Tag: work

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Birthdeals

I dropped the girls off this morning and went home to relax since it was raining outside. I ought to spend some time cleaning up indoors, but it’s still cold, and difficult to motivate myself in the early morning. It’s either too cold, or too hot though. At some point, I’ve just got to get stuff done. I ended up not feeling great in the later part of the morning, and ended up taking a long bath after applying for a random remote SCCM administrator job that I found online.

I made it to the high school just in time to be out of the road, in line to pick up Eaddie. Then we made it across town to get Autumn since she spent the entire day “teaching” at Dwight. Aaron saw me and came out to say hi, but the conversation didn’t go any further than just that. Autumn wanted to go to her grandparents’ house, but she said they weren’t going to be home, so I just took them to the house after we dropped off Autumn’s overdue book at the county library.

Summer met us at the house and had to talk to Eaddie for a bit before we could head to Conway for her work meeting. We ended up getting into town a bit late because of it, but we still had time to get dinner at Golden Corral first so I could use my free birthday meal.

After we ate, I took her to Splash for a team meeting. Before they got started, I let Jason take the Model 3 around the block. Then I drove a few blocks away to charge outside the Holiday Inn Express. The chargers outside the Comfort Inn appeared to all be powered off, but the Holiday Inn looked a bit nicer anyway. I managed to get about 10% in the hour I sat there.

Once Summer was done, I picked her up and we ran back across town to Old Navy and Kohl’s to spend some rewards money I had saved up. I didn’t even get anything for myself, which was only slightly aggravating because Summer didn’t want to go in the first place.

We made it home after that, with a couple more instances of abandoned manual lane changes in Autopilot. Once everyone went to bed, I filled out a big support ticket for the Enhanced Autopilot frustrations, as well as the troubles I’ve seen with the visuals and sensors, or lack thereof. Then it was off to sleep.

Dream big, and never have the money.

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Apply Yourself

I dropped the girls off at school again this morning, and then went straight home to work in the yard again. I was by myself this time, which was fine. It was a little cooler, since I started earlier in the morning. Unfortunately I still had trouble getting a good fire going, but I burned up a bunch more leaves and trampled some of the crispier plant stalks that were left standing. I may be able to mow some of it down tomorrow.

Once the fires burned out, I came inside to take a shower. Then I went by Taco John’s and took a late lunch to Summer at the wash. Autumn had been texting us both to try and come up with an alternative to getting back into a car with me, but when the time came, she got over it. I dropped her off at the wash, and then went to Walgreens to drop off the floormats that I needed to return.

Eaddie had a band buddies meet after school, so she got a ride there and then to Dairy Queen, where the FBLA kids were hosting a fund raiser. Desha spotted me, and then Dustin came around and got to hear my exciting story. Otherwise, the Diary Queen experience was pretty awful. The poor teen that was running the place was stressing over a downed computer system. Then the food was all cold and overcooked.

When we finally finished there, I went home to swap cars. Mom and Dad popped in for a moment since they were next door, but then I headed up to Summer’s for the evening. I finished filling out an application for what would essentially be my dad’s old job. Brody texted to basically tell me he was keeping a seat warm for me at Clarksville. If I have to go through the pains of learning a new job, I at least want a raise out of it.

I probably don’t have 43 more years in me though.

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Páusé/Résumé

We dropped Autumn off at Dwight again today, but then went to my house to swap cars before dropping Eaddie off. She had made a comment yesterday about not getting dropped off in the Tesla, so I figured, “why not?”

I tried not to get too comfortable once I got home. I’ve spent too long wallowing and getting distracted. I got to work building a timeline of my career with the school, and felt pretty good about what I had. It may be false confidence. It usually is.

Bác Vân and Doug were outside all day working in the yard, and I wanted to go out to help, but I was afraid of getting too distracted. Instead, I only left the house to get some tacos for a late lunch. Then I got to work translating my résumé from the old Word file. I was worried about how it would look in Google Docs, but they improved the DOCX conversion, and I was able to copy and paste in large chunks instead of having to hand-type everything again. The hardest part by far was making the last, intentionally blank page, though that seemed counterintuitive.

