Slashdot Mirror
Cube House
drkanta writes "Hey, I decided to decorate my cube for a holiday decoration contest. Well, I went all out and had a lot of fun and turned my cube into a house. I thought it was very very funny. What bugged me was that some people asked me where I saw this before to get my idea. What? Saw something like this before? My question is: has anyone done something like this before?"
I think this is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. You are now my hero. Course most of the guys I work with say it is gay.
I've done it, lots of times. I make them out of tinfoil. It's stops the cosmic rays, you know.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
That's awesome!!
Where are the TSP reports I asked for two days ago?
Okay !!!
...is currently taking a long hard look at just how much he's paying you.
Don't you have work to do?
Some of Pixars' work areas have more imaginative cube mods, decorations etc than this
What did he say? Didn't he complain that you should spend you time more productivly?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
Where do you work that you can get away with doing this.
Yes I have seen this before, but then the walls were padded....
I have to work when I'm at work, and I have interests besides work, so I'm not going to stay after work decorating a cube.
I see there's a pink slip attached to your monitor too! I wonder what THAT'S doing there!
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Did you win the contest?
Glad to see someone attempting to liven up the usual dull conformo look of the "cube". I assume since you're in a cubicle yourself you're not a manager or such, so my question is, how did you get your bosses to allow that? And what will be your next project, perhaps a little cubicle bunker where you can rain weapons of nerf destruction down on your fellow co-workers?
See subject; :)
Other than that, I think JWZ made himself a cubicle tent once. Netscape made him take it down as I recall. I'd love to see more examples of clear fire hazards, so if anyone has any more keep posting.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
it can't get any worse. Oh no, There is a whole new level of people with to much time on their hands.
Just what *do* you do at work if you have that much free time!? lol This reminds of that "While You Were Out" show...they should do it for cubicles.
Can I see you in my office, please? I think we have a few things to discuss....
- Your Pointy Haired Boss
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
I read this thinking he decorated his Mac Cube... and thought that was pretty cool. Maybe put some christmas lights inside or something... but this is just his work cube... not as cool.. IMO.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Wouldn't it get pretty warm in there?
I had my girlfriend do some makeup on my penis. That is fun.
Well, I only thought it was very funny. So there.
Put a fridge and a tv in and you may not have an excuse to go home ...
I thought things got out of hand at *my* office during the holiday season. On a more serious note- clearly the individual who made the house/cubes company is not in downsizing mode. Still Looks like a big "Lay *me* off please" sign to me...
I bet he did that only to see how much load his server could handle ! Hope the university admins don't knock at your "house" in a few minutes!
5.5 Hour of Pay to decorate your CUBE. cool I still have you beat, getting paid 8 hours a day to surfing slashdot.org
has anyone done something like this before?
True Story: In 1982 or so I had a job stocking shelves (hey, I was 16) Anyhow, I got pretty stoned at dinner break and had a great idea.. I bought a can of gold spray paint in the store then proceeded to completely spray paint a urinal in the men's room. Then I wrote in felt marker Needless to say when my boss called me in the next day and I was straight I didn't think the idea was too smart.
Trolling is a art,
I will get myself an office with sauna, bubblebath, harem, minibar and some nice waterfalls. Maybe a nice big gatling cannon to keep people at bay...
Hate me!
...after slashdot gets done with your site, you may want to ask the guy with a white beard for a new server. :)
My server could use a good slashdotting... ;)
http://scottkuma.net/CubeHouse/
>What bugged me was that some people asked me
Wow, so you must work with some uncreative people, if they think that anything cool has to have been ripped off. I hope they don't have the same attitude to the actual WORK that you do.>where I saw this before to get my idea.
there was a whole interview on some evening magazine type tv show in the SF bay area a few years back, where some guy did that PERMANENTLY to his cube.
he used wood for all the framing and used real wood shingles for the roof!!!
his boss said, ok, but that no one else was allowed to do it.
I have not looked at the article yet.
I procured cardboard shipping boxes with the intent of converting my cubicle into an interior office.
There is no good reason the walls do not continue straight up.
comment directly in my journal
/.ing is now considered arson.
Is it just me or all the offices look alike. Man my office has exactly the same layout, floor, cube and ceiling. And then again you get to spend 5.5 hours doing things other than "work". Hope you are using "cover page" on all your reports :-)
as if cubes don't trap the smell of a fart already enough...
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Dude, you need to spend less time at work.
Do you really spend that much time at your cube that you need to go to such lengths to decorate it?
Work less man, life is not all about work.
greg minshalls cube house at ipsilon around 98 or 99
I saw that too. He used camo-netting and had it propped up in true tent-like fashion. Great story he had, where is he now?
if he's hosting this from his cube, the smoke'll need a way out.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
somebody too nerdy for even slashdot!
Since I started to work at home, I have turned my house into a cube. Much to my wife's consternation, I might add...
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
There was the "Tent of Doom" at Netscape for example, which was waaay cool.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Pictures have been archived for your permanent employee records :) :) :)
...that i worked at with cubicles, i would have gotten fired for this probably.
