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Guv’mint Work

I had an awful time trying to get to sleep last night for some reason. I don’t remember thinking or feeling anything at all. I just remember not being asleep for longer than I wanted to be. To make matters worse, for some reason my shower would never get hot. I ran straight-hot water and it just felt cool. I turned the water heater up a bit and the water felt quite hot later, so I don’t know what was going on.

My office light was on and the door was ajar when I got there, but to my surprise no one was there. I spent some time investigating to find out who had been there, but the hallway lights turning on and off all night made that a nearly impossible task. I assume Jason had gone in there last week and left it that way, but I may never know.

Gary went to help Amanda, Brice, and Heather finish the cable runs at vo-tech, so once I got my laptops started I went to help as well. The first couple runs ended up being a bit easier than we originally expected, but it still took us all morning. Brice and I went to Zaxby’s for lunch and then went to run one more line in the afternoon. It was quite a bit worse, and the end point actually came out at the top of the raised ceiling, back into a hole in the wall, and then out of a surface mount box at an accessible height. It was super stupid, but we managed to use the old line as a pull without losing it in the wall.

I finished up the afternoon and completed the 1:1 laptop imaging task. I’ve got a few more things I’d like to do, but I don’t know how much time I’ll get to do that after seeing how many Chromebooks are left for the others to enroll. At the end of the day I gathered up a bunch of stuff to take to the DMV and headed across town.

It was a surprisingly small crowd with only one person in line ahead of me, but I was informed that after all that trouble to find my boat’s hull identification plate, I would have to visit someone to get a longer replacement tag before I could re-register the boat. I had also forgotten to add the Murano and Grom to my..account?.. I’ve already assessed for the year, so I have to call before 4pm to add the two new vehicles, and I guess I can’t do it online. For some reason I had hoped the government would suck a little less by 2019, but here I am, unable to complete any of my three required tasks.

Defeated and annoyed, I went home and started cleaning up a bit. I’m trying to do some more frequent water changes to drop nitrate levels a bit more. Summer came by with some Quiznos for dinner before heading to the gym. Then I spent the rest of the evening wandering around the house picking at little things. I need to spend a whole day cleaning up the living space, but that just feels impossible.

It must be so nice to leave at 4 every day forever.

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Simulating Africa

I slept in pretty late today. When I woke up, Summer and Autumn were finishing up Harry Potter, and Eaddie was still asleep. I warmed up some leftover tacos for lunch, and then Eaddie and I watched some Daredevil while Summer took Autumn to her Law Enforcement Explorers program.

Eventually she took Eaddie to the gym and I went home to clean up before movie time with the family. I cleaned up the aquariums a bit, and added some more water to acclimate the new cherry red shrimp. After my shower, I went to pick the girls up, and we met my family at UEC for The Lion King to celebrate Julie’s birthday.

The seats felt better but narrower, and the place was packed with little children. Even more annoying were the young adults that seemed to be eating out of the loudest packaging possible, and the asshat that left their phone LED notification flash on during the movie. The kid in the ridiculous cowboy hat next to me smelled like he hadn’t had a shower in a while, and provided a running commentary. I spent most of the movie admiring the animation and daydreaming about how everything we see is a lie. There’s no going back now. It’s inevitable.

Autumn called during the movie to say that she needed a proper shoe shine brush and blanket for the week, so we went to the Neighborhood Market to try and find the brush. Failing that, we grabbed a blanket from their house and dropped it off at the dorm. Finally, I dropped the girls off at their house and headed home to test my aquariums’ chemistry before dropping the new shrimp in and going to bed.

So much DMV business to do, so little time…

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70s Pizza Party

We got up and around this morning to some leftover chicken tacos. They were so much better with the crunchy greens this time, and frying the cheese in the pan onto the tortillas made them that much better, and even a little more durable. Eaddie and I watched a little Daredevil while Summer went out with Autumn to get some things. Then I went home to clean up for our trip to Cabot.

I got frustrated when my brand new air conditioner only dropped about six degrees in three hours, but I didn’t have the temperature probes I needed to check how much it’s actually cooling. I left my still-warm house to pick up Dad, and then to get the girls for our trip to Cabot for Uncle Rick’s birthday party.

We met up at U.S. Pizza Company and greeted a few of the mostly strangers-level family. It was pretty uneventful for us, but Dad had a good time and it was nice to get together to celebrate. The pizza wasn’t bad, but the toppings seemed cheap. I got pretty frustrated as usual with Autumn’s refusal to eat anything other than a plain pepperoni pizza. It only got worse when she ate our pizza after she finished hers. I swear next time I’m just not asking what they want at all.

