Author: gallopingcow

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79% Deployed

Today was another relatively dull day of scattered students coming in for Chromebooks. We did get down to the elementary for a bit, so I was glad to close out some of those work orders. At one point I had a pretty bad anxiety attack. My vision went dark, and I got super dizzy and sweaty really fast. It took me a little while to shake that one off.

I finally got an answer from Entergy, but not the one I was looking for. I suppose it will let me focus on the school a little harder, but it was disappointing all the same. Summer said Splash was hiring for another IT person, but that work sounds very entry-level with nowhere to go.

I stopped by Casey’s after work, but they didn’t have the coffee I wanted, so I continued home to clean up a bit. Mom had some phở to clean up, so I ran across town to eat and then chatted with them for a bit before heading up to Summer’s.

Eaddie helped me fill out the family calendar with all of her band events, and I went through the house baiting for ants again. Then it was off to bed.

So close, yet so far.

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I Can See Clearly Now the Crack Is Gone

I made it to work early today, but forgot my keys at home, so I was more or less tethered to Kim all day. I had to prod a couple of vendors for some quotes they’ve been sitting on for over a week, and still didn’t get responses by the end of the day as promised. We did reach over 70% deployment with Chromebooks, so that was alright. I also fired off what I thought was a pretty slick email denying someone’s request to move some technology.

Otherwise there wasn’t a whole lot to the day. It was busy, but went by much slower than yesterday. I also had to call Fast Glass for an update on my windshield, and was told the glass “just arrived fifteen minutes ago” but they hadn’t confirmed its fit yet. I ran straight to the shop after work and found Shaun working on it, so we would at least get it back at the end of the day. It was a good thing too, because I called Progressive and they would do absolutely nothing to resolve the awful claim experience.

I ran by Superfast to check on Summer, went home to change, and then made it back to get her so we could pick up my car. She went home and I stuck around chatting with Shaun for a while before heading back home to do some laundry.

I picked up some tacos for dinner while I laundered, and then my phone started going off with messages about more school superintendent shenanigans. Evidently Hope had quit, and hung a bunch of dirty laundry out to dry. I messaged her as I fell down that rabbit hole again, and offered to throw any of my fuel on that fire.

Finally I made it up to Summer’s for the evening. She had been asleep for a while. Eaddie pulled into the driveway right after me, having been at school late for band. She stayed up and did homework while I fought their ant problem, and eventually made it to bed.

Moving Day Aproaches

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We’re Halfway There

Taco John’s had a deal on breakfast burritos today, so I stopped there before heading to work. It was pretty boring without salsa, but at least it was clean enough to eat on the drive. As soon as I got to work, Kim said she had to run an errand, so I was without her for an hour or two. I continued handing out devices until we finished ninth grade in the afternoon. Only about half of the high school has picked up their Chromebooks, so hopefully teachers will take it upon themselves to initiate parent contacts next.

Otherwise I didn’t get out of the office, and it was a pretty fast day. I ran to Fast Glass as soon as I left, but that place was a ghost town by the time I got there. My car was still in the bay, and we’re feeling pretty frustrated by the lack of service.

I headed home after that, and used my carpet cleaner to try and clean up the trunk of the Model Y. I don’t know that it made any real difference, but I felt better. I hate that the shape of the cargo mat allowed for spillage. Then I continued up to Summer’s house for the evening.

Eaddie wanted to go to her tutor, Kim’s, flute recital at Tech, so I warmed up some tacos for Summer and myself. Then we sat around the rest of the evening until bedtime.

Ding dong.

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Spiral

Today was a bit of a struggle. I finished up a super old biscuit with egg and cheese out of the ridge before going home for a bit. I showered and then came back to get Summer, who wanted to spend her day cleaning house. I took her to Lowe’s and Walmart to poke around for any seasonal deals. Lowe’s didn’t have anything of interest at all, but Walmart had a barbecue prep cart that I had been eyeing since last year.

We picked up some groceries and headed home to start dinner. When we unloaded, we discovered the chicken had leaked all over the trunk, so I had to pull the rubber liner out and clean up where it had jumped the lip onto the carpet. Once that was cleaned up, I came inside and started the chicken for tacos in the Instant Pot. That didn’t take very long at all, but after days of constant frustrations, I finally just shut down for a bit.

