back contents next March 9, 2000
 

New Things

Eileene and Mike
An old picture of Mike and I in front of the house.
I think I should have worn something nicer.

Wednesday.

At work, I had my weekly departmental meeting. We used to meet every week, but then we stopped for a while. Now we're back into it. We might start meeting every two weeks in the future, primarily to catch up and to see who is working on what project. Who is free and who is swamped and try to get everyone working with constant, billable work. Today, we had a talk about the new offices.

Wow.

The company is moving from our 3rd Avenue and 44th Street location to 5th Avenue, 37th Street. We're moving from the sixth floor to four floors (2 - 5). We're moving away from grey cubical land...

When my sister first came to visit our offices, she commented how Dilbertesque it all looked. "I thought that Scott Adams was exaggerating."

"Nope. Welcome to cubicle hell."

"It's kind of depressing and sad."

"Well, we try to make up for it by having games and personal stuff around." I pointed to my cluttered and colorful desk. Then I realized I'm a bad example. I have one of the most colorful and personalized desks in the company.

"But it's still.. so.. grey."

...to something completely different.

office arrangement

Our new first floor. It is an extremely tall floor ("studio/loft feel") with heigh ceilings and huge windows (alas, they do not open). You either take the elevator or staircase up to the second floor and enter through the reception area. It will have a few large video monitors mounted to the walls that will have slide presentations showing off our work or the company's commercials. It will remind me of the EURO RSCG office reception area.

I remember the first time I walked into the reception area of EURO RSCG, a large advertising agency. Their offices were amazing. The walls were covered with posters from all over the world of the ads they produced for their clients. They even had an Intel Bunnyman suit, hot pink, standing by a supporting pillar. One of their clients is Philips and they had a huge (atleast five or six feet across) flatscreen monitor behind the receptionist. I knew it was a flatscreen and not a recessed television set because when I walked past the reception area, the office behind the monitor is encased in glass with a thin wall on one of the four sides. The wall was very thin. The television itself was probably three inches wide, give or take. I was impressed.

The architect is building, in the middle of the space, a large raised auditorium that should be large enough to hold everyone for regional office meetings. The auditorium space is a circular room, bowing outwards to give the reception area a convex appearance. On the other side of the floor will be the kitchen, bathrooms, and a few small conference rooms (no offices. It turns out that very few people will have offices and that we're going for a friendlier office space). The space in the middle will be devoted to meeting tables and desks, for project leaders, designers, and developers to meet around informally and talk about projects.

Towards the windows will be our department. Our space. Since we have the most visually presentable department...

Programmers and developers, unfortunately, aren't very visually appealing. You can't point to code and go, "Isn't that wonderful? Don't you want to hire us to do your next website with such slick-looking code?" I can understand code monkeys getting really excited about code (sometimes, I get that way too), but the most obvious part of the applications we build is the interface. The design. Not what goes on behind the curtain.

...we're going to be showcased on our main floor. Clients can walk into the group and look at us working, see the sketches, design in action. We're proposing a circular arrangement for our cubicles (yes, we're still in cubicles, although the desks are going to be very generous because the designers all have two machines and we need the space for our tablets) with everyone facing inwards to foster a "crossroad" of communication among the designers.

My bosses want to make the space a fully-functional artist studio. Large drafting tables supplied with pens, markers, pencils, etc. The lighting is going to be well-thought out, warmer in tone. Right now, our fluorescent lights really force our eyes to strain when we're doing color work. We've taped up the lights and bought several floor lamp halogens which help soften the lighting in our current office. We won't have this problem in the new office.

The space will be exciting and a wonderful work area. I'm so excited! We're going to be moving in perhaps in May or June. I can't wait for the new space. I love new things.

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After three months of waffling, I decided to buckle down and buy a new pilot. My old pilot is currently not in a happy state, after it mysteriously got smashed up badly during my trip to the Philippines. I probably knocked it on a hard surface when tossing my backpack around and.. a lovely spiderweb crack on the glass. I have no idea how to fix it (or how to begin. I'd like to get it fixed, but don't know who to contact).

So, I did some research today and found a pilot that I wanted (the Palm IIIx. Cheap and in the Palm III family. My GoType! keyboard needs to be used with a PDA in the Palm III family) at the price that I wanted. So, I purchased it, along with a colorful hard flip case. I will probably buy a nice leather holder in future, probably one that can hold both my pilot and keyboard.

The impetus for this purchase was my credit card bill. It was shockingly low. The rest is history.

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© Copyright 1999-2000 Eileene Coscolluela
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