:o)
But that being said, i say this is the coolest cubicle "alterations" i've seen ever. You did an excellent job on it, and i think it's awesome. Plus, i bet with a cover on it it is quieter and feels more 'private'....
Well done!
Can't wait to see what you do next year.
do() || do_not();
Ya know, the first thing I thought when I saw those pictures was, "Looks awfully familiar..." I thought that could have been in the office of my last job. But then I realized, "Oh, it's just a cube farm."
:)
See, thing is, I haven't been in a cube farm for the past two years. I've either been unemployed or working for a small company that has a funky office in a warehouse. I've been out of the cubefarm for so long that I've forgotten how generic and anonymous one can be.
Christ, those places are depressing! I'll take a funky old warehouse (with lots of random telco equipment laying around in bins) over that any day.
Never again!
Linking a page full of rather large images to slashdot?? That's a suicide plan, although the server is taking it well so far! You're crazy, man!
Berto
or do "cubes" seem rather a horrible way to spend your career/life i cant imagine enjoying any job where you sit in a little box like those all day, i think an assembly line has better conditions
if its not out of choice you have my condolences
AC
I didn't get the memo.
I think this should fall under a new /. category called "Cube Hacks". All in favor?
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
This is only a worth while project if you were getting paid while you were doing it. Otherwise you've got either way too much time on your hands... Or you hate going home.
The Tent of Doom
My cube at work has 2 pieces of my art in it, some random weird webcomics, the sign "It is illegal to be normal and work here", and a random toy I got when I was younger. People pause when they see odd colored light coming out of my cube.
And it's not the weirdest cube in the office by far. *That* cube has a bunch of even more random stuff including Brittney Spears posters, Phish posters, a mousetrap, and a drum kit.
Gentoo Sucks
He works for a college in their CS department. Of course he won't get in trouble for it. Probably also hangs out "after hours" and tries to hang with all the residents and be cool. :)
I gotta say, that has to be the worst karma whoring ever...
Java: the bastard demon spawn of C++ and Ada
Who's the idiot that modded this up?
This is what we call a "troll." It could be considered a "karma whore," but the formatting is so bad and the content so obviously useless, it fits more into the "troll" category. Good to see Slashdot moderators still fall for obvious garbage like this.
In Australia I used to have a pipe house that consisted of PVC pipes with holes in them, and it connected up to a hose to keep cool inside... It could also have a sheet thrown over it, but nowhere near as intricate as that. Still, it's something like it.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
Queer eye for the straight cube
I made a cubicle roof solely to shut out the fluorescent lights overhead, which the accountant (apparently) desperately needed.
Mine was constructed out of 1x2 and black fabric, and earned me quite a few more odd points around the office... though my green hair phase probably added some, too.
Photos here...
0x0D 0x0A
I was hoping this would be someone's cube with in-cube plumbing for a bathroom, shower, and drinking water. Then just add relatively normal extra stuff like a small microwave and fridge and maybe an inflatable or roll-up bed and you never have to leave.
Beacause with a door, a computer, and that box of kleenex...
Quote: "Oh, and the ladies tell me that I have such wanderfull color coordination."
:)
Dude- whatever it take to get you some...
I know some places hate it if you have more than x number of personal effects at your workspace, etc...
/.ed :)
But c'mon...you may get canned for getting
...the network administrators now won the Christmas Lighting Contest with their amazing display of flashing lights and fireworks from their Internet server.
first off, nobody gets the won-eyed girl in the jump-you ads, as she is rumoured to be not real, &/or not a member.
that's all of the rules for now. more to come when the results of the 'va lairIE/robbIE answer yOUR questions' interview come in? of course, as always, keep it simple. don't ask about where all the phonIE monIE is going/weNT. we'll get back to you with their answers, after they've been filtered through robbIE's corepirate nazi ?pr? ?firm? & shyster hypenosys review, until they've (both the answers & lairIE/robbIE) been reduced to reflect almost nothing that matters.
says that this barely registers at all. In fact, this is the lowest Masculinity site I've ever measured, that wasn't pink. I'd have my testes checked, if I were you. Sounds like a hormone deficiency or something like that. Better go buy a red sports car. (With a stick shift! NOT a manual!) That'll perk you right up!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
and you wasted 5.5 hours of the work day I'd KICK YOUR ASS (and then move into your cube house).
Mirror here
Whenever we did anything like this to break the monotony of the cubicle villa the HR people would come by and state the fire code... Like they even knew what it was.... There cubes ALWAYS have the fancy add-ons...
Dude, to spend that much time whoring up your cube... and THEN to slashdot the hell out of your college servers with gargantuan images...
Well, let's just say I see where you got those brass balls hanging around the roof.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
wow, and I clicked on the link assuming that you had decorated a Mac cube, maybe like a gingerbread houes or something. Boy am I happy I don't worrk in a cube farm.... :)
Currently he runs a little nightclub call the DNA Lounge. Strangely enough, they webcast all their live events...
