via Lori.
I am sat, much earlier than usual, in an almost empty office. Most people won’t start rolling in until around 9:30am, and some may not arrive until gone 10am. At first glace, it looks just like a normal office – chairs, computers, bits of paper, empty coffee mugs. But look a little closer, and all is not as it seems.
For a start, there’s an unusually large number of whiteboards scattered around. In fact, nearly every available wallspace seems to have a whiteboard on it. And they’ve all got strange, arcane diagrams on with lots of arrows and boxes and lots and lots of weird acronyms.
The other strange thing is that there isn’t a single Windows screensaver on any of the monitors. This is because there are no machines here running Windows; at least, not on any kind of permanent basis and not unless Trav gets his way and persuades someone to install it on his machine. We run Linux around here. Sometimes, it even works, too.
There’s a lot of books lying around – Stroustrup’s C++ is popular, as are various CPU manufacturer’s instruction set reference manuals. There’s a 2-volume set documenting XLib to my left, and a copy of the Ruby Pickaxe and a Linux kernel reference prop up the iBook on my desk. On the windowsill, there’s a soldering iron and more cables than you’d know what to do with (of course, the actual cable that you really need is never there, because that is the way of things). Oh, and there’s quite a bit of Nerf weaponry, too.
Out of the window in front of me, I can see the corner of #1 Deansgate, and the back of Harvey Nichols, and it occasionally entertains me to watch posh people running through the sudden rainstorms you get in Manchester. And on hot days, you can watch the girls walking by on Deansgate from the comfort of an air conditioned office.
Shortly, the rest of the office will arrive, and there’ll be some bacon sandwiches and fruit and stuff for breakfast. In the meantime, though, it’s just me and my mug of coffee.