PART 1 I work at a relatively large technology company in California. I won't say which one, since I don't want to get in trouble or anything. I've been working here for about three years now and so have some stories to relay. Most of the stories are just mildly creepy but probably explainable. Others still weird me out and I try not to think about them or I'd probably just quit from fear. The thing that bothers me the most about this place is the lack of color: everything is gray illuminated by florescent lights. Some of the floors have lines of color on the wall to break up the gray, but that's about it. I think the lines are for the delivery workers so that they can find their way from the delivery office to the large storage rooms that exit to a loading dock. Because everything is such a boring and dead shade of gray, it's easy to get lost. The lower floors are easier to navigate, since there are the most people down there and you can find your way from the sounds of the cafeteria, but the upper floors are pretty much a labyrinth. I've walked around on the second floor, trying to find an elevator, only to apparently pass by it three times before I notice it. The first experience I'll relay is of getting lost. I went looking for a friend to meet up with for break time, going up to an upper floor where his cube was. I figured it would be a straight shot down a main walkway, so I took the stairs up and followed the walkway. I texted my friend, letting him know I was coming and he said that he'd stand in the walkway waiting for me. Now, this company is so big that there are 7 buildings. The lower floors have signs telling you which building you are in with arrows, ie. "Building #1 ->", so you know you take the left turn to get to building one. The upper floors, not so much. Anyways, I'm following the walkway, confirming that its the correct one with my friend. I spend about 2 minutes walking when I run up against a wall with windows. I look out the windows, see no other buildings out of them, and realize I'm in the 7th building. From one end of the company buildings to the other, its about 1 mile, so it takes me at least 15 minutes to go from one side to the other. I had started in the 2nd building, but had some how managed to travel 3/4 of a mile and 5 buildings in under 5 minutes. I turned a 180 and marched back the way I'd came, looking down the completely straight walkway. I immediately saw my friend in front of me, who started waving. I waved back, a little confused. I glanced behind me and noticed that the wall with windows was completely gone. Nothing but a long, featureless walkway lined with cubicles behind me. I space out pretty bad, sometimes, thinking about my TV shows, so I figure that that's probably what happened. XXxxxXX My second story is a little stranger. I work in a server lab, right now. I've been through 4 other labs at this company, but this is my latest lab. I was connecting up a rack of servers (12 servers one on top of the other) with ethernet cables, hard drives, and remote login cables. On either side of the server rack I was setting up was an empty rack and a fully connected rack with the max amount of servers. I'm pretty detail oriented, so I had a little sticky note checklist with all the servers written on it, where I'd put 3 checks next to each server name, each one representing ethernet, hard drive, and remote login. I'd made it through 6 of the servers by lunchtime, so I left my stuff there and went to eat. When I came back, only 4 servers were connected. I checked my checklist, checked the server racks on either side to make sure I hadn't gotten them mixed up. I hadn't and I still had cables and drives left to connect only 6 more servers. I figured I must have slipped up and so when to grab 2 more sets of cables and drives. This time, when I came back, 6 servers were all connected up again. Now, this might be me messing up, but I am pretty conscientious. Also, there's the possibility that someone borrowed the cables and drives, then returned them. We do all take 1hr long lunches here, so there would have been enough time to take the cables and drives. There wasn't that much time to reconnect them all afterwards, though, as no one was in the lab when I left after going to get more cables and the cabinet I get the cables from is right in front of the door to the servers. XXxxxXX For this particular story, I should let you know that I'm female. Not too far away from our lab are bathrooms, one for men and one for women. I like this bathroom because it's generally quiet, especially since I'm one of maybe 6 women that work in this particular lab. I have a favorite particular stall, 2nd from the door. I know this sounds weird, but I like it because it's well illuminated, compared to the other stalls. I don't like feeling like I'm in a crypt. This one time that I went it, my favorite stall was occupied, so I had to use one of the dark crypt stalls. I glanced into one and saw that the seat and entire inside of the bowl was covered in thick, red blood, but there wasn't any on the floor or the edge of the toilet. My guess at the time was just that someone was having a really bad period. Also, since we are such a big tech company, we have a lot of foreigners, particularly Asians, coming through. Some of them are probably just not used to American