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Price Cutter

I had another slow start this morning, but we had a pretty good day at work. Clint had emailed me way early in the morning with a question that he didn’t even realize would be about databases. I hopped on a call with him and we discussed that for a little bit. Then I continued trying to clean up some policies between other little tasks I needed to complete.

Summer had an MRI in Little Rock and wouldn’t make it back for lunch, so I went to Ortega’s by myself. It was another strange day of absolutely no service, but at least I only got charged like half of what I normally pay for that meal.

The afternoon dragged slightly, but it wasn’t too bad. We got home without much fuss, just after Summer, and I went inside to unbox a whole bunch of Vine stuff. She laid on the couch all evening, and we never saw Eaddie. She eventually got up and ate some leftovers. I did some cleaning and ate a little myself, then took Muad’Dib for a short run to my parents’ house.

I finally sat down to review the old and new repair estimates for my car, and it looked like they cut my labor hours nearly in half. I assume the first guy was giving me walk-in rates while the second girl was giving me insurance rates.

Cut it again!

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Quiet Focus

I felt like I slept okay even though my mind was reeling all night. I woke up around four and laid awake for most of the next couple hours, then got up and out for work. I forgot the power went out briefly yesterday, which messed up my clock. I was a little later than usual, but still there well before eight.

I had a pretty good, focused day after a bit of frustrating back and forth where our Aptean support just plain didn’t seem to be reading our messages. We still never got a real answer for anything by the end of the day. I had to fight with the laptop I had for Gary, since he decided he wasn’t going to be able to make it in person. I was planning to use him to test some of my recent policy updates as a part of updating for best practices, but instead I got to test something completely different.

The day went by really quickly, but I wanted to get something good for Muad’Dib for lunch since it was his birthday. We shared some chili cheese fries, chicken bites, and even a bit of my burger before heading back. It didn’t feel horribly hot, but it never felt like it got any cooler.

The rest of the afternoon flew by as well, and I didn’t even realize when it was time to leave. We walked out a little later than usual, so I just let the car do its thing most of the way home. Summer had a roast in the slow cooker all day, and Eaddie was having her birthday dinner with Eli’s family instead, so the two of us sat down to eat.

Afterward, I ran Muad’Dib to my parents’ house to help Dad pick up sticks in the front yard before they come over to mow. We didn’t stay long because it was warm, so we headed home and I gave Muad’Dib a much overdue bath. Eaddie had Eli and Mari over for a little while after Summer went to bed, so I tried to get things cleaned up quickly.

I finally got a copy of my new repair estimates for my car, and even found my original copies for the warranty work, but I know I had a check from the insurance company, and I can’t find it or any evidence that I deposited it.

Cheque please!

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Better Take Me First

I think we all slept fairly well last night. I got up and made some breakfast sandwiches for Summer and myself before she wanted to leave for the gym. Eaddie was in bed all day, so I never saw her. Not long after Summer had left for the gym, she called to say they were closed due to a power outage. Instead, she headed to the old house to mow, so I took Muad’Dib over there with the trimmer to get the rest of it cleaned up.

After that short trip, we went to the car wash to wash both of our cars. She went for a Sonic drink before meeting me back at the house, and after a little while we headed over to my parents’ house to swim. Mom was going to have spring rolls, but of course those plans were vague at best.

We ended up staying until it was time to get dinner ready. I sliced a bunch of meat while they went to the store for some more veggies, and eventually Julie and Kevin showed up with the baby. Eaddie and Eli showed up after they did some trimming in our lawn. It was kind of a hot mess with the baby wandering around haphazardly and not having much room on the table for all of the food. We set up a secondary table, but it ended up just being Eaddie and Eli out there.

I helped clean up a bit after everyone was gone, and then I left pretty upset at Kevin’s earlier comments about Muad’Dib. The baby kept going after him, and Muad’Dib was playing nicely, but he and Julie wanted to make a statement about how the baby’s otherwise neglectful family would react if Muad’Dib got aggressive, and I’m not willing to take any chances.

Summer and I went home while Eaddie went to Eli’s. Summer made it to bed quickly, and I wound down a little early myself.

It’s okay. Let’s go home.

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Supermeh

Summer had a race first thing this morning, so I went with her to the junior high for that. Muad’Dib and I rode around with the Onewheel, making laps around the building while we waited, and then he got some attention from others as we milled around waiting for results. There was another guy there with a small heeler that wanted to run and play so badly, but he didn’t want to let her off the leash, which was probably a good thing.

Summer got her second place medal just as it started to get really gross and humid, and we headed home for a snack and to clean up before our trip to Fayetteville. Eaddie was in bed until we left, and stayed home with Muad’Dib. We made it to Alma for a charge and pit stop, then continued straight to the Arkadia Retrocade.

We talked to Shea briefly after paying him twice the admission fee, just to show support for the work he’s done, and to share our excitement about the place. I think I actually enjoy it more as a walkthrough museum experience than someplace I enjoy going to sit down and play. I’m always a little disappointed in the condition of some of the machines, which I know are hard to service, but the place was also crawling with mostly unsupervised kids. It’s still a blast, and I would recommend it for anyone. It really seems like a passion project, and I love that he’s been successful with it.

