Tag: work

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Antici

I woke up on my anniversary with Summer, already dreading an evening with John and Melissa. I didn’t realize how emotional the day would become.

Shortly after our morning meeting, I got an email from Thomas saying that he needed to meet with me, and that the meeting was disciplinary in nature. Of course that got my mind reeling, wondering what I could have possibly done. I didn’t know if I had offended someone, or if I just wasn’t keeping myself busy enough. It’s been a slow time of year, but I’ve always offered to help anywhere possible.

I was eaten up with stress for the rest of the day. Gary took Zach, Greg, and me to IHOP where we coincidentally ran into Brody, who was upset that he had suggested IHOP multiple times but we would never go until after he left us.

I went to Dwight right after lunch to return a laptop, but didn’t learn anything there either. I headed back to the shop and eventually went to my meeting in Thomas’s office at 3:30 with Gary, who offered to stand in as a witness, or representation I suppose. I was written up for the parody poem of A Visit from St. Nicholas that I wrote for my CPPC minutes email earlier in the week.

I thought the poem was rather clever, but I have to assume that Ginni took it as an opportunity to twist the words and make it sound like I was speaking ill of the district. Though Thomas wrote the write-up himself, it seemed out of character for him to call me out on something like that so specifically. I have to assume that he was instructed to shut me down by the superintendent, because it’s the only way I can continue working for him for the time being.

My stomach had been in knots all day, so it didn’t even register that everyone left at four. Kyle found me in the office by myself, and then we left for the weekend. I drove by my parents’ house, but Mom was working late. I ended up back at home for a bit before going back across town. Mom was working really late though, and I ended up swinging by Brody’s house to take him for a ride.

We chatted for a bit afterward, and then I finally went to visit with Mom for a bit. We discovered a very small leak under the kitchen sink, so I cleaned up a bit but didn’t actually do anything to fix it. She said she was sleepy after a while, and I went home to trade vehicles and head to Summer’s.

Summer wanted to talk about my day, but I was already completely beaten down by it all. I killed a whole bunch of time and nearly left, but drank myself to bed instead.

What’s wrong with being me?

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Parkour Parking

Kayla called me to the Transportation office pretty early this morning, but this time they had questions about the CPPC minutes. I stayed and chatted with them for quite a while before making it back to the office. Then I ended up at Support Services for a quick ticket before lunch.

Brody said he was required to do volunteer work, but that there was no paperwork to fill out, or requirements about what he had to do, so he asked if he could come to the school to hang out. He wanted to go to Ridgewood for lunch, but after a quick stop there it was immediately obvious that we wouldn’t make it through the line in an hour. Instead, the guys wanted to drive out to London for Fat Daddy’s, which didn’t at all appeal to me, but I took Thomas anyway. My hot dog was fine, but ten dollars just felt stupid.

The afternoon was slow, but I finished up one old ticket with some help from Gary and Thomas. Then I went to Dwight to pick up a Chromebook that had some keys ripped off of it. Replacing the keyboard was really more like moving all of the components out of one chassis into another.

We had our department Christmas party at Nonna Bella’s in the evening, so I went home to change. Then Summer picked me up and we went to the restaurant. We arrived right in the middle of the whole group, and settled right in. Our server seemed a little slow, or at least, seemed not to be fully engaging her thought muscles. Thomas had to prompt her to get some food started so we wouldn’t be there all night just waiting for everyone. Travis was the last to show up, but I was glad he showed up. It was a good dinner, my pizza was delicious, and I had the giggles for most of it. I always enjoy holiday parties with the crew.

Getting out was a chore, because parking was so narrow. Travis ended up taking his giant truck offroading over the parking bumper just so the rest of us could get out. When Summer dropped me back off at home, I finally watched The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which I thought was great. It was much more sentimental than I expected, but it was a great end to the evening.

That sounds like sentiment, son!

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Dropped Merch

After not feeling well last night, I slept in today and then left for work a bit early, unrelatedly, so I could pick up some McDonald’s on the way in. They were supposed to have a merch drop with some kind of shirt or beanie, or possibly something else. Unfortunately I never got the notification in the app, and never made it to the store.

Work was pretty boring, as we lead up to break. I went back to McDonald’s again for some fries on my way to Dwight, but never got the link to the secret store for that either. When I got back to the shop, a group of us went to Quiznos for a proper lunch break. I just had a little cup of soup, since I had already eaten so much that morning.

