Tag: disappointment

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Put Away

I thought I’d have a little more room in the bed last night, but Muad’Dib still mostly slept right in the middle. I got up reasonably early and started picking around the house. My main goal was to clean up my office so I could actually use my own area for my projects instead of having to spill out all over the rest of the place. That also meant I finally got to unpack my boxes of stuff from when I left the Russellville School District. I’d been so focused on my new jobs every year since then, that I never got settled. Of course there’s still stuff to move from the old house as well, and even more stuff that’s already here and still hasn’t been unpacked, but this was what was immediately in my way.

I picked at some leftovers for breakfast and lunch. Summer called at one point, so I caught up a little bit with her between their adventures. I got a ton of stuff put away in the right place, but that also meant it was a slow process, so there’s not much to show for it anywhere else. Hopefully I can at least get my office done before the girls get home tomorrow, but I kind of doubt it.

Dad texted to say Mom had some phở that would be ready soon, so I took the chance to get Muad’Dib out of the house. He had been in bed for nearly the entire day, possibly feeling some depression without the girls. I let him lead nearly the entire way, but then Dad said food was ready and I had to hurry him along. We got there, ate, and then headed back to continue my project.

I finally took a shower after moving around in my own funk all day, and felt much better by bedtime. Muad’Dib was still in the middle of the bed, but at least there was enough room for him to stay with me all night.

One more for the road!

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Back Doorman

Internet at home was still out until late in the morning, without much news from TCW. I was excited to get to experiment with some scheduling instead of just beating my head against the wall over intercom programming today. Nobody else seemed to show any feelings about it, but I assumed they were just glad I finally fixed something. Of course now I also have a backup, and can replicate my success in a few minutes rather than weeks. Programming was relatively straightforward, but the holiday scheduling had me stumped for a while. The guides I found all had them added to schedules, but that wasn’t the case. Just adding the holiday dates defaulted the lock schedules to a locked state.

We took a really late lunch and picked up some free McNuggets, then had chili cheese fries and onion rings at Sonic. It was cheap and light, and the weather was great for it. When we got back, I stopped by the back gate to test the closing, and it worked perfectly. I had its schedule fixed, but now that the plant is running around the clock, the gate isn’t really even necessary.

The last piece of the puzzle for now was to get cameras integrated with the security system, but everything I tried seemed incompatible between systems. I had an anxiety attack late in the afternoon, but it cleared up well. We left a little late after verifying the gate shut properly. Then we made it home to find Eaddie back from her band conference, and Summer in the bath.

Once Summer got out, I took them to Brangus for dinner. I had a pretty awful steak, which was both overcooked and somehow cold to the touch. The girls enjoyed it, so I didn’t press. I just don’t think they’re any good for a dinner on a slow day.

I tried to take them out for dessert when we left, but they didn’t want to go. Instead, Summer and I had a beer on the back porch before I took Muad’Dib out for a run. We took a big plastic bag from Eaddie’s vacuum-sealed couch, and then came back home. As we got back, I heard the familiar frustrated cries of a man trying to recall a stubborn dog. I was proud to be able to call Muad’Dib back out of the house to run and fetch him, and then deliver him back across the street.

Not bad for a Thursday.

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Gatekeeping

My shower wasn’t great this morning, and I almost wished I had just left the old, broken head in place. When I finished, I bent over to dry off and then pinched a nerve in the middle of my back as I tried to stand back up. I was hunched for the rest of the day from that, and I could barely move without tweaking it.

I realized after we left the house that I forgot my breakfast, so I survived the morning on coffee alone. At least I remembered to bring my leftovers for lunch. The first thing I fought was actually the broken maintenance network again. This time I tried changing some STP priorities to see if it would prevent the far point-to-point from tripping the port.

The rest of the day was spent digging through and documenting the security cameras and gate system. Heaven mentioned Charles doing something on her phone that caused the front and rear gate cameras to become inverted, and I could never figure out how or where that might be set. I spent all day tinkering with settings, but never heard anything back from Fleming about what the old password might have been. I had finally given up on trying to recover anything from the non-wiped equipment, but then I couldn’t seem to write new configurations over them, so tomorrow I’ll still be stuck working on that.

I left work late again after messing around with the relay portion of the gate controls, then made it home through heavy traffic. I quickly fixed the leaky shower head and bruised the bottom of my foot in the process. Summer got home moments later and took a shower. I made her a sandwich and had some more Long John Silvers myself. A bunch of the lunch meat went bad, and I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to buy so much in the first place. We ate, and then cleaned up a bit. Eaddie was already gone to work the conference, so Summer had to finish her laundry for her.

