Category: Uncategorised

Today was a sharp contrast from yesterday’s public outing. Back to normal. How else was I supposed to catch up on my Overwatch winter loot boxes? I got to where I really enjoyed playing the yeti mode.

Later in the day, I spent quite a bit of time brushing my ridiculous winter-shedding cat, and vacuuming up after them. I should make sweaters out of all this fur. This is stupid.

I rounded out the evening with some Rocket League and Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds with the boys.

How’s your life, what’s it like there?

Everyone’s gearing down for semester tests and Christmas break. Except shit kids. The school is so afraid of backlash from parents that no real discipline is allowed. Overall, most of the kids are okay, but the ones that are bad are really bad. They disrespect simply because they know they can. Parents are decidedly MIA.

On the flip side, someone brought hot cider to the junior high, plus it was popcorn Friday. It’s hard to argue with any of that. Everyone seemed to be in pretty good spirits all day too. Heather even gave me permission to say anything I wanted today after my “good behavior” in front of the kids at Ben’s Christmas shindig last night, so I took the opportunity to rip through the George Carlin Seven.

Now for something completely different.

Today wasn’t too bad of a start. My greatest accomplishment for the day was soldering a stripped cable onto a circuit board to replace a broken RCA jack. It went okay, even if the results were a little LOL.

I took a late lunch and went à la carte with McDonald’s fries and a Wendy’s burger, because I’m an adult that does what he wants. BOGO coupons made that a choice dinner as well, because I’m also a glutton for punishment.

I made Technology Tech of the month, which was nice. I didn’t even see the email until after the congratulations started pouring in.

I was so cold when I got home that I just bundled up instead of going shopping to pick up potluck goods. I’ll make time tomorrow.

Evidently I had to leave the Android 8.1 beta in order to receive the OTA update on my new Pixel 2 XL. I’m glad to finally have it going. Time to ship the old one back for a refund.

I owe it all to my fans.

I feel like I’ve been running around a lot lately at work. I definitely travelled the halls a lot more today than what I would consider typical. I keep getting more and more grunt work and less that I can actually learn about, so that’s frustrating.

After working late, I went by my parents’ house to see if Dad had a suitable RCA connector that I could use to fix the preamplifier in the junior high cafeteria, but I didn’t have any luck there. I tried to help clean up some leftovers there, then came home and couldn’t find a suitable connector in any of my old electronics here either. It’s crazy/not-crazy to me that our home theater contacts don’t do any repairs, but I guess it’s not worth the effort for them to keep parts like that on hand. I remember the days of going with my dad to the TV repair shop or Radio Shack for parts. Now you just buy a whole new thing.

I muddled around the house for the rest of the evening and eventually made some hot tea before refunding my Star Wars tickets. I’ll give my new Pixel another day or so to get the update before I box up the old one to ship back for a refund as well.

You can count on it, I’m where you left me

I’ve decided to take a refund on my seven tickets to the opening night of Star Wars. Ben’s having a Christmas shindig at his place that night that I’d rather go to, and I could only find a couple takers for tickets anyway.

I worked late messing with the A/V rack at the junior high, and left when I got to a point where I needed a part.

Whiskey sour ’til bed.

I’d be a better man, better man, better man

I got my second Pixel 2 XL today. Only because they offered it with a $100 credit this time, and they let me return the old one without question. In fact, one of the options for the return was that I found a better price somewhere else.

Fortunately, the tempered glass screen protector I ordered came in as well, so I was able to install it with very little fuss. The new Pixel is mostly set back up like the old one, but I’m a little behind on my Android version. I can’t wait for my dbrand skins to come in now, but I’m nervous about installing my first one.

I didn’t do much else all day. I got a load of laundry done. Kept a couple chairs from floating away. Made some green tea.

That all changed when I met Lucy.

