Tag: work

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Finding Priorities

I wasn’t quite as tired this morning as yesterday, but it was still rough getting out of bed. I even woke up a couple minutes before my alarm, but I was still just exhausted. I made it to work a little earlier today, and had my leftover croissant for breakfast along with a McCoffee I picked up on the way. Kim showed up and quietly did her own thing most of the day.

I had a couple people come in for some new RFID fobs for door access, and then I just grasped at random things throughout the rest of the day. At one point, Kim and I went to the elementary to get the last two iPads into my inventory spreadsheet, and near the end of the day she collected some touch panel serial numbers from the high school. Nicky was on the hunt for a bunch of asset tags, so I spent a while trying to figure out the tag printer.

I left a little bit late after penning a long email about Chromebook planning. I won’t be there to meet with the administration next week, but hopefully I made some good points and showed them how much money they’re bleeding out.

Autumn called as I was leaving, but I didn’t get to answer. Evidently she went by the house and bothered the girls to fetch some more stuff. Summer said she wanted a hug and cried a bit, but it wasn’t very effective. I made it home and took care of a few things before making it up to Summer’s.

As soon as I got there, I uncovered the grill and cooked some smoked sausages for dinner. Summer was mowing, so she came in to shower, and then it was a pretty quiet night after that. I laid down to relax for a bit with her, but then had to get up to finish my chores before bed.

We’re going the wrong direction!

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Good Answer

I felt like I was dead when my alarm went off this morning. I dragged all the way to work, through the Burger King drive-through for some coffee and croissants. As I neared the school, I passed a truck that I guess kicked up a rock somehow, and it sounded like I had gotten shot. I got a thumbnail-sized crack, nearly dead-center in my line of sight.

Once I got to the office, I felt pretty productive all morning. I hardly left my office, but I felt relatively focused compared to my usual days there. I remember fixing my one thing for the day pretty early, but I can’t remember what it was now. I also filed a glass claim with Progressive, and the girl said I qualified for a whole new windshield. I guess I feel better about that than a repair. Hopefully my insurance premiums don’t go up.

I took a break for some soft tacos from the cafeteria, and then the afternoon kind of dragged on. Blake came into my office to ask about spending the rest of some money, and I felt like I had some pretty good answers for him. Then Carla came into the office to look for Kim, who wasn’t working, and I learned of our shared disgust of the lack of accountability with Chromebooks. She seemed excited to help call the list of literally hundreds of parents to try and recover missing devices.

I left work a bit late, and last as usual. I went home to change, and then headed straight up to Summer’s. She and Eaddie had hiked down to the Petit Jean waterfall during the day, so they weren’t up to much when I got to the house. I made a leftover burger, and then struggled to get to bed early because Summer was on a very loud and gossipy work call in bed for what felt like hours.

Seriously, why do I even come here.

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Gators Out of Water

I squeezed into work today, but things were unusually quiet. It wasn’t long before I learned that they sent everyone home because a water main had gone out somewhere up the road, so the school had no water. I tried to stick around for a bit, but eventually went home since I knew it would take me half an hour to get back home to my own bathroom.

Just after I got home, the mail lady came by with my new sun shades for our cars. I tried them out and settled on using the umbrella type for the Model 3, since I didn’t really have anywhere to store the folding one. Then I decided to surprise the guys at Taco John’s for lunch. I tried to see if Allen was going, but from what I could hear over the phone, he was out doing something else.

I stopped to wash my car first so I wouldn’t be too early, but even when I arrived, I had time to eat all of my food before Zach, Greg, and his wife and kid showed up. They didn’t have a whole lot to say, but I did learn that Old South had burned down. Shortly after they got their food, a bunch of the maintenance crew came in, so I moved over to sit with them once Zach and Greg left.

After lunch, I headed up to see if Eaddie wanted to go driving. She was cleaning and doing laundry, so I helped pick through some crap Autumn had left in the floor when she left. Noah left with the promise of coming back to help us move a grill up from my house. I had texted Autumn to see if she wanted to come get some more stuff, but when she came by after DEP for her school records, she said she still hadn’t unpacked anything. She seemed humbled though, and even offered to come back and mow the front lawn so Eaddie wouldn’t have to do it herself.

After a while, I convinced Eaddie to go grocery shopping with me, and we got everything to grill some burgers and took it back to my house to wait for Noah. We ended up waiting for nearly two hours, but he eventually showed up and we successfully moved the grill. Eaddie got to work right away baking a cake, while I started up the grill. The three of them went back out to get some fries while I mixed up the hamburger meat, and then I grilled everything as quickly as I could.

