Author: gallopingcow

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Tone the Line

Today was a long day of a mostly empty office. Johnny called me early, and we talked for a while on the phone. I kept fairly busy after that, but I was very tired. We were up and down the stairs quite a bit again, and between that and the running I let Muad’Dib do outside in the morning and before lunch, even he was reluctant to climb any more stairs.

I ate leftovers with Janice, Elizabeth, and Teisha again, and then we split up what was left to take home. I ended up with a bunch of rice, beans, and shredded lettuce, so I guess we’ll have tacos tomorrow. The afternoon seemed to drag on forever after that, and I never got any closer to finding the switch side of the line running from the lab.

The drive home was slow, stupid, and full of road-raging idiots. We got to the house alive though, and I immediately took Muad’Dib out for a pretty slow run. It was really dark, and he just didn’t really want to run. We visited my parents briefly, then got back to the house where I finally put away all the food I brought home. The kids were there, but left for a high school football game with friends.

I’m too tired for a weekend.

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Should Be Singing

The Morrilton McDonald’s was lined up to the entrance this morning, but I managed to squeak in and pick up my free frappé at the counter. I was still fairly early to work, and it was a relatively busy day for me. I ran up and down the stairs several times to help with various things. Lunch time came pretty fast, and we had leftover grilled chicken and rice from Colton’s. Muad’Dib ate a bunch of broccoli and some cauliflower. The afternoon was fairly busy too, but I got stuck trying to track down a cable from the lab up to the switch. The tone probe should have been singing, but it just kept going off sporadically in the most unhelpful kind of way.

We got home fairly quickly after dropping off some goose clothes with Kevin. Summer was grilling burgers at the house, so I took Muad’Dib for a quick run and then the three of us ate. We have no choice but to clean the grill before we use it again, because it is consistently catching on fire now. Hopefully we can get it done before the cold snap really hits.

Summer went to bed, Eaddie had Eli over to practice singing their own stuff for school, and I finished cleaning the mini fridge and restocked it before finally making it to bed.

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” — which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

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Boom!!! Headshot!

I somehow managed to dress up and tie an eldredge knot quickly enough to get to work around the same time this morning. I had forgotten it was going to be a new crew the next two days, so we had to introduce ourselves again, and then it was a waiting game for Ciara to show up and take our pictures. I guess she missed her ride in the morning or something, so Jessica ended up taking some of our photos herself just before lunch. I got Muad’Dib dressed up in his little tie, hat, and glasses, and even managed to get one good photo of him head-on. Then I discovered Google’s Nano Banana for generative photo editing, and got some really stunning results. Some were even a bit interstellar.

We ate some leftover fajitas from the sales lunch, but then the afternoon dragged by and I ended up being the only one upstairs for the last couple hours. I raced the sun home so I could take Muad’Dib for a run, but then Julie called with some sourdough and I had to vector off on a detour. He got in trouble when I got back to the car, because he crawled up into the front and was sitting on the center console.

We had our run, visited my parents, and made it back to the house just as the kids were finishing dinner. Summer made some chicken with some kind of habanero sauce, and boiled broccoli to go along with some leftover rice and mashed sweet potato. Dinner was really good, and then the kids disappeared and Summer went to bed.

He is the Kwisatz Haderach.

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Ceiling Dirt

I forgot my bánh bao for breakfast this morning, so I stopped at McDonald’s to redeem my last free biscuit. Then I jumped right into my network switch from yesterday, which went even worse than I expected. For some reason, I couldn’t get the old SSIDs to quit showing up. On top of that, I had a couple of important access points that refused to talk over their wired connections, and instead wanted to mesh to other access points. I fought that the entire day.

I ate some leftover coldcuts from the sales lunch, plus some steak tips from yesterday. I ate too much, but it made up for not having dinner later in the evening. At some point, Ciara wanted to take pictures of Muad’Dib with his little tie on, so Teisha and I went outside with her to do that. He was uncooporative, but that was expected. Teisha gets him even more riled up than usual with all her treats.

The afternoon was long and painful, and I checked in with Joel on the way out, but he didn’t have much to say. I felt like people were having a really poor experience with the network, but he said nobody complained to him about it.

