Tag: work

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Irreason

My days are creeping back and I’m arriving at work just a little bit earlier every day. I did fairly well in the morning, and finally started tinkering with TFTP block and window sizes to troubleshoot my slow boot image issue at the office. Wouldn’t you know, I fixed it on my first try. I was able to test multiple iterations of my task sequence the rest of the day.

Maggie and I rode with Randy to Gadwall’s for lunch, and I had some fairly disappointing nachos. I did like the cheese dip though. I think Maggie said it was Mexico Chiquito, but then she also said that was another restaurant, but I thought it tasted a bit like Stoby’s.

I slowly lost myself in the afternoon. I got home and ran Muad’Dib to Walgreens to pick up my escitalopram while Summer finished making a pork chop dinner. He did great on the run, and after dropping my meds off at home, we ran an abridged version of our normal route to see Dad. Eaddie was home and we ate when we got back to the house. Then we all had to go to the high school arena for the band awards.

The awards took a while, because they read off every single activity in which each senior participated. Eli had a super long list. Eaddie’s was long, but not long enough to beat his. She did get one of the three big awards at the end though, which was exciting for her. Eaddie stayed out, so Summer and I went to wash my car and then headed home to go to bed.

happy birthday

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The Patriarchy

I got to work pretty early this morning after a reasonably focused and optimistic drive in, but I could feel myself slipping pretty early. I slunk down in the back and accomplished one task by accident, and there was hardly a soul around to pat me on the back for it. I plowed right through into the afternoon, but decided to get up to take a break for a Big Mac not long before quitting time. I ended up staying a little bit late anyway just to kill some time before I could meet up with Mitch, who was in town for work.

I made it over to his hotel and found a free charger at the Tropical Smoothie where I waited for him to get off work. Then we drove across town toward Southern Tail Brewing, stopping first at Stone’s Throw Brewing for a quick flight and to see if one of Mitch’s old friends was working. We finished there and got to the restaurant where service was friendly, but a bit slow. Blake showed up out of nowhere, walking straight onto the patio from the street, and the three of us had a great time trauma dumping and catching up.

I felt a little bad to monopolize the time Mitch had in the state, but Blake and I never knew each other very well back in school, so we really are kind of connecting for the first time. We had some great laughs, and some interesting, yet delicious salmon fish and chips.

Mitch went with Blake after that since I had to head home for bed. It was great catching up, and I’ll have to make more of an effort to keep up with Blake in the near future since he lives so close to my office. I got home and got to witness my matrix headlights doing their partial dimming, which was cool, but a little anticlimactic. The girls had cleaned up house a bit and were ready for bed, so I wasted no time to get there myself.

Three Male Incomes

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Chasing Lightning

It was a bit rainy on the way to work, but the drive wasn’t too bad. Lightning rippled through the clouds a few times, creating a fishing net of light cast across the sky. I arrived fairly early and Randy was already hard at work with the domain controllers. I mostly sat back so we didn’t have too many hands in the cookie jar, and instead fought an issue for our Cenergistic guy who couldn’t figure out how to remote into the system I set up for him. He eventually came by the office so I could take a look at his laptop, and it looked like he just couldn’t save the connection because of rotating credentials.

Randy and I met Jay, Charles, Kyle, and Hunter at Cotham’s for lunch, and I think my burger was even bigger than usual. It was great, and I tried to impart as much wisdom onto Jay as I could. I was feeling a little frisky, so I almost approached a girl for him, who he was eyeing, but I figured that would be best saved for another time.

Randy left for the day after dropping me off, and with Maggie out all day, things were quiet at the office. Time got away from me a bit, and then it was an aggravatingly slow drive home through traffic. The kids had just finished eating some leftovers when I got there, so I took Muad’Dib out for a run.

