Tag: work

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Sliced

I got out really early today, and it seemed to make a huge difference in traffic. The guys were outside talking, but I went in because it was chilly out. Most of my day was pretty scattered, but quiet. I started with a cup of oatmeal, and the morning went by reasonably quickly. We took a late lunch, and I went to BJ’s Market Cafe with Jim and Maggie, where they had us in and out within minutes. They were like Old South, but bigger, and possibly even more packed. I had the “beef tips” which mostly reminded me of rice and roast beef that had been in the slow cooker too long.

The afternoon dragged on a bit, and Johnny called right at the end of the day to gripe about Lamar. I finally got out of there and made my way home after coming to a dead stop right out of Little Rock. Summer was in bed with a bad back, so I took the dogs out for another record-breaking run. They did 2.3 miles at a 9.5mph pace with a top speed of 21.2mph. We stopped at a house along the way home because it looked like they had a water hose running into their yard and all down the neighbor’s yard. They didn’t answer the door, so I went to find their neighbor, who had already texted the lady but hadn’t gotten a response. Hopefully they were just draining their pool, because the back gate was padlocked so I couldn’t get back there to turn a faucet off. The dogs and I finally got home and I gave them treats before making myself a burrito for dinner.

Kevin came over with Mathai to get his laptop. Then after they left, I ended up slicing a huge gash on the right side of my right hand as I tried to swat a fly off of an open can of refried beans. Blood gushed everywhere for a moment, and I called Eaddie for some help as I leaked life fluid into the sink. She brought alcohol, bandages, and even helped clean up the blood splatter all over the floor.

Once I got my hand cleaned up and bandaged, we sat in the dining room and talked for quite a while about growing up and her future plans. It was a great moment, and eventually I had to make a mad dash to get to bed late.

I’m pretty sure I’ve learned this lesson before.

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Just a Little PXE Dust

I had a rough start this morning, but things eventually worked out. I had to get out of bed just after I had gotten in it because Stilgar was barking at something. When I got outside, Muad’Dib had shredded my newer grill’s cover trying to get to a foil pan that had fallen behind it. I ended up beating him for it, and he ran off behind the outhouse for the night. He was back on the porch for breakfast with Summer in the morning though.

I got to work and the guys were chatting outside as usual. I went in to test PXE booting, and wouldn’t you know it, adding IP helpers completely fixed the issue. I don’t know why the DHCP policy didn’t work, since I’d used that successfully before and all things pointed to it being a different issue, but I had an image booted in no time.

Maggie and Randy were both somewhere else in the district all day, so Maggie turned the lights off and left me alone in the dark for nearly the entire day. I ended up going to Arby’s for lunch when I couldn’t get a response from Randy, but then he called to say they were going to Hogg’s Meat Market just after I got back to the office.

At one point, Gary came in and started cussin’ about Maggie, trying to tell me that it was her job to go to all of the buildings and do inventory. I wasn’t going to roll over on that, and told him that “we” had always delegated that to building techs since they were the ones that had to deploy and verify inventory for any areas for which they were responsible. He didn’t like that answer at all, and told me that this wasn’t wherever I came from. He didn’t stick around long after that.

Randy came in near the end of the day saying he heard that I had pissed Gary off, so I shared my side of the story. He appreciated that I backed Maggie and stood up to the old man, and we chatted while I continued to work on SCCM stuff. At the end of the day, he mentioned something about getting home after dark, so I brought up my struggles with 13-hour work days. I raised my question about cutting our lunch hour down to 30 minutes again, and he said he would be okay with it as long as he could get permission for the department. In reality, there didn’t seem to be a policy in place anywhere, and they were only taking a full hour lunch “because that’s how they’d always done it.” He also suggested working remotely for one day a week, and I told him I’d rather try and ask forgiveness for doing something like that as-needed, rather than be shot down for asking permission to set that as a weekly schedule.

I eventually got out of there, and Ben called as I was making my way home. He asked about the job, and we chatted for a little while up until I got off the interstate. When I got to the house, Eaddie and her friend Autumn were there doing homework, and Summer was coming home from work a little later. Dad had already come by the house and taken the dogs for a walk, but I took them out for a faster run. I think they beat their record with a 20.6mph top speed and a pace of 9.2mph for 2.1 miles. We visited Dad, then went around the basin which had surprisingly already drained most of the way back down. They did well enough for hot dogs when we got home, and then Eaddie left to take Autumn home. Summer was along shortly after that, and I worked on Kevin’s computer a little more until bedtime.

