Pictures of my wine

Americrocs

If I don’t post a “Randy in an airport” photo, did the flight really happen?

I don’t love working a fairly full workday then donating 8 more hours to travel, getting into the hotel at midnight and needing to hit the ground running the next day, but it’s a way of life. I rarely travel during work hours unless it’s around some kind of same day travel requirement.

Xfinity internet service for the four houses around me served by the utility box in my back yard

My clothes dryer

My downstairs air conditioner

The plug behind the TV is working. I'm beginning to wonder if we were struck by lightning on that side of the house because literally everything on that side is D-E-A-D!! Like superdead. And other than the downstairs AC which isn't working, everything else in the house seems ok after resetting breakers etc. The M4 mac mini has lights on it now, so it's probably working so we can take that off the list.

Anyway, that's life. Replacement cost of the dead items: $3727. Hopefully some (any?) of it is covered by warranty as they all died within a year of purchase, but I suspect "power surges" are excluded from such replacements. And no, I don't buy service plans on this stuff because they're pure profit for the vendor and have never paid me off one time in 30 years (where I did buy them... like a lot... I hate money).

Compounding my issues is the fact that I'm headed to the airport today and David is at work fulltime so there are only a few days David has off where he could let a technician into the house to fix the A/C and one GFCI outlet that doesn't seem to work.

All the GFCI outlets I checked were tripped and had to be reset. There's one I still haven't checked, and that's the one outdoors behind the dead TV. I'm not the guy who gets lucky in this regard, but wouldn't it be nice if that outdoor plug and the plug directly behind it in the wall with the dead TV and subwoofer attached were on the same circuit?

I went outsite to check the breaker panel hoping some things weren't turning on because of tripped breakers.

Indeed I found 7 breakers tripped. I've literally never seen this (so many at once) happen before in my life, but then this is what they're there for

The M4 mac mini appears ok. Everything else is still dead. WOmp womp.

I've heard stories of lightning strikes / whole home power surges in storms... but never got hit with the big one until today. We had a whole-home power surge that blew electronics plugged into every wall in the house, upstairs and downstairs. So far the following electronics are not responding to their power buttons:

M4 Mac Mini

77" LG C6 OLED TV

Yamaha RX-A2A 7.2 receiver / amp

David's XBox One X

The 8 port 10Gbit switch I just bought

I haven't checked the whole house yet... I expect to find more dead electronics.

When it dries up, I'll check outside breakers, but... the fact that a different XBox plugged into the same plug as David's power's up... well... you have your answers.

Hilarious thing: Half of it was plugged into proper surge suppressors (not just multi-plug power strips).

I have to be in Detroit weds-Friday and Costa Mesa CA Mon - weds of the following week.

I could come home between trips, “but what if I didn’t?”, I thought to myself.

I had options of hanging on the beach in Costa Mesa (always nice) or going to vegas because it was 113 today there.

I chose vegas for the weekend because 🤷‍♂️ food or whatever. Again I will remind you: 🤷‍♂️

I am working on some slides I'm going to deliver on Weds. afternoon and the people coordinating the events where I'm delivering the material are really involved in my deck creation... and so I wanted to knock the draft out early, and then I realized, "What the fuck are you doing? You're the senior exec on the team responsible for this. This is your content. You're doing them a favor. Don't kill yourself. They'll just have to trust that you're going to do the A+ job you've always done. LIke go back to sleep you idiot!"

I got to visit with my step mother / dad’s widow and my stepsister for breakfast this morning. I see her about every other trip, but hadn’t seen my stepsis in a year or two except in our phones. Was a nice visit, and nice that my oldest was along for the trip.

Then we went and visited my mom, and now I’m at the airport. This airport was too small to have a restaurant or bar for the first all-my-years-alive but they opened the new terminal about 4 years ago and it has a great little central bar on the correct side of security… so you know… margaritaville.

I went to bed last night at like... 830pm. The boy and I were both tired... I had been waking up on average of around 430 am for 4 days straight as I supported some international account teams and did all that in-Texas driving for on-site stuff.

Slept until 6am, aka the time my body naturally wakes up anywhere on earth.

I would love to tell you she was all smiles, but selfies aren’t her strong suit anymore. And while this photo is unflattering, it’s reality much of the time. We did make her smile a few times. It’s nice to see those moments of happiness wander into frame from time to time. We will see her all three days… she’s likely to tell me tomorrow and Sunday she hasn’t seen me in months, and that’s a-ok. Each time I’ll tell her that I’m here now and I’ll try to come more often.

The boy and I had a good dinner of fried Louisiana shrimp, crab, and crawfish, charbroiled oysters, and seafood gumbo. And not one food pic.