When we got back to work, Gary sent me down the block to set up a computer for a new girl with Child Nutrition. Shane came by with some macarons from Kneading Hands Bakery, which were delicious. Then after work, I hung out with Gary while he upgraded the firewalls.

I went to see Mom when I left, and she had rice soup warming up for dinner. Summer needed to pick up a prescription from Rose Drug, so I offered to grab it quickly since I was already on that side of town. I went back to eat with Mom, and then headed home to change before going up to see the girls.

Autumn was finishing up with baking some cookies. Eaddie had been wanting to play Rocket League, so she got it loaded onto the Switch. She drove in circles a bit, and then had me actually play to show her how the game works. Playing on a new profile had such bad players that it was mostly everyone running into each other as they chased the ball. I didn’t play long on her profile though, because I didn’t want to get her into a rank where she couldn’t compete. I was surprised to see they moved the goals in from the outside walls for the hockey mode. That was neat.

The girls eventually went off to bed, and I wrapped up later than I wanted. Phase 10 still has my attention on the phone, but I managed not to check in on ExoMiner today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, though.

Probably not merch. ಠ_ಠ

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Drop Cap

I thought I was a little early this morning, but walked in a solid couple minutes late. I dug right into whatever came my way, which included getting sent to Oakland for an “emergency” SMART board issue. I love Sheri dearly, but she has a habit of reaching out herself, which for some reason invokes some kind of artificial urgency from others. I wish they’d stop jumping, but I was happy to visit my old friends.

The problem ended up being a two minute verification that the projector lamp in the art room had gone out, but since the decision was made to replace all projectors with flat panels regardless of age, I couldn’t just install its very first replacement lamp ever. I spent some time visiting in the office afterward, and then stopped by Casey’s on the way back to the shop for a free coffee.

We split up unnecessarily for our Taco Tuesday run. I thought we had too many people, but Josh ended up driving himself and just going through the drive-through so he could run other errands. I ate light in preparation for Golden Corral in the evening.

When we got back to the shop, I spent some time gabbing with the girls up front before going back to the quiet of my office. There, I finished up my parody of A Visit from St. Nicholas for our CPPC minutes email. I was interrupted at one point for a freight delivery, and I ended up having to wait in the rain for Justin to come let me into the warehouse. The forklift was on the battery charger, but still had to be jumped. Fortunately it performed normally for the unloading of the single short pallet.

At the end of the day, I ran home to change and then headed straight to Conway in the rain. Summer was hosting the Splash Christmas party at Golden Corral for Conway, Greenbrier, and I think Morrilton. I felt a little awkward sitting and eating by myself, since Summer was busy bouncing around with the rest of the crew, and then later handing out awards. I wanted to support her more than anything, but it’s just never been my experience to witness a person in her type of position bring someone else along to that type of gathering.

After we left, I ran to Target for a bit. I had to pick up an order of some chicken strips I got with a 50% off coupon. Then I drove on home, again in the rain, feeling pretty ill. I ended up taking a long bath, but never quite got over it. Hopefully sleeping late will help.

The office Christmas party is a great opportunity to catch up with people you haven’t seen for 20 minutes.

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Ring Ting Tingling, Too

I had a rough start this morning and wandered into work a bit late. Fortunately there wasn’t a whole lot going on, but I did have to get Dina a computer to get back to work. As it turned out, she had typed in her email and password into a phishing site, which promptly nabbed her information. I thought she was mostly safe, but it wasn’t long before we realized she had saved all kinds of banking and personal account passwords to her work Chrome profile. I just felt incredibly bad for her after that.

I kept pretty busy the rest of the day with seemingly random things. Zach came to tell me that he and Greg were going to lunch with some Hector buddies, so I just skipped altogether. I did leave to get a freebie Monster from Casey’s, but then made it back to the shop wanting something warm, so I made some oatmeal and a bagel.

As the day wound down, Thomas ended up kicking everyone out a little early. I wasn’t really sure what for, but I wasn’t going to argue. I had to get home and change for the band’s Christmas concert anyway. Summer picked me up on the way, and we met her parents and my dad in the back of the theater.

The concert band was godawful. There was no way around it. They surely hit some of the notes. Eventually. The symphonic band was much better, but was still not quite as good as I remember them being in the past. Overall it was a fine show though, and the girls all awkwardly waddled around taking pictures in front of a Christmas tree afterward.

