Tag: work

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Dirty Gifting

I got up a bit earlier this morning so I could get to work for a Fat Daddy’s lunch and a game of Dirty Santa. Melinda somehow coerced the entire crew to participate, so of course we had a fair amount of disparity in the quality of gifts. I started out strong, was the victim of an untimely theft, scored what was probably the best gift in the lot, was victimized again, and ultimately left with a stuffed puppy in a Santa hat with a chocolate snowman.

School let out an hour early, so I didn’t really get any work done. I ended up going by Casey’s for a free pack of cookies, and then was asked to deliver Autumn to therapy just before making it home. Eaddie had to stay and clean house so their friends could come over to stay the night, so I dropped Autumn off with Summer and went on home for a few hours.

When the girls all eventually made it home, I came up and had some pizza with them. Then it was going to be a relatively early night, but Julie called with a deal that had me up racking my brain. At the end of it all, I just had to bite the bullet. I’ll figure out the details later.

No amount of over-preparation ever seems to help anyway.

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Merry Crampsmas

I felt a bit worse this morning and into the day, but I made it in for the afternoon. I didn’t stick around the shop for as long, and spent most of my time at the junior high. Eaddie found me after school and said she hadn’t eaten anything because she couldn’t get her Invisalign out. After some convincing, she took half of my apple and mostly sucked on it for half an hour, because her teeth were hurting so much. On the way home, I got her some Wendy’s chili to eat since it would be less solid.

When we got to their house, the girls got ready for karate while I started prepping another ham bone soup. This time it would be split pea. I dropped them off and got back to the house just as Noah pulled in. I got the Instant Pot going, and dinner was finished just as Summer got home from work with the girls. The soup was pretty good, though the green thickness of it didn’t look too great. A sprinkle of mozzarella and a thick slice of French bread helped a lot.

Summer had to do some stuff for work, and Julie finished printing a shirt for me, so I left to pick it up from her house. She had a lot to say, so I was there for quite a while. Just before I left, we got to laughing so hard that my entire torso cramped from every angle, so she loaded me up with electrolytes. I eventually made it back home for the evening, and wrapped a Dirty Santa gift for work tomorrow.

I really hope someone put away the soup.

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Threeniversary

This morning started pretty rough, comparatively. I’ve got to get back into the groove of actually doing anything every day, and since nobody managed to secure any millions of dollars while I was badly ill, going to work is one of those things. I’m not sure if the grilled onions, bacon, egg, and cheese on a leftover Popeye’s biscuit was the culprit, but it was delicious nonetheless.

I made it to work well before the recyclers, and unloaded some old scrap electronics. Then I headed to the junior high by myself to work on more laptops. I actually didn’t really fix any laptops, but I did manage to build an updated image for them that includes some software that was missing before.

Eaddie met up with me after school, but her father picked her up just before my quitting time, so they could go out to eat. Since he had the girls, I left work to catch Summer, and we went to Sumo for dinner. It was relatively quiet, but the food was better than I’ve had there in a long time, and came out super quickly. Then we each went home so I could check on the house before I caught up with everyone at her house.

Noah had just started Spenser Confidential, so I sat down and watched that with them. Eaddie was in trouble for most of the night for losing her brand new Invisalign, but then Noah found them sitting – transparently – on the bathroom counter. It’s no wonder no one made it rich within the last month. After the movie, it was off to bed to do it all over again.

Like a clown fish and an anemone!

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I Was Shorai Did It Right!

Today was supposed to be a bit rainy, but the rain never came. I drove to work anyway, since I had to pick up my life vests I had loaned to the theater. Daniel had to come help me work on Chrissy’s Mac, and three out of my four Adobe packages worked after manually shutting a bunch of apps down. Any sane person would think a restart would clear that, but no, not in Apple’s world.

The morning went by a little slowly, but I made it through to lunch. Jeff from Belkin called and confirmed what I already knew – that my brand new WeMo light switch had a firmware problem and needed to be replaced. I wanted to try installing my other one too, just to see if it had the same problem, but that would have to wait for after work.

I went by the shop after lunch and gave Ben the Internet Yellow Pages book I found in the garage, and then helped him haul a smashed Newline touch panel into a dumpster out by the bus barn. I’m not looking forward to walking the SMART E75 models down there, but I think that’s happening this week.

