A Goofy Foot in Mouth

Last week as part of the Fidelity Cares group, I led a team that built a greenhouse at the Elm Street Middle school in Nashua  It was a pretty intense day.  It felt really good to give back to the community using a skill that I normally only employ at home.  One of the Fidelity Community Relations coordinators knew that I did a lot of construction stuff on the side (see tailgate box) and so thought I would be well suited.

Overall this was challenging.  This was your typical DIY kit.  I am really not a fan of these.  They dumb it down so much to simplify shipping and assembly, that they actually make it more difficult.  Examples: There were no lock washers, the ‘square bolt’ channel system is crap, the base kit was a different size than the actual greenhouse, etc.  Some of the design was cheapened too; the roof vents were flimsy and had an awful design for the lower cross beams, the roof and side panels were held in by caulking but we needed to cut several panels, squaring the unit was near impossible.

The idea for these kits is that the basic 2-3 person homeowner team could complete the unit in 3-4 days.  Mom, Dad and I could have done it in a weekend, but we work really well together: There were a LOT of these projects over my first 21 years of life.  But scaling a project like this that has very linear directions to a large team was particularly difficult.

Fidelity gave me a team of +30 to assemble the structure in about 4 hours.  Some teachers had already built the base.  So I split the directions and assigned groups of 4-6 to assemble pieces and bring them to the unit for final assembly.  My favorite project management expression is that “9 women can’t make a baby in one month”.  Meaning that sometimes you can’t just throw bodies at a problem and have it scale efficiently.  This was one of those situations.

After the first day we finished all of the framing assembly.  I came back a few days later and installed the doors.  Last Friday, Sara, Cristin and myself helped one of the science teachers Denise Rock, install the roof and wall panels.  I’m proud of what we accomplished and I hope the kids enjoy and learn about how the hydroponics work.  But I also learned about employing volunteer teams on projects and how non-profit work for large groups needs to be compartmentalized.  I think if more projects contemplated large teams and how to cater to them, there would be a lot more volunteering by big corporations.  If I had started from scratch, I would have gamified the 8 teams and structured the work around building micro-teams and healthy competition.  It stoked a lot of ideas on how to do this for my business…more to come.

The other day a good friend of mine and I were discussing the general notion of ‘making lemonade from lemons’  He framed the counter-point argument in a metaphor that I thought was really insightful.

In general, I have never been happy about my lot in life.  I wouldn’t call it a full-fledged depression, but it certainly is a disappointment.  Things have never gone the way I want and I have always had abnormally high expectations for myself.  This translates to a perpetual sense of not achieving my goals and unhappiness with that situation.  There are aspects of my life that go well, and others that are absolutely wonderful.  I don’t negate or ignore either.

But when things don’t go according to plan, I don’t actively celebrate the positives in that particular scenario.  I don’t look for the ‘silver lining’, the ‘bright side’, or ‘the positives’.  I see no need.  Just because I am unhappy with a situation does not mean that I need to reframe my context of that situation to make it positive.  It is what it is.  It has positive aspects, but the overall occurrence is not positive and focusing on those aspects only degrades my full objective as unworthy of expecting success.  I won’t do that.  If I want an Aston Martin but can only afford a Ford Focus, there is no need to celebrate my new car for it being a new car. Yes that is nice, just don’t tell me that my desire for the Vontage was unrealistic to start with and that I should embrace what I have.

I reject that whole proposition.  When something doesn’t go the way you want, fight back at it.  Don’t give up on what you really want.  This brings me to the metaphor of my good friend.  Sometimes it is good to fight back.  Sometimes you have to.  Accepting something for what it is, or as a ‘learning experience’ is a copout.  If your job is going in a way you don’t like, don’t embrace it as a ‘learning experience.’  You have to fight back.  If you get accused of a crime unfairly, going to jail is not a “great opportunity for growth.”  No.  It sucks no matter how good 3 squares a day, endless time to read, and that societal experience might be.  Fighting back makes sense.  Defending yourself is right.  Your goals, no matter how unrealistic, is justified.

“Making lemonade” is just about dumping a ton of sugar into lemon juice.  It still tastes sour.

