The Red Sox started demolishing the .406 Club at Fenway Park. The .406 Club is a glassed-in seating area for high rollers that the Red Sox built in the late ‘80s. The big problem with the .406 Club is that since it’s glassed-in, and the windows can’t be opened, it doesn’t seem quite like you are actually in the ballpark. I have sat up there a half-dozen times or so with company tickets, and it feels like you are watching the game on the biggest, clearest TV you’ve ever seen.

So the Red Sox held a ceremonial shattering of the windows the other day, which required a cement baseball thrown by an EMC employee (EMC is sponsoring the new club). And I knew that a regular baseball wouldn’t work, because I was involved in testing the windows.

Back when I was in public accounting, one of my regular clients was a glass company that was a subcontractor working on the original construction of the Club. One day when I was out there working, one of the employees came by and told me that they were testing different types of glass for the new addition at Fenway. So he wanted to know if I wanted to throw some balls at panes of glass they were trying out. It turns out that 1/8 inch thick glass would shatter, but ¼ inch glass wouldn’t.

Oh, in case you are wondering why they don’t use plexiglass, here’s the reason. Plexiglass scratches. Glass doesn’t.

I finally got around to seeing Serenity this weekend. The movie was great, and tied up many of the loose ends of the Firefly TV series. The film contained a few surprises and a few big changes for some of the regular characters. It also left things open for future adventures. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the crew of Serenity, but if we have this was a very satisfying way to wrap things up.