Tag: lessons

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I Make a Penny

I’ve been bringing leftover Starbucks coffee to work lately, but having very mixed experiences with the USB heated mug. The Ember gets it hot once I get to work, but it’s annoying that the travel mug doesn’t work as well. We had someone from IK Electric and someone from Fortinet coming to set up some demo phones for us, but I wasn’t sure when they would be there. That meant we had a fairly slow morning waiting for them.

Randy had to disappear to deal with the Windstream folks, so I tried to lead some of the conversation with the phone guys. Maggie kept including herself in the conversation for some reason, which was annoying because it was difficult to get any more technical questions out.

Kyle and I met Randy and Jim at Shotgun Dan’s Pizza for lunch, and they appeared to be much busier than they expected, because there was only one server for the whole restaurant. She was struggling to get anything done, but at least the food was pretty good.

After lunch, Randy went with me to Central Office to “apologize” to Sonya. I expected to at least say something, but really he walked in and just started talking and never really quit. She didn’t seem very chipper, but maybe she’s just sassy like that. I couldn’t be bothered.

When we got back to the office, Randy realized his car was actually at the high school. We decided I could just take him back to his car after work, and we finished out the afternoon. I had to charge in the warehouse in order to get home, but it all worked out.

Summer made slow cooker chili, so I got home and ran with the dogs. It was pretty cool outside, and we were chasing daylight anyway. I was pretty frustrated when we got back, because Summer brought in Stilgar’s slow feeder that she had left outside. He literally chewed the whole food dish in half. I really liked that slow feeder, and I haven’t seen another one like it available on Amazon Vine. I don’t know how many times I’ve told her not to leave it outside. Stupid.

My new Pixel Watch 3 came in, so I spent some time setting it up. I didn’t love the color of the band, but I’ve ordered more from Vine. Otherwise than that, I spent some time on the phone with Johnny, and went to bed early.

My boss makes a dime.

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Sliced

I got out really early today, and it seemed to make a huge difference in traffic. The guys were outside talking, but I went in because it was chilly out. Most of my day was pretty scattered, but quiet. I started with a cup of oatmeal, and the morning went by reasonably quickly. We took a late lunch, and I went to BJ’s Market Cafe with Jim and Maggie, where they had us in and out within minutes. They were like Old South, but bigger, and possibly even more packed. I had the “beef tips” which mostly reminded me of rice and roast beef that had been in the slow cooker too long.

The afternoon dragged on a bit, and Johnny called right at the end of the day to gripe about Lamar. I finally got out of there and made my way home after coming to a dead stop right out of Little Rock. Summer was in bed with a bad back, so I took the dogs out for another record-breaking run. They did 2.3 miles at a 9.5mph pace with a top speed of 21.2mph. We stopped at a house along the way home because it looked like they had a water hose running into their yard and all down the neighbor’s yard. They didn’t answer the door, so I went to find their neighbor, who had already texted the lady but hadn’t gotten a response. Hopefully they were just draining their pool, because the back gate was padlocked so I couldn’t get back there to turn a faucet off. The dogs and I finally got home and I gave them treats before making myself a burrito for dinner.

Kevin came over with Mathai to get his laptop. Then after they left, I ended up slicing a huge gash on the right side of my right hand as I tried to swat a fly off of an open can of refried beans. Blood gushed everywhere for a moment, and I called Eaddie for some help as I leaked life fluid into the sink. She brought alcohol, bandages, and even helped clean up the blood splatter all over the floor.

Once I got my hand cleaned up and bandaged, we sat in the dining room and talked for quite a while about growing up and her future plans. It was a great moment, and eventually I had to make a mad dash to get to bed late.

I’m pretty sure I’ve learned this lesson before.

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Experience Depreciation

I got up extra early today so I could try and beat the new guy to work, but that failed for multiple reasons. I stopped at Taco John’s for breakfast, which ate up all of that extra time, but he also showed up a full hour early. Todd had already given him the tour, and as I would learn later, Samuel had actually given him a tour the week before last, while I was still there. In fact, Samuel was the one that called him the week that Blake told me they weren’t going to keep me, and told him they were looking for a new Tech Coordinator. The entire thing has been super shady, and it just made my day worse and worse until the end.

I walked around with him again and we visited all of the switch closets in the high school and elementary. We didn’t bother going anywhere else, and I probably won’t, except maybe Plainview to see if there’s anything out there that I want for myself. Maybe I could get lucky and find some rails.

