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I work at a small company, and we have a few standing arguments that will never be resolved and will likely continue forever. I’d like to know if this is normal.

Do any of you have something similar? Leave your stories in the comments.

I’ll share a few of our standing arguments:

• In a one-on-one fight to the death between a coworker of ours and a female cow who would win? (no tools, weapons, sticks, rocks may be used)
• What is a sport, what is a game. Is a given activity a sport or a game or a contest.
• Are fish closer to vegetables than animals? (food-wise, i.e. are the advanced enough to feel pain or is it morally equivalent to eating celery)
• The Monty Hall problem.

There are so many more, and none of them are more useful (or resolvable) than those.

The problem light broke.

Update: violently.

Mike D: Ugh.
Sander: What’s up dude?
Mike D: Name three places you’d rather be right now. Go.
Sander:

1. Painful eye surgery
2. World’s ugliest woman contest.
3. Shoveling dung behind an elephant.

Mike D: Yeah, that sounds about right.

I use Google Desktop every single day at work. It is a life savor. If you haven’t tried it, it can honestly save you hours over the course of a week or month.

Last night Sander and I hit Pittsburgh like it was our job (…)

We went into a section of town called, no lie, Shadyside. It’s actually a pretty neat college-y area near Pittsburgh. We ate at Casbah. Prognosis? Totally delicious.

I got the black pepper parpardelle and Sander got a lamb dish. They were both out of this world. Pricey? yes. Entrees went from 25 to 37 dollars a piece with appetizers in the 7-9 dollar range. The ambiance was nice, though there wasn’t enough lighting. It was almost difficult to read the menu.

After dinner we drove around a little bit in Pittsburgh and then returned to our hotel. Today we have meetings until about 11am then it’s off to the airport for the return flight.

Enjoy your weekend Team D!

Delayed! Woo!

This morning I grabbed a bagel at the Airport. There are few things that can turn a morning from drab to fab more quickly than a delicious bagel with some tasty cream cheese spread on top.

As I approached the counter to order my over-priced prize, I considered my options. Plain, poppyseed, cinnamon raisin, sesame… Sesame! Yes, today is a sesame seed bagel kind of day.

“May I help you sir?”
“Yes, May I have a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese please?”
“Sure.”

I reached into my wallet to pull out my money and walked to the ‘pick up’ counter. I waited patiently as the bagel worked its way through the toasting conveyor and again as the server wrapped my breakfast in thin paper and retrieved the cream cheese packet from the refrigerator. I paid my four dollars and walked to my gate to sit down.

I unwrapped my toasted sesame bagel to find that there were only 34 sesame seeds on said bagel. Thirty four. Never have I seen such a poor showing of sesame seeds. Normally, the top of the bagel is covered in countless sesame seeds that fall off and get everywhere. Every bite is full of sesame goodness. But such was not the case with this bagel. 34. Granted, the breakfast was still delicious, but I am terribly disappointed with the quantity of sesame seeds provided. I am disappointed in you Bradley Airport. I am disappointed in you.

Ring Ring!

Mike D: good morning this is Mike D!

Ed: Goodmorning Mike, this is Ed.

Mike D: Hi Ed. Did you get my e-mail about the stainless steel tubing?

Ed: Yes.

Mike D: Awesome.

Ed: In fact, I got all 103 e-mails from you about the stainless steel tubing.

Mike D: huh?

Ed: My inbox contained 103 e-mails from you this morning.

Mike D: Oh no…

Ed: I guess your computer spazzed out a bit?

Mike D: Oh no…. You weren’t the only person I e-mailed this morning…

Ed: You best make some phone calls. Otherwise I suspect all your correspondents today will open up their e-mail to find hundreds of e-mails from you.

Happy Wednesday Everybody!

Homework is tragic word. ‘Work’ is pretty much the polar opposite of ‘home’. ‘Home’ instills thoughts of relaxation, sleep, and comfort. ‘Work’ instills thoughts of stress and overwhelming to-do lists. Why would anyone ever want to combine the two?

Professor Sisson: “Have we figured out how to raise the melting point of Aluminum yet?”
Professor Apelian: “Yes we have. You just use a different Thermocouple. It works every time.”

HA!

Back on that day that i was in charge here at work I made a bunch of t-shirts for everybody.

People still wear them. And that is awesome.

The Printer at Sander and my desk is named “MSPaint”

The last 48 hours have been totally crazy. It started with too much sugary foods Wednesday night which, when accompanied by anticipation for a stressful meeting, resulted in only 2 hours of sleep Wednesday to Thursday.

