A Thousand Days in the MakingPart 4: Jesse Delivers the Triple No No

I know, I know. I'm a bit behind on all this. No excuses, I've been busy. We're finally getting to the meat of the story though. If you've followed the blog for a while we're introducing a new Rachael in this story. Fortunately, she spells it differently than the "other" Rachel.

Also, I should point out that I took the link to her blog out because it's now private. And before you ask, yes it's because she didn't want you reading it(Kidding).

Day 828(January 16th, 2009) -

My phone buzzed around lunchtime to let me know that I had an email. Oddly enough it wasn't work related, or even a personal message. It was an email to my Sesquipedalis account. Before the Shaq piece, that account got about as much email as Isaiah Washington gets gay fan mail. Even more odd was that it was from a girl, identified in the From field of the message as Rachael.

Hi there,
I found your blog in a round about way through my sister Mandi's. She convinced me to start one at Christmas and I did. Not sure that it is so fabulous, but it entertains her and my mom so I guess it serves a purpose. Anyways, I thought yours was pretty funny. When I have some time I will read more of it. If you're interested mine is removed. I live in Phoenix too oddly enough. Happy blogging :) Rachael

I immediately went and spent some time reading through her blog. One of the first entries I came across pertained to her penchant for giving pet names to the peeps in her life. Oddly enough, the first comment her sister Mandi ever made was about my tendency to do the same. I was pretty amused by the whole thing, and since it had relatively few entries at the time, I breezed through it.

In the upper right hand corner of the blog was a picture of Rachael. I throw words like "Cute" and "Pretty" around on this blog like Steve Nash dishing assists, but I find them insufficient in regards to describing this girl. She was gorgeous. And for my part I was having none of it.

I once wrote that after the twins, I was tired of pretty people. You need to be a 6 or less to hang out with me, and Rachael had missed the cut by about 4 points. I sent her a very polite response and thanked her for reading, but when I received a response the following Monday, I just let it go. In my mind, no girl that attractive was out on the Internet interested in talking to me. She probably didn't care if I wrote back or not.

Day 890(March 9th, 2009) -

I was surprised when Rachael left a comment on one of my blog entries, and even sent me an email to let me know how amused she was. I had assumed that her initial letter was just an attempt to gain more readers, or just a friendly hello. Even more surprising was that within 30 minutes of her leaving the comment Liang was in my office.

"Who's Rachael?"
"Huh? Uh... Ruth's sister? The twin? You've met h..."
"No... the one who left a comment on your blog. The super cute one in the beanie."

Leaving a comment on my blog had lead him back to hers.

"Oh... her. That's Mandi's sister."
"Who the hell's Mandi?"

An hour later I got an IM from J.R.
"Who the hell is this Rachael?"

I was doing my best to keep expectations low, but by the end of the day Rachael was the talk of the office. The common question became, "What are you going to do?"

My plan remained the same. I was going to do nothing.

"Have you seen that girl?" I'd ask, "I'm not taking my whiffle ball bat and trying to hit in the National League. I'm not doing anything."

Most of the nerds let it go fairly quickly. Most of the nerds except for Sean. Sean has been happily married for a while, which somehow gives him carte blanche to screw with the rest of us when it comes to women. Had he not metaphorically won the lottery by meeting his wife, he'd be just as spineless and lame as the rest of us, but since fate had dealt him a royal flush he took this opportunity to mess with me while we planned his annual St. Patty's day party.

"You should invite Kansas."
"Let me get this straight... Some girl who I only know because I know her sister, in fact, I don't really even know here sister, I should ask her to a party with a bunch of you dorks? Yeah, that won't be creepy. Pass."
"Do it. If you don't, I'll write a comment on her blog and ask her for you."
Fine

Day 892(March 11th, 2009) -

I sent Rachael a long email, and tried to casually work it in that she could come to our party.

Day 893(March 12th, 2009) -

Rachael sent me a long email and casually worked it in that my invitation to a party with a bunch of people she didn't know was sort of weird, and that she would not be attending.

Rachael and I continued to correspond for the next month. The letters were always quite lengthy and amusing, but eventually I decided that she was most likely just being nice. Pretty, funny, smart girls probably have better things to do with their time than email me. Right?

Day 926(April 14th, 2009) -

Rachael sent me a lengthy email that I had thought was quite typical. The email sat in my inbox for quite some time. I had intended to respond, but never got around to it. I would later find that I should have read the email more carefully...

