Up and at Em!

I got up a bit early today so I could swing by the shop to get the stuff I needed to run a new HDMI cable first thing this morning. Then I continued on home to get ready before going to the high school with everything. Mason offered to help me, so Jason let me off the hook for the meeting this morning for not having to pull anyone else out with me. It didn’t take very long because it was a short run and there was already some panduit on the wall. Then it was off to take care of other random work orders.

Brice and Amanda wanted Brangus for lunch. Eight of us in total made it there this time. My steak tasted a bit funny but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. On the way back, I stopped by Oakland to give Leslie a new power cable for her speakers. Then I continued on back to the high school.

I left pretty close to on time after a slightly frustrating and loud conversation with Dan, but I think we were both just feeling frustrations from different angles. After I got home, I received an email from him thanking me for the insight, which felt nice. It’s probably worth another conversation in the future after I had some time to kind of stew on it a bit, but I hope I expressed a genuine desire to be helpful without giving in too much.

While I was home, I took care of the fish and then sat for quite a while just relaxing in front of the shrimp tank. The snail population has just exploded, and though I appreciate the lack of algae, I think it may be time to do something about them. No other tank of mine has nearly this many, though I guess the shrimp tank is pretty jungly.

Once the girls got home, I headed up there and heated up the leftover pizza for dinner. Then Summer and Autumn went to sleep while Eaddie and I sat up watching Daredevil. She fell asleep part way through the last episode we watched, and then we both called it a night.

I seriously just taught you how to do something that I learned by myself in middle school, and that’s not even the most frustrating part!

Hackerman

I loaded everything up this morning and headed to central office for a new picture. I went ahead and took a normal photo for the website first, but then the coat went on, the collars went up, and the Matrix glasses and Lazer Tag helmet topped it all off. Josh seemed genuinely excited to be doing something fun and different. He even asked me to stick around to take some other creative shots after he finished portraits for the last few people walking in. I felt a little silly, but I figured it would be worth it. Even Ben walked in and caught my hijinks and had to laugh. As we finished up, Josh made the comment that he wished I had the gun to go with it. I told him I was moving in with him if I got fired for it, retrieved it from the trunk of my car, and we took the shots.

With that out of the way, I stopped by the shop to check on things there, then ran by the middle school to pick up some scrapped Chromebook chargers to use for something at the high school. I ran into Sara there, and she wanted to pick my brain about esports. We ended up talking for quite a while, laughing at how we were both far enough behind that sitting around chatting all day wouldn’t even make a noticeable difference. When I finally left the middle school, I stopped by Oakland to see if I could swipe an unused laptop dock and say hello to everyone for a minute. Then I had to head on to the high school to fix a vo-tech phone I had evidently broken yesterday.

I did a few more things at the high school before heading to Morelos to meet Zach and Allen. The carnitas were pretty great, and I took a taco salad to Summer afterward. Zach bought my lunch because he said it was easier than trying to explain in broken English how to split the check. I stopped by the shop to pick up some things, then headed back to the high school to churn through some more work orders.

The girls took the bus over after school, and I took them home with me so I could take care of some things. My wireless was out, which turned into having to update some things that took too long. I eventually just gave up on having it done, and we went to CiCi’s to meet Summer. She ended up not feeling well enough to eat out, so we got some Little Caesar’s on the way up instead. The girls did their homework, and Summer and I tried to watch the new Rocko’s Modern Life on Netflix. I didn’t love it, but it did satisfy what little nostalgia I had just from remembering the show existed. Finally it was off to a slightly early bedtime.

I’ll have to come back again and dual wield these things.

Third Wind

I went to bed early last night but tossed and turned for a couple hours before I finally fell asleep. It wasn’t too much later that I woke up to the sound of the cat retching in the floor, so I had to get out of bed to clean that up. Then I tossed and turned, wide-eyed from about 3am until about 5:45, when I finally jumped out of bed and drove to Waffle House. I sat at the bar by myself with only one other customer in the restaurant, surprised that there weren’t more people there for breakfast. Running on so little sleep, I knew what I had to get. Bacon cheese burger with hash browns scattered all the way with chili and gravy. It was full-on punishment for the betrayal I felt as my body refused to go to sleep. The cook was a rockstar, but accidentally threw some hash browns on the grill for a regular customer that ended up not wanting them. He offered them to me for free, so I mounded them on top of my already sloppy plate and destroyed it all. No mercy.

It was a super fast breakfast with nobody else there, and I made it home just in time to hear my alarm clock start buzzing. It was go-time. Full morning routine and out the door a full 10 minutes early. I made it to school and got up into the building way early and jumped right in. Then I was assaulted by the library when some testing didn’t go as planned. Failures exaggerated, our pseudo hero jumped in to “save the day” and “take the credit.” Gary showed up in the middle of it all and had to go hide in my office for all the screaming.

