Garden Update

I talked about my garden at the apartment previously, and it has grown literally and figuratively. I've got the table I constructed that has the main garden, a half barrel on the patio, flower wall box and a hanging basket. in addition to all of that, I have installed a rain barrel with irrigation system that goes to all growing areas.

On the garden table, I have grown green and yellow Zucchini plants, pansies, marigolds, a jalapeno pepper plant, and two bush green bean plants. In the half barrel I have a tomato plant with some marigolds. In the wall box I have petunias and marigolds, and in the hanging basket right now is some more petunias of a different type.

I've gotten varied reactions to the garden from the management and neighbors. Management has believe it or not been good with it. I also offered the ladies in the front office some tomatoes once they are in. The neighbors have varied from indifference to all out support. I again offered to share some of the produce with them, since I will probably have more than I can eat. It's been a good ice breaker with some of the neighbors as well, leading to some conversations with people I haven't talked to in a year of living here.So overall it's been positive on that front.

The irrigation system is my crowning achievement. The rain barrel fills from just an evening of rain. It's then connected to a pond pump through various fittings not particularly designed for that job, and then feeds up into 1/2" tubing to be distributed to the garden table and to the other side of the patio. It then gets further distributed to 1/4" tubing to little drip fittings. It only takes 5 minutes to give the entire place a nice gentle soaking, which is handled by a timer plugged in at the patio. Each morning it distributes the water and everything keeps growing.

I had two main objectives with this. The first was to keep me from having to use a bunch of little watering can trips to water the garden. I don't have an outside hose connection I can tap. Secondly I wanted to make sure the garden would be self sufficient to survive while I was at Infocomm in a couple weeks. I'll be gone for 8 days, and that would be enough time to have things die.

So that's where the garden stands at this point. I'll post more pics and another update in a few weeks when some of these budding plants start producing veggies.

New Job Transition

I started a new job two weeks ago, and it's been very interesting. I can't really say where I work, just that it's contracting for the federal government. I've been working for one integrator or another for basically my entire career, so switching to the end user side of the house is an adjustment to say the least.

I've gone from constantly cranking out new jobs, barely able to keep up with the details of each one, to now working for a single customer with over a hundred rooms that need to be supported and maintained. Also part of the job description is to come up with the new version of these rooms, and to implement that vision.

I've had all the usual new job experiences, meeting new people and as seems to always happens in the AV industry reconnecting with people I've worked with previously. We like to think that AV is big, but it's a very small community when you get down to it. A fairly specialized set of skills is required, so everyone eventually runs into everyone else.

Something that has been interesting is the different level of focus I'm able to bring to what I'm working on. At the moment (knock on wood) things are running pretty smoothly so there aren't a ton of trouble calls. That gives a good bit of time to devote to really planning out the refresh for the rooms, and to work on longer term projects that will make the entire complex function much more smoothly.

All in all, it's really nice to get my hands back on equipment. For a few years I've been basically stuck behind a keyboard doing CAD drawings, and getting further and further out of touch with the current gear. When techs would call from the field and ask questions about a specific piece of gear, I'd have to go look at the manual because I'd never touched it. I was starting to feel barely ahead of the techs in the field. My current position gets me out from behind the desk sometimes and behind a rack. It's very welcome, and makes me feel like I'm actually getting back to the things I am really good at, figuring out how things need to work, and why they may not be working right that moment. All in all, I'm happier with my work and it's a good secure gig where I can ride out the storms I see coming in AV.