Summer was baking pumpkins when we got to the house, and then spent the rest of the evening dehydrating the seeds and some guts. I took Muad’Dib for a quick run as the sun went down, and thought I’d have to go to the old house to look for my necktie, but I finally found it in my secondary storage closet.

How does the dust even get up there?!?

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Why Five

We woke up to a crash at around three in the morning. I yelled for Muad’Dib, and he jumped right back into the bed, but I couldn’t tell that he caused any trouble. Once I gathered myself, I discovered the ice finally fell out of the mini fridge and shattered on the bottom shelf. I was able to doze off a few more times, but kept waking up in the middle of wildly different dreams every few minutes.

All the salespeople and our new marketing coordinator were going to be at the office for some technical training today, so I tried to get there a little early. Muad’Dib did great all day. We started out with brief introductions, and then I just went to work as usual until Shane walked into my office.

He asked for the “simple” task of capitalizing the company name on all of our WiFi SSIDs, not realizing this would require a touch to every device that was connected to any of the affected networks. I took the opportunity to learn some more, and built out some structure that I had planned for the distant future. Without RADIUS, I was still able to learn how to create a policy in Intune to distribute shared credentials. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

That ate up all of my day, but I did take a late lunch to eat some of their leftover steak tips they got for lunch. Janice, Elizabeth, and Tammy were in the breakroom as we walked out, and invited us in to eat. Muad’Dib did well to lay at my feet while I ate, and then we had Janice’s carrot cake for Scott’s belated birthday just as he was walking out the door.

I didn’t really finish my whole task before I left half an hour late, but I had enough done that I felt confident in my ability to clean it up in the morning when everyone was there. Summer had dinner going at the house, so we got there as quickly as we could. I took Muad’Dib for a quick run as the sun went down. We visited Dad, then got back to eat just as the kids were finishing their plates.

After dinner, I finished setting up the KitchenAid KF8 that Summer unboxed. We brewed a few cups with some trash coffee, and then I filled the hopper to make a single milk drink before bed. We shared a couple sips to test it, and then Summer went to bed. I had an anxiety attack as I cleaned up, and then went to bed pretty early in anticipation of another early morning.

Why not six?

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Incomplete

I went to bed several hours early last night, and woke up a little early this morning. Summer went to the store for some breakfast and then came back to make sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits. I worked on several things, including vacuuming for several hours, laundry, and continuing to defrost the mini fridge. Very little of it felt finished.

I took Muad’Dib out for a run and encountered a littlel dog with heterochromia. She was just running loose and came to chase Muad’Dib for a bit before a kid came out to get her. We visited Dad, then got back to the house where Summer warmed up some of the meatballs she made the other night. We ate and then I took a shower.

Summer and I had a talk, but like everything else, that conversation isn’t finished. Things calmed down pretty quickly though, and I had to prep for a week of salespeople and visitors at work.

She spilled her coffee; broke a shoelace.

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Ice Cold

I continued to doze on and off this morning, slipping in and out of different dreams. Summer wandered the house loudly until I got up to some breakfast. She started to cook some bacon, but then left the stove on with nothing on the burner while she went to the bathroom. I got up and put the bacon on, but then she came out and took over to scramble some eggs for me. They came out grey and wet because she scrambled them with pepper. Afterward, we moved the couch so we could vacuum the other half of the living room, and then Summer had to mop the floors because she didn’t pay attention to all the mud in the back yard when she let Muad’Dib out.

I worked on some reviews and then started to get cleaned up so I could at least go to Eaddie’s pregame show. Summer left first, and then I got my socks wet because Summer didn’t dry the floors after she wet mopped, so I just stayed home. That was when I discovered the mini fridge had frozen up around a few cans, which subsequently froze, bloated, and leaked everywhere. I started to clean that up and let it defrost while I vacuumed behind what Summer had done. No surprise, there was still a bunch of that fine powder all in the carpet.

Hours went by as I cleaned, and eventually I quit to take Muad’Dib out on a run. It was pretty cold out, so he did great to run the whole time. We went to Ridgewood and had a Frito chili pie, and then ran into Eric and Carlie as we left. We made it to see my parents, and then got back to the house where Summer was warming up in a bath.

