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Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.

I came in to work this morning ready to get things done. My first stop at the arena was a bust, but then I sat down in my office and just bit right into the Avaya system. I dug through manuals and samples, and got an IVR built. I even found an unused phone number that worked with a vanity number. I was super proud of it, even if it probably took me way longer to create than it should have. By the time lunch rolled around, I was super hungry. Allen and Jason were going to Arby’s, so I met them there. On the way back, I felt like it was nice enough to take the bike out, so I went home to trade.

I worked late hunting down a bunch of existing network lines, and got it mostly figured out. Then I went home to change before going to pick up the girls for karate. Summer was almost off work, so I went to my parents’ house to meet her for more leftovers. When I got home, I had to clean up the Imagitarium a bit because the screen I put over the filter to keep the shrimp from getting sucked in was too dirty to let enough water out into the sump. Then it was off to bed early again to finish the week on a good Friday.

Look at me. I am the phone guy now.

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Learning ALL THE THINGS

I tried pretty hard to get things done today, and though I closed a few little things, I felt better about learning and knowing processes and things. I wish I had time to just sit and document some of this stuff, or better yet, organize the documentation that we already have so it’s more accessible. I worked into lunch a bit, but got hungry and bothered enough to leave. I tried to go to CiCi’s with Summer, but she got stuck on the phone while I was waiting for her, and I had to run to Wendy’s really quickly instead.

After lunch, I chatted with Ben for a bit so he could help me better understand some of the things I had been working on. I was on the right track, which made me feel at least a little competent. It’s starting to feel like I’m the everything-guy though, and it’s aggravating being around people that make more for less. I also about had a fight with my phone over how stupid it was being, but then out of the blue it fixed itself as though it could sense that I was preparing to pull the trigger on a full factory reset.

I finished up the day a little late, then headed home to do some more laundry while I waited for Summer to get off work. Then we went to my parents’ house for spring rolls, and the girls brought some homework along as well. They did really well today, but they couldn’t stick around for too long. I had to head home to finish laundry and clean up after the cat too, and then it was a relatively early night to bed.

Shrimp everywhere!

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Lunch with LeRoy

Today was pretty incredibly scattered for me. I got a few things done, but I had trouble prioritizing things to actually get them off my plate. Instead, I kept starting new projects and finishing nothing. I had planned to go get a $5 garden bar with Summer for lunch, but Ben invited everyone to Taco John’s, and I couldn’t pass up seeing him again after his retirement. Ben’s order got made and delivered twice, so I took the leftover tacos to Summer so she’d at least have the same light lunch I had in case she wanted to go to Ruby Tuesday later in the afternoon.

The afternoon was more of the same scattered nonsense for me until I finally left and had to get the girls from the shop to go home to change for karate. They did a good job of hustling and I got them dropped off just in time, and then I went to my parents’ house for some leftovers. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten when Summer left work for the gym, so Autumn called when nobody came to pick them up. I ran to get them, then cooked up some chicken sandwiches for their dinner before going home to complete some laundry.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to sit down and just do a thing.

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Meet the Nerites

It was so hard to get out of the perfectly snuggly bed this morning after staying up too late. We had to get to the lobby for breakfast though, and I was excited for an omelette from the chef. I was disappointed to learn that he wasn’t there, and I’m guessing they only bring him out for conferences. The rest of the food was okay, but not great. The biscuits were a surprising win.

We went back to the room to get ready for the trip back home, and finally left right around noon. I tried calling a couple local pet stores, but everyone was closed for the holiday. Without any other plans, we headed straight home. I dropped Summer off with the kids and then headed to PetSmart to look for some snails for the Imagitarium. They actually had some ghost shrimp in stock too, and one was berried, so I picked up a couple of them to mix up the gene pool. They had one black racer nerite and a tiny horned nerite that looked fun, so I got those for the algae and headed home.

I wanted to take a nap, but spent most of the afternoon with the aquariums instead. I got some laundry going and headed to my parents’ house for some eggplant soup, then came back home to finish up laundry and headed to bed really early.

That is a horny gastropod mollusc.

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Let’s Get Weird

We got up a little early this morning so we could get out of town for lunch. Our first stop was Home Depot to pick up some work lights I bought, and then we went to a little diner called Taylors’ Made on the other side of Conway. Summer had breakfast food, and I got the reuben. It was all pretty good, but I didn’t care for the super thin onion rings. I wish we had tried some of the appetizers.

As we got into Little Rock, I decided to go down to the Park Plaza Mall rather than the usual McCain. I figured it would be closer to the hotel, and we could kill enough time there until check-in time at the hotel. Summer was happy to look around but was reluctant to pick up anything. I got an armful of clothing from Dillard’s, which reminded me of how much I hated shopping there with my parents as a child. It was just always so boring, but now I get it. We covered most of the mall by about 3 in the afternoon, and then headed to the Wyndham Riverfront to get our room.

Eventually Amanda messaged me back, and we met her at the Red Lobster for dinner. Sarah decide she didn’t want to go to the concert, so she brought her father along instead. Summer and I got our fix of endless shrimp, and then we headed back for the concert.

