Andy Boyer

Blog

  • Man vs Plumbing, or, The Great Kitchen Sink Adventure

    It all started innocently enough.

    It was a Friday morning that looked like any other Friday morning.  Except this time, as I headed through the kitchen on my way to work, I noticed the sink was backed up.  I’m not very handy, so these kind of things fill me with dread.  So, I walked over and followed the process adhered to by every man who suffers from my lack of home improvement ability.

    1. Look at sink and say to self, “(Sigh) This doesn’t look good.”
    2. Turn on garbage disposal, and think, “I’m a genius” as the water goes away.  However, as soon as the disposal was turned off, the water returned.
    3. Stare at garbage disposal and try to figure out what law of physics caused Step 2.
    4. Grab plunger, plunge, and watch water spray out of the silly useless little release valve on top of the sink that I had never noticed before.  Plunge more, and notice how all the water from one side of the sink was being pushed into the other side of the sink.  Stop plunging, and watch the water return to its original home.
    5. Look under the sink.  I’m not sure why we do this.  It’s like we’re expecting to see a little elf with his hand stuck up the pipe, and a sly mischievous grin saying, “Ha, you caught me.”
    6. Look at sink again and say, “Well maybe it will magically fix itself while I’m at work.”

    I successfully made it through all 6 steps, and headed to work.  And to my surprise and delight, when I returned home, the sink was clear.  Sure, there was residue, but no more clog.  Life was good.  I was a home repair genius for not panicking.

    Now just to be safe, I called for a moratorium on kitchen sink usage.  I wanted to make sure we were safe.  No dishwasher, no washing machine, no sink.  And so when I looked that evening at a messy (but not smelly) kitchen sink with dirty water backed up, I had to scratch my head.  Where did that water come from?  I decided to worry about that later.

    Attempt 2: The solution seemed easy enough.  If it was a clogged kitchen sink pipe, all I needed to do was undo the pipes, find the clog,  replace pipes. Piece of cake.  So, I emptied the sink out the kitchen window, pulled out the pipes and…..found no clog. (Sigh).  Now I had an empty sink, but one that wasn’t connected to the pipe system.

    Attempt 3: After careful consideration, it was now my expert plumbing opinion that there was a clog somewhere below the second floor.  So I grabbed about a gallon of Drano, and dumped it down the kitchen wall pipes.  Surely, a gallon of Drano would do the trick.  Environment be damned.  It was with a certain amount of displeasure that I watched the Drano come back out of the wall pipe, and into the bucket below the pipes.   Side effect – Child was starting to find this quite funny, and I was becoming a trending topic in her text world.

    Attempt 4: It was clear I needed some professional help here, so I consulted the place that all amateur home repairmen go – the Internet.  And the Web provided a genius solution – the baking soda and vinegar bomb.  Child was particularly excited to find out how this would play out, as my battle with the pipes was achieving Movie of the Week status, and her frequent updates were giving her unemployed friends something to focus on.  So the next day, I carefully mixed a few boxes of baking soda with water and salt, and poured them down the pipes.  Then I dumped a bottle of white vinegar down the pipes.  I could hear the compound getting ready to fizzle back up, so I shoved a sock in the pipe to force the mixture in the right direction.  In my head, I imagined a gigantic, organic explosion, blasting its way through my invisible clog, like a supernova soaring through space……In reality, I have no idea what happened, but the clog seemed unfazed.  All I had were pipes with baking soda in them.

    Now, somewhere along this time we had a discovery.  Remember, I still never figured out how that sink filled with water again a few days back.  However, suddenly upstairs I heard a toilet flush, and watched with horror as water came from the pipes and filled my bucket.  Our problem was somehow related to the pipes associated with the toilet upstairs.  Not a happy discovery. The upside was that now we had introduced a new set of drama into Child’s broadcasts, and ratings were up.

    Attempt 5: It was time to do some real man’s work on this thing, so the next day, I commandeered a 25′ snake from a friend, and shoved it down the pipe.  I went down 25′ without issue.  No blockage.  I thought maybe I had saved the day, and confidently went back upstairs to flush a clean toilet just to test and confirm my successful snaking effort.  Alas….I once again had a full bucket.  At least the water was clean.

