Category Archives: work

The Rise and Fall of the Turf

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Two more months have gone by, and we’re now officially well into the hottest part of the summer in Georgia. I’m quite settled into the work-from-home routine – though I’m actually at the office today because my internet crapped out at home and AT&T isn’t sending a technician until Friday. Yes, I do have a mobile hotspot, but it’s just barely sufficient for doing my job at home.

The routine for the last few months has been pretty much set in stone. I get up at 5:00, feed the cats, drink a cup of coffee while watching the news or some YouTube videos. Shortly before 6:00, I’ll head out for a 5-mile walk, which gets me home at just after 7:00. At that point, I’ll have another cup of coffee (decaf, by the way – always), will watch the tube a bit more, and might eat something for breakfast – egg white omelet, bowl of cereal, or some fruit. As often as not, I’ll skip the food altogether. At around 7:30, I’ll take a shower and start work. Somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00, I’ll turn off the computer, feed the cats again, take another walk, put something on the stove for dinner, and drink a couple of rocks glasses of bourbon while looking at Facebook or playing a game on my phone – generally sitting in the screen house on my deck, though it’s recently gotten so hot that it’s uncomfortable to sit outside for too long.

The “Bourbon Barn” on my deck – a screen-house with removable wind/rain panels – is where I’ve taken to spending most evenings. I took this picture the day the roof was being replaced, which explains the rope on the roof.

After an hour or so, I’ll wander back inside, eat whatever was cooking, watch part of a movie or something, and generally hit the sack before 9:00. Lather, rinse, repeat. It really shouldn’t be surprising that I quite often do not know what day it is. Seriously – it’s not unusual at all for me to start the day by saying, “Alexa, what day is it?”

There are some highlights and banner days, however. For example, I had my gutters replaced last Thursday. After getting quotes from three different roofers to do the job – and after all three of them gave me quotes, but never followed up to schedule the work even when I sent them emails, I called a fourth company who was recommended by my bartender on Sunday. They came out and took pictures on Monday, gave me a quote on Tuesday, and did the job Thursday. The gutters look great, the work was done in less than three hours, and I’m not sure why the first three companies didn’t think it was worth three hours of their time to make $1500.

Another example: yesterday was Tuesday the 11th – and on Tuesday the 11th, my new retaining wall was completed. While it was expensive, it came out looking great and I’m confident that the erosion that has claimed about a foot and a half of my backyard over the last 20 years will now stop. I ended up hiring a hardscraper who lives in my neighborhood, and he went to town: 85-pound blocks, a few tons of gravel, two large drainage tubes, another ton of fill dirt, another ton or two of large rocks….the upper yard is not going anywhere anytime soon.

The new retaining wall shortly after it was finished.

The biggest disappointment with the new wall, however, is that my lawns were absolutely destroyed by the equipment and materiel needed to build it. As you can see in the picture, both the lower and upper yards are now little more than dirt. I’m fairly certain that it’s too late in the year to try planting grass, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Wendell (the guy who built the wall) really wanted me to hire him to resod the yard, but I’m not doing that anytime soon. The plan all along has been “Roof then wall then floors,” and I’m sticking to it. My floors – at least downstairs – are getting replaced next.

And I think the upstairs will get replaced sooner rather than later, too. Since I’m going to be working out of the house for the long term, I really want to get my upstairs office into better shape, starting with a new floor. It’s okay right now, but I need to make it feel less like a spare bedroom and more like an office, so I might as well start at the bottom, rip out the floor, repaint it, replace the lights, then put in a new floor and start getting the furniture laid out like an office. I think it will help me put some distance between home and work, and make the days a little less monotonous.

I did drive up to the NC mountains last weekend – mainly to find out if they were open and people could camp there again. I went to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and drove along the forest road next to the Little Santeetlah River, where all of my favorite spots did indeed have people in them. So that’s a good thing. I stopped for 45 minutes or so just to sit by the river and soak up the sound of quiet. Now that I’ve established that the place is open, a couple of friends and I may hike up to Bob Bald in the next couple of weeks and spend a night up there. That should be really nice.

Weight Lifted

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Went to a vascular surgeon on Monday morning to get the ol’ carotid arteries checked out. That’s something I never dreamed that I’d be saying as little as 4 months ago, but apparently 2020 is just going to be one of those years where weird shit comes at you from every direction. Lose control of your eyes in January. Find out you’ve got carotid stenosis in February. Get hit by a global pandemic in March. Develop chest tightness in April.

Can’t say that I’m really looking forward to May.

However, the visit to the vasculatorium© turned out okay for me. Got my temp taken (98.4, I think), BP (140/85, I think – heart rate was 76), weight (170). Got to talk to about 14 different people, none of whom was the doctor that I made the appointment with. Got to regale them all with stories of why I went to the ER in January, and two of them made me smile and pull their fingers and raise my eyebrows and stick out my tongue. Both approved of my performances and declared that I haven’t had a stroke.

Then I went in for an ultrasound of the arteries, and that was pleasant enough experience. Had a lovely technician basically massage my neck for 10 minutes and then leave.