Server is starting to get slashdotted.
I put up a temporary mirror.
- tristan
What are you doing reading slashdot, then ? And replying, no less...
--
Dang don't you know how to resize images? They could be about half that size and still show enough detail.
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
It's become amusing looking at all these dumb moderations. Informative?!? Jesus Freaking Christ. I hope to meet you in metamod.
Don't be surprised if security tears it down when you go home for the night. This is in violation of fire ordinances in more ways than one, right?
For a second there, I had forgotten what my OLD cubefarm looked like.
Get out of corporate hell. Start your own business doing SOMETHING and then you don't have to worry about what to do with your cube over the holidays.
Sheesh...
...cuz I expect you'll be referred to pics of said cube.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Would anyone else just find this annoying. Maybe I'm a grinch, but if the guy next to me was putting up a house over his cube, it would drive me crazy. Not to mention the people constantly stopping by to marvel at it.
Rob
...it was attacked by the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
nobodIE's saying that robbIE's gnu online dating service will work any better, or worse, than his whoreabully infactdead/pateNTdead PostBlock(tm) commeNT censoring/manipulation devise.
well, actually, it couldn't work any worse?
One tiny spark and whoosh, your cube is charcole man. Watch your task lights.
I sit in the corner, you insensitive clod!
We wanted to do something like this.. but the fire code people were not too fond of putting any significant horizontal surfaces between the sprinklers on the ceiling and the floor.
Isolated behind cloth covered walls all day is not my idea of a good working environment.
My workplace is not ideal. We are semi-open plan with groups of four but it looks like luxury when compared to the layout of a cube farm.
Well done with the House Mate. However, by the time I got to the stage of making a house out of my cube I would have got out of that place.
he's running club dna...
try jwz.org
... hi bingo
Leave him alone, he has a brick tied to his head...
Doesn't anybody remember Phil Hartman's house on NewsRadio? He actually had a staircase leading down to a basement smoking lounge...I never could figure out how he did that.
Pete Forsyth
The real reason he did this was that he felt the flourescent lighting above was keeping him from acheiving that optimial geek paleness that drives the ladies wild. Now the only light he'll have to worry about reaching his skin is that CRT glow.
Needs a little bit more work, the decode is way too feminine I think.
So you turned your cube into a house? Where'd you put the toilet?
And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll ./ your house down!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
...if the Borg ever go gay.
You don't have any ancestors that built arks, do you?
How this got to Informative?
In other news, some numbers from our favorite businesses:
SCO: 2.3 Millions$, 85 files, a few thousand lines of code, and hundreds of CAD.
Microsoft: 1300 coders for the project, 23 million initial budget, security risks unknown.
IBM: 1200 outsourced jobs every month, 4500 CPU and a big pile of paper!
Oh, and the match is currently 5 to 3 for the home boys!
Do you work for SallieMae?
AWESOME pics in your sig link. Abortions are cool.
Actually yes, while I was at one job I turned my cube into a tiki hut complete with thatch roof. My boss was pissed and was going to scream at me until the VP of the company came by and congratulated me on such a great morale builder and said that others should be so industrious.
:)
Nearly everything for your own Tiki hut can be purchased at Archie McPhee's
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Ipsilon was the company that eventually was aquired and is now the foundation for the Nokia/Checkpoint OS (which I think is a FreeBSD variant).
I was visiting in about 1997 looking at their fast flow setup switch (I dont recall the product name at this point). Esentially it was a PC gateway hooked up to an ATM switch. The PC handled the flow setup, and then programmed the switch. I'm sure someone else can correct my recollection if necessary.
While I was there, one guy had walls and a roof structure built of wood around his cube. Apparently they had to install a sprinkler in the top of the roof on the inside to meet fire safety codes. The structure itself was a pretty solid design.
SiteSmith was a managed services company that was aquired by MFN to be their Managed Services arm.
When I was at SiteSmith around 2000 we had one guy who put a roof on his cube as well but I believe HR or Facilities made him take it down. I think this one was more decorated, but not for Xmas.
When I was a kid i'd used to build play houses and pretend to be working inside. Now I see you can do the same even as an adult!
Did anyone else read this and think about the Macintosh G4 Cube?
Wally got a story posted on Slashdot! Bet he gets a visit from Alice soon.
"Derp de derp."
It's pretty damned cute, 100% A+! Steve
1. doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of a cubicle - getting up and looking at all the others... 2. personaly i'd like to see a borg cube(icle)... 'scuse me, while i
My question is does the poster violate TechTv's Fung Shui guide for cubicles? Feng Shui for Cubicles.
Rule #6 is: Make sure your workspace is pleasing to your eye, uncluttered, and comfortable to work in.
Still Mud? Try www.phoenixmud.org!
and I, for one, am quite disappointed!
Clear, Dark Skies
When she bends over that fax machine! Man, I just want to slide my st nick down up her chimney.
Being able to violate HR policy is the only perk which can possibly attract people to work in HR.
when I used to take all the pillows and chairs around the house and built myself a fort.
