Tag: work

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Computer Hardware 101

It’s been rainy, or at least threatening rain for days, so when today looked to be only cloudy, I jumped at the chance to ride the bike to work. I spent most of the morning at Oakland setting up a new phone extension and configuring a switch for it. Shavon emailed me along with a couple others to invite us for lunch, so Allen, Jason, and I all drove there separately. I wanted to go to the junior high in the afternoon, and I guess Allen wasn’t going back to the shop either.

I stayed at the junior high almost until school let out, slowly making my way around some work while trying to keep my blood pressure low. Then I went back to preschool for a work order on the way over to the high school to meet up with Dale. We scanned in another cubby worth of laptops and did a very little bit of exploring before quitting time.

Back home, I felt flush all evening. I couldn’t tell if it was an actual problem, or if I was just paranoid, but I wasn’t going to stress over it. Summer had to go to the shop for a meeting to be introduced formally as the new manager, and then to Autumn’s band concert. I spent some time cleaning up my computer, and then even more time just trying to relax in bed.

One of my esports founders expressed boredom, so I suggested he troubleshoot his desktop that doesn’t currently work. For a kid in EAST that I would assume has some interest in computers, he really seemed to be afraid to try anything at all. Maybe I’m looking back through rose-tinted glasses, but I feel like I never hesitated to tear into stuff. I remember getting a VooDoo graphics card from Jared and installing that in my computer to improve seemingly everything. I wonder what happened to things like that. In the end, we narrowed it down to a likely bad hard drive, but I can get him a crappy spare from scrap. It should be easy to get him back in business.

Remember that time you thought you couldn’t do that thing, but then you turned around and did it anyway?

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Underpaid Factory Work

It was rainy all day, so I decided to start at the high school. Dale was expecting a bunch of keyboard bezels in today, so we had the afternoon to start that. I spent most of the morning trying to augment his barcode scanning sheet so he wouldn’t have to scan both the library tag and the laptop serial tag, and instead have it auto-populate the serial from a sheet with the complete inventory CSV.

He had to leave a bit early for lunch with the super, so I went to Oakland to work on a couple things. I ended up sitting and chatting with Sharon, Stephen, and Marcia for a while before getting back to the science room to fix the issue. By the time I got back to the front of the building, everyone had pretty much eaten all of the barbecue they brought in. I managed to scrap together a ham sandwich and sat in the lounge watching the rain outside.

Afterward I went back to the office and got around to checking my blood pressure. One of the diabetic kids was in there, and we laughed about how we were dying. He started rambling a bit about his mom, and as Leslie was turned around seemingly ignoring us, I told him he should run away. We both turned to look at her still facing the computer, and giggled that she wasn’t listening. Of course she turned around laughing, and told him not to run away. My numbers were pretty high, so I tried to chill out the rest of the day.

Back at the high school, Dale and I started tearing into the repairs. We had a pretty big stack of bezels come in, and he showed me how to replace them. Something like 27 screws and some calloused fingers later, I had the old part out. Then it was just a matter of doing it again in reverse to put the things back together. My back hurt from leaning over to perform this mindless task, and I found myself really hating it. If I’m going to last there any length of time at all, they’re going to have to let me come inspect them throughout the year so I’m not stuck rushing through it all over the summer.

We left work a bit early since Dale had a haircut, and I worked through most of my lunch. I went home for just a little while before having to get back out in the rain to make it up to Summer’s house. She had taken the day off and made a nice dinner for everyone. I never really got to feeling better about my blood pressure all afternoon, and that carried over into the evening with the kids being of normal volume. I couldn’t be mad because they were all behaving relatively well, but I just couldn’t decompress the way I really needed to.

Eventually everyone made it to bed. At least tomorrow morning I’ll have a break from the already tedious labor I’ve been assigned, but I imagine it will be back to that old grind stone in the afternoon again.

I have learned absolutely nothing today.

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The Unlikely Lunch

The weather was nice today and I really wanted to ride the bike in to work, but I had to set up the five new computer monitors that Ben offered to Oakland to make up for moving me to another campus. I think all the shuffling around has stressed me out, or at least caused some anxiety because I haven’t quite accepted the inevitability of it. I guess I just have to remind myself that in the end, none of it really matters anyway. Otherwise it was a pretty slow day.

