EMC Support Continues to Amaze

We received an email from a local EMC Account Service Rep last week about a small update that needed to be applied to our array to restore CallHome functionality.  In talking with him, we decided to have them come in and do the File OE upgrade from 7.0.14-0 to 70.0.40.1 since we have a dual control station VNX 5300 that doesn't allow end user upgrades.

The tech arrived today around noon to perform the upgrade.  We got him setup with a table and chair in our datacenter and left him to it.  The prior field tech took roughly an hour to perform a similar upgrade, so we figured that would be about right for this one.  Not so fast...

At 1pm, the tech received a failure running the upgrade routine and needed to call it in to EMC support.  They returned his call TWO HOURS LATER.  I guess it's good to know it's not just the customers that get shitty, no-care support?!

As of 5pm tonight, the upgrade was STILL stuck and we'll need to provide the remote techs a machine to WebEx into and continue the work.  Today's field tech has another install scheduled tomorrow and is on vacation for the rest of the week.  Top notch service, guys!

I asked what the implications of running on the mid-upgrade array were and was told that CallHome wouldn't work.  No big whoop, since it wasn't working in the first place!

Guess it's a good thing we don't use the File side of that array at all.  Control station 1 is shutdown because it's in the middle of an upgrade, and control station 0 is unusable because it's in the middle of an upgrade.

Let's Go Tigers!

I can't understand a word the guy is saying, but he's still the coolest mofo in baseball.

But How Am I Supposed to Dry My Bricks?

THIS Is Enterprise-Level?

For the last 3 years, we've had an HP EVA4400 SAN in our main datacenter.  Apart from a buggy admin (me) that pulled a live controller, early battles with HP over support levels, and a suspected-buggy firmware revision, it was a good SAN.  With support coming up for renewal, we took a look around at our options.

We ended up with an EMC VNX 5300 that is now fully installed.  To say it was as simple as advertised would be misleading.  A badly chosen default timezone halted our setup for nearly two weeks as we waited for EMC to resolve the issue across timezones and continents.

With the machine finally in service, we went about updating the file and block software on the system.  Unfortunately, EMC decided to ship the system without the necessary support tools available -- dual Control Stations means USM doesn't work to upgrade the File side software.  Without the File side updated, you can't update the Block side.

Now, EMC make a bunch of noise about the VNX series being "unified".  As near as I can tell, that means they all fit in the same rack.  There are two still personalities to the thing and a multitude of tools necessary to manage it.  Between Unisphere, USM, Navisphere CLI, and the Linux consoles, you'll spend a lot of time moving from tool to tool trying to get things running.

After two days of negotiating with EMC's Indian support rep -- it seems Live Chat for the VNX doesn't exist -- we finally get a field tech assigned to assist in upgrading the File software.

The field tech contacted us later that day to follow-up with the sparse documentation that was in their request.  We explained what we were trying to do and worked out a time at the beginning of last week for them to be on-site to perform the upgrade.

When the tech arrived, we showed him in to the datacenter and the VNX.  He was excited, it was the first he'd ever seen!  Things weren't looking good.

About two hours later, the tech emerged with the File upgrade completed, so we started down our list of 10-or-so questions we had about the Unisphere interface, the USM interface and the hardware setup.  He was "slightly confident" about 1 of his answers, but had no information on the remaining questions.

We sent him on his way with the list of questions for him to follow-up with us.  Two days later we inquired about answers.  No luck yet.  A week later, we asked again.  Yeah, his manager was forwarding them to the sales staff for answers.

Really?  This is enterprise-level support?  A field tech who's never seen the equipment?  A Live Chat function that doesn't work for their hot new product?  A support org that doesn't seem to have any sense of urgency concerning a frustrated new customer?

Makes me pine for the good ol' days of HP yelling at me...

Back In The Saddle

Yep, it's been many, many months since my last post here.  Gave Facebook a try for awhile, but I really can't find much interest in the day-to-day minutia to spend more than a couple minutes there.  So, to keep from having to hear about YOUR problems, I'm back on my blog where I can just listen to myself.

David Attenborough's Got Nothin' On This Wildlife Narrator

New Bremen, Ohio

Thursday was a work meeting for a new customer, so my boss and I drove most of the way Wednesday night to give us a reasonable wake-up time for Thursday morning.  Neither of us are morning people, so the prospect of driving at 7am didn't sound good.  Driving at 10pm is much better!

Since we had a couple hours to kill on Thursday morning, we stopped in downtown New Bremen, OH and had a look around.

It had become a running joke among my co-workers and I that the obvious cool thing to do in New Bremen is to tour the Bicycle Museum of America.  So, my boss and I did exactly that!

It really was a pretty cool place!  The museum covers three floors of a retail storefront in downtown, and includes bicycles from the very early 1800's to the very latest releases.  Our guide did a great job of making us feel welcome and explaining the importance of some of the models.

After the tour, we stopped at the Crown Shop (New Bremen is the world headquarters for Crown Equipment -- they make material handling equipment like tow motors and hilos) to pick up some gifts for friends.

