Meeting & Marlins, day ON

On Tuesday I left work early to attend the seminar.  The parking pass and instructions I received earlier in the day indicated the seminar was supposed to start at 5pm.  Since I wanted to make sure I had spare time in case I hit traffic I left the office shortly after 2 for the drive across the alley.

I initially had thought about grabbing a coffee for the drive across but I felt relatively alert so I didn’t bother.  It didn’t take me long until I regretted that decision.  I stopped at the first rest stop to grab a cup of stale, bad tasting java.  Despite the bad taste it did the job.

When I arrived at the stadium I had some confusion.  My letter indicated I should be entering Gate G.  Well after driving around the stadium twice I confirmed that the entrances were all labeled numerically.

I eventually had to ask a guy directing traffic where the hell Gate G was.  He told me to go into Gate 4, the main gate.  Um ok, makes perfect sense.

I pulled out the parking pass I was sent.  It was a blue pass that allows you to park anywhere almost.  It also appeared to be valid for the entire season.  I told Randall I would send it to him in case he got a desire to go catch a game this year. As I approached the stadium I realized that Gate G referred to an entrance to the stadium itself, not the the parking lot.

I asked the security guard where I should go.  He wasn’t sure so he directed me back towards the executive offices.  As I walked back I admired the various baseball artwork on the walls.  It was a pretty cool to be in an area of the stadium that most people never see.  It also brought back the aspirations of being as pro baseball player that dominated a good portion of my youth.

I eventually came upon the reception area.  I explained to the women at the desk I was here for a seminar.  I was greeted with confusion, even after showing them my confirmation letter.  Eventually they found reference to the meeting on some list.  They said the meeting wasn’t actually scheduled to start until 5:30.  Evidently the 5pm time was posted to make sure people are there on time. In total I wound up dilly dallying around the area for close to an hour before the seminar started.  I spent the time doing a lot of looking around.

Finally we were allowed up to the meeting area.  We were directed to a conference room upstairs that was labeled as the Executive Clubhouse. It was pretty awesome to be sitting around the large table that is used by Marlins executives themselves.

The seminar itself was pretty standard affair with Powerpoint presentations and sales pitches, specifically about the virtues of virtualization,  especially when using products like VMware and EMC.

There was one large annoyance during the presentation.  One of the attendees thought it would be neat to bring his young boy along, I would imagine the kid was 7 or 8.  For maybe the first 45 minutes of the 90 minutes presentation the kid managed to sit on a chair in the perimeter of the room and do some coloring.  However after that his patience expired.

The rest of the meeting he was a constant distraction, talking, throwing things, rolling on the floor and basically just being a 7 year old.  His dad did a piss poor job of disciplining the kid, just asking him to be still/quiet and having his request repeatedly ignored without consequence.  It was really annoying.

The game was supposed to start at 7:10.  Unfortunately at 7:05 the presentation was handed off to the VMWare guy.  He wasn’t interested in getting short spaced on time and probably took up another 20-25 minutes, causing us to miss the first few innings of the game.

We were lead up to the suite level.   I was immediately impressed.  We were along the third base line and had a great vantage point.  The suite was also stuffed with food and a fridge full of beer, all complimentary.

I spent most of the night standing as opposed to being seated in the front of the suite.  I split my time between watching the game and talking to the reps from the host companies.

I had noticed during the main presentation that the Mac Airbook Pro used for the slide show had a World of Warcraft icon on it.  I approached the main presenter and said “I have a very important question for you.”  The guy straightened up and prepared to answer what he assumed was a technical inquiry.  “Are you Alliance or Horde?” I followed.  The guy laughed when he realized that I spotted his WoW hobby.  I was relieved to find out he played Alliance as I do.

The game was a real pitcher’s duel with Roy Halladay going for the Phillies and Josh Johnson for the Marlins, two of the best pitchers in the game.  The Phillies blew a number of golden opportunities early in the game, walking away from bases loaded situations twice without scoring a single run.  Ryan Howard, despite his solo home run early, came up real small late, striking out twice with the bases jammed.   He is such an all or nothing player.

The Marlins managed to squeak out a second unearned run late because of some sloppy play by the Phillies.  The Phils went down quietly in the the 9th to close out the 2-1 loss.  Oh well it was a bummer they lost but it didn’t do much to change what was an overall very positive evening. If you would like to see all of the various pictures I took you can see them here.

The one downer was the prospect of the long drive back across the alley late at night.  I once again stopped at the first alley rest stop to grab coffee.  I had a weird thing happen there.

