Tuesday, November 27, 2001
TechCenter 051—any relation to Area 51?
Mark sent me a link to TechCenter 051, a facility used by IBM and located in Boca Raton, Florida.
You have to check out the video about TechCenter 051. The beginning comes across like a documentary for the NSA—IBM used this facility for back ops and top secret projects for both commercial and government use. The whole tone comes across as the business equivilent of Area 51 (I wonder if there is a connection? Hmmmmm … ) but once the tone changes, it becomes just another generic infomercial (although the building has redundant SONET rings and redundant power generators. It is an impresive facility.
Masks
Spring took it upon herself to fix some
pictures I had to get them back on the wall. I had 
two regular water colors and two rather unusual
Oriental Demon Masks. All four belonged to my parents and I know for a fact
that the Oriental Demon Masks were a wedding gift to my parents (who were
married in Hell,
Michigan—fitting, isn't it?). For years they sat in the attic of my
Dad's parent's house collecting dust. I gathered them on a visit one year,
much to the dismay of my Mom. It was only after I inherited Condo Conner
that I actually hung them up just outside the Computer Room.
But eventually the wire on the back of the frame broke so they've been sitting in my room waiting till someone got around to fixing them.
I also had a few 
African masks that my Dad's mom
got for me in the mid 80s. She knew I liked the Oriental Demon Masks but
also knew that my Mom would never allow them back in her house. So one
summer in the mid-80s we found a pair of masks at a garage sale and paid
something like $1 each or something like that. Pretty cheap. And
they had been lying around in the room just lying around, since
there was no real way to hang them up.
But Spring found a way using picture hooks, one on each side and one at the bottom, and used hanging wire to connect them all in the back with an round picture hook at the junction of wire. She then hung them up along the front entry wall to break up the expansive space of white wall. It actually looks good now.
And yes, we did name them. Bob, Bing, Byron and Arsenio. Any relations to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.