So are we skipping the moon and taking Doge straight to Mars now?

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Breakfixst

I didn’t sleep great last night, and it stormed for most of it. I woke up groggy, but made it out of the house early enough to take the drive a little easier. Surprisingly, Maggie beat me to the office and started talking about breakfast shortly after I got there. I made coffee, and when Kyle and Randy came in, she took orders from everyone and went to get food from BJ’s. I had a western omelette with hashbrowns and biscuits, and it was pretty good. I ate way slower than everyone else since I was trying to work at the same time.

I didn’t really get hungry until late in the afternoon, so I didn’t take a lunch. I just kept chugging away at SCCM, trying to fix PXE booting all day. I asked Randy if I could take off an hour early since I didn’t eat, and he just said not to make a habit of it after Javier had been taking advantage. I made it home quickly, and it had dried up, so I wanted to take the dogs out on a good run.

Summer had been home much of the day since the washes were rained out. She was working in her office when I came and left. I took the dogs to my parents’ house to sniff around the yard, then went to the basin trail, which was mostly flooded into one giant pond.

I let the dogs splash around a little bit, and then we chased off a big flock of geese. Stilgar was whining because he wanted to chase them so badly, but I knew he’d never come back. He could have so much more fun if he’d just have better recall, but he won’t listen. We ended up going out further, crossing 12th, and visiting Sequoyah Park. Then we made it around to the Boulevard before swinging back through the roundabout. It was nearly a five mile run at an 8.5mph average, so they got home hungry. I actually ran out of poop bags and had to come home to get a new roll after Stilgar left a big pile at someone’s house. Embassingly, the lady pulled up to check her male as I was looking around the yard to find it, but she told me she didn’t care and not to worry about it.

We got home for some hot dogs, I ate some leftover pizza, and then Summer and I sat down to chat for a bit before I opened up a couple more Vine packages. They keep coming out with “neon” signs that I love. I wrapped things up early after that, and actually managed to get to bed really early.

Silly goose.

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Negligence

Just before I went to bed last night, Eaddie’s car alarm started going off. I yelled across the house at her for her keys, and she just yelled back through her bedroom door to check the valet. I knew damn well the key wasn’t there, but I looked anyway. Fortunately the alarm quit, and I found no evidence of tampering. The rain must have triggered something in a sensor.

I finally got to sleep, and Summer woke me up a couple hours later because it was going off again. I found the keys, this time in Eaddie’s purse that she thought she left at school. Keys go in the valet, so we always know where they are. If nobody else is going to lift a finger, then I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

I slept in a few minutes and ran an alternate routine in the morning to get to work on time. I didn’t feel too awful for it, but it wasn’t great. I was the first one there, and started out with some coffee pretty early. I got through to lunch when Randy, Kyle, Jim, and I went to American Pie Pizza. Maggie said she wasn’t going, but then beat us there. She and I split a pizza, but she only ate two slices. Kyle and Randy split another pizza that I thought we might share from, but we each stuck to our own, and Jim got a salad. I liked the brick oven style crust a lot, but it made for eating half a pie.

The afternoon was spent on SCCM again, and I finally cracked the puzzle by setting a compatibility version on the SQL server. That got me right to the end of the day, so I’ll dive into it again first thing tomorrow.

Summer went home early in the rain and had dinner going for us. I raced there to get the dogs walked before sundown, but we still ended up in the dark. We had to go on an acoustic walk since the ground was wet and I didn’t want the Onewheel to kick water up at my leg the entire time, though the dogs wouldn’t have cared. I need to get a fender for those types of days, but I like the exposed wheel otherwise.

I had to take a beat when I got back because Summer said she left the grill cover out and the dogs ripped a hole in it. She overcooked four well-done strip steaks, steamed five potatoes, and made a huge bowl of salad for the three of us plus Eli. I was irritated and disappointed. The dogs will be dogs, but I’m tired of her absent mindedness. After dinner, I had to unload the dirty dishwasher to load it correctly, and she scolded me for having a fit, but I was really just trying to get it done, and frustrated that I was having to fix her mess again.

