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It Kryptmus Time!

We were down another man at the shop today because Brice accepted a job at Two Rivers, and I guess he took today off so he could work over the break? I don’t really know what’s happening anymore. I was going to pair up with Ben to help make some tech tubs and then hang a new WAP for JROTC, but then Allen came along for the tech tubs as well, and then Ben left the two of us to figure out my WAP. While we were there, I found Seth and unloaded a ton of cardboard boxes for him and Danielle to move over break.

It took us a little while to get the line through the weird wall for JROTC, but eventually we got the access point powered up and running. We made it back to the shop just in time for lunch, and convinced Jason to drive us to New China. He always says he hates that place and refuses to go, but he seemed to like it alright today. Then I spent most of the afternoon at the shop just killing time. Right at the end of the day, I got a text about the sign at the high school, so I left to take a look.

On the way there, I had to stop by Oakland to see the girls before break. Apparently I was late to the party, because they already knew Brice was leaving and wanted to know if I was coming back. Sheri even told me she’d give me her own office if I’d come back! As the kids finally dispersed, I had to continue on to the high school to look at my sign. I spent a couple hours running back and forth, cycling power in different orders. The original problem was the GFCI outlet, but even with that reset I could never get the computer to talk to the sign, and I eventually just gave up so I could start my Christmas break.

I went home for a little while and waited for Summer to get home from the gym. The girls went out to eat with their father, so Summer and I had some leftover pasta that she brought home from work. Then we ran to Walmart for the stuff we needed to make for tomorrow’s big family shindig.

Running has never been appealing to me, but damn.

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Holiday Ghost Town

The parking lot was mostly empty this morning, since most of the kids are done with their semester tests. Ben broke the phones, so I ran around the building fixing that for a while, then tinkered around until lunch. I met Allen and Gary at the shop, and we went to Wendy’s. I got everyone birthday cake Frosties for dessert, and halfway through mine I remembered that a vendor brought us cookies, so I took what was left in my cup back with us to eat with a snickerdoodle.

It was a really quiet afternoon, so I went back to the high school and tried building a new task sequence to deploy the Windows 2019 LTSC image, and it seemed to work. I guess I’m an expert now. I saw an email from Danielle that they’re moving over break, so after work I gathered up a bunch of cardboard boxes from home that would have otherwise gone out for recycling. Then I headed up to Summer’s to fix some leftovers for dinner.

Eaddie was the only one with school tomorrow, so Autumn stayed with her grandparents. Summer picked at some leftover smoked turkey, and then we watched an episode of Firefly. After one episode, I put on a Donald Glover stand-up special until Summer went to sleep.

One last day!

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Trimming the Fat

I got out my puffy coat today, and boy did it keep me toasty on the way to work. My morning was pretty relaxed as everything has wound down with semester tests. Traffic was a mess at lunch time again because most of the kids checked out. I was craving KFC after reading an article about the Christmas tradition in Japan, so I rounded up Allen, Gary, and Brice to go along with me.

I spent the afternoon closing out a couple more work orders, so my Web Help Desk doesn’t even have a scroll bar any more. I also learned officially that Amanda is leaving us, so she and I chatted back and forth for a while. I stayed a bit late to call SuddenLink about my bill increase and got my 400mb service dropped to $57.49. The guy in their “save” department kept trying to convince me that customers signing up for the $39.99 price-for-life promotion would end up paying more than me, but I can’t imagine a 44% increase due to taxes and other fees. That’s cable company math for you though.

The evening seemed to go by pretty quickly at home, though I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. I’m just ready for the break.

The call center has a lot of work from home positions too, which may be up your alley from what I hear…

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Just a Quiet Christmas Dinner with the Crew

I had to run back to the shop this morning because I forgot to grab a document camera on my way out yesterday. I stuck around for a little while just because it was so quiet there, but eventually I did make it up to the high school and successfully deployed Adobe Acrobat DC as a package instead of an application, because Adobe is stupid. We had a good size crew for lunch, which we wanted to keep light for the sake of having a Christmas dinner later in the evening, so we went for Taco Tuesday.

After lunch, I spent a bit more time at the shop before finishing up at the high school. I left work later than I should have because I was tinkering with some stuff, so I was just a little bit late getting changed for the party. I ran to pick up Summer, and we made our way to Old Bank for dinner. About half of the crew was already there, but with relationships and crew members shifted from where we were a few years ago, the whole night ended up being pretty quiet. To call it dull would be harsh, but we were upstairs by ourselves and the whole place just seemed really quiet.