    Attempt 6: It was time for some real professional macho man work on this thing, so I did what us men do when we want to release our inner caveman.  We head to Home Depot and rent big tools.  Tools so big, they get their own room in the back corner of the store, back where women refuse to wander. In this case, I got the big ol’ 100′ mechanical snake to run through the clean out valve.  It was dirty, heavy and nasty, and I prepped myself for the mess that would come from opening the clean out valve.  Except….. I couldn’t get the clean out valve open.  It was glued shut.  Now, I could have forced it open, but I took a moment to pause and reflect.  Whoever had built my house had gone through a lot of work to stop a yahoo like me from successfully acting upon the thought that it would be a good idea to open the pipe.  He obviously knew something I didn’t, and I trusted that opinion.  The clean out valve would stay closed, and I would return the super snake.  Child had mixed emotions on this.  She was anxious for some real open pipe drama – though admittedly less so when she realized the clean out valve was in her room.

    So now we’re close to a week without sink, laundry, dish washer or upstairs toilet, and the natives are getting restless.  But I’ve invested enough hours into this process that stubbornness trumps practicality.  It’s been kind of the theme for the month anyway, dealing with some toxic people and situations, so what’s one more.

    Attempt 7: There seems to be one solution left, and if I had known what I know now, it would have been Attempt #1, not #7.  It’s time to remove the toilet, and go in through the pipe.  I’ve never removed a toilet before.  It certainly doesn’t look hard on YouTube, so what the heck.  I get another mechanical snake, this time a slightly smaller 75′ version.  And I go to work on it.

    I’m not going to lie, it took me a good 20 minutes to figure out how to use this machinery without either getting my hand or shirt stuck in the wire and almost getting flipped upside down.  I mean, there was a pretty good chunk of time where that snake was beating the heck out of anything in the bathroom that it wanted to.   But for the grace of god did I make it through that “training period” with all my fingers and not winding the power cord into the spinny thing.  But I eventually settled into a nice rhythm, and only had to jump out of the way and hit the emergency stop button every 10-15 minutes or so.

    And then suddenly, success!  There was a silence down the hole, as whatever the snake had been banging on for 30 minutes finally gave way.  I recoiled the snake, and the size of the clog I brought back up made me pretty sure I’d solved the problem.

    I was riding a pretty high level of confidence, and thus the re-assembly of the sinks and toilets were accomplished at a speed normally reserved for someone who knows what they are doing, not me.  It was a pretty crowning achievement in my home repair merit badge list.  I felt like Foursquare should have a check-in for “I fixed my plumbing” and give me 100 points.

    Anyway that’s my story.  9 days, 3 snakes, 4 trips to Home Depot, 2 trips to hardware stores, a gallon of Drano, a few boxes and bottles of Baking Soda and Vinegar, and about $80 in supplies.  But in this episode of Man vs Plumbing…..Man wins.

  • Scenes from Torchlight Run 2011

  • Mariners Make Us Remember What We Loved About the Sonics

    Last Friday, a Major League Baseball team did an unprecedented thing.  They celebrated another sports franchise.  Even odder, in this case, it was a former franchise.

    The Seattle Mariners didn’t make any new friends in David Stern’s office by providing the city it’s first chance to collect 16 legends from a team that no longer exists, and get them together for a tribute.  And odd as it may seem, the Mariners may have been the most logical host for this type of party.

    The Mariners were just entering Major League Baseball while the Sonics were having their first glory days in the late 1970’s.  And then the two teams shared the job of electrifying the sports community in the mid 1990’s.

    So for 30 brief minutes, a baseball stadium full of Green and Gold celebrated what we miss about the Sonics.  We miss the people, the characters.  We miss guys with nicknames like The Glove, The Reign Man, Slick, X-Man, Sleepy Sam, the Hawk, and Downtown.  Guys who were recognizable by first name only – Nate, Lenny, Detlef, Dale, Bernie, Vincent and Desmond.  We miss Michael Cage’s giant afro, Jack Sikma’s freakishly large frame, and George Karl’s Space Needle tie.

    I appreciate what Jack Zurencik and Pete Carroll are doing by flipping over the entire rosters of the M’s and Hawks.  But a team achieves cult status and hero worship when there’s a core group of players that you root for.  You wanted Gary to get a ring.  You knew that Hersey Hawkins could score 6 more points a night if he played somewhere else, but you loved he was bombing three’s for us.  There was something about George and Nate that made you think you could ask them to dinner and they’d say yes.

