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Plant B

I slept in just a little bit today, but got out for some breakfast to take to Summer since she was at Superfast today. I didn’t stay long though, and headed home to clean up for round two at Green Bay Packaging. I was actually a little behind where I wanted to be, but I made it there in time.

Gary took me to his office where we chatted kind of loosely some more about some typical personality and work methodology interview questions. Then he took me through the main paper-rolling portion of the plant. I didn’t really get to see any pulp go in, but I did see what he called the “wet” and “dry” ends of the process. It was expectedly hot and humid, but it’s not even August yet. The control rooms and the industrial plant as a whole were reminiscent of my couple of tours of the nuclear plant when Dad could still take me through the plant. It was a really neat look behind the scenes.

After the tour, we chatted for just a brief moment more before I headed home. I was hungry for lunch by then, so I picked up Summer and we went to Popeye’s. They were, as usual, out of chicken, so we waited about 20 minutes for our food. At least the chicken was hot and fresh, but then that had me in a rush to get home and change before driving out to ANO.

I had MASS testing at the Generation Support Building, and I arrived just in time to meet a couple other guys waiting at the door to be let in. It was a small group of people testing, and at least one other kid going up against me for the same job. I’m really not going into it with any confidence, but I figure I’ve got to try if I’ve made it this far.

The first test was shape assembly, and I didn’t make it nearly as far along the test as I thought I would. I didn’t have my watch, so I couldn’t pace myself. If I have to test again, I think I could do better. The mechanical concepts test was the easiest for me, but two of the questions dealt with things I just wasn’t familiar with. In particular, I was unsure about belt slippage between two spindles. Otherwise I thought I did fairly well, and there definitely weren’t any ambiguous questions like there were on the practice test. I was surprised the math portion was only seven minutes long, and I thought I’d get through more of it than I did. I hated hunting through the huge list of conversion factors to find what I needed.

Once I was done with the test, I headed back into town and stopped by to see Mom. I forgot Dad was out for a funeral, so I hung out with her for a little bit before heading home to change, and then finally making it up to Summer’s for the night.

Autumn was in Clarksville with Adam again, allegedly at the water park. Eaddie was cleaning her room and doing laundry. Summer was watching TV in the living room, so I bounced around a little bit between the couch and snacking in the kitchen. Once Autumn came home, I disappeared into the bedroom until she went away to her room. Then it was a race to get to bed for an early day at work. I’m not afraid of ten hour days, but I hate starting so early.

I’m not even sure what I want any more.

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Fifty Grand and the Hunt for Chromebooks

Kim called me while I was on the way to work this morning, and said she would be coming in a little bit later. I don’t think she’s actually scheduled to work any more over the summer, but she says she swaps comp days, and I don’t know enough yet to argue. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I decided to poke around the 3CX phone system a little more.

Blake came into my office a little later and said I had about $50,000 to spend before the end of the year. I’m guessing that’s normally a good problem to have, but in this case I’m still not even sure what we have in order to make a judgement on what we need. I’ve got dozens of fires going at once, and I’m just not able to prioritize any one of them.

The lunch room was obviously closed, so I didn’t even bother trying to find anything to eat. Kim found us some leftover cake though, so that served well enough. We spent the afternoon going room-to-room looking for Chromebooks, and I made a spreadsheet to compare those that we scanned with those from Google Admin. That seemed like a good start, at least. We found about 200 by the end of the day.

Apparently we’re already starting four ten hour days, so I left a little after five and raced home as quickly as traffic would allow. Summer had swapped to charge, so I had to shuffle cars around after I changed clothes and stoked the fires in the back yard a little more. Then I picked up some Taco John’s on the way up to her house for the evening.

I brought home some leftover hot sauce from our Taco Villa lunch on Friday, and it made my tacos about a thousand times better. I only stopped eating them because I ran out. Summer sat in front of the TV the rest of the night until she went to bed. I finally got Summer’s Fitbit Aria scale paired again, after an infuriating conversation with tech support, and finally bringing out an old iPad to complete the process.