Yesterday kept up the craziness with a marathon of work-filled adrenalin. I finally left the office around 7:30pm, went home, took care of a few house maintenance things, and collapsed.

This morning I’m a bit refreshed and back in business. Hopefully I can hold out through the first week of June when all accounts suggest that anything fun at work will be replaced with project mayhem. Needless to say, the problem light remains alight.

The Problem Light has been ignited and it will be remaining on for the foreseeable future.

A colleague of mine here at work passed away over the weekend. He was one of my company’s close vendors. He would regularly come to our place to help out with designs or efforts. His company is integral to the way we do business.

It’s an odd feeling when someone who you’d only met with a few times, but knew well enough to wave as they passed in the hallway, passes away. It feels empty, but not debilitating.

I suppose that’s often the mark of death - a feeling of emptiness. Let’s not stress on his not being here anymore, let’s celebrate the fact that he was with us for 50 or so years and made a impact even on those who he’d only worked with briefly.

Here’s to you Ed.

RING RING RING

Mike D: Hello this is Mike D.
President of my company: Hi Mike.
Mike D: Hi, what can I do for you?
President of my company: I’m frightened that you got a B in your ethics class
Mike D: ha ha ha
President of my company: what happened?
Mike D: I was horribly bored with the subject matter and stopped putting effort into the class.
President of my company: Ha!

I hate AutoCad.

Invariably, whenever I stuff my face full of food here at work… the phone rings.

Today he informed me:

“Belgium is delicious”

Be careful Belgium… I think it might be within Sander’s abilities to eat an entire nation.

One thing is absolutely true about flying. It gives you plenty of time to read. Today I hope to finish up the book “Tipping Point” which I started last week and make some progress with the Rock thriller Slash. I don’t have too much time before classes start hitting me with heavy homework again, so the more I can take advantage of the time now, the better.

As we look towards the weekend, I think things will get pretty fun. I have class on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday I’m meeting up with the rest of the DiDonato clan for a cooking class. Actually, Tom and Mykal are coming too and that should be way fun - I haven’t seen them in many moons.

The recipes to be made in the mass cooking extravaganza are:

* Tuna Salad with Green Beans and Tomatoes
* Minestra (Escarole and Meatball Soup)
* Zuppa di Cozze (Mussels in Spicy Tomato Sauce)
* Arancini (Rice Balls)
* Bistecca Pizzaiola or Braciole
* Veal Scaloppine Marsala
* Baked Chicken with Potato, Lemon and Oregano
* Linguini with White Clam Sauce
* Manicotti with Marinara Sauce
* Verdure alla Griglia (Grilled Veg)
* Struffoli (Honey Balls) * Biscotti Regina (Sesame Cookies)

Bang. Italian delicious. I will of course report back.

Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze a band practice into the weekend too. We’ll see.

I’ve switched all my pens to blue ink. Sure, it might seem like a trivial change… but it’s made a great difference here in my working world of Mechanical Engineering.

You see, I work quite a bit with detailed drawings which are all printed on giant black and white plotters. When you’re making small revisions in a vast sea of black and white lines and text, the blue stands out a lot better than black. In fact, a good black pen will blend in perfectly with the ink drawings.

Some might make the argument for mechanical pencils, but, like rock and grain in a Catan without cities, those pencils are a hot commodity in our supply cabinets. Others use red or highlighters, but those colors aren’t as welcomed by the business community for official documents. Blue is the best of both worlds; it meets the standards of the corporate environment and provides a nice color differentiation on printed draft files.

Rock on blue ink.

Colleague: I haven’t received that package you guys sent
Mike D: Really? We sent on Thursday next day air.
Colleague: uh oh.
Mike D: Hold on a sec
I open up UPS.com and check the tracking number. It says “Delivered. Porch.”
Mike D: The package is on your porch.
Colleague: What?
Mike D: check your porch. The package is on your porch.
…
Colleague: Wow. Yes it is. Well done.

Mike D: I think I have to come into work this weekend.
Sander: Bummer.
Mike D: yeah, I suppose it could be worse though.
Sander: that’s true. your office could be full of snakes.

My uncle got me a sick ‘Paper Airplane a Day’ Calendar. the problem is… it’s February… and I have about 25 paper airplanes on my shelves (weekends are one plane, not two). I’m running out of space fast.

One more week of this and I will no longer have places to put airplanes. I was thinking about stringing them up, but then people couldn’t try them out. Maybe some shallow shelving?

I’m not sure.

Ideas?