7 in the 8’s, halfway, Thor, pin hole, Fast Pat
So my plan for Saturday was to get up early, do the group run and then go straight into the office from there. There was a bigger crowd at the run than the week prior, including some of the guys I have run with before like George and Jeff. However I wound up running with Matt.
Matt is a much more accomplished and faster runner than I will ever hope to be, however he was coming off an injury that prompted him to run at what is a more leisurely pace for him. Well Matt’s leisure pace equates to me pushing my speed. I wound up covering the 7 mile run in the fastest time ever at an 8:55 pace according to my Garmin.
Another nice aspect of running with Matt is he is a self admitted chatterbox. Our conversation helped make the run go by quicker, even if trying to talk was somewhat difficult for me at various points on the route.
After a thorough toweling off session and a change of clothes I was on my way to the office.
Typically the job of a network administrator is not a very physical one. Hence why you see so many of us that are built like bowling pins. Saturday however was an exception to that norm. We were slinging around servers that in some cases weigh close to 75 pounds each.
We have two racks of servers at the office. Over the years through the addition and subtraction of equipment the racks have gotten progressively more unkempt. We just completed rewiring the NOC a couple months back, cleaning up the racks was the last stage of the project.
Initially I had hoped to get both racks done on Saturday but that didn’t happen. It didn’t take me long into the process to realize this was going to take awhile. It took us five and a half hours just to redo one rack, I wasn’t going to put in a 10 or 11 hour day, plus I actually needed some longer cables anyway to wire things the way I want. Unfortunately this means for the second weekend in a row I will be working Saturday.
The one rack we did look significantly better. With a server rack you can’t tell a whole lot from the front of it. It’s when you step around the back end and are exposed to the myriad of wires and cables where you can tell how much care was taken during the installation.
By the time I got home I was beat. Getting up to run and then following up with high tech labor had left me drained. I almost immediately retreated to the bedroom for a nap since Ali wasn’t home. When she got back around 4 I was still dozing.
We had plans Saturday night to go see Thor at Silverspot. We had not been out to the movies together in quite awhile. I purchased the tickets on Friday and landed the best seats in the house, at least for me, top row, dead center.
We decided to also eat our dinner there. We both had meals we enjoyed. We had a nice kid as our waiter although he appeared to be spread a bit thin as he outright forgot to bring a couple things like a second Diet Coke for me and some water for Ali without a second reminder. I still gave him a solid 20% tip as I felt generous.
Ali wasn’t very thrilled to see Thor going in. I wasn’t super stoked to see it but my expectations were heightened by the lavish praise Howard gave the movie since he is a hard core super hero fan. After we sat down in our primo seats I was surprised to see the guy right next to me was one of our fellow running club board members, what a small world.
I opted for the 3D version of the movie. Even though 3D has lost some of it’s “golly gee” factor at this point, I still will opt fo it over 2D when given a choice.
Being a big comic book reader as a kid, I was familiar with who Thor was but only in a very surface way, I had no back story on him. I just basically knew he was dude with a winged helmet and a kick ass hammer.
Well the movie did a nice job of filling in all of that back story. It did so in a very thorough but entertaining way. The movie was great. I enjoyed it almost as much as Iron Man and the fact that Thor didn’t have the weak ending that Iron Man suffered from makes it almost an equal. I give the flick a solid A. Even if you aren’t a super hero nut I am pretty confident you WILL like this movie.
On Sunday morning the skies were very gray. Looking on radar I saw a line of thunderstorms coming ashore. I had originally planned to go bike and then swim at the water park. It started to rain, hard, between 7 and 8. Despite the wet conditions I loaded up the bike under the bed cover in the truck, intent to still give it a go. My plan was to go to Home Depot first, hoping that by the time I got to the water park things will have cleared up a bit.
Well I pulled into the water park parking lot at 9:30 and the skies still looked very menacing. I looked out at the roads covered with puddles and decided to scuttle my plans. Not only was it wet, it was also windy. The combination of the two would make for a pretty miserable biking experience. I headed back home, frustrated but yet somewhat relieved at the same time. Mentally I just was not all that into it if I was being honest with myself.
The reason I went to Home Depot was to get some JB Weld. JB Weld is supposed to be the equivalent of a cold weld. Earlier in the weekend I had noticed a hissing noise out by the water equipment. After using my ears and eyes I zeroed in on the source, a pin hole in the side of the pressurized water holding tank.
Well I instantly knew this was not a good thing. The pin hole means the inside of the tank is rusting to the point where it is now breaching. As I looked closely at the tank I saw a bunch more spots that looked like potential pinholes.
After emptying the tank I wire brushed and lightly sanded the actual pinhole and it’s potential siblings. I then mixed up some JB Weld and applied to all of the affected areas. The multiple spots of black on a light colored tank certainly didn’t look nice but I hoped it would at least buy me some time.
After letting the stuff set up for a few hours I repressurized the tank. I was not thrilled to see droplets forming around the pinhole, it still leaks although at least it wasn’t blowing air.
So now we have a dilemma. I did a quick check and to just replace the holding tank would probably run us close to $2k. It hardly seems worth it to me for a few reasons. The tank itself is less than 6 years old. To have it rust out in that amount of time seems short to me.
The water equipment in general just doesn’t perform very well, our water more often than not has a a slight discoloration despite my best efforts to maintain the equipment. To throw that kind of money on a system that doesn’t really do what I want it to do seems dumb.
What would be ideal is to replace the equipment with a whole house RO (reverse osmosis) system. These systems deliver bottled quality water to every fixture in your house, even with crappy well water as the source. Now of course this convenience comes at a price. We will easily spend more than double what it would cost to replace just the holding tank alone. Plus an RO system requires filter changes and produces a TON of waste water during the cleaning process.
So my plan is to get at least three quotes on whole house RO. I know the technology has matured a bit over the last half decade, hopefully it will result in slightly lower prices.
My brother Patrick competed in his third Pittsburgh Marathon on Sunday. He turned in an INCREDIBLE time of 3:05 and change. It was actually a fast enough time to qualify him for the Boston Marathon which is extremely difficult to do. He is a great all around athlete but has been focusing on his running the last few years. He has plans to even do an ULTRA run in June which will be a total of around 80 miles. You basically run all day long.
The last part of my Sunday was very laid back, I didn’t do much in the way of labor. The lack of motivation that I woke up with followed me the rest of the day. I am in the heart of the full moon darkness for me, which is the few days before the actual lunar event.
I did manage to try out the swim tether. Let me tell you, swimming in place is way harder than swimming unshackled. My initial goal of swimming 8 minutes straight in this manner was quickly aborted. Having no momentum and constantly fighting against a device that is trying to pull you backwards makes the activity incredibly more challenging. You can see some video Ali shot of it here.