Tag: anger management

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Michael and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today was easily the roughest day I’ve ever had at a job. My hair dryer blew up on me yesterday, so I went to the high school with wet hair to try and work on as much as I could possibly accomplish. It wasn’t long before I was sent to the shop to help Bedo with hotspots. All the while, I had people begging me to tend to their problems. Nothing was working. Everything was broken. I was the only person that could fix any of it.

I tried to pick at a couple of my oldest work orders just to accomplish anything at all, but I’m sure that just made others even more upset with me for not picking their issues. I just couldn’t win with anyone. Even Luke got my number and had to text me, on top of an email he already sent me, on top of the work orders I had already received, on top of the in-person harassment I’d already received.

The hotspots weren’t cooperating either, and any time I got into anything at the shop, I’d get called away by someone else needing something. It truly felt like I was just the sole face of the department. When I finally felt like I had a win helping Bryan with something, even my own team aggressively shot me down with hostility.

I finally left, late again, and utterly defeated. The girls had activities, so I had to pick them up. Autumn went to band, and Eaddie went to karate. Then I had to pick Eaddie up because Summer’s work meeting ran late.

The girls were going to stay the night, but ended up going home instead. I drank my dinner and cleaned more carpet. Zero wins today.

I think I’ll move to Australia.

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Living Within the Means

Summer got up and took the girls home while I started cleaning in the garage. Frustration and anxiety about some of the things I’ve hoarded has made it a tiny bit easier to get rid of them, but it’s still not easy. Seeded deep within me is a primal need to be prepared for the day I’ll need some of those things, and I have a genuine fear of not having them when the day comes.

Along with removing the less valuable things comes reorganizing the things that will stay. I have amassed a veritable trove of things larger than I am, and I’ll have to find enough wall space to store them all. I can get a little creative with suspending things from the ceiling, but that will take a considerable amount of work in and of itself. It is neat to be back in a place where I can imagine a realistically finished project though.

The girls eventually came back and we took the leftover barbecue to my parents’ house for lunch. We got there and realized I had forgotten the sauce, so Summer and I ran back across town for that before we could eat. After lunch, Mom seemed to be feeling some kind of way about the way I’ve tried to live within my means, and kept encouraging me to go into debt all just to build a new house. Being out of debt and having money in the bank has been a point of personal pride for me for quite a while, so building a new house isn’t even in my 10-year plan.

We made it back to my house and the girls went home while I cleaned up a bit more. Split wasn’t well, and has gotten to the point where he only eats the gravy out of the canned food I’ve been getting him. Of course he’ll eat the more expensive cans though, so I suppose I’ll be getting more of those tomorrow. Ultimately I made my way up to Summer’s for the evening, and watched some Glee with her and Eaddie before bed.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
-Douglas Adams

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Say, “No” to “No!”

I decided to go in for a half day today since I had a few things I wanted to take care of before the three-day weekend. Everyone started at the shop, but then I was off to the high school. I stopped at Casey’s for a free slice, then got to work on testing printer deployment to users instead of computers. It took me way longer than I expected, and I think the point of failure was initially drivers. By the afternoon, I had it working on at least one computer.

I left a while after lunch time once I reached a stopping point. I cleaned up some leftovers at home before trying to earn some loot boxes in Overwatch. It was pretty frustrating to work so hard for them, only to get almost exclusively duplicate items. Eventually I started working on cleaning up a bit around the house before Summer was ready to get gas.

I met her at Shell to use my 30¢ discount, then came home again to continue cleaning until she brought the girls over for the evening. We had planned to go to Harbor Freight, but I think picking up dinner took a bit longer than expected. On top of that, the girls had gotten a bit too comfortable in their disobedience and needed some firm direction. You know you’re off track when they start suggesting their own punishments. It will only get more strict from here.

We ate our Popeye’s and put off Harbor Freight for the following morning. I got a little distracted while the girls watched some TV, and then we called it a night.

Go ahead and add the number to Child Protective Services to your contact list, because you’re gonna need them if you act like that again.

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Captaining 101

We skipped the shop this morning and got Autumn straight into imaging laptops. It took me a little bit to get any traction with any particular task, but I got a few miscellaneous things accomplished throughout the day.

Allen called for lunch, so Autumn and I picked up some Arby’s and took it back to the shop for him. The fast food deals have been pretty rockin’ since Coronavirus came to town. As long as it’s only a looming fear and doesn’t kill anyone I particularly care about, it can stay around as long as it dadgum wants, man.

It was a short afternoon with more of the same. Then I had to take Autumn to physical therapy again. While she was there, I stopped in to Mark’s office to take care of a failed email import task. That didn’t take long, then I got Autumn and we went to see Summer at work.