Happy Holidays!
I was totally expecting a decorated GameCube.
i doubt you'll get the linux driver to work under windows ....
only $28.12 and 1/2 cent See economy
I thought this was going to be some kind of Cube case mod, but no, it's just a guy with a weird sense of humor.
Okay, okay, I admit it. It's funny.
But somebody should still wrap it good.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
It's TPS reports. And you seem to have forgotten your cover sheets as well... (If you're gonna do it, do it right :)
"Watch your cornhole, bud."
I think someone needs to do this to a coworkers cube while they're on vacation or something.. Now *that* would be good.
||:|::
One of my co-workers went to Hong Kong on business last year. When he returned, his cube was tented with plastic sheeting. We hung up SARS warning signs and facemasks. We even put a facemask on his bowling trophy guy. He wasn't impressed.
the mirror was slashdotted already -- I tried a few more times and grabbed it from the original site. I put it here in case anyone is unable to get the first two - [www.rizzn.com/cubehouse]
goto http://rizzn.com
"Everything's been thought of before. The trick is to think of it again."
Don't get your knickers in a knot just because someone else once had the same brilliant idea you had. It happens. A lot. It doesn't in any way diminish your own insight, no matter what some dimwitted nebish in the third cube over says.
Or even what you think.
I've always liked Pete Seeger's definition of "sophmoric," the itch to be original. Let it go.
I've never had the "pleasure" of working in a cube farm, but I tend to work in open office like enviroments of one sort or another. I like to dress up my space on a periodic basis. Right now it's a simulated Japanese tatami room, floor seating with the computer on a kotatsu with nonfunctioning wooden hibachi ( actually, it functions as a waste basket). A scroll painting and a rack of swords as a finishing touch. Very comfortable actually, and a damned sight cheaper than an Aeron. It's pretty easy to do in a cube space.
In the past I've done a simulated traditional Mongolian yurt, the rectangular Tibetan equivilent, various native American styles and an English country cottage.
Of course on a workaday basis it helps to have enough authority that no one can give you shit over it.
Next Christmas you might want to try a traditional middle eastern house or nomadic tent for the true Christmas spirit.
KFG
I prefer Doom House.
At one start up I worked at, we had a cubicle decorating contest for who got the close parking spots in the middle of January. My cubicle group (4 cubicles with doorways facing inwards) use white plastic to create a biohazard tent. It actually was nice because it blocked light from outside and helped us regulate the temperature.
The downside was when someone let one rip, well it lingered.
right here! - just in case the other 5 mirrors aren't good enough. :)
This guy/girl did something quite entertaining, even though it probably violates countless fire codes.
I wonder if it's still up..
Few office workers outside America work in cube farms.
You should have made it look like this instead of the little christmas house.
Then, I would be impressed.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I love the cube creativity. I expressed such "creativity" twice at my previous employer...though the "previous-ness" has nothing to do with my cube creativity.
...
This is all true, as I have MPEG movies of both of these. If someone wants a copy, I'm happy to share, just email it to me at cubicoasters_on_slashdot@emailias.com. If anyone has some bandwidth and wants to host them, I'd be very happy to forward them to you, too.
Cubi-coaster 1997: Christmas 1997, I converted my cubicle into a "ball and gutter" kinetic energy machine. Basically, it's a small version of the contraptions you would find in a good science museum or in a progressive airport or mall (for entertaining the public). It started with a slingshot of a small plastic ball across the cubicle into a funnel made of paper that led to the other gutters (made of paper, tape, paperclips)...through a loop-the-loop, and down into a trashcan. But this was no ordinary trashcan. I had rigged it as a "triggered catapult" (I kid you not!) to throw the ball back up into the original funnel across the cube one more time. It only made two laps because I had to re-cock the trashcan catapult.
Cubi-coaster 1998: Christmas 1998, I created a motorized version using several pingpong balls. Using a desktop fan and removing the blade, I created a "chairlift" with fishing line and paperclips (for the "chairs"). The balls would be lifted out of a paper tube and dropped into a clear plastic funnel (made of overhead transparencies and tape) near the ceiling. It could then go one of two ways through clear plastic tubes, across highly-tensioned parallel "rails" of fishline, and over a couple of other pendulum-like devices. This was perpetual, thanks to the motor/fan.
This was a lot of fun and sure drew a lot of visitors. Friends commented that for the "next year" that I'd either have to expand to "outside the building" or would have to quit work...I chose the latter.
Happy to share...both then and now! Happy Holidays!
It was very cool. He used fish pattern fabric.
"Total cost of the project: $34
...pissing off all your non-christian co-workers: priceless
Total cost of the project after I return "unneeded items": $14
Total time to build, including sawing, etc: 5.5 hours."
Sorry, I keep forgetting to add the tongue-in-cheek emoticon to the bottom of my posts...
