Opinions Are Like Family

Summer had to work this morning, so I let the girls sleep in a little while before showering and taking them to my parents’ house for the day. Julie was already there swimming with some friends, so we went in to meet with Chellie and Phil. Dad invited them over to learn a bit about film and print photography.

Julie had picked up some Popeye’s for us for lunch, so we had a little to eat before I sent the girls out to swim. They were a bit shy to get out there because of how much noise Julie and her two friends were making, and Eaddie wasn’t super excited to swim in the first place. I just laid on the couch inside and dozed off a little between apneas.

Eventually I got a grill going and pattied some hamburgers. I managed to fit all of the corn, four types of tubed meat, and some burgers on one grill. The more impressive part was that I finished cooking everything and toasting buns just as the last of the charcoal turned to warm ash.

The food was good, but somehow Julie got onto some tirade about racism. Lelan showed up at one point for just a few minutes, and Summer eventually showed up late after work. It was all a bit more excitement than I could really stand.

On the way home, I stopped by to see if Grant was cooking so I could talk to him about a possible catering job. It was just Felix hanging outside talking to a friend, so I headed on home. Autumn put on Coco much to Eaddie’s umbrage. Summer went straight to bed, so I played a couple rounds of Overwatch with Clint. Then I finished the night with an episode of The Punisher with Eaddie.

A Dothraki wedding family reunion without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair.

Juicy Fruit

We tried to sleep in a bit today, but the sun got me up early. I went outside to bang on my new cabinet to try and get the door straight enough to close properly. As I was finishing up, Summer left with Autumn so they could start their day.

I bounced around the house for a little while until I settled on the computer to troubleshoot my Plex subtitle problem. I never could get it to behave properly. Zach came by at some point and worked on the Fiero for a bit. I eventually took a shower and headed up to Summer’s house.

Autumn went to spend some time with her father, so Summer and I just picked at some leftovers for dinner and then sorted out what we needed for Eaddie’s little birthday gathering tomorrow. Then we went to Walmart and picked up everything for chicken tacos. When we got back to the house, Summer started prepping some sauces and sides, and I started some refried beans in the Instant Pot.

When we both got to a stopping point, we watched some Master of None. As soon as the beans finished cooking, I scooped them out of the water and blended them. That really made all the difference both in taste and volume, and Summer liked them so much she wanted a bowl to eat right away.

By the time everything was finished, there wasn’t much point in going back to my house just to sleep, so we ended the evening with another episode before bed.

Yabba dabba doo it!

The Breakthrough

I finally did it. I made a successful imaging task sequence. What’s more, the problem-step was early enough that I could fix it in one of my later sequences to quickly skip back through all the other additions I made.

Allen came back to the shop for lunch and wanted Bocadillos again, so I let him and Gary talk me into going for the third day in a row. It worked out in our favor though, because one of the school board members was having lunch there and decided to surprise us by sneakily going up and paying for our meals.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on into the evening copying flash drives and tinkering with the group policy setting that’s causing some weird issues with the Start Menu. It all comes down to what should be an unnecessary shortcut for staff that can’t seem to use the search function successfully.

I had to stop by the high school to pick up more flash drives before getting waxed out tomorrow, and then I went home to relax for a while. I got a surprise gift in the mail from Jennifer all the way from New Mexico to put up next to Becky’s other paintings. Then I tried to play some Overwatch, which lead to a lot more troubleshooting an issue with my display drivers to fix a flickering screen.

Eventually I made it up to Summer’s where I caught an episode of The Punisher with Eaddie before bed.

It wasn’t even procrastination so much as poor timing.

Spitting Image

Right after I got into the shower, they started working on the water lines down the road and I lost all of my water pressure. I practically had to jump around just to get wet. It was really humid this morning, but otherwise the weather was really nice. I rode the bike to work again, but I really need to take it in for scheduled maintenance. We still didn’t have any projects to do, so I spent all morning working on the wiki again. I think I finally got it to a place where I could be happy with it, so all that’s left is to get people to start creating articles for procedures and documentation.

Zach and Greg went to pick up Arby’s for lunch, and then Gary helped me dissect the imaging task sequence so I could rebuild it with a few changes for next year’s leased devices. I felt really happy with my level of understanding, and I even got in a little learning about subnetting on the side.

