Slippery Dippery

We had some makeup testing today, so I didn’t feel super comfortable changing any more network configurations. I wasn’t super motivated to do anything at all, really. Kim wasn’t particularly useful, and Denice had guests in her closed office all day. I just passed the time. Slowly. With ham rollups for lunch.

I went straight home after work because Summer had dinner going. Eaddie and Eli were watching the new Cinderella movie while Summer barbecued chicken quarters. It was a nice dinner, but the chicken and green beans were both undercooked, and the potato salad was bland. I really don’t think she tries any of the food as she’s cooking, and then just sits down with everyone else at the table to find out for the first time how it tastes.

I put the larger pieces of chicken back on the grill and ate what I could, but I think I was hungrier after I ate than before I started. The kids left, and I went out on the Onewheel for a little while. My parents weren’t home, so I continued around to Ridgewood to see Grant for a minute.

Afterward, I floated through the neighborhood for a new path back home and thought I’d try the Waco Detention Basin Trail, which may not have been a path back at all. It also wasn’t dry. It was dark and completely unlit, and there was a layer of silt that I couldn’t see over the concrete trail. I narrowly escaped going down to the ground, but got a streak of mud up my jeans. I backtracked up to the road and made it home, but then rode over to my parents’ house to borrow a rat trap.

What I thought was a mouse yesterday looked a bit bigger on camera today, so I brought two larger traps home. I set them with some peanut butter, along with the little jar trap, and hoped I could catch something overnight. Summer was working late, but then I upset her with my own airing of grievances as she went to bed. I stayed up and did my load of laundry, periodically stepping out to listen to the rain.

bberry

Please, Don’t Touch Anything

We had a little mouse visitor in the basement last night. It looked huge as it sniffed the camera, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a rat. I made it to work in the rain, and then sat quietly without touching anything while they tested. It’s been a long week, so I wasn’t keen on doing a whole lot anyway. The “orange chicken” for lunch was pretty good since they ran out of boxed ones and we got “fresh” food.

After work, I fed the fish and grabbed a couple handfuls of CDs and papers to bring home. Then I cleaned up some leftovers before the girls got home. Eaddie was out really late, but Summer got home just before I finished eating. I did the dishes, and then sat quietly trying not to aggravate my cough any more for the night. I really wanted to see Dune this weekend, but Eaddie just has too much crap going on, and I don’t want to spend the entire weekend in Little Rock.

We’ll get to it next life.

Idiotecha

I was in a rush this morning, so when Summer came into the bathroom and startled me, I stabbed myself in the eye with my toothbrush. It was seven kinds of painful, but there didn’t appear to be any major damage. I got to work on time in spite of the dummies in front of me, and I poked at my switches some more. That’s when things took a turn for the worst. Something at the elementary is causing trouble upstream, and I’m pretty sure it’s a rogue DHCP server.

Summer came to talk to some students at our reverse job fair, and then had lunch with us. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to fix what I had broken. With Kim’s help, we reset things in the right order to get them going again.

After work, I fed the fish and got a few more things before making it home to ride the Onewheel. I stopped by my parents’ house briefly, and then went back toward Ridgewood. I rode by Mollie’s house and saw Craig outside mowing the lawn, so I texted her and stopped to chat briefly before finally circling around the restaurant.

I didn’t see anyone I knew, so I left straight away and rode a little ways up the bike trail. There was a neat little intersection with signage for different local destinations. When I finally got back home, I ate some leftovers and then settled in for the night.

Dis

Forty Lost

I had to stop by the agri building first this morning because the teacher out there was fussing about still not having internet. I didn’t even make it back to my office in time for my call with Robert, but that didn’t seem to matter. Once I had him remote in to take a look at our setup, he didn’t seem to do much other than skim over pages of the Unifi system rather aimlessly.

While I was in the agri building, I fixed an issue with a switch that was in the simulator room because someone created a loop that shut down the upstream switch port. I didn’t know how to hook the simulator up correctly, so I left it until I could research how it was supposed to be hooked up. Evidently that caused a problem for the teacher, which led to a phone call, me having to go and talk to Blake, who set the thing up originally, and then ultimately to a long email chain between the teacher, him, and myself. I thought I held my ground well though.

