Work Adventures

What Puts the Cot in ACOT?!

It was a pretty successful conference day. We started with breakfast around 7:30, and the first classes had been rescheduled from 8:30 to 9, so we had a bit more time to visit with the vendors and fill our goody bags before we got down to business.

I made the mistake of following Jason and Allen to a security class that surprisingly ended up being more of a talk about the company that rented the time slot than how to implement or improve access control, but I chickened out of the leadership class when I found out it was a round table discussion. In the future I’ll just jump right in anyway. I paid my dues.

Lunch was on them, and was barely a step above cafeteria food, but I expected as much. When we finished the day of classes, all except Jason went down to the steakhouse for dinner again, and then Jason wanted me to take him back to the liquor store because he accidentally dumped his in a drunken fit of Mortal Kombat. He, Gary, Heather, and I went to the liquor store together, and one of the guys at the store was so excited for me to buy their new mango habanero whiskey that he ran out to his car to get his own bottle to pour us a couple samples.

When we got back to the hotel, Jason went to his room and we traded him for Dale. Finally, after a brief run around the building looking for a corkscrew for Heather, the four of us sat by the fire until everyone but Gary trickled out to bed. He and I chatted for a couple hours longer before calling it a night, and I got to talk to Dad about our new guy a bit. Gary wants to see if we can get him trained by two generations of Zelnick just to see what happens, and I think that is just a capital idea!

-500 Int

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ACOT 2018

Everything was pretty well organized for me to leave this morning, so I headed home to shower and feed the fish, then packed and left for work. I had a bit more testing in the morning, and then I took care of as many work orders as I could at the junior high in the afternoon before we headed out.

I picked Jason up at his house in Atkins and we made our way to the Wyndham Riverfront in Little Rock. He was super anxious to get to a liquor store, so we drove to a pretty big one about half a mile away, then came back to the hotel for dinner. We all agreed to go downstairs to the steakhouse in the lobby, which actually turned out surprisingly nice. They had an “early bird special” for a buy one, get one free entree, and I decided to get two entrees for myself since the district was buying. So it was two 8oz medium rare filets with carrots, a giant baked potato, and a bowl of butter, sour cream, and cheese of equal mass for me. They increased the district reimbursement to $40, so I paid a grand total of $1.57 plus tip for my meal, plus nearly a whole pecan crusted salmon filet between Heather and Jason’s leftovers.

After dinner, we mostly split up, but Gary came back to my room to have a couple drinks with me. We ended up going out into the courtyard and met up with Dale, and the three of us chatted around a propane fire table for a few hours. An older couple came out and sat with us for a while, and ended up talking a lot of history and politics with Dale, which proved to be super entertaining for all. It was a really great night, and the weather was just perfect out there.

We eventually had to part ways so we could get some sleep before the classes in the morning, but I think it’s going to be a really great conference.

Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un would NEVER go for that!

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Call Me When It’s Over

I started off trying to finish up my printer work this morning, but was interrupted when Ben called to see if I could look at the junior high’s phone system with him. He had just gotten to my office when I noticed an email from my counselor at Oakland about an issue during Aspire testing. I failed to create calendar entries for the testing dates and completely forgot that it was happening today, so I had to drop everything and go there to sit on my hands after she resolved the issue by restarting the devices.

I sat mostly useless until lunch time when Jason texted me directly asking about lunch. I assumed he needed someone to go with so he wouldn’t be lonely, so I let him talk me into Fat Daddy’s in London, but when I got to the shop, he and Allen were outside waiting for me to pick them up. I ate some overly heavy nachos that left me dissatisfied, and then made it back to Oakland for afternoon testing.

When that finally wrapped up, I headed back to the office and tried to absorb as much information as I could from Ben as he showed me a bit about the Avaya system. I felt completely lost and overwhelmed, but I know I’m going to have to become intimate with that stuff sooner than later, so I soldiered on. After school let out, he and I went to the junior high to finish what we tried to start in the morning. Once he figured that out, he came to help with my printer issue, which we ultimately gave up on, and resolved manually on each machine.

After work, I headed home to gather things for the conference before heading to Summer’s for the evening.

‘Til you died, but you’re still alive.

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Coaching Needed

I spent a good portion of today in the ceiling cleaning up some old cabling at the junior high. I spent more time there than I should have, but I was working with a cable that was only just long enough to do what I wanted. I went back to the shop to try and take Allen out to lunch for his birthday, but found out that he had called in sick for the day, so I went to McDonald’s to grab some fries, then went home to eat my leftover reuben from Arby’s last week.

When I got back from lunch, we had a conference call with some PaperCut people to go over some things that we mostly already knew. I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on it already, which was nice. Then I spent some more time finishing my work in the junior high ceiling before closing out what new work orders I had received.

Too near the end of the day, I got started troubleshooting some print issues the coaches were having in their office. I figured it was a quick in-and-out fix, but I ended up staying about three hours late and frustrated myself to the point of giving up until tomorrow. I’ll have to try and steal some cycles from Gary to figure it out, but I feel like I’m just missing something dumb.

Load Balancing Needed

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Dish It

Summer went home to do some house work and prepare to receive the girls while I hung out at home for a while. I played some Overwatch with Clint, then a couple of rounds of solo ranked Rocket League before getting the kitchen cleaned up a bit.