Every time that there is a police shooting or some instance where a renegade cop acts inappropriately, we hear the call for “more training.”  I find this whole notion spectacularly irresponsible.  These are people who have grown up racist or at the very least insensitive and now we think x hours of “training” is going to make them more effective at being responsible humans capable of “to protect and to serve.”  Training also can’t make chauvinistic bosses less apt to sexually harass associates.  Sensitivity training doesn’t make people sensitive.

Clearly these people were not raised with any sort of decorum or decency that respects others.  But the problem is with how they are raised.  The problem is with their belief structure, not with how they act on that belief structure.  When presented with possibly life threatening situations requiring moral sensitivity, do we really expect a split second decision to be responsible based on section 4.2 of the sensitivity training a cop received on day 3 of a 4 part series?  Come on.

Juxtapose this to times when training is actually useful.  Training can help govern a thought based or procedure based action.  Call any healthcare provider and try to get a decent answer to a question.  Step 1, tell your life story to an operator, who doesn’t tell you they are the answering service.  That’s HIPPA violation number 1.  Step 2, play the transfer game to 15 departments and schedulers and specialists and PCPs. Step 3, talk to your insurance provider.  What a fun conversation that is.

Oh and please be sure to make sure you are not in a plan that might actually help “bend the cost curve” by incentivizing you to find the low cost option like an HDHP.  Because when you pay out of pocket from your HSA you can be sure that none of these knuckleheads will know the actual COST of a treatment or procedure that would let you act like a consumer and comparison shop.

We see recurring themes of cases when training would actually enhance the user experience of a service.  Yet training never seems to be applied in the right places.  Certainly it is never advocated for in the right ways.  When have you heard public clamor for “more training” of health care providers?  I have yet to figure out why this is.  “More training” has become the go-to solution for every social ill in the way that “rehab” seems to cure every celebrity personality fault.  But it can’t solve social problems, it can’t change beliefs, only actions.

There are times when knowledge is power and training can really benefit the collective actions of mankind by making people smarter.  But it is not the utopian solution to all problems.

Only in boxing does alto training really make things better.  Definitely alto training.  Alto. Alto? Alto?  Oh!  “A lot!”  (4:26)

I wrote this paper at work to galvanize thoughts around ways to do my job that make systems development more efficient.  Back office big-data projects are different from customer facing UX driven ‘products’ and so we should think about the work in a different context.  Less is more.  80:20.  KISS.  All the typical euphemisms are thrown around but never actually followed.  Capability Based Design is a philosophy that helps the dev teams, funding sponsors, and business users act together for the benefit of the project and the organization.  It is how I have been thinking and doing my job for a while now.  I hope it rings true with others. I’d love to get feedback on how practical it might be from people in similar roles.

Capability Based Design

I’ve been meaning to rant about this one for a while.  I like to say that “decaf” is not “coffee”.  At the same time, a two-wheeled wheelbarrow is not a “wheelbarrow”.

Haley and the girls at the barn love them, and yes I understand that it makes things easier when you are small, but that is not the point.  You lose the process of gaining valuable skills when there are two wheels in the front of a wheelbarrow.

Balance:  It is not easy when there is only 1 wheel in the front.  Every time you go to move something and you lift the handles, you have to be thinking about balance.  That means that as you load the bucket, you think about how and where you fill, even distribution, stacking vs the hill you are on, forward vs back placement.  It requires thinking ahead and planning.

Grade: You can’t take a 2-wheeler cross-wise on a steep hill, it just won’t work because the wheels have to stay parallel to the earth.   All of your choices on how to get from point A to B are limited when you can only think 2 dimensionally to the hill you are working against.  It limits the variables you assign to the challenge.  Do I keep the weight light and go straight up the hill?  Or can I add more weight and work against the grain?

Strength:  Let’s face it, the shoulder strength needed to lift a single wheeler and the micro adjustments necessary to keep it balanced throughout the run, can greatly enhance your long term health.  Stronger shoulders means more neck strength meaning less long term pain as you get older.  Lifting more weight for balance, means you are constantly engaging your core to keep yourself upright.