We went all the way out to Casey’s so I could redeem a free slush. We encountered an old lady walking a rather unruly dog, and she pointed at us saying it was bad because her dog didn’t like it. Muad’Dib stayed right by my side with hardly a look, and waited patiently outside while I got my slush. Tracy saw me walking out and said hello, and I thought the number of call center throwbacks has been wild this year. Muad’Dib and I rode down the sidewalk and crossed over without any trouble, and I decided to swing through the Ridgewood Brothers to see if anyone was home.

Failing there, we continued past Kroger, across town, through the basin for a dip, and down to see Dad for a while before we made it home. Seven and a half miles, and he loved every bit of it. The kids were gone, but Summer got home shortly after we did. She ate some leftovers, and then we wound down pretty quickly. Eaddie tried on her graduation gown when she got home, and it was off to bed before the Toad Suck race in the morning.

’cause the love that you lost wasn’t worth what it cost

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Rawdoggin’

We had a mid-morning meeting that would last through lunch, so Randy wanted to swing through McDonald’s for some pre-breakfast. I rode with him and grabbed an iced coffee, and not long after we got back to the office, we headed upstairs to meet with a couple of Acer Premier Support representatives. Maggie brought Chick-fil-A breakfast for everyone, and then we sat through a bunch of training that could have probably been an email with the YouTube tutorial link. It wasn’t really required knowledge for me, so I was fairly disconnected and possibly a bit jittery from all the coffee.

I skipped lunch again, and the afternoon was for unearthing broken things. I couldn’t tell if we had actual replication issues with our domain controllers, or if there was something else preventing communication, but we definitely had issues communicating with the domain controllers. Randy ended up taking over, but that wasn’t what I intended. That sort of left me hanging for the day.

I had a pretty big anxiety attack on the drive home, but I made it. Eaddie and I chatted briefly while Summer was in the shower. They had spent the day together after Eaddie’s signing day and made Oreo balls while I ate some leftover shepherd’s pie. I was still a little bit hungry and got to craving some Taco Villa, so I ran across town to get an assortment to share with the girls. Eaddie had to leave for her appreciation concert as soon as I got back though, so Summer and I ate and then I quickly ran Muad’Dib before we met my dad at the Center.

We got there between songs by the concert band, and then moved to sit next to Dad for Eaddie’s symphonic band. I thought they did pretty great even if Eaddie thought they were awful. Eaddie and Eli both had surprise speaking parts, so of course Summer was stunned. She recorded their speaking parts, but quit when it came to the music. Moss composed one of their songs, called Grawlix, which was awesome. Then Summer had me record The Stars and Stripes Forever since Eaddie would be first in the piccolo line.

The kids went out to celebrate afterward, so Summer and I headed home and shut down pretty quickly.

Weep not for roads untraveled.

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Shame on Me

I managed to lock in this morning and had all screens going for maximum efficiency. Each answer led only to more questions, but that is often the case with so many hands in the cookie jar. I brought some leftover pizza and munched on that throughout the day, so I didn’t go to lunch. I just kept digging for our unknown domain controller, assuming that our problems were due to misconfigured DNS, and Kyle wasn’t able to articulate anything to help. I think I’m on top of something big, though.

The afternoon went by pretty slowly, but there were people through the office all day to keep things from getting too dull. Traffic home was horribly slow. Just after I got into town, a storm blew through and I could barely see ten feet ahead of me. Within my last mile I saw several large branches go down, and our driveway was flooding into the garage when I made it home. If I had realized how high the water was, I would have left the garage door closed and just run into the house by way of the equally flooded front walkway. At least the step up there would have been high enough to prevent water from coming into the house.

Summer was warming up leftover spaghetti while I ran around trying to direct the water from the driveway around the north side of the house. Eaddie and Eli tried to help just inside the door as I ran for things like the leaf blower, squeegee, and eventually a towel to keep from dripping all over the house. I don’t think there was any real water damage after that, and I got almost all of it out the door.

I ate with Summer while the kids studied in the living room, but she finished pretty quickly. As of last night we had plans to meet Shawna at Crystal Bridges on Sunday, but Summer said she backed out today because she has a new boyfriend with pictures to prove it. I wish that was more of a plot twist than any of us expected, but I just hope she finds what she needs.

