Thursday, May 21:
Day off. First day of my five-day holiday weekend. For the first time in what feels like months (and, actually, may be) I have legitimately nothing to do and no outward responsibilities that must be taken care of in the present or immediate future...and it feels so wonderful. I wake up late (like, almost 6PM), take a shower, go downstairs to get the mail, and Daisy arrives home with groceries from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. For a little bit, I forget that we're in a pandemic; I quickly remember, and then feel fortunate that we can afford food, that she can still stop on the way home from work to get some things when we need them, and that neither of us have gotten sick from this virus. I continue to work my way through batch 6, slowly, on the old drive (I'll mess with the new portable one tomorrow). Finally, after ordering it on March 27, my new Judas Priest t-shirt arrives in the mail. I take the last dose of my Prednisone and hope against hope that the elbow/arm issues do not come back tomorrow to ruin my holiday weekend. I order a promotional t-shirt to support a friend and colleague of mine who is an aspiring pro wrestler, fulfilling a promise I made to him close to a month ago. At my request from earlier in the week, the wife makes us baked veggie subs for dinner (so good) and we watch an episode of Supergirl before she has to go to bed for the night. I stay up a few more hours to rip some more CDs and eventually pass out in my chair.
Friday, May 22:
Day off. Second day of my five-day holiday weekend. Payday for both Daisy AND myself, which is a rarity most times now. I get up around the time she does (my body needs to pee more often since I now have to drink a ton of water for my meds) and go back to ripping more CDs on the old drive. I calculate our paychecks and make an Amazon order for some essentials -- laundry detergent, cat food, etc -- and continue the archiving work for batch 6. When the time comes that I need both of my USB ports to charge my vape(s) and mp3 player, I quit and take a shower -- after which I put on my new Judas Priest shirt. The internet goes down for well over an hour, and Cox tells me via phone that there's an issue in the neighborhood and that it should be fixed by around 3:10 PM. It is fixed by around 1. I hook up the new portable drive to test it out, and find that it is lightning fast but the USB cable for it is less than 8 inches long -- meaning it cannot sit flat on my desk, but has to sit up on my tower (which makes changing discs a pain in the ass). I immediately go on Amazon and purchase a USB extension cord; it is set to arrive tomorrow. With the speed of the new drive, I should be able to get through the 50ish CDs stacked on my desk by the end of the night, instead of by Monday or Tuesday. I relegate the old drive back to its protective bag and set it aside -- it'll be useful if this new one dies, but for the moment it is 100% a failsafe backup again. The OEM replacement drive for my actual machine arrives in the mail today as well, and it takes me about 30 seconds to remove the problematic bezel from it. It gets placed (in its own protective bag) in the closet, set aside for the time when I'll actually disassemble my PC case to swap out the old one for it. I'll need to be careful with it -- it is paper thin and I'll probably have to swap my current bezel onto it upon installation for seamless functionality. My arm, and elbow, is fine so far, a day out from the last dose of Prednisone I took; for the first time in a month it feels completely normal. Nasty thunderstorms are predicted for the evening and overnight hours, and throughout the day it feels like it's getting darker and darker outside as they slowly move in. I do all of the laundry in the house, and even wash the bedsheets and blankets. The cats spend the day asleep, as it's dark and gloomy (which they love, especially when the windows are open and air is flowing through the house). My body feels tired in the afternoon hours, but I push through it. I make it until around 1AM or so (but do not finish the stack of discs on my desk); after a nice dinner and evening with the wife. I pass out in my chair. It never storms.
Saturday, May 23:
Day off. Third day of my five-day holiday weekend. I awaken around 7 and feel like a mess. I immediately resume archiving of batch 6, and then the wife awakens and we eat breakfast, watching two more episodes of Supergirl. After this, I leave the house for probably the...fifth(?) time in the past two months, as we go get produce from a local farmer's market, drop some off at the parents', and go to the local Bakers to get some actual groceries -- it is the first time in over a month I've set foot inside a grocery store, and the first time I've seen anyone else in person aside from our neighbors, the wife, or her parents, in just as long. We return home and I'm feeling really rather out of it -- it's hot and muggy, and the mask I had to wear while interfacing with other humans is really hard to breathe in. The entire experience leaves me feeling rather drained and lethargic. I let the air conditioning make me feel a little better and fall asleep in my chair...for almost five hours. During this time, Daisy lets me sleep and I just lay there sweating. When I get up, I find that Daisy has prepared a psuedo-Mexican casserole dish for dinner and was just waiting for me to get up to eat it. We eat, and finish the last two episodes of Supergirl currently available on Netflix; superb season, really -- they did a great job this time around. Daisy stays up until almost 4:30 in the morning before going back to bed; I am awake until around 5:30ish before I (again) pass out in my chair for several hours -- just as a thunderstorm rather quietly rolls through the area.