Here's me, outside the museum, mugging for the camera:

And here's my boss, trying out the high-wheel model.  She's a bit shorter than me and when the pedals rotated, I think she was nearly on her tippy-toes:

If you ever find yourself traveling through New Bremen, give the Museum a try!

Time Has Not Been Kind

From this:

To this:

Yep, That Lazy

I figured out last night that my laziness has hit a new level.  After trekking up the stairs to turn on the heat because my feet were freezing, I checked Google to see if anyone made a thermostat that I could control from downstairs.

Turns out, a company called Radio Thermostat makes a line of WiFi-enabled thermostats and has built apps for the iPhone/iPad and Windows Mobile devices.  The thermostats are sold under the Filtrete name at Home Depot and the 3M-50 model retails for just under $100.  We picked one up tonight and got it installed in fairly short order.

The thermostat required an extra wire that wasn't used by the previous thermostat, but I was able to find a constant 24VAC source at the furnace (you can also wire in a wallwart adapter if the source or wiring isn't convenient).

Once the thermostat was connected, it was just a matter of connecting my iPhone to the thermostat's wireless network, setting up the WiFi SSID and password (even supports WPA2!) and having the thing go through a reboot.

Finally, you use your iPhone/computer to connect to the Radio Thermostat website to register the device and connect it to your user account.

Download the iPhone/iPad app and you're all set to control your thermostat from wherever you might be.

Once the registration process is completed, you can program your thermostat right from the website -- a huge improvement over the random sequence of buttons you normally have to go through.

Cuckoo, Cuckoo!

If the best that the "secret government" can come up with to decimate the Earth's population is SARS and H1N1, I think people have vastly over-estimated the threat they pose...  Sheesh, it's like The Apple Dumpling Gang!

God Bless Title IX, Part 2

User Conference - Day 3

The last day of the User Conference is always a short one, with just one class then a 2 hour sales pitch about all the wonderful things they'll (not) be doing over the course of the next couple years.

The morning class was about the latest releases and the items being folded in.  A new version is a chance for the software vendor to fold in custom programming they've done either for long-term customers who had the stuff done in order to purchase the software, or for stuff that they've promised to new customers to close the sale.  All in all, it's a good time to avoid upgrading because of the instability.

All told, the software vendor is currently support some 8 or 10 different versions of the software.  One customer I talked to was nearly 8 versions behind and had no upgrade path until the next release.  It's fun to talk to those people, since they're missing things that the rest of us have had for years.  I can't imagine the weeks of head scratching they'll go through moving through ALL of the changes that have happened through the years in one mighty leap.

The sales portion of the day was the usual.  "We understand people are frustrated, we have made a bunch of changes to make it better, here's our rainbow vision of the next two years."  They gave away a couple HP mini netbooks and an iPad, though I'm not sure how exciting a prize that might be given the number of iPads I saw during the conference.  There's no doubt Apple has a killer product -- it has just about killed off the laptop count among the user base here.

After the official User Conference ends, the official user group meetings begin.  They had a couple sessions on the workflow product and what the vendor "calls" their CRM product.  The CRM is an interesting beast, mostly because it does NOTHING for the customer relationship.  It was merely an outside-the-office sales / bookings viewer for the sales force.  When I asked one of the other members of the user group where the customer contact tracking was, he said "wrong product."  Apparently, THAT functionality is completely different, and separately licensed/priced.  Amazing.

As much as I wonder about out Microsoft CRM installation, at least it actually does something pertaining to the RELATIONSHIP with the customer.

The last portion of the user group meeting was about spending the allocation of programming hours "donated" by the software vendor.  While the gathering of suggestions took a couple of hours, I can honestly say there was NOTHING that was worthy of being brought up.  Usually, there are one or two suggestions that you say "Hey, I hadn't thought of that, but that'd be pretty cool."  Not so this time.  Maybe it was exhaustion from all of the training, but the suggestions were junk.

I headed over to Caesar's Palace last night for some dinner, hoping to eat at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill.  No such luck -- the wait for a table was nearly an hour and a half, and I wasn't in the mood to wait.  Instead, I went to Bradley Ogden and had a FANTASTIC meal.  Celery Root soup and a really nicely cooked swordfish steak.

If you had told me that I'd like the soup, you'd have had an argument on your hands.  As it was, I loved it.  The bits of duck, apple slices and pistachios were fantastic.

Drink total for today:  1 Gin & Tonic...  pathetic...

User Conference - Day 2

Another sales pitch general session to start off the day... this time flogging software that had either been available for nearly 10 years, or software that will soon be obsoleted.  I kind of feel sorry for the second group of users, since they'd gone into the purchase believing that it was an ongoing solution.  Not something that they'd be asked to re-buy a couple years down the road.

The second session was about the eventual replacement to the document management stuff currently being sold.  The software vendor has apparently decided that sometimes someone else builds a wheel that will work just fine on the wagon you're trying to use and decides to simply license the SDK.  Good for them, wish they would have done that years ago.  The new software looks really nice.  If it weren't an area that we already had covered, I'd be interested.

