Tag: work

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Getting it Done

Jason found the student laptops we lost the other day, exactly where he put them originally. I had no idea they were in these massive bags from shipping, and they didn’t look at all like anything useful. About half of the crew was out, but Jason had a plan for most of us. I had to tell him that Ben planned to spend the day with me, which I’m not certain actually changed any of what the rest of them were doing.

Ben and I loaded up and went to the high school to try and run some network cable for the new assistant technical director. His chosen office space was laughably stupid, and the absolute farthest away from the rest of civilization that anyone could get. Even vo-tech and the multipurpose facility didn’t seem as out of the way as his office. It wasn’t even a real closet. It was literally the access room for where the stage curtain rolls away. There was absolutely no access for cable, and we didn’t have a ladder even half as high as we would have needed to run the cable.

Giving up with that, we went upstairs for what turned out to be a super simple run for some phones to JROTC. I didn’t even mind having to run it twice to add a WAP line. We finished up just in time to make it to lunch a little bit late. Jason, Brice, and Zach met us at CJ’s for double-price burgers. I ran into Jessica’s mom there too, but otherwise it was an uneventful and quick lunch.

On the way back, Ben had to stop by St. John’s Catholic School to drop off some RAM, and made jokes about me spontaneously combusting as we pulled into the property. I wasn’t worried, but I also didn’t want to tempt fate by letting him park on top of the single parking space with a cross painted right in the middle of it.

I was on my own for the rest of the day, so I went back to the high school and tried to finish up what I could before the three-day weekend. As everyone started to leave at the end of the day, I headed back to the shop to upgrade PaperCut with Ben. The new version was actually a new major release which fixed the staple finishing option. With that done, I noted the day as a great success.

I got home just a little late, especially considering Ben sent everyone else home a bit early. I spent a whole bunch of time with the shrimp, dividing everyone up by color and acclimating them to two different tanks. I put the higher quality cherries and ghost shrimp into the larger tank, and the lower quality cherries into the Imagitarium to test the water. I hope they brighten up from being around the dark substrate, but I really don’t have a clue how they’ll look when they grow up.

Finally I headed to Summer’s for the evening, where I decided it was a nice evening for a fire. Summer brought leftover pizza home from the shop, so I ate a bit of that for dinner while I got the fire pit started. Once the larger logs lit up, she came outside to kick back under the stars with me, and we chatted away while the girls went to bed.

Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.

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MRIs!

It was actually a little bit cool out this morning, and another nice day to ride. I closed out what work orders I could chase down, and then left after a half day so we could take Autumn to Little Rock for her MRI. Once Summer was home, I picked her up and we went to The 3D Cafe for lunch. The fajita nachos were excellent and heaping, and apparently they’re the kind of restaurant that serves chips and salsa when you sit down now. Summer wanted the strawberry pie too, so we split that cream cheesy goodness.

When we got to the junior high, I ran inside to see the girls in the library for just a moment, and then we were on our way. I thought about stopping in Conway first, and possibly should have, but it all worked out in the end. We took a brief detour through Little Rock due to some blind acceptance of the GPS, but we made it to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in plenty of time. It was a late appointment, and the place looked mostly empty, so I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising that they got us checked in so quickly. There was a bit of a wait for the MRI, but then she was in and out in no time. Summer and I didn’t even make it through a whole episode of Battlestar Galactica on my phone before Autumn got back.

I fought my GPS a little more and circled the capital before heading out of town. We got into Conway and stopped at Sam’s for a little too long before running through Bed Bath & Beyond to grab some clearanced merchandise, and then finally stopping at PetCo for some more shrimp. The store looked to be in particular disarray, and it took us forever to get any help. They had one fish tank full of young bettas that were flaring up at each other with all manners of stress, and I was just told he’d “tell their fish guy.” There were tons of dead, but I went through with the purchase anyway. Some combination of poor eyesight and not giving a shit landed me with a couple extra shrimp, but I figure I may lose that many in the next day or so just due to the poor handling.

