On our own, new dog hangout, 12 around, always the simple things

Friday night on my way home from work I went straight to a track meet at Palmetto Ridge to get some more exposure to the track timing scene.  I got a little more hands on training as I manually entered in the results from a few field events into the meet software.   There is another meet this Saturday that I might try to visit for a little bit.  I want to try to work the camera that is used for the track events.  Although the set up for timing track events is vastly different than what I am used to with chip timing, it isn’t necessarily hard.  Once you are familiar with the hardware/software, the skill set is pretty much the same as what I have already been doing for nearly 10 years.

Saturday morning Cindy and I had our first official 5K as Green Machine Timing.  Technically the event was only renting our inflatable finish line arch but I brought most of my other stuff as well including tent, table, chairs and my race clock.  The event was also held at Palmetto Ridge High School which is only around 4 miles from our house which was very convenient. The event did not start until 8:30 so we set the alarm clock for the same time it fires off during the work week so it wasn’t nearly as painful as race mornings used to be.

We got there around 7:15, we didn’t need that much set up time since all we HAD to do was set up the arch.  I was unsure of what I would have near the finish line to tie the arch to so I brought weights consisting of two 35 pound dumbbells and two 45 pound olympic plates.  I was glad I had them since we were too far away to tie onto anything else.  After some minor adjustments we got the arch set up and anchored down within 15 minutes or so.  Ironically the colors of my arch were an exact match for the school colors which was very cool.  Some volunteers further decorated the arch with some color coordinated balloons that they hung across it.

We set up my GMT tent, table and some chairs so we had a spot to hang during the event.  Although I was not being paid to actually time the race I had configured the race on my computer as a manually timed event.  I knew participation was going to be on the small side so I thought I would try to manually time it just for fun.

When I asked the race director if they wanted to rent my race clock he declined because he didn’t want the extra expense.  He said one of the local middle schools had a race clock they were going to use and the track coach from the school was also going to do the manual timing.  Well when I saw the clock they had, which was the size of a shoe box, I told them they could just use my clock, regardless if they paid for it.  Once we had everything set up at the finish line we took a few pictures.  Despite the relative shoe string budget I used accumulating my race equipment it all looked pretty solid in real world conditions.

We had time to spare so we walked to the start line to see where it was located.  This course was unique as a large portion of it is run on the school’s cross country course, a rare opportunity for adult runners.  We returned to the start line with my stopwatch in hand for the start of the race.  Since the event was a fundraiser for the band a lot of band members were playing music, adding more uniqueness to the race.  They band performed a strong rendition of the Star Spangled Banner and the race began.

Cindy and I hustled back to the finish line and waited for the first runner to show.  The band was also at the finish line inside the football stadium, playing in the runners which I am sure was cool for them.  As runners came across Cindy helped me spot their bib numbers so I could record a finish time for them.  I had no bib number to name cross reference since I wasn’t involved in the registration so the number was all I had but at least it was something.

The race had less than 100 participants with the last finisher crossing a little short of the 60 minute mark.  In addition to the 5K they ran a couple events for kids, a 1/4 mile dash for the little kids and a 1/2 mile for the middle school aged kids.  I had my GoPro running the entire time to capture all the finishers.  Even though the event and the dollars I charged for it were small, it was cool participating in the race.  The GMT arch definitely added something significant to the race, giving runners a more professional visual as they finished.

Once the last kids event finished Cindy and I started the tear down process.  When the arch was down Cindy showed me something very aggravating.  One of the tether points on the new section of the arch was almost completely torn loose.  It was bizarre, it almost looked like the strapping the metal loop was secured by was cut.   Luckily Cindy has some pretty strong sewing skills so she should be able to fix the anchor but I was still very annoyed.  I emailed a picture of the bad tether anchor to the place I paid to refurbish the arch.  I am curious if they will offer me anything as compensation or just a shoulder shrug.

When we got home Cindy attended to the cleaning the chicken coop as I worked on ripping the finish line video and posting unconventional results that included only runner bib numbers and not names.  Mid-afternoon we decided to do a Rural King run.  I discovered that Rural King officially allows dogs in their stores, something that I should have realized previously since we have seen a couple dogs inside before.  It meant Sadie had a new adventure in front of her. Sadie was very excited walking the aisles of the store, sniffing endless objects.  After we grabbed the few items we needed we headed back home for the night. I did squeeze out a bit more productivity late in the day, heading outside around 5PM to mow the back part of the yard.  I got finished up just around the time the chickens were heading into the coop for bed.

Sunday morning we started it off with roughly a 5K around the local track.  I didn’t feel great or horrible during the run but I did enjoy when we stopped running.  The weather on Sunday was quite pleasant.  The day was a mix of some work and some relaxation which is what most Sundays should be in my book.  The front door on the house was open most of the day, allowing clean, cool air to flow through the interior.  It was a great day.

I forgot to relay an IT problem and resolution from last week which was yet another example of the simple answer being the solution to what seems like a complex problem.  I was trying to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on a new high power server.  The server has massive drive space which requires GPT partitioning instead of MBR which only supports 2TB partions.   I literally spent the better part of two days trying to make this happen.

I had never integrated a server with this much internal drive space (20TB) so I learned several things along the way.  To use GPT you have to boot in UEFI mode which again is something new to me.  Well after working through some confusion on how I was going to do this since the server had no built in dvd drive I would up using a USB dvd drive I had from home.  I was able to initiate the Windows install routine from my installation dvd but shortly into the process I would get a prompt that it needed a driver to continue.  Well my assumption was it meant it was looking for the RAID controller driver to access the massive hard drive set.  I located and downloaded the drivers to provide the install routine but it balked at them.  No matter how I tried to get into the install routine I kept getting stuck at the same point.

So I finally decided to contact Dell support after exhausting various suggestions I found online.  After explaining what I had done so far the tech really wasn’t sure why it wasn’t working.  He had me duplicate my steps while he was on the phone and verified what I did should work and not be asking for additional drivers.  He had me do some shotgun type things like reloading the bios software and even reburning the Windows installation media.  None of it worked.

So after the tech was about at the end of his rope I decided to try something.  I had a much older USB dvd reader/writer on a shelf.  I hooked it up to the server and again tried the install routine.  It worked with no errors. Evidently the driver the software was asking for was for the newer DVD drive I was using, not the RAID controller.  What doesn’t make sense is by the time it asked for the driver the server had already booted to the install DVD on the newer dvd drive.  Why it would be asking for a driver for it once the install routine already started made no sense.  Oh well, both myself and the tech were thankful that I stumbled across a resolution for the issue.  It is one of the countless examples I have had in my IT career where a long drawn out problem winds up having a really simple resolution.