At long last, the actual DOCTOR doctor came into the room…and made me smile and pull his fingers and raise my eyebrows and stick out my tongue, before approving of my performances and declaring that I haven’t had a stroke. I was beginning to wonder if anyone there had bothered to read the reports from the ER saying, “no stroke.”

The dude finally got around to my carotids and told me that, yeah, there was some blockage in both. He drew a very bad representation of a carotid artery on a piece of paper and showed me where said blockage was. Then he said that it was under 50% in both of them, no surgery, come back and check again in a year.

I said, “That’s it?” Yep. That’s it. I asked what the actual percentage of blockage is, and he said, “Under 50%. That’s about as specific as I can get.” I asked if either artery is more blocked than the other, and he said, “No. About the same.” I asked what would happen if it gets to be more than 50% and he said, “If it’s under 80%, you’ll need to check it every 6 months. If it’s over, then we’ll talk about surgery.”

So I made an appointment for April, 2021, and I left. And I felt much better than I have since the first week of February, when my GP made it seem as if my carotids were both about to explode. I’ve got another appointment with him in a few weeks and I might tell him he’s a jerk…or I might just get a prescription refill and be on my way. In either case, I won’t be as stressed as I was a week ago.

In other news, the family had a zoom conference call on Sunday afternoon, and it became apparent that I need to get remote access into Dad’s computer so that I can get him set up correctly should we do it again (and I hope we do, as it was enjoyable).

I’ve been trying to get some estimates from landscapers to see what can be done with my back yards. So far, I’m having a hard time getting any of them to call me back. Guess they don’t want money?

Insurance agent is supposed to be coming to look at my roof next Monday – I’d really love to get THAT fixed.

Oh yeah – Right Networks acquired another company yesterday – Rootworks. As I understand it, that acquisition puts us in a pretty good spot to become the go-to cloud company for any CPA firms with fewer than 300 users. I’ve decided to be positive for a change and to believe that I’ll be able to work at RN until I retire. Maybe not as lucratively as I’d once assumed, but comfortably enough, I guess. And if the house has a new roof and good-looking backyard, maybe I can even get a nice chunk of change for it if I want to move to a shack in the mountains.

Magnificent Saturday

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I felt pretty good this morning, which was nice – because the weather today has been fantastic. It rained very early (like between 0600 and 0800), and I sat on my deck in my bathrobe, drank coffee, and read my phone during that time. In addition to the rain, there was a pretty strong breeze and it felt amazingly like sitting under a tarp during a camping trip. Very relaxing and a nice prelude to the rest of the day.

I should mention that the featured photo for this entry is one that I took of sunrise over Lake Superior in October, 2016. It was at Au Sable Lighthouse at Pictured Rocks National Seashore, and a few hours after I took that shot, I was on a call with my (AT&T) boss and getting the first inkling that my job was in jeopardy. One of the most beautiful mornings juxtaposed with one of the worst. I need to get back to Pictured Rocks, though. I haven’t been since that autumn, and I don’t want to conflate that wonderful place with bad memories.

After the rain had stopped, I put on a shirt and some pants, along with a windbreaker, and headed out for a brisk walk. “Brisk” in the sense that it was still a little chilly – probably 60 degrees. I didn’t set any speed records, but after two days of not really walking (and about six of those days in the last two weeks), I really wanted to just have a nice long walk. I got 5.5 miles in and averaged about 15.5 minutes/mile. I’ll take that every time.

Back at the house, I jumped into yard work. Mowed both of the back yards, as well as the front-side one, cut down a lot of weeds and shrubs in the back of the house, cleared crap out from around the deck, and fixed the “blow it all out” hole on my lawnmower. The cover had come off – what a pain THAT was to get back on! It was a perfect day for this kind of work. Sunny, high sixties, breezy…one of the nine perfect Georgia days that I’ve written about previously.

In the afternoon, I played around with my router a bit and discovered that it will do an admirable job of cutting some miter-jig grooves for my table saw, so I’m going to try to do that tomorrow. I also did a few loads of laundry and took another 2.5-mile walk in the afternoon, during which I tried to take a picture of a squirrel standing straight up in the middle of the road. Said squirrel took off as soon as I brought my phone up, but I did managed to get him with all four little feet off of the ground…which was nice.

For dinner, I cooked the first of my Rastelli’s pork chops. Like the chicken and salmon before it, the pork chop was fantastic. I took a chance on Rastelli’s a couple of weeks ago and put in an order for $140 worth of chicken, salmon, and pork – mainly because I saw a good review for them and because I wanted to stock up on meat that I could eat without health concerns. I’m now a devotee. When this stuff runs out (a couple of months, probably), I’ll be making another order.

Throughout today, I’ve been running scripts to delete old profiles from all of my firms. This will result in them all having less data on our servers and they’ll save money because of it. They’ll probably never know I’ve done this for them, and that’s fine. I really just wanted to script something cool, and this fits the bill. I’ll continue running the scripts tomorrow and I should be able to have all of my firms cleaned up by Monday. Then I’ll have to come up with something else to interest me.

Looking forward to sleeping well tonight. This has been a really good day.

