Tag: work

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Noisy Day

I spent a lot of the day by myself because Kim kept disappearing. I keep having to go through and close old work orders from a month ago that I feel like she should have done, but I’m sure she feels like I should have done more myself. It’s just hard for me to focus on random daily requests when I’m also the one that has to do anything even remotely technical. She’s not in there modifying any scripts.

She said Mel was picking up roast beef sandwiches for lunch, so I had her pick one up for me too. It was pretty decent for eight bucks at a gas station. I ate by myself after she brought food back and then left for duty. Then she disappeared for most of the afternoon before leaving early to do something else. I just don’t know what’s going on in her head, but it doesn’t seem like work.

I stayed late to close out a bunch of stuff, and then headed home to charge and feed the fish for just a little bit before heading to the new house. Summer made a pretty good dinner of stuffed peppers, mashed potatoes, and citrus green beans. At least all of the components tasted good on their own, but it lacked in cohesion.

The TV never went off the entire evening, so I disappeared to the bedroom to relax in the quiet. It’s frustrating that there’s just nowhere I can go to get away from all of the noise. Kim has started leaving the TV on at work. The kids are loud outside my office door. Summer blasts cooking shows at home. There’s just no retreat.

At least there’s a conference week ahead.

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March On

I finally got my request submitted to attend this year’s Arkansas Conference of Technology, and Blake came into the office to ask me to commit to staying for the rest of the school year. I understand that the budget for this year was made, and I know that I haven’t had long to prove myself, but I also feel like my department has really been set back from the direction I wanted to go. I told him honestly that it’s not my intention to leave, but that I was still kicking myself for not taking the $70,000 offer I got earlier in the year. I’m even more upset that I didn’t join Brody at Clarksville. This year is full of regrets, and there’s no confusion about how I feel toward my new school. There is a lot of work to be done, and they’re barely paying me enough to submit tickets to DIS to let them handle it. In the end, he said he would get me a PO, so I’ll be going for both days of the main conference, as well as both pre-conference days. It’s an investment in me, and I feel I’ve earned it whether I stay or go.

It was otherwise a pretty quiet day. I made plans to meet with John at the house after work to sign an invoice, for which he was expecting half of the payment before I actually knew what that payment would be. That was on him. After I met with him at the house, I took my car to the old house to charge and then took the Shadow to the high school for the marching assessment. It got cold fast, and I was pretty much immediately ready to leave, but it wasn’t awful. Mark and Laura actually came up and sat by us, and we chatted very briefly. She evidently knew my name from my own firing, and Mark laughed saying, “me too!” It’s harder to find a good lawyer at Technician pay though.

After the marching assessment, I went to the house to pay some bills before finally heading to the new house for the evening.

Actually, I thought there’d be more fire.

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Pixel8ed

I slept reasonably well through the night, so I was surprised at how tired I was when I woke up this morning. I had another annoying shower, fighting with the hot water again. Then it was a McChicken Biscuit kind of morning for the drive to work. It was a bit of a struggle getting Kim to focus, which was especially bad since Denice was in the office for most of the day. Summer sent me a picture of the back of her car where someone must have hit it with something and gouged the paint a bit. She tried to look through the dashcam footage, but couldn’t find anything.

I spent my entire day working on VMware again, and with Gary’s help, I got my log files cleaned up, and everything was working again. I learned quite a bit, but there’s still so much more. They had a pep rally in the afternoon, and then school let out for a three-day weekend that I really needed.

After work, I ran straight to the new house to get my Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2. I spent most of the evening setting them up, until the girls got home and I went out to find some food. I went to the Neighborhood Market to see if they had anything interesting in the deli. They did not. Then I went to Kroger and ended up getting some brats to grill.

Summer was asleep by the time I got back, so I ate by myself, tinkered for a while longer, and then finally went to bed late.

Every day, there’s something new.

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Bashed

I was exhausted this morning, but I made it to work early again. Eaddie ended up sleeping in and going to school around lunch time, and I was so mad and jealous at the same time. I had to dig into my VMware issues some more, but still didn’t have a fix. It looks like I’ll have to learn some more command line stuff to really fix it. It was a long day, but thankfully my coffee got me through it.

Afterward, I went straight home to charge for a while. I ended up just figuring dinner on my own because Summer made chicken salads, and I was tired of salad after eating one every day at school. I took the Shadow out, and it was a cool night for my first ride in months. I felt bad that I hadn’t taken the bikes out earlier, but I just haven’t had a good opportunity for it in a long time.

