Category: Uncategorised

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I Can’t Believe, Today Was a Good Day

Zach wanted everyone to come to the shop at 8 this morning, and Autumn and I pulled up just in time to see the recyclers picking up junk from the graveyard. I guess they did have a little meeting inside, but Ben was outside helping clear out the warehouse. Everyone split pretty quick, so Autumn and I just headed on to the high school for the day.

I didn’t really get very far with my task sequence in the morning, but I did discover a way to create batches of warranty claims using a CSV template. That turned a 14+ hour job into just a few minutes after the couple hours figuring out the poorly documented process.

We went to Burger King and got a huge family pack so we could take Summer some food. She had already bought food for the shop, but ate a bit with us anyway.

The afternoon was ripe with success. Autumn verified the warranty status on a ton of serial numbers for me, then unboxed almost all of the teacher devices. I got the self maintainer claims filed for replacement parts, and found the rogue opening bracket that was breaking my task sequence all along. I ended the day duplicating flash drives for a quick jump into imaging next week.

When we got home, I checked out the first day’s worth of siding work on the house. The soffit was done almost all the way around the house, and they were bringing it horizontally from the edge of the roof to the house instead of sloping upward with an overhang. It made me a little worried about having space for creatures to crawl into, but I guess once it’s sealed off it shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Autumn and I waited there until Summer got off work, then we met her at Shell to use my 30¢ per gallon discount. She took Autumn from there, but we both just headed straight to their house for the evening. Autumn and I picked at leftovers, Summer and Eaddie mowed the back yard, and then we put on Who Framed Roger Rabbit because Autumn had never seen it before. Everyone was pretty tired, so it was a relatively early night.

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Aye Captain

I dropped Autumn off with Summer this morning so she could do something besides sit around the house while I got ready for work. Summer ended up needing the help anyway, so it worked out at the expense of running late myself.

We had our work cut out for us today, to a much greater extent than I expected. I started out having Autumn file warranty claims while I bounced between servicing other devices and troubleshooting my task sequence for faculty devices.

Just before lunch, Zach called and said they were getting kicked out of the kitchen area and the other half of the cafeteria at Gardner, so they had to bring me the rest of my teacher devices. I didn’t really have room for them either, but we did our best to carve out a hole. I still have a bunch of new monitors sitting in the hallway for Ethan’s eight additional lab computers.

Obama’s been gone so long that
America’s all out of change.

As soon as we finished there, we went to Popeye’s to pick up some chicken for lunch. We got to Summer just before a huge storm hit, and we ate with her. Ronda showed up for an oil change on our way out, so we stopped to talk with her a bit, then made it back to the high school. We ran into a shotgun pattern of warranty expiration dates when filing claims, which had me super stressed. In the end, they’re all just extra devices anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s all garbage, and I don’t really care if it fails because I know it’s not any fault of ours.

We worked pretty late, and I still never got a functioning faculty image made, but I think I may have figured out why. I won’t know until I get to try my new media tomorrow morning. It’s Friday though, and everyone has chosen to work at 8am. I took off last Friday, so tomorrow is my first full scheduled eight hour day since before the pandemic started. I’ve actually worked plenty longer than that by choice, but somehow actually being scheduled for it feels worse.

Summer got off early and went to the gym, so Autumn and I ran by the graveyard to quickly check for any treasure. Then we went home so I could quickly change before going to Walmart for dinner supplies. They had a ton of Petit Jean pepper bacon marked down pretty significantly, so of course I bought all of it.

When we got back to their house, Summer and Eaddie were up in arms about all the things Eaddie hadn’t done at home all day. It took us a while to get our rotisserie chicken wraps going because I had to get in Eaddie’s face about it. I couldn’t fathom rebutting not completing any chores because I had nothing to do all day. That was just stupid, and she knew it.

Dinner was great, and at least felt healthy. Autumn went to her room and passed right out, and Eaddie turned her attitude around to get some things done in her room. She even seemed to be in a good mood about it.

I guess sometimes you’ve just gotta take a hollering.

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On the Subject of Taking on Large Projects by Yourself

Autumn didn’t want to go to work with me today, but said she would help after lunch if I came to get her. I had all morning to myself to do some more device shuffling, and start getting together claim information for the devices I couldn’t fix in-house.

Just before lunch time, Autumn texted me and said she just wanted to stay home all day, so I wouldn’t have her in the afternoon either. Zach let me know when my 120 teacher laptops arrived, and they already had them loaded into the Gardner kitchen by the time I got there. Everyone else was busy, and also using the trucks and trailer, so I just loaded 30 laptops into my trunk and delivered them to the high school myself.

Ben showed up just as I was getting a cart to retrieve them from my car, so he helped me unload. Then we chatted with Karen for a tiny bit before I went in to try imaging one of the new devices. It was then that I realized I would have to do a bit more work on my task sequence to make it work with the teacher laptops. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get that working, but it won’t be until tomorrow that I have a flash drive ready to test again.

