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Every Tech for Himself

It’s the last week before school starts, and we’re still occupied with summer projects. I spent most of the morning delivering Chromebook carts with Dale and Amanda. It was a bit aggravating to fully indispose three people for such a task, but such is life in the district. I’d had enough when it came time to deliver a single tech tub with five Chromebooks to my elementary campus while towing a trailer and two extra bodies, so I had them drop me off at my car.

I was just in time to help unload a short pallet of laptops for Jason. I would have thought we would finish imaging mine before he started unboxing his, but the moment I touched my boxes, he had Allen help him unbox all of his and stack them up under one another in all of the imaging stations in the shop. I managed to squeak four extra lines in and ran power so I could continue imaging my own, but it was super frustrating that he had come along and disconnected mine when I was already two thirds done.

Everyone expected to have to go to a presentation with Ben in the afternoon to learn how we would work with non-touch displays in the classroom, but I opted out since all of my teachers were good with the change. Dale, Allen, and I went to Subway for lunch early though, so the two of them could go. When I got back, I continued imaging all of the laptops, both mine and Jason’s, so he could take Amanda to do something else.

Zach insists it’s like this every year, but I maintain my belief that this is worse than last year. He says everyone always stresses out and hates each other, and that I was just working with the rose-colored glasses of being newly hired. Maybe that’s true in that last year I was more willing to just follow orders, but this year I’m really feeling the burn of my coworkers’ knack for slack.

After work, I stopped by the house briefly before heading to my parents’ to grill hamburgers. Dad already had everything ready to go, so I just had to patty the meat and throw it on the grill. Summer got there just as I finished grilling everything. I was pretty happy with how they turned out, though the buns could have been bigger, or else the patties smaller.

When we finished eating, we ran by JCPenney to spend some rewards cash that was due to expire soon, then headed home for bed.

P for Pie is somehow disappointing.

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No Taxation Without Edumication

After a quick breakfast, I came home and showered while Summer dropped Autumn off with her grandparents. The remaining three of us headed to Conway for some more back to school shopping since we wore ourselves out at the mall yesterday. We accomplished less than I expected, and I didn’t get to pick up the one thing I really wanted, but it went okay all the same. We even all agreed upon one restaurant for dinner before heading home.

Once we got back, I got to work on the house to wrap up weekend chores. Once that was done, Josh wanted to play some PUBG, so I played a round with him, then another couple rounds after Clint joined us. I wonder if just a new graphics card would solve most of my issues.

Let the needy sweat it out.

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Feeling Flushed

We got up this morning, had breakfast, and packed everyone up to go to the Alma Aquatic Park. They had half a dozen tubeless water slides and a decent sized pool with a climbing wall and diving board. There was even a toilet bowl slide that dumped you into a tiny, deep pool as not to crack your skull. It was pretty impressive, and we lucked out by accidentally visiting on a BOGO for $5 day. We expected to pay $50, but got everyone in for $15.

The lines weren’t bad on the slides, so the kids wore them out pretty well. It was tax-free weekend for back to school shopping, so I think that helped thin down the crowd. We stuck around for a few hours, then headed in to Fort Smith for an early dinner at Furr’s Fresh Buffet.

Once everyone finished eating, we decided to stick around town to get some shopping done at the mall since we wouldn’t have everyone with us on Sunday. Eaddie and Noah didn’t much want to participate, but after dragging them around for a while and then pumping them full of some sugary lemonade, they pepped up a bit. Summer and I were still super tired, but we all survived and made it out of Penny’s with some pretty great deals.

We headed back home after dark and opted not to go to my house for the kids to continue watching Lord of the Rings, even though Eaddie and Noah seemed to find their second wind with some more Arrow.

Wake up everybody, no more sleepin’ in bed.

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Easy Overtime

I spent all day working at the high school handout today. It was probably the best day I’ve had at work in a long time. Even when it was busy, things went smoothly and correctly. They’ve done a really good job of making the whole process pretty efficient.

Summer brought Noah in to get his laptop in the afternoon, and we were all done by 3:30. Central Office dismissed us at three, but I still had work to do at the junior high, so I stayed until nearly five.

After that, I went home to get some things and then went to Summer’s for the evening. She made sloppy joes with mashed potatoes and some asparagus that all turned out pretty awesome. Eaddie made cupcakes for dessert, and we played a game of Uno before the kids started watching The Fellowship of the Ring. I played a bit of Limbo before settling down for bed.

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First Class

There were several out of the office first thing this morning. Even Allen showed up a few minutes late. Nobody really spoke to me, and I sort of imagine it was because they were upset with me, but I don’t much care either.

