Category: Uncategorised

Uncategorised

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

I had a decent start to the day, and managed to close out a few more work orders. I’m up to just 20 behind Amanda again, but I’ve got to keep on chugging along. I’m still not sure how she got nearly 100 more to beat me, but I’m going to assume it was work that wasn’t done properly before, and that had just caught up to her. Gary had time in the morning to help me get an email group made for esports, which made things a lot easier.

Zach, Sara, and I met at Taco Bell for a relatively light lunch. Then I made it to the junior high to take care of a few things before picking at a few more esports things. I have an account set up now for money, so I can start accepting donations and the like for kids to compete, or presumably purchase necessary equipment. I’m hoping I can get some donations by way of accessory sponsorships and swag giveaways, but I’ll probably need to clarify what is actually legal before I take too many actions.

After work, I ran home to clean up after the cats. While that was going, I pinched off a piece of Ludwigia and replanted it so I’ll hopefully grow an additional stem in the aquarium. It’s looking pretty nice the way it’s growing in, and I can’t wait to see how it does if I can ever find the time to start some CO2.

As soon as I finished those chores, I ran up to Summer’s to get Autumn to help grab a couple pizzas from Little Caesar’s. We pulled in just as Summer was leaving with hers, but we still had to wait a few minutes for ours to come out of the oven. We ate, and I finally got my first esports newsletter out to the members. I also selectively spammed a few key people with the hopes of catching a little bit of positive publicity. I really hope it goes well, but trying to enlist a proper team is proving difficult with such a short timeframe. To compound that, evidently I need to confirm that our school allows 8th and 9th grade students to compete in “high school” sports. It all seems like semantics to me, but in the end it’s just frustrating to everyone involved. It sure seems like a lot of work and money just to play a free-to-play game.

This is fine.

Uncategorised

Harmony with Discord

I was excited to wake up without a headache this morning, but I got a little bit of a slow start anyway. I made up for it though, and got to work with plenty of time to spare. I ran pretty much all day, mostly catching up on neglected work orders. Esports has really taken a lot of my focus, but it’s been fun because I’m getting to test my working knowledge of so many working parts just on the technology side alone. Every time I turn around, I find something new that I have to take into consideration, and probably another thing I have to make work in some system.

Today, it was mostly a day of Discord. I’ve gotten the responses. Forty seven students registered for the club. Twenty one of those joined our Discord server. I mostly dismissed Discord when it came out nearly four years ago. The audio quality was rubbish, and still mostly is in comparison to other services like TeamSpeak or Mumble. It’s the rest of the organizational features that make the service truly shine though. I’ve spent probably over eight hours working on this server, and am only just really getting into the meat of what it can do. I’m excited to make it look truly professional, even if it is mostly used by a bunch of new teenagers.

More bots! More bots! More bots! Come on, more bots! K, stop bots!

Uncategorised

Coach Brain

I spent virtually the entire day trying to compose an email. There was a lot of fact checking and gathering of second through 20th opinions as well. I truly shirked my tech duties all day for the sake of a solid esports launch. Even after all of that though, I still haven’t actually had my first after school meeting yet. All of this was just to send out a survey and set up a Discord. There are so many moving parts, and it’s great to be on the front and back end of the whole process, but it just means twice the work along with the glory.

Zach chose Morelos for us, so he and Sara drove while Allen and Brice rode with me. We made it there and back in plenty of time in spite of Allen’s whining. After lunch I was approved to unblock Discord from our firewall when, much to Gary’s sarcastic amusement, a certified teacher agreed that he told him so about classroom management being the issue and not the communication tool itself. School let out two hours early, but I made it to the junior high just in time to get everything set up for conferences.

It didn’t seem like there were a bunch of parents there, but I had several stop by my little area to talk about it. I handed out just a few more flyers, but most everyone that stopped by was at least a little bit aware of esports. Evidently there was something on the news about it last night, so it seemed like most of them expected it. Still, it was nice to get a little bit of face time along with a whole lot of validation from parents, teachers, and principals.

I finally left around 7:30 and went to my parents’ house for a leftover egg roll salad. Then it was home for the evening to play with Discord some more. I think, like everything else, I’m making it more complicated than it has to be.

I’ve decided that being called “Coach” is gross, and have promoted myself to the Director of Esports position.

Uncategorised

Eat. Sleep. Esports. Repeat.

We woke up this morning and finished up some ancient barbecue leftovers for breakfast. Then it was the struggle of getting children out of bed. I took Summer and Autumn home with me to get their car, and I got to work crunching esports stuff together.

I left for a brief moment to get some leftovers at my parents’ house for dinner since the girls didn’t really have time to come down the hill. Nothing fancy; just some leftover KFC. Then it was back home to try and build a playlist of highschool-appropriate esports promotional videos for parent-teacher conferences tomorrow. I just hope it’s not a disaster.

