Tag: work

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I Can’t Believe, Today Was a Good Day

Zach wanted everyone to come to the shop at 8 this morning, and Autumn and I pulled up just in time to see the recyclers picking up junk from the graveyard. I guess they did have a little meeting inside, but Ben was outside helping clear out the warehouse. Everyone split pretty quick, so Autumn and I just headed on to the high school for the day.

I didn’t really get very far with my task sequence in the morning, but I did discover a way to create batches of warranty claims using a CSV template. That turned a 14+ hour job into just a few minutes after the couple hours figuring out the poorly documented process.

We went to Burger King and got a huge family pack so we could take Summer some food. She had already bought food for the shop, but ate a bit with us anyway.

The afternoon was ripe with success. Autumn verified the warranty status on a ton of serial numbers for me, then unboxed almost all of the teacher devices. I got the self maintainer claims filed for replacement parts, and found the rogue opening bracket that was breaking my task sequence all along. I ended the day duplicating flash drives for a quick jump into imaging next week.

When we got home, I checked out the first day’s worth of siding work on the house. The soffit was done almost all the way around the house, and they were bringing it horizontally from the edge of the roof to the house instead of sloping upward with an overhang. It made me a little worried about having space for creatures to crawl into, but I guess once it’s sealed off it shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Autumn and I waited there until Summer got off work, then we met her at Shell to use my 30¢ per gallon discount. She took Autumn from there, but we both just headed straight to their house for the evening. Autumn and I picked at leftovers, Summer and Eaddie mowed the back yard, and then we put on Who Framed Roger Rabbit because Autumn had never seen it before. Everyone was pretty tired, so it was a relatively early night.

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Aye Captain

I dropped Autumn off with Summer this morning so she could do something besides sit around the house while I got ready for work. Summer ended up needing the help anyway, so it worked out at the expense of running late myself.

We had our work cut out for us today, to a much greater extent than I expected. I started out having Autumn file warranty claims while I bounced between servicing other devices and troubleshooting my task sequence for faculty devices.

Just before lunch, Zach called and said they were getting kicked out of the kitchen area and the other half of the cafeteria at Gardner, so they had to bring me the rest of my teacher devices. I didn’t really have room for them either, but we did our best to carve out a hole. I still have a bunch of new monitors sitting in the hallway for Ethan’s eight additional lab computers.

Obama’s been gone so long that
America’s all out of change.

As soon as we finished there, we went to Popeye’s to pick up some chicken for lunch. We got to Summer just before a huge storm hit, and we ate with her. Ronda showed up for an oil change on our way out, so we stopped to talk with her a bit, then made it back to the high school. We ran into a shotgun pattern of warranty expiration dates when filing claims, which had me super stressed. In the end, they’re all just extra devices anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s all garbage, and I don’t really care if it fails because I know it’s not any fault of ours.

We worked pretty late, and I still never got a functioning faculty image made, but I think I may have figured out why. I won’t know until I get to try my new media tomorrow morning. It’s Friday though, and everyone has chosen to work at 8am. I took off last Friday, so tomorrow is my first full scheduled eight hour day since before the pandemic started. I’ve actually worked plenty longer than that by choice, but somehow actually being scheduled for it feels worse.

Summer got off early and went to the gym, so Autumn and I ran by the graveyard to quickly check for any treasure. Then we went home so I could quickly change before going to Walmart for dinner supplies. They had a ton of Petit Jean pepper bacon marked down pretty significantly, so of course I bought all of it.

When we got back to their house, Summer and Eaddie were up in arms about all the things Eaddie hadn’t done at home all day. It took us a while to get our rotisserie chicken wraps going because I had to get in Eaddie’s face about it. I couldn’t fathom rebutting not completing any chores because I had nothing to do all day. That was just stupid, and she knew it.

Dinner was great, and at least felt healthy. Autumn went to her room and passed right out, and Eaddie turned her attitude around to get some things done in her room. She even seemed to be in a good mood about it.

I guess sometimes you’ve just gotta take a hollering.

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On the Subject of Taking on Large Projects by Yourself

Autumn didn’t want to go to work with me today, but said she would help after lunch if I came to get her. I had all morning to myself to do some more device shuffling, and start getting together claim information for the devices I couldn’t fix in-house.