Red Meat

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I ate a steak tonight! First red meat I’ve had since January – since “the incident,” to be more precise. It’s probably an abundance of caution bordering on paranoia, but I’ve limited myself to fish since then (with chicken once or twice). Made some peas, carrots, and mushrooms to go with the steak. Everything turned out pretty good! Back to fish now.

The temperature today plunged back down to the low 50s. It had been in the 80s for the last few days, so it really felt a bit chilly this morning – I had the windows in the office open for a while (until it started to rain), but I eventually turned on the heat for a while. Strange, because I’d just switched from heat to air conditioning on Saturday.

I did manage to get some decent work done today – mind still wandered a bit, but I generally stayed in control of it. I also put in an extra hour just to be sure. Also played around with my Webcam quite a bit, and figured out how to drop “exotic” backgrounds into my video meetings – so instead of just me in my office, people can now see me in front of Lake Ahmic or the NC mountains or in a snow storm on the shore of Lake Huron. That was kinda fun.

Planning to hit the sack early tonight. Might as well take advantage of the cooler weather and get 8-9 hours of (hopefully) deep sleep. Nothing else to do in this “shelter in place” bit anyway. I could go for a walk, I guess, but I got nearly 6 miles in this morning, and I don’t want to push my feet any harder than that.

A Day in the Life

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Since I’m being the responsible, “socially-distanced” individual (working from home), I figured I might as well try to update a post throughout the course of a day at work. I’m a few hours late – started work at about 7:30 this morning – but I’ll gloss over those three hours and keep things updated going forward.

I started the day by kicking Joshua out of my office chair. He’s decided that it’s his. I’ve decided that he can have it when I don’t want it; and, since I’m bigger than he is, I get the last word. He and Boo are currently sharing the cat tree by the front window.

Lazy Morning Kitty Tree

Spent some time BS’ing via Microsoft Teams (chat) with the other leads in Alpharetta – who’s feeling sick, who’s buying ammunition (not kidding!), how are teams are handling the enforced isolation, etc. While doing this, I went through my team’s ticket list trying to identify cases that could be resolved or needed updates. I also started working on the cases that were auto-assigned to me overnight.

At around 9:00, the “Open Office Hours – Coffee Chat” meeting started. This is something that my boss put together on Monday as daily meeting for anybody who wants to join it (webcams, microphones, and chat) just to combat the feeling of isolation that some folks might be having. It’s a good idea and people seem to enjoy it. Early on – from 9:00 to 9:15 or so – pretty much everyone who’s working will be in the meeting, just to shoot the shit about nothing or to ask questions about specific tickets. After that, people just start to drop out and get back to focusing on their work.

One of the tickets that I’ve been working on since 9:30 or so has to do with a user email account that’s having problems. I’ve been unable to attach to it with my own testing account, which is a red flag. Other users have said that they’ve gotten kickback messages when trying to send something to the problem address, but I’ve been unable to replicate that. So I’m waiting on a few more details from the users before opening a case with Microsoft.

Right now, I’m putting together call and ticket statistics from yesterday for my team.

Got the stats out. Now I’m trying to coach one of my people on what sounds like an incredibly simple ticket (a user can’t get connected to a Citrix session), and it’s like pulling teeth to get my person to follow simple troubleshooting steps. We’ve been dealing with a lot of clients having problems getting set up to work from home this week – everything from, “My monitors look funny,” to “How do I print to the office?”

The answer to that last question, should you be wondering, is, “You don’t. And why on earth would you want to?”

At any rate, if a user can’t get connected, there are only about 3 things it could be. I could jump into the call and do this work for my direct report, but I really want her to figure it out on her own. I get amazingly frustrated when my people don’t follow the simple troubleshooting steps that I preach to them every week.

20 minutes later and she still hasn’t figured it out. She also hasn’t answered any of the three troubleshooting questions that I put in front of her. I know that she’s expecting me to jump into her call, jump onto the remote machine, and fix it for her. It’s not going to happen. I have a meeting in 10 minutes – ironically enough, one concerning how to deal with “uncomfortable” discussions with our consultants – and she’s either going to have to figure it out by herself or get some help from the rest of the team.

She did end up getting help from one of my senior consultants. As expected, it was an incredibly simple fix (literally – click “Reset”).

The meeting was a rundown of new procedures for issuing warnings (verbal, documented, written), PIPs (performance improvement plans), and terminations if the warnings and the PIP don’t work. Happy stuff.

Speaking of happy stuff, I’ve learned that a large number of sporting/gun stores in the metro area are running out of guns and ammunition. This bothers me. A week ago, we were in a normal society. Now we’ve got people stockpiling firearms? Believe it or not, I registered at Adventure Outdoors – literally the largest gun store in the world. Perhaps I have to finally pull the trigger (no pun intended) and buy an actual gun, rather than counting on the BB pistol I’ve got to deter people.

We’re now in a possible SysInc (System Incident), although it looks like it might be restricted to a couple of cities in Texas where ISPs are having trouble. Not surprising, since the load on them from people suddenly deciding to work from home is probably pretty intense.

