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Week in the Life, Day 3&4
Oops, so yesterday I ended up falling asleep at, like, 8:30 and didn't make a Week in the Life post, I'm going to merge yesterday's and today's together.
Day 3
So, this is what I woke up to. I'm not naturally a morning person, but if I get in the rhythm I can actually be up and functional early. I think I'm mostly adjusted at this point, but I still boggle some days at how early I wake up.
That said, yesterday I was tired, so was still pretty sleepy on the bus.
So, there's this project at work where they're changing all the printers in the building. And eventually there will be this automated system that will send out warnings to the IT team to go change the toner in them when it's needed. However, since the project is still being implemented the "automated" part hasn't happened yet, so it's my job to check each printer for the toner levels. Luckily I can do that from my computer.
One of the departments at work recently changed locations and did a lot of cleaning up with the move. And so brought us boxes of junk they found, because clearly IT is the place for that? Anyway, yesterday was slow, so I picked through the box sorting the useful things from the garbage (no, really, the Windows 98 printer drivers aren't *useful*). One of the things given in was this thing below. It won the prize for being the most disturbing. I finally looked up what it is online, and apparently it's an alarm you can use to lock up your laptop? But the part that made it disturbing is that it purrs whenever you touch it. Or, like, whenever I put anything in the garbage box with it. It would purr! o_O
The computers at my work are heavily networked and that's how they get most of their updates. This is fine for the desktops or the people who use a laptop as their main computer, but there are a lot of departments that have laptops that are only used when someone is traveling or maybe wants to bring work home. Those laptops can stay locked in a cupboard for months, even years at a time. Which means when someone does pull it out, it hasn't gotten updates in forever. If a computer has been off the network for too long, it basically stops working and we have to wipe it and rebuild it (ie. reinstall everything from the operating system up). We got one of those computers yesterday so that's what I spent a good chunk of yesterday and today doing. The picture's kinda blurry there, but that's me reinstalling the operating system.
I ended up working on a printer problem at the end of day yesterday and couldn't get it fixed before leaving. I kept wanting to try one more thing, though and ended up missing my bus home. Rather than wait 20 minutes for the next bus, I caught a bus heading in the other direction, heading downtown to catch my transfer. I actually got home at my usual time, so maybe I should look into going this way more often.
When I catch my transfer downtown, I get off at the Rideau Centre on one side, and catch my next bus on the other side of the mall. So I jumped off the bus and went into the The Bay, where they're currently selling things based off their signature look (17th century Canadian chic!). Every time I go by it, I think about buying something, a blanket maybe? Or a sweater?
Then I went upstairs to cross the tunnel across the road to the Rideau Centre.
The bus stops around the mall are super busy. A lot of transfers happen here because it's right downtown, and the back end of the mall is on the transitway route. It's pretty much a constant stream of buses (that one bus, 95? I think there's always a minimum of 4 of them on this bridge during rush hour, by far the route with the most buses on it).
While I was waiting for the bus, I took a pic of some of the buildings around.
When I got home, I made myself burritos for dinner! It was the first time I've tried to make them and I was quite pleased with the outcome, I especially liked the taste with avocado added.
Then, as I said above, I basically passed out. So now, onto day 4!
Day 4
I wasn't as good at taking pictures of the random things I was doing today, so instead there's a lot of pictures of where I work.
But first, my day started off on the bus.
This is the building where I work.
It's hard to see in the morning light, but in that glass pyramid there are all these colourful drapey things. Here's a pic of them from inside in the afternoon light.
The building itself is older, but there are all these newer additions on them. They tried to make the building more interesting and artsy but it's debatable how well it worked. :P A lot of people call the building the "geometry building" because there are a lot of random shapes on it, like that pyramid in the front. Here's a pic of some of the newer part in the back. See the white metal part sticking out to the side of the higher brick part of the building? I'll try and get a pic of it, but it's probably the most random part of the building. It's this really tall metal archway. It doesn't seem to have any practical purpose, other than as a landmark, I suppose, since it sticks out so much.
My office is in the older, original part of the building. Actually, the two windows on the top floor or the shorter part that juts out are mine. I have a surprisingly large cubicle although sometimes I curse the windows. Sometimes the afternoon light shines through and stabs me in the eyes, which can give me a headache. I generally try to spend the sunny afternoons in the lab to avoid it. :S
My work is actually on an island in the Rideau River. Here's a picture of the river, covered in snow, of course.
We're the only building on the island, but there is a sort of park on the other side of the road which, according to Wikipedia, contains a number of war memorials. It's been pretty snow covered the entire time I've been here so I haven't had a chance to really explore it yet.
