Please, Don’t Touch Anything

We had a little mouse visitor in the basement last night. It looked huge as it sniffed the camera, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a rat. I made it to work in the rain, and then sat quietly without touching anything while they tested. It’s been a long week, so I wasn’t keen on doing a whole lot anyway. The “orange chicken” for lunch was pretty good since they ran out of boxed ones and we got “fresh” food.

After work, I fed the fish and grabbed a couple handfuls of CDs and papers to bring home. Then I cleaned up some leftovers before the girls got home. Eaddie was out really late, but Summer got home just before I finished eating. I did the dishes, and then sat quietly trying not to aggravate my cough any more for the night. I really wanted to see Dune this weekend, but Eaddie just has too much crap going on, and I don’t want to spend the entire weekend in Little Rock.

We’ll get to it next life.

Forty Lost

I had to stop by the agri building first this morning because the teacher out there was fussing about still not having internet. I didn’t even make it back to my office in time for my call with Robert, but that didn’t seem to matter. Once I had him remote in to take a look at our setup, he didn’t seem to do much other than skim over pages of the Unifi system rather aimlessly.

While I was in the agri building, I fixed an issue with a switch that was in the simulator room because someone created a loop that shut down the upstream switch port. I didn’t know how to hook the simulator up correctly, so I left it until I could research how it was supposed to be hooked up. Evidently that caused a problem for the teacher, which led to a phone call, me having to go and talk to Blake, who set the thing up originally, and then ultimately to a long email chain between the teacher, him, and myself. I thought I held my ground well though.

I spent the afternoon slowly updating switches, so as not to disturb a huge group of people at once. That went more or less pretty smoothly, and then I went back by agri to take pictures of the correct simulator setup on the way home. It was easy enough for a superintendent to fix, so I don’t know why it should be so difficult for a teacher.

I fed the fish and then went home and hopped on the Onewheel. Eaddie had a robotics banquet in the evening, so I went by my parents’ house and then had to find out myself that Summer wanted to meet me there instead of coming home first. It was nice out, so I decided to ride the rest of the way there. I was worried I might be a hair late, but I was still early and ended up catching Summer just as she got out of the car.

New China donated the food, which had a disappointing amount of rice, but the noodles were good. It seemed like there were a lot fewer parents than last year, but I couldn’t be certain. We ate, didn’t really talk much, and then headed home for the night. I doped up on some cough medicine, and tried not to stay up too late.

Just stop it.

Keeping the Road Warm

I ran really late and really fast this morning after barely remembering to pay the mortgage before jumping into the shower. It was a pretty quiet day though, and I was excited to have two more kids pay fines for damaged Chromebooks. I tinkered with SCCM and some other things, and then Kim left for the afternoon. I hesitated to dig too deep into anything new, but hopefully we’ll be ready to deploy some computers next week.

After work, I took a leisurely drive home behind a bunch of idiots driving WAY under the speed limit. I fed the fish and stuffed some things into the trunk. I thought I’d go out on the Onewheel, but had a bit of a stomach ache and had to sit it out for the night. Summer eventually texted to say she wanted to go to Walmart, so I went to the wash to pick her up while Eaddie stayed home to go to the art walk downtown.

We followed each other so we wouldn’t have to backtrack and pick up the other car. Summer was fussy about buying some new clothes, and we didn’t end up buying much of anything. She didn’t even want to look at groceries. Instead, we left and went to Dairy Queen for dinner. It was a stark difference from the service Eaddie and I received the other day. It was just children working, and none of them seemed to be communicating well enough to run a restaurant. We got food, and it was hot, but it took way too long for that kid to assemble two chicken strip baskets.

After that, we made it home and Summer settled in while I took the Onewheel to my parents’ house. Dad wanted to try out an antenna, so I rode to the end of the street with another radio to test. It was pretty cold outside, so I didn’t stay very long before heading home. There, I sat in the dark and played on my phone for hours until bed.

Pity Potty

Testing my Patience

Late but early again. They surprised me with more testing, and I had a call with tech support for our crappy FlySense vape detectors. Without knowing more about what wasn’t working, I just accepted the guy’s response that for some reason, several people weren’t subscribed to specific devices. The management website seemed bad.

The noise came roaring in around lunch when testing was over. I just had to stop and put my head down for a minute while it was unbearably loud. At least the meatloaf wasn’t bad, though we didn’t get much of it. They threw a couple steak fingers in to make up for it, so I didn’t even get a salad today like I usually do.

I spun my wheels a lot in the afternoon, unable to make up my mind on a naming convention for new computers. I’d like it to be different enough to be glanceable, but everything I’ve tested just kind of looks bad. I guess that’s what I get for using serial numbers, but somehow it didn’t seem so bad in the past. I guess at this scale, it doesn’t really matter what we name them. They’ll just be glad to have something that actually works.