Chamberlain has replaced Joshua and Boo on the Kitty Tree. Joshua has – you guessed it – settled into my office chair. I’m standing. Good thing I brought home the Varidesk when I moved from the office!

Chamberlain loves to sleep near an open window

This afternoon has been fairly slow. We’re still having clients call in regarding disconnects, but it’s become widely known that multiple ISPs are having problems and there’s isn’t really much we can do about it.

My team has chugged away and we’ve gotten back down under 30 tickets, though how long that will last I don’t know. A couple of my guys will be working tomorrow, so that will help. Call volume will be low and I hope they can snipe some of the low-hanging fruit on our ticket board.

At 3:00, we had “Beer Cart Friday – Virtual Style,” which was interesting. Normally on Fridays, we push a literal beer cart around the office and everyone grabs a beer. Today, we all just took pictures of ourselves holding up beers (or a shot of bourbon in my case) and shared them in our internal bulletin board.

I’m just wrapping things up now – helping some younger consultants with tickets that they’re working for my clients, finding documents for them, etc. Most of my team has gone offline for the day, and I’m not far from joining them. So I’ll wrap this up here. Happy Friday!

Virtual Beer Cart Friday

Pandemic!

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Been quite a while since I did anything with this, and I’ve been keenly aware of that fact. Oddly enough, a bunch of stuff has happened since I left wrote an entry, and I wasn’t completely sure how I wanted to approach writing about it. So let’s just jump into everything.

While driving into work on Tuesday, January 27th, I slowly began to realize that I couldn’t see. Fortunately, I was almost at work by the time I figured out what was happening. It wasn’t that I was going blind – my eyes basically just stopped working together. My right pupil was larger than my left, it was basically impossible to focus on anything that wasn’t directly in front of me, and if I moved my head (hence having to focus on something ELSE right in front of me), it’d take probably 5 seconds to get that new focus.

As I said, I didn’t really figure out that this was happening until quite a bit later. I just knew that it was getting more and more difficult to really see anything. That may help explain how it is that I got myself to work, told my boss something was going on, looked up directions to the hospital, and drove myself there. I told the woman at the front desk that I thought I might be having a stroke, and she lost no time in getting me through the doors and sitting me in front of a doctor.

And another doctor. And some nurses. And some other people. They squeezed and shone lights on me and gave me a couple of CT scans and plugged about 500 wires into me and asked a bunch of inane questions (true story – I told them I was having double vision and they asked, “In which eye?”), and about three hours later told me that I had high blood pressure but no signs of a stroke. The also said that they wanted to admit me and give me an MRI, but I’d already promised Jenny (she was in the Galapagos at the time) that I’d take care of her cats – and I didn’t know what this was costing me – so I declined and somehow drove myself home.

It was during the drive home (white-knuckled) and while sitting there the rest of the afternoon that I actually figured out what my eyes were doing (as described above). Needless to say, I was kind of freaking out for most of the day, but I managed to let my boss and co-workers know that I wasn’t dead and went to bed pretty early.

Wednesday morning, my eyes were back to normal. I took the day off and picked up a couple of prescriptions that the hospital had given me for hypertension and made an appointment with a GP for a follow-up.

Do you remember when I said, near the end of my last post, that I really needed to cut down on my smoking? Yeah – I went ahead and quit that. Coming up on two months now. I’m also walking (rather quickly) a bit over 5 miles every morning and taking drugs for hypertension and cholesterol. I’m also not eating anything that tastes remotely good (no sugar, no salt, no cholesterol, no fat, no carbs, blah, blah, blah).

The GP wants me to go see a cardiologist about carotid stenosis (blockage in my carotids), but I’m not ready for that yet. The worst part of things now is that one of the BP meds occasionally gives me vertigo – and every time it happens, I start to wonder if the whole thing is starting up again.

That can’t be good for my blood pressure.

In other news…THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE! Yes. Coronavirus. COVID-19. The big one. Or not. Who knows? All I know is that everything in Atlanta (and much of the world) has been canceled, and we went from talking about maybe working from home a bit to EVERYBODY WORK AT HOME ALL THE TIME – over the course of 3 days. So that’s what we’re doing. I straightened out my office, brought home a standing desk and my laptop, and made sure that all of my people brought home whatever they needed to be efficient from home. Just like that, all of us are remote for the foreseeable future.

My work-from-home setup, featuring a stand-up desk

The remote working isn’t really a big deal – I’ve been doing it a couple of days per week anyway – but the fact that I’m at home all the time now is going to get really boring really fast. I’ve got a project, which I’m calling “Campmachine 3.0,” to keep me occupied for a while. Not sure how long it will last. I’m basically building a bed and some cabinets in the back of my car in anticipation of going car camping sometime after tax season. At this point, what I’ve built is perfectly functional (helps a great deal when I’m bringing home groceries!), but it doesn’t look “finished,” so I might just consider what I’ve got to be a prototype and built the whole thing again better. That’s assuming that the Home Depot stays open long enough for me to get the material that I need.

