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Killing Me, Smalls

I came in to work this morning and had everything of my own wrapped up pretty quickly, so Gary gave me three of his work orders. I went nextdoor to the transportation office first, and picked up a couple old computers to swap out and clean up. Then I went upstairs to get a couple broken laptops. One of them was a broken screen, and the other was a super gross looking one from a remote student.

Thomas came in and appeared to be in good spirits, but he still sounded awful. It seemed a little like he was afraid to show too much weakness from it. The morning went by quickly, and Brody came to the office and took Gary and me to Linhs for lunch. As we were finishing up, Kelsea came in with her family. Evidently she took a half day, so we didn’t see her again.

After lunch was pretty quiet as I finished up the work Gary had given me. I picked Eaddie up from Oakland on the way home, and we watched an episode of Hawkeye until Summer got there. She really wanted to go out for Chinese, and I talked myself into feeling hungry enough to go.

The hostess sat us in the tiniest booth in the place, so it was super awkward for me. Eaddie and I werre both basically sandwiched on either side, between the table and our chair. I overate and felt awful, so I came home and put about a mile and a half on the treadmill. It felt awful for about a mile, but then got better just in time for my shins to start cramping. The only real solution is to stop eating food. Maybe I can just take a Soylent with me so I can still socialize during lunch.

Being value-driven is really going to end me.

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Step 2: Do Step 1

I was a little late to work this morning, but it has been especially quiet this week anyway. I’ve rather enjoyed it. Gary gave me something else to do so our new domain controller would sync passwords with Google. Then I actually got a couple new work orders for the first time in a while. I did what I could and kept busy the rest of the morning.

Brody, Josh, and I met Greg at CiCi’s for lunch against my better judgement. I didn’t stuff myself silly, but I’m not sure that wasn’t just because my stomach is permanently too large now. I blame Brody for always wanting CiCi’s.

After lunch, Greg went to Oakland with me to check out an intercom speaker. It wasn’t malfunctioning at the time, so he just rewired something and we left. I ended the day back at Oakland to hide some wires to keep the underdeveloped from yanking them out and hanging themselves. Eaddie was there waiting for me to take her home, so we went on to my house where she started some homework while I dropped off a UPS package and picked up some dinner for her.

I spent a little time on the treadmill to make up for my last cinnamon roll, and when Eaddie finished eating and doing some homework, we watched a couple episodes of Hawkeye. I think it’s getting better, but I really just want to consume the story as quickly as possible. By the time we finished the second episode, she was ready to go home.

Autumn was at a church thing, presumably trying to pray the non-binary away. Summer had a late meeting in Conway, so we didn’t see her either until very late. I played some Last Horizon, which has been a fun twist on the old lunar lander game. Then it was off to bed.

Step 3: Do Step 2

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The Sickness

Today was even quieter in the office because we had three people out on COVID leave. I did a good thing and found a script to bulk clean up some DHCP settings. Then it was mostly helping Brody over the phone for the rest of the day.

He wanted to go to lunch, so Brody, Gary, and I went down to Dardanelle for BFD. For some reason I ordered a big plate of nachos, which were good, but just too much to eat. I polished my plate though, and then didn’t really do much the rest of the day.

Zach came in for the superintendent meeting, but wore a mask until he could go get tested after the meeting. That ended up being positive – the test, and not the meeting. We can’t quite figure out the logic behind Dardanelle finding many qualified doctoral candidates for their superintendent, but we only found two candidates, who incidentally seem less qualified than Jeff.

When I left work, I stopped by Oakland to get Eaddie, who promptly told me that plans had changed and she would be waiting for Autumn to take her to a basketball game. I went on home and wasted most of the evening by myself. I tried to motivate myself to pick up the bedroom so I could move some furniture, but I just didn’t have much luck in the cold.

There’s just no home for it all. It’s homeless.

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Occam’s Cable

Today was to be warm, with a high in the 60s, but starting with some light frost on my car. I made it through my morning quicker than I expected, which got me to work about five minutes early, even after stopping at Casey’s for a free slice of breakfast pizza.