The afternoon was slow as well, as I walked across campus again, then spent a little time outside working at the picnic tables. When I got home from work, I started right away on replacing my WeMo switch, and discovered that it was working as intended, so I only have the one that needs to be replaced. My MotoMummy package came in as well, and they hooked me up with my requested drawing and a stack of decals, so I spent the rest of the evening replacing the battery in the Shadow. I finished with just enough time to ride over and surprise Summer and Eaddie after karate. I gave Eaddie a ride home, then made it back to my house in the cold evening air.

My phlegmy cough had me pretty ragged last night, but I figured that’s all it was. I slept pretty horribly and felt absolutely exhausted when I got home from work. It wasn’t until later in the evening that I started to feel a little feverish, so it was an early night to bed, hopefully without the COVID.

100.7, The Edge!

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Tall Stairs

We had a few short showers today, but it was dry enough to take the bike to work. I started out in the band area and had to carry a huge ladder down the hall so I could reset the power on an Airtame that refused to connect to the network.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet all to myself. Summer had a lunch break scheduled, so she picked me up and we went to Bocadillos. An old student of hers was our server, and he seemed super excitable, but a little forgetful. Otherwise it was pretty great, but I ate too much.

There wasn’t much more going on in the afternoon, so I had a bit of trouble focusing on anything. I had half of an energy drink just to keep myself going for the rest of the day. A third guy from Belkin called to troubleshoot my WeMo, but unlike the first two, this guy only works business hours, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow on my lunch break.

After work, I went home to change and start washing dishes before picking up the girls and bringing them down. Summer beat us home for the evening, and after she had a shower and picked at some leftover ham, we watched an episode of Cobra Kai and then went to bed.

I’m a phlegmingo.

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Lotería!

Summer got up this morning and made some delicious eggs scrambled with a variety of peppers and onions for breakfast. Then she picked up Autumn from her Explorers camp trip before we went to Walmart to pick up what we needed for her work Friendsgiving dinner.

When we got back, she started on her broccoli salad, and then I got the ham started in the oven and took a shower while they went to get Eaddie from her friend’s house. Everything finished up right on time, and one of Summer’s employees dropped off her foster kid to hang out with the girls while we all attended the party.

We had a really good time. Everyone put together a really great dinner party with lots of good food. Summer got to announce her two promotions at the shop, and made a heartwarming speech that had everyone’s hushed attention. Then we gambled quarters in a game of Lotería, which was a lot like Bingo with tarot cards.

We were the first to go, partly so the rest of the crew could enjoy themselves and partly so we could get back to the kids. Everyone settled in for the evening and I headed home just to make my morning a bit easier after getting all gussied up today. My blood pressure seems to be high in the evenings after being low throughout most of the day. The clinic cancelled my last appointment and declined my medication refill though, so that’ll have to be a discussion once I get a little closer to the bottom of the bottle.

Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. What do we do? We clean, clean!

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On Queue

I woke up half an hour early today just to go to Starbucks for a plastic red cup. When I got there, the drive-through was coned off and traffic was wrapped around the parking lot, so I waited for just a minute before leaving after I saw absolutely no movement.

That threw me a little off of my morning routine, and I ended up late by a few minutes, but nobody was talking about anything at work. In fact, there were only five of us there, with Melinda and Josh out with COVID, and Allen taking a vacation day to avoid a cable pull. Ben said he’d buy us all lunch since we all made it to Friday.

I didn’t have any group work in the morning, so I went to the high school until lunch. Then I beat everyone else back to the shop. We decided to check out the Ridgewood Brothers’ first Friday lunch first, and would move on to Peg Leg if the line was too long. Our third option was Fat Daddy’s in London if Peg Leg wasn’t open for dine-in. Fortunately there was hardly a line, but unfortunately they were out of everything but loin back ribs and pulled pork. It still made for an incredible lunch though, and it was a beautiful day to eat outside.

After lunch, I had to help Kyle take some carts to Sequoyah. It was predictably awkward, and then he wanted me to put the truck away afterward since he had some other work to finish up there. I went back to the shop for a little while, then ended the day at the high school.

When I got home, I traded for the Murano to get some gas, then came home and waited for Summer and Autumn to get there. Autumn and I set up a dome tent I found in a repossessed vehicle back when I worked at AAF, and surprisingly it looked brand new aside from a couple missing pieces. As long as it doesn’t rain this weekend, she should be fine to camp in it.

