Tag: anger management

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Hot Swaps

I made it to work a bit early this morning and went straight to work swapping out computers so I could take the older ones to the old fieldhouse. Other work kept coming in as well, making it a super busy day for me. Allen wanted to go to lunch, and was actually willing to go five minutes late because I was in the middle of working on something. I met him at Arby’s, and luckily found a pretty good meal-for-two coupon in my car.

After lunch was just as busy, but I was still mostly fighting with imaging the old computers I pulled out. I didn’t get them to the fieldhouse today, but I can have an intern help me tomorrow. When I got home, I started right away on cleaning the cat box. That’s when the trouble really started.

The toilet in my guest bathroom slowed down after a few flushes, and eventually stopped up almost completely. Gross water came out from the bottom, so I know the seal is broken. I spent a while cleaning everything up again, but I’ll probably try and pull the toilet tomorrow to see what’s going on down there.

The remainder of the evening went by pretty quickly as I parsed more email and skimmed through articles of varying interest.

The handyman can, ’cause he fixes it with tape…

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What an Ice Day to Be at Work

The surrounding districts, and even Tech closed today, but not us. We were going to tough it out. I didn’t really expect to be let out, but hearing everyone else fuss about it convinced me that I wanted to stay home too. Just as I pulled out of the driveway it started to sleet, but it all melted as soon as it hit my windshield. It wasn’t until I got to the parking lot that my wipers kicked on and smeared the water across my windshield, instantly turning it to a sheet of ice. I wandered into the high school and worked on some laptops.

Jason called out for lunch this time, but by the time I got back to the shop it sounded like he wasn’t a part of the conversation. Allen, Gary, and Ben were up for it though, and the four of us went to Mulan’s for some hot soup and the like. When we got back to the shop, I milled around for a while and had Gary and Ben walk me through some of the automation processes to get a better understanding of how student data is managed between all of the different systems.

Later in the afternoon in the library, Karen made a comment about an inconsistency in the Technology job title in our recent board meeting notes, and we kind of laughed about how nobody even knows what our title is supposed to be, much less what we actually do. Then I tried explaining what I had learned just an hour before about our different synchronization scripts to her and Amber to further emphasize that we don’t “just work on computers.” It’s an incredible amount of planning and learning how other people’s products work so that we can seamlessly integrate them with our own stuff. I’ve had people argue that they have to know a lot, or have an education to do their jobs out there. Maybe it’s an inflated sense of pride for some of the people in my department, but what about those of us that basically have to learn how to do all of their jobs on the fly in order to fix what isn’t working? I’ve never been a part of any department that had to know so much about so many things spanning across the rest of the entire organization, yet people get pissy about only getting a 2-minute primer on how to use their desk phone. Guess what! If you can’t remember the two minutes worth of tips that would have fixed your issue, you get the whole manual!

When I left work, it was still drizzling out, but not quite icy. I went straight home and dove into another couple hours worth of documentation of troubleshooting that I’ve done to my Nanoleaf Aurora light panels. I really didn’t appreciate the copy/paste from the FAQ that I got from support, so hopefully my lengthy response will garner some positive attention.

As I wrapped up for the night, I remembered it being a Hog Wild Wednesday for 10 cents off fuel at the Shell, so I ran across town to top off. In retrospect, I should have stayed out of that miserable weather for the 60 cents I saved. But then again, I am an idiot.

No. No, it’s not something we just run every night like magic. We built that shit from the ground-up.

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Black Holiday

I took a personal day to hang out with Eaddie since school was out for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Summer had to work. It was quiet when I got up, so I had a pancake and started watching Luke Cage. Ronda messaged me on Marco Polo to say that Long John Silver’s had a for-lease sign up, which made me pretty sad. When Eaddie eventually came out of her room, she watched a bit of TV with me. She didn’t want to leave the house at all, so I left her to her chores while I went home to shower.

I hadn’t been there in a while, so the inside temperature had actually dropped super low. I had to give it some time to warm up before I could do much of anything. Eventually I had my bath and then had to head back out for dinner. I decided to make shredded beef street tacos with chipotles in adobo sauce so we could eat the aging cilantro and sour cream in the fridge.