We had several waves of kids come in for password resets, but otherwise it was relatively quiet. I had to keep telling him that I wished him the best of luck in spite of how crappy they’ve been to me, but secretly I just hope he gets the same and leaves them in a short amount of time. It’s just not fair that I invested all of that time and effort to fix so many major problems, and he gets to come in and ride the calm seas at a higher rate of pay with two fewer years of school experience.

I was the last one out of the office, and I had already relinquished my keys, but luckily Keith was there and I could borrow his to lock the office. I headed toward home and fed the fish, and got gas at Casey’s. Summer was making a baked spaghetti with pink sauce when I got home, and I just held her for a bit before I got changed and went out to sit with the dogs.

Summer called Eaddie home for dinner, and the three of us ate. Julie called because she saw a Cybertruck in town and thought it might actually be me. Then I went out for a run with the dogs. They did super well, ran hard, had some mostly solid poops, and for the most part weren’t too bad about getting distracted until the very end. It got dark fast, so we only stopped at my parents’ house long enough to say, “hello.”

I wound down pretty quickly, and everyone was off to bed. It was an awful, emotional, maddening day of being the better person, and the frustration of living by an unmatched code of integrity just made me incredibly sad.

And either I’m right and justice is never served, or I’m wrong and I go to Hell anyway.

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Dog Days of Summer

I slept in a little bit today, and the dogs dug a new hole under the fence. I rode around and found Muad’Dib a couple blocks southwest, but didn’t see Stilgar anywhere. We looked around for a little bit, and then I got a call from the vet asking if we had him, because some lady brought in a dog that looked just like him. Muad’Dib and I started rolling back toward home so we could go get Stilgar, but then he just turned away from me and started walking toward a guy that was walking down the street. We ended up at the cemetery before Eaddie got to us with the leashes, and we loaded him up and headed to the vet. She said the lady came in a little panicked, and wanted to chip him. I would have been fine with it if she paid for it, but I couldn’t understand why that would be someone’s go-to action for a lost dog. It didn’t necessarily sound like she wanted to keep him, but maybe she did.

We finally got everyone home, and I went outside to brick up the fence, and nail some new pallet wood above it. That seemed to work, because the dogs were in the yard for the rest of the day while Eaddie and I ran around town.

We showered first, and then went to Superfast to see if Summer wanted to join us for lunch. She said she couldn’t, so the two of us went to New China. After that we went to PetSmart to browse for dog stuff. We looked at the little kiddie pools they had, but decided to try and find a cheaper one somewhere else.

Next we went to Ross and then T.J.Maxx to look for a swim suit for Eaddie. She found a couple she liked, but we ended up buying one she saw yesterday and missed out on when someone else picked it up. I guess the other girl didn’t care for it, or maybe they stocked a new one. In any case, Eaddie was happy.

We stopped at Harbor Freight, but couldn’t find any clasps for my homemade leash, so we went to Walmart and picked up a couple from there. They were out of pools, and thus started the great search. We went to the nearby Dollar General where they had just sold their last one. We decided to get something to drink, but at $2.30 for a 20oz Coke, we ended up buying two cartons of Minute Maid fruit punch for $3.

After that, we stopped back by PetSmart to look at their pool again, but after sizing it up, I felt it was too small for Stilgar, and definitely too small if both of them wanted to splash around at once. We went across town to the newer Dollar Tree and then another Dollar General on our side of town, but nobody had a pool. We finally made it back home and rested for a while. I had a pretty bad headache, so I laid in bed for most of the remaining afternoon.

We eventually got up and went to my parents’ house to swim for a bit. We got back home a little before Summer did, and played with the dogs a bunch more. I was exhausted, so we wound down pretty quickly from there. Hopefully the dogs will still be there in the morning, because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Collars next.

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On Leash

I rode the Onewheel around the block this morning and found the dogs playing in someone’s garden on the corner of Ridgewood. They ran after me full-speed when they saw me, and heard me blowing the dog whistle I got from Dad. They ran all the way home, and though they hesitated to go back into the gate, they laid down on the porch like they might just rest a while. Unfortunately they were gone again by the time I left for work, and I didn’t see them as I drove away.

Shortly after I got to work, I got a notification from the same girl that posted about them on Nextdoor, and she said they were seen on Tanglewood. I sent the girls after them, and I guess they had some help from at least one neighbor who straight-up carried Muad’Dib over to Summer. Stilgar had to be fetched from the end of the road, and for some reason Summer thought it would be best to load him into the Model Y instead of just have him follow her home in the rain.