I bought a Dremel tool a few weeks ago. Now THAT’S a good time! I’m still very green with it. Not sure of all the cool things that it can do, but I know it can do more than cut the ends off of screws that go all the way through a piece of wood (which is all I’ve used it for). I have a feeling that I’ll be doing more with it as I get more bored.

I’ve also been watching a couple of woodworking channels on YouTube, and I’m definitely going to build a Joiner’s table to replace the aging worktable that I put in my garage 15 or so years ago. I’ve got the plans and everything. I’m really looking forward to building that. I probably should do that before I do any other projects, to be honest.

One last bit of news is that this blog may be moving yet again. Or it may not. I’m definitely doing something with it, but haven’t decided exactly what. I’ve started a new domain called TomsBrain.com, both because I don’t want my personal blog so closely associated with the football site and also because I wanted a non-gmail address that was more “me” than my hotmail address, but not all-the-way “professional” like my Outlook address is. For those of you who didn’t know I had multiple addresses, you haven’t been paying attention – and I have others that are basically “stealth” addresses that you’ll probably never know about.

Anyway, I liked the idea of “tom@tomsbrain.com,” so I got that setup. The new domain is indeed built on a WordPress structure; in theory, I could just move this whole thing there and call it good. I thought about that. And then I thought, “What if I use the TomsBrain.com address to apply for a job? Do I want complete strangers who might be looking to hire me to see a personal blog?”

And I’m not sure that I do. But I might want them to see a less personal blog. Not necessarily professional, but maybe more structured, with more formal writing. Maybe articles about brass banding or thoughts on various technical issues or even just day-to-day nonsense, but written for a larger, general, audience (as this is most certainly not). That’s a decent idea…but what do I do with the last 15 years’ worth of stuff that’s already here?

Don’t know. I might move it (truth be told, I already HAVE copied it) to the new site, but set it up in a more protected way, allowing access only to a select few. Or I might just archive it, allowing access to nobody other than me – no one wants to go back and read my old stuff anyway, right?

Anyway, it’s all still up in the air. I’m working on the design for TomsBrain.com now, and I’ll decide what it’s going to be – and where this blog will fit in – after I’ve got that taken care of. For now, this is still the only place to see all this literary nonsense.

Merry Christmas

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It seems as if every time I sit down to write something here, two things are true: My dad’s reminded me that I’m a complete slacker about updating my stuff, and at least two months have gone by since I last did so.

So, in response to an email that I got from Dad last night, I shall now update this tome…after a four-month hiatus this time.

I did not make it to Michigan for my fall sojourn this year. Throughout September and October, I kept wavering on whether or not to do it, given that I’d booked my time off for the week before and of Thanksgiving, which would be the latest I’ve headed to the uncivilized part of the north (Vermont is not uncivilized). I was concerned not about the cold, but with the possibility that I’d get my car to the cabin and not be able to get it back out to a road – the cabins at Cheboygan are 1-2 miles from the parking lot, reachable on dirt tracks that are navigable in the Subaru as long as there aren’t two feet of snow on the ground, and that was a distinct possibility in late November.

So I opted for a staycation – improved the setup of the tarp on my deck and spent a week and a half doing basically nothing. Sat on the deck, drank beer and bourbon, listened to podcasts…hung out inside with the cats, did some laundry, etc.

I think it turned out to be a fairly wise decision. The weather in northern Michigan was crappy, to put it mildly. Looks like they had at least rain every day, some snow, some bitterly-cold days – and wind-driven flooding along the Mackinaw Straits, which almost certainly would’ve made 10 days in the cabin (100 feet from the water in normal conditions) pretty miserable. It would have been relaxing, however; I’ve got to admit that I didn’t feel nearly as chill after 10 days at home as I did after 7 days in Michigan each of the last couple of years.

I saved some money, though. That’s a good thing.

I made an appearance at the company Christmas party this year. It was a couple of weeks ago, and it marked the first time in my entire career that I’ve gone to an office party. I did so at the request/command of my boss, who has decided that I need to, I guess, be more approachable as a normal person to the other departments at work. I’m not describing that very well, but I sort of get what he’s pushing. I tend to focus on my direct reports, along with one or two key contacts in other departments, and I don’t socialize with many other people in the office. Although I’ve achieved (and encouraged) a reputation as a go-to technical guy, I’m still learning the hands-off, administrative, style of management; and making small talk with the big bosses from New Hampshire and heads of other departments is part of that, I suppose. I didn’t stay long. I had a couple of drinks, ate dinner, talked with a few folks, and left. I didn’t hang around for the post-dinner festivities (a game of musical chairs that has become somewhat legendary in the company over the last 15 years), and I missed seeing, apparently, half of my team get shit-faced. That’s probably a good thing – and is also one of the reasons that I don’t do office parties. I’ve been known to, um, inebriate myself on occasion.

This past week, I led a project in Statesville, NC. This is not the project that I mentioned in my previous post (August), which was in Winston-Salem, NC, but a small setup for a 23-person office that I handled along with one of the newer kids on my team. I was curious to see how she’d do on her first project, and was pleased to see that she performed very well, as I’d believed she would. She was a hire that I had mild reservations about making earlier this year, but her ability to work with people – and good critical-thinking skills in spite of a lack of technical background – is serving her well on my team. She’s not ready to step into a leadership position yet, but she will be once she gets over her insecurity and figures out that she knows as much or more than most of her peers.