I kept busy all day, first on my own, then by going to the high school to help Brody with Jazz’s chips. After everything, it really did turn out to be the USB cables causing the trouble. I’d lost count of how many hours we worked on that, all for it to be the stupid cable.

I wasn’t at all hungry by the time lunch came around, nor did La Chiquita sound like a very good choice, so I just stayed in my office and tinkered for an hour. When everyone got back, Gary made his way back to my office and had me run through some other configuration changes for the new domain controller, or more specifically, the new Server 2019 VM template I created. That got us through to the end of the day.

Eaddie called me just as I was leaving work, and asked me to pick her up at Oakland. We went back to my house just long enough to change out of work clothes, and then we headed up to their house. I stopped for my daily taco along the way, and then we ate and chatted about her day.

Summer got home and had to do more work stuff. Autumn got home after doing some homework with her grandparents. Then everyone shuffled off to bed pretty quietly.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager just has too many managers. Like us!

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Bloody Sunday

I tried to sleep in just a little bit today, then woke up to Summer’s pancake breakfast. We broke out the bottle of Fruity Pebbles Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, and the flavor was spot-on. We pretty much coasted the rest of the day though. Summer eventually went to the gym while I took a really long bath. The girls stayed in their rooms all day. Summer came back home and made some yeast rolls. I played some Don’t Starve in the evening. Summer somehow motivated Autumn to play a round on Ring Fit Adventure.

What a waste.

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Mario Cam Live

Autumn had a PT event with JROTC this morning, so she was gone all day. Summer got up and made eggs for breakfast, and then we got out the Ring Fit Adventure game to try it out. I think Summer was a little surprised at the workout she got from it. Then Eaddie got out the Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit games to try setting up a track. It was actually really cool, though the cars were a little bit bigger than I expected, which meant they didn’t have quite enough room to make a really good track in their house.

Eventually Summer went to work out, and I took Eaddie to get her phone that she forgot at the junior high, and then to drop her off at her grandmother’s house so she could work on Eaddie’s dress. On the way, we stopped to pick up my “free” taco from Taco Bell, along with a burrito for good measure. Eaddie ate the burrito, and I dumped my taco in the floorboard. There was just enough of it left in the wrapper that I could eat, and then I cleaned up what I could to throw away.

After I dropped Eaddie off, I went home to clean up. Eventually I made my way back up to Summer’s to take her shopping. We went by Lowe’s, then Walmart to pick up dinner. I wasn’t really successful in finding any interesting deals. We picked Eaddie up, then headed home to make tacos.

Summer made all the fresh veggies while I cooked the taco meat and cheese dip. Dinner was great, but I ate way too much. Afterward, we got Mario Kart Live out again and Eaddie played some more. Then Summer went to bed and I laid on the couch with Eaddie to watch Romeo + Juliet. I started dozing off pretty early, and Eaddie decided to save the rest of the movie for tomorrow, so we went to bed.

“Hoes.” That’s what we call a group of women now. Feminism won.

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Down Loading

I made it in to work on time for the first time in several days. It felt like we were missing more people than we really were, but it was just Thomas and Greg. We got a really slow start to the day, and burned about an hour just hanging out. Once we got up from that, I got started working on my project for Jazz. That went even slower, on account of how large all of the installers were for the four required pieces of software to make the stupid chip work.

It was a quiet lunch, too. Gary, Zach, and I went to Taco Bell for significantly cheaper than the sit-down restaurants we usually visit. I was frustrated by the app again though, because my order was never made until I went to the counter to ask about it. Last time they had already made it at the other restaurant. I just want to know what the expected protocol is to get my food.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly as I found some success in getting the S7 chip to work. Then I went to Oakland to take care of a couple work orders, and then ended my day early to make up for coming in a couple weekends ago.

I hung out at my house a while, just kind of piddling around until Summer got home. Then I went up to her place for the evening. We chatted for a while, looked at cars and boats, and then went to bed.

If you’re not better, you’re worse.

