Tag: aquarium

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The Fastest Day Ever

I slept pretty well last night and was able to jump right into the day. The morning absolutely flew by. I got enough done that I felt really accomplished, and even spent some time remoting in to assist Heather with a deployment. That was two labs worth of testing software resolved. It felt like I had only been there for half an hour before lunch time. I lucked out and caught Summer on a slow day so she could meet me at Arby’s for lunch. The poor old lady at the register seemed new, but was kind. The tiny girl that came to help her a couple times as she struggled seemed like she was super frustrated by it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but thinking back she looked a lot like the daughter of one of the big wigs from back when I worked at Domino’s. Surely it wasn’t.

After lunch, I had to babysit the interns for a period while the girls in the library were out. I took them downstairs to help move a lab worth of computers from under the desks to behind the monitors. I originally intended to leave them to do it alone, but as we got going, I just stayed and helped complete the job. I was surprised we were able to get it all done in one day. I worked on some other stuff for a bit until Ben came by to look at the fire panel at vo-tech. I met him there and tried to learn anything, but oldschool telephone stuff still just confuses the hell out of me.

Eaddie came to the high school today, but she just had to chill out while I was with Ben. Then a bit after quitting time I had to take off to pick up Autumn from her practice. We were a bit later than I wanted to be, but I didn’t want to just leave Ben either. Once I had everyone, we headed straight to their house so they could take care of whatever it is they had to do. Autumn first claimed homework, then reported near-immediate completion when she wanted to sit down and play Minecraft. I played with them for a bit, and then switched to my phone to kill time until Summer got home.

I hadn’t been home, and it was too late for dinner by the time Summer got there, so I left and spent the rest of the evening taking care of the shrimp before bed.

We’ve got an escape artist!

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Sleeping In at Home

Summer had to work today, which meant I got to sleep in at home for the first time in a long while. I started the morning with the shrimp and just kind of lounged around all morning and early afternoon. When I finally got around, I tinkered with the computer some and got to play with PRTG, which is something I installed but then sort of abandoned last year. I even had a little fun adding some custom device icons.

Eventually I got around to bathing, then waited a bit until Summer got here from the gym and a shower. We went to my parents’ house for duck soup for dinner, and then came home for a few tense episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

No, no, no. It’s “frak.”

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I Am Shrimp Mother

I was so happy to get to sleep in a bit today. When we did wake up, we sat in bed and watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica. After that, I went home to get ready for the evening. I was supposed to meet Ronda, Mollie, Erica, and Leslie at Fat Daddy’s, but Erica wanted to push it back an hour and then Ronda cancelled on us entirely, so we just gave up for this weekend.

I spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening taking care of my aquariums and giving everyone a full chemistry check. I learned a bit more about the red cherry shrimp and how to sex them, and now I’m thinking I inadvertently split up the males and females. Apparently the males can be less colorful, and those are the ones I put in the Imagitarium, while the ones in the old shrimp tank all appear to be female.

Summer decided to make a wonderful dinner for us all since I wasn’t going to be out for the evening, so once I got everything packed up, I headed up to her house for the evening. She grilled some chicken, squash, and zucchini, and roasted some itty bitty potatoes. Noah brought his new dog over, and the girls had the old mattress in the floor to lay around. Noah wanted to watch a scary movie after dinner, and I had been wanting to watch I Am Mother since it came out, so we settled for the suspense right before bed.

Do you ever feel like murdering robots?

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Getting it Done

Jason found the student laptops we lost the other day, exactly where he put them originally. I had no idea they were in these massive bags from shipping, and they didn’t look at all like anything useful. About half of the crew was out, but Jason had a plan for most of us. I had to tell him that Ben planned to spend the day with me, which I’m not certain actually changed any of what the rest of them were doing.

Ben and I loaded up and went to the high school to try and run some network cable for the new assistant technical director. His chosen office space was laughably stupid, and the absolute farthest away from the rest of civilization that anyone could get. Even vo-tech and the multipurpose facility didn’t seem as out of the way as his office. It wasn’t even a real closet. It was literally the access room for where the stage curtain rolls away. There was absolutely no access for cable, and we didn’t have a ladder even half as high as we would have needed to run the cable.

Giving up with that, we went upstairs for what turned out to be a super simple run for some phones to JROTC. I didn’t even mind having to run it twice to add a WAP line. We finished up just in time to make it to lunch a little bit late. Jason, Brice, and Zach met us at CJ’s for double-price burgers. I ran into Jessica’s mom there too, but otherwise it was an uneventful and quick lunch.

On the way back, Ben had to stop by St. John’s Catholic School to drop off some RAM, and made jokes about me spontaneously combusting as we pulled into the property. I wasn’t worried, but I also didn’t want to tempt fate by letting him park on top of the single parking space with a cross painted right in the middle of it.