After we ate and I had some time to cool down, we went back to Walmart to pick up one of the prep carts. Then we came home and it was eventually off to sleep.

My inner monologue has had it.

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Same Furniture; Different Sales Tactics

I didn’t sleep great last night, but at least the length of sleep was nice after feeling highly irritated all night. Summer went to the gym and I went home after climbing my way out of a coffee grinding rabbit hole, so I could shower before a day of shopping. Mom wanted to go look at some furniture, so they met us at Summer’s house and we went to Hank’s, Good Deal Charlie, Sofa City, Peters, failed at Stroud’s because they were closed, and finally Cleo’s. Afterward, we ran through the junk shop briefly before I learned that Julie and Kevin were already waiting for us at Brown’s.

I had brought the car down to that side of the mall, so we took Mom while Dad went to get his car, and met him at the restaurant. Summer wanted to take him out for an early birthday dinner, so we stuffed ourselves silly in the hot back room. Every one of us was sweating back there, and the place was packed. The food was good, but I didn’t realize how badly I overdid it until we got home.

Eaddie disappeared to her room for the rest of the night, and Summer and I eventually ended up on the couch together, and I put on Thor: Love and Thunder. We got about halfway through before she needed a break, and then we finished it in the bedroom before she went to sleep. I got up and dug my way down the furniture rabbit hole. It’s all a racket, but I’d like to find the sweet spot between long-lasting and expensive, or cheap and disposable.

You bet I’m gonna haggle you.

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I’m Surrounded by Idiots

I took the Model Y to work today so Summer could drop my car off at Fast Glass. I wasn’t even sure whether they had my replacement there, but I figured it’s been since June 7th. Once I got to work, we hustled to get laid out in the cafeteria so we could hand out the high schoolers’ laptops. I don’t know what I expected, but only about a third of the students had forms turned in, and not all of them even came down to get a Chromebook. We only handed out 56 out of the expected 121 between juniors and seniors, so I felt a little smug about having my handbook approved by the school board.

Even with such a small group of students coming down, things still got hectic because parents couldn’t count on their fingers to figure out what year their students were expected to graduate. We could just ask for their grade level, but some of those students didn’t even know what grade they were in. I asked one kid his name, and he kept responding in different ways about how he had turned his form in to somebody else, so I just skipped him and went on to the next person that could answer a question correctly.

Susan from Fast Glass called to let me know they were going to be working on my car, but then she called later to tell me they had the wrong windshield, but they only found out after they removed my old one. She offered a loaner car since they wouldn’t get it fixed until Monday, but then said it wouldn’t start, and that I was out of luck.

After lunch, we eventually made it to the elementary to swap out a couple of carts and backfill others that needed more devices. We have more work to do, but it’s hard to be sympathetic to some of those people. I get that not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up, but it’d be nice if a larger percentage of them would grow up and be useful members of society.

Sometime near the end of the day, our core switch stopped responding and I had to go down to the core closet to reset it. I guess I’ll try to dig into some logs later to figure out what happened, but for now I’m focusing on short-term goals, because school.

I raced back to town so I could run by Fast Glass to see why my car wasn’t charging after they plugged it in, and I had to meet Shaun at Linh’s where they were getting some dinner after leaving work before their posted closing time. He was at least nice enough to let me go down to the shop by myself to try and figure it out. As luck would have it, their crappy extension cord wasn’t grounded properly, so I just had to leave it unplugged.

Then I went home to change so I could go to my parents’ house to swim for a bit. I got so hot and sweaty at work all day that I just wanted to float and cool down for a bit. I wasn’t out there long before we had a short thunderstorm. I got out, but my phone was nearly dead, so I went across town to meet up with Summer at Splash. Then we headed to her house where I warmed up some leftover spaghetti before we called it an early night. Eaddie was out late for their first football game, so we never even saw her, but maybe we’ll have a good day tomorrow.

Inconsiderate

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Pain of Glass

This week mellowed out quickly, but that may be from my own intentional ignoring of work orders. Chromebook carts are done, so we enrolled a bunch more devices to shuffle with the elementary. The internet went goofy for a while, but of course I didn’t have the tools in place to explain why. It was just bad for some reason.