We stopped at Rally’s for a bite to eat on the way home and had some of their awesome fries. Their cheese sticks didn’t have any noticeable seasoning as advertised, but the cheese itself was perfectly stringy and delicious. When we got back home, I dropped the shrimp off, we got Eaddie from her grandparents’ house, and then I dropped the girls off at home. Summer and I finished the last few minutes of our episode, and then I headed home to set up a quarantine for the shrimp before bed.

OIC, MREDBD peepers!

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Keep Riding On

I got up this morning and it was pretty nice out, so I decided to take the bike to work. Traffic wasn’t as bad, and I got in just in time. All morning was wandering around closing work orders until lunch. I did have one moment of perfect clarity when I had to hunt down a switch I could see but not access. All the work on switches recently has me feeling more confident when I’m configuring them.

Gary, Allen, and Jason all went to Wendy’s for lunch because that’s Allen’s favorite place to eat now after years of hating it. I joined them for a while, and then went by the junior high afterward to start wiping more hard drives for some computers that just sold at auction. Heather needed some help looking at the digital sign outside, and we discovered it was actually a power issue.

On the way back to the high school, I stopped by and chatted with Ben for quite a while. Then Gary brought a switch and a couple WAPs over to the old fieldhouse after school so we could get their network up and running again. I know it’s nothing at all to him, but I actually had a lot of fun just racking it and patching everything in. Then I got to feel smart when I configured their printer for use again.

After work, I went home to change and then got some gas for the bike. It was close to closing time, so I stopped by the shop to see Summer for a bit, and then went by the junior high to wipe a few more computers. From there, I went to my parents’ house and waited for the girls to get there for dinner. We all just cleaned up some leftovers and headed home.

I had planned to spend the night with them, but really wanted to test the water in the Imagitarium again. It was better, but not quite as much as I was hoping after such a large water change. I did some trimming with the plants though, and got a better feel for the dense planting I’ll have in that tank.

No, they did not put our network closet in a girl’s locker room. I tried.

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Don’t Get Testy

I started out at the shop this morning so I could finish my LockDown browser deployment. I got the last piece I needed in order to put the whole thing together, and it worked. Once that was done, I had to leave the shop before I got too annoyed with anyone that was either not doing anything at all or too stupid to remember how to do what they were doing yesterday.

Most of the rest of my morning was spent shuffling around Verizon Jetpacks that reeked of cigarette smoke and unemployment. Evidently we lost two outright last year, and four more were damaged or not working for one reason or another. Lunch came and went, and nothing sounded good so I seized the opportunity to ride on through on another Soylent.

The afternoon rolled on pretty quickly, and then Eaddie rode the bus over to me after school. We went to my parents’ house for some fish soup before I had to take her to karate. She’s been aggravating me with her lackadaisical responses any time we ask her to do anything, and today was no exception. She had 20 minutes to finish eating before karate. Then she had 15. Then she had 10. Then she had 5 to get dressed. Then she was 10 minutes late to karate and still wouldn’t even walk quickly to the front door of the establishment. I cannot imagine why someone with so much uncontrollable, spontaneous energy would have to drag her feet after being asked to do anything and everything, and things are about to get really serious.

I came on home after that and started taking care of the fish again. I put Fatty back into the community tank since I’ve lost enough of the other inhabitants over the years that she shouldn’t be stressed. I still need to put together some bigger tanks for the other two bettas, and I can’t decide if I want to put one in the Imagitarium to take to work. I’ve still got the Fluval Edges to work with as well, and the Miracle-Gro® Performance Organics™ All Purpose Container Mix seems to be doing quite well for my plants. I like the Black Diamond sandblasting media as a substrate cap as well, though I wish I had the coarser stuff.

For some reason, out of all the still water in my house, a mosquito laid eggs that hatched in my Imagitarium. I sucked a bunch of larvae out in a massive, first water change in that tank, but I wish I could have just dropped a fish in to take care of it. The nitrogen cycle is stupid. Hopefully after tomorrow it will be ready for some fauna, but at least so far the plants have really taken off.

I’m gonna count to one.

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Up and at Em!