I needed an oil change, so we made Autumn pull my car into the bay under much duress. We couldn’t figure out why she was so adamant that she wasn’t going do what we told her, but Summer didn’t take any guff. She did slightly run over an employee, but he lived.

From there, we spent a little time at my house with the cat, then went up the hill to start making dinner. I cleaned the grill and cooked some chicken breasts for salads. Autumn, always having to be different, made a little wrap instead. While I was grilling, I made her come outside so I could talk at her about her feelings earlier in the day, and I think she ultimately appreciated the gesture. The chicken also turned out great, and the salads were awesome. Afterward, Summer watched a little bit of Moana with Autumn, then went to bed. I wasn’t terribly far behind.

At least someone accomplished something today.

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Is This What White People Sound Like?

I went to the shop first thing this morning to try and recruit some help moving all of the old laptops from my office to The UPS Store. Josh and Kyle drew the short straws, so I got the truck and we headed out. We managed to get it all into the back of the truck, except for a half box of laptops that we forgot to grab.

Once that was done, I dropped Josh and the truck off, and then Kyle and I went back to the high school to replace some docking stations. It got me a little out of my groove I was in, but we got a lot accomplished and I appreciated the help. He was only working the half day, so he cut out at lunch and I went back to my office for the afternoon.

I still had a leftover sandwich in the fridge, so I ate that while I worked. All of my flash drives accepted the new laptop image, so hopefully I can start on that next week. I got a couple huge boxes of parts in, but it was all for Heather’s new laptops, so I’ll have her come take them away eventually.

After work, took the last few laptops to The UPS Store and encountered a loud, ignorant couple that was just hellbent against wearing masks. It seemed like they were just out for an argument, because he was wearing a completely open mesh mask that I guess was intended to comply with the most generic definition of the word. The girl at the counter asked them to step away, and they both immediately started spouting off about how the CDC said surgical masks didn’t protect against COVID-19, and asked on whose authority was his mask deemed unworthy. I’m sure if they had done a little more digging on that same internet where they found their information, they would have learned that idiots and assholes are not protected classes of people, and that private establishments like The UPS Store aren’t infringing on their rights by not serving them. I spent the rest of my evening winning arguments and delivering sick burns to them in my mind.

I stopped by to see Summer on the way home, and then finally broke out my new carpet cleaner to make my living room a little less gross. It seemed to do a really great job, and really made me want to continue on cleaning the rest of the house. It did pull up a lot of carpet lint, but I figured at its age, that wasn’t enough of a reason to stop cleaning. I felt like the room looked a lot better when I was done.

Summer headed over after work while I ran to Walmart to pick up some wet cat food. Split has lost a ton of weight from his formerly fat and floppy self, so I imagine he’s finally on his way out after 15 years. He really took to the canned food when I got home though, so maybe he was just having trouble with the dry stuff.

I warmed up the leftover nachos with some extra salad stuff and watched Forged in Fire with Summer until she started to fall asleep on the couch. I think even I was more tired than I realized.

The lady asked you to leave….

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Commendearing Cow

I did it. I got up nearly an hour and a half early this morning in commitment to a joke that only served to entertain myself. I had the time, so I stopped in to Casey’s for a free breakfast slice on the way to work. When I got there, the new guy was already standing awkwardly downstairs outside the basement doors. I guess nobody told him we’ve been starting at 9am, so he showed up at 7:45am.

We went inside, and I invited him into Ben’s my office, where I planted my pirate flag and sat down in his my chair. We chatted for a few minutes while I opened up my laptop to check some email, until Ben and Greg walked in together. Ben came in and without any hesitation just knocked my pirate flag off his desk and pushed me out of his chair. I was really hoping we’d have an hour to chat alone, but with Kyle starting his first day and others trickling in, it just didn’t happen. We all sort of openly groaned about how disappointed we were in his response to the board last night, but I guess that’s just what we get for trying.

I made my way to the high school and started on a few things there. Most of it blurred together into a haze of meaningless work, but I know I got a couple docking stations swapped. It was uncharacteristically quiet for my hallway, but I wasn’t going to complain. I made my way back to the shop in case anyone wanted to have lunch, and Allen suggested Cici’s. He got Greg and Josh to go, and even Kyle and Melinda decided to join us. Summer took the day off from work and met us there to eat.

Kyle was kind of super awkward, though seemingly familiar. He kept making jokes about all the cops and Army fellows coming in because they heard about my act of piracy this morning, but I never saw anyone from the Navy.

