Author: gallopingcow

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I Don’t Wanna!

We had a little meeting today, but it didn’t seem like there was a whole lot of stress to do anything. I certainly didn’t overexert myself in my office. Gary asked me to go upstairs to take care of a couple work orders, which would have burned him up a bit, but I was able to breeze right through. I thought I might make it back over to Oakland at some point, but I just never did.

The morning went by surprisingly quickly, and Gary came back to fetch me for lunch. I took him, Josh, and Thomas to Zaxby’s where we mostly sat in silence and ate. Then it was back to the office. After a little while, Greg came in to investigate the phones, as they had all disconnected. Evidently Gary was making some network changes, and some automation actually caused what he was actively trying to prevent from happening. Once they got it working again, I went with Gary to Central Office, then Transportation, and finally Support Services.

By then, it was nearly quitting time. I think my greatest accomplishment was melting the crystals out of my honey bear with my Ember mug. I still ended up sticking around late though, because Eaddie didn’t have karate. I had a little peace to myself, and then went home for some more before heading up to Summer’s.

I stopped by Taco Bell for a couple burritos, which was fortunate since Summer wanted something to eat. Autumn was watching YouTube on the TV, and had talked to Summer about getting some things out of storage. I was still upset that we hadn’t addressed the manipulation that occurred while Autumn was “helping” around her grandparents’ house, so I made Summer call them on speakerphone. She didn’t answer, but at least it got the conversation started with Autumn. She got angry at first, but cooled off surprisingly quickly. I’m not going to keep letting her think she can get things over on me though.

We ended the evening shaking out Eaddie’s blanket because she left chocolate in her bed, which attracted ants. They’ve been in every single room of the house, and nobody’s figured out why yet. I baited them, and was off to bed.

Nike.

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Armed Brother

Thomas and Zach were out today, so Gary was calling the shots. I was initially directed to the Support Services building to investigate a bunch of equipment moves, but was quickly pulled off of that to start a help ticket with Jamf. I thought they might actually be quick to respond, but I never heard anything back all day.

I went to Oakland for a little while to troubleshoot my weird lunch room computer issues, but didn’t get very far. I consistently had issues with both computers there. I made it back to the shop for lunch, but Gary and Tammy were the only ones there, and he had to stick around for Ritter to show up. He did end up picking up some food, but then had to meet the guy that showed up while he was out. I wound up just skipping lunch entirely, and picked at various things I found around the office.

I didn’t really get a whole lot accomplished the rest of the afternoon. I sat with Tammy for a little while as she got emotional. Gary eventually showed back up after she went to pick up some food for herself, but it was still quiet downstairs all afternoon.

Summer took Autumn to therapy, and then brought back some food from Big Poppa’s after dropping her off at karate. I went to Kroger to pick up some freezer bags, and then met the other two at home to eat. Summer wanted to go to the gym, so I dropped Eaddie off at tennis for an hour while I set spider traps all around the house. I look forward to being horrified by how many bugs I catch.

Summer got Autumn and I got Eaddie after their activities, and we headed back up to the house for the evening. Tonight was my turn to get a long call from sister, and we chatted about Randall’s upcoming wedding next year, then therapy, then vacations, then frustrations. I hope an unbiased third party will help now that I’ve had some experience communicating thoughts and feelings.

Naked force has resolved more conflicts throughout history than any other factor.

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Task Man

We met for about an hour this morning before Gary and I went to Oakland to take care of a couple different things. I wanted to close out an old ticket, but got sidetracked by a stubborn lunch line computer. Gary went to a couple switch closets to check on some dead batteries. When we got back to the shop, I had a little time to work on our Jamf migration before he asked me to run a computer across the street to Central Office.

By the time I made it back, it was nearly lunch time, and Zach took us along with Thomas to Wendy’s. Service there was super fast, so we spent most of the hour chatting before heading back. I continued to work on random tasks the rest of the afternoon until Hannah came down to pick up a laptop. She ended up sticking around to chat for quite a while.

I left a little bit late and had to get Eaddie to tennis practice. She chatted about boating with friends, and then staying the night with another friend. I had to take her to my house to change first, but then I dropped her off and went to my parents’ house for some eggplant soup until she was done.