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Promoted

Today was super cold, but dry enough that there wasn’t a speck of frost on my windshield. I rolled in a little bit late, but got right to work on the hardware I brought with me from yesterday. It wasn’t very long before I got sidetracked with other projects though, and I spent the rest of the day juggling at least three different things for different people. It felt good to be busy and useful, but I hated that it took me away from fixing the real issue I wanted to address.

Four of us went to Western Sizzlin for lunch, which of course filled me up for the day. At least I didn’t leave hurting and worthless for the rest of the day. Gary actually came back and spent most of the afternoon with me, showing me how to promote a new domain controller that we had built before lunch.

After work, I went to my parents’ house for a while to show them some visualizations from engaging-data.com. Mom had duck soup, but I still couldn’t eat at that point. We chatted for a little bit, and eventually I went home for the night. I perused some educational YouTube, peeked back into upcoming EV credits, and tinkered with my Hue controllers again, and ended up crawling into bed a bit late.

The tail end of the week sure didn’t stick around long.

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Frederick’s

I was cold and tired again this morning, so climbing out of bed wasn’t easy. The girls made it out of the house early, and it was warm enough outside that I didn’t have to waste any time defrosting to make it to Oakland on time. I made a couple quick stops there, then made my way to the shop.

It was mostly uneventful there. Zach was back, but out doing things most of the day. I saw Greg a couple times, but not for long. Kyle was in and out while Josh stuck around the shop and worked on the Mac stuff some more. I think we’re all a bit annoyed that the person with the most Apple computers hasn’t really done any of the work here.

We went to Sumo’s for lunch, and the tempura chicken lunch box turned out to be more food than I was expecting. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to get the fried vegetables and the chicken, but it was awesome that I did.

I went back to Oakland for a quick stop after lunch, and then went to the high school at the end of the day to help Brody with something in Jazz’s room. We couldn’t figure anything out there though, so I left for the day and picked Eaddie up from Oakland, then went home.

Summer was worried about a banging sound she heard on the drive home from Conway, so I met her at the shop to investigate. She thinks it’s a part of the rear wheel well, so we don’t think it’s catastrophic yet. It’s still approaching the time to really consider buying a new car though.

When we finished at the shop, Summer went to the house and I went through Freddy’s drive-through for some frozen custard. The line just barely creeped along, but by the time I thought to time the wait for each car to get their stuff, they had sped up to just a couple minutes per car. I wasn’t very impressed with the volume of custard or toppings though, and the chili cheese fries left a lot to be desired.

It was a pretty short evening after we ate. Eaddie has been staying in her room, Summer watched TV in the living room, and I washed a bunch of dishes before getting ready for bed.

Were you ever in tune with the song life was humming?

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Peak Waste

I just barely crawled out of bed this morning after waking up really stiff. I even considered calling in for at least a partial day, but instead I made it in about five minutes late. Several were still out, so it was quiet again downstairs. I went to Oakland for a couple hours before lunch and took care of some stuff there, but otherwise the day was a wash.

I’ve almost eaten enough tacos to make up for my subscription pass. After lunch, Josh came downstairs and built out the Kerberos settings to try and help Kyle, so all the reading I did yesterday was basically for nothing. Kyle was still a real no-getter, and I’m not sure that’ll ever get any better. Maybe he’s just feeling the burnout.

After work, I just went home and waited to hear from Summer about Eaddie. Evidently Autumn burned another COVID test to try and prove she could go back to school. Fortunately they still had one left for Eaddie to take before she came over for the night.

I was still concerned about false negatives and the possibility of a late exposure simply not showing up on the test yet, so I stayed in the bedroom the rest of the night. Summer brought Eaddie over, along with some burgers from Freddy’s. Eaddie was upset that she didn’t buy any custard, and I was inclined to agree. The burger was better than I expected, but it’s still not the reason you go.

With everyone winding down pretty early due to staying separated, I got out a projector to tinker with in the bedroom. It worked as a proof of concept, but really just made me dream about turning the whole bedroom into a theater again. Maybe someday.

Level up.