Risk vs Reward:  “When I was a kid” we heated with wood in a cast iron Vermont Castings stove in the living room.  Every year mom and dad would order two cords of wood and we would move it from where it was dumped on the driveway to the back of the yard and stack it along the property line.  Each run started with a steep up-hill slope gaining about 4 feet of elevation over a ten foot span and then leveled off for about 30 feet and then the last 50 feet or so gained another 3 feet of elevation finishing such that you had to turn the wheelbarrow 90 degrees to park on the flat parallel to the pile (another off-axis slope).  This was hard.  You had to get a good running start for the first hill and then save enough strength for the long haul and still avoid bumps.  I hated taking multiple trips.  LONG before there was any term called “gamification” I would challenge myself with how much I could stack in the wheelbarrow without it all falling out.  Heaven forbid a piece fell out the front.  It was hard to recover from the bump which almost always forced the wheelbarrow to tip over, losing everything.  It was a risk.  You would lose all your gains and waste a ton of time.  But stacking too little meant that each run plus the walk back, kills time.  If I wanted to get back on the Commodore 64 (yes I am THAT old), I had to finish the wood.  Time was important.

Yes I know these things seem silly.  And yes later we got the tractor and trailer and so things got a lot easier.  But then I learned other skills, like backing up a trailer.  Yes I know this wasn’t exactly ‘farm living’ and I had it pretty easy in comparison to families that required real work on a daily basis.  But somehow this 2 wheel thing just makes me think back on all the things I learned in little subtle ways by arguing with that damn 1 wheeler.  I’ve ranted about this before, that as life gets simpler, skills aren’t being replaced with other challenges.  My tractor example is perfect to illustrate this.  Kids can barely drive a standard transmission today, never mind backing a trailer into a driveway.

When Haley and the crew are at the barn, they certainly do their fair share of hard work.  Mucking stalls is not exactly fun, and yes I have seen them gamify the experience…by running up and down the muck pile…yuck.  But I also watch as they load the wheelbarrow (missing 20% of each pitchfork throw, don’t get me started) and then push it over to the pile.  They will lift and tip the wheelbarrow to dump, and as it is perfectly balanced in the air, on two wheels, reach into their pockets, pull out their cell phones…and post on Instagram/FB/Snapchat.  Is that the new “skill”?

Yesterday Megan and I were able to attend an end-of-year school ceremony where Haley received an academic award for having the third highest aggregate grade on her team.  A team is 4 classes or about 90 students.

The funny part is that 3 years ago we sat in the same room and Taylor got the exact same award.  I leaned over to Megan and said, “She got third and does no work, imagine if she tried.”  Megan laughed and said “She’s just like you were.”

It’s true.  I was an awful student.  I was smart but I never did any real work.  When I understood a subject, I did well.  If a subject required lots of assignments and homework, I didn’t do as well.  In primary school, I was a classic “B” student.  I like to say that I was top 10%, but I have to rely on rounding as I graduated 33 of 329 in high school.  It wasn’t until college when I was writing very large checks for tuition, that I started doing well.

Megan was at the top of our class and was always diligent about doing her homework and studying.  Taylor is just like her.

Both girls continue to impress me.  Haley’s ability to retain facts and images is just incredible.  She is able to grasp things very quickly and retain them.  She is writing a novel and I have to admit that I am hoping she finishes it this summer.  It is both interesting, and I am learning a lot about horses.

Taylor has an incredible work ethic.  Her ability to focus (outside of text messages) on homework, study regularly and perform on exams is admirable.  I really wish I had some of that ability to focus on things I don’t want to do, because I know it’s the right thing to do.

Not much point to this blog post.  I just found the day and the continuity in my kids to be fascinating in light of how different they are.  As they get older and I see them becoming more like ‘real people’ it is fun to evaluate their personalities and note their skills in the context of admiration, and not just in a parent’s state of wonder.

We saw the announcement of an historic framework… for discussions… for a plan… for a deal… for peace with Iran this week.  Regardless of where you come down on whether it will work or not, I’d like to point out some interesting facets of this whole topic.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy is based on the notion of engagement (Cuba, Russia, Iran) and the idea that we can eventually talk our way to peace.  This is in contrast to the post 9/11 policy of the Bush administration’s adoption of the Jewish commandment zachor to “remember” or “never forget”.  Which translated to a policy of confrontation whenever there is doubt that someone might possibly have bad intent.  Or the Clinton strategy of quasi-appeasement as a path to peace (Somalia, Yemen, North Korea, Palestinians).  One strategy may or may not be better than the others on a whole host of measurable outcomes.  I’m not here to argue that.

