Fall in California

For those of you that don't think we have seasons in California I just thought I would post a few pictures to show that we do have leaves that change colors here in California.

Thanksgiving Week

My parents came to visit me for Thanksgiving.  We spent most of the time shopping at several stores and went out for our Thanksgiving dinner at Sheepherders Inn.  They had a great Thanksgiving meal and it was great to enjoy a good meal without all the hassle of cooking it.  Down side to going out is that you don't have any leftovers for later.


My mother is in charge the the family history center in Kanab an decorates for Christmas every year.  Last year when I went out to visit them at the end of October I spent the week I was there doing crafts for the family history center and the ornaments my mother hands out to the people who work at the center.  Last year we made pot people and a little pot village, as well as reindeer ornaments.  This year we went with a snowman theme and here are some pictures of the snowmen we made.

Team Building Event at Work

Okay, so at my work they have these things they call team building events.  More so with the home office than with my office and my department but this time we actually got to participate.  Usually as in years past the departments would have a team building even like go see a baseball game together.  Which I never understood how that builds the team but I guess it's just getting together outside of work and establishing a stronger bond with each other.  My department has said we are going to do a team building event in the past but it never happens.  Usually because we can't decide on what we want to do as a group.  This year my whole department got to participate.  Usually because we are a 24/7 shop the off shift workers don't usually get to join in because they are working or have sleeping from working all night, or even have to work that night and need to sleep.  However this year because the VP wanted everyone to participate they called on some people from the home office to cover our department and systems so we could go. They decided to have a luncheon on the Delta King (that's a paddle wheel boat in the Sacramento river that doesn't move) and then a scavenger hunt in old town Sacramento.

The lunch was good I had a really good piece of beef, with steamed veggies.  After lunch we were to divide into teams for the scavenger hunt.  They wanted to mix up everyone so that you were on a team with people you don't usually have much contact with.  So we did the school yard number off system... 1, 2, 3, 4 etc to establish who was on what team.  As fate would have it my team was made up of the VP (Joe), the Manager of operations (Matt), a senior Administrator for our systems/network (Mitch), and two system Administrators (myself and a coworker in my department named Scott).  Now as you know those in upper management spend a lot more time in meetings and not so much time actually doing things.  Well that was the group I was in a more lets get together and discuss the matter and figure out how to go about doing it.  The problem was the team to finish the scavenger hunt fist got a prize (extra drink tickets not something I cared about) and as everyone knows that  is a major motivator for most drinkers.  Oh funny side note regarding that is there are 2 Mormons that work in our building and we both ended up on the same team.