The Liang Prank

Back in October, my coworker Liang was sent to Romania for a one month assignment. For him it was an opportunity to check out Europe and try out a new work place. For Sean it was the opportunity to pull the prank of a lifetime. We quickly assembled a team of super nerds from around the office and began plotting.

The "Plan" as viewed on Liang's new Newton.

Liang is the very proud owner of a three monitor set up. As I noted in The Developer Trap, monitors are at a premium around the office, and Liang loves to point out that he has three. We began by taking all of the technology out of his office and filling it with old and antiquated equipment. Whenever possible, something made by Apple was used since Liang has a bigger man-crush on Steve Jobs than I do on Steve Nash.

Liang also owns a large stuffed rabbit that sits in his office. We once considered an intervention, or at least investigation, but eventually decided that it's better to just not ask questions.

For my part of the prank, we stole the bunny and hid it in a ceiling tile. I then made several ransom note style newspaper cutout messages to lead him on a scavenger hunt from one point to the next. A cardboard X was taped to his window, and at 3 PM, the X would cast a shadow on the floor of where he should search.

Liang hates having the windows in his office open. You'd think having an office in one of the few Phoenecian sky scrapers would be incentive enough to look outside, but Liang stays true to his nerd roots and avoids the sunlight like the nosferatu.

We were going to steal and hide the blinds, but eventually decided that leaving them open with a surprise waiting would be a better decision. We printed out a large photo of us holding the bunny, cut it in to tiny strips, and placed it on his blinds so that when they were opened the picture wouldn't be noticed. When the blinds were then closed, the picture would reveal itself.

Sean wanted Liang to take it in the face like a boxer who doesn't know how to block, so we took a large, battery operated nerf gun and rigged it to go off when the door was opened. This would also trigger an 80's style tape deck which would then beging playing this song.

A bungee cord was then secured to the door to make sure he wouldn't immediately shut it to block the oncoming nerf barrage.

The final part of the plan was packing peanuts.

Lots and lots of packing peanuts.

It took two full nights after work to set up the joke. A webcam was placed inside of Liang's office, and on the morning of his return from his long trip it was set to broadcast to the our 50+ coworkers who were all "in" on the joke.

As he turned the handle and the door flew out of his hand I could hear a loud obsenity shouted from the general direction of his office. He immediately jumped back and out of range. Like a newborn baby, he stood for a few moments, his brain not fully registering what his eyes were seeing.

After inspecting and cleaning for a few hours, he finally had a path made to his desk.

"At least I can finally get some work done, maybe answer some emails" he told me as we returned from lunch.

It was at this point that he shut his blinds.

As I walked back towards my office I heard an exasperated nerd sigh, "You got the bunny too?"

A few notes:

• The webcam feed was saved, but unfortunately the sound was not. You can view it here, although there's not much to see.
• The packing peanuts were a bit of an optical illusion. The illusion can be seen here. Still, it was about 100 dollars worth of packing peanuts. Were you fooled? He certainly was.
• You can see the full set of pictures on my flickr account here.
• Next to Steve Nash, Sean is my vote for Canadian of the year. Make sure you let him know if you enjoyed the prank.
  

Ro Two Oh

"I've got the girl for you" Sean N announced as he burst in to my office last Monday morning. Monday mornings with Sean usually involve mom jokes and him farting in my office* so the possibility of female interaction for me was a welcomed change.

"Yeah?" I responded, pretending not to be half as interested as I was.
"That girl from Romania is cute."
"Yeah, I remember her from last time she was here. She was cute... in that Cold War kind of way, if you know what I mean."
"No, not that one. It's a new one. She's even cuter. She's Ro Two Oh(2.0)" he said, obviously pleased with himself for the joke.
"She seems friendly. I said hi to her and I think she smiled." he continued, now beaming as any nerd would after a cute girl had smiled at him.
"Well, I guess I'll have to check that out"

My interest was now piqued. Erik recently married a Brazilian girl, and Adam a German. Maybe I could make it a clean sweep? Maybe the nerd pot of gold lays outside of US borders?

Soon, like news of a blog contest for a free lunch, the word had spread and half of the office was going to try to "hook Jesse up"(Aside from Liang who was trying to hook Liang up despite the fact that Liang is married).

I decided to have a little fun with it and marched in to Jim's office. Jim was the Romanian's contact while they were here(There were 2 guys and the girl).

