Tag: work

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No, It’s Not Fixed

Today was another really quiet day, and I was continually surprised how fast the week flew by. I spent all day in the quiet of my office again, and finally got some correspondence from Jamf. We bounced emails back and forth a couple times, and though he asked for my availability for the day, he never actually reached out. It was frustrating that after a full day, I sent two additional log files and was back in the same spot where we started.

Gary took Josh and me to Bocadillos for lunch, and the salsa tasted sour. We were the only table there, and only two other tables showed up the entire time we were there. The food tasted okay, but the al pastor was dry. I got a mangonada on the way out, which was awesome though.

The afternoon was quiet as well, and everyone filtered off on their own. I went home for just a bit, and then took Eaddie to tennis practice for an hour. When we got back to their house, Summer brought some Little Caesar’s home for dinner.

I tried to be helpful around the house by replacing light bulbs while everyone else either watched TV or continued to paint. I have a feeling I won’t sleep very well, but at least tomorrow is Friday.

Shut up, Walgreens.

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I Don’t Wanna!

We had a little meeting today, but it didn’t seem like there was a whole lot of stress to do anything. I certainly didn’t overexert myself in my office. Gary asked me to go upstairs to take care of a couple work orders, which would have burned him up a bit, but I was able to breeze right through. I thought I might make it back over to Oakland at some point, but I just never did.

The morning went by surprisingly quickly, and Gary came back to fetch me for lunch. I took him, Josh, and Thomas to Zaxby’s where we mostly sat in silence and ate. Then it was back to the office. After a little while, Greg came in to investigate the phones, as they had all disconnected. Evidently Gary was making some network changes, and some automation actually caused what he was actively trying to prevent from happening. Once they got it working again, I went with Gary to Central Office, then Transportation, and finally Support Services.

By then, it was nearly quitting time. I think my greatest accomplishment was melting the crystals out of my honey bear with my Ember mug. I still ended up sticking around late though, because Eaddie didn’t have karate. I had a little peace to myself, and then went home for some more before heading up to Summer’s.

I stopped by Taco Bell for a couple burritos, which was fortunate since Summer wanted something to eat. Autumn was watching YouTube on the TV, and had talked to Summer about getting some things out of storage. I was still upset that we hadn’t addressed the manipulation that occurred while Autumn was “helping” around her grandparents’ house, so I made Summer call them on speakerphone. She didn’t answer, but at least it got the conversation started with Autumn. She got angry at first, but cooled off surprisingly quickly. I’m not going to keep letting her think she can get things over on me though.

We ended the evening shaking out Eaddie’s blanket because she left chocolate in her bed, which attracted ants. They’ve been in every single room of the house, and nobody’s figured out why yet. I baited them, and was off to bed.

Nike.

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Armed Brother

Thomas and Zach were out today, so Gary was calling the shots. I was initially directed to the Support Services building to investigate a bunch of equipment moves, but was quickly pulled off of that to start a help ticket with Jamf. I thought they might actually be quick to respond, but I never heard anything back all day.

I went to Oakland for a little while to troubleshoot my weird lunch room computer issues, but didn’t get very far. I consistently had issues with both computers there. I made it back to the shop for lunch, but Gary and Tammy were the only ones there, and he had to stick around for Ritter to show up. He did end up picking up some food, but then had to meet the guy that showed up while he was out. I wound up just skipping lunch entirely, and picked at various things I found around the office.

I didn’t really get a whole lot accomplished the rest of the afternoon. I sat with Tammy for a little while as she got emotional. Gary eventually showed back up after she went to pick up some food for herself, but it was still quiet downstairs all afternoon.

Summer took Autumn to therapy, and then brought back some food from Big Poppa’s after dropping her off at karate. I went to Kroger to pick up some freezer bags, and then met the other two at home to eat. Summer wanted to go to the gym, so I dropped Eaddie off at tennis for an hour while I set spider traps all around the house. I look forward to being horrified by how many bugs I catch.

Summer got Autumn and I got Eaddie after their activities, and we headed back up to the house for the evening. Tonight was my turn to get a long call from sister, and we chatted about Randall’s upcoming wedding next year, then therapy, then vacations, then frustrations. I hope an unbiased third party will help now that I’ve had some experience communicating thoughts and feelings.

Naked force has resolved more conflicts throughout history than any other factor.

