Tag: work

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Network-

I only woke up about 15 minutes earlier than usual, since I did all my prep work the night before. I didn’t love it, but it got the job done, and got me to Little Rock a little after 7:30, which gave me just enough time to settle in before finding the classroom. Greg called to tell me he was coming in late, but that he would be there since they couldn’t get a refund for his ticket. He said he felt better, so hopefully I don’t catch whatever he had.

Mike Meyers was a bit of a celebrity in the field, and I think he probably acted more that way than anybody else let on. I was only just aware of his existence in the space, but Ben wanted to come have his book autographed. When I saw that he was giving us copies of his new book, I jumped at the chance to have it signed for myself, and got a selfie with him as well.

The class itself was rather a disappointment. I had hoped it would be an intense workshop to try and cover as much material as possible, but instead it ended up almost being more of a roundtable. It would have been a nice way to decompress and chat further about things you learned in a formal class, but in and of itself, I don’t think Greg or I learned anything at all. It was almost more of a pep talk to psyche us up for the test itself.

Greg and I had lunch at the hotel, which was quite a bit smaller than I expected, but still better than the “barely a step above cafeteria food” I had documented from previous years. Half of the bar was a salad, and the other half had mostly run out of food by the time we got there. They had some chicken, and Greg found some pork when we went back for seconds. The staff were fussing that it seemed like there were more people than they were told, and we missed out on dessert as well. Ben picked up Tacos 4 Life, but I declined his offer to pick up some for us, remembering a less than stellar experience from before.

The afternoon went by relatively quickly, but with not much more productivity. By then, the hotel had managed to bring out cookies, and did a fair job of keeping the drink fridges stocked. We got through the day, but Greg mostly scoffed and rolled his eyes at the fossil that couldn’t remember his ports or acronyms. I was a bit more forgiving and could see the struggle with fitting so much historical knowledge into an eight hour course. I tried to reel the conversations back in to the test material periodically, but I don’t know how much that helped.

I made the trip back home without incident, but confirmed how much I hate traffic between Conway and Little Rock. I just don’t know how people do it. My entire life would be so much more stressful if I had to do that every day. I miss the old days of getting a hotel room the night before a day like that. I got gas, went home to unload, and then went to my parents’ house to visit for a bit.

Julie was there to talk to Dad about their trip to Disney. They warmed up some fish sticks for sandwiches, and Mom shattered one of her prized bowls full of boiled carrots and butter, slicing her hand open a bit. I didn’t really get to talk about my delivery day plans, but suffice to say that I wasn’t thrilled with the way support responded. I went ahead and made the appointment, but apparently even that can change, so if we stay the night, I’ll have to get a room that allows for refunds in the event of a reschedule.

When I left my parents’ house, I went to the high school and got some of that fancy pellet ice from the breakroom, and then went out to the stadium to watch the marching assessment with Summer. We stuck around longer and colder than I expected, and then ran out to the cars to beat the crowd out. The girls eventually made it home after the event, and everyone was off to bed in a hurry.

0/10, especially with that weird, bland rice.

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Never Gonna Finish

It was pretty cold out this morning, plus I had an armful of stuff I wanted to take with me, so I drove to work. I was really hoping I could spend the day studying Net+, but Greg and Josh were both out with the flu, so I spent the entire day doing things for either Greg, or Kyle later in the afternoon.

Thomas drove Zach, Gary, and me to Freddy’s for lunch, which was kind of a surprising choice. I always kind of thought he just tolerated that place. Evidently Jason’s daughter was the one that took our orders, but I didn’t recognize her on account of not really knowing her. Gary just said something about Jason’s car not being totaled when he saw it in the parking lot as we were leaving.

Zach and I went to Support Services to rearrange some stuff in the afternoon, and then ran around town picking up touch panels and tools to hang for Kyle at Dwight. My rooms at Oakland were finished over a month ago, so I was surprised to learn that his weren’t. That took us the rest of the day, so we just barely had time to clean up when we got back to the shop. I had made my Hawaiian coffee in the morning, and was upset that Tammy threw it out at the end of the day in spite of me specifically asking her not to. I only had one cup in the morning, so I guess if I want more, we’ll have to go back.

I went home after work and immediately started getting things ready to go to Little Rock alone the next morning. I think I just psyched myself out over traveling so early in the morning, but I hate that Greg can’t go with me. At least Ben will swing by for lunch, but I would have really liked someone I could talk to about the material afterward.

