Tag: work

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Pulled an All-Dayer Today. Pretty Rough.

It’s endlessly frustrating how much work I always have left to do these days. Then I go to the shop and hear someone watching YouTube videos a good hour before lunchtime. I spent a bit of the morning at the high school rushing to get some things done before my call with Jamf support. We never came up with a resolution, but at least I learned a couple things during the call.

Zach, Allen, and I went to Morelos for lunch, and then crossed the street to give Summer some lunch too. Then I made my way back to the high school to get as much other stuff done as I could. I ended the day dragging the ladder around the STEM center so I could set up their new Airtames. I still don’t understand why we’ll buy TVs for them, but not every other department. I file those under “nice to have, but ultimately pointless.”

Summer needed me to take the girls to karate, so I ran home for just a little bit before picking them up. Eaddie forgot her pants again, and fussed at me the whole way to take her home to get them. I told her it wasn’t about time, and that I had other things I wanted to do that didn’t involve driving all the way across town. Then as soon as I got to my parents’ house, Summer called to say that Eaddie had taken her car keys. So here’s me, driving back across town again to return the stupid keys.

Mom and I finished up some leftovers with some more of that weird, flavorless squash. I added a ton of fresh ground black pepper this time, which gave it a nice kick. After that, I started to head home but decided to go up to Summer’s instead.

When Summer and Eaddie got back from the gym, we let the little stray cat in for some cheese, then settled in for some Battlestar before bed.

to be continued

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Midweek Blitz

It was back to work today after a four day weekend, though it didn’t really feel like I had a day off at all. I jumped right into work and picked apart all the work orders I had gotten while I was away. A few of them had already been looked at by someone, which was a really nice surprise. I ended up spending all morning at the shop to catch up. Most of that time was spent with the iPad Pro after hearing back from Jamf support, but unfortunately we still couldn’t get it enrolled properly.

Zach, Ben, and I went to Arby’s for lunch and all got the Beer Cheese ‘n Double Beef Sandwich with free fries. It was a bit messy, but not any more than a big Beef ‘n Cheddar. I really enjoyed it. Then after lunch I finally made it to the high school to jump into my remaining work orders. I kept really busy right up to the end when Autumn came to the high school. On the way out, we walked across campus to the PAC so I could take a look at their sign again. What a surprise to see it not responding over wireless.

Autumn and I came back to my house for just a little while until it was time to get Eaddie from her after school activities. Then I dropped them off at their house before going to visit with Mom for dinner. She had made some salty sausage and stir fried some kind of squash to go along with it. Then we shared some French bread and sweetened, condensed milk for desert.

To wrap up the evening, I came home and did some more laundry while I took care of all the pets. The teeny baby shrimplets have doubled in size by my estimation, and it’s becoming easier to see how many of them there are. I really may have to just eat the culls, because they’re booming and it’s only going to get worse as more of them mature.

Missin’ out on ACOT has me all sad ‘n stuff.

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Shrimp Daddy

We had a pretty contagious day of not giving a crap about anything. Jason sent every last one of us to the junior high to do a few things, and then vanished as usual. He did stop in a couple times just to make his presence known, but otherwise he was as useless as ever with an attitude to go along with it. I stopped in to talk with Matt about esports again, so I guess that’s still on the table. Then we got a few lines run and found another that already existed. They fed us chili dogs there, and pretty much everyone came out for it.

I spent the afternoon with Brice, first going by Oakland to take care of a couple of his things. We ended up sticking around the office for a while just to enjoy a Friday afternoon. Then we finished up at the high school running a video cable for a troublesome display. I didn’t leave with an overwhelming feeling of confidence, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

Summer had me get the girls from the junior high, so I dropped them off at their house because they didn’t care to have me around. I went home to clean up a bit from all the ceiling dust. That’s when I spotted something new in the Imagitarium!

I finally have baby shrimplets! They were so minuscule that I had to get out the magnifying glass just to see any detail on them. Some of the bigger flatworms rival them in size. I’ll never know exactly how many shrimp I have ever again, because this is just the first of many population explosions. I’ll need to get some other tanks cycled soon for my genetic experimentation.

