Tag: family

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May I Present to You…

We slept in a bit today since I didn’t really plan on seeing the opening keynote speakers. Breakfast had me feeling a bit off though, which made me a couple minutes late, which in turn made it awkward for me to walk into the first class I was thinking of attending. I ended up finding Ben in his booth for ARKSTE and chatted with him for a bit before making a round through the vendors and eventually finding my way to Esports 101 by the presumably unlikely ByteSpeed.

Fortunately that session ended up being wonderful, and in fact, one of the best I’ve ever attended. The guy was a former esports coach at the collegiate level, and you could tell he both really knew his stuff, and also wasn’t necessarily there just to sell us something. He definitely gave me some ideas for practice that I’ll have to use, assuming this thing ever gets off the ground for me.

My presentation was next after a bit of a break. I followed Adrian in the same room we were in before, and setup couldn’t have been easier for what I needed to do. I had a small crowd, including one guy that didn’t even know what esports are. It was small enough to be a little intimate, and my jokes were received well, so overall I thought it was a success. We actually used up the hour, which was my primary concern, and our conversations kind of floated from Discord to esports in general. All I can do is hope that tomorrow’s session will go as well.

I went to one more session before heading out. Summer came back to pick me up a bit early and was waiting outside, so I ran out after retrieving the laptop power supply I had forgotten in the classroom. Then we stopped by Dick’s to try and find something cheap to earn me the last point I needed for another reward certificate. Once we got that, we headed back to the hotel so she could get ready for dinner.

We met Ben in the lobby and had a few minutes to kill over beer, wine, burgers, and brats. I hadn’t eaten lunch and was pretty hungry, but I didn’t want to kill my appetite right before dinner, but I also didn’t want to be super hungry in case we ended up waiting for another couple hours to get our food in such a big group.

Dinner was at the same Back Porch Grill as last night, so we were welcomed back with open arms. I had the red fish this time, which was excellent. After trying Summers Cajun ribeye, I did have a taste for steak, but I still left satisfied. Summer did some work on some wine and wanted to go back to the room, so we dropped her off before heading to The Porterhouse for the ARKSTE party. I stuck to tea, and we spent most of the time chatting with a couple techs from Conway. The karaoke room was too loud, and the dining room was too old, so we stood by the bar like hip young men and got in the way of servers and ladies wishing to visit the loo.

None of us in our group won a door prize, and then they shut the thing down and we went out the back door. It was a quick trip back across town, and off to bed for one last day. I present early, and I need my beauty rest after today.

The eagle has landed.

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Winner, Winner, HSTI Dinner!

I had an absolutely terrible fit trying to sleep last night. I climbed up into the window to try and mask the street light right outside our window, and only just barely got it too dark to read inside. My heart raced, and I had all kinds of anxiety about waking up early enough to get to my preconference meeting. After what felt like no sleep at all, I got up and ready, woke Summer up, and we went down for breakfast.

Ultimately I made it in plenty of time. Breakfast was fast, traffic wasn’t bad, and even parking that early for a preconference day was easy. The class was pretty good, but I think the biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the number of schools that were not only competing, but already had fully funded labs. It’s frustrating still waiting to see if I’ll even get paid for it in the future, since I’ve already volunteered all of last semester.

Lunch was cold, cold burgers and surprisingly good hot dogs in the cafeteria where I sat alone until another group of people spilled over into the seats by me. I have always, and still struggle getting to know individuals, so I didn’t actually talk to any particular person long enough to hunt them down for a lunch buddy. It wasn’t bad, and may have even been better since I kept getting mustard in weird places like some kind of man child that had never eaten food before.

We finished up early in the afternoon, so I headed back to the hotel and caught Summer exploring outside. We went up to the room so I could change, then went for a walk down the street, marveling at the near-million-dollar homes along the water. It really is the best of both worlds, being close to nature, but still having access to broadband internet.

Back in the room, we watched the end of The Amazing Spider-Man and the beginning of the new, dark Fantastic Four before leaving for dinner with Next Step. We went into The Back Porch Grill as relative strangers, but ended up sitting with a pretty good, chummy group of folks. It was a good time, and the conversation was casual and topical enough that Summer had plenty to talk about as well. I’d hate to even see the bill, but needless to say we all left with full bellies.

Charlie hitched a ride with us to Woody’s Big Party at Terry Martin’s bar, where things got a bit crazier than I’ve seen at other conferences. Summer had never seen anything like it, so it was a good experience for her to have, even if it was only educational. The craziest thing to happen was with the door prizes though. Those guys running the show were rowdy, and drew the whole thing out forever. Summer and I both had winning, sequential tickets. First I got up for a tiny Bluetooth JBL speaker and wall power splitter. Then at the end we won the grand prize, which was a new Lenovo Chromebook.

