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Chris + Plane 3
Another look at the ultra-colorful ridiculous plane.
You are viewing stuff tagged with 3m.
Hi kids,
You probably won’t like your first job very much. My first job was at 3M and its only saving grace was that I met a truly great guy named Chris Rupert. Lacking a car, I was taking extremely long bus trips to work and he was nice enough to give me a ride—he’s one of those people who help out, expecting no overblown credit or glory in return. Just a super nice, stand-up guy. I’m lucky to know him. That’s sort of it from that job, though. I’ll be honest, I did a fair amount of sleeping—3M is where I first learned to sleep sitting up. I’d wear my glasses in the morning, and arrive in the empty, recently sold-off Pharm portion of the 3M building. In a nearly-empty farm of cubicles I’d turn on my computer and then… sleep for about an hour. After that I’d go to the bathroom, put in my contacts, and start my day. During the long afternoons, I taught myself object-oriented programming and wrote large chunks of the software behind this website. None of this, not the sleeping, not the programming, was in any way related to my job. But, I learned the ins and outs of corporate email (send a lot of it, be unnecessarily verbose, CC liberally) and the pure, unabashed joy with which folks greeted “free cake in the breakroom.”
Another look at the ultra-colorful ridiculous plane.
Chris launching the ultra-colorful ridiculous plane.
Chris launching his special miniature plane (good flier, very pointy).
These are magnetic… so I look forward to being able to use this on my fridge.
Old magnetic tape — it holds 60 megabytes on 620 feet of tape! Wow!
A diversion. The pattern is the F-117A Nighthawk, the paper is cotton letterhead from the sold-off 3M Pharma division.
This morning, I had an 8:30 meeting on the sixth floor of the pilot process/laboratory building next to the building in which I work. I sprinted up 6 flights of stairs to wake myself up (and to get to the floor the meeting was on). The view from the conference room was incredible.
You see, 3M’s campus is covered in oak trees, and they all got a thick coating of frost last night. So, this morning, a diffuse reddish-golden glow shone over the entire scene — it looked like the kind of view you would have from a castle in a storybook. With some effort, I stopped admiring the brilliant colors of the perfect dream-like winter landscape and focused my thoughts on the meeting ahead. I wondered if any one of my colleagues were as distracted as myself by the beauty behind them. Perhaps, I mused, decades in cubes and laboratories stunts one’s appreciation of the transient beauty of nature. It was like a Schumann opus playing behind a group of deaf people.
The silence at tumbledry lately has been due to a wide variety of different things going on, which will all be discussed in time. The thing I’d like to focus on for now: as of last week, I am employed! Furthermore, I’m currently investigating how much I am allowed to talk about the employment in this space. Naturally, I will not ever be revealing any information remotely related to people, politics, products, etc. … or even the physical location of where I work. However, I am sure it is safe to say that I work as a contract analyst at 3M. Putting my biochemistry degree to good use should be exciting. Big changes are ahead in my life, and I will keep everyone posted as opportunities to write arise.