I tried going to Taco Bell at first, and it looked like they had remodeled and duplicated the Chick-fil-A method of multiple drive-through lines. Those were packed, but I wanted to dine inside anyway. When I went into the restaurant, there were about a dozen other people standing around waiting for food, and I didn’t see a single person eating anything. I decided to dip pretty quickly, and ended up going to McDonald’s for an equally poor experience. Employees were yelling at each other across the restaurant, my fries weren’t very fresh, and my Quarter Pounder wasn’t made correctly at all. The lady behind me was traveling through, and went Super-Karen because she wasn’t happy with how her food was made either. She kept muttering to herself, and I realized pretty quickly I was in CrazyTown.

I took the bike back home after I ate, and took the Model 3 for a wash before going to the new house. Summer was helping Eaddie study for tests, so I took care of my own chores and made it to bed roughly on time.

It’s the state of the civilization for me.

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“Cheer Up,” My Friends All Say

Today was my first drive in to work straight from the new house. I wasn’t quite early enough to make it to the old house first to feed the fish, so I figured I could take care of them after work. I was fairly productive until lunch time when kids started screaming at the tops of their lungs right outside my door. I really have no idea how I’m expected to get any work done in there, and it made me furious. On top of that, I was constantly up and down at my desk to let visitors in for Denice. Productivity was down in an already ailing department.

I left just a little bit early to get home to change before the concert. Eaddie was wishy-washy about going because her band teacher made an announcement that anybody who didn’t show up to practice couldn’t march at the homecoming game. I told her there was no way they would keep their star performer from marching, and she finally agreed to go with me.

We headed out of town later than I wanted, and stopped in Ozark to charge and get some food. We ran into Alisha and Joshua there, who were also on their way across the state for the concert. They wanted to make it for the gate opening, but we didn’t arrive until The Get Up Kids were near the end of their set. After that, I knew one song by Motion City Soundtrack. I knew the most songs from New Found Glory. The lead singer from The All-American Rejects was super weird, but he kind of made me think of what I might be like if I had lived in the spotlight as long as he had.

Overall, everyone was entertaining. It was a packed house, but we managed to get out in a reasonable amount of time. We stopped in Lowell for a quick charge just long enough to use the restroom and get a drink, and then continued to Ozark where I charged enough to get me to work the next morning. Eaddie slept the whole way home and never got out of the car. I wrapped up quickly once I got home, so I shouldn’t be much shorter on sleep than a typical late night.

There’s a place, somewhere that’s between dream and awake.

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Imbalance

I was a little bit behind this morning, and I still had a mix of my routine at the new house and at the old house. I never brought shoes over, so I had to wear flip-flops to the old house to feed the fish, brush my teeth, and then get to work on time. I jumped right on some super old requisitions that I had, and then spent like two hours on printing asset tags. That basically took me through lunch, when I had to work with earbuds because of the noise. I hate my new office arrangement so much.

I spent most of the afternoon in PowerShell trying to figure out why our existing scripts were screwing up student accounts in Clever. I ended up staying super late after a day of hearing Kim on her phone, but I think I got most of it fixed before testing tomorrow.

My car seemed to be taking a bit longer to charge than I expected, so I was home for a while before I finally went to Taco John’s for dinner. Then I went back to the house to kill some more time, pay some bills, and charge before going to the new house for the night.

I just want to pay my gas bill.

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If I Had a Nickel

I slept in a little bit today before we got around to organizing the house. Summer mostly did things herself in the spare room, and I finally got the cabinets pulled away from the wall in the laundry room. I got a little hangry after a while, so I showered and we went to Mulan’s, Walmart, and then to my house to pick up a few more things.

I had an idea to mount Eaddie’s bathroom Google Nest Mini on the wall and to make the power cord into some wall art to look like a flower stem with leaves. The Command Strips we picked up weren’t perfect, but I eventually got them to stick, and I thought it looked pretty good.

Summer didn’t feel great, so she cancelled her therapy appointment, took a bath, and settled down pretty quickly. Brody invited me to see The Exorcist: Believer, but I turned him down on account of my being a big sissy. He stopped by to check out the house though, and then I let him take a ride around the block in the Model Y. He seemed to be doing pretty well at Clarksville, and it made me angry again that I didn’t go join him when I had the chance. The pay there really would have been so much better.