I got everything loaded into the Instant Pot and sat down to a couple more episodes of Luke Cage while we waited for Summer to get home. Autumn was dropped off with McDonald’s for her and Eaddie, which aggravated me beyond having the already super late dinner. I thought the tacos were pretty good, but I forgot to get the veggie mix out of the fridge again for some reason.

I hate that this whole weekend was just another bust. It was a long one, too.

This is worse than a lack of motivation.

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MRW I Drive to Little Rock to Park the Car

I went in to work for the first half of the day today, and did a mix of working on 1:1 laptops and running around closing work orders. Then around lunch time I left to pick up Summer and Autumn to take them to Little Rock for Autumn’s checkup. I crammed a bunch of leftover veggies into my gullet before we left since I wouldn’t have time for any other lunch, and we made our way out of town.

When we got there, it was early afternoon and there was nowhere to park. At one point I blocked traffic for nearly five minutes waiting for someone to pull out of their spot, and then someone else immediately pulled up and stole it. Being in the parking lot for a children’s hospital, I did my best to maintain my composure and drove around some more looking for another spot. Luckily I found another person leaving, and managed to squeeze the Murano in with just a few inches of clearance on either side. I decided to just wait in the car since it had already been a while since the girls were called back, and before I knew it they were ready for me to pick them back up.

Summer didn’t have any other plans, so I just drove them back toward home. We stopped in Conway so I could get a carwash, and then split a cheeseburger and three chicken strips three ways at a place called The Original Pies & Fries Shop. We did not get any fried pies, but the seasoned fries were pretty good and I did try a sample pie on our way out. The samples were there when we came in, and there’s no telling how long they had been sitting there before we arrived, so the mini spoonful I had wasn’t very good. The burger was great, though expensive after paying an extra buck for cheddar cheese.

We passed a ton of police along the way home, and they had the eastbound Atkins exit closed down for some reason, but I have no idea what was going on. I called Jason to let him know he should take an earlier exit going home, and continued on to drop the girls off at home. I went back to work for about an hour to finish up something I had started in the morning, then went to my parents’ house for dinner. Summer got Eaddie from her afterschool activities and met me there for dinner, and then we split off back home for the evening.

I felt accomplished with another load of laundry and a clean cat box, so at least there’s that.

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Tending the Dumber Slumbered

We got up this morning and decided on a cheapish Burger King lunch for the horde. Summer left for the gym, and after a bit I took the kids up to her house so they could shed their collective stench. I had gotten a call earlier in the morning that my final(?) pair of trial contacts had come in, so I stopped to get them on the way home. Then I spent the afternoon cleaning house.

I found myself getting bitter over the careless, wasteful, and generally unsanitary nature of the kids, but they’ve grown into their filthy habits without regard for the types of things that matter to me. I shouldn’t have much room to gripe on account of my own lifestyle, but so much of what irks me comes from a lack of consideration or respect. Sometimes I feel like I just have to step around them and ignore what they’ve done as I clean up after them, but ultimately it just makes me want them around less.

Summer eventually brought them all over again, along with a bunch of stuff for dinner. We left them here watching The Simpsons against my better judgement, while Summer and I went to Walmart to pick up groceries for New Year’s Eve. Hopefully it’s a fun time for everyone. We should have plenty of snacks, but I still think I’ll end up getting more vegetables.

We made salads and sloppy joes for dinner, then finished The Lord of the Rings saga with The Return of the King. Overall it was a better night than last. I even put together a shoe rack to bring some order to my entryway.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

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The Baby-Sitter’s Club

We stayed in today. All day long. Summer made a good breakfast, which I turned into a pretty delicious sandwich. The cat jumped into the Christmas tree, knocking it over and breaking some ornaments, so they put that away. I put on Contact until Summer went to work out, and then she returned with some friends to see the girls for a while. They brought tacos and I started making some pinto beans in the Instant Pot, but they left before I even finished putting it all together.

Summer wanted to play Mario Party, and the first round of minigames went okay, but the actually board game always just makes me mad. Eaddie and I watched MKBHD’s Retro Tech: Walkman episode, and then it was back to bed.

Even this rainy December day felt more like spring.