We both parked at the hotel and walked the quarter mile or so to the arena. We were early, so we had to stand out in the heat for a little while before we could go in. Once the line started moving, I had trouble getting the TicketMaster app to load the tickets, but fortunately I saved them to Google Pay and that worked to get us in.

The concert was incredible, but I was surprised they didn’t have the upper bowl open. We were in a lower section of removable seating right by the stage, so we could see everything really well. It was awesome having the orchestra there, especially seeing a McLovin lookalike on the French horn. They started off with some Indiana Jones, and we loved the Superman theme song. They took a 20 minute break after the warm up routine, and then Weird Al came out with his crew and performed a huge mix of songs I expected, as well as some I’d never even heard before. Afterward, Summer and I made our way through the merch line to get a couple shirts, and then walked back to the hotel for the evening.

And protect them from the evils of the world, like trigonometry and prime numbers!

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I Am Shrimp Mother

I was so happy to get to sleep in a bit today. When we did wake up, we sat in bed and watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica. After that, I went home to get ready for the evening. I was supposed to meet Ronda, Mollie, Erica, and Leslie at Fat Daddy’s, but Erica wanted to push it back an hour and then Ronda cancelled on us entirely, so we just gave up for this weekend.

I spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening taking care of my aquariums and giving everyone a full chemistry check. I learned a bit more about the red cherry shrimp and how to sex them, and now I’m thinking I inadvertently split up the males and females. Apparently the males can be less colorful, and those are the ones I put in the Imagitarium, while the ones in the old shrimp tank all appear to be female.

Summer decided to make a wonderful dinner for us all since I wasn’t going to be out for the evening, so once I got everything packed up, I headed up to her house for the evening. She grilled some chicken, squash, and zucchini, and roasted some itty bitty potatoes. Noah brought his new dog over, and the girls had the old mattress in the floor to lay around. Noah wanted to watch a scary movie after dinner, and I had been wanting to watch I Am Mother since it came out, so we settled for the suspense right before bed.

Do you ever feel like murdering robots?

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Getting it Done

Jason found the student laptops we lost the other day, exactly where he put them originally. I had no idea they were in these massive bags from shipping, and they didn’t look at all like anything useful. About half of the crew was out, but Jason had a plan for most of us. I had to tell him that Ben planned to spend the day with me, which I’m not certain actually changed any of what the rest of them were doing.

Ben and I loaded up and went to the high school to try and run some network cable for the new assistant technical director. His chosen office space was laughably stupid, and the absolute farthest away from the rest of civilization that anyone could get. Even vo-tech and the multipurpose facility didn’t seem as out of the way as his office. It wasn’t even a real closet. It was literally the access room for where the stage curtain rolls away. There was absolutely no access for cable, and we didn’t have a ladder even half as high as we would have needed to run the cable.

Giving up with that, we went upstairs for what turned out to be a super simple run for some phones to JROTC. I didn’t even mind having to run it twice to add a WAP line. We finished up just in time to make it to lunch a little bit late. Jason, Brice, and Zach met us at CJ’s for double-price burgers. I ran into Jessica’s mom there too, but otherwise it was an uneventful and quick lunch.

On the way back, Ben had to stop by St. John’s Catholic School to drop off some RAM, and made jokes about me spontaneously combusting as we pulled into the property. I wasn’t worried, but I also didn’t want to tempt fate by letting him park on top of the single parking space with a cross painted right in the middle of it.

I was on my own for the rest of the day, so I went back to the high school and tried to finish up what I could before the three-day weekend. As everyone started to leave at the end of the day, I headed back to the shop to upgrade PaperCut with Ben. The new version was actually a new major release which fixed the staple finishing option. With that done, I noted the day as a great success.

I got home just a little late, especially considering Ben sent everyone else home a bit early. I spent a whole bunch of time with the shrimp, dividing everyone up by color and acclimating them to two different tanks. I put the higher quality cherries and ghost shrimp into the larger tank, and the lower quality cherries into the Imagitarium to test the water. I hope they brighten up from being around the dark substrate, but I really don’t have a clue how they’ll look when they grow up.

Finally I headed to Summer’s for the evening, where I decided it was a nice evening for a fire. Summer brought leftover pizza home from the shop, so I ate a bit of that for dinner while I got the fire pit started. Once the larger logs lit up, she came outside to kick back under the stars with me, and we chatted away while the girls went to bed.

Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

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MRIs!

It was actually a little bit cool out this morning, and another nice day to ride. I closed out what work orders I could chase down, and then left after a half day so we could take Autumn to Little Rock for her MRI. Once Summer was home, I picked her up and we went to The 3D Cafe for lunch. The fajita nachos were excellent and heaping, and apparently they’re the kind of restaurant that serves chips and salsa when you sit down now. Summer wanted the strawberry pie too, so we split that cream cheesy goodness.