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Task Man

We met for about an hour this morning before Gary and I went to Oakland to take care of a couple different things. I wanted to close out an old ticket, but got sidetracked by a stubborn lunch line computer. Gary went to a couple switch closets to check on some dead batteries. When we got back to the shop, I had a little time to work on our Jamf migration before he asked me to run a computer across the street to Central Office.

By the time I made it back, it was nearly lunch time, and Zach took us along with Thomas to Wendy’s. Service there was super fast, so we spent most of the hour chatting before heading back. I continued to work on random tasks the rest of the afternoon until Hannah came down to pick up a laptop. She ended up sticking around to chat for quite a while.

I left a little bit late and had to get Eaddie to tennis practice. She chatted about boating with friends, and then staying the night with another friend. I had to take her to my house to change first, but then I dropped her off and went to my parents’ house for some eggplant soup until she was done.

On the way back to their house, Eaddie wanted to get some Dairy Queen. Then she fussed about the poor quality of their product recently. She said her Thin Mints Blizzard tasted poorly blended, and all she got was the mint syrup.

Summer and Autumn eventually showed up, and Autumn appeared to be in a pretty good mood. Summer almost immediately got on the phone with Beth, so I basically didn’t see her the rest of the night. Everyone went to bed relatively early, and I got there eventually.

Lie Still

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Doubles

Gary had me spin up a VM for our upcoming Jamf Cloud migration, which took most of the day worth of tinkering. I felt good about setting up the VM, and followed along well enough as we made firewall changes. Unfortunately the application didn’t have very good documentation, and the installation got stuck near what I think was the end of the process.

Zach took a bunch of us to CJ’s for lunch, and I spent the ride coloring in the back seat. The burger was pretty messy today, and had me gurgling a bit in the afternoon. I continued to tinker with our Jamf project until Thomas let everyone go about an hour early.

Summer took the day off with the girls, but didn’t get up to a whole lot, I don’t think. She wanted to take a nap about the time I got home, so I just stayed there and tinkered around until later in the evening. When I finally made it up to their house, Eaddie wanted to go out to play tennis. Autumn decided to surprise us with her participation as well, so I figured I should complete the set.

I ate some leftover stir fry really quickly, and then we had Eaddie drive us to the city park to see how busy they were. She really wanted to go to Old Post though, so we went to my house for my racket and some more balls, and then made our way to the lock and dam. I was surprised the courts there weren’t packed with how nice it felt outside.

We switched around from playing singles to doubles, and everyone had quite a bit of fun. Autumn eventually tapped out, and then a little while later our lights went out and we couldn’t get them back on, so we decided to wrap it up. Summer took us up to Caudle Overlook so Autumn could see the dam, and then we headed home to wind down and head to bed.

Feels like 40, love.

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Clever Boy

I thought it was going to be another quiet, uneventful day at the office, but shortly after I dug into some work, Gary called and asked for help with a couple guys from Raptor that were there to test and troubleshoot our alerting system. Evidently among all of the brightest minds there, not one of them thought to “think different” and bring along an Android device.

I headed to the high school and had to sit while they discussed some things before we actually got started. Then we wandered to a couple places, both inside and out, in order to test different scenarios, logging in and out of the app repeatedly until we had enough data points. I don’t think we unearthed anything groundbreaking, but hopefully they were able to take back some good feedback.

We worked into lunch, but then the guys offered to buy lunch. Terry gave them the option of CJ’s or Old South, and we went for the southern comfort food. I should have gotten the chicken fried steak breakfast platter that Albert ordered, because it looked awesome. My fried catfish wasn’t bad, but I was definitely jealous.

When we got back to the high school, Gary sent me off to meet up with Greg in Chrissy’s office. He was having trouble with the Macs over there, but unfortunately I wasn’t much help. We also checked on Daniel’s, which he ended up taking back to the shop. I spent the rest of the afternoon, quietly in my office. I did managed to get a couple things done, and then headed up to get Eaddie for tennis practice after work.

While I waited for Eaddie to finish, I set up an Echo Show, which didn’t really impress me much. I haven’t really liked the Blink Mini camera that came with it either. I don’t think I’ll return them, but I just don’t care for the quality.

Autumn and Summer made dinner back home, which made everyone quite happy. Then I suggested a game of Phase 10 before everyone was ready for bed. I did my best not to stay up too early on account of how behind I’ve been on sleep. Weekends happen too fast and too far apart. I don’t know why I can’t just live on a boat forever.

