The Positivity Thread aka "Today was a great day because....."

officially finished my degree, as i just discovered the grade for my thesis has been recorded yesterday as 1.0 (german system, best grade) making my overall average for my masters a 1.4. very happy about all of this, looking forward to my time in oman and everything that will follow. this is basically todays mindset for me, i love it :)
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Congratulations! That sounds like the best news ever!

I'm spending the next two days recuperating from a nasty cold, but that means all of the Man Lab and Toy Stories marathon! Woot! *cough*
 
A small piece of Detroit is reborn. Follow the link for photos and a video.


Glory restored to David Whitney Building

Work on the historic downtown building is about 90% complete.


Michael H. Hodges, Detroit News Fine Arts Writer 12:48 a.m. EDT October 23, 2014


Lumber baron David Whitney would surely be pleased. The long-abandoned Detroit skyscraper bearing his name is about to reopen, and it looks like a million dollars.

Well, $92 million, to be precise ? the price tag developer David Di Rita of Whitney Partners puts on the elaborate restoration that will bring the 1915 Grand Circus Park landmark back to something very close to its original glory inside and out.

When it reopens in December, the 19-story building, designed by Chicago's D. H. Burnham & Co., will house an Aloft "boutique" hotel with 136 rooms, and 105 apartments starting at $1,000 a month on floors 10 through 18. A new restaurant, the Grand Cirque Brasserie, is slated to open next March.

Di Rita promises the Whitney, which closed in 1999, will be a luminous addition to the skyline.

"We're going to up-light the fa?ade at night," he said, as well as a reproduction of the original rooftop sign with the building's name. (The red illuminated sign many will remember was not original.)

But it's the four-story interior lobby, the Grand Rotunda, with its vast skylight and large gold clock, that's the real knockout. Anyone who visited in the 1990s will scarcely recognize the space now that all its white-and-gilt luster has been brought back to life.

Throughout there's been an impressive effort made to retain historic elements. Doors to hotel rooms and apartments are original. And some 800 of the building's 1,100 windows have been meticulously restored rather than replaced.

The Grand Rotunda skylight, however, is something of an exception to this rule, though you'd never guess.


Views from the 18th floor three-bedroom apartment
Views from the 18th floor three-bedroom apartment at The Whitney Building. (Photo: Max Ortiz , The Detroit News )


The ornate grid that held the original glass "panes" is still there, but rather than replacing every piece of glass, which wasn't practical, Di Rita says that architects instead removed them all and suspended a large, invisible glass sheet on top of the metalwork.

If the Whitney's restoration seems unusually good, that has a lot to do with rental rates. In the past year or so, residential rents downtown have begun to get close to $2 a square foot, a number that allows for more luxurious treatment.


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This is a good thing, as the building suffered from an ill-advised exterior "modernization" in 1959 that architect Bob Kraemer at Kraemer Design Group has worked to remedy.

Among other touches, he's restored the long-lost lion's heads that used to ring the 19th floor.


The David Whitney Building was constructed in 1915
The David Whitney Building was constructed in 1915 and closed in 1999. (Photo: Max Ortiz , The Detroit News )

Kraemer told The Detroit News a month ago that they've relied on both the original plans and old photos to get it right, though it wasn't possible in all cases to precisely mimic every element of the 1915 design.

"What we're putting back is an interpretation of what we believe was there," Kraemer said.
 
neat lobby :eek:

positivity for me today: just finished a job application. ok, ok, it's only sort of an internship, but at least it's paid. also the employer is kinda nice i think, would be great.

next step: actually have the guts to send out the damn thing. then accept the fact, that i most probably won't get the job and continue to send out more applications.
 
I posted this in the guitar thread, but I'll also cross post it here for you non-guitar players that may like to hear about a positive thing that that happened to me recently:

I've been MIA from the forum for a couple years now so I gotta tell you guys and gals about something really cool that happened to me guitar-wise.

I met this Scottish bloke from Chicago awhile back, an old hippy who lived in San Francisco in the 60's and used to run around with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Grateful Dead, etc. He's now a 70 year old retired electrical engineer.

