mindtangle

nagu’s personal blog: geekness, travelogue, catalogue of ideas. . .

Our de facto VP of Engineering just snuck out of his office and into the cubicle next to mine, which is vacant because my teammate is on vacation. He’s trying to make it harder for people to find him, so that he can get some coding done.

Another reason why we’re all looking for a VP of Engineering who actually wants to be VP of Engineering.

Our IT guy is leaving for smaller, more hardcore UNIX pastures, now that our company is growing and doesn’t need his ninja skills any more.

Part of his lovely goodbye email:

Now that my choice is made, I am thinking about celebrating by getting a big 8 gauge septum piercing. I know every 30-something bald guy in the Castro has one, but I like them anyways.

See you later, bud. You’ve been good to us. . .

At my workplace, our floor has four long hallways that run parallel to the sides of the building, forming a square within the larger square. Each side of this internal conduit is about sixty feet long. It’s used when going to the restroom, the coffee machine, even between departments of the same company.

My problem with this layout is that momentary encounters between strangers are drawn out uncomfortably long. The situation is worsened by the fact that our company shares the floor with another. So there are a hell of a lot of strangers walking around all the time.

Here’s what it’s like: I round the corner with my coffee, and find myself at opposite ends of the hallway with someone. Let’s call this hypothetical person Chuck. Chuck is one of the sales drones from the other company, balding, overweight, fond of pleated slacks. I’ve overheard him talking football or getting out of breath playing foosball with like-minded drones in the break room. Me facing Chuck is like Scrooge looking into Christmas future. He’s my cautionary tale.

So, off we go, walking directly towards one another, searching around for things to look at to avoid eye contact for about twenty-five of the thirty feet we have to travel before the other is mercifully behind us. In those last five feet, we explore a varied repertoire of muttered hellos, grunts, panicked glances, and utter indifference.

It’s a real bummer, doing this every other time I leave my cube. At least we share the floor with another software company. When I worked at an insurance company, last summer, some of the people I had to deal with almost made give up hope altogether.

Thankfully, we’re moving to a much nicer building in the next few months. We have our own floor, and the layout is dynamic enough for me to dodge any drones that come my way.

I’m in a bad mood. Can you tell?

Wondering where I got the nickname “Nagu”? Well, I could tell you the actual, crazed etymology of the term, but that would take too long. Instead, I kind of like this one, which Aaron found on this branding company’s site. The text:

Ngu is a Proto-Indo-European word which means cow. We suspect that the word, which is pronounced naa’guu’, has not been uttered for at least 3,500 years. But it is still important to us.

Proto-Indo-European is an ancient language. At one time it was spoken by the peoples of Europe, Iran, and India. As the linguistic ancestor of half this planet’s population, Proto-Indo-European is taken seriously at Lexicon because it helps us better understand the principles of language and speech that affect the success of trademarks. We use these principles as springboards to create coined, constructed and compressed trademarks.

Proto-Indo-European is a part of the language discipline that we use to create new brands with rhythm, power and clarity. Names that you won’t have to explain to your customer or your general manager.

Personally, I hope I don’t ever have to explain my nickname to my customers or my general manager.