I spent the afternoon slowly updating switches, so as not to disturb a huge group of people at once. That went more or less pretty smoothly, and then I went back by agri to take pictures of the correct simulator setup on the way home. It was easy enough for a superintendent to fix, so I don’t know why it should be so difficult for a teacher.

I fed the fish and then went home and hopped on the Onewheel. Eaddie had a robotics banquet in the evening, so I went by my parents’ house and then had to find out myself that Summer wanted to meet me there instead of coming home first. It was nice out, so I decided to ride the rest of the way there. I was worried I might be a hair late, but I was still early and ended up catching Summer just as she got out of the car.

New China donated the food, which had a disappointing amount of rice, but the noodles were good. It seemed like there were a lot fewer parents than last year, but I couldn’t be certain. We ate, didn’t really talk much, and then headed home for the night. I doped up on some cough medicine, and tried not to stay up too late.

Just stop it.

Downtime, Downtown

I was actually early for work today, but I got a text from Kim just as I was pulling in that the internet was down. I spent the entire day trying to get the switches to respond again, and nearly overheated in the server room. I had to take a break for lunch, but ended up there again at the end of the day. I installed a pretty big upgrade on the Ubiquiti controller, which I had been saving for some downtime. Forced downtime won, but I couldn’t tell if the upgrade actually helped or not. I had Kim call DIS to try and get some help, but as soon as she got to an agent, she handed the phone to me, not even waiting long enough to hear that the poor girl couldn’t troubleshoot, and would only be submitting a ticket for us.

I eventually got the switches back online after school let out, and then I got into some fast traffic to get home quickly. Robert called from DIS, and we scheduled a call for the morning to check for the cause of the day’s outage. I fed the fish and grabbed a couple things, and then ran home to get the Onewheel.

Dad wanted to know if anyone wanted to go out for my birthday, so I rode the Onewheel across town to the carwash to find Summer. Along the way, I spotted a couple girls at James Park that looked like they stepped straight off the streets of Grand Theft Auto. Then I crossed the tracks and rode through the Superfast lot before crossing the street and coming into the back side of the wash.

Summer was slow to leave work, and was back and forth on whether she wanted to eat. In the end, Mom wanted New China, and the two of us met them there.

I thought about riding the Onewheel home after that, but Summer made a B-line for the passenger seat again. I drove us home, and settled down pretty quickly after a tough day.

Did I just get catcalled by a daywalking prostitute?

Bringing It Down

I woke up fairly early this morning and made French press coffee for Summer and myself. I’m excited to try out the new grinder, because I’ve always had coffee that was too fine for pressing and left a lot of sediment. It just feels dusty.

Summer went to the gym, and then both girls went shopping while I was in the shower. It was pretty clear we weren’t moving anything else again, and I don’t know why I ever think anyone is going with me. I ended up taking the Onewheel out to my parents’ house for a bit, and then back over to the Neighborhood Market to drop off some recycling.

Summer was in her feelings for most of the day, and wanted to make dinner alone. I guess Eaddie wanted some kind of chicken alfredo lasagna, but Summer made it with a rotisserie chicken from Walmart. Eaddie had Eli over, but didn’t even wait for him to arrive before making a plate.

I did laundry, but overall it’s just another wasted weekend.

Hue’ve gotta be kidding.

Dam Skate Park

Summer went to the gym and Eaddie went to a robotics tournament today. A little after Summer got back, we decided to go to Old Post so she could practice the Onewheel on level ground. She did really well, and got to turn around in the road and ride around on the sidewalk a little bit. On the way back home, we stopped at the Neighborhood Market for some brats and fries for a late lunch or early dinner.

Eaddie got home from robotics and wanted to go out on her bicycle. I fried and grilled some food, and then went out on the Onewheel myself for a bit as it got dark. I tried stopping by Ridgewood to see Grant, but they were busy and I didn’t want to be a bother.

Summer and I watched Modern Family when I got back, and Eli came over to hang out while Eaddie made brownies. Everyone went to bed at pretty reasonable times except me. For some reason I just kept getting sucked into time-wasting.

Woah, again!