CiCi’s had free buffets for teacher appreciation week today, so I convinced Jason and Allen to go there for lunch with me. Allen spaced and tried to pay for his. I guess I should be relieved that he didn’t show up at Pizza Hut instead, even though I drove us all. I started with a huge salad full of leafy green stuff. The spinach looked pretty wilted, but it tasted good. I couldn’t leave without at least a little pizza, but it was definitely a different mindset than what I normally have. The downside was that I was really hungry again later in the day.

I had esports today, and had a couple kids get caught making out after they had left the building to wait for their rides outside. They seemed like relatively unlikely ones, but what the hell do I know? Kids these days are a whole different breed altogether. When I left work, I went to my parents’ house to help clean up leftovers. I stuffed myself there with a lot more roughage. Once I get into a groove at high school, I’m going to try and skip lunch and do the Soylent thing for a while. I should have at least a week or two where that will work out conveniently.

Back home, I continued to feel the anxiety as I did my best to sit through the Google I/O stream. Somehow I didn’t make it through the hour and a half stream in all of that time, so I’ll have to wrap up the last part of it tomorrow.

All you can SHēt for $5.99

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High School; High Score

I went to the high school this morning to see what Dale was doing. They were just starting to pick up senior devices, classroom at a time. This all leads in to the busiest time for them, and I’ve somehow got to wrap my head around all the RMA processes while also learning a massive new campus. To make things even more difficult, I won’t properly be able to do my own part replacements until I get my A+ and Lenovo certifications. I can already tell I’m going to miss a lot of time that I have traditionally used to learn new things. I kind of hate it, but I’m still hopeful it won’t be that bad.

Teacher appreciation week is here, so Dale and I mooched off of their catered lunch from La Huerta. Then I left to go to the junior high for some work. They were serving hamburgers, so I grabbed one for later while Ben, Jason, and Allen were there. Then I went to work. On his way out, Ben said he basically gave his blessing to move the technology office into a closet, which really got me pretty angry. Evidently it was enough to earn myself a new high score of 200/112, so I went straight back to my room and kicked back for an hour. I tried calling my clinic, but the nurse line voicemail said they only check messages at the end of the day, and I wasn’t sure if I should treat it as more of an emergency. I gave it some time and checked my blood pressure again at a more normal high of 184/101.

Chrystal convinced me to call the clinic again, so I left the voicemail and went back to work. Eventually they did call me back, and told me to double my dosage to 10mg. It’s still not a lot, but the 5mg didn’t seem to phase me at all and I feel like I’m flush more often, or at least more consciously aware of every twinge and ache in my arm, chest, and brain helmet area. They want me to come back in a week instead of the two and a half weeks later for my 30-day checkup.

After school, Summer left for the gym while the girls went with me to my parents’ house. Eaddie came and sat next to me on the couch for the first time, and we both played on our phones until Summer got there. Mom made spring rolls with some pork that Dad smoked, and I filled up on leafy greens. I feel like the fish sauce may have nullified some of that, with a bedtime reading of 150/100. It’d be great if I could keep my diastolic out of the triple digits.

Maybe I’m just too intense.

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Friar Cluck

Summer started off super early to get the car show going. I got out as quickly as I could, feeling much better after sleep. I had to go by her place to get some cakes she forgot, then made it in at least before it started.

I didn’t feel confident in running more than one deep fryer because of the lack of outlets, but I managed with just one pretty well. The show had a great turnout, and people seemed to have a really good time. Nick sold out of pulled pork peculiarly fast, but we had chicken strips for days. I just kept churning them through the fry baskets, using the timer on my Pebble to keep them going. While I was there, I had a few esports kids come in to play, but they were just left to their own devices since I was busy elsewhere.

Dad came by to check it out and hung out with the Model T guys for most of the day. I pulled him away for just a bit to climb up to the roof for some photos. The trees were a bit in the way, but I got a decent panorama out of the deal.

I was absolutely beat by the time we got everything wrapped up, but I had to go to my parents’ to clean up their fryer, and then to the shop to drop off the borrowed extension cords. Somehow Summer had the energy for some gym time. I went home to clean up just a little bit, then made my way to her place to pick her up for the Magic: The Gathering open house. Travis met us there, but John and Melissa had something else going on. We ended up wishing we had brought the kids, but they were tired and moody anyway.

We played a couple games, first for Summer to watch and learn, and then again with all three of us in a free-for-all. Summer won that game, and seemed to really enjoy it, so I’m sure we’ll be back for the next open house. One of the esports kids that didn’t show up to the car show today was there learning how to DM a game of D&D, which I thought was pretty neat. They really did a lot with a small amount of space.