Feels like cramming.

Uncategorised

Early Saturday

I couldn’t sleep in this morning and got out of bed right around 8. Summer and Autumn were already gone for a quiz bowl tournament. I had some leftover barbecue for breakfast while Eaddie slept in. Eventually I got her up and we got ready to go to my parents’ house where Uncle Giao and Aunt Teresa had come to visit. Bác Vân was there too, and Mom made phở and egg rolls for lunch. We ate, then hung out for a little while before heading back to my house.

Eaddie watched Legends of Tomorrow while I milled around the house and tried to organize some things for esports. Summer and Autumn got back around dinner time, and we packed everyone up to go back to my parents’ house. We ate and socialized until Uncle Giao and Teresa were ready to head out. As we were driving away, he stopped and asked me to lead him to the hotels, so I drove him up north. I don’t know why they wouldn’t just stay in one of the spare rooms at my parents’ house, but whatever the reason, it was annoying enough to me that he would rather ask me to drive them to a hotel instead.

Since we were already on that side of town, I decided not to go back for Summer’s car, and we just crashed at her place. I couldn’t get Battlestar Galactica to play properly and Summer was ready to pass out, so that was it for the night.

Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it.

Uncategorised

Dungeons & Deaths

We started work 15 minutes early in exchange for leaving 30 minutes earlier than usual. Ben had a conference to attend, so the rest of us kept busy cleaning up random projects. I got a little time at Oakland to myself, but then spent the afternoon with Zach and Allen after we all had lunch at Fat Daddy’s. I always forget how disappointed I am in the value of their Friday special of a pork loin “covered in bacon.” $7 is just a crime.

After work, Summer brought the girls over to me at the shop, and I took them to get dinner before dropping them off with their grandparents. Autumn wanted a burger and Eaddie insisted on Popeye’s, so we ran by McDonald’s and then Popeye’s before heading to my house to eat. The chicken took an incredible amount of time to prepare, at least for those that were in line ahead of us. I was parked by the speaker for near 15 minutes before they even addressed me and asked me to wait longer before taking my order.

Once the girls ate, they stopped bickering just long enough for me to drop them off. From there, I headed to Kroger and then Domino’s before swinging by Summer’s. She had to be back home relatively early to be up for a quiz bowl tournament the next day, so she just followed me to Travis’s house in her own car.

John and Melissa beat us there, and we spent just a very small amount of time on introductions and pleasantries before jumping right into a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game was pretty fun in spite of me dying twice and not having anyone around to resurrect me. Summer seemed to enjoy it as well, and we’re excited to go back and continue the campaign.

With the game over, Summer went to get the girls and I met her back at her house for the evening. I showed Eaddie a bit of Bandersnatch while the other two went to bed. We made it through to the credits once before the Netflix autoplay took over and tried to start an episode of Black Mirror. I wish you could just disable that timer and have it automatically play the full credits every time.

I’m gonna have to kick this into high gear!

Uncategorised

V-Games for V-Day

Oakland was pretty crazy with Valentine’s Day stuff this morning, so I was just in and out. I spent a bit of time at the shop trying to organize my thoughts about esports, and then made it to the junior high just before the 8th graders went to lunch. I grabbed my flyers and waited nervously in the lunch meeting room. As soon as Matt made the announcement, the kids started pouring in. It was pretty rowdy, and I was a little disappointed in how little most of them knew about the games being offered. I got a bunch of questions about adding shooters, and I just kept having to point them to the fact that we’re going to have a hard enough time convincing parents that video games are good for school without throwing violence in with it.

The 9th graders seemed way more prepared. Hands shot up for all the games, and there were plenty of people that already played them at home. It ended up being almost entirely a question/answer session. I was glad that Summer and Hannah came to the 8th grade lunch for support though, and even Autumn brought a couple friends. I felt like I had a pretty decent handle on the introduction the second time, but the hardest part is still ahead. I spent all afternoon running around the building getting input from different people about how to get the word out to parents. Once I can get my mind to slow down a bit, I’ll be able to enlist the EAST project kids to do most of this legwork.

I never did make it to a lunch, and I spent the end of the workday setting up AppLocker for League of Legends so I can restrict who can actually run the game. I got to chatting with Ben for a little bit before I left, and then headed home to meet up with Summer. Once I got a hold of my parents, everyone agreed on my suggestion of Taco Villa for a Valentine’s Day dinner. It was a relatively easy way to avoid the craziness of all the sit-down restaurants today. I forgot to grab cash on the way out the door though, so we had to run back home for that before we got the food.

