Tag: work

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Problems with Pilots

It’s been a bad year for pilots. I was headed to work this morning, stopping at Starbucks for red cup day, when I saw Dad text that Mom was in the emergency room after wrecking on her way to work. I messaged Teisha and Joel that I would be late, then headed to the hospital to see how she was doing. I got in just in time to watch them roll her off to a CT scan, so I sat with Dad for a bit before having to go back out to scold Muad’Dib for trying to climb into the front seat.

We walked around the parking lot a bit, and then I went back inside once Mom was out. She looked to be in good shape, but had some cuts from the glass after rolling her car. She was in the left lane, and a semi truck was in the right lane, turning right. Someone on that road didn’t see her behind the semi, and T-boned her, which caused her car to roll. All things considered, she fared really well.

Muad’Dib and I eventually continued to work, and then just stayed at the office all day. I found a good series on subnetting with some practical exercises, so I mostly did that all day. I had my bánh bao and some popcorn for lunch and just worked straight through the end of the day.

We got back home for a quick run, checked on my parents, then came back to the house where I ate some of the grosser leftovers that hadn’t been finished yet. Then I unboxed some Vine stuff before an early bedtime.

shortest days

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These Subnets Are Just Right

I was in a convoy of speeders all the way to work today, so I shaved quite a bit of time off the drive. I had an anxiety attack really early, and then I really tried to dig into network redesign. I think I’ve made a decision and am finally ready to move forward with some changes. Otherwise it was really quiet all day long. We had some McDonald’s, but their ice cream machine was down and I couldn’t redeem dessert.

The afternoon was short by comparison, and then I took Muad’Dib for a run as soon as we got to the house. Summer got home just as we were walking out, and went to bed with an aching back. I made a couple burritos once we got back, and then we expected more of the aurora in the evening, but it just didn’t happen. I was really surprised at the one second video time lapse I got from the Pixel 8 Pro’s astro photography mode last night. We ended up staying in and just went to bed early.

Really early.

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Dull Drums and Electro Acoustic

I had another rough start like yesterday and got out of the house a bit late, but I made up the time. Muad’Dib must have had a belly ache, because he had to stop a few times outside before he was done. Then he threw up in Tyler’s office later in the morning, but he didn’t eat and hardly drank anything all day.

I pushed lunch out again, not feeling great myself. I decided to try Domino’s since they had a large one-topping for $6.70. I ordered a thin with half pepperoni and half bacon that I ended up just eating in the car in the Domino’s parking lot. There wasn’t another soul there, and all three employees were sitting at a little table in the corner when I walked in. When I opened the box, I spotted a singular, tiny little critter crawling around, but I think it was just a little spider. Everything else appeared clean.

The pizza was good, and Muad’Dib seemed to have plenty of energy when we got back. I let him run it out and then we dragged on through the afternoon. I had a bit more fun when Elizabeth called me downstairs for some help, and I got to quit reading documentation all day.

I let the car take me home, and immediately took Muad’Dib for a run since Future Motion won’t do the right thing and replace or refund my board. They won’t even give me the benefit of the doubt and take it back for service without charging me. My hope is that the attorney general helps, since I’ve had luck with that avenue in the past.

We rode into the dark, stopped by my parents’ empty house, circled past home and then went back to see Dad. Mom showed up just as we were pulling out, so we circled back again before going back to the house. I could never reproduce my battery failure, but the motor did disengage for a split second at one point.

I picked at some random leftovers that didn’t quite make a meal while Summer baked her gingerale-soaked cranberries in powdered sugar. She went to bed, Eaddie came and left, and I wound down until Dad prompted me to run outside and check out the northern lights. I blew off a notification from the MyRadar app about it, but then Dad shared a picture he took and I had to go outside to try myself. It was visible with the naked eye, so I decided to wake Summer up to see it, and then it was quick to bed.

Peachy.

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Cold Quiet

We had our first, brief freeze last night, and it was a cold, quiet drive to work. I got there much earlier than I expected, and to a relative ghost town with several people out. I was surprised to hear from anyone at all. We took a late lunch and ate mostly free on McDonald’s rewards, and then the afternoon went by fairly quickly after that.