So we got are instructions headed out of the boat to find the clues for the hunt.  Scott my coworker says I'll get the 5th one and meet you back here and takes off running.  Well the rest of our team is still coming out of the boat and when they get up to me we start walking into town.  I am afraid we will lose Scott and wish I had his cell number so I can call him to let him know where we went.  I watch other groups take off running and split up to get the clues as well and my group just starts walking.  So as we are walking down the street I am watching for Scott so we don't lose him but the leader of our group ( I use that term loosely because he was just the one walking in the front) wasn't really walking toward anywhere specific.  I was trying to walk, read the clues and keep an eye out for Scott all that the same time.  When I saw Scott he couldn't find us so I whistled for him and all the guys in my group said "Did you do that?" and I said yes because I needed to get Scott's attention which I did.  Scott caught up to us and we proceeded down the street to head for another clue location.  When we got to the next street we discovered we had gone the wrong way but there was a clue at that corner too so we got that one.  Mitch and Scott both said they would run and get the two of the others and send us in the other direction to get the 3 clues that were together 2 blocks away.  Well the remaining mangers i.e. Joe and Matt just stood there talking and I said we need to get moving and I took off down the street.  Had I waited for one of them to decide to move we would have stood there a lot longer.  So I lead the way with Joe and Matt walking behind me talking.  I found the next 2 answers and we met up with Scott at the 3rd one.  The store was closed for the next 30 minutes and we didn't know how we were going to get the last clue answered.  We looked through the windows trying to figure out what item the clue was asking for, well Scott not being a person who can sit still long went into the Railroad museum and asked a guy inside there if he knew the answer.  Since the questions are put out by the merchants of old town he did know and told Scott where to look.  Once we had all the answers I thought we were suppose to return to the Delta King and meet up in the bar area as we were instructed but the document we were working off of said to go to one of the stores called Trailmix.net so that is where the group headed.  It was in fact where we were suppose to go.  We handed in our list and found we had one wrong.  We rechecked that one by Scott running back over to the Delta King to count the flag poles and returned with the right answer.  We asked if we were the first and she said yes.  Our group was excited to be first, and after she rechecked our answers we had them all right.  We wondered around the store for a while waiting for another group to show up but none did.  I couldn't figure out why it was taking them so long to finish so we headed over to the Delta King to wait.  We found everyone was over there and about 20 minutes later Denise (The VP's wife and judge of the game) come over.  Everyone at the boat said they thought we were suppose to just return to the boat and meet at the bar after all the answers were gathered. (as did I) Since the instructions were unclear Denise gave the first prize to another team for being first.  (they didn't run around they just pulled out their Iphones and googled the questions)  There were only 2 teams that had all the questions right. (which I told Patrick they had the flag pole question wrong but didn't explain why I knew but he didn't change it) so we also got prizes for having all the correct answers.  All in all it was a fun day and the food was really good.  It cost me $10 to park even with the validation card of $5 off.  I hung out with Cindy, and Scott for a while after everyone else left.  Scott had another drink ticket, Cindy didn't want to leave him at the bar alone so we sat around and talked.  We used to be on the same shift together and get along pretty well so it was fun just sitting there talking.
For my first team building experience it was good but I didn't think it built much team bonding if you ask me.  I would have to say that we all pretty much stuck with who we already knew and didn't really build many bonds with anyone new.

Do you want Egg on that?

There is a local bagel shop I like to go to and get what they call a eggwich and every time I place my order for an eggwich with ham and cheese they always ask me EGG, ham and cheese?  I always say yes, but I wonder has anyone ever ordered an eggwich and requested not to have the egg on it?  Wouldn't that just be a bagel with ham and cheese? and why would you order an eggwich if you don't want the egg?  Them asking me about the egg on the bagel is like asking when you ordered a hamburger if you wanted the hamburger meat on the burger.  Does anyone else find this question to be strange or is it just me?

Disaster in Rancho Cordova Data Center....

Once a year my work has what they call Disaster recovery week to test our backup plan in case there is a disaster at our location.  What happens is they take the backup tapes to our backup location and load the information on our backup machines and then run production on those systems to see if we could switch over with as little break in service as possible.  All sounds like a good idea and every company should have a disaster recovery plan.  The reason I am writing this entry is because my company actually plays out the fake disaster with a long detail explanation of what happened that caused the problem.
For example this year the disaster was that an airplane engine fell out of the sky and came through our roof taking out our communications and some of our server cabinets in a particular part of our Data Center.  I was listening in to the conference call where they are asking about the condition of the building, if anyone was injured as well as if the fire department was on site.  To which the participant answer as if this is really going on.  So although there is nothing wrong I hear one guy say yes the fire department was here and there was a fire in our data center from the debris of the engine.  I had to keep from laughing as I listened to the call because it was all just make believe.  I can understand why they have to act like this is real but to hear adults who for a live do not pretend things are happening which are not talk like they are was funny to me.  Perhaps next year I will be part of the DR testing and have to pretend some horrific accident has taken place and I am now responsible for getting the business running from our backup location.  Oh the fun we have at work.

Warning.... Warning... Intruder alert!