After Summer dropped me off at home, I decided to just stay in for the night since it was already pretty late, and I hardly ever stay home anymore. I decided to try some praline Bird Dog on one of my fancy new craft ice balls, and it was great. I wish the balls were a bit bigger, and didn’t have a little divot on one side, but after some melting they actually look pretty cool.

Little ice comet.

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Oh, It’s Friday

We had a meeting this morning to talk about how to tighten up our cyber security a bit. Overall, Gary has most of our stuff set up pretty smartly, but the whole system is only as strong as its weakest link, and we hire almost exclusively weak links. Zach split up a couple groups for some work that shouldn’t have taken much time at all, but ended up taking the whole day. Thomas left to go to a tech directors meeting to discuss the different districts that have become compromised around us. I was left to my own devices, which was mostly just boring.

I went to Dwight for a bit and got trapped in the office while they performed, as far as I could tell, an exorcism. I might have been more shocked if I hadn’t just had to deal with Autumn for the past two years, but at this point I’m an expert on crazy.

I got back to the shop right at lunch time, and Kyle came out to tell me that everyone was splitting up. He wanted to try Ridgewood, but I expressed concern that he likely wouldn’t get to order before his lunch break was over. A minute after he left to roll the dice, Greg and Josh came out of the shop and said they were planning to go to La Chiquita, so I drove them. There, our server was pretty awkward, but friendly. He got me a cheese enchilada instead of chicken, so I had him bring me another and just ate both.

After lunch, I had to go investigate Dina’s computer, because a bunch of people got phishing emails from her, and Thomas wanted to see if her computer was compromised. I neither expected nor found any evidence, but I also wasn’t sure what tools would be best for discovering any.

The rest of the afternoon was really quiet, but then at the last half hour, Kelsea came back to tell me that Burris finally showed up with furniture for the child nutrition folks. They were supposed to have it all done in the morning, so I had to send out a message to recall a bunch of guys to help finish moving them. On the way out, Zach parked the truck and looked pretty defeated by the door they had been trying to wire all day long.

After work, I hung out at home for quite a while, and spent my time between watching the shrimp, playing Phase 10 on my phone, and trying to get Disney+ to work on my TV. Summer made it home late, so I met her there while the girls were at some lights event downtown. It was a dull night until I made it to bed, an hour earlier than I ever do during the week.

Never once in step.

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Grand

I took a half day this afternoon so I could go to Summer’s company Christmas party in Little Rock. I didn’t get into a whole lot in the morning, but nearly finished my CPPC minutes. It turns out something I had brought up during our meeting that kind of spun everyone into a frenzy might have been a non-issue, but that’s what I get for letting Zach see the proposed changes first.

I had pretty much already made up my mind to go to Ridgewood Brothers for their grand opening lunch, just to show my support. What really solidified it for me was hearing the Eagles sing about brisket though. Gary didn’t want to brave the crowd, and he was right. They had the exact same bottleneck, even with a crowd of other, mostly available employees. Robert was running his ass off while all the girls were mostly just standing around with RBF. Hopefully they can optimize and churn out food faster after some time in the new building.

I couldn’t get Summer to come by to eat with me, even though I ordered double food just in case. Luckily I ran into Keith and his work crew and convinced him to come sit with me so I wouldn’t be alone. The silliest part of the visit after an hour in line was that well over half the seats were completely empty. More space was taken up by people standing in line than anything else.

After I ate, I went home for a bit, and then left again to wash my car. I had it charged up to nearly 100% when Summer came by to get me. We stuck the Murano in the garage, and headed to the Chenal Country Club for the evening.

The drive was uneventful, and I was thankful not to have to mind much while the car did all the hard bits. I’m still not happy with the way it navigates through lane changes, but all I can do is just not use it, I suppose. I’m just afraid it makes me look like an idiot, or a jerk the way it flashes random turn signals to merge at exactly the wrong times.

We arrived at the country club a little over half an hour early, and had to wait for everyone to show up. It would have been better if there were other folks from the main office there for Summer to mingle with, but it really was just a ghost town until right after six. The food was middling heavy hors d’oeuvres, and offered my second take on grits for the day. I think the Brothers beat them, but nobody would have expected otherwise.

The whole event was much shorter than last time, which was probably the best part. The games were less bad, though the prizes were still very limited and mostly sucked for a company that appears to be doing so well. I guess it’s true that you don’t get rich by giving it away. I was glad that Justin and Chelsey made it out, so I had an awkward partner throughout the event. Overall it was a fair time, and I was happy to support Summer with her crew. Justin and Summer actually went up to compete in a game together, where they had to use spoons in their mouths to move cotton balls from one bowl to another. Evidently Summer accidentally bumped Justin enough that he took a big chip out of one of his front teeth.

