It almost is a relief to be back to work. On work days I get to sleep later and deal with less stress than I did yesterday.
After work on Friday I made two pit stops, one at Home Depot and then Sam’s Club. When I stop at Sam’s I always swing by the Wii section. I saw that they had Mario Kart in stock. Earlier in the week Charlie told me he had bought the game and how much he liked it. I used Charlie’s advice and described it to Ali as a “stimulus present”, my personal gift to myself out of the stimulus check we received. I still think the stimulus checks are a stupid idea that does nothing but bury the government in more debt but hey if they are going to send it to me, I’ll spend it.
Late Friday night I got to play with the game a bit. It’s pretty sweet. It comes with a small steering wheel that the Wii controller snaps into. It definitely adds to the realism of the experience. The game is best described with one word, “fun”, lot of fun. I played the N64 version of the game a bit, they used to have that at the orthodontist office for people to play while waiting. Well obviously the Wii version steps things up quite a bit. The action is fast and furious but the basic control for the game is simple. However to do well at the game there is definitely skill involved. This is the first Wii title I bought that allows you to compete directly head to head against others, either against your friends, other people in the US or worldwide. The online experience is quite good, I noticed no performance issues even with 12 people racing at once. Racing online also let me know I wasn’t very good. I consistently would finish in the bottom third. It’s a big advantage if you know the courses inside and out. Speaking of the courses, there are tons of them. Fans of the series will appreciate that they migrated courses from the older consoles to this title. I bought a second wheel so Ali and I could play using the same control method. (you don’t HAVE to use the wheel) She did relatively well on the simpler courses, some of the tracks are pretty brutal. It’s a great game that will add on to the already high entertainment value of our Wii.
Saturday morning Ali was out most of the morning at the gym. I had written myself a list of to-do’s that kept me busy the entire time she was gone and then some. I mowed and weed whacked the grass, worked on adjusting the sprinklers to cover some dead spots, scrubbed down the pool, cleaned out the pond fountain, planted the tomato and plumeria cuttings from my mom’s place and a few other small things. We had to clean up to head out by 3:30. We were stopping at the running store to pick up additional entries for Sunday’s race and then heading over to our friend’s house for a pizza dinner we were picking up.
We hadn’t seen our friends Michelle and Taylor for quite a long time, more than 6 months. They just had their second kid, Spencer a few weeks ago so we wanted to stop by to see the new addition. We had a good time just hanging out and shooting the breeze. Ali and I had fun playing with their older boy, Parker. He was all smiles after warming up to us. What a cute kid. I hope it isn’t another 6 months until we see them again, we always have a good time when we get together. We watched the Kentucky Derby while there. It was so sad to see that horse break it’s ankles AFTER the race. They had to kill it on the spot. It was very depressing, we felt terrible about it.
We made sure to get out of there early since we had to crawl out of bed at 4:30 Sunday morning to get to another race we were timing. This was the biggest race to date that I was timing with the DAG system. The last race we did was rather small but we had pretty good success with the results, only missing a couple runners. I was a bit nervous about how we would do with 300 + runners. Things went from bad to worse.
When we got there I almost immediately felt like I had to do a number two even though I had went before leaving. With port-o-potties being the only bathroom facilities there was no way that was going to happen. My colon would have to be on the verge of exploding before I would use a port-o-pot for that. So instead I just got to feel uncomfortable the entire race which added to the misery.
It didn’t take long to run into my first technical snafu. We take two laptops to a race. One is used by Ali to enter the day of registrations and the other is used by me to hook up to the timing system. I network the two together with a Linksys wireless router because I need to be able to copy files between them. This set up has worked just fine for the previous races. So I tried to connect to Ali’s laptop from the one I had and was unsuccessful. I didn’t see her system but I was connected to the wireless router just fine. I walked over to her system and saw it indicated it was not connected to the wireless router and in fact it didn’t see ANY wireless networks. Strange, my system saw 5 or 6 wireless networks in range. I didn’t know what the deal was. So when in doubt, reboot.
