Tag: work

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Bee Team

I had forgotten about my ice scraper being broken, and had to try and use the bristles of the brush side to sweep away the heavy frost this morning. It went about as well as you would expect. Fortunately I didn’t really lose too much time waiting for it to defrost.

I had forgotten about testing at Oakland this morning, so as soon as I got settled, I packed up to babysit them for about an hour. Of course nothing happened that was even remotely related to us, but everyone felt better for my being there, and it helped me split up my day.

There wasn’t much going on at the shop when I got back. I killed some time until lunch, when Zach, Gary, Thomas, and I went to Morelos. Evidently Greg is the sole reason we haven’t gone there, which is unfortunate, because they’re far superior to La Chiquita.

The afternoon was really slow. I ran home to get a package, thinking it was Summer’s new phone. To my surprise, it was a Mariah Carey beanie from a McDonald’s promotion before Christmas. I had forgotten all about it, and was pretty disappointed. If I had just waited until the end of the day, I would have been much happier about finally receiving it.

Zach, Gary, and eventually Thomas all came back to the shop at the end of the day and just chilled until quitting time. I went home and started some laundry until Summer and Eaddie came to pick me up for Autumn’s band concert. The auditorium was mostly empty, and super cold. It really felt like they were just barely keeping the lights on. It reminded me a lot of the theater experience at the movies right after they re-opened from COVID.

I finished laundry when I got back home. Then I tinkered a bit more on the computer before going to sleep.

Stalled

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Cheesin Crackas

We got to start an hour late today because of the little ice that remained. I took my cheese, crackers, and salami in to work, but Brody and Zach were the only two that really ate any. Greg tried one, and the girls came and had a couple later, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that they really got popular.

Brody and I went along with Zach and Greg to hang a TV in Dwight’s saferoom. I discovered a photo opportunity with a little trampoline, since we had to hang the TV so high. Greg and Brody just kept playing basketball, but we got the job done.

It was nearly lunch time by the time we got back. We sat around a bit, and then Greg and I decided to chase after Brody to Umami, since it was just the three of us going to lunch for the day. I was surprised at how many people they could pack in there now, but the service was super slow. We didn’t even get our order in for the first half hour. When the food finally arrived, I wasn’t at all impressed with any of the flavors of either the food or the sauces they gave me. I saw Josh walk in and snapped a candid photo to send to the group chat, which turned out to be the highlight of my lunch hour.

When we got back to the shop, Zach had everyone go outside to move some stuff in the graveyard again. We cleaned out the kitchen area and put a bunch of stuff on shelves. As we finished, Brody and Jacob mentioned that they had never seen the murder-basement, so I took them across campus to see that. It was even grosser with all the ice and water.

From then, we didn’t have a whole lot longer until our hour-early quitting time. Ben texted that he was at the arts center helping set up for a church gig, so I went over there and made a cable for them. I thought we’d get more time to visit, but he spent most of his time actually working to get things set up. I spent more time talking to Dustin than anyone else. They did seem to really enjoy the cheese and crackers there, and ate nearly half of what was left.

I went by the shop to see Summer on the way home from there. She was just finishing up and wanted to go to the gym, so I was charged with taking the girls home. They were packed and waiting for her when I arrived, so I didn’t even have a moment to breathe before they started fussing for me to take them home. I got some gas on the way, and then warmed up some old leftover shrimp and salmon to clean out their fridge until Summer got home.

The girls kept busy all night, so Summer and I watched some Modern Family until she was ready for bed. I tried not to stay up too late past that, but still ended up losing a fair amount of time hunting for the perfect phone case/mount/charger combination.

It’ll take just a Moment to find a case with Peak Design for this new phone.

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Odd Man In

I showered late last night so I could sleep in a bit and still get my car de-iced this morning. I let it run for about half an hour before I could chip all of the ice off, and then made it in to work. The roads weren’t bad, and I expected at least a few people to show up, but not one other soul was there. I just sat in the dark by myself for a while with some hot Earl Grey and milk.

After a while, I got up to check the weather outside. Justin and the rest of the maintenance crew were there working, so I thought I’d try and catch them huddled together for warmth in their warehouse. The joke was on me though, because they were actually at Sequoyah working on something. I penguin-waddled around a while until I got a text back from Justin that they were headed to the performing arts center to unload a truck that showed up in spite of the ice weather.

