Let’s go somewhere good instead.

I bounced around a bit at work today. At one point in the morning, a group of six of us went to hang a touch panel at the high school. There was actually more to do than just that, but it still seemed like overkill until Jason ended up on a ladder asking for someone to get something for him, and realized everyone was actually busy doing something. Typically anyone beyond the two required for the work would just be playing on a phone or sitting idle.

Summer came downstairs and ate some leftover potluck stuff with me for lunch, and then I spent more of the afternoon running around doing non-group stuff. Eventually we finished out our full day and I headed home. Elementary summer school won’t start until next week, so it’s still pretty slow for me in spite of having both summer school campuses.

After having her hair cut, Summer came over and we went to get some things from my sister’s house. Then we went to Ruby Tuesday to use a BOGO coupon. As we walked in, I expressed how I always feel like I would almost always go somewhere better, even if I had to pay full price. The slap in the face came at the end of the meal when I was told the food I ordered didn’t qualify for the promotion, so I ended up paying twice what I expected. I’m sick to death of it with that place.

Boom, roasted!

 

End of the Year Review: Year 2

It was field day at the junior high today, so on top of being slow this time of year, I didn’t have anything new coming in. I decided to walk around some of the activities there, and had lunch from Subway that was brought in. School let out two hours early for our awards assembly at the performing arts center.

The guys left the shop earlier than I expected, so I was the last one to make it to the PAC. I mingled a little in the lobby, then found a seat with Summer and Miranda. Ryan got tech of the year, which was well deserved after all the work he’s been doing on just about everything that makes the rest of our jobs easier.

I stuck around and chatted with Becky for a little while until traffic settled down, and then headed home. On the way toward Hickey Park, I saw a fox run across the road from the school into the little meadow between the campus and the park. It had a squirrel in its mouth, which I kind of assume was dinner for some tiny fox babies.

When I got home, I moved the rest of the tadpoles to the 55-gallon tank. I counted around 250 alive, and only really found one corpse. There were some others that didn’t seem too active, but there’s a ton of movement now that they all have way more space to swim around. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with over 200 frogs, but it should be entertaining. The pair I took to Oakland have gotten way bigger than any of the ones I have at home, which I guess is due to less crowding and better water quality. Hopefully the larger tank will fix both of those issues, though I still need to go buy some more filter media.

I drove through Wendy’s for a couple burgers on the way to Summer’s house. She baked some fries, and we watched The Office for a while. There was some leftover caramel apple pie from the bake sale that was super good too.

On the way home, I decided to stop at Walmart for some new batteries to put in my Nest Protect and a replacement lava lamp bulb for the one I broke in the library. Then I ran into Steven while I was looking at water hose nozzles. I see his dad around the neighborhood, but I haven’t seen him in years. Crazy how time works.

Price check on prune juice, Bob. Price check on prune juice.

Grease is the Word

The girls were spending the day with their father, so Summer and I got ready and headed to Conway to catch Grease‘s 40th anniversary showing. I had only sort of seen it once before at Suzanne’s house years ago while she was having a party where people were doing things that kept me distracted from the movie, so it was nice to check it off my list proper.

After the movie, we wandered through Target for a while. She picked up a new swimsuit, and I loaded up on clearanced Easter candy. Then we found our way to Red Robin for dinner. It was pretty good, if not expensive, and really messy. Endless fries helped, but I didn’t think six onion rings were worth an upcharge.

That ain’t no shit, we’ll be getting lots of tit.

The Existential Review: Year 2

Reviews seemed to be bumped back by a month this year for some reason. I didn’t notice in time to ask about the timing, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.

It was the last day of testing, and everything went alright. Quiznos for lunch. Lots of work orders for after.

I met Josue at Ruby Tuesday for our birthday burgers. I left a little early to get there and took a loop around town to get there on the bike on account of the weather. Then we caught up over beer and cheeseburgers. He came by the house for a while after to see the new TV and what I’ve made of my home theater so far.

I needed to get some laundry done, but I’m exhausted, so it’s sleep instead.

Dinkin’ flicka.

