The campus where I work was, in a previous life, a marine park complete with
killer whales, dolphins and rides. In1986 it just got up and moved to the North
Bay where there was more land and the weather was hotter and less windy. At
certain time of the year the heat generated
by sun falling on the land on the Sacramento Valley causes the air chilled
by the Pacific ocean to be sucked eastwards. The air hits the hills of the
Peninsular
and gets funneled to be concentrated in places. One of the those places is
Candlestick Park where you needed to wear a ski jacket and gloves for evening
baseball games even in
the middle of the summer before the new ballpark was built in the city itself.
Another of those sites is where the old Marine World
was, where our work campus now is. The wind is so great at times that half
the doors to the buildings (those facing west) have signs on them asking that
you
don't use them due to the fact that no automatic door closer known to man can
live up to its name
when the wind is up. A couple of years ago they tore down all the doors in
an effort to remedy the problem but the rebuilt doors still have hand written
signs
taped to them at least 2 months of the year by the receptionists tired of sitting
in an accidental
wind
tunnel. Still they have to constantly get up and down to close the doors
behind
those
of my colleagues who are too entitled to obey a temporary signs.
Back to the plot; this buoy must date back to the Marine Park days at least.
In fact, it is the only indication that anything existed here before the modern,
severe reflective glass office blocks were built. Having lost its buoyancy
years ago
it gets covered and revealed by the tides daily. Will it still be here when
the office blocks are gone and the database, application and browser wars are
all forgotten? The code I write with my name and contact details in the first
comment line, a geek's graffiti tag that only other geeks will ever see, is
obsolete in half a decade. It lies degrading on some forgotten server until
all our users have upgraded to the latest and greatest and the once state of
the art, but now obsolete machine is powered down for the last time and sold
for scrap.
The metal buoy faces the constant eroding elements of salt water, sun and
wind without having the decency to collapse and be absorbed into the mud. As
I jog past it twice a week in an attempt to slow my own erosion I wonder if
it will out last me. I wonder if it matters. |