I did a bunch of Disney planning and took care of some things I’d been needing to do. Keith found me an old pallet that I could take home to mend the fence, and I eventually left that ghost town. I fed the fish and then went home to clean up. Julie called to settle a bet with Kevin, and my blog came to her rescue. I told Kevin I would have erased his name for half the price of losing the bet. Maybe now Julie understands the value I get from journaling everything.

Eaddie was out with friends, so I asked Summer if she wanted to go try the pork steaks at Ridgewood Brothers. As we were leaving, we noticed she had another crack spreading up her windshield from a pretty big impact spot in the bottom-right, so we added that to her air conditioning service appointment. Grant was at the restaurant running a full crew for a mostly empty dining room. The pork steak was good, but I don’t think ours were glazed properly when they were served. If they were, then we still needed more because they were pretty dry. Of course they were huge, thick cuts of lean meat that had been smoked and then finished on a grill. They weren’t overly tough or difficult to eat, but they would have been great with a cup of glaze for dipping.

When we got back home, we decided to take the dogs out for a walk to my parents’ house. It went pretty well until we got there and I let Stilgar off of his leash. Summer just dropped Muad’Dib’s, and he took off after a cat under the porch. I got angry and she tried to just leave me there alone, which made me even angrier. I got her to come back and help, and she saw Muad’Dib gnawing on something under the porch. We were worried it was the cat, but we were pretty sure it was just the leash. When they finally came back out, I hosed a bunch of mud off of the leash and gave them some water before we headed back home.

She went to the bedroom after that, and I took care of some things before eventually getting to bed myself. I’m constantly sleep deprived, angry, frustrated, depressed, and just about any other negative emotion there is. I’m hoping a vacation will help, but I’m already stressed about traveling, and worried about what the dogs will get into while we’re gone. Summer informing me that she’s paying Noah to come house-sit while we’re gone only made me feel worse about the situation, and angry that she didn’t consult me first. Telling me that she was going to “set some ground rules” was not the consolation she thought it might be.

I’ll have them longer.

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I DEMAND A REFUND

Kim was out today, and Denice wasn’t in the office for the first part of the morning, so I made myself some coffee and tried to concentrate on my Modern Driver Management in SCCM. Somehow, the server stopped responding to PXE requests, and then started working again after lunch, just as suddenly as it had quit.

The drive home was pretty fast, but that didn’t stop a jackass truck from passing me at over 70mph, and then end up parked in front of me once we got into Dardanelle. I’m sick to death of those idiots kicking road grit in my face and gaining nothing for it.

I was racing against the potential of rain, so I went straight home where the girls were just getting back with dinner. I went to my office and started working on taxes, determined to file on time. It took a trip back to the old house to find some paperwork, and then doing some math to make up for forms I didn’t have, but by the end of it all, I felt pretty confident in what I filed for both of us. Summer didn’t even add any of her interest accounts, so I was that far ahead already.

Sick of it.

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OUTAGAS

We all slept in this morning after I initially woke up just before five as Eaddie jokingly suggested as a departure time. We loaded up quickly, and Summer and I went in for some breakfast while Eaddie sat in the car. Then we met Dad at McDonald’s to pick up some steak, egg, and cheese bagels for Julie and Kevin. The kid at the register kept wanting to tell me too much information about his struggle finding the right picture on his employee register, or how he’d eat his Quarter Pounders with leftover gravy from the morning’s breakfast. Eaddie wanted to try one of the bagels, so we split one before we left.

Dad followed us while we kept getting stuck behind slow traffic, but eventually we passed most of it and got ahead of him. We stopped for a restroom break in Ozark, but didn’t need to charge. Eaddie had rehearsal at Tech after we got home. I unpacked and then left on the Onewheel to see Mom, and then ride the bagels over to Julie across town. She suggested I could go find Kevin at the airport, but I ended up a couple blocks over at my friend Kevin’s place.

Kevin hopped on the board and rode a little bit, but then wanted Matthi to try it out. That kid wasn’t afraid of anything, and immediately jumped on with reckless abandon. He got pretty good at it too, and then brought out a RipStik and a classic two-wheeled hoverboard to show me. Kevin and I ended up chatting for quite a while before I left and circled through the old house to feed the fish.

I didn’t quite make it back home before my battery died. I would have made it if I hadn’t circled through the Ridgewood Brothers’ parking lot, and nobody was there anyway. I had to walk most of the way up Honeysuckle, and the Onewheel got heavy fast. I got to the top of the hill and was able to ride it for a few more feet, but then had to walk it from the end of the street back to the house. It was the hardest workout I’ve had with the thing, but it was worth it.

