Tag: work

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1:1 Practice

It was a little drizzly this morning, but we decided to continue on with our great Chromebook hunt. We ended up getting just over 500 more Chromebooks to the UPS store by the end of the day, with only a short lunch break with Allen to Wind Taste. It really felt to me like a trial run of returning the high school laptops. I was hot, sweaty, and sticky by the time we left, so I ran home to change before meeting Summer at my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom warmed up the leftover phở for the four of us, and then we headed back to Summer’s for the evening. The turtle tank was looking pretty rough, and I had a lapse in memory where I imagined Autumn was away at band camp and not just choosing to exist somewhere else for the evening, so I cleaned it out myself. If I had remembered she could have been here, I would have made her come home to clean it herself.

lOl

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The A Team

It saddens me to say that today was an unusually good day at work. Jason had us all go start collecting old leased Chromebooks, so we took both trucks, loaded up with dollies and empty retail boxes, and visited four elementary campuses to collect the equipment. Of course he didn’t really have much of a plan to do any of it, and he even had to leave for half of the day to work on something else while we did the grunt work. Regardless, we pulled together and got into a groove that really worked for us. Everyone participated, and nobody ever got upset with anyone else. It was really quite the sight.

Four of us went to Taco John’s for lunch, where I ended up eating too much because I craved Potato Olés, and then Gary ended up hardly touching his. I still consider it a good choice for the day though, because they were probably the hottest and freshest I had ever had, and they were seasoned and crisped perfectly. The tacos were a bit stale, but after the fried potato bliss, I wasn’t in any shape to argue.

We continued with more of the same in the afternoon, touching just over 300 Chromebooks for the day. Jason even let us go an hour early for our efforts, but Gary and I ended up going to the junior high to take care of some things for James in his new office. Then we chatted for a bit after we walked out, and finally left just before 5.

Summer went to the gym, so I had a little time to kill. I was hot and sticky from sweating all day, so I ran home to change and clean up a little, then stopped by Walgreens on the way up to her house so I could get my new prescription. Hopefully splitting it up in the morning and evening will help, but I’m still annoyed that I’m having to keep up with all of that. I guess I really do need to just purchase a blood pressure cuff for home.

When I got Summer, we went to my parents’ house for spaghetti dinner. I wanted to swim from being so overheated, but it was dark and cold by the time we finished, and we figured it’d be best to head back home to bed.

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Every Other Week

It was back to work today after another week away. I’ve really gotten used to not being around over the summer, and it’s been great avoiding so much of the negativity. I feel like summer is slipping away, and we’ve still got so much work to do. That doesn’t even include me figuring out what the hell I’m doing at the high school.

Ben was out and Jason didn’t have any direction for us, so everyone split up to do their own things. I played a bit of catch up myself before taking Brice and Allen to Chick-fil-A to meet Dale and Gary for lunch. They had their peach milkshakes, which made the whole visit worthwhile. Then I met Heather at the junior high to take a look at the outside signs. We appeared to have a bad hard drive in one, so we pulled it and took it back to the shop for Jason.

I had another nurse checkup where they fussed that my blood pressure was still high. Instead of upping my dosage again, she added a third prescription. To complicate things further, she wants me to take them at different times. She wasn’t as pumped about my tracking spreadsheet either, since I couldn’t limit the data to only include readings taken a couple hours after taking my meds. It’s beyond annoying dealing with it, and at times it doesn’t even feel worth the frustration.

After blowing an hour there, I went back to the shop where I teamed up with Brice to check out all the work orders I’ve been ignoring for Oakland. We got a few things done, and it was nice to have the help. A lot of the cleanup stuff will have to wait until the beginning of the school year since teachers will move things around again.

I headed home and spent some time cleaning up after the pets before rummaging around for a wireless charger to use in Summer’s charging picture frame. I didn’t have a lot of room to work, but eventually I got it soldered and working. With any luck, it won’t catch on fire. Mom texted that she made phở, so I stopped for gas, got Summer, and headed to their house for dinner. Summer was exhausted from work, so we headed straight home after that and went to bed.

The heat was hot.

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Eight Minute Labs

I slept only a tiny bit better last night, which made it all the more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. It was my last day to present, and I was scheduled for the first breakout session block in the morning. I had plenty of time for breakfast, and decided to go present my session and then return to check out of the hotel before going back for the last session and closing.

Much to my surprise, my lab pretty well filled up and it made me feel a bit better to be a popular topic. Even Thomas showed up with his tech. I was more confident in my ability to present as well, so I assumed things would go about the same as yesterday. I could not have been more wrong. We started chatting casually just a few minutes before time, and as people quit trickling in, I started in on what I had. It took me all of about eight minutes to completely cover what I had. The room was dead silent the whole time, and none of my jokes got even a groan. I wrapped it up just as quickly as I started, and several people took off. I did have a few people come in a little late, which got the conversations going again. We did have more general esports chats going on, and I got to talk to the kid doing the last session I would attend. I ended up staying the whole hour for the conversation, but overall I considered the presentation a flop.