I went home to change after work, then went to meet Beth and Mark at their shop to do some technology consulting. He was finishing up with a customer, so I had to wait a bit, and then things went very differently than I expected. He sat down and started chatting about school district stuff with me, and I just started vomiting grievances. I figure this will end one of two ways. I’ll either be let go for not drinking the Kool-Aid, or be inducted into some dark society whose sole mission is to root out the corruption in our local government. Either way it should be a lot of fun.

Moving on from that, we chatted at length about choices in email hosting for a business domain, and I was left mostly confused about why any of this was happening. He seemed anxious to pay me though, if I only had the mental capacity to conjure up some fair billing practice.

By the time I got up to Summer’s, the girls had already eaten the homemade Hamburger Helper that Autumn made for dinner. I warmed up some for myself, and then watched the last episode of The Punisher with Eaddie. The evening went by frustratingly quickly, and all I have to look forward to is more laptops in the morning.

Don’t go and try making sense of it. You’ll go positively mad.

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Accounted

Autumn came to work with me again today, and we finally got most of the old lease boxed up and ready to ship. I spent most of my time trying to account for every serial number that Lenovo expects to receive back. We did a pretty good job of sorting everything out, but it wasn’t until I got some feedback from the library staff that we really had everything accounted for.

We went to Cici’s for lunch since I had another BOGO. Then we stopped by the shop to catch up a bit. With all the older, purchased devices I’ll be shipping back, I’ll actually be keeping quite a few of the old leased devices as a sly upgrade.

We finished up at the high school and then came back to my house for just a little bit. It was then that I realized the new leaf blower I bought did not use the same battery from my lawn mower like I expected. Failing that, we headed out to pick up Eaddie, then went to my parents’ house for some leftovers.

I got the girls food, then let Autumn swim while I finished up some super-veggie spring rolls. They were basically the plant version of sausage in a casing. Fiber for days.

On the way back home, we stopped to get Summer some food from Tropical Smoothie since she had a long day, and I watched a couple episodes of The Punisher with Eaddie before bed.

Well that blows.

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Lowering the Standards

I stopped by Casey’s this morning to grab my free slice of pizza before it expired. Then it was a solo day at the high school, all day long. I put on some tunes and crunched through over 100 laptops with higher levels of damage, and pulled out the small handful that would need to be repaired, and boxed up the rest that just had heavier cosmetic damage so they could be shipped back to Lenovo.

Nobody reached out about lunch, so I worked straight through with half a Soylent. That’s something I’ve been wanting to get back into, but haven’t had the opportunity either because of social eating, or because Autumn was with me.

At the end of the day, I stopped by central office to sign my contract, then visited the shop to see what everyone else had been up to all day. There was a huge pile of iPads in the floor, so I guess that was my answer.

On the way out, I stopped by Casey’s again for a free cookie, then by Summer’s shop to see her. She would be leaving soon for the gym, so I headed home to change before meeting her back at my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom made phở out of some leftover beef from spring rolls and frozen broth. Then I took a bunch of plants to Bác Vân’s house before heading to Summer’s for the evening.

The girls were finally back home, and Summer said she was hoodwinked about Autumn going skydiving. I guess I wasn’t really surprised to hear of the 18-year age requirement, but I hadn’t considered it before. The girls must have all been pretty tired, because they all disappeared to their rooms pretty quickly. I took the opportunity to get to bed a bit early myself.

103 down; ??? to go!

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Cleankering

We slept in pretty late today, which was a great recharge. I made tuna croissant sandwiches for lunch, and then Summer went to the gym and home to clean up. I played a little Overwatch, then cleaned and tinkered randomly around the house until Summer got back.

We went to my parents’ house for spring rolls for dinner. Julie was late even though she was the one that decided on the time. It wouldn’t have mattered, but Mom was super worried that she had fallen asleep and wasn’t going to come over.

When we got back home, I started some laundry while Summer watched a cake show. Then I got the cat box cleaned up before bed.

Three-day weekends should be standard.

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From Womb to Tomb

Summer took the girls to meet up with their father today while I cleaned and tinkered at the house. Eventually she came back over and we went to my parents’ house for some dinner.

Evidently Autumn went skydiving, and we didn’t learn about it until after the fact. I don’t think either of us really minded except that we didn’t learn that it was even a possibility until after the fact. It’s possible I was more upset about it than Summer.

After dinner, we came back home and watched Cloud Atlas. It was pretty tough to keep up at first, and it was more impressive how many characters each actor portrayed than anything than anything else. After three hours, we decided we liked it, but I’m not sure I’d watch it again. Just another one checked off my list.