With that crisis out of the way, Gary and I wandered around vo-tech taking care of phones. The Mac internet issue ended up not being my problem, which was nice. Then it was back up to the office for our second crisis. Just as class let out, one of our internet circuits went out for just a few minutes and I had a line of people out my door wanting to know what we were doing to fix it. Without even having enough time to identify the failure, we had people wanting to know an ETA for a fix so they could plan their next period. Gary rage-quit and went back to his office for good reason, but I was no stranger to dealing with people in a self-induced panic. Boom, more work orders closed.

I continued on with work orders until lunch when Allen invited me to Smackin’ Wings. I met him there, along with Gary, Zach, and Ben. We had entertainingly, lovingly hateful conversations, making sure we made it fully around the department. Then I had to load up a computer lab worth of computers to take to the high school. Allen helped me move them to the dock to load them into my car, and then I cut him loose to do his own things. I got lucky and ran into my intern while looking for a dolly to bring the computers inside, then got a bit of sass from my mohawked maintenance guy for knocking on his dungeon door. I get personal space, but I still felt slighted. I may have to take his internet.

Ben met us to help set up the computer lab, which ended up taking the rest of the day. We fought the switch configuration a bit, and even had trouble toning out a line, and ended up switching ports in the room for one that was labeled at the switch. All done except for the deployments. Then I closed out a few more things before walking out.

Finally home, I just continued my work streak and cleaned up all of the aquariums. It looks like Murderface has a bit of hole-in-the-head, but I’m not certain. Gotta keep his water changed more often, especially since I never test it. Those snails are messy. Once everything was cleaned up, I headed to my parents’ house to pick up some props for picture day. Then it was off to Summer’s for promised head scratchies to ensure absolute sleep tonight.

All the angles.

There’s No Good Time

I made it in to work just a little early this morning, still pretty groggy from waking up a few times last night. I made up my own parking space in the grass again, but I can already tell it’s going to be trouble when it rains. I’m not looking forward to it at all, but I guess I’ve got the sick leave to burn if I wanted to just not work every time the weather is bad.

I spent a little time on some stuff in my office, then wandered around the campus for a while to clean up some work orders. Zach stopped in since he was there working on something else, and we went down to the ATCC for a bit to scope out a couple things. Then I left him to go close out a couple things at the multipurpose facility before lunch. Summer wanted to join us for the $5 salad bar, but we had to wait until 1 o’clock for her. I picked Zach up on the way off campus, then we got her from the shop, and made our way to Ruby Tuesday. Our server goofed and Zach got a free meal just because he didn’t want to ring out another guest because of some fraud prevention system. To me that sounded a bit broken, but we tipped him for it.

After dropping everyone off, I headed to the shop for a bit to set up a new laptop and then research some of my more time consuming work orders. Ben eventually came around the shop and asked when we could set up a desktop computer lab, and I just had to tell him there is no good time because I feel like I’m drowning in things to do as it is, so we’d just have to make the time and sacrifice something else. Then we sat down and he showed me the system to create IVR systems in Avaya. It looked really fun, and I can see myself borrowing some of our outbound numbers in the future, assuming I ever find any free time ever again.

I worked a little late to finish making the user accounts for the new vo-tech phone lines, and then went by my parents’ house for just a few minutes. They weren’t really doing much and I wasn’t hungry since we had a big, late lunch, so I sat there for a few minutes before Dad decided we could move the boat onto the paver stones I bought. We couldn’t really push it around by hand, so we actually had to hook it up to my hitch and drive it a couple feet, but it wasn’t too bad. It was hot and humid outside though, so by the time that was over I was ready for bed. I went home and laid down for a while before getting back up to finish my evening routine, then crashing a few hours early.

For Allen Dot Hopgood, press 1.
For Amandy Bolton, press 60,000.net.
Para Pancho, oprima el numero tres.
For Customer Relations, push all of his buttons.

On the Subject of Drowning

I got out a bit early this morning to bring Doug home after dropping his car off at the Cogswell Collision Center. He had a little fender bender the other day and asked me to give him a ride back. I actually made it to work just a few minutes late, which I thought was pretty impressive. It was all downhill from there.

All day I felt like I was just scattered and scrambling to make sense of it all. Ultimately I got several things closed out, but I’m still getting covered up with work orders and I haven’t had a chance to touch any of the 1:1 devices. The stack of repairs isn’t getting any shorter, and the anxiety is mounting. I didn’t even take a lunch, and opted for a bit of Soylent halfway through the day instead. It got me to the end of the day without too much trouble, which I guess was ideal.