I got a response back from Future Motion that they wouldn’t refund me, which was expected, so I compiled a timeline of all my warranty and paid services to send to the attorney general, and finally replied back requesting to escalate the issue.

It was an easy ride home, and Summer was there early with a bad back. I made us a couple burritos when she got out of the bath, and then we laid down to watch Justin Willman’s Magic Lover on Netflix before I got up to finish my routine.

Nowheel

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Tone the Line

Today was a long day of a mostly empty office. Johnny called me early, and we talked for a while on the phone. I kept fairly busy after that, but I was very tired. We were up and down the stairs quite a bit again, and between that and the running I let Muad’Dib do outside in the morning and before lunch, even he was reluctant to climb any more stairs.

I ate leftovers with Janice, Elizabeth, and Teisha again, and then we split up what was left to take home. I ended up with a bunch of rice, beans, and shredded lettuce, so I guess we’ll have tacos tomorrow. The afternoon seemed to drag on forever after that, and I never got any closer to finding the switch side of the line running from the lab.

The drive home was slow, stupid, and full of road-raging idiots. We got to the house alive though, and I immediately took Muad’Dib out for a pretty slow run. It was really dark, and he just didn’t really want to run. We visited my parents briefly, then got back to the house where I finally put away all the food I brought home. The kids were there, but left for a high school football game with friends.

I’m too tired for a weekend.

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Should Be Singing

The Morrilton McDonald’s was lined up to the entrance this morning, but I managed to squeak in and pick up my free frappé at the counter. I was still fairly early to work, and it was a relatively busy day for me. I ran up and down the stairs several times to help with various things. Lunch time came pretty fast, and we had leftover grilled chicken and rice from Colton’s. Muad’Dib ate a bunch of broccoli and some cauliflower. The afternoon was fairly busy too, but I got stuck trying to track down a cable from the lab up to the switch. The tone probe should have been singing, but it just kept going off sporadically in the most unhelpful kind of way.

We got home fairly quickly after dropping off some goose clothes with Kevin. Summer was grilling burgers at the house, so I took Muad’Dib for a quick run and then the three of us ate. We have no choice but to clean the grill before we use it again, because it is consistently catching on fire now. Hopefully we can get it done before the cold snap really hits.

Summer went to bed, Eaddie had Eli over to practice singing their own stuff for school, and I finished cleaning the mini fridge and restocked it before finally making it to bed.

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” — which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.

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Boom!!! Headshot!

I somehow managed to dress up and tie an eldredge knot quickly enough to get to work around the same time this morning. I had forgotten it was going to be a new crew the next two days, so we had to introduce ourselves again, and then it was a waiting game for Ciara to show up and take our pictures. I guess she missed her ride in the morning or something, so Jessica ended up taking some of our photos herself just before lunch. I got Muad’Dib dressed up in his little tie, hat, and glasses, and even managed to get one good photo of him head-on. Then I discovered Google’s Nano Banana for generative photo editing, and got some really stunning results. Some were even a bit interstellar.

We ate some leftover fajitas from the sales lunch, but then the afternoon dragged by and I ended up being the only one upstairs for the last couple hours. I raced the sun home so I could take Muad’Dib for a run, but then Julie called with some sourdough and I had to vector off on a detour. He got in trouble when I got back to the car, because he crawled up into the front and was sitting on the center console.

We had our run, visited my parents, and made it back to the house just as the kids were finishing dinner. Summer made some chicken with some kind of habanero sauce, and boiled broccoli to go along with some leftover rice and mashed sweet potato. Dinner was really good, and then the kids disappeared and Summer went to bed.

He is the Kwisatz Haderach.

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Ceiling Dirt

I forgot my bánh bao for breakfast this morning, so I stopped at McDonald’s to redeem my last free biscuit. Then I jumped right into my network switch from yesterday, which went even worse than I expected. For some reason, I couldn’t get the old SSIDs to quit showing up. On top of that, I had a couple of important access points that refused to talk over their wired connections, and instead wanted to mesh to other access points. I fought that the entire day.

