Tag: family

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Shrimp Daddy

We had a pretty contagious day of not giving a crap about anything. Jason sent every last one of us to the junior high to do a few things, and then vanished as usual. He did stop in a couple times just to make his presence known, but otherwise he was as useless as ever with an attitude to go along with it. I stopped in to talk with Matt about esports again, so I guess that’s still on the table. Then we got a few lines run and found another that already existed. They fed us chili dogs there, and pretty much everyone came out for it.

I spent the afternoon with Brice, first going by Oakland to take care of a couple of his things. We ended up sticking around the office for a while just to enjoy a Friday afternoon. Then we finished up at the high school running a video cable for a troublesome display. I didn’t leave with an overwhelming feeling of confidence, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

Summer had me get the girls from the junior high, so I dropped them off at their house because they didn’t care to have me around. I went home to clean up a bit from all the ceiling dust. That’s when I spotted something new in the Imagitarium!

I finally have baby shrimplets! They were so minuscule that I had to get out the magnifying glass just to see any detail on them. Some of the bigger flatworms rival them in size. I’ll never know exactly how many shrimp I have ever again, because this is just the first of many population explosions. I’ll need to get some other tanks cycled soon for my genetic experimentation.

Mom called me over for dinner, so we sat and had some soup together. Dad had already left on his trip, but left us some fresh banana bread for dessert. Then I headed up to Summer’s where everyone had pretty well split up into their rooms. Summer and I watched an episode and a half of Battlestar before she passed out. I’m super happy about having a long weekend myself.

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man, with my three wishes clutched in her hand.

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What Prompted This?

I had a pretty rough start this morning, but with an iron will and the perseverance of someone with a powerful need to eat, I was able to make it happen. Work started out okay, but then I got to my office.

I had just gotten into a little work order to install a minor upgrade in a computer lab, which seemed petty and annoying at first, but became fun when I realized how easy it was. Halfway through that, my favorite regular customer walked in asking if I had gotten her email. I guess she thinks I just sit in my office playing Minesweeper until a little notification bell goes off. As it turns out, work orders and emails are a relatively small part of my job. I fashioned a response for her and the handful of people she addressed, and made a mental note to proceed with my next troubleshooting steps for her at some point ever. Then I continued on with my more pressing matters.

The rest of the morning went by pretty quickly. I texted Allen to reserve a lunch date at Taco Bell for a Toasted Cheddar Chalupa before they went out of fashion. When we got there, we felt encouraged by the marquis advertising the object of our yearning. Even the Taco Bell app was working just as it should. Things couldn’t be better. I had just selected the $6 box for my order when the girl at the counter told Allen that they no longer carried the toasty, cheddary treat. With that, I sat down and ate the saddest bean burrito I’d ever eaten.

When we got back to the shop, I spent a little time there on my iPad Pro again, with no additional luck. I ended up back at the PAC to try and downgrade the sign software, but got stuck again when the support rep refused to provide the password for the hardware we purchased. School let out just as I gave up, so I had to ride through that traffic to get to the other side of the building to my office. I wrapped up a couple more work orders to finish the day, then finally made the call for my vision exam.

The later it gets in the year and the more I read about what my EyeMed benefits actually are, the more upset I get over having waited so long, and also having purchased the insurance at all. It seems like a complete sham to have a provider that only has three local providers in their network, especially when one of them is the CFO’s wife, and another has a 2.7 star rating on Google Maps. I half expect them to poke me in the eye with a sharp stick and tell me I’ll just have to be blind for the rest of my life. I wonder if my insurance will even cover a sterile stick.

I didn’t have much time at home before I had to get Eaddie from her after school activities. We headed up to her house and killed most of the time until Summer got back with Autumn. I cooked some chicken strips for salads, then burned the rest of the evening fighting Google systems and their sign-in prompts. I should be able to get a two-factor authentication prompt on my phone, but it’s been broken for what feels like forever. I’ve reset more things, more times than I can count, and I’m just sick of it.