Eaddie took the bus to the high school so I wouldn’t have to get her from the shop, and we went to my parents’ house for more spring rolls. I helped slice up the smoked pork and shrimp while Eaddie played on her phone. We didn’t waste any time, and ate as soon as everything was ready. Julie came by and finished up her beef spring rolls too.

I decided to take Eaddie out for ice cream after dinner, and we settled on Bocadillos for something different. She got an ice cream cone with mint chocolate and Nutella. I got a churro with strawberry cheesecake ice cream. It was all delicious and expensive. Then we stopped by my house so I could change before making our way to their house for the night. Summer spent all evening at Tech for some kind of involvement fair, so we made another stop to get her some Taco John’s for dinner. I was upset to hear they “couldn’t do Potato Olés” for some reason, but I don’t think they charged the whole combo price either.

It sounds like they’re still shaking things up at Splash, so it’ll be exciting to see what happens next. Right now all I can think about is my pillow.

House slippers in the summer just make me sweat.

Ah, the Old Bait-and-Switch

Ben and I were supposed to go take care of a few older pending things at the high school today, but instead I ended up getting a scolding for not listing things on GovDeals during our busiest time of the year as we drove to the junior high to do just that. I definitely never meant for Heather to feel any anxiety about what was left, but it just didn’t seem like a priority to me when she was coming into the job not knowing how to do most of it anyway. I did feel tremendously guilty for not having my things out first, but I also felt an obligation to wait for Dale to leave before I started shuffling things around. The entire ordeal just kind of felt like a big mess to me, and I’ve felt nothing but bad about it all for the several months it’s been since I had been advised of the changes.

In any case, he and I spent all morning cleaning up her office before we went to Bocadillos for lunch. He had never been, and like the rest of my week, nothing at all sounded good to me. I almost feel like a tiny part of me has died and is just over food altogether. I’m sure that won’t last, but it’s a weird feeling at the moment.

After lunch, we finished up with what we were doing and then grabbed a bunch of phones to deliver to vo-tech. We didn’t realize – and nobody could tell us – that they had already delivered all of the phones to the campus, and even set them in place for the most part, which was another aggravation of mine. You’d think the project manager would have known, or at least would have sent the same crew to complete the job so they could report accurately what had been done. That’s not how we do things though.

I left work a bit late after all of that, never having the chance to complete any of my work. I went by Summer’s shop to see her, but she was super busy. The girls were there, but they didn’t seem bothered by my presence either. I ended up just slowly uninstalling a bunch of old crap from the shop’s laptop to try and help its poor performance. When it was all over, I felt so sweaty from just existing there that I had to go home to dry off.

I started immediately on just about anything I thought I could accomplish. I cleaned up some email, did some research, cleaned up some things, paid some bills, and finally made it to Summer’s house just in time for absolutely nothing. Everyone was asleep and I kind of wished I had just stayed home where I could have at least continued cleaning while I was still in the mood. Instead, I sat in the dark for my evening routine and eventually went to bed.

How dissatisfying.

The Walkabout Campus

I headed in to work just a few minutes early today after waking up a few minutes before my alarm. I still felt tired, but not as bad as earlier in the week. I went by the shop first to have Jason submit warranty claims for a couple laptops. Then I ended up chatting with Ben for a while before heading to the high school.

I didn’t start in my usual place by going to the office. Instead, I had to go to the old field house to set up a printer we removed before the renovation. I drove around a bit at first, but eventually parked at the front of the building and walked around campus for most of the day. I went to the arena a couple times, back out to the field house, over through vo-tech, and up and around the main building. I still haven’t had a whole lot come up, but I’m feeling a bit of anxiety again about repairing laptops. I spent a decent amount of time yesterday doing just that, and I don’t want to get sucked into doing too much there and not focusing on learning the things I really want to learn.

Nothing really jumped out at me for lunch, so I just snacked on leftover donut holes most of the day while walking all over the place. I didn’t leave too late either, and only have a couple more hours to work tomorrow to hit my 40 hours for the week. I almost feel like I should be more stressed, but the long hours haven’t bothered me too much. I’m just physically very tired all the time. I need to just commit to a Soylent diet for a while to see if it helps.

I relaxed at home for a little while before heading up to Summer’s for dinner. I was going to make chicken salads, but ended up making everyone clean up the super old mashed potatoes and ribs that were left over from forever ago.

Happy fridge; happy belly.

Mutha, Don’t Wanna Go to School Today!

This was probably one of the most relaxing first days of school I’ve experienced. The drive was short and I came in late enough that traffic wasn’t an issue, though parking was a bit of a struggle. They handed out a few more laptops, but we still have plenty ready to go for now. I’m still not sure how many total I’ll have extra as spares. I didn’t really have many new work orders coming in, but I tried to be accessible for any major crises. At one point I did have to go to the library to help reset student account passwords.