I got up a bit early today so I could swing by the shop to get the stuff I needed to run a new HDMI cable first thing this morning. Then I continued on home to get ready before going to the high school with everything. Mason offered to help me, so Jason let me off the hook for the meeting this morning for not having to pull anyone else out with me. It didn’t take very long because it was a short run and there was already some panduit on the wall. Then it was off to take care of other random work orders.

Brice and Amanda wanted Brangus for lunch. Eight of us in total made it there this time. My steak tasted a bit funny but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. On the way back, I stopped by Oakland to give Leslie a new power cable for her speakers. Then I continued on back to the high school.

I left pretty close to on time after a slightly frustrating and loud conversation with Dan, but I think we were both just feeling frustrations from different angles. After I got home, I received an email from him thanking me for the insight, which felt nice. It’s probably worth another conversation in the future after I had some time to kind of stew on it a bit, but I hope I expressed a genuine desire to be helpful without giving in too much.

While I was home, I took care of the fish and then sat for quite a while just relaxing in front of the shrimp tank. The snail population has just exploded, and though I appreciate the lack of algae, I think it may be time to do something about them. No other tank of mine has nearly this many, though I guess the shrimp tank is pretty jungly.

Once the girls got home, I headed up there and heated up the leftover pizza for dinner. Then Summer and Autumn went to sleep while Eaddie and I sat up watching Daredevil. She fell asleep part way through the last episode we watched, and then we both called it a night.

I seriously just taught you how to do something that I learned by myself in middle school, and that’s not even the most frustrating part!

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Hackerman

I loaded everything up this morning and headed to central office for a new picture. I went ahead and took a normal photo for the website first, but then the coat went on, the collars went up, and the Matrix glasses and Lazer Tag helmet topped it all off. Josh seemed genuinely excited to be doing something fun and different. He even asked me to stick around to take some other creative shots after he finished portraits for the last few people walking in. I felt a little silly, but I figured it would be worth it. Even Ben walked in and caught my hijinks and had to laugh. As we finished up, Josh made the comment that he wished I had the gun to go with it. I told him I was moving in with him if I got fired for it, retrieved it from the trunk of my car, and we took the shots.

With that out of the way, I stopped by the shop to check on things there, then ran by the middle school to pick up some scrapped Chromebook chargers to use for something at the high school. I ran into Sara there, and she wanted to pick my brain about esports. We ended up talking for quite a while, laughing at how we were both far enough behind that sitting around chatting all day wouldn’t even make a noticeable difference. When I finally left the middle school, I stopped by Oakland to see if I could swipe an unused laptop dock and say hello to everyone for a minute. Then I had to head on to the high school to fix a vo-tech phone I had evidently broken yesterday.

I did a few more things at the high school before heading to Morelos to meet Zach and Allen. The carnitas were pretty great, and I took a taco salad to Summer afterward. Zach bought my lunch because he said it was easier than trying to explain in broken English how to split the check. I stopped by the shop to pick up some things, then headed back to the high school to churn through some more work orders.

The girls took the bus over after school, and I took them home with me so I could take care of some things. My wireless was out, which turned into having to update some things that took too long. I eventually just gave up on having it done, and we went to CiCi’s to meet Summer. She ended up not feeling well enough to eat out, so we got some Little Caesar’s on the way up instead. The girls did their homework, and Summer and I tried to watch the new Rocko’s Modern Life on Netflix. I didn’t love it, but it did satisfy what little nostalgia I had just from remembering the show existed. Finally it was off to a slightly early bedtime.

I’ll have to come back again and dual wield these things.

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Third Wind

I went to bed early last night but tossed and turned for a couple hours before I finally fell asleep. It wasn’t too much later that I woke up to the sound of the cat retching in the floor, so I had to get out of bed to clean that up. Then I tossed and turned, wide-eyed from about 3am until about 5:45, when I finally jumped out of bed and drove to Waffle House. I sat at the bar by myself with only one other customer in the restaurant, surprised that there weren’t more people there for breakfast. Running on so little sleep, I knew what I had to get. Bacon cheese burger with hash browns scattered all the way with chili and gravy. It was full-on punishment for the betrayal I felt as my body refused to go to sleep. The cook was a rockstar, but accidentally threw some hash browns on the grill for a regular customer that ended up not wanting them. He offered them to me for free, so I mounded them on top of my already sloppy plate and destroyed it all. No mercy.

