Tag: work

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Tired Again

I’ve spent every morning this week waking up so tired that I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be retired. At least I felt like I got a lot accomplished at work. I’m still getting a lot of work orders coming in, and I still have projects ahead of me that I need to finish sooner than later, but I feel like I’m learning things at a faster pace.

I spent the morning at Oakland before Ronda and I went to Long John Silver’s for lunch with my BoGo coupon, then I spent the afternoon at the junior high. Tomorrow may be kind of rough with projects, depending on who all decides not to show up. I’ll never understand the mindset of the people on my team when they say they can take an extra day off to make it a longer weekend. That’s literally always the case.

After work, I went to my parents’ house and met up with my newly retired father. It’s probably not even possible for me to retire from a job after 43 years now. I guess I could from the school, but I’d like to make enough money to do more than eat by then. Summer and Eaddie came over and had curry with us when they got out of their respective athletic activities. Finally it was back home for an earlier bedtime.

I should have taken tomorrow off so I could have a four day weekend…

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Moment of Focus

I stopped by Oakland to wrap up a couple things before heading to the junior high to get the chicken biscuit that Summer got me. Once there, I spent a little time running around, then found myself intensely focused on some System Center stuff. I started digging around in Ryan’s OS deployment task sequence to see how it ticked, and I was actually having fun.

During one of my trips out of my office and across the building, one of the SpEd kids had gotten loose and was tearing down the halls with all kinds of people chasing after him. I wasn’t sure what my place in all of this was, which only got worse when I turned a corner and found him running straight toward me. I nearly tackled him, but Joe got to him first with his tallman legs.

When I finally got out for a late lunch, I went to Wendy’s for a dollar Double Stack with a free order of Baconator fries. I’m killin it with cheap lunches lately. I just took it with me to the shop and continued working on things there until the end of the day.

It started to storm really hard right before quitting time, so I hung out a bit late finishing some stuff, then went to Summer’s for dinner. She made some slow cooker ribs, and we tried watching something educational instead of the Vine compilations the kids kept wanting to watch. I’m sure my parents thought I was rotting my brain doing the things I did as a kid, but these days I feel like the memes have reached critical mass, and kids are just completely ignorant. It’s always the same 5-second videos over and over again, and they’ve nothing to learn from it.

Back home, I finished sorting socks and worked on a computer for a while longer before heading to bed. These mornings are killing me.

What have you done?

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Today’s Theme: Internal Conflict

I haven’t felt even close to 100% all day, and there’s always some thing or another gnawing at my brain. I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning, but finally made my way to Oakland to play catch-up from the end of last week.

When I got back to the Gardner building, I wandered upstairs to check out the maintenance guys’ progress on gutting the auditorium seating. They were tearing everything out to haul to the scrap yard. I had, and still have strong urges to salvage a couple rows of seating to build a proper home theater. They told me to take all I wanted, but in the end I told Wesley I wouldn’t take any because I have too many higher priority projects that I’m already having trouble starting.

It would have been a pretty amazing opportunity to restore some of those seats, and they were infinitely customizable. I could have built a multi-level seating area and had a real home theater with as many seats as I could physically fit. In the end, I had to make the tough choice not to get any because I wasn’t sure that aligned with the best possible endgame – not to mention simply not having any more physical storage for something like that. Still, it felt like such a shame to let it go to scrap metal.

Insides in knots from my decision to pass up on the seating, I went to Taco John’s to redeem a reward for a combo meal. At least lunch was free today. Then I spent the afternoon at the junior high picking at random work orders to close.

After work, I went to Walmart to try Ronda’s suggestion of haggling with a manager for the electric lawn mowers. I was again conflicted, asking myself why I was there to buy a lawn mower at all. I hadn’t even mowed my lawn in years, but depending on where you look, they were originally $478, $358, or $250. The local store had them for $199.99, and with only two left, I had some dire need to have them both for under $200. They called a CSM out to help, and she said she could only do $300 for the pair. I started to text Summer for feedback, and she came down to $275, then just as quickly to $250 for both, which I accepted. I guess this was my motivation to start mowing.

From there, I went to Summer’s for some leftovers before heading home for the night. That was when I realized that the manager had actually scanned two of the gas powered mowers on my receipt, and had the maintenance guy load one of each into my car. It was an easy mistake to make with the way they were stacked on the shelf, so I guess I’ll have to go back tomorrow to correct it. It’ll be interesting to see if I can talk them into giving me a refund on top of the exchange to get my price below $200 like I wanted.

