Tag: work

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That Time I Trolled the Police

I parked in my usual space at Oakland this morning. Unthreatened by unwarranted police force, I couldn’t resist the temptation. I had too many people and too much logic and too much of the law on my side. I had just walked into the office after doing some work when Erica said Sheri was on the phone with him. I didn’t find out until later that he had pulled up behind me and was calling from just outside the building, but Sheri told him to leave me alone because she needed more help dealing with actual real life dangers like speeding and cell phone usage down the street in front of the school. Justice is.. well.. I didn’t go to jail. So, whatever, Beyette.

Zach and I went to Morelos to get some fajitas for lunch. I was super hungry and made a happy plate. Then I spent all afternoon mostly catching up with people at the junior high. I told Kevin about my victory in the morning, and he pulled me into his office to ask what time my confrontation happened the day before. He already had the cameras pulled up for that campus and day, and wanted to see the guy’s stupid face when he tried to intimidate me. It went downhill from “not a fan” pretty fast.

When it was time to leave, I took Eaddie to my parents’ house for some mango soup. I told her it was one of my favorite soups that Mom makes, and she said I say that every time. I asked if I had ever lead her astray, and she sheepishly shook her head and grinned.

Summer went to the football game to see Autumn perform at halftime, and Eaddie and I went back to my house to pick up some things for tomorrow before heading back to their house. This week has gone by fast, and I’m ready to have some time at home. Those cats just can’t keep the place tidy. I don’t know what their deal is.

It’s pretty bad when your own brothers in blue don’t have your back.

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The Day Before I Almost Got Arrested

I started the day off at Oakland, working on a handful of things. The moment that stands out, though, was when I was helping Sheri with some technical issues she was having in a testing room. Erica came by and tapped on the glass and pointed at me, so I came out and was greeted by a uniformed police officer. He informed me that I was parked in a no-parking zone. I corrected him that it was a no-unloading-zone. He said I could finish what I was doing in the testing room before moving my vehicle, so I offered to walk him outside to confirm. He tried getting all tough-guy and said we could do things the hard way if I wanted. He asked to see my ID, but I insisted we should go outside to look first.

When we got outside, John was already there and started telling the officer that maintenance and I park in that area all the time because we are employees that travel and may have to unload equipment or otherwise access areas that are not normally accessed by the public. When we got to my car, I pointed at each word on the sign as I read them aloud slowly. He pointed at the ground behind my vehicle where the old parking spaces had been painted over and re-marked with NO PARKING. I guess he missed the bright yellow school bus that was parked squarely on top of a painted NO PARKING area. He said he was checking all of the schools after complaints about people parking “suspiciously.” Outside of the building I didn’t want to push my luck, so I gave up my ID when he asked again, and then moved to a parking space so he would leave.

Back inside, Mollie said she would make me my own parking space. I insisted it would have to be in the front lawn by the tree, or somewhere else conspicuous and obviously not a parking area. She said that wouldn’t be a problem. After a quick run through Wendy’s for lunch, I ended up at the junior high and told Kevin about my harassment. He knew almost immediately who I was talking to and indicated that he wasn’t a fan of the guy’s attitude either. He even went as far as to tell me I should hang a “TECHNOLOGY PARKING ONLY” sign on top of the no-unloading-zone sign when I park there tomorrow, because he would be on duty again. I think the real problem was that he came into the building without a visitor badge. Office staff should really be trained to take IDs from everyone, even if they’re dressed up like cops. We’ve got to be vigilant with these predators and sexual offenders.

After work, I ran home to tend to the ailing betta. It looked worse off and seemed even less active, but I’ll keep doing what I can. I moved him to a small betta cup with just a little bit of water in it so he wouldn’t have to swim so high to get to the surface for air, but his eyes are clouded over and I’m not sure he’ll eat anything. I’ll feel a lot better if I can get him to eat something.

Summer beat me to my parents’ house for dinner, but they weren’t home anyway. They arrived shortly after I did, and we had dinner and played some more arcade games and foosball. The kids all ate pretty well, and then Summer had to get them home for homework and bedtime. I filled up on gas on the way, and it was pretty much straight to bed since Summer’s neck was out again.

Julie messaged the family late with her own troubles, and I guess all I can really do is hope for the best. Sometimes you’ve just got to make your own fortune.

I’ll give you one guess which one of us has more authority inside this building right now.

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Fishing for Help

I spent all morning back and forth between Oakland and the shop, and only had a few answers to show for it. I’ve got so many work orders to close all at once when these long jobs are finished. Ronda was going to go to lunch with us for $5 salads at Ruby Tuesday, but she ended up meeting Steven instead when our lunch hours didn’t quite mesh. I didn’t make it back to the shop in time to drive, so I met Jason and Allen there.

Most of the afternoon was spent waiting for a fix for PaperCut, and then an hour or so was spent on the phone with the VantageLED folks. The first half hour call I made ended up with me in a queue where I went from the first person in line to being the second person in line, and then I heard someone rattle a phone and hang up on me. The second call got me the resolution I needed, but still no answer for why my emails to tech support never garnered a response. They say there are notes that we were referred to an electrician, but that is both false and an incorrect diagnosis for the problem I’m experiencing.