Summer was dead tired from working in the heat, and I could still barely move. Leonard’s was closed, so I couldn’t go get the air filter we’d been needing for a few weeks. Muad’Dib hadn’t been run in a couple days either, so I decided to take him to the Neighborhood Market to get rid of some recycling. One of our neighbors had a car in the driveway with a trunk that was open the entire time we were gone, so we stopped by on the way home to knock on the door. Someone turned on some lights, but we never got a response, so I considered that the extent of my neighborly responsibility.

We hobbled home and went to bed.

Meet prep!

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Lefthandyman

I woke up surprisingly early this morning, but put myself back to bed since Summer was still out cold. We eventually got up for some brunch. She made herself an egg, and I had some Long John Silvers. I had some coffee and sat with her on the couch for a bit, tinkering with the Steam Machine. I got some laundry going, and she went to the gym. Eaddie got around and eventually started cleaning up her areas.

I kept going all day long, barely stopping, but didn’t have a whole lot of good to show for it. My biggest project went off the rails because I thought it would just be a simple power outlet replacement. I figured Eaddie’s bathroom socket was the culprit, but after I pulled it, I still had no power to the lines coming in there. I checked our closet receptacle and found that it was the end of the circuit, so I went back to the bathroom.

I ended up pulling out the outlet and both wall switches. One was just a switch for the heater and had no power coming in behind the switch. The other switches in the two-gang box had three lines coming in. I eventually worked out which was the power in, and then the other two were just lines to the light and the vent fan. There didn’t appear to be another line going out to the outlet, so that whole project was a wash. I did learn that the fluorescent light in our closet actually worked though, and just needed bulbs. I’ll have to see if I can find LED alternatives for it, otherwise I’ll end up pulling the whole fixture for some better lighting.

Summer got home and mowed, then threw together a quick pasta dinner for the three of us. I got the new shower fixture installed, but not at all to my liking, so that will have to be swapped again too. By the end of the night, I ended up using the new diverter with the old shower head and wand, but the diverter itself seemed to be inhibiting some of the awesome water pressure we had gotten used to.

I finally took a shower, Eaddie finally finished all of her cleaning, and Summer made it to bed. At least there was some success.

Back to work!

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It’s Hot up Here!

I brought some spare stuff to work with me so I could wire Heaven’s new office. My first goal was to get up to the switch cabinet in the shipping area to see if they just needed to be patched in. I had to ask Charles to get someone to clear a path, since there were pallets upon pallets of stuff all underneath where I needed to be.

They got that cleaned up and delivered a scissor lift quicker than I could have imagined, so Muad’Dib and I took a walk through the plant to try and find some cable. I tried to get him onto the lift, but he refused to jump up. He stayed right by me though, while I went up. The cabinet was completely full of the blackest dust and dirt that got all over anything it touched. The switch wasn’t protected at all. There were no air filters or dust covers anywhere. There also weren’t any unpatched wires, and I couldn’t see cables coming into the cabinet anywhere, so I came back down and drove the lift over to the other switch cabinet by the line. More dust, and still no cables.

I walked through asking everyone, and nobody knew where any of it was run. Finally, Charles went over there and took a picture of the other side of the cabinet, where cables were barely sticking out from behind the cabinet, just out of sight and reach. I took the lift back over, and managed to reach up from behind to grab them. It was super uncomfortable, and super hot up there, but I eventually got them down and into the cabinet.

Three of the four lines were Cat6a, so my fingers felt all torn up by the time I was done with those. We made it down and brought a laptop to Heaven so she could get signed in. Rhonda had a fit about her leaving, and then gave Teddy to me since Muad’Dib got hyped for a run outside. I let them run around before taking Teddy back in, and then Muad’Dib and I grabbed some Arby’s and McDonald’s fries for lunch. Our Aptean call was coming up quickly, so I just ate in my office right before the call. The call itself was pretty pointless since we hadn’t done any more testing. I really need to get Janice and Elizabeth set up.

We eventually made it back out to Heaven’s new office to terminate there. I decided to just use RJ45 connectors on both ends, then went straight into the switch, since I didn’t have any keystones anyway. I thought maybe they had used Panduit Mini-Com keystones like they did in our main rack, but they did not. I’ll just have to go back and do it right later. By the end of it, I was able to verify data on all four cables, though PoE didn’t test completely right. I chalked it up to the dirt that I couldn’t blow out.

Finally, I got to focus a little bit on the security gates again. I found some manuals and tinkered with the setup utility some more, but didn’t really have anything to show for it by the time we left. Everyone else was long gone, and we made it home through some fairly thick traffic.