Productivity == 0
...a submarine. I work as a reserve officer and spend several weeks every summer at a nearby air force base. This summer, a few guys in my office took it upon themselves to turn another office-mates cube into a submarine like environment. Using nothing but card-board and duct tape, they enclosed the cube from floor to ceiling. At the cube entrance they left a fully functioning hatch-style door complete with wheel. They then proceeded to decorate the outside to look like steel and rivets (not quite as much effort as your cube-house though).
By the way, good job on the cube-house!
At my roommate's work they aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas at work, they have holiday parties, winter festivals, and exchange holiday gifts (Don't forget to wrap them with holiday papaer and put them under your holiday tree decorated with holiday lights!). Someone asked at a company meeting if they could put up nativity scenes. The answer was a resounding no (and many people would agree work isn't the place for such a thing). However, when they asked if it was OK to put up a tree or some decorations they were told no because it might offend someone.
So I'm surprised you can put up a tree, presents, and decorate your cube with such offensive material.
No matter how you feel about Christmas (ie, religous/nonreligous), it is a fact that those bent to oppose it will remove it anywhere they see it. It first seemed like this meant all public places, but it has extended to private business as well.
Big deal, who cares, right? The problem is that if something as personal as someone's faith/belief/religion can be squelched from public and private life then it is only a matter of time before 'trivial things' are disallowed. Maybe you listen to 'offensive' music at work (on headphones). Maybe you want to read up on the latest 2600 or O'Reilly book but now you're labeled hackerish. Maybe you're a republican and work with democrats and its offensive to customers (or vice-versa).
Stripped of emotion, stripped of belief, stripped of thought, stripped of individualty comes the new generation of the Corporate American(TM).
because after you get fired, you'll be living in your little holiday cube
have fun !!!
Did you set the correct jumper settings for the proper IRQ? Linux is usually better at allocating interrupts for PNP ISA cards than Windows, so you have to be more precise when installing 98.
. . . that I have never seen such an original cube decoration. My hat's off to you.
It's too bad you can't wait til after the holidays and replace the Christmas wrap with some kind of sound-dampening material. Then you'd have peace and quiet to add to your elegant decor.
Even so, every cube-dweller and former cube-dweller should salute your ingenuity and festive spirit. And only $34 (before returns)?
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
When I was a child, I though like a child;
When I was an adult, I thought like an adult;
When I went completely insane, I converted my cube to a house...
Can you do other drugs there, or just pot?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I wonder how long it will be before someone in Corp. Realestate will force you to take it down due fire code violations.
We (I can't say what company I work for but it sounds like: "DUHrizon") did something like this for daily operations (because the lights were too bright) and it was about an hour before we were forced to take the stuff down.
In MY cube, I've cut the space into half-high walled partitions, each with their desk, phone and chair. They are .5 metre sq. Then when I'm sick of my surroundings, I can switch cubes! I have scenic calendars on the outer walls so I can treat myself to a "window office" now and then.
Is your parking spot in the lot sponsored by Taco Bell ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
The lovable comic artist, Scott Adams, famous for "Dilbert" had a strip with this idea in there. During a tight labor market for Engineers, Wally was enjoying the new found freedom, and hired a construction worker to build him a cubicle roof.
Cubes suck. I've worked in 3, but the rest of my jobs have been cubeless...I think it's a prerequisite now to avoid workplaces that use them. Awful things. This poor chap violated the cube laws, too. Probably had HR pull him in and give him a scolding. Places like this are yucky, but it is nice to know that someone has some creativity to be the penguin in the crowd singing "I've gotta be me!"
man rtfm
If I lived in a foul spider hole I might want to spend all my free time at home too.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
One of my co-workers went to Hong Kong on business last year. When he returned, his cube was tented with plastic sheeting. We hung up SARS warning signs and facemasks. We even put a facemask on his bowling trophy guy. He wasn't impressed.
When I was in the Air Force I saw someone who turned their cubicle into a ginger bread house. I've also seen a person take a shower curtain, a shower shelf unit and some wall tile and decorate their cubicle to look like a shower, it was a message that the cublicle was too small and the false ceiling leaked during heavy rains!
Cube House: I read this thinking he decorated is house like a Rubik's cube. It's a nice-looking project, but not exactly what I expected either.
Everyone's house is very different. So walking into the animation area you get the feeling of entering a village full of very short, very eccentric people.
Not all random numbers are created equally.
This is a fire code violation where I live... and might be where you are at as well. You can't have any coverings that might block the sprinklers from getting to every nook and cranny.
;)
Sorry!
We do this stuff at our office all the time. Usually for birthdays and the such. I really should throw together a web page with all the pics sometime.
The best ones so far where.
We took a bunch of cubicles and covered them with taped together black trash bags. This created a very cool cave. We put plants and a fog machine in as well.
Our boss is from Alabama, so for his birthday we decorated the whole office like some kind of back woods farm. We took his desk out and replaced it with a piece of plywood, and put a bail of straw in his office. We all dressed up in overalls and even staged a wedding ( the groom was at gun point and the bride about 8 months along ).
The next year we staged a murder mystery with our unexpecting boss at the middle of it. His brother was murdered and he had to figure out who it was. We staged it like a 30's private eye office.
