22 March 2009
Road Trip!
22/03/09 18:35
This was an eventful week. It began normally enough. Working on the web site, working out, working on the house. Then on Wednesday evening I drove to Victoria. Starting bright and early Thursday morning, we worked on the networking in the new Parkside Resort. Let me describe the design. Ground floor has 16 foot ceilings so we climb two stories of stairs to get to Mezzanine level. One floor above Mezzanine is 1st floor. Starting 1st through 5th there are 16 units per floor. 6th and 7th each have eight units. In each room I had to locate the wiring cabinet, figure out which Cat5 cable was the one going to the connection room, and put an RJ45 plug on the cable. The other end of all the cables are in the wiring room. The wiring room is however not on the ground floor. It is in the sub-basement of the underground parking ramp. The job consisted of putting the plugs in all the rooms, connecting the other end of all the cables to the patch panel, and then testing the lines. On Thursday I got 1st, 2nd, and most of 3rd done and the guy I was working with, Scott, got all the ends connected in the sub basement. On Friday I did 4th, 6th and 7th while Scott did 5th. Then we broke for lunch. After lunch we tested the lines and I headed back to Nanaimo by about 4:30.
Now, Parkside is a serious construction site. Steel toed boots and hard hats are required at all times. Two things about that. First the hats. Have you ever noticed that hard hats come in different colors? Red, blue, white, yellow, and such. In the changing room we grabbed a couple of white hard hats because that was what was in the drawer. We were very surprised that no matter where we went or what we wanted to do the other workers never questioned us. It turns out that, on this construction site at least the colors mean something. Blue is plumbing, yellow is masonry, and so on. It turned out that white hard hats signify management. I guess everyone thought we knew what we were doing.
The other thing was the boots. I don't own any steel toed boots. For visitors like us the site has some knee length rubber steel toed boots in the changing room and I used a pair of those. I had two pair of thick socks and some gell insoles and they actually weren't too bad, despite the warnings I had received before this trip. Part of that was that we were not going very far. Just walking around the floor, plus some stairs. Thursday night I kept working in the rooms on the upper floor until 6:30, when it was getting too dark to work. This was well after everyone else had left. Even then, my feet didn't feel too bad. I headed downstairs to the changing room and made an alarming discovery. When the site officially closes at 5:00 they lock the changing room. I couldn't get my shoes, so I had to walk back to the Rosewood Inn where I was staying in the big boots. While the boots weren't too bad walking a few paces around the site, by the time I completed the seven blocks back to the Rosewood, my feet were not happy. The next morning my plan was to park close to Parkside. That's was all fine and good but I had to drive barefoot because there was no way I was going to be able to drive the Mini with the big boots on. The very first thing I did when I got back on site Friday was to get my shoes and put them in our wiring room where I knew I could get them at the end of the day.
So after ten hour days on Thursday and Friday I headed home. One thing I can say is that I've gotten really good at putting RJ45 plugs on. The last few dozen had no failures and where the first few took over 10 minutes per room, by the end I was down under 5 including locating the panel, when seemed to be in a bit different location in each room. This weekend I've been recovering around the house. Marsha had a loooong day Saturday. She worked from 9:30 to 5:00 at H&R Block, then from 6:15 to 11:00 at Superstore. a killer schedule, especially as she has another shift Sunday at Superstore, but as she said, she's going to be gone for a week so better to get as much time in as she can right now.
D&M
Pix
On Monday when Marsha was at the beach she noticed that one section was covered with what she thought was yellow sand. There were also hundreds of seagulls both on shore and in the water just offshore. On closer examination the 'sand' turned out to be herring eggs. Apparently a bunch of herring had spawned along that section of the beach and then the tide went out exposing some of the eggs for a seagull feast.
Now, Parkside is a serious construction site. Steel toed boots and hard hats are required at all times. Two things about that. First the hats. Have you ever noticed that hard hats come in different colors? Red, blue, white, yellow, and such. In the changing room we grabbed a couple of white hard hats because that was what was in the drawer. We were very surprised that no matter where we went or what we wanted to do the other workers never questioned us. It turns out that, on this construction site at least the colors mean something. Blue is plumbing, yellow is masonry, and so on. It turned out that white hard hats signify management. I guess everyone thought we knew what we were doing.
The other thing was the boots. I don't own any steel toed boots. For visitors like us the site has some knee length rubber steel toed boots in the changing room and I used a pair of those. I had two pair of thick socks and some gell insoles and they actually weren't too bad, despite the warnings I had received before this trip. Part of that was that we were not going very far. Just walking around the floor, plus some stairs. Thursday night I kept working in the rooms on the upper floor until 6:30, when it was getting too dark to work. This was well after everyone else had left. Even then, my feet didn't feel too bad. I headed downstairs to the changing room and made an alarming discovery. When the site officially closes at 5:00 they lock the changing room. I couldn't get my shoes, so I had to walk back to the Rosewood Inn where I was staying in the big boots. While the boots weren't too bad walking a few paces around the site, by the time I completed the seven blocks back to the Rosewood, my feet were not happy. The next morning my plan was to park close to Parkside. That's was all fine and good but I had to drive barefoot because there was no way I was going to be able to drive the Mini with the big boots on. The very first thing I did when I got back on site Friday was to get my shoes and put them in our wiring room where I knew I could get them at the end of the day.
So after ten hour days on Thursday and Friday I headed home. One thing I can say is that I've gotten really good at putting RJ45 plugs on. The last few dozen had no failures and where the first few took over 10 minutes per room, by the end I was down under 5 including locating the panel, when seemed to be in a bit different location in each room. This weekend I've been recovering around the house. Marsha had a loooong day Saturday. She worked from 9:30 to 5:00 at H&R Block, then from 6:15 to 11:00 at Superstore. a killer schedule, especially as she has another shift Sunday at Superstore, but as she said, she's going to be gone for a week so better to get as much time in as she can right now.
D&M
Pix
On Monday when Marsha was at the beach she noticed that one section was covered with what she thought was yellow sand. There were also hundreds of seagulls both on shore and in the water just offshore. On closer examination the 'sand' turned out to be herring eggs. Apparently a bunch of herring had spawned along that section of the beach and then the tide went out exposing some of the eggs for a seagull feast.