I took a break to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica with Summer, and ended my night in another disappointment without my prompts.

Well, this is embarrassing.

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Blockin’ out the Scenery, Breakin’ My Mind

It was quite chilly out this morning. My fingers felt the sting of the autumn air on my ride in to work. I got out of the teens on my work order count, not counting any of the 1:1 laptop stuff, so I felt pretty good about it. I got a response back from 000webhost about my site and got the suspension lifted. The first thing I did was make a backup, but I have a feeling this is ultimately going to end in me paying for hosting. They’re cheap enough though, and the support response was fast and helpful. I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth so far.

Gary said he was going to Tropical Smoothie for lunch, so I met him, Zach, and Heather there. I had a coupon, but it was “Pick 2 Tuesday” that got me the same thing for a buck less. The flatbread was really good, and the pumpkin smoothie was delicious and larger than I expected to get in a twofer. It still wasn’t cheap, but I felt pretty good about it. I couldn’t believe how busy they were though. The drive-through line just didn’t quit, and there was hardly any room for other traffic to pass through. It didn’t bother the bike any though.

After lunch, I met with Ben and we worked on the LED road sign. We were out there for nearly four hours working on the damned thing, and we really didn’t do anything to fix it other than reboot it several times. Once we got it working, I screwed it up again by updating the publishing software to a version that evidently isn’t compatible with our sign’s firmware, so that’s another call in to the company that no longer supports our sign. I have a feeling they’re going to just have to replace the stupid thing anyway, probably with an even stupider thing. The whole time we were working on it, I just felt like maybe if there was only someone that worked specifically at the Center on their very technical things, that we wouldn’t have to be out there. At least the weather was nice, and I even got some closeup time with a black widow mamma and her sack of eggs.

Once home, I spent a little time cleaning up before going to get the girls from karate. Then we met Summer at my parents’ house for bún bò Huế before heading home for an early night.

ESPORTS REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
J/K

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Downtime!

It’s been three days since my site at 000webhost was shut down for some unknown violation of their terms of service. I finally sent an email off to them to appeal the shutdown. I guess I’ll give them a couple days to respond before I try and migrate to a paid plan. Their free service has always been more than enough for me, and I figured it would be fine for the foreseeable future.

Not much else of note happened today. I went to Popeye’s for lunch with Allen and was reminded of the maddening inconsistency in the size of their tenders. After work I went to my parents’ house for grilled pork chops before coming home to clean house. I can’t let all these responsibilities keep slipping by. Maybe this is the year.

I can’t get no relief.

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Battlestar Bingetactica

Summer got up this morning and made a trip to town for breakfast food. She came back and made some awesome sausage, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. Then she started the kids on chores and we basically just binge watched the rest of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

We made it through the first few episodes of the last season before everyone had to settle in for bed. It stormed quite a bit in the afternoon and early evening, so we never left the house to ride the Grom like she originally planned. It was nice to have a down day after yesterday though.

No reason to get excited.

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Have fun doing the dumb things without me!

This morning actually felt like fall weather. The air was cool on the ride to work, and it was quickly downhill from there. We all got a super slow start, but Jason was quick to tell us we had a bunch of undesirable work to do without his help. I can’t stand his attitude on the best of days, and lately it’s just been super shitty. Even Ben was out there in the graveyard with us. It wasn’t even particularly awful work to be done, so I don’t get his vocalization to the rest of us. We had a relatively good time out there.

Allen and I went across the street for Fry Day at Smackin’ Wings again. This time we sat right behind Gary and Heather since they beat us there without inviting us. They had beef queso nachos or fries on special today, and they looked super nasty when we got them. I got the fries, but wished I had gotten the chips like Allen. They needed a whole lot of something else to make them better. When we left, the guy that delivered the food to our table came up and said they comped our food because it took too long to serve us. In reality it was actually faster than our last visit, only taking half an hour from the time we sat down. Even Gary and Heather waited longer than we did, but they ddin’t get their food for free.

