Tag: Reviews

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So You’re PMSing Pretty Bad, Huh?

It was nice enough this morning that I got the R1 out, but I didn’t get much time on it. I started super tired and got a slow start, which landed me at work pretty late, but I stayed even later to make up for it. I felt like it was a pretty productive day of mostly helping others, but I also felt like I was the only one that saw it that way. I’ve been feeling more or less like a superficial cog in the wheel, taking on menial tasks without any real, tangible usefulness.

Lunch at Fat Daddy’s didn’t make it any better. Gary and I got the Tuesday special, which was a “brisket sandwich” that looked like an overcooked philly cheesesteak sandwich without the grilled onions or peppers. It was more like a French dip than anything, and it was pretty awful. I left hungry and dissatisfied, both because of the food and the amount of time it took to get to us. I don’t know how a barbecue place that has to smoke meats hours ahead can take so long to slice and assemble a plate.

The afternoon was successful in that I got rid of the Mac that has been sitting downstairs for the past couple weeks. I was also promised some recommendations for Ben’s position, though I’m not super hopeful about that. I’m cautiously, if not unjustifiably optimistic. Ben told me to take my speakers home, which sort of inadvertently crushed what little bit of happiness I’ve had at work lately.

I stopped by to see Summer on the way home and we chatted a little bit before she went home. Still hungry from a disappointing lunch, I stopped by McDonald’s for a sad bacon double quarter pounder, then Wendy’s for a sad order of fries. I ate, finished up a bottle of apple pie, and watched a couple more episodes of Superman & Lois before crashing for the night.

I suppose you’re all wondering why I called you here today.

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Battle of the Bulk

Summer and I got up this morning and started shuffling things in the garage. After some debate, we decided to get rid of the chest of drawers that has been rotting away in the garage due to some water damage. Then we got rid of some larger pallets from the shed out back, and moved some of the smaller ones from the garage out into the shed. There was a nest of some kind of flying ant-looking bugs out there, and they didn’t seem to be eating up anything, but they just went everywhere when we disturbed them. I just left the shed open all day, and they moved on out.

By the time we got the majority of everything out, we had worked up an appetite for lunch, so we loaded up the girls and went to Smackin’ Wings and Things. I guess I had slightly forgotten how high that place is, and I outright refused to get Autumn the 5-piece chicken strip meal she wanted for $16.49(!), especially since she was the only one of us that had already eaten something in the form of two leftover soft tacos just minutes earlier. Instead, we had them split an order of 20 boneless wings, and Summer and I shared some Curious George fries. We still didn’t get out the door for under $50 after a tip, so I hope at those prices even the servers get paid a living wage.

After we ate, we took the girls home to clean up and mow the lawn while Summer and I loaded their old mattress onto her car for a trip back to my house for bulk item pickup day. I was pleasantly surprised with how well it rode up there, and we made it home without incident. I continued to clean up and started some laundry while she went back home.

Eaddie wanted to go to an Among Us real-life game with her boyfriend, what’s-his-face, so Summer dropped her off and then came to visit me for a while later in the evening. I felt pretty tired, and was surprised to see how early it was by the time I was winding down for bed. I’ll take the sleep when I can get it.

Seriously, for $2.75 more we could have gotten a dinner buffet at Brown’s.

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It’s Curtains for You!

I went in to the office for a little while today, then got a call from Brody to help with something at the junior high. We only sort of fixed that for Matt, then piddled around with some print issues in the library until lunch.

We decided to try Whatta Burger after having possibly not been at all since I started working there. They had changed the decorations again, replacing the generic pictures of hamburgers with some squidly kites. The menu boards and POS systems were all new and lacking any character at all. The burger was fine, but the fries were pretty lame. For a $10 lunch deal, it hardly felt like a deal at all.

After lunch, I spent a good amount of time hunting for my bead curtain. Ben hid it somewhere, and I couldn’t tell whether he played some camera trickery on me. There definitely didn’t seem to be any place for it to hide in that storage room where he originally hid it. I was able to recover my pirate flag, but no curtain.

I was supposed to go by Mark’s after work but forgot in the process of getting the girls ready for karate. Fortunately he called to say he had to leave work, so we’d have to schedule another time anyway. I dropped the girls off, then went to the Neighborhood Market for some extras to dress up one of the school pizzas that Brody brought back for us.

Once I got to Summer’s, I started cooking some bacon and putting the dryer back together. The part went in super easily, and I managed to get all the screws back in the right place. I did put the drum in backwards, but it was symmetrical anyway. The pizza turned out pretty great, and was completely unrecognizable with everything I added.

The girls trickled off to showers and bed, and I headed home for the evening hoping not to lose any more Doge. It definitely hit a low where I was losing, but popped right back up within minutes. It just made me wish I was better prepared to begin with, but now that the money is in the account, trades can happen without any fear of missing out.

Rollercoaster…. of Doooooge.

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Where’s Curtain?

I had so much trouble going to sleep last night that it was a real surprise making it to work early today. Ben enjoyed my I Know What You Did Last Summer Recently picture so much that he made his own Where’s Waldo Curtain picture to tape over my door. Melinda was gone and left me with a gift bag of snacks and a single-shot dart gun with a pile of foam darts; mostly pink.