toilets, so I figured that this was just from someone like that. I went to use the other open stall. When I got out, my friend, the Russian Janitor Lady, was rolling her cart into the bathroom. I asked her about the bloody stall and, instead of getting the complaints and fake spitting in the direction of an offender that I was used to, she clammed up and shook her head at me, quietly cleaning up the blood as fast as she could. I really like this janitor, since she's always friendly towards me and gives me Ukranian and Russian candies, but she does complain a lot. She complains if other janitors don't change the soap or don't change out the paper. She'll complain if a man is taking more than 2 minutes to use the restroom. She'll complain about people dropping paper towels on the floor or not flushing. I guess it's possible that you don't talk about periods in Russian culture, but it was still weird. XXxxxXX So, I have a question to pose to anyone that will answer: could a large tech company be intentionally creating glitches? My latest incident and my obsession with 'True Glitches' narrations has me wondering. I was up on the third floor to find an engineer and, not surprisingly, I got lost. I realized I was lost after I passed a cubicle with a promotional poster on it and a blonde lady in a conference call 3 times. When I realized this, I decided to walk straight until I hit a wall, then follow it with my right hand until I found a distinguishing feature. There are almost certainly a lot of blondes that work here and the promotional posters are very common, but as I was walking straight, I passed by that same cubicle, poster, and lady three more times. The lady seemed to be saying the same thing each time I walked past. Something like, "And which Operating System are you using?" before she paused to listen. The last time I passed the lady, I stopped and poked my head through her cubicle doorway. You know how you can look at a character in a game and know that their hair isn't real? Like, even the really good games? That's what I felt like when I looked at her hair, like it wasn't real, just a texture map. I gave up on trying to find the engineer at this point. I ran back to my lab and sent him an email, instead. XXxxxXX This experience is one that keeps me up at night. I get to work pretty early most days, generally before most everyone but the cafeteria and janitorial staff get there. I enjoy the quiet time to get work done before being assaulted by a barrage of 'high priority' tasks. When everything is high priority, nothing is... Anyways, one morning, I get to work early, as usual. I grab a soda and start walking to my lab. I know the way to my lab pretty well. It's easier than my last lab, since it's on the first floor. I'm browsing through Imgr when I notice someone is walking in front of me. Surprised, I look up to see if I recognize the early-riser. At first, I get this weird sensation of discomfort, like I'm being watched. As I continue to look at this person, little details start to click together, like pieces of a puzzle. The person is female, short-haired, wearing the same shoes I am. Wearing the same shorts I am. Carrying the same deteriorating University tote I am. At this point, I stopped walking and kind of sway forwards and backwards, since I stopped pretty suddenly. The person in front of me stopped, too. The feeling of being watched still hasn't gone away, so I look behind myself, only to see a mirror image of me also looking behind them. By this point, I've realized that the hallway I'm in stretches away inifinitely in either direction, no side hallways, doors, or windows. By this point, I'm pretty shaken up, so I slowly turn my head back around to see the mirror image of me I'd first seen also slowly looking back to the front. I've seen posts from people in situations similar to these saying they though they must be dreaming and tried to wake themselves up. I knew I wasn't asleep. I figured that the best thing to do would be to close my eyes and pretend that this wasn't happening, start walking again, and blindly turn the direction my lab should have been. I did this and was relieve that I eventually ran into what felt like a door. I opened my eyes and I had indeed walked straight into the door to my lab. I quickly scanned my badge and went inside. XXxxxXX As the inside of this entire company is gray and dead, I like eating lunch outside every chance I get. I don't really like being around people during my precious free time, so I always find the quietest place I can to eat in. Recently, I've been eating inside of an enclosed courtyard. I've only been bothered by coworkers once while eating out there, so it's pretty good. There are trees planted around the edges, right against the buildings. I wouldn't be surprised if the company has to tear them out when the roots start displacing the floors on the other side of the wall. I really don't think that any rational thought went into placing these trees, since they're constantly scratching up against the windows and making awful squeaking sounds. Definitely a downside to an otherwise quiet paradise. Sometimes, the squeaking doesn't sound like branch against window, though. There are times where I could have sworn that they sounded like screaming. Tortured screaming. When it gets really bad, it can sound