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post-peak America
Friday, August 25 2017
location: Bunk 2, Cabin 12, Camp Hollywoodland, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California
Unfortunately (I think) someone had stolen my little container of Dr. Bronner's soap, so I had to shampoo and shave with the horrible pink soap provided for washing hands at the sink. [I think it was antibacterial, and thus destroyed the sensitive balance of flora on my face, eventually leading to a couple vexing pimples, something I rarely get at my advanced age.]
The first order of business today was to take an Uber to The Organization's office in West Hollywood. I managed to order one on the walk down to the Griffith Park gate, during which a woman on foot asked if there were any bathrooms. I didn't know of any, though I suggested the bushes and to watch out for coyotes. This was the first time a stranger along this route had ever asked me a question unrelated to the Hollywood sign.
My Uber was a pool ride, meaning a couple other passengers rode with me for part of the trip. They looked to be women on their way to work, which made sense at that early hour.
It's fun to be inside an office when nobody is there, seeing the state of things frozen in time from the last time people had been here. Cameron had given me his keys, but he hadn't given me a sense of where any of the network equipment that I'd come to look at was. I found a WiFi hotspot upstairs, but it wasn't the one I was looking for. I also found Cameron's desk, with the nearby whiteboard I always see during our video chats. I wrote a few cryptic messages, one of which referred to Suzy, my most famous internet troll. I also made use of the upstairs bathroom. There is nothing like a clean bathroom in an empty office.
The stuff I was looking for was actually in the basement offices, accessible via a separate entrance. The reason I'd had to go to the offices was that Cameron had been unable to bring up an admin page for the main router that acts as the NAT for the office network, and I thought I might have to reset it to factory. I'd even brought an extra router (flashed with DD-WRT) with me across the country just to see if I could replicate the behavior of the existing router in a different router before blowing away all the settings in the existing router. But with some experimentation involving the unplugging of ethernet cables, I soon realized that the reason Cameron hadn't been able to get to the router's admin page was that its IP address had been occluded by something else on the network. All I had to do was move it to some other IP address.
I wanted some fresh booze for the plane back home, so I bought a flask of vodka at a Russian-owned liquor store near the Whole Foods across Santa Monica Blvd. Then I immediately booked another pool ride with Uber. My driver looked like an angry Russian would-be hitman, and he tended to mutter under his breath. I'm sure he wasn't too happy when he had to wait for me to cross both Santa Monica and Fairfax. To drop off one of the riders, we climbed into the nearby Hollywood Hills on a stretch of impossibly-steep roadway. I rather liked the weird novelty of riding with strangers in another stranger's personal car. It felt very post-peak America, an almost-third-world efficiency brought about by ubiquitous technology.
Nobody was in the main hall at Camp Hollywoodland, which meant they were all up in the mysterious bleacher area having group photos taken. I'd missed all the ones that people would soon be posting on Facebook and now would only be in the short videoclips made for major donors (wishing them happy birthday, etc.). Participating in the simultaneous shouting of some canned phrase is totally not my thing (and it must've sounded psychotic to hikers in nearby canyons), but if it gets more money from donors, then so be it.
After some presentations from the heads of the various foreign branches, there was lunch, and then there were some hastily-arranged presentations by various employees fairly low in the organizational workchart. The first of these was such a random pair, I had to believe they'd been chosen because they are the thinnest people working for The Organization. One of these was Allison, newly moved to IT from Development. She'd been bitching about having this assignment dumped on her and Jamie (her co-presenter) at the last minute, and I expected her to just phone it in. Initially it seemed like that was happening, with lots of ungrounded vague language about "solution-oriented" approaches to doing stuff. But then we were asked to talk at our respective tables about things that are holding us back and things we might do to improve the situation, and it was probably the most productive single thing that happened in the entire retreat.
[REDACTED]
As the retreat closed down with its final "love bubble," Tammy (who runs Merchandising) gave me props for leading the work on building her new store, but it felt more like a threat than praise. Now I really had to come through on that store.
There was no meal served at Camp Hollywoodland tonight, with idea being that we would all go into the city and broaden our culinary horizons. While I went up to my cabin to put some vodka in my lemonade, a large group of my colleagues had decided to go out to Mohawk Bend. It didn't really matter that I'd just been there yesterday; as Allison put it, "I could never get sick of that place."
Getting to Mohawk Bend was kind of chaotic. Some left by overcrowded car before I did and I ended up walking with a motley crew of people I mostly didn't know. My phone was the only one with a signal, so I was trying to order us an Uber, but the app kept stalling out on me, perhaps for reasons unrelated to the quality of the cellular signal. As I kept trying to work my phone, I drifted to the back of the group of us walking down the hill. Eventually Sarah and Hillary came rolling up in Sarah's car and asked if I wanted a ride. I sure did! But then as we rolled up to the others, they seemed mad that I was shirking my Uber-ordering duties. But we still had room for two in Sarah's car. so whatever. Sarah is a crazy driver and nearly got us all killed a couple times on the drive to Mohawk bend.
While waiting to order a Mongo, the VP of Education dropped a new unexpected requirement on me regarding the store. I was in an agreeable mood, so I said I'd try to figure out a solution. And then Sara (not to be confused with Sarah) invited me to sit with her at her table out in the open-air out front, where Hillary (from Sarah's car) and Lucas (the head of the Brazilian operation) were sitting. I didn't know any of these people very well, but I was soon yacking about my problems with Nick's algorithms. Nick is an executive vice president and his algorithms form the basis of our organizational philosophy. But they're too simple and don't take account the complexity of how the world works. His idea is that very animal is of equal value, so saving 10,000 fish is 10,000 better than saving one elephant. But people don't think that way, and, while the saving of thousands of fish might be some sort of victory, it will never get the publicity that saving one charismatic animal would get. While I said these things, most of the others (particularly Lucas) were silent, though this did seem to give them license to come around to my way of thinking later in the conversation in a few places that provided me the vindication I needed. Later I talked some about Gretchen's horrible experience writing the memoir of Jenny Brown, the erstwhile head of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, who is well-known among animal rights people even on the West Coast. (Hillary is a big WFAS fan and is even familiar with the Garden Café, though she only knew a little about the underlying politics of the place.)
Meanwhile a group of people from PETA (our rival!) came from their office across the boulevard and took over the fire pit area, though we soon supplanted them. And I ordered a brandy, somehow allowing myself to be upsold to the $14 one. When the bill came ($200!), only Sara and I were around to pay for it, though we managed to get Lucas to give us some cash.
At Mohawk Bend tonight with my co-workers (I'm farthest to the right). We're wearing official teeshirts still because of those group photos we took earlier in the day.
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