Josh, Aaron, and Justine were online when I sat down at the computer, so I played a couple really quick rounds of PUBG with them before heading to bed. With any luck, I won’t keep myself up by thinking about all those theater seats going to waste.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

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Infinity Cords

It took me five and a half hours to do what should have taken 20 minutes, and I have a lack of documentation to thank for it. I expected to be pulled for project work today, but nobody said a word to me. Instead, I spent all morning and some of the afternoon tending to an “emergency” issue with the intercom bells at the junior high being slightly offset from the red clocks in the halls. It should have been easy to find the switch port that had been locked due to a tripped port security setting, but instead of reading a label, I had to follow the line all the way from the intercom to the switch closet.

We took a brief break for lunch at Fat Daddy’s in London, but everyone was eager to get back to work for some reason. I just got stuck sitting on all of my work orders. I even thought for a brief moment I’d get to leave on time, but no such luck.

After being stopped in the hallway for another 30 minute job, I went to Summer’s and waited for her to get home. I warmed her up a leftover hamburger, then we came back to my house to watch Infinity Wars in glorious 3D. We even caught the end of Ragnarok to bring us up to speed with the refugee ship.

#thanosdidnothingwrong

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Welcome Back, Fodder

It really wasn’t too bad for the first day of school. Teachers were busy enough with students that I had some time to catch up again. I spent all morning at the junior high, probably spending too much time trying to fix Hall Pass after I swapped out a computer. It ended up being a low power issue with the USB-powered scanner, and I should have figured it out a lot sooner.

Nobody said anything about lunch, so I went to McDonald’s by myself. It was a little rainy, and I just sat by the window to eat. I managed to double up on discounts and got a Big Mac, medium fry, and large drink for $2.18. The guy delivering orders to the tables tried giving my order to someone else, but I managed to catch it before that happened.

After lunch, I spent a bit of time at Oakland before heading back to the junior high. I had a stack of Chromebooks I had to set up for the teachers, so I spent most of my time on that before knocking out a bunch more work orders. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have most all of them done.

I went straight to my parents’ house for dinner after work. I cleaned up some soup, then scavenged some vegetables for the turtles and tadpoles before heading up to visit with Summer for a bit. I helped Autumn change her turtle’s water again while trying to explain to her how siphons work. Maybe I only understood it after living a childhood with fish, but I couldn’t understand why she just didn’t get it, or why she didn’t seem to care. I wish she showed more interest in knowing how the world works.

Summer had me run her to the Dollar General for some things, and then I headed home to clean up before bed. I got a load of laundry done, and did some minor cleanup tasks. My kitchen has been out of control for too long. It’s time to recalibrate my anti-hoarding mindset.

Hi, I’m Cortana!

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Relentless

We didn’t have a team meeting this morning, so I spent all day in my buildings trying to keep my head above water. For some reason people feel like now is the best time to try and request new things from everyone, so on top of them finding things that have been broken since last year, they’re creating new work for us as well.

I met up with Summer at New China for lunch, then continued on with more of the same until it was time to go. I took Eaddie along with me while Summer went to work out, and we got some milkshakes from Sonic on the way home. Once Summer got here, we all went to pick up some Wendy’s for them before coming home to watch Unbreakable.

Monday will bring out the priorities in everyone.

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thats racist af

I got up early this morning so I could go to the high school for our welcome back assembly. Breakfast was suboptimal. I got the last piece of real bacon. There was a ton of turkey bacon left though. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever had, but geez.

I actually won a door prize this year. Most of our table did. Allen, Heather, Jason, Dale, Gary, Ryan, and I all won something. I think Ryan’s $50 Leaning Willow gift card had the highest technical value/lowest personal value ratio possible. I made a joke about my prize being racist because of the bamboo. I didn’t realize they were just getting started.

The actual assembly at the Center was interesting. We actually sat through a live OSHA presentation this year instead of watching a prerecorded video. The guy giving the presentation was super old and southern to the point that I actually had some trouble understanding him. My favorite part was when he made a joke that he submitted a recommendation for a new HCS Pictogram for explosives involving a guy wearing a turban. I’m not one to shy away from off-color humor, but the balls on this guy to say it on stage in front of a mixed crowd. Holy. Shit. Just a few minutes later, he asked us to “pardon his French” for saying that a kid dying “sucks.” Priorities, I suppose.

After the assembly, Summer wanted to get lunch. She was craving Mexican, so we decided on Morelos. It wasn’t until the third one of my team pulled into the parking lot that I realized everyone happened to make the same decision collectively as they left the auditorium. I’m only just now realizing that this meant they didn’t invite me, but we all sat together anyway.