Summer was doing her nails, and Eaddie came home and cleaned her room a bit since she wanted to unbox the vacuum-sealed sofa I got her. I grilled some of the squash and zucchini that I brought home from Janice, and the three of us finished up the ribs from the other day. I took Muad’Dib for a run as it got dark and cool, but it still felt pretty miserable and stagnant outside. We visited my parents, and made it home in the dark.

Summer went to bed surprisingly late, especially considering she had a race in the early morning. I got us tickets to see The Odyssey in IMAX, so I tried not to stay up too late.

Much to do!

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Subnets

It may be my imagination, but the loaner Model 3 sounds much quieter than mine. It definitely doesn’t have the wheel shake, so I need to get my tires balanced or aligned. We made it to work and got right on trying to fix the remainder of the cameras that were out. The gate was also down, so that was another piece of the adjacent puzzle. I was pretty focused on it, and got a lot of documentation done for the future.

Anneka called a couple times about my car, and hopefully they’d be getting started on it within a day or so. I considered getting another door ding fixed, but it wasn’t worth the extra thousand dollars to me. We ended up finally taking a late lunch just to grab some onion rings and chili cheese fries from Sonic to eat at my desk.

They didn’t have cake for Heaven’s birthday yesterday, so we had some today. By the end of it all, I finally had some major pieces of the puzzle figured out. Unfortunately I can’t tell whether anyone there actually believes that I’m fixing these things “for good.” All I can do is keep documenting things to back up what I’ve done.

I got tied up pretty late as I finally figured out one more piece of the Avigilon puzzle, and I finally headed home. Summer was in a bath and hungry, but wasn’t in a rush to come out. I took care of a bunch of Vine stuff, and then we went to Ridgewood for dinner. They were super dead, and closing down a little early. We got a rack of ribs and a Bronco to sit outside with Muad’Dib. Fortunately it felt pretty nice out.

When we got home, I took Muad’Dib on a good run to my parents’ house. It started to get a little dark, so we continued around on a short jaunt, slowing down slightly as the air began to feel stagnant. We got home and Summer was in bed, so I wrapped up quickly.

It was subnets all along.

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At Your Service

I had a rough start this morning, but planned to swing by the vet to cancel Muad’Dib’s appointment, since Eaddie wouldn’t be there to take him. We left the house a little later than usual, did that, and then made it to work late. I immediately got a call from Heaven, but that turned out to be a simple UPS update. Then Rhonda wanted help with something, but I brought Janice into the loop since I knew she would have a better understanding of the system procedures. We didn’t get to meet together, because Rhonda was on the phone for a while. Instead, I got pulled away to look at cameras because about half of them were offline.

I ended up staying quite a bit longer than I intended, since I still had to get to Little Rock for our appointments. Just as I was giving up, David mentioned PoE injectors in another location, so I figured I would look at that later. We left, and headed straight to Tokyo House for lunch with Summer after her meeting. We ate, and then ran by the NLRSD office to see if Randy was there. He was not, so we carried on to Gwatney Collision to drop off my car. That was a bit weird, since this was the third person I had spoken to, but he made marks around my car and I gave up my key card.

Next was Summer’s appointment at the Tesla service center. We got there really early, and basically learned that we would just be paying for the entire service. Diagnostics and all was something close to $400, and all they determined was a clogged cabin air filter. Phillip got me a loaner for my service, and Hunter took care of Summer’s car, so maybe we’ll have a little rapport if we have to take her back later.

Summer needed a charge, but thought she could make it to Conway. They indicated pets weren’t allowed in the loaner, so I met her at the Supercharger to load Muad’Dib’s stuff into the back of the car. I later read the loaner agreement, and the only mention of pets was that there would be an extra fee if they had to do extra cleaning due to pet hair.

I beat Summer home since she wanted to work out in Conway just to have some different scenery. I got home and cleaned up a bit before she and Eaddie got home. I got the new shower head, but decided to wait on installing that until I could spend some time straightening the shower arm coming out of the wall. I eventually took Muad’Dib on a run, and some incoming rain made it really nice outside. He ran nearly the whole way, we visited my parents, I cut open a spaghetti squash full of sprouts, and then we continued a short run home as it began to sprinkle.

Summer was off to bed, Eaddie left late, and I wrapped up as quickly as I could.

That’s an expensive filter.

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Forth

Summer had a run in Dardanelle this morning, and I wanted to force myself out of bed to go with her. It started super early, and she had already made it out the door, but wasn’t in the car yet. I quickly got dressed, loaded up the Onewheel, and then we were off. We got to River Front Park with time to spare, so I let Muad’Dib take off on a wild run down the street for a bit. I don’t know if it was just the stimulus of being in a new place, but he ran like crazy.