Mom called me over for dinner, so we sat and had some soup together. Dad had already left on his trip, but left us some fresh banana bread for dessert. Then I headed up to Summer’s where everyone had pretty well split up into their rooms. Summer and I watched an episode and a half of Battlestar before she passed out. I’m super happy about having a long weekend myself.

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man, with my three wishes clutched in her hand.

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Just give me the damn password, Bob!

I forgot my phone at home this morning, which wouldn’t have been a huge deal any other day, but I was expecting a support call from the sign company. I hoped he would call sooner than later, but I guess his day went by quicker than mine. I spent the morning catching up on a few things, then met Allen, Gary, and Zach at Wendy’s for lunch. Wesley and a couple of his guys were there too, so we sat and complained about our absent coworkers.

We got some new work shirts in after lunch, and I ended up spending more time there than I had anticipated. It wasn’t a big deal though, since everything I really needed to do had to wait until the end of the day anyway. That’s when I finally got my support call. I had just gotten back to the high school and started to settle in when my phone rang. I had to run all the way across the campus, and then spend over an hour on the phone while this guy remoted into our sign computer so he could show me first hand how little he understood about what he was doing. On the way there, I encountered a brand new brick wall blocking my path, so I had to get creative and walk around the stupid place.

As he started digging into things, I kept telling him to upgrade the firmware. He kept getting his head stuck on version numbers that seemed impossible, and kept installing and uninstalling different versions of the software to get around it. All I wanted was the stupid admin password, which he finally provided, and I could have resolved the stupid issue in under five minutes. Instead I was stuck there, unable to do the other work I had planned for the end of the day. We did finally get the sign going again, which was only partially a relief. The real concern is how long it will last until it breaks again.

That wrapped up my workday, so I headed home to change before going to my parents’ for dinner. We cleaned up some super old burrito stuff and I sat there for a while messing with my phone again. I’ve about given up on fixing it, and I’ve made peace with just wiping the whole thing and starting over. Next Tuesday is the new Pixel announcement, so worst case scenario I can just get a whole new phone.

Get in there, Bob!
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What Prompted This?

I had a pretty rough start this morning, but with an iron will and the perseverance of someone with a powerful need to eat, I was able to make it happen. Work started out okay, but then I got to my office.

I had just gotten into a little work order to install a minor upgrade in a computer lab, which seemed petty and annoying at first, but became fun when I realized how easy it was. Halfway through that, my favorite regular customer walked in asking if I had gotten her email. I guess she thinks I just sit in my office playing Minesweeper until a little notification bell goes off. As it turns out, work orders and emails are a relatively small part of my job. I fashioned a response for her and the handful of people she addressed, and made a mental note to proceed with my next troubleshooting steps for her at some point ever. Then I continued on with my more pressing matters.

The rest of the morning went by pretty quickly. I texted Allen to reserve a lunch date at Taco Bell for a Toasted Cheddar Chalupa before they went out of fashion. When we got there, we felt encouraged by the marquis advertising the object of our yearning. Even the Taco Bell app was working just as it should. Things couldn’t be better. I had just selected the $6 box for my order when the girl at the counter told Allen that they no longer carried the toasty, cheddary treat. With that, I sat down and ate the saddest bean burrito I’d ever eaten.

When we got back to the shop, I spent a little time there on my iPad Pro again, with no additional luck. I ended up back at the PAC to try and downgrade the sign software, but got stuck again when the support rep refused to provide the password for the hardware we purchased. School let out just as I gave up, so I had to ride through that traffic to get to the other side of the building to my office. I wrapped up a couple more work orders to finish the day, then finally made the call for my vision exam.

The later it gets in the year and the more I read about what my EyeMed benefits actually are, the more upset I get over having waited so long, and also having purchased the insurance at all. It seems like a complete sham to have a provider that only has three local providers in their network, especially when one of them is the CFO’s wife, and another has a 2.7 star rating on Google Maps. I half expect them to poke me in the eye with a sharp stick and tell me I’ll just have to be blind for the rest of my life. I wonder if my insurance will even cover a sterile stick.

