Tag: office

Lots of Lights

Timothy Price47 Comments
Clouds blowing about over the mountains behind Resa’s tree.

I was going to photograph Mars this morning, but low clouds covered the sky, and the wind blew the dribbles of spit from the clouds in my face when I stepped outside. Ominous foretelling of the possibility of another Freaking Friday.

Back in September, I asked the question of our lighting lady if I could get parts for the light fixtures in the ceiling of our new, 15-year-old, office building. The answer was no. Those light fixtures are not made anymore. However, she had retrofit LED fixtures by Litetronics that cost the same as ballasts that replace the fluorescents in the fixtures. She brought two sample lights. One with a sensor and one without a sensor. The retro fixtures are much nicer looking than the fluorescent fixtures, but even when they are set at 25 watts, they are super bright.

The LED lights are fairly easy to install. I gut the fluorescent fixture boxes, slide a hinge rail on one long side between the drop ceiling rails and the gutted fixture box, and a latch rail on the other side. I hang the retro fixture on the hinge rail, plug it into the power, and latch it in place.

I installed the first demo light with a sensor in Ailene’s office because one of her lights had a bad ballast. The sensor lights can be controlled with an app on my phone and a physical controller. After I got the light installed and the controller configured, I showed Ailene how to adjust the light. Later that afternoon I got a text from Ailene asking me to quit messing with her light. I texted back I wasn’t messing with it. We had left the sensor set on auto-sense that adjusts the light according to how much light is coming into the room through the windows. As the sun was setting, the light was changing light levels to compensate for the outside light coming into her office. I’ve installed six of the LED lights with sensors. I’m not getting any more lights with sensors. Managing six of them is a pain.

One of the fluorescent fixtures in the conference room was making a really loud, annoying buzzing sound. The conference room has a 13-foot ceiling and a big conference table under the lights. The issue was how to reach the lights to install the LEDs. The gate I ordered back in August came in on Monday, so I purchased a giant Little Giant ladder that extends to 11.5 feet as a step ladder and 26 feet as an extension ladder. The Little Giant worked out perfectly for replacing the lights in the conference room because it straddled the conference table nicely and was still tall enough for me to reach the lights.

As part of the tenant improvements on the other side of the building, we are replacing all 54 fluorescent fixtures with LED fixtures. Two pallets of fixtures were delivered this afternoon, and I had a fun time moving 27 30 pound boxes from a parking spot into one of our offices. There was a cold wind blowing outside.

Little Giant ladder over the conference table under a gutted light fixture.

Three new LED lights in the conference room.

Two pallets of LED fixtures ready to be moved inside.

All the boxes stacked in our communal office.

Beaker Eyeing me in the light of the setting sun before I covered his cage for the night.

A Pug With No Name*

Timothy Price108 Comments

I’m a sweet little fellow

With a face that’s molto bello

I watch the clouds for rain.

I have a loving family

Life would be as sweet as candy

If I only had a name!

Liza, our planner, brought her adorable Pug to the office today. He’s a wonderful, really well behaved dog. But he doesn’t have a name. Liza is open to suggestions for names.

*He his really a French Bulldog, and not a Pug at all. However, the title goes better calling him a Pug with no name.

What Was Is Not

Timothy Price35 Comments

The cubicles that came with the new office.

The cubicles that came with the new office were old, broken, and worn out. We are getting new cubicles, so we had to get the old cubicles out. No one wanted to take and reuse them, so demolition was in order. I could not figure out how to take them apart, so our office manager’s brother sent a person who installs cubicles to the office to check them out, and I made a deal with him to have a couple of his staff come in and take the cubicle apart for us. He asked who made them, and when I told him he had never heard of the manufacturer. The manufacturer had gone out of business years ago. Even though the building is only 15 years old, we figure the cubicles were at least 30 years old. Two young men came by yesterday and took them apart. I would have never figured it out, and, although the two young me were fast, it was a lot of work for them to take down the partitions. The two didn’t want to haul them to the dump because they would be charged to dump them. We had them leave the partitions and we spent most of today stripping off the fabric, removing the insulation, and separating the metal and plastic from 72 partitions. Dolores took two loads of metal to Acme Metal and got some cash for it. She will take a couple more loads to Acme tomorrow and we’ll be rid of the old cubicles without simply taking them to the dump.

Uppers, a box of brackets, and a few partitions stripped to the metal remain to be taken to Acme tomorrow. The piles of fabric and insulation are in the center and some tack boards await me to take the mounting hardware off of them.

Intermission: My new La Llorona approved aqua-turquoise blue Nostalgia Retrowave microwave I got for my office. It’s a long way to the kitchen in the new building.

Daddy Owl holding on tight in the high winds that were trying to blow him out of the tree.

Ear Tufts in silhouette

No Last Sigh

Timothy Price43 Comments
My monitors, keyboard and mouse on my Strat mouse pad sitting happily on my desk in the new office in front of my new mod lamp.

Unlike Boabdil who, in 1492, gave his last sigh as he topped the hill and lost sight of Grenada, I neither sighed nor looked back after leaving my keys to the office building downtown and headed to the new office building with the last load on office supplies. April 1st begins a new chapter for office life in a new building.