Sunday, May 24:
Day off. Fourth day of my five-day holiday weekend. Daisy doesn't wake up until after 12:30, and doesn't actually get out of bed to move about for the day until well after 1. With the extension USB plug I got from Amazon in the mail yesterday (thank you, one-day Prime shipping), I continue through batch 6 -- 118 discs have so far been archived. This seems like a small amount, but it's actually over half of what's in the box, as some discs were damaged, unplayable, had disc rot, or were otherwise unusable. Batch 6 is otherwise an overall mixed bag -- I thought it was going to be a bust upon first inspection, but there's actually a fair amount of really good stuff within it here and there. The day gets hot very quickly, and the local weather channels call for severe storms in the evening and overnight hours. I'm not holding my breath, as this is the same forecast they've given us for the past three days, and aside from the very quiet storm that rolled through in the early morning hours, we have gotten nothing.
Neat.
We find out that one (or more) of the cats has peed on the rug in the dining room, and Daisy hauls it outside to literally hose it off as the afternoon sky gets darker and darker. She makes us (vegan) eggs, hashbrowns, and flatbreads for a late lunch. Today is Community Day in Pokemon Go, so I make sure I play long enough to get a shiny Seedot for both myself as well as her, in the event she can't get one. It feels weird being awake all day on a Sunday, as I usually head back to work on Sunday nights. The extra downtime is...welcome. I make my monthly vape juice order from my supplier, even though I'd rather not spend the money right now -- but I'm down to my last bottle. My arm/elbow is fine, and the pain/stiffness has not returned. My back has been bothering me a little more the past few days, though -- probably due to me falling asleep in my chair more often than sleeping in the bed. I make a plan for the night to actually sleep in the bed and not in the chair for once -- whenever I do go to sleep, that is. I also find that after my upgrade last week to the new Ubuntu, some of my PC games no longer work, so fixing that problem is on my docket of plans for these last two days off I have. It storms briefly, with a few loud rumbles of thunder and a little rain, but that's it. In the early evening hours, I get really tired really quickly, and make the conscious decision to go take a nap in the bed, as planned. When I awaken, it's after 11 and Daisy is coming upstairs to go to bed herself. She spends nearly two hours in my office with me where we finally get some time together for the day that's not spent in front of a television, before she goes to sleep. In the interim, I get down to the last stack of CDs in batch 6 -- with about 60-80 left to go before I'm complete. I take a quick glance at my email to see that it's not nutty or crazy at work, at least not that I can tell, and then force myself to not pay attention to it anymore -- I've earned this PTO and I'm using it.
