I turned on my shower at 6:43 this AM.

By 6:50 the water was tepid enough for me to enter the shower, after seven entire minutes of being ice cold. A few minutes later it was so hot that I had to adjust the temperature on the fly for a minute or so after that.

I know that we’ve gotten a new boiler put in for my part of the building. Does anyone know if this is normal behavior for a new hot water heater? Some kind of odd on-demand boiler that only heats water when you need it? Anyone? Anything?

It just seems inefficient, especially when you consider that We The People do not pay the water bill in this particular apartment complex, not to mention the wastefulness of my running water for no purpose for seven minutes.

Bah.

a pre-emptive gambit, as i likely won’t have a chance to post one tomorrow.

on a conf. call for new UHG managers. the topic? how to effectively manage using our intranet system. it, possibly, is one of the most incredibly idiotic things i’ve ever endured. it’s taking two hours to cover the most basic.. simple… common sense topics in excruciating detail. however, that’s not to say there haven’t been some entertaining highlights.

+ at one point, the facilitator says “human crapital.” there was a long pause and you could really tell that she was weighing whether to acknowledge what she said or not. she didn’t.

+ “please refer to slide seven on how to access news articles if you do not have internet access.” this is a webex presentation. delivered by… the, um, internet.

+ a participant asked if the slide deck would be available to participants after the session. the answer? no. that’s acceptable– it’s HR-related, and you wouldn’t want outdated copies floating around. additionally, if participants knew they could get the deck afterwards, some may not pay as much attention. so that’s ok. however, the answer this person received? “we can’t send these out because of a size limitation in our e-mail system.” ahem… LIES!! it’s a 35-slide deck. all static, no embedded multimedia. that’s– what– 300kb? 400? even lotus notes can handle that. it’s rather disturbing when someone within HR fibs so blatantly, especially when it’s such an obvious fib.

i’m not in a bad mood, really. in fact, i’m nearly completely checked out, mentally, as i’m out tomorrow and all of next week. just a little frustrated that these types of things need to be dumbed down to the least-common denominator and i need to spend three hours of my afternoon listening to it. at least i’m an excellent multitasker.

So I’ve been thinking about giving up cable TV lately.

I know, I know. You’re saying: That’s crazy talk! There’s no way you’ll be able to give that up. At least one of you has already said that to me verbatim. But bear with me, and listen to the rationale, and we’ll see if I can convince myself, if not you.

What do I watch on TV? Sports. I probably watch the following channels 95% of the time: ESPN, ESPN2, Vs., and Fox Sports North. The other 5% ends up going to random viewings of The Daily Show, or Countdown, and watching the local morning news.

And for the privilege of watching all of this (much of it in beautiful High Definition), plus having high speed internet, I pay (drum roll please): $130 a month. It’s almost completely insane for me to be paying that much money for what I use it for.

Consider, I could get high speed internet through a local phone provider who shall remain nameless, because I hate them, for about $30 a month. It doesn’t take a math major to figure out that’s a savings of $1200 per year. I could take a nice vacation on that, couldn’t I? I could spend a small fraction (about 1/12) of that money, and use the high speed internet to watch baseball games via MLB.tv, which would help alleviate some of the DTs I’d be facing from TV withdrawl. Most football is on free TV, and I could use an antenna (kids, ask your parents what that is) and pull that in. I’ll admit it, I’d miss hockey. Well, I’d miss the playoffs. But I think I’d live.

Also consider… I could watch more movies. I could watch TV shows via Netflix (without commercials). I could do more creative projects. I could exercise. The list of things I could do with increased free time goes on and on…

Between the fiscal and free time arguments, I could almost convince myself. This is something I’m seriously considering. What do you all think? Is this something you’d consider for yourself?

transcription of a call between a BRITA customer service rep and our hero:

OH: “yes, i have a kitchen faucet-mount filter, and the black plastic adapter that connects it to the faucet has cracked.”

CSR: “oh, no problem sir, we can get that replaced for you. what color is your unit?”

varied baseball nuggets for today:

+ the sea bass are up to 7th (out of 10) in the goat? fantasy league. if the season ended today… i’d be satisfied.

+ relatedly: am i going to hell because i’m cheering for a-rod (first-round pick for the sea bass) this season? yeah. i thought so.

+ if you haven’t already, read this. it’s a little dated, but is a perfect example of why i’m in love with firejoemorgan.com.

+ while the twins game tonight has been pretty depressing overall, i found a bright spot: yanks first baseman doug mientkiewicz grounding a ball to justin morneau, who starts a 3-6-3 double play. makes me forget about david ortiz a little bit.

+ lastly, sometimes baseball is really a game of multiple purposes. thanks to ETC for the link.

play ball.