My Journal

Day 6
AM:
45 min elliptical machine

Day 7
AM:
2 hour hike in Rock Creek park

Many things all had to happen, just as they happened in order for us to have arrived at the point we did in the park. We set our alarms to get up so we could be leaving the house by 7am. The heat was going to be near 100 degrees so getting out early was important. We ofcourse left a little late before making it to Rock Creek Park. We took a trail up to the visitors center but were there at 8:17 AM and they did not open until 9am. We went on with our hike and found trees can sometimes double as private bathroom stalls, Lol. We made it down the trail and were working our way back to the truck and took the gravel trail on one side of the creek instead of the paved side. As we made it to a bridge to cross the creek we did. We did not have to, but I wanted to. So we did. Once across we took a few steps on the road and looked ahead of us and saw a bicyclist take a terrible spill. Her front tire hit a pothole and spun the handlebars sideways and she went down head first, and was not moving! We rushed over there and my Nurse/wife went to work. The lady’s husband and I worked on getting her untangled from the bike, she had on the specialty bike shoes that lock into the pedals. My wife monitored her and called 911 and spoke with an operator relaying information. 2 different people went on to the police/ranger station 1 mile away. The lady was making weird breathing noises and was not conscious. eventually she came to, but was disorientated and did not know where she was, or what happened. She knew she was in bad paid and was bleeding. She knew she had a headache but asked repeatedly where she was even after being told multiple times. It took EMS over 13 minutes to get to her. While there I gave the husband our cell numbers and home address and offered to take their bikes home with us since he was going in the ambulance and they only had one bike lock. We received updates throughout the day and originally the Docs thought she had a separated shoulder, but it turns out she did not. This evening her husband stopped by and picked up the bikes and gave us a thank you card with a $25 dollar Amazon gift card. Very cool but not needed. So today we had an adventure. This is the 3rd time my wife rendered aid until EMS arrived.

Here are some pix we took prior to the bike crash, the wasps were the most insane things ever, it looked like they were scorpion tails on them!

AM:
squats
bar-5,8
95-5
135-3,3
95-6

lats
100-15
120-12
140-10
160-4
120-10

hack squats
90-12
180-12
270-10
360-10,10
270-10

Overhead press
95-5,5,5
105-5

Deadlifts
135-10
185-5

Lat raises
95-12,10
115-8

squats-10,10,10

PM:
40 min elliptical machine

I was busy at work again! That is good thing because the time flies by. Monday is set to be interesting, there are some projects that need to be done but the Dream team of engineers could not get their stuff together for about a month so now there is a delay.

AM:
31 min of 1/10 mile intervals walking/jogging
10 min bike

PM:
46 min neighborhood walk with my wife, 2.11 miles

We were busy today at work and the time flew by. We were tasked with some trouble shooting of a non-organizational network on site. We found nothing wrong, but it was working when we left.

AM:
leg press
180-15
270-15
360-15
450-15
540-15
630-10
720-10
810-5
720-10
630-10
540-10,10

Dumbbell bench press
55-10
65-10
75-10
85-4,7 (not sure what happened with the 4 reps, but I did fine second time)
95-4
100-3 PERSONAL RECORD AND WHAT I WAS WORKING TOWARDS! WOOHOO!
90-5
85-6
75-10

incline bench press
135-9,9,7

workout time was 64 minutes

PM:
30 min walking in place while watching a tv show.

Work was OK, i did not need to deal with any of the knuckleheads so all was good. I got a haircut after work and was too tired to go to the gym afterwards, thus the walking in place watching TV at home. Looks like I should be in bed before 7pm tonight. I am beat!

AM:
30 min 1/10 mile intervals of walking and jogging
10 min walking on treadmill

I worked off site today. Unfortunately it was a request filled out by one of the contractor screw-ups. I identified the problem at 7:35 AM, asked a relevant question and made a suggestion for if the answer to my question was no. I did not hear back from them until after 1:45 PM. I am not talking about a life changing question and seeking a decision. A port I needed to connect to was already in use with link light. Do you want me to tie off the new patch cord to the existing port for you to later cut-over to the new system, or should I move the connection to the next available port? This is Rookie level stuff. The project manager overseeing the project could not figure out what the right thing to do was. He passes it over to the engineer that is responsible for half the request, but not the half that deals with this connection!!!! so he does not know what to do. I made a decision, I moved the port to the next available. Driving home from site I get a message from my coworker. Once I exited the highway I parked on aside street and called him. They finally figured out what to do, 6 hours later! After I left site!!!! They decided I should move the port to the next available. I already did that, Duh these guys are killing me. Coworker tells me they came knocking on our office door at 1:45 PM to discuss it with me. SO they ignored my 7:35 AM email asking the question and the followup my coworker did at 11:00 AM. So they tell him “Oh it no big deal, we will just change the request and resend it” So my coworker explains it to them I WAS on site doing the work and needed the answer hours ago when I asked it.