I got a new line of laptops imaging since nobody had touched them for a couple days, and Amanda only got six of the second set done. I upped it to eight and left for Oakland to try and complete some work orders. Just as I got there, I noticed an email requesting immediate help at the junior high for a CPR presentation the nurses were giving. This was two-for-two of their technology completely failing. Last year it was a bad audio input port on their mixer. This year it seemed to be an issue with reading their DVD on the laptop the building provided. I guess there’s always next year. One of the girls just ran home and brought in a personal DVD player.

I went straight back to Oakland to knock some things out before heading to the high school. I actually kind of felt good about what I had completed, but next week won’t be any picnic. High school time came up on me faster than I expected.

It wasn’t quite as crazy as I expected, but I guess the real circus will be tomorrow with the sophomores. Today it was the juniors, which would have been the first 9th grade class I supported at the junior high. I was kind of surprised how few faces I recognized, but looking back I guess I would have seen the 8th graders more often anyway.

After work, I headed home and unboxed my Google Daydream View VR headset. I got it for a steal, so I practically had to get it just for the controller. The girls stopped by for a bit before I headed to my parents’ house for dinner. After some chit-chat there, I stopped by CVS to use a coupon, then went to visit with the girls before heading home to bed.

Tomorrow’s an all-day laptop extravaganza.

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The Handout

Today started the three-day process of handing out 1:1 laptops at the high school. I’ve secured my place for all three days because I feel like right now I deserve some light work. I’ve spent too long pushing other people this summer, so I don’t care to be selfish enough to do something I want to do now. It won’t get me any closer to getting my own work done, but technology be damned.

We were meeting at 10:00 for the handout, so I got a little bit of time in at Oakland to clean up a few work orders before then. I’m hoping that my absence in the buildings will motivate others to try a little harder at setting up their own things. It’s not hard to plug in a computer, even with all the peripherals they have. Once I got to the high school, it was a relatively easy day to deal with seniors that have all gone through this before. We actually handed out just under 300 laptops, so the next two days will be much crazier. It’s my kind of crazy though, and I doubt anyone back at the shop is breaking much of a sweat doing anything else.

Once that was over, I had to run to the junior high to take care of a couple things before heading home. Summer got there right after I did, and we went to my parents’ house to swim and have dinner. Julie brought a tiny hairless baby critter over, and nobody knew quite what to do with it. Most of us voted to euthanize it because it looked like it wouldn’t survive very long. She left to try and find someone to take care of it, and ultimately did. After she left, I guessed correctly that it was a squirrel, which made me regret not trying to raise it. I probably didn’t really want a pet squirrel, but I’ve always thought I did since I was a child. In any case, it’s got better odds now.

When we got back home, I started a load of laundry while we watched a couple episodes of The Office before bed.

But I’m the one that does that!

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Slags

Another day of motivating my coworkers. A recycling company was scheduled to visit today, so I took a trunk full of scrap electronics to work with me. Then it was straight into hanging TVs at the middle school. Neither Jason nor Amanda claimed to feel very well today. I’d like to say this affected their performance, but it noticeably didn’t. There was every bit as much leaning and sitting and playing on cell phones as usual. I did what I could to push everyone along as quickly as possible because I still had two more to hang at the junior high.

We finished up right around lunch time. Ryan, Dale, Allen, and I met Summer at Ruby Tuesday for salads. They were super busy this time. I guess people have started to catch on to the special pricing announcements.

When we got back to work, the recyclers were cleaning out our graveyard. I was supposed to help take some laptop carts to the middle school, but I was reassigned to one of Jason’s work orders with Amanda to set up three dual-monitor stands at the special services building. We didn’t even get to jump into that right away though, because just as I was walking in to do that, a FedEx truck pulled up with three pallets of Chromebooks for mostly my building. Gary and I unloaded all of those pallets into the graveyard, and then Amanda and I completed our re-task.

After work, Summer and I went to my parents for dinner. We both ate too much and then called it an early night because we were both so tired. We caught a couple episodes of The Office, and then headed straight to bed.

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Work Hard, Not Smart

I feel like the new school year is coming faster than I’m prepared for. I still have two labs worth of laptops to take care of on top of the usual setting everyone’s computer back up so they can get back to work. I was excited that I’d get the morning to take care of my own things. That’s about the time Allen asked for help mounting panduit on the walls at his campus. He loaded the entire toolbox into the truck to do this. I had to run to the junior high pretty immediately to take care of a surprise-fried computer, but I called him as soon as I was done. He was sitting in the truck waiting for me to help him unload the toolbox, even though all he really needed was a hacksaw. When I got there, he was parked on the wrong side of the building at the far end of the parking lot. Him saying it wouldn’t hurt me to walk just about set the tone for the rest of the day. No rest for my possibly-fractured foot today.