I eventually had a shower after getting all sweaty carrying the Onewheel. Eaddie ate with Eli, so Summer and I had some leftover corned beef. She spent most of the evening like the rest of the weekend, not feeling great. I thought for sure I had seen something about not having school on Monday, but I don’t know where I hallucinated that, because there’s even a lunch menu. I’ll have to take another day off to take the Model 3 back to Tulsa, which makes me a bit sad, but I think it’ll all be worth it in the end.

I could ride you, but I’d have to charge.

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Network-

I only woke up about 15 minutes earlier than usual, since I did all my prep work the night before. I didn’t love it, but it got the job done, and got me to Little Rock a little after 7:30, which gave me just enough time to settle in before finding the classroom. Greg called to tell me he was coming in late, but that he would be there since they couldn’t get a refund for his ticket. He said he felt better, so hopefully I don’t catch whatever he had.

Mike Meyers was a bit of a celebrity in the field, and I think he probably acted more that way than anybody else let on. I was only just aware of his existence in the space, but Ben wanted to come have his book autographed. When I saw that he was giving us copies of his new book, I jumped at the chance to have it signed for myself, and got a selfie with him as well.

The class itself was rather a disappointment. I had hoped it would be an intense workshop to try and cover as much material as possible, but instead it ended up almost being more of a roundtable. It would have been a nice way to decompress and chat further about things you learned in a formal class, but in and of itself, I don’t think Greg or I learned anything at all. It was almost more of a pep talk to psyche us up for the test itself.

Greg and I had lunch at the hotel, which was quite a bit smaller than I expected, but still better than the “barely a step above cafeteria food” I had documented from previous years. Half of the bar was a salad, and the other half had mostly run out of food by the time we got there. They had some chicken, and Greg found some pork when we went back for seconds. The staff were fussing that it seemed like there were more people than they were told, and we missed out on dessert as well. Ben picked up Tacos 4 Life, but I declined his offer to pick up some for us, remembering a less than stellar experience from before.

The afternoon went by relatively quickly, but with not much more productivity. By then, the hotel had managed to bring out cookies, and did a fair job of keeping the drink fridges stocked. We got through the day, but Greg mostly scoffed and rolled his eyes at the fossil that couldn’t remember his ports or acronyms. I was a bit more forgiving and could see the struggle with fitting so much historical knowledge into an eight hour course. I tried to reel the conversations back in to the test material periodically, but I don’t know how much that helped.

I made the trip back home without incident, but confirmed how much I hate traffic between Conway and Little Rock. I just don’t know how people do it. My entire life would be so much more stressful if I had to do that every day. I miss the old days of getting a hotel room the night before a day like that. I got gas, went home to unload, and then went to my parents’ house to visit for a bit.

Julie was there to talk to Dad about their trip to Disney. They warmed up some fish sticks for sandwiches, and Mom shattered one of her prized bowls full of boiled carrots and butter, slicing her hand open a bit. I didn’t really get to talk about my delivery day plans, but suffice to say that I wasn’t thrilled with the way support responded. I went ahead and made the appointment, but apparently even that can change, so if we stay the night, I’ll have to get a room that allows for refunds in the event of a reschedule.

When I left my parents’ house, I went to the high school and got some of that fancy pellet ice from the breakroom, and then went out to the stadium to watch the marching assessment with Summer. We stuck around longer and colder than I expected, and then ran out to the cars to beat the crowd out. The girls eventually made it home after the event, and everyone was off to bed in a hurry.

0/10, especially with that weird, bland rice.

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Blow Me

We didn’t sleep in super late, but laid around for a while this morning before getting around. Summer’s car was at her house, so I had to take her home before I could get into anything. Autumn wanted her to make a lasagna for dinner, but I made plans to take my parents out for an early anniversary dinner instead.

Once I was ready to leave the house, I met Summer at Walmart to pick up some groceries and check out the store remodel. They ripped out all of the wood grain flooring and left everything on polished concrete, which kind of made everything a bit louder and more warehouse-like. It was pretty clear they weren’t done yet, so hopefully there will be some good changes.

They had one long aisle of clearance stuff, where I picked up two overpriced hairdryers. Reviews weren’t much help, so I figured I would just return the one I liked the least. One of them looked like a travel dryer, and pushed about as much air as you would get from a hotel dryer. The other was cheaper, but I still wasn’t sure it was worth twice the price of a cheapo model.