When we finally split up, Summer and I went to get the girls and headed home. She and I watched a bit of YouTube while Eaddie did her homework, and then we were all off to bed.

This Tuesday feels an awful lot like Friday. Are we sure it’s not Friday? How would we really know for sure?

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Two One Thousand

When I first got to work this morning, my office was blowing super hot air and I had to strip down pretty quickly. It didn’t take it long to shut off though, and before I knew it, I was being blasted with cool air again. I wound up heading to the shop at lunch time and intercepted a big group heading to Fat Daddy’s again.

After lunch, I just stayed at the shop and continued to work on the Adobe Acrobat package that was giving me trouble. I think I finally had a working one by quitting time, but I didn’t have time to test it, so that’ll be a job for another day.

When I got home, I continued my cleaning project, slowly working my way across the room. I’ve found that I struggle with keeping things for two reasons. First is sentimentality. Then there’s practicality and expecting that something will be of use in the future. It makes progress extremely slow, but at least I feel like I have something to show for it his time.

Eventually I headed up to Summer’s for the evening, where I picked at leftovers some more. Then I ended the night with a little YouTube before bed.

Don’t feel like Christmas.

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Surprisingly Productive

I got up this morning and headed home to get ready for my all-you-can-eat date with Allen at Long John Silver’s. He called while I was in the shower and said he was on his way back from church, and then immediately gave up on me and went to eat without me instead of picking me up like we had planned. I met him there, but he had already finished eating. I made sure he wasn’t going to just get up and leave by the time I got my food, and we ended up sitting and chatting for a while. I was pretty aggravated at first, but I let that fizzle out as usual.

After I was stuffed with fish and chicken, we both headed home and I started washing my sheets and cleaning up the bedroom. I worked on that all day and late into the evening until bedtime. A better person would have made more progress, but I was happy with what I accomplished in my one little corner.

Well that was nearly half of my entire life.

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Gettin’ Weepy

The girls had all region today, so I got up alone and had some salad for breakfast before heading home to clean up. I had to get Aimee’s laptop from the high school to her at the junior high, and ended up sitting and chatting with her for quite a while. By the time I left there, Summer had already left the concession stand, so I left and stopped by Ridgewood Brothers to pick up some smoked turkey. I must have clicked something on the iPad that made it not charge my credit card, so when I got back to the car and realized it, I ran back to pay Robert and he handed me a side of slaw to go with it.

I ate a little when I got home, then cleaned the vacuum cleaner so I could clean up the bedroom a bit. There’s still a ton of junk in there to sort through and discard, but at this rate that will always be the case. Eventually Summer got everyone home, so I went to pick her and Autumn up so we could go to Walmart. I volunteered to make burgers and Autumn wanted to pick up some snacks for Eaddie and herself while Summer and I were out with friends.

We dropped Autumn off and gathered everything up to head to John and Melissa’s. Travis was already there, and Veronica and her kids showed up a bit after that. We had a great time eating and drinking, and then tried to play some Magic: The Gathering until we gave up on teaching three new players and switching to Cards Against Humanity. Asher had brought it and wanted to play, but we refused until he could beat Travis at Magic. The kids ended up leaving to go to an escape room anyway, which made it all the more funny when they returned to us playing their game.

By the end of the night, Travis had gotten pretty weepy about everything, so we tried to sober him up enough just for us to take him home. As I walked him into his house, he seemed very concerned about the Dust from His Dark Materials. I did my best to reassure him, and locked him in his house so I could get home with Summer for some sleep.

I AM THE DARKNESS! I AM THE ONE WHO DUSTS!

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Busy Start to a Busy Weekend

Amanda and I coordinated our Weird Al shirts for today’s meeting. Allen and I were going to team up for the day, but before we could do that we had a conference room meeting about job expectations. It was a little foreboding, but I was hopeful.

Allen and I first went to the high school with the trailer to pick up the cart that had mysteriously appeared in my office the day before. We took it back to the shop, then took a touch panel to Crawford to be installed in the afternoon. Since we were on that side of town, I offered to ride up to Center Valley with him to check out their sign. I pulled the truck right up to it, which worked perfectly for climbing up to the raised panels. We couldn’t get any video out, so we pulled the computer and headed back to the shop for lunch.

I had been thinking of Fat Daddy’s, and I guess that psychically rubbed off onto everyone else, because a huge group of six of us went to the one downtown. I got the nachos since they were presented so much better than the one in London. Then it was back to the shop to get ready for Allen’s touch panel install.

