Roblog

Well, I waited 4 hours to do it, but I placed my order for one of the new G5 iMacs. Four hours after they were available for ordering, I submitted my order for a 20" LCD, 1.8 GHz G5, DVD-R burner, wireless keyboard iMac.

I've been way too busy at work to wax eloquent about the upcoming arrival of the computer, but I'll have time. It won't be shipped for at least 4 weeks - maybe longer. At least I'm relatively close to the front of the line. I hope.

I work at a large, unnamed petroleum company. I noticed yesterday that there was a security guard standing at the top of the escalator in the lobby that leads down to the cafeteria. It's a nice cafeteria, and other downtown workers come there to eat lunch on occasion.

That afternoon, a site-wide email was sent saying that a Greenpeace van was spotted in the parking lot across the street the previous day. For that reason, security was tightened and no one who does not work for the company will be allowed to go downstairs to the cafeteria.

This sounded ridiculous to me when I first read it. Nothing indicated that a direct (or indirect) threat was received or that the van's proximity to the building was anything other than coincidence. So all of a sudden we're in a "heightened security state"? But as I thought about it, I realized that the company has been a target of Greenpeace's activism in the past. Although I still think it's overreacting a little bit, I can understand their desire to be cautious.

I wonder how long of a "heightened security level" one van sighting warrants? Maybe they were here doing some reconnaissance to plan some future activism event. The company should probably proactively shutdown the group, by any means necessary, regardless of support of other companies or agencies. Then the company executives can state over and over about how the group is directly linked to terrorist organizations. Eventually, if they say it enough times, the shareholders will believe it and re-elect the board members for another four-year term.

Oops - I think I mixed up my story lines there. Sorry about that. I'm going to go have lunch in the secured cafeteria.

I have updated my Macintosh page to reflect my pending change in home computing environment. The old Macintosh page is still around, if you want to reminisce.

Have I lost my design touch? It seems like I had a much harder time in laying out the new page than I used to, and I'm still not very happy with it. I think part of it is that I don't have as much time to spend on my web page as I used to, and part of it is my attempt to use CSS to control the layout and style of my page, instead of the old techniques I've known for years.

I at least got what I wanted to up on the page: a comparison between my old (current) Mac and my new (future) iMac, and a cute little countdown image. It'll do for now, even though the countdown image will cease to function 20 days after my new Mac arrives.

I'm continuing to be very busy recently. It was really stressing me out a few weeks ago, to the point where I was having trouble sleeping and eating. I'm over that now, not because I'm necessarily having less to do, but because I've decided to not let it get to me.

It's also been nice to look forward to my new computer. It's only a couple weeks away now, and in fact should be on its way here next week. Before it arrives, I'm trying to get the office in shape. It's such a stylish computer, I'd hate to sentence it to exist in the most cluttered room in our house. Not only would that detract from its look, but also I'll probably be dragging people back to the office to look at it whenever anyone stops by.

Another nice thing is that I recently got promoted. No sudden change in role or responsibilities is going along with it, but it's more of an acknowledgement of the work I have been doing recently. That takes a bit of the sting off of having way too much to do.