We split after that, heading straight back to the hotel and to bed to hopefully get a good night’s sleep before the regular conference starts tomorrow.

FREE STUFF!!!!!

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Wharf, or Art Thou?

“Lakeview Property”

I ran home to get things ready for my conference. We didn’t get out of town quite as early as I wanted, but I probably would have been too tired to do much else anyway. Once I got everything packed up and the pets all fed, I went to get Summer and we went to the high school to pick up a laptop. Dale came by his office just as we were finishing up, so we chatted with him for just a second before leaving.

We hit the road in the middle of the afternoon, stopping for some snacks in Ola before making the rest of the trip. It didn’t seem like a long drive, and I didn’t have any traffic in front of me for most of the trip. When we got to the Staybridge, the a guy from maintenance was in the room trying to fix the garbage disposal. I told him it wasn’t a big deal, but he wanted to fuss at the front desk anyway. We took all our stuff back downstairs and then stowed it away in one of the conference rooms while we went out to eat.

I had heard about Fisherman’s Wharf in my past travels, and it was just across the bridge from the hotel. It seemed really tiny from outside, but once we got inside and chose to eat outside on the desk, we realized just how big it really is. They had a pretty impressive outdoor seating area, and the food was pretty amazing. Summer kept getting up to take pictures of the geese and turtles. I was most impressed with how many roll up doors they had. I counted 19, and we can’t get even one for our warehouse. We sure can renovate an auditorium for the super’s singing club, though.

After we ate, we went back to the hotel and got moved into our room, then went downstairs to check out the social. We found the theater room and decided to tuck away in there for a movie. They had 13 Going on 30 on the counter, so I stuck it in and philandered with the remotes a while until I finally got it to play. Amazingly, Summer had never seen it before, and I thought it was right up her alley.

Once the movie was over, Summer went up to bed while I tried to make sense of my schedule over the next couple days. I guess tomorrow night I’ll have some time to try and put my thoughts together on how to present for my breakout session.

I do my best work when I’m rushed at the last minute, because I never complete any work until then!

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Bring the Heat

We got up this morning and Summer mowed her lawn while I went home to get laundry started. It was so hot inside that I had to fire up the portable air conditioner in the bedroom. I only got one load of laundry done before I got super hungry for lunch, so I came back up and made some big chicken and fruit salads for us. I mostly wanted to clean all of that stuff out of the refrigerator so it wouldn’t go bad, but the salads turned out awesome.

We both slowed down quite a bit after that, but I had to get back home to continue with laundry. While I did that, I got some other things cleaned up, did a little vacuuming, and cleaned up the big Pioneer speakers I brought home the other day. I was able to vacuum the speaker domes out without any trouble, but I did notice one of the tweeters was ripped. I couldn’t tell by listening though, so all was well.

After a while, Summer came over and mowed the lawn while I finished up the last of the laundry. Then she went home and I took a shower before heading back up to her house. All total, I did six big loads of laundry. It got so hot and humid in the house that it was just miserable, and it wasn’t forecast to get much cooler in the evening. I’m ready to have a new central unit installed.

When I got to Summer’s, I cleaned up some more salad and we watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec before bed.

Ready to drop the bass.

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The Good Househusband

Summer had to work today, so I got up and started trying to make myself useful. I cleaned out her refrigerator and threw away a bunch of food that had gone bad while I cleaned up the last of the chicken tacos we had that one time forever ago. Then I made her a huge salad with everything I could find. Radishes? You bet. Strawberries and mango? Bring it on! Just a dusting of coleslaw mix? Crunch it up! I fried some chicken strips at the last minute so they’d be hot, and took it to her on my way home.

I stayed pretty scattered once I got there, but I still managed to get a lot done. I cleaned up the laundry room, did dishes, got my work shirts washed and put away, and even spent some time going through some old stacks of receipts and paperwork. It got pretty uncomfortably hot, so I took a cold shower and then met Summer at Walmart to shop for dinner. She invited Alex over for dinner, so we picked up some ribeyes, fries, corn, and even a big cake that was marked down.

We had a little time to relax before Alex would be over, so I let the steaks sit with their seasonings for a while. About 30 minutes before he got there, I started getting everything going. The steaks and corn turned out really good for being cooked over a gas grill. The fries fried up nicely, though I did get a bit of a burn due to a lack of a fry basket or metal scoop to lower them down into the oil. Even the cake was moist and delicious.

Summer and Alex went back and forth with stories about work while I just kind of sat there looking pretty. I was pleased with how all of the day’s food was presented. Now the trick is to clean out as much of the food in the refrigerator as we can before we leave for the week.

Bare-foot with a big, round belly.