I finished up much later than I wanted, then got gas and headed up to Summer’s for the night. Hopefully I’m prepared enough, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.

Mike Meyers before Halloween? Seems a little on-the-nose.

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In Transit

Our meeting was fairly short this morning, as they’ve only come up with about three agenda items per week. That will grow as we bring in the two new-hires though, and we’ll continue the tradition of learning the flow of data every year and a half when we lose people. I was left mostly to myself, so I picked at a few things in my office before going to Oakland. I didn’t notice when I’ll actually start moving to Dwight, but I’m not really stoked about it.

I came back to the shop for lunch, and a few of us went to Zaxby’s. After we ate, we noticed a semi with a trailer full of identical grey Teslas going down Main Street. I had to get gas in the Shadow anyway, so I followed it until the guy parked in the turning lane at Chick-fil-A and ran across the street. I figured he was just stopping for lunch, because he was on the road again by the time I finished getting gas.

On the way back to the shop, I saw a girl tip-toeing her sport bike down the road by Summer’s new car wash, so I turned around and helped her push it over to 2nd Street. She fussed a bit about having just purchased the bike, and how they had trouble with the shift lever. They had it rigged together with some wire, and the whole linkage just fell apart. I made sure she was okay, and continued back to work when she insisted that she was fine and someone was on the way.

The afternoon was really quiet, and I spent some time cleaning out my old cubby in the office. I threw out an armful of stuff that I was saving, because my perception of value has changed quite a bit since I first started and was using that cubby. Now that I have an office, I should make room for the new techs.

When I left work, I decided to ride by Allen’s house to see if he was home. His car was there, and the front door was open, so I popped in to surprise him the day before his birthday. He was happy to see me, and we chatted for quite a while. I caught him up on all the goings-on at work, and he talked about going hunting tomorrow.

Apparently Eaddie wanted to play hooky and stayed home from school all day. Summer let her, since her lowest grade was a 94%. Autumn had to perform at an away game after school, so she was gone all evening. When I finished at Allen’s, I asked Eaddie if she wanted to go get her bike, and she quickly responded that she did. I went to pick her up, and she took off as soon as we got to my parents’ house. I stuck around for just a little bit, but they were busy either eating or watering the garden.

I went home to clean up before Summer got home. Bác Vân was outside for a little bit, and asked me to mow some of the tall grass in my front yard. I knocked that out really quickly, but then she wanted to buy my mower because she was aggravated with her own gas mower. I just kept telling her I could mow when the season comes around again.

Summer originally wanted to have a fire, but I was glad I didn’t waste the effort. She didn’t leave work until super late. Eaddie never made it home, and instead stopped at Maristella’s house. She asked me to pick her up, forgetting our conversation just minutes earlier that we had to wait for Summer to get back with the Murano. I brought her home, and then we went back for the bike once Summer arrived. They both wanted Casey’s pizza for dinner, so I ordered that before we left, and then we stopped at Kroger for some juice before getting the pizza. I ordered their beer cheese breakfast pizza and a barbecue brisket pizza, and the brisket was surprisingly good.

After we ate, we settled on watching the first two episodes of She-Hulk. I was glad I did, because I had forgotten who a couple of the characters were from the very beginning. I didn’t even realize how neglected some of those characters were as the story kept moving along. Eaddie quickly went to bed afterward, since she has a robotics event tomorrow. Autumn came over as soon as she got back to town, and Summer was quick to bed.

It must have fit, because it shipped!

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Draining

I finally remembered to bring a bánh giò for breakfast this morning, but I forgot my soy sauce. Luckily Summer was working in town and brought me some after she finished her morning workout. I spent the first couple hours of the day resetting passwords that Brody had accessed during his time with us, which was coincidentally the first time we’d ever done that before. We just never bothered in the past, but with such a new crew, it seemed like a good time.

The guys went to lunch several minutes early, but I went an hour late to go with Summer. I picked her up on the Shadow and we rode across the street to Morelos. The lunch fajitas are so good there. She had told me earlier in the day that she wanted to have family time this weekend, but I absolutely could not waste any more time getting my things in order. Then I upset her further with my response when she pushed me about John and Melissa. I’m simply juggling too many things, and I’m prioritizing them the best that I can. I’m not going to let something that’s going to drag me into the past distract me from the future I’m trying to build.

I dropped her off and planned to meet her at home right after work, where Dad was going to meet me to help with my leaky sink. I spent most of the afternoon watching more Network+ videos until I had to go upstairs for a couple work orders. Then I left on time, because Dad beat me to the house and had already started looking at the sink.