I was on my own for the rest of the day, so I went back to the high school and tried to finish up what I could before the three-day weekend. As everyone started to leave at the end of the day, I headed back to the shop to upgrade PaperCut with Ben. The new version was actually a new major release which fixed the staple finishing option. With that done, I noted the day as a great success.

I got home just a little late, especially considering Ben sent everyone else home a bit early. I spent a whole bunch of time with the shrimp, dividing everyone up by color and acclimating them to two different tanks. I put the higher quality cherries and ghost shrimp into the larger tank, and the lower quality cherries into the Imagitarium to test the water. I hope they brighten up from being around the dark substrate, but I really don’t have a clue how they’ll look when they grow up.

Finally I headed to Summer’s for the evening, where I decided it was a nice evening for a fire. Summer brought leftover pizza home from the shop, so I ate a bit of that for dinner while I got the fire pit started. Once the larger logs lit up, she came outside to kick back under the stars with me, and we chatted away while the girls went to bed.

Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

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Keep Riding On

I got up this morning and it was pretty nice out, so I decided to take the bike to work. Traffic wasn’t as bad, and I got in just in time. All morning was wandering around closing work orders until lunch. I did have one moment of perfect clarity when I had to hunt down a switch I could see but not access. All the work on switches recently has me feeling more confident when I’m configuring them.

Gary, Allen, and Jason all went to Wendy’s for lunch because that’s Allen’s favorite place to eat now after years of hating it. I joined them for a while, and then went by the junior high afterward to start wiping more hard drives for some computers that just sold at auction. Heather needed some help looking at the digital sign outside, and we discovered it was actually a power issue.

On the way back to the high school, I stopped by and chatted with Ben for quite a while. Then Gary brought a switch and a couple WAPs over to the old fieldhouse after school so we could get their network up and running again. I know it’s nothing at all to him, but I actually had a lot of fun just racking it and patching everything in. Then I got to feel smart when I configured their printer for use again.

After work, I went home to change and then got some gas for the bike. It was close to closing time, so I stopped by the shop to see Summer for a bit, and then went by the junior high to wipe a few more computers. From there, I went to my parents’ house and waited for the girls to get there for dinner. We all just cleaned up some leftovers and headed home.

I had planned to spend the night with them, but really wanted to test the water in the Imagitarium again. It was better, but not quite as much as I was hoping after such a large water change. I did some trimming with the plants though, and got a better feel for the dense planting I’ll have in that tank.

No, they did not put our network closet in a girl’s locker room. I tried.

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Mutha, Don’t Wanna Go to School Today!

This was probably one of the most relaxing first days of school I’ve experienced. The drive was short and I came in late enough that traffic wasn’t an issue, though parking was a bit of a struggle. They handed out a few more laptops, but we still have plenty ready to go for now. I’m still not sure how many total I’ll have extra as spares. I didn’t really have many new work orders coming in, but I tried to be accessible for any major crises. At one point I did have to go to the library to help reset student account passwords.

The seniors had a big breakfast from the parents, and I didn’t realize until late, but they brought all the leftovers to the lounge. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many donuts in one place before. They also had pans of biscuits and sausage patties. I wish I had gotten in there earlier for breakfast. Summer came by for lunch and brought 50 cent corn dogs.

I didn’t have to work too late, so I came home and started working on the aquariums. I spent hours cleaning and finally trimming some with my new clippers. They’re quite a bit better than I expected, so I may end up getting some more. I need to set up a better place to grow out in quantity so I can really aquascape something nice, rather than planting a few stems at a time the way I have been.

I think I’d rather go outside and play, yeah!

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The Rhoids Are Back in Town

We were supposed to get today in our buildings, but Jason called us to the shop instead. He had me take a person to Oakland to do Brice’s work orders all morning, which really wasn’t that bad but I resented anyway. Amanda volunteered and we just cleaned up what we could in the time we had. I wish I had gotten to spend more time with the people I’ll miss, but a lot of it ended up being new teachers that I’ve never met before and won’t be supporting for the foreseeable future.

I dropped Amanda off at the shop for lunch, and Allen invited me to meet him at KFC. Surprisingly I wasn’t really that hungry, but I went anyway. I wish I had the self control at the time to just order something small instead of getting the buffet as usual. I guess I need to do the survey on my receipt for the freebie for next time. That’ll be a whole lot less guilt.

After lunch I finally got to spend some time at the high school, but the first little bit of that was setting up new keypads for the cafeteria. I got them hooked up but couldn’t set them up because nobody was around that could identify line numbers for me. A problem for another day, I suppose. After that I started digging into my work orders, but they kept coming in faster than I could close them. It’s such a big campus too, so I feel like I’m always running so far out only to have to come back for something else. I foresee a hoverboard in my future. I ended up staying super late trying to fix a couple persistently annoying things, but it didn’t help. I’ll still be at it all day tomorrow.