Eaddie had spent several hours helping her grandmother in the garden, and best I could tell, Autumn was out at the movies with Adam. Eaddie came home and showed me some new shirts she got, and I made it to bed before Autumn got home.

Tek Tuk Tuk!

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Poor Test

I was pretty sleepy last night, and slept in a fair amount today, partially because my phone never finished charging overnight with a faulty cable, and I wanted to run a full charge cycle for testing purposes. Summer forgot it was Memorial Day and scheduled herself to work in Greenbrier. Autumn had plans to spend the day out, mostly with Adam, so Eaddie and I had the day to ourselves.

I started with a bowl of cereal while I shopped for a sunshade for my car. Mom called to offer leftovers for lunch, so I woke Eaddie up and we eventually made our way to their house to eat. Then she wanted to go play her flute with a friend, so we had to run back to the house for her instrument, and then I dropped her off and headed to my house for the day.

The first thing I did was poke around the logs some more to get them burning down some more. Then I went inside and had a bit of an anxiety/dizziness attack that gave me a little bit of a dull headache for a while. Eventually I got around to doing my practice testing for Entergy, but evidently I did the wrong collection of tests. I thought I had to do all of them, but it was just four specific categories.

As it got later, I went back to get Eaddie, and we made it home just after Summer. They watched The Office while I argued with Julie about the practice test answers. I just couldn’t see how they came to some of their conclusions, but hopefully they were just poor examples of test questions. It won’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it anyway.

I ended the night with even more frustration, trying to re-pair Summer’s Fitbit Aria to her new router. I forgot to update it when I replaced the router, and apparently Fitbit has abandoned the setup process, and it will no longer work. I wish I could just no longer work.

Money

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Log Blog

I slept hard last night after working hard all day. Summer wanted to clean house, so I went home and stoked the fires. I was surprised by how much some of the bigger logs had burned down overnight. In all, I had four separate fires going. One of them was a long trail of tree trunk that slowly smoldered like an enormous wick. At one point, I brought out a smoked sausage and made lunch over a fire. Mom and Dad stopped by briefly to see Bác Vân. I eventually made it back inside to shower.

Summer surprised me with a steak dinner when I made it back up to her house. Then we watched Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, which I found to be mostly pretty boring. I think Holtzmann was my favorite character and had the funniest bits, but the rest of the movie just seemed like fan service. I wished it hadn’t been a complete reboot.

The girls made it home from Clarksville, but I never saw either of them. The rest of the night was quiet until bedtime.

It’s 2040. Our president is a plant!

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Stumped

The girls got up for a 5k this morning while I slept in just a little bit, which still was less than usual because of how late we got home. When I came out, they were eating some leftovers, so I had a slice of pizza too. Summer wanted to go to the movies, so I went home to clean up first. I had a few hours to kill though, so I decided to start burning some wood out back.

The fire caught super fast this time, and I filled in quite a bit of the hole where an old stump had rotted out. I got some massive pieces of tree trunk burning, and then went inside to rest for a bit before my shower. Summer ended up getting a headache and changed her mind about the movies, so I went back out and started a second fire on top of a different tree stump. It was really low to the ground, but had stuff growing all around it, so I figured I should try and burn it out. I didn’t stay out for long though, since I had just taken a shower.

Finally I made it back up to Summer’s house, and warmed up the bean soup for dinner. The three of us ate, and when Autumn got back home, she packed up and took Eaddie to their father’s for the night. Summer and I laid around the rest of the evening, and then went to sleep early.

Sinusitis sounds like the name of a villain.

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But You, You Were My Favorite

Today was a full day. The roads were clear and I made it to work really early. I spent nearly all morning reading documentation on an Aruba switch. I felt good about it, but didn’t learn what I was needing to know. I finally asked Gary, and he explained it perfectly, and I knew exactly what I was missing in my new life.

The school got everyone Taco Villa for lunch, so everyone gathered in the cafeteria to eat, and then Harry gave a short speech to end the year. I stuck around for a while just to make sure everyone else was gone, and then left very near to last. I had to get charged back up so Eaddie and I could make it to Rogers.

