No, I Don’t Want Insurance!

I had a lighter day today, with a bit more focus and less being dragged between projects. Muad’Dib threw up a little bit in the car, but I didn’t find out until we got there. It was easy to clean up though. I started off with a Soylent, which probably helped me feel a bit better. Janice came upstairs saying something about a lizard in a coffee cup on the breakroom table, so I made sure to stop by later to check that out.

The morning went by fairly quickly, and we went to Sonic for a light lunch of corn dogs and chili cheese fries. It was super hot coming back though. The sun has been brutal in the afternoons. I stopped by the breakroom and took the little lizard upstairs, and Google identified it as a mediterranean house gecko at just barely an inch long without his tail, which he presumably lost when he was captured. Evidently there is a breeding population here, but they haven’t been found to be damaging to the environment. I figure best to keep him out of the wild, so I took him home.

The afternoon was fairly busy as I focused on trying to get the gate doorbell to talk to the RingCentral system. I think it came down to subnetting again, or at leasts, network configuration. I’ll have more decisions to make tomorrow. We left it unfinished for the day, and headed home to unbox a few things before Summer got home.

Eaddie got there just after I did, but was in and out pretty quick. Summer just barely missed her, but seemed to come home in a reasonably good mood. I had to pin her down for a long conversation though, since she’s been constantly moody blue. I think it helped, but we just can’t keep any momentum when she’s always worn out from work.

We eventually headed over to my parents’ house for a quick swim and some shrimp soup. We also took a plastic cart over to assemble, because I thought they’d like it for storage or rolling around gardening stuff in the spring and fall. Muad’Dib ran over, then got some more zoomies around the pool for a bit. Summer went in to help Mom while Dad watered plants and I assembled the cart. Then we ate and ran, to get home for a late bedtime. I got the gecko into a tiny aquarium I got from Vine a while back, and left him with a caterpillar from the pantry.

Watch out, he’s sticky!

Gimme Chimi

I had a much better start today, but still felt tired. David emailed before I even woke up to say he was having monitor issues, so I had to check that out first thing. It ended up being a bad cable and a bad adapter, but I got him sorted. Later on I got a call from Shane about some HubSpot stuff. As I expected, they did not have a way to do what we wanted natively, without custom code.

I met Summer at Ortega’s as she was on her way back from Little Rock, and we got our usual server. He was so excited to see us that he shook my hand, and then made me a custom plate with a chili relleno, tamale with extra beef on top, tostada, chicken quesadilla, and then an extra chicken chimichanga on the side. He just patted me on the shoulder and left me to it, so I wasn’t worth much the rest of the day.

The afternoon was long after an early lunch, but we persevered. Summer finished work at home, so we found her in front of the TV. I wanted to go swim, but she was in the middle of her show, so I spent some time vacuuming up moths and caterpillars that had overrun our pantry. Once she was done with her show, we went to my parents’ house. Muad’Dib did a great job running over and then got really playful around the pool. I spent most of my time going around scrubbing algae, but had plenty of time to play with Muad’Dib too.

Muad’Dib was pretty wet by the time we got home, so I gave him a nice, long, overdue bath. That got me a bit behind in cleaning up, so it was late to bed.

Creepy caterpillars!

Porky and Friends

I woke up super early this morning when the power flickered and killed my CPAP again, and decided to just get out of bed. That left me pretty tired the rest of the day, but the hope was that I would be able to sleep at night. Summer got up and we mostly lounged around. We watched a bunch of Wolves of Glendale videos on Youtube, and she eventually left for the gym while I cleaned up and showered. I didn’t feel great after that, but the only thing we really wanted to do was grill something for dinner.

It was pretty hot outside. I got my Anbernic RG DS from Vine and tinkered with it for a bit. We eventually made it to the Neighborhood Market to see what was on sale. We ended up getting some bone-in pork chops, potatoes, and a few more veggies to go with the zucchini and squash that had been on the counter for quite a while. As we were finishing up, Johnny called to say he was in town and wanted to know if I wanted to go out to eat. We had him over to join us for dinner at the house instead.