For my birthday the guys decorated my office like a rave. Including a bunch of techno and monitors with cheesy colorful screen savers. Again the smoke machine was brought in, and they all laughed as I got lung cancer and couldn't even see my screen.
We've made people where bunny suits like at an amunsment park, had a toga party theme, made people work in a tent all day, and a whole lot of other things.
We've been slacking as of late with less revenues and more stress, but this stuff can really really boost morale in your office. We are a small company with very few rules, so we can get away with this stuff, if you can go for it.
Back in the day (1997-98), at NCD in Mountain View, we decorated cubes for birthdays:
t ml t upid inside jokes
e s, we really put *sod* into an office. On top of some palettes covered with plastic sheeting
http://www.darryl.com/cubes/tomatoes/tomatoes.h
http://www.darryl.com/cubes/lace/lace.html
--S
http://www.darryl.com/cubes/golf/golf.html
--Y
http://www.darryl.com/cubes/eros/foil.html
-- Yeah, that's a lot of foil.
gosh, aside from your house-cubie, your office looks just like mine! what a coincidence!
some kids (not me) tried to do something similar to their desks (they put refridgerator boxes over their desks, with little window flaps cut out. It was a small, private school and for some reason the school admin let it go for a while.
shortly after the first kids did it others started trying to do the same thing, at which point the admin decided this was not going to work and put the smack down on the whole idea.
it was fine with me as I was starting to worry about what these kids were doing in there?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
During the 60s and 70s, my father worked as a low-level data processing guy at the then-in-NJ headquarters of a very prominent non-profit organization. If you're male, you may have scouted them out as a channel for interesting after-school activities during your youth.
Anyhow, the last manager he had (before the organization packed its bags and moved to Texas) had been left without a proper office because of lack of seniority and a space crunch. His response to this situation was to cordon off part of the cube floor and build, with year-end budget pork, a house. Complete with a fancy front door, a mailbox, siding (not sure about the material), windows and flower boxes.
My father told me it was still there the day that they all packed up their desks and left the building for good.
... to jwz's entry on his cubicle house in the pizza-eating days of Netscape ... but I'm sure someone else would've beat me to wayback machine to do it properly ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Heh heh, if it weren't for small clues, like the molding at the bottom of the cube walls, or the desk surface, I'd swear you worked my company!
Exact same cube panels, ceiling tiles, lights, ventialition grates, carpet color, wall style... creepy!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
There was a homeless couple in NY back in 98 who did that to a dumpster... got fined and jailed for it, too.
Or was it sheboykin? Biddings SD maybe?
Seriously, though, it's cool that his company lets him do things like that. Sounds like reasonable, human employers, which of course means a reasonable, fun place to work, which means better productivity.
I know many places that would have you called in their office for daring have such a "distraction on the floor."
"Sufferin' succotash."
http://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/
RFC1925
I think I've seen this one.
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
...i never expected to use in the same sentence: "Cubicle police" and "zoning permits".
Neatest thing I saw wasn't a cube but an office someone had filled with a foot or two of plastic balls. You know those ball pits you see at fast food restaurants for kids? Like that. It was pretty impressive being a good-sized office. Balls were everywhere, in drifts on the ground at least a foot deep at the shallowest point, on shelves, on filing cabinets, on the desk, in the drawers, everywhere.
There was a story behind them. They represented something or another that they were messaging, and wanted to visualize how big it was, and so for every so many they threw a ball in the office and-- uh, I forget the story, but it was an office full of brightly colored plastic balls. Great ammo, too. Anyone who visited him had to wade through balls and brush them off of the chairs to even sit...
He's still there, you just can't see him.
I'm stealing your red stapler and turning it into santa claus.
Well, not me personally. But I've seen something very similar to that at a local (Pittsburgh) financial services company that has a cube decorating contest every year for the holidays.
That office loks like every single place I'ce worked in the last 8 years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why, when I come to work in the morning they convert us to 2 dimensions and pile us up like sheets of paper.
It's the perfect balance between holiday cheerfulness and depressing vocational stagnation. Jung would be proud.
Uhhh dude....
Sorry about the mess in your bathroom.
Surely nobody but a Marketing drone would have this much time to flirt away at work... except me, but that's different.
John, I'm Only Dancing!
>>has anyone done something like this before?
Usually it precedes the co-worker showing up to work with an assault weapon, or having a nervous breakdown, only they usually don't have all the Christmasy colors.
I swear to %DIETY%, I thought this was written by a girl, till I got to the "the ladies tell me..." part.
Gay. Totally gay. Liberace gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
But now to my real question: when did everyone decide to call cubicles "cubes"? Seems like a gross misapplication/bastardization of geometry to me...plus, they suck. Whatever happened to those dinosaurs that used to be called "offices"?
I swear, if I ever get an actual honest-to-goodness *office*, *all to myself*, I'm gonna keep the door closed and the curtain drawn and anti-noise generator running all the fweakin' time. In the words of Dave, "Everybody could kiss my ass".
