mike

When I went to work Friday morning, it was -20 with a wind chill around -45. I don’t think I’d be out of line saying that it was the coldest weather I had ever experienced. Since I’m only outdoors from the door of the house to my car then the parking lot into work 0 isn’t all that bad, with gloves and maybe the hood of my jacket I can survive. I didn’t think it was all that bad at first. I had to rev the engine to get the car started. My first sign that it was cold was that the LCD on my radio wasn’t showing anything, no clock, nothing. It’s usually dim in spots and changes very slowly, but I’d never seen something like this. I decided to let the car warm up to the point where I could see the clock, thought it would be for the best. Even the walk into work wasn’t all that bad, until I turned and started walking into the wind. OUCH! Don’t open your eyes when walking into a -45 degree wind chill. When I got inside I couldn’t see anything for a second or two and took a little for my brain to unfreeze to be able to swipe my badge. I might have been walking into the wind for a total of 10 feet, I hope it isn’t blowing in a different direction next time. In the afternoon it was bright and sunny when I left work and gloves almost didn’t seem necessary. Driving home I had a feeling that it was so warm that the snow was starting to melt a bit. When I got onto my computer AccuWeather told me it was -5. My former concept of temperature is gone. This week looks to be warmed with 6 inches of snow again on Monday.

Evan and I are busy planning our Spring and Summer trips. The details will be finalized soon and published so you can all commence your feelings of jealously. By now you should all be familiar with these trips. It will be the 3rd Spring Break trip and 2nd Summer trip. We are getting so good at this we should be paid to do it for other people, I think it would make a good business. (What’s that? That’s what travel agents are for you say? Oh well.) The Spring Trip will be similar to those in the past, but the Summer trip, that’s a whole different story. This year is a Midwest theme, surprise! We also have very few contacts out here so it may be the first time we, gasp, spring for a hotel. Keep your eyes here for further news.

The Myths of Minnesota
Its cold and everybody talks funny.
Ok, I’ll give ya a bit of the cold, but actually its been about the same here as back home, but the floor for the temperature is much lower. As for the talk funny, I can’t say that its any different than back home.

Yesterday was the first snow since I’ve been here (a coating to an inch doesn’t count). I think we got about 5 or 6 inches. The problem was that most of it fell while I was in work on Monday, making the drive home very messy. The Focus handled things well enough to survive. The average temperature has been pretty nice, we’ve hit a few -25 wind chills. I came out of work one evening to a -10 wind chill. That morning it was 30 so I was not prepared for that kind of drop. The most unusual weather that I have noticed, however, was on Saturday morning when my AccuWeather told me it was 0 but the heat index was 6. I mentioned this to Evan, he responded that it’s the humidity that’ll kill you.

I think it may be that people move from all over to work at IBM but I have not found many people who appeared in Fargo. I was warned that as soon as you cross the Mississippi that people start talking funny. I guess it’s possible up North, but here in the tropical part of the state people come for all over. Maybe I’ve already adjusted and everyone will look at me funny when I come home. I’ve heard a lot of accents from Texas and plenty of Spanish. But if you count all the professors I’ve had at school, I haven’t heard anything funny here.

The job itself has kept me busy and not seeing an end to the learning opportunity, or requirement that is necessary to do the job. The 3-5 minute commute is going to cause problems in the future. Now, sometimes I sit in the driveway when I get home so that I can at least listen to one entire song. Last summer was over an hour each way. I’m going to have a hard time until I ride the monorail to work when the Master Plan in implemented.

Things I’d Change at IBM
Now these are not actual business ideas but things that I’ve had in the past or observations that I’ve made that would make life working at IBM just a bit better.

Free Soda – I spent a good part of my days last summer walking over to the fountain soda machine to choose which kind I was going to have. Now some days I don’t get a drink because I’m scared of what would happen if I feed a 20 to the machine. I can’t take many more of those dollar coins.

New Badges – The ID Badges are just your standard credit card type deal with the magnetic strip. The problem is every card reader in the building has its own little quirk. Backups occur during lunch when people have to swipe multiple times to get it to work. The simple flash of the badge in front of the reader would be so much nicer.

On the first day of work I noticed that there was a door with a sign that hung in the hallway indicating that it was the Visitors’ Center. First you need to get through the main doors with an ID to get to this point, but I let that slide. Then I read the door: “Employee’s Only.” I still can’t get over this one. You can’t be an employee and a visitor at the same time. I hope that if anyone was to ever open this door, which would violate all sorts of common sense laws, that there was just a brick wall on the other side.

You aren’t even going to notice this entry, but I’ll put it here anyway. I finally got around to sorting through the pictures that I took during Evan and my baseball trip this past summer. There are some comments included and more may come at some point, but don’t hold your breath. You can check out all the big city goodness here.