Summer prepped the veggies and made mashed potatoes while I got the grill started, and everything came together surprisingly well. Everything turned out super good, and the chops were some of the most tender I’d ever made. I had her slice up a fresh pineapple that I grilled on top of each one, so that may have helped them stay moist. It was a great dinner.

We didn’t visit for very long after that since Johnny had to run. I waited until it cooled down a bit more, then took Muad’Dib on a run to my parents’ house. It was gross outside and my Onewheel was slightly low on battery, so we took a short trip home, then got to bed quickly.

Don’t look down.

A Different Sonic Blast

I received some docking stations this morning that we ordered from Amazon, and I was tickled to see the prior shipping labels were to Woot.com. I spent much longer swapping David’s docking station than I expected, but at least he was out. Back in my office, I had run out of space, so I decided to clean up and sort through all the laptops that had found their way to my desk. I was also notified that we had someone coming to do some data entry, but that turned out being less of an employee situation that would just be temporary. That got me tinkering with onboarding processes again though, since I haven’t had a secure way to onboard new users onto an Intune device without just handing over a temporary password. I really wanted to figure out how to use the Temporary Access Pass instead.

We had an Aptean call in the early afternoon, so we took an earlier lunch to go to Sonic. I don’t know what it was, but it upset both of our stomachs. Muad’Dib threw up everything he had eaten before we left the office, as well as what he had with me at lunch. I didn’t throw up, but I felt indigestion for the next several hours.

Near the end of the day, I got a call from one of the guys at Roy’s saying he loaded up the air conditioner at the old house with nitrogen to test for leaks, so hopefully we’ll see where that is and get it going again soon. By the time I was ready to leave, we had gotten locked in the office, so we left out the back. It was a quiet ride home, and I cleaned up a little bit while I waited for Summer to get home. She ate some leftovers, and then I took Muad’Dib out for a run while she bathed.

The weather outside felt great for the first part of our run. We made it to my parents’ house and I warmed up some fish soup for dinner. Then we didn’t get back home until after dark. I laid on the couch with Summer until she went to bed. Then I accidentally hopped into a Discord channel with some of the guys.

Johnny had called yesterday to say he was interviewing for the Pottsville IT Director position, and this morning he said they offered it to him about half an hour after he left. With school starting next week, his last day at Nabholz would be Monday. I typed at the guys while they chatted and played Rocket League. Then I tinkered with remote play on my Steam Machine, and I think it may be a viable option until I have room to set up a docking station for my old Steam Deck.

I was up super late toying with that, long after the guys had all left. I’m just super excited to have some options after so long without.

steamdeck

Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring

We made it to work quite a bit earlier today, and it was super quiet again. I was actually super focused for the entire day because I was able to get up and move around a lot. I spent a bit of time in the upstairs conference room getting a laptop ready for Teisha to use for interviews. While I was up there, I cleaned up a bunch of the black dust that was getting in from the plant on the other side of the wall. I didn’t realize until later that it was continually blowing in quite quickly. Muad’Dib had laid on the floor and gotten it on him, and then it got onto my light colored pants when he laid his head in my lap.

I had my breakfast super late, so I ended up skipping lunch. I went downstairs to do some work, and Amanda had me look at an issue with her phone. That was my project for the rest of the day. While I was downstairs, I checked in on Rhonda and took Teddy out for a walk. Then I was upstairs the rest of the day learning all about RingCentral. There’s still my number consolidation to do, but I learned a lot of other stuff today.

I had to get Summer over to the old house earlier in the morning because the water leak was growing. Dad eventually got over in the afternoon with a plumber, and they found the leak. I made it home and Summer had just cleaned up and was agreeable to having dinner. She wanted Venezia’s though, which didn’t excite me.

We dropped Muad’Dib off with my parents, along with the Buick in case Dad needed a vehicle sometime in the near future, then went to eat. She enjoyed her seafood special, but my ribeye tasted microwaved and my angel hair was mushy. When we got home, I took the Onewheel to get Muad’Dib.