I restarted her system, hoping a restart would magically fix whatever the issue is. As a windows user/admin I certainly have seen restarts fix all sorts of computer ills over the years. Well I wasn’t so lucky this time, it still didn’t connect to the network. Well I didn’t have time to f with it. I told her to bring the laptop over to my table when she was done and if need be I would hard wire it to the router. I had to get the timing system up and running.
So I head over to my table, make all the connections and fire the timing box up. I bring up the software that controls it but I don’t get a connection to the box. WTF? I have no idea what the problem is but I have little time to figure it out. It’s after 7am at this point and the race is at 7:30. The timing box would not shut down as it is supposed to via the power button so I had to unplug it to kill it. I tried to connect 2 more times and again I could not. I was starting to panic a bit. Finally after a 4th power down and restart of the timing box I was able to connect. I had no time to worry about why I couldn’t connect .
So with about 10 minutes before race time I have Ali bring the other laptop over so I could hook up to it. even with it sitting right next to the wireless router it would not connect. I had a CAT5 cable in the bag so I hard wired it to the router. I try to connect and STILL can not do it! Ok I had only a few minutes before the race started. I had no time to f around any further so I made a quick decision to flip the timing equipment over on to Ali’s laptop and quickly configure it. As the race started I was still frantically changing things around. I was only able to do some limited testing of the finish line and it’s ability to read my test chip. It read the chip but the detection height was not great. I checked the monitor screen that displays the status of the finish mats and the numbers looked good.
The first place runners came screaming into the finish in less than 17 minutes. When the first two runners registered I breathed a sigh of relief, I guess it is working ok. Well I should have held my breath longer. The third place runner came through and no confirmation beep was heard, shit. I quickly check to see if he has a chip on his sneaker, he does, shit…. I was pissed. Earlier in the week Ali and I spent a lot of time running 500 chips over the lines to verify they read. Of course it doesn’t simulate someone running across the lines and the various position/angles/height the chip can be in as it crosses. Well that first miss opened the flood gates. The system started missing a bunch of runners.
There are two timing mats set up, a primary and a secondary. The first mat is supposed to catch the vast majority of runners and the second mat is there as a fail safe just in case the first mat misses one. Well the first mat was missing almost every single runner, the second mat was pretty much doing all the work and not a great job of it. At one point I slammed down the pen I was using to write down missed runners in disgust. By the time it was over, out of the 300 runners, there were at least 50 that the system missed timing. Now there were some other issues that caused some problems. Again we had some runners that could not follow directions and attached the chip incorrectly or loosely. We had two or three that had the chip fly off just before the finish as they sprinted in because the chip was loose. Even so I felt like shit. I felt like I felt when I collapsed at the end of that volleyball game in the tournament. Getting this system to work is my responsibility and I felt 100% responsible and embarrassed that it was a cluster f at this race.
All of the missed runners made figuring out the awards a mess. Thank goodness the club was still manually timing as a safety net. Without it the race would have been a total disaster. Even so the mix of automated and manual timing results made figuring out the awards and producing the final results later that night a pain in the ass. I was really bummed out as I put the equipment away after the race. To their credit, nobody from the club was critical or negative about the problems, they all offered positives and were confident that the bugs would be worked out. I wasn’t so sure.
We took two vehicles to the race because Ali had to go in to work a few hours to get caught up. One of the club members had offered to let Ali borrow her racing bike for Ali to try out. The woman has three of them and was going to be out of town all summer. The bike is hardcore. It has the low profile tires, no kick stand, toe clips and is very light weight. I put it into the back of the truck in between the boxes of equipment. Ali has ideas of maybe doing a dualathalon.
So one of the first things I did after getting home was to sit down at the computer and fire off emails to the distributor that sold us the system. The email was basically saying, “wtf is the deal. This shit isn’t working…” I hopped on the distributors message board and found it ironic to see a post from another customer whom recently switch to the V6B DAG chips and timed a 3000 person race with them. She said she STARTED out only capturing 80% of the runners, by the end of the race only 40% were getting counted. That is horrible. I also emailed a contact at DAG looking for answers. The company that makes the DAG system is french, I am not looking forward to trying to work out this frustrating problem with the additional burden of language translation.