When we got back to Summer’s, we unloaded groceries and she prepped a lasagna to bake for dinner later in the week, and then we met Autumn, Julie, and my parents at Western Sizzlin. Things started out pretty rough, but settled as well as they could have, I suppose. I ate too much, but at least a part of that was a plate full of kale.

The girls came home with me only for a minute to get some things, and then left me to do some laundry. It was then that I unboxed and tinkered with the hair dryers. I really expected more after all that fancy packaging, but I should have gone with my gut and just gotten a cheap fan-in-a-tube. Everything else is just bullshit marketing. Seriously? Ions to coat and protect your hair? With socks dried, presorted, resorted, and stored, it was time for bed.

Have you tried being less awful?

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Split My Life into Pieces

I woke up pretty rested, having held Split Lip in my hands most of the night. He didn’t leave the way he normally would after I fell asleep, at least until hours into the night when he wanted to go outside. When I finally got up to go to work, I scooped him up and carried him off to the vet. I actually felt a little bit hopeful that he seemed to eat a bit of canned food before bed last night.

When we got to the vet, I parked next to Robyn, who was there dropping off a cat as well. They were super busy running in and out with animals, so we chatted while we waited. Just after she left, I heard the spew of diarrhea in the carrier, so I pulled it out of the car and threw some napkins in to try and cover it up the best I could. It didn’t keep Split’s tail from getting in it though. It was actually kind of normal colored and had some solid in it, which made me even more hopeful. I thought maybe he had just powered through some mouth pain so he could eat last night.

I carried on to work feeling a little better about the ordeal, so I stopped and grabbed a slice of breakfast pizza on the way. From there, things slowly started going downhill.

Sandy emailed me to say Dover couldn’t meet my salary request, so they went with another candidate. I would have liked a raise, even if it was only an opportunity to say no to a couple thousand dollars for a lateral step to their pay scale. I wasn’t heartbroken about it though, and in fact had at least a little bit of relief in sticking with what I know.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why imaging the student laptops was suddenly destroying my task sequence flash media. Ben called a couple times and we chatted about Impero some more. Overall, not much was really accomplished.

Dr. Pearson called about split sometime in the middle of the day, and let me know that she couldn’t find anything in his mouth that would cause the grinding sound we were hearing. Without any real answers as to why he wouldn’t eat, her best guess was that he was wasting away from some kind of cancer, and that it was best to let him go. He was already sedated for the examination, so it was a pretty easy decision with the expected fallout throughout the rest of the evening.

I stopped by to get my pet carrier, then picked up a shirt that Ben got me for toughing it out while everyone else was quarantined. The girls didn’t have karate, so I stopped to see Summer briefly before making it home. When I got there, I realized they had not cleaned the cat carrier at the vet, so I hosed it down a bit and left it out to dry.

Autumn made dinner, so I eventually made my way across town. Summer spent nearly the whole evening on a video call with the automotive guys at the ATCC. Autumn’s hamburger meat with rice reminded me of eating leftover taco meat over steamed rice as a child. Then we played a round of Mario Kart before Summer went to sleep and I headed back home.

It really feels like the end of an era. I’ve never truly been here, home, alone. I had my childhood at home. Then I moved out with Angie and we got Kitty, turned Big Kitty, turned Momma. Little Kitty quickly outgrew Big Kitty, but size didn’t matter when he became Daddy. They had five distinct little kittens while we were away in Hawaii just over 15 years ago – Split Lip, Grey, Chewie, Momma’s Clone, and a fifth that we managed to give away before having to come up with a way to describe it against the others.

Daddy and Clone disappeared after I put a bunch of them outside to keep the males from breeding and spraying everywhere. Chewie stuck around the neighborhood, but quickly came down with a dickborn disease, and I had to put him down suddenly when the vet said he had developed jaundice. For a long time, it was just Momma, Grey, and Split. Then Momma blew up like a balloon and I put her down suddenly after a completely worthless trip to the vet at Town and Country. Years later, Grey got the same thing, and Dr. Tanner easily identified and fixed the issue, giving us a little over two more years.

I had been over the whole idea of having cats, and largely pets in general, for a long time. That whole second era of my life had dragged on enough, and I felt like I was never really able to pick up the pieces and move on. Maybe I used the cats as an excuse for being an awful human, but I wanted the chance to find out for sure. I had been ready to move on for a long time, and I guess he was finally ready too.

I’m gonna miss you, buddy. We’ve sure been through some shit together.