SAALI Goes Home

I came in this morning and found Tom asleep in the break room. He was sitting at the table with his head on an open copy of The Red Tent. That’s the first time I’ve seen a man reading that, so I’ll have to ask him what he thinks. He falls asleep quite easily for someone who has coffee administered to him via an IV tube. When I told him that he could go home he said that in college, when he was in the library, he would paperclip a note on the back of his shirt collar asking whoever read it to wake him up if he was asleep, so that he could get a cup of coffee and keep studying. He said he was surprised by how often it worked.

I decided on Thursday to put the Being & Nothingness Cam Team members back on their regular shifts to prevent them from hanging around as a group chatting and starting to take being at work less seriously. When the computers are functioning again I want the B&NC Team to remember that this is serious business. I can’t tell them what kind of serious business, but by god, it’s serious.

At around 11 AM a guy from FedEx came by for “the pickup,” which I hadn’t asked for. I looked at his paperwork and it looks like the gentlemen in Irvine want back their (theoretically) sentient computer—SAALI-- that croaked the week before last and more or less sealed itself up when the power blew. Every seam, slot, vent and adaptor plug was melted shut. Dirk the cranky computer guy was creeped out, so he boxed it up like it was radioactive and it’s been in the back yard under some plastic ever since. I was happy to see it go. I don’t know if it’s coming back, but it didn’t seem too keen on functioning here, so maybe they’ll find it a better home.