"Why you gotta block Jim? Why haven't you introduced me yet?"

Much to my dismay, Jim was in to the idea too and decided to help. By Thursday a plan was set up where some people from the office would take the Romanians out to Mill Ave. over the weekend. A trip to Mill on the weekend for me is generally about as uplifting as "Bring Your Parents to School Day" for Bruce Wayne, but I decided to tough it out.

Friday Sean came down with Bronchitis, and other people started bailing. I found out that two of the Romanians were going to Vegas for the weekend, but the one guy (Mihi) still wanted to go out. Then Jim told me that the girl (Andrea) had a boyfriend anyhow.

I ended up showing him downtown Tempe and it was a cool experience getting to hang out with a Romanian dude for the night, but it was still no Ro 2.0.

* It's not just Monday mornings, that's pretty much every day.

The Developer Trap

About two months ago there was a huge box sitting in one of the spare rooms at our office. I work for a large format printer company so there are always rolls of paper around, and therefore always large cardboard tubes around. Apparently John saw fit to put these two together, combined with an electrical cord, and make a trap.

After some time Sean came across the trap and added a sign, and a nearby empty flat panel monitor box to the trap as "bait".

I'm really not sure how I was not involved in the trap building process. I must have been hard at work that week, but that hardly seems possible. Eventually Sean decided he needed to take pictures of his creation, and wanted a "test dummy" to pose with it.

I'm sure Liang was first choice to trap in a box, but I'm equally sure that he was cranky and argued that he wouldn't do it, so Sean came to me. As is often the case, it didn't take much persuasion to get me to make an ass out of myself.

Sean had the photos for a while, today I finally decided to sit down and throw them together. I hope you enjoy "The Developer Trap", and apologize for the fact that it's mostly inside jokes and nerd humor.

The UFADAR swings both ways/Jesse gets a new building crush

I really wish I had the writing ability to do this story justice, but you'll have to take my word for it that the real version of this was far more amusing than what I've managed to detail here. That being said, sorry it took so long. For some reason I just couldn't finish it. Sorry for the length. Feel free to stop in the middle and make yourself a sandwich, or some homemade lunchables. If that doesn't work give me a call and I'll read it to you.

"Someone in the building was looking for help with their computer."
"Uhm... yeah..." I responded with a bit of hesitation.

It was Allen, former doorman and now resident of my building, on the other end of the phone. He's the all around good Samaritan kind of guy, so I didn't want to come right out and say it, but normally helping people with their computer ends up being a pain in my ass that I'd rather avoid.

"It's Agnes, do you know her?"
"Red hair? About 4 feet tall?" I asked, now somewhat guilty for being hesitant. "Feel free to give her my number."

I'd run in to Agnes a few times in the lobby over the past year. She was an older lady(I'd assumed in her 70's) who always had a smile and a "Hello" as she ran off to her job, volunteering at the hospital. She's the kind of lady that makes you feel like you should hug her goodbye and say thank you for the cookies when she leaves.

After a bit of phone tag we finally arranged a date and time for me to come down and assess the damage. From what I could gather she and her sister had bought condos next door to each other so that Agnes could take care of her. When her sister recently moved in to a retirement home, Agnes moved across the hall to live in the bigger unit.

"When I bought the computa, the... the Geek. You know the Geek from tha Best Buy? He set it up for me" she informed me with her New York type accent and a certain amount of innocence reserved only for children and the elderly when dealing with technology. "I asked the man from Qwest if I needed to call the Geek back, but they said they could do it. He moved the computa for me. And... and now the thing doesn't work!" Her voice perked up at every use of the word "Geek".

Some quick investigation revealed that qwest had really done a number on her computer. I'll save the nerdtastic explanations for offline discussions if anyone is interested, but about an hour later I had most everything fixed except for her email.

"Okay, you need your name and password to sign in here" I told her as I attempted to fix the email issue and moved aside to give her access to the keyboard.

"Oh, it's agnesbridget and the password is..." she revealed what most people consider "private" without hesitation.

"You really shouldn't tell anyone y..." I began to protest, but gave up at the futility of it.

The login didn't work, and after a half hour conversation with qwest we found that they had disabled the account and it couldn't be recovered. I had some choice words for them over their treatment of a customer, but eventually I gave up and decided to sign her up for a free account at yahoo.