The project, for the most part, went well. Started out very poorly – equipment that was sent via FedEx from Montana 10 days earlier had not arrived, and we also had some problems with an anti-virus software that had been installed by the client’s previous IT company – but by the middle of the third day I was breathing easier, and by the end of the fifth I was able to sit down with the firm administrator and others central to the project and determine that everybody was pretty happy and we looked good going forward. That’s a bonus because I also learned that my team will be the primary technical support for this particular client. That doesn’t happen a lot – normally, I have to run clean-up for 2 months for firms that other teams have on-boarded, and it’s a real pain.

I don’t have any big plans for Christmas, the title of this post notwithstanding. I’m guessing that Jenny will probably invite me over for dinner at some point – if so, I’ll go. Other than that, I plan to sleep for a couple of days. Beginning in January, I’m going to try to start walking in the mornings again. I’ve completely gotten out of that habit. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I need to get back into it. I’m getting basically no exercise these days. I might try to stop smoking again at the same time. I’d quit for probably 6 months before Mom died, then started up again immediately after (stupid, I know). Kept it pretty much under control until I got my notice from AT&T, at which point I turned into a heavy smoker. I know I need to cut it out, but it’s a habit like a vice grip at this point. I know it’s a mental thing, however…just need to decide I want to quit again and do it. I know a couple of kitties who’ll probably be happy when I do.

That’s pretty much all the stuff that I can remember for now, so I’ll end this here. I hope everyone has a happy Christmas, festive New Year, and fewer fireworks than I’m sure my neighbors will have.

Getting Slack Again

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I got a note from Dad the other day, in which he mentioned that he’d just read my post from July. That made me realize that I hadn’t updated this thing in over a month. Again. I’m not sure how that happens so often. Actually, yes I am. My life isn’t that interesting. Not much to write about when the same things happen every day for a month. So, I have to store up all of the amazing happenings over time and then dump them all out at once.

Unfortunately, I’ve generally forgotten what happened by the time I get around to that dump. But, hey….I’ll give it a shot again. A few weeks ago, I attacked my back yard with a vengeance – and with a Ka-Bar knife that I purchased with Discover card kickbacks. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my camping knife situation for a couple of years, and finally just pulled the plug and bought a great knife – so I naturally had to see if I could hack my way through the jungle that is my south 40.

It did very well. Much better than I did, as a matter of fact, because I’m allergic some something back there. Didn’t notice until the next day, but my arms were covered with a rash (a very itchy rash), which still hasn’t completely subsided. Before you ask, no – it’s not poison ivy. No idea what it was, but I can say with some surety that it’s gone now. I hacked the crap out of that yard. Cut it down enough that I could even get my gasoline mower out and cut everything down to nubs after letting it all grow for about three years. I still have to clean up near the back fence (if only because I need to repair the fence and I can’t get close to it), but the majority of the “lawn” is now available and I can start thinking about what I want to plant back there, be it grass or trees or some kind. Have been thinking about putting in either Crepe Myrtle or Black Maple, but it would probably be easier just to kill everything off and put some sod in. I really don’t know. The most important thing is that my knife is awesome.

I also cleared off my deck. The cat house that had been there for many years is now underneath the deck, and I’ve reclaimed the entire area for, well, people. Or person, since I don’t have guests. I still need to repair the trellises on one end, but for now I’ve settled with stringing up a fly over a couple of plastic chairs at the far end of the deck, under which I can sit and drink and smoke and generally be a white trash redneck kinda guy. I noticed that, the day after I put up the fly, my neighbor (fondly known as “Martha Stewart”) installed a brand-new, huge, patio umbrella. I see it as her polite way of telling me that a bright blue tarp is not appropriate; but it’s in my back yard, it’s invisible from the street, it does the job I need for it to do, and she can get over herself. I looked at those big umbrellas, and those sumbeaches are expensive! My fly will do just fine. It also funnels the rain into a water dish for the cats who still like to lie on the deck even though their house is now beneath them.

Next week is Adam’s wedding, and it is now official that I won’t be able to make it, as I have to go on a project in North Carolina. This was not my idea – I actively campaigned against going – but it’s a huge project, with consultants onsite in 6 locations in four different states, and when the client comes on board, it’s going to be my team’s client; so in the end I relented and agreed to take one of the offices just so I could get a better idea of how things are set up – and also because my team has been extremely short-handed for the last 6 weeks and I figured that I was the “consultant” who could leave for a week and cause the least disruption to my other clients. I still handle the big problems, but I really don’t do much of the day-to-day client support anymore, so I’m expendable from that standpoint.

So, Adam – if you or your family is reading this – I wish nothing but good things for you and your bride, and once you’ve gotten settled into married life and have a stable household, I’ve got an awesome wedding present for you.