The fix for PaperCut ended up being an update to the embedded printer software, and then I went to my parents’ house for a bit before deciding to go to the junior high to pick up Jessica’s dying betta. It looked dreadful, and Ronda felt like it was going to die overnight, so I decided to take it home to try and nurse it back to health. I hope it works, selfishly as an I-told-you-so moment. I wish I could impart some empathy and a willingness to properly care for fish, but I guess it’s just too small of a creature for her to care about.

When the girls got out of karate, Summer brought them to my parents’ house and we had most of a Christmas dinner. We didn’t stick around too long though, because the kids had work to do, and I had a fish tank to clean. I guess I’ve done all I can for now. We’ll see how he is tomorrow.

Thank you for holding. All our agents are busy helping more important customers right now.

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Time Trials

Ben had us in the conference room first thing this morning to talk about PaperCut and testing rules. He got breakfast, which helped quite a bit. Then we actually got to do some group work for me!

I think Dale, Zach, and I set a new record for the fastest truck loading, delivery, removal, and mounting to replace a SMART board. It helped that we only had to drive to Oakland, but it helped even more that everyone on board was there to work. After the first one, we went to the arena to fix a board in a switch closet that had started to sag away from the wall.

Lunch was a big group of us at Western Sizzlin, and then Gary joined the three of us to hang a second touch panel at Oakland. That was all the group work I had to be a part of, so I spent the rest of the afternoon at Oakland before heading home.

I played Overwatch most of the evening to get the wins I needed for some special loot, and then I had to call SiriusXM when I realized they had charged me for another month of service after I specifically asked them not to! It was mostly painless, but I set myself up for having to call again in under a month. I really hate that company.

I made another quick call to Discover to find out the department I needed was closed. Then I went to get some gas and headed to Summer’s for the evening.

Hog Wild Wednesdays are back!

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Hangin Around

I could have had most of the day for work orders. We were supposed to hang one of my touch panels in the afternoon. Instead, I volunteered to help Zach and Jason hang some security cameras at London. They had lost an extension cord somehow, so we first had to run to Lowe’s to buy a new one. At least I got to pick it out this time, and I chose an auto-retracting one that can mount to the wall or ceiling. It ended up being about the same $100 that we would have paid for one with a manual reel anyway. When we finally got to the school, Zach started putting cameras together, and Jason sort of apologized but mostly excused himself for sitting on a bench with a bum knee.

We worked through the first half of lunch and then headed to the junior high for chili dogs. The others finished pretty quickly and were ready to head back to the shop for some reason, so I wrapped up and we went back. Then they sat around the shop until it was time to go to the middle school to hang two of Allen’s TVs for him. Of course he took the day off so he could have a four day weekend.

I was supposed to work on some network configurations with Gary in the afternoon, but he wasn’t up to it, and I ended up just sitting there to run out the clock. Back at home, I felt my head cold slowly get worse through the night. Summer came over and we watched a few more episodes of The Office before I had to take a shot of Nyquil and head to bed.

Well, it looks like there’s going to be a clean-up on aisle five.

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Tired Again

I’ve spent every morning this week waking up so tired that I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be retired. At least I felt like I got a lot accomplished at work. I’m still getting a lot of work orders coming in, and I still have projects ahead of me that I need to finish sooner than later, but I feel like I’m learning things at a faster pace.

I spent the morning at Oakland before Ronda and I went to Long John Silver’s for lunch with my BoGo coupon, then I spent the afternoon at the junior high. Tomorrow may be kind of rough with projects, depending on who all decides not to show up. I’ll never understand the mindset of the people on my team when they say they can take an extra day off to make it a longer weekend. That’s literally always the case.

After work, I went to my parents’ house and met up with my newly retired father. It’s probably not even possible for me to retire from a job after 43 years now. I guess I could from the school, but I’d like to make enough money to do more than eat by then. Summer and Eaddie came over and had curry with us when they got out of their respective athletic activities. Finally it was back home for an earlier bedtime.

I should have taken tomorrow off so I could have a four day weekend…

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Moment of Focus

I stopped by Oakland to wrap up a couple things before heading to the junior high to get the chicken biscuit that Summer got me. Once there, I spent a little time running around, then found myself intensely focused on some System Center stuff. I started digging around in Ryan’s OS deployment task sequence to see how it ticked, and I was actually having fun.

During one of my trips out of my office and across the building, one of the SpEd kids had gotten loose and was tearing down the halls with all kinds of people chasing after him. I wasn’t sure what my place in all of this was, which only got worse when I turned a corner and found him running straight toward me. I nearly tackled him, but Joe got to him first with his tallman legs.

When I finally got out for a late lunch, I went to Wendy’s for a dollar Double Stack with a free order of Baconator fries. I’m killin it with cheap lunches lately. I just took it with me to the shop and continued working on things there until the end of the day.

It started to storm really hard right before quitting time, so I hung out a bit late finishing some stuff, then went to Summer’s for dinner. She made some slow cooker ribs, and we tried watching something educational instead of the Vine compilations the kids kept wanting to watch. I’m sure my parents thought I was rotting my brain doing the things I did as a kid, but these days I feel like the memes have reached critical mass, and kids are just completely ignorant. It’s always the same 5-second videos over and over again, and they’ve nothing to learn from it.