It had started to thunder-sleet again, so they decided they were going home when they got back. I followed suit and finished up downstairs, then went to see Summer at Superfast. She had just left though, so I tracked her down at Walmart where we picked up some things for dinner.

I found a couple pork butt roasts on sale, so I started up the smoker and got them going as quickly as I could. The girls eventually came over for the evening, as I struggled to get the grill up to temperature to fully cook the pork. It also seemed like my Meater thermometer was reading low on the ambient temperature, but in any case, the meat spent far too many hours on the grill as I continued to shovel charcoal in. I ended up finishing the roasts in the oven, and completed the meal with baked potatoes and grilled asparagus.

The girls sat around and watched TV until they could eat. The meat was predictably dry and tough, but had a pretty good taste. Everything was pretty salty though, so I’ll have to watch that in the future. I’m sure it won’t be so hard to do when it’s not literally freezing outside. At least I got a nice smoke ring and flavor out of it.

We get an hour late start in the morning, and I’ll take advantage of it with how sore I am from running around all afternoon. It’s also time to bring some smoked cheese and crackers in. I haven’t had any with crackers, and I’m excited about the sausage slices I found.

I’ve got to clean… everything.

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About 180

I got up early today so I could pick Gary up for work. Zach and Thomas went on a trip with Jeff and possibly others to “experience” Avigilon at a couple of other schools, so they were gone pretty much all day. I don’t think anyone was super motivated to work, but I kept occupied. Gary came and spent some time with me, and then Justin came downstairs to talk about maintenance pay. It didn’t seem to take very long to get close to lunch time.

Gary had an appointment to check on his arm, so I took him to that around 11. We thought he was early and wouldn’t actually get to his appointment time until 11:30, but he ended up finishing relatively quickly. I had driven across town to pick up Summer, and we had just gotten some cheese dip at Stoby’s when he called and said he was done. Summer ordered some food for him, and I brought him back to the restaurant for lunch.

The afternoon dragged on a bit. Gary took a half day, so I took him home after dropping Summer off at work. I spent a little time gossiping with the girls up front until Josh came downstairs with a question from one of his teachers in the virtual academy. I took him back to my office for a little research, but couldn’t come up with a real answer from Google’s documentation. Zach and Thomas eventually showed up, and Zach spent a while on my couch before making his way to his office.

Eventually quitting time arrived, and I headed home to try and move my computer around. That went relatively poorly, on account of the questionable reliability of the computer I brought home, the home theater amplifier that wouldn’t receive audio from the computer’s HDMI output, and the awkward size of my monitor and speakers on such a small desk. I thought it was going to be great, but it’s actually pretty awful so far. Now my room is a mess, and I can’t even make it through a blog post without my computer freezing up on me.

But at least it’s quiet…?

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Cap Conference

I didn’t sleep the best last night, but I made it work. I took some sweet rice and a banana for breakfast, but then blended cultures with a cup of Earl Grey with milk. I felt pretty useful when I helped Gary sort a PaperCut issue, and then continued to take Brody’s calls the rest of the day. Thomas came into my office and asked some questions about the last lease pickup that we did, but I felt less good about that conversation. Things lightened up in the afternoon though.

Zach took Gary, Thomas, and me to CJ’s for lunch after not getting to eat there the last time he tried. The food was fine, but the service was slow and I wasn’t really all that hungry. I could have easily skipped, but as soon as I decided that would be what determined when I went out to lunch, the guys started remembering to invite me every single day.

I went by Oakland in the middle of the afternoon, fully forgetting that school would be out an hour early. Fortunately it wasn’t too much of an ordeal getting around, and I eventually made my way back to the shop to end the day. I put Gary’s dual monitor stand together, and discussed the proposed change to the policies regarding job descriptions and how they would be changed in the future.

As soon as I left for work, I had to run home and change so I could meet Summer at the high school for parent-teacher conferences. I didn’t realize that she would have both of the girls there with her, otherwise I would have warned her against it. We needed the opportunity to be frank with their teachers without pressuring any of them to mince their words. Autumn became upset as we spoke to her science teacher, and ended up storming away from the conversation, which I think ultimately benefited us in the long run. Next time we’ll know better than to let her tag along.

I got dragged away a couple of times – once when Charlie wanted to talk about all the people he knew, and again when Ethan wanted to chat CPPC. That got me thinking some more, and I think I’ll have some good things to say during our meeting next week. I caught up with the last conference for Autumn, and then the girls went home so Summer and I could go to the junior high by ourselves.

