RCC: Goodbye Saddlemire, Hello Conklin

Heads up! This is an image-intensive post.

For those who know, and others who don’t, I have been working for Residential Computing Connection (RCC) on the campus of Bowling Green State University for the past four years of my college career. Nearly one week ago, the office moved from the old Saddlemire Student Services Building into Conklin Residence Hall. Saddlemire is set for construction in the near future. Get the BG News write-up here, and check out some pictures of the building. The design for the building did win an award or two if I recall correctly.

Here is some photo-documentation of the summer to-date, focusing on the move as well as some of the humorous things my co-workers and I do. All photographs were taken with my cell phone camera (which is no better than my digital one at this point). The post is long due to a history of computer problems (and therefore inability to upload photos at home for a long, long time). Originally I had planned on blogging about work once a week, on average.

Anyhow - here is summer at RCC, to-date.

Each year, we have to remove all of the mini-hubs from a few residence halls on campus that still only have one port in each room. We add these splitters so that both residents can have a physical connection to the internet. This is what the pile of hubs looks like once they are removed. We’ve actually sorted some of them out at this point.

Ethernet cables…

Sorted and wrapped hubs, not quite organized.

Slowly getting more organized…

See?

We still had plenty left to deal with.

Now, on to some fun stuff. Check out the label on this keyboard.

“USB Flavored”… hmm. I don’t think I want to try it.

Some of the time Allyson (a co-worker of mine) and I exchange little gifts. We’ll pretend it’s all for office morale. While cleaning part of the office up for the move, we came across various computer discs, and she took a couple apart, making things out of them. She made me a valentine. (also, check out her webcomic here)

Don’t you like it?

I had taken down all of my signs/notices/funny things from the cubicle, and decided it looked too blank. I invited this little dude to chill on my wall. Allyson drew on his face a bit.

Mean!

French!

They belong together. I even moved them into the new office with me.

Three days later: Allyson is up to her old tricks.

“Da Bare”

Out of the office, and in the working world - ladies, ladies, ladies - throw away your rap singers if you’re going to be eating.

Later that evening? The wall fountain in Kohl Hall peed itself.

Check it out. This one was actually hung up in Saddlemire. I’m not doing this to be mean, I just think it’s kind of funny.

Hey! We got new computers for the labs.

Back in the office, later in the day, this frightening warning had appeared above my desk.

A few of you will know about this. You know how the fan in Allyson’s computer would sporadically get really loud, blow all of the papers on her desk around, and sound like it was going to “take off”? It finally quit working on May 30, 2007.

Getting packed up for the move - boxes, filing trays, empty cabinets.

For those of you who work(ed) here, believe it or not - everything was removed from the cubicle walls prior to the move.

It’s getting there. That fan is just getting older, though.

The next day, I arrived at work and found the hallways lined with furniture. I also paused at the door to wonder if I still had a chair inside, since I had some work to do on my computer yet.

A mysterious person working projects (Tommy Wiebell) made these letters, and placed them at the top of my cubicle for me to notice. The “computer monitor” was leftover from some teambuilding activities in the fall for RCC training.

Chris Gross decided to admire them.

This was my favorite.

Second to last day in Saddlemire. Things are starting to look pretty empty.

Kind of.

Mattt (3 T’s because it is his preference, Allyson thinks “ttthattt’s pretttentttious”) wrote out the first amendment on a small American flag. I asked him if he thought he could get in trouble for doing that (since it could potentially be deemed disrespectful), and he noted “If I get in trouble for writing the first amendment on the American flag, I think I’ll die. From irony.”

In addition to the flag antics, he had been guzzling “Ol’ Glory” energy drink that day. The can has the pledge of alliegence on the back, with “UNDER GOD” in all caps, just like that. Patriotic energy drinks. Hm.

For those of you who ever attended Senior Staff meetings, the ResLife office started to look pretty empty too.

