Tag: work

Uncategorised

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!

Uncategorised

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!

Uncategorised

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.

Uncategorised

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!

Uncategorised

Bro

I squeezed in a minute late today, but beat Tammy by nearly 20 minutes. Thomas was apparently out on some (possibly?) surprise trip, so Zach set the guys out on some projects after Gary had a spiel about how the high school is being stupid about their guest WiFi access. I didn’t have to do any of that, so I spent some time in my office for the morning.

After a little while, I started getting phone calls. Kayla was still having trouble with transcribing her time cards, and then one of my old teachers at Oakland called asking for some help with a display issue. I kind of wanted an excuse to go back over there anyway, so I did.

Brody wanted to eat lunch with us since he was finally off on Fridays. We met him at Zaxby’s, and he did the surprised Pikachu face when he saw me pull up in my Tesla. He said he hated his new job, and had an interview with Ryan for a network engineer job in Clarksville. I guess Ryan didn’t remember having lunch with him when we picked up the carts from Bentonville, otherwise he might not have gotten the interview.

After lunch, I went across the street to spend some time with Kayla. She was still super stressed over the time cards, and Rebecca wasn’t really any help with her payroll knowledge. I did some more tweaking on the spreadsheet, and tried my best to make her job as easy as possible before going back to my office to send out the CPPC agenda.

After work, I stopped by to see the Ridgewood Brothers, and they had the restaurant ready to roll, with tons of staff everywhere. I thought I was helping, but didn’t realize they actually had an event scheduled that evening. I went home to get a tablet, but got sidetracked by picking up my blood pressure meds from Walgreens, and then cleaning up my new fridge so I could power it on. By the time I made it back to the restaurant, they had two parking lots FULL of people.

I went back home for a bit before meeting Summer at Arby’s for dinner. Then we came home and waited for the girls to get there. They both had to get up super early for school events the next day, so they wanted to stay close by for a shorter drive to the school. Summer watched some TV in bed as usual, and everyone was off to bed pretty early, except me, who was not at all used to sleeping at home.

Of course my refrigerator has a firmware update. How could it possibly keep my food cold without firmware?

Uncategorised

Space Parade

It took me a little bit to get settled into my office today, but once I did, I spent most of my time on the phone with Kayla. There wasn’t much else going on though, and I enjoyed the work I was doing. When we moved all of the bus drivers to hourly pay rates, the district neglected to plan how payroll would be done. As such, Kayla has been processing reams of paper timesheets for every single person that drives a bus.

I got a quick Google Sheet put together with her, and then Zach pulled me away to lunch with Thomas and Greg at Brangus. I had the half chicken salad and remembered how overpriced it was in comparison to the other lunch options. Then I was right back on the phone with Kayla once we got back.

They let us out an hour early to avoid getting stuck by all the people lining up for the parade. I went by Ridgewood and actually got to lend a hand in cleaning things up a bit for the soft open on Saturday. Then I left to swap cars before going up to Summer’s.

We finished up most of the Thanksgiving leftovers and then made our way to the parade. We were early, but not early enough to avoid parking a block off of the main strip. We opted to stand in the middle of a side street once they blocked it off, and that earned us a view from the front row.

The parade itself was super spaced out, with tons of gaps between several of the floats. The high school band was first, so we got to see Eaddie. Then we waited until Autumn passed with the JROTC, and immediately left. The girls actually finished up shortly after that, but didn’t get home until later.

Summer watched the last bit of Weird with me, and then I started UHF before quitting at the first commercial to get ready for bed.

Space mining!

Uncategorised

Defrosty

I tried not to feel too bad about leaving Tres outside overnight, since it wasn’t particularly gross or rainy out. It was nice being able to warm things up before I actually got outside, too. Not to mention autopilot taking me home while I was still drowsy.

It was a pretty quiet day back to work. Gary, Greg, and Zach were mostly preoccupied replacing something in the server room, so I was left to myself. I didn’t have much to catch up on, but still had several old, stale work orders that I couldn’t really update with anything. I wasn’t upset about easing back into work over a cup of oatmeal though.

When lunch time came around, Zach suggested Quiznos, so I took him and Gary. I had them add some fresh jalapeños to my burnt ends sandwich, and it was awesome. I didn’t expect that much heat. I paired that with a cup of broccoli cheddar soup and skipped the chips and drink, but of course it was still like 12 bucks.

I went to Dwight in the afternoon for a bit, but that ended up being a non-issue. Then I ran home to quickly grab a package from the front door before going back to the office. I had to take care of something upstairs in the SDC room, and one of the kids said my hair looked like Jesus.

The rest of the afternoon was super quiet until quitting time. I ran by Ridgewood to try and grab a picture of the smoke stack going, but they had it off again by the time I got there. Robert seemed all-business, so I didn’t stick around to see anyone else, though I did try to volunteer. Instead, I headed on home to clean out my garage so I could park inside again. Then I put the refrigerator shelves and drawers back together. Somehow we got a small scratch near the top of the left side. Nothing even touched it up there, so I have no idea what happened.

Summer went to the gym when she got back into town, and then I met her at Walmart to pick up stuff for banana pudding. Then we went on home, where Eaddie instantly crashed from exhaustion, and Autumn closed herself off in her room. Summer made pudding, and I did my best to stay warm from my unusual chill.

You’ve gotta spatulate that stuff better.