I then took to more household chores. I pulled out the Dyson and gave it a run through the house. I plan to do this weekly to supplement my Roomba runs. I also tried running my Scooba. I have had some issues with my robotic maids as of late. My 535 Roomba has had various problems since I bought it last September. I have received a new beater brush, cleaning module, side brush and now am awaiting a new side brush module. Needless to say the lustre has worn off with he 500 series of robots. I prefer my older, louder Discovery models. They do a better job of cleaning in my environment and seem to hold up better.
I also am having an issue with my floor washing Scooba. Last week I noticed that it seemed to be only putting down a trickle of cleaning fluid, much less than normal. I also have had issues for awhile with opening the unit up to remove the fluid container. Look at the email I got from Irobot regarding how to address these issues.
To handle a stuck fluid container:
Place one hand on the Tank Receiver where “iRobot” or “iRobot Scooba” is written, and apply pressure to pull back on the tank. Using the other hand’s index finger, tap lightly and quickly on the Tank Handle towards the edge. This should allow the Tank to release.
WTF? I need to be the Fonz to operate the unit?? The advice for the fluid problem is even funnier:
You will want to hold the Scooba so it is standing on it’s side and the clear end of the Cleaning Head is touching the ground. Hold the unit about 6-8 inches above the ground, and let the Scooba drop through your hands about 5 times.
Ok let me get this straight. You want me to “fix” my $500 robot by holding it on it’s side and dropping it on the floor? I could not believe this was the advice I was getting back from tech support. I emailed back for a clarification to which they responded.
Do not actually drop it on the floor, but just tap it on the cleaning head side; either on the counter or on the floor five times.
Oh ok that makes me feel so much better, just bang it on the counter. So anyway I took out my Scooba and performed blunt trauma on it as instructed. I set it up and let it loose on a cleaning run. The violence didn’t work. It still was not putting down fluid. So I ad-libbed and just poured some warm water on the floor and let the Scooba suck it up so it at least was of some use. I emailed back to Irobot to see what their next piece of advice is. Maybe throw it like a frisbee or roll it into a wall??
After Ali got home I set the timing system back up and f’d around with it some more. I just set up one line. Even with maxxing out the power, the detection height sucked. I was very frustrated with it. I did manage to figure out the reason I could not connect the laptops together. The Lenovo laptops have a little slider switch on the front of them that turns off the wireless card. Somehow this slider managed to get put in the “off” position, disabling any wireless network access. The thing is when I looked at the wireless card under Windows it looked active and enabled. Well at least I know that problem won’t happen again.
The f’ing drain covers I got for the pool drains are officially a waste of money. They just don’t work. Instead of getting stuck on the drains the damn Hayward gets stuck on these things. I sent an email to the guy on ebay I bought them from telling him they are a basically piece of shit as well as Polaris, the manufacturer. I am hoping by complaining I may get my money back or something but I doubt it.
I was thinking to myself over the weekend for some reason if people would use the adjectives “happy” or “friendly” when describing me. I don’t think they would. I have been told in the past, years ago by someone that I later became friendly with that initially they thought I was a snob. I know why people would think that. I avoid making much eye contact or smiling at people I don’t know. The reason for it is that I am so dreadfully bad at making the small talk that leads to more meaningful conversation. Many of the people that I wind up being friendly with are outgoing and friendly themselves, possessing the qualities I lack. Once that initial barrier is broken I am normally much more at ease talking with someone. I don’t know why I bring this up besides the fact that it is something I am not happy about, ironically.
at the board meeting for the running club we approved buying the Ipico timing rig. The approval signals the upcoming end to our relationship with DAG. The DAG system has been a hassle for us due to unreliable reading of the chips. The reliability problem has been exasperated by the horrible customer service experience trying to get help from the parent company in France. Good riddance. Hopefully if all goes well I will be ready to use the Ipico system in the fall.