End of rant.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
We had a guy turn his cube into a wrapped gift. Pretty hot in there though.
-L
Don't Panic.
I've alwasy wanted that cube Bordello....
There is this pesky company policy about having things higher than yer cube though....
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
You Rock!!
All you need is a screen door and a rocking chair to complete things a la Kramer in the infamous Seinfeld episode.
Serenity now.
"More organs means more human." - Zim
Yup, been there, done that.
In 1980, working in DEC's mill buildings in
Maynard, MA, I lived in a cube adjacent to a
room full of LA120's being wear tested to the
point of failure...that point being seldom
reached, the noise was a steady 55dB. I lined
the walls with and pitched a roof of styrofoam
panels sandwiched to egg-crate foam...it was
quieter and looked sort of Greek revival
as far as style is concerned. Fire marshall
would have s..t a brick if he ever saw it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
At one point it had a wading pool, white picket fence, walls, roof, and garden gnomes...
If I remember, I'll dig up the pictures...
:wq
Has anyone done this before? I hope not. _MK Merry Christmas!!!
I am sure you already sleep at your cube er, house so you have a bedroom, but I think to make it a real home you could use a kitchen- get an Easy Bake Oven and you are set. Oh, of course you need a toilet too. Bucket? A 'Lil Johnny toilet trainer?
Box noted in highly unusual place by cleaning staff.
MPs forcibly evacutated building.
Bomb squad noted problems with security and downtime due to location in network control center.
In case box contained explosive device, it was immediately disrupted with small demolition charges. Minor damage to surrounding equipment.
There was one casualty. How he avoided the evacuation and reached the vicinity of the box has not been determined.
Forty five you insensitive clod!
I had some sandbags (actually, gunny-sacks) and put them on top of a framework over the top of the cube. Then some others cut some branches for the camouflage. Looked pretty cool, but I can't find the picture.
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.
You miss working from home? Even @ the christmas time?! WOW!
-- There is no spaam
this is a fire hazard, not a friendly holiday decoration.
Where I'm from, we just turn our cubes into pumpkins.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You insensitive clod! I don't celebrate Christmas!
Everybody missed the point of the article. It's not "give me props & kudos;" it's "is there such a thing as original thought?"
Some people seem to think there is a finite amount of knowledge, and that what someone "discovers" is already known by others.
On the other hand, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has no references. Try that yourself and you'll be laughed out of the peer review process.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
i'm gonna have to go ahead and ah, ask you to -- ah, take that down...oh and uh, yeah, you're gonna need to come in on Saturday... ;)
....now that would be cool....
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
http://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/
Friggin' window licker!!!
He got it from Dilbert. The house in Dilbert wasn't Christmassy, but he got it from Dilbert.
wow.....just wow.....
I am starting a fanclub. ^_^ Merry Christmas!
Can we make this the new standard for cubes? I would kill to have a roof on mine so I wouldn't have those god damn flourescent lights shining on me giving me eyestrain all day. Hello? I work on computers staring at monitors all day, I don't need the light of 1,000 suns glaring in my eyes from a light placed jjjuuuuuussssttttt....PERFECTLY....so that there is no shadow from my big ass head on my eyes. Sometimes I turn off the lights in the lab and people act like I need to be committed...
Halloween 2000 - not much here
Halloween 2002 - a witch hat
Christmas 2000 - bottom half of a christmas tree
Christmas 2002 - a house
The christmas cubes were harder, as it became a normal occurance for an 'inspection' once my cubes were put up to see how many building codes violations I had (inspections were due around christmas), and to take pictures to send to my boss. The only year i had to comply was Christmas 2003, I had to drop the roof from the ceiling 18" and remove all the hanging stuff.
--Ara
Heh. When I first started reading this article I was thinking "Sweet! A gingerbread house case mod for the holidays!", but alas...
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Turned mine into a dump for old computer gear. Hang on, that's what every sysadmin does! You just never know whether a DecStation5000 will turn up to plug that old digitiser tablet into - all those empty boxes damp sound in the office, and that big pile of AT keyboards and big 10Mb/s switches are valuble thermal mass keeping the office temperature from fluctuating too quickly.
Until recently the word gay was used to describe something as bright or festive colors or clothing, the feeling of being "merry", drawn towards social pleasures, etc. One of the reasons that homosexuals coined the term "gay" is because the stereotypical homeosexual is quite gay by definition. As a metrosexual, people call me gay all the time, but they really aren't talking about my sexual orientation, rather, they're talking about my designer clothes or my "gay dancing". The fact that homosexuals decided to start using slang terms such as "gay" is their own parrogative, and it will be met with sarcastic remarks.
Now Eric, much as he was an evangelical dick at times, was no "Kroch".
And don't make me disassemble "modzilla", unless I missed a crucial CPD meeting.
I guess that adds a whole new definition to the term "work from home".
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
More hardcore, yet twisted verbally describedexample.
I'm sorry, but this violates Fire Code. You're going to have to take it down.
GET BACK TO WORK!
Sorry I am too busy reading Slashdot at work to do anything like that.