Eaddie was out late at an away game, so I was up by myself pretty late. I took apart the dryer because it had been making an awful racket, and I shook a nickel free from the edge of the drum. That seemed to resolve the issue, so I put everything back together and eventually made it to bed.

This sleep schedule is getting out of hand.

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Keyless Entry

My shower kept swinging between scalding and cold water for some reason. I would make incredibly tiny adjustments and wait for a while, and eventually the temperature would shift suddenly. I managed to get through it though, and went to the old house to finish getting ready for work. I was just early enough to stop for a McMuffin, but when I got to work I realized I forgot my keys at home.

It was a reasonably quiet day, and I actually got to accomplish a couple things. I’m still falling behind in work orders, but maybe I’ll catch up by Christmas. Near the end of the day, the superintendent came into my office to borrow the Newline display cart. They were having an ASBA meeting with school board members around the area, and I kind of wanted to stick around to see if anyone from Russellville would show up, or if they were too good for that.

Summer wanted me to stop by and see her at Splash when I got back to town, so I did that briefly, and then went to Arby’s a couple of times to get all of my order. I took food to Summer and then went home to eat and charge for a while.

Eventually I started loading up some things to take to the new house, and then started picking up a little bit when I got there. Summer wasn’t long behind me, and then Eaddie got home from helping at a football game shortly after that. The microwave quit working on Eaddie, so I’ll probably have to check out some replacement switches for it pretty soon. I guess I can do that at the same time I’m fixing the refrigerator.

Inthinuation

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Zero Productivity

I was early to work today, but that was about as good as it got. I pretty quickly got sucked into doing other peoples’ jobs. The one task I set out to do for myself ended up breaking a switch again, so I had to factory reset it. Fortunately that didn’t take down the entire network like what happened on Monday.

People keep calling or stopping in, which is throwing off my flow too. At least Denice wasn’t there for most of the day, but being cramped in half as much space has also made things more frustrating. I’ve just been having a bad time overall.

I tried watching the Pixel launch event, but struggled with that too. I ended up ordering a new phone and watch since my S21 Ultra has been on the struggle bus for a while now with its battery. I guess two and a half years is about the best I can hope for these days.

I thought I might sneak out a little early, but somehow still ended up a little late instead. The stupid kids hit my car with a basketball again, and it infuriates me that the teacher just sits there rocking in his chair the whole time. There’s still no damage, but I don’t want any more scuffs or dents. They just don’t respect peoples things.

Summer made dinner, so I ran home to change, stopped at my parents’ house for some moving boxes and eggs, and then made it to the new house for dinner. Afterward, I tried showing Summer how to load the dishwasher better, took care of my plants outside, cleaned up in the bathroom, and tried removing some more screws from the stupid extra cabinets in the laundry room. I still have one super stubborn screw to get out of one side, and then possibly more on the other side before we can take that thing out. Once we do, we should have plenty more room for the spare refrigerator.

Down the review rabbit hole.

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Could Should

I went home for my shower this morning and let my car charge for a bit. I was early for work, but then ran into directed traffic at the Scenic 7 junction, so I just showed up on time. I wasn’t too worried about the aftermath of yesterday’s snafu, but we did have a couple wireless shots that went down. Luckily a power cycle fixed those issues, but in reality, at least one of those should be a fiber run anyway. I don’t really know what else I even got into. I rearranged my desk a little bit more because it was super cramped where I was sitting. The front of that office simply isn’t big enough, and I’m mad about it. I’m trying to give them a fair shake, and Denice has been nice enough for what it’s worth.

Lunch was mid with a side of chips, but at least it was filling. I went home a little bit late just because I was busy catching up on a bunch of crap. It’s so hard to juggle everything I have to do, and by the time we’ll be slow enough for me to actually accomplish things, I don’t think I’ll care enough.

I spent a little time at home before meeting Julie and Kevin at my parents’ house to cover the pool. I hated to see it go, but this is just the way of our summers. Underutilized and undervalued. Afterward, we all sat down to eat some leftovers, and then I left to wash my car and then meet Eaddie at my house to try and dispose of an old mattress that wasn’t picked up for bulk pickup week. Unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into the Murano, so we left it in the garage as not to get wet in the eventual rain.

I finally made it to the new house late, and Summer was in a quiet mood. I tinkered for just a short bit, and then it was off to bed.

Cold Shold