The race started, and we found a bench up by the gazebo. It got hot and humid fast. Summer finished pretty quickly, but then wanted to wait for what she thought were door prizes. I took Muad’Dib to Shipley’s for some breakfast, and not only did she not warm up my kolaches, but she also gave me the wrong ones. We made it back and rode around for a total of three and a half miles until Summer realized what she saw were actually placement prizes.

We made it home to clean up, and I got some more laundry done. Then we went to my parents’ house to finish up spring rolls and then power wash the pool cover water bags. That took significantly longer than either of us expected, especially after we were interrupted by a pretty intense storm that passed through quickly.

I finally finished up and we went home for a short rest before we decided to go downtown to see the festivities at the train depot. I didn’t want to leave Muad’Dib home for several hours since he was already cowering from the fireworks. I figured I could drop him off back at home before the show started. We picked up Dad, found a spot to park at the mall, and walked to the depot. There was still a lot of room, so I went back for the car and moved it to the end of the block downtown.

We set up our chairs on the sidewalk to watch the band, and then Summer and I wandered briefly to see what food we could find. We ended up getting a load of food from what I later learned was Cecil’s food truck. He gave us one of our meals for free, which was completely unexpected and appreciated. I really never knew the guy in school, so it was a blast from the past to see him twice in short succession.

The band was pretty good, and it felt nice for a while, but it actually got gross and humid as the wind died down later in the evening. Eaddie didn’t want to stay in Clarksville again, so she came by to pick up Muad’Dib from the depot, and we waited for fireworks. Summer had a good time, but I was pretty disappointed in the fireworks show. There really wasn’t that much to do downtown, considering the crowd that showed up. Cecil and his crew ran out of food super fast, and there were really only two other food trucks.

After the show, we hustled to the car to get out, and I curbed the shit out of the rear passenger side wheel. Then we were still stuck in traffic for quite a while before we could get out. Once we did, we dropped Dad off and then went home to go to bed. Eaddie and Eli were watching TV in her room, and Muad’Dib came out from under the bed, happy to see us.

Everything is sticky, and I hate it.

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Underpowered

Somehow we managed to get out of the house extra early today, after a couple days of running behind. They were having some trouble with equipment overheating in the plant, and I pretty quickly got busy with tasks in the office. Heaven had enough trouble with her computer that I decided to rip the bandaid and swap it out with one I found in the upstairs conference room. Unfortunately it had the wrong power supply, and I couldn’t find the correct one anywhere. The computer would come on, but throttle itself to a crawl.

After that, I had to work on the break room signage that wouldn’t accept a presentation update. That update took forever, so I went upstairs to continue working. I had forgotten breakfast, and ended up skipping lunch because Summer said she would be hungry for dinner when she got home around the same time that I normally do.

Heaven’s new computer just barely hit 99% when it was time to go, so I just left it to finish overnight. We got home and Summer was in the shower, so I cleaned up briefly until she was ready for dinner. We ended up going to Brown’s because of how hungry I was, and because I had a coupon.

As I maybe should have predicted, Summer kept fanning herself with the coupon instead of presenting it to the cashier, so I ended up paying full price and didn’t scan my rewards card for points. Hopefully I’ll be able to get credit another way. I felt like a double-sucker when the food was some of the worst we’d had there. It wasn’t terrible, but almost everything was just barely warm. The shrimp was tiny, and it seemed like everything was really mushy, especially considering how busy they were.

We had left Muad’Dib at home alone, so we took him for a short walk up the cul-de-sac when we got back. Eaddie came home and wanted to have friends over to watch a movie, but I don’t think anyone but Eli ever showed up. They ended up disappearing while Summer and I watched Louis C.K.’s new special on Netflix. It was also pretty disappointing compared to the memories of his old stand-up. Then it was off to bed.

meh

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Price Cutter

I had another slow start this morning, but we had a pretty good day at work. Clint had emailed me way early in the morning with a question that he didn’t even realize would be about databases. I hopped on a call with him and we discussed that for a little bit. Then I continued trying to clean up some policies between other little tasks I needed to complete.

Summer had an MRI in Little Rock and wouldn’t make it back for lunch, so I went to Ortega’s by myself. It was another strange day of absolutely no service, but at least I only got charged like half of what I normally pay for that meal.

The afternoon dragged slightly, but it wasn’t too bad. We got home without much fuss, just after Summer, and I went inside to unbox a whole bunch of Vine stuff. She laid on the couch all evening, and we never saw Eaddie. She eventually got up and ate some leftovers. I did some cleaning and ate a little myself, then took Muad’Dib for a short run to my parents’ house.

I finally sat down to review the old and new repair estimates for my car, and it looked like they cut my labor hours nearly in half. I assume the first guy was giving me walk-in rates while the second girl was giving me insurance rates.

Cut it again!