On the way back to their house, Eaddie wanted to get some Dairy Queen. Then she fussed about the poor quality of their product recently. She said her Thin Mints Blizzard tasted poorly blended, and all she got was the mint syrup.

Summer and Autumn eventually showed up, and Autumn appeared to be in a pretty good mood. Summer almost immediately got on the phone with Beth, so I basically didn’t see her the rest of the night. Everyone went to bed relatively early, and I got there eventually.

Lie Still

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Cleared for Nothing

Eaddie had a couple days worth of fun planned with friends, so Summer dropped her off for church and a day on a boat, followed by a night with her friend. Then she went on to the gym while I slept in. Eventually she made it home, and she, Autumn, and I decided to go hang out at Walmart for a little while. Jaylinn had told Summer that a bunch of stuff was on clearance, so we thought we might find a deal.

Nothing really caught our eye, but Summer did finally get her kitchen zester. About halfway through our shopping trip, Autumn developed a scowl that nobody really understood. Eventually she came out and said she didn’t like me showing public displays of affection to Summer, but really all I had done was hold her hand or walk with my arm around her. Autumn was just acting lonely and petty, and wanted to lash out. She even tried getting me in trouble for some new scratches on the side of Summer’s car, even though it was pretty obviously done by someone else pushing up against it from the outside.

Autumn wanted us to take her back home instead of to my parents’ house to swim, but I thought we might do her one better and take her to her grandparents’ house for a while. We first drove around the block a few times to look at some houses for sale, and then dropped her off to help with some housework. Then Summer and I went to my parents’ house for some swimming and spring rolls.

Julie eventually showed up as well, and helped with a bit of the prep work before we ate. I tried slicing some meat, but had trouble getting it very thin since the very outside of the block of meat had thawed out to be very soft while the inside was still frozen. The rolls were good though, and Julie appreciated an accidental, early, birthday dinner of one of her favorite foods.

Summer and I eventually headed home, stopping at Walgreens to pick up an order along the way. Then it was back up to her house for the evening, where we tried to finish up our written document for Autumn’s FINS petition. She baked a boxed cake mix we got from Walgreens, then did some stuff for work. We fought a couple separate ant infestations, Autumn was dropped off super late, and then it was off to bed.

Ungrateful swine.

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Swim&Ms

Summer scrambled some ham, cheese, and eggs together for breakfast this morning. Eaddie didn’t want to come out of her room much, but she at least ate with everyone else. Autumn actually wanted to come swim with Summer and me, which was a bit of a surprise. It didn’t take long for her to start acting a bit cranky though. We eventually made it to my parents’ house, and Dad came out to join us while Mom slept in.

After we finished swimming in the midday sun, they dropped me off at my house so I could clean up before our double date with Melinda and Matt. I tinkered a bit, but didn’t get up to a whole lot. I watched a little bit of Ms. Marvel just to see if I thought Eaddie might be interested in watching it with me. I’m not sure she’ll care much about the characters, but some of the effects are pretty neat.

Summer eventually made it back down to pick me up, and we headed to Cagle’s Mill for dinner with my old workmate and her husband. I really didn’t have much to say, and Summer spent quite a while just talking about work, so I think it was a little more awkward for Matt and me than anything. The girls enjoyed their drinks though, and all of their food looked pretty good. My ribeye looked awful, but tasted alright. After Summer’s work talk, Melinda kept the small talk going until we decided it was time to head home.

The girls were watching the last episode of Stranger Things, so Summer and I went to the bedroom for some quiet. Then everyone made it to sleep relatively early.

Puff!

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Doubles

Gary had me spin up a VM for our upcoming Jamf Cloud migration, which took most of the day worth of tinkering. I felt good about setting up the VM, and followed along well enough as we made firewall changes. Unfortunately the application didn’t have very good documentation, and the installation got stuck near what I think was the end of the process.

Zach took a bunch of us to CJ’s for lunch, and I spent the ride coloring in the back seat. The burger was pretty messy today, and had me gurgling a bit in the afternoon. I continued to tinker with our Jamf project until Thomas let everyone go about an hour early.