Summer went for a bath while I spent some quiet time with Muad’Dib in the rain. I took care of some chores and then set up a new wireless microphone for Eaddie’s flute, which also involved testing out my old PA system. The kids played with that for a bit, then I cleaned up a bit in the kitchen before bed.

The sun doesn’t give light to the moon assuming the moon’s gonna owe it one.

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Two for Two; How ‘Bout You?

I went straight to the high school this morning, unannounced. That meant I arrived early enough that I didn’t see another soul for several minutes. I texted Jim to see where he was, and he eventually showed up after I had rummaged through Kyle’s office looking for some network ports. Jim and I went up to look at a couple of his tickets, and then we settled in the library again. I was there all day, quickly tweaking my task sequence to try and resolve the domain trust issue, as well as the driver issue after the OS deployment.

Kyle asked about lunch, and I found a place near us called Mr. Cajun’s Kitchen that everyone agreed to. We had one of the biggest lunch crews we’ve had, including Randy, Maggie, Jay, Kyle, Jim, and myself. Most of us got the blackened chicken and shrimp pasta at the recommendation of the girl at the counter, and it was super good. The lunch portion was a little bit small, but Maggie gave me her leftovers. Everyone really liked it, so that was a second win for my lunch suggestions.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly after that. Kyle came by to check out a possible DNS issue I found, but then didn’t really know what any of the forward lookup zones meant. I guess it’s an opportunity for me to learn more about the networking side since he doesn’t seem to have any interest. Jim left before I did, so I got a little bit lost trying to find my way out, but I eventually did.

The drive home was pretty raw and I got a bit jittery without anything to focus on. I took Muad’Dib out for a run to decompress as soon as I got home, but I cut us a block short to avoid some traffic. We visited Dad for a little while before making it home to Summer. She wanted to sit on the porch for a bit, so I sat with her there until she started asking about my day. That sparked a difficult conversation that we took inside, and eventually just had to step away for a bit until we both made it to bed.

Not me, feeling all these feelings!

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Alaska Dreamin’

An hour drive inside my head every day hasn’t been great. Between that and exhaustion, I don’t even remember most of the drive in to work today. I zoned out hard. Randy was back from his bereavacation and had a comically and expectedly foul reaction to being back at work. He confirmed my suspicions on the couple things I saved for him to look at, and then disappeared with Maggie for some meeting somewhere.

I had some coffee and tinkered for a while, but Jim needed some help with imaging at the high school. It was about lunch time, so Randy and I drove separately across the river to Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken to meet Kyle. The spice in that chicken was exactly what my soul needed to find peace for about twenty minutes. Then we split up and I headed to the high school to find Jim.

He had laptops spread across a table in the library where he was trying to image, and they would join the domain but then immediately lose their trust, so he couldn’t log in without dropping and rejoining the domain. I didn’t have much time to troubleshoot, but I had a couple of ideas before I had to leave to meet Summer.

I got through town as quickly as I could and met Summer at the Conway Regional Imaging Center for her breast MRI. The appointment was actually quite a bit faster than either of us expected, but of course we have to wait a few days for answers. She was super hungry after that due to fasting in the morning, so we went to Los 3 Potrillos for an early dinner. I parked at a hotel charger while we ate and got enough juice to get home. The food was good and reasonably fast, and I got out for less than half of what I normally pay in Little Rock.

After we ate, Summer went to pick up tickets to Eaddie’s graduation. I went straight home and took Muad’Dib to my parents’ house to see Dad, then over to Walgreens to pick up my prescription. On the way back, he got overheated and parked under a closed drive-through awning to catch his breath. I took the opportunity to return a call from Michael, who wanted to borrow some speakers for Oakland’s Dancing Through the Decades party. We chatted briefly, and then Muad’Dib and I made it back to our neighborhood where we stopped to chat with Mason for a minute.