Pixel 2 XL 3

We didn’t have any group work today, so I visited my buildings in the morning. Mollie set me up with some leftover biscuits and gravy at Oakland, and then I got some work done at the junior high before lunch. I was going to come home to eat leftovers, but ended up going to Wendy’s with Zach and Sara.

In the afternoon, my insurance replacement Pixel 2 XL came in, and once home, I spent several hours getting the screen protector and skin installed. I wasn’t too happy with this new brand of screen protector, but the skin installation went okay. I was able to salvage the wood grain top from my old phone, but the main skin was destroyed mostly because I also had the metal magnetic mounting plate stuck over it. Overall, it went okay, and I’m happy with the new look.

Later in the evening, I went and had dinner with the girls for a little while, then came back home to a few rounds of PUBG before bed.

This is exhausting.

Retrorito

Not much to report from work today. Summer took the afternoon off to take Autumn to the doctor, so the three of us had lunch at Stoby’s. I got my 8Bitdo N30 PRO controller in today, and I’m pretty impressed with the build quality. I look forward to loading up some emulators on my phone soon.

Summer made burritos for dinner, and we discovered how much of a pro-rito-roller I really am. I think I’ve found my true calling.

When fade into darkness, the light will keep strong and bright until itself dies.

High Class; Low Society

You want the nicest house on the block. It’s better to have high class in low society than low class in high society. I visited a recently/currently renovated McDonald’s for lunch today that was a perfect example. The self-ordering kiosks weren’t functioning yet, but the mobile ordering works well. Service and food were great because the owner was there in his McVette. It was a little funny that the manager didn’t know what I was talking about when I said I wanted to pay with Android Pay. I’ve used that method to pay for ages, and now suddenly it’s a problem because of some new floor tiles.

Back at work, I successfully installed Neverware on an old Gateway laptop, essentially turning a slow Windows machine into a faster Chromebook. Ryan was impressed enough, but nobody else was around to bear witness. Another day.

After work, I headed home and lost track of time in PUBG land again. I actually intended to go out again, but it’s probably best that I didn’t, as tired as I was this morning.

But what do white people think about the “Black Panther” movie?

MOOvie Day

We continued our movie marathon today with The Incredible HulkCaptain America, and Iron Man 2. We took a break in the afternoon somewhere between the movies and picked up some Popeye’s for a late lunch. As though the universe was teaching me a lesson for continuing to do business there, they shorted us our seven biscuits and all of our dipping sauces. On top of that, the spicy chicken seemed to not be spicy at all. Even more disappointing were the ghost pepper wings I decided to try again. I’ve seriously had ice cream spicier than those wings. At least the chicken was fresh and hot in temperature, unlike the fries that were cold and soggy.

By the time everyone left, I needed some time to unwind. Jack got on and played a few duos with me, and though we got close, we never won. I guess tomorrow I’ll clean house again. I don’t know why I thought chicken grease wouldn’t end up on all the things.

Don’t get crazy.

TellPopeyes

It was so warm again today. I spent most of the day at the shop working on a bunch of iPads. Ben, Sara, and I went to Brick Oven for lunch, and I got a big ol’ Big Italy. I can’t not order a large one of those things. They’re so delicious.

After work, I went to my parents’ house for some more fish soup, then made a stop at the junior high to take care of a couple things, and finally a quick jaunt to Summer’s before heading home to do a load of laundry for tomorrow. Once that was started, I filled out a survey for yesterday’s visit to Popeye’s, and maybe 10 minutes later I received a phone call from this evening’s shift manager. I guess I really ripped them with my comments, but I’m just so tired of coworkers dragging me there when it’s such lame service. The food’s usually pretty decent, but I shouldn’t have to ask if they have fried chicken currently available at a fried chicken restaurant. That’s retarded.

I finished the evening with a different kind of chicken dinner in PUBG with Clint, Jack, and Aaron. Clint was downed, but otherwise we all made it out alive, and it was awesome.

Only in America could a restaurant advertise a low calorie drink using a banner that says “<450 CALORIES.”

Technophile: Pixel 2 XL

I was surprised how much it warmed up today. I wasn’t expecting it after this past cold week.