On the way out, I grabbed a big plate of catfish and chicken strips and headed back to the hotel. I packed everything as quickly as I could, then ate while Summer ran her stuff downstairs. Once I was satisfied with the room check, we headed back to the high school to wrap up the conference. Summer went to Planet Fitness while she waited for me. I went to Connor’s presentation where he tried to quickly go through his slides and then switched to open discussion after seeing how the HSTI fatigue had hit my last session.

We wrapped the conference with a comedian that went around the auditorium trying to make jokes about things people did. I wasn’t into it. The door prizes took forever, and I didn’t have the luck I had the first night. I shouldn’t complain, but I had other plans and was ready to leave.

Summer had met up with Amanda and come back to get me. I hadn’t seen her since her time with Brandon, so it was nice to catch up a bit. I was mostly surprised she remembered our comments on her Instagram and reached back out to me right before the conference. We went to a place called Cafe 1217 that had a bunch of what I considered to be “weird” stuff. It was good, but expensive. I was still kind of full from the quick lunch, which didn’t make me feel any better about it. It was a good time though, and I was happy that at least the staff there liked my jokes.

When we finished, we ran Amanda back home before heading toward home ourselves. I think we were both just too tired at that point to do much else. We stopped to fill our water bottles on the way out, and then made it all the way to the Hot Springs Village Walmart where we stopped for a restroom break and to peruse for clearance deals. Summer got a couple things for herself, and I picked up a couple cheap frisbees since I occasionally find myself in need of one. Finally we made the remainder of the trip home in good time, I unpacked and cleaned up a little, and we went back to her house for the evening. She has to work tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll be making a decision on an air conditioner.

I’ve never had a more successful conference, but I need a vacation after that!

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May I Present to You…

We slept in a bit today since I didn’t really plan on seeing the opening keynote speakers. Breakfast had me feeling a bit off though, which made me a couple minutes late, which in turn made it awkward for me to walk into the first class I was thinking of attending. I ended up finding Ben in his booth for ARKSTE and chatted with him for a bit before making a round through the vendors and eventually finding my way to Esports 101 by the presumably unlikely ByteSpeed.

Fortunately that session ended up being wonderful, and in fact, one of the best I’ve ever attended. The guy was a former esports coach at the collegiate level, and you could tell he both really knew his stuff, and also wasn’t necessarily there just to sell us something. He definitely gave me some ideas for practice that I’ll have to use, assuming this thing ever gets off the ground for me.

My presentation was next after a bit of a break. I followed Adrian in the same room we were in before, and setup couldn’t have been easier for what I needed to do. I had a small crowd, including one guy that didn’t even know what esports are. It was small enough to be a little intimate, and my jokes were received well, so overall I thought it was a success. We actually used up the hour, which was my primary concern, and our conversations kind of floated from Discord to esports in general. All I can do is hope that tomorrow’s session will go as well.

I went to one more session before heading out. Summer came back to pick me up a bit early and was waiting outside, so I ran out after retrieving the laptop power supply I had forgotten in the classroom. Then we stopped by Dick’s to try and find something cheap to earn me the last point I needed for another reward certificate. Once we got that, we headed back to the hotel so she could get ready for dinner.

We met Ben in the lobby and had a few minutes to kill over beer, wine, burgers, and brats. I hadn’t eaten lunch and was pretty hungry, but I didn’t want to kill my appetite right before dinner, but I also didn’t want to be super hungry in case we ended up waiting for another couple hours to get our food in such a big group.

Dinner was at the same Back Porch Grill as last night, so we were welcomed back with open arms. I had the red fish this time, which was excellent. After trying Summers Cajun ribeye, I did have a taste for steak, but I still left satisfied. Summer did some work on some wine and wanted to go back to the room, so we dropped her off before heading to The Porterhouse for the ARKSTE party. I stuck to tea, and we spent most of the time chatting with a couple techs from Conway. The karaoke room was too loud, and the dining room was too old, so we stood by the bar like hip young men and got in the way of servers and ladies wishing to visit the loo.

None of us in our group won a door prize, and then they shut the thing down and we went out the back door. It was a quick trip back across town, and off to bed for one last day. I present early, and I need my beauty rest after today.

The eagle has landed.

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Winner, Winner, HSTI Dinner!

I had an absolutely terrible fit trying to sleep last night. I climbed up into the window to try and mask the street light right outside our window, and only just barely got it too dark to read inside. My heart raced, and I had all kinds of anxiety about waking up early enough to get to my preconference meeting. After what felt like no sleep at all, I got up and ready, woke Summer up, and we went down for breakfast.