It was a quiet day, because Zach was off and Ben left to cover testing at Crawford. Greg and I were the only two at the shop for a while. Gary was in and out. I had some work orders assigned to me, so I just took care of those for most of the morning.

Lunch time approached surprisingly fast. I convinced Gary, Greg, and Josh to go to McAlister’s with me so I could redeem my free entrée. I should have taken a picture of how pitiful it looked. I got the Pick Two with a cup of soup that was only about two thirds full, and a sandwich that hardly had anything inside of the bread. For ten bucks, I would have been super mad. For free, I just sort of felt like I was on a diet.

After lunch, I continued work in Jamf, trying to enroll that new iMac. I finally asked Gary for some advice and we pretty well decided it was just an OS incompatibility for being so new. Ben and I chatted for a little bit after work, and then I headed home to get Autumn to her Explorers event in Dardanelle.

The internet was in and out for a while, so we had to let Eaddie into the garage from her bike ride. After dropping Autumn off, I came home and continued packing things into my cabinet and cleaning up the garage. Summer came by to get Eaddie, and once the sun went down, I moved inside to try and clean up the laundry room. It gets a lot slower as the things I’m organizing get smaller.

I finished the evening trying to find some arrangement of picture frames that lined up well enough to not notice minor height differences. Next time I’m staggering them purposefully, because inconsistency in mounting hardware height is stupid.

It’s like triangular marketing.

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Dude, You’re Getting a Dell!

I ran home this morning after clicking some more cookies with Eaddie. Uncle Giao and the family came down, so I had to get a laptop ready for him to take. It took me a while to get everything updated and ready to go, but hopefully it works well for him. I spent most of the afternoon at my parents’ house until they left. Then I ate some leftovers before heading back to Summer’s.

Nobody was really hungry for a proper dinner, but Autumn grilled some hot dogs and we all munched a bit in the evening. Then she wanted to watch The Greatest Showman, which I surprisingly didn’t really care for. I didn’t dislike it by any means, but I think I had just built it up to be something completely different in my mind.

When we finished that, I put on The History of Time Travel until Summer and Autumn went to bed. Then Eaddie and I stayed up and watched an episode of House before bed.

No, that was not a real documentary about how someone invented an actual time machine out of an Atari.

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Attack of the Time Sinks

I woke up to an empty house today, and continued my clicker games until my FedEx package arrived at the Dollar General up the road. As soon as I got it back to the house, I got to work applying my screen protector with the liquid, optically clear adhesive. The packaging of the phone ended up making it a dirtier and dustier project than I like, but I eventually got everything together.

The sticker at the top of the phone that was supposed to prevent the adhesive from seeping into the speaker did basically nothing, and appeared to even draw the liquid into it with surface tension. Next time I’ll have to line the phone with some masking tape or something, because it was a bit of a pain to get it all out. It made me pretty nervous, but it all worked out alright in the end. The biggest disappointment was a wave of discolored area in the screen. Unfortunately I didn’t turn the phone on before applying the screen protector, so I have no way of knowing if it’s caused by the adhesive, or if the screen itself is defective. Rather than remove the screen protector now, I decided to give it just under a year to crack or chip. As the end of the phone warranty approaches, I may have to peel the protector off and see what’s really going on.

I eventually had to leave to get the girls from school. I took them back to my house, and they rode their bikes to Oakland Heights until it was time for me to take Autumn to her Monday night school. Eaddie and I went to my parents’ house to work on some leftovers until it was time to get Autumn again. Then we made it up the hill for the evening.

Summer spent the evening on the couch setting up her replacement phone after her original Pixel 3 died. We never could get it going again, so it’ll be sent back tomorrow. The girls went to bed pretty soon after they got home, and I stayed up late getting my new phone prepared to port my old Sprint number over tomorrow.

Entertain the swarm.

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A Wonder We’ve Made It This Far

I picked up some semi-disappointing biscuits from Hardee’s for breakfast this morning before our trip to Conway. They just seemed like they weren’t quite as “loaded” as they should have been. The biscuits themselves, however, were perfect as always.

The girls loaded up in the cold, misty rain, and we made it to Conway just in time to grab snacks and take our seats before the previews started. The girls didn’t really remember the first Wonder Woman movie, and we probably should have watched it last night instead of The Dark Knight Rises for a refresher. I thought this one was entertaining, but the story seemed weak. I would have liked to see more building up of the villain and where he came from. In contrast, I didn’t find the flashback to baby Diana to be very important at all.

After the movie and with some protest, we went to Kohl’s to look around. I got a mooing chip clip that was on clearance for what should have been regular price, so that was worth the trip by itself. The girls all wanted to eat by then, and of course couldn’t agree on a place to go, so I picked Mike’s Place as a treat. I figured Autumn could get the steak she wanted, and Eaddie could get something aquatic.