like there's manic laughing. At that point, I just go inside to where I can't hear it. XXxxxXX At this point, some of you are probably wondering if I have mental issues. I can assure you that I've been to psychologists about this and that nothing's come of it. I have a clean bill of health, as far as they're concerned. Since I have trouble sleeping when I think about this stuff, though, I've been prescribed a sleep-better pill. I can't remember the brand name, off the top of my head. I don't do drugs, drink, or smoke, either, so perish that thought. I'm not alone, either. I've tentatively poked around and some of my coworkers have seen the same things. When asking another female coworker about the blood in the toilet, she said that she'd being getting ready to sit down on the same one when it started oozing blood from the bowl and the seat, almost like it was sweating blood. I overheard a hushed conversation from some men that had seen fingers drumming on the inside of the bowl underneath the water. Just the fingers, no hand in sight. I tried cornering my Russian Janitor Lady friend and asked her about the blood again. She just shook her head and refused to talk about it. XXxxxXX There seem to be a lot of glitches that happen here at this company, but it's hard to know if it's just the technology that's being buggy or if an actual glitch has occurred. One of these is a meeting that I'm invited to and get notifications for, but don't exist in my calendar. I've gone to the rooms that the meetings have been scheduled in, but no one ever shows up. The meetings are always from 4 to 4:30pm and always called "Important Presentation." I've asked people about this, but no one else seems to have gotten them. I get a lot of IMs from people that don't actually exist in the company. Like, I'll get an IM that says, 'hi i have a question', but when I accept the message, nothing shows up in the Skype IM tabs. I've tried searching for the names of the people in Skype, since it will show anyone that works in this company, but they never show up. I've asked IT about it, but they've not found anything wrong with my laptop. One night, while I was working overtime and the server room was essentially empty, all of the servers shutdown. I knew this because I heard all of the fans on the servers slowing down and stopping, leaving me in a silent server room for around 30 seconds before everything slowly turned back on. XXxxxXX These are the main encounters I've had. I've had a few others, some of which I'm a little uncomfortable talking about. I might tell you guys some more if you're interested. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART 2
Out of curiousity, I looked up some of the history of the location that this corporation is built on. I didn't expect to find anything, really. I was surprised to learn that there used to be a little mining town here. When the Corp. started building on the land, they found the remains of some of the residents of the abandoned mining town. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised: California was filled with little mining towns during the gold rush, many of which were deserted. No matter how much I try to stop thinking about it, the blood in the ladies' restroom continues to plague my mind. I just can't figure out why the toilet would be so filled with blood. And why won't my janitor friend tell me about it? I don't really belive in the paranormal, but I'm really out of other explanations. Maybe the toilet just has very old iron pipes that occasionally leak out huge amounts of rust. After all, iron in the blood is what makes it red... XXxxxXX This happened this morning. I got here around 5am, since I've been having to work a lot of overtime. I prefer to have my day end early, rather than late. It was dead in the parking lot. I got such a great parking spot! Small miracles, I guess. I climbed out of my car and glanced up when I heard another car approaching. It was a little Honda Civic that had driven up. It looked pretty old and well-loved. I looked in through the windshield to see if I might recognize the driver. I couldn't see anyone at first. I kept watching the car as it pulled around into a parking spot, now perpendicular to my car, so I had a good view into the driver's seat. There was no one in it. I don't know why no one was in there. Maybe the dark outdoors and the reflections off of the glass fooled me? I guess this is a pretty big tech company. Maybe it was just a remote controlled car or am automated taxi prototype. But why a Honda Civic? I mean, talk about a junky car. XXxxxXX To keep my sanity and to follow California employment law, I religiously take two 15 minute breaks, one at 10am and one at 3pm. To try and keep in shape and to get some fresh air, I usually take a walk outside with my coworkers. I don't know if you guys have heard the California news, but there are fires all over the state. The air outside is horror movie bad. Sometimes, ash rains out of the sky. I feel like fire is some sort of eldritch entity that humanity fights vainly against and can never really control. Like some sort of bad horror movie, we manage to get the fires under control each year, but only because of winter coming: a circumstance we have no control over. Each year, the crappy sequel comes out and we have the same bad smoke, the same