I was pretty exhausted and exhasperated by then, so it was an early, early night to bed.

subzero

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Bring Grandma to Work Day

We had enough time to stop for coffee and then a biscuit this morning, and then still had time to stretch our legs when we got to work before putting on Muad’Dib’s costume. I wore my red hoodie, and he wore his robe, hairnet, and eyeglasses, which everyone loved. Joel brought Dexter, and though he was skittish at first, he eventually warmed up to Muad’Dib. Muad’Dib kept stealing his toy bone though, and I had to scold him.

I got into the firewall some and figured out how to pass the traffic I needed to make the Unifi captive portal work, so we won’t need a WiFi password next week when everyone shows up for training. I spent a bunch of time out and about, and felt a little more comfortable joking around with people, which was great.

We went to McDonald’s for lunch and had a pretty bad experience again. It wasn’t terrible, but every single aspect of being there could have been made better with almost no effort. I ended up sending a huge letter of complaint through their online form, since they requested I do so after I left a poor Google review.

The afternoon went by fairly quickly. I had a sudden anxiety attack, and Joel sent us home half an hour early. Muad’Dib and I got to the house where Summer was preparing for trick-or-treaters. We went on our run with Muad’Dib dressed as a cow, and then I took him around the block again without the outfit so he could feel more comfortable running fast.

I ate some food and then we sat outside with Summer while she passed out candy. There weren’t very many people in our neighborhood, which was great news for me. We came inside and watched the rest of Ironheart before winding down for bed.

My, what big runs you have!

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I’d Rautha Not

I took Muad’Dib in this morning with his little rodeo accessory, and everyone loved it. Unfortunately it just didn’t fit right, so he didn’t wear it for most of the day. I also had him wear an e-collar since he’s gotten into the habit of running off uncontrollably. He behaved much better today for our several trips up and down the stairs.

I also buckled him up while I went in for lunch, since I didn’t want him crawling all over the car and tearing something up. The afternoon was long and tiring, but we eventually got home. Summer was there, not feeling well. We went out for an early run, but then things got a little huskier.

We got to the end of the street and encountered a white and tan husky on the loose. They charged at each other and then ran in circles around me. Muad’Dib was fairly well minding, but the stranger was really skittish around me. I got a pet or two in, but otherwise he would cower and run away. He followed us back to the house where I had Summer meet us outside. It took some work, but once she came back out with a bowl of food, he came right up to us and followed us into the back yard.

He was super friendly from that point on, but had a ton of hair coming off in big tufts as though he had never been brushed, or even petted. He also had super long toenails like he had never been outside to walk, or even roam around freely. He was really skinny under all that fur, and showed a bit of bone. We needed to get to walking though, so I decided to leash him and see if we could find anyone who recognized him.

We made it all the way around to my parents’ house, where Mom scolded me for picking up another dog. They were talking with someone about replacing their windows, so we left. We got all the way back to the house when we rounded the corner and were approached in the dark by a lime green Jeep Renegade. A skinny, shirtless, white guy smoking a cigarette eyeballed us through his window, so I asked if he knew the dog. He nodded, and reached behind himself to try and open his back door from the inside. He gestured to put the dog in, again without words. I suggested he step outside since I didn’t want to take my leash and collor off the dog without securing him in some way. As soon as he opened the door, the dog cowered and tried to get away. I asked where he lived, and he pointed down the street where we found him. Then he loaded up and drove away.

Feeling pretty awful about the entire experience, I went inside and called the police, who basically told me to call Animal Control during business hours. I wrote a long email to them before going to bed, but I doubt anything comes of it.

Feyd to Black

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#mood

We picked up a frappé when we got into Morrilton, then realized how cold it was outside as we walked into the building. I bounced around a bit between projects, but stayed busy. The McDonald’s app screwed up at lunch time, but I managed to get my food. I was pretty sure Muad’Dib climbed into the front seat while he was waiting for me, so he was mildly in trouble for the afternoon.

I had to go downstairs to help Elizabeth with something, and her computer update took about an hour to complete, so I was down there with her for a while. We chatted and tinkered with Kandi’s old computer while we waited. Heaven came out and took Muad’Dib in to play with Teddy for a bit, and then we finally got back upstairs just in time to wind things down.

Summer had some food in the slow cooker when we got to the house. It was mostly dry, so I took Muad’Dib on a quick run, visited my parents, and then got back to eat. Summer went to bed after that, and I cleaned up for trash day.

~super automatic~