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Like a Damn Circus

Jason had me drive him to the field house this morning so he could show me where we were putting equipment back into the building. He hadn’t mentioned the part where he was going to have to go back to the shop immediately after while I went back to the field house to run the lines for this equipment. We ended up with three personal vehicles on site, and then I think we had at least two more show up not very long into our exploratory mission.

We ended up having to pull a fiber line back to its entry point into the building, and then re-run it to the new switch location. Having a bunch of hands on deck helped the line runs go faster, but did leave the end product a bit less organized, which required some extra finishing work to make things really nice. We all went to Brangus for lunch, but luckily we finished running all the cable before we left. When we got back, all we had to do was terminate and mount wall plates.

By the time we got back to the shop, everyone was so exhausted that we mostly just sat around the shop for the last hour and a half. I would have liked to resolve a printer issue at Oakland with Ben, but it just didn’t work out. Hopefully I can try tomorrow.

I went by my parents’ house to chat with Dad about air conditioners after work until I had to leave to get Eaddie from karate. I could tell immediately that it was going to be a challenging evening with very little compliance from her. We ran by my house so I could change, and then stopped by Sonic for 99 cent cheese sticks on the way to their house. I fried up some chicken strips, but Summer never got around to making salads. Everyone just kind of picked at what food was already made while she struggled to get the kids to complete chores before their trip to Texas.

I know I was a whiny kid, but I just can’t remember being this completely insubordinate. The stern talkings, screaming, and eventual spankings seem to only last for so long.

It’s feeling real Lord of the Flies over here.

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Heave!

I was incredibly achy this morning when I woke up, so it was tough to get moving. I had to run to the junior high to get my blower, and then I met up with a group at the high school to clean out projectors and what few desktops were around. The campus has changed so much since I graduated that it’s easy to get lost, especially in the science area. So many of the rooms are connected through back hallways or closets. I’m hoping it makes a bit more sense once the rooms are filled with people, but I’m not sure that will be the case. Some of us had never seen the new multipurpose facility before, so we made the trek by foot. I got a pretty good sweat going by the time we got back to the cars, and that got us through to lunch.

I still had a bit of Soylent and felt contrary to the group’s choice of Chick-fil-A, so I worked through lunch, going to Oakland again to help with some summer school issues. When I got back to the shop, Amanda was outside getting things ready for Brice’s network runs at Sequoyah. Things looked bleak at first, then started to go really smoothly before making a turn for the worst.

After Amanda and I had run two lines to two different classrooms, we discovered that there were already network drops in both rooms. We went to check another room, and found multiple drops in multiple places in the room. Every single room we checked already had network lines in them. The aggravation was only compounded when I was reminded that he took the campus from Amanda earlier this year, so really she didn’t have much right to be upset with him when she could have patched the computers up instead of leaving them on the wireless.

With a face full of sawdust and rat droppings, we headed back to the shop in a lull of the thunderstorm. I chatted with Ben outside for a little while when Autumn called to ask if I would take her to Dollar Tree for some things. It was odd to receive a phone call for this, especially in the middle of a storm, so I was maybe unnecessarily short with her. Not long after, I got a call from Summer that she also received a call from a distraught daughter. I figured it was a good time for a sit-down chat.

Aching from a lack of food, I ran to my parents’ house and warmed up a little bit of fried rice before the power went out in the storm. Dad tried boiling some okra, and then inadvertently left it in the hot water too long after it didn’t boil due to the power outage. It came out like stringy apple sauce, but tasted fine. I finished up and went home to do some necessary cleaning in the heat and humidity of my home.

Luckily the cat box behaved. While that was going, I did a slow water change in the aquarium after feeling unsatisfied by the visual water quality. Unfortunately, I discovered another dead snail, possibly due to a lack of fresh veggies they had become accustomed to. With only two of the six left, I felt obligated to throw in some old, wilted lettuce with the hopes that they would eat it instead of ignoring it as usual.

Finally I made my way to the girls for the evening. Summer looked exhausted from the day, which upset me a bit more, so we had the chat. I’m hoping the humor didn’t distract from the point I was trying to make or the disappointment I felt for the situation, but it was also important to me that she understood I didn’t intentionally hurt her feelings in response to her poor decision. I am just a mean, old man with higher expectations.

It’s too early to be mad at each other already.

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Sounds like Treasure to Me

We were sent out to hang touch panels and do random campus cleanup tasks this morning. It took us two trips back to the shop to get everything we needed, and even then we each had plenty of time to sit around while someone else was doing the work. I would have appreciated a break if I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed and behind in cleaning and moving between campuses.

Allen, Amanda, Zach, and I all went to Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads, and I ran into David there again. I told him we must be living right to be seeing each other this much after all this time.

