Tag: work

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Hot Diggity Dog

I had a room full of kids waiting on me in the office this morning, but we got them some Chromebooks and sent them along their way. I had been crawling out of bed more and more begrudgingly over the course of the week, and Kim didn’t make any coffee this morning, so I tried out my Aeropress Go. It really only made about half of a cup, but I felt like the scoop was bigger and it probably used more coffee grounds than the regular one. The coffee was good, though.

I continued picking through work orders to close out some older ones, and finally moved some things off of the backburner. One of those things was a door controller with an undocumented password. I mentioned something to Todd about it, and the next thing I know, he called Samuel down to have a look. They showed up while I was on a call with a guy from DIS, but came back around a little later.

Sam sidled up to my computer and hammered away rather belligerently at my keyboard as he discovered my troubles, one-by-one. We eventually took a walk down to the core closet, and I got a little more history and some guidance for what equipment I had. I felt a little better about digging into some new stuff, but then he left after having broken my phone.

The rest of the day was pretty slow. We had hot dogs for lunch, along with some other leftovers that made for a pretty big meal. I left work early, but then got caught in traffic with some busses after a pep rally, so my call with DIS from home didn’t happen. I was only a few minutes late, but I think he misunderstood what time I would be available to troubleshoot his VPN issue.

After a little while, I took my car to the wash, and then to my parents’ house to visit for a moment. I tried to convince Mom to come with me to the Model Y service appointment to test drive an S or X, but for some reason she kept fighting it. The prices just dropped substantially too, so now would be a great time to buy.

When I left there, I drove by the Sherwood house just to check things out again, and Jeremy saw me and waved me down. I stopped and we chatted for a little while, and he seemed super nice. One of the kids peeked out the window at us, but I never saw anyone else. He said they would be out of the house later in the evening, so we would be free to move on in.

I finally made it up to Summer’s, but mostly dawdled the rest of the night. I wanted to go to the house after Jeremy texted me, but it was a bit late. I guess I would have been more productive to go early in the morning anyway. Summer went to bed, and Eaddie didn’t get home until really late from an away game. They also had a Conquer the Gauntlet race in the morning in Tulsa, so I figured I’d have a day to myself to get things done.

How do utilities work again?

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Catching Upwards

I was early again this morning, so I stopped into Sonic for breakfast, and they were super fast. The drive to work was mostly slow while I was stuck behind traffic for most of the drive. I was feeling a bit more caught up and less ragged, which was nice. Nothing remarkable happened over the course of the day, though I think we’ll need to order a lot more Chromebook chargers than I expected.

Julie called me after I got home and said in a lot of words that she decided to delay our impromptu vacation. I headed up to Summer’s kind of late, stopping at Casey’s for a second time in the day to try and find a S’mores coffee. They still didn’t have any. Then I stopped at McDonald’s but only got fries since Summer had just started heading home. I had her warm up the chicken and I made everyone leftover tacos for dinner.

Eaddie came out to do some homework with me, and then it was off to bed a little earlier than usual.

The fact that I can no longer “supersize” my fries because of one asshole’s documentary is absolutely the current world’s greatest injustice.

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79% Deployed

Today was another relatively dull day of scattered students coming in for Chromebooks. We did get down to the elementary for a bit, so I was glad to close out some of those work orders. At one point I had a pretty bad anxiety attack. My vision went dark, and I got super dizzy and sweaty really fast. It took me a little while to shake that one off.

I finally got an answer from Entergy, but not the one I was looking for. I suppose it will let me focus on the school a little harder, but it was disappointing all the same. Summer said Splash was hiring for another IT person, but that work sounds very entry-level with nowhere to go.

I stopped by Casey’s after work, but they didn’t have the coffee I wanted, so I continued home to clean up a bit. Mom had some phở to clean up, so I ran across town to eat and then chatted with them for a bit before heading up to Summer’s.

Eaddie helped me fill out the family calendar with all of her band events, and I went through the house baiting for ants again. Then it was off to bed.

So close, yet so far.

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I Can See Clearly Now the Crack Is Gone

I made it to work early today, but forgot my keys at home, so I was more or less tethered to Kim all day. I had to prod a couple of vendors for some quotes they’ve been sitting on for over a week, and still didn’t get responses by the end of the day as promised. We did reach over 70% deployment with Chromebooks, so that was alright. I also fired off what I thought was a pretty slick email denying someone’s request to move some technology.

Otherwise there wasn’t a whole lot to the day. It was busy, but went by much slower than yesterday. I also had to call Fast Glass for an update on my windshield, and was told the glass “just arrived fifteen minutes ago” but they hadn’t confirmed its fit yet. I ran straight to the shop after work and found Shaun working on it, so we would at least get it back at the end of the day. It was a good thing too, because I called Progressive and they would do absolutely nothing to resolve the awful claim experience.