Uncategorised

Idledeedee

Gary and Greg were both out today, and we only had a really brief meeting in the morning. Zach sent everyone but me to replace docking stations at the junior high. I slowly dug into my own things until he called and asked me to run across the street to help Chris with an “internet slowness” issue. That, of course, didn’t really turn into much of anything on account of “everything” that was going wrong at the time. On the way over, I inspected the parking lot and found the offending ketchup packet sitting right next to my tire. Unfortunately there wasn’t any way to get proof of who did it, but at least now I know it was some stupid kid that squirted ketchup all over my car.

After that, I burned most of my day trying to get the new Google Drive deployment to behave properly. It either didn’t want to uninstall the old version properly, or wouldn’t install and detect the new version. When lunch time came around, Zach and Kyle were the only two around to go. Zach suggested Brangus, which didn’t really excite me, but nothing else did either. I took the two of them, and we had an awkwardly quiet lunch.

The afternoon dragged on a bit. I went upstairs to restart a laptop for a kid, and then Thomas sent everyone home a few minutes earlier than the half hour that Ginni gave us. I had actually gotten into some things, so I didn’t actually leave until a few minutes late. Summer didn’t get back to town until late, Autumn went to an away game in Greenwood, and Eaddie had her grandparents take her home right after school, so I hung out at home for a while before coming over.

On the way out, I stopped by to troubleshoot Bác Vân’s dead iPad. It needed to be charged in a bad way. Then I cleaned up some leftovers at the house. The girls watched a bit of TV when Summer got home, but didn’t get up to anything else. I stayed up late playing on my phone until Autumn showed up. Then it was off to bed. Mom came down with the flu or something like it, so it’s just as well that we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving this year.

I guess I should start shopping for tires early…

Uncategorised

Quarter Panel with Ketchup

I almost made it to my charge limit this morning, and left the house at 75%. I think being able to take a day trip during the weekend and then recoup that energy throughout the week is acceptable. I kept relatively busy today, and went to Dwight in the morning to troubleshoot a display issue. I ended up having to contact Newline support for some firmware, so I went back to the shop and had lunch before going back.

Aramark served us Thanksgiving lunch in the Gardner cafeteria, and most of our crew went, along with a few from maintenance, several from administration, and some others from the surrounding buildings that I didn’t know so well. Gary joked that the superintendent didn’t punch me when she walked in, so I must be in the clear for now. Thomas was going to go back to the shop, but we ended up staying. I sat with our substitute custodian, Anthony, and a couple Chrises from maintenance, since the tech table was a little crowded.

After lunch, I finished up at Dwight and Ian found me in the office again. I guess no one else ever sticks around so long when he starts talking, because he’s always got something to say. I ended up going back to the shop just before school let out, and rode out the rest of the day there. Thomas told us not to wait until 4:30 to leave, but I only got out a few minutes early.

I saw Summer at Superfast, so I stopped in to see her and we went to Walmart to get stuff for her to make chili for work. I found a kitchen faucet on clearance as well, so I picked it up to replace my leaky one. She dropped me back off at my car and I took it home, but on my way back out to go to her house, I noticed a big blob of ketchup on my rear passenger quarter panel. It was all over the place, and obviously intentional, so I had to take it to the carwash.

I spent a couple minutes in the carwash, trying to scrub through what little sentry mode footage I had. I never saw anything suspicious, but the recording hadn’t been working for several days anyway. I was really upset that someone would do something like that to my car for no apparent reason other than the fact that it’s a Tesla. The ketchup was very dry, but I never noticed it throughout the day as I walked to the car. It took me a little while to clean it off, but I had been wanting to wash the car again anyway. Fortunately it didn’t seem to mess anything else up, but it was also dark outside. While I was in the middle of the wash, I had to ride out an anxiety attack. I remember a couple of loud trucks being around, which probably put me a little more on edge on account of why I was at a carwash in the middle of a cold night.

I made it back home to swap cars and headed up to Summer’s for the evening. Eaddie had me bring my Yeti microphone over so she could record some flute assignments, but she kept yelling with frustration for most of the evening. Summer baked a cake, but I just laid in bed playing the Stranger Things game on my phone, desperately trying to make it through Chapter 5. When I finally got back up to finish my blog, I had another anxiety attack that I tried to collect some data on. I stopped breathing to see if my oxygen level was just low, but it didn’t seem to be. I’d love to know why I get these now.

This is the kind of stuff that gets people shot.

Uncategorised

Copy No Copy

It was frosty again this morning, but comfortably cold during the day. I tried to keep busy, but kind of got distracted quite a bit. I spent some time on hold with my insurance company because I couldn’t log in to check my HSA information. That whole process was a bit of a rabbit hole. When lunch time rolled around, it was just Zach and me again, so I suggested sharing a BOGO at Subway.

The afternoon was super quiet, just as it has been. I finished up my file copying and messed with file shares, visited Dwight to check on something that fixed itself, and generally tried to stay out of trouble. After work, I went straight home to swap cars before going to Walmart to pick up the last couple things I needed to make dinner.

Summer was at the gym and Autumn was at karate, but Eaddie was home while I threw some frozen chicken into the Instant Pot for tacos. I ended up running the program twice because I wasn’t completely sold on the temperature of the chicken after the first cook. I think too much of it was above the water line, and all of the chicken was frozen into a solid block anyway. I thought it smelled pretty gross, but Summer said it just smelled like dark meat. It tasted alright though.

The girls all went to bed really early. I played my Stranger Things Puzzle Tales game a bit since I had to make it to a certain level to retrieve the progression pack I earned from playing before it was moved to the Netflix games category. I tried not to stay up too late though.

Sentry mode… re-activated?