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hot dog

I forgot my Soylent this morning, but we had time to swing by Taco John’s for a burrito. When we first left the restaurant, my car hadn’t realized we completed our first stop and tried to route us back, so I took over and got on the Interstate. As we made it down the road, it tried to steer me to the offramp, so I took over again. I didn’t realize it was trying to avoid a wreck further down the road. It wasn’t until we passed our last opportunity to exit that I realized traffic ahead was stopped. We waited, stopped, for nearly an hour due to a truck that was completely on its side.

We eventually made it to work and it was the talk of the town. They wanted to know if I had any produce, but everything was cleaned up by the time we got there. We got straight to work, more or less with a plan, though it wasn’t until the afternoon that things really kicked into gear.

It was super nice out by midday, so we went to Sonic out of order for some daylight. It was super windy though, and not gusty, but straight-line winds just constantly trying to blow our stuff away. We ate and got back to work where I buckled in and made some more network changes.

By the end of the day, I had one printer moved to the new subnet. Janice noticed while I was in the middle of it, because apparently I hadn’t opened up enough ports. That was good, though, because it led to more discovery. At the end of the day, working slightly late, I felt like I finally understood.

I was subnetting.

We made it home pretty quickly after that. The sun was going down and I had a load of stuff to bring inside. We worked quickly to get a short run in before Summer got home. I also had to start some charcoal to grill some hot dogs for the chili that Summer had in the slow cooker. We finally hit the road and it was dark the whole way, but we only did a couple miles. We stopped briefly to see my parents, then arrived back at the house just as Summer was getting me plugged into the charger.

The grill never really got hot, but I went super short on coals. I wasn’t excited about Ballparks anyway, because I told Summer very specifically that I wanted to get some really nice, high-quality smoked sausages to go with the chili. In the end, it was all the same vegetable soup-looking stuff she always makes. I wasn’t even going to say anything, but she pried an argument out of me somehow. I could tell she came home moody, but there was nothing to do about it.

We finished eating and I cleaned up, then cleaned up some more, and then cleaned up even more. We didn’t watch VisionQuest, but the cleaning felt better.

You’ve missed the entire purpose behind your own actions.

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Permissible

We had our staff meeting first thing this morning, and it took the full hour. I thought it went pretty well though, and felt a bit more included in other conversations than usual. Afterward I had a few tasks to take care of, which kind of sidetracked me all day. I ended up spending a lot of time fighting SharePoint.

We met Summer at Ortega’s for lunch and had another new guy I hadn’t seen before. He was confused when I tried to order a second plate, but he got it eventually. The afternoon went on a bit, but I never really stopped. Quitting time arrived all the same, and we headed home for a quick run.

It got dark quickly, but we had a little bit of time in the light before we got to my parents’ house. We visited briefly, then made it home to find Summer prepping for chili the next day. I took care of a few things before she finished. Then we sat down to try and watch VisionQuest. I didn’t realize it wasn’t out until 8:00, so we started playing Ibb & Obb again instead.

By the time the episode was released, we wanted to get ready for bed, so we’ll have to watch it tomorrow.

Toesty!

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10.

I had a pretty good day of focus with a Soylent that got me through the morning. Muad’Dib got in trouble first thing because he wandered into the conference room where they were doing some training. He pouted for a bit in his bed, then came over to me and threw up under my desk for some reason. I got him cleaned up and he felt much better later on.

The morning was a little all over the place. I started out cleaning up some file permissions with SharePoint Advanced Management. Then Tyler had me shopping for a new tablet. I was deep in it, so we picked up a pizza from Domino’s and came back to the office. Rhonda had Teddy outside, and then we ran into Joel and Dexter, so we all came back out to play for a bit. Muad’Dib was full of energy again. I didn’t notice until we finally got back upstairs, but they forgot to slice my pizza, so I had to cut it up with a knife. They also didn’t offer cheese or peppers any longer, and instead required payment for little tiny shakers. At least the pizza was loaded with toppings and tasted great.

I finally got back into the firewall and ended up moving my PRTG server to the new 10.10.x. subnet. My routing rules were working, but there may be additional configuration to get the PLCs to talk back to it. I’ll have to tinker more tomorrow.

We ended up leaving work pretty late, but still beat Summer home. I immediately took Muad’Dib on a short run to my parents’ house and met Summer there for dinner. The four of us actually sat at the table for some bún bò Huế, which was nice. We made it back home and Summer got ready for bed, but I stayed up and wrote a bunch of reviews before going to bed myself. With a staff meeting in the morning, I tried not to stay up too late.

