Small Worlds and Facebook Friends

Gee....two blog entries in two days!!

During my first stint on Facebook I came across something I found interesting.  Facebook will suggest friends for you; people you may know based on the fact that they are friends with people you are also friends with.  I found it interesting when these suggested friends would be friends with people who I knew through completely different circumstances.  What I mean is, usually the mutual friends you have with this suggested person are all part of the same group.  Five mutual friends, all of whom you went to high school with, usually means you also went to high school with this suggested friend.  Three of your friends from work know this person, then it's probably someone they knew through work.

Every once in a while though, people will have mutual friends who you happen to know through completely different circumstances.  For example, the first time I was on Facebook I was friends with an individual I had been stationed with when I was in the Army.  We were stationed together in Germany and he lives no where close to me here in the States.  That person, Jason Becker, was facebook friends with an individual named Mike Banks.  Mike was someone I knew from his job in public safety communications in Wadsworth, OH.  My paths with these two individuals had crossed years apart and in two very different ways, yet somehow they knew each other and both knew me.

Today something very similar happened.  As I was looking through people that facebook was saying I might know, I came across the name Melissa Albert.  I don't know Melissa, but it said that three of my friends did know her.  I checked out who those three people were, expecting them to maybe be a cousin, his wife and his kid.  However, it was not.  Two of the friends, my sister and her son, made sense that they would both know Melissa, but the third was a co-worker of mine, Justin Chappelear.  To the best of my knowledge Justin has never crossed paths with my sister or her son, but somehow they both know and are friends with the same person.  Small world, nice coincidence, but hardly earth shattering.

But check this one out.  Another friend suggestion was a girl named Laurie Johnston.  Laurie is friends with two people who are Facebook friends of mine.  One, Steven Daniel, is my second cousin who lives in Chicago.  Steven's mother and my grandmother were sisters, but not raised together for a variety of reasons, some which are still unknown to the family.  The other mutual friend is Brian Evak, someone I went to high school with in Pickerington.  I don't know of any situation when Brian and Steve would have had any reason to cross paths, yet somehow they both crossed paths with Laurie Johnston and have crossed paths with me in very different ways.

Again, none of this is earth shattering, but it is, at least to me, very interesting.  It shows that the world is indeed small and that we are all connected much more closely than we may realize.

Been A While

Well, it has been a while since I last added to my blog, so I thought I'd "check-in".

I started off May by running the Cap City Half Marathon.  My fitness level, which dropped after running the Columbus Marathon last fall, does not seem to have fully recovered.  I'm not real discouraged by that though.  I was able to run the entire Half Marathon without walking, and with a respectable time.  I've still got a full marathon training schedule planned for the summer in preparation for the Virginia Beach Half Marathon at the end of August, the Nationwide Children's Hospital Half Marathon in October and the Big Sur and Space Coast Half Marathons in November.  Along the way I've got a few more out of state races that I'm scheduled to do and am looking forward to the traveling that will come with them.

This past weekend the Burkhardt Family had their annual reunion/cookout.  As always, it was a good time.  A time to see family that we usually only see once or twice a year, and catch up.  One thing you can be sure of at ANY gathering of Burkhardt's is that the food will be plentiful and it will be good.  This year was no exception.

I remember as a kid, the highlight of every summer was the family reunion.  We would head to the location early and secure the shelter house.  There were a lot more family and extended family there then, but the Burkhardt's always knew out to put out a spread.  The cookout now is an extension of one of those traditions that you hate to ever see go away.

This week at work is one that we tend to look forward to coming and look forward to ending both at the same time.  It's Memorial Tournament week in Dublin, Ohio.  The Memorial is an event on the PGA tour.  It's interesting how each year we tend to get complaints from residents about the traffic and parking in the area.  Even long-time residents seem to complain, as if this hasn't been going on for over 30 years.  But overall the week usually goes smoothly and we get through it unscathed.  It's almost down to a science now.  Early in the week, it's still pretty tame.  It'll be later this week, when play actually begins, that our activity level will pick up.  We'll get the inevitable loud noise complaints, parking complaints and dealing with those who overestimate the amount of alcohol their bodies can handle.  

Then in a couple of weeks I'll spend a week at my second job teaching a class at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy in London, OH.  The following weekend is a trip up to Minnesota and Wisconsin for a couple 5K runs, visit some family, attend a German-American festival and do some quick site seeing around the area.  Those two runs will move me up to 16 states completed in my quest to run a race in every state.  In July I'll add #17 with a 4th of July race in Bloomington, IL.  In August I'll tack on #18 when I head to Virginia Beach and #19 will come in November when I head to California for the Big Sur Half Marathon (which, interestingly, is not run in Big Sur).