When we got to the junior high, I ran inside to see the girls in the library for just a moment, and then we were on our way. I thought about stopping in Conway first, and possibly should have, but it all worked out in the end. We took a brief detour through Little Rock due to some blind acceptance of the GPS, but we made it to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in plenty of time. It was a late appointment, and the place looked mostly empty, so I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising that they got us checked in so quickly. There was a bit of a wait for the MRI, but then she was in and out in no time. Summer and I didn’t even make it through a whole episode of Battlestar Galactica on my phone before Autumn got back.

I fought my GPS a little more and circled the capital before heading out of town. We got into Conway and stopped at Sam’s for a little too long before running through Bed Bath & Beyond to grab some clearanced merchandise, and then finally stopping at PetCo for some more shrimp. The store looked to be in particular disarray, and it took us forever to get any help. They had one fish tank full of young bettas that were flaring up at each other with all manners of stress, and I was just told he’d “tell their fish guy.” There were tons of dead, but I went through with the purchase anyway. Some combination of poor eyesight and not giving a shit landed me with a couple extra shrimp, but I figure I may lose that many in the next day or so just due to the poor handling.

We stopped at Rally’s for a bite to eat on the way home and had some of their awesome fries. Their cheese sticks didn’t have any noticeable seasoning as advertised, but the cheese itself was perfectly stringy and delicious. When we got back home, I dropped the shrimp off, we got Eaddie from her grandparents’ house, and then I dropped the girls off at home. Summer and I finished the last few minutes of our episode, and then I headed home to set up a quarantine for the shrimp before bed.

OIC, MREDBD peepers!

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Keep Riding On

I got up this morning and it was pretty nice out, so I decided to take the bike to work. Traffic wasn’t as bad, and I got in just in time. All morning was wandering around closing work orders until lunch. I did have one moment of perfect clarity when I had to hunt down a switch I could see but not access. All the work on switches recently has me feeling more confident when I’m configuring them.

Gary, Allen, and Jason all went to Wendy’s for lunch because that’s Allen’s favorite place to eat now after years of hating it. I joined them for a while, and then went by the junior high afterward to start wiping more hard drives for some computers that just sold at auction. Heather needed some help looking at the digital sign outside, and we discovered it was actually a power issue.

On the way back to the high school, I stopped by and chatted with Ben for quite a while. Then Gary brought a switch and a couple WAPs over to the old fieldhouse after school so we could get their network up and running again. I know it’s nothing at all to him, but I actually had a lot of fun just racking it and patching everything in. Then I got to feel smart when I configured their printer for use again.

After work, I went home to change and then got some gas for the bike. It was close to closing time, so I stopped by the shop to see Summer for a bit, and then went by the junior high to wipe a few more computers. From there, I went to my parents’ house and waited for the girls to get there for dinner. We all just cleaned up some leftovers and headed home.

I had planned to spend the night with them, but really wanted to test the water in the Imagitarium again. It was better, but not quite as much as I was hoping after such a large water change. I did some trimming with the plants though, and got a better feel for the dense planting I’ll have in that tank.

No, they did not put our network closet in a girl’s locker room. I tried.

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Don’t Get Testy

I started out at the shop this morning so I could finish my LockDown browser deployment. I got the last piece I needed in order to put the whole thing together, and it worked. Once that was done, I had to leave the shop before I got too annoyed with anyone that was either not doing anything at all or too stupid to remember how to do what they were doing yesterday.

Most of the rest of my morning was spent shuffling around Verizon Jetpacks that reeked of cigarette smoke and unemployment. Evidently we lost two outright last year, and four more were damaged or not working for one reason or another. Lunch came and went, and nothing sounded good so I seized the opportunity to ride on through on another Soylent.

The afternoon rolled on pretty quickly, and then Eaddie rode the bus over to me after school. We went to my parents’ house for some fish soup before I had to take her to karate. She’s been aggravating me with her lackadaisical responses any time we ask her to do anything, and today was no exception. She had 20 minutes to finish eating before karate. Then she had 15. Then she had 10. Then she had 5 to get dressed. Then she was 10 minutes late to karate and still wouldn’t even walk quickly to the front door of the establishment. I cannot imagine why someone with so much uncontrollable, spontaneous energy would have to drag her feet after being asked to do anything and everything, and things are about to get really serious.

I came on home after that and started taking care of the fish again. I put Fatty back into the community tank since I’ve lost enough of the other inhabitants over the years that she shouldn’t be stressed. I still need to put together some bigger tanks for the other two bettas, and I can’t decide if I want to put one in the Imagitarium to take to work. I’ve still got the Fluval Edges to work with as well, and the Miracle-Gro® Performance Organics™ All Purpose Container Mix seems to be doing quite well for my plants. I like the Black Diamond sandblasting media as a substrate cap as well, though I wish I had the coarser stuff.

For some reason, out of all the still water in my house, a mosquito laid eggs that hatched in my Imagitarium. I sucked a bunch of larvae out in a massive, first water change in that tank, but I wish I could have just dropped a fish in to take care of it. The nitrogen cycle is stupid. Hopefully after tomorrow it will be ready for some fauna, but at least so far the plants have really taken off.

I’m gonna count to one.