Lunch was back at the Range Steakhouse, this time with cold cut sandwiches and yummy desserts.  Ended up with an unfamiliar group this time, which was nice.  I sat back and listened to the stuff they were going through, happy that we'd found our own solution long ago.  It was especially nice because a couple of the other people at the table were distant competitors of ours.  I'd never heard their name come up before, but since they're within a couple hours of our plant, I'll just assume we must compete with them somewhere.

After lunch, I took two session with the same trainer.  I really like this guy...  He's got a no-nonsense style to him and does a good job presenting the areas he's covering.  The first session covered sales commissions, something we haven't done within the ERP to date, but if it will work for the upcoming scheme, I'm hopeful we can.  The following session was about Cost Estimating and the analytical info available to make decisions about whether an item is a good "fit" for the operation.  There were a couple of tidbits that may be useful to our plant in the near future, so I think they earned their conference fee from those two sessions.

I apparently missed quite the rousing session while attending the Cost Estimating class... The "Ask the Experts" turned into the usual bitch session about what a crappy vendor we all have, though without the clarity of actual REASONS that they're crappy.  Too bad I didn't attend, as I could have given them concrete examples.  Still, we manage to take orders, ship product, get paid, and pay our employees, so I guess at a bare minimum, there's not much to complain about.  Do we have complaints about the software and support?  Sure.  Do they bring the business to a halt?  Nope, we're shaping up to have a banner year in sales and profitability.  Not easy to do in this Michigan economy.  And that's why they're still our software vendor after 12 years...

Finally, the end-of-meeting (sort of) pool party was held tonight.  As windy as it was in West Michigan, it was nearly as windy in Vegas.  The party started around 7pm and by 8:30, most had given up on enjoying themselves because of the temperature (very cold for Vegas) and the extreme wind.  I ended up hanging out with a vendor salesperson, a vendor IT guy, and a couple customers until around 10pm.  Hey, the beer was free!

Please let the record reflect that I thoroughly enjoyed another 7 frothy beverages tonight.  Trust me, I'm hammered.  This blog posting is the thing that's letting me avoid laying in bed and feeling the room spin. :)

Another day and a half that this conference is over for a couple more years!

For the Curious - Drink Count

It's been a lubricated trip, that's for sure:

Friday - 2 Gin & Tonic's at the Harrah's bar
Saturday - 2 Gin & Tonic's at the Rio bar
Sunday - 3 Bud Lights at the welcome party
Monday - 1 Heineken on the way to the datacenter

Even my DAILY count is more than I've imbibed TOTAL in the months since my last heavy drinking in Cozumel...

Yay me!

User Conference - Day 1

Well, after a short opening night party -- and three beers! -- the User Conference kicked off this morning with a nice hour and a half sales pitch for the vendor's newest products.  Most of it I'd seen before, but they've done a bit more development and it's looking like it might actually be useful.  "Correct" is always a different answer with their software, but I'll find out more about that later this week.

After the keynote sales pitch, I picked the wrong conference room and ended up in a class about Sales Analysis.  The classes are scheduled for 90 minutes.  The Powerpoint show lasted 10 minutes and the presenter was finished.  So, we ended up going through the slide show AGAIN, just to make sure no one missed any of the "critical" information that was presented on the 10 slides.

To say that the presenter was ill-prepared is an understatement.  She had NO idea what any of the reports actually reported on, nor what the report headers actually SAID.  When asked whether the sales dollars were ALL dollars or just commissionable sales, she had no idea.  When asked about whether a report -- BEING DISPLAYED ON THE SCREEN -- had columns for commissionable and non-commissionable sales dollars, she punted and said "Yes".  I kind of wrinkled my face and caught the eye of the other presenter (Yeah, it took two geniuses to present ten minutes worth of wrong info), I asked whether that was true, because to my eyes it looked like the report actually current and prior year sales dollars on it.  I said I couldn't be sure because the screenshot had been smooshed and distorted, and "it might just be my eyeglass prescription." (which, as designed, got lots of laughs)

I couldn't be too hard on the presenter, since she happens to live next door to one of our IT guys.  But, at least I can warn our guy not to take any info she might share as "fact."

Lunch at the Range Steakhouse was pretty good, and I got to talk to lots of people I knew.  A couple were former employee's of the software vendor, now working for box plants.  A few were other IT / Accounting / Customer Service people from other box plants.  I managed to keep the snark at a minimum, and I think these people might actually talk to me again.  :)

The session after lunch was about Job Costing.  Basically, coming from the Cost Estimate from a built spec and comparing it to the actual performance that happens in the real world.  There were a couple tidbits of info that I'll have to follow up on in our own plant, but lots of the info didn't apply simply because we don't use the vendor's reports for our own plant.  So, while lots of people complained about how some of the reports worked, I was able to sit back and know that we'd solved those problems years ago.  It's a good feeling!

The last session of the day was mostly a curiousity for me, because I largely knew the information that they were going to present.  The session was on Virtualization, Data Centers, and Hosting, something the vendor is starting to look into as a billable service.  They, of course, repeated their ill-informed statements about the ability to run SQL Server in a virtualized environment.  There were a couple of us in the session that had been running fully virtualized for at least a year that suggested that whatever performance problems there might have been years ago, they were long past solved.  We shared the info we knew -- and it's amazing that we all learn the same lessons when doing virtualization -- and I think the few people in the session felt much better about the things their IT people were asking to do.