It rained on the way home, but was only sprinkling when I got into town. I met Dad at Bác Vân’s to get my old Atari from her house. Doug had apparently moved out completely. I loaded enough other stuff from my old house to fill the trunk, and then headed home to where Summer was finishing up dinner. Eaddie got home and I started some laundry, and we sat down for a nice chicken spaghetti that was baked a bit for some crispy cheesy goodness.

I thought we might go back out so I could show off my leap year t-shirt in public, but it continued to get colder and rainier all night. I just wrapped things up, and then wrapped up in bed.

Why is there so much email?

Teenager Berries

I took some guaifenesin last night to dry up the crud in my chest, and it seemed to work pretty well. I woke up early and then dozed off a bit after Summer got out of bed. She went to the gym and Eaddie went to a band thing at Tech, so I got around to some coffee and eventually a shower.

Summer wanted to clean house a bit and then cook fajitas for dinner, so we went to the Neighborhood market to get groceries. I cleaned and cut up strawberries for shortcakes when we got back, and some of the berries had seeds with leaves on them. One of them in particular reminded me of a patchy high schooler’s beard, or a transition gone awry. I left it out to sprout and see if we could get any strawberry plants out of it.

Once Summer got the shortcake into the oven, we went outside so she could try riding around on the Onewheel. She got her first few falls and scrapes out of the way, but overall did a great job of moving slowly down the road and making turns. I just kept emphasizing that it was better to bail early than try and ride it out when you’re just getting started, because skill at bailing, running it out, or even falling is just as important as skill at riding.

Eaddie eventually made it home after also going to my parents’ house to rake some more leaves, but then she wanted to go out on her bicycle. Evidently Eli came over as well, and I rode around the block to find him walking alongside her on the bicycle toward my parents’ house. I popped in to say hello, and then headed back home to cook.

We considered putting the leftover chicken and some fresh veggies on the flat top to grill outside, but I ended up just heating it up on the skillet over the stove instead. I didn’t have very much room, but it worked alright and didn’t take as long to get heated up as it would have taken outside for such a small amount of food. I also cooked some black beans in the Instant Pot that turned out pretty good, though next time I’ll let the “bean/chili” setting finish instead of following some arbitrary recipe I found online.

The four of us started to play a game after dinner, and I excitedly brought out Hail Hydra, but I think it wanted at least five players. Eaddie kept fussing that she didn’t remember anything about Hydra anyway, and wanted to watch the movie instead. We all settled in and watched Captain America: The First Avenger, though Summer went to bed partway through. I enjoyed revisiting the movie, but seeing all of the hokey 3D stuff without 3D glasses felt a little silly. It was a silly movie anyway.

Eli left and Eaddie crashed as soon as the movie was over. Summer stayed up in bed to watch baking shows until I finished my own chores. I guess we plan to make more food tomorrow.

And why not? We like to eat.

All-State 2024

Neither Summer or I slept very well last night because the heater was making an awful rattling noise. When morning finally came, all I could hear was the whirring of the elevator. The shower just lightly dribbled water, as though I was bathing by watering can. We finally made it downstairs for breakfast, and even that was a little bit disappointing in quality.

We went back up to the room and waited for Eaddie to respond so we could coordinate the afternoon. We eventually got checked out and drove over to get her stuff. Then we walked to the Copper Penny Pub for a really good lunch. We all shared an appetizer, Summer and I got some hot drinks, and Eaddie had a sandwich as she became hungry.

After that, we made our way back to the convention center so we could start watching performances. I spotted Reece and Christina and chatted with them for a little bit before we got seated. All the bands we watched were pretty good, but I ended up liking the music better from some of the earlier bands. Eaddie’s wind symphonic band played exclusively ethnic themed songs, which just got a little tiresome after a while. They did great though, and we ended up taking Eli with us.

After the event, we went across town to Fisherman’s Wharf for a nice dinner. Evidently Eaddie had already taken a Dramamine and was feeling the effects at dinner. We went to the mall after we ate, and wandered around the dilapidated establishment depressingly for a bit. Then we stopped for some spring water on the way out of town.

I made good time, but just as we were approaching the stop sign in Ola, Summer got urgently sick. It didn’t make any sense that she made it the entire way and had to throw up in that moment, but all I could do was stop in the middle of the road. Then we dropped the kids off at the high school to get their cars before heading home to unpack and go to bed.

What a match.