As I was heading towards the vending machines I saw some guy in my peripheral vision over towards the women’s bathroom.  He was looking at something on the wall in a way that looked like he was not really looking.  I then saw him disappear down the hall toward the bathroom.

As I got closer I looked down the hall I saw two entrances to the women’s bathroom and no guy.  Now I didn’t know if the guy was a janitor or perhaps nighttime security but my initial instinct was he was just a perv.

The coffee machine was right outside the hallway to the women’s bathroom.  I hung out at the machine and in the lobby for a few minutes as I saw several women enter the bathroom.  I was basically waiting for one of them to indicate that there was a man hanging in there.  If that happened I was ready to walk in there and confront the guy.  After waiting maybe 5 minutes and seeing a few women go in and out I figured my assumption was incorrect and I left.

I got home about midnight and collapsed into bed after taking a shower.  I was glad I arranged to take Wednesday off.

The dogs were not very interested in my sleeping in, they had my up and out of bed around 6:30 am, I felt pretty pooped as I trudged through the house.

As you read in my prior entry, I had planned for my day off to be more of a day ON, filled with various projects I wanted to get done.  The first of those was added late via a request from our Michigan based neighbors to help them pick up some used furniture they bought in my truck.

The stuff barely all fit into the back of the Tacoma.  I drove back to our place very carefully as one of the items was a tall TV unit that could have easily tipped if I made a hard left turn, despite the couple bungee cords I had over it.  The front of the unit was covered with smashed love bugs by the time we made it back, lovely.

After we unloaded the furniture I was immediately on to my list.  Obviously everything I posted on Monday as possible to do’s couldn’t get done, but I took out a nice chunk of it.

One of the items was changing the oil and filter in both the Camry and Tacoma.  After doing that I decided to try a trick I read on the Camaro forum for removing love bug residue from the front of a vehicle, dryer sheets.

You are probably scratching your head as I first did when I heard this suggestion.  How can dryer sheets help with bug guts removal?  I don’t know why either, but it works.  You simply wet a dryer sheet and start wiping the area on the car affected.  In most cases the goop wipes right off the car with nearly no effort, it works great!  After you are done you want to wash the area affected, if you don’t the dryer sheets can leave a residue. I used this technique on both the Camry and the truck and had similar positive results on each.  I even told my neighbor about the trick and he used it successfully on his car as well.

I cleaned up the cabbage palm with the machete and then turned my attention to the tractor.  I have noticed for a month or so that it was sounding unusual while mowing.  It sounded like something was rattling and loose.  The noise has gotten progressively worse.  My plan was to pull the mower deck off to see what the hell was going on.

Once I got the deck off I didn’t see anything obvious right away.  I started turning the blades and felt unusual resistance which I thought at first was just from grass packed around the pulleys.  After removing the grass it still felt weird.

I spun the blades some more and observed the deck.  I saw that the center fixed pulley appeared to be spinning erratically.  When I took the pulley apart some ball bearings dropped into my hand.  Ah, problem identified, the bearings for this pulley failed.  The bearing actually was more or less disintegrated. I was surprised the whole deck hasn’t blown apart from the heat this must have been generating.  I hopped online and spent $40 to get the bearings and a couple other parts I needed for the deck.

The last target I had on my list for the day was to finally get the 3 additional raised beds set up.  In order to do that I needed garden soil and lots of it.  Ali and the dogs accompanied me to Home Depot to load up 18, 2 cubic foot bags of dirt.  If you have ever picked up one of these bags of dirt you know they are pretty heavy.

Once we got home Ali assisted me in getting everything set up.  Before we got started I sent a text message to the other neighbor asking if she could take inside her eternally barking chihuahuas since I had already spent a good portion of the day listening to their maddening squeals. No, that situation has not improved.

The garden project was pretty extensive.  First we popped out the plants that were still planted on the right side, a few broccoli plants, a huge swiss chard, an asparasgus plant and a couple tomato plants.  After that I came in with a rake and leveled the area.  Then we assembled the beds one at a time and then filled each with 360 quarts of dirt.

We put the beds close together, only leaving enough space between them to get the shuffle hoe through which also happens to be just wide enough for my foot.  We then transplanted the items we popped out back into their new raised homes.  Ali also planted the few new items I bought, eggplant, avocado and romaine lettuce.

We still have some open bed space that Ali is going to plant some items from seed, mainly corn, beans and carrots.  I’ll take a picture of the new arrangement.  Both Ali and I are looking forward to getting even more yield from our garden with the addition of these beds.

We didn’t get done until well after 6pm.  I was quite pooped from busting my ass practically all day long.  Days on are tough.