Cliff notes week

I was at home training all week.  Instead of making the effort to try to blog at home I decided to just do a brief recap.  After all, blogging would have cut into the time I needed to go get DD coffee every morning with the dogs.

This week long class was for Exchange 2010.  Last year I took two week long Exchange 2007 classes.  There are a ton of similarities between the two versions, the differences probably could have been covered in a day.  This meant that the vast majority of the week was stuff I already knew about which equated to a lot of boring hours.

Sitting at home all day listening to the instructor was somehow more arduous than what I do normally at work, more sitting behind two screens all day.  Maybe it is because I literally had to be paying attention (more or less) the entire time.

Ironically I was in the middle of an Exchange 2010 migration of my own, on my home network.  This migration was expedited when my old server had an unexpected hard drive failure Wednesday night.  I had some very nervous moments while trying to get the old server up and running.  At one point I feared that the nightly back up I have been doing for years was not actually backing up my Exchange server properly which would result in catastrophic loss of email. Luckily, everything was there although I did lose one days worth of mail since the crash happened in the middle of the back up.

I had a very stressful day Thursday trying to get the old server back up.  I needed it up in order to migrate to the new one.  I worked on it until 11:30 that night.

Everything worked out in the end.  I now have our home network and email up and running on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.  There are a few more loose ends to attend to but everything appears to be functional and stable.  If there was a good thing from the crash it was that it gave me some first hand experience in the Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 migration process.

On Wednesday night we had a running club meeting that drug on for two hours +.  We had at least 12 people there.  With that many people in a room it is pretty hard to get things accomplished in a quick manner since varying opinions want to be heard.

One of the things we agreed upon is getting away from the online store that I worked so hard on.  The store was my idea and it is my idea to shit can it.  The store works very well from some perspectives.  Runners love it, it makes it very easy to sign up for races, even multiple races with a few clicks.  The low CC fees with this option allowed us to absorb the fees instead of tacking them on to the registration cost, another plus.

However maintenance of the store has become a nightmare.  I have wound up keying in each and every purchase made on the store as opposed to being able to download them in bulk.  Bulk entry with the store is just too much of a mess plus I feel personally responsible for each and every entry.  I fear if I don’t enter each one as it appears in my email I may risk missing someone.

We are going to go with a different online race registrar that charges more than what we pay with the store but far less than our former registrar.  A $20 entry fee used to cost us $3.25 in fees with Active.com.  With the store it cost a little less than a buck. With the new registrar, Raceit.com,  it will cost about $2 so we are splitting the difference.  That extra $1 will save me a hell of a lot of headaches.

Of course I had to get my exercise in during the week, else I would go mad.  I did a different lunch time routine each day, the most amusing of which was the one I taped. That session included a new activity, the death crawl, which is better seen than explained.

On Saturday I did another 10 mile run in prep for my new, unexpected goal of running a half marathon in early march. Although Ali and the girls were there I ran ahead with another group.  I ran with them for about 4 miles or so until they turned around.

I have found with long distance running it is much easier to do it with someone else, preferably someone who is chatty.  Having someone along to share the effort helps keep your mind off the actual run.  Doing that last 6 miles alone was not great fun.  I did try to pick up the pace considerably over my previous 10 mile efforts, shaving around 6 minutes from the time I posted two weeks prior.

My body is becoming more accustomed to going that distance, I felt negligible physical side effects and spent the rest of Saturday buzzing about doing stuff around the house as I normally would.

Saturday night Ali and I watched a documentary that my Exchange trainer turned me onto on Netflix, Man on Wire.  it is about some french wire walker that snuck into the Twin Towers shortly after they opened, strung a steel cable between them and walked the span back and forth for nearly an hour.

I was amazed that I never heard of this feat.  Granted I was only 7 years old at the time but still…  I found the documentary extremely interesting.  I was feeling the immense fear just from seeing the pictures and video from the event.

Some wire in the brain that controls fear had to be cut in this guys brain.  I absolutely can not imagine what it would be like to be out on a wire at the top of those buildings with absolutely no safety equipment whatsoever.  If you have Netflix put this in your instant queue, it’s a hidden gem. Even now, 35+ years later the people involved in the event are overcome with emotion when they try to describe that moment.

Sunday Ali and I were looking forward to a relaxed kind of day since I got most of the house stuff done the day before.  Unfortunately Ali’s day got cut in half when she wound up having to go to work to cover for kitchen staff that called off .

I kept myself busy doing car maintenance on the Camry and Tacoma. On the Camry I changed the oil/filter, rotated the tires and replaced the cabin air filter.  The Tacoma just got an oil change.

I had a problem with my one floor jack, it stopped jacking.  Luckily my neighbor let me borrow his jack to finish the tire rotation.  If you watch the broadcast of the event you will see the car teetering as it was balanced on the front and rear center point.  I didn’t realize how unstable it was until I watched the video back.  Next time I will change my jacking plan.

During the tire rotation I utilized my air wrench to remove and reattach the lug nuts.  I realized that working with air tools is even more satisfying than pulling the trigger on a cordless drill.  I just love the sound as I zip off nuts in milliseconds and the reassuring noise made as the tool drives them back in place.  Of course all of this was made possible by the repair I finally made on the air compressor a few weeks back.

Most of the latter part of my Sunday was spent watching the two playoff games.  I loved that both of them were played in frigid temperatures, the only thing that would have made it better would have been a snowstorm.

Ironically both games followed a similar storyline where one team was dominant early on with a sizable lead and had to hold on down the stretch to win.  My brother is a huge Steelers fan so I was glad they won.  My trip to Green Bay years ago solidified the Packers as one of my fav teams as well so no matter who wins the Super Bowl I will be glad for different reasons.