I didn’t have much time at home before I had to get Eaddie from her after school activities. We headed up to her house and killed most of the time until Summer got back with Autumn. I cooked some chicken strips for salads, then burned the rest of the evening fighting Google systems and their sign-in prompts. I should be able to get a two-factor authentication prompt on my phone, but it’s been broken for what feels like forever. I’ve reset more things, more times than I can count, and I’m just sick of it.

I took a break to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica with Summer, and ended my night in another disappointment without my prompts.

Well, this is embarrassing.

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Blockin’ out the Scenery, Breakin’ My Mind

It was quite chilly out this morning. My fingers felt the sting of the autumn air on my ride in to work. I got out of the teens on my work order count, not counting any of the 1:1 laptop stuff, so I felt pretty good about it. I got a response back from 000webhost about my site and got the suspension lifted. The first thing I did was make a backup, but I have a feeling this is ultimately going to end in me paying for hosting. They’re cheap enough though, and the support response was fast and helpful. I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth so far.

Gary said he was going to Tropical Smoothie for lunch, so I met him, Zach, and Heather there. I had a coupon, but it was “Pick 2 Tuesday” that got me the same thing for a buck less. The flatbread was really good, and the pumpkin smoothie was delicious and larger than I expected to get in a twofer. It still wasn’t cheap, but I felt pretty good about it. I couldn’t believe how busy they were though. The drive-through line just didn’t quit, and there was hardly any room for other traffic to pass through. It didn’t bother the bike any though.

After lunch, I met with Ben and we worked on the LED road sign. We were out there for nearly four hours working on the damned thing, and we really didn’t do anything to fix it other than reboot it several times. Once we got it working, I screwed it up again by updating the publishing software to a version that evidently isn’t compatible with our sign’s firmware, so that’s another call in to the company that no longer supports our sign. I have a feeling they’re going to just have to replace the stupid thing anyway, probably with an even stupider thing. The whole time we were working on it, I just felt like maybe if there was only someone that worked specifically at the Center on their very technical things, that we wouldn’t have to be out there. At least the weather was nice, and I even got some closeup time with a black widow mamma and her sack of eggs.

Once home, I spent a little time cleaning up before going to get the girls from karate. Then we met Summer at my parents’ house for bún bò Huế before heading home for an early night.

ESPORTS REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
J/K

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Downtime!

It’s been three days since my site at 000webhost was shut down for some unknown violation of their terms of service. I finally sent an email off to them to appeal the shutdown. I guess I’ll give them a couple days to respond before I try and migrate to a paid plan. Their free service has always been more than enough for me, and I figured it would be fine for the foreseeable future.

Not much else of note happened today. I went to Popeye’s for lunch with Allen and was reminded of the maddening inconsistency in the size of their tenders. After work I went to my parents’ house for grilled pork chops before coming home to clean house. I can’t let all these responsibilities keep slipping by. Maybe this is the year.

I can’t get no relief.

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Have fun doing the dumb things without me!

This morning actually felt like fall weather. The air was cool on the ride to work, and it was quickly downhill from there. We all got a super slow start, but Jason was quick to tell us we had a bunch of undesirable work to do without his help. I can’t stand his attitude on the best of days, and lately it’s just been super shitty. Even Ben was out there in the graveyard with us. It wasn’t even particularly awful work to be done, so I don’t get his vocalization to the rest of us. We had a relatively good time out there.

Allen and I went across the street for Fry Day at Smackin’ Wings again. This time we sat right behind Gary and Heather since they beat us there without inviting us. They had beef queso nachos or fries on special today, and they looked super nasty when we got them. I got the fries, but wished I had gotten the chips like Allen. They needed a whole lot of something else to make them better. When we left, the guy that delivered the food to our table came up and said they comped our food because it took too long to serve us. In reality it was actually faster than our last visit, only taking half an hour from the time we sat down. Even Gary and Heather waited longer than we did, but they ddin’t get their food for free.

