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Last week work had the first all-hands meeting for my department. I didn't realize this before making a comment about the upcoming daily scrum and learning nobody was going to be at it. So, this took me to a new building and the auditorium there and a half-hour get-together with doughnuts and coffee and the chance to meet people. The guy I work with most often introduced me to a few people, the most interesting being a guy who performs with this local old-time-radio club that does show reenactments. This was thrilling to me; I'd read about it in the alt-weekly a few years ago but we missed the show and I never saw anything about it again. So that was thrilling.
At the meeting all the new hires --- there were a half-dozen or so --- got mentioned. They avoided the problem of pronouncing my (real) last name by not reading anyone's last names; while my last name may confuse folks my first is no issue for anyone.
Most of the presentations were various sub-departments reading off lists of numbers about how the number of things they were doing had changed over the last couple years. There was a fun bit where whoever it was addressed IT problems including ranking of the people who give them the greatest number of calls and gave some shout-outs to a woman who'd gone from #1 to, like, #16 or so which they admitted was because she had semi-retired. Amiable enough stuff.
The oddest presentation was photos of one group's trip to a water quality sampling station, including the research boat that wasn't being taken out because the waters were too cold. It was neat seeing but I'm not sure why it was something they figured everyone needed to know. On the other hand, I guess seeing neat stuff is its own justification.
The most interesting and ominous piece came from someone who seems to be in charge of the department, and it was about whether there would be a return to full-time office work. He owned up that this was a political decision, which was some pleasant honesty, but that as such it would be made above his level. he said he had not heard of any plans to return everyone to full-time in-office conditions but he couldn't swear that would hold forever. But he did note that hybrid had been working out really well, taking a lot of pressure off of facilities without hurting productivity any. At present I have to spend two days a week in office and while I'll grant there's some benefit to that, for me it's mostly been that it's much easier to have someone walk me through how to do a computer thing if I can just watch them doing it in person. One day a week would be plenty for that. I hope we stick to the hybrid format; even if I still have to get up at the same hour it's much easier to spend the day working from home instead. But they're not asking me about it.
Now let's take in some more Michigan Women's State Pinball Championship action!
Setting up the right for a match on The Addams Family, one that people went to often. Spider-Man, so far as I'm aware, nobody touched in either tournament which is odd since it's a fun game. Note in the background on the wall a picture of Roger Sharpe's famous demonstration of pinball as a game of skill for the New York city council.
Checking that the monitors are streaming correctly while the competitors take their 30-second practice rounds. The practice is a good way to learn where the skill shot is, how the ball is kicking out of holes, how bouncey the flippers are, that sort of thing.
Game is underway! I like the illusion of the laptop hovering nearby as they stream.
Game's over, time to move the rig to a new location.
ACE helps out by getting under the rig games to mess with the power cords.
The Pong cocktail party table offers a couple of games, including Quadrapong, which I can't decide whether sounds like a legitimate game from the 70s or a retrospective creation that hit the name and the logo just perfectly.
Trivia: By 1919 the Carnegie Endowment had spent over $350 million (something like three billion in current dollars) on projects including 2,811 public libraries and 7,689 church organs. Source: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge.
Currently Reading: Suddenly, Tomorrow Came: A History of the Johnson Space Center, Henry C Dethloff. NASA SP-4307.