orange-brown skies. Anyways. Because of the bad smoke, we've had to take our walks inside. I miss the fresh air, but the change of scenery is nice. Strangely, we never get lost on the walks inside. Everything looks different and the landmarks are obvious. It makes me wonder if I've just got no sense of direction. Today, as we were walking and chatting about some TV show, we walked past a utility closet. It sounded a little odd, different than usual. I paused as my coworkers walked passed me and listened. I'm not sure how to describe it... I don't really want to describe it, but it sounded like screaming. It sounded like several people were screaming inside of the utility closet, but like they were far away. I'm pretty sure that utility closets aren't larger than 5' by 5', maybe 10' by 10'. But the screaming sounded like it was echoing down a long corridor. I decided it was time to get away and rejoin my coworkers when the door knob started jiggling. I really didn't want to see what the inside of that room looked like. XXxxxXX I made a stupid mistake around when I first started working here, three-ish years ago. Fortunately, not a mistake that would compromise my job. Unfortunately, a mistake that might had been the first chip in my sanity. There was one cabinet in the lab that no one really used. It had some back-up safety equipment and office supplies in it, apparently. The strange part was that it would sometimes leak. I saw it leaking one morning, so I immediately went to tell one of my engineers. He took some paper towels and soaked up what was on the floor, then wiped the front of the cabinet. I asked him why he didn't open up the cabinet and find out the source of the leak. He told me that opening the cabinet was a bad idea. I figured he was probably being lazy and not willingly to locate the source of the problem and clean up the probably bigger mess that was inside of the cabinet. I figured it was probably an oil jug leaking, since the fluid that had come out was thick, viscous, and brown. Later on that day, after most everyone had packed up and left. My tasks had all pretty much been completed, so I decided to tackle the mess inside of the cabinet. I grabbed the key to the cabinet, some Clorox wipes, and a roll of paper towels. When I got there, there was already another leak, worse than this morning. I threw a handful of paper towels on the ground and tried to sop everything up before popping open the cabinet door. I noticed that the brown stuff had leaked out of the top of the cabinet doors, too. I cursed under my breath, figuring that a large container of oil had probably fallen over and soaked all of the contents of the cabinet. Steeling myself for the worst, I unlocked the cabinet and swung it open. I was not prepared for the worst. The brown stuff was everywhere. I think it was oozing out of all the inside edges and corners. And there were fingers. Fingers everywhere. Wriggling, twisting, twitching, scraping. And the eye. Just one eyeball. I slammed the door shut and ran for a trash can to vomit in. The smell had been so bad. I don't know how I hadn't smelled it before opening the cabinet. I decided it was close enough to quitting time, grabbed my purse, and ran out the door. XXxxxXX I'll probably sound like some sort of Creepy Pasta protagonist when I say this, but it's good to have an outlet to vent on. I can complain about the normal work BS to my friends, but I can't really talk about this stuff. Thank gods for the anonymity of the internet. I have more stories to tell, so I'll try to write them up later on this week. This has been both therapeutic and painful... Thanks for reading. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART 3
Can anyone tell me why some of my coworkers have extra fingers? I don't mean that some of them have that genetic mutation that gives them six fingers on each hand. I'm talking 7, 8, or 10 fingers on each hand, while the hands remain the same size. I was in a meeting a little while back and the presenter was pointing at the projection of his website mock-up. As he was doing this, it looked like his fingers were, how shall I say this, pulsating between 5 and many fingers. Like, you'd see that he only had 5 fingers on his hand, but then his hand would pulse or breath and there'd be more, but there'd still only be enough room for 5 fingers. I'm sure I'm not making any sense. It didn't make any sense at the time. I heard one of the other meeting participants gasp the first time the presenter's hand did this, but she wouldn't admit to having gasped when I asked her about it after the meeting. XXxxxXX For most of these experiences that I've told you about, they've happened when I'm alone. This experience happened while I was hanging out with my friend Ryan. We were sitting and chatting in one of the courtyards, enjoying the weather, since it was Spring at the time. We were talking about some video game when Ryan made a face. I asked him what was up and he asked back if the trees behind me had been like that before. I turned to see what he was talking about and noticed that there were 4 trees behind me, lined up in a shallow arc. I thought there had only been 3 trees, before, but I figured one of them must have just been obstructed from our view when we first walked in and I relayed such to Ryan. He shrugged and we went back