After lunch, I started to go back to the high school but got roped into helping Allen get the bus yard gate open. I thought it would be an easy task, but then we both got trapped and had to call on Gary to let us out. I guess our garage door opener was failing, so he had to borrow one from maintenance to let us out.

Once I finally got back to the high school, the afternoon went by pretty quickly. I started pumping out flash drives for the student devices, and it was time to go before I knew it. I headed home to meet Richard from Dependable, and he poked around my air units to check for leaks. I’m not even sure he checked whether it was low, but he ended up adding some dye before he left, and said he would be back in a few weeks.

Summer came back shortly after, and I started picking up a tiny bit while she watched TV. I washed my comforter, warmed up some egg rolls, and made myself a salad with what she brought over. We spent the evening shopping and dreaming about cars, and it just made me sad to know how poor I am.

You know it’s going to be a long day when you start by commandeering the whole department.

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Fumble

I had to get gas first thing this morning, so I decided to Treat Yo Self to a Wendy’s Maple Bacon Chicken Croissant on the way back to work. It was delicious, if not a bit of a greasy mess. Work was a bit stressful first thing just because teachers are still trickling in, and my math hallway always seems to be super needy. I can’t tell if it’s just because they’re closest to me, or if it’s because they legitimately just have more software needs than other departments.

Ben texted me to say that five of them were going to Linh for lunch, and I didn’t want to miss out on the group meal even though I wasn’t really hungry yet. I just had a couple spring rolls since they were mostly iceberg lettuce anyway. While we were there, I mentioned trying to put things into motion that would get us some attention from the school board. I figured that would help right the ship, but it’s possible I misjudged the point of failure.

After lunch, I tinkered with my flash drives and came to the conclusion that any speed difference beyond the initial copying of data to the drives was negligible. The $10 extra per flash drive ($400 in total) would only really save me about four minutes (half the time) of making and updating each of the drives.

I went by the shop at the end of the day so I could return the one failed drive that I had, and tried to help Ben with an imaging issue on a brand new laptop model. Then I headed to Mark’s office to help a couple of the others there. We got a fair bit fixed in a short amount of time since it was less teaching and more doing, even though I had to tinker with it a bit myself to even figure out what I was doing.

When we finished, I went home for a little bit to wait for Summer to get off work. Then I met her at her house to make up some leftovers for dinner. It felt good to clean up the couple of things we did. While we were there, I got a couple messages about the school board meeting and tried to check out the live stream. Unfortunately there was no way to scrub back in time, so I had to wait for the stream to finish before I could go back and watch it.

Summer and I headed back to my house for the evening, and she settled right into bed. I tinkered online for a bit longer than I should have, but it looks like this captain has some work to do.

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These Aren’t the Laptops You’re Looking For

This morning was rough getting out of bed, and it didn’t get much better into the day. I started out well enough, trying to make sense of everything I have left to do before school starts again. It wasn’t long before Allen and Josh showed up to pick up some laptops. I thought they were there to help take the old devices to UPS for me, but after some forced conversation and a bit of random chance, I discovered they were actually looking for the old teacher devices that we were keeping. I didn’t have very many for them to take since they’re still picking them up in the office, but we loaded up what we could and packed them into Josh’s car.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get into much else, so I started unboxing more parts so I could find the three LCD screens that required broken parts to be returned. Then I went to the shop and picked up Zach, Allen, and Greg for a trip to Firehouse. They had a bunch more new vegetables to try, so I loaded up my New York Steamer and went to town. It was excellent.

After lunch, I went back to the high school and did my best to keep busy between all the off-contract employees bugging me to fix their issues immediately. I managed to replace a couple docking stations, helped Al type his password in correctly a couple more times, and eventually got around to taking a sample laptop and box of 80 chargers to The UPS Store to get a quote.

I went by the shop on the way back across town, but Ben wasn’t there for a chat and the others were busy imaging and loading iPads into cases. I only had a little bit of time left, so I went back to the high school and tested out my new USB flash drives. So far, the Patriot Supersonic Rage Elite is the fastest, but out of two drives, I’ve already broken one and was unable to format it. I’ll give it another try tomorrow, but I’m starting to run out of options.

I left work a little late and ran home to clean up a bit before going by Mark’s office again. He had a bunch of questions for me, and I grew to hate offline email clients just a little bit more. He hooked me up with the headgear I needed for my CPAP, and it still baffles me that those simple elastic straps sell for $15 when they’re “on sale.”

Summer got home just as we finished up, so I met her at the house and we went to my parents’ for dinner. Mom made some killer bún thang out of the leftover wing tips from Julie’s BBQ Birthday Bash. After dinner, we headed home and settled into bed pretty quickly after I put together my Kobalt string trimmer.