I ran by Superfast to check on Summer, went home to change, and then made it back to get her so we could pick up my car. She went home and I stuck around chatting with Shaun for a while before heading back home to do some laundry.

I picked up some tacos for dinner while I laundered, and then my phone started going off with messages about more school superintendent shenanigans. Evidently Hope had quit, and hung a bunch of dirty laundry out to dry. I messaged her as I fell down that rabbit hole again, and offered to throw any of my fuel on that fire.

Finally I made it up to Summer’s for the evening. She had been asleep for a while. Eaddie pulled into the driveway right after me, having been at school late for band. She stayed up and did homework while I fought their ant problem, and eventually made it to bed.

Moving Day Aproaches

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We’re Halfway There

Taco John’s had a deal on breakfast burritos today, so I stopped there before heading to work. It was pretty boring without salsa, but at least it was clean enough to eat on the drive. As soon as I got to work, Kim said she had to run an errand, so I was without her for an hour or two. I continued handing out devices until we finished ninth grade in the afternoon. Only about half of the high school has picked up their Chromebooks, so hopefully teachers will take it upon themselves to initiate parent contacts next.

Otherwise I didn’t get out of the office, and it was a pretty fast day. I ran to Fast Glass as soon as I left, but that place was a ghost town by the time I got there. My car was still in the bay, and we’re feeling pretty frustrated by the lack of service.

I headed home after that, and used my carpet cleaner to try and clean up the trunk of the Model Y. I don’t know that it made any real difference, but I felt better. I hate that the shape of the cargo mat allowed for spillage. Then I continued up to Summer’s house for the evening.

Eaddie wanted to go to her tutor, Kim’s, flute recital at Tech, so I warmed up some tacos for Summer and myself. Then we sat around the rest of the evening until bedtime.

Ding dong.

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Pain of Glass

This week mellowed out quickly, but that may be from my own intentional ignoring of work orders. Chromebook carts are done, so we enrolled a bunch more devices to shuffle with the elementary. The internet went goofy for a while, but of course I didn’t have the tools in place to explain why. It was just bad for some reason.

I had a video call with a couple of guys from the Department of Information Systems to upgrade our VPN service. That went poorly enough that we’ll have to troubleshoot another time. Fortunately, I don’t know of anyone that actually uses that VPN service. It’s possible that somebody does, but I’ll just have to find out who when it stops working.

Fast Glass called to say that Summer’s windshield didn’t come in. I asked about mine, she said she would call me right back, and of course I never heard another word. That reminded me to go and leave a bad review for River Valley Tinting and Glass after they scratched the window trim on the Model Y back in April.

I made it home a little late and hung out to charge for a while. Julie called to update me on the Entergy job, which is to say that operations are just slower than expected, and that no news is still good news. Then I took the car in for a much-needed wash before I made it up to Summer’s. I had her start baking the casserole from weeks ago so we could try and clean it up. Eaddie came home and went straight to homework, and eventually everyone went to bed.

The scope has changed.

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Delegate

I left the house early today and cruised in to work on Autopilot. Kim was there on her birthday, and we delivered a couple more carts. I tried to take her to lunch, but we ended up just eating cafeteria food. They thought they ran out of orange chicken, so they gave us some chicken strips and fries instead, but then someone else came out the back entrance with some “teacher trays” of orange chicken, so I ate twice. The rice was pretty miserable, but the chicken was good.

Kim spent most of the day cleaning up old work orders, and I was glad that she was taking the initiative to do what she could do without me having to take a walk with her. Of course her days are super short, since she’s gone for lunch duty for what feels like hours, and then she leaves when the kids get out of class. Maybe some day I’ll get bored and actually pay attention to her hours.

I headed home as casually as I had driven in to work, and spent some time charging at home before heading up to Summer’s. Eaddie wanted me to help her with some physics homework, and I tried, but she was already kind of burned out on schoolwork. Eventually everyone made it to bed after an uneventful day.

How does insurance work, anyway?

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Shut In and Shut Up

My office was pretty toasty this morning since the air had been off all night. It wasn’t long before Toby came by and said he needed help with the HVAC server. He got hold of a couple people that directed us to reset some things on our virtual machine that ran the HVAC software, and we eventually got things running again. It took most of the day to cool my office down, but I was thankful to have some air.

Kim was out to take her boys to the dentist, so I shut myself in my office and finished up a bunch of Chromebook carts. I grabbed some chili for lunch and continued enrolling more devices, and then left just a few minutes early so I could get to Gardner before Gary left. I was hoping they had some tech tubs left, but apparently they threw most of them in the garbage and wanted to keep whatever they still had left. I understand not keeping everything, but they had so many brand new tubs that could have been used for something. I’ll never understand the money that’s just thrown away like that.