Dinner was awesome. They were some of the best burgers I’d made in quite a while, and it made the girls realize why I scoffed at the $80 it cost for us to eat at Big Orange the other day. Noah had put on The Guardians of the Galaxy while they were waiting to eat, so we finished watching it after we ate, and then everyone was off to bed.

They drained the swamp.

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The Bed is Too Full

As expected, Summer had a pretty sleepless night last night. I didn’t do much better myself, but I did manage to shut my eyes for a little while before I woke up to an empty bed. She had gone to the living room and was playing on her phone, so I had to fetch her back. She mentioned that Eaddie had been up, so I went and brought her into the bedroom with us and we all snuggled up together for a bit. There really wasn’t much room, and I didn’t really get to fall asleep again for most of the night. Eaddie didn’t stick around for too long, but I think it helped Summer.

I gave up on getting to work by seven, and stopped at McDonald’s for a frappé. I had forgotten that summer school started today, and there seemed to be more kids around than I expected, but maybe only a few of them needed Chromebooks. A couple teachers came to fetch a cart from me, and we settled on leaving it in the front office where kids could pick up devices on their way in.

I was alone all day, so I spent the morning scanning damaged devices and moving what was left of a pallet of Chromebooks outside of our office. I broke a pretty good sweat, and spent the rest of the day in a pretty quiet office.

It started raining pretty hard around quitting time, and I think I was the last one to leave by quite a while. I headed home and retrieved the phone mounts I ordered for the Teslas. Then I continued up to Summer’s for the evening. Noah was supposed to come over late, and the girls had been out to eat earlier in the day, so I had some leftovers. Then the three of us watched a couple episodes of The Office while Eaddie ate in the floor. Then Summer and I watched some Modern Family until she was ready to go to sleep.

How does she always pick the ones into pseudo-science???

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Murder Campus

I rolled in to work a few minutes late today, but that seems to be the atmosphere there. I think as long as work gets done, nobody really seems to care too much about anything else. I didn’t get too deep into much before Kim got there, and then we ended up at the bottom of the hill to finish up our inventory and hunting for Chromebooks. That project was going to take us most of the day, but I wanted to take a break and visit the Plainview campus for the first time.

We had to track down some keys for the building, and then we were on our way. As timing would have it, we had to accept a delivery from UPS anyway. Then I got a quick tour of a hallway they use for preschool, and then a walk through the back side of the building that was blocked by storage. It was padlocked shut, and everything was pretty gross inside. There were some neat things, like a giant, old safe, and an old stage with theater seating in surprisingly good condition. We looked at some carts that I might want to put back into circulation if they’re firm on keeping a cart in every single room, used or not.

By the time we finished there, I was pretty hungry and insisted on taking Kim out to lunch at the Junction Café in town. I tried the Cajun baked potato with shrimp and crawfish, and then Kim got the Cajun fries, which looked like a slightly better deal, though my potato wasn’t bad.

We finished the elementary inventory in the afternoon, which took us right to quitting time. I didn’t even bother unloading everything when we got back to the office. I raced home with very little traffic and stopped by my parents’ house to visit with Mom, but she wasn’t home from work. The landscapers were there, and evidently they cut down her favorite magnolia tree, of which I wasn’t even fully aware.

I ended up leaving well before she got home, stopped by Walgreens where the pharmacy had already closed at three, and then ran home to change before going to Summer’s. She made dinner, so I ate while she and Eaddie watched baking shows.

Summer had told Autumn the other night that she couldn’t go to band camp because she declined the offer earlier in the year. Autumn pitched a fit over it, and evidently spent the afternoon with her grandparents to get money to go. The whole ordeal burned me up, because I’m sick to death of her sidestepping Summer’s parenting, and Summer not doing anything about it. I almost left, but calmed myself down enough to talk to Summer about it. Of course she was just dead eyes through the entire conversation. I know she has it worse, but I can’t feel sorry for her if she does nothing to change the situation. Autumn is just making all of our lives worse by existing, and I wish Summer would put her foot down.

Maybe a trip to Plainview.

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Plant B

I slept in just a little bit today, but got out for some breakfast to take to Summer since she was at Superfast today. I didn’t stay long though, and headed home to clean up for round two at Green Bay Packaging. I was actually a little behind where I wanted to be, but I made it there in time.

Gary took me to his office where we chatted kind of loosely some more about some typical personality and work methodology interview questions. Then he took me through the main paper-rolling portion of the plant. I didn’t really get to see any pulp go in, but I did see what he called the “wet” and “dry” ends of the process. It was expectedly hot and humid, but it’s not even August yet. The control rooms and the industrial plant as a whole were reminiscent of my couple of tours of the nuclear plant when Dad could still take me through the plant. It was a really neat look behind the scenes.

