down the steps · mind the pipes
behind the Operations door at Cavendish Coworking · the plant room
The Operations Room
Where we run the thing.
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.
The Operations meeting is where the work of keeping Stimpunks running gets done. Each week we hold a task scrub — triage, prioritize, and move work forward together. If you want to understand how the organization operates or get involved in the doing, this is the meeting for you.
The log
The log hangs on its clipboard by the door, so that whoever comes down the steps can see when the next round is without asking anybody. It is our events page’s own line, with the hour on your own clock underneath.
The Operations meeting
Every Tuesday · 10:00–11:00 AM CT
The monitor by the gauges
Something to leave on in the background while we work. These are the cams the Watering Hole leaves on, the waterholes in the Namib and at Etosha, the otters and the jellies, taken from that room’s own list, so whatever is on there is on here. Every card wears the water main’s green, because every cam on it is water. They are live, so each one runs until you close it, and the picture may be darkness, an empty pan or a cam between streams. Play one on its card, or put it up on the monitor; each is yours, at your own pace, and nothing reaches YouTube until you press. In the call, anybody can put a YouTube video on for everybody from the call’s own menu, under Share video, and then whoever shares it plays and pauses it for everybody.
The cams: the waterholes, the otters and the jellies
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Live stream in the Namib Desert
NamibiaCam, on YouTube
Desert, a pan of water, and long stretches of nothing at all. Oryx, springbok, jackals, and at night whatever the infrared finds.
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Okaukuejo waterhole, Etosha National Park
NamibiaCam, on YouTube
The floodlit waterhole at Okaukuejo. Elephant and rhino come in after dark and the light stays on all night, which makes this the cam to have up at three in the morning.
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Sea Otter Cam
Vancouver Aquarium, on YouTube
Sea otters in the water, being extremely busy about nothing in particular.
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Sea Otter Cam 2
Vancouver Aquarium, on YouTube
The second angle on the same otters, which is a different room to them and therefore a different cam to us.
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Live Sea Otter Cam
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
Monterey's otters. Grooming, mostly. An otter spends an enormous amount of its day on its own coat and is not embarrassed about it.
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Live Sea Otter Cam (second view)
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
The alternate Monterey feed. This one is often between streams; when it is, you get the last one instead, which is still otters.
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Live sea otter and fur seal cam
Seattle Aquarium, on YouTube
Otters and fur seals sharing a frame. The fur seals are louder about it.
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Live Jelly Cam
Monterey Bay Aquarium, on YouTube
Moon jellies, lit from behind, drifting in a circular tank. The slowest thing in this room and the one most likely to still be on an hour after you meant to close it.
The call
The call in here is for people signed on to the CB, which is everybody in our community. Anybody can come in and look around; to talk, and to be in the call, you need the CB, and the Community Center says how to get on it. People are most likely to be in here at the times on the list above, and between those times there may be nobody in the call.
You are not signed on to the CB in this browser. Get on the CB at the Community Center, then come back and the way in is here.
A Note on Communication Access. We support multiple modes of participation including text chat, audio, and video — whatever works for your communication needs on a given day. You do not need to speak to belong here.
The call is run by 8x8’s Jitsi as a Service. Your camera and microphone start off, the name you are called by goes to 8x8 inside your pass into the call, and while somebody is in the call we keep their name in it, until they leave. What goes where.
Why a plant room
Everything that keeps a building going is in here, and none of it is hidden: every pipe is painted the colour of what it carries, so anybody can tell the water from the gas without opening anything, and every valve has a tag saying what it does. That is what a task scrub is for. You can walk in and see how the thing runs. Nothing in this room moves, at any setting, the lamp on its hook included.
Whose words
Every line about when is our events page’s, word for word, read off stimpunks.org/events on 2026-09-25, and tools/make-coworking.py reads that page again every time it builds this room and its door. The hour on your own clock is worked out in your browser.
Chakra Petch is Cadson Demak’s and Saira is Omnibus-Type’s, both under the SIL Open Font License; the room is ours. More in the liner notes.
Job marker — a brass valve tag, fallen off a valve onto the floor
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: How long the round takes
Before the code: How long does the Operations meeting run, from start to finish?
Hint 1
It is on the log sheet.
Hint 2
Read the line under The Operations meeting.
Last hint
From ten to eleven.
Give me the answer
The answer is An hour. Every Tuesday, 10:00 to 11:00 AM Central, in our events page's own words: an hour, and the room works out the same hour on your own clock underneath.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: VALVETAG
That is the one.
Every Tuesday, 10:00 to 11:00 AM Central, in our events page's own words: an hour, and the room works out the same hour on your own clock underneath.
Quest code: VALVETAG