Monday, May 25:
Day off. Memorial Day. Final day of my five-day holiday weekend. I awaken around noon to find that I once more have no internet in the house. Several power-cycles and two phone calls later, I am told that my modem is more than likely on its last legs and should be replaced, as it's functioned for almost double its expected lifespan. The lady on the phone at Cox tells me she can ship me a new one and that it'll be $11 a month added to my bill; I tell her that's fine, whatever works, but also bring up that I have the 24/7 support plan where I can request a technician dispatch to my house to work on my service at any time (I do, I paid extra for it two years ago when we bought the house and moved our service). She puts me on hold and then comes back five minutes later to tell me that there are no technicians who can dispatch out for a check/install until July (partially due to the Covid stuff), but she can ship me the modem and I can install it myself and troubleshoot with said installation via phone with them as necessary. As I work from home, this is something I have to just bite down on and agree to if I want reliable service. At the end of the call she checks again and, surprise, there is indeed an outage in my area that their techs are working on. Mind you, I have had Cox for my internet since 2009, and have been largely pro-Cox (get your minds out of the gutter, please) for almost that entire time. Their service, and customer service, has been exemplary for almost any issue I've had in those 11 years -- however, in the past 3-4 months we've been having a lot of outages in my area, and I know a lot of them are not because my modem is old. Network outages and congestion/slowness is partially because of everyone working from home (like myself) because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Anyway, after a few more small bounces, the internet eventually stabilizes. I go outside to check the actual cable box on the side of the house to find an active wasp nest inside it larger than my hand. I dispatch the wasps and destroy the nest -- the cable is fine. I do all of this while on the phone with the tech lady. She tells me that since I called early enough in the day (she's in Phoenix), it's possible that with the expedited shipping, I could get the new modem as early as tomorrow -- and if not tomorrow, Wednesday. Once it arrives, that'll be something else fun I get to put together and troubleshoot until it works. The wife and I have an early cookout lunch of grilled (vegan) burgers and corn on the cob, with a side of watermelon, and watch an episode of The Flash. I get confirmation in the afternoon that my vape juice order has shipped, so I'll probably have it by Wednesday. I am down to my last fifteen discs to archive from batch 6, so I power through them one by one to clear my docket of them before the final three batches arrive (in one shipment, that was supposed to be here a week ago...I am still waiting for them). Shipping says they're still in California, but, if I can finish batch 6 tonight, I will have the entire night free to get some downtime, decompress, and prepare for the next two days of this week where I'll actually have to work normally. It's a short week, yeah, but Tuesday nights historically suck, and Tuesdays after a holiday weekend much more so. I'll put on a brave face and see what happens. I'm also hoping that I finally start receiving my comics in the mail again this week, as I haven't received a new issue of anything since the beginning of April, and three weeks ago Marvel and DC began shipping books again. I generally get new issues in the mail about three weeks after publication, leading me to believe that I should be getting a shit ton of them this coming week. If I do not, believe me, I will begin raising holy hell with the distributors. In the evening hours, the wife makes a soup broth from corn that has to boil down for hours, and will be the base for a potato soup. It rains, continually, for most of the day.
Tuesday, May 26:
Working from home, day 35. My sleep schedule is completely out of whack, and I fall asleep early in the overnight hours, wake up a few times only to doze off again, and finally at 4AM go to the bedroom to sleep with the wife, waking up around 10-ish to find myself unable to sleep any more, despite my trying. Oh well, I think to myself, I can power through it and just go to bed immediately when I get off work in the morning, if that's what it comes to. After all, I only have tonight and tomorrow night to work this week, and then I have another long weekend as I took our anniversary off. I can power through being awake for 21 hours straight and sleep afterwards if I have to, and it'll reset my sleep cycle. I get up, feed the cats, and make myself something to eat so that I'm not hungry later. Batch 6 is complete; from it, I have procured 169 albums and a total of 2,238 tracks. I upload it to my backup drive specifically purchased for this reason, and decide against overhauling what's on my mp3 player until I've completed everything, including batches 7, 8, and 9 still (slowly) on their way to me in the mail. I have no tracking number or further information for my replacement modem/router that Cox is sending me, so my guess is it's not going to get here until Thursday at the least. Since I'm awake so early, I pay some bills and balance the checkbook; I don't get paid again until June 5, so the stuff that needs to be paid in the interim gets taken care of. I also order some new vape juice from a different supplier that was recommended to me by a Facebook group I'm in, and check my work email to see that apparently last night wasn't that busy, which is sort of good. I'm sure I'll get the report from my team once I log on tonight. I begin my Father's Day project for my own dad, which involves spending $10 on Amazon for a crucial component of it. It is still raining and the weather is very nice and cool, about 65 degrees. The local weather says there's a chance for tornadoes today or tonight, mainly to the east of the city, but I don't buy it; it's not warm enough and the rain is just a light mist for most of the day. Daisy finds out that the massive two tons of soil she had delivered for the