Subnetting!

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Obb Couple

Today was a good mix of cleaning and socializing. We got up to some coffee, and I played some more Titan Souls with Summer sat by me on the couch. Eaddie walked in the door, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t come home the night before, but neither she or Summer said anything about it. Summer went to the gym, and then Eaddie left again. I got cleaned up so Summer and I could go to Brown’s Catfish on their first Sunday ever, I think.

Things seemed slightly off at the restaurant. Nothing was bad, but there were weird instances of dirty serving utensils, at least one had fallen into the food entirely. Another tray was, I guess, some kind of chicken pot pie, but looked like a full tray of just dry biscuits. I tried it, but it was terrible, and I threw the entire biscuit away. I was going to take Muad’Dib an ice cream cone, but the vanilla was broken.

After that, I stopped at the car wash for a quick, sub-dollar wash. Then we took Muad’Dib to Point Remove where Hound Town was having a promotional event. We tried a couple treats and took a flyer, but it was mostly very flamboyantly dressed/dyed dogs in the place. It was odd, and all the leashed dogs weren’t really given a place to play together, so we left pretty quickly.

Summer started some laundry when we got home, and I cleaned up a bit to try and clear up some space in the kitchen. Then I played a little more on the Steam Machine before taking Muad’Dib on a run. Summer wanted to play too, so we got her signed in to tinker around.

My board was a bit low on juice, but based on the estimate in the app, I should have been able to make it around our usual course. We stopped by my parents’ house where Julie and Kevin were visiting. They left pretty quickly, and it was dark anyway, so we kept moving. Then my board died at the end of the block. I limped it home, walking it up any inclines and riding downhill. It sucked, but I’ve just got to deal with its shit battery and controller from Future Motion.

Summer was playing Fez, but wanted to play Ibb & Obb with me, so I dug out another controller and we eventually got it working. Playing a game together was frustrating and infuriating in the best way possible. I hadn’t played enough to know the levels super well, but we played until we got tired of it, and she went to bed. I got my stuff done pretty early so I could try and be super productive the next day.

Review time!

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Off Track

We got up fairly early today. Eaddie left early for a day of marching for their last football game of the season. I made Vietnamese coffee for Summer and myself, and then made eggs on avocado toast for breakfast. We ate, and Summer lounged for a bit. I played Titan Souls on the Steam Machine for a little bit. She took Muad’Dib outside at one point and encountered two loose dogs, so I got dressed and took him to try and wrangle the strays back down the block to the address on their tags. They didn’t want to listen, but we eventually got one, and then the other home.

Summer left for the game and I cleaned up a bit. I had to shuffle a bunch of stuff around, but it was still all just moving and storage, and not actually doing anything with the stuff. I watered plants, took a shower, and tinkered with the Steam Frame for just a little bit before giving up again. I was hungry for a proper lunch, and then dinner, but waited forever for Summer to get back home.

When she finally did get there, she was just complaining about the cold. I insisted on dinner, so we loaded up in the car without a plan. A couple blocks down the road, I remembered the new Indian place just at the edge of the neighborhood. We arrived just as another Tesla was leaving – the only other customer there. We walked in to a bright, but empty dining room with a couple ladies hanging out and waiting for customers.

I felt better when a group of ethnic college-aged kids walked in behind us. I asked the young lady to just feed me, and then Summer ordered something else. They were both just big bowls of rice with whatever saucy meats and toppings. We ended up taking it home, since it all came in covered bowls anyway. It wasn’t cheap, but for as hungry as I was, we could only each eat half of our own bowls. It was really tasty, but could have been hotter. It was only a couple minutes home, and the food was barely warm.

After that, Summer took a bath. I didn’t really want to go run in the cold, but I waited to see if Muad’Dib pushed me to go. He didn’t, so we ended up staying in for the night. I couldn’t squeeze any more productivity out, so it was a pretty wasted day overall.

Peace was never an option!

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Just Me and My AI

I remembered after we left the house that I wanted to take a Soylent for breakfast, so we stopped at Burger King for a biscuit on the way out of town. Muad’Dib enjoyed his hash rounds, and we had a pleasant ride in. Things were super quiet upstairs with just us boys, and of course all of them left pretty early.

