What I Forgot

What I forgot
I can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned the air conditioning system at school. How could I have done that, especially since the temperatures have been in the 90Fs/32Cs?

The school is in a two story building and each floor as its own air conditioning unit. That makes some sense to me.

The unit that cools the first floor failed a week or so ago at the start of what looks like regular Summer here in Southern California. Actually, it had a catastrophic metal failure in the blower section. The blower section pushes the chilled air into all of the classrooms and first floor offices; simple enough. The fan assembly had a catastrophic metal failure where the fan, in essence, disintegrated.

The twenty seven year old unit, because of its size, was custom built for the building. That means you can’t just run over the local Air Conditioners R Us and pick up a replacement right off of the shelf. The replacement has to be fabricated.

Fabrication takes time as if you didn’t know that already.

This is a problem for the building owner which is only now gathering bids to fix or replace the unit. Either option is going to be costly; I would choose the replacement option since that will have a longer life. It will also cost more, probably USD$200,000 or more.

I had been told on Wednesday that the replacement or fix was only going to take about another two weeks. That was before I learned that the building owner has taken over the project. I am guessing that the project will last into the Fall. I suppose that, if I looked long and hard enough, I could see the irony in having the system fixed by the Fall just in time for Winter except that the heating part doesn’t want work the way it was designed to work but the cooling works just great.

Oh well, it is not my problem. I can wear wool suits and sweaters to teach in.

Verizon equipment
I use Verizon for my DSL service. They are my local phone company. I won’t say it is composed of a bunch of retired bandits but it sure seems that way. I used to have Verizon set as my long distance carrier on the land line. I make almost all of my long distance calls on cell phones because of unlimited in-network dialing. Verizon was charging me USD$5.00 a month just for not making any calls.

Being charged for not making a call sounds ridiculous.

Moving along.

I purchased a Verizon DSL modem when I got my DSL service. It failed on Tuesday morning. Three plus years is a good life for a modem. I drove over to Best Buy to buy a new modem. I picked up a simple, low-end Verizon modem and then drove home.

I unpacked it from the box and found the software CD had a nasty, star shaped crack in it. That would make it unusable I think. Back to Best Buy and returned with a new modem.

After I had lunch, I figured that I could install it by myself. After all, I was using Windows Vista SP2 with IE 8.0 for a browser and Outlook for email.

Nothing complicated there.

So much for grossly unsubstantiated enthusiasm on my part. It took the Verizon tech support lady 55 minutes to get my laptop and the Verizon modem to play nicely together. That was not what I wanted or expected. I had to plug in the cell phone battery charger so I could continue the phone call.

Guess who won’t be buying another Verizon DSL modem?

Visitors
Vacations are killing the blog traffic count right now. I am assuming that the visitor traffic count is down because of vacations. Last week, we had 145 visitors who viewed 187 pages. That was a nasty drop off but the total for the month will still be strong.

The blog ought to reach its 50,000th visitor sometime in August. That is an accomplishment.

I do appreciate all of you who stop by the blog, when you are not on vacation.

Molly the Stylist
I went to see Molly the Stylist this afternoon, after my morning class on Marketing Research. It was that time of the month for me to get my haircut. This haircut was a little earlier than normal because Molly is getting married next week. I normally get my haircut in the last week of the month.

I had thought about asking if she could change her plans but realized that was out of the question. I can remember how inflexible the Princess was in the weeks before her wedding.

I was early so I had time to sit and think. Everyone in the salon was female so there were very few opportunities for conversations. I would have preferred to have a chat with Natalie the receptionist but she was too busy.

It was then when I realized that it had been thirty five years since anyone had cut my hair perfectly. Thirty five years ago I was in the Marine Corps Reserve. I have to have a Marine Corps hair cut, “a high and tight,” for drill weekends. That was easy for any barber to do.

Nevertheless, Molly was very pleased when I told her that her stylings were the best haircuts that I have had in thirty five years.

Today was the first time that I could recall that Molly was wearing low shoes. High heeled shoes for women do create an illusion of height.

Molly introduced me to a new stylist. Her name is Rachel. Rachel seems like a nice young stylist but I plan to stick with Molly for now. I am too used to the way she styles or cuts my hair. I am certain that Rachel is well qualified but I do not see a reason to make a change now.

As Doug might say, “why mess with success?”


Be well and stay happy.