garden was, in fact, the wrong soil -- it was filler/"scrap" soil instead of the premium planting/compost mix she paid for. The company owns this mistake and very graciously offers a full refund or another full two-ton delivery. As the soil is perfectly fine and we've already used about 90% of it, I advise her to take the refund and use what we have left plus the other bagged soil mixes she got first, and if necessary we can order more in the future. She tells me she'll have to do some measurements and the like before she decides. I'll support her in whatever decision she makes, of course. In the afternoon hours I run a load of laundry and re-coil/re-wick my vape, and as much as I don't want to do it, I down a Monster as I'm sure I'll need the extra energy. The internet has been stable for over 24 hours now, leading me to believe the outage yesterday was the overall problem (at least yesterday, anyway); however, I'm glad the new modem is coming because the one I have is old and the tech support lady was probably right when she said it was on its last legs. Working from home means I must have a reliable connection that doesn't repeatedly drop if I look at it funny. No sooner than when I type this, the internet goes down for an extended period of time, and I only know because Alexa was giving me the news at the time and she suddenly just stopped talking. I call in the outage to Cox, again, and as I'm doing so, the internet restores. In the evening hours, I get an update on the shipping for batches 7, 8, and 9 -- and they are now expected to arrive by June 2. This is a full two weeks after the shipment was originally slated to arrive. I am not happy about this, but it is what it is I suppose. The night at work is plagued not only by every idiot client crawling out of the woodwork to send our team issues after the holiday weekend, but by multiple technical problems (including the network kicking me off for a full hour between 12 and 1, again). Remarkably, I'm able to leave on time, though I didn't think I would. I eat a quick breakfast and literally take my phone to bed with me so that I can pass out.
Wednesday, May 27:
Working from home, day 36. I get up around 4PM and actually feel somewhat rested, which surprises me. It is still very gray and moist outside, though I'll take that over it being 90+ degrees and sunny, as it generally is at this time of May in Nebraska. I have had no problems with the internet thus far today, but I have also not received any sort of shipping info/tracking info for my replacement modem/router from Cox, which makes me twitch a bit. Tonight is garbage night; batch 5 and about half of batch 6 is recycled with the rest of the recycling. Daisy comes home and against my protests (because it's been raining for four days) decides to mow the yard -- I had planned to mow it on Friday when the weather is supposed to be nice, after it dries out some. As soon as I log on for work, I am informed (along with the rest of leadership) that a conference call will be immediately necessary with our executive director. This is never good news, but we all get on the call to be told first that our work-at-home program was originally extended to December, but is now going to become completely permanent, effective...well, now. The lease on our office space we've been in for over two years is up at the end of June, so our operations will be running out of the hub building after that. As for our machines and possessions at our desks and the like, we have been instructed to go in sometime over the next month and bring everything home, yes, including our actual work computers. Apparently they will receive a VPN upgrade at some point soon that will allow us to login and work from home with them seamlessly, as if we were all in the office -- meaning two things for me: 1) I will not have to log in to the VPN I've been using anymore, but 2) I will also have to hardwire the ancient work PC into my modem/router downstairs in the living room, and purchase a new computer chair and desk for said living room -- the work desktop does not have wifi capability because it is about fifteen years old and a deployment-based office machine only. This is all do-able, of course, but Christ what a pain in the ass it will be. Not to mention all of the other logistical impossibilities and new headaches that working fully from home will cause -- for example, what happens when those ancient company-provided machines break down? Because they do that, a lot. Is IT going to make house calls? What about all of the people who legit bought new computers to make themselves compliant for work from home two months ago? Do the (useless) computers become personal property of the employees or do they still remain company property? How will the VPN access work for people who are otherwise using much better machines to login and work now, with a much higher productivity rate? Etc. The list goes on and on, and the ball is rolling starting June 1. We are told not to tell anyone on our teams anything about these plans until at least Friday, when it will be announced to not only our teams but to the entire building -- and this is mandatory, meaning anyone who doesn't want to bring their machines home or work from home that way, or work from home at all...will be shown the door in a discreet fashion. This does not sit well with a few of us in leadership, as you might imagine. An hour after the call, as our team is assessing everything coming to 3rd shift for the night, the gas canister on my office chair (the pressurized pneumatic system that lets it adjust/raise/lower) explodes with a loud BANG and drives the rod downward into the carpet of my office, almost throwing me out of the chair in the process. The chair is still functional but it must now remain in its lowest possible adjustment and can't really be rolled anymore, due to the rod sticking out the bottom of it. It drips grease all over the floor as well, so I am forced to put a towel under it and use it all the way lowered. This now means I need two computer chairs to purchase for use. The rest of the night goes (mostly) uneventfully, as I handle a few issues and keep my lips zipped, and set my OOO message on my phone and email when I end my shift.