I had a video call with a couple of guys from the Department of Information Systems to upgrade our VPN service. That went poorly enough that we’ll have to troubleshoot another time. Fortunately, I don’t know of anyone that actually uses that VPN service. It’s possible that somebody does, but I’ll just have to find out who when it stops working.

Fast Glass called to say that Summer’s windshield didn’t come in. I asked about mine, she said she would call me right back, and of course I never heard another word. That reminded me to go and leave a bad review for River Valley Tinting and Glass after they scratched the window trim on the Model Y back in April.

I made it home a little late and hung out to charge for a while. Julie called to update me on the Entergy job, which is to say that operations are just slower than expected, and that no news is still good news. Then I took the car in for a much-needed wash before I made it up to Summer’s. I had her start baking the casserole from weeks ago so we could try and clean it up. Eaddie came home and went straight to homework, and eventually everyone went to bed.

The scope has changed.

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Delegate

I left the house early today and cruised in to work on Autopilot. Kim was there on her birthday, and we delivered a couple more carts. I tried to take her to lunch, but we ended up just eating cafeteria food. They thought they ran out of orange chicken, so they gave us some chicken strips and fries instead, but then someone else came out the back entrance with some “teacher trays” of orange chicken, so I ate twice. The rice was pretty miserable, but the chicken was good.

Kim spent most of the day cleaning up old work orders, and I was glad that she was taking the initiative to do what she could do without me having to take a walk with her. Of course her days are super short, since she’s gone for lunch duty for what feels like hours, and then she leaves when the kids get out of class. Maybe some day I’ll get bored and actually pay attention to her hours.

I headed home as casually as I had driven in to work, and spent some time charging at home before heading up to Summer’s. Eaddie wanted me to help her with some physics homework, and I tried, but she was already kind of burned out on schoolwork. Eventually everyone made it to bed after an uneventful day.

How does insurance work, anyway?

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Shut In and Shut Up

My office was pretty toasty this morning since the air had been off all night. It wasn’t long before Toby came by and said he needed help with the HVAC server. He got hold of a couple people that directed us to reset some things on our virtual machine that ran the HVAC software, and we eventually got things running again. It took most of the day to cool my office down, but I was thankful to have some air.

Kim was out to take her boys to the dentist, so I shut myself in my office and finished up a bunch of Chromebook carts. I grabbed some chili for lunch and continued enrolling more devices, and then left just a few minutes early so I could get to Gardner before Gary left. I was hoping they had some tech tubs left, but apparently they threw most of them in the garbage and wanted to keep whatever they still had left. I understand not keeping everything, but they had so many brand new tubs that could have been used for something. I’ll never understand the money that’s just thrown away like that.

After talking with Gary for a while, and then briefly with Thomas in the parking lot, I went to both Casey’s stores to redeem some rewards. Then I went home to charge for a while before heading up to Summer’s. I stopped for tacos along the way, and saved some seeds from the Taco Villa hot sauce, hoping I could grow them to learn what kind of peppers they use.

Eaddie was out late for band practice, and Summer went to bed early. I just sat in the dark for quite a while until bed.

The toxicity of our city.

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Transform and Roll Out

I forgot my watch this morning and had to run back home for it. That got me to work right on time after following a slowpoke. Kim was a little bit late, but that gave me time to make a coffee and get into moving some Chromebooks around in Google Admin. I basically spent the entire day building out carts, expecting to roll them out to the classrooms. When we did finally start to deliver three finished carts, we realized that none of those teachers were there. I should be able to get most of them done tomorrow though, now that everything is put together.

It was incredibly hot outside, which didn’t affect me indoors until our air unit started blowing warm air. By the time I left, it was getting pretty toasty inside. I got home and changed, but then had to head right up to Summer’s house for dinner. Noah came over, and Eaddie invited Eli for a spaghetti dinner. Then we played a couple games of Uno afterward.

It was still hot outside in the evening, but I tried to go out and fix Noah’s tailgate handle in the dark. As luck would have it, we didn’t have the socket we needed, so we’ll have to try again at my house later, hopefully when even the dark doesn’t make me sweat.

I was getting ready for bed when I happened to think of the heat and the hungry, thirsty hummingbirds, so I made some more nectar and then went to bed.

Lightning at the End of the Tunnel