Full Work Week

Monday, the start of the first full work week for Cicely and I in nearly a month, yikes! It's gonna play out one of two ways - drag on forever and feel like 2 weeks or zoom past because we are so busy with everyone returning from their holiday, diving back into work. Either way it's crappy that the holiday time-off has come to an end, but nice to get back into the groove.

SpeakerCraft Install

Yesterday afternoon Cicely and I completed the install of our new SpeakerCraft sound base that I bought on Saturday at Best Buy. It took us nearly 5 hours before we were able to bring it to life. Reason being, once we started moving things, cleaning up dust bunnies and trying to figure out what cable went to which device - we figured it was the prime time to re-route all of the cabling in the entire entertainment center, tie it up nice and neat as well as label it for easy identification should we need to add or remove a component in the future. This timeline also included us running to Best Buy to pick up a few cables that would reach to the components new location.

All said and done we brought it to life around 8:00 last night and it sounds friggin' amazing! Even Cicely was blown away when she heard it. After all of our hard work setting everything up it was the perfect reward, both that everything worked and that I now knew she was going to enjoy it as much as I would. Cicely is not usually excited about stuff like this, she can take it or leave it so long as she can hear her programs.

After seeing how excited she was, I am officially chalking my research and ultimately my purchase up as an indication that I made an excellent choice. She watched one of her favorite movies, The Fifth Element, right away and was shaking the room! Now we just have to get the fuzzy kid use to the monster sounds that come from the sound base. He will, it's just new to him right now.

The Bluetooth syncing to my iPhone 5 was flawless to set-up as expected. Pandora streaming to the sound base sounded awesome and filled the house with music. I was a little worried that it might not work as well as it is because of the location of the sound base. I am happy to say that I was wrong, and basically as long as you have line of sight to the device it streams perfectly.

If I had to pick one downside, a minor one, it would be that we need to have a separate remote to control any functionality of the sound base. I plan to look around online and see if there are any decent solutions. We have become so accustomed to only using our TiVo remote and occasionally the Apple TV remote so it will be nothing more than getting use to it. On the flip side, currently if you want to only use the TV sound to watch a quick show you still have the option to as it is now. I would like to maintain that, but control all devices with one remote if possible. Guess we will see what the internet comes up with for me after my search.

Wash Your Hands

Today's photo was taken at a local business a few weeks back and I could not help but wonder; how do they enforce this? Are there inspectors inspecting hands after you use the restroom if you are employed by a company that enforces this - via a fancy sign? I think it's nothing more than a reminder for employees that washing your hands is "the right thing to do". It also serves as a warm-fuzzy for the customer because heck, if there is a sign then we are guaranteed that the employees have stellar hand hygiene right? Yeah I know, I am being a bit of an ass but with good reason. I also have to question exactly how many people did not think-to, or know-to wash their hands prior to the hanging of the sign?

My initial thought is that if this is anything like the latex gloves everyone wears in the food industry while preparing sandwiches and stuff, then it is a waste and only a warm-fuzzy when the customer sees it. Employee or not, you should wash your hands after messing with your junk! C'mon people it's common sense, although there does seem to be an abundance of the lack of common sense.

When it comes to the latex gloved hand there is nothing like watching your sandwich being made by a gloved employee only to see them touch 3 other things in the process with that glove, and who knows what else touch said item before the glove did, and so on - you get the idea.

Call me paranoid or that I have an OCD, but who are we protecting with the glove? It would appear we are protecting the employees hands I guess because it is not touching anything once sheathed in latex. Alright, probably more than enough on the subject,. I could not resist taking a pic the day I saw this sign, most times it's nothing more than a paper printout so these guys were really going the extra mile, I will give them some "effort" points for that I guess.

Please Come Again

That will wrap it up for this entry. Time to go wash up after all of this typing, my digits just gotta be a filthy mess. Maybe I should start wearing a latex glove at work, hmm not a bad idea - if it works for the food industry why would it not help to stop the spread of germs in the game industry? After-all, we have hardly any signs about washing our hands at company so there must be an abundance of latex gloves out there somewhere or some pretty gross keyboards and door handles. Nasty!

Photo: Wash Your Digits