My Last Day at Work and Unversal Studio Hollywood visit

On August 31st, 2005, I retired from the working world. My last day at work I brought my camera and took some pictures. Here is a look at Life Alert on my last day.




Here is the main office area right behind my desk with everybody hard at work, while I was allowed to do nothing that day.










The desk on the left is where I used to sit. Next to me is a guy named Rami that I have known since I started my "Temporary Job" at Life Alert 20 years ago.










This is the cubicle to my right (a wall of windows is to my left, yes I had a window seat) and the lady on the right is the office supervisor and the lady on the left is in training.






This is Russ. He is a big Disneyland and Disney fan. He is also our Tech Support person who keeps everything in the office running smoothly. He handles all telephones, computers, servers and anything else that our office depends on daily in order to stay up and running.

Rus is also the one who custom built my home compter and has updated it for me several times over that last 10 or so years. Thanks Russ, you are the best.









Life Alert is an Emergency Response System for the elderly and handicapped. It became famous several years ago with the add slogan, "Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up". When a subscriber to Life Alert needs assistance of any kind, they simply push a pendant and the signal comes into our Dispatch Center, shown here. The Response Personel in this center then have 2-way vocal communication without the customer having to get to, or use, the telephone. All communications between Life Alert and the subscriber are done through the Life Alert's Main system control box that sits anywhere the customer wishes to place it. The system is entirely wireless and is very simple to install by the subscriber.



This is another view of Dispatch showing a lady named Lisa who is the Manager of Dispatch at her Bridge Station so she can see everything going on in the room.

Life Alert is all about saving lives. They have around 50,000 active subscribers and they save over 1,000 lives on average every two weeks.





This is my Retirement Cake. Everybody at Life Alert knows of my love of all things Disney so they had this cake made for me. I have the decorations at home, and what no one knew, including me until I got them home and was running water on them to clean up the icing, Minnie's Motorcycle makes starting up and idling noises when you press a button on the gas tank of the cycle. Cool.


This is me on the left and the President and CEO of Life Alert, Isaac Shepher. Isaac has been a wonderful boss for the last 20 years and I respect and admire what he has done with the company in that time.

Below is Miri Shepher, the Vice-President and Office Manager of Life Alert. Miri has been very supportive of me and has treated me like a member of her family. She was the person who made sure that my teeth were taken care of. She helped me purchase my first computer and so many other things. I will miss all these people very much, but Isaac and Miri are very special and I will miss them both very much.
So that was a peek at the place that has been "home" during the week for the last 20 years.

MY FIRST WEEKDAY TRIP TO UNIVERSAL HOLLYWOOD

Two days later I was at Universal Hollywood for my first week day visit in a long, long time. Below is a selection of pictures I took on September 2nd, 2005, including some shots of the newly opened War Of The Worlds set that the tram drives through near the end of the tour. I had the entire back row of the third tram car to myself so I could slid across the seats to get pictures from both the left and right side of the tour.


This is a shot of the Back Lot New York Street Set from the side as it was being used and we could not drive down the street.










This is a new (at least to me it was) of a small dinosaur on top of one of the Jurassic Park vehicles in the Greenery Section of the tour. It doesn't move or anything, just makes for a cool picture.











The next series of pictures shows the "Flood Sequence" located in the "Old Mexico" area of the backlot tour.




























Next is a couple of shots I got in the King Kong portion of the ride. They didn't come out all that good but I thought you might like to see them.


























This next set is of the "Earthquake" sequence of the Tram ride.



























Here is a shot of the Shark from Jaws. Got wet on this one.














The rest of the pictures are of the War Of The Worlds plane crash set. They have added smoke, sound and movement to this area and it really looks like the real thing. There is one shot here (at the end) where I attempted to get a panoramic shot of the crashed jetliner but I was in an awkward position and had to slightly turn as I moved the camera from left to right and so the edges don't quite line up, but you get the idea. This is now the highlight of the Universal Hollywood Back Lot Tram Tour. They drive very slowly through here and stop in the middle so you can get lots of pictures.

















The fans blades in this jet engine are still spinning, very slowly.




































Well, that is about it. I got many more shots, but the blog will only hold so many pictures before it gets cranky. Hopefully you can click on the panorama to bring up a bigger version, as you can on any of the pictures posted here. Thanks for looking and please make some comments so I know you are looking at my blog.

Disneyland is next.