She went to bed and the kids stayed up doing homework. I eventually got outside to clean up the grill because I knew she hadn’t, and that’s when I discovered the burner had been on the entire time, wasting propane and keeping the grill hot. I sat outside with the dogs while it cooled down, and then managed to get the ripped cover mostly back over the grill. I don’t think they make that model any more, and the shape was pretty specific with the smoke vent, so I may just have to do my best to patch the thing up.

I don’t know when it turns from negligence to stupidity, but I don’t know how much more I’m willing to overlook.

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It’s A’parent

We had a more relaxing drive to work today. I got in relatively early and things were pretty quiet all day. Randy came to work at Kyle’s desk again, and he, Maggie, and I chatted back and forth for much of the morning until he left for the admin building. I had some coffee a little late, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just brewing too long. I was excited to finally see a scale on Amazon Vine, which also has a built-in timer. Maybe this will let me fine-tune my brew.

Lunch time came around, and Randy met Maggie and me at Skinny J’s. Randy even called Jim, who came to eat with us on his day off. I had the “Heart Attack” burger, which came on Texas toast with an egg on it. I thought it was pretty good, but the homemade chips were a little bland. Maggie doesn’t like it when I use FSD, so I had to drive to and from lunch, which was so jarring after how little I’ve been driving lately.

Later in the afternoon, I finally cracked what I was missing in our KMS server, and I got the Office 2024 license working. Randy left a little early, and then I finally got out of there. Traffic was wild on the way home, and speeding triggered another FSD failure, so I had to pull off at an exit to park and reset so I didn’t have to drive the rest of the way home.

I stopped in Morrilton for some beer and then made it home, where Summer was eating some food truck hibachi. She ate half, and then I finished. Then I took the dogs for a run while she went out to Eaddie’s football game. Jesica thought she would be coming through, but we ended up not seeing her.

The dogs did really well, and then I cleaned up to go to the halftime show. It was senior night, so Summer and I walked onto the field along with Nick to celebrate Eaddie in the band. It was really cool to be right in the middle of everyone when she played the fight song. We left immediately after that, and I tinkered a while before bed.

Easy Peasy

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Chasing Goblins

I woke up to a rainstorm and practically had to push the car through the rain to get to work because Full Self Driving didn’t want to go over about 60. Traffic after Conway slowed down to the 40s, so I showed up plenty late. Randy was the only one there, and he only walked in just before me. A few others trickled in, but most didn’t stick around long.

I ended up sitting in on a quick call with Kyle and Maggie, but that was mostly just receiving a proposal from a vendor that Randy didn’t want to attend. I was just happy my microphone worked this time. Then I sat in with Maggie and Randy when the Acer rep came to talk to us in person. He tried name dropping Russellville as a client, but I confirmed with Gary that they hadn’t bought any Acer stuff. I don’t know if he was just lying or mistaken.

We didn’t get out for lunch because Robin cooked pork chops and baked potatoes for us. You really couldn’t beat it for five bucks. We’ve been eating great every couple of weeks out there. Then I poked around with the KMS server a bit more in the afternoon. I left work early so I could go home and vote, but I had to stop at the old house first. Then went and stood in line at the election headquarters. They were churning people through there pretty quickly, so I was in and out in no time. Then I headed straight home to see Summer before the trick-or-treaters started coming around.

We had some leftover burritos, and then as soon as we got our first group of kids, I took the dogs out for a run on the Onewheel. They must have smelled it in the air, because they took off running like crazy. There were people all down the road, and we flew by without too much trouble. They did want to sniff at people at first, but overall they did pretty great. We stopped by to see Dad, but their street was dark.

From there, we went around the block to Promenade Circle, and that place was packed. There were cars parked on both sides of the road around the whole block, and you couldn’t get farther than about ten feet away from people in any direction. We rolled on through and went around the main circle once before going out to the basin trail. There was nobody out there, so we continued around Vancouver and then came back up by my parents’ house for some water before taking the long way home.

Summer kept handing out candy for a little longer, but then we put everything away and got ready for bed. Eaddie was out all night with Eli at a Tech band concert. I saw her come in, and then went to bed.

