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Josh indirectly pointed me to The Story About the Baby, where a guy named Jeff Vogel writes weekly updates about being a new father. This week's entry is kinda cute, discussing pieces of wisdom one might pass on to one's children.

I'm not going to go read the rest of the series, though, because I can tell when I'm exhibiting avoidance behavior (at least sometimes), and it's clear that I'm trying to avoid going to work.

This is largely because of an incident that happened last night as I was leaving work, around 9:30 last night (no, I wasn't actually working that late, I was finishing up some magazine stuff); I found the side door of the building propped open, I pushed it closed, a guy who I assume was a construction worker came over and started yelling at me. Apparently they were working there and I had just locked them out of the building. It's impossible to open that door from the outside, so I couldn't even fix the problem. I had closed the door because the building's been burglarized twice in the past couple years, someone going through and stealing all the loose laptops, and I figured I was helping keep the building secure, and that anyone who was there legitimately would be able to get back in. In retrospect, this was not the most adult way to handle things; I should've found the construction people, talked with them about it, made sure they had some sort of ID that indicated they were supposed to be there. Or something. But I was tired and hungry and just wanting to go home, and feeling even more non-confrontational than usual. So I thought I'd take the easy way out, but instead got heavily yelled at by a guy who, in my somewhat paranoid frame of mind at the time, looked quite ready to attack me physically. It was dark, there was nobody else around (except the person he was with, who was presumably also mad at me), and the only security person was comfortably ensconced on the fourth floor, far from any means of contact. But I got past the guy, and drove away at a rather unsafe speed.

But as I was getting into my car, I heard the guy yell to the person he was with, "Hey, what's his license plate number?" And under the circumstances, this made me wonder if my car was going to suffer some kind of retaliation in the parking lot today.

Got home, emailed a long note to our Facilities department, had dinner, calmed down. This morning, the whole thing seems kinda silly, a misunderstanding, though I'm also still a little tense about it. The guy was understandably upset (he was just doing his job, and I made it a lot harder to continue), and he never did or said anything overtly threatening; I just don't deal well with people yelling at me.

But I'm sure he and his colleagues will be working on the building again today, and I'm strongly tempted to work at home today just to avoid the possibility of running into him, not to mention removing any temptation he might have on seeing my car in the lot.

But I'm probably being silly.

I could go on for days on the whole topic of security in Silicon Valley. It's laughable. Computer companies are easy pickings—lots of expensive hardware lying around, lots of ways to get around security. Including just looking like you belong there, which is an easy way to get geeks to let you into a building. A few months back, one of our engineers rode up from the lobby in an elevator with two seedy-looking guys who he didn't recognize, but he didn't confront them (as I wouldn't have either); they proceeded to wander through the building picking up loose purses and PDAs and walk out with them. And don't even get me started on network security.