I got side tracked with a couple tasks, but the real ask was to set up ChatGPT. I tinkered some more and came to the same conclusion that I had regarding Copilot, which was that our data governance needed cleaning before opening up the floodgates.

We had Sonic for lunch, and then I took Muad’Dib on a run for almost a mile since I still had the Onewheel in the car. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take him in the evening since I had scheduled for the past two days to go help Mark with some more computer trouble.

Later in the afternoon, I discovered a free trial for SharePoint Advanced Management, which should let me audit things much more easily. About that time, Joel came up to chat with me about it. I felt only slightly better about it after that, but the ask is the ask.

There wasn’t any point in burning free trial time at the end of the day on Friday, so I performed an emergency patch on the firewall and then left for the day. We went straight to Russellville Medical to see what we could do to help. Thankfully it didn’t take very long to get the majority of it sorted before they needed to run.

We headed on home to find Summer eating something she picked up on the way home. Muad’Dib really wanted a run, so he took us on his full circuit. We stopped at my parents’ house and had some spaghetti while Mom was asleep. Then it was back home and eventually an episode of VisionQuest with Summer before she went to sleep.

Eaddie came home while I was cleaning up my stuff, so we chatted for a bit over some toast. By then it was pretty late, so I went to bed.

Untagged!

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Not My Jam

I woke up about half an hour early today, which didn’t start out terribly, but I quickly found myself out of sorts. I managed a shower, but finished everything quite early, so I sat in the bed next to Summer for a bit before she left, and then left myself. We headed straight to the Tesla service center in North Little Rock, fighting stop-and-go traffic after Conway. I don’t know if it was just backed up from where the sun meets the curve in the road just right in order to blind everyone, but it seemed about right.

We arrived just before our scheduled time, which was perfect. I dropped off my car to little fanfare, and was offered Uber credits to get around. I asked about a loaner, and was told Muad’Dib couldn’t get in the car, so I asked about a Cybertruck so he could ride in the back. Being early in the day, they had one available for me, and we made our way to the school district office to see Randy and company.

Randy met us outside, and I quickly learned that they had begun letting people bring their dogs to work. He said he was initially turned down when I asked permission, but later caught the superintendent with his dogs, and through a change of heart, others were suddenly allowed as well.

It was Jimmy’s birthday, but there was no fanfare there either. I visited with him, Maggie, and my replacement, Billy for a bit. At one point, Charles came through as well. Randy and I tried to orchestrate lunch with Ben, but he was slow to reply. I got a call that my car was finished surprisingly early, but we had just a little bit of time before lunch anyway, so I swapped vehicles, Supercharged a bit, then went to Waldo’s to wait for the others.

They had a little patio area, but the highway traffic was horribly loud. As the midday sun came around, things got pretty warm, but it was just a little sweaty. We ate and visited, and eventually went our own ways. Muad’Dib and I made it back to Morrilton for some work in the afternoon.

Things were pretty quiet around the office. I messed around with ChatGPT a bit more since Joel sent me an invite to a company account. It had me wondering again if it would be better to start with Copilot, but it remains that our SharePoint is a mess. I ended up working late to try some network changes that I’d been holding onto until everyone was gone. That got put off a little longer because Amanda and Elizabeth were working late.

Luckily I had my Onewheel, so Muad’Dib and I ran a couple miles around the property and over to Petit Jean Meats to try their walking track a couple times. Muad’Dib had a super time in a new place with cooler air. The girls were still wrapping up when we made it back, but I got things lined up and then made my changes when they left. It went flawlessly and quickly, so we headed home in the dark after that.

I was hungry after the incredible fried chicken at Waldo’s, so we stopped at Popeye’s to burn some points and get some more chicken on the way home. As usual, there was a drive-through line around the building and a lobby absolutely full of angry looking people. All of the workers seemed super unhappy, and I witnessed an old guy gripe at the nice, but sad looking kid at the counter. They boxed up my food surprisingly quickly, so I told the kid things would get better and got a laugh out of him as I left.

When we finally made it home, Summer was lounging in an antigravity chair in the driveway. She came in and we ate some chicken, then watched the next episode of VisionQuest before she went to bed. I was exhausted from my own long day, and didn’t stay up much longer.

If I go, there will be trouble!

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Plop Plop Fizz

I took my leftover sausage, jalapeño, egg, and cheese kolache for breakfast today, which got me off to a good start in the Sophos again. I spend more time going back and forth over the same concepts than anything, but I’m feeling good about my understanding. I had a couple side quests, including a drop-in from a couple guys from Ritter again. I took the opportunity to take Muad’Dib outside, and we chatted for a little bit.