We took everything apart once I got there, and struggled breaking the garbage disposal apart until I brought out a real hammer. He had some ancient plumber’s putty from McCoys, which he was able to knead and microwave in order to make it pliable enough to apply to the sink drain. Summer came over after work and picked at weeds in the back yard, and Dad and I had to go to Lowe’s for a replacement rubber gasket.

We got most everything put back together correctly this time, but Dad had to go to a church meeting. Summer stuck around for a little while, but eventually went home. I continued compressing the putty, and scrubbed the corroded parts until they were a bit cleaner and more usable. Then when Dad came back after the meeting, we got everything sealed back up water tight again. There’s still a leak in the faucet, but that can wait for another day.

I ended the evening with the finale of She-Hulk, which was both weird and satisfying. I, for one, enjoyed it for its quirks.

Whatever, K.E.V.I.N.

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She’s a Brainiac, Brainiac on the Floor

I got a request to shuffle a bunch of stuff at Support Services yesterday, so first thing this morning, Gary, Zach, Greg, and I went over to take care of that. It ended up being way easier than I expected, and we knocked it out pretty quickly, even after we lost Zach to go watch his kid do a firefighter challenge at Sequoyah.

Afterward, I went back to my office and started in on my Network+ videos again until lunch time. It was Brody’s last day, so most of us got together and went to Cicis for lunch. While we were there, Aaron and a couple other guys from the bank came in, and he snuck up behind me to say, “hi.”

Summer had gotten a call from the neurologist that they could see her in the afternoon, which was way better than waiting for the middle of December, so she came back to town and picked me up after lunch. We went straight to their office and waited for them to open back up from lunch so we could fill out paperwork before talking to the doctor. The meeting actually went really well, and he put us at ease right away. The abnormality was some possible shrinkage of her frontal lobe that could possibly have been greater than average, but he didn’t feel like that had anything to do with the symptoms that brought her to the doctor in the first place.

Summer did a few cognitive tests with varying results, and he referred us to UAMS, which we’ll probably do at the start of next year after her deductible resets. She still felt a bit off with a headache, but I talked her into going to my house to clean up, since I had been gone from work long enough to take the remainder of the day off.

I poked around in the garage when I got home, and cleaned and organized a few more things. Summer befriended a beautiful white dog with white eyes, who I’d seen wander around the neighborhood in the past. We tested the couple of scrapped TVs I brought home, and one of them appeared to work without any trouble. The other was clearly physically broken on the left side, but it would be fine for someone that just needs one that works at all. We loaded up the better one to take to her house, and then I ran around looking for some feet. I thought I had some in my office, but I finally came back home and found them there.

Up at Summer’s house, Eaddie was already dressed down for the evening. Summer made Rice Krispies Treats, and eventually Autumn showed up from whatever she had going on. I had gotten a message that my VIN was assigned, so I hopped online to try and finalize my Progressive quote. Since the delivery is happening so late in the year, I’m actually getting a 2023 year model, which is pretty neat. I won’t have ultrasonic sensors, so I’m annoyed that some features may be temporarily disabled, but hopefully it won’t take long for that to be corrected. I had trouble making the insurance changes myself because the new year model wasn’t even in the system yet, so I had to spend quite a while chatting with support to get the changes made. My rate will be higher than I thought, but still only about half of what State Farm wanted for just one car.

The girls all wound down pretty quietly, so I surfed my nightly deals, got a little distracted, and eventually made it to bed.

We are so close to being able to speak of Tres!

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CBD Nuggets

There wasn’t much going on today, so I spent several hours watching Network+ training videos on CBT Nuggets. I was really pleased with the guy that was doing those videos, because he wasn’t terribly dry to sit and listen to for long periods of time. The videos themselves were broken up into relatively short topics, which at least made me feel like I was making progress. Whether or not I’m retaining any of the important stuff remains to be seen.

Gary, Thomas, and I were the only three to go to Taco Tuesday, and the tacos were pretty sad. The hot sauce changed and was less thick, but spicier out of the packet, but the tacos were stale and thin. We didn’t stick around too long, because they had another interview right after lunch. When we got back, I packed up and went to Oakland for a couple hours.

The end of the day came and went quietly, just as the rest of the day. I felt a sprinkle or two, but never saw any heavier rain. I rode straight to my parents’ house and caught Dad blowing leaves in the driveway. We stood outside for about an hour, talking until Mom got home from work. Then we went inside to pick at leftovers.