The Data Center and Hosting portion of the session concentrated on colocation and PAAS (Platform as a Service).  Basically, making the choice that you no longer want to be responsible for all of the "extra" stuff that comes from having servers on-site.  The colocation idea makes sense, since it's extremely expensive to bring in a "real" datacenter on-site.  There's no way a company our size could do the sort of redundancies that even a low-end colocation site has.

One interesting area -- and I think it's gonna be a good money-maker for the vendor -- is in PAAS.  Here, they'd take over all of the infrastructure (servers, software, etc) and host it in a datacenter.  You'd pay per-user / per-month to bring in the ERP software to your business.  They didn't have much of a handle on what they were going to offer -- which is scary considering they want to be up and running in six months -- but I think there's money to be made there.  Lots of small box plants don't have the user base to support even a single real IT person, let alone the kind of staff that would be needed to provide the level of software that you're talking about.  If they can price it right, I think they've got a winner.

Not that I'm planning on moving our systems.  We've got a highly-skilled staff that does this stuff really well and we mangle the living crap out of our ERP system.  That kind of stuff just wouldn't be possible in a PAAS environment.

After that session, we gathered up a group of about 15 people that were interested in seeing a local datacenter that the software vendor is using.  It was a nice tour of a pretty small colocation facility.  Seeing the racks of equipment in there definitely made me feel better about the wiring that we do in our own plant -- our stuff totally owns these customer-owned racks.

About the only thing that surprised me -- kind of -- was the rack installation that our software vendor was in the midst of putting together.  Maybe it's just my own bias, but I wouldn't expect my outsourced vendor to put Netgear switches between my servers and my connectivity.  Call me a Cisco shill, but I'd sure prefer a real "enterprise" support contract'ed switch in there.  Apart from the two Netgear switches, there were 6 or 7 1U servers and a Barracuda firewall device being installed.  Apparently, no one taught these guys about the nice 2-ft power cords, 'cause they had the 14-footers draped around the cabinet and attached to the servers.

We did manage one pit-stop on the way back from the colo tour -- the infamous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in downtown Vegas.  If you've ever seen the Pawn Stars show on the History Channel, this is where it all takes place.

I can honestly say that was my first time ever in a pawn shop!  I've been deflowered!

About half the space was just tourist crap -- bumper stickers, t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.  The other half was the various crap you see being brought in on the show.  Lots of swords, knives, buffalo heads (!) and jewelry on display.  I managed to exit without buying anything, though we did try to talk one of the software vendors' staff into buying a $20k motorcycle to give away at the raffle at the conference's close.

I'm about to head down to Mandalay Bay for dinner at a cool Mexican place I found years ago, so that's about it for today!

Penn & Teller Show

There are very few things I own that I am particular about. If something happens to my clothes, my car, or things like that, I'm generally pretty blase about it.

Except my Apple stuff. Those things, I treat like a first time mother treats her baby. I shy away from letting other people touch them and they're generally wrapped in some protective blanket.

I went to the Penn & Teller show at the Rio tonight. Anyone who knows me knows that I love Penn & Teller. They've been a fascination of mine since college when I saw their movie, Penn & Teller Get Killed. Heck, Lynn and I like 'em so much we named our cats after them.

The ticket ordering process couldn't have been easier. Pick the date, enter your credit card info, get receipt. The ticket pickup process couldn't have been any more difficult if they'd put developmentally challenged orangutans at the Concierge counter. More on that later...

I had dinner at Ming's Table before heading over to the Rio. Short review: skip it. The Hot & Sour soup was okay, the Crab Rangoon was barely warm, and the General's Chicken had a special piece of gristle in every bite. Add to that, the YELLING faux cowboys (seated a couple tables away and yelling to other faux cowboys walking by) lured into the hotel by Toby Keith's bar and you have an experience you can skip for something better (I seem to remember a really nice Asian place at Mandalay Bay, dunno if it's still there).

Prior to the show I was checking out reviews and saw that they do meet-and-greets after each show. A plan is hatched, I now have to hope there's no restrictions that will thwart me!

The line to pickup tickets was probably 20 people deep when I arrived and the Rio found it reasonable to put just one person at the Concierge desk to issue tickets. Eventually, someone else on the staff decided to let people know there was another ticket counter available, but pointed to a ticket counter that was completely unstaffed. So helpful!

Finally, a group of us found another ticket counter that could help us. And, of course, it was completely void of a line (they were all still at the front desk getting no help).

I'm sure there's something to enjoy in going to a Vegas show and being in the upper balcony stuffing tissues into your nose, but that isn't how I do things. Short of taking another trip to Vegas with Lynn, there's very little chance that I'll come back to see this show again, so I want GOOD seats. 4th row kind of seats, so that's what I got.

When you first enter the theatre, there's a piano and upright bass playing to the right of the stage. Audience members are lined up on the stage for the Penn & Teller Envelope Signing and Box Viewing Experience. That Experience, appropriately enough, consists of viewing a wooden box used in their act and subsequently signing a manila envelope which is also used. How many times do you get to stand on a real Vegas show stage?!

