An Einstein Moment and a Busy Day

Albert is given credit for this definition of insanity:

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

This morning I called the cable company for the fifth time in the past two weeks. Thus far, I have talked with Agents Adam, Eileen, Kay, Dee, Charmone and Supervisors Brian, Walter and Mike. This morning, I talked with Supervisor Mike's Supervisor, Eric. When I asked Eric who I would talk with next, assuming results of today's discussion will be similar to my previous results, he said the next level would be an Operations Director. I told Eric I hoped that would not be necessary.

I patiently went over the situation again with Eric, but explained to him that I felt I was reaching my Einstein moment. I also told him that, while shear incompetence is a potential explanation for their inability to execute our simple service request, I was starting to believe there might actually be an elaborate conspiracy afoot to lose our business. I suggested to Eric that it would be far easier to just tell us to "go away". Eric assured me that, despite all indications otherwise, they wanted to retain our business. If so, then I must conclude that we have indeed struck a rich vein (the Mother Load) of incompetence within their organization.

As always, Eric was very pleasant, calm and sympathetic. I give this company credit for training their people on how to remain calm with irate customers. He said he is located in Florida and would personally call me back with a status report before the end of today (4pm CST). In turn, I explained to Eric, as I did to Walter yesterday, that we are getting close to the point at which this issue will become a delay to our project. When that happens, I will cut their cable.

"Our" Mike and Nate are in the back yard this morning and Matt (electrical) is again in the basement. The weather is brisk and I noticed a few snow flurries during my walk this morning with Spenser. Mike and Nate are spending the day building up five layers of 2x4 on top of the hot tub bay window framing, on top of which, the new glass window will be positioned. It looks very stout indeed. Mike pointed out that the end of each member is beveled so as to overlap, providing a solid foundation for the glass roof structure. We found out later that they were going to have to remove two or three of these layers. Apparently Tyler had notified Mike of this back in September, but that information was forgotten. That is another problem with how long this project has stretched out.

I took a few minutes this morning to modify a sectional drawing of the sunroom to reflect the possibility of vaulting all the trusses to conform to the glass roof contour. When I brought this up to T yesterday, she was skeptical. When I suggested it to Tyler yesterday when I talked with him, he was definitely against the idea. Therefore, with this encouragement, I decided to see how the drawings would look if we went forward. The first drawing below is how the glass roof will appear with the current truss design. The second drawing is the view of the glass roof with a vaulted truss design. The exact design of the vaulted trusses is not known at this time.

Current Sunroom Trust Design

A Vaulted Sunroom Truss Design Approach

While I was working on these drawings, T informed me that, upon overnight consideration of my suggestion of making all the sunroom trusses vaulted, she is now of an opinion that this approach has merits and may indeed be the correct answer. I showed her my drawings and she suggested we ask "Our" Mike to stop by and talk us before he leaves for the day. When I later approached Mike, he said that he had given Tyler the new design for the girder truss this morning (presumably, designed by the truss company). While there may not be a wrong answer as to which truss design to use, it was absolutely wrong that the promise to explore this issue was not addressed prior to the trusses being fabricated. If we go the direction of a vaulted truss, and the existing trusses are abandoned, it will represent a significant waste of time and money, and an issue I will bring to Tyler's attention.

Matt ran out of supplies and left shortly after noon. He did get the new 240V recepticle moved to the west wall for the dryer. T is very happy and, therefore, so am I. Matt said he was not certain when he would return.

It was about 1500 hours when the main surprise of the day occurred. A cable company truck drove up and a man came to the door saying he was here to reroute the cable. This evening, it has been done. I will inspect it in the morning before announcing a successful end to this unbelievably stupid drama.

Mike stopped by as requested to talk about the trusses. We reviewed the drawings I put together and debated whether we should vault all, some or none of the sunroom trusses. It became apparent that the main resistance to vaulting all of the trusses stemmed from not wanting to waste the ones that we have already had fabricated. Once we got beyond that concern, it was easy to reach a consensus to replace them all. Yes, we should have had this discussion prior to fabricating the trusses. This was what T and I believe we had all agreed upon four months ago. Yes, it will cost us several thousands more to replace them all. Mike is going to have the truss company work up the designs and get a cost quote, but I have little doubt we will replace them all. This evening, Tyler sent out dimensions of the new vaulted girder truss. I sent him a note telling him that we expected to replace the others with vaulted trusses as well.

While Mike was here, I asked him if he was aware of the interior hearth that we wanted on the fireplace. Based on what I am seeing out there, it was not clear to me that he was. Indeed, he was not and said he would have to modify the framing once he gets the dimensions. A couple of drawings show a hearth and other drawings do not. No where is it specified or detailed. I sent a note to Tyler for details.