Tag: work

I Want to Go Home

I want to go home. I’m in the office, 44 miles away. Tonight I want to cook dinner for my beautiful bride and then move some furniture around to make room for a new couch. I got seven hours of sleep last night so I am not terribly tired right now (and it feels weird) so I know I will have the energy to pull it all off. I just wish I were at home so I could just punch out of work and do it all without having the long drive home wedged into the middle of everything. Blah.

Here’s another cat photo that I took this morning before I left for work just because Robin the cat is adorable and she was very willing to pose for the camera today.

Unrelated question… the band Facebook chat left off with hoping we could all get together at some point after the first weekend in January. The first weekend in January is now over. How long should I wait before I start the discussion up again? How soon is too soon? Should I wait three days as if it were a kind of first date thing? Do the same stupid rules apply? I don’t want to sound too eager even though I am SUPER eager to get the band moving again. I want to play. I want to gig. I want, want, want.

Back to Work

It was like a three day weekend except that it happened in the middle of the week. Now it’s Friday and xmas is over and I am back at work and it sucks.

Well… sucks is probably over dramatic. I feel more like I wish I had taken today off as well and given myself a six day weekend, which would have felt more like an actual vacation. I’m off again on Wednesday for New Year’s Day, and then we’re back to normal for a few weeks until we go on Jen’s birthday trip to Florida late in January.

I planned to work in the office today, but my cold is still a thing so I am working from home. I probably won’t hit my in-the-office-quote for December now, but being sick and not wanting to spread the bug is an acceptable reason for coming up a little short. I do feel quite a bit better, but I am far from over it. Worse, I have a cold sore on my lip now. Oh good.

Okay. Time to get caught up on all of the email that came in while I was out. That should take a while. Wish me luck.

Two More Days

We are down to the holiday wire and, somehow, I wrapped the final present this morning. We had a few things delivered yesterday and today before work I took them to my wrapping station in the cellar and cranked them out.

The Wrapping Is Complete.

I still need to go out and pick up one or two little things that are fun but not required. I will do that either tonight after work or tomorrow. I am off work tomorrow. Actually, I am off work until Friday. I was going to work in the office today but I am still sick so in order to not screw up anyone else’s holiday I stayed home. I am well enough to work, but not well enough to be in public guilt free. If I do go out at some point tonight I will wear a mask.

One more work day to go and then I am off for xmas eve, xmas, and Boxing Day… even though the US doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day. Whatevs, right? HoHoHo.

Drenched

I hate to keep harping on something as inane as the weather but…

Sum up the first half of my work day:

Walk from the building to the car. Drenched.
Walk from the car to the building. Drenched.
Walk from the building to the car. Drenched.
Walk from the car to the building. Drenched.

There you go. That’s the first half of my work day.

Can’t we just go back to working from home again?

Rain is a Thing

So rain is still a thing. I mean this from a work point of view.

When Covid hit and we all started working from home full time, I learned to stop really worrying about rain. I didn’t have a commute anymore so I didn’t need to drive to and from work in the rain. I didn’t need to walk out to a parking lot in the rain. I didn’t even need to walk to the driveway. From the perspective of getting to and from work rain (and snow) stopped being a concern at all.

Now that we’re back in the office at least some of the time it’s a thing again and it sucks.

It is pouring rain today. I’m looking out the window and the parking lot looks like a small lake. I have to drive to a different building soon and that means I have to go out in this suck-fest of a rain storm and get drenched so that I can make the next meeting.

Working at home is so much better than working in the office. So much better.

Thus concludes this morning’s rant about rain. Thank you for your time and patience.

Nothing

It’s been a quiet day. Not a lot going on. One issue at work that should have been wrapped up on Friday came back to us today (Tuesday) and was immediately taken care of. It should not have come back to us though. There was another issue that one of my staff members worked on over the last month or so. He wrapped it up nicely last week. We were talking about it yesterday and we were both a little sad that his hard work did not seem to rate a pat on the back or a thank you from the customer. It’s okay if they just move on with their lives, but this was a kind of issue where we thought a simple thank you would have been nice. Well, he got a thank you today. Thanks for the thanks, customer.