Thursday, May 28:
Day off. I wake up around 4 and am feeling incredibly dehydrated; over the course of the next three hours I drain an entire 48oz bottle of water and three cans of seltzer just to begin feeling somewhat normal. I find a replacement chair on Amazon that is big enough and strong enough to hold my fat ass; it is $180. Computer chairs, it turns out, are really expensive. I tell the wife that I'm just going to bite the bullet and purchase it once we get paid next week. I don't like spending the money, but it's pretty much unavoidable at this point as I must use my computer every day, and using it with the current chair so low is going to eventually drive me nuts. I reach out via email to my higher-ups and ask them about whether we can take our office chairs with us when we pick up the rest of the stuff, and am told that we are to leave them there, the site leadership will work out an "office supplies sale" in the coming days and weeks. The last time they did this, they were selling the chairs for $5 each, so I hold off on my plans to order a new one for the time being -- if I can get two of those chairs for $10 versus spending $180 on one, well, I'm sure you know what I'm going to do. And the office chairs are pretty cool, as well. they're comfortable. Always the cheapskate, I also research wifi extender dongles to plug into the work PC to see if I can get it to access the home network from my desk upstairs; if I can, I'll just make room on my current desk (easier said than done, though) and switch between PCs for work and home use, without needing to set up an entire new desk and chair downstairs. I'm also calling dibs on at least one of the huge dual door metal storage cabinets (like file cabinets, but with shelves inside) when they go up for sale; it'll make a perfect corner pantry/wardrobe/storage unit for the house, either upstairs or downstairs. Daisy returns home from work and works in the garden until dark, at which point she makes dinner around 11:30 PM, we watch an episode of The Flash, and she goes to bed. I, having had a little coffee after dinner, finally get a little downtime and I spend it in my chair, listing to Joe Rogan's podcast and playing on my phone, before I eventually pass out there. I get up around 7 and move to the bed, where I sleep for another 3-4 hours.
Friday, May 29:
Day off. I awaken and go downstairs to feed the cats and the like to find a massive styrofoam box on the porch from Omaha Steaks. Neither the wife nor I have ordered anything from Omaha Steaks, she's vegan and I'm vegetarian, and it contains a random assortment of items (but no meat). It is shipped to the wife, with her name, address, and even phone number on the address label, and in small print at the bottom of said label, it is notated that it is a surprise thank-you from the wife's office for all of the work that she's done during the pandemic -- all of it contains either eggs or dairy, which the Daisy will not eat, but I will. I call her at work and tell her the story. She addresses it with her boss, who relays that the new HR person put together the box orders for everyone as a surprise, and she was told that Daisy was vegan (specifically told, in fact) but said HR person either did not know what that meant and didn't look it up, or did not care. As a result, our box came full of non-vegan items. Daisy's boss makes this right by getting her multiple types of vegan burgers and delivering them to her in the office, along with a massive bag of popcorn. Meanwhile, I take the stuff that was actually shipped to us -- hash browns, au gratin potatoes, some apple tarts, cauliflower gratins, and cauliflower and caprese risottos -- and cram them into our already-full-and-overflowing freezer. Next, I mow the grass, run the trimmer around the entire house, garden, sidewalks, porches, and everything else, and wash the bedsheets and blankets. I then eat a package of the au gratins (they're fine, but nothing to write home about) and take a shower to wash all of the sweat and dirt and grass off me. Daisy arrives home, and she spends about an hour in the backyard planting a peach tree she bought several weeks ago. During this time, I notice that the police choppers are circling the area pretty aggressively, and no fewer than forty police cars scream by our house one by one over the span of about ten minutes, sirens on full blast. I come inside to find out that there's a protest/riot about a mile from my house regarding the police brutality death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and it's blocking one of the busiest intersections in Omaha. Daisy and I watch various livestreams of the events unfolding -- both on Facebook from people onsite and from the news channels in town -- of the cops in riot gear tear-gassing and pepper-balling protesters right down the street from us, for over two hours. Eventually, most of the crowds disperse and by around 1 or 2am (yes, that late) I no longer hear the police choppers. We eat a rather quick dinner and watch most of an episode of The Flash before Daisy goes to bed and I stay up a while longer. Shortly before I pass out, I see that a very similar protest is about to overrun the White House.