The afternoon was spent catching up on the massive influx of work orders I had been receiving all morning while we were at our mandatory meeting. The couple of things I tried to finish quickly at Oakland ended up taking a couple hours, which left little time at the junior high. I stayed a bit late, but I’ll still have plenty for tomorrow.

Summer had to stay for the open house, so I headed home and burned the entire evening.

I keep dragging around what’s bringing me down.

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Feelin Froggy

It was a bit rainy last night, but it was dry enough for us to do our group work this morning. Jason asked if I wanted to go with him and Allen or Dale and Ryan. I hesitated out of courtesy, but then Allen made a comment about being stuck with Amanda and I took the opportunity to ditch them for the brofessionals. We hung one TV and one touch panel at the middle school for Allen, then headed to the high school arena to hang a TV there.

We finished just in time for lunch, and Ryan told me to pick something. Given the company and the amount of time since my last visit, I chose Popeye’s. It was by far the fastest service I’ve ever had there. They actually had spicy chicken cooked and ready to go for lunch. They even had shrimp ready. The disappointment came in the size of the meat under the breading. I got plenty to eat to be sure, but it still wasn’t worth the price of admission. Summer stopped by to visit after a while until we had to go back.

When we got back to the shop, most everyone else had left, so we split up to work on our own things. I got a bunch of work orders closed out at the junior high, and managed to go from having the most work orders to third place, even after being out of my buildings for three days last week, so I was happy. I also had the second most closed work orders of all the building techs.

After work, I dropped my dad’s retainer off at their house, then came home to start a load of laundry. Then I fished out the most frogs I’ve ever had to release at once. There were three that had completely lost their tails, and two more that had very short tails. They don’t seem to be coming out super healthy, and I don’t know if that’s just because normally they wouldn’t survive this long in the wild, or if it’s something to do with their environment. I definitely feel like more tadpoles generally die before making the transformation though.

Once that was all done, I headed to Summer’s for a leftover sloppy joe for dinner. Eaddie was still stuck watching Arrow, so we watched with her over some cake and ice cream until I had to head home to finish laundry. Tomorrow is the back to school extravaganza, so it’s early to bed and early to breakfast.

Do it right, do it well, and do it once.

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Every Tech for Himself

It’s the last week before school starts, and we’re still occupied with summer projects. I spent most of the morning delivering Chromebook carts with Dale and Amanda. It was a bit aggravating to fully indispose three people for such a task, but such is life in the district. I’d had enough when it came time to deliver a single tech tub with five Chromebooks to my elementary campus while towing a trailer and two extra bodies, so I had them drop me off at my car.

I was just in time to help unload a short pallet of laptops for Jason. I would have thought we would finish imaging mine before he started unboxing his, but the moment I touched my boxes, he had Allen help him unbox all of his and stack them up under one another in all of the imaging stations in the shop. I managed to squeak four extra lines in and ran power so I could continue imaging my own, but it was super frustrating that he had come along and disconnected mine when I was already two thirds done.

Everyone expected to have to go to a presentation with Ben in the afternoon to learn how we would work with non-touch displays in the classroom, but I opted out since all of my teachers were good with the change. Dale, Allen, and I went to Subway for lunch early though, so the two of them could go. When I got back, I continued imaging all of the laptops, both mine and Jason’s, so he could take Amanda to do something else.

Zach insists it’s like this every year, but I maintain my belief that this is worse than last year. He says everyone always stresses out and hates each other, and that I was just working with the rose-colored glasses of being newly hired. Maybe that’s true in that last year I was more willing to just follow orders, but this year I’m really feeling the burn of my coworkers’ knack for slack.

After work, I stopped by the house briefly before heading to my parents’ to grill hamburgers. Dad already had everything ready to go, so I just had to patty the meat and throw it on the grill. Summer got there just as I finished grilling everything. I was pretty happy with how they turned out, though the buns could have been bigger, or else the patties smaller.

When we finished eating, we ran by JCPenney to spend some rewards cash that was due to expire soon, then headed home for bed.

P for Pie is somehow disappointing.

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Easy Overtime

I spent all day working at the high school handout today. It was probably the best day I’ve had at work in a long time. Even when it was busy, things went smoothly and correctly. They’ve done a really good job of making the whole process pretty efficient.

Summer brought Noah in to get his laptop in the afternoon, and we were all done by 3:30. Central Office dismissed us at three, but I still had work to do at the junior high, so I stayed until nearly five.

After that, I went home to get some things and then went to Summer’s for the evening. She made sloppy joes with mashed potatoes and some asparagus that all turned out pretty awesome. Eaddie made cupcakes for dessert, and we played a game of Uno before the kids started watching The Fellowship of the Ring. I played a bit of Limbo before settling down for bed.