Once we got home, I started hammering out reviews for Vine to get my ratio up. I’m almost at the point where I have to start unboxing things that I had stocked up on, like light bulbs, in order to give a proper review. That should be easy, but time consuming, so I’ve got to lock in. Unfortunately my lock-in juice appears to be causing some swelling, and I have blood tests incoming, so I’d probably do well to sober up.

That guy sailed away, man. He’s gone. Probably crashed into an iceberg.

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Unbreakable

I woke up just before my alarm this morning and made it to work pretty early. I really thought I had to get Jim’s imaging issue fixed, but he called me away to babysit a Google Meet interview in the boardroom. You would think with so many educated people in a room, they could figure out how to click the button to join a meeting. I wasn’t even that surprised to find it was the interviewee who couldn’t figure out how to show our video, but I could at least have the chief of staff pull the Meet up on his phone and prove that our video was broadcasting correctly.

After that, I decided to give Captain D’s a try since I was already on that side of town. The girl at the counter could not have been more disinterested, but somehow the food was really great. I stopped at Walmart for some drinks on the way back to the office, and finished out the day in relative quiet. I had also picked up some dog food on clearance, but was overcharged, so I stopped by Walmart again on my way out of town to correct that.

I got home and Summer and the kids were on the couch watching gymnastics. I went out to play with Muad’Dib for a bit. Eaddie left to go stay the night with her father, and Summer came outside to sit with me for a little bit. Things have been super volatile, which made it a terrible time to try and discuss any of our issues, so she yelled at me and stormed off. I gave her a minute before following her to the living room, and she yelled at me a bunch more. That was when I saw she had gotten a new tattoo that said “Unbreakable” on her left forearm, and it crushed me.

Once we had cooled off, she sent me to take Muad’Dib for a run. He did great, didn’t chase any geese, and got to play in the creek for a little while since I just needed to be in the air for a little while. We made it over to my parents’ house to visit with them, and he got some more leftover pork before we headed home. Mom had leftover bún thang, so I asked Summer to come have dinner with them. We used to go visit much more often, and it’s been a big issue for me that it seems like she never wants to make the time with my family. I explained this again, and was super happy that she agreed this time. It was a great visit and great food.

We talked a bunch more when we got home, and things shifted from good to bad and back again several times. I got some laundry done, and she got some sleep before her 5k in Dover tomorrow. I was ready to pass out at any moment, but had things to do.

You gotta give them to the land

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Waning Crescent

I woke up shaking with anxiety this morning that followed me most of the way to work. It eventually leveled out, which was good because Gary tried to help a lady in the office with a printer issue, and it quickly became my problem. Luckily Kyle walked in and it then became his problem when we discovered the switch port was tagged incorrectly, and the printer had been set up differently than whatever standard they eventually chose.

I fought slow deployment tests all day, but took a break to take Maggie to lunch with Jim. Somehow when I pay for her, we end up spending enough to feed three or four people, but it was her birthday. They both asked about Summer after I took the day off, so I shared a little bit of what we’ve been working through, and Jim joked that it sounded like we were married.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly and my single image test failed what I was trying to accomplish. On the way out, I got to see the giant lizard Maggie told me was living under the sidewalk. I headed home through some fairly slow traffic, stopping in Atkins to swing through Casey’s to redeem a freebie. Summer and I had discussed dinner earlier in the morning, so she had a shepherd’s pie in the oven when I got home. She was sitting at the dinner table doing some work on her laptop with a look on her face, so we talked a bunch more.

We mostly talked in circles over the same things. She said she was taking some time away from work just to stay away from the public for a bit, and I was glad she got to see some support from her team and leadership. I don’t think any of the talking was actually helping at that point since we’ve always had trouble communicating. We stopped for dinner with Eaddie, and the shepherd’s pie turned out awesome. Afterward she had to go to Tech to prepare for a concert. I tried to take Muad’Dib out for a run, but it started raining and we ended up sitting on the porch together instead. Summer came out and we got burned out from talking again, so we loaded up to go watch Eaddie’s Tech concert.