to our conversation. To my right and slightly behind Ryan, I suddenly noticed that there was a tree there. I stopped talking abruptly. It was almost as if the tree had popped out of nowhere, but my brain couldn't process it. Ryan turned and looked towards the tree. He then turned back and looked at the four trees behind us, all of which had orange-ish bark and no leaves, now. I also noticed that this new fifth tree also had no leaves. This was really weird, since it was mid-Spring, and all the other trees had leaves. "Is it just me or are the trees lined up like fingers on a hand?" Ryan asked. I jumped when I heard the trees starting to creak. I looked around and it seemed like the trees were starting to bend inward, just like a hand slowly closing. I jumped up out of my seat and ran back inside, followed closely by Ryan. Once inside, we looked at each other, then laughed. We felt like fools, being scared by trees being blown in the breeze. We both shook our heads and went our separate ways back to work. I took a longer route back to my lab, since the most direct route was back through the courtyard. XXxxxXX I was taking a walk around campus, by myself, since it was lunchtime. I had a lot on my mind, thanks to the college classes I was squeezing in around my full-time work schedule. I was sticking to the first floor, since I really didn't want to get lost and it was hot as balls outside. I happened to walk by a storage or utility room, not sure which, when the handle to the door started violently jiggling, right at the instant I walked by, then stopped as soon as I stepped past the door. I paused, then let my curiousity get the better of me. I stepped back in front of the door and jumped as the handle started violently jiggling again. I glanced around, but didn't see anyone. I wondered if someone was stuck on the inside and just trying to get out. I thought I'd reach out and try the door handle. Maybe it was just stuck and needed a twist from the outside. I grabbed the handle and turned it. It turned pretty easily, so I was surprised it hadn't opened the first time the person on the other side had jiggled it. I slowly pushed the door open, saying something like, "I'll get the door for you, dude." Once I'd gotten the door open about 12", a horrible stench slammed into my face. I watched in horror as a thick, brown trickle of liquid began to run its way down the outside of the door towards my hand. I immediately slammed the door back shut and sprinted, and I mean sprinted, away from that door. I heard the handle shaking more violently than before as I made my getaway. XXxxxXX We had pretty bad fires in California last year. A lot of people lost their houses. There was a lot of smoke, too. The smoke was alternately bad and non-existent for a few months. At one point, the smoke was especially thick and awful around the Corp's buildings. It was so thick that you couldn't see 10 feet in front of yourself. What made it extremely weird, though, wasn't that the smoke smelled like decaying flesh in addition to burning wood and plastic, but that the smoke stopped right at the edge of the Corp's campus. I noticed this on my drive back home, one day. I glanced back behind myself as I left the campus and was amazed that you couldn't see the smoke from the outside. I figured that the Corp's campus must just be in a dead-air or valley area, trapping the smoke. XXxxxXX It's kind of embarassing, but I generally have to spend anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes in the bathroom. Life lesson: don't eat Taco Bell every day. During this particular bathroom run, all of the stalls but The Crypt stall was open. I really don't like this stall because, as I've mentioned before, the lighting in it is bad, so you feel like you're sitting in a crypt. I did my business and was washing my hands when I suddenly got the weird feeling that I'd just woken up from a long nap. Not a normal nap, but the sort of nap that makes you feel so groggy that you wished you'd just dealt with the tired, instead. I wandered out of the bathroom and back into the lab. My coworker that sits next to me looked up and asked where I'd been. I briefly commented that I'd just gotten back from the restroom. He looked perplexed, so I glanced at my watch to see if I'd accidentally fallen asleep and taken a half hour bathroom break. It had been 4 hours. I had left at 10am and had gotten back at 2pm. I suddenly felt extremely hungry and realized that I had inadvertently skipped lunch. I decided to just snarf it down while I worked.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PART 4