Autumn had asked in the morning to go to the junior high concert after school. I confirmed with Eaddie that she actually wanted to go, but then Autumn wanted me to shuttle her boyfriend around afterward. I just knew she only wanted to go for that reason, so I shut it down. It was such a surprise when she decided she’d rather just go home after basketball practice instead of sticking around. I took her to Taco John’s for a cheap dinner, where Patrick came around the counter to chat for a bit when she went to the restroom. Then we made it back to my house just in time for Summer to pick her up and head home.

I waited the rest of the evening until Eaddie was ready to be picked up from the concert, and then we headed up the hill as well. I warmed up some leftovers for her while she chatted in bed with Summer. Then I had to change some settings on her iPhone to get MMS messages to work. Evidently the phone remembered that the Fi app was installed with my account, and wouldn’t associate with her data. With that, everyone was off to bed, leaving me to dawdle online. It may be time to do something about the attention deficit.

Never quit never quitting.

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Shitty Universe

I only slept from about three in the morning until about seven, because Autumn was talking loudly to Summer right outside the bedroom door. I felt incapable of sleeping by the time everyone left for school and work, so I got up and eventually made myself a burrito. I looked for some jobs and chatted with several people. Travis was the only person from work to text me, since we didn’t have each others’ phone numbers already, and it was really nice to hear from him.

I would have liked to be more productive, but I just felt sleepy and groggy all day long. I was definitely too hazy to do anything too cognitive, and my emotions cycled through confidence, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, and doubt. As the clock ticked on, I finally made it home to shower before having to get the girls from school.

It seemed clear outside, so I took the car for a wash before going to pick up Eaddie at hour-early dismissal. She responded that she had stuff to do for robotics while Autumn was at basketball practice. That nearly messed up Summer’s plan to start teacher conferences as soon as the doors opened.

I ended up getting Summer from Superfast, and then coming right back to the high school to try for conferences. As we pulled through the parking lot, I saw Travis and Sarah walking into the building, so I circled the lot and we happened to see Eaddie. I wasn’t in the mood to fight the stars and their twisted plot, so we took Eaddie to a friend’s house to work on their National History Day project. Then we went to Staples to get her a flip chart before going back to the high school to get Autumn from basketball.

We went back to get Eaddie and took the girls home, and then went to Las Palmas for dinner before going to conferences much later than we originally planned. Those went well, and I shared my news with lots of old coworkers, to a surprising variety of responses. The kids are lined up, but I’ve got more work to do tomorrow. I took Summer back to the Murano at Superfast, went home to trade vehicles myself, and then made it up to their house for the night. I thought I’d crash earlier than I did, but at that point I wouldn’t turn my nose up at going to sleep “on time.”

Collect the facts.

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“Pack Your Things” in Nature

I really didn’t expect today to play out the way that it did.

I made it to work a little early this morning, expecting rain, and then not expecting rain. I started to go to the high school to work with Jacob, but stayed at the shop to do those same tickets since it’d be easier there anyway, and Jacob didn’t really need me to hold his hand.

Diane at Crawford messaged me with badge printer trouble again, so I ran across town to take care of that. I was there just long enough for the storm to roll in, but that wasn’t all. Judy emailed Jeff and me that she needed to have a disciplinary meeting with me at 4:30. Everyone knows it’s no good to have a disciplinary meeting after hours. I knew they were terminating me right away.

I got back to the shop and told Zach, and then Tammy, and then Ryan. I felt like they were all as stunned as me, and we all kept going back and forth on whether it really was a termination or a writeup. It just didn’t make sense, but I could play it out either way in my head. I’ve heard of more and more distrust lately, and frankly I think it bit me.

I asked Zach to be my witness, and then asked Greg and Justin since they were there as well. For a moment I thought I’d actually have a group to support me.

Nobody else was around, so Zach and I went to Arby’s for a nauseating lunch, only on account of my anxiety. I was glad I ate though, because not eating would have made the long night even worse. We made it back to the shop, and I tried to be useful until quitting time. Gary and Thomas had been at training all day, but came back in the afternoon.

When it came time for me to walk across the street, I went to say some goodbyes, and Thomas hugged me and said he didn’t know what they were going to do. I figure that was an untruth at best, because I’m pretty sure he’s the only one that raised the flag at Central Office in the first place.

Justin beat me to the office, and we went in to find Judy. She was running all around, and was acting lighthearted enough that I sort of got my hopes up. Jeff was just solemn-faced the entire time though, and we sat down at the table in his office. Judy said not to read too much into the timing of the meeting, which prompted me to ask if they weren’t terminating me. She replied that she didn’t say that either, and I felt yo-yoed around. In the end, she presented me with a page that accused me of purposefully hitting an employee with my vehicle on school property.