Eventually I got showered and went to my parents’ house to pick up some bánh gìo that Mom made, then went to Summer’s for dinner. She made some slow cooker beef and broccoli, then we shared a cupcake before I headed back home for the evening.

Super digging the synthwave tonight.

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Instant Frustration

I got up this morning and watched as the whole day burned away. I did motivate myself enough briefly to clean up after the cats and do a partial water change in the aquarium, but otherwise we just laid around all day long. Summer picked up some Wendy’s for lunch on her way back from the gym. Then I started the old family classic Blazing Saddles half jokingly while she was in the shower, but we actually managed to finish it.

After the girls left with their father for the night, I tried making some chicken as my first meal in the Instant Pot Ultra. I didn’t realize the rice would cook so quickly and keep the water from boiling and building up pressure, so what I thought was going to be a 10-minute meal ended up being a multiple-hour shit show that ended with me transferring the entire thing to a couple of glass dishes to bake in the oven. Luckly the food wasn’t completely ruined and we could eat it for a super late dinner, but by that point I was so tired, hungry, cranky, and frustrated that I was just exhausted from dealing with it in the first place. Even cooking that meal the traditional way only takes about 45 minutes.

Can’t you see that that man is a nih?

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Phoning in the Productivity

We didn’t have a meeting today, so I spent a large part of the day doing the telephone shuffle. I got two done at Oakland before lunch and got to snack on a goodie table the teachers made for the classified staff. Then Jason and Allen wanted to go to Arby’s for lunch, so I picked them up to go there. Afterward I spent the afternoon at the junior high replacing a couple other phones and cleaning up a few other stray work orders that had come in throughout the day.

After work, I headed home to wait for Josh to come over with a laptop he wanted me to diagnose. It was actually a pretty nice one that his aunt or cousin had, but didn’t want to pay to repair, so they gave it to him. It seemed to only to need a hard drive, but it required an M.2 format that neither of us had to test, so I booted it to a flash drive and then performed on board diagnostics, then ordered the best deal on an SSD that I could find.

From there we headed to CiCi’s for dinner. The girls beat us there and were just leaving as we were walking in. Summer went to work out while Josh and I ate, and then I picked the girls up on the way back home. Summer met us there, and we watched The Martian until bed.

I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.

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Putting in the Hours

I took the bike in to work today because it was supposed to be nice. I never really got to spend any time on it though. I started at Oakland to close out what work I had there, then spent the rest of the day at the junior high.

I was on enough of a roll that I just worked straight through lunch on my Soylent, and even ended up working a little over an hour late on top of that. I got a ton of stuff done, and I was pretty happy with moving all of that stuff around.

When I left, I had to run home to grab a helmet before picking Eaddie up at karate. She was super excited to ride, but it had already started to cool off a lot, so we just went back to my house and watched Arrow over some of the best popcorn I’ve ever made.

Eventually we made it back to their house for the evening and I was able to load Overwatch for a quick game before bed. Our regularly scheduled meeting has been cancelled for tomorrow morning, so I should be able to clean up a bunch more of my work at last.

Sinus attack!

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Now Serving Number Two

I didn’t spend much time at the junior high today because I had my wellness exam first thing. I didn’t wait terribly long to get in, but I had to fill out new patient paperwork even though I’ve basically seen the same doctor my entire life. Then I ended up having to wait a while for the nurse practitioner to get to my room. After that elongated conversation about wearing seat belts and hospice care, I had to wait probably another 45 minutes to have another nurse take my blood. I never thought I’d actually say that I preferred my old doctor.

After that was finally over, I headed home to meet FedEx for a delivery. Then Ben said everyone was going to Popeye’s for Ryan’s last day, so I picked a load of people up at the shop and went to lunch. When we got back, I helped Gary and Zach set up some giant new UPS batteries in the server room which took until school was out. I didn’t want to fight traffic, so I hung out in the shop until I could get in to Oakland and finished up a bunch of work orders there.

When I finally left work, I went home for several hours, paid some bills, played some Overwatch, and eventually headed up to Summer’s for the evening.

Wind it down.

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Shush!

I found myself getting frustrated a lot today. I had trouble getting traction on anything I would start, and I kept getting pulled away to do something else any time I’d start. I tried watching the Google hardware announcement live stream, but kept getting interrupted by people, or even by loud students in the hall outside my door. I missed my FedEx shipment again, though at least this time he left a door tag. I had to work on a stupid printer that I can’t really repair. I even skipped lunch because I just kept trying to get work done.

I ended up staying late after work because I thought I had to label some laptops that a coach didn’t label properly, but after fussing around town trying to find the labels I needed, he walked in and was about to write on the laptops in permanent marker. I had to explain again that they were a lease that had to be returned, and gave him half of the printed labels I made to place on the laptops himself.

When I finally left work, I stopped by my parents’ house to give my dad a flash drive, and had some ribs for dinner. I was starving, but it ended up giving me heartburn. It started to storm pretty badly, so I drove home past multiple tornado sirens. I spent a little time there, then headed to Summer’s for the evening where we debated on the Pixel 3 for a while.

Somewhere along the way I’ve lost sight of the minimalism I wanted.