Just before lunch time, Autumn texted me and said she just wanted to stay home all day, so I wouldn’t have her in the afternoon either. Zach let me know when my 120 teacher laptops arrived, and they already had them loaded into the Gardner kitchen by the time I got there. Everyone else was busy, and also using the trucks and trailer, so I just loaded 30 laptops into my trunk and delivered them to the high school myself.

Ben showed up just as I was getting a cart to retrieve them from my car, so he helped me unload. Then we chatted with Karen for a tiny bit before I went in to try imaging one of the new devices. It was then that I realized I would have to do a bit more work on my task sequence to make it work with the teacher laptops. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get that working, but it won’t be until tomorrow that I have a flash drive ready to test again.

I went home to change after work, then went to meet Beth and Mark at their shop to do some technology consulting. He was finishing up with a customer, so I had to wait a bit, and then things went very differently than I expected. He sat down and started chatting about school district stuff with me, and I just started vomiting grievances. I figure this will end one of two ways. I’ll either be let go for not drinking the Kool-Aid, or be inducted into some dark society whose sole mission is to root out the corruption in our local government. Either way it should be a lot of fun.

Moving on from that, we chatted at length about choices in email hosting for a business domain, and I was left mostly confused about why any of this was happening. He seemed anxious to pay me though, if I only had the mental capacity to conjure up some fair billing practice.

By the time I got up to Summer’s, the girls had already eaten the homemade Hamburger Helper that Autumn made for dinner. I warmed up some for myself, and then watched the last episode of The Punisher with Eaddie. The evening went by frustratingly quickly, and all I have to look forward to is more laptops in the morning.

Don’t go and try making sense of it. You’ll go positively mad.

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Accounted

Autumn came to work with me again today, and we finally got most of the old lease boxed up and ready to ship. I spent most of my time trying to account for every serial number that Lenovo expects to receive back. We did a pretty good job of sorting everything out, but it wasn’t until I got some feedback from the library staff that we really had everything accounted for.

We went to Cici’s for lunch since I had another BOGO. Then we stopped by the shop to catch up a bit. With all the older, purchased devices I’ll be shipping back, I’ll actually be keeping quite a few of the old leased devices as a sly upgrade.

We finished up at the high school and then came back to my house for just a little bit. It was then that I realized the new leaf blower I bought did not use the same battery from my lawn mower like I expected. Failing that, we headed out to pick up Eaddie, then went to my parents’ house for some leftovers.

I got the girls food, then let Autumn swim while I finished up some super-veggie spring rolls. They were basically the plant version of sausage in a casing. Fiber for days.

On the way back home, we stopped to get Summer some food from Tropical Smoothie since she had a long day, and I watched a couple episodes of The Punisher with Eaddie before bed.

Well that blows.

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Lowering the Standards

I stopped by Casey’s this morning to grab my free slice of pizza before it expired. Then it was a solo day at the high school, all day long. I put on some tunes and crunched through over 100 laptops with higher levels of damage, and pulled out the small handful that would need to be repaired, and boxed up the rest that just had heavier cosmetic damage so they could be shipped back to Lenovo.

Nobody reached out about lunch, so I worked straight through with half a Soylent. That’s something I’ve been wanting to get back into, but haven’t had the opportunity either because of social eating, or because Autumn was with me.

At the end of the day, I stopped by central office to sign my contract, then visited the shop to see what everyone else had been up to all day. There was a huge pile of iPads in the floor, so I guess that was my answer.

On the way out, I stopped by Casey’s again for a free cookie, then by Summer’s shop to see her. She would be leaving soon for the gym, so I headed home to change before meeting her back at my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom made phở out of some leftover beef from spring rolls and frozen broth. Then I took a bunch of plants to Bác Vân’s house before heading to Summer’s for the evening.

The girls were finally back home, and Summer said she was hoodwinked about Autumn going skydiving. I guess I wasn’t really surprised to hear of the 18-year age requirement, but I hadn’t considered it before. The girls must have all been pretty tired, because they all disappeared to their rooms pretty quickly. I took the opportunity to get to bed a bit early myself.

103 down; ??? to go!

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Aw, Shucks!