He's played guitar since he was 7 or 8...basically for so long that he doesn't even remember learning. How cool is that? He knew I had a fairly cheap Les Paul asked if I'd be interested in a Fender Strat instead. Thinking that he was about to offer me one for sale, I said I probably wouldn't be in the market for one, but I appreciated the offer. I didn't tell him that I'd actually love to buy one, but my wife would kill me if I bought even another cheapo guitar at this point, let alone a Stratocaster. However, before I could even think such a thing, he replied with, "I didn't ask if you wanted to buy one, did I?"

His collection contains about 30 guitars, and he's never sold an instrument his entire life. Ever. I was not aware of this until afterwards. He also told me that one of his worst fears is that his guitars will be auctioned off when he dies, ending up in the hands of people who may not even play them.

When he offered to give me a 1956 Fender Custom Shop Strat, it completely blew my mind. I've never experienced that sort of generosity, especially not lately. I honestly thought I might wake up in a few minutes, cursing at the heavens for sending such a cruel dream to taunt me. But no. It was real.

Just to give a little more perspective: The guitar is worth 4 grand. That's more money than I personally made all of last year since I'm disabled. Not that I would ever even consider selling it, but just to give you an idea of its monetary value. But much more importantly, it has incredible soul and it represents the man's character. That's much, much more valuable to me than having $4000 in my pocket. To me, it's priceless.

He said he heard something in my playing, and he could tell that I would treasure that Strat everyday for the rest of my life. To hear someone say that, especially a guy like that, really, really means a lot. Anyway, he's really one of the coolest people on the face of this planet. I could listen to his stories for hours. Unfortunately though, I don't live near Chicago any more and I could only visit him for a day when I picked up the guitar as my wife had to be back home the very same night for work the next day (she's a busy gal).

The only thing I had to do was promise never to sell it and to pass it down as an heirloom, as he had passed it down to me. What an honor! That's almost like receiving the family sword...I'm still pinching myself.

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Here's me playing a little improv blues:

 
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This concerns not today, but yesterday: I was travelling from Frankfurt via Rome to Ancona and the flight to Rome was delayed so heavily that Alitalia had already rebooked me. However, I did make it to the gate well in time, so when I handed my boarding pass to the gate agent, this happened:


and moments later, the guy told me that I'd been rebooked on a (much) later flight... and that this one was now full even without me. Very bad news because due to my reason for travelling, any delay had to be avoided if at all possible.

However, their computer screens were in plain sight and I could read that some eight people were still missing, people who - I'd just read this between the lines - certainly wouldn't make it onto "my" flight. So I knew that it was completely up to the gate agents whether or not I'd be travelling as intended. As I was talking to the other man at the gate, who hadn't really been involved, I told him that I'd been rebooked and the reason why - in these exact words - "That ain't happening, I must be on this flight." Some stereotypically Italian (i.e. needlessly frantic) typing and a very quick phone call resulted from that, then "Do you have any luggage in transfer?" - "No." and I was waved away with a jump-on-that-bus-and-GTFO-of-my-sight look on the face of a rather annoyed Alitalia employee. :lmao:

tl;dr: I did a job very well because I went "This problem of mine is now yours as well, enjoy!" towards someone who could have ruined my day.
 
Today I received a letter from my ISP (local ISP, son of the public utility company) that I receive an upgrade from 30/3 Mbit/s to 100/20 Mbit/s not just for free, but for 2,70 Euros a month less than my previous rate... :thumbsup:
 
I got a raise I wasn't expecting. A 16% raise. Without a promotion attached.

Something tells me they are desperate to hang on to the people that have stayed on through the last year of change.
 
Returned from a long business trip today...and tomorrow I take the family out to the private range for a day of shooting.
 
Had a school driving job today. Thought it was 3 buses to a park in the old Olympic Precinct. Turns out it was to the V8 Supercar race that is on a street circuit there this weekend.
School principal had spare passes, so my workmate and I got in for free!
 
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I absolutely hate everything romantic and stuff about couples and people kissing and shit but this I like. Dunno why though.
 
Uniform fetish?
 
...got paid to look at locomotives being built sheetmetal-to-completion, had loads of free food and drink. *burp*
 
Went to inspect my first prospective rental property. It was my first pick of the candidates. By the time I got back into the office 30 minutes later, the agent had checked in with my references and offered me the property.

Moving out into my own place in two weeks. :dance:
 
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