~Monday~ I was up and at ’em at oh-dark-hundred this morning with a commitment to be at work for 7:00. To that end, I caught the 6:55 #11 Avent Ferry city bus, which was supposed to pick up at 6:55.
Some things that I never see in the morning as I’m never up while it’s still dark out:
- Kids, who you can hardly see, waiting for a school bus
- A kid’s school bag laying in the middle of the sidewalk with no kid next to it, which could easily lead to a broken hip or something if an old person trips over it
- “Tonnage” vehicles (semis, tow trucks, school buses, concrete mixers, dump trucks…)
- Streetlights turning off
I was a little annoyed that the bus didn’t come until 7:05. How is the second bus of the day already 10 minutes behind schedule? Somebody was late to work.
Today was Cybersecurity Day at work, and our organization played a big role in it. I had volunteered to staff the popcorn machine from 7:00-9:00. Not that anyone eats popcorn for breakfast, and not to mention that the event didn’t even start until 9:00.
I was rewarded for my willingness to help though, solely by getting the story of the popcorn machine from the horse’s mouth. Jeffrey, the husband of one of my co-workers who was the co-leader of the event, stepped into the elevator holding the big, rented popcorn machine. What he didn’t know that he didn’t know when the doors closed was that while the machine was in his arms inside the elevator, the plug end of the cord was on the outside.
As the elevator ascended, the cord tightened and the machine began to be pulled toward the door, until eventually the cord was pulled so hard that it snapped. Miraculously, when he went back to the first floor to see if the plug—which he had fully expected to have fallen down the elevator shaft—was still there, it was sitting right there in front of the elevator with its frayed end. Jeffrey is a carpenter for a living, and has done minor electrician work, too, and he was able to splice that cord back together, and by 8:30, by god, we had popcorn.
He and I spent an hour or more together, with no “popcorn business” at that hour—let me put a look of 
on your face—and he and I had easy conversation. At one point, I asked him how long he and Debbie had been married and he indicated that it was over 20 years. Then it turned into a conversation that matters when he commented back on my statement, “It seems like you still have a great relationship with each other.”
That kind of conversation doesn’t happen often with people you just meet, and when it does, I recognize it as an affirmation.
The keynote speaker for the event was an IBMer who my ex-wife and I worked with about 20 years ago at IBM. I caught up with him before his speech.
In his talk, “Secure Thinking,” he asked this, “Why do we put brakes on cars?” The somewhat profound answer was not, of course, the expected, “In order to stop,” but, “So that we can go really fast.” Who would drive a car really fast if we couldn’t stop?
I didn’t realize that The Fruitcake Lady was Truman Capote’s aunt, and helped to raise him. Her real name was Marie Rudisill.
I napped for a couple of hours after getting home, and then later went into the office for a little while. I returned that display board from University Open House and I took advantage of having my car to ride home in by taking home my bowling ball, which has been sitting in my office since late August / early September.
I read some more of Big Machine before falling asleep. At the end of the last chapter I read, I believe I hit what was referred to in the interview I heard with the author of this book, as the “big surprise” in the plot.