Runcation and Warranties

Well, for the most part, April ended pretty well.  I got my second runcation in for the year.  I headed down to Nashville for the Rock 'n' Roll Country Music Half Marathon.  I'm not sure if this course had more hills than any other course I've run, or if the hills on this course were steeper than any other course I've run, or if it just happened to be the most recent hilly course and therefore I perceived it to be hillier and steeper.  Whatever the case, the first 9 miles of the course was a rough course when it came to the hills.  There was pretty good crowd support however, and I have to say that the Competitor Group, who owns the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series, put on yet another great event.

While in Nashville I made it a point to look around the area, take a couple tours, catch a couple shows.  My first day there I took a tour of the Ryman Auditorium and toured the Johnny Cash Museum.  Later that evening I went back to the Ryman for the Opry Country Classics show where they were doing a tribute to George Jones as it neared the one year anniversary of his death.

After the run on Saturday I got some dinner, then went to the Grand Ole Opry for their Saturday evening show.  After the show I stuck around for the back stage tour.

Because of some storms that were supposed to blow through the are Sunday night in to Monday, I decided to leave a day early and head home Sunday.

On Monday I found a leak in my water heater.  Getting that fixed has turned out to be more of an adventure than my trip to Nashville.  After finding the leak, I pulled out my paperwork for the heater.  Knowing that the water heater was not that old I thought it may be possible that it was still under warranty, so I checked the paperwork and, as luck would have it, the paperwork showed that I spent a little extra on an extended warranty to cover the tank until 2017.  GREAT!  So I called the phone number on the contract to set up a service appointment and was told that the contract expired in 2012.  Now my paperwork clearly said 2017, but they refused to send a tech out unless I sent them the paperwork.  In the mean time they suggested I shut off the water to my hot water heater.  So I was supposed to go without hot water until I proved to them that they made a mistake.  They also informed me that it would take 3 business days to look at the contract and determine if it was a mistake.  Why it would take 3 days to look at a contract that says "Expiration Date 7/12/2017" was beyond me, and the company couldn't seem to be able to explain it to me either.
The next day I went to Home Depot and spoke to a manager there.  I showed her my contract, she made a couple of phone calls and put me on the line with someone in Atlanta.  Phillip assured me that if I could email a copy of the contract to him, he would be sure to accelerate this issue and get resolved with the company who sells the extended warranties.  Sure enough, the next morning I got a phone call from Assurant telling me that they had gotten the information from Home Depot that I did have a good warranty and they would be sending out a tech that day.
Well, the tech came out and, at first, it appeared to be a simple fix.  Replace the valve.  So, after getting approval by the warranty company he replaced the valve...however the leak didn't go away.  It turned out not to be a leak in the valve, but a crack in the tank at the base of the valve.
So another phone call to the warranty company who now told the tech that he had to call the manufacturer and get approval first.  Of course, the manufacturer's warranty was expired (the purpose of buying an "extended" warranty).  After another 30-45 minutes of phone calls, with yet another customer service rep telling me that my extended warranty was expired, and refusing to listen to me, I was finally able to get ahold of someone who understood English enough to understand what was going on and get the work approved.
That is now supposed to happen this morning after I get home from work.  Fortunately I'm going in to my weekend.  This SHOULD all be resolved this morning.

It's my firm belief that when this company sells someone an extended warranty that they make it so difficult and time consuming for the customer to make a claim on the warranty that most just give up and pay for the repairs out of pocket.  Overall I'm happy with the way Home Depot responded to my issues.  But I'm not happy with their affiliation with Assurant to cover the extended warranties that are sold in the name of Home Depot.  In most cases customer service is poor because we as consumers allow it to be.  Mistakes are going to be made, but customer service as horrendous as what I've dealt with the last few days is inexcusable and should be responded to that way.

On a better note, I'll also be heading downtown today or tomorrow to pick up my race packet for this weekend's Cap City Half Marathon.  This is the fourth time I will run this particular race.  It is enjoyable and I'm interested to see how my legs hold up, as this will be the first time I've ever run two half marathons on back to back weekends.  Usually I've had at least 4-5 weeks between Half's.

My race in Nashville was the 14th State that I've run a race in.  In June I will be doing two out of state races.  The Lederhosenlauf 5K in St. Paul, MN, and the Run for the Stars 5K the next morning in La Crosse, WI.