Gary called us all to the shop this morning in Ben’s absence, and arranged for the whole crew to unbox student laptops at the high school. For some reason Zach kept wanting to just hand-load the laptops onto the trucks instead of getting maintenance to use the forklift, but thankfully in the end we had it done right. Chris drove the forklift over and kept talking about how much of a real man he was for being able to load the pallets for us.

We ended up sitting right inside the back doors to shuck boxes, since we had to take the trash back out anyway. Then we wheeled carts full of laptops into my office and under the cubbies.

Most of us went to La Chiquita for a super fast lunch. We were all pretty tired and drenched in sweat already from the humidity, but lunch was a good break. Afterward was finishing up more of the same, and then Gary and Josh stayed to help finish up a couple mini pallets that were already rolled up to my office.

When we left, Autumn and I stopped by Casey’s for the freebie of the day, and then I dropped her off at her house before going home to change. Ronda called and said that they were driving through Searcy and saw Michael on the side of the road. They hydroplaned and totaled their car, and the cops were already on the scene to help. I finally got a hold of him to confirm everyone was okay and that someone was on the way to pick them up.

After chilling out a bit at home, I went to my parents’ house for a dip in the pool. Then I finished up the last of the eggplant soup before heading up to Summer’s for the evening. We caught an episode of Master of None before bed since the girls were both off in their rooms.

Sweat dreams are made of these…

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Movers of Things

Autumn chose to come to work with me yet again, so we met what was left of the crew at the shop this morning. Everyone but the newbies had taken the day off, so I met Ben, Greg, and Josh at the high school to load laptops into the trailer. They hauled everything out so quickly that I actually lost count, and ended up shorting them by one box of 20 laptops, so I’ll probably have Heather come pick those up later. I’m done doing all of this extra work for no good reason or appreciation.

The guys were meeting some old coworkers from Service Plus at Linh, so I convinced Autumn to try it out, and we picked up Ben from the shop. After lunch, we went back to the shop to pick up a bunch of old model laptops that were pulled from the junior high and took them to the high school. We stopped for some happy hour drinks from Sonic along the way, and though my Red Bull Summer Edition Slush was good, I did not necessarily feel like it gave me wings.

The afternoon was much more relaxed, and we eventually started sifting through laptops we had set aside with what I considered to be heavier damage. Fortunately most of those are actually just cosmetic damage that we can ship back to Lenovo without any additional service.

We ran back by the shop after work so I could sign my contract for the next school year, but everyone had already left the auditorium. I had mentioned the Bargain Barn to Autumn earlier, so we decided to stop in to see what they were about. Allen told me about them and mentioned that they had good snacks. I had no idea. It just seemed like a normal little thrift shop from the front, but then we walked through a door in the back of the room and it was like walking into some kind of slumlord Willy Wonka shop. We picked up a couple things, including a giant tin of butter cookies to take to Summer. Then we went home until dinner.

Since Eaddie was staying with her grandparents another night, Autumn and I decided to go to Cici’s for dinner to try and catch the Corona again. They had plastic wrap all around the front of the buffet so they could serve you cafeteria-style. It was pretty empty, but the drive-through looked busy. All the pizza on the bar was pretty dry and gross from the lack of traffic, so I asked them to make me one with everything. It was absolutely Zen.

When we left, Autumn wanted to go Bowling, but somehow I convinced her to go shop with me at Lowe’s instead. We wandered around for a bit just chatting along until I stumbled upon a big 48-inch Kobalt garage cabinet that had been marked down to half price due to some damage. I figure with just a very little bit of work, I could get the thing back into nearly new condition.

I spoke to a manager, took Autumn back to my house, then went to Allen’s to borrow his truck. The trip back into Lowe’s was a little more chaotic just because of how busy they were, but eventually I got someone to help me check out and load the cabinet into the truck. I only had to adjust it once, just because the cabinet door wouldn’t lock shut, and the wall-mount straps on the back were blowing around and hitting the glass.

Autumn helped me unload the cabinet and I walked it into the garage, then I went back to Allen’s and chatted with him and Charlotte for a few minutes. Eventually I made it back home, and I watched some random stuff on TV with Autumn until Summer got home from her late night bowling teambuilder. Then I put on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 until everyone got bored, and we went to bed.

Come with me
And you’ll be
In a world of out-of-date confections.

