Tag: work

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Wiki Wild… Wiki Wild Wild Documentation

With a good start on wireless hotspots yesterday, I thought I’d start this morning finishing their setup. I got a little frustrated and a little more sidetracked as I had to refer to the hidden and overdocumented instructions. Between at least three network shares with countless folders, email, Google Shared Drives, and individually shared Google documents, sometimes finding what you really want can be an absolute nightmare. I’ve been talking about wanting to start a Wiki for a long time for its ability to interlink other articles, and today was the day to break ground.

Zach, Gary, Allen, and I went to Wendy’s for lunch, and then Gary showed me how to start up a virtual machine on our servers. It was pretty straightforward, but fun to finally dig into. Next will be setting up a web server with PHP and a SQL database. Right now I’m just saying words, but hopefully soon I’ll have a better understanding as I find my way to documentation Valhalla.

I spent the rest of the afternoon digging into more Avaya stuff, and testing how my new IVR behaves. In retrospect I could have done some more testing before, but now that I’ve been able to collect the recording and create the call map, I can dig into the nuances of how all the pieces connect together. My next big sell will probably be a complete tear-down and reconstruction of the entire district’s worth of phone extensions, and I’m giddy just thinking about it.

When I got home, I took care of some housekeeping before running to Walmart for cat food. Then it was off to Summer’s to hear about her day at headquarters in Little Rock.

Turn on by holding the power button and go through the tutorial, (push buttons for next until the dashboard shows the signal strength, battery level, and icons).

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Cellulations

I approached today quite a bit more casually, but still managed to get quite a bit done. It’s likely that I’m not prioritizing properly, but at least I got things closed. I need to hunker down and churn through some 1:1 laptops soon though, because they’re going to stack up on me pretty quickly.

Summer invited us all to the shop for hot dogs during Paint the Town Green & Gold, but nobody else showed up. I mostly stood out in the sun with Ben and just watched cars go by. I was hoping Summer would have a chance to step away and just eat with me, but no such luck. I headed back a bit early since it was so hot, and I had some things to take care of at our office before going back to work. The afternoon went by pretty quickly as I wrapped up the day swapping devices on our Verizon wireless account. I couldn’t tell any particular rhyme or reason for the replacement devices we received, but overall it was pretty painless.

When I got home, I started some laundry before heading out to get the girls from karate. Then we met Summer at Cici’s for dinner before heading back home. Once laundry was stowed away, it was off for an early bedtime.

I like me better when I’m with you.

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The Fastest Day Ever

I slept pretty well last night and was able to jump right into the day. The morning absolutely flew by. I got enough done that I felt really accomplished, and even spent some time remoting in to assist Heather with a deployment. That was two labs worth of testing software resolved. It felt like I had only been there for half an hour before lunch time. I lucked out and caught Summer on a slow day so she could meet me at Arby’s for lunch. The poor old lady at the register seemed new, but was kind. The tiny girl that came to help her a couple times as she struggled seemed like she was super frustrated by it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but thinking back she looked a lot like the daughter of one of the big wigs from back when I worked at Domino’s. Surely it wasn’t.

After lunch, I had to babysit the interns for a period while the girls in the library were out. I took them downstairs to help move a lab worth of computers from under the desks to behind the monitors. I originally intended to leave them to do it alone, but as we got going, I just stayed and helped complete the job. I was surprised we were able to get it all done in one day. I worked on some other stuff for a bit until Ben came by to look at the fire panel at vo-tech. I met him there and tried to learn anything, but oldschool telephone stuff still just confuses the hell out of me.

Eaddie came to the high school today, but she just had to chill out while I was with Ben. Then a bit after quitting time I had to take off to pick up Autumn from her practice. We were a bit later than I wanted to be, but I didn’t want to just leave Ben either. Once I had everyone, we headed straight to their house so they could take care of whatever it is they had to do. Autumn first claimed homework, then reported near-immediate completion when she wanted to sit down and play Minecraft. I played with them for a bit, and then switched to my phone to kill time until Summer got home.

I hadn’t been home, and it was too late for dinner by the time Summer got there, so I left and spent the rest of the evening taking care of the shrimp before bed.

We’ve got an escape artist!

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Fax It to Me Baby

The team meeting was pretty worthless this morning, but I expected it to be with Jason’s attitude about “nobody sending him any projects” yesterday. Heather had some lines to pull at the junior high, so Ben helped her with one set while Allen and I ran another longer one. Ours was a fax line for the counselors, because it’s 1982. We worked until a late lunch, then went to Wind Taste to eat before going back to drop the cable down the wall.