It’s like a candy festival of light!

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Forced Drive

I got out a little earlier today and had a more relaxed ride in to work until around Mayflower. Conway traffic was thick and fast, so I was in a mob of cars that were flying down the road at 88 miles an hour. This is both the speed at which you travel through time, as well as the speed at which Autopilot will no longer autopilot. I had to take over, and with such heavy traffic, didn’t feel like pulling over to park and re-engage. Stress was much higher the rest of the way in, which was also the most busy part of the drive.

The morning wasn’t too bad though. Maggie split her biscuits and gravy with me, and I puttered a bit before really sinking my teeth into anything. The morning went by quickly though, and then I had to text Randy to see what they were doing for lunch. He, Jim, and Kyle were at Cary’s Grill and Bar, which was closed the last time we tried to visit. Maggie wasn’t going to lunch, but changed her mind when I told her the place, so we drove over to meet them.

I had a pretty decent chicken fried steak, but the hashbrown casserole was pretty awful. All of the food could have been a bit more fresh and hot, but wasn’t bad. I also had okra for the first time in the day. Maggie was too nervous to let the car drive us back, so I drove to the office by myself, and I finished the day trying to wrangle our KMS server.

Julie called on the drive home to say she wanted to have Kevin’s celebratory dinner tonight, so I called Eaddie to queue her up before I got home. I didn’t have time to run the dogs, but I got cleaned up before picking up my parents, and then had the car drive us to Brangus to meet Eaddie, Julie, and Kevin. Summer came along after we got inside, but then had to deal with an accident at work.

Dinner was pretty good, as Brangus usually is. We lingered a bit longer than I really wanted, since I still had to run the dogs before bed. Summer took Eaddie home while I took my parents home, and then I took the dogs out for an short, alternate run in the dark. They did alright though, and then I had another speed run to bed.

Sure it works, but is it better?

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Hi, Sharks

I didn’t sleep well, and was predictably tired getting out this morning. I was a few minutes late, but showed up as the guys were checking out our new shop building that has finally been cleaned out. Humorously, I was still the first one to my desk to begin work. I had a bit of a false start when I accidentally joined my call with PRTG an hour early. When the call finally did start, I had audio trouble and had to join from my computer and phone for anyone to hear me.

The morning ran long as nobody came around for lunch. I was going back and forth with Maggie about what to eat when she suddenly said David was coming from Howard to treat us to an impromptu lunch at Saltgrass Steak House. I was excited to try that, but she talked him into going to Longhorn instead because she liked their lunch better. My New York strip ended up being absolutely terrible because it was overcooked and unbelievably tough. I had to saw it into thin strips just to chew the thing.

It took us a while to get started because we waited for Jim to join us, and then Maggie behaved embarrassingly with our waitress, asking multiple people for an extra plate and receiving too many, and then getting out of her seat to chase down our server to ask for something near the end of our visit. She’s been a very involved secretary, which I appreciate, but her lunchtime habits are unhinged.

We made it back to the office and I finished out the day mostly struggling to troubleshoot my audio issue. I finally left and made it home to take the dogs out for a quick run. We visited my parents, and then Stilgar had to lay down in the creek for a bit while we were in the basin. They behaved well though, and got hot dogs at home.

Once I cleaned up, I had to pry Summer out of her chair so we could take the Model Y to Superfast and finally fix the piece of the bumper that was out of place. I was right, and it was relatively easy to do, and it should have been done the day of the accident to prevent further damage to the paint.

We took a moment and let the car drive us around town to cool down from my frustrations, and unboxed a couple of fun things from Amazon Vine. Julie called about an earlier text message about a loan to buy an airplane. We discussed that with a predictable tone before I finally got to wind down for bed. Eaddie came in late, as seems to be the norm. I did well to crawl into bed before ten.

High risk; No reward

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Let’s Carve a Smile on that Face

It was a quiet, slow drive in today. I had a little note from Randy in my chair, thanking me for being a part of the team. I figure he was required to write it, but it was nice all the same, and the words felt genuine because they mirrored the comments he’s made to me ever since I started.

The guys came and went, but mostly went, leaving me alone for lunch. I went to Rally’s and had a pretty disappointing burger because they were out of bacon without any recourse for my prepaid online order. I ate it at my desk and waited for others to come around.