Ultimately I made it in plenty of time. Breakfast was fast, traffic wasn’t bad, and even parking that early for a preconference day was easy. The class was pretty good, but I think the biggest thing I got out of it was seeing the number of schools that were not only competing, but already had fully funded labs. It’s frustrating still waiting to see if I’ll even get paid for it in the future, since I’ve already volunteered all of last semester.

Lunch was cold, cold burgers and surprisingly good hot dogs in the cafeteria where I sat alone until another group of people spilled over into the seats by me. I have always, and still struggle getting to know individuals, so I didn’t actually talk to any particular person long enough to hunt them down for a lunch buddy. It wasn’t bad, and may have even been better since I kept getting mustard in weird places like some kind of man child that had never eaten food before.

We finished up early in the afternoon, so I headed back to the hotel and caught Summer exploring outside. We went up to the room so I could change, then went for a walk down the street, marveling at the near-million-dollar homes along the water. It really is the best of both worlds, being close to nature, but still having access to broadband internet.

Back in the room, we watched the end of The Amazing Spider-Man and the beginning of the new, dark Fantastic Four before leaving for dinner with Next Step. We went into The Back Porch Grill as relative strangers, but ended up sitting with a pretty good, chummy group of folks. It was a good time, and the conversation was casual and topical enough that Summer had plenty to talk about as well. I’d hate to even see the bill, but needless to say we all left with full bellies.

Charlie hitched a ride with us to Woody’s Big Party at Terry Martin’s bar, where things got a bit crazier than I’ve seen at other conferences. Summer had never seen anything like it, so it was a good experience for her to have, even if it was only educational. The craziest thing to happen was with the door prizes though. Those guys running the show were rowdy, and drew the whole thing out forever. Summer and I both had winning, sequential tickets. First I got up for a tiny Bluetooth JBL speaker and wall power splitter. Then at the end we won the grand prize, which was a new Lenovo Chromebook.

We split after that, heading straight back to the hotel and to bed to hopefully get a good night’s sleep before the regular conference starts tomorrow.

FREE STUFF!!!!!

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Tell Me About It

Brice had three more lines for us to run at Dwight this morning. Amanda and I were put on his crew, so our first demand was to re-check the rooms in question for existing lines. It only took us about three hours, but wouldn’t you know we found two lines already in place? We did have to run one more in a room that had several oldschool telephone drops, but we spent so much time trying to track down other lines that we didn’t even get to run it before lunch.

Jesica was in town for another meeting, so I met her at Sumo for lunch. Her client was evidently pretty crazy, which only served to upset her. The waitress dumped my water all over the table, but fortunately only a little bit over me. Then for some reason she only came back with a single rag to clean up a whole glass of water, and had to run off and get more. Just as Jesica’s food came out, her boss called to check up on her and she spent the entire meal talking to him about her appointment.

I was a bit annoyed that Brice had suggested Brown’s for lunch and actually had others agree to go, because nobody ever wants to go when I do. I suppose only to annoy me further, Brice didn’t even go, and Allen and Jason were the only two that did. Sumo isn’t exactly a favorite for me, but Jesica said she started keto and felt like she could only eat raw fish.

After lunch, I got out of running that single line with Brice and Amanda because Jason wanted me to meet Al and Kenny at the high school while they scouted out locations for new hallway wall clocks. I tried to convince them that digital watches for the entire student body would be cheaper, but they didn’t seem to like that idea. Somehow I managed to graduate with honors using only the existing dummy clocks though.

When I got home, a bit of rain cooled the air down quite a bit and made the house quite habitable. I started to get into a few things, but ultimately only really cleaned up some email and played some Overwatch. Later in the evening, I made my way to Summer’s where she talked at me about her week at work before bed.

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Like a Damn Circus

Jason had me drive him to the field house this morning so he could show me where we were putting equipment back into the building. He hadn’t mentioned the part where he was going to have to go back to the shop immediately after while I went back to the field house to run the lines for this equipment. We ended up with three personal vehicles on site, and then I think we had at least two more show up not very long into our exploratory mission.

We ended up having to pull a fiber line back to its entry point into the building, and then re-run it to the new switch location. Having a bunch of hands on deck helped the line runs go faster, but did leave the end product a bit less organized, which required some extra finishing work to make things really nice. We all went to Brangus for lunch, but luckily we finished running all the cable before we left. When we got back, all we had to do was terminate and mount wall plates.

By the time we got back to the shop, everyone was so exhausted that we mostly just sat around the shop for the last hour and a half. I would have liked to resolve a printer issue at Oakland with Ben, but it just didn’t work out. Hopefully I can try tomorrow.