The concert was long, but the band was great. We were both pretty exhausted from the stress and the lack of sleep. I know my head dropped at least once while I had my eyes closed, listening to the music. We got home, shared some drinks, and wound down quickly for bed.

I got my change behind the bed, in a coffee can I throw my nickels in. ☄️

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PGA Tour

After the intensity yesterday, I knew I’d have to medicate today to keep the shakes down. I was early, so I just let the car do its thing to get me to the office, and from there I was actually pretty focused. I continued working in SCCM to fix some issues with Jim’s laptop deployment, but was still delayed by the network latency. At this point it would be much faster to just go to the high school and test my task sequences there.

I offered to take Maggie out to lunch for her birthday, but she said she had plans to meet a friend. She ended up disappearing for much of the day, so it was just the two old men and me, sipping my sweet tea all day. I didn’t eat my banana, and I wasn’t hungry for lunch, so I just plowed right through. I tried to stay hydrated, but somehow the lid to my cup popped off and I spilled 32 ounces of ice water all over the floor right outside our office. All I could do was shrug. I broke my cup and lid in the process, and to add insult to injury, they don’t seem to keep a mop in the closet with the other cleaning supplies. I had to use a rag to wipe it all up after wringing it out repeatedly.

The afternoon dragged by slowly, but quitting time eventually rolled around. I was exhausted and a bit dazed, but the car was a champ again. Eaddie called and wanted to know if we were going to go to Nebo with her, Eli, and my dad to take some more senior photos, so that was our new plan. I got home and tried to lay on the couch with Summer for a bit since she had gotten home fairly early. We started talking, and that continued off and on all night long.

The kids got there, followed by my dad, and we loaded Muad’Dib into the Pathfinder to drive up the mountain. Summer had to use the restroom, so we found the bathhouse first, then took some pictures at the overlook there. We still had quite a bit of daylight left, so we went around to the waterfall and took some pictures there. Our last stop was sunset point to get a few more shots as the sun set behind the clouds. I spotted a lone lady sitting on a rock staring into the distance, so I made a point to walk down by her with a smile and wish her well. I shared with her that I had spent many evenings there alone, and hoped that she was doing okay.

We stopped one last time at an overlook on the way down the mountain, and then headed home. My chat with Summer had kind of gone back and forth all day, but really took a defeating turn on the drive home. The way she digs into me and refuses any help unless somebody is forcing her makes me worry that I’m doing more harm than good just by being around at this point.

I didn’t find out until later, but Summer robbed my liquor cabinet on the way to take a bath. I warmed up some spaghetti for Eaddie and sat in the kitchen with her for another really great talk about how she basically wished we would split up. Coming from either of the other kids might have been an insult, but I knew what she meant. She just wants us both to be happy, and has a logical enough mindset that she sees a path forward for all of us. She recognized the decline of our relationship, especially after moving in together, and identified the core differences in our values and priorities. She especially didn’t want us sticking together on account of her, and hated that we’ve both been so unhappy in spite of how Summer says she feels. We discussed sitting down as a family to share our feelings, which is something I’ve struggled to get Summer to do even one-on-one, but Eaddie has proven time and time again that she has insight that both of us could use. She really is the daughter I always wanted.

I started to wind down, but heard Summer whimpering in the bedroom. By the time I got there, she was absolutely hammered and sobbing into her pillow from finishing my bottle of cocoa cayenne Bird Dog. In nearly eight years, I had never really seen her cry, and I’d definitely never seen her that drunk before. We “fought” for over two hours, mostly about me trying to get her to drink some water. I needed her to be able to open up emotionally, but in a more constructive way. We both called in to work, and I guess we’ll see if we can actually have an adult conversation tomorrow, but I’m betting on at least one hangover eating into that productivity. She is such an incredible woman, and we both learned and grew from one another a great deal in our time. I would still be broken in a big way without her. I never expected this to come to a head in this way. I’ve tried so hard, but I just don’t know if we can truly be good for one another in this kind of relationship.

Older than the ocean. Older than the night sky, I am.