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No Need for a Manger in Hammock Weather

Summer woke up to a surprise visit from Santa Classic, Mexican Sañta, and Satan the lysdexic Santa today, so I got pushed out of bed as well. She made some biscuits and woke Eaddie up, who probably would have walked around the tree all day without noticing the new gifts. Summer went to get Autumn from her parents’ house as soon as we finished eating, and I played some Mario Kart with Eaddie until they got back so we could open presents.

When that was all done, I headed home to clean up before heading to my parents’ house for Christmas dinner. When the girls got here, Eaddie wanted to ride bikes, so she and Summer rode across town while Autumn and I chauffeured the crock pot of mashed potatoes. When we got there and found that everyone had already eaten, we learned that we had misinterpreted a text from earlier without an expected time to gather. We picked at food, played on my childhood slot-car/jet race track, and generally lazed around until Uncle Giao, Aunt Teresa, Bác Vân, and Doug all left. Julie was in Disney World, so it was just us kids visiting.

The girls had dinner plans with their father, so we headed back to my house to wait for him. The girls watched TV while I mostly just sat feeling tired. I cleaned the cat box and played a couple rounds of Overwatch after everyone left, then called it an early night for Autumn’s knee surgery at 8:30 the next morning.

Holidays just make me a cranky old codger anyway.

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Fellowship of the Inconsiderate

Summer left us for work this morning. I eventually got up and snuck over to the girls who were laying in the floor watching YouTube videos until Noah woke up. Once they started making a little noise, he got up and we finished The Fellowship of the Ring. The extended version was so incredibly long, and the fan club credits ran about 15 minutes long themselves. I even made some popcorn for us all.

After the movie, we gathered everyone up and headed back to their house so they could clean up. The girls were reluctant to do anything, so Noah took charge and prodded them along to getting anything done at all. Summer eventually got home after shutting down early for Christmas, and really got things moving. I noticed that one of the girls had stuck an earring into the cork handle on my electric kettle, which set me off. Summer got mad at me for flipping my shit, but I can’t stand that kind of destructive disrespect. I’m about one more incident from taking my toys back home.

They all finally used up the gingerbread house I’d had on top of my refrigerator for the past 16 or so years, and then decorated cookies. I needed a shower and some time away from their shrieking, so I had a drink and a time-out while they finished. Summer’s parents eventually came over with a crate full of gifts for everyone, and then left with Noah and Autumn for the evening. I guess we’ll figure out tomorrow when it gets here.

Summer went to bed with a headache, so Eaddie and I played some Mario Kart before settling in for about an episode and a half of Luke Cage. She started to fall asleep, so we called it a night.

Disappointed Narwhal disapproves.

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Trimming the Fat

I got out my puffy coat today, and boy did it keep me toasty on the way to work. My morning was pretty relaxed as everything has wound down with semester tests. Traffic was a mess at lunch time again because most of the kids checked out. I was craving KFC after reading an article about the Christmas tradition in Japan, so I rounded up Allen, Gary, and Brice to go along with me.

I spent the afternoon closing out a couple more work orders, so my Web Help Desk doesn’t even have a scroll bar any more. I also learned officially that Amanda is leaving us, so she and I chatted back and forth for a while. I stayed a bit late to call SuddenLink about my bill increase and got my 400mb service dropped to $57.49. The guy in their “save” department kept trying to convince me that customers signing up for the $39.99 price-for-life promotion would end up paying more than me, but I can’t imagine a 44% increase due to taxes and other fees. That’s cable company math for you though.

The evening seemed to go by pretty quickly at home, though I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. I’m just ready for the break.

The call center has a lot of work from home positions too, which may be up your alley from what I hear…

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Surprisingly Productive

I got up this morning and headed home to get ready for my all-you-can-eat date with Allen at Long John Silver’s. He called while I was in the shower and said he was on his way back from church, and then immediately gave up on me and went to eat without me instead of picking me up like we had planned. I met him there, but he had already finished eating. I made sure he wasn’t going to just get up and leave by the time I got my food, and we ended up sitting and chatting for a while. I was pretty aggravated at first, but I let that fizzle out as usual.

After I was stuffed with fish and chicken, we both headed home and I started washing my sheets and cleaning up the bedroom. I worked on that all day and late into the evening until bedtime. A better person would have made more progress, but I was happy with what I accomplished in my one little corner.

Well that was nearly half of my entire life.