Tag: work

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Just Shrimpy

I got home this morning and discovered one of my cherry shrimp had died. I’m assuming it was just a bad molt, because they all seemed fine yesterday. Can you imagine being trapped and suffocating inside of your own skin?

Work carried on with more random workie stuff. I do find myself annoyed with basically always having a backlog of work to do. It’s not that I don’t care to work the whole time I’m there, but rather that it’s so much more work than what I was doing before.

Lunch time ran a little late, and I found myself at Hardee’s to try their Monster Roast Beef. From the moment I walked in, I felt a little like I was in some kind of slummy neighborhood. What was confusing to me was that I saw examples of great customer service happening around me, but then I felt like I just got the “thank you, now move along” treatment. It was really kind of a weird experience. I felt like that place used to be a lot better. The sandwich was super tasty but surprisingly wet. I guess the roast beef was kept in juice to keep it moist, almost like a pre-soaked French dip.

I didn’t accomplish a whole lot more in the afternoon, and ended the day with some clerical nonsense that drove me a bit mad. I went by the warehouse to pick up some speakers, then home to change and hang out for a while. I made a frozen shrimp pasta dish of some kind that I got from Zach several months ago, and mixed it with some “grilled potatoes” he gave me as well. The whole meal was old enough to be walking and talking, but it tasted alright for what it was.

To wrap up the evening, I headed up to Summer’s and started setting up the speakers, and then we went to bed with the last episode of the second season of Battlestar.

Battlestar Shrimptactica

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Beating Down Problems

My first task of the day was to collect a new recording for the arena IVR. I had to wait in the office a bit, but eventually got Johnny to put on his best radio voice. With that out of the way, I jumped into some AppLocker configuration for Ethan’s lab. I kept digging and digging and felt like I was getting nowhere until lunch time. I eventually just had to stand up and walk away, if for nothing else than to get some food.

I hunted around for a bit but didn’t find anyone, so I headed to Wendy’s by myself. That’s where I ran into Allen at his new favorite restaurant. He was so adamantly against it for so long that it’s hilarious for him to love it so much now. That guy’s so dumb and hilarious. I customized a bacon jalapeño chicken sandwich by adding all the usual burger veggies plus the spring mix, and it made all the difference. It had a whole new crunch and depth of flavor to it, and I loved it. I don’t know why every restaurant app can’t be like theirs.

After lunch, I solved my great AppLocker conundrum with a stroke of luck with the flexibility of wildcards. It’s still technically a loophole, but a small enough one to not have to concern myself with the possibilities. Next it was off to beat my head against the wall for a VPN setup where I kept having to wait for Al’s password until he eventually just gave it to me. Super insecure? Sure. Did he only give it to me because of the rapport and trust we’ve built over the twenty four years we’ve known one another? Probably not. Does it not matter because of the eventual and inevitable heat-death of the entire universe and the end of everything we’ve ever known? Absolutely.

I wrapped up the day with a small cable run across the floor, and then headed home to clean up. Houdini, the black racer nerite, escaped from the front portion of the tank again, and I don’t know why. He seems to just prefer the sump area for some reason. Mom called with leftovers, so I went to their house for dinner. I got to try out the Anker Soundcore Life Q20 noise cancelling headphones I got for Dad, and I was super impressed by both their sound and their active noise cancellation. Then he brought out a bunch of old computer stuff and we tinkered for a bit.

I ended the evening at Summer’s, where I first helped Eaddie with a bit of math, and then settled in for another episode of Battlestar. I truly had forgotten how much I really loved that show.

We’re here on our own. That’s the way they set things up. We have to find our own answers, our own way out of the wilderness without a nice little sunny path all laid out in front of us in advance.

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IMPOSSIBRU!!!

The high school had a tornado drill this morning, so I started at the shop just to avoid it. When I finally did get to the high school, most of my day was taken up with interruptions and being dragged out of my office to look at something. I spent way too long messing with a touch panel and dock situation, and not enough time doing other older work orders.

Nobody had said anything by the time lunch rolled around, so I just kind of left campus and tried to wing it. I stopped by the taco truck I’ve seen up the road, but they were closed on Mondays. Then I started toward Taco Bell before switching gears to try the Impossible Whopper at Burger King. The app experience was absolutely horrible, and it didn’t matter whether I wanted to place the order online or use a coupon in the restaurant. It took me about 15 minutes just  to get the order in.

Once I finally got my order, I headed to see if I could commandeer Summer for a few minutes. We split a shitty taco, some nuggets, onion rings, and the two burgers. I’m not sure what I expected with the taco, but it was an absolute abomination, and whoever thought it was a good idea should be fired, re-hired, and then fired again. The nuggets and rings were bomb. The burgers were more or less indistinguishable, but I think the takeaway is not so much that we can make fake beef taste good. The lesson here is that Whoppers are terrible. Sure, they managed to make a vegetable patty that tasted like a Whopper, but why would anyone want that?

