Tag: work

Uncategorised

I Want a New Duck

It was really slow again today, but I spent most of my time trying not to hulk out instead of cleaning or doing much of substance. My morning systolic blood pressure was pretty good, but my diastolic doesn’t like to hang out much below 90. I stopped by Sonic to get some Ched ‘R’ Peppers for Summer and a free fresh cherry lemonade that I stuck in my fridge to sip on over time. Jessica finally got power for her TVs outside the library, but I had to climb up to reset the Chromebits.

Allen wanted Dairy Queen for lunch, so I met him and Jason there. They had a promo chicken and waffles meal that was super good. The waffle was really crispy on the outside and perfectly soft in the middle, and I even got some gravy for the chicken strips. Even the fries were hot and tasty today. I felt that it was a great accomplishment to order a 4-piece meal instead of the 6 that was offered. Baby steps.

A little while after lunch, I had to go back to the doctor to let them take my blood pressure a couple times until they found a number they liked. The bad thing is that they kept my diastolic blood pressure of 80, which is an all-time low that I’ve only ever reached once before during a reading where I was distracted and taking a phone call. I always just assumed that one was bogus and should be thrown out. In any case, they wrote me a proper prescription for the 10mg of amlodipine besylate I’ve been taking, plus a new prescription for 25mg of hydrochlorothiazide. I’ve only got one more double-shot of my original prescription, so I guess I’ll wait a day and take my new ones together so they run out at the same time.

Summer had a really rough day and was super frustrated with everyone, so I took the girls with me while she went to the gym. We stopped by Walgreens so I could pick up my prescriptions, and then I took Autumn home since she was dealing with a bad attitude as well, and Eaddie wanted to join Summer and me for bún thang at my parents’ house. The soup was great, but it’ll be interesting to see how my body deals with the extra spice tomorrow.

After dinner, Summer took Eaddie home and I went to my house and did a little cleaning before setting up my replacement TicWatch E. I really love my Pebble more though, so I may try to sell the TicWatch and come back to Wear OS later in the future. A big part of me is frustrated by how many interests I’m trying to juggle right now though, and just wants to sail off and disconnect for a while. At least I think it does. I suppose it’s possible this is just another one of my many interests that is feeling neglected at the moment. I haven’t been on the water in a while.

One that’s never gonna try to migrate or escape!

Uncategorised

Splashing in the Rain

We woke up unnaturally early today so we could get to Conway for Summer’s 5k before 7:30. Autumn and I dropped her off in a place with way too little parking, and nearly got stuck in the mud after a couple jerks in trucks parked in the middle of the exit. It rained most of the day, so rather than sit around in the car listening to that, we went across town to Walmart to pick up some food to share for breakfast. Once Summer was done, we continued on to Benton to meet Jeff and get a tour of the Splash Car Wash & Express Lube.

The facility was super new and super clean, and really showed how much work they put into maintaining a positive and clean atmosphere for both customers and employees. It would have been neat to see the car wash in action, but that will have to wait for another time I suppose. It was great getting the full tour of the place though. I didn’t care for the acrylic tip boxes they had out, but that may be me projecting my feelings about American tip culture than anything else. Maybe enough people have tried to tip the “behind the scenes” employees that the boxes became a necessity. I tend to always feel that tips in the US are just a company’s way of subsidizing their employees’ pay so they don’t have to pay them a fair hourly wage, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

After the tour, Jeff treated us to lunch at Olive Garden back in Little Rock. Then we went across town to Walmart and Sam’s where I spent too much money and too much time. By the time we got out of there, we were all pretty tired. We made it back to Conway and decided to stop at Dick’s to check out the bicycle sale. Summer and Autumn both liked the ride height of the GT Laguna Pro, so we picked one up there and decided to try and order the other two colors online since we didn’t have the bike rack anyway.

We circled back to Pizza Ranch for dinner, which I learned was another strangely Christian pizza buffet. I guess that’s a thing? The bar was small and the food was pretty good, but I don’t think it was worth anywhere near the $12 price tag per head. It was a relatively enjoyable visit though, and a decent cap to our day.

Once we got back home, I dropped Summer off at my house, unloaded the bike, and Autumn and I went to pick up Eaddie from their grandparents’ house. When we got back, I had Eaddie try to ride the bike, and she passed that test with flying colors, and in a fraction of the time it took the others to get both feet off the ground. Summer was already in bed, so the girls started some TV while I tried ordering bikes. The website inventory seemed inaccurate, so I got right to calling stores. Little Rock was the only one of the three I tried that had the gunmetal color in the medium size frame, so I talked them into honoring the sale price the day after expiration. Then I called back to Conway and talked to Taylor again, and he agreed to do the same for the light blue. I guess tomorrow we’ll drive across the state again, only this time with a bike rack in tow.

Oh hey! Look, it’s a pikachWHAT THE HELL?!?

Uncategorised

Hamburglar

It was no surprise that Jason didn’t have any projects for us. That’s probably not totally fair to say since a lot of that has to do with nobody else asking for help doing anything, but he’s already made himself an easy target. I went on about my own business and spent most of the morning at Oakland with my best blood pressure yet. Then I went to the junior high a bit before lunch so I could get a hamburger from there for lunch. I’m pretty sure that if I had timed it right, I could have had a free hamburger for lunch every single day this week.

I spent most of the afternoon there until it started raining, and I went back to the shop to pick up a badge for someone. Just as I was about to leave, Ben and Dale got back with a truck and trailer load of carts from Thomas, so I had to help unload those. Then we went across the street to give Brenda our best for her retirement. The snacks helped, but I feel so guilty going to those gatherings just for the food, so I always try to make an effort to chat a bit with whoever we’re celebrating. It’s still super awkward if I’ve never spent much time with that person though.

I delivered the badge on the way home, and then it wasn’t long before Summer and Autumn got there so we could all go to dinner at the shop. We got rained out of the park, so Ben got Summer’s crew together to grill ribeyes in the shop. It probably would have been less awkward in the park, but it wasn’t an awful time. I don’t know that anybody stuck around for a super long time after they ate. We left to go get gas and stop by PetSmart.

On the way home, Eaddie texted Summer and said she had forgotten her homework in her locker, so we went by my house to get the keys and then picked Eaddie up from her grandparents’ house. We got into the middle school, and Summer slipped on the wet floor and hurt her knee pretty badly. Then almost inevitably, Eaddie’s homework wasn’t in her locker. We took her back, then came back to my house for bed.

It’s too cold to be out running this early.

Uncategorised

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?

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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!

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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.