I spent the afternoon wrestling with my athletics iPad Pro some more, which evidently they purchased for the sole purchase of underwater video for the swim team. I don’t fucking understand this place at all. The high school was on a pep rally schedule, and Allen was in a helping mood, so he and Brice met me there to run a short cable and climb a ladder up to the cafeteria projector. I was happy to accomplish that much, but annoyed to hear Brice say he was all caught up on his work orders while I’m still drowning in 1:1 devices that have to be shipped off.

After work, I met the girls at my parents’ house to help cover the pool. I really wanted to swim again, but it’s been cooling off fast lately. I hate how little use the pool gets after the very first part of the summer. Eaddie wanted to work out with Summer, so I took Autumn home with me. We watched a little bit of The Office until she was ready to go to the homecoming game. I dropped her off and then came home to fight with some Google stuff on my phone. When she was ready to leave, I picked her up and we waited for Noah to finish at work. We picked him up, got his bag from his house, then went up to Summer’s for the evening.

It was our fault. We wanted instant gratification, and soon the screens felt like home.

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iPooed

I really felt like I sunk the entire day into a stupid iPad Pro that we couldn’t enroll in our device management system. Even Ben sat down with me for a while and tried to help, but it just didn’t work. Eventually I just had to get up and take a break, so Allen came over and took us to Subway for lunch. I got more and more aggravated all afternoon as I kept finding myself surrounded by people not working.

After work, I rode home and took the car in for an oil change. Summer was beat from a pretty rough day herself and wanted me to get dinner for her. It started to downpour, so I hung out at the shop until it settled down as they closed up. I ran home to change shoes for the evening and called in an order to Spices, then went to pick it up along with the girls from karate. Back at her house, I finished up some leftover tacos with Eaddie before catching an episode of Battlestar and then going to bed.

I did my fair share of homework when I was younger. I don’t need to be doing yours too.

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Rice Nazi

Waking up was just awful this morning. It was so bad that I sacrificed most of my routine and went back to sleep for another 30 minutes. Most of my morning was pretty sluggish after that, but I kept at it.

Allen and I went to Wind Taste for lunch since we got coupons yesterday. It took them over half an hour to get our food out to us, and they told us they were out of eggrolls after the fact, but that we could “tell her next time and we would get free eggrolls on our next visit.” Moments later I heard her turn around and ask a customer standing at the counter, “you need something?!” I’m fairly used to dealing with people that don’t speak English natively, and have trouble with the nuances of tone and phrasing. This bitch just doesn’t try. When we finally got up to pay, she took one look at my coupon, scolded me for trying to use an expired one, and then charged me full price. When we got to the car, I took Allen’s coupon in and threw it on the counter and told her once more that these coupons had just been delivered the day before. She shifted tone, fussed that the advertisers were wasting her money, and apologized. I didn’t get any money back, or the eggrolls that I had already bought, but I suppose that was the best I could have hoped to get from her.

The afternoon was mostly more of the same, except with interns in my office. I had to call the sign company about our broken display because evidently it had become a “hot button item” with the superintendent. Hilariously and almost predictably, they told me the company that made it was going out of business, and that rolling a truck to work on it would be a complete waste of money. I guess the poor children will have to go without for a bit longer. My initial thought was to wonder whether having a monochrome sign by the road benefited as many children as having an esports team would have. The cynicism cut deeply today.

After work, I brought the Grom home and took the R1 out for a wash. It had rolled right over 16,000 miles coming back home this weekend, so it’s time for another service from the worst dealership I’ve ever known. I guess I could forego the stealership and take it to a third party instead. Hubbard has always been good to me with tires. I miss the hell out of Valley Powersports though.

After washing the bike I picked up some cheap mozzarella sticks at Sonic, traded vehicles and went to Walmart for some salad, then went to Summer’s for some leftover pizza. Then we jumped right into a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica until bed.

A kick in the butt is worth a thousand words.