It was a super fast breakfast with nobody else there, and I made it home just in time to hear my alarm clock start buzzing. It was go-time. Full morning routine and out the door a full 10 minutes early. I made it to school and got up into the building way early and jumped right in. Then I was assaulted by the library when some testing didn’t go as planned. Failures exaggerated, our pseudo hero jumped in to “save the day” and “take the credit.” Gary showed up in the middle of it all and had to go hide in my office for all the screaming.

With that crisis out of the way, Gary and I wandered around vo-tech taking care of phones. The Mac internet issue ended up not being my problem, which was nice. Then it was back up to the office for our second crisis. Just as class let out, one of our internet circuits went out for just a few minutes and I had a line of people out my door wanting to know what we were doing to fix it. Without even having enough time to identify the failure, we had people wanting to know an ETA for a fix so they could plan their next period. Gary rage-quit and went back to his office for good reason, but I was no stranger to dealing with people in a self-induced panic. Boom, more work orders closed.

I continued on with work orders until lunch when Allen invited me to Smackin’ Wings. I met him there, along with Gary, Zach, and Ben. We had entertainingly, lovingly hateful conversations, making sure we made it fully around the department. Then I had to load up a computer lab worth of computers to take to the high school. Allen helped me move them to the dock to load them into my car, and then I cut him loose to do his own things. I got lucky and ran into my intern while looking for a dolly to bring the computers inside, then got a bit of sass from my mohawked maintenance guy for knocking on his dungeon door. I get personal space, but I still felt slighted. I may have to take his internet.

Ben met us to help set up the computer lab, which ended up taking the rest of the day. We fought the switch configuration a bit, and even had trouble toning out a line, and ended up switching ports in the room for one that was labeled at the switch. All done except for the deployments. Then I closed out a few more things before walking out.

Finally home, I just continued my work streak and cleaned up all of the aquariums. It looks like Murderface has a bit of hole-in-the-head, but I’m not certain. Gotta keep his water changed more often, especially since I never test it. Those snails are messy. Once everything was cleaned up, I headed to my parents’ house to pick up some props for picture day. Then it was off to Summer’s for promised head scratchies to ensure absolute sleep tonight.

All the angles.

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There’s No Good Time

I made it in to work just a little early this morning, still pretty groggy from waking up a few times last night. I made up my own parking space in the grass again, but I can already tell it’s going to be trouble when it rains. I’m not looking forward to it at all, but I guess I’ve got the sick leave to burn if I wanted to just not work every time the weather is bad.

I spent a little time on some stuff in my office, then wandered around the campus for a while to clean up some work orders. Zach stopped in since he was there working on something else, and we went down to the ATCC for a bit to scope out a couple things. Then I left him to go close out a couple things at the multipurpose facility before lunch. Summer wanted to join us for the $5 salad bar, but we had to wait until 1 o’clock for her. I picked Zach up on the way off campus, then we got her from the shop, and made our way to Ruby Tuesday. Our server goofed and Zach got a free meal just because he didn’t want to ring out another guest because of some fraud prevention system. To me that sounded a bit broken, but we tipped him for it.

After dropping everyone off, I headed to the shop for a bit to set up a new laptop and then research some of my more time consuming work orders. Ben eventually came around the shop and asked when we could set up a desktop computer lab, and I just had to tell him there is no good time because I feel like I’m drowning in things to do as it is, so we’d just have to make the time and sacrifice something else. Then we sat down and he showed me the system to create IVR systems in Avaya. It looked really fun, and I can see myself borrowing some of our outbound numbers in the future, assuming I ever find any free time ever again.

I worked a little late to finish making the user accounts for the new vo-tech phone lines, and then went by my parents’ house for just a few minutes. They weren’t really doing much and I wasn’t hungry since we had a big, late lunch, so I sat there for a few minutes before Dad decided we could move the boat onto the paver stones I bought. We couldn’t really push it around by hand, so we actually had to hook it up to my hitch and drive it a couple feet, but it wasn’t too bad. It was hot and humid outside though, so by the time that was over I was ready for bed. I went home and laid down for a while before getting back up to finish my evening routine, then crashing a few hours early.