Once Travis had had enough, we headed home and I fried up some rice and egg for dinner. We watched a couple episodes of Parks and Rec, and then crashed.

Oh, oh, it’s Magic!

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Taking Things Without Asking

Heather came to the junior high early this morning, and I tried to show her around a bit while we picked up some more computers that were going out for auction. Matt came along and said they were probably going to move technology out of my office and into a closet so James and his people could have the space, which got me really riled up. It was at that point that I decided it was okay to go gut a teacher’s classroom of student devices without asking.

I forgot my medication yesterday, but was back on it today. A big group of us met at Old South for a very slow lunch. I tried the taco salad with their Old South dressing, which seemed like it was all mayonnaise and garlic powder. The waitress even had a little spiel about how she couldn’t tell me all the ingredients because then it would be “everybody’s” dressing, and that it would ward off vampires, boyfriends, etc. It was a little surreal getting all of that considering how busy they were. The taco salad was good though, even with the weird mayo dressing. I felt like it was more taco than salad, but I’d never complain about it because then they would just give less meat.

After lunch, I had to go to Oakland to help with a National Board video conversion. Erica stopped me cold in my tracks and said Ben told them he was moving me to the high school. It was a bad day for everyone.

When school let out, I went back to the shop to chat with Ben until we went to Alene’s retirement shindig. They really do it up big for those at the top of the food chain. Dale gets his party in the library. I imagine mine will be in a bathroom somewhere, assuming I don’t die from it first.

When I got home, I started some laundry and then tried out Breath of the Wild in 3D. The pictures on the TV were way too diverged, and I think it gave me a pretty good, lingering headache. For a bit I thought it might even be the blood pressure, but I went by Oakland to check, and it wasn’t any worse than usual. I stopped by the shop to get the blood pressure cuff from Jason’s office so I could watch it over the weekend, then went to my parents’ to borrow the deep fryers for the car show. There, I found out that Alene was actually the travel agent for my parents’ honeymoon. If I hadn’t been born two years later, I might have been concerned that I owed the woman my life.

On the way home, I stopped by the shop again for some extension cords because I forgot them the first time. Then it was home for the evening to try and relax and sleep before the big day tomorrow.

Space Cadet.

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Tuckered

Some woman came to my door in the rain this morning, but I was just out of the shower and didn’t get to see what she wanted. Unfortunately nobody recognized her from the school, so I guess it will remain forever a mystery. It was another quiet day of testing once I got in. I took care of a couple things, but the morning went by really fast. It felt like no time at all before my half day was up, and Summer and I started our afternoon of errands for the car show on Saturday.

We went to Advance Auto Parts first, and picked up two car wash bucket kits. Then we went to Tyson to pick up 100 pounds of chicken strips. This is what I was most excited about, because if there’s anything I enjoy, it’s a good chicken strip. We had to ask a guard for directions, and then weaved between a bunch of semi trailers to get where we needed to go. They were very specific in mentioning that we couldn’t take any photographs, but that level of security seemed a little silly to me.

Summer’s freezer was too small to fit the unopened boxes, so rather than cram bags of chicken in there, we went back to the junior high and unloaded it all into the cafeteria freezer. Being in there for only a couple minutes reminded me of working in pizza, and made me really miss it. More specifically, I missed being able to go into a big room that is instantly winter. It’s so nice to just go in there during the summer time to cool off.

With that unloaded, we headed to Morrilton Walmart to try and find a clearanced Yeti microphone. I spent way too much time there, but it looked like they were remodeling and had a ton of stuff on clearance. I couldn’t help myself. In the end I couldn’t find any of the mics I was looking for, but I did pick up a Logitech G430 headset for 15 bucks. I still question whether those mics are just hidden in the store somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious, and the employees seemed clueless to it, and even insistent that they have never carried microphones.

From there, we went across the street to Chopsticks for lunch. It was too late in the afternoon for it to be particularly fresh, but they still did a good job of keeping the food decent. For at least a little while, we were the only ones there, but others did trickle in afterward. The éclairs were unexpectedly delicious, and I think Summer ate a hundred of them. I ran out of room, or I would have done the same.

Finally, we continued on to Conway to go to Sam’s Club. We loaded a full cart, and subsequently my car. Barry came strolling out just as I was loading up, and they were parked just a couple spaces away. I swear I run into him in the wild more than anyone else. We headed back home to unload at the junior high, and then I brought Eaddie back home with me for a while.