After talking with Gary for a while, and then briefly with Thomas in the parking lot, I went to both Casey’s stores to redeem some rewards. Then I went home to charge for a while before heading up to Summer’s. I stopped for tacos along the way, and saved some seeds from the Taco Villa hot sauce, hoping I could grow them to learn what kind of peppers they use.

Eaddie was out late for band practice, and Summer went to bed early. I just sat in the dark for quite a while until bed.

The toxicity of our city.

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Transform and Roll Out

I forgot my watch this morning and had to run back home for it. That got me to work right on time after following a slowpoke. Kim was a little bit late, but that gave me time to make a coffee and get into moving some Chromebooks around in Google Admin. I basically spent the entire day building out carts, expecting to roll them out to the classrooms. When we did finally start to deliver three finished carts, we realized that none of those teachers were there. I should be able to get most of them done tomorrow though, now that everything is put together.

It was incredibly hot outside, which didn’t affect me indoors until our air unit started blowing warm air. By the time I left, it was getting pretty toasty inside. I got home and changed, but then had to head right up to Summer’s house for dinner. Noah came over, and Eaddie invited Eli for a spaghetti dinner. Then we played a couple games of Uno afterward.

It was still hot outside in the evening, but I tried to go out and fix Noah’s tailgate handle in the dark. As luck would have it, we didn’t have the socket we needed, so we’ll have to try again at my house later, hopefully when even the dark doesn’t make me sweat.

I was getting ready for bed when I happened to think of the heat and the hungry, thirsty hummingbirds, so I made some more nectar and then went to bed.

Lightning at the End of the Tunnel

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Remotely Fun

I let myself sleep in a little bit today since I worked from home. I jumped right into it when I got up, which felt pretty nice. Kim seemed to be getting hammered with all kinds of requests, so I felt bad, but she’ll have to learn to ignore the noise if she wants to make any progress. It’s going to be a Jason-level job to get her on task.

About an hour and a half into it, I got a rather demanding email from Harry regarding a testing software deployment. Then he scolded me and set expectations because I hadn’t been approved to work off-site. I responded politely and apologetically, but called out the teacher’s failings of requesting a lab deployment with three days notice in the middle of the first week of school, all without providing a resource for the software itself. I also called out the very poor state of the infrastructure I was charged with fixing, and the fact that I had been misled during my interview about the tools that I would have available to me. Even if it was out of ignorance, the fact remains that my job is difficult because of their poor history with my department.

I headed on home to get ready for the closing on our new house. By the time I got there, Harry had responded positively, so I felt he was more than fair, and handled the situation appropriately. I took my shower and then ran back to get the girls so we could get to Pope County Title for signing.

Alisha was there with Sarah from the bank, who was sitting in for Missy, our loan officer who we have still never actually met. It wasn’t long before we were taken back to sign what we were told was a relatively short stack of papers. I think the only thing we could have done better was pay for the house in full instead of taking out a loan, and if we ever buy another home, that certainly feels possible now. The signing didn’t really take that long, and then we had to go get a cashier’s check from Centennial. My transfer from Discover to Arvest hadn’t been delivered yet, but Sarah said she could run a cashier’s check over to the title company as soon as they did get it.

After we ran the check back and I signed a couple additional, forgotten documents about pest control, the three of us went to see the Ridgewood Brothers for lunch. We ate a ton of food and got to see both Grant and Robert, as well as Kyler, who was just leaving to go on vacation.

I took the girls back to their house and then went to mine so I could finish working out the day. Kim seemed super overrun, but I couldn’t really quantify what she had actually accomplished. I worked on a few different things mostly to get organized, and then pruned what work orders I could. Google Remote Desktop worked intermittently, and I couldn’t tell if it was an issue with the computer or the internet at the school, but most of what I was doing didn’t require that anyway.

Later in the evening I headed back up to the girls, where Summer watched TV until she went to bed and watched more TV. Eaddie hung out with me for most of the evening, looking at eyeglasses online or going through old Google Classrooms that her old teachers had failed to archive appropriately. It astounds me that we allow technology illiterate people to attempt to educate the youth of a society that is ever-reliant on technology. You wouldn’t let a mechanic work on your car if they had only ever raised horses.

I stayed up super late just combing through houseware deals. I wanted to get out to do some shopping, but I didn’t expect anyone else to be up for that. It seems like a good time to start finding some seasonal deals, though.

Things were so much simpler back in the day when we just gave people smallpox blankets and took their land.