I’m supposed to be setting up about 30 workstations for a firm in Florida today, and I got started on that project at about 6:00 this morning. Literally 4 minutes after I started, my primary scripting engine – which I use for doing everything from joining the machines to the domain to adding shortcuts to the desktop – went down. Along with a number of other servers at work (including those that run the portals that all of our clients use). It’s now coming up on 3.5 hours since everything went balls up, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to waste all day doing something that I could have done in about 30 minutes with my scripts. Hope not, because I really kinda wanted to go bowling today.

I may join a bowling league in a couple of weeks, but I want to be sure that I still know how to roll a big ball down a lane towards pins.

Band started back up this week, after a summer break of about 6 weeks. Lots of new faces, including a new solo horn player – who showed up 5 minutes late. I think that’s just a requirement of playing solo horn. He sounded okay, I guess. Still think Andrew and I should’ve double-teamed the part and we should have brought in a newbie to play 2nd horn. Instead, I’ll be doing that for at least another year. Nothing wrong with the part – it just gets boring. Sort of like 2nd baritone. Occasional flourishes of music, surrounded by lots and lots of long tones and off-beats. Yawn.

On the home front, I’ve embarked on an experiment in minimalism. I’m trying to get rid of stuff that I don’t need and to limit myself to as few redundancies as possible. Example: 1 plate, 1 coffee cup, 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 cooking pot, etc. Yes, I have about 70 coffee cups, enough plates and flatware settings for a dinner with 8 guests, and more than enough pans to use a different one every day for two weeks before washing any of them. But c’mon. What’s the point? If I can just wash the dishes as I use them, I don’t need multiples. We’ll see how it goes. Am also finally throwing stuff away that I brought with me from my office when AT&T canned me – notebooks, textbooks, desk knickknacks, cables, charges, etc. No need to have all that stuff cluttering up my living room. Ideally, I want to get down to having, basically, an empty house. When it’s time to pick up and move on, it won’t take any time.

Ah! I almost forgot that I also bought a gimbal for my phone a few weeks ago. I haven’t done more than play with it for about 20 minutes, but it’s going to be a lot of fun particularly when I’m out in the woods. From what I’ve seen with my experiment, it does a great job of tracking an object, stabilizing a moving camera, and allowing for easy camera manipulation (panning, zooming, etc.), and it’s cool to watch it do its thing: it’s like having a little robot in your hand who’s doing all of your photography for you. Looking forward to taking it out camping soon.

And that’s about all the news that’s fit to type for now. I’ll go see if I can do any more work on my workstation setups, and, if not, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do today while waiting to be able to work.

TWD

Happy National Birthdays

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It’s made it to July in Atlanta, and in most other places, too, I would imagine. Canada Day (7/1) nearly got past me, but I remembered it at around noon. There was no way to forget the 4th, seeing as how my neighbors began their annual bombardment sometime in late June. That has, fortunately, nearly ceased – although there were a couple of explosions last night. Thankfully, it rained yesterday (hard!), and I’m hoping that will put a damper on the fireworks.

One of my favorite clients, in Burlington, told me the other day that it was nearly 80 degrees and she was ready to enjoy the warmth. Suck it, Vermont. It’s been pushing 100 down here for the last couple of weeks, and I’m ready to hit the road for winter in Michigan. That’s still three or four months away, unfortunately. I’m hoping to spend Thanksgiving week in Cheboygan, since we get both Thursday and Friday off on that week. I’m also hoping that there isn’t as much snow up there as there was last November, since I’ll be going a week later and I don’t want to find out how my Subaru does in a foot of snow on an unplowed track through the woods to my cabin. If I have to find out, however, I’ll find out. I’ve been dreaming of being at that cabin for the last couple of months.

I power-washed my driveway last weekend, which was quite a bit of fun and also quite a bit of work. My whole body ached on Sunday. Hard to believe it was so much work, but the driveway (and my front stoop) looks amazing. I also “fixed” my old trimmer/edger/weed-whacker….by throwing it away and buying a new one. I can’t complain too much, as I did get 4-5 years of use out of the old thing, but I’m still not sure what actually killed it. It’d been acting temperamental for several months and last week it just died and seized up when I tried to restart it. Futzed around with it for 30 minutes or so and then just tossed it. The new one is doing an admirable job and all of the accessories from the old one fit it just fine.

We’ve got 7 new people starting at work on Monday. There were supposed to have been 8, but one of them who’d reluctantly accepted our offer on Wednesday decided to reverse himself on Thursday. I can’t say that I’m heartbroken over that, as my comments regarding his interview began with “Rubbed me the wrong way at first – throughout the interview, actually. Struck me as arrogant, thinks he knows more than he does, kind of entitled.” So how’d he make it to the point of getting an offer? Well, I finished off my comments by saying that I was probably the same way on my first interview out of college, and that he probably had the raw skills to do an okay job if he could watch his attitude when dealing with clients. I said I’d approve him if the other two interviewers did, and they did. They started to rethink things when his acceptance of our offer began with, “I guess I’ll go ahead and accept your offer…”

As I said, he changed his mind the next day. I’d already indicated that I didn’t want him on my team, so I’ll still get two newbies and we’ll begin interviewing for another junior consultant later next week. I’m getting pretty good at spotting the ones who won’t work out, I must say.

