Journal Allen Zadr's Journal: Skyways and Masonic Rituals 1
Skyways
It is possible, in either of the Twin Cities, to walk from building to building to building, to building without ever going outside or dealing with weather. Today, I left my office on the twenty-something-th floor of a St. Paul tower, took the elevator to the bottom. Walked through the lobby, up an escelator and into the skyway system - never leaving the climate controls of any building, crossed over several streets between the second-or-third floor of the next buildings past Dentist Offices, a Shoe store, a Jeweler, a whole slew of little places to eat, two McDonalds, countless coffee shops, multiple convienience stores, and I got a hair cut at "The Chair", a barber shop on the second floor of the U.S. Bank building.
I can describe all of this, but you'd never really, really understand unless you've been in a place like this. I say this - having not 'really' understood how vast - and foreign this is, until actually working in a "connected" building (and not growing up where it's just a local feature).
Minneapolis' skyway is far larger, more complex, and more places to shop. In fact - Minneapolis has a skyway connected Target and grociery - so it's actually possible to live, work and shop without EVER going outside. Unlike subway living in other cities - there's no fees involved - there's no need to get off to go to a destination - you just go inside, and could decide to never leave.
So, I got my hair cut, and then went to the next building and ate lunch. Then I walked a few more buildings and back into mine (through a different skyway). In St. Paul though, by 3:30 almost every business is closed. By 5:00, you'd think you were walking in a horror flick, where the whole world is dead.
I'm probably not describing it well enough, so if anybody's got questions... ask away!
As un-technical as I can explain the Masonic Rituals...
HTML::Mason - Yeah, it's yet another templating/CGI management embedded programming directly in HTML thingy. I've been dealing with it lately, except, I've been dealing with the limitations of a very, very old version of it. And the documentation is all for newer versions. So I have to do a little dance after every change, and hope it will still work. Yet, even the older version is pretty cool - once I figured out whice parts are available to me.
Anyway, I'm having fun but pulling out all my hair at the same time. And I work for a fairly big company, and I'm not used to that. I used to run a network and the systems. If I needed to upgrade, I could just do the upgrade. Here, there's a 3 month project to do any change. Quite obnoxious.
A little late... (Score:2)
One last question, do you know of any 3-d models or diagrams of the system?