    The Schultz led Sonics never quite got that.  And tellingly, no one from the last 5 years of the franchise were represented as a Sonics legend.  It’s true, we didn’t adore the 2003-2008 versions of the Sonics that got rid of Gary.  Ray Allen is the best 3 point shooter of all time, but he wasn’t Det.  Nene, Robert Swift, Jermoe James, insert big stiff here….. none of them were Cage, Brickowski, Sikma, Lister or Perkins.  When they left for OKC, we mourned the loss of the guys who didn’t actually play anymore.

    I still don’t think we care all that much about bringing back a generic NBA Sonics club that looks like any other NBA club.  But that doesn’t make us miss “Our Sonics” any less.  Ask any sports fan in Seattle, and they can tell you where they watched Game 5 vs Denver, Game 7 vs Houston, Game 7 vs Phoenix and Game 7 vs Utah. You don’t even have to say the year.  We all just know what games you’re referring to.  There was a connection to those guys – not to the franchise, but to the guys – that made you happy when they won, hurt when you lost, and want to fight anyone from Phoenix.

    So good for the Mariners for bringing back those guys.  I hope their front office took note.  It’s not about rally fires or a moose.  Bring in players who are also great characters, let us connect with them over a long period, and we’ll come back to Safeco.

  • Willkommen Jurgen Klinsmann

    At last count, there have been roughly 32,342 signings in the NFL in the last 3 days.  However, in the soccer community, there was just one signing – and it was bigger than all of those combined.

    Why the magnitude? While these NFL signings are all designed to make a team better this year, and maybe next year, the USA just put pen to paper on a plan to make their soccer program not just relevant, but highly competitive in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

    2018, you ask? How does that work?

    After years of trying, the U.S. finally convinced Jürgen Klinsman to come take over the entire US National Program.  This is the guy the U.S. wanted in 2006 after he led the German team to the World Cup semifinals.  But the U.S. Soccer Federation only wanted to let him run the Men’s National Team, while reportedly he wanted to overhaul the entire way we teach soccer in this country.  His point was simple – I can’t be successful coaching the top level team if you give me a system that doesn’t produce elite players.

    So, it took 5 years, but someone at US Soccer finally figured out something that we all have known for years.  Our current system of developing the suburban rich kids who don’t play football and basketball, putting them in a system where you have to pay to play for elite coaching, and then grooming them into an army full of hustle and grind midfielders with no striking ability, makes it hard to beat teams with players like Messi and Ronaldo.

    So Klinsman is here to teach us the German Way of soccer.  This is better than trying to install the Barcelona Way, or the Brazilian Way.  The U.S. youth soccer system is full of kids that look like German kids.  So the German Way should be teachable.

    It will be unfair to grade Klinsman on his performance in the 2014 World Cup.  But keep on eye on how the US Under 20 team does in the next 4 years.  Then let’s get excited and have high hopes for 2018.

    Check out SoccerByIves for a detailed story.

  • Nobody asked me but, here are a few thoughts about the Sounders, Manchester United & the MLS

    Nobody asked me but…

    If you spent $150 on two tickets to see Manchester United play the Sounders, and were disappointed or surprised at a 7-0 score, you shouldn’t be.  You SHOULD have been surprised and delighted that the Sounders first team held one of the most expensive and well coached teams in the world to a single goal in 45 minutes.

    Manchester United has one of the world’s top 5 strikers, Wayne Rooney.  They have possibly the greatest center back duo in all of soccer, Ferdinand and Vidic.  Just about every player on their team is a starter on their country’s national team.  They have one of the world’s greatest coaches. And amongst all their superstars, they have a bench full of players who happily share time supporting the studs.  It’s a football factory, and really only rivaled by Barcelona.  For Montero, Keller and company to play those guys 0-1 was a real surprise.

    Now unfortunately, the 2nd half happened.  I understand Sigi Schmid’s dilemma.  In all reality, no Sounder is ever going to make the English Premier League.  This is the only chance anyone on the roster has to play against guys like Rooney, Carrick, Ferdinand, Nani, etc… So as a coach, you gotta let your guys enjoy the moment, even if they are totally overmatched.  And what you saw  in the 2nd half was a situation where players who can’t start in the MLS got turned into mincemeat by a vastly superior group of athletes.

