Blowup Dolls and Sharp Tacks - Closed for Remodeling

First things middle. Freeman Plaza. The traffic center of campus. Closed. How was this accomplished? Well, for one, someone ripped the hell out of it. (Maybe it was one of those trucks that get lost at night and mistake it for a road.) More than likely, it was those guys who were probably getting PAID to rip it apart. They seem to be paid a ton per ounce per hour. If they would work on putting a solid surface down rather than moving loose stuff around, maybe we could get into some of the buildings. As it is, getting out of Washburn becomes difficult if you aren't carrying a compass. Our sources reveal that over the summer, there were (on average) three people working on the Freeman Trench project. Hmmm, wouldn't it make just a liiiiitle bit of sense to have a full crew, so that it would be done when its use would be greatly appreciated? Gee, these guys could have benefited greatly from one of WPI's stellar Management courses.

If you have not noticed the construction going on at Higgins Labs, you obviously (1) aren't an ME, (2) have absolutely no clue, or (3) are a Freshman and think Higgins is a modern art sculpture. If you do have a class in Higgins, I hear the bookstore (pronounced Two Towers Traitor) is selling hard hats at their standard high prices. This project, surprise, surprise, is also running behind schedule. I certainly would not want to be one of those professors stuck in the trailer park out back... Those things attract tornadoes, ya know...

If you have not been inside Higgins yet, do so, because this next part will make a bit more sense if you do. Walk down any of the main hallways, and notice the striking difference from one side of the hall to the other. Hmmm, who's in charge of the decor around here? The old side, aside from being old, looked kind of neat and classy. The new side reminds me of a hospital. (Dr. Fine, report to emergency room 5, STAT.) Hmmm, maybe it is a McDLT motif that they are going for here...

And last but not first, the Library steps. This collection of Happy Heated Manually-Operated Vertical People Movers, was stripped of its dignity, having to undergo the humiliation of bearing its pipes for all to see. What an outrage! From what we hear, they had the heat up higher than a hippie at Woodstock, and it melted the mortar right off the brick walls. Honest. Furiously the crew worked to restore the structural integrity of the walls, and broke a few of the steps in the process, c'est la vie... (We don't know if this is entirely true, but hey...)

Once again it is time for [insert fanfare here] a silly list of things that we noticed but you probably didn't care about.

When a tree was needed for that strange circular area by the front entrance to the quad, the closest thing WPI has to a rotary, some (gasp) thinking person had to of picked a Beech tree for one particular reason: it is the school colours. ...Must have been a fluke. Before too much time goes by, take a look at the tree, especially up at the top where the leaves are still maroon. This, combined with the trunk being grey, makes for a really neat thing - whether planned or not...

Did ya ever notice that Salisbury Labs has "Freshness Vents," just like the Ziplock Bags?

Where is the Acoustics Labs? Take a guess... No. No. That's not it either. Forget it, you will never guess this one, because it doesn't seem to make any sense. According to the sign on the door, it is in the carriage house of Higgins House. Is that anything like a garage band?

Where in the world, is Carmen Sandiego©? Did she steal the pavement from Freeman Plaza? What sort of sinister plan could this be? Is she in cahoots with some newfangled terrorist organization trying to undermine our education - or at least our ability to get to class to get an education. Whatever the reason, we need to find her...

Did you ever wonder what the Ellsworth-Fuller apartments would look like if they burnt down? Since they are mostly cheap wood and brick, they would burn quite nicely. But on the next day, they would provide the student body with a neat opportunity for some fun games. I bet that the parallel brick walls, which should remain standing, would make for an excellent game of dominoes (read physics experiment for class credit). Don't try this... until we get there with the video camera... ok?

Ok, we've talked excessively about things that are broken around here. Now, this is an engineering school, so we should figure out ways to fix them. Before we do this, we should review how others on campus have gone about making repairs.

For instance, down in front of Founders, we assume at one time or another, one of the pseudo-street lights stopped working. Now, the logical thing to do would be to fix the light, but that's not what happened. In typical Plant Services style, they engineered a pipe, traversing the concrete sidewalk barrier, creating a space-age sky tram for electricity. In other words, instead of finding the break in the wire and fixing it properly, they Mickey Moused it with a 10 pound lead pipe. Nice, guys. Very nice.

As you could probably tell from the nifty neat shiny blacktop surrounding Boynton and Washburn, over the summer, when most of us were not here, a fair amount of paving went on. This, on the whole, was uneventful, except for the fact a lovely gentleman with a backhoe decided to rip through the main communication cable for the majority of campus. No one knows precisely why this was done, but it was generally considered to be a poor idea in the long run. The NYNEX people loved it, getting beaucoup overtime to repair it through half the night. Green wire goes with green, brown wire goes with brown, red wire gets cut first, blue wire goes with yellow... Hmmm, maybe that's why my phone rings when I turn on the shower...

As a result of this fiasco, the CCC had to make some quick fixes. So quick in fact, that they were not even given the time to pull a Plant Services and use conduit (the official Plant Services fix-it tool). They had to resort to using Nature's own method of hanging Ethernet wire: they strung it up in the trees and hoped... This is obviously a true engineering solution, and we congratulate the CCC for a job well thought out, by awarding them the official Philler award for the Neatest Fix Of Something That Was Not Your Fault In The First Place award (N.F.O.S.T.W.N.Y.F.I.T.F.P. award).

You know, this is the proper way to write a Philler article: at the last minute, and while listening to TMBG. This might explain a lot of things to you, it certainly does to us. Nothing drastically important, mind you, but hey.

Uh, uh, what are we going to fill this last bit of space with? Any suggestions? No. We could always keep rambling on, and on, and on, and I'm sure we could keep this going for quite some time if we really wanted to, but as our minds are quickly running out of things to write about it seems that we will have to just end this in any old way such as...

Send your thoughts, observations, and questions to us at philler@philler.com...