Or in a robot car…

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Freeze!

I spent most of this morning very slowly trying to replace the cafeteria computers at Oakland. While I waited for them to boot up and update, I ended up exploring the walk-in cooler, as well as the freezer section located through a second doorway inside the refrigerator. I panicked a little bit as the button to open the door from the inside had frozen stuck for a moment, but I escaped. After that, I tinkered around until lunch time when a group of us went to Freddy’s.

I misspoke and got my burger without all the veggies, which was detrimental to its flavor. I also still wonder what a sport pepper is, since they didn’t have any. I was the only one to end my meal with any custard, but I had earned a free concrete in the form of a key lime pie. It was delicious, but I only had a few bites before we headed back to the shop.

I spent most of the afternoon helping Zach and Greg run a couple lines at Central Office. It was frustrating to see all of the renovations there, while we can’t even drink the tap water downstairs. I got a little itchy from the insulation in the ceiling, but fortunately it was a short run. I spent more time terminating than actually running the cable.

I walked across to the Transportation office for the last bit of the day, and ended up talking to Kayla well past quitting time. We shared our gossip, and she tried to offer any advice she could for our situation with Autumn. Summer texted that they were home and ready to cook dinner, so I had to run home and change before stopping by Walmart for a few last-minute ingredients.

When I got there, Summer and Autumn were both in the kitchen, dancing around each other. Summer made a sort of stir-fry while Autumn baked snickerdoodles. We had a good dinner, everyone got along, and then Summer did some stuff for work before heading off to bed. Autumn ended up sleeping on the couch while I documented our troubles with her for our FINS petition. I stayed up later than I wanted, but I think I got most everything written down.

It’s important to be historically accurate!

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She’s a Little Runaway

I hardly slept last night, but got up and back to my cooler house after its first night of air conditioning in a while. We were a little scattered for projects during our meeting, and I could have hidden away in my office all morning, but instead I rode around with Zach to work on a few doors. We chatted, and it really helped keep my spirits up.

Summer had to go to Little Rock for a meeting, but then came back to work from home for the rest of the day. She wanted to get lunch, so after Zach and I finished running around trying to fix and lock all of the doors we were working on, I met her at Sumo’s. I still wasn’t feeling great about the situation at home, but we finally talked a bit and tried to come up with a plan. I suggested that she try and take Autumn to a recruiter and see what options might be available to her.

I went back to work, and after a followup text, Summer said she was having trouble with Autumn, and then called in tears to say that Autumn had blown up again and “ran away” down the road again. I reminded her that she could file a FINS petition, so she made a phone call and then had me meet her at the juvenile office next to the courthouse. The lady there did a whole lot of talking to sell the program to us even though we were already all-in. Eaddie sat in the corner quietly while we chatted, and then they went home to fill out paperwork while I went back to work. I figured Autumn had most likely called her grandparents to pick her up, and of course Summer confirmed my suspicion.

I worked out the rest of the day, and even a little bit late to update our Jamf server prior to our migration to their cloud service. Everyone else left me in the dark, but I was just happy to accomplish something of my own before I left. Then I went home until Eaddie finished with tennis practice and then met Summer at her house. They cleaned up a bit, since Summer had also worked up a sweat at the gym. Then we went to Stoby’s for dinner before fetching Autumn.

Eaddie went inside to visit, and perhaps to survey the situation. Her grandmother came outside to talk to Summer, but Autumn hid away inside until we talked her into going back inside to get her. I had to threaten calling the police, and then ultimately made the call when Autumn came outside but refused to come with us. A few minutes later, she realized how dumb and wasteful she was being and agreed to comply, but by then the trucks had already rolled and we had to stand at the end of the driveway talking to four officers for the next hour.

Autumn had cooled down, and was very talkative with Eaddie in the back seat. She kept wanting to talk to us, but of course we were sick of even hearing her voice. We had them shower as soon as we got home, and then they went to bed while Summer worked on the FINS petition with occasional help from me.

Having a written record of your life is pretty handy…and incriminating!