After lunch was literally more of the same, getting pulled back to the same room for hours, fighting with the same touch panel and display issues. I really just hope the next time she comes around, I’m legitimately in the middle of something so she doesn’t think she can just come and fetch me any time she wants. I ended the day playing with the IVR a bit more, and finally switched the career center over to their automated menu.

When I got home, I pretty much immediately got to checking water quality in the aquariums. Much to my surprise, everything was great! The 10 gallon shrimp tank was within acceptable ranges of everything, but the Imagitarium had perfect numbers. No ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates at all. The carbonate hardness was up a bit, and it had even turned a bit alkaline, which is great for the shrimp. The Tums really worked some magic in both of the tanks.

Eventually I headed up to Summer’s for the evening, and made us salads for dinner before settling down with an episode of Battlestar for bed.

Frakking toaster thinks it’s human!

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Mandio Cart

I forgot my phone at home this morning, but at least I made it there on time. Jason was out, which shouldn’t have surprised me since he actually had us scheduled yesterday for projects today. I was sent with Amanda to pick up a couple unused carts from Oakland and London. If I had known they were such small carts, we wouldn’t have taken the trailer, but it did still make things easier on us. I even managed to swing by and get my phone on the way. When we finished with the carts, we had to hang a touch panel at Crawford for Allen, and Amanda and I made short work of it.

On a whim this morning, I suggested Taco Bell for their new toasted cheddar chalupas, and it stuck. Allen, Gary, Ben, and I all had the same thing for lunch, and it was a hit. It didn’t even seem as heavy as I expected it to be, and the tacos were extraordinarily fresh and crunchy. I spent too long fighting with their app and ended up having to order at the counter like some kind of plebeian, but it was worth it for that warm, fried, cheddar shell.

After lunch we split up to do our own work orders, and I fought with my latest software deployment some more. It never finished overnight, and I nearly gave up, but I kept throwing changes at it until it worked once, and then I deployed it to the lab. So far, so good. I finally got that sound system lowered as well, but I cheated and didn’t even bother mounting the wall mount. She had a full size filing cabinet right there underneath it, and there was just enough slack in the cabling to pull it down, so I set the amp there instead.

After work, I went to the shop to visit with Summer, and messed around with her computer some to try and make things better for her. It was so hot upstairs, and I could tell the heat was making me a little cranky. When we left there, I couldn’t even take the short way home because of the county fair traffic. I had to make a huge loop all the way around town. I found one more cherry shrimp in the kitchen tank, which brings my total to eight in the Imagitarium and one stubborn and hard to catch shrimp still in the kitchen tank. Then I got frustrated with a corrupt Tabs Outliner file and had to recover from a January backup before Summer got here from the gym.

We settled in for some Battlestar Galactica, and then it was off to bed. Dad wanted to leave super early for the civil war thing, and we just weren’t having any of it, so we’re sleeping in instead.

Ocular migraines are weird.

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I’ve Got a Package for You

I don’t know how, but I lost about 15 minutes this morning somewhere. At least it was nice weather, so I picked the Grom for the day. Today was the day for people to come and fetch me from my office. First it was a needy one from down the hall, and then it was maintenance from opposite ends of the campus. They came and got me while I was on the phone with Becky talking about her impromptu retirement and move to Asurion. We walked for what seemed like forever, but I did get to see the balcony at the Center in all its pitch blackness. The office makes for a nice, spooky hideaway. Once I fixed that wireless issue, it was off to the arena for more of the same, plus some printer fudging.

Lunch was there before I knew it, and I squeaked out just in time to catch Allen and Gary heading to McDonald’s. I tried the Bacon Big Mac after fighting with their WiFi and app for a while, and I was quite pleased with it. It didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks either, which was odd and satisfying.

When I got back to the high school, I dug into some software and got to brag about how smartly I created an uninstallation/upgrade package. Feelsgoodman.jpg

I rode home and unboxed a huge package from Amazon with a bunch of Tide PODS and aquarium goodies. The hang-on breeding boxes seemed really great, so I set one up for a betta in the bathroom, and then netted out three cherry shrimp to move to the Imagitarium. It seems like I lost several more of them, but it’s possible they’re just hiding really well in all the vegetation. Summer and Eaddie came over as soon as they could after their trip around town. Autumn had another appointment in Little Rock before a football game tonight, and Summer had to go by the shop to take care of some things at the end of the day.

Tech’s Family Night was happening at the train depot, and Summer wanted to go for the announcement of the winners of Paint the Town Green and Gold. The food truck selection was abysmal, but I managed an Old Post Bar-B-Q sandwich with great success. Eaddie went blue with some shaved ice. We weren’t there too long before we spotted a furry playing with any dog it could find. Then it was time for the announcements. Summer won Best New Participant with her painting and crushed cars at Superfast, and she was so excited to run up on stage.

We didn’t stick around for the pep rally since Eaddie had homework and I’m pretty sure we all hate pep rallies. It was back to my house until Autumn finished with the band. Summer started falling asleep on the couch while Eaddie spent like seventy two hours writing a single paragraph. I worked on the aquariums a bit more until they left and I got ready for bed myself.

I simply cannot express to you in words how low of a priority this is for me.

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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.