My Pixel 2 XL finally came in today after like a month of waiting. I finally split my Google Voice number off from my Sprint number and used it to sign up for Google Fi to compare coverage and quality of service to what I’ve been getting on Sprint. I figure it’s time to look at options now that there’s no incentive to stay with any particular carrier. The Pixel 2 uses an eSIM instead of a physical SIM card for service on Fi, so I was able to sign up and jump right into service without any trouble at all. I’m a little nervous about losing my account history from Google Voice, but hopefully it will all just slide right over. I get to continue using Hangouts with SMS, which will hopefully also eliminate the weird issues I had with group SMS and certain emojis or text strings when combining Google Voice with Sprint integration.

The first thing I noticed on the new Pixel 2 XL was the color shift when viewing off-axis. I kind of wrote it off when listening to reviewers complain about it because I thought I had a similar color shifting issue with other phones and didn’t mind it, but WOW this is bad. I absolutely would not have expected this quality from any flagship device even a few years ago. I heard others make similar remarks, but it honestly didn’t look that bad in videos. In person, you get blue-shifting almost immediately off axis when looking at a white screen. It’s not nearly as noticeable when looking at a photo or something darker, but anything super white is painfully obvious. So far I haven’t noticed any issue with image retention or burn-in, but it may be too early to tell, and I haven’t been watching for it super hard either.

I’ve tried to just use it as I normally would, and my biggest complaint aside from the screen is the size of the phone in conjunction with the indistinct texture of the power button and its placement above the volume buttons. The size of the phone requires that I completely shift my grip to reach the power button that is way up in the top right to turn the screen off. While shifting my grip again to put it away, I find that I often accidentally unlock the phone again as I graze the fingerprint reader. On top of that, all of this grip-shifting leaves me more prone to dropping the phone, which is terrifying now that I’m not getting them for free with a one-time damage replacement from HTC Uh Oh. I’m not even sure if I’m still eligible for an ADH plan from either Fi or straight from the Google store, but it hasn’t been offered to me anywhere yet.

I still find myself trying to unlock the phone by touching where the home button was on my HTC 10. The fingerprint reader on the back isn’t the worst placement, but I definitely felt better about gripping the chin of the phone to unlock it than I do finding the right spot on the back. Hopefully a little bit of time will get me used to most of these things, but the texture of the power button being indistinguishable from the texture of the volume button is going to be a thorn in my side. Things like this really show the attention to detail that I’m used to from HTC. Without tactile differentiation on the buttons, I keep fumbling the simple locking of the device, which is something I have to do literally every time I use the device.

The volume and clarity of the speakers is actually pretty disappointing for it to have dual front-facing speakers. I really expected more in this area. It sounds okay, but it’s no HTC Boomsound. While playing with the ringtones, I found that sound was only coming out of the bottom speaker. Music plays out of both, but the bottom speaker is clearly louder and harsher than the top speaker, giving you an unbalanced feel when watching videos with stereo sound. I also wish the Now Playing feature that shows the title of ambient songs playing in the background would work with songs being played on the Pixel itself. Seriously, why the hell would it show me song information for something I’m not playing, but not show me information for something I’m actively playing on my device? That’s just stupid.

Voice quality on Google Fi seems to be lacking quite a bit compared to Sprint. I’m willing to make that sacrifice since I rarely make phone calls, but it’s worth noting. I’ve never found a carrier with voice quality as good as Sprint in this area. I haven’t really done any speed tests yet because I’m paying per megabyte, but I guess I should spend a few cents to compare service while I can.

Overall I just need to spend some more time with it to see how I really feel. Next week back at work should be interesting. I really hope I don’t drop it, because I’m going naked. #YOLO

After I got the phone set up, I took a shower and headed to the theater to meet with Jesica to watch Murder on the Orient Express. She finally texted right before the movie was set to start to let me know she was just finished getting her hair done, so I abandoned ship and went to my parents’ house for a while. I ended up eating some leftovers there, then came back home to play with the Pixel some more.

Fulfilled Plans: 2/5
At least there’s a Steam sale.