Summer took the day off with the girls, but didn’t get up to a whole lot, I don’t think. She wanted to take a nap about the time I got home, so I just stayed there and tinkered around until later in the evening. When I finally made it up to their house, Eaddie wanted to go out to play tennis. Autumn decided to surprise us with her participation as well, so I figured I should complete the set.

I ate some leftover stir fry really quickly, and then we had Eaddie drive us to the city park to see how busy they were. She really wanted to go to Old Post though, so we went to my house for my racket and some more balls, and then made our way to the lock and dam. I was surprised the courts there weren’t packed with how nice it felt outside.

We switched around from playing singles to doubles, and everyone had quite a bit of fun. Autumn eventually tapped out, and then a little while later our lights went out and we couldn’t get them back on, so we decided to wrap it up. Summer took us up to Caudle Overlook so Autumn could see the dam, and then we headed home to wind down and head to bed.

Feels like 40, love.

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Clever Boy

I thought it was going to be another quiet, uneventful day at the office, but shortly after I dug into some work, Gary called and asked for help with a couple guys from Raptor that were there to test and troubleshoot our alerting system. Evidently among all of the brightest minds there, not one of them thought to “think different” and bring along an Android device.

I headed to the high school and had to sit while they discussed some things before we actually got started. Then we wandered to a couple places, both inside and out, in order to test different scenarios, logging in and out of the app repeatedly until we had enough data points. I don’t think we unearthed anything groundbreaking, but hopefully they were able to take back some good feedback.

We worked into lunch, but then the guys offered to buy lunch. Terry gave them the option of CJ’s or Old South, and we went for the southern comfort food. I should have gotten the chicken fried steak breakfast platter that Albert ordered, because it looked awesome. My fried catfish wasn’t bad, but I was definitely jealous.

When we got back to the high school, Gary sent me off to meet up with Greg in Chrissy’s office. He was having trouble with the Macs over there, but unfortunately I wasn’t much help. We also checked on Daniel’s, which he ended up taking back to the shop. I spent the rest of the afternoon, quietly in my office. I did managed to get a couple things done, and then headed up to get Eaddie for tennis practice after work.

While I waited for Eaddie to finish, I set up an Echo Show, which didn’t really impress me much. I haven’t really liked the Blink Mini camera that came with it either. I don’t think I’ll return them, but I just don’t care for the quality.

Autumn and Summer made dinner back home, which made everyone quite happy. Then I suggested a game of Phase 10 before everyone was ready for bed. I did my best not to stay up too early on account of how behind I’ve been on sleep. Weekends happen too fast and too far apart. I don’t know why I can’t just live on a boat forever.

Or in a robot car…

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Freeze!

I spent most of this morning very slowly trying to replace the cafeteria computers at Oakland. While I waited for them to boot up and update, I ended up exploring the walk-in cooler, as well as the freezer section located through a second doorway inside the refrigerator. I panicked a little bit as the button to open the door from the inside had frozen stuck for a moment, but I escaped. After that, I tinkered around until lunch time when a group of us went to Freddy’s.

I misspoke and got my burger without all the veggies, which was detrimental to its flavor. I also still wonder what a sport pepper is, since they didn’t have any. I was the only one to end my meal with any custard, but I had earned a free concrete in the form of a key lime pie. It was delicious, but I only had a few bites before we headed back to the shop.

I spent most of the afternoon helping Zach and Greg run a couple lines at Central Office. It was frustrating to see all of the renovations there, while we can’t even drink the tap water downstairs. I got a little itchy from the insulation in the ceiling, but fortunately it was a short run. I spent more time terminating than actually running the cable.

I walked across to the Transportation office for the last bit of the day, and ended up talking to Kayla well past quitting time. We shared our gossip, and she tried to offer any advice she could for our situation with Autumn. Summer texted that they were home and ready to cook dinner, so I had to run home and change before stopping by Walmart for a few last-minute ingredients.

When I got there, Summer and Autumn were both in the kitchen, dancing around each other. Summer made a sort of stir-fry while Autumn baked snickerdoodles. We had a good dinner, everyone got along, and then Summer did some stuff for work before heading off to bed. Autumn ended up sleeping on the couch while I documented our troubles with her for our FINS petition. I stayed up later than I wanted, but I think I got most everything written down.