I began to fill out the registration information when I got in the kind of situation that I always seem to screw up despite my best intentions.

"Uhm... it uh... wants your birthday" I asked hesitantly. Was it rude to ask? Should I have just put in a fake date? Would that have been more rude?

"Oh. April 11, 1917" she said with a big smile. "I'm an old bag"

I was soon done with the necessary changes. The printer was working again so she could write her niece. "She never writes back anyhow. I don't know why I botha".

The shortcut to her recipe site was placed on the desktop. "It's the only thing I use tha Intenet for."

Everything else that could possibly be distracting was placed away in a nice folder. "I don't have time for all that nonsense"

She offered to pay me for my time, but I was more than happy to do it, and didn't feel right taking money from a 90 year old woman, especially one who's more proficient with the computer than half the people I know.

---

About a week later Liang was supposed to come over to watch the Sun's game. I had hung up the phone with him less than 5 minutes before when I heard a knock at my door. I thought maybe he had tricked me and called from the lobby so I threw the door open and jumped outside only to find Agnes standing there, now somewhat startled.

"Oh... uh hi" I stammered as she simultaneously announced, "Ya... Ya got no room unda ya door!"

I looked at her somewhat puzzled until she pulled a card out. "I tried to shove this under it, but it doesn't fit. Ya got no room unda ya door" she repeated.

"I wanted to say thank you for helping me out the other day. I was at the Biltmore. That Apple store. I don't know what they do there. My son... he... he's got one of those... what do you call em? A tripod. He loves the thing."

"Oh, an iPod?" I asked.

"Yeah, it plays tha music or whateva." she commented with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I got no use for all that. But he seems to love it." At this she handed me a card. After another thank you or two she left and I went back inside to open the card and find a 50 dollar Apple Store gift card.

Liang showed up minutes later and I related the whole story to him. My pure amusement at the whole ordeal was enough for him to start ribbing me about my 90 year old crush. The teasing continued until half time came and we decided to leave for dinner.

"Well, I always did want a short red headed girl." I relented as gathered our things to go. "And besides, a sweet, cute girl brought me a card. That's better than you've done in a while"

We were half way down the hall when the door to 11-N flew open and Agnes came bounding out with an energy normally reserved for those a tenth of her age. "Oh! I got distracted. I met this nice lady and decided ta chat for a while. I think I'm stuck on the 11th floor!"

We smiled, nodded and said our pleasantries as we made way to the elevator.

Once out of earshot Liang turned to me with a huge grin on his face and finally gave in, "All right. I see it"

I need to just keep my mouth shut in the elevator

I stayed late at work today. I couldn't really tell you why. My next deadline isn't until Friday of next week, and according to the standard nerd rules I shouldn't be putting in extra time until Wednesday at the earliest.

At any rate, just after six I decided it was time to head home. As I strolled out I noticed Liang was still in his office.

"You heading home?" he asked.
"Yeah, gotta hit the restroom first"
"I'll meet you in the lobby in a minute"

As I was entering the lobby after having taken care of my business I heard the elevator ding as it's doors opened.

"That jerk took off without me" I thought and quickened my pace to catch up. I opened the door to the elevator lobby to see Liang walking towards an elevator with an open door, and inside the elevator I could see a woman furiously pushing the "Close Door" button as if she was quite upset to have been stopped.

I looked at Liang, shrugged, and we both got in. The woman never looked up, and never acknowledged us at all. As the doors to the elevator closed I noticed Sean had a laptop in his hands.

"I got it from Jim after they gave away all the old stuff from the office that they weren't using anymore." He explained, "I figure I'll see what I can salvage from it. LCD, maybe a hard drive. I think it's even got some memo..."

He never finished the sentence because at this point the lady, who had been hiding in the corner of the elevator, let out the loudest yawn I have ever heard in my life.

Normally, 5 minutes after a situation such as this, the perfect thing to say pops in to my head and I end up kicking myself for the blown opportunity. With that said, I was delighted when the following joke popped in to my head. It was the perfect storm of elevator humor. It was simple, it was easy, it was a good ice breaker, and most of all, it was a chance to make fun of Sean.

"Don't worry, I find him quite boring too" I quipped.

And then... silence.

The lady didn't move, didn't budge, didn't look at me, nothing.

The door opened and she hastily exited, but I couldn't contain my laughter.

"You're pretty proud of yourself for that one are you?" Sean asked.

Yes, yes I was.