Michael Hanscom

I’ll know more about this later tonight and tomorrow, at which times I’ll put what I know up…but I wanted to at least mention this, since it’s been bouncing around in my head since yesterday.

A little around 1pm or so yesterday I got a knock on my door from Melvin, the landlord for my apartment building. A couple weeks ago he’d let me know that he was being replaced by whatever company oversees the building, and was looking for a position at another building. I thought that was kind of a shame, as he’s a good guy, and one of the better landlords I’ve had. Well, yesterday he came by to let me know that it looks like he’s found one…and it looks like this could have some interesting side benefits for me, also.

Apparently the building he got the position at is just a few blocks away from the building we’re at currently, and a much newer/nicer building. A studio apartment there, while the same monthly price as mine ($650/mo), would be larger, in a nicer building, and apparently with a fuller kitchen area. He forwarded the idea of me switching buildings with him, and acting as some sort of assistant manager to the building in my off hours from my normal job. I’m not sure what all the duties might entail (that should get a little more ironed out over the next couple days), but it could have some definite benefits to it. I figure at the minimum it could get me some new and different experience on my resume, and there’s at least a possibility that it could get me some price breaks on the apartment.

I’m heading over to Melvin’s tonight after I get off work to help him out with his iBook, then tomorrow we’ll be heading down to his new building after he gets the keys, and will probably be discussing things in a bit more detail then. If I can come up with the money to make the move, I think it could be a good deal — a larger, newer place for the same price, more varied experience on my resume, and being able to stay with a landlord that I know I’m on good terms with. Could be very good…I’ll put more details up when I know more, either later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

Ever since I started working here, I’ve been able to watch day by day as a new skyscraper is built about two blocks away from my building. When I started last August it wasn’t much more than a hole in the ground as they worked on the foundation; now there is a steel framework stretching up about 25 floors, with a central concrete core that’s going up what looks to be at least another ten floors or so. Pretty much anytime I look out my windows I can see construction workers scurrying around this thing looking like ants on playground monkey bars, flashes of light and sparks from the welding — and one of the most fascinating pieces, the tower crane that’s hauling all the steel beams up from street level up to wherever they need to go on the building.

Of course, those cranes have to get taller somehow as the building goes up — a process which I’d never completely understood. Today I get to watch it happening, and there is no way you could ever pay me enough to be part of an operation like this! I’m pretty convinced at this point that you have to be certifiably insane to become a high-rise construction worker — this stuff is just crazy. Since you obviously don’t have one taller crane avaiable to help raise the crane, the contraption has to ‘grow’ as the project gets taller. This is done by an outer ‘raiser’ unit that detaches the top of the crane from the mast, lifts the top up about 24 feet, then sets it back down after a new 20-foot section is slipped into the gap (this page has some pictures of the operation). Just amazing…they’re in the process of lifting the top of the crane here at the moment, with the new section poised to go in — and a second section hanging from the crane waiting to be added next. Meanwhile, the entire time this is going on, there are workers climbing all up and down both the riser unit and the top of the crane, getting everything set to slide the new piece in.

Yup. They’re all insane. And I’m quite happy to keep all of my jobs with my feet planted firmly on a solid surface.

I generally think of myself as having a fairly good vocabulary, but yesterday at a department meeting Carrie tossed out a term that I hadn’t ever come across before — amanuensis, which she said was a synonym for secretary. We weren’t sure how it was spelled (I had guessed amenuensis, guessing that the amen used at the end of prayers could mean something like ‘the word’ [as in ‘the word of the Lord’], which could tie into a secretarial profession), but Lee was able to look it up and send us the correct spelling via e-mail. I just looked it up on dictionary.com, and here’s what they returned:

amanuensis Aman`uen”sis, n.; pl. Amanuenses. [L., fr. a, ab + manus hand.]

A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. [Latin amanuensis, from the phrase (servus) amanu, (slave) at handwriting :a, ab, by; see ab–¹ + manu, ablative of manus, hand; see man-² in Indo-European Roots.]

I just thought it was interesting, and another two-cent word to toss in every so often. Apparently mom’s been an amanuensis for most of her working life!

Apparently I was pretty off-base about ‘amen’ having anything to do with ‘word’, however — I just looked it up on dictionary.com, here’s the result for that:

amen A*men” (?; 277), interj., adv., & n. [L. amen, Gr. ‘amh`n, Heb. [=a]m[=e]n certainly, truly.]

An expression used at the end of prayers, and meaning, So be it. At the end of a creed, it is a solemn asseveration of belief. When it introduces a declaration, it is equivalent to truly, verily.

I still think my ‘amen/word/word of God’ guess was a good one, though. :)