When I finally got home, I had to clean all of the aquariums. When I took the water out to the garden, I saw that Bác Vân had trimmed over the mint I planted in the garden, which made me sad. Hopefully the rhizome is still in good shape so it can come back next year. I got the water changes done but still didn’t get everything else done around the house that I needed to. Focus probably isn’t so much the problem right now as prioritization. Memory seems bad too. Could probably use a reboot.

Weave my allegorical elegy.

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Little Fiero Bro

Today was junior laptop handout day, and Zach and Gary came to help again. It was quite a bit busier than yesterday, but still wasn’t much work for us. Things go really smoothly in the library, and they pretty well have a system down at this point. Melinda brought us Stoby’s for lunch, but I don’t think she stuck around to eat like yesterday since I didn’t see Ben around with her. It was a good ramp-up day to get us to tomorrow’s all day event with the sophomores.

After work, I came straight home and started taking care of the fish. I got the new sump tank cleaned up a bit better and started getting ready to dirt it when a kid came by on a bicycle and wanted to talk about the 87 Fiero GT Fastback. He was super excited by it, and seemed to want to try and help work on it with me so he could buy it from me later. I mentioned Summer’s desire to work with the high school to get an intern at her shop, and he seemed really excited about that too. I texted him back when the girls got here to see if he wanted to come talk to her, and he replied instantly that he was already here. She talked to him a little bit, and then he hung around and looked over the car some more while I sifted potting soil.

As it got dark, he went along his way and I came inside to watch Jessica Jones with Eaddie before bed.

Clockwork Congestion

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70s Pizza Party

We got up and around this morning to some leftover chicken tacos. They were so much better with the crunchy greens this time, and frying the cheese in the pan onto the tortillas made them that much better, and even a little more durable. Eaddie and I watched a little Daredevil while Summer went out with Autumn to get some things. Then I went home to clean up for our trip to Cabot.

I got frustrated when my brand new air conditioner only dropped about six degrees in three hours, but I didn’t have the temperature probes I needed to check how much it’s actually cooling. I left my still-warm house to pick up Dad, and then to get the girls for our trip to Cabot for Uncle Rick’s birthday party.

We met up at U.S. Pizza Company and greeted a few of the mostly strangers-level family. It was pretty uneventful for us, but Dad had a good time and it was nice to get together to celebrate. The pizza wasn’t bad, but the toppings seemed cheap. I got pretty frustrated as usual with Autumn’s refusal to eat anything other than a plain pepperoni pizza. It only got worse when she ate our pizza after she finished hers. I swear next time I’m just not asking what they want at all.

On the way back we stopped at PetSmart and then PetCo looking for some shrimp. The first stop was a complete bust. PetCo had some, but they were mostly pretty tiny. I went ahead and picked up three anyway just to grow them, but I’m thinking I may have better luck just getting some from a random stranger on the internet.

Once we got back to town, I dropped the girls off at their house, then the shrimp at my house, and took my parents’ receiver with us back to their house. Dad and I tried hooking it back up, but it still didn’t pass any video along to the TV. I guess it really is only good as an audio amplifier now.

Back at Summer’s house, Eaddie and I finished the evening with a couple more episodes of Daredevil while everyone else was in bed. We made it most of the way through the first season pretty quickly, and I’m excited to finally watch more for the first time.

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Boot Nuked

I got to pull away from the low priority nonsense that’s been going around so I could deal with the more important stuff. Gary and I spent all day at the high school coming up with a process to create boot disks, breaking only for lunch at Wendy’s with Zach. It wasn’t stressful work, but we weren’t quite at the stage where we churn through hundreds of laptops yet either. At the end of the day, I finished up and then rebooted the computer as usual. Unfortunately I didn’t notice that I had forgotten to take the boot disks out of the USB ports, and the computer immediately booted back up and wiped itself.

After spending so much time making sure we copied all the files Dale saved for me, I wiped it all away in just an instant. I’ll have to pull the hard drive and try to recover some of those files, but I have a feeling that most of them aren’t that important. It’s still a good lesson in keeping important things off of the local machine though. I had been thinking about getting rid of the desktop and going to a docking station setup anyway, so this just kind of forced me along into trying that out sooner than I expected. I was so initially upset by my negligence that I decided to go ahead with rearranging the office. I stayed super late moving things around to how I wanted them, and I’m not even sure how long any of it will stay. At least it’s left in usable shape for tomorrow morning.

Summer left Eaddie with her parents and came to stay the night at my house. I hadn’t planned to eat because it had gotten so late, but then felt so hungry by the time I actually left, so she picked up some Taco Bell for us. I ate some, and then did some quick water changes in all of the tanks just to try and help out my recent negligence. That seems to be a running theme lately.

Are you leaving those here? Are those your own personal speakers??? Can you even hear me??????