Saturday, May 30:
Day off. Apparently the White House still stands, and most of the protests died off peacefully in the night. It is pouring rain and has been since long before I awakened. Frustrated with the process of waiting, I check the tracking and subscribe to tracking updates for batches 7, 8, and 9, which should have been here on Tuesday, May 19 and were still in California as of last night. The last actual update on the shipping was from May 22. I must begin to consider that the box is possibly lost in the mail, or that it may not have been shipped properly at all, and make the decision that if I do not have an update by Tuesday, as that will be a full two weeks after the package was supposed to arrive, to reach out to the seller to see if they will either refund or re-ship the order. Worst case scenario is that they refuse and it truly is lost in the mail and I'm out the money; best case scenario is that I'd get a refund and/or another three batches of CDs out of it. I think this is fair and a long enough time to wait before requesting something be fucking done to fix this shit. After the upgrade to the new Ubuntu disabled the functionality of the game I played on my computer in my downtime to decompress, and without more CDs to archive, I'm beginning to go a little stir crazy in my free time -- especially when the wife is asleep. Both of these activities occupied my time and made me feel like I was doing something other than just sitting around the house; without them I feel like I'm starting to lose my mind a bit. This isn't helped by the fact that I have still received zero comics in the mail in the three weeks (now going on four) since distribution apparently "resumed." I am, however, delighted to find that the order from the new vape juice company I decided to give a try is arriving today, instead of on Monday -- I'll get to enjoy that tonight and tomorrow as I took tomorrow night off. The wife awakens around noon and wants us to get some food before going to see the parents once it stops raining -- social distancing requires us to have to sit outside or what have you for any sort of visits with them -- though it doesn't look like any of this rain is going to stop anytime soon. The rain does, eventually, stop in the afternoon hours, but by that point it's too late to visit the parents and thus we make plans to do it tomorrow. The protests fire up again in the evening hours and get progressively violent not only here in town, but nationwide. Here in town, a 22-year-old black man is shot dead by a purportedly racist bar owner during the protests, sparking further nationwide outrage. People begin calling for Trump to make a press conference/statement about the wave of violent protests, and that would be a very, very bad idea for him to do as it is almost certain he would side with the cops and/or threaten martial law, which would make the country explode. Add to this that most protesters at all of these protests nationwide are not abiding by social distancing rules and most of them are not wearing masks (or are wearing mostly ineffective ones) and I predict we will see a massive jump in virus cases over the next few weeks. The wife and I try to distance ourselves from the live feeds and news coverage of the rioting, as it very quickly becomes incredibly depressing, and eat a small dinner before bed.