At the end of the day, Gary had to go to Sequoyah to do some more fiber switching, so I joined him again. As we left the shop, I looked up and saw the brightest, cleanest, bluest sky I think I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t see a cloud, a jet trail, or anything else in the sky at all. It was just pure blue.

When we finished, I stopped by Leonard’s to pick up a pry bar, Casey’s for a free water, and the shop to see Summer, all before heading home to play some Overwatch. The evening went by pretty quickly, and I eventually headed up to her house for the night.

Summer and Autumn were watching TV in bed, so Eaddie and I watched an episode of The Punisher before going to bed ourselves.

This season is a laugh track away from being a sitcom.

Cafeteria-Style

Autumn really wanted to go to Conway to do some shopping today, so I went home to clean up while Summer got her nails done. Then I picked everyone up and we headed out of town. Autumn wanted to look up hairstyles in the back, so Eaddie played DJ up front with me.

We started at Target and milled all around the place. I was a little worried that we’d need masks to get in places, but nobody brought any. It really wasn’t terribly crowded though, and most other people out and about weren’t wearing masks either. After maybe an hour or so, we left with basically just some toiletries.

The next stop was Kohl’s where we hit up the clearance racks. There wasn’t much for me, but the girls got a few things. Then we stopped by Dick’s for just a bit. I wanted to go to Best Buy, but they were straight-up closed with bars behind the door.

By the time we finished checking out, everyone was pretty hungry. I decided to try Pizza Ranch again since I had gotten an email recently that they were open again. They gave us masks to wear any time we were walking around, and then the buffet was served cafeteria-style. The food was surprisingly fresh considering there was only one other party there when we arrived, and I only saw two more come in before we left.

It was too late to go anywhere else since the virus has everything closing around eight, so we headed back home. Autumn really wanted to stay at my house, so we planned to let them clean and pack before heading over. It wasn’t but a few minutes later that she came back around and said she was sleepy and just wanted to go to bed, so we stayed in. Eaddie and I watched a couple episodes of The Punisher until things started to get pretty good, and then it was off to bed.

But why no fried chicken pizza???

Ketchup with Griff Q Over BBQ

This week went by super fast. When I got to work, Ben, Gary, and Zach were already in the conference room talking about something. That something ended up being the logistics behind bringing the district to true K-12 1-to-1 devices. I laid my brilliant plan to keep our old lease devices on them again, and I think they started to see the light.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out answer files for a Windows image. Even Gary said that was difficult, or at least confusing, which didn’t give me any hope at all. I felt like I was just beating my head against the wall forever, but it was kind of cathartic in a way.

Ben bought us all lunch at Linh, and my crunchy noodles were fire. I loved that it was absolutely loaded down with vegetables that I’ve sorely missed the last few days.

After work, I spent some more time chatting with Ben, then went home to sell my turnips on the Stalk Market. I am still more successful in Animal Crossing than real life, and I hate it.

I was going to get Gary and stop by the Ridgewood Brothers BBQ to visit with those guys, but he ended up having other plans. When I got there, Robert was already gone, but Felix and Grant were there. It was great getting to catch up a little with Grant, but it still feels like we barely scratched the surface. I haven’t had that much fun digging up old memories in a long time.

Eventually I made my way up to Summer’s for the evening. Autumn ordered Papa John’s delivery, so I ate what was left over. Then Eaddie and I started the second season of The Punisher before bed.

What am I going to do with a 10 gigabyte hard drive?
Just wait. Twenty years from now, you’re never gonna believe this shit.

Cover

We slept in a bit this morning before getting out of the house. Summer decided she wanted to plan a dinner with my parents, so she went home to clean and prep while I took the girls to my parents’ house to clean the pool cover.

Eaddie was with me, but we had to retrieve Autumn from her grandparents’ house. We got things started, but then the girls started fussing about being hungry, so I went to Tropical Smoothie and Wendy’s, because I guess I’m enabling that behavior now. I also went by their house to get Autumn’s swimsuit and give Summer a smoothie.

When I got back to my parents’ house, we let the girls take a break and eat, but then I had to take my parents to my house to check out some vinyl siding samples. The contractor that came to see us didn’t actually have any samples, but he did have a ring of chips to hold up, and I still preferred the dark brown to match with the non-primary color of my brick. He said he agreed, but you can never trust a salesperson.

When we finally got back to my parents’ house, the girls were out back swimming. They said it wasn’t too terribly cold, but we had to get the pool cover finished. They took turns scrubbing and hosing the thing down, and then Dad and I flipped and dried it before folding it back up for storage.

