Tag: work

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One Last Call for Alcohol

I spent today closing out work orders. One by one, they fell. I got hung up for a while on a phone that I’m not entirely convinced is broken, but I still don’t know how to fix it. Needs more knowledge.

Dale, Jason, and Zach were most of the way through their meals by the time I met them at Taco John’s. Then I closed out some more work orders in the afternoon. I’m back in the teens, and ready to start closing out some really old ones that I’ve left open simply due to low priority.

After work, I went home and started boiling my Antworks gel so I could fill up my ant farm again. I’d never used it before, but the ant colony in my bathroom convinced me to break it out again. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a queen, but hopefully they’ll do something and not just die overnight.

There’s always time for Jello.

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Empty the Toy Box

Allen called me early this morning wanting help hanging a touch panel, so I left Oakland and met him and Brice at the shop. They had most everything loaded up, but I caught a couple things Allen forgot before we left. Unfortunately I didn’t catch everything before we got to London, and we were missing a driver we needed for the tool box as well as the actual mount for the touch panel. To aggravate me further, traffic was utterly retarded with what little drizzle we had for rain. I was stuck behind someone going 10 miles under the speed limit on the way back to town, and then on the way back to London I kept getting stuck by people driving slowly or not paying attention and swerving or parking at green lights.

We finally got the panel hung and it started to rain a bit more. We stopped at the dumpster to throw away our trash, and then Allen backed into someone else’s truck. It wasn’t a gentle bump either. He smashed into it with a major thud. Miraculously we couldn’t see any damage to either vehicle. We figured the trailer hitch hit the tire and just stopped us cold, but I had to assume there must be some alignment issue after that hit. Allen went inside to report himself, and then we made our way back to the shop.

By that time I was so incredibly frustrated that I decided to dump both tool boxes and rebuild them from scratch. I think it took me a little over three hours, but I got all the random nonsense cleaned out and organized. It’s amazing how empty they look when they only have what they’re supposed to have in them. I finally left the shop and was going to grab some lunch, but ended up only getting some nuggets on the way to the junior high since school was almost out. I finished the day there, and even worked a couple hours late just because I wanted to get a loaner laptop set up for Tracy since her hard desktop hard drive died this morning.

Summer got some chicken grilling at her house, so I ran to Walmart to get some squash, zucchini, mushrooms, and a bell pepper to skewer, and we had a pretty great dinner. I didn’t stay long though, because I still had to set up the loaner laptop. It took me practically until bedtime, and then I headed home in the fog to go to sleep.

There’s a black cloud hanging over my head and it’s pouring down, pouring down.

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League

Jason was out today, which kind of just reinforced our lack of projects for the day. That meant I got to spend most of the morning researching high school esports so I could write a reply email to the kid that contacted me about wanting to start a league. I got really into it for a bit, and kind of hyped myself up, probably too much. I’m too much of a filthy casual to be too serious, but I love the idea of it all the same, and I feel like I know more than most anyone else that will be helping these kids out.

Gary’s birthday is coming up Sunday, so Dale wanted to take him to lunch today. We got almost everyone out to CJ’s, where we spotted a Tesla Model 3 driven by a guy Brice recognized from the plant. That was a mostly quiet and not entirely awkward lunch, and then I spent the rest of the afternoon at Oakland, babysitting an imaging computer.

Ben released us at 3 on the grounds that we could go vote if we wanted to do so. I came home and cast mine into the toilet, and came out feeling like I got more out of the ordeal. Summer came over after her workout, and eventually we went to Zaxby’s to split some dinner. It was still too much food for us, but it hit the spot. When we got home, I caught her up on my esports correspondence before wasting the rest of my evening doing nothing on the internet.

Now I’m going to have to become a history teacher.

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Sensationalism

I had a headache pretty much all day today which kind of gave me a mood, and maybe a bit of an attitude at work today.

Every time I would come through the shop this morning, Brice would be sitting in a chair doing something on his phone. I completely understand having to be babysat until his background check comes in, but I swear he didn’t even move for two hours. He can’t go anywhere near the kids without an escort, but surely there’s someone he could be shadowing or something he could be reading over while he’s sitting in the shop. Maybe I’m remembering my first week with arrogance, but I seem to remember at least trying to keep busy. Maybe he just already gets it and will jump right in once he’s cleared to do so, but that’s when he opened his mouth and said he was coming in 15 minutes early and leaving 15 minutes late every day this week to build up some comp time so he could take a day off next week.