I kept it together and took my licks. I think she was trying to help me at least a little bit. We left and I spoke with Justin for just a moment before going back to the shop where Thomas and Gary were talking. I was pretty sure Thomas was shocked to see me badge back in, but I don’t know who else would have disabled it. He offered condolences and help, but I figured it was too late for that. Both Judy and Thomas said it was fine for me to have badge access all night to clean out my office, which seemed very out of the norm. Very little of the afternoon made any sense at all.

I went home and talked to Ben while I waited for Summer to get the kids home. She beat me to Gardner, so I ran back across town and we got to work cleaning out my office. Then Brody called me and we talked while loading the car. It was big stuff first, and we made two trips back to the house. Kevin called me to get the scoop as well, but didn’t have a whole lot to add that I hadn’t already heard. After we unloaded the second time, we went to Chick-fil-A for some dinner. Then I let Summer take the Montego home while I went back for one final load of little stuff that had to be boxed up. I was out until well after midnight, but I got it done.

Once I had my nightly routine finished, I headed up to Summer’s to crash for a few hours until it was time to take the kids to school in the morning.

Seriously, could you have whipped that pen out any faster?

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Parenting 401: Teenager Wrangling

Thomas had a meeting with some of our guys right outside my door this morning, so they shut me in. It didn’t seem like anything too serious, so I didn’t really get the whole shutout thing, but it was fine. Afterward I went to Crawford to take care of a couple things before lunch.

I tried to get Dale to come to Taco Tuesday with us, but he said he couldn’t make it. Allen happened to find us there though, and he had a lot to say. The food was pretty good today, which was an improvement over last night.

When we got back, I spent some time with Special Services, but couldn’t actually get their signature pad working for their application. Apparently the documentation specifically calls out that they do not support signature pads, so we had to take the “L.”

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, but relatively steady. I cleaned up some old tickets, but I’ve got some more important ones that I really need to wrap up. Most everyone left right at quitting time, so I rushed Tammy out, and then went to my parents’ house to help Dad put the gate back together.

We chatted for a while, and then I finally made it home to swap cars before heading up to Summer’s. She made salmon and Brussel sprouts for dinner, and then Eaddie started on some homework. Autumn was supposed to be at a basketball game, but I caught her driving around to the back side of the high school again and finally convinced Summer to catch her and Adam in the act.

We loaded up, and I dropped Summer off at Autumn’s car. Autumn immediately freaked out, but Adam calmly got out of her car and into the Murano with me so I could take him home. The drive wasn’t too awkwardly quiet, and the conversation with his father was probably a little too easy. At least we didn’t catch them actively doing anything too bad. I told them I understood just wanting to hang out with some peace and quiet to talk, but that if they say they’ll be in a public place for an event, they had better be there.

The girls met us back at home, and we talked to Autumn some more. Who knows if it will do any good, but at least there wasn’t any screaming by the time we got back. All things considered, she seemed to be in fair spirits. By that time, it was off to bed for everyone.

It’s clobberin’ time!

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And How’s Your Day

I woke up in the middle of the night with a pretty bad anxiety attack, and it had me feeling a bit off for most of the day. I made it to work pretty early, and didn’t really have a good starting point. I started to leave for Crawford when Gary asked me to stick around to go over some Google and Active Directory sync changes with the engineering team. It kept feeling like we were overcomplicating it, but Ryan is just extremely structured and methodical about how he does things.

When we finished, I continued to Crawford until lunch time. The guys had left the shop while I was on the way back, so I just met them at Slim Chickens. I really liked their new hot honey sauce. The afternoon was pretty quiet after that. I went to Central Office to set up a webcam and headphones, and then stopped by Transportation on the way back. Kayla got on a rant that ended up consuming the remainder of my day.

I stopped by Superfast to check on Summer, and then went home to change before picking up some Taco John’s and heading up to her house for the evening. Eaddie had played hooky to catch up on homework, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense since she was only behind because she had missed two days for all-state last week.

The three of us ate dinner in a mixture of tacos and burritos, and then Autumn came out of her room long enough to make a bowl of ramen that ended up being too hot for her to eat, so she gave it to Eaddie. Then I crunched some numbers and planned some account changes for our phone plans until I was off to bed.