But let’s examine Iran.  There is talk that this deal is the first step towards bringing Iran into the league of civilized nations such that it will have a positive effect on the rest of the Middle-East to transition into peaceful coexistence with Israel and other Arab nations.  Wasn’t that the utopian goal for establishing a democracy in the just liberated Iraq?  It’s deja vous all over again.  Except this time we are negotiating the change, rather than imposing it by force.  You say tomato…

What I find interesting is the arrogance by the left that a diplomat (Hillary, Kerry) is inherently more qualified to do the work of nation building or coalition building than a grunt.  The State Department is assumed to have the ‘peaceful’ solution.  I will use the Garner Plan as a use case in this regard.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I, but it’s really interesting.

Jay Garner was a retired Army three star who was appointed to lead the post war reconstruction efforts in Iraq in 2003.  He started his career with an enlistment in the Marines.  Not very academic beginnings.  Oh wait, he did his undergrad at UPenn and grad school at Harvard?  hmmm.  So his ‘plan’ was to just kick out the top guys in the Iraqi government and hold elections as soon as possible.   Granted, there were some problems with his selections for the interim leadership.  But after his ouster I think this sentiment summed up what would have been an empowering strategy that might not have led to the sectarian morass of today.

I don’t think [Iraqis] need to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government that represents the freely elected will of the people. It’s their country … their oil

Contrast this with Garner’s successor Paul Bremmer (Exeter, Yale, Harvard) who entered the foreign service and State Dept almost straight out of college.  Upon arrival in Iraq he did the following

• Renamed the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance as the Coalition Provisional Authority.  “Authority,” great choice of a word.
• Ruled by decree, the first of which was to dissolve the Baath Party
• The second was to disband the military
• Then he decided that the CPA should write a constitution for the Iraqis.  Brilliant

Consider those actions vis a vis another great quote from General Garner,

…as in any totalitarian regime, there were many people who needed to join the Baath Party in order to get ahead in their careers. We don’t have a problem with most of them. But we do have a problem with those who were part of the thug mechanism under Saddam. Once the U.S. identifies those in the second group, we will get rid of them.

I was listening to the SEALFIT podcast and Commander Devine was interviewing Congressman Ryan Zinke (also a former SEAL). This was the first time I had ever heard talk of the Garner Plan.  They were discussing observations from their time in Iraq in ‘03-’04. Some great insights in a very fast moving conversation,

• “when…you force into unemployment, the thousands of …military…”
• “The people who know how to shoot the guns to put them back on the street with no food, was not a wise decision”
• “…Those same soldiers, that obeyed orders all the way up, and all you had to do was replace the speaker at the top…”

It really got me to thinking about how we approach the world. Most soldiers respect other soldiers. They share a common understanding for the awesome responsibility that governments place on them. Regardless of their association with a government, they share that same basic foundation and philosophy.  Diplomats always talk about “finding common ground” and “shared interests” to “build bridges”. I remember thinking at the time that it was a great idea to cut all of that Baath crap out of the government and start from scratch. How stupid was that.  Looking back, I recognize the limitations in my experience base.  Much of that is my lack of personal military service.  I don’t have the knowledge of what war is really like, how chain of command effects your decision making process on the battle field.  But soldiers know this.  And I bet a number of them with that experience know that as long as there are clear orders from above, most Iraqis would have been happy to find a new way to continue serving their country under different leadership.  I bet there was a certain soldier who told his bosses that too.  Wish they had listened. I wonder why some people find it so hard to believe that not only do soldiers have brawn, but they are usually pretty smart too.

Many of you that tailgate with us know this story, but my dad recommended that I write it down before I forgot.  So here goes.

When the Tailgate Box was first released, it was all white.  And sitting in the back of my truck, it looked like one of those old fashioned ice delivery trucks.  So Sam started singing “Ice Shack baby” and soon that is how it got its name.  Most all of our nicknames start with a stupid story like that.

November 2, 2014.  Pats vs Denver.  Game time = 4:25 PM.  I still had a few things left to do on the Box and Sam was going to help me, so I stayed at his house and we got up early to work on the box, figuring we would hit the road around 10:00AM.  It was really cold and windy and was hard to get things done.  I wanted to rig the grill lighting so we could see what we were cooking after the game.  Everything goes well, we load the truck, head to the game.  Great tailgate (as always) and a win over Peyton Manning too.  We hit the road about 10 PM headed for home.  In the front seat is Sam Nelson, in the back is Ed Kelly and John West.