I spent the afternoon wrestling with my athletics iPad Pro some more, which evidently they purchased for the sole purchase of underwater video for the swim team. I don’t fucking understand this place at all. The high school was on a pep rally schedule, and Allen was in a helping mood, so he and Brice met me there to run a short cable and climb a ladder up to the cafeteria projector. I was happy to accomplish that much, but annoyed to hear Brice say he was all caught up on his work orders while I’m still drowning in 1:1 devices that have to be shipped off.

After work, I met the girls at my parents’ house to help cover the pool. I really wanted to swim again, but it’s been cooling off fast lately. I hate how little use the pool gets after the very first part of the summer. Eaddie wanted to work out with Summer, so I took Autumn home with me. We watched a little bit of The Office until she was ready to go to the homecoming game. I dropped her off and then came home to fight with some Google stuff on my phone. When she was ready to leave, I picked her up and we waited for Noah to finish at work. We picked him up, got his bag from his house, then went up to Summer’s for the evening.

It was our fault. We wanted instant gratification, and soon the screens felt like home.

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iPooed

I really felt like I sunk the entire day into a stupid iPad Pro that we couldn’t enroll in our device management system. Even Ben sat down with me for a while and tried to help, but it just didn’t work. Eventually I just had to get up and take a break, so Allen came over and took us to Subway for lunch. I got more and more aggravated all afternoon as I kept finding myself surrounded by people not working.

After work, I rode home and took the car in for an oil change. Summer was beat from a pretty rough day herself and wanted me to get dinner for her. It started to downpour, so I hung out at the shop until it settled down as they closed up. I ran home to change shoes for the evening and called in an order to Spices, then went to pick it up along with the girls from karate. Back at her house, I finished up some leftover tacos with Eaddie before catching an episode of Battlestar and then going to bed.

I did my fair share of homework when I was younger. I don’t need to be doing yours too.

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Rice Nazi

Waking up was just awful this morning. It was so bad that I sacrificed most of my routine and went back to sleep for another 30 minutes. Most of my morning was pretty sluggish after that, but I kept at it.

Allen and I went to Wind Taste for lunch since we got coupons yesterday. It took them over half an hour to get our food out to us, and they told us they were out of eggrolls after the fact, but that we could “tell her next time and we would get free eggrolls on our next visit.” Moments later I heard her turn around and ask a customer standing at the counter, “you need something?!” I’m fairly used to dealing with people that don’t speak English natively, and have trouble with the nuances of tone and phrasing. This bitch just doesn’t try. When we finally got up to pay, she took one look at my coupon, scolded me for trying to use an expired one, and then charged me full price. When we got to the car, I took Allen’s coupon in and threw it on the counter and told her once more that these coupons had just been delivered the day before. She shifted tone, fussed that the advertisers were wasting her money, and apologized. I didn’t get any money back, or the eggrolls that I had already bought, but I suppose that was the best I could have hoped to get from her.

The afternoon was mostly more of the same, except with interns in my office. I had to call the sign company about our broken display because evidently it had become a “hot button item” with the superintendent. Hilariously and almost predictably, they told me the company that made it was going out of business, and that rolling a truck to work on it would be a complete waste of money. I guess the poor children will have to go without for a bit longer. My initial thought was to wonder whether having a monochrome sign by the road benefited as many children as having an esports team would have. The cynicism cut deeply today.

After work, I brought the Grom home and took the R1 out for a wash. It had rolled right over 16,000 miles coming back home this weekend, so it’s time for another service from the worst dealership I’ve ever known. I guess I could forego the stealership and take it to a third party instead. Hubbard has always been good to me with tires. I miss the hell out of Valley Powersports though.