Eaddie’s conferences went much faster, but she didn’t get out unscathed. Missing work is missing work, and though having the grades helps, there’s no reason to be missing the types of things that she’s missing. Once I took Summer back to her car and we each made it home, we had a video call to chat with the girls about our conversations and expectations. They vocalized an idea to set aside time at home to do homework together, which I think was a great idea, if they could commit to actually doing it every night.

I spent the rest of the evening tinkering with the new bedroom setup. I’m relatively certain the HDMI output on my parents’ old home theater receiver is just outright dead, but I should be able to use it as a dumb analog audio amplifier. I’ll make do.

Sounds good.

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…and Then He Threw My Typewriter

We had a long, quiet meeting this morning while kids were out and staff were only present for “professional development.” I was told that our interim superintendent showed up to one, asked if that was the best they could come up with, declared that it was boring, and promptly left. The longer he’s around, the more I like him.

Zach and I ran some reports and crunched some numbers to get a count of how many Chromebooks we needed to order for next year, and then ended up going out into the graveyard to scan and inventory what was out there. Thomas came out about halfway through it and tried to help make some room to stack them on the shelves by throwing an old typewriter at the ground. It had been a running joke that I was saving it, so of course theatrics ensued and we all had a good belly laugh.

Zach suggested Brick Oven for lunch after he and Gary had a successful night there last night. The service seemed particularly slow, but the food was good. Zach and I split two large pizzas for the leftovers. About an hour and a half later, we made it back to work and Thomas made grumblings about going home early.

Gary needed me to set up some dual monitor stands at Central Office, so I borrowed Zach again to help assemble them before we drove across the street. It took two trips, but we got everyone set up, though it was pretty quiet in the office by that late in the afternoon. No work was done after we finished and made it back to the office. I sat in front of Tammy and chattered loudly with the surrounding offices for the rest of the day.

Eventually Thomas sent everyone home about half an hour early. I headed home and continued my quest to move my old computer desk to the master bedroom. Summer and Eaddie showed up as I was about halfway through the process, and watched TV while I continued to work. Eaddie had a date night at the church, so Summer dropped her off while I tinkered with The Martian playing in the background.

Eaddie texted me when her movie was over, and I picked her up. We stopped by my office briefly so I could get a different computer, and made our way home. Summer never saw her come in and started hollering about it, which Eaddie took as a sign that she should mess with her mother. She had a good laugh, and they both went off to bed while I continued to tinker. Half giving up, I finally went to bed myself.

…which is a very odd sentence to say in this day and age.

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To the Window

I ran a little behind in the rain this morning, but there wasn’t much going on. I helped with a few things, and then just tinkered while I assumed it continued to rain. At one point I went out to get a desktop I saved from the recycling, and came back in with some intense pain in my stomach. It actually made me nauseous for a bit, but I guess it was only a gas bubble in a weird place that eventually just went away.

Five of us loaded into my car to go to Zaxby’s for lunch, and I had a bogo deal for some boneless wings that gave me some to take home for dinner later. While we were sitting there, I noticed they had torn down the old building across the street where the new Splash car wash will go. They didn’t waste any time at all getting that project going, though no one was actually outside doing anything at that moment.

The afternoon was pretty quiet as usual. I ran by Oakland for a bit, then came back to the shop and got my tools to help Kyle run a single line across the hall at Dwight for a new wireless access point in a tiny meeting room. Greg was bored, so he drove us over there and we found an existing, unused line to use. It took a moment to tone it out, but it was already terminated and just hanging there on the switch side. We ended up leaving the last little bit for Kyle to do, since there were some people meeting in the room at the time.

After work, I went straight home and started to clean up the bedroom. The girls came by to change for karate, but didn’t stay long. I spent all night excavating and moving junk into the dining room just so I’d have enough room to move my other desk into the bedroom. We should be able to do that part tomorrow.

Prime time!

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Trashcycle

I made it in to work this morning with some of my last returns to the graveyard. Jason had come over from Atkins to pillage some of our trash before it went out, so I didn’t even spend any time in the office at all in the morning. A couple of big guys with a big box truck showed up, expertly parked at our makeshift loading dock, and loaded 12 gaylords full of our electronic waste. The biggest heartbreak was probably all of the student Lenovos that have been absolute workhorses for us for the past four years, going on five. Sure they were showing their age, but they were still great laptops that were super easy to service.