Meanwhile, Summer got a fire going in the pit out back, and then we cooked some brats over it for dinner. We ran out of fire just as we finished as many marshmallows as we wanted, and then we came inside to watch Ralph Breaks the Internet. It didn’t have quite the amount of easter eggs as Ready Player One, but it was really good. I wish we had watched it in 3D though.

Queue? Cue? Que? Q?

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MacNuggies With Bae

Ben emailed us early this morning to say that Melinda tested positive for COVID. We were all pretty sure she had it the other day when I was at the shop, but evidently she refused to go home. Surprisingly, I don’t think anyone else chose to quarantine. Even Zach, who I think jokingly hugged on her that day, was at work today. Josh apparently took COVID days, but refused to test because if it comes back positive, his breadwinner wife would have to quarantine as well. The level of selfishness kind of astounds me.

I stuck to my office for most of the day, but was mostly aimless. I left for a late lunch and got a big bag of McNuggets to share with Summer, and we ate on the bench outside her shop. Then I went to our office for some parts and to talk to Ben for a bit before going back to the high school.

I wrapped up the day at the Center, getting their new box office ticket printer working. There wasn’t a lot of useful troubleshooting I could do, but through enough tinkering, I finally got it to work.

I stopped to see Summer again on the way home, then spent a quiet evening alone at the house. I got some more laundry done while Inception played, then went to bed.

You’re waiting for a train.

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On the Subject of Customer Service

I had a few new things come in this morning, so I spent all day working on those. The kids were back, which meant I had to work around the bell schedule again. I also kept getting phone calls instead of work orders, but fortunately it wasn’t anything too serious.

Summer got a lunch break, so I picked her up and we went to Brangus. A big group of the guys were there with Dale, and it hurt my feelers that not one of them said a word to me about it. I knew it was Gary’s birthday, so I guess it was my fault for not finding my way back to the shop before lunch, but a text doesn’t seem like too much trouble if they wanted me there. On the plus side, our waitress was my favorite, and remembered my order.

I spent all afternoon fighting my way around a switch configuration, which really ended up being due to port security and forgetting that there was another network device in line that kept breaking things as I fixed them. I won in the end, except for some lag in how often PaperCut updates printer IPs.

After work, Julie brought me some leftover donuts from work. Then Summer came over and took a bath while I finished up some leftovers. Autumn called for a ride because Nick’s car quit on them on the drive over, so we picked them up.

While the girls were inside watching TV, I called Belkin WeMo support for help with my new light switch that won’t update firmware. The support was surprisingly really great in spite of having to call back when the line went dead the first time. The guy I got the second time could tell I knew my stuff, so we sped through the troubleshooting stuff really quickly and he escalated the issue with an expected callback in a day or two. Best of all, they’re open 24/7, so I really can take care of it when it’s convenient for me.

Once off the phone, I had to play catch-up on a conversation with emotion that the girls were having. We de-escalated pretty easily, and set some expectations. With that, the leash will get just a little bit shorter, and the behavior will have to show marked improvement.

Finally, just before bed, I ordered a new Shorai battery for the Shadow. I had to email the manufacturer this afternoon for the correct part number, and they responded in like an hour. Of course I went back to MotoMummy for the battery, since they’ve always been spectacular on top of having the best price by a long shot. This time we’ll see if they can draw my namesake on the shipping box.

“Like hugging a giant rotisserie chicken.”
Sometimes you just have to take the compliments as they come.

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Where Yeezy At?

Today was the second virtual day to account for conferences, so I quietly closed a few work orders at the high school before taking a lunch. This time it was Burger King that had a free Whopper, so I picked that up and then ate at home.

It was a gorgeous day at that point, so I tried starting the Shadow. It didn’t even grumble, so I put it on the charger and took the R1 back to work.

I spent the afternoon at the shop with Gary, troubleshooting the terrible performance in Cognos. We drilled it down to something likely in Group Policy, so it’s anybody’s guess what the difference between our laptops and desktops is. I broke off of that project and got a software deployment made, and then it was time to go.

I only stopped at home long enough to change, then took the girls to karate. I still had a $5 off coupon for Ace Hardware, so I went by Leonard’s and just perused the kitchen wares for nearly an hour. I ended up getting a tea infuser that immediately broke as soon as I unpackaged it, and a tire patch kit for my mountain bike, all for like 40 cents.

I ended the night with some laundry and an early bedtime. I couldn’t bear to stay awake knowing Kanye was relegated to the “Other Candidates” heading.

You may be talented, but you’re not Kanye West.