I don't know how many people notice that the upright bass player is actually Penn Jillette, one half of Penn & Teller. One of the other audience members said that he'd been playing since 8pm. How cool is that?! He does an hour of jazz and then an hour-long show 6 nights a week.

The show was fantastic! Exactly the irreverent presentation you'd expect from them. A nice bit on the theatre that is airport security (and a nice plug for their steel, business-card sized Bill of Rights for bothering the TSA agents), taking the piss out of sawing an assistant in half, a ball and hoop trick where even hearing how it's done doesn't help explain what you're seeing, a nice bit on the freedom of speech and protest, and their always awesome Magic Bullet act.

After the show, I start looking around the first lobby to see if I see them, but it's just people streaming to the exits. The next lobby is a jackpot.

As I'm waiting in the mob that's waiting for a picture with Teller, I'm asked by a couple if I'll take a picture of them with Teller. Sure! I don't know if a Droid phone always takes multiple minutes to start up or if it was just this guy's lucky day, but that phone took FOREVER! Finally, it finished booting and I was pulled forward to meet Teller.

I'd previously pulled my iPad out of its case, and now was the time for it to be defiled.

Teller kind of did a double take when I pushed the iPad toward him. "Wow!" came out of his usually silent mouth as he signed it. Victory! I very humbly thanked him for the show and for their Showtime show Bullshit! If you haven't seen it, please do. They're doing good things in presenting skepticism in an entertaining light.

I then pushed back into the mob to help out the Android couple. I hate to admit, but I was the quintessential "guy that can't figure out a camera" and I'm pretty sure I took a couple shots of their feet before finally getting what I hope was a usable photo for them. Android couple, I'm sorry if I screwed up your photo!

Just a little ways down from Teller was Mike Jones, the piano-playing half of the jazz duo that ushers people in to the theatre. I gotta say, I felt a little sorry for the guy... I don't think anyone had actually paid attention prior to the show, probably didn't recognize him, and people weren't saying anything to they guy. I walked up, tapped him on the shoulder and kind of nudged my iPad toward him. Would he autograph this for me? "Really?" He signed, then gave me a card for a free download of his newest album. He's a REALLY cool guy, I wish people at least acknowledged his work after the show.

Walking a bit further, it wasn't difficult to figure out where Penn was standing. The dude is 6'6" and his head is freakin' HUGE. His mob took a bit longer to work through, but eventually I got to push my iPad into his hands to an "Oh, wow!" before he signed it.

I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't spot their lovely assistant, Georgie, in the lobby, because that would have made the whole thing complete.

As it is, I have an awesome iPad that's been autographed by Penn & Teller. I love it! Thanks guys!

What a Clusterf*ck

After a completely uneventful pair of flights, I finally arrived in Vegas around 9pm.  Quick shuttle to the hotel and jumped in line at the check-in desk.  It's there were everything seemed to fall apart.

Now, Harrah's has had my reservation for a month.  Did they manage to actually fulfill that reservation?  No.

You see, at 10pm, they don't have any clean smoking rooms.  If I want a smoking room, I can linger around their lobby for some indeterminate amount of time waiting for housekeeping to get around to cleaning one, or I could take a non-smoking room for the night, then call the desk in the morning and change rooms.

Those both sound like a lot of work that all falls on ME.  I'm not the one that screwed this up, so why am I being inconvenienced?

The gentlemen that checked me in had a really obvious, really bad toupee.  He reminded me of the kind of guy that probably spent his "working years" selling appliances at Sears.  I almost expected him to ask me if I wanted to see the Kenmore appliances before making a final choice.

My Sears agent tried to find a non-smoking room with a patio from which I could practice my vile hobby.  I told him I was alright with that suggestion, but by the time he actually got around to choosing a room, someone else had apparently taken it.

So, I'm in a non-smoking room with no patio and no sense that Harrah's thinks there's anything wrong with the situation.

Any suggestion of discounting the room for tonight?  Nope.  Any suggestion that they'll be pro-active tomorrow about getting a room for me?  Nope.  

After schlubbing my luggage through the middle of the casino to reach the Mardi Gras tower (I have no idea what that means... I flashed my boobs but received no beads from the drunk frat boys near the elevator).  

What is it about hotels that the refuse to believe that people bring things that PLUG IN TO THE WALL to the room?  Why is every damned outlet either behind the 600lb nightstand, or behind the matteresses that are bolted to the wall via some hidden mounting device?

Despite the ubiquity of free WiFi throughout the rest of the country, Harrah's still seems to believe that it's a precious natural resource and charges $11.95 per day PER DEVICE.  F* that.

I brought the Airport Express, so I plugged that in and handed out free WiFi to my laptop, iPad and iPhone.  Screw Harrah's.

Oh, and the TV remote doesn't work either.  Dead batteries.

This would be a pretty good place to put a hotel...  I mean, the property's right on the Strip!  I'll bet a real hotelier could make a KILLING here.

What a Bunch of Idiots

I ordered some new "dork goggles" (eyeglass frames) last week.  They've taken forever and a day to arrive, and it appears that some chicken farm on the outskirts of Hudsonville will be receiving them tomorrow.