When we finished with that, we ran by the high school so I could check on Ethan and his robotics tournament setup. We got him squared away, then stopped in to see Al, who had accidentally hidden all of his desktop icons. Jason called us all back to the shop at the end of the day, which was predictably bad. It’s upsetting to see that happen to a friend, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to do the things if you’re going to have a job. I really love Ben as a boss, but I hate how easy it is for people to take advantage of his want to see the best in everyone.

With that done, they let us out a bit early and I headed home to bring in the day’s shipments. It wasn’t too long before I had to head to Walmart for some drinks for dinner with Ronda and Steven. Inside wasn’t too bad, but traffic outside was an absolute zoo. I was running behind and still had to swing by to pick up the girls. We ran on up the mountain and had a great time and an incredible feast of M-E-A-T! Steven grilled marinated pork chops and ribeyes to go with some asparagus and tomatoes, twice-baked potatoes, and more. Every time I turned around, he was making something else for us. He really pulled out all the stops for us, and I hate that I don’t think I could ever top that, but I think he and I just really enjoy hosting like that.

We all ate so much, and the girls had fun with Maleea, but we had to get everyone home for all region band in the morning. I had to give up programming their DirecTV remote, and we got everyone to bed with a medium amount of fighting. Looks like we’re going to be running all weekend.

What an extravaganza.

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All Gobbled Up

It wasn’t quite as cold out today, but my office was still pretty frigid. The morning went by quickly, and then I headed to the shop before lunch. Allen, Jason, and Brice wanted to go to Long John Silver’s, so Brice and I split a 12 for $12.12 coupon and ate too much. I actually stopped myself a little early and kept some leftovers for dinner.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly, and was just as quiet as this morning. I stayed a bit late to finish up on Aimee’s laptop, then headed home to change. Summer went to Eaddie’s concert tonight, because I guess they have too many bands to host them all on the same night, and wanted me to figure out dinner. I ran to Walmart for a few things, then made it up to their house to start some turkey stock in the Instant Pot.

Summer got home just as the pressure cooking finished, but I still had to let it depressurize to add the stock to the rest of the soup. I started some carrots, celery, onion, and fresh thyme in another pot and got a good browning on all of that, then added the stock, leftover turkey meat, and some egg noodles. I thought it came out really great, and was ready to eat just as the kids got back from their dinner. Summer ate as she fought her exhaustion calling her to bed, and then everyone went to sleep.

All this perfection hurts my back after a while.

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Chili Fingers

I froze all day long, with my office blowing nothing but cold air at me. I spent almost the entire day sifting through verbose log files to try and fix the same Chrome issue that I’m sure ultimately doesn’t matter because it’s an old computer on an old 32-bit version of Windows 7, but I wanted to try anyway. An hour or so in, I was surprised with a lockdown drill, so for the first time I actually had to participate. Just as I got up to lock the door, a girl peeked in my window and needed a place to hide, so I let her in and we sat in the dark together for the next 15 minutes until they gave the all-clear.

I finally took a break to grab my new Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle that was delivered, and headed to the shop for lunch. Allen and Gary wanted Kob Jai, and against what every experience I’ve ever had there, I decided to give it another shot. They got grilled chicken, which was really just two boneless, skinless chicken breasts charred until black on the outside and served with a container of sticky rice and an egg roll or two. It was simply the most underwhelming looking plate I could imagine anyone serving, but the chicken looked good for those that like it cooked just a step above jerky. I had the pad thai again, this time with “all the stars,” and the noodles were super tough and chewy. There was very little chicken, especially compared to what appeared to be four breasts sitting across the table from me. It tasted alright I guess, but overall I should really commit to never going there again.

When we got back to the shop, I spent quite a while setting up my new watch with Gary. The first big update caused the watch to run super poorly while also absolutely nuking the battery. I got it up to 100% while setting it up, and then after failing the first update attempt, it dropped down below 60% within just a few minutes. A restart and re-download of the same update later, it did finally succeed and ran smooth as butter.

I wrapped up the day working on the same stuff I’d wasted all morning on, and headed home in the freezing cold. I got some gas, then ran the dollar menu gauntlet for some Wendy’s nuggets and McDonald’s fries because I was super hungry after only eating half of my lunch plate. I finished them along with my leftovers for lunch, then bundled up the best I could for a cold night at home. Jack came on and we played a little Overwatch before bed.

Hands like ice.