So it might sound like I am hard on these guys. I am not. We had a big meeting on Thursday because of these screw-ups not getting the correct information to us so we can process the work. The GOV guys were involved and pissed with them. The form we need is a simple spreadsheet that lists the site location, the rack, the equipment type, equipment ID, Slot and port information as well as the Rack unit the equipment is mounted in. We then need to have the same information for the equipment it is attaching to and the final thing we need to know is if we are using fiber or copper connections. Simple sh!t. As the engineer managing equipment you should know the info for the equipment you manage and you should know whose equipment you are connecting to so that person should have the information that relates. So during the meeting a plan was put in place. The engineers would go to site and see if there is any connections abandoned or no longer needed and give us a demo request to pull out the old stuff. They then were supposed to verify the ports they requested. That was supposed to happen on Friday. Monday comes and goes and no other information is provided. I go to site as discussed to do the work and guess what? there was demo work that needs to be done. They did not verify ports. I do not know what they did if anything. They are inconsiderate since they don’t care to get me the information they should have provided correctly the first time, and did not do it in a timely manor. Topping it off was their thought that I could just drive 2 plus hours their and back to perform the 5 minutes of work to make the correction once they send in the updated request was absurd!

OK, rant over. This is why I bitch about the guys at work sometimes.

AM:
Dumbbell routine with 35 LB dumbbells. This is up from the 30 lbs.
Pushups 10,9,8,7,6,5
OHP 10,9,8,7,6,5
squats 10,9,8,7,6,5
Deadlifts 10,9,8,7,6,5
curls 10,9,8,7,6,5
situps 10,9,8,7,6,5

45 reps total

PM:
40 min elliptical machine

We were finally able to do some work today. We did 90 % complete on the first project and I will be going to our OFFSITE to see if I can do the work or if we need new infrastructure. I am packed and ready to patch the equipment if I have the ports, but I will not know if it will be a long day or short day until I am out there.

AM:
3.25 hour hike at River Bend Park.

We had fun, we say a snake, lizards, birds, fish, flowers, fungi, and plenty of water views. Today was great.

you might need to turn up your volume, but here is a video of the frogs croaking.

AM:
47 min elliptical machine

PM:
5 rounds of 10 reps pushups and body weight squats

PM BONUS:
we took a neighborhood walk after dinner. we did 1.65 miles in 49 minutes. We putzed around at the garden for a little while so the it was not all walking.

I made a cool dinner tonight. I cut an onion part way so I could peal off an entire layer in one whole piece with a single sliced open section. I took ground beef and mixed in some cooked spinach, Worcester sauce, ketchup, 1 egg, bread crumbs, and some EVOO and stuffed the onion sections. I made 4 stuffed onions and with the extra meat mix I stuffed 1 pepper. It came out great!

AM:
squats
bar-6,10
95-5,6
135-3

Assisted pullups
120-6,6

Lats
160-5
140-8
120-12

Hack squats
90-12
180-12
270-12
360-10,10
270-10,10

Overhead press
95-6,6,6,6

Smith machine lat raises
95-10,10,10
115-8

tri’s
50-15
100-5
70-10

Body squats
10,10,10

Today at work it was crazy. We did a lot of demoing of old and abandoned cables under the raised floors. My body got so sore from all the up and down off the solid tiled floors combined with the stretching and reaching under the floor to cut and pull out the old stuff I am aching! I did not work out this afternoon because once I got home I needed to rest on the couch. The got their money’s worth out of me today!

AM:
EZ-bar curls
60-10,10,10,10

40 min on treadmill 2.5 miles I did intervals of 1/10 mile distances of jogging and walking for the first 30 minutes

PM:
40 min elliptical machine

WORK! Let me tell you about the dream team today. We had a meeting with 7 or 8 guys plus one that conference called in. Basically the team of Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Abbot and Costello were told by the Government representative they need to fill out the request form properly, and submit it TODAY! So the Dream Team decided they will have the guy who is most familiar with it to fill out the form. News Flash! He is the same person that the last 8 times (I kid you not, 8 times) did not fill it out right. Yep these guys are due for promotions with demonstrating the keen leadership they possess.