Got the oil changed in the Subaru this morning. Only about 1000 miles after I should have, and almost forgot to do it anyway. I looked at my watch at 6:30 and remembered that I meant to do something. 10 minutes later, it dawned on my that I’d made a 7:00 appointment with Tires Plus for the oil. No harm, no foul – I wasn’t even late.

My no-sugar diet (or as close to none as I can get) is actually working out pretty well. I’ve dropped 10 pounds in the last month or so (Chamberlain, who also likes to weigh himself, has held steady at 16.2 pounds over the same period), and don’t feel nearly as crappy as I did for the last year. Have even started walking most mornings again. Not going for speed (much), but my calves have stopped aching and I guess I’m averaging around 16-17 minutes per mile, which is fine.

Got a pot roast and some veggies lined up for the slo-cooker this afternoon, which should be pretty good. Had salmon and potatoes the last couple of days. Interesting fact: Chamberlain’s favorite cat food is salmon-flavored stuff, but he turned his nose up at the real thing. More for me. The other two kitties, should you be wondering, were both upstairs when I made the offer to Chamberlain. I don’t know if Joshua would’ve gone for it or not (although he’ll generally try anything that I put in front of him at least once), but I suspect that Boo would’ve sucked it down pretty fast.

I do need to mow half of the front lawn today. I did the other half on the 4th, but it was so hot I didn’t want to spend more than 15 minutes outside. The weekend before, I put in a few hours in the back yard and the south 40, which I hadn’t even looked at in about a year. Lots of bushwhacking with a machete and urging my ancient gasoline mower through 4-foot-tall shrubbery. In restrospect, it was probably that (not the pressure washing) that put me in my sore state.

I guess that that’s about enough writing for today. I actually sat down at the computer just to update my bills spreadsheet with the oil change and some grocery shopping that I did this morning, but thought it’d be nice to do some typing, too.

Now that I’ve done so, it’s time to tackle the lawn.

Welcome to Summer

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So I’m a month older than I was the last time I sat down to write something here – and a couple of pounds lighter thanks to renewing walking and cutting out as much processed sugar as possible. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still a fat bastard, but I’m a little less so now.

At work, we’re in the doldrums after tax season, and so it’s interview season. I’ve done a bunch in the last month, and they’ve been a pretty good crop, actually. I think offer letters have been sent out to two and we’ve got two others going through background and drug tests. Hoping to have them on board in the next 10 days or so. I’m also promoting my one Junior Consultant to a salaried Level 1 position on or about July 1, which is nice. She’s been a junior for longer than I would’ve liked, but I had a talk with her at the beginning of last month and told her I needed her to step up. She did. Assuming she did okay on the test I gave her yesterday, she’s ready to move up and I won’t have any juniors on the team….until the newbies come in.

Need to mow half of the front lawn today, and I’m hoping I can actually get my edger working so I can edge everything. The stupid thing just sort of died on me a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve got one half of one side of my driveway edged at this point. I’ve tried on three occasions to get it to start and keep running, but so far it’s been good for about 5 minutes before it quits. If I can’t keep it running today, I guess I’ll be making a trip to Home Depot for a new one. It’s amazing how much better my lawn looks when it’s been edged.

The band played a concert at Reinhart College (hope I spelled that right) a week and a half ago. It’s in Cherokee County, well north of Atlanta, and at about 20 minutes before downbeat our solo horn player sent a message that he wasn’t coming. Needless to say, there were some bad words following that. A couple of the pieces on the concert had fairly exposed solo horn parts, so our 1st horn learned those as quickly as possible and I learned the 1st horn part as quickly as possible. Another exposed part had to be transcribed for the flugel player, since all three horn parts were needed. Made it through the performance okay.

A couple of days after that, we had a board meeting, in which it was pretty much unanimously decided that the solo horn player won’t be returning for the 2019-2020 season. The big question is who’ll play that part. The 1st horn player and I have both said we’d like to play it at times, but not exclusively – it’s a painful part to play if you haven’t developed a high-range embouchure. I’m sort of hoping that Andrew (1st horn) will bite the bullet and do it, so that I can move back to 1st horn – which has always been my favorite horn part. Then we can recruit somebody to take my spot on 2nd.

Or if they want to try me on solo, I’ll do that, too. It’ll hurt for a few months, but might be a good learning experience for me, and could force me to deal with the stage fright that I’ve always had when playing solos.

Have plans to do some housework this afternoon – cleaning out my master bedroom, primarily. I’ve had a twin bed in there for the last few months (moved my queen to the guest room before Cy and “T” visited), and at first I was getting great sleep in it because the cats didn’t fit on it and pretty much left me alone. That’s changed in the last couple of weeks. They still don’t fit, so they just jump all over me and make sleeping pretty much impossible. Time to bring the queen back into play.

It is now officially summer in Georgia, and it’s been officially HOT for several weeks. Temps today should be in the mid-90s, which makes the thought of cleaning my room a bit more palatable than the thought of mowing the lawn.

But they’ve both gotta get done, so I guess I’ll go get started.