Quick Cuts

I took Summer’s car to work so she could have mine in town for service. The guy never actually talked to either of us, and just did the work on the car while she was working. One of her employees said the alarm was going off, but I never got a notification, so I don’t know whether that was really true, but hopefully my bolts are there to stay for as long as I have the car.

Otherwise I felt super productive at work today. DIS finally got Cognos going again, and I fixed a bunch of our scheduled tasks and PowerShell scripts. My SCCM client appeared to install correctly, but I wasn’t sure about another part of the setup, and I’ll have to continue that tomorrow.

After work, I decided to head home and grill some steaks for Valentine’s Day with my parents and the girls. I ran home to feed the fish, and then stopped by Kroger and Neighborhood Market for several different cuts of steak and some zucchini, squash, and salad. I probably could have gotten more squash, but we still had a little bit left over. Dad baked some sweet potatoes to go along with it all, and met us at the house a little after Summer got home from work.

It was a quick dinner to throw together on the grill, and Dad got to share about their trip to California while Mom fell asleep on the couch. Eaddie dipped a few leftover strawberries in chocolate, but they didn’t last very long. Once my parents left, Eaddie packed up for her weekend at All-State, and Summer went to bed. I would have gotten there sooner if I hadn’t been distracted by Prune.

Porterhouse, Loin, Strip, Ribeye

Level Up

I made myself get out of bed early today, but Summer was the one that wanted to make breakfast. She eventually got up, but then had a long phone call with Noah before she started cooking. We ended up having eggs and corned beef hash for lunch. Afterward she went to the gym while Eaddie played flute. I got distracted by phone puzzles.

When Summer got home, she wanted to rearrange a bunch of the stuff that I had moved in, but we didn’t really accomplish putting anything away where it needed to go. I wasn’t really thrilled by any of the “cleaning” that happened, but I didn’t do any of it myself either.

Later in the evening, Summer decided she wanted to try the Onewheel, so we went outside after it had stopped raining and I walked back and forth down the street with her. She did pretty well, but relied on leaning on me too much. Once she started to stand up on her own, she was able to turn around a couple times. It got chilly pretty quick though after all the rain, and we came back inside.

The girls wanted me to handle dinner, but didn’t want to give any feedback on what to make. I ate some food in the afternoon because I got hungry, so I wasn’t famished by dinner time. I ended up going to Zaxby’s and Burger King to redeem a couple of deals, and we all shared that before bed.

Lost a another weekend.

Documents for Their Documents

I had a slow start this morning, grabbed a free cappuccino, and strolled into work a couple minutes late after fighting some dumb traffic. Denise was actually in her office all day because they’re actually doing testing, and I think that makes four whole days this calendar year. Kim was pretty chatty all day, and I struggled to deal with all the noise.

Lunch time came and went, and we kept having people in and out of the office, which further frustrated me. I spent most of the day trying to spin up SCCM, but it seemed far less than straightforward. There are so many pieces to set up manually, and for some reason I thought it would be a click-through install.

When quitting time finally arrived, I headed toward home, stopping at McDonald’s for a cheap Big Mac before going by the old house to feed the fish, and finally making it home to where Summer had been cooking dinner for a while. I changed clothes and rode to my parents’ house on the Onewheel to pick up some things, but ended up leaving more than I took because the things kept adding up to more than what I wanted to haul in my backpack.

I headed back home before dark, and Summer had baked ribs and potatoes, and pan-fried some Brussels sprouts. Eaddie made it home late for dinner, and then everyone wound down pretty quickly. I was tired and uneasy, but eventually made it to bed.

Settled down.

Raya and the Blackest Dragon

Everyone slept super late today. I got up first, and started making breakfast croissants. We had some leftover ham we had frozen a while back, and I fried up slices of that with some eggs and cheese. They were really awesome with the “everything” croissants. It was pretty yucky out all day, but Summer went to the gym and I cleaned up the kitchen before running outside to run the sump and then taking a shower.

We really didn’t do anything after that until dinner time. Eaddie had a bunch of dreams about food last night, so I took that inspiration and made some pizza on toast with leftover pizza dipping sauce, slices of mozzarella, and some hard salami that Summer was letting go bad slowly in the refrigerator. Eaddie and I tried melting some old chocolate to dip strawberries, but that didn’t work well. At least we ate the chocolate and got it out of the cabinet. I was still hungry, so I had some leftover turkey soup.

Summer and I watched Raya an the Last Dragon, and I found Awkwafina’s voice to be completely out of place and offputting for the story. It made the whole movie feel less authentic, and took a lot of weight out of the theme for me. It just felt cheap.

Eaddie didn’t even bother watching with us, and went to her room. Summer quickly went to bed after it was over, and I ended the night by paying some bills.

What is culture, anyway?