Now let me just say in my defense that there were two small screws holding the box from sliding backwards out of the truck.  Because it weighed at least 800 lbs loaded, I never thought anyone could physically steal it and since it is framed over the wheel wells, it would only really slide a few inches backward until it hit the steel frame and stopped.  I NEVER considered the aerodynamics of something so big as being able to generate enough lift to pull it up 8 inches, sheer the screws, and then float out the back of the truck.

So all I could picture as I look back on the highway is the big rig about 1/4 mile behind me, smashing this giant wooden box on the highway and like in the movies, it shatters in a million shards.  The box was framed to be light-weight, so there is not a lot of structure to it, I tried to frame it as smart as possible using the interior dividers as strength members.  But I did worry about the 3 car batteries and 2 propane tanks and cornhole frames and generator and some poor old lady driving along, hitting the thing and getting hurt.  By the time I could get to the right lane and pull over, we were at least a half mile up but could see the big white box sitting smack in the middle of the highway which was 5 lanes wide at this point (between exits 4 and 5).

I bolt out “we gotta go get it.”  The guys were not as convinced, and hinted at leaving it.  But I have a decent amount invested, I wanted to at least try.  I tell John to call 911, we head for exit 5 to loop back.  While we are heading south John tells us that the 911 operator says that at least 10 calls have come in for a “refrigerator” on the highway.  I get off at exit 4, head to the north on-ramp and see a local cop in a Ford Explorer getting on the highway.  I try flashing my lights but he continues on.  We catch up to him on the highway and he flashes on his blues pulling right up behind the box, providing cover.  We pull up along side in the breakdown lane.  All of us are amazed, “Holy shit, no one hit it!”

I yell to the cop who had rolled down his window, “That’s mine, we are going to come get it, ok?”  He yells “Go ahead”.  The 4 of us then run out into the middle of the highway and I tell the guys that we can push it to the side of the road.  4 grown men lean into the side of the thing…it doesn’t budge.  Wow this thing is heavy.  There was a lot of colorful language.  We get all 4 of us on one side and start to ‘spin’ it, one end at a time, for the side.  As we move it and progress slightly forward, the cop is moving with us, providing cover.  Later we would joke that it was like playing Frogger with cars zipping by at full speed.

We get the box to the side, the local cop takes off because a state trooper pulls up.  This guy must have thought we were all nuts.  He never asks our name, but already knows that we are coming home from a Pats game.  We unlock the storage doors and start unloading everything onto the side of the highway.  This includes my large plastic bin FULL of empties, because well you know, I have to recycle them.  Sam’s grill tray is partially broken and it falls off as he lifts it out, smashing himself in the face (black eye the next day).  We get all the heavy stuff out and I tell the guys that we can lift the front and I will back up to the box, lay it on the truck and then all 4 of us can lift the back and hinge it forward sliding it over the wheel well and then back in place.

Believe it or not, the plan works flawlessly.  The trooper held the flashlight for a while while we put all the crap back in and then went back to his car, I think he was cold…we certainly were.  We load everything back in the box and then I throw 3 ratchet straps over the top, because now I am paranoid.

This whole episode only took about 45 minutes and as we got back in the truck to drive on, it was so surreal that we kept saying, “Did that really just happen?”

A few days later, I finally had a chance to assess the damage. The 42″ tv cracked, but special thanks to the crew that chipped in for the new one.  Sam’s grill got dinged.  The frame of the box had a few cracks and scratches, but since it landed square on the highway and just skidded, it was actually ok.  One of the cracks was from where I ratcheted the strap down so tight that it cracked a piece of the frame…oops.   One of the batteries cracked a cell.  Everything was jumbled around, but no bottles in the bar broke, all the electronics were fine, and the other two 32″ tvs were fine.  I was amazed.  We all praised my “Built in America craftsmanship” and the “Flying Ice Shack” lived to fight another day.  I thought it was poetic that the next week was the bye week, and then we had an away game.  I guess the whole team needed some time to heal up for the playoff run and Superbowl victory!

Go Pats!