I’m going to get yelled at for posting this picture. That hat is made out of velcro zip-strips… typically used to keep cables behind computers (relatively more) organized.

This is Sean packing up his area too.

Back to the hat - it’s structurally sound - see?

This scene is far more questionable than the flag and energy drinks alone.

Since Sean has been employed at RCC for a period of years (first as a student, then on a letter of appointment, and now as an official full time staff member), he decided that he wanted to keep the sign from the front of the office.

Allyson saw this photo, and noted “that looks like a prison photo, kind of.”

This was underneath the sign that Sean removed. Take note of the additional “s” on “connection”. It wasn’t supposed to be there.

Sean threw these scissors from the hallway into Jason Dunn’s office… they stuck in the wall with a resounding *thump*. That was really the end of the destructive streak in the office prior to the move.

Jesus Christ - it’s a lion! Get in the car!
I was given that car when I became a manager at RCC years ago. Weird welcoming gift, but hey - I passed it on to Allyson the day before the offical move.

RCC golf carts and gator, view outside of Saddlemire. Art building in the background. I have probably spent an entire 1/3 of my college career rotating between these two buildings. Also entertaining: Conklin is just on the other side of the Art Building.

Last day. What an empty place.

Blurry picture, but I think you get the point. Brian Eggenberger is part of that blur, somewhere in there.

Saddlemire from the outside…

A better shot of the building.

Seems like a nice day, huh?

Just shy of six minutes later, it was pouring outdoors. Oh. We were moving furniture from Saddlemire to Conklin right then, too.

When I said pouring, I did mean pouring. This went on for almost an hour.

Finally things are clearing off. That’s Sean gazing over the small river in front of him.

ResTech.

Senior Staff.

ResTech (again).

Special Projects Team.

Helpdesk.

On-Call Area.

Welcome to RCC!

This was the last of the stuff from the office… they stayed there for almost a day because of the rain outside. It was just time to send people home.

… moving intermission…

If you think this looks like a questionable situation, it is.
This is underneath the table in the Kohl Hall group project area. They waxed the floor… this outlet/cover is on the floor. The tables are heavy and the computers were locked down, so instead of calling us to have us move them, they just waxed around it. The outlet case is full of water.

Looks kind of dangerous to me.

Do you see that? One of the prongs (top) is completely broken off. The remaining prongs on this plug are black.

The prongs on the white plug in front aren’t black… but the plastic around them is black and kind of melty - you can see it on the top prong here too. It’s hard to see, but if you look in front of the white plug, you can also glimpse the broken prong from the orange plug. Guh, what a bad situation.

This is the new Senior Staff office. The office-office was less set up at the time, so I haven’t taken any snazzy new pictures of it yet.

SPT “area”. Tony Tozzi (foreground), Doug Stoots (background), velcro zip-strip ball (suspended.

Empty Chair (me +laptop, foreground), Allyson Feasel (background). I’ve got the same setup going on today.

There’s that damn hat. Otherwise, you can see that we’ve still got some unpacking to do.

See? On the upside, things have gotten better in the room since this photograph. And - let’s face it. This really isn’t bad at all. It could have been like this (www.toothpastefordinner.com).

Yep, we moved the bowling pin from Saddlemire into the new Senior Staff office. I used one of the remnants from a disc Allyson took apart to cut her name out (radial style). Later in the week Tony Tozzi did the same thing to a different disc.

Allyson took apart a computer disc, and it had this quirky little piece of clear plastic in it. It had four holes in it. Apparently it looked like a cow.

Moo-cow and a “ch” from the disc.

Allyson’s boyfriend (Tyler Hart) just walked in to the office… Since Conklin used to be a residence hall, apparently he’s been here before.

“What did you do to Mike and Alan’s room??? This is totally Mike and Alan’s room. I’ve thrown up in this room so many times. I’m going to call Alan as soon as we leave. We even built a beer-a-myd all the way to the ceiling in here.”

That story makes this room soooo much funnier.