We spent most of the morning taking care of two panduit runs and then one internal wall run where he cut the pull line I was planning to leave in place for the future. It just kept getting dumber from there, and it was immensely frustrating, but I had to just laugh it off. To care too much there is to drive oneself mad. I spent what little time I had left before lunch at Oakland and tried to take care of a couple work orders. I got tied up with the librarian there, so I didn’t even get to leave lunch until 10 minutes late, so I ended up just going home for a couple slices of leftover pizza.

When I got back to work, we went upstairs to build a few laptop carts, not quite certain how many we needed to build and with what quantity of laptops in each. It mostly didn’t matter, though, because the cables were tied directly to a circuit board, and we maxed out the connections. When we finished, we loaded up two trucks worth of TVs, again for the middle school, and headed to start mounting them. Jason made a comment about mounting them tomorrow, and I scolded him into admitting that we could “probably get one” done before quitting time.

We had to wait at the front door with our load until Dale, Ryan, and Amanda finished unloading theirs and brought us the dolly. While we waited, I started to unload the truck, and Jason made a comment about not wanting to have to lift all the boxes twice in order to get them inside, even though I really didn’t add any extra steps. He was content to lean against the truck and watch me work, so I told him to run inside and find Allen, who was still trying to get two dual monitors working since I left him before lunch. I was finally afforded the silence to unload the entire truck by myself. Once we got everything inside, we managed to mount four TVs before heading back to the shop. On the way to the dumpster, I lost a box in the road, which just frustrated me more after I was made fun of for packing trash the way I do.

After work, I came home and waited for a long-winded Summer to get there so we could go to my parents’ house for dinner. We had a nice talk, then went to eat some bún thịt nướng. She did really great with the chopsticks. We killed a bit of time while a small storm rolled through, then went to the shop to pick up some scrap that I wanted to play with before it was sent to recycling. I feel like a crazy person, and most at work would probably agree, but this type of equipment still has a lot of novelty to me.

Break out the red ink.

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Sous Apprécié

We slept in a bit this morning, but not too much considering when I went to bed. Summer made a few pancakes for breakfast before we headed to Walmart to pick up the things for my first attempt at some sous-vide ribeyes. Autumn wanted to go to her grandparents’ house, so Summer dropped her off while I got the potatoes baking.

Once I had that started, we packed everything up and headed to my parents’ house to re-learn how to cook a steak. Mom started fussing over cooking things differently, so I left a couple steaks out for her to grill traditionally. The rest were salt and peppered, then vacuum sealed with some shallots, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. I had never used my vacuum sealer before either, so that was a little bit of a learning process. Overall everything went pretty well, though. As soon as I finished sealing everything and dropping it into the water, it was time to go home and get the baked potatoes.

I brought the potatoes back to my parents’ house and gutted them for twice-baked potatoes. They turned out really great, but the steaks were the real belle of the ball. After two hours at 138ºF, I pulled the steaks out and finished two of them on a hot cast-iron griddle in the kitchen. The high heat and butter smoked up the whole house almost instantly, so I moved that step outside to the charcoal grill instead. It didn’t finish them quite as perfectly, but it worked and I didn’t have to worry about airing out the house or burning my lungs with all the smoke. Next time I think I’ll cook the steaks at a slightly lower temperature, but these turned out pretty great. I definitely need to season them earlier, and probably with more seasoning next time, but overall I think it was an excellent first try. I can’t wait to try it again to see how I can improve.

After dinner, I took the girls home to pack some things, then met them back to my place for the evening.

Now if I could just figure out where the rest of my weekend went, I’d be in good shape.

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Life Aquatic

I had a rough start this morning, but it worked itself out in the end. Summer was worried about poor weather, so we skipped going to Clarksville and went to the Russellville Aquatic Center instead. I was still coming out of my local anxiety, so I told them to go separately and met up with them a short bit later. When I got there, I didn’t realize she had already paid my way, and ended up paying separately. We couldn’t get a refund, but after a bit of rigmarole, we were able to spend the credit on concessions that weren’t obscenely overpriced.

It was an interesting place, but it’s hard to understand how Clarksville can have such a better one. There was a floating obstacle course the kids got to take turns running, but otherwise it wasn’t much more than a couple of indoor pools. It’s not surprising to see they’re having trouble keeping the lights on.

After the swim, I went to my parents’ house to take a look at their home theater receiver and TV. So far it seems like they have a couple bad HDMI ports from a surge or something, but I’ll have to mess around with it a bit more before I know for sure.

From there, I picked up some things from work, then made it up to Summer’s for dinner. She grilled some big, thick burgers, squash, and zucchini that all turned out great. We finished with the Game of Life, then settled in for an episode of Stranger Things before everyone was pretty well tuckered out for bed.

This is annoying.