For Allen Dot Hopgood, press 1.
For Amandy Bolton, press 60,000.net.
Para Pancho, oprima el numero tres.
For Customer Relations, push all of his buttons.

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On the Subject of Drowning

I got out a bit early this morning to bring Doug home after dropping his car off at the Cogswell Collision Center. He had a little fender bender the other day and asked me to give him a ride back. I actually made it to work just a few minutes late, which I thought was pretty impressive. It was all downhill from there.

All day I felt like I was just scattered and scrambling to make sense of it all. Ultimately I got several things closed out, but I’m still getting covered up with work orders and I haven’t had a chance to touch any of the 1:1 devices. The stack of repairs isn’t getting any shorter, and the anxiety is mounting. I didn’t even take a lunch, and opted for a bit of Soylent halfway through the day instead. It got me to the end of the day without too much trouble, which I guess was ideal.

Eaddie took the bus to the high school so I wouldn’t have to get her from the shop, and we went to my parents’ house for more spring rolls. I helped slice up the smoked pork and shrimp while Eaddie played on her phone. We didn’t waste any time, and ate as soon as everything was ready. Julie came by and finished up her beef spring rolls too.

I decided to take Eaddie out for ice cream after dinner, and we settled on Bocadillos for something different. She got an ice cream cone with mint chocolate and Nutella. I got a churro with strawberry cheesecake ice cream. It was all delicious and expensive. Then we stopped by my house so I could change before making our way to their house for the night. Summer spent all evening at Tech for some kind of involvement fair, so we made another stop to get her some Taco John’s for dinner. I was upset to hear they “couldn’t do Potato Olés” for some reason, but I don’t think they charged the whole combo price either.

It sounds like they’re still shaking things up at Splash, so it’ll be exciting to see what happens next. Right now all I can think about is my pillow.

House slippers in the summer just make me sweat.

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Ah, the Old Bait-and-Switch

Ben and I were supposed to go take care of a few older pending things at the high school today, but instead I ended up getting a scolding for not listing things on GovDeals during our busiest time of the year as we drove to the junior high to do just that. I definitely never meant for Heather to feel any anxiety about what was left, but it just didn’t seem like a priority to me when she was coming into the job not knowing how to do most of it anyway. I did feel tremendously guilty for not having my things out first, but I also felt an obligation to wait for Dale to leave before I started shuffling things around. The entire ordeal just kind of felt like a big mess to me, and I’ve felt nothing but bad about it all for the several months it’s been since I had been advised of the changes.

In any case, he and I spent all morning cleaning up her office before we went to Bocadillos for lunch. He had never been, and like the rest of my week, nothing at all sounded good to me. I almost feel like a tiny part of me has died and is just over food altogether. I’m sure that won’t last, but it’s a weird feeling at the moment.

After lunch, we finished up with what we were doing and then grabbed a bunch of phones to deliver to vo-tech. We didn’t realize – and nobody could tell us – that they had already delivered all of the phones to the campus, and even set them in place for the most part, which was another aggravation of mine. You’d think the project manager would have known, or at least would have sent the same crew to complete the job so they could report accurately what had been done. That’s not how we do things though.

I left work a bit late after all of that, never having the chance to complete any of my work. I went by Summer’s shop to see her, but she was super busy. The girls were there, but they didn’t seem bothered by my presence either. I ended up just slowly uninstalling a bunch of old crap from the shop’s laptop to try and help its poor performance. When it was all over, I felt so sweaty from just existing there that I had to go home to dry off.

I started immediately on just about anything I thought I could accomplish. I cleaned up some email, did some research, cleaned up some things, paid some bills, and finally made it to Summer’s house just in time for absolutely nothing. Everyone was asleep and I kind of wished I had just stayed home where I could have at least continued cleaning while I was still in the mood. Instead, I sat in the dark for my evening routine and eventually went to bed.

How dissatisfying.