So I know you’re super busy dealing with like three times your usual workload, but can you pay attention to just me right now?

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If the Boat’s a’ Rockin, Don’t Come a’ Dokkin

We only slept in a little this morning before trying to get the kids up and at it. Summer took Autumn to the gym while I went home to clean up. I loaded up some camp chairs and empty bottles for our trip to Magic Springs, then stopped by Lowe’s to pick up an order before making my way back up to the girls.

They were still cleaning up and getting ready to go, and I was too hungry to wait and eat after the drive, so I cooked a whole package of Petit Jean pepper bacon and we all made big bacon salads before we left. We finally hit the road pretty late in the afternoon, but I was determined to get us there.

We made it nearly to Centerville when I realized I didn’t grab our season passes. We probably could have gone through guest services to get in, but I didn’t want to drive all that way and chance it, so we made our way back home to get them, and then drove back down into Hot Springs. We wanted to eat at a phở place we saw last time just outside of Magic Springs, but when we got there it was closed and we didn’t even bother to get out to read the sign.

Summer did a quick search for restaurants and came across a hibachi place we had gone to before without the kids, so we made our way to the Osaka Japanese Steakhouse. I didn’t remember loving it the first time, and I felt like it was pretty overpriced this time, but everyone seemed satisfied enough. The service was a bit slow for me since I was already on edge about leaving late, then having to drive back for our passes.

We finished up pretty quickly and headed to Magic Springs to try and catch the main attraction. The park had closed down all the rides, and the openers had already finished their portion of the concert by the time we got down to the amphitheater. Fortunately the pandemic had most of the crowd gone, so we had our pick of where to sit.

I didn’t recognize a single song of theirs, but fortunately Summer did. At least she enjoyed it if no one else did. It wasn’t too hot and miserable out, so I enjoyed just going to a concert at all, but I still would have liked to have some more time in town.

There was hardly any traffic on the way out since attendance was so low. We made our way to the spring water fountain to fill up my bottles, and then hit the road. Summer started having nerve pains again, but she would have gone straight to bed regardless of that. Everyone but Eaddie was pretty tired since she was the only one to really sleep in late.

Wait… the lyric is “lucky!”

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Training Costs Extra

Autumn was able to finish imaging the teacher devices this morning, and then got most of my power adapters counted and boxed up for shipment. I arranged for pickup of all the depot claims I had ready to go out, and even helped a couple fussy people with their technology woes.

We took a late lunch at Cici’s, and it seemed like right as we sat down, Autumn started acting like she wasn’t feeling great. She ate a little bit, but wanted to go home for the afternoon, so I dropped her off at her house before going back to work.

Ben came over, and we had another conference call with Impero, which went only slightly better than yesterday. It turns out we’ve got a lot of work to do to get Clever to play nicely with their software, and exactly zero of us has any free time to dedicate to it.

I spent the rest of the afternoon straightening up a bit more before heading home to change, and then off to get Mark and his team switched over to G Suite. It turns out he had already initiated a trial but needed to confirm ownership of the domain, so the affiliate link was out, but the discount code still seemed to work. He kept wanting to do things for himself, which was both endearing and frustrating because I love getting to teach people new things, but it takes significantly longer to get things done because I’ve spent most of my life learning how to do what he’s hired me to do. There’s some combination of feeling like I’m burning time on the clock, and worry that the value of my time is being vastly underestimated. Most of my time was spent waiting for his old Outlook data to export, and we ended up having to put off importing it until the next day.

I headed up to Summer’s to meet them for dinner, where Autumn seemed to be feeling a little worse but still wanted to go back to my house for the evening “because her quilt was there.” I didn’t need an excuse to go back home, so after we ate, the girls started to get cleaned up and I went back home to wait for them.

Just as I got there, Summer called and said Autumn was having leg cramps and feeling extremely sick, so I went back up the hill instead. It seemed to me like another case of bad babysitting because she just simply didn’t take care of her body. It’s one of the most aggravating things to me because I want her to be healthy, but I can’t be bothered to micromanage every ounce of anything going into her body. If she hasn’t learned proper hydration and nutrition by the age of 15, then I don’t have the patience to rein her in now, nor the sympathy to put up with her declining health. I’m certainly not going to give her any attention in the hospital.

Once we got her a regimen of fluids for the evening, Summer and I sat down for an episode of Master of None before stopping to talk about our feelings for a bit. Then it was off to bed.

Yes. Turned out great. This is fine. Everything is fine.