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.

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.

No Power to Breathe

We lost power in the middle of the night last night, and I couldn’t breathe for the few hours while it was out. I tried going to sleep without my CPAP, but I just tossed and turned and couldn’t pass out at all. Eventually the lights all came on and I was back in business, but I was ragged by the time I had to get up to go to work. I don’t know what happened, but it just affected a small area down my street.

Once at work, we hooked up the trailer to deliver a bunch of Chromebook carts. I feel like I have way more devices than students, and it just feels ridiculous. It would make more sense if they actually used them properly, but most of the time they end up used as babysitting devices.

Allen and I went to Taco Villa for lunch, and then Amanda went with us to run some security wires in the high school arena. I got even more frustrated with Jason while trying to figure out exactly what we needed to do. We loaded up two trucks to go over there, and then as soon as we got there, Jason said he was going to show me what needed to be done because he had to leave us. I don’t know why I let myself be surprised at all by that. The rest of the afternoon ended up being me slave-driving the other two, because neither of them wanted to do anything. We would have finished the entire job in plenty of time if they had stopped dicking around in the bleachers, but instead we made it back to the shop a few minutes late. On the way there, we saw three fire trucks outside the Blue Chip Ice Co, which seemed super ironic.

After a quick trip home to change, I went to pick up Eaddie and talked her into going swimming for a while since she had been sitting in the house watching The Flash all day long. She resisted the whole way there, but we had fun once she got in the pool. Summer came over after her workout and picked her up to run home and get some things before coming over.

I went home and set up my new monitor before they got there. It just barely fit, with the back leg of the mount barely secured on the back edge of the desk. I could mount it on an arm, but that’s a project for another day. It’d probably be preferable to switch desks anyway. We didn’t get to start Rampage like we wanted because they got here so late, so instead we watched an episode of New Girl with some cake and ice cream, then called it a night.

What happened to pride in one’s work?