Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 16:58:51 -0400
From: Kafka Dreams 
To: void
Subject: nerd thoughts


It's cold in the building where I work.  I would guess 65'F, but I
might be exaggerating because I come in from the steaming or baking
heat, wearing my short-sleeved shirts and sometimes cotton pants, and
it's a shock.  Not a diving-into-ice-water kind of shock, more of a
can't-tell-whether-the-tap-water-is-hot-or-cold kind of flinchy 
surprise.  Hits me every time.  It's too visceral to quite be prepared
for it.

I've always figured it was bone-chilling cold to keep the computers
cool and tempers in check.  We are an Internet company, so everyone
has at least one computer.  Many have two or more.  Between egoz and
cpuz, there's a lot of heat that requires neutralizing.

But today I had another thought: refrigeration.

Ah, you might say, didn't we already cover this?  Well, sort of - but
now I mean refrigeration for things that spoil and start to stink.
Like milk.  Or chicken.  Or nerds.

In a 24x7 Network Operations Center sort of environment, a place that
is always full of PEOPLE (many of whom consume cheezerific chemical
byproducts) - people who sit and eat and drink and cough and burp and
fart and spew crumbs ALL THE TIME, people who are nerd-studs and work
extra long hours so they're here even longer than normals might be,
people who sometimes have sorta questionable grooming habits, people
who love people - things can get a little... shall we say, FUNKY?  And
I do not mean that in a groovy way.

I'm beginning to believe that the extreme refrigeration minimizes the
"I CAN SMELL YOUR FEET FROM HERE!" effect - particularly in high
summer.

Or maybe the facilities staff just don't want their genetic
experiments going bad.  Who the hell knows...

Kelly J.
  The sentences: "Stanislaw Lem's room reeks of cheese" and "We have
  discovered a new solar system" are treated exactly the same way on
  the Internet.  There is no ordering of information to separate the
  important from the trivial, the correct from absolute nonsense.
                        - Stanislaw Lem