I think we all ate too much. I confirmed that I still don’t love tamales, especially that aren’t homemade. There was a lot of cheese. Everywhere. When we got back home after dinner, I felt like I slammed into a brick wall of exhaustion, but had to finish washing a load of socks. Summer went home to receive the girls as I stayed in to wind down as quickly as possible.

Here’s to the last 80.

Uncategorised

Whee Sports!

I thought it might be warm enough to ride today, but it was still around 30 when I left for work, so that was right out. I mostly worked around the shop all morning, and spent a little time looking over my esports stuff so I could meet up with the EAST kids in the afternoon.

Allen suggested KFC for lunch, and I was excited to check out the renovation. It was really nice, but I was a little surprised at a few of the choices. I hated the absence of a tray rail on the buffet, and had to balance my tray on the edge of the bar instead. The food was the same mix of stuff, and everything was nice and fresh. I’m seldom disappointed there lately.

Once I got to the junior high, I set up in Lab 201 and waited for the kids to arrive. I got them signed up with PlayVS, and we looked at some of the resources there. I didn’t see the required firewall settings at first, so I wasn’t able to install League of Legends today, but I finally found them later in the evening.

Summer had to go to an eye appointment and took Eaddie with her, so I took Autumn home to pick up some deliveries. Evidently I ordered a 24oz CO2 bottle instead of the 20oz I thought I ordered. Fortunately it fit my SodaStream perfectly, and seems to be holding pressure fine. Only time will tell. From there, we went to my parents’ house to trade some razer cleaner for rice and toilet paper. Summer skipped the gym so she could get dinner started, so we headed that way without too much delay.

She made a really great, if not confusing mix of ginger chicken and asparagus with fettuccini. It was really good, but Autumn wasn’t a fan. I was a bit surprised we didn’t force her to finish her bowl, but I’m at a loss. After we ate, Summer got a workout on her stair stepper while we watched a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation. I had to head home to start some laundry, so I didn’t stay too long. Then it was off to bed.

“Matt, I wanna see you play more aggressive!”
“Yep.”

Uncategorised

Mounting Pressure

Zach really pushed me to deploy four TVs at the junior high today, so I made the call and made it happen. Ben helped me load the trailer while Allen and Brice did something inside. I shinned myself pretty badly on a Chromebook cart, dumbly trying to bring it downstairs from the graveyard by myself. They were small and relatively light, so once Ben started helping it went smoothly. We dropped the carts off at the middle school for Amanda, and then the three of us headed on to hang TVs.

I got a little flustered trying to call the shots just because I really only had two that wanted or needed to be swapped out. I managed to get two more done though, in spite of the unnecessary nature of the replacement. Allen and Brice were surprised that we got that many done before lunch.

The three of us met Summer and the girls at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. Zach followed shortly thereafter. They had a bacon balsamic dressing that was okay, but I think I used too much. The peaches were amazing, as canned peaches are. On the way back, we dropped Brice off to do a work order before Allen and I unloaded the trailer full of junk. Then I spent most of the afternoon at Oakland pulling relatively newer technology out of classrooms that traded for new Chromebooks. At least they seemed more aware of the request than the ladies at the junior high.

Central office closed at 4, so we also got to leave early. I ended up sitting and chatting with Ben for another half hour though, so I didn’t get home until nearly 5. I did a couple small, quick water changes before heading up to Summer’s for the evening. She made rice, grilled chicken, and some mixed vegetables that smelled so good that I couldn’t resist a small bowl even though I was still pretty full from lunch. Then we watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec before bed.

Make yourself irreplaceable, make others do the work, and then take all the credit.

Uncategorised

What’s the Dale, Yo?

It rained all day today, so we had to trailer the TVs we were mounting. Dale had us load up four for the high school, but when we got there we decided not to do two of those because they had newer projectors already. Then the two we did hang were in rooms that seemed not to use them at all, so I’m not even sure it was necessary. All of this was really out of the ordinary for Dale, so it really threw us out of whack the rest of the morning.

I offered up a couple places at the junior high where we could mount the last two, and after Zach spent about half an hour trying to back the trailer up to the pad, we got one TV hung. They left the last one in my office, and we met the gang at the shop to go to lunch at Popeye’s.

Way too much food later, I was left to go to the junior high and take care of a few things by myself. I spent a while trying to get sound out of the TV we hung, and then went through a few rooms to check on the quality of some projectors to decide on more replacements. The teachers were all there for SSP night, so I found all of them to discuss the replacements. About half of them were all for TVs, and the other half didn’t want to give up their touch panels. It’s all well enough, I suppose, because I hate getting rid of stuff that still works.

Summer had to stay late for her conferences, so I headed home and played some Rocket League and Overwatch with Johnny and Aaron when they came on. I missed having friends to play with, but I didn’t miss all the whining about why things are the way that they are in the games. I guess you just have to take the good with the bad.

My body is finely tuned, like a microchip.