I had to run to Oakland to take care of something right after lunch, but then I met up with the others at the middle school again, where we completed the two touch panel installs and then removed a bunch of hallway TVs for the painters. We ended the day blowing out computers, which would have been fine, but doing an entire lab at once with three other people made the air completely unbreathable. I would have preferred to just do the lab by myself.

Summer had to work late, so I ran to get the girls and take them to karate, and then went to my parents’ house where Dad was grilling pork chops for noodles. Summer met us to eat once she got off, and then Dad and I went to the graveyard to rummage through the pallets of stuff that was being thrown out.

I was out there for several hours, and ended up with a couple giant speakers, a karaoke machine with cassette tape and 8-track players, and a couple beefy amps. To make me even more crazy, I saw the JBL 530 bookshelf speakers on sale when I got back to Summer’s, but she wouldn’t let me get any more. Some people seem to think I have a problem, but I’m just not hearing it.

They thought I wouldn’t find it… but I did!

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Trash or Treasure

Going back to work this morning wasn’t quite as difficult as I thought it would be. I managed to get there with time to spare, and brought along plenty of Soylent to choose for brunch. We met at the shop, but didn’t really have any major projects to do. Ben just had me go to the junior high to clean up my office all day. I loaded up a trunk full of stuff to bring home, and then after lunch time he came in a work truck to help me with a bunch more. We filled the truck bed nearly to the brim, and there’s still more little stuff to pack as well. I’m cautious to start moving anything to the high school yet, and it’s hard to motivate myself to move things out when it feels like Heather doesn’t have anything major to move into the space I’m leaving.

I met Ben back at the shop to unload, and then Gary invited me to the server room to move the phone equipment between racks, and then mount four new servers we got in. It was a very light $100,000 worth of equipment, which snapped into place as easily as Lego bricks. I really enjoyed the hands-on, though I’d like to see the software setup side as well.

That got us to the end of the day, and I went home to unload the trunk and grab a couple things I needed for the evening. Dad had come over earlier in the day and had someone look at my broken air conditioner. They deemed it irreparable and quoted $4,945 for a new one, which felt like chump change after dealing with the new stuff at work. It’ll be nice to have something reliable and relevant to this century though, and hopefully we can get some duct work done as well.

I left home and went to my parents’ to chat about it, and ate some leftovers while I was there. I also brought Dad a box full of some old yearbook photography equipment that he sifted through. Summer was working late on her first day at the new job, so I took her some fried rice and egg rolls when I left. We watched Parks and Rec over a big strawberry shortcake, and then it was off to bed.

Throw it away?!?

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Last Minute Grind

I successfully climbed out of bed earlier this morning in preparation for my return to work tomorrow. Summer made sausage and eggs for breakfast before going to the gym, and eventually I went home to get their bikes ready to ride.

The girls got there, picked up their bikes, and rode to her parents’ house first, and then went to my parents’ house to help scrub the pool cover. I was going to stay home and clean in the heat, but I wasn’t inside for very long before Ronda texted with contact information for a Pelican Matrix 100x kayak for sale. I called the guy and then went straight up to meet him.

I didn’t realize how that subdivision had sprouted up in that area, but they seemed like some nicer houses. The guy had a slingshot in the garage that he said he just purchased from someone on a swap page as well. We took the kayak out of his garage, and then went straight to putting it up on my car. In hindsight, I think he probably expected me to haggle him down a bit on the price, but I figured the $125 was a “friend of a friend” price already. If I had given it any more thought, looked over its condition some more, and considered that it didn’t come with a paddle, I think I would have tried for $100. He helped me get it on top of the car, and then I climbed up and strapped it in under the raging sun.

I considered going home first, but then decided to go straight to my parents’ house to see the girls’ reactions. Nobody really said much, but Summer and Eaddie came over to look at it. I was already sweaty from mounting the kayak and felt gross from my lack of a shower in the morning, but I stayed outside and helped spray down the cover while the girls scrubbed it. They got it all done in record time, and Summer caved and let the girls go for an early swim. The water was cold, fresh out of the hose while Dad was refilling the pool.

Mom made fried rice while Dad fried some egg rolls, and we all sat down to eat. I ate some 7-layer dip before we had dinner, but I didn’t expect that to make me feel so full. The girls had to ride home afterward, and I followed along in the car shortly thereafter. They got to the house right as I was ready for help getting the kayak off of the roof of the car, and we made room for it in the garage on top of mine.

From there, the girls ran to Walmart for groceries while I took a shower at home. It was too hot to do much else, but I managed to pack my backpack for work, and loaded up some things to bring to Summer’s for the evening. I made some strawberry shortcakes, and we watched an episode of Parks and Recreation before bed.

Shave his belly with a rusty razor!