After washing the bike I picked up some cheap mozzarella sticks at Sonic, traded vehicles and went to Walmart for some salad, then went to Summer’s for some leftover pizza. Then we jumped right into a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica until bed.

A kick in the butt is worth a thousand words.

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Gromroll, Please!

I slept pretty well last night after a couple Aleve to dull the aches of the day. Summer left to get the girls home and start some cleaning before lunch. Mom had leftover beef spring rolls ready for lunch when they got up. Summer and Eaddie wanted to ride their bikes, so I drove Autumn and met them there. Autumn was more or less a lame duck, but Eaddie at least pretended to watch Dad work on their telescope a bit.

After a little while, we all headed home so Summer could get some time on the Grom after several weeks without. I wouldn’t let Autumn stay at the house, so I gave her the choice of riding with me or riding her own bike. She reluctantly climbed onto the Grom with me, and we made our way to the park. Summer and Eaddie beat us there on their bikes from my parents’ house, but the parking lot was cluttered with cars for a ballgame, so we rode up to the highschool instead. Summer jumped on and did really well today, weaving through the concrete parking bumpers and other obstacles. She even left the parking lot and drove around the little streets around the campus.

They all had to get home to finish their chores before school and work tomorrow, so we all rode back to my house and they headed home. I milled around and did some cleaning myself after having a Full Throttle to wake myself up. I took care of the pets, started some laundry, and got things ready for work in the morning.

Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow.

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Jesus Hubert Christ

I made it in really early today and got started in a classroom to test and fix an Airtame 2. The teacher’s laptop was still trying to connect to the old device for some reason, so I just had to point it at the new device instead. I was pretty productive the rest of the morning as well, but then got stuck on some medieval software that another teacher wanted me to install on all of her students’ devices from a compact disc.

Allen wanted to go to KFC for lunch again, and I’m always down for that party. We had just sat down to eat when I looked out the window and spied, with my little eyes, Jesus of Nazareth. Not like a long-haired, blonde, homeless vagrant type, but like a guy wearing potato sacks for clothes. You don’t get that stuff at Walmart. I don’t even know where you’d begin to look for fabric like that. I told Allen that he was about to be raptured away, and that I would be left to eat the rest of the chicken all by myself. The guy came in holding something square under his arms wrapped in the same fabric, but I couldn’t make out what it was. His ensemble was complete with some kind of rope or heavy twine for a belt and everything. I knew for sure that this was it. Either the end times were here, or we were about to be blown up by some religious nut coming after gluttons at a buffet.

The man came in, spoke to someone at the counter, and then left just moments later. It seemed we were all spared. Or all left behind. I’m always telling Allen he’s not living right, but he never listens. Not one soul was spirited away, so maybe we’re all damned. I’m not really sure how we would know in any event. Allen suggested that maybe there was a play going on at the church next door, but I told him that this was no Thursday matinee Jesus. This was the Saturday night, packed mezzanine, prime-time son of God.

I went back for seconds. Then dessert.

After lunch, I went to the junior high to pick up another rubber cable cover, then stopped by the library on my way out. When I got back to the shop, I chatted with Ben for a bit about various goings-on before heading back to the high school. I wasn’t super motivated by that time, and ended up talking with Karen about my spiritual encounter. Eventually I did get back to work, and the girls came to my office so I could shuttle them around after school.

We left first to go to my house so I could change. Then we dropped Autumn off at the junior high for her football game. Eaddie had some time to kill before karate, so we ended up at Sonic for some cheese sticks and fried Oreos à la mode. Everything was incredible. I dropped her off, then went to my parents’ house to visit while she was in class. Dad brought out a bunch of old junk for me to discard, and I went to get Eaddie.

When we got to her house, Summer was laid out in bed feeling ill. I started watching Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, which I wholeheartedly recommend for any old fans. Autumn called for a pickup just as the credits rolled, so I went to pick her back up from the junior high, and we all came home for bed.