Summer came over eventually to get her for the band concert. I didn’t feel great, so as soon as they left, I passed out and took a nap until about the time I normally go to bed. When I woke up, I spent a while cleaning out my inbox before cleaning up for bed again.

Calling that “7.1” is absolutely false advertising.

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It’s Snot What You Think

Heather was supposed to come work with me at the junior high this morning, but she ended up being pretty busy back at the office. I just kind of piddled around until testing was over, and then went back to the shop to meet up for lunch. Jason wanted wings and suggested Zaxby’s, so he, Ben, Zach, and Heather all loaded up with me to go. I had a salad that was really pretty good, but it still made me sad. It wasn’t even a healthy salad, but I just get so much joy out of their chicken strips that it made me sad not to eat them.

After lunch, I chatted with Gary for a while before going to Oakland to clean up a virus our firewall detected was being synced by OneDrive. Then I went back to the shop until the end of the day.

On the way home, I felt a mass inside my right nostril that I thought I could extract. It took some back and forth, but eventually I blew it out. It was so big that my curiosity had me weigh it at just over five grams. I felt like I had never breathed clean air before in my life, but that only lasted a few minutes before I felt the congestion start to move back in.

The Dumbo betta’s fins seemed to have gotten worse since separating her, so I spent some time getting her into some medicated water. Then Summer came over to help clean up the leftover pizza and some dill soup Ronda gave me. Ronda didn’t care for it from Stoby’s, but Summer and I both liked it. Then I spent the rest of the evening on the computer haphazardly researching things I keep putting on the backburner. Clint and Aaron got on for a bit, so I ended the light with a couple rounds of Overwatch before retiring to bed.

Is that my brain?!?

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Dinghy Gamer Peripherals

Testing saw another boring morning. At least I finished making esports giveaways, so it’s on to the next cleanup project. Zach, Summer, and I all met at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. It didn’t seem to help my blood pressure any. I lack the commitment to go on a completely Soylent diet because I’m a social eater. The American workday and lunch schedule just doesn’t fit how my body wants to be treated. Vacations are splendid at correcting this, and I’m feeling like it’s about time for one of those.

I stayed at the junior high all day, because Heather wanted to come check out the building for a bit at the end of the day, and then I had to stay late for esports. I’ve lost some of my motivation here just because of the lack of payoff so far, but I’m still hopeful. I just can’t afford to keep pouring more volunteer time into it when I’m feeling short on time at home too.

After work, I stopped by the house before going to my parents’ for dinner, and then to Walmart to do some deal hunting. I picked up a Corsair keyboard and mouse at a pretty steep clearance price as sort of a treat for all the anxiety I’ll be going through to move over to the high school. The Executive Director and Game Master of Esports can’t be seen using rubber dome keyboards, after all.

Back home for the evening, I don’t even know where my time went. I swear I just got out of work.

You can’t get there from here.

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Removing Tech

Finals started for my campuses today, so I spent all morning at the junior high while Ben covered Oakland. I used the time to dust and wipe more computers for esports kids since there wasn’t any real need for me anywhere. Dale called for lunch and nobody else was interested, so I met him at Subway for an overpriced 6-inch sub. We didn’t stick around long because the parking lot was packed. I went back to the shop for a bit before visiting Oakland.

Steven had texted earlier about his laptop not working. Ben okayed the swap of his old desktop and laptop for a single laptop to use, but I considered it a small success to have him agree to use the office loaner on those very rare occasions that he needs a laptop, and I’ll replace the desktop with a current model over the summer.

I finished the day at the shop, partly messing with a Chrome tablet and partly chatting with Ben. Then I went home and had to clean up a bit and separate my betta pair in the kitchen. The Dumbo’s fins have been getting worse every day, and though I haven’t seen the other betta pick on her in any meaningful way, I had to start eliminating variables to get her better. Afterward, I went to visit with Summer for just a little bit before going to get gas, exchange the incorrect toilet seat I had picked up from Lowe’s on Saturday, and finally to Tractor Supply to pick up some bags of Black Diamond coal slag sandblasting abrasives to use as a soil cap in the aquariums. I really hope it pans out, but it’s going to be quite a bit of time consuming work ahead.

Back home, I started some laundry, installed the new toilet seat, cleaned up, and played some Overwatch with Clint, Jack, and Johnny before bed.

The socks won’t sort and number themselves!