Sunday, May 31:
Day off, PTO, for our anniversary. Our sixth (married) anniversary is celebrated in a very muted fashion, what with all of the protests going on and Covid-19 still rampant (and in many places, just getting worse and worse). Both of us sleep late; I sleep late on purpose, as I will still have to be awake most of the night in order to reset my sleep schedule for work this week. I get up around 11 and shower. I do not shave; I may as well just grow out the beard again and keep it for the summer, because fuck it, I have no one to impress and I legit have three tins of beard balm still left to use. Because I have heard nothing about my replacement modem/router from Cox, I log into their website and chat with a live agent to ask about it -- said agent tells me the order for it is still "processing" and that I should have a shipping update three days from now. While this frustrates me, I am incredibly sweet and kind to the agent and thank her multiple times for the help. While I do this, Daisy modifies one of her t-shirts to add a large "BLM" in fabric marker to the front of it. We venture over to the parents', staying socially distant and wearing masks the entire time, spend probably an hour with them in the front yard/driveway, and then go do our food shopping at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods before returning home. While we are out, we learn that there is a state of emergency in Omaha due to the protests/riots, and that for the next 72 hours a mandatory city curfew has been established -- between 8pm and 6am, nobody is allowed out of their homes (basically) and the national guard has been brought in to enforce said curfew. I am stunned into silence by this; this is the first steppingstone to martial law being declared due to civil unrest. Throughout the evening I watch various feeds of erupting violence around the country -- police precincts burning to the ground in Los Angeles, the White House being overrun and Trump being forcefully relocated to a basement bunker, bricks thrown through windows in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit. At last count 22 cities were on lockdown with curfews, and I expect that number to rise. I no longer recognize my country; I no longer recognize the United States that I grew up in and was once a proud supporter of, and I fear more every day that we'll never get back to a "normal" that any of us would actually recognize as such. The thoughts of all of this make me incredibly depressed. We have a quiet dinner of grilled vegan burgers and lentil chips, and watch another episode of The Flash to try to keep our minds off all of the gloom and doom outside the sanctuary of our home. In the evening and early overnight hours, Daisy tells me that she has a sore throat and that it's getting progressively worse. I had a sore throat on Friday and some of yesterday before it went away; I tell her that mine was more than likely because I worked in the yard most of the day on Friday and it was probably allergy-based. Hers I'm not so sure about it, and she is now paranoid that she's contracted Covid-19. I tell her to sleep it off and she replies that if she doesn't feel better in the morning, she's not going to work. I support this, as I'll be sleeping most of the day anyway in order to be able to return to work tomorrow night. After she goes to bed, I run two loads of laundry and settle down for the night to decompress with my Switch and Joe Rogan's podcast in my ears. I eventually go to bed around 5 or 6; I can't remember as I was so exhausted.
Monday, June 1:
Working from home, day 37. Almost as soon as I awaken, I am informed that the purportedly racist bar owner who shot and killed an unarmed 22-year-old black man during the protests on Friday night has been released without charges being filed, and I decide to completely shut myself off from the news and world events for the rest of the day as I can no longer compartmentalize and/or otherwise "deal with" what's going on. I make a meal for myself and then just...disconnect from devices for a while in the afternoon. Daisy texts me and the parents and informs me that her bank is closing early because of expected protests and the curfew, and is sending everyone home. Daisy also tells me that someone in her office has been exposed to Covid-19 and that her own sore throat is not going away. This makes both of us paranoid. The temperature outside hits 93 degrees, and tomorrow it is expected to hit 95. Happy June, everyone; summer is here. The plan has been laid out with a schedule for agents and managers at work to go into the office and retrieve their belongings -- certain agents are to go in certain days and hours, etc. A further plan will be laid out by the end of the week for everyone to go get their PCs and peripherals, but as it stands, all employees are to go in and retrieve all personal belongings by the end of this coming week. I no longer have any actual possessions at work aside from my nameplate on my cube and maybe a can of soda or seltzer or something of that ilk -- everything I needed, I brought home with me back in March when we started this work from home program, and I was one of the first to have full at-home functionality anyway. I'll probably wait as long as possible after we get the go-ahead on bringing our work PCs home anyhow, because I do not have a desk and chair set up for it yet and it's going to be difficult and/or expensive to get that all ready to go. I may be one of the last who will bring those items home; I'd rather everyone else work out the kinks with their connections first. It is only Monday, yet I desperately need it to be Friday so that it can be payday; we've exhausted most of our bank account and I need to pay four bills and be able to figure out what I'm gonna do about a computer chair and desk for the downstairs. I also need to (sooner rather than later) upgrade my iPhone, and Daisy needs to get a new phone as well. All of this requires money, which we really don't have much of to spare at the moment. Frustrated about delays on batches 7, 8, and 9 -- because I severely need a