Archive for the ‘Around the office’ Category

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

April 10th, 2008 by Darin Herle

I’ve always been fascinated by the Hollywood game “the six degrees of Kevin Bacon“. Its a pop-culture version of the well known “six degrees of separation” idea – we’re all seperated from anyone on the planet by, at most, six people. Except, in the “Kevin Bacon” version, you interconnect Hollywood stars via Kevin Bacon.

I’m in Corpus Christi, TX right now at the ESRI SCAUG conference, and was thinking of this concept as it relates to my predicament: I flew here on American Airlines and narrowly averted getting stuck in Seattle as their MD-80 fleet was grounded for FAA inspection earlier this week. With the cancelling of so many flights, surely everyone would know someone this has affected? Well now you know one more (or the first) – me.

I just checked the American Airlines website for information related to my flight home tomorrow and it won’t load – presumably becuase the other 100,000 or so displaced passengers are looking for the same information I am! Anyways, I hope I make it home tomorrow – but I can think of worse places to spend a weekend.

Our New, Vibrating Office

March 26th, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

vibrating_floorHaving recently hired four people, we’re expanding into some more office space next to the product developers on the third floor. In the main room we’re trying to figure out if we should go more open concept (loud, but looks nice) or build a cube farm (practical, but doesn’t look nice).

We’re also trying to figure out how to solve a weird issue with the space. After we took possession we noticed that about one quarter of the floor in the main room vibrates (I think the ventilation system in the downstairs office passes under the hardwood floor). While Drew was in Dubai he acquired a large (8’x14’) Persian rug for us in an effort to absorb some of the vibrations. It sure looks nice, but it doesn’t do much to reduce the constant vibration. Any clever ideas?