    But there was much to appreciate about the game, even the 2nd half.  For one thing, you should have been amazed by how fast all of the Man Utd players were.  They weren’t just better soccer players.  They would have won a track meet, basketball game and frisbee toss.  Also, it was a blast to watch Rooney.  It’s easy to ask, “How was he so open for those goals.” It was actually simple.  He was guarded.  Then he quietly snuck away about 40 yards from goal.  He’d get the ball an dmake a pass.  And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he’d have made a 30 yard run, gotten a pass, and put the ball in the back of the net.  That’s not just one player doing his job.  It’s a gifted athlete being on the same page with 10 other players and orchestrating a “play” without the benefit of a huddle.

    So was the MLS embarrassed by this? I say no.  People need to get it.  The MLS does not and never will compete with the English, Italian, French, German or Spanish Leagues.  It can, and should someday, compete with the Mexican, Swedish, Norwegian, and maybe even someday the Dutch league.  It would be a perfectly reasonable goal that the MLS becomes the best league in North America, and the top feeder from this hemisphere for players to European Leagues.  It would be great if the hardcore soccer enthusiasts followed the MLS to see which young studs from Columbia, Panama, etc… were going to end up in Europe.  And it would be great for MLS fans if you knew that your best players were going to end up playing on top teams someday.

    Part 2 on this topic to come in a follow up post.

  • Tesco: Homeplus Subway Virtual Store

    I don’t usually like when people post the same thing in all their channels.  It seems pointless and a little lazy to me.  But in this case, I think this story is interesting enough that I’m embedding the video I previously posted on Twitter. (And yes, I know the story is old and you’ve all probably seen it 100 times already.)

    Also, here’s the full story from Adverblog.

     

  • Unbelievable 3D Street Art

    So 3,000+ people have already liked this blog post on Facebook, so it makes me think this has been around awhile.  But it’s the first time I saw it, so who knows, maybe my faithful readers will view this kind of street art with the same kind of amazement.  Warning – make sure your jaw isn’t too close to a hard surface.

    https://plus.google.com/photos/106526452034734966566/albums/5626567803379889857

     

    Now, if you can’t view that because you aren’t in Google Plus, this link is pretty good too.

    http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/absolutely-stunning-3d-street-art-paintings/

    Here’s a teaser:

  • Happy Independence Day

    Sure, I know we all equate July 4th with a nice 3 day weekend in the middle of the summer.  But I want to take 2 minutes to reflect on exactly what we are celebrating.  Now, I don’t know what really happened 200-300 years ago, but I’ll try to remember what my history teachers told me.  

    Sometime in the 1600’s, we were all living in England.  And then some of our friends and neighbors decided they had had enough of religious oppression.  So they hopped on boats like the Mayflower and headed to the new “colonies” in America.  

    Eventually, enough of us moved over here that we developed some sort of free market up and down the Eastern seaboard.  And we must have been doing pretty well developing new products, exporting new crops and creating a nice sustainable economy that didn’t require subsidies or loans.  Because the guys back in England said, “You guys are really showing success.  We need to raise taxes on you so we can spread that money around over here.”

    Eventually, we got tired of a bunch of professional politicians and lifelong royalty-types telling us what to do.  We were sick of a government that reached out too far, who taxed us too much, and who got involved with things they had no expertise or knowledge about, passing arcane laws that made no sense.

    So, as one big group we denounced our relationship with the oppressors.  We announced independence, and developed a loose government in which the colonies – now called states – would govern themselves.  The national government would pretty much be in charge of monitoring interstate commerce and running a national defense made up of all the state militias.  But at the core of the idea, was that we would govern ourselves in a manageable, state by state way.  We’d be responsible for our own welfare, and only rely on the federal government to arbitrate disputes and manage a defense – where if you attacked one of us, you attacked all of us.

    Obviously times have changed and we’re in a more complex world now.  But every Independence Day, I like to reflect back and remember what our whole country was based on.  I wonder how many ways we’ve deviated from the original plan, and whether that’s a good or bad thing.

