I have taken home the ultimate BlueBehemoth souvenir: an actual cubicle!

When BlueBehemoth first closed its site here in South Florida and moved its personnel to several leased buildings in the area, they had to buy all new furniture for the refugees newly-moved employees. This Knoll cubicle is part of that original shipment.

Used by BlueBehemoth from 1996 to 2001, it changed hands when my current company was spun off from BlueBehemoth, and has served the spin-off for years. However, over those years, my company steadily shrank and headcount dwindled;  consequently, this particular cube had been sitting unoccupied at my office for several years–ultimately becoming a home for wayward marketing materials.

Now, with my current office consolidation, this cubicle became surplus–and given the glut of office closings due to the economy, brokers who deal in used office furniture and fixtures have found themselves with a huge surplus on their hands. Consequently, we have several cubes that we can scarcely give away.

So I decided to snag this one.

Here it is in my loft on the second floor of my house.

Aah, these were the days.

Even when I worked at BlueBehemoth, I only sat in a cube for less than a year–I moved into the lab shortly after my hiring, and now I have my own office.  However, I sat in one remarkably similar (and across the way) when I contracted for my current company with Thyme back in 2006.

Now that my oldest stepson has moved out and gone up to college, we moved T-Rex into his very own room (something he’s absolutely thrilled about), making way for me to move this cubicle into the loft. Believe it or not, dis-assembly and re-assembly of the cubicle was actually not at all difficult. The only two tools I needed were a Phillips-head screwdriver (for the desk), and a 5/16th Allen wrench for the walls. Everything else was snap-on, including the power, which I was able to wire into a neat 110v knife-plug and plug into the receptacle in the floor of the loft. And it was a one-man job, to boot: I dismantled it, loaded it into the truck, got it home, brought it up the stairs, and reassembled it–almost completely solo. About the only help I got was from Butterfly, who helped me wrestle the long-side desktop out of my truck and into the garage. I took it from there.

Before I acquired this primo piece of office real-estate, my “office” was relegated to a 6×6-foot walk-in closet in my bedroom–which I had to share with my wardrobe. Hardly the place to build and maintain computers, which I do at home on a semi-regular basis.  Now I have room to spread out and build machines to my heart’s content.

It should be noted that as much as Butterfly loves me, she hates this gray-and-green monstrosity in the house. But she is happy that I finally have an actual office that isn’t the size of a phone booth.

Many conservatives enraged over Obama school speech – CNN.com.

The latest controversy to swirl around our Commander-in-Chief’s head is the one where all the conservative folks are up-in-arms about Obama delivering a pep talk to kick off the school year

“‘Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me,’ suburban Colorado mother Shanneen Barron told CNN Denver affiliate KMGH. ‘I’m an American. They are Americans, and I don’t feel that’s OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now.’”

God forbid our leader should exercise his First-Amendment rights, or schoolchildren should hear a message from their president.

“Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer released a statement this week accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to “indoctrinate” children.

‘As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,’ Greer said.”

Say–wasn’t Bush reading “My Pet Goat” to a classroom full of kids in Sarasota, Florida, when the attacks of September 11th took place? I suppose he was trying to indoctrinate them into the seedy underworld of animal husbandry.

“In November 1988, President Ronald Reagan delivered more politically charged remarks that were made available to students nationwide. Among other things, Reagan called taxes ’such a penalty on people that there’s no incentive for them to prosper … because they have to give so much to the government.’

Once again, I guess if you’re a Republican, it’s okay to make political statements to our nation’s schoolchildren? Is that the message I’m getting here?

“‘As far as I’m concerned this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality,”‘ said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell, a Republican.

Well. You really gotta work hard to make a Republican so mad he’ll quote a song by Living Colour. You mean to tell me that Dubyah didn’t have his own “cult of personality,” as Senator Russell so indelicately puts it? Well than how did a complete and utter moron manage to get elected to the highest offiice in the land, not once, but twice!?

In washington, of couse, it’s all about spin; I reckon if you’re party’s leader is in power, he has a “strong following.” If the other guy’s party’s leader is in power, it’s because they have a “cult of personality.”

Really, when you boil it down, this is just a bunch of political grandstanding by embarrassed conservatives grasping at any straw, no matter how ridiculous or absurd, to distract people from the fact that their party had complete and total carte blanche for eight years and in that time have managed to drive this country to the brink of complete ruin.