Most years at work I am part of two holiday celebrations. One is a big lunch with a yankee swap and the other is a smaller, quieter group lunch. The yankee swap happened today. The quieter group lunch happens tomorrow. Both of them take place in Foxborough, which is the office that is as far away as I am willing to go to. It could be worse. It could be Fall River. That building has been open for a decade or so and I have never been there. It’s just too far away. If I ever have the need to go there I will, but I am not going by choice and I will avoid it whenever I can. I’ve been lucky so far. Foxborough though… today and tomorrow. It’s okay. I’ll handle it. It’s only about 70 miles away. Yikes.

At the Yankee swap thing today there was a sign that said there are only 15 days left until xmas. You know… I wasn’t feeling a holiday crunch before I saw that… now? Oh yeah, I’m feeling the holiday crunch. Panic is setting in.

There is a new episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew coming out at 9pm tonight. Hopefully that will make me feel a little better. I’m still not 100% sold on the concept of Goonies in Space, but I am liking it so far. I’ve only seen two episodes. I am optimistic that tonight’s episode three will be good. The bad guys are Pirates. Arrrr, righty then.

What else can I write about? Nothing. I think I need to wrap this literary masterpiece and click that publish button. Okay, loyal readers… here it comes!

Handcuffed

We just had a really frustrating issue come up at work. The customer had access to their system locked down hard, for perfectly valid and acceptable reasons. They had issues with applications crashing and we couldn’t get in to see what happened. There were a slew of people from my company, the hardware vendor, and the customer on a conference call and we were all totally stumped. Then one of our tech guys and one of the tech guys from the hardware vendor started hammering away at it and they figured it out.

Sometimes this software support stuff can be incredibly frustrating, but when those frustrating moments get resolved… oh man is that satisfying. Even in a case like this where the folks who support my application ended up being innocent bystanders (the issue and the fix ended up having zero to do with us) it is still immensely satisfying.

Huge tip of the hat to the two guys who eventually worked it all out. As the commercials used to say, it’s Miller time*.

*It’s not Miller time for me. I don’t drink. The sentiment still works though.

Almost There

It’s 2:15pm. Lunch is about to end (I started my break a little later than normal today). I have a vacation day booked for tomorrow, then the following two days are off for Thanksgiving, then the weekend. That’s right, folks. I have a five day weekend coming and it is just a bit more than three hours away. I have one more meeting on my schedule this afternoon and I have a few email threads that need updating. Other than that, we’re just riding out this fine Tuesday in the office.

87/365

So before Covid shut everything down I was a regular user of Audible, the audiobook subscription service. I forget how but at some point I came into a whole bunch of credits and blew them all on a number of books that I never got around to listening to. Back in March when my company upped our in-the-office requirement from once a week to twice a week I reopened my account and all of those unread books were still there. One was a biography of Syd Barrett. I’m listening to it now and while many of the events and facts the author describes are clearly incorrect, and many others are trying to show Barrett as some poetic legend on a level that is infinitely greater than his catalog demonstrates, it is a good read. I have been listening to a lot of his music over the last week.

The National Solo Album Month (nasoalmo) rules allow for one cover song. While adding another song does not fit my personal theme for this month’s project, I am wondering if I should record a cover of Dominoes. I’m thinking about it.

Mood

I woke up in a grade A shitty mood this morning and I don’t know why. Over tired? Probably. Stress? Maybe, but I can’t understand why or about what? Pissed off that the Bruins got smoked last night? Definitely.

I was starting to feel a little more relaxed over the last hour or so. Just generally calming down. Unfortunately I now have to go into a two hour meeting so… yeah.

Happy Tuesday, boys and girls. Let’s try to keep the grrrrrrrrr to a minimum, if we can.