Dave
I've been in IT too long. I look at that and instinctively expect to find a Mac-enthusiast who's decorated a particular piece of hardware in an unusual fashion...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Crap on you.
This was done at Ipsilon for Greg Minshall, who kept requesting a real office instead of a cube. The CEO and his carpenter friend came in and put up real framing, a serious roof, etc., and painted the whole thing YELLOW. After the fire inspectors saw it, we had to put a sprinkler inside.
That row looks familiar. It must be my office. It's every row in every farm in every office. Just like home.
Who would front up the charges for that kind of overhead?
This is not gay but simply demand to be with around 5% of other people on the right side of the bell curve of creativity.
:gay, anti-patriotic, communist, witch, file sharer, or anything that is hot to persecute in that moment. Then they can feel the joy and satisfaction of belonging to a larger group of people who persecute the smaller one.
A typical reaction of the 95% will be to call him
Many times they also do not belong to the right side of another important bell curve and have no idea of what I am talking about.
There doesn't look like there was a lot of other competition.. at least nearby!
Cube houses in Rotterdam. I used to live in one.
Oh, you meant cubicle, not cube!
Wait till Diwali comes!
More than mere navel gazing.
My server could use a good slashdotting... ;)
Ah yes, the famous last words of the goatse.cx man...
Wow, I tried to do the same thing once with a shared cube (we'd removed the walls from the middle). My cubemate brought in that same type of camo, except it had been to burning man and smelled like it, so we aborted the project.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
...the hottie little rich girls there. Now he needs to park a fake Escalade just outside the door...
Loading...
Doooooood! I've never seen ANYTHING like that before!
(Now I'll go check out your site if it's not slashdotted yet.)
I thought for sure you'd get tagged for having objects(chimney) too close to the ceiling :)
Where do you work that allows you to do this to your cube without making you tear it all down? And where do you work that pays you enough money to pay your bills and also blow $34 to turn your cubicle into something you're going to tear down in 2 weeks? I know not all geeks are as poor as me butt I think I'd like an extra $34 in my pocket right now. Please send me an application to this high paying, totally layed back job. Thanks!
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I am an artist and it is sad but true that the most common reaction to a creative male is "he must be gay". Most men 1)don't have a creative artistic thought more than once a year, and then they 2)are afraid to do anything about it for fear of being labeled as gay. Me, I don't give a crap and my life is richer because of it. The upside is that women generally adore artists - so there.
AT LAST! We've finally tracked down the guy that puts all those Easter Eggs in software!
the really funny (but sadly defunct) Computer Stew web-comedy once had a Renovate Your Cube episode, in which they roofed over some guy's cude and panneled the walls etc, etc. John Hargrave, where are you now?
the really funny (but sadly defunct) Computer Stew web-comedy once had a Renovate Your Cube episode, in which they roofed over some guy's cude and panneled the walls etc, etc. John Hargrave, where are you now?
The fact that it's "been done before" is irrelevant. Things get "reinvented" all of the time. Sheesh, cow-orkers, or to quote my boss "If it weren't for the clients and the employees, this job would be perfect".
i guess that someone has already done something similar in a dilbert strip
One of the chaps in the VMS team at spitbrook had his cube "roofed" with a model of Mt Everest constructed entirely of green and white listing paper. Very pretty indeed. That would be circa 1989. I guess everything about VMS was ahead of the game....;^)
... people ask why jobs are shifted to India:
-Overpaid people with too much time on their hands...
-.. that exhibit behaviour bordering on the dihonest (what about the cost of this "exercise" after returning "uneeded" items).
Nice though, but somehow I had to let my little Scrooge out just on time for the festive season.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But what about when you are part of a minority.
There was nothing more uncomfrotable that to work in a Muslim country and have to put up with their faith displays, specially on Fridays.
For all the non-muslims there (which were around 40% of the workforce between Buddhists, Xians, agnostics and atheists, these last foreigners of course, otherwise they would have been breaking the law) it was a real pain to have to work all the time around the needs of the Muslim majority.
Consider yourself lucky that in civilized countries religious fervour is being relegated to where it rightly belongs: the personal sphere.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Back in 92 or so I turn my cube into a cave and dressed up in a wizards outfit for Holloween. Built the cave front from plywood, styrofoam, and felt (I have a sister in law who does set design). The 'mountain' the cave was in consisted of the large brown paper dropcloths that had been seriously wrinkled and spray painted. It was suspended from the ceiling in tent fashion. Turns out I was the only one who came in costume.
An employee of mine at UUNET tried to decorate her cube in a similar fashion, and as her manager I supported her effort. Then the secretary of the VP got pissed off at it and declared that it had to go. The VP, I suspect, didn't care, but the whim of the boss's secretary couldn't be denied, and it all had to come down.
It was one of the signs of the WorldCom apocalypse, I now realize.
--doug
I misread that as "turned his house into a cube". Wow, I thought, that must look cool, in a post-mod kinda way. And, Wow, I bet he catches heck from the neighbors.