Preview panic, bumbling, Rapidly Rhino’d

So before I left yesterday I turned on my wi-fi netcam that I had on the dash of the party van.  Throughout the day I was able to monitor the progress of the painters.  I became quite nervous when I saw the main color being applied, it was looking pinky/peach’ish.  Now I didn’t know if it was because I was viewing it through the netcam which is not exactly a great image or if they maybe messed up the tint.

When I sent a copy of the still image to Ali she was freaked out as I figured she would be.  I went as far as to contact my sales guy and tell him I was watching the process via a remote webcam and the color looked off.  He assured me the tint is a dead match for what we gave him.   So I nervously crossed my fingers what I was seeing was a result of wet paint, lighting and poor web cam color.

During the day yesterday one of our remote branches was down in Everglades City.  They had a power problem the night before, a common occurrence, but their network line did not come up after the outage.

I called in the problem like I have done many times before after verifying the simple stuff like everything was actually turned on.  Throughout the day I got calls back from our provider, unfortunately all of them basically different ways of saying “not fixed”.

So now it is late in the day and I get a call from a tech assigned to the call.  He tells me the circuit is testing fine from a point outside the office.  I ask him “Have you actually gone inside the office to test from there since that is what actually matters?”  No, he hadn’t he isn’t that kind of tech.  What does that mean, he isn’t allowed to walk into buildings? He is an open air only technician?  What the F??

So he tells me that since our equipment is under service contract they need to have it handled by a different department.  Now I was officially annoyed.

He transfers me to another department where I am greeted by a very soft spoken girl.  It quickly becomes very obvious that she is new to the job when she asks me to hold while her “coach” gets on the line to listen.  Again, WHAT THE F?

The girl knows nothing about everything that has gone down already and starts asking me to reinvent the wheel.  Asking for our company name, phone number, etc….  I stop her right there, unable to tolerate any more of this bullshit.  I told her “Can you please get the “COACH” on the line?”   Coach was a woman as well.  As soon as she introduced herself I cut her off and said “Listen, I know this isn’t your fault, but the way this call has been handled is ridiculous”  “I have made many calls for downed network lines over the years and never had to go through this crap to get something fixed”

I continued, “I’ll tell you what.  I am going to hang up, call my sales rep and HE will straighten this out”  Well mr Outdoor Tech only evidently was still lurking on the line, unbeknown to me.  He says that whether I call my sales rep or not, I am going to have to go this route to get the issue addressed.  Of course this turned up the anger dial a few notches on my part and I fired back “Actually no, I won’t have to go through the same procedure” knowing that the county carries a big stick and when we have a problem with our carrier, they will ask how high if we say jump.

I hung up on Team Ineptitude and sent an email to my sales rep, asking him to call me, which he did shortly afterward.  I recanted the circus I had gone through trying to get this circuit back up.  The rep apologized for the confusion and promised he would step in and get it expedited.  We’ll see how things roll today.

On the way home I stopped back at Home Depot to grab another Dapper Tan swatch since I gave my original to Jay.  I wanted to make sure that the color on the walls was what we picked out.

I already knew from monitoring the web cam that they appeared to be damn close to finished as I saw them pulling down paper used to mask the roof line.  It was hard to believe they could repair the cracks, prime it and get two coats of Rhinoshield all in one day.  Later I was told that since they had two sprayers on site instead of the normal one it really makes the job go faster, plus they had an extra set of hands or two.

So I pulled up to the house worried I would see the peachy hue that adorned the web cam.  I was relieved that it looked much better in person.  Holding the swatch up to the wall confirmed the color was right.  The visual difference in the house was pretty stunning.

As I walked around the house it became obvious that these guys really do nice work.  I literally saw no flaws.  I was particularly interested in the areas that were in the worst shape like the hell wall on the east side of the house.  Man, what a difference.  The wall looked perfect.  The entire house literally looks better than it did when it was brand new in 2001.

The only issue I had was on the back deck where they only painted the face of the wood border the accent color and not the sides.  They went back and painted the edges per my request as I knew it would drive Ali nuts.

The crew that was doing the work were very friendly and nice, just as our sales guy has been.  Thanks to the extended daylight they were able to totally finish the job, pulling out after 7.  I signed over my same as cash financing check, thanked the crew and Jay for their work, and that was that.

I walked around the house and took a number of pictures to post on Facebook.  It is very interesting comparing the stark difference in the before and after shots.  I am very glad that we decided to mix up the colors instead of sticking with something very close to what we already had.  It feels like I am walking up to a new home.

Unfortunately Ali didn’t get home till after dark so she couldn’t get a great look but she liked what she saw from the lit lanai.

I am still amazed that they could do all that work in such a short time while doing it in such a high quality manner.  I guess it helps to have the right equipment and years of expertise. I’m very pleased with the result.

This weekend I need to put everything back around the house as well as pushing the stone border back in place.  They recommended I give it a couple days to fully cure.  The yard is in desperate need of attention as well so that will get addressed I’m sure.

Ali’s training buddies have other plans this weekend so I will be Ali’s primary training partner this weekend.  I am thinking about doing a two or even three headed brick at the water park possibly on Sunday.  We’ll see if Ali feels up to it.

Yesterday at the gym I literally raised the bar on my muscle up progress.  Up until a few weeks ago I had been unable to do any variety of muscle up.  Oh, for you bar work noobs, a muscle up is when you get your body from a position below a bar to fully extended above a bar.

I have been working off and on on the movement for a long time.  Well a few weeks ago I read a blurb on beastskills.com that described the transition portion of the muscle up as “getting your shoulders over your wrists”.  Well once I visualized getting my shoulders over my wrists I was able to get my first muscle up, albeit on the cross bar of the smith machine which is maybe six and a half feet high. This allowed me to use some leg assist. Still, I had never been able to do this before using any sort of assist.

So yesterday I upped the ante, moving to the bar that is probably 7.5 feet high in between the pulley stations.  I set up a Reebok step under it with only one step installed, giving me a few extra inches but the bar felt noticeably higher than what I was doing on the Smith machine.  On the Smith machine I was false gripping around a large, rounded support.  Grabbing just a bar felt less substantial.

So I kept running “shoulders over the wrists” through my head as I prepared to give it a go.  I yanked hard, exploded up and forward and found myself in position to easily lock out the dip portion of the movement. I did it, nice!  I tried two more times, missing one mostly due to sweaty hands and then making the last attempt.

It really encourages me, now that I know what the transition is supposed to feel like, that I can soon do a free hanging muscle up in the not too distant future.  I will be trying some assisted muscle ups at home with plenty of chalk soon.  Look for it at the YouTube channel nearest you soon.

There has been another episode released in the epic Jeremy cartoon series.