I noticed that the Sulphur Springs Truck Patch was going to be at a farmer’s market downtown, which I didn’t even realize was a thing, so after we ate, I rode to the train depot to see if Bryan would be out there peddling flowers. They were tearing down for the evening, but he had one more bouquet left unsold, so we chatted for a moment before I stuffed them into my backpack and ran home to get the key to the Murano.

Summer was meeting with the ATCC kids, so she was there late while the girls were at marching practice. I stuck the flowers in the car and luckily had some leftover water for them in my travel mug. Then I headed on home to poke around under my leaky sink. I didn’t feel like digging too deep into anything and then quitting halfway through, so I actually didn’t get much of anything accomplished. I thought Summer might come over, but instead she and Eaddie just sat around confused about how flowers ended up in the car. I had to remind her of how many times I’d brought her flowers, and she suddenly remembered how nice I am.

I wrapped up the evening as quickly as I could, just tired from running around all day. Hopefully tomorrow will afford me some more time to study for my Net+ so I won’t be completely lost in Mike Meyers’s training class at ACOT next week.

It’s Homestead Runner!

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Mocha Choca-lata Ya Ya

The shop was a ghost town today, but you wouldn’t hear any complaints. Greg was out, which meant I got to make some good coffee for a change. I had a few things to take care of, but it was just dull enough that I don’t really remember what I did for most of the day.

Gary wanted McAlister’s for lunch, so when Brody came to the shop, he took the three of us. He had never been, and somehow he had the best looking food at the table. I still didn’t think it was a $12 sandwich, but it beat my $12 potato. It didn’t even have any of the toppings it was supposed to have, so it was even worse than it possibly could have been.

I finished up my CPPC minutes email in the afternoon and prepared to send it at the end of the day. Then I spent some time at Oakland until the kids dismissed. Back at the shop, I tried to save the last half of my coffee, but Tammy threw it out before I got to it.

I went home just long enough to assemble my new Squatty Potty, then went on up to Summer’s to steam some rice and throw some cabbage into the corned beef she started in the morning. Eaddie was in a great mood and spent the entire time in the living room playing things on her flute. I didn’t see Autumn until Summer got home and called her out for dinner.

After we ate, Eaddie wanted to coat the cake pops she baked last night in some chocolate, so I helped melt that and poked holes in a box for her to let them harden up. I still don’t think they really did it right, but they tasted good enough.

From there, the girls all went to bed. I stayed up too long just poking around, so hopefully sleep won’t be too troublesome tonight.

Bed, I say.

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Nothing Passive About It

We had our meeting first thing this morning, and I tried to compose myself after the strange conversations I had yesterday. It wasn’t long into the day that I got an email from the superintendent with an infographic for Robert’s Rules of Order. I wasn’t completely sure how to take it, but I knew I wanted to at least show that I had some idea of what I was talking about. She tends to be kind of a fast talker, and doesn’t really give much time for a response, so written communication to me is much more effective for completing my thoughts with her.

With that, I got sucked into drafting an email again for most of the morning after our lengthy meeting about how awful Incident IQ is. We went to Quiznos for a relatively quick lunch, and then it was back to the shop for a short afternoon due to the homecoming parade. I ended the day at Oakland again, and then went downtown to meet Summer for the parade. It was surprisingly hot sitting out in the sun, but it was a short parade.

Afterward, I rode the opposite direction of traffic across town and stopped at the Ridgewood Brothers to visit with Grant and Robert. We chatted about security systems for a bit, and then I continued home. As the sun went down, I went to visit with Mom for a few minutes before going to the homecoming game to catch halftime. Summer was crammed up in the stands again, so I sort of worthlessly stood on the ground below until we could leave.

Summer wanted to eat, so we dropped off the Shadow and went to Chili’s where we were served by a student from her very first year of teaching. She really enjoyed her steak, but 100% of my food was cold. Not lukewarm, but outright cold. I went home to get her car, and then met her at her house. The girls got home after a shocking turnaround of the depressing score we left, and everyone was quickly off to bed.

Do I have your attention?

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On Nesting Hornets

I spent nearly the entire day on my meeting minutes, trying to research additional resources to review changes, perfecting my wording, and ultimately getting it to the members that were present so they could review and suggest changes. I forgot my watch at home though, so I felt naked for most of the morning. When everyone gathered for lunch, I quickly ran home for it before meeting them at Linhs.