OK, so why do things like this always happen when I am at work and never when my coworker who works grave shift.  Sunday night when I was covering the grave shift for my coworker the alarm system we have in the building started going off. Luckily I was not alone at the time and the guy that works swing shift was still at work.  He tried to silence the alarm as the display said something about an up link failure.  No worries if the up link has an issue as it will try again and eventually get connected.  Anyway I went over and keyed in the code since I had it memorized (I enter it every night when I set the alarm) which silenced the noise.  After getting the noise to stop the display said something about running a test so I said yes.  Well the monitoring company called us to say they showed an alarm on one of our doors.  The door was labeled File Library door, which no one knew what door that was.  The only library door we knew of was our tape library and that door doesn't have any sensors for the alarm.
Scott my coworker decided to go out and investigate the building to see what he could find so he gave me his fob (which is our keys to get in the doors) and decided to go all Jason Bourne and grabbed a pen and pencil for weapons.  I was on the phone with our monitoring company waiting for them to see if they had a schismatic of the office to tell us which door was causing the alarm.  As Scott left the data center I asked him if he wanted my pocket knife and at first he said no until I took it out and show it to him.  He then came back in and gave me the pencil and took the knife.  Long story short he checked to building finding nothing wrong and came back to the data center.  The monitoring company couldn't tell us what door it was and after discussing it between Scott and myself we decided it must be an internal door and had the monitoring company disable it until morning when they could have someone come out to look at our system.  Scott talked about us getting some wasp spray as a no lethal defense weapon because it can shoot up to 20 feet and will cause the person getting shot trouble enough for the shooter to get away. 
All was quiet the rest of the night which I was glad about because after 3am I am in the building alone.  Turns out that the door happens to be the one to the break room that is always propped open and that is why it was alarming.  They disabled that door from the alarm system and so we shouldn't have anymore alarms for that door anyway.

WICKED in San Francisco!!!!

I was down talking with my friend Mark and his husband Wil a few months ago and we got on the subject of Wicked.  I told them I wanted to see it and Mark said they had seen it 3 times already and would love to go again.  Since it was playing in San Francisco he got online to see if he could get tickets for us to go and see it together.  He looked for tickets on a Tuesday since that was my day off and he was able to get us some great seats a little more than half way back in the orchestra seating area.  I took my binoculars just in case since I didn't know where we would be and if we would need them. We were in the middle of the theater!

 Our seats are the ones in blue in the center of this picture.  I know it's hard to see but I think you get the point that we had good seats.

We got seated and were just visiting until the play was to start.  I noticed the couple that came to sit in the row in front of us but didn't really pay much attention to them until the lights dimmed and the play was beginning.  That's when I realized all I could see was the back of the head of the man sitting in in front of me.  So for the first part of the play I spent my time moving back and forth trying to see around the giant head.
I felt bad for the person behind me because I was probably blocking them every time I moved my head. After intermission I decide I would lean forward and kind of to the side so I didn't have to keep moving.  I was basically looking over his left shoulder until he decided to lean to the left.  This was the first time all night he decided to do that and I think he knew I was leaning to see around him and he didn't like me breathing down his neck.  I almost wanted to flick him in the head and say "Look man either sit up and block my view straight up or lean to the left, make a choice because you're killing my view."  But I resisted and just moved back until he finally moved again and I was again looking at the back of his head.  Back to the lean to the left I went and he luckily didn't lean that way again.  However it was tough on my back to be leaning over and forward for so long but I enjoyed the show none the less.  If you get the change to see this play I would suggest you take the opportunity, I would so go see it again.

4Th of July in Kanab Ut.

I went down to Kanab Ut. for the 4th of July holiday this year.  Since the fire alarm went off before I left for my trip I would say my 4th of July excitement started early.  The first of the festivities for the holiday is the parade.  Here are a few pictures from the parade.

Hunter and his Dad enjoying the parade

This is a picture of Violet Honey who is 105 years old and is in the parade every year.

This is the clean up crew after the horses, otherwise known as the pooper scoopers.

This picture is a bit of a slam on the BLM as they grab up all the land and leave nothing for recreation.

If you look close at this picture you can see that Latex Larry is driving. (Latex Larry is the dummy that sits in the car on the side of the road and makes people slow down because they see someone in a cop car but it's really just a dummy)  When this car drove past the announcer he said it's hard to tell who is the dummy.

Spiderman was also in the parade.

The parade wouldn't be complete without the fire trucks spraying the spectators.

Some kids thought they would fight back with a garden hose but lost that battle very quickly.

Here is a picture of Hunter collecting candy.

A picture of the boys at the parade

Grandma Su and Hunter.

Latter that night was the fireworks show.

We had a lot of fun with the glow stick hats, balls and etc that make for a great evening for the kids.

It was a great time had by all.