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The Hired Help

Autumn came with me to work again today, and again outworked and outperformed the paid help. Heather was exactly as late as usual, which makes me wonder why she can’t just set her alarm ten minutes earlier.

We started off walking down to the storage area under the cafeteria and found some waxed chicken boxes we could use to haul the laptops to the junior high. Then we went back upstairs and finished imaging everything we had. Once we had the last of the laptops on the benches, I sent Heather to go track down the older 20GA models so we could ship those back. I did not hear from her again, other than to tell us to which room we should deliver her laptops tomorrow in her absence.

Autumn and I went to Chick-fil-A and picked up lunch, then went to eat with Summer. Afterwards, we stopped by the shop to see if we could intercept Heather or anyone else. Gary and the newbies were in the breakroom having lunch, so Autumn and I went back to the high school and retrieved the boxes from the dungeon.

I built a spreadsheet to compare what serial numbers Lenovo expects to receive back while Autumn folded boxes. Then the two of us started my third inspection cycle of all 1,015 laptops while we packed them into the boxes for transfer to the junior high, ensuring that they would receive the best of the best of these gross, teenager-used devices.

When we left, I dropped her off at Old Post Park for an Explorers meeting and ran home to clean up. I decided to pick her back up on the bike, so I got the pressure washer out to blow the cobwebs off of the R1. She had never ridden before, but reacted much more calmly than ever before when I had suggested she try to ride with me in the past.

We went by the shop to meet up with Summer and Eaddie, but they were inside waiting for a tow truck that would deliver a vehicle that had seized up after dropping all of its oil when it left. I noticed the streak of oil in the road, but I thought it was just a wet spot from someone leaving after everything had been cleaned at closing time.

Eaddie was picked up by her grandparents, and the rest of us went back home. Summer, having had a pretty bad day, sent me to Wendy’s for a bag of Baconators. Then I took Autumn home to clean up and get some fresh clothes before coming home for the night. Of course, around that time I realized I had forgotten to do my own load of laundry I needed for the next day, so it was a bit of a late night for me.

Bye bye, birdie.

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Bring Your Daughter to Work Day

Autumn wanted to go to work with me today, so I let her come help with the laptop processing. She ended up being a huge help, and even spent less time griping about the work than Heather. Having her there filled the little gaps where Heather and I were previously tripping over each other. The downside to that improved efficiency was that there was basically no downtime at all. We were basically moving the entire day, so we pretty much finished sorting all the laptops out.

Ben texted that they were heading to Bocadillos for lunch, so I took Autumn there instead of Chick-fil-A where she had been asking to go all morning. We’ll probably end up there tomorrow to make up for it. I wasn’t even hungry, but ate anyway and ended up regretting it. I really kind of preferred just working straight through lunch.

At the end of the day, Ben stopped by to see our progress and chat for a bit. The logistics of getting 875 laptops to the junior high are still a bit daunting, and there are a lot of options on how to handle which laptops will be returned for the lease. At least I can take comfort in knowing I still have some time left to file the warranty claims.

Autumn and I headed to my house to change, then went to Walmart to pick up some stuff for dinner. She made both teriyaki and Buffalo sauces for some chicken and rice. I helped a bit, and made some broccoli to green things up a bit.

When Summer got home from the gym, we ate and then packed up to head to my house for the evening. We had to stop by her parents’ house first to meet her sister and niece. Eaddie decided to bail on us and stayed the night there, so Autumn came back with us and we watched an episode of Game of Thrones before bed.

What do we say to one more episode?
“Not today.”

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Squatsville

Today was day two of the great laptop imaging race of 2020. We found our stride a bit quicker this time, and got up to around 600 laptops done. I also discovered that the warranty is good until the middle of August for most of our laptops, which was a tremendous relief.

After work, I went home to decompress for just a little bit before meeting the girls at my parents’ house for dinner. Autumn and I went out for a short swim before dinner while Mom finished the eggplant soup. Eaddie and I ate soup, and Summer and Autumn had some leftovers instead.

Eventually we made it up to Summer’s for the evening. I got a massive cramp in the front of my right thigh, which seemed like a really weird place to cramp. I figured it was from the two days worth of squats moving laptops around. I still prefer that to the hundred depot laptop claims I’ll have to file.

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or more!