Office
Disneyland. Client needed a data migration. I’ve also had to do similar tasks by pulling over at rest stops because everything is always an emergency.
I was at a barbecue on a Saturday night once when my boss called in an emergency because he thought we were being hacked. The reason being, because he was in Starbucks trying to look at our website on his phone and it wasn’t loading properly. I had to explain that:
- It’s Saturday night and I’m not on-call for IT.
- I’m also in the art department and IT is in no way part of my job description.
- Because of 2, if we are being hacked I don’t know what to do about it.
- It’s probably just that Starbucks wifi is shitty?
That was a stressful job lol.
Hiked out to a hot spring at Big Bend National Park with my laptop, my satellite dish, and a big solar panel, and spent my day working with my feet dabbling in the river.
That was a pretty awesome day for me but I bet in 50 years people will just be irritated that all the cool places are full of losers trying to get work done and ruining the vibe
Toilet. Back in the day, the startup I worked for had their servers in the bathroom closet, and the toilet was conveniently located close by.
Sucked having to wait for people to get out of the bathroom, to get into the server room tho lol
lol wut, why would you put the servers in the Bathroom Closet?
It was a startup in an old Victorian. There weren’t any other options.
In an ICU room. I was the visitor. The patient had dozed off. I had a client wanting reports for a board meeting. Finance does not pause for family emergencies.
At the computer desk where my desktop computer already is.
The elevator shaft in 100+ year-old building while running Ethernet cables between the 8th and 9th floor.
That actually sounds pretty cool. Was it?
It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds honestly. I was going down the service ladder and had to stop and test the cable halfway through.
My manager at the time turned white as a sheet when he found out I did that.
Pulled over on the highway in Chicago. This just when phones started being hot spots, and I got an emergency service call about a software glitch, had to write and upload a fix from my car.
The 9th story of an 8-story building.
How?
Because, even though it wasn’t labeled as such and people didn’t know it was up there, it was, in fact, up there.
Interesting architectural mystery
There was storage and HVAC stuff, and the elevator didn’t go that high. Just a plain door, usually unlocked, at the top of the steps.
That’s my dream office haha. Somewhere that no one knows exists.
Had to check for unknown WiFi signals for a client. So I was walking around with my laptop in hand and a WiFi antenna. So cafeteria, toilet, staircase, server room, chill out lounge, parking spot and rooftop. It was pretty funny trying to assign all the WiFi networks to the cars in the parking lot and to the other buildings and stores around. That day I learned just how far away you can still see WiFi networks if you use a reasonably strong antenna (just a usb-stick basically).
Probably on a porch in the winter.
I was on call during a work team night out at a darts place and had to get on the WiFi there to check it out an incident
It was one of those ones that has a camera for action replays and I’m in the background of one tapping away
A windowless room in the upper floors of a military air terminal. NASA interns left beer in the fridge somewhere else up there IIRC. Kinda boring tbh.
Strangely its also the most comfortable room atmosphere I’ve been in. Literally just folding tables and chairs, but there was lots of hardwood trim.
on the roof of the Regenstein Library
In a car, outside a Panera, after hours.
Welcome to 2001, when we had 56k at home, and corporate broadband 802.11b networks never had passwords.