Once that was finished, we went back to the shop for a while, where I spent some time chatting with Gary before heading to the high school to do some work. I wrapped up late there too, then headed home for a little while. I messed with the aquariums some until I saw Summer’s text about needing help at the shop. Evidently they had some trouble with their modem, and poor luck timed it during an outage with Suddenlink’s own provisioning service. We called and spent a while on hold, but couldn’t ever get the service switched to the new modem, so Summer left her personal modem there for tomorrow.

Having done all we could do, Summer went home to get some clothes while I picked up some Zaxby’s for dinner, then met her at my house for the evening.

I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a freelancer, but I’ll give it a shot.

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Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.

I came in to work this morning ready to get things done. My first stop at the arena was a bust, but then I sat down in my office and just bit right into the Avaya system. I dug through manuals and samples, and got an IVR built. I even found an unused phone number that worked with a vanity number. I was super proud of it, even if it probably took me way longer to create than it should have. By the time lunch rolled around, I was super hungry. Allen and Jason were going to Arby’s, so I met them there. On the way back, I felt like it was nice enough to take the bike out, so I went home to trade.

I worked late hunting down a bunch of existing network lines, and got it mostly figured out. Then I went home to change before going to pick up the girls for karate. Summer was almost off work, so I went to my parents’ house to meet her for more leftovers. When I got home, I had to clean up the Imagitarium a bit because the screen I put over the filter to keep the shrimp from getting sucked in was too dirty to let enough water out into the sump. Then it was off to bed early again to finish the week on a good Friday.

Look at me. I am the phone guy now.

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Learning ALL THE THINGS

I tried pretty hard to get things done today, and though I closed a few little things, I felt better about learning and knowing processes and things. I wish I had time to just sit and document some of this stuff, or better yet, organize the documentation that we already have so it’s more accessible. I worked into lunch a bit, but got hungry and bothered enough to leave. I tried to go to CiCi’s with Summer, but she got stuck on the phone while I was waiting for her, and I had to run to Wendy’s really quickly instead.

After lunch, I chatted with Ben for a bit so he could help me better understand some of the things I had been working on. I was on the right track, which made me feel at least a little competent. It’s starting to feel like I’m the everything-guy though, and it’s aggravating being around people that make more for less. I also about had a fight with my phone over how stupid it was being, but then out of the blue it fixed itself as though it could sense that I was preparing to pull the trigger on a full factory reset.

I finished up the day a little late, then headed home to do some more laundry while I waited for Summer to get off work. Then we went to my parents’ house for spring rolls, and the girls brought some homework along as well. They did really well today, but they couldn’t stick around for too long. I had to head home to finish laundry and clean up after the cat too, and then it was a relatively early night to bed.

Shrimp everywhere!

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Lunch with LeRoy

Today was pretty incredibly scattered for me. I got a few things done, but I had trouble prioritizing things to actually get them off my plate. Instead, I kept starting new projects and finishing nothing. I had planned to go get a $5 garden bar with Summer for lunch, but Ben invited everyone to Taco John’s, and I couldn’t pass up seeing him again after his retirement. Ben’s order got made and delivered twice, so I took the leftover tacos to Summer so she’d at least have the same light lunch I had in case she wanted to go to Ruby Tuesday later in the afternoon.

The afternoon was more of the same scattered nonsense for me until I finally left and had to get the girls from the shop to go home to change for karate. They did a good job of hustling and I got them dropped off just in time, and then I went to my parents’ house for some leftovers. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten when Summer left work for the gym, so Autumn called when nobody came to pick them up. I ran to get them, then cooked up some chicken sandwiches for their dinner before going home to complete some laundry.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to sit down and just do a thing.

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Getting it Done

Jason found the student laptops we lost the other day, exactly where he put them originally. I had no idea they were in these massive bags from shipping, and they didn’t look at all like anything useful. About half of the crew was out, but Jason had a plan for most of us. I had to tell him that Ben planned to spend the day with me, which I’m not certain actually changed any of what the rest of them were doing.

Ben and I loaded up and went to the high school to try and run some network cable for the new assistant technical director. His chosen office space was laughably stupid, and the absolute farthest away from the rest of civilization that anyone could get. Even vo-tech and the multipurpose facility didn’t seem as out of the way as his office. It wasn’t even a real closet. It was literally the access room for where the stage curtain rolls away. There was absolutely no access for cable, and we didn’t have a ladder even half as high as we would have needed to run the cable.

Giving up with that, we went upstairs for what turned out to be a super simple run for some phones to JROTC. I didn’t even mind having to run it twice to add a WAP line. We finished up just in time to make it to lunch a little bit late. Jason, Brice, and Zach met us at CJ’s for double-price burgers. I ran into Jessica’s mom there too, but otherwise it was an uneventful and quick lunch.