Summer forgot that we still had to eat dinner tonight as well before having my parents over tomorrow, so the kids and I agreed on Wendy’s. I customized all of the burgers, which seemed to completely confuse everyone there. I guess the way those customizations show up is pretty easily misinterpreted. We made do with what we got though, then Summer, Eaddie, and I watched an out-of-season episode of Glee before Summer went to bed. Then Eaddie and I finished the last few episodes of the Daredevil series that left me a little confused and disappointed, but overall satisfied with the show.

Do I really want to research the manufacturing differences in vinyl?

Slow Start; Quick Finish

I slept so well last night that I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. It took me a while to get going, and Eaddie basically slept until the last minute. I eventually got around to making an “everything” Italian loaf egg sandwich to take to Summer for what was supposed to be brunch but ended up being a late lunch. It felt super hot outside in the sun, and traffic was awful again. I miss the early days of the pandemic.

After lunch, we went by Julie’s to help take her TV off the wall so Suddenlink could check out why her internet keeps dropping out throughout the day. While we were there, we heat-pressed half of the flags I made, to cure the ink. The other half I wanted to experiment with water to get the paint to flow to both sides of the flag. Hopefully that will keep me from having to come up with a way to screen print the reverse side as well.

With that done, Eaddie and I headed back home and watched some more Daredevil until Summer got off work and came to get her. They went home to clean up while I did the same, and then they picked up Slim Chickens for dinner on the way back here.

The chicken was pretty decent, but I think for my money, Zaxby’s has better sauces. I put on the 2003 Daredevil movie for us to watch, and Eaddie just kept groaning through the entire thing, which really made it all worthwhile. She did find a lot of parallels though, and insisted we watch the first episode of the Netflix series when the movie was over.

After that, Summer went to bed and we watched a few more episodes, ending with a really horrible one with a pointless flashback to an already established-well-enough character. Being this close to the end, it really aggravated me that they wasted a whole episode to that.

Gravy. Gravy would make it all better.

Dared to Stay Up Late

I slept pretty well last night, got up this morning, and made myself a leftover hamburger for brunch. The girls were in their rooms until the afternoon, when I finally coaxed them out for some chores. Autumn wanted to go to her grandparents’ house, so I got her to clean house while Eaddie finished mowing the lawn that they skipped the other day.

When the time came, I dropped Autumn off and went home for a little bit. I only had a few minutes to kill before Summer would be home, so I hopped into a few rounds of Overwatch, then went by Sonic for 50 cent corn dogs. I went back up to their house, we had dinner, and then packed up some stuff to come back home for the evening.

We watched a couple episodes of Glee for the first time in a little while, and then Summer went to bed and Eaddie and I stayed up super late, hooked on the last season of Daredevil. Watching the show has made me want to go back and watch the movie from 2003, but nothing screams the year 2000 like that soundtrack.

BRING ME TO LIIIIIIIIIIIFE (wake me up!)

Feudal Review

I felt a little sour this morning, so I went in to work a bit late. I wasn’t really supposed to be staffing the office anyway, so nobody really cared. I was surprised to learn that it was review time, but we really didn’t have much to talk about since we have a pretty communicative relationship. I would have liked higher marks for being one of the top performers, but we don’t reward good behavior here.

I had a really pointless conference call to try and set up a live demo of Linewize Classwize, and they seemed a little confused that all I really needed to see was the big-brother capabilities of their classroom management software. Since that call lasted through lunch, Ben and I ran to get BOGO Subway afterward, and chatted in the conference room.

Summer came by to eat my leftovers, but mostly to visit with me. Then I tinkered until quitting time. Autumn needed a ride home from physical therapy, so I got her and we stopped by my house to pick up my freshly delivered black flags. Then we went to Julie’s so I could try my hand at arts and crafts. She cut some vinyl and showed me how to screen print, and I made a handful of little desk pirate flags for my future conquests.

The screen printing process was tedious, but fun once I understood some of the different variables to control. It didn’t take long to become proficient with the tools I had, but to make all 36 flags I purchased, I started to really think of some ways to increase efficiency.

By the time I got a few done, Summer was home and ready to eat, so Autumn and I headed on up and had some leftover pulled pork sandwiches. We ended the evening with another thrilling episode of Game of Thrones, and stopped on a bit of a cliffhanger – probably the biggest we’ve had so far.

When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.