BOLVERK – Tim's Dead Blog

This isn’t nearly as glamorous as the flurry of announcements being made about the joining of Chad’s vArmy but is a big one for myself. I’ve just made the move on to a new employer, Data Strategy, as a Sr. VMware Consultant. This is a move I’ve been looking at making though it’s occurring much sooner than anticipated. I see this, consulting for VMware that is, as the next step in advancing my career and enhancing my breadth/depth of knowledge with VMware productions and storage. I will be updating my LinkedIn page in the very near future, if you haven’t connected to me yet please do feel free.

Yeah, it looks like I’ve broken my blog attempting to be able to maintain some old links using .htaccess rules. No I get no stylesheets and no access to older links. Good job Tim…

Completed the 37 miles route of the Minneapolis Bike Tour today. Unfortunately, my iPhone battery died and I wasn’t able to record the route bit it’s been saved at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2165149. I’m not sure of the time, average, speed, etc. I know that this must have been record slow time for this distance due to the quantity and duration of stops. There were several stops, all with water, fruit and other snacks. I ended up loosing about 20+ minutes helping another cyclist fix a flat time.

Slow time aside it was a great ride and an almost perfect route. To insure the day ended well the sponsors had a free beer tent with New Belgian Brewing Co. beer.

Yet another trip on the same old route, trying to master this one and get a time to a reasonable length. North East to St. Paul and back. Also, as usual, ended up at The Corner Bar in Minneapolis for several beers to cool off. Got off to a late start and got to the bar quite a bit later, I even got yelled at by the bartender for being so late. Sheeesh.

Made plans to ride the Night Owl Classic in Minneapolis with a friend.  The wife and a friend of hers decided to ride as well.  They were doing a shorter route than we were.  Made a last minute decision to ride along with them on their route then come back for the start of ours.  We killed about 48 minutes out on the road then lined up for the longer ride.

First Ride:

Second Ride:

First, never take any home improvement tips from me.

Now that this is out of the way let’s talk a little bit about laying tile.  Read, read lots and pay close attention.  It’s really not that hard of a task if you can be patient and devote the time.  Let me a add a few “don’t do what I did” type bits of advice.

1. Never do a wall as your first project
2. If  you must do a wall, pony up a few extra pennies and buy supplies to practice with!
3. Don’t use tile from different manufacturers for a job unless you know that the width and thickness are identical OR if you plan for these differences.
4. Don’t try to do the math, whiteboard the install and go by a technical diagram.  This is not technology, it just doesn’t seem to work that way.
5. Never use a combination of textured tile and sanded grout unless you really know what you’re doing.
6. Protect the floor, tub, liner, whatever there is when you’re working.  Quadruple the importance of this with sanded grout.
7. Don’t get mad and hit the tile, it breaks.
8. Make sure you have plenty of tile!
9. Don’t take a friends left over tile and start using it not knowing it’s $100 a box Italian tile.
10. Always find a friend to assist the first time.

That’s all I got, a long list of what not to do!

Another ride, same route as the last but a bit further this time.  Started out in NE Minneapolis cycling down the Mississippi into downtown St. Paul and back along West River Parkway.  The ride got a bit wonky as we really had very little clue as to exactly where we were most of the time.  There were quite a few stops to find ourselves on the GPS.  As usual, ended up at The Corner Bar for beer and food!

Ride from Friday night as recorded by my iPhone, I forgot to map a small section from the start point. As you’ll see, got the tracking started at the U of M. This is a great route traveling along East and West river road with some small. rolling speed bumps the Minnesotans call hills. Plus, there’s a great selection of bars to celebrate at and regain a few spent calories at the end! Total, per my cyclometer, about 22 miles. Finished with a beer, or two, at Mac’s Industrial!

Check out the map!

I’ve been on vacation for about a week, made a trip to Sundance, WY to see some family.  The trip was alright but I grew bored really quickly.  Now, well, I just don’t know what to do with myself.  Did some work earlier today to help out some co-workers and am going to get a few small house things done today.  Yep, bored here now too.  Maybe I should just go back to work.

Now I needs to figure out how to upgrade, fix my links and redirect issues on this install due to external links.  I know, all external links are WAY old but I don’t want to break them out of respect for the internet denizens.  I love y’all.  Even my contact form does not work, I’ll blame that on my new web host though.  I can fix it!

Off to relearning .htaccess hacking again.  I’ve been away from web content since moving to an infrastructure role I think I’ve forgotten everything I’ve even known…except what an .htaccess file is capable of.

Again, ugh.