January 18, 2006

Up at 5:45 this morning. What is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be waking up on my own so early in the morning. Since I was awake I figured that I should at least take advantage of the spare time so I got myself out of bed and shaved my head (it really needed it) and got ready to go to work today. Today is the big project day that Jeremy is coming along to help out with. He is excited, it is his first real day of work on an IT job. He has helped out with things down at Castile before but that isn’t the same.

As always happens to me when I have to get ready for a big project day like this I end up running around like mad all morning and then running late because I can’t find things that I really, really need. Today was no exception. I was supposed to pick up Jeremy in Leicester by 8:30 but it was ten till nine by the time I finally got down there to get him. What a great start to the day.

The upside is that we ended up arriving in Pittsford just a few minutes after 9:30 which is when we had scheduled with Tim, the electrician, to be there. He, being for more responsible than I, had been there for almost twenty minutes by the time that we arrived. The weather turned really cold today and it was quite unpleasant being outside at all. Fierce winds and a lot of snow. The people who were supposed to have opened the store for us at 9:30 didn’t end up being there after all so it didn’t matter that we hadn’t been there early anyway. Apparently no one told them that we were coming. Nothing new.

We waited for about fifteen minutes before going into the Barnes & Noble Booksellers that was right next to us to get some coffees to keep us warm while we waited. I think that it was a bit after 10:00 when someone finally arrived and opened the place up for us. So at this point we were running more than half an hour late and we had planned on having a very full day so we were feeling a crunch.

It turned out that within minutes we could see that the store that the three of us were working at had not actually been surveyed like it was supposed to have been and the architectural drawings that we had were useless as the architect had obviously gotten a description over the phone and had never set foot into the building. We had some real critical things missing like power, network and telephone connections. All things that we needed in order to do any work at all. It was expected that power might be short of expectations and they had, at least, though ahead and had electricians go to all of the sites and not just the techs.

The day ended up being a disaster. The original plan had us working in Rochester from 9:30 till about 1:00 and then scooting over to Buffalo as quickly as possible and doing the same project there from 2:00 until 6:00 or so. Nope. Didn’t happen like that at all. The Rochester site was so massively unprepared for us that we ended up spending the entire day there just to get the site up to the point that it should have been at when we had first arrived at 9:30 (sans telephone since we didn’t have access to the telephone equipment.) The only thing that we were able to do while we were there is get the place ready for us to try it again at a later date and determine that there is some unknown network issue that we couldn’t troubleshoot due to limited local resources and so they know that that has to be remedied before we are able to come back and try the whole thing again.

So instead of doing two stores today we ended up not even getting close to doing a single one. The day wasn’t stressful but it was hectic and exhausting. We had to make two runs to the electrical supply stores to be able to get everything done that we did as it was. We were so busy that I didn’t get to eat all day. None of us got breakfast or lunch and worked past the normal end of day time for most people.

After we wrapped up for the day Jeremy and I took a really quick run over to Despatch Junction that was nearby so that Jeremy could see what Rochester’s largest model train store had to offer. He wasn’t very impressed. The guy who runs the store is really nice and helpful but the selection leaves a lot to be desired for serious modelers. It is tough because we have almost exhausted his entire supply of N scale (1:160) building models because there are only a handful from DPM and Model Power. We have all the DPM models that he carries and almost all of the Model Powers. We could order them but it would be nice to get a good look at things before buying them. The sad thing is that we have purchased just about every building that they have at that store in the process of building one tiny learning layout that is only a fraction of the size of a normal layout that most modelers would do. It is, in fact, only a fraction of the size layout that we are hoping to do soon. We just are doing something small to get started. Good thing that we are sticking with the size that we are or we would have to order parts for it just to get to the point that we are at now.

We were only at the store for ten minutes or less and then it was on to Geneseo to get dinner at the Omega Grill. More tuna salad cold plate. I get that almost every day while I am on this diet. I am losing interest in food, let me tell you! I was almost relieved to only have to eat a single meal today. The cold plate is actually very good but I have been eating it SO much. I have most definitely figured out how this diet really works. Culinary boredom!

I took Jeremy home and then drove over to dad’s house to pick up Oreo who had been staying over there today. I hung out with dad for about forty-five minutes or so before coming home. By the time I got home I was exhausted. I spent most of the evening scanning slides and writing the dailies (I am a day behind.)

My latest N scale model railroad locomative came today. I got this one off of eBay. It is a Bachman made Burlington switcher. By Burlington I mean the old pre-1970 CB&Q red and white colour scheme. I thought that it would go well with my other Bachman made Burlington Northern engine. I could use the two together on a layout and target the very early 1970’s when both colour schemes were both in use on the Burlington Northern lines just after the merger. It isn’t a top notch engine or anything I just got a really good deal on it and it matched what I had invested in previously so I was happy with the deal.

Dominica didn’t get home until after 11:00 pm. She said that her drive home tonight was the worst drive that she has had all winter! The wind is just awful. She wanted to watch some DVDs before going to bed but I was really exhausted after my long day and I decided that I would just wrap up some stuff in the office and go to bed early. It is pretty unusual for me to go to bed before she does but once in a while it actually happens.

Well, I caught up on the dailies now. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day, I think. That is the theory anyway. Dad has errands in the city in the morning and we are getting lunch on his way back home.

Leave a comment