After about an hour there, we decided we were hungry enough to eat a little bit, so we drove toward the Malco. I would have preferred to go somewhere uniquely NWA, but we stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings and sat at the bar for a couple drinks and some buffalo chicken dip. Then we headed to the surprisingly empty, but well-maintained theater for our IMAX experience.

Right off the bat, the audio was just too loud. It distorted dialog especially, and made a few scenes completely unintelligible. I enjoy Jason Momoa, but Lobo’s existence added nothing to the film. All of the characters were short-lived and mostly forgettable, and all of the action was depicted too close up and cloudy/dusty/blurry to be entertaining. The animation and physics felt fake, which could have been forgiven for the sake of a better story, but it just wasn’t good. There were certainly emotional bits, but overall we were super disappointed.

After the show, I found a place called House of Taste, which seemed fairly authentic Korean. At least the old lady running the place felt somehow relatable. The food was good, but seemed unnecessarily expensive. There were several signs about a long wait, but we were only bookended by two other tables during our visit. The food was served impressively hot in near-molten bowls that retained the heat well. My soup was scaldingly hot to nearly the last bite.

The drive home was much more relaxed, with a stop in Ozark to charge again. I hate that the trip is long enough to really require charging twice, since there’s not a Supercharger right in Fayetteville. We’d have to drive further north for that, so we just charge twice inbetween instead.

Eaddie had just finished mowing our lawn when we got home. I took Muad’Dib for a run to my parents’ house, but then waited by the pool for them to get home from Kroger. I helped unload groceries, then headed back home to find Eaddie practicing loudly in the bathroom while Summer was passed out in bed two doors down. I wrapped up quickly and joined her.

Who expected Seth Rogen to be the best part???

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Not Your Grandfather’s SpaghettiOs

I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the night at one point after I had been awake for a moment. When I did finally get up for work, I was able to cut my morning short and warm up my last burrito before showering and heading in to work. I was aware of my afternoon meeting with Aptean yesterday, but somewhere along the way it fell off my radar.

I took a late lunch, but fortunately I had brought leftovers from home, because a few bites into it I noticed the calendar alert. I hopped onto the call about five minutes late and felt terrible for it, but it was still a mostly pointless and short meeting.

A little while after that, I started to feel some generalized anxiety again, and I didn’t understand it. I think that hung around for an hour or so before it let up, but I had trouble focusing after that. I tried to just relax on the way home, but I pressed on as usual.

Eaddie was home from band camp, but Summer had already eaten earlier in the afternoon. They sat around talking and doing things on the couch while I processed Vine stuff and put together a couple motorcycle stands. Then I took Eaddie to La Villa for dinner. I got a seafood pasta that had so many calamari rings that it looked more like giant SpaghettiOs. She talked all about her experience as a counselor and how terrible the entire event was. It sounded like the complete lack of adult oversight could have easily caused enough of a parental stir to get Tech into big trouble, but it’s more likely that nothing will happen.

When we got home, I took Muad’Dib for a quick run to my parents’ house as it got dark. Eaddie left, Summer went to bed, and I fought sinus issues the rest of the night.

Just a trickling.

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Eager Doggies

We had all kinds of dogs at work today. Joel was back with Dexter. Elizabeth has been bringing Zeke every day. Scott brought Maple, though I hardly saw her at all because she was hiding in Tyler’s office all day. Muad’Dib was having a fit about not being the baby any more.

I had my head stuck in Intune again all day, and had a support call before lunch for my strange PIN policy behavior, but I think I sorted that out earlier. It won’t be until another intermittent issue occurs that I’ll be proven wrong.

We went to Sonic for lunch, then finished up a pretty quiet afternoon. The drive home was fast and mostly dumb. Summer had a late meeting, so I rearranged the dishes in the dishwasher that she had washed and ran them all again. Then I put together a desk hutch I got for her. Just as she got home, I took Muad’Dib to the Neighborhood Market to deposit some bags for recycling. Then we made the trek to my parents’ house just as it was getting dark. Muad’Dib was pretty exhausted by the end of it.

Once home, I tried to quickly wrap things up for bed. I used to have a life.

At least someone’s paying attention.

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PINNNNNNNNNNNN

We stopped at Starbucks for a breakfast wrap and then hit the road where, ironically, I got stuck behind some idiot who was too distracted on her phone to drive. I eventually had to put down my wrap so I could pass her in a huff. We made it to work, and I chatted with David for a bit about his AI endeavors. Muad’Dib was impatient and ran upstairs with Scott, and then snorted at me when I finally made it up there.

Next, I discovered my Chrome had shit the bed, and I lost everything. My additional user profiles were gone, and I lost almost all of my extensions and their data. I still don’t have a clue what happened, but I spent a couple hours recovering from that. Then I was surprised by a prompt to increase my PIN length on one of my test laptops. I fought that for a little while, but eventually created a support ticket for it.