After the tour, we chatted for just a brief moment more before I headed home. I was hungry for lunch by then, so I picked up Summer and we went to Popeye’s. They were, as usual, out of chicken, so we waited about 20 minutes for our food. At least the chicken was hot and fresh, but then that had me in a rush to get home and change before driving out to ANO.

I had MASS testing at the Generation Support Building, and I arrived just in time to meet a couple other guys waiting at the door to be let in. It was a small group of people testing, and at least one other kid going up against me for the same job. I’m really not going into it with any confidence, but I figure I’ve got to try if I’ve made it this far.

The first test was shape assembly, and I didn’t make it nearly as far along the test as I thought I would. I didn’t have my watch, so I couldn’t pace myself. If I have to test again, I think I could do better. The mechanical concepts test was the easiest for me, but two of the questions dealt with things I just wasn’t familiar with. In particular, I was unsure about belt slippage between two spindles. Otherwise I thought I did fairly well, and there definitely weren’t any ambiguous questions like there were on the practice test. I was surprised the math portion was only seven minutes long, and I thought I’d get through more of it than I did. I hated hunting through the huge list of conversion factors to find what I needed.

Once I was done with the test, I headed back into town and stopped by to see Mom. I forgot Dad was out for a funeral, so I hung out with her for a little bit before heading home to change, and then finally making it up to Summer’s for the night.

Autumn was in Clarksville with Adam again, allegedly at the water park. Eaddie was cleaning her room and doing laundry. Summer was watching TV in the living room, so I bounced around a little bit between the couch and snacking in the kitchen. Once Autumn came home, I disappeared into the bedroom until she went away to her room. Then it was a race to get to bed for an early day at work. I’m not afraid of ten hour days, but I hate starting so early.

I’m not even sure what I want any more.

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Fifty Grand and the Hunt for Chromebooks

Kim called me while I was on the way to work this morning, and said she would be coming in a little bit later. I don’t think she’s actually scheduled to work any more over the summer, but she says she swaps comp days, and I don’t know enough yet to argue. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I decided to poke around the 3CX phone system a little more.

Blake came into my office a little later and said I had about $50,000 to spend before the end of the year. I’m guessing that’s normally a good problem to have, but in this case I’m still not even sure what we have in order to make a judgement on what we need. I’ve got dozens of fires going at once, and I’m just not able to prioritize any one of them.

The lunch room was obviously closed, so I didn’t even bother trying to find anything to eat. Kim found us some leftover cake though, so that served well enough. We spent the afternoon going room-to-room looking for Chromebooks, and I made a spreadsheet to compare those that we scanned with those from Google Admin. That seemed like a good start, at least. We found about 200 by the end of the day.

Apparently we’re already starting four ten hour days, so I left a little after five and raced home as quickly as traffic would allow. Summer had swapped to charge, so I had to shuffle cars around after I changed clothes and stoked the fires in the back yard a little more. Then I picked up some Taco John’s on the way up to her house for the evening.

I brought home some leftover hot sauce from our Taco Villa lunch on Friday, and it made my tacos about a thousand times better. I only stopped eating them because I ran out. Summer sat in front of the TV the rest of the night until she went to bed. I finally got Summer’s Fitbit Aria scale paired again, after an infuriating conversation with tech support, and finally bringing out an old iPad to complete the process.

Eaddie had spent several hours helping her grandmother in the garden, and best I could tell, Autumn was out at the movies with Adam. Eaddie came home and showed me some new shirts she got, and I made it to bed before Autumn got home.

Tek Tuk Tuk!

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But You, You Were My Favorite

Today was a full day. The roads were clear and I made it to work really early. I spent nearly all morning reading documentation on an Aruba switch. I felt good about it, but didn’t learn what I was needing to know. I finally asked Gary, and he explained it perfectly, and I knew exactly what I was missing in my new life.

The school got everyone Taco Villa for lunch, so everyone gathered in the cafeteria to eat, and then Harry gave a short speech to end the year. I stuck around for a while just to make sure everyone else was gone, and then left very near to last. I had to get charged back up so Eaddie and I could make it to Rogers.

Once I was back up to 90%, I stopped by Superfast to see Summer, and then I picked Eaddie up. We hit the road and ran into really heavy traffic all the way to Alma. We knew we wanted to stop somewhere for dinner, but didn’t know what we wanted. Eaddie finally found a place called La Sirenita in Springdale that caught her eye, so we found that little hole in the wall where we were greeted in Spanish. It was at that point I knew the food would be good. The gorditas weren’t anything like I was expecting because they weren’t really crispy enough, but it was good food and friendly service.