On the way back we stopped at PetSmart and then PetCo looking for some shrimp. The first stop was a complete bust. PetCo had some, but they were mostly pretty tiny. I went ahead and picked up three anyway just to grow them, but I’m thinking I may have better luck just getting some from a random stranger on the internet.

Once we got back to town, I dropped the girls off at their house, then the shrimp at my house, and took my parents’ receiver with us back to their house. Dad and I tried hooking it back up, but it still didn’t pass any video along to the TV. I guess it really is only good as an audio amplifier now.

Back at Summer’s house, Eaddie and I finished the evening with a couple more episodes of Daredevil while everyone else was in bed. We made it most of the way through the first season pretty quickly, and I’m excited to finally watch more for the first time.

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The Time I Almost Stole Dinner

We didn’t get to finish up the 1:1 laptops today. Instead, Jason took a crew to get a bunch of bottled water for the shop while the rest of us enrolled Chromebooks in the graveyard. When they got back, I was upset to see a literal pallet of water bottles. I don’t even drink the bottles, and it aggravates me that everyone else does. We don’t live in a third world country. We don’t live in Mexico. We don’t even live in Flint, Michigan. Paying thousands of dollars every year for water that comes with its own trash just seems insane to me, and nobody is even a little bit sympathetic, or even appears understanding to the idea that this is just terrible.

Once we got the pallet unloaded, we took two trucks worth of stuff to vo-tech to run a bunch of network cable. I don’t have a ton of experience running lines out there, but I know enough to know that it’s terrible. We encountered a wall without visible penetration, so we didn’t get our WAP lines run. We did at least manage to find existing cabling where most of the phones were going, which was a great relief.

We all went to Stoby’s for lunch and crammed us three fatties, Allen, and Gary into a booth. When we got back, we reminded everyone that Gary and I didn’t leave early in the middle of the week like everyone else, and that we would be leaving early today. We wrapped up a couple lines and then left at 1:30. I dropped Gary off back at the shop and then went home and took a nap because I felt completely exhausted.

When I woke up, I got my things together and headed to Walmart for groceries. Ronda, Steven, and Maleea were coming over for dinner, and I wanted to make Instant Pot chicken tacos. I was a bit impatient while checking out with Walmart Pay, and forgot that I had received a new Discover Card number after discovering an unauthorized charge. My payment didn’t go through, so I had to run back to the register and apologize for looking like a thief and/or a fool. They had printed a receipt with all my groceries just as I showed up, and with a quick scan of a single barcode, it loaded up my entire purchase again so I could process my payment the old fashioned way.

The girls did a pretty good job of cleaning the place up, and dinner went together pretty well. I completely forgot the slaw mix and punch in the refrigerator, which was super disappointing. Nobody really seemed to notice though, because we had so much other stuff to put on the tacos. Now I’ve got to figure out what else to do with the stuff though, since no one else ever seems interested in eating it.

The girls hung out and played and did whatever kids do in 2019 while we sat at the table and chatted. After the others left, Summer crashed and Eaddie and I watched some Daredevil, though she evidently watched quite a bit without me. I guess that’s how it us during boring old summer vacation.

There are no heroes, no villains. Just people with different agendas.

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Exactly Prepared

The cafeteria staff had a meeting at the high school this morning, for which I had prepared 40 laptops. The initial request was for like 20, I was asked for 30, and they used 37. I was very happy to have overestimated the original overestimations to come out looking like a boss. Ben had me run to the house to grab my Yeti microphone that they didn’t end up using for the conference call, and then Gary and I continued imaging laptops. The three of us met Heather at Chick-fil-A for lunch, and then we dropped Ben back off before going back to imaging.

Heather hung out with us until her LanSchool conference call and vented about the inefficiencies of the group she worked with all morning. We just sort of had to laugh and roll our eyes, because it’s always that way with Jason. Being away all week has been awesome.

After work, I spent some time cleaning house before going to Walgreens to get my prescription, then to my parents’ house to get a picture of the sailboat’s hull identification number tag. Fortunately Dad was able to find it today after the mounting nails had rusted out. Back home, I picked up what I could around the house until bed.

Mango mango mango.

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Friends and Stuff

Gary and I spent all day imaging laptops again. Ben bought lunch for Melinda’s first day, and everyone walked next door to Smackin’ Wings and Things. They had a 20-piece wing special that cost as much as a larger meal, so I just ate that. The Cyclone Fever sauce was a pretty good mix of hot honey mustard and sweet honey barbecue.