Plug it in, plug it in.

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Class Class

Our Friday morning meeting was about Google Classroom, and though we’ll probably never need any of what we learned, it was kind of fun to tinker with everyone. It certainly lightened the mood after the past couple days. Afterward, I just dug right back into the folder permissions for Adobe. Ryan came by a couple times and rattled off a bunch of stuff that was way over my head, and eventually I understood a small percentage of it.

Lunch time came by pretty quickly, and Zach, Gary, Greg, and I went to Brangus. I went with the chicken fried steak this time, for something surprisingly lighter, or at least smaller. Eating half of a beef spud would probably be a better deal though.

The afternoon was more or less kind of quiet. Jacob hung out in my office for a little bit near the end of the day, but not for any reason other than a place to sit. When we left work, I stopped by Superfast to find Summer still working. She said she would leave at noon, but ended up staying until about 6:30. Typical.

We were going to get gas on the way back to her house, but she didn’t get her discount code in time. We went to Zaxby’s for dinner instead, and then went home. It was early to bed in preparation for our Hot Springs trip tomorrow to see Eaddie in her first all-state band concert. It’ll be a fun drive in the Model 3.

Yes Yes

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Too Stressed Three Me

I went to bed really early, but it was still a really rough night of tossing and turning. I went in to the office and mostly stayed quiet in my room, trying to solve the puzzles they pay me to solve. Tammy sent me to the main office to set up a scanner, and I happened to catch up to Gary on the walk over. He lent a hand, and then chatted with me about the witch hunt on the way back to the shop.

Zach had been out of the office most of the morning, but came back for lunch. He, Gary, and I went to Foodies, which was tasty but extremely slow to present our meals. Zach had never been, so it was a nice change to try something different.

In the afternoon, I finally got around to talking to Thomas about what happened on Monday, and he seemed upset that I didn’t specifically incriminate myself in writing. I just explained to him that I didn’t see any other way out of it, and that this kind of documentation is never going to be used to benefit me. I sent the email, and then worked out the day as productively as I could.

After work, I stopped for a cold and windy car wash before going by Superfast to visit Summer. Then I stopped by her wash to vacuum out my car. I thought I’d go by my parents’ house, but never made it. Instead, I backed up some videos from Sentry Mode on my car and tried to relax at home.

Summer had a meeting at the ATCC that ran a bit late, but I met her up at her house when she finished. We ate some leftovers, and then I had already taken care of most of my nightly tasks, so it was easy to get to bed.

If you’re going to believe every off-the-cuff remark I make, your mother’s got some explaining to do.

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Nothing Happened

Gary came by early this morning and told me to go spend the day with Kyle. I actually had quite a bit to do, so this was pretty frustrating to hear. I still barely made it over to the junior high before lunch, because I got stuck trying to get a signature pad working for support services, and then had to run by Crawford to pick up some headphones and, bizarrely, try and help Kevin set up an aim bot for Call of Duty.

When I actually caught up with Kyle, he seemed to be more or less under control. I expected him to have a bunch of nonsense backed up, but it was mostly repairs and he didn’t really need my help with anything. He suggested Quiznos for lunch, but I ended up going back to the shop to pick up a crew for Wendy’s instead.

I went back to the junior high after lunch, but kept having to field high school questions from Jacob. He was clearly frustrated by devices not behaving with SCCM as he expected, but we’ve just been such a revolving door that there’s not much history at the high school after I left the building.

I finally made it back to the office at the end of the day, but then Thomas walked into my dark room and asked me about what happened with Zach after work the other day. I told him I felt terrible, and he seemed sympathetic, but like he was still caught in a position of having to file paperwork. He asked me to email him my side of the story, and I spent the rest of the night fretting over how not to incriminate myself or anyone else. I figure it’s none of anyone’s business what happens after work.

Eaddie had walked to my house to ride her bike, but she was back home by the time I made it there. We left for her house and stopped at Sonic for some cheese sticks along the way. Then I made them burritos for dinner, and drank mine. Autumn came home nonchalantly after an alleged study night at the mall. Eaddie went to bed early for all-state over the next couple days, and Summer was in bed by her usual, early time. I managed to make it to bed over two hours early myself.

Ignorance is bliss.