Hey guy, guy, you can't park in front of the building
 

Earlier, biking a buncha interview stuff around campus. There's the 1329 building. I've been doing this **** on and off for four+ years. Pull up to the front sliding door area like I've always done for those four+ years.

Then the guard guy comes hustling out. Hey guy, guy, you can't park in front of the building. You have to go park over there by the palm trees. I look at the racks about forty yards away. I'm in a good mood, its nice out, I'm glad not to be in front of this goddamn computer, so I smile and say sure boss and hoof it over to the racks proper.

But I just ****ing KNOW this came from the pipe bomb ****. Somebody got a memo put out and now I'm not supposed to park in front of the building, even though I spend more time going from racks to front than the entire time in the building.

Has this happened with anyone else? Especially messengers, any change there? Yeah, we're common enough, but still... all of a sudden its a danger that I'm the rascally guy with the huge backpack in an awful hurry to get somewhere.

What a ****ing country.

End, rant.

hey, its a post-9/11 world, we all have to let fear get the best of us. thats the latest thing.

this sounds like a job for spraypaint.

At least you don't have to park a car. Think how far you'd have to walk then.

You guys always confuse me...first off I've been told that before. Maybe the owner/manager of the building has decided he wants a clean look i.e. no hunks of metal cluttering up the area around his building (beauty is in the eye of the beholder). Second off whats wrong with being aware of the possible threats to a building and its occupants? He didn't ask to pat you down, he didn't ask that you leave you bag at the door and he didn't ask for your ID. Asking people not to leave unattended anything that could house some type of destructive mateirial around oft used or important (also in the eye of the beholder) buildingsseems like a solid and responsable way to prevent that one in a million attempt. Just saying.

...proving once again that Gainesville has the dumbest cops, security guards, etc... in America.

do you hate freedom?

THAT is the big question! come on matthew...are you a freedom lover, or a freedom hater?

This isn't meant as criticism of the guard. The building is owned by UF; maybe there's a building manager, but more likely the UFPD circulated something around (we have our own police force strictly for campus).

The guard's a nice guy-- again, I've been waving and nodding at him for years now, he's been waving and nodding back. But it was obvious as soon as he started talking that these were not his words. This was something recited, automatic.


It's just kinda unnerving in retrospect that I'm not the zippy guy from the dean's office, I'm the guy whose bike might explode. It was/is a weird change, and I'm curious if this has happened to anyone else. That's all.

A first degree assault on common sense and also
caving to ridiculous and imbicilic adminstration sponsored
fearmongering are a few of many reasons I can think of :eek:

Just for context, this is a med school building on a college campus in the middle of nowhere. This isn't some NYC messenger compaining about a jackass security guard at some hoity-toity building.

Funny image of my friend Cory on this last Fourth of July, obliterated in this park with this massive roman candle-- every time it went off he'd scream FREEDOM! JUSTICE! JIHAD! TACOS!


Somewhat related, the guy on the Fourth who brought all the badass fireworks was an off-duty cop, so as long as we kept our flammable meyhem within that little area we were cool. We got our ******* cops, and we got our non-******* cops. It happens.

name a few things that COULDNT house some type of destructive material?

Tacos. Kittens. Very small rocks.

Hey, Dommer.

churches?




hey matt. whaaaats happenin

and i could easily make a bomb that looks like a kitten

BAN KITTENS IN 06!!

Thats the point...even before 9-11(everyone in the world still hated us, we were just happily oblivious) it would be prudent to make every reasoable attempt to insure the saftey of the occupants of a building on your guard. Example:

The state governemt has used imment domain to take some of the land from an middle-aged farmer who's spent his entire life on his farm and now doesn't know what to do. He retaliates at the closest state facility he knows, the college, by driving his pickup filled with ammonium nitrate up to the medical building and detonationing. One in trillion chance but so was the oklahoma city bombing. As soon as it happens people are going to ask what happened and no one is going to say that they didn't want to make it a No-Parking Zone becuase they didn't think anything would happen.

OK.... what?? I mean, that's a precious example and all, but how often does that happen? How is that a good idea for policy? Why not have metal detectors at every entrance to every post office? Cos those guys go batty all the time.

I've just usually found that policy created around incredibly improbable and emotionally-charged disasters are rarely prudent or reasonable. Today's experience, related to an uninformed overreaction to a years-old Pensacola punk band, is--for me--another tick in the "you gotta be kidding me" column.

Dude, there is seriously a bomb under your bed. Seriously.

Did you read the post? It will probably happen never but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take every reasonable step to prevent it.

Istead of saying what a ****ing country...you should say what a ****ing world.

How in Christ's balls is a guy I've known for four years acting on the presumption that I'm there to blow up the ****ing building reasonable?