It’s important to be historically accurate!

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She’s a Little Runaway

I hardly slept last night, but got up and back to my cooler house after its first night of air conditioning in a while. We were a little scattered for projects during our meeting, and I could have hidden away in my office all morning, but instead I rode around with Zach to work on a few doors. We chatted, and it really helped keep my spirits up.

Summer had to go to Little Rock for a meeting, but then came back to work from home for the rest of the day. She wanted to get lunch, so after Zach and I finished running around trying to fix and lock all of the doors we were working on, I met her at Sumo’s. I still wasn’t feeling great about the situation at home, but we finally talked a bit and tried to come up with a plan. I suggested that she try and take Autumn to a recruiter and see what options might be available to her.

I went back to work, and after a followup text, Summer said she was having trouble with Autumn, and then called in tears to say that Autumn had blown up again and “ran away” down the road again. I reminded her that she could file a FINS petition, so she made a phone call and then had me meet her at the juvenile office next to the courthouse. The lady there did a whole lot of talking to sell the program to us even though we were already all-in. Eaddie sat in the corner quietly while we chatted, and then they went home to fill out paperwork while I went back to work. I figured Autumn had most likely called her grandparents to pick her up, and of course Summer confirmed my suspicion.

I worked out the rest of the day, and even a little bit late to update our Jamf server prior to our migration to their cloud service. Everyone else left me in the dark, but I was just happy to accomplish something of my own before I left. Then I went home until Eaddie finished with tennis practice and then met Summer at her house. They cleaned up a bit, since Summer had also worked up a sweat at the gym. Then we went to Stoby’s for dinner before fetching Autumn.

Eaddie went inside to visit, and perhaps to survey the situation. Her grandmother came outside to talk to Summer, but Autumn hid away inside until we talked her into going back inside to get her. I had to threaten calling the police, and then ultimately made the call when Autumn came outside but refused to come with us. A few minutes later, she realized how dumb and wasteful she was being and agreed to comply, but by then the trucks had already rolled and we had to stand at the end of the driveway talking to four officers for the next hour.

Autumn had cooled down, and was very talkative with Eaddie in the back seat. She kept wanting to talk to us, but of course we were sick of even hearing her voice. We had them shower as soon as we got home, and then they went to bed while Summer worked on the FINS petition with occasional help from me.

Having a written record of your life is pretty handy…and incriminating!

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Heat Waive

I made it home to shower this morning, but then couldn’t dry my hair in the heat and humidity before making it in to work. Everyone was sitting around the conference table awkwardly without me, but we didn’t have much to talk about. Everyone was sent off to take care of little things, and I spent all day in my office trying to look busy. I tinkered with a task sequence for a while, but couldn’t really test anything out without a lab full of computers.

Rood couldn’t get anyone out today to look at my air conditioner, so I called Roy’s. The lady I spoke with said they could get someone out in the same day, so I took that bet without knowing any kind of timeframe.

Gary and I met the others at Brangus for lunch, though I wasn’t really hungry enough for that. Just before we got our food, Veronica walked in, followed a few minutes later by her husband and Junior. Then on the way out, we saw Grant and his mother as they were leaving right behind us.

I spent most of the afternoon taking Net+ quizzes until quitting time. I figured my air conditioner probably wasn’t going to get fixed and went on to get Eaddie to her tennis practice. Rather than wait in the sun, I went home to sweat it out inside until Eaddie finished. A little while later, I actually got a call from the Roy’s tech. I was super surprised that he would be working that late, but he was super friendly and got me up and running again super fast.

The house only cooled down a couple degrees by the time I left to get Eaddie, and then I took her on home because she just wanted to eat leftovers. I finished up the rice and beans from Chuy’s while she cleaned the kitchen, and then sat around until Summer and Autumn got home.

We had both had a pretty long day, and Autumn had been running her mouth again, which lead to another family conversation. It’s really hard not to blame all of it on Autumn, because she’s making everyone in the house absolutely miserable. She does fine for a while, and we can spend time with her laughing for minutes at a time, but she eventually always reverts to a hateful, bitter kid. Eaddie’s been growing into her own person as well, so Summer’s feeling that loss as well. Seems nobody wins today.

Any one you walk away from, right?