In the afternoon, Melissa dispatched someone to check out my air conditioner, so I had to do a bit of juggling to get Dad over to the house, and get Summer to open the garage since my app still doesn’t work with the Android beta. Fortunately I’m not completely crazy and he did find the unit a little low on refrigerant. He said he’d come by again next week to check again, so I’ll have to spend some time there in the afternoons to see if it cools any faster.

Summer took the day off and spent some time with the kids at the Clarksville water park, and then came home to grill steaks and burgers for us. She invited Gary over for dinner, and luckily I got there right as he was turning around to make another pass by her house. We played a couple games of Magic, ate, had a couple beers outside on the fancy new lawn furniture, and then came in to play Stuff Happens with the kids.

Eaddie begged to watch Parks and Rec after Gary left, and after a couple episodes of that everyone headed on to bed.

Better dreams this time.

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Soggy Bottom Boys

I was supposed to meet Gary at the high school this morning, but he texted and said the basement flooded overnight with about an inch of water everywhere. Apparently the big pit they dug next to our building soaked up all the rain water over the past couple days, and of course water seeks the lowest level, and there’s nothing lower than technology. I was almost sad that I missed it, because as luck would have it, I had left my lifejacket there from Zach’s joke last week. Gary said he put it on as he waded around the shop among the dozen or so maintenance and custodian folks that were there to help with the mess.

Missing out on all of that fun, I just continued imaging laptops until Gary got there. Then we continued on until lunch, when we met with Shae for lunch at Colton’s. Vendor lunches are almost always great, except when the Belkin guy is weird. This one was one of our better ones, though I think we’ve only ever actually made one purchase from these guys. I guess a single six-digit piece of equipment is worth a few steaks though. Allen sat at the opposite end of the table with our little buddy intern from Friendship, and Brice got told in the everlasting argument between Cisco and everybody else. I was just happy to see Gary smile.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly again. I accidentally broke my ColdHeat soldering tool trying to solder some 1/4″ plugs to some speaker wire. We got very close to 600 total laptops imaged, so the end is at least visible. I just hope we don’t discover that we’ve missed something silly, but that seems really unlikely. Gary left my office a little early, and then I left a little late after starting another round of laptops. I went straight to my parents’ house to borrow a real soldering iron, and then Autumn called wanting to come swim.

Summer was off soon, so I just had her bring everyone over. All three kids went out to swim while she ate a bit, and then we joined them. The water was really cold after all the rain, but it was warm enough out that it felt fine after you acclimated. When it was time to go, they packed up and left while I waited for Dad to get back home from bible camp. I had him help me hunt down the sailboat hull identification number so I could renew the registration, but I’m pretty sure it broke off and we couldn’t find it anywhere.

Finally back home, I planted a stem of peppermint I pulled from the garden at the high school, and cleaned up for bed.

Dream time!

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Relief Work

I got off to a pretty rough start this morning, throwing an entire brand new bottle of pills all over the kitchen floor. Somehow I miraculously found every last pill and filled the bottle back up. All of this was because I noticed that Walgreens had incorrectly filled my prescription with a lower dosage than what I needed. I wouldn’t have noticed, except the pills were the wrong shape. I can’t wait until I’m old and dumb, and accidentally take the wrong pill that kills me.

I almost went straight to the high school to continue my imaging work, but I went to the shop as usual instead. It was a good thing though, because Gary needed the excuse to get away from the others at the office for a while. I can only imagine the frustration he feels when he tries to do things in a more correct way, but then gets told to just let other people do what they want instead. There’s no telling how much extra work has been created for him because someone else didn’t have the competency they needed to do it without breaking something.

Everyone else stayed at the shop, seemingly unmotivated, while he and I went to the high school to continue imaging. I didn’t particularly need the help, but it definitely helped to pass the time less painfully. It helped that I wore thicker-soled shoes this time too. We took a break for lunch at Arby’s and had enough time after we ate to stop by the house and see the Grom. It was then that we noticed a little bit of road rash on the rear fender indicating it had been stood up at least once. I guess it wasn’t too much of a surprise really, and I plan to get rid of it anyway. I haven’t had much time to look at mods, but I know there must be quite a few.