Randy texted and asked me to take care of a printer issue upstairs, so I rebuilt that from scratch. The HP printer has an incredibly annoying requirement to read a PIN from a hidden label inside the machine in order to get to the remote settings. It was clear that the initial deployment wasn’t done correctly, or at least not completely. She shouldn’t have any more issues now though.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly as we tackled various puzzles. I left a little bit late, and traffic was relatively light but unnecessarily slow. I got stuck under the speed limit for a few miles, and then got behind a gravel truck that was spewing pebbles through Conway.

Eaddie and Eli were practicing their instruments when I got home. I immediately took the dogs out for their run, ran through my parents’ yard, around the basin, and back home. They did pretty well and got their hot dogs afterward. Then I jumped right into making burritos for dinner.

I got pretty heated at Summer and the kids after I called to them several times. Evidently it’s my fault for not explaining to them that I won’t call them unless I want them to come to me. Nobody offered to help; nobody said they were on the way; nobody said thanks; nobody told me to pound sand.

I ate and excused myself to try and wrap up the rest of my evening. Dad eventually showed up to eat, and then we got to carving pumpkins. The mallet and “cookie cutters” I got from Amazon Vine were ridiculed at first, but ended up being a “hit” once they started using them. They were difficult to extract, but with some care, they worked really well. We got everyone cleaned up and shuffled off, and I made a speed run for bed.

Burrito Stuff

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Elon, Take the Wheel

I let the car take the onramp all the way to the offramp this morning, and only had to intervene once when it stupidly tried to pass in the right lane a block before it would have had to turn into the office parking lot. I just don’t get why it does obviously stupid things when it does so well at other times.

Randy wasn’t feeling well and ended up leaving after lunch. Nobody else came around, so I just went to Arby’s by myself and hung out there for the hour. I didn’t get into anything super complicated, and actually spent most of the morning waiting for Randy to show me a couple things, so I’m still feeling a little bit lost a lot of the time.

The morning happened to go by super quickly, so of course the afternoon dragged on. I decided to take the next two days off for recovery, so I headed home and then immediately took the dogs out for a walk. We went backwards this time, and went to the pond first to get a bit muddy. Then we stopped by my parents’ house before going up the hill and through Pinewood before making it home, where we took one more lap around the block before stopping.

Eaddie and Eli ate salad crap that Summer brought home, and I left out of frustration when I found an empty condiment shelf in the refrigerator. I ended up going to KFC to pick up a Famous Bowl, and then I went to the city park to eat at a picnic table. I sat there and enjoyed the weather for a while before going to the old house to check things out. There weren’t any toilets, so I ended up leaving sooner than I expected.

I didn’t want to go home though, so I immediately started Full Self Driving without a destination, just to see where the car would take me. I wondered if it would choose turns, or if it would just keep trying to drive straight as long as it could. It ended up taking a right at the stop sign, which made me think it was going to default to taking me home. It made it all the way across town, but then took the first exit out of the roundabout, which put me back on 12th Street all the way to Glenwood. There, it took its only left turn the entire night, and took me up to 2nd Street. There, it took another right and got through the stops all the way to the traffic light. It tried to proceed through green, but then hit the brakes hard right in the middle of the intersection because it couldn’t see the street. There just happened to be another car coming from the other direction, so the headlights probably didn’t help the matter. I pressed the accelerator to carefully nudge it through the intersection, and it continued on as if nothing had happened.

It ended up at sort of a dead-end, so it took a right and went nearly all the way to Oakland Heights before it took a sudden right to get back over to Detroit. Then we headed north, all the way over the tracks, and then took the first right out of the traffic circle on that side of town. It took me around the Parker Road bend, then all the way up the steep hill to get to Highway 124. We drove by the girls’ old house and ended up on the intersection of 124 and Weir Road. It took me back toward town all the way to Main Street before taking a right and going all the way over the bridge. After we made it through downtown, I finally told it to take me home, and it did. We made it just over 15 miles over the course of 35 minutes with absolutely no interventions, and I really only stopped because the battery was low and still hadn’t recovered from my drive back from work.

Summer was already in bed. Eaddie saw Eli out, I took out the trash. Eventually sleep.

Adventures with Machines