From there, we made it to the Walmart AMP just in time for the gates to open. We parked in an EV charger spot, but the ChargePoint charger didn’t seem to work. It looked dusty and non-functioning to begin with, but the charger wouldn’t even come out of the socket. We stayed parked there and walked down to the line of people, got through the gates, and then found a short, fast, hidden merch line.

Once we had a couple shirts, we found a place on the lawn and I waited for Brandon and Diana to show up. Brandon said they had tickets to the show, but I didn’t ask them early enough to plan dinner. Eaddie and I moved around a bit, and she sat on the other side of some people for a while, but eventually joined us when Brandon and Diana found me. They got a couple seats, but I still didn’t really think they were worth the extra $10.

Coheed and Cambria were an awesome opening act, and I enjoyed them every bit as much as Incubus. Both of the frontmen were incredibly talented with how well they belted their lyrics all night. The crowd definitely got more excited for the headlining group though. Brandon and Diana left early, so Eaddie and I took over their lawn chairs until after they played the last song. Then we made it back to the car and fought stupid traffic for the first time there. For some reason they wouldn’t let us go left out of the parking garage, so we had to fight our way around a street with a median, and then through a roundabout that had no traffic control.

We stopped in Lowell for a quick charge and a drink, and then we headed home as quickly as we could. I got the car down to 8%, which was half the estimated charge the navigation said I would have when we started, but it was fine. We dropped it off at my house around 1:30 to charge back up, and then headed up to Summer’s where everyone was fast asleep.

The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.

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Care and Confidence

I was pretty tired today, but I surprisingly made it in to work a little early. It helped that there was almost no school traffic through Dardanelle. It was hard for me to get started on anything in particular, and I’m still feeling lost on some of the most important things I need to learn, but later in the afternoon it got easier to focus. Having noisy kids in and out of the room all day gets super old, and makes it hard to concentrate. On the other hand, I won’t have Kim there over the summer to help me know what I need to be doing.

I skipped lunch and worked a little bit late, and then went straight to my parents’ house for some shrimp soup. Summer left her car to charge at my house again, so I got it after I ate and took it home to her. Autumn had Adam over for her birthday, and they all had pizza for dinner and were playing Mario Party when I got there.

I was surprised to already see an invite for the second round of interviews at Green Bay Packaging this morning, since he said that process would probably take a couple months. Gary wanted to schedule me for next week, so I figure I can knock that out and then come right back home for the MASS testing at the nuclear plant. I’ve never had so many opportunities sprung on me at once.

After they finished their game, Eaddie wanted me to cut her hair. High on the recent rush of confidence-inspiring events, I took her out back and we chopped off several inches. It took me a little bit to get it to look right from all angles, but in the end we quit when it got too dark to see, and she was super happy with it. I figure now’s my chance to decline all of these offers and go straight to opening my own salon – Captain’s Cuts.

You’ll like the cut of your jib, or your money back!

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Job Collector

I headed to Arch Ford first thing this morning so they could take my fingerprints. When I got there, they first said I needed an appointment and scheduled me for the next morning, but then I asked about my incorrect birthdate. That prompted another lady to come out, and they ended up calling the Department of Education to see who had to make the correction. Unfortunately the person that could answer that question wouldn’t be there until 8:30, so I waited about 20 more minutes to hear an answer. Once they felt good about that, they went ahead and fingerprinted me today so I didn’t have to drive back.

From there, I stopped by Green Bay Packaging to talk to Gary. It was less of an interview and more of a quick introduction for him to tell me about the place. He seemed really happy to be there, but didn’t want to mince words about how unpleasant the place might be for me if my expectations were incorrect. It basically all boiled down to how blue-collar it was as an industrial plant. Outside of that, it sounded like a bit of unpaid overtime due to an on-call rotation, but they would pay fairly well for what sounded like entry-level tech work.

After that brief meeting, I drove through the countryside to get to work, where nobody seemed to notice I was gone. Kim and I ended up starting inventory at the elementary building, and quit as school let out. I don’t think we made it quite halfway through the building, but it took us a bit to find our rhythm.

The rest of the afternoon was super quiet, and I was left alone for most of it. I messed around with PRTG to try and come up with some useful monitoring, and eventually headed home through one insane person and a bunch of other slower traffic. When I got home, I received an invitation to take the pre-employment test for Entergy, which was basically the third callback in two days. These other jobs simply pay too much for me to ignore them, but I feel guilty for Two Rivers. If they have any sense at all, they’ll work with me to adjust the salary schedule appropriately.

Dad grilled pork chops for dinner, so I went to eat with them before finally heading up to Summer’s house for the evening. She got her vanity license plate, so I installed it for her before she went to bed. Then we watched an episode of Modern Family before I wrapped things up to go to sleep myself.

Gotta catch ’em all… Interviews!