We had to take a late break and went to Taco Bell for a small lunch. Some kid randomly ran around the corner and surprised Muad’Dib, which made him start barking uncontrollably. It wasn’t a vicious bark, and the kid tried to pet him all throughout the event. We made it back to the office to fight my PIN policy some more, and I thought I finally had it figured out, but when I started to leave, I was prompted on my own computer to update my PIN to 14 digits. I was trying to get out, but a quick search gave me an answer that seemed to make sense, so I’ll have to try that fix in the morning.

We made it home after another troubling experience at the onramp leaving Morrilton. It’s such a perfect, long, clear, wide-open stretch of road that you can use to get up to speed, but for some reason these idiots insist on driving 40 all the way up to the Interstate with big traffic coming from the east. I’ll never understand it.

Summer had just barely beat us home, and jumped into the shower once we got inside. We lost power for a few minutes for some reason, but there wasn’t a storm or anything happening. When Summer got out, she was craving a burrito from Taco Villa, so I dug out some cash and drove all the way over there to find out they were closed. I called her, and we ended up going to Panda Express instead. Of course their order status was completely wrong, because I left Muad’Dib outside when it said my order was done. It was about five more minutes before they started plating us up, and then we left.

Summer and I ate, and then we cleaned up and took out the trash before she went to bed. I could have used a walk or something to keep the indigestion at bay, but I ended up going to bed early myself.

Deal, or no deal.

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Incensed

I felt pretty crummy most of the day, but at least it was dry out. Summer would be going to Little Rock in the afternoon, so she stopped to meet me for lunch at Ortega’s on the way. I tried to go light, but our server brought me an extra taco anyway. For the first time, I had to call it quits before I finished my plate.

The afternoon dragged a bit, but I didn’t feel quite as bad. We never heard from Lelan about Bác Vân’s ngày giỗ, but my parents planned to go to the cemetery in the evening. Summer didn’t want to go to therapy, but then Dwayne coincidentally texted that he had to cancel himself.

That gave me time to get home and settle down a bit before going to the cemetery, but then Summer and I got into it about her work frustrations again, and she pouted in the tub while I went to meet my family.

Muad’Dib and I met my parents just after they arrived with some fruit for praying, and then Julie and Kevin showed up shortly after Mom got the incense burning. We visited as they burned down, and then we headed home rather than go out to eat. I ate a sandwich mostly to clean up some food before it spoils, and eventually made it to bed.

it burns!

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Not Nothing

It started storming last night, and there was actually enough water on the road that I couldn’t reliably get over 50mph for a couple miles. It wasn’t a torrential downpour, but I guess the water wasn’t moving fast enough, or I may just have gone through a bunch of my tire tread since the last heavy rain. We made it to work though, and only encountered one vehicle stuck in the middle of the median.

Several were out today, so it was super quiet in the office. It was dry outside by lunch time, and it felt great out in the shade, so we went to Sonic for a red, white, and blue Creamslush with our lunch deal. Then I fought some unreliable and inconsistent policy changes in Intune, but never really felt good about a fix.

The drive home was pretty uneventful, and I decided to stop by Superfast to fill up on washer fluid. When I got home, I finally broke out the robot mower to see what it would do in our little half-moon of a lawn by the curb. It was frustrating at first because I didn’t RTFM, but once I figured out what I was doing, it actually worked surprisingly well. It still got stuck every few minutes, so I had to go rescue it a dozen times, but it did cut the majority of the grass. It was super patchy, but the grass was also quite a bit longer than it was rated to cut, so I was actually pretty happy with the results. It never once lemming-ed itself off of the curb, and basically only got stuck in the tight corners where it would try to back up and turn repeatedly until it lost traction in the long grass, or it would get stuck in the water meter hole.

Summer and I ate some leftovers and then I ran Muad’Dib to see my parents super quickly before making it back home. I ended up getting a stomach ache that kind of ruined the rest of my night, but I got some other things done and got to bed early.

Barely.

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Just Eat It

I didn’t sleep very well or very long. I didn’t let myself sleep in because I knew I wanted to get some meals in, so I took Muad’Dib outside and then brought some breakfast back upstairs with us. I was really proud of him when he did a great job of sitting by a table alone while I went into the other room to get food. Summer was slow to get out of bed, but then I slowed down a bit as we were trying to get out of the room. We ended up checking out right on time, and made our way down the road to Southern Tail for brunch.

Summer walked up to the front and learned that they were only seating people with reservations, which would have been nice to know before we planned an entire weekend around the event. They didn’t take any of her information, and instead told us to come back around 12:30. We sat in the car until then, but when I walked back in to ask about seating, I was told there was a wait list, and we wouldn’t get a seat until around one. That they the girl got my number and called us back in at 12:35.

We got seated outside as the heat intensified. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t fresh feeling. There was a pretty good band playing live, and the food was good though. Service was slow, so we didn’t have much for drinks, but it was an okay time. It might have been worth the price at a better season with some good company.

We headed straight home after that, and had a little bit of time to lounge before heading to my parents’ house to swim. The pool was surprisingly cold, and by then most of it was in the shade. Julie and Kevin eventually showed up with some Popeye’s chicken and we picked at a little bit of food.

I was completely beat by the time we got home, so I shut down quickly and got ready for bed.

What did you expect?