When I saw the incorrect address on the UPS website, I tried to call them to get the address corrected.  First, you have to know some secret incantation to actually speak to a human.  Next, you need to understand that there's shit-all that they'll actually DO for you.

I explained that the shipment was headed to the wrong place and was told that UPS' fancy computers don't have the ability to update the delivery address to be correct.

I explained that the shipper had some weird mix of my home and work addresses and that I wasn't even sure that it was valid.  The customer service rep tells me that if they can't deliver the package, they'll send a postcard to let me know.

Umm... to where?  The invalid address?  To whomever happens to live at the screwed up address that the package is currently routed to?

And that, apparenly, is the extent of their "Customer Service".

I hope the chickens get some use out of the glasses...

Target.com

Why bother listing pants that are backordered for 2 to 4 weeks?  If I could wait 2 to 4 weeks, I wouldn't be shopping NOW.

Oh, and when I put those pants in my shopping cart, don't be so smug as to offer me OVERNIGHT shipping.

So Busy!

Yikes, it's getting to the point where I'm looking forward to Monday morning, just to cut down on the hectic pace of my weekends!

Mad Men has been on for a few weeks now, so I'm nicely settled back in to 1965 and the goings-on at Sterling Cooper Draper Price.

It's season premier week this week, so I've been EXTREMELY busy catching up on all of the episodes...  30 Rock, Community, Glee, Detroit 1-8-7, Grey's Anatomy, The Apprentice, Modern Family, The Office, Cougar Town, and Parenthood are all still in the lineup.

I'm beginning to care less and less about Grey's Anatomy, it didn't do much to hold my attention this week, probably because I sort of gave up on it after the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years episode last season.

The Apprentice is back in my lineup after about a 4 year hiatus, mostly because I'd had enough of Donald Trump YELLING AT THE CAMERA.  Stop it.  The microphone is there for a reason, asshole.  We'll see how long I make it though this season...

Detroit 1-8-7 has the makings of a decent show.  I'm not usually one for cop shows (except The Shield, that was really good), but Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos is a fun guy to watch.

There are a couple new shows that I'm getting in to this year... First, Outlaw with Jimmy Smits.  Interesting premise to the show, and the first two episodes have enough foreshadowing to make me think it'll be interesting to watch it unfold for a bit.

Next, Raising Hope.  The premier episode was fantastic.  Witty, great dialogue, original visual gags, it's good TV.

I tried watching The Middle, but didn't think too much of it.  I'll give it a couple more episodes, but if it doesn't get better, I'm done.

My Generation is an interesting concept, but I'm not sure I can keep up with all of the intertwining stories (my old mind doesn't keep track of things as well as it used to).  I'll give it a couple more episodes, but if it doesn't get any better, it's off my subscription list.

I'm not getting the good show vibe from Running Wilde... That one can die soon, I think.

And those are just the ones on Hulu!

The Showtime and HBO series' are kicking off again too, with Eastbound & Down, Dexter, Weeds, and Boardwalk Empire all starting up.  A few more weeks and Californication will be showing new episodes too.

I finally broke down tonight and bought the expansion drive for our Tivo HD.  The onboard drive only has enough room for 20 hours of HD shows, which is causing us to miss episodes (missed two Hung episodes and now I have to give that one up for the season).  The expansion drive adds another 160-or-so hours, which should cover our laziness for a week or so.  I probably should have done it awhile ago, but in truth, we don't watch much TV on the TV.

Devour is Awesome

Have spent the last couple hours watching videos on Devour. Just gorgeous video quality, streamed from Youtube, etc in 720p.

Fantasy Football

Gong Golf

We're Back

On the way to Ohio Wednesday night, we discovered that we hadn't been to Cedar Point in a few years.  As in, nearly 20 years!  Yow!

The drive down was easy enough, and thanks to TomTom and Grace's outstanding driving skills, we found our hotel very easily.  I had rejected a bunch of hotels that Grace first suggested because well, if you're going on vacation, what's the point in staying in a craphole?  So, no Super 8, Motel 6, Days Inn or Comfort Inn for me.  Fairfield Inn?  Sure, why not.  I can't think of a time I've had a bad room there!

Let's just say you can cross the Fairfield Inn in Sandusky off your list of "must see" sites.  The room was nice enough, I suppose.  But if the point of a jacuzzi is that you can relax with your significant other, well, you'd better be an extremely small couple.  Like Mini Me size.  And God help you if one of you moves around because sooner or later, someone's gonna end up with a big toe in a very uncomfortable place.  Luckily, my physician had already done my prostate exam and we skipped that procedure.

They were nice enough to put a decent size LCD television in the room, but didn't manage to leave a matching remote.  What happened to the good old days when the remotes were bolted to the friggin' nightstand?!

The HVAC unit was mounted, as standard these days, right below the curtains and drapes.  So, unless you tucked those onto the window sill, all the cold air just went onto the panes of glass to the outside of the building, further building up the condensation.