The seniors had a big breakfast from the parents, and I didn’t realize until late, but they brought all the leftovers to the lounge. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many donuts in one place before. They also had pans of biscuits and sausage patties. I wish I had gotten in there earlier for breakfast. Summer came by for lunch and brought 50 cent corn dogs.

I didn’t have to work too late, so I came home and started working on the aquariums. I spent hours cleaning and finally trimming some with my new clippers. They’re quite a bit better than I expected, so I may end up getting some more. I need to set up a better place to grow out in quantity so I can really aquascape something nice, rather than planting a few stems at a time the way I have been.

I think I’d rather go outside and play, yeah!

They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be.

I had to go to the shop this morning to pick up some stuff to reroute lines for Ethan this afternoon. It was a relatively quick stop, and then I dove right back into work orders. I really feel like I crushed it for being the start of the year, but then another part of me knows that the laptop returns are about to start rolling in. I’m both surprised and not surprised by the amount of specialty software I’ve had to install. It’s been almost exclusively the math department, which is convenient because that’s where my office is located. I did get stuck on a couple of more difficult tasks, but all in all I was pretty pleased with myself. It’s been nice not feeling so stressed about things, and getting to spend a little more time building rapport with my new staff. I’m still getting emails and personal requests from my old staff too though, which I don’t mind because I do miss them.

I worked right through lunch today, finishing off a bottle of Soylent along with a really gross chocolate sea salt RXBAR. I cannot express enough how not good it was. The whole thing just wanted to gum up my mouth and stick to my teeth everywhere. It was like chewing tar, except it tasted bad too. I didn’t read the label until after I ate it, and I never would have pegged it for chocolate. If anything, it reminded me of the homemade dehydrated bananas that Mom and Bâc Ván used to make. They weren’t chips like you get in the store. They were whole, but peeled bananas, dehydrated to look like shriveled up fingers. The outsides got dark, but not as dark and brown as the insides. I actually kind of liked the bananas though.

Ethan was a bit late, so I finished up some other stuff while I waited. I wasn’t about to do anything without him after he destroyed his own lab infrastructure. Even getting lucky and only needing to rearrange the lines that were already in his room, we burned about five hours getting it all set up again. I got to mess around with the switch configuration again too, which is making me feel a bit more comfortable with that aspect of the job. I actually had a pretty good time chatting with him too, which was nice. I stayed pretty late finishing everything up, but he was there too. It’s nice to see someone else with a similar dedication.

When I finally left, I stopped by the house to change really quick, and then ran straight up to Summer’s to start cooking some chicken for tacos. I feel like the tacos are relatively easy and healthy, but I still have a quantity issue. It’s like I just eat them too fast and don’t realize I should’ve stopped 12 tacos ago.

Hey Google, play my back to school playlist.

Walking the Land

I went to the shop first thing this morning because I wasn’t certain of Jason’s plans. It ended up being unnecessary, but at least I got to see Brice sitting around eating breakfast after being out for the past couple weeks.

I rolled into the high school and jumped right into things, finally making it out to the multipurpose facility to check on some things. Eventually I made it inside to start closing work orders, and I did a fair job of catching up. There’s still a lot to do, but at least it feels achievable. Lunchtime came around out of nowhere, so I went to Arby’s for a quick meal before coming back early and diving right back in.

If nothing else, today served to better familiarize myself with the layout of the campus. There is still a ton of unexplored territory, and a surprising number of young teachers of questionable caliber. I suppose time will tell, but I had such hopes. I guess statistically I really haven’t had to visit that many rooms to hook everything up from scratch.

After staying late to take care of a couple things at the MPF, I headed home to cool off. It was incredibly hot and humid today, and I was surprised to see the Hickey pool closed and partly drained. Beth was in town for their father’s birthday, but it wasn’t long before Summer said they were leaving their parents’ house and wanted to go to Stoby’s for dinner.

Dinner was uneventful aside from my taco salad that was served with a paltry smattering of chips. Beth took the girls home while I went to the junior high to snag an old discarded switch to set up at Summer’s shop. It didn’t take long at all to get them set back up, and everything was working again. It kind of really made me want to pursue a real IT job with them, but I don’t really know enough about their existing business structure and Summer’s too busy trying to hold onto the reigns of her own position.

Finally home for the evening, I spent too much time browsing cheap Chinese goods that I’ve been meaning to buy for too long. I got a small order out, so in a few months I’ll have a surprise delivery that I’ve forgotten all about.

I wonder what a real IT job is like.