Once I was back up to 90%, I stopped by Superfast to see Summer, and then I picked Eaddie up. We hit the road and ran into really heavy traffic all the way to Alma. We knew we wanted to stop somewhere for dinner, but didn’t know what we wanted. Eaddie finally found a place called La Sirenita in Springdale that caught her eye, so we found that little hole in the wall where we were greeted in Spanish. It was at that point I knew the food would be good. The gorditas weren’t anything like I was expecting because they weren’t really crispy enough, but it was good food and friendly service.

From there, we made it to the Walmart AMP just in time for the gates to open. We parked in an EV charger spot, but the ChargePoint charger didn’t seem to work. It looked dusty and non-functioning to begin with, but the charger wouldn’t even come out of the socket. We stayed parked there and walked down to the line of people, got through the gates, and then found a short, fast, hidden merch line.

Once we had a couple shirts, we found a place on the lawn and I waited for Brandon and Diana to show up. Brandon said they had tickets to the show, but I didn’t ask them early enough to plan dinner. Eaddie and I moved around a bit, and she sat on the other side of some people for a while, but eventually joined us when Brandon and Diana found me. They got a couple seats, but I still didn’t really think they were worth the extra $10.

Coheed and Cambria were an awesome opening act, and I enjoyed them every bit as much as Incubus. Both of the frontmen were incredibly talented with how well they belted their lyrics all night. The crowd definitely got more excited for the headlining group though. Brandon and Diana left early, so Eaddie and I took over their lawn chairs until after they played the last song. Then we made it back to the car and fought stupid traffic for the first time there. For some reason they wouldn’t let us go left out of the parking garage, so we had to fight our way around a street with a median, and then through a roundabout that had no traffic control.

We stopped in Lowell for a quick charge and a drink, and then we headed home as quickly as we could. I got the car down to 8%, which was half the estimated charge the navigation said I would have when we started, but it was fine. We dropped it off at my house around 1:30 to charge back up, and then headed up to Summer’s where everyone was fast asleep.

The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.

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Care and Confidence

I was pretty tired today, but I surprisingly made it in to work a little early. It helped that there was almost no school traffic through Dardanelle. It was hard for me to get started on anything in particular, and I’m still feeling lost on some of the most important things I need to learn, but later in the afternoon it got easier to focus. Having noisy kids in and out of the room all day gets super old, and makes it hard to concentrate. On the other hand, I won’t have Kim there over the summer to help me know what I need to be doing.

I skipped lunch and worked a little bit late, and then went straight to my parents’ house for some shrimp soup. Summer left her car to charge at my house again, so I got it after I ate and took it home to her. Autumn had Adam over for her birthday, and they all had pizza for dinner and were playing Mario Party when I got there.

I was surprised to already see an invite for the second round of interviews at Green Bay Packaging this morning, since he said that process would probably take a couple months. Gary wanted to schedule me for next week, so I figure I can knock that out and then come right back home for the MASS testing at the nuclear plant. I’ve never had so many opportunities sprung on me at once.

After they finished their game, Eaddie wanted me to cut her hair. High on the recent rush of confidence-inspiring events, I took her out back and we chopped off several inches. It took me a little bit to get it to look right from all angles, but in the end we quit when it got too dark to see, and she was super happy with it. I figure now’s my chance to decline all of these offers and go straight to opening my own salon – Captain’s Cuts.

You’ll like the cut of your jib, or your money back!

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Job Collector

I headed to Arch Ford first thing this morning so they could take my fingerprints. When I got there, they first said I needed an appointment and scheduled me for the next morning, but then I asked about my incorrect birthdate. That prompted another lady to come out, and they ended up calling the Department of Education to see who had to make the correction. Unfortunately the person that could answer that question wouldn’t be there until 8:30, so I waited about 20 more minutes to hear an answer. Once they felt good about that, they went ahead and fingerprinted me today so I didn’t have to drive back.

From there, I stopped by Green Bay Packaging to talk to Gary. It was less of an interview and more of a quick introduction for him to tell me about the place. He seemed really happy to be there, but didn’t want to mince words about how unpleasant the place might be for me if my expectations were incorrect. It basically all boiled down to how blue-collar it was as an industrial plant. Outside of that, it sounded like a bit of unpaid overtime due to an on-call rotation, but they would pay fairly well for what sounded like entry-level tech work.