I ate some leftover coldcuts from the sales lunch, plus some steak tips from yesterday. I ate too much, but it made up for not having dinner later in the evening. At some point, Ciara wanted to take pictures of Muad’Dib with his little tie on, so Teisha and I went outside with her to do that. He was uncooporative, but that was expected. Teisha gets him even more riled up than usual with all her treats.

The afternoon was long and painful, and I checked in with Joel on the way out, but he didn’t have much to say. I felt like people were having a really poor experience with the network, but he said nobody complained to him about it.

Summer was baking pumpkins when we got to the house, and then spent the rest of the evening dehydrating the seeds and some guts. I took Muad’Dib for a quick run as the sun went down, and thought I’d have to go to the old house to look for my necktie, but I finally found it in my secondary storage closet.

How does the dust even get up there?!?

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Why Five

We woke up to a crash at around three in the morning. I yelled for Muad’Dib, and he jumped right back into the bed, but I couldn’t tell that he caused any trouble. Once I gathered myself, I discovered the ice finally fell out of the mini fridge and shattered on the bottom shelf. I was able to doze off a few more times, but kept waking up in the middle of wildly different dreams every few minutes.

All the salespeople and our new marketing coordinator were going to be at the office for some technical training today, so I tried to get there a little early. Muad’Dib did great all day. We started out with brief introductions, and then I just went to work as usual until Shane walked into my office.

He asked for the “simple” task of capitalizing the company name on all of our WiFi SSIDs, not realizing this would require a touch to every device that was connected to any of the affected networks. I took the opportunity to learn some more, and built out some structure that I had planned for the distant future. Without RADIUS, I was still able to learn how to create a policy in Intune to distribute shared credentials. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

That ate up all of my day, but I did take a late lunch to eat some of their leftover steak tips they got for lunch. Janice, Elizabeth, and Tammy were in the breakroom as we walked out, and invited us in to eat. Muad’Dib did well to lay at my feet while I ate, and then we had Janice’s carrot cake for Scott’s belated birthday just as he was walking out the door.

I didn’t really finish my whole task before I left half an hour late, but I had enough done that I felt confident in my ability to clean it up in the morning when everyone was there. Summer had dinner going at the house, so we got there as quickly as we could. I took Muad’Dib for a quick run as the sun went down. We visited Dad, then got back to eat just as the kids were finishing their plates.

After dinner, I finished setting up the KitchenAid KF8 that Summer unboxed. We brewed a few cups with some trash coffee, and then I filled the hopper to make a single milk drink before bed. We shared a couple sips to test it, and then Summer went to bed. I had an anxiety attack as I cleaned up, and then went to bed pretty early in anticipation of another early morning.

Why not six?

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Bring Grandma to Work Day

We had enough time to stop for coffee and then a biscuit this morning, and then still had time to stretch our legs when we got to work before putting on Muad’Dib’s costume. I wore my red hoodie, and he wore his robe, hairnet, and eyeglasses, which everyone loved. Joel brought Dexter, and though he was skittish at first, he eventually warmed up to Muad’Dib. Muad’Dib kept stealing his toy bone though, and I had to scold him.

I got into the firewall some and figured out how to pass the traffic I needed to make the Unifi captive portal work, so we won’t need a WiFi password next week when everyone shows up for training. I spent a bunch of time out and about, and felt a little more comfortable joking around with people, which was great.

We went to McDonald’s for lunch and had a pretty bad experience again. It wasn’t terrible, but every single aspect of being there could have been made better with almost no effort. I ended up sending a huge letter of complaint through their online form, since they requested I do so after I left a poor Google review.

The afternoon went by fairly quickly. I had a sudden anxiety attack, and Joel sent us home half an hour early. Muad’Dib and I got to the house where Summer was preparing for trick-or-treaters. We went on our run with Muad’Dib dressed as a cow, and then I took him around the block again without the outfit so he could feel more comfortable running fast.

I ate some food and then we sat outside with Summer while she passed out candy. There weren’t very many people in our neighborhood, which was great news for me. We came inside and watched the rest of Ironheart before winding down for bed.

My, what big runs you have!