He got the zoomies and ran to the end of the road to meet me, then ran in circles around the yard when we got back to my parents’ house. We had a short ride back home, but I took a modified route to give him a little extra time. We encountered a couple of older guys talking over some lawn mowers, and I got one of them to try the Onewheel. Summer was in bed when we got home, and I cleaned up a bit before getting there myself.

Banana phone!

One Flat

It was another super quiet day without much to say. I kind of spun my wheels on a couple different things, but hopefully got a step closer to improving my processes. Summer was having a slow morning and met me for lunch early. We had a new server at Ortega’s that I don’t remember seeing before, but Summer said she had seen him there. He was easily a contender for the best service we’ve had though.

The afternoon was long, but didn’t feel quite as long as the morning since I was moving around a lot more. When we finally left, I got stuck behind two out-of-state vehicles that were varying their speeds while parked in the left lane, and I couldn’t burst ahead of them in the loaner Model 3 due to the speed limiter. I pressed on, and found Summer laid out on the couch, not feeling well.

I got right to work building a chair I got for Eaddie’s bathroom. I’m not sure it fits as well as I wanted it to, and she may not like it, but Dad could take it. I continued to try and clean up a bit, and found Summer’s sunroof shade in the closet. I got that installed before it got a little cooler out, and then I took Muad’Dib on a run. We went straight to my parents’ house, and as soon as I rolled into the garage, my Onewheel went completely flat. I didn’t see a puncture anywhere, so I got the air compressor going and filled it back up. There was a huge difference, so I guess it had been super flat for a really long time. I could see some air bubbling out around the rim, so I don’t know if the seal there is bad, or if maybe it was just too hot on the pavement.

We ran a short bit more after we left there, and the board handled completely differently. I’ll have to check the air pressure more frequently. We got home just as it started to get dark, and Summer went to bed. I got some Triscuits out for chicken salad, and discovered where our moths had been coming from. I had only seen a couple, but the pantry was absolutely full of them, and a bunch of larvae were all wrapped up around the Triscuits. Luckily we had an unopened package that was untainted, so I had my snack before bed.

Can’t keep me down!

Tribal Ignorance

I felt like I slept great after going to bed early. I didn’t have a great start, but I didn’t feel awful afterward either. We made it to work and then just had to pick a project. It was a relatively quiet day, which was nice for a Monday. The morning went by fairly quickly and we took a late lunch. I wanted to go a little light while still being cheap, and we ended up going to Taco Bell for a burrito, along with some fries from Arby’s. Muad’Dib had the booty scoots for some reason, but he seemed to get over it by the time we were done with lunch.

The afternoon got a little bit exciting when Rhonda had a question that turned procedural. I broke out the Traverse manual and possibly learned something that nobody had done before. I wish we could just have an expert come shadow everyone for a day, because I think that would be worth it to show us where we’re missing best practices. People have just been making it work for so long that nobody really understands the whole beast.

We left about half an hour late, and Summer wanted me to stop by the store to get some celery and an onion for the chicken salad she made for sandwiches. We ate, and then she showered while I did my Vine stuff. Once it cooled down, I took Muad’Dib for a pretty good run. Lots of people were out in the cooler air. We got lots of waves, we saw my parents, and then we made it home without having to carry my board home again.

Summer was getting ready for bed, so I cleaned the rest of the chicken off of the bones that she left. Then I quickly wrapped up for bed.

Where does all the space go???

Lawn Boys

I felt like I slept okay, but the day sapped me quickly. I was up first, and tried to keep fairly busy. I warmed up the last of the pasta for Summer and made myself a sandwich out of some rye bread I found in the freezer. Then she went to the gym and I cleaned up and had a shower. I felt a bit worse after that, which slowed me down for a while.