After that brief meeting, I drove through the countryside to get to work, where nobody seemed to notice I was gone. Kim and I ended up starting inventory at the elementary building, and quit as school let out. I don’t think we made it quite halfway through the building, but it took us a bit to find our rhythm.

The rest of the afternoon was super quiet, and I was left alone for most of it. I messed around with PRTG to try and come up with some useful monitoring, and eventually headed home through one insane person and a bunch of other slower traffic. When I got home, I received an invitation to take the pre-employment test for Entergy, which was basically the third callback in two days. These other jobs simply pay too much for me to ignore them, but I feel guilty for Two Rivers. If they have any sense at all, they’ll work with me to adjust the salary schedule appropriately.

Dad grilled pork chops for dinner, so I went to eat with them before finally heading up to Summer’s house for the evening. She got her vanity license plate, so I installed it for her before she went to bed. Then we watched an episode of Modern Family before I wrapped things up to go to sleep myself.

Gotta catch ’em all… Interviews!

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Opportunities Rebound

I didn’t sleep great last night, but my biggest struggle was slow traffic and feeling hungry on the drive in to work. I parked by the loading dock for the second time, assuming kids were only out there yesterday due to the staff softball game they had, but evidently that’s just what they do every day after lunch. Some of them were playing basketball nearby, and the ball hit my car and set off the alarm. What surprised me the most was that I didn’t even notice the notification because it wasn’t a special sound. It was just a regular notification that didn’t draw any special attention. One of the maintenance guys had to come in to get me when the alarm was going off. Unfortunately I didn’t even catch the event on sentry mode, beyond seeing a basketball bounce away from my car, and then be caught by a girl that looked like a deer in headlights.

The best part of the day was the “taco Tuesday” nachos, which was a big, ugly glob of meat and cheese with a heap of vegetables on top from the salad bar. I’ve actually been overall pretty happy with the lunch there. Otherwise I spent most of my day writing up thoughts on our device deployment, and trying to come up with compelling ideas for administration to limit damage and loss.

The second best part of the day was the confidence boost of getting a job offer from Compsys, and then later a request for an interview at Green Bay Packaging. The former wasn’t going to pay well enough for the commute, but the second would be worth the sudden jump. I’ve really liked the people at Two Rivers so far, but it is a lot of work for very little compensation, comparatively. It’s a bit like when I started at Russellville, making way too little for an ever-increasing workload.

I made it home through some more slow traffic, but Summer was charging in the garage, so I changed clothes and took my car for a wash. Then I came back home to do some laundry. Once it was in the dryer, I left to visit my parents, but they were out at Lelan’s shop getting Mom’s hair cut. I turned back around and waited out the laundry, and then headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Summer was already in bed and wanted me to sit with her for a bit. Autumn started watching TV at an obnoxious volume in the living room, but fortunately left around the time I was getting ready for bed. Eaddie decided she didn’t want to go to work with me, but then came out fussing that she didn’t have a source to stream The Office. First world problems.

Don’t blow it.

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Fed

I made it to bed a little early last night, so I ended up wide awake before my alarm this morning. That allowed me to get a very small head-start on my day, and I made it to work a few minutes early. I brought the leftover chicken sandwich from Burger King and ended up eating it an hour or two into my day, and then did my best to accomplish anything at all. It’s so hard not to be incredibly scattered, just because so many things need attention.

I didn’t take a lunch, and I ended up staying fairly late to finish up an email, to which I didn’t even really receive a satisfying response. I raced home so I wouldn’t burn the remainder of my evening, but as soon as I got up to Summer’s, she and Eaddie just wanted food. I immediately threw the super old, leftover ham bone into the Instant Pot along with some beans and anything else I could find.

Eaddie wanted to watch Modern Family and wasn’t willing to wait for soup, so she made a bowl of ramen. Summer ended up not eating anything at all before going to bed. I was frustrated and bitter, so I had a small bowl myself before going to bed.

All the way up.