Pictures of my wine

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.

This Randy-in-an-airport photo brought to you by the limited dining options at Terminal A at George Bush International Spaceport but the decent if slightly sweet margaritas served at El Tiempo.

I've been busy with work... Did a lot of driving and on-site / client facing dtuff the last few days so just haven't had a lot of personsl time / cell phone time to post here.

I managed to get home in time to shop for dinner and grill Halibut last night, and steak tonight. I'm headed to my mom's tomorrow.

Going to see my mom this weekend and my oldest will drive in to hang with me for a few days in Lafayette. Flights were cheap enough that I won't be in a car 8+ hours... I'm happy about that--as long as I don't end up in one of those summer-weather-all-day-flight-delays. I chose the stupidest, most delayed time of day to fly so you know... tempting fate here (friday at 2pm).

My mom's alzheimers is really progressing. There won't be a lot of visit in this visit, but I have learned how to fill the time and to fill her eyes and ears. You're not trying to have a conversation with her where you need her to respond in some kind of deep, meaningful way--you're trying to tell her stories, to keep the subject changing, to keep her engaged, looking at you and listening to you.

She won't care what I talk about, just that I'm talking. I won't correct anything she says that's nonsensical. You roll with it... you talk to her. You hug her. You smile and laugh and roll with whatever emotions come out on her side. It's getting really rough.

She's having a hard time eating now... she'll put her fork in her tea... she won't be sure where the food goes. We are in the end game now... but sadly, the human body is pretty resilient and you can live a long time on autopilot. This is the hard time... we're losing her, but she's still here.

Randy, of course never wants to be late so I’ve been in the parking lot since 1030am 🙄

These things happen.

I have a meeting with my Korea team tonight at 7pm I wanted to be home prepping for. I’ll have an hour less to do it.

I didn’t bring my laptop because this was really intended to be a social call / informal meeting. But I could have used these 90 minutes better.

Woke up at 5am today to drive to Frisco, TX (north Dallas suburb), about 3.5 hours from my house to have lunch with a customer in the area. Lunch. We needed FaceTime with these guys and this is what we could get so… here I am. I hope this matters in the long-term health of the account. I’ll try my best.

Ignore my morning hair / hat head chic and the chaos in the kitchen. I want to tell you that I conquered my Everest today. The brisket was immaculate, flavorful, incredibly tender, Smokey, well-seasoned, and delicious. The marg was oranges and limes, citronge and tequila.

My dinner guests bailed on me today so I’m looking for a home for 7 remaining pounds of brisket. We’ll eat on it for a few days… I’ll give some to David’s mother, and maybe to my no-show guests so they can have it for dinner tomorrow.

Anyway this was good. Some notes:

I cooked an 8 pound trimmed up brisket flat, not a whole packer

I made an aluminum foil tub and cheated to keep it from drying out, which flats have a tendency to do.

I did pour off the liquid around 165-170 degrees so that I had smoked brisket and not braised brisket

My oven doesn’t go down to 150–it only goes to 175 so I held it at 175 after cooking for a couple hours and then wrapped it in an ice chest to let it finish resting a few more hours. The brisket was plenty warm when I sliced it / made sandwiches.

Mine was simple—sliced brisket, Franklin’s spicy bbq sauce (they do not know the definition of the term “spicy” but it’s a decent counterpoint to the rub I used. And pickles. Crunchy, acidic counterpoint to the Smokey meat, salty bark and sweet sauce.

Speaking of the rub, after my previous post about rubbing my meat right before I cook it—I did say I do day ahead if I’m able and in today’s case I rubbed it and wrapped it a day ahead.