The afternoon went by just as quickly, and then I stopped into the shop after dropping Gary off. That’s where I learned that all the others combined only enrolled about 200 Chromebooks, while Gary and I finished up about 250 Windows computers with software deployments. That’s just the underpaid, peak efficiency model versus the Jason-lead group, I suppose.

When I left there, I stopped by Superfast to see Summer before going to Walgreens to fix my prescription. Fortunately I didn’t really have to put on my mean face, but I was only one wrong sentence away from doing so. From there I went to Summer’s to start making chicken salads. Autumn stayed with her grandparents, so the remaining three of us watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec before I headed home.

I finished the night cleaning up after the pets, which was long overdue as usual. I’m going to have to find some time pretty soon, no matter the cost.

What’s the deal with Stonehenge?

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Grom

We got up this morning and finished putting together the patio furniture and fire pit. It drizzled on and off, so we actually assembled the fire pit inside while the girls did a few chores. Just as we finished moving all of that stuff around outside, I saw Chase post on Instagram that they were selling his wife’s 2019 Honda Grom with next to no miles on it. On a complete whim, I hit him up and we arranged to go pick it up at his place. I stopped by Arvest on the way home, but my debit card was expired. He didn’t mind PayPal though, so as soon as Summer got to my house, we headed on out to London. We stopped for gas at Kroger and ran into Ronda just briefly. We only stopped to chat long enough to pump our gas, and then we were on our way.

The bike was so much tinier than I had imagined. It will be a great learner bike though, and perfect for riding around in town. While we were looking around, his pet pig kept trying to get into the garage, which just tickled me so. It kept threatening rain, so we didn’t stick around for super long. We made our way back to town, and I managed to get the bike up to 60mph, tucked and coming down a bit of a hill. Screaming along that fast and sitting so high and forward didn’t feel great, but I figure it’ll still be perfect if the girls want to learn to ride too. I bet Eaddie will want to learn, and I could see her riding to high school on it eventually. I stopped by Walgreens to pick up my medication, and then ran by Allen’s place to show him. He was absolutely thrilled about it. Then I finally took it home so I could shower and clean up a bit.

I was going to go back up to Summer’s for dinner, but I first got distracted by a fraud alert email from Discover. Evidently they stopped a $503.44 charge at Nordstrom from going through. I had to call and talk to someone, and they closed my account and created a new one. Unfortunately that also meant my memorized credit card information was no longer useful. In the middle of all of that, the doorbell rang. Michael stopped by, so I stepped out to chat with him. They had some kind of party and had some leftover food, but the friend he was going to deliver them to wasn’t home. Their loss was our gain. We chatted for a bit about some of his conspiracies, the Fiero, the Grom, and his van. I never realized he had it outfitted for living. I always imagined him roughing it out in the woods, but at least some of the time he’s just been sleeping in the van.

Finally, I made it back up to Summer’s for the evening. The girls had gone with their father for the evening, so we ate some of Michael’s leftover barbecue along with some sweet potato fries, and then went to bed with some Sealab 2021. It was definitely funnier in my 20s.

 

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Pudding can’t fill the emptiness inside me!!!
But it’ll help….

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Quality Time

Summer had to work this morning. I got up after she left and went home to clean up before going to check Autumn out of band camp. Luckily I went up the right flight of stairs and ran right into her, so checkout was painless. I signed a piece of paper “Adult” and nobody cared who I was, but I completed the job.

From there, I went to get Eaddie and Summer, and we came back for Autumn’s concert. Dad texted me just after we sat down, so I had him meet us there as well. Autumn made the first band and even had a song introduction, but she struggled really badly between the anxiety and some of the words. The band was otherwise pretty good though, and afterward I took Summer back to work and the girls to Cicis for lunch.

We ate a bunch, then went to my parents’ house to swim for a while until Summer got out of work. Then we ran by Walmart for a couple things, and I scoped out a deal on a patio furniture set. We headed back up to their house and relaxed there for a bit before Autumn and I went back to Walmart for some hot dogs, and I went ahead and picked up one of the furniture sets.

I broke a pretty good sweat trying to fit the thing into the back of the Murano, and even more of a sweat outside trying to get the thing out of the box. Sylvia came over for dinner and to chat with Summer for a bit. I got two chairs built, but not before both of them decided to come inside away from the bugs. She didn’t stick around for very long though, and the others started crashing pretty quickly after she left. Eaddie and I stayed up watching Daredevil again, and we started getting into some of the cliffhanger episodes. Eventually I started falling asleep on the couch though, so I had to call it quits.

Knot what I was trying to do, but it did the trick.