And, since I started the day with a picture on the bus, here's another one to close it out. This is the guy that sat down across from me on the bus holding a bunch of flags and a drum. o_O
Day 3
So, this is what I woke up to. I'm not naturally a morning person, but if I get in the rhythm I can actually be up and functional early. I think I'm mostly adjusted at this point, but I still boggle some days at how early I wake up.
That said, yesterday I was tired, so was still pretty sleepy on the bus.
So, there's this project at work where they're changing all the printers in the building. And eventually there will be this automated system that will send out warnings to the IT team to go change the toner in them when it's needed. However, since the project is still being implemented the "automated" part hasn't happened yet, so it's my job to check each printer for the toner levels. Luckily I can do that from my computer.
One of the departments at work recently changed locations and did a lot of cleaning up with the move. And so brought us boxes of junk they found, because clearly IT is the place for that? Anyway, yesterday was slow, so I picked through the box sorting the useful things from the garbage (no, really, the Windows 98 printer drivers aren't *useful*). One of the things given in was this thing below. It won the prize for being the most disturbing. I finally looked up what it is online, and apparently it's an alarm you can use to lock up your laptop? But the part that made it disturbing is that it purrs whenever you touch it. Or, like, whenever I put anything in the garbage box with it. It would purr! o_O
The computers at my work are heavily networked and that's how they get most of their updates. This is fine for the desktops or the people who use a laptop as their main computer, but there are a lot of departments that have laptops that are only used when someone is traveling or maybe wants to bring work home. Those laptops can stay locked in a cupboard for months, even years at a time. Which means when someone does pull it out, it hasn't gotten updates in forever. If a computer has been off the network for too long, it basically stops working and we have to wipe it and rebuild it (ie. reinstall everything from the operating system up). We got one of those computers yesterday so that's what I spent a good chunk of yesterday and today doing. The picture's kinda blurry there, but that's me reinstalling the operating system.
I ended up working on a printer problem at the end of day yesterday and couldn't get it fixed before leaving. I kept wanting to try one more thing, though and ended up missing my bus home. Rather than wait 20 minutes for the next bus, I caught a bus heading in the other direction, heading downtown to catch my transfer. I actually got home at my usual time, so maybe I should look into going this way more often.
When I catch my transfer downtown, I get off at the Rideau Centre on one side, and catch my next bus on the other side of the mall. So I jumped off the bus and went into the The Bay, where they're currently selling things based off their signature look (17th century Canadian chic!). Every time I go by it, I think about buying something, a blanket maybe? Or a sweater?
Then I went upstairs to cross the tunnel across the road to the Rideau Centre.
The bus stops around the mall are super busy. A lot of transfers happen here because it's right downtown, and the back end of the mall is on the transitway route. It's pretty much a constant stream of buses (that one bus, 95? I think there's always a minimum of 4 of them on this bridge during rush hour, by far the route with the most buses on it).
While I was waiting for the bus, I took a pic of some of the buildings around.
When I got home, I made myself burritos for dinner! It was the first time I've tried to make them and I was quite pleased with the outcome, I especially liked the taste with avocado added.
Then, as I said above, I basically passed out. So now, onto day 4!
Day 4
I wasn't as good at taking pictures of the random things I was doing today, so instead there's a lot of pictures of where I work.
But first, my day started off on the bus.
This is the building where I work.
It's hard to see in the morning light, but in that glass pyramid there are all these colourful drapey things. Here's a pic of them from inside in the afternoon light.
The building itself is older, but there are all these newer additions on them. They tried to make the building more interesting and artsy but it's debatable how well it worked. :P A lot of people call the building the "geometry building" because there are a lot of random shapes on it, like that pyramid in the front. Here's a pic of some of the newer part in the back. See the white metal part sticking out to the side of the higher brick part of the building? I'll try and get a pic of it, but it's probably the most random part of the building. It's this really tall metal archway. It doesn't seem to have any practical purpose, other than as a landmark, I suppose, since it sticks out so much.
My office is in the older, original part of the building. Actually, the two windows on the top floor or the shorter part that juts out are mine. I have a surprisingly large cubicle although sometimes I curse the windows. Sometimes the afternoon light shines through and stabs me in the eyes, which can give me a headache. I generally try to spend the sunny afternoons in the lab to avoid it. :S
My work is actually on an island in the Rideau River. Here's a picture of the river, covered in snow, of course.
We're the only building on the island, but there is a sort of park on the other side of the road which, according to Wikipedia, contains a number of war memorials. It's been pretty snow covered the entire time I've been here so I haven't had a chance to really explore it yet.
And, since I started the day with a picture on the bus, here's another one to close it out. This is the guy that sat down across from me on the bus holding a bunch of flags and a drum. o_O