On the way back, Ben had to stop by St. John’s Catholic School to drop off some RAM, and made jokes about me spontaneously combusting as we pulled into the property. I wasn’t worried, but I also didn’t want to tempt fate by letting him park on top of the single parking space with a cross painted right in the middle of it.

I was on my own for the rest of the day, so I went back to the high school and tried to finish up what I could before the three-day weekend. As everyone started to leave at the end of the day, I headed back to the shop to upgrade PaperCut with Ben. The new version was actually a new major release which fixed the staple finishing option. With that done, I noted the day as a great success.

I got home just a little late, especially considering Ben sent everyone else home a bit early. I spent a whole bunch of time with the shrimp, dividing everyone up by color and acclimating them to two different tanks. I put the higher quality cherries and ghost shrimp into the larger tank, and the lower quality cherries into the Imagitarium to test the water. I hope they brighten up from being around the dark substrate, but I really don’t have a clue how they’ll look when they grow up.

Finally I headed to Summer’s for the evening, where I decided it was a nice evening for a fire. Summer brought leftover pizza home from the shop, so I ate a bit of that for dinner while I got the fire pit started. Once the larger logs lit up, she came outside to kick back under the stars with me, and we chatted away while the girls went to bed.

Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

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MRIs!

It was actually a little bit cool out this morning, and another nice day to ride. I closed out what work orders I could chase down, and then left after a half day so we could take Autumn to Little Rock for her MRI. Once Summer was home, I picked her up and we went to The 3D Cafe for lunch. The fajita nachos were excellent and heaping, and apparently they’re the kind of restaurant that serves chips and salsa when you sit down now. Summer wanted the strawberry pie too, so we split that cream cheesy goodness.

When we got to the junior high, I ran inside to see the girls in the library for just a moment, and then we were on our way. I thought about stopping in Conway first, and possibly should have, but it all worked out in the end. We took a brief detour through Little Rock due to some blind acceptance of the GPS, but we made it to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in plenty of time. It was a late appointment, and the place looked mostly empty, so I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising that they got us checked in so quickly. There was a bit of a wait for the MRI, but then she was in and out in no time. Summer and I didn’t even make it through a whole episode of Battlestar Galactica on my phone before Autumn got back.

I fought my GPS a little more and circled the capital before heading out of town. We got into Conway and stopped at Sam’s for a little too long before running through Bed Bath & Beyond to grab some clearanced merchandise, and then finally stopping at PetCo for some more shrimp. The store looked to be in particular disarray, and it took us forever to get any help. They had one fish tank full of young bettas that were flaring up at each other with all manners of stress, and I was just told he’d “tell their fish guy.” There were tons of dead, but I went through with the purchase anyway. Some combination of poor eyesight and not giving a shit landed me with a couple extra shrimp, but I figure I may lose that many in the next day or so just due to the poor handling.

We stopped at Rally’s for a bite to eat on the way home and had some of their awesome fries. Their cheese sticks didn’t have any noticeable seasoning as advertised, but the cheese itself was perfectly stringy and delicious. When we got back home, I dropped the shrimp off, we got Eaddie from her grandparents’ house, and then I dropped the girls off at home. Summer and I finished the last few minutes of our episode, and then I headed home to set up a quarantine for the shrimp before bed.

OIC, MREDBD peepers!

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Keep Riding On

I got up this morning and it was pretty nice out, so I decided to take the bike to work. Traffic wasn’t as bad, and I got in just in time. All morning was wandering around closing work orders until lunch. I did have one moment of perfect clarity when I had to hunt down a switch I could see but not access. All the work on switches recently has me feeling more confident when I’m configuring them.

Gary, Allen, and Jason all went to Wendy’s for lunch because that’s Allen’s favorite place to eat now after years of hating it. I joined them for a while, and then went by the junior high afterward to start wiping more hard drives for some computers that just sold at auction. Heather needed some help looking at the digital sign outside, and we discovered it was actually a power issue.

On the way back to the high school, I stopped by and chatted with Ben for quite a while. Then Gary brought a switch and a couple WAPs over to the old fieldhouse after school so we could get their network up and running again. I know it’s nothing at all to him, but I actually had a lot of fun just racking it and patching everything in. Then I got to feel smart when I configured their printer for use again.

After work, I went home to change and then got some gas for the bike. It was close to closing time, so I stopped by the shop to see Summer for a bit, and then went by the junior high to wipe a few more computers. From there, I went to my parents’ house and waited for the girls to get there for dinner. We all just cleaned up some leftovers and headed home.

I had planned to spend the night with them, but really wanted to test the water in the Imagitarium again. It was better, but not quite as much as I was hoping after such a large water change. I did some trimming with the plants though, and got a better feel for the dense planting I’ll have in that tank.

No, they did not put our network closet in a girl’s locker room. I tried.