I ended the evening tinkering with my TeamSpeak Sinus bot some more, and managed to get YouTube search and streaming to work. I just don’t understand how something so well designed and refined can have such completely absent documentation.

Our lives are not our own. we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

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Opinions Are Like Family

Summer had to work this morning, so I let the girls sleep in a little while before showering and taking them to my parents’ house for the day. Julie was already there swimming with some friends, so we went in to meet with Chellie and Phil. Dad invited them over to learn a bit about film and print photography.

Julie had picked up some Popeye’s for us for lunch, so we had a little to eat before I sent the girls out to swim. They were a bit shy to get out there because of how much noise Julie and her two friends were making, and Eaddie wasn’t super excited to swim in the first place. I just laid on the couch inside and dozed off a little between apneas.

Eventually I got a grill going and pattied some hamburgers. I managed to fit all of the corn, four types of tubed meat, and some burgers on one grill. The more impressive part was that I finished cooking everything and toasting buns just as the last of the charcoal turned to warm ash.

The food was good, but somehow Julie got onto some tirade about racism. Lelan showed up at one point for just a few minutes, and Summer eventually showed up late after work. It was all a bit more excitement than I could really stand.

On the way home, I stopped by to see if Grant was cooking so I could talk to him about a possible catering job. It was just Felix hanging outside talking to a friend, so I headed on home. Autumn put on Coco much to Eaddie’s umbrage. Summer went straight to bed, so I played a couple rounds of Overwatch with Clint. Then I finished the night with an episode of The Punisher with Eaddie.

A Dothraki wedding family reunion without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair.

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Aw, Shucks!

Gary called us all to the shop this morning in Ben’s absence, and arranged for the whole crew to unbox student laptops at the high school. For some reason Zach kept wanting to just hand-load the laptops onto the trucks instead of getting maintenance to use the forklift, but thankfully in the end we had it done right. Chris drove the forklift over and kept talking about how much of a real man he was for being able to load the pallets for us.

We ended up sitting right inside the back doors to shuck boxes, since we had to take the trash back out anyway. Then we wheeled carts full of laptops into my office and under the cubbies.

Most of us went to La Chiquita for a super fast lunch. We were all pretty tired and drenched in sweat already from the humidity, but lunch was a good break. Afterward was finishing up more of the same, and then Gary and Josh stayed to help finish up a couple mini pallets that were already rolled up to my office.

When we left, Autumn and I stopped by Casey’s for the freebie of the day, and then I dropped her off at her house before going home to change. Ronda called and said that they were driving through Searcy and saw Michael on the side of the road. They hydroplaned and totaled their car, and the cops were already on the scene to help. I finally got a hold of him to confirm everyone was okay and that someone was on the way to pick them up.

After chilling out a bit at home, I went to my parents’ house for a dip in the pool. Then I finished up the last of the eggplant soup before heading up to Summer’s for the evening. We caught an episode of Master of None before bed since the girls were both off in their rooms.

Sweat dreams are made of these…

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Everything of Something, and a Little of Everything

I got up this morning and went home to clean up before coming back to pick up Summer and Autumn. We made it down to the Children’s Hospital with plenty of time to spare, so I tried to redeem a free meal from Taco Bell while I waited. Evidently so were millions of other people, so both the website and the app were down.

Fortunately it wasn’t long before the girls were done, so I got them and we drove across town to our first Target on University. They had a few Philips light switches and motion sensors left on clearance, so I bought them out. Then we stopped by Big Orange Burger for some lunch. Autumn was trying to avoid a burger with an egg on it, and somehow she managed to order the only hamburger that came with an egg on it. I still can’t even.

After lunch, we went by the Splash main office so Summer could pick up a check. Jeff gave me a handful of Splash gift cards, and sent us on our way.

We had to drive way across Little Rock to get to the Target on Chenal, where I picked up way more Philips stuff. They didn’t have theirs marked down or moved to a clearance rack, but I lucked out and they all rang up at the clearance price.

With my Operation: Spend All My Money complete, we headed toward home and stopped at Sam’s in Conway to spend more money. This time it was mostly essentials, and I took the opportunity to stock up on some meats in case COVID gets really bad as things keep opening up. Then it was back home.

We stopped to get Summer’s car, and we both went to get some gas. Then I ran home to do some chores while they went back to their house. I had forgotten that I had to do some laundry, so I got my load of socks going, changed my furnace air filter, and tinkered with a motion sensor.

When I finally got to Summer’s, Autumn helped me split up the bulk meat we bought, then I had some of the chicken dinner she made for everyone. Summer was already in bed not feeling well, so I stayed up and tinkered with a Sinus server for Johnny and the rest of the gang to use on my TeamSpeak server. It looks like a pretty robust piece of software, and I’m surprised there wasn’t better documentation for the initial setup. I managed to get most of it figured out though. I’ll have to tinker more with it later.

They couldn’t think of any better names?