After leaving work early yesterday for the parade, we’ve come to the time of the year where everyone takes off of work. I never take the extra vacation days because I feel like I’d be wasting them, and would rather just be at work.

There were only a few of us there today, so we didn’t have any group projects. I went and visited my buildings and got a few things done. Jason told us to go home at 2:45, but I ended up staying until about 4:30 anyway before going to my parents’ house for dinner.

When I got home, I tried working on my network some more. I got the file share working again, but my modem is definitely dead, and only one of my two ethernet ports on my PC is working, and even it’s only working at 10Mb. I’m may have to talk myself out of building a new machine pretty soon, because I have too many other projects.

She’s been dancing with the devil all night.

It’s been a real struggle since my modem blew. I still haven’t heard anything from Suddenlink about the damage.

I spent all day at the junior high, even having cafeteria lunch in the library. We got to leave early for the Christmas parade, but I ended up sticking around for a while after anyway.

I came straight home after work to fight some more with my home network. After trying out a dozen different drivers at different speeds, I was able to get my gaming PC connected over ethernet, but at greatly reduced speeds. I got to chatting on #woot on irc.gamesurge.net and came to the realization that my first PC was built in January of 2004. My second and current gaming PC was built in January of 2011. If I’m to keep with my seemingly scheduled system failures, then it looks like I’m due to build another one this January.

I guess it is Christmas, but I’ve done nothing but buy things all year. On top of that, I don’t really game as much as I used to anyway. I would like to play around with some VR, but I feel like over the past few years I’ve mostly grown apart from my gaming group. I could sink a good amount of money into a new computer and be set for another seven years, but for what? Even when I built this one, I mostly used it for Chrome. Even if I did get more into gaming again, can I really afford to shut myself in even more?

Goals should be assessed.

At least the house talks back today.

I woke up this morning to no internet. My home life is so integrated, I couldn’t help but to be affected by the lack of service. I had gotten my wireless working again when I went to bed, but everything was completely down by the time I woke up. Somehow my router had gotten worse overnight, and could no longer detect the connection to my modem. I spent a while trying to bring it back to life, but ultimately gave up so I could get to work.

There wasn’t much going on at work, but I did get to learn a little bit about AppLocker. I stayed late to make up for some time and then drove by my parents’ house when I got off. As I pulled up, my parents were on their way to the funeral home to pay their respects to my fourth grade teacher’s husband. I only just vaguely remembered that period in my life, so I passed on visiting myself.

I really wanted to go to Dixie Cafe at some point today before they closed for good. Growing up, I had a very different version of “home-cooked” or “comfort food” than others around here. Even when we went out to eat, we usually ended up at a Chinese restaurant. There was a lot at Dixie that I never got at home, so it was really exotic food for me. I loved their appetizer sampler with their fried pickle spears, chicken strips with gravy, fried mushrooms, and fried cheese sticks. I always went through a couple baskets of their rolls and jalapeño cornbread. I only had a couple people that would ever go there with me, so it was really nostalgic for me, and now it’s gone forever.

Instead, I came home and warmed up some leftover eggrolls while I worked on my network. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite alone as when I walked into a dark, cold house that couldn’t talk back to me. I’ve grown beyond accustomed to my smart home, and it invoked a real emotional response when I came home and it was completely dead. After a bunch of trial and error, I remembered my pocket aces. When I worked at NEW, I had at one time required a customer ship us a router that he had claimed on his service plan. For some reason, I felt fit to keep this scrapped equipment. It was only one letter off of the model number of my router, so I thought it might be useful for parts. He shipped it to me without a power supply or even the screw-on antennae, but those parts from my fried router fit perfectly, and to my surprise the router booted up without issue. I performed a firmware update and got it running my home network in no time.

After I got my lights and other essential equipment back online, I settled in with my old friend Tom Collins and finished The Avengers. It really was a fun movie, and it reminded me of how far we’ve come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I can’t wait for the next movie in the collection.

No one likes a one-upper.