Fucking what?!

We give Amanda enough shit over using all of her time off and having to make up overtime on the weekends to earn comp that I feel absolutely confident saying that in no damn way should this kid be cleared for coming in and sitting on his ass an extra half hour every day of his first week so he can take a day off before he’s even finished training enough to do a day’s work. I mean, we basically already paid him for six days before he started coming in to work in the first place. Did I get that? I honestly can’t even remember at this point.

I holed up at the junior high the rest of the morning and all afternoon. I simply couldn’t. I left him in the shop alone. Heather was at the front desk at least. I really don’t think anyone else was even there. That’s our fault. I offered to train him.

Summer had half of a sandwich left over, so I ate it in her room on her lunch, then sat with the girls in the library while they ate their lunch. I kept busy enough. Maybe even learned a useful thing.

After work, I took Eaddie to karate before heading home to clean up a bit. Then I picked her up and headed up to Summer’s for the evening. Autumn was non-compliant. Eaddie did okay. To wrap up my mood for the day, we sat up and watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show until bedtime.

If only we were amongst friends… or sane persons!

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That Time the Superintendent Took a Shit on My Lawn

During a day of unseasonable warmth, I rode the bike to work again. I got stuck in a polar vortex of doing things for the office at the junior high, which meant I started stacking up work orders from other people. I took a quick Taco Tuesday break with Dale, Zach, Gary, and Heather, and then ran home to get a helmet for Eaddie.

Near the end of the day, Ben sent us a pretty long email basically telling us that Brice was hired on a full four steps higher than any of us were allowed to hire on, which makes him one of the highest paid techs right out of the gate. I was bothered still by his start date a full week before he actually showed up. It didn’t make me much happier to see him sitting in the shop on his phone, but I couldn’t really blame him if he was just there to follow someone else around. I would have liked to see him trying to talk to someone instead though, since he’s got a lot of ground to cover regardless of how much he knows outside of our own policies and procedures. I certainly don’t remember being on my phone a lot during my third day on the job.

Demoralized, I left whatever I had going on to take Eaddie to karate. Summer and Autumn were at a quiz bowl event in Clarksville, so she and I got to ride the bike across town. I stopped by the shop to talk to Ben for a couple minutes, running into Ryan as I pulled in. Then I went to my parents’ house for dinner and to pick up some bánh bao. Zach called a couple times and we chatted about what we should do, and how we could possibly have a productive conversation without the lesser-intelligent bringing up irrelevant nonsense or flying off the handle. We didn’t have any great ideas.

Back home, I had lost power for most of the evening, so I took the opportunity to shuffle around some battery backups. It took me most of the night to fight through everything, and I guess I’m really no better for it.

Tell me again why I can’t be a part of that positive change.

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I challenge you to a Dual!

I rode the bike in this morning because it was supposed to be really nice in the afternoon, and I forgot I was supposed to take the girls home after school. My first stop was Oakland to drop off a stack of iPads that I was conveniently able to fit in my bag. I ended up having to work on them for a while more before I could leave, but eventually I found a fix. Then I went to the junior high to start setting up my last three dual monitor setups.

Lunch time rolled around right as I finished up my first one, so I took a break and rode to Subway across town. It took me 30 minutes just to get through the line, and then I took it home to eat since I had to trade out for the car. I ran back by Oakland again to work on a couple of things, and ended up getting some help from Gary in the self-contained classroom. A couple of the kids were all over us, and one stole a water bottle out of Gary’s bag and drank it. He must have been in a good mood, because he didn’t seem too bothered by the kid, or the fact that I missed a stupid version check on my Chromebooks.

After that, I only had time to get one more dual monitor stand set up before I had to take the girls home. We went by my house first so I could change, and my Google Home Hub was delivered while we were there, so I set it up. I also dug out my gel ant farm in case I still have ants in the bathroom, but all the gel dried up. I tried boiling some water to dissolve the gel and left it to dissolve overnight.

When we got back to Summer’s house, I pulled out all of the leftovers I could find and made the kids eat that. Some stuff got thrown out, and I ate the oldest stuff I could find that didn’t seem like it had completely turned. Then I played a few rounds of Overwatch before bed.