I went by my parents’ house to chat with Dad about air conditioners after work until I had to leave to get Eaddie from karate. I could tell immediately that it was going to be a challenging evening with very little compliance from her. We ran by my house so I could change, and then stopped by Sonic for 99 cent cheese sticks on the way to their house. I fried up some chicken strips, but Summer never got around to making salads. Everyone just kind of picked at what food was already made while she struggled to get the kids to complete chores before their trip to Texas.

I know I was a whiny kid, but I just can’t remember being this completely insubordinate. The stern talkings, screaming, and eventual spankings seem to only last for so long.

It’s feeling real Lord of the Flies over here.

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Heave!

I was incredibly achy this morning when I woke up, so it was tough to get moving. I had to run to the junior high to get my blower, and then I met up with a group at the high school to clean out projectors and what few desktops were around. The campus has changed so much since I graduated that it’s easy to get lost, especially in the science area. So many of the rooms are connected through back hallways or closets. I’m hoping it makes a bit more sense once the rooms are filled with people, but I’m not sure that will be the case. Some of us had never seen the new multipurpose facility before, so we made the trek by foot. I got a pretty good sweat going by the time we got back to the cars, and that got us through to lunch.

I still had a bit of Soylent and felt contrary to the group’s choice of Chick-fil-A, so I worked through lunch, going to Oakland again to help with some summer school issues. When I got back to the shop, Amanda was outside getting things ready for Brice’s network runs at Sequoyah. Things looked bleak at first, then started to go really smoothly before making a turn for the worst.

After Amanda and I had run two lines to two different classrooms, we discovered that there were already network drops in both rooms. We went to check another room, and found multiple drops in multiple places in the room. Every single room we checked already had network lines in them. The aggravation was only compounded when I was reminded that he took the campus from Amanda earlier this year, so really she didn’t have much right to be upset with him when she could have patched the computers up instead of leaving them on the wireless.

With a face full of sawdust and rat droppings, we headed back to the shop in a lull of the thunderstorm. I chatted with Ben outside for a little while when Autumn called to ask if I would take her to Dollar Tree for some things. It was odd to receive a phone call for this, especially in the middle of a storm, so I was maybe unnecessarily short with her. Not long after, I got a call from Summer that she also received a call from a distraught daughter. I figured it was a good time for a sit-down chat.

Aching from a lack of food, I ran to my parents’ house and warmed up a little bit of fried rice before the power went out in the storm. Dad tried boiling some okra, and then inadvertently left it in the hot water too long after it didn’t boil due to the power outage. It came out like stringy apple sauce, but tasted fine. I finished up and went home to do some necessary cleaning in the heat and humidity of my home.

Luckily the cat box behaved. While that was going, I did a slow water change in the aquarium after feeling unsatisfied by the visual water quality. Unfortunately, I discovered another dead snail, possibly due to a lack of fresh veggies they had become accustomed to. With only two of the six left, I felt obligated to throw in some old, wilted lettuce with the hopes that they would eat it instead of ignoring it as usual.

Finally I made my way to the girls for the evening. Summer looked exhausted from the day, which upset me a bit more, so we had the chat. I’m hoping the humor didn’t distract from the point I was trying to make or the disappointment I felt for the situation, but it was also important to me that she understood I didn’t intentionally hurt her feelings in response to her poor decision. I am just a mean, old man with higher expectations.

It’s too early to be mad at each other already.

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Sounds like Treasure to Me

We were sent out to hang touch panels and do random campus cleanup tasks this morning. It took us two trips back to the shop to get everything we needed, and even then we each had plenty of time to sit around while someone else was doing the work. I would have appreciated a break if I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed and behind in cleaning and moving between campuses.

Allen, Amanda, Zach, and I all went to Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads, and I ran into David there again. I told him we must be living right to be seeing each other this much after all this time.

I had to run to Oakland to take care of something right after lunch, but then I met up with the others at the middle school again, where we completed the two touch panel installs and then removed a bunch of hallway TVs for the painters. We ended the day blowing out computers, which would have been fine, but doing an entire lab at once with three other people made the air completely unbreathable. I would have preferred to just do the lab by myself.

Summer had to work late, so I ran to get the girls and take them to karate, and then went to my parents’ house where Dad was grilling pork chops for noodles. Summer met us to eat once she got off, and then Dad and I went to the graveyard to rummage through the pallets of stuff that was being thrown out.

I was out there for several hours, and ended up with a couple giant speakers, a karaoke machine with cassette tape and 8-track players, and a couple beefy amps. To make me even more crazy, I saw the JBL 530 bookshelf speakers on sale when I got back to Summer’s, but she wouldn’t let me get any more. Some people seem to think I have a problem, but I’m just not hearing it.

They thought I wouldn’t find it… but I did!