Jacob, Zach, and I stayed in the graveyard all morning to help move all of those piles of junk. That got us to lunch time, but Gary and I were the only two that didn’t have plans. He and I both independently thought about The Gunslingin’ Burger, so that’s where we went. It took them a typical several minutes to cook everything. The burger was good, but the fries were cheap and uninspired frozen crinkle-cuts. Sixteen bucks later, I had slowed down quite a bit. I kept eyeing the Sonic across the street though, and grabbed a Cherry Limeade on the way back to work.

The afternoon dragged on for what felt like forever. I ended up way more sore from the morning than I expected, plus I just felt super sleepy the rest of the day. I did manage to get a little bit of work done, but otherwise the back of the office was pretty quiet all afternoon. I was the last one out the door, and headed straight home to try and stay up.

I went outside again and moved a log to the side of the house so I could tinker with the siding and figure out a way to hang the windchime. I finally figured out how to pull one of the panels out, and ultimately decided to hang the thing with some velcro. I wasn’t completely convinced that was the best place to hang it though, so I may come back later to move it around again.

I took a short break, then did about a mile and a half on the treadmill while watching Love, Death & Robots. It’s been on my list since it came out, but I didn’t realize how absolutely perfect it would be for me. I love sci-fi shorts, so I burned through three episodes before deciding to give it a rest. I can already tell I’ll be really sad when I run out of episodes.

Xerox, Styrofoam, Taser, Thermos

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Graveyard Dead

I unloaded the last of the old laptops this morning, but I still had some other odds and ends to bring back before recycling day. Gary was back at work again, but now with his arm in a sling. I was worried he wasn’t in great spirits at the start of the day, but as we got into it, he seemed to be doing alright.

A bunch of us went to Taco John’s for Taco Tuesday. Then we had everyone come to the shop afterward to help rummage one last time through all the junk in the graveyard. We pulled out a bunch of old Lenovo laptops, which have been absolute workhorses. I almost hate to get rid of them after all this time.

As we finished up, everyone filtered off. Zach and I ended up in my office at one point, and I decided that I just had to have a Sonic slush. I went around the office to take orders, and then Zach and I picked them up in the middle of an apparent controlled burn across town. It was so hazy that it nearly blocked out the sun.

After work, I took some new scrap home to unload, then cleaned up a bit more junk at the house to take back tomorrow. Summer came by after her workout to help me load some into the car, and then I eventually went up to her house, taco in tow.

The girls had karate and got home late. Autumn seemed to be in a much better mood, but I didn’t see Eaddie all night. I forgot my medication, so I just got ready for bed as quickly as I could.

To parts-store, or not to parts-store…

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Mission: Success

It was pretty cold out this morning, but it turned into a beautiful day for a few hours in the afternoon. Work was pretty uneventful for the most part. Zach was out of the office all day. Greg was in his office making a bunch of racket when he spilled coffee everywhere and decided to mount a TV to the wall as his monitor instead. It really looks like a grandpa setup now.

I was talked into Brangus for lunch, where I tried their grilled chicken sandwich. The chicken didn’t look like much, but basically came with an entire salad’s worth of fixings, and it tasted alright. I think I ate too many peanuts though, and I felt pretty stuffed the rest of the day.

The afternoon was equally quiet, if not moreso. I did go by Oakland for a few minutes, but only to drop off a badge holder. Somehow quitting time still snuck up on me, and I was the last one out.

I went home to change, and then met the girls at the high school to talk to their advisors about their student success plans. Autumn didn’t want me there on account of her hatred toward anything remotely challenging, but warmed up to me later in the evening. Summer wasn’t super impressed with our first visit, but I knew what to expect. Eaddie’s went much better, but then I had to take her to the junior high to look for her lost phone.

The junior high had their own evening plans, though it was basically a ghost town with teachers sitting around bored in the cafeteria. Hope helped us look in the office for Eaddie’s phone, but it wasn’t anywhere to be found. I ran through Taco Bell on the way up to Summer’s, but that took an incredible amount of time for no apparent reason.

Once we got to the house, Eaddie found her phone in her backpack. Autumn had brought a very trying friend home, but they stayed in her room until Autumn had to take her home. Summer had brought Popeye’s home for everyone, but had a ton left over.

When Autumn got back home, we had a short heart-to-heart before she went to do homework. Then Eaddie came and looked through some old photos with me until I went to bed.

Life is just a series of choices, one after the next.