Our server was fantastic, but I didn’t love my fish. Autumn’s $30 New York strip looked to be cooked to perfection, but she turned her nose up at it after about three bites. Then she tried to convince us that her palate was sophisticated enough to identify and appreciate different cuts and qualities of beef, and that she didn’t want it because it wasn’t good. Astoundingly, I managed to bury whatever beast those comments normally would have unleashed, and we boxed up her leftovers for my breakfast.

Both of the girls’ behavior really started to slide from that point on, as we went to walk Target, and then Best Buy. They cried about staying one more night at my house, and I got to try my hand at Good Cop again. Their attitudes really seem to be habits learned from always getting their way, and again I can feel my strict hand at parenting tightening its grip.

Such is the cost of making a better people.

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Food Zombies

We got up early this morning to take Summer to work at the Conway location. Autumn wanted to tag along for some shopping as well. I had to run home to clean up, then pick up my trial contacts, and finally picked up the girls for a drive to Conway. We dropped Summer off, then went to Target for a slow walk around the store.

We picked up a couple very small things, but nothing of much consequence. Autumn got pretty hungry, so we left there and went to Golden Corral for lunch. The buffet was pretty disappointing, with several duplicated dishes and only hamburgers made with rolls instead of buns from the grill. I still filled up, but I left super unsatisfied.

From there, we went back to Kohl’s to try and find some clearance. Autumn actually did a good job thumbing through the racks and picked up a pair of pants. Still, I didn’t find a whole lot that interested me, so we eventually moved on to Best Buy. We were both feeling super exhausted after a big lunch, and just wanted to nap. Best Buy was really just a time killer for an hour before we could fetch Summer from work.

On the way, I grabbed an iced coffee from McDonald’s that really helped to pep me up. When we got to Summer, she was in the pit training their manager. She wanted to do another oil change with her down there, so she had me pull around and get mine done a bit prematurely. I couldn’t complain, and the oil was still black anyway.

When they finished up, the three of us ran to Sam’s to pick up a few things. I tried to do a bit more deal scouting, but came up dry. We headed home as the sun came down, stopping once in Morrilton for some a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Autumn wanted to make tacos for dinner, so we let her run into Walmart for a couple missing ingredients once we got back into town.

The tacos were simple but tasty enough. Everyone turned in super early after we finished eating. I was exhausted, but had a bunch of email to catch up on before going to bed myself.

This is starting to feel like work.

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Sorta Sitting

Summer got up this morning for a hair appointment that kept her out all day, so I was left alone in a house full of teenage girls. They make that sound way more exciting in the short films I watch, but in reality it was me playing video games in bed all day, waiting for Summer to get back. On the bright side, Stadia has been pretty great, even handling buffering issues pretty well when all the girls started streaming other things across the network. Latency isn’t much of an issue in a turn-based game like Into the Breach, but it was still pretty impressive.

That pretty well burned the whole day, so when Summer returned and then left to take the girls home, I went home to shower. Then she came over and we went to Mulan’s for dinner to show off her fancy new hairdo. When we got back home, it was pretty much straight to bed again.

My only regret was that I didn’t have more of that lychee/longan/rambutan flavored jello.

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#UnexpectedCrucifix

I went by the shop this morning to pick up a couple TVs for Athletics, and dropped them off at their office. After that, I stayed quietly busy in my office for most of the day. Allen invited me out to lunch, so we decided to try The Gunslingin’ Burger.

The staff was friendly, and the menu was quaint. They had a TV up with a special Murder Burger that looked pretty good, so I just got that without even bothering to look at anything else. Loaded Beer Cheese Fries on the side brought my total to just under $15, which set the bar pretty high.

After we ordered, we noticed the rest of the decor, which consisted of a giant, life-sized, floor-standing cross, and a jail cell. We took a photo op with the more interesting of the two, and then were relatively quickly served our meals. I was more than a little put off by the overall presentation, but it was cool that Allen could get a side of chili with his. My fries were pretty good, and the burger was tasty, but the price was all I could think about. The burgers were disappointingly flat, at about half the thickness of the photo. More vegetables would have given it the thickness I craved, but the sliced celery was an interesting addition that I enjoyed.

The cook came out a couple times, once to check on another couple of guys that were there, and again to check on us. The approach was a little bit awkward, but I could appreciate his desire to connect with his patrons. I hadn’t fully made up my mind by the time he came to us, so we just responded that everything tasted good, which wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t worth $15.

I actually left hungry, so I ran home and cut up another peach for my afternoon at work. I did a bit of running around, had a sit down political conversation in the library, and then left work to meet up at Summer’s for dinner. She grilled a bunch of meats to eat for the whole week, so tonight was rice, chicken, broccoli, and cheese. I threw all of mine into a bowl and just sort of mixed it up, and it was great. She didn’t take the girls to karate, and Autumn decided she didn’t need to go to the high school for whatever band fitting they were having, so I ended up leaving them there for the night so I could come back home.

I wanted to clean up a bit more, but most of my evening was spent getting distracted by different problems everywhere, and I was never satisfied with any fixes. My new WEMO switch still isn’t working, my WiFi is a mess because of it, and I’m overall just super frustrated with the whole process.

And for some reason, I’m still freakin’ hungry.