Keeping the Road Warm

I ran really late and really fast this morning after barely remembering to pay the mortgage before jumping into the shower. It was a pretty quiet day though, and I was excited to have two more kids pay fines for damaged Chromebooks. I tinkered with SCCM and some other things, and then Kim left for the afternoon. I hesitated to dig too deep into anything new, but hopefully we’ll be ready to deploy some computers next week.

After work, I took a leisurely drive home behind a bunch of idiots driving WAY under the speed limit. I fed the fish and stuffed some things into the trunk. I thought I’d go out on the Onewheel, but had a bit of a stomach ache and had to sit it out for the night. Summer eventually texted to say she wanted to go to Walmart, so I went to the wash to pick her up while Eaddie stayed home to go to the art walk downtown.

We followed each other so we wouldn’t have to backtrack and pick up the other car. Summer was fussy about buying some new clothes, and we didn’t end up buying much of anything. She didn’t even want to look at groceries. Instead, we left and went to Dairy Queen for dinner. It was a stark difference from the service Eaddie and I received the other day. It was just children working, and none of them seemed to be communicating well enough to run a restaurant. We got food, and it was hot, but it took way too long for that kid to assemble two chicken strip baskets.

After that, we made it home and Summer settled in while I took the Onewheel to my parents’ house. Dad wanted to try out an antenna, so I rode to the end of the street with another radio to test. It was pretty cold outside, so I didn’t stay very long before heading home. There, I sat in the dark and played on my phone for hours until bed.

Pity Potty

Testing my Patience

Late but early again. They surprised me with more testing, and I had a call with tech support for our crappy FlySense vape detectors. Without knowing more about what wasn’t working, I just accepted the guy’s response that for some reason, several people weren’t subscribed to specific devices. The management website seemed bad.

The noise came roaring in around lunch when testing was over. I just had to stop and put my head down for a minute while it was unbearably loud. At least the meatloaf wasn’t bad, though we didn’t get much of it. They threw a couple steak fingers in to make up for it, so I didn’t even get a salad today like I usually do.

I spun my wheels a lot in the afternoon, unable to make up my mind on a naming convention for new computers. I’d like it to be different enough to be glanceable, but everything I’ve tested just kind of looks bad. I guess that’s what I get for using serial numbers, but somehow it didn’t seem so bad in the past. I guess at this scale, it doesn’t really matter what we name them. They’ll just be glad to have something that actually works.

It rained on the way home, but was only sprinkling when I got into town. I met Dad at Bác Vân’s to get my old Atari from her house. Doug had apparently moved out completely. I loaded enough other stuff from my old house to fill the trunk, and then headed home to where Summer was finishing up dinner. Eaddie got home and I started some laundry, and we sat down for a nice chicken spaghetti that was baked a bit for some crispy cheesy goodness.

I thought we might go back out so I could show off my leap year t-shirt in public, but it continued to get colder and rainier all night. I just wrapped things up, and then wrapped up in bed.

Why is there so much email?

Pizza Cake

I ran a little late again this morning, but rolled into work early enough that I didn’t have a problem taking a beat to make a coffee. I knew the day couldn’t hold a candle to the success I had yesterday, so and Kim was back after a day off, so I didn’t even try. I still got a couple more deployments made though, and overall it was a pretty decent day.

Dad met someone at the old house to look at some remodeling, but I missed them by the time I was off work. I fed the fish and then pretty quickly headed home to get Eaddie for dinner. Summer was working late, so the two of us decided to go to Pizza Hut for a change.

I started a load of laundry and we went to eat. Zach and his family were there with Gray’s basketball team celebrating a tournament win, and he came over to chat a bit before we ordered. Then Eaddie and I had a really good chat about life and stuff. I tried to save some leftovers for when Summer got home, but all she got was bread sticks and chocolate donut bites.

The girls settled in pretty early, and I saw another offer from Tesla to buy back my car. I accepted at a loss of a little over $8,000, which is still less than how much they dropped the price of the car after I bought it. A big part of me is excited to see the next performance Model 3, but another very present part of me is curious about home solar. Finances may need some time to settle, but how neat would it be to have both?

We’ve had one, yes. What about second winter?!