After that, we made it to lunch a bit earlier than usual. The Wendy’s drive-through went all the way around the building, but inside was mostly empty as usual. I had a cheap lunch, then made it back for another surprise task in the afternoon. Teisha lost a file folder, and Purview didn’t help, but only because I didn’t have the right file name. Luckily her File Explorer cache came to the rescue.

The rest of the afternoon went by pretty slowly until we left. I felt a bit sick to the stomach, so I couldn’t take Muad’Dib on a run immediately after we got home. Summer came in right behind us and took him outside for a little while after she ate. Once I felt better, I took him to my parents’ house. I had eaten a brat before I left, but Mom had some rice soup to clean up, so I ate a bowl of that before we made it back home.

Summer waited for us, and we watched an episode of VisionQuest before she went to bed. I had my Tesla service appointment for my left repeater camera in the morning, so I got to bed a few minutes early too.

Missed it!

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Build It Out

Shipley’s notified me too late yesterday to get their bogo kolaches, but fortunately their app let me order ahead for today using the promo. We left the house in the rain and found a line wrapped around the building, but I was able to walk inside and pick up my order without a hitch. We made it to work through some pretty heavy rain, making surprisingly good time for how slow we had to drive.

I desperately wanted to actually start building out some network changes today, so through a lot of reading, I finally built out some new VLANs and subnets. We took a break to go to Ortega’s for a quick lunch. They were probably the busiest I’ve ever seen them, but they had me in and out in a flash. Then we had some leftover dessert at the office before going back upstairs to continue working.

I was just proud to have something to show for my time before I left. Then it was a clear drive home in the evening. Summer was in the bath when we got there. I immediately took Muad’Dib for a quick run, skipping the flooded basin and stopping at my parents’ house briefly before making it home in the dark.

Summer pan fried some chicken bits a couple weeks ago for a bunch of salad she said she wanted, but hadn’t eaten any of it since. I frustratingly picked through melting salad and combined a bunch of other ingredients I really didn’t want, with dressing I didn’t like, and pushed it down my gullet to get rid of as much of it as possible. Summer got immediately quiet when she saw how frustrated I was, and then seemed to pout on the couch the rest of the night, insisting she wasn’t upset. I came out to sit with her, and we eventually watched an episode of VisionQuest before she went to bed. I wasn’t far behind.

Fighting for what’s left.

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Yes, But Why

I woke up feeling pretty okay, but the stress of getting ready for work got to me as Summer kept riling up Muad’Dib and not listening to what I was telling her. We left in time to get some breakfast to try and settle things, so I grabbed a Hardee’s breakfast burrito and luckily had FSD working all the way to work.

I struggled to accomplish much today, partly from my own trouble focusing, but also because I was having absolutely no luck with the one thing I was trying to accomplish. They said we couldn’t use mobile check depositing, so I spent all day messing with the check scanner again. I sat downstairs with a test laptop off of management just to try and eliminate every possible configuration, and I just couldn’t get it working.

We left to get some Angry Orchard for Summer, then grabbed a Taco Bell deal on the way back. We ate downstairs with Janice and Elizabeth, and then went back to Amanda’s computer to mess with it some more. As I gave up, I plugged it back into her computer and suddenly it worked. My only possible guess was that it was all caused by the Sophos MDR, but I really had no clue or proof of it.

I went back upstairs pretty defeated after the days-long fight. I poked around in a couple things, but just couldn’t get locked into anything. When it was time to leave, we left in a bit of a hurry to try and get a run in before it got dark and possibly rainy. Summer had to work late and had a meeting, so we took off.

It started to sprinkle a little, and got heavier as we rode on, so we went straight to my parents’ house. Mom was making bún bò Huế, so we decided to stay for that. I needed to juggle some car charging though, so we rode a bit of a ride to make it back to the house. Luckily it didn’t really rain any more while we were out. While at home, I moved some things around to prevent water damage when it eventually does rain a lot. Then we rode back to my parents’ house to eat.

After dinner, we came straight home and took care of new packages while Summer vegged on the couch. Eaddie came home for a bit and tried to find her wallet, which she can never hold onto. I cleaned up a bit, Summer went to bed, and then I wrapped up pretty early. The biological clock is holding on to the old time, and I’m trying to take advantage of it to catch up on some sleep.

Catch up!