Day: 15 May 2005

Construction (Still Going On)

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I am off to Kingston for 2 days of construction fun tomorrow. We are moving existing cubes downstairs, and putting in the remaining furniture. When I mean we, I mean the furniture guys are coming and I am going to “supervise”. I am going for 2 days since the furniture people think it will take that long. The cable guys are coming out the day after the furniture guys leave to finish up the cable. Once that is done we can move the remaining reps downstairs and be done with this long delayed project.

Fear not, the next 2 major projects is already underway. Turns out we are big enough and have the right people in place that I can run two major upgrades at the same time. My stress level is up there, but we can do it. I have NYC people (myself included) working on upgrades (now officially moving) of our cage to a new location in our data center. Kingston on the other hand is working on IPCC. I am still involved in that, but Kai will have to handle some of the day to day details since he will manage the product after it is deployed. Along the way the dev team has noted that they will be building an entirely new website environment to accommodate the next generation site they are building. That means in addition to what I just mentioned we need to find space for, design, quote, build and then manage new Dev, QA, & production environments. that means servers, databases, web servers, etc. All this while we maintain our existing equipment. It will be an interesting project.

Swiss Persision, & My New Omega

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My old Timex watch broke on me a few weeks ago. I have always been a cheap digital watch person. I liked the alarm, and the laziness of a digital watch. Not even the metal kind, the ones with the leather or rubber straps. My wrists are too small for a cheap metal watch. They would require cutting out of metal links. The work to do that would cost me more than the watch did, so I stayed with the cheap stuff.

Last year my dad gave me his 1969 vintage Omega Speedmaster Professional. I have worn it on and off since I got it. I have always been fearful I would damage it. My dad keeps saying that the watch has been through allot, and I shouldn’t worry. I have heard stories of it being sterilized. Been in countless peoples chests during surgery, and other interesting tidbits. My response is that most flesh wont scratch a watch, but sheet metal and a rack will destroy anything. I don’t want to destroy a great old vintage watch. That being said I have been afraid of wearing it every day. My family says I should just wear it for special occasions. Good idea, but that brings me back to my broken Timex. I got a replacement one at Walmart a few weeks ago. I hate it. It doesn’t feel right, the synthetic strap itches. I just don’t like it. What to do. The final straw was a conversation I had with Jayson on friday after he showed me the nice swiss army watch Gretchen got for his birthday. I realized my problem was I didn’t want to wear my dad’s old omega, but I wanted one I could beat up. I started smelling a spending spree coming on.

I went online and found several model’s of Omega watches that I liked. I was specifically interested in the X-33. it is the latest update to the Speedmaster Professional watch that is certified by NASA for space travel. If NASA certified something, it must be built to last. What I also liked was that the watch was both analog and digital. My main issues with the old Omega I had was that it was all analog. It takes me a few seconds to read the time since I am still not used to all analog. The digital face of the X-33 was cool. The other issue is the old one I have is heavy. it is of course stainless steel. The new X-33 is all titanium. Nice and light. I went over to Tourneau. They have a huge watch store on Madison Ave. They didn’t have any new X-33’s in stock, but the manager came out when I asked about availability of the watch. He showed me a “pre-owned” one. It had some wear on it. Nothing too noticeable, but he said it was heavily discounted since it was pre owned. When I heard the price I gave him my credit card on the spot. It was like half of what I thought it would cost, and it came with a 1 year store warrentee. I am now a happy wearer of a nice metal (yet digital) watch that I can beat up. I finally figured I would fork over some extra money for something that I keep on my wrist 16 hours a day, every day. I mean I buy a good expensive pair of eye glasses for the same reason (well that and other reasons), so why not get a good watch.

So I put my tax return money to good use. Hopefully I will have this watch around in 35 years like my dad had the one he gave me. that way grand kids can have a 70 year old watch and a 35 year old one! 🙂

Now all I need are nicer shoes, and maybe a few dress shirts and I will be presentable. On a plus note I do have the nice day to day dress paints down!

Most importantly now if NASA call’s and says I can goto the International Space Station, I have one less thing I need to buy!

Dari’s Birthday Bowling Bash

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Went to celebrate Dari’s birthday last night at Bowlmor. It is one of those places right near where I am all day but never went to. It was cool. Yes, bowling that was cool. I guess when you light up the lanes, turn down the overhead lights, play good music, and feed us food and good alcohol anything can be fun!

I bowled horribly. I did a 50 something, and a 60 something in the 2 games I played. Heather, Alyssa, & Miguel didn’t do much better than I did. The other Miguel, and a few people I cannot remember did way better! Bowling always hurts my wrists, so I got out of the games early. Thankfully we weren’t playing teams or my team would have been killed. Not only because of me, thankfully!

It was fun. I didn’t eat since the afternoon and one drink got me really buzzed. At least I got happy on 1 drinks since the mixed drinks were like $9 a drink. I owe Cari a round since she cut out early. Some lame excuse about parents visiting. Come on Cari, come up with something better than that:)

For her birthday desert we had fondu. I am not normally a fan of the non-hygenic deserts (Dam double dipping people) such as fondu, but it was good.

Even though it was really late, the subway even agreed with me and only took 10 minutes to show up!