I wrote about the first tailgate box a while ago.  And yes, it has been almost a full season since I built the second one, but I still wanted to talk about the process.  I think the tailgate box is a perfect metaphor for Agile development.  I admit 100% that building 2.0 last summer was not a good use of my time at a point when I could have been doing other things.  But it provided a nice escape from a lot of troubles at work, and I needed the distraction.  It was a great mental focus.

Tailgate box 1.0 was MVP.  We learned a lot from that experience.  Mostly that it was too small, we needed bigger TVs and that it has to be completely waterproof.  Even with several point releases each season, we new an upgrade was needed.  And so, we also added several items to the enhancement backlog: a bar, better storage, DVD player, internet TV, louder stereo, better lighting, etc

Over the 2013-14 season I knew I was going to rebuild the box in the off-season.  I was anxious to begin.  But the knowledge of the new box, didn’t detract from the customer experience with v1.4  I even got a pretty early start in June.  But as summer wore on, I got behind.  I remember the night before the first game, Tay and I worked her JROTC fundraiser at the racetrack and I didn’t get a lot done.  As they say, you go to battle with the army you have, not the one you want.

I ran my electronics smoke test a few days before, but the development delays meant that we went live missing a lot of functionality.  There were only 2 TVs.  None of the piping for the gas lines was in, nothing was painted, the storage area was incomplete, no lighting, the doors had no brackets to stay open.  It took several games to get these items corrected.  But even now I still haven’t finished painting and need to build shelves in the storage area.

My customer (me, the crew, our fans) really want the full functionality to be complete.  But it’s not like they got nothing.  We delivered a major new release with working functionality that far surpasses the previous version.  Was it everything on the list of requirements?  No.  But that doesn’t detract from the user experience: More functionality can only enhance the user experience.  As a product manager, I made choices, given limited resources and timeline, of what would be delivered on opening day.  The rest of the items got prioritized on the backlog, based on what I learned from actual usage those first few production cycles.  As an example, because it can get a little breezy in the fall, a good system for holding the doors open got moved to the top of the list.  As a result of high winds on the Middlesex Turnpike, we added backup strapping capability.

No one, I mean NO ONE complained about the 2.0 rollout.  I was more critical on myself than anything.  I had more fans than ever coming over to take pictures, ask questions and get ‘the tour’.  The Tailgate Box is not a life-critical endeavor.  It may be customer facing, but my customer understands that perfection is impossible.  The reason is that my customer has come to expect limitations given their limited resources/support, despite the fact that the Doctor insists it was a “group effort”.   They accept this and work within the limitations.

It could be argued that the tailgate crew is my ‘internal customer’.  These guys are definitely on my team.  We work together and in fact, when calamity arose (see Flying IceShack post later) they rose to the occasion and increased their funding to help address a near fatal system crash.  I find it amazing that no one would question these general attitudes, yet reality is a complete juxtaposition at work.  There, my internal customer suddenly isn’t on my team.  I never feel we are working together for a shared goal.  We may talk a good game about managing the backlog, but the minimum threshold for go-live is always near perfection.  We never discuss strategies to go live with minimum capability.  In theory, we could roll out less than the original spec and still have meaningful functionality.  But you better believe that if something is on the requirements list, we won’t go live until it is complete.  No one ever thinks to just accept a limited roll-out and learn as a team from what we experience.

I don’t know why attitudes and norms that you live on a daily basis (ie in a parking lot) are suddenly invalid in an office.  It makes no sense to me, especially when you literally are on the same team.  I have had plans for Tailgate Box 3.0 (new platform= ambulance) for a while now, but that doesn’t mean that v2.0 is complete crap.  It doesn’t detract from existing functionality or make 2.0 ‘unacceptable’.  And in fact, there will be a 2.1 dev iteration before the start of the next production cycle.  The following items made the cut, if you would like something else to be considered, please email me.  No planning poker is necessary 🙂   But you know what?  If I miss a few things, life will go on, the box will still be rockin and no one will be disappointed at the tailgate.  Go Pats!

• Shelving system and storage for items in the back
• Re-Rig 3rd battery and secure mounting system
• Charging wires
• Easy-on/off and storage system
• Through-bolts to connect to truck bed
• Painting with logo
• Misc fixes for flying damage
• Glare and protection shield for 42″ TV
• Rain shields for speakers
• Bar utensils
• Propane piping
• Inside lighting
• Storage doors for DVD cabinet
• Satellite Dish