In the afternoon, I finally finished my first draft and sent it out for review. Judy was quick to check it out, and had something for me to add. Then I saw it move up the ladder to Justin, who spent a fair amount of time reading it. After he left, I saw Ginni going down the whole document, and then highlight a line I had written about administration not budgeting for a Christmas bonus. A moment later, Justin was back on the document, and then Thomas appeared in my doorway and asked me to call her.

It felt like she was mostly concerned about a possibly negative perception, and I don’t think she really understood that I was on her side. I’m sick of hearing about people feeling entitled to a bonus because they can’t manage to save for Christmas on their own. I’m sick of departments that aren’t losing people complaining about pay. She had me call Justin to try and come up with some better wording, but he didn’t really have any suggestions either. In the end, I modified three of the bullet points to try and spin the story a bit in the direction she seemed to want.

After that, I noticed an urgent work order from Sheri and took off to Oakland. They had a robotics tryout, and needed some software installed so they could update their robotics hardware. Then I finished up with some trouble Sheri was having on her laptop before heading home.

Autumn asked if I could get Eaddie from her own robotics event so she could go to a volleyball game. When I eventually picked her up, it seemed like Autumn might be hiding out in the band room, so we snooped around a bit before giving up. From there, we went to Mom’s to check in on her. Eaddie wanted to ride her bike to her friend’s house to finish some homework, so I helped Mom warm up dinner while she was out.

Eventually everyone got fed, I took care of dishes, and Mom ran us off as it got late. Summer was nearly asleep when we got to the house. I never actually saw Autumn, but she seemed to be up later than usual. Eaddie practiced her flute for a while, and then spent some time with her new earbuds. I chatted with Grant for a little bit about some games, and ended the evening by finishing the Pixel 7 announcement stream.

Mmm, beefy.

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New Committee, New You

I forgot that we had our CPPC meeting this morning, so after a while at work, I had to run home to grab my Pixel for some superior notetaking. I actually got the time for the meeting wrong too, so I started walking over about 45 minutes early. I stopped in at Transportation to talk to those guys briefly, realized I was way early, then got my Pixel, and finally arrived back at Central Office. I was the first one there by a longshot. Then Justin and Justin came in. Judy brought some donuts for us. We very nearly didn’t have a quorum, but Ginni showed up along with two more administrators, and we dug right in.

I volunteered to do the secretarying again, and to my dismay, I didn’t have the right strings pulled to get Justin as our president. I’ll guess I’ll have to go for that next year. As far as the meeting went, we sped through most of it after confirming that everyone had a chance to read the changes. There wasn’t a whole lot of jibber jabber until Janie wanted to express distrust over the wording of our bonus announcement. Ginni was quick to passive-aggressively shut her down, and everything else passed with very little formality.

The rest of the day as pretty quiet. Josh and I were the only two around for lunch, so he took us to Stoby’s, where Gary coincidentally was meeting some other friends for lunch. I spent most of the afternoon working on my CPPC minutes, but had to walk back over to Central Office to take Gary a replacement UPS battery. That ended up being a faulty power outlet, so he had to call an electrician to come out tomorrow.

Autumn was supposed to meet with a recruiter after school, but changed her mind to hang out with her new boyfriend under the guise of “not feeling well enough to meet the recruiter.” This caused a conflict with Eaddie, who wanted to get home to do good kid things, like homework. I was actually able to get Summer on the phone, and she called to set her straight, and then talked to me a bit while she was on her way to Target to try and find some clearance Sony WF-1000XM3 earbuds for Eaddie.

Since Autumn took Eaddie home, I left work in pretty high spirits and great weather, so I took the bike across town and ended up at AT&T to see my old crew. Hope and Nicole both came up to give me a hug, and I spent most of my time chatting with Kevin. I hung out there for a little while until Kevin finished his shift. Then I headed on home to change before going to my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom had just gotten home from work, and they were outside looking at the ditch where they had a tree service come and clean out a couple of big trees that have been there since my childhood. I hated to see them go, and I worry about continuing erosion, so hopefully it was for the best. We went in and warmed up some curry, but Mom ate something else again. Dad and I chatted for a while, and eventually I had to head over to Summer’s to help Eaddie with her science homework.

On the way, Summer asked for food, so I ran by Lowe’s quickly to see if they still had the headlamp I had reserved over the weekend. They didn’t, so I left and picked up a burrito at Taco Bell before making it up to the girls. Eaddie came out, and Summer didn’t want to wait to gift her headphones. Then I helped with the homework, and everyone was off to bed.

I’ve waited my whole life to be a parent that knows everything.