Back home, I finished sorting socks and worked on a computer for a while longer before heading to bed. These mornings are killing me.

What have you done?

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Today’s Theme: Internal Conflict

I haven’t felt even close to 100% all day, and there’s always some thing or another gnawing at my brain. I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning, but finally made my way to Oakland to play catch-up from the end of last week.

When I got back to the Gardner building, I wandered upstairs to check out the maintenance guys’ progress on gutting the auditorium seating. They were tearing everything out to haul to the scrap yard. I had, and still have strong urges to salvage a couple rows of seating to build a proper home theater. They told me to take all I wanted, but in the end I told Wesley I wouldn’t take any because I have too many higher priority projects that I’m already having trouble starting.

It would have been a pretty amazing opportunity to restore some of those seats, and they were infinitely customizable. I could have built a multi-level seating area and had a real home theater with as many seats as I could physically fit. In the end, I had to make the tough choice not to get any because I wasn’t sure that aligned with the best possible endgame – not to mention simply not having any more physical storage for something like that. Still, it felt like such a shame to let it go to scrap metal.

Insides in knots from my decision to pass up on the seating, I went to Taco John’s to redeem a reward for a combo meal. At least lunch was free today. Then I spent the afternoon at the junior high picking at random work orders to close.

After work, I went to Walmart to try Ronda’s suggestion of haggling with a manager for the electric lawn mowers. I was again conflicted, asking myself why I was there to buy a lawn mower at all. I hadn’t even mowed my lawn in years, but depending on where you look, they were originally $478, $358, or $250. The local store had them for $199.99, and with only two left, I had some dire need to have them both for under $200. They called a CSM out to help, and she said she could only do $300 for the pair. I started to text Summer for feedback, and she came down to $275, then just as quickly to $250 for both, which I accepted. I guess this was my motivation to start mowing.

From there, I went to Summer’s for some leftovers before heading home for the night. That was when I realized that the manager had actually scanned two of the gas powered mowers on my receipt, and had the maintenance guy load one of each into my car. It was an easy mistake to make with the way they were stacked on the shelf, so I guess I’ll have to go back tomorrow to correct it. It’ll be interesting to see if I can talk them into giving me a refund on top of the exchange to get my price below $200 like I wanted.

Josh, Aaron, and Justine were online when I sat down at the computer, so I played a couple really quick rounds of PUBG with them before heading to bed. With any luck, I won’t keep myself up by thinking about all those theater seats going to waste.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

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Infinity Cords

It took me five and a half hours to do what should have taken 20 minutes, and I have a lack of documentation to thank for it. I expected to be pulled for project work today, but nobody said a word to me. Instead, I spent all morning and some of the afternoon tending to an “emergency” issue with the intercom bells at the junior high being slightly offset from the red clocks in the halls. It should have been easy to find the switch port that had been locked due to a tripped port security setting, but instead of reading a label, I had to follow the line all the way from the intercom to the switch closet.

We took a brief break for lunch at Fat Daddy’s in London, but everyone was eager to get back to work for some reason. I just got stuck sitting on all of my work orders. I even thought for a brief moment I’d get to leave on time, but no such luck.

After being stopped in the hallway for another 30 minute job, I went to Summer’s and waited for her to get home. I warmed her up a leftover hamburger, then we came back to my house to watch Infinity Wars in glorious 3D. We even caught the end of Ragnarok to bring us up to speed with the refugee ship.

#thanosdidnothingwrong

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Welcome Back, Fodder

It really wasn’t too bad for the first day of school. Teachers were busy enough with students that I had some time to catch up again. I spent all morning at the junior high, probably spending too much time trying to fix Hall Pass after I swapped out a computer. It ended up being a low power issue with the USB-powered scanner, and I should have figured it out a lot sooner.

Nobody said anything about lunch, so I went to McDonald’s by myself. It was a little rainy, and I just sat by the window to eat. I managed to double up on discounts and got a Big Mac, medium fry, and large drink for $2.18. The guy delivering orders to the tables tried giving my order to someone else, but I managed to catch it before that happened.

After lunch, I spent a bit of time at Oakland before heading back to the junior high. I had a stack of Chromebooks I had to set up for the teachers, so I spent most of my time on that before knocking out a bunch more work orders. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have most all of them done.

I went straight to my parents’ house for dinner after work. I cleaned up some soup, then scavenged some vegetables for the turtles and tadpoles before heading up to visit with Summer for a bit. I helped Autumn change her turtle’s water again while trying to explain to her how siphons work. Maybe I only understood it after living a childhood with fish, but I couldn’t understand why she just didn’t get it, or why she didn’t seem to care. I wish she showed more interest in knowing how the world works.

Summer had me run her to the Dollar General for some things, and then I headed home to clean up before bed. I got a load of laundry done, and did some minor cleanup tasks. My kitchen has been out of control for too long. It’s time to recalibrate my anti-hoarding mindset.

Hi, I’m Cortana!