We woke up bright and early on Thursday morning (9am!) and headed over to the park.  First stop, Millenium Force -- 300-some feet up in the air, with an 80 degree drop on the first hill.  93 miles an hour.  Excellent!  The intervening 20 years have seen some amazing technology upgrades in getting the cars up the hill, this one uses some sort of metal shuttle bar that yanks you up the hill fast enough that you don't have enough time to panic and worry about just how friggin' high up you are.

Next up, the Maverick.  Hooooollllllyyyy Crap!  Only 105 feet up in the air, but the first drop actually comes back in on itself with a drop of 95 degrees.  Once again, no chain lift on the big hill, this one uses linear induction to get you up there.  About half-way through the ride, there's a smooth slowdown as you head into a dark tunnel.  Part way through, there's another induction set that shoots you right back out of the tunnel at full speed.  Yow!  This one had the longest wait times in the park all day long, about 90 minutes, but is TOTALLY worth it.  This is an awesome coaster!



We headed over to the Red Garter Saloon for some lunch -- a chicken caesar salad and a delicious dill pickle from Lexington, MI.

From there we headed over to the Skyhawk, one of two evil rides in the park.  Think of this one as two hammers hanging upside down, next to each other, with two cars facing opposite each other on each hammer.  The hammers swing in opposite directions, so everyone spends half the ride seeing the impending doom and the other half only feeling the impending doom.

Now, it should be said that Grace is an EXCELLENT partner for amusement parks.  She doesn't whine and complain about rides, even those that our combined 80 years of wisdom should tell us are bad ideas. We both missed the mark here.

About two swings into the ride, I see Grace is upset.  Tears upset.  Do you know how freaking long that ride is when the other one is crying?  Yeah, about 3 decades longer than forever.  Once the ride FINALLY came to a stop, I convinced her to wipe away the tears before the two 12-year old girls she had befriended in the line saw her.  Once you've taken crap from Justin Bieber fans, there's not much light at the end of the tunnel...

Next up, the Gemini.  It wasn't something we "headed for" so much as we happened across it and the line was only showing as 15 minutes long.  Except, that 15 minutes was really just walking through the completely empty queue... There was NO ONE in line.

Right here, I should point out that the Caesar salad and dill pickle was a BAD combination.  Add in the exceedingly muggy weather and well, there's not much that could have avoided the upcoming bad situation.

It's a good thing Gemini's ride time is short.  I truly believe that if there had been 30 seconds more spinning and dropping, I'd have been spinning and dropping my lunch onto innocent bystanders.  I don't usually get sick riding coasters, but something got me that morning.

Luckily, Grace took pity on me and we headed back to the hotel for a bit.  Yeah, we made it a whole 4 hours in the park and had to TAKE A NAP.  For two hours!  Yeah, we're old.

That over, I was feeling MUCH better, so we headed back to the park.  Since Grace knows all the tricks, we were able to park again without paying a second time.  I'm pretty sure that deal is available to anyone, but when she explained it to me, she certainly tried to make it sound like she knew some magic 'park-worker of old' words.

Once back in the park,  we picked up some vanilla custard while watching the MaxAir ride.  Now, I should have realized that this would be a bad idea...  Grace had already told me there was NO WAY she was going on it.  She'd be happy to watch me, though!

So, MaxAir is basically a carousel of seats at the bottom of a pendulum.  The carousel spins around while the pendulum swings back and forth just a bit past 90 degrees in the air.  By the second time past 90 degrees, I realized I had made a horrrible, horrible mistake.  One that might very well cost me my custard.  Thanks heavens that ride stopped much more quickly than the Skyhawk.  I wiped away my tears before the 14-year old next to me happened to notice.  He was screaming like a girl DURING the ride, but at least he didn't have to wipe away the evidence on his shirt sleeve.

That done, we headed to the Wicked Twister.  It's a U-shaped bit of evil that shoots you out of the launching area at about 840 miles an hour.  And thank God for that too, because I think it was the only thing keeping the crap from staying IN my boxers.  Up one side, and twist.  Oh, goody, BACKWARDS back through the launching area and up the other side.  Oh, and back down and FASTER through the launching area.  Repeat until nauseous.



We should have known that ride was a bad idea when someone nearly got smacked with a cell phone that fell out of someone's pocket on the ride.  I can't even imagine what a goose egg that would have left, falling from 120 feet up.

From there, we headed back to the Magnum, something that just doesn't feel that dangerous after having done the 300ft Millenium.  Still that sucker takes FOR-EVER to get up the hill.  Ugh.  Just knots in the stomach as you click up each of the 200 feet on that first hill.

We did sit and watch the Top Thrill Dragster for a few launches, both of us nodding in agreement that we WERE NOT going on that damned thing.    400 eff-you feet in the air?  No.  120 miles per hour?  Sure, but not when I gotta twist and come back down ANOTHER 400 eff-you feet...



Unless you've already booked a chiropractor visit for the afternoon, skip the Mean Streak.  20 years ago, that was a VERY cool ride.  Now, it's just plain old back pain.  The last half of the ride was completely lost on me because all I could think about was how badly I wanted to kill the idiot at the control panel for even allowing human subjects ON that thing.



We went back toward the front of the park, because I think both of us had had enough for the day.  We hit the Blue Streak on the way out of the park, mostly out of respect for it.  It's been there almost 50 years, and it's still just as much fun as I remember.