I let Tres drive home as well, and just relaxed for the drive. I let it be stupid and change lanes for no reason, and only interrupted a couple of times when other cars were too close to be doing stupid merges. We dropped my car off to charge, and then I met Summer at her house just in time for bed.

Give me another slice of that barbecued brisket!

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High Functioning

I had a CPPC meeting this morning, so I drove across the parking lot in case it started raining. I never actually saw any precipitation all day though. It was a pretty good meeting, and I got a peek at some turnover rates, which I’ve been asking to see for months. It seemed like it just took me putting it on our written agenda to get the ball rolling after nearly a year.

It was Jeff’s birthday, so he picked Arby’s for lunch. I was a bit surprised by that pick, and though I like Arby’s a lot, today’s experience wasn’t great. Service was slow, because apparently somebody didn’t show up for work. On top of that, I received a bag with Beef ‘n Cheddar ingredients seemingly “tossed” in. I ended up having to get a fork and knife to make my way through it, and it simply wasn’t enjoyable at all.

I spent some time at Dwight in the afternoon, and got up on a ladder in the saferoom to install an Airtame. It was a really quiet day otherwise. Zach and Greg were both out, so there was absolutely nothing going on in the shop all day. When quitting time came around, I finally got around to requesting a half day off for Summer’s company Christmas party tomorrow.

I headed home, swapped vehicles, and headed right up to Summer’s for the evening. She had some kind of turkey lasagna going, which was super tasty. We ate when Autumn got back from karate, and then the girls all did their own thing the rest of the evening until bedtime. I spent some quiet time to myself, and ended up getting to bed a little later than what I wanted, but not too late.

She can’nae take any more, Captain!

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Notivation

I couldn’t get into anything today. It was all I could do to finish my one work order for decommissioning the old SCCM server. Everyone else was out doing things, like building a rack in the server room. The shop was so quiet and boring. Nobody even came back for lunch, so I missed Taco Tuesday and just stayed in the shop all day.

I forgot Summer was going to make dinner, and I probably would have been happier just going to my parents’ house for roasted turkey anyway. Eaddie decided to go to the middle school band’s Christmas concert at the last minute, and Summer didn’t make it home to start dinner until really late.

To make things worse, Summer got the concert time wrong, so I didn’t make it up to their house to eat until eight. When I walked in, she immediately started acting frustrated. Autumn called and said her car wouldn’t start, but fortunately she was just at the Dollar General. Summer got her while I ate some of the food. It tasted fine, but a ground turkey lettuce wrap just wasn’t at all appealing after missing lunch.

Autumn picked up Eaddie after the concert, and they both came out to eat at the table, which was nice. There was just so much talking without much substance though, and it just irritated me all night until bed.

Bad start, bad finish.

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Thank You, Tech!

I barely squeezed into work today, but it was quiet enough that it wouldn’t have mattered even if I was late. I handed out rambutans sporadically throughout the day as I thought people might try them. Then after some coffee, I went across the street to check on Kayla, and then went to Dwight for a single work order.

Evidently the teacher had moved to Sequoyah, but the location in Incident IQ never changed, so I had to hand the ticket off to Kyle. I made it back to the shop a bit before lunch, and then I took Zach and Gary to McDonald’s so I could get another one of their Smoky Quarter Pounder BLTs. Several of the maintenance crew were there, and Tyler ended up hanging out with us through the rest of our lunch. It seemed a bit like maybe he needed something to do.

The afternoon wasn’t too dull, because I got a bunch more work orders that I was able to mostly complete from my office. Autumn called after school to ask me to get Eaddie while she went to karate, but then I couldn’t actually find Eaddie when I got to the band room after work. She eventually came out, and I took her to my house to trade vehicles.

While we were at my house, I cleaned out the shrimp tank a bit. Then we stopped by Popeye’s for the girls. I met Summer at my parents’ house for some more egg rolls. We chatted with Dad for a bit, and then we made it home. Eaddie was working on homework, and I helped her with some Python code. Autumn got home late and made a beeline for her room as usual.

I tried not to get to bed too late, because I was pretty tired. Everyone else still beat me to it. I’m already looking toward our next break.

But our teacher is in another building!