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Heat Waive

I made it home to shower this morning, but then couldn’t dry my hair in the heat and humidity before making it in to work. Everyone was sitting around the conference table awkwardly without me, but we didn’t have much to talk about. Everyone was sent off to take care of little things, and I spent all day in my office trying to look busy. I tinkered with a task sequence for a while, but couldn’t really test anything out without a lab full of computers.

Rood couldn’t get anyone out today to look at my air conditioner, so I called Roy’s. The lady I spoke with said they could get someone out in the same day, so I took that bet without knowing any kind of timeframe.

Gary and I met the others at Brangus for lunch, though I wasn’t really hungry enough for that. Just before we got our food, Veronica walked in, followed a few minutes later by her husband and Junior. Then on the way out, we saw Grant and his mother as they were leaving right behind us.

I spent most of the afternoon taking Net+ quizzes until quitting time. I figured my air conditioner probably wasn’t going to get fixed and went on to get Eaddie to her tennis practice. Rather than wait in the sun, I went home to sweat it out inside until Eaddie finished. A little while later, I actually got a call from the Roy’s tech. I was super surprised that he would be working that late, but he was super friendly and got me up and running again super fast.

The house only cooled down a couple degrees by the time I left to get Eaddie, and then I took her on home because she just wanted to eat leftovers. I finished up the rice and beans from Chuy’s while she cleaned the kitchen, and then sat around until Summer and Autumn got home.

We had both had a pretty long day, and Autumn had been running her mouth again, which lead to another family conversation. It’s really hard not to blame all of it on Autumn, because she’s making everyone in the house absolutely miserable. She does fine for a while, and we can spend time with her laughing for minutes at a time, but she eventually always reverts to a hateful, bitter kid. Eaddie’s been growing into her own person as well, so Summer’s feeling that loss as well. Seems nobody wins today.

Any one you walk away from, right?

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Gone Finishing

Today was our last day of “summer hours,” and I was so excited to “sleep in” for half an hour to make it in to work by eight. Gary brought Shipley’s donuts instead of our usual, and they tasted very different from our usual. They were good, but I think I like the traditional ones better. I don’t know what they’re doing to their dough, but it just has a different taste and texture, and they’re glazed hot, which seems to melt most of the glaze off.

We sent Kyle to the junior high to finish up the imaging. Tammy was out, so I stayed in the shop to watch the phone that never rang. Gary took Zach and Greg to move some equipment around in a rack first thing, and then I think they spent the rest of the morning at the shop. Greg came back and chatted with me a little bit while I looked at CompTIA Net+ practice tests.

Greg insisted that we were supposed to go home at 11:30, so the other two followed him out. Kyle and I both independently worked until the dictated noon time, but he just left straight from the junior high. Gary ended up coming back with some lunch because he wasn’t sure anyone cleaned up the coffee pot. I had already taken care of it, so I just sat in the breakroom with him while he ate.

I went straight up to Summer’s to pick up Eaddie so we could watch the last episode of Stranger Things. I didn’t realize Autumn would be home, so I relented and invited her along too. Evidently Eaddie told her it was just going to be the two of us, so Autumn pitched a fit before I got there, and then refused to come with us. On the drive home, Eaddie mentioned that Rick really had contacted her for her Social Security number, and said that it was so he could put her in his will. That seemed very sketchy to me, especially as she described him as doing well with his new girlfriend. She seemed to acknowledge that it was weird for him to be so vague about what he was doing, so hopefully nothing comes of that. It’ll still have to be a parent talk soon though.

The season finale was pretty awesome, but I kind of felt like it was longer than it needed to be. Some of the scenes dragged on, and I thought they could have built the story about the main ‘tagonists a bit better. It just felt a little shallow, when otherwise it’s been an excellent show. As soon as we finished, Eaddie rushed me to take her home and wouldn’t even finish the credits because she said Summer told her to clean her room.

We made it back up to their house and Autumn was still lumped in front of the TV watching mindless YouTube videos. Summer eventually made it home, but then took Autumn to the gym while I made her a fresh salad, and fried some cod fillets to make sandwiches for Eaddie and myself. I felt a little bad not having anything explicitly for Autumn, but she didn’t set out any new food, and I cleaned up all of the leftovers in the fridge. She just didn’t want what little was left.

After we ate, Autumn was in a pretty good mood and wanted to play Monopoly, so Summer and I joined her. It was a comparatively fast game, and I went out early to help Autumn secure the win. Then everyone was off to bed.

You sank my battleship!