Firm Resistance

After the tense conversations about the server closets in all the buildings and the confrontation about the excess wiring in the science building, I tried to find a way where I could work in partnership with the maintenance people.

One thing that seemed interesting to them after seeing my demonstration of Virtus with the architects, was to create digital floorpans of the buildings. Most of the buildings had been built 80 years before and there really were no accurate blueprints. Seeing how quickly I had mocked up the computer center they thought it would not take long to do that with a couple of the main buildings.

I had found another Mac program where you could add units and the rooms would have labeled lengths and the program could then calculate floor areas and such. I offered to show them how to use this and to put a Mac in their office. The revulsion to the idea of having a Mac pollute “their space” was palpable. They assured me that they could do their own research and find their own application. Again this was before the launch of Windows so they were still on DOS PCs.

So I took some time and created a tentative floor plan for the two floors of the science building. They proudly told me that they were working on Founders, the main building. 

After about a month I asked if they had finished their work, and they admitted that it was going slowly but that they were determined to finish Founders. 

After a lot of discussion they agreed to show me their work. They had only been able to finish three rooms. As I looked at the paper it finally became clear what they were doing. 

They had been using a Word processor and were drawing the horizontal lines with underline characters and the vertical with the pipe character. The lines didn’t fully touch and there really was no way to add dimensions or anything, given it was a text document! It was so ridiculous that I just had no comment, but I resisted bursting out in laughter.

I decided it was not worth even giving feedback. I just told them to let me know if they wanted help in the future and let it go at that. 

To my knowledge they never continued and we never talked about it again.