  • Baseball’s Balancing Act – Fans vs VIP’s

    Now, to understand where this article comes from, you’ll probably have to have known me for a few decades.  So if you didn’t know me in 1988, you’ll need to imagine two high school kids going to a Mariners game, buying $3 GA tix, going up those big grey ramps at the Kingdome, and climbing the fence that separated the good ramp from the bad ramp.  Fast forward a few years later, when a friend (who I won’t identify) created fake press passes.  We were able to get into Mariners games for a few years before the jacka$$ screwed it up.  (And that’s a different story.)

    So what I’m saying is, I believe that a team should let its real fans support it, even if they can’t afford to.  And the entire experience about attending a ball game should be about FAN EXPERIENCE.  No more no less.

    Now, baseball is kind of unique because it is something passed down from generation to generation.  People like or dislike baseball when they are 3 years old because their parents like or dislike baseball.  And their parents like or dislike baseball because of their parents and etc… In the grand scheme of things, the Seattle Mariners marketing department has really had little impact on whether I like baseball or not.

    Which leads me to my issue.

    I’ve shared season tickets since 1996.  I really don’t care that much that the team has stunk for 10 or 11 of those 15 years.  It’s just something I pay each year, like insurance, energy bills and gas.  I own a little piece of real estate inside Safeco Field.  I go to my little 2 seat condo every 6th game, pay too much for a beer, and just enjoy my 3 hours.  And for 15 years or so, it’s been realtively peaceful.

    So enter 2011.  On one hand, I’m excited again.  I’ve seen Pineda and Felix throw gems.  I’ve watched the Yankees and Phillies.  Dustin Ackley hit a home run.  Life is exciting. What could I possible complain about?

    Ushers.  Yes ushers.  Or more accurately, ushers crushing fans.  Ushers becoming part of MY game experience.  Ushers who seem endorsed by the Mariners to make the ballpark experience kind of stink.

    We sit right next to the VIP section – scouts, wives, execs, etc…. And most of the time, NO ONE sits in these seats.  I mean, no one.  Mariner wives seemed to be on a collective cruise in April and May, because they sure weren’t at Safeco.  And you didn’t see many scouts around charting Milton Bradley, Ryan Langerhans, or Michael Saunders.

    Now the last 3 games I’ve attended, I’ve lost at least a half-inning each game as the same Mariners usher booted people who were minding their own business.  Incident #1: A group of 10 boisterous fans who were spending a fair amount of money at the concession stand on beer.  I give them full credit.  They recognized that there were a bunch of kids sitting near them in their assigned seats in Sec 128.  So as a group, they moved ONE section over to Sec 129, where there were 80-120 empty seats, so they could enjoy themselves without disturbing the kids.  I think that’s heads-up fan behavior.  And for this act of courtesy, they got booted.  For being in the wrong seats. Because in the 7th inning, there was still the chance that one of the wives would be showing up.  

    Incident #2: Two fans are discussing the poor performance of Chone Figgins in 2011.  I’m not sure this is really a debatable point.  But there was one woman who took offense – Figgins’ fiance.  Not his mom, not even his wife.  His fiance didn’t appreciate that someone who was actually at the game, had noticed that the guy wasn’t exactly earning the money he was spending on her Gucci purse.  So, the fans got booted.  Apparently, you aren’t allowed to talk poorly about a player having a poor year if his fiance is in the same section as you.

    Incident #3: 4 Phillies fans have tickets in Sec 129, row 30.  Now, that row is super cramped, so they shoot forward 4 rows to Row 26, where only a couple of people are sitting.  One of the Phillies fans starts a debate with a Mariners fan about how much better the Phillies have been since 2001 than the Mariners.  Again, I’m not sure how this is debatable.  The best response from the Mariners fan should have been, “But you live in Philadelphia.  I’m actually glad the Phillies exist so you have a reason to get up every day.”  Instead, they got booted.  Apparently debate between fans isn’t allowed at Safeco either. 

    So my question… I love baseball. I like to go to a game and experience it the way fans in other cities do.  But, do I need to just accept that the Mariners VIP’s have thin skin? Or is this uber-usher out of line for continually looking for people to boot?

  • Fun Alaska Airlines Commercial

    Good stuff from Alaska Airlines here.  John Spencer is the Head Coach of of the Portland Timbers.