Here Lies Michael: Hater of Waste

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New Ryan

Brice finally started today, though I’m still fuzzy on how he started so long after his contract start date. More importantly, I finally found out what my building assignments would be, and it looks like it’s just more of the same. I think they’re expecting Brice to pick up mostly where Ryan left off, and I hope it does work out, but I knew I’d have mixed feelings about it no matter what. Ben said he dreaded the thought of having to have a conversation with Sheri about taking me away from her building, so I guess their constant bragging on me isn’t lost.

Zach, Jason, and I hung a broken(?) touch panel in the coaches’ office, mostly to get it out of the warehouse since nobody else wanted it. Then we hung a new one for Allen before lunch. Everyone but Allen and Heather came to Brangus, but it wasn’t much ado about anything. Afterward it was just back to work orders for me.

After work, I came home and played a few rounds of solo Rocket League until Summer got there. I spent some time cleaning up a CamelBak for her race tomorrow, and then we went to La Huerta to split some fajitas for dinner. I stopped to air up my cold tires on the way home, and then she read her book while I played some doubles with Josh until bedtime.

Dude, you’re making it look like they actually pay us fairly around here!

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Well I don’t want to see you waiting.

Zach griped at me this morning for wasting my time playing with a Firefox deployment I made yesterday. I just need experience fighting with some of this stuff so I can get better at it. There’s always time for work orders later.

Jason texted and asked if I wanted to go to Las Palmas for lunch, so when he and Ben got back to the shop, we met Dale there. My taco salad was hot and fresh, but there’s no denying that the key lime candy at the register was my favorite part.

After lunch, I went to the junior high for a little bit, but ended up leaving to take care of some work back at Oakland before ultimately ending the day at the junior high. Autumn got rained out of color guard at the game, but Eaddie was upset that she wouldn’t get to watch TV at my house, so I took the girls home with me while Summer went to the gym. Josh met me there just long enough to hand over the laptop I picked up for Summer, and the girls settled in for an episode of Criminal Minds.

When Summer got to the house, we went to Burger King for the best family deal coupon in town. I had more burgers than heads for under 20 bucks. We just happened to be on the Halloween episode of The Office, so we watched that before the girls went home for the night. Then I finished laundry and headed to bed myself.

I’m wasting my time agaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnnn!

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Powerpuff Curls

I stopped by Oakland for just a little bit this morning, but most of the teachers I was there to see were out for the day. It was just as well though, because work orders started pouring in from the junior high. I guess there was some kind of power issue there over the last few days, because I had several SMART boards that wouldn’t power on at all and just needed to be power flushed. I ran around the building doing that over and over again after spending half an hour on my first one thinking it was a component problem.

I took a late lunch, and after some difficulty deciding where to go, I ended up at Wendy’s for a salad. They were packed, and the service was pretty slow because they only had one register open. It seems to be a trend for them lately. The salad was really good, even though I was craving fried chicken or burritos. I tried to make a healthy choice.

I spent the afternoon picking up loose ends from old work orders, and I’m getting to the point where I really need to focus my energy on learning how to pick up the slack that Ryan left behind. It’s been tough motivating myself lately though.

After work, I went home to start some laundry before heading to Summer’s for the evening. She picked up some Little Caesar’s after I suggested it, ending my short run at lighter meals.

I’m sure I’ll be much more productive tomorrow when it’ll be cooler, cloudy, and a little rainy.

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Conferred

Ben started off the morning addressing relatively singular issues as though they were widespread, and then we split up to do work orders all day. I went to Oakland first and shuffled some batteries around since that place was a ghost town. Then I went straight to the junior high until lunch. Summer had a break then as well, so we went to Taco Bell where I ran into my old classmate Noreen. I kind of expected her to take off and really make something of herself, so that was a bit of a surprise.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on into a late evening working on various things at the junior high. Conferences started at 1:00 and ran until 7, so I stuck around wandering between work orders and chatting with people that were there. I don’t find a lot of people that are social employees the way that I am. Most people are just in and out, but I kind of enjoy sticking around after hours sometimes. Plus I got to chow on some La Huerta that they set up for the teachers, so dinner was done, and dessert was amazing.

After work, I had to run to Walgreens to pick up a FedEx package that was dropped there for me. I tried answering the doorbell while I was at work, but for some reason it cut out just as I was asking if he could bring it to our office for a signature. The notification that he dropped it off at Walgreens was a complete surprise, but I’m glad he did because I wasn’t expecting it until tomorrow, nor for it to require a signature.

Back home, I washed some socks and crashed early from my long day.