Once back at the hotel, we ordered some Dominos Pizza and fell asleep once we were stuffed full of pizza goodness.

It was, despite my protestations above, an exceedingly good time.  But, my age is apparently catching up to me.  Sick on rides?  Need a nap by 2pm?  I think I actually threw out a HIP while walking back to the car.

Despite (or maybe because of) the muggy weather, the rides REALLY felt empty.  Apart from the Millenium (45 minutes) and the Maverick (90 minutes), none of the other rides even had more than a 5 minute line.  We walked right up to Magnum, right up to Gemini, right up to Blue Streak and right up to Mean Streak.  I think we waiting maybe two rides worth at any of the other rides.  I can't think of a time when that's ever happened before.  Even the Millenium and Maverick lines moved right along, neither line time was as long as advertised.  I don't know whether attendance is that far down, or if people have just lost interest in the older rides.  Top Thrill Dragster was only showing 90 minutes line time when we checked that one, but was showing 3 hours when we checked it using an iPhone app on the drive home on Friday.

Yeah, there's an iPhone app to check line times for Cedar Point rides.  How freakin' cool is that?!

Get to the Point!

Off to simmering Ohio for a day at Cedar Point, see everyone later!

Campsite Setup

Two Guys Too Wasted To Set Up Tents - Watch more Funny Videos

Never Knew!

Apparently Netflix offers RSS feeds for various things, including announcements of new DVD and streaming releases.  Coolio!

Officially a Fanboy

I'm a huge fan of Sports Night and West Wing, both written by Aaron Sorkin. I noticed that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was available for streaming on Netflix, so I started watching last night.

It's terrific and I'm hooked! It's too bad it only got 1 season on the air, but short runs seem to be par for Sorkin (Sports Night only made it two seasons).

What Am I Supposed To Eat?!

Between King Corn, Food Inc., and Fast Food Nation, I'm not sure there's ANY worthwhile food available to Americans.  Seriously, those three will absolutely destroy any faith you had in the agricultural system, supermarkets, or fast food.

Freight Rail / High-Speed Passenger Rail Services

Interesting article at The Economist about the structure of freight rail services in the US, along with the impending fights between freight and high-speed passenger rail services.

Let's Get Something Clear

While attempting to find a tee shirt to wear last week, I noticed that every damned shirt in my dresser seemed to make me look less like a well-dressed person and more like a sausage stuffed into a casing.  You know that phrase "looks like two racoons fighting in a sack"?  That was my upper half attempting to put on various tee shirts.

I somehow managed to gather enough energy this afternoon to head to Target for my bi-annual bi-ennial every two years shirt shopping.   I don't enjoy shopping for clothes, mostly because I'm a guy and have no idea what the hell I'm doing.  My shopping consists of finding the general thing I'm looking for (defined as "pants", "shirts" or "underwear"), then buying their entire stock in my size.

There's plenty of time in the coming 24 months to decide whether I'll actually WEAR a shirt that is roughly the same color as a Century 21 jacket.  The important thing right now is to simply put it in the cart and get the hell out of there.

So, I managed to find 37 shirts that had some fabric I don't detest (I'm looking at you polo shirts!) and in the size I figure I must wear.  Yes, that's a lot of shirts.  But when you figure that roughly 25% will never even see the outside of my dresser, it's probably an appropriate number.

You may think I'm joking, but I actually have a pair of pants that took me nearly 3 years to finally wear -- they're not nearly as bad as I pictured them to be when skipping them in the closet every couple of weeks.  They're nice pants, just a bit more busy than I'm typically comfortable with.

As difficult as the shopping experience was, it paled in comparison to the absolute TEDIUM that ensues when preparing to wash these items for the first time (and yes, they must be washed before I'll wear them).  Between the 3 stickers on the front ("New Softer Fabric!") and the two hang tags attached to every shirt, I think the pile of garbage was stacked higher than the clothes!  By the end, I had a mouth full of plastic ends from the hang tags and stickers all the way up my arms.  

Could someone please invent some clothing tags/stickers that simply dissolve in the wash so I don't have to deal with this crap?  Usually I make Lynn do this part -- I firmly believe my job ends at providing payment to the cashier -- so her being gone this weekend really kind of cramped my process.

While de-stickering all of the shirts, I had to chuckle over the sticker on some of them:

If I'm picking up a 2-XL shirt, that's a pretty good indicator that athletics DO NOT take up any of my time.  Let's clarify something here, the most athletic thing I did today was to PICK UP THAT SHIRT!

Let's just label it like it should be... Cheetos Fit, Recliner Fit (with long tail to avoid cold leather on skin!), or maybe Please, Dear God, Let This Fit!

Wouldn't The Snaggletooth Have Been a Dead Giveaway?

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel from Jewel

Mushroom Cloud over Grand Rapids

Spooky!

Really, Apple? Censoring Book Titles?

Guess that'll teach Ms. von Ziegesar about using Latin when naming her book... Apple's iBook store decides it's too dangerous for the masses to read without asterisk-ing out any possible offensive terms...

Just Gotta Know How to Hold It!

Thanks, Steve!