I would like to start this post by thanking the people that have commented so kindly on my posts. Even though what's been happening to me is both making my question my sanity and sky-rocketing my stress levels, knowing that people are empathizing and reading my encounters has really vindicated me. Thank you all! XXxxxXX I don't know what it is, but I've been having more and more 'fingers' occurances. In the ladies' bathroom, there's a drain on the floor. Underneath the brass drain cover, I've seen long, seemingly endless fingers stroking the underside. The fingers are normal thickness, though, so they can't fit out through the drain cover's grating. While I was watching the grate yesterday, I heard burbling and 'splooking' inside of the drain pipe. When I peered inside, I saw a thick, brown, mucousy substance, much like what I saw in the cabinet and coming over the edge of that one door, gurgling and bubbling. Fairly suddenly, fingers jumped out of the goo, then thumped against the bottom of the grate. After a few forceful attempts to get out, the fingers seemed to give up and just started stroking the bottom of the grate. You might wonder why I didn't get out of there sooner, but I'm starting to get used to these strange occurances. Plus, don't rush people when they're in the bathroom. I didn't actually feel scared of the fingers, even when they were beating against the drain cover. I felt more mesmerized, even more so after they started stroking. I had to shake my head to stop staring and made my way out of there. I haven't seen the Crypt Toilet bloodied in a while. Also, strangely, haven't seen my Russian Janitor Lady friend. I hope she's okay. XXxxxXX I'm trying not break down in tears over this one. I don't know what happened, but one of my coworkers just vanished. He didn't show up to work one day about three weeks ago. I tried asking my manager, but he said that he didn't know and couldn't tell me what had happened to him, even if he did. The longer the time between his disappearance, the more people that seem to forget about him. It makes me especially sad, since we found out that we grew up in the same no-where city. Today, I asked my coworker that had been training him if he'd heard anything, but he gave me a blank look. He then asked me who that was. I mean, he was the one training the guy. He should definitely remember him, right? They spent a few hours talking about motorcycles and vespas, for gosh sake. I took a risk, just before lunch, and asked my manager about the guy who disappeared, again. My manager had absolutely no recollection of the man. None. My first fear after the first week was that my coworker had wiped out on his motorcycle on his 2 hour long commute on quiet backroads. Now, I have no idea. Is this a glitch? Could my company delete an entire person as a test? Or was he never real to begin with? Yikes... I shouldn't tell my therapist about that line of thought... Probably unrelated, but I have a pretty powerful craving for chocolate milk. Also, had the worst headache since I got in. It might be the smoke from the Summer fires here in CA. XXxxxXX I decided to be brave last week and try out that door, again. The one where the handle was rattling and I thought someone just needed help opening the door. So, last week, I went up to the door and scanned my badge on the card reader and was surprised that the door unlocked for me. I slowly opened the door, looking at the top to see if more of that brown stuff would start running down the outside. To my surprise, again, the room that was revealed on the other side of the door was a bright, sterile server and networking room. Like, there were cables and routers everywhere. Racks and racks of systems. But it was all organized. All the cables were neatly zip-tied together. I'm not sure if I have access to this room because I'm working with in the same group as owns this room or what, but I'm not going to think too hard about it. I decided to go inside the room and wanter around. I wanted to prop the door open for a quick getaway if things got weird, but the alarms start going off and security get grumpy if the badge-access-only doors are left open for longer than 30 seconds. Anyways, I wandered around and looked at all the racks and was impressed by the neat cabling and dust-free floors. Believe me, the floors ALWAYS have dust. Comes with having a bunch of fans and vents everywhere. But this room was as clean as a hospital. Heck, maybe cleaner. I was wandering around for about 5 minutes when I realized that I couldn't see the door anymore. The room seemed to stretch on for miles around me in pretty much any direction I looked. My fast-walk pace is only 3 miles an hour, so being miles in to a server room in 5 minutes is very unlikely. I decided to make another risky decision and look up at the ceiling. Maybe see if there was a sign. Well, there wasn't a sign. There wasn't even a ceiling. It looked like the walls of the room went up 20 feet, then ended, leaving nothing but a gaping blackness above me. I tried shading my eyes to see if I could see little blinking lights or even a dim constellation. I couldn't see anything but black. When I looked back down, right in front of me was a door. I walked over to it quickly, then cracked it open. Much to my relief, it was the same door I'd come in through. I opened the door the rest of the way and walked back to my lab. XXxxxXX Just before I started writing this section, someone I've not met before walked up and introduced himself to me. I guess he's a manager of another lab and had heard good things about me from my lab manager. He mentioned that there might be a better opportunity for me over in his lab and, oddly, that my current lab manager would be fine with it if I decided to transfer. He said that I sound 'like a particularly special individual.' I guess I'll be doing an interview with him later on this week. I'll let you guys know how it goes. The guy seems alright, but somehow... slightly off. I don't know how to describe it. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.