Summer mentioned wanting the lawn done, so I texted Kevin to have him come by at his convenience. He and Matthi took care of the old house, and then came over to the new house. Dad texted that he was going to have a kid from church mow their lawn instead, so Kevin asked for $100, then backed down to $90 for the two they did, but I gave him the full amount.

I was up wandering around the house and cleaning up all day, so I was feeling pretty tired. Dad said they had fish soup, so I tried running Muad’Dib over on the Onewheel later in the evening. We got a couple blocks down the road and the board died again with a reported 35% battery. I carried it most of the way home, and then we drove over to eat.

Dad was out watering plants while Mom finished up inside. Then they both came out while I was sat by the pool with Muad’Dib. Once I realized how late it was getting, Muad’Dib and I went in to eat, and then headed back home. It was a short night after that.

Sleep it off.

Babysitting

Summer went to the gym this morning while I had a rough start myself. She decided to try Eaddie’s shower when she got back, and much preferred the shower head in there. I gave it a try myself, and while the volume of water was better, I didn’t care for the space or the lighting. We eventually got things going and ran Muad’Dib to my parents’ house so he could stay there while we went to Conway for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

We were both hungry, since it was after noon, so we started at Stoby’s for lunch. I thought I was going light by getting a Reuben, but the large cheese dip done us in. We arrived in Conway early, and went by Sam’s Club first to kill some time and hunt for snacks. We didn’t get much, and settled on a bag of Werther’s, then made it to the Cinemark.

The theater was filled with people, though our auditorium took a while to fill out. I fought Summer on getting popcorn, but she insisted. She also wanted an extra large for a refill, and a large drink. The movie was a huge shift in gears from any other recent Marvel films, but it was absolutely fantastic. It was definitely more emotional than any of the others, and brought you closer to the action with Spider-Man, especially in 3D.

Summer barely touched the popcorn at all, which caused some drama. I am not allowed to feel frustration. We headed straight toward home instead of having dinner. I dropped her off at her car that was parked at my office, and then beat her home so I could move the Buick out of the garage for her. She went out onto the porch with a big glass of wine, and I rode the Onewheel to my parents’ house to get Muad’Dib.

My parents were out watering plants when I got there, so he sprinted after me from a distance. I got his things, and we continued on a really great run in the fall-like air. It felt really amazing outside, so I was surprised that he shortened his run. Once we made it back to the house, he went to bed with Summer, and I did my own thing until bed.

Third time’s the charm.

Stouffing

David hit me up first thing this morning with a bad docking station. He had a little, cheap, VAVA dock that looked more like it was for travel than for desktop usage, and the USB-C cable was a bit frayed on the end. I didn’t have a full size dock for him, but I did have a little portable one that would work in a pinch. I’ll have to make a decision and order some extras now.

It was otherwise a really quiet day. We went to Taco Bell a little early, and Muad’Dib was perfect. It was super gusty though, and I kept losing things off of our table. Afterward, we had our Aptean meeting, and I felt better about providing some feedback and participation. The rest of the afternoon was even quieter until everyone filtered out.

We stopped by the lube to see Summer on the way home, and she was about to leave. She wanted to go straight to Brown’s for dinner, but I wasn’t super hungry and still wanted to change clothes. She was frustrated that I wanted her to go home to clean up first, and I was frustrated that she never wants to leave the house again after she gets home. She showered quickly, we left Muad’Dib home alone, and then had a fine dinner anyway.

The restaurant had some empty tables, but also a huge line out the door, waiting to get seated. I think it was just a slow line of people at the buffet. The food was good, and there were a few new things, which was exciting. After we ate, we went by the old house to check on the air filter. It was pretty gross, and it must have been from the construction, because otherwise it shouldn’t have been used much. Hopefully changing the filter helps with the cooling, but I still think there’s another problem.

I dropped Summer at home, then took Muad’Dib for a late run. He did great, and we got lots of waves with his little headlamp on. We stopped to visit my parents, then made it home in the dark. Summer was on her way to sleep, but I was up for a little while before going to bed. Eaddie got a house sitting gig, so I guess we won’t be seeing her for a while.

Not cool.