distraction from the outside world right about now -- I explore my options on eBay's site for contacting the seller or anyone to get a replacement shipment or a refund because nothing has moved or updated on the tracker since May 22. I am told that if there are no further updates by tomorrow that I can and should reach out directly to the seller to see what can be done. While this is not ideal, I can force myself to be a little more patient, I suppose. It feels stupid to care so much and to get worked up over something so frivolous, but I'm really getting close to my snapping point about everything right about now, and I really need some stuff in the world -- even if it's just my world -- to actually go right for a little while. Between the virus, the protests and riots, our washing machine fucking up, the constant dropped connections at work, the internet connectivity problems at home, the shipping of my new modem/router taking over a week longer than it was supposed to, my comics still not arriving in the mail almost a month now after shipping apparently resumed, the delays in the shipping of batches 7, 8, and 9, my PC game no longer working after my upgrade of Ubuntu, Daisy getting sick, bills coming due, my chair blowing out, work transitioning to entirely work at home, and my own health issues I constantly have to fight with almost every day in one form or another...I need a break. I need some things to actually start going right again before I collapse into some sort of breakdown. I really don't know how much longer I can juggle everything being constantly shitty. Like, something's gotta give. I need something I can be happy about, or (and I can already feel it coming on now) I will settle into a very deep depression that may take weeks or months to pull out of. This is one of my biggest fears, and even one of these things getting righted would help my mental state by leaps and bounds. When I finally log on for work in the evening hours, thus ending my four-day weekend, I am greeted with three of my employees calling out for the night, and a fourth reminding me that she has to leave three hours early (I approved her PTO for this last week). That same employee has an issue that goes nuclear two hours after she leaves for the night, and while me and my colleagues are able to rectify it, the reason it went nuclear is traced back to a failure on her part, and at the request of my executive director -- who called me two and a half hours after I was off work in the morning -- disciplinary action will be taken. This does not make me happy, but it is not my call.
Tuesday, June 2:
Working from home, day 38. As promised, I now have a tracking number for the UPS shipment of the new modem/router from Cox; it has not, however, actually begun its transit. It comes with step-by-step instructions on how to install it, and I am told in my email from them that I need to set it up within 48 hours of receiving it in order to avoid "any possible service disruptions." I sort of laugh when I read that, because that's exactly why I needed it in the first place. It is sweltering hot outside; while it is nice in the house, the outside temperature is 95, with a heat index of 98.
eBay really does not want me to contact the seller or file a claim for batches 7, 8, and 9, and has told me to give it "a few extra days" past today before reaching out due to possible further shipping delays because of Covid-19. For the soil shipment that Daisy said she could get a re-delivery or a refund on, she decides to take the refund, and the company refunds the money to our bank account today. I shower and once more do not shave, as I am indeed going to attempt to grow the beard back out some. It is garbage night, and for the first time in weeks I do not have any used up CDs to recycle. No comics come in the mail today either, though I do get a thank-you card from my cousin for sending her a $25 check for graduation. I have high hopes that I'll be able to get back home to WV this fall for a few days to see her, as well as the rest of the family. I put in the PTO for the Sunday after Daisy's birthday; she took the previous Friday off so we will have three whole days of downtime together to do something, if we so choose (and if we can). My PTO is quickly approved, leaving me with 3-4 days in my PTO bank to spare at the moment in the event that I get sick or can tack them onto whatever vacation time I want to use this fall and winter. In regards to my employee needing "disciplinary action," I do a deep-dive on the issue itself to find that she did nothing wrong, and the blame for the delay in issue resolution lies in miscommunication between the client and their account team, as well as their account team not providing us with the correct information we needed in the first place. I present this evidence to my executive director (I even use screenshots!) to prove that nobody on our side was at fault for what transpired, and tell him I'm flat-out not issuing any sort of corrective action unless he wants to override me for it -- I'm not playing the scapegoat game. I do not get a response, though I am sure he read my breakdown of the situation. I also find out that the announcement about all of us going permanently work from home, as well as all of us eventually bringing home all of our work PCs, did not go out to the team on Friday as it should have...but an email did go out from one of our operations directors instructing all of the teams to go into the office in waves to pick up their belongings and take them home -- with no explanation as to why. This, obviously, makes people freak the hell out. My boss tells me that until an announcement is made publicly, I can relay limited info about it to individuals if they ask questions, but I am not to send a team-wide email or make a group announcement. All of this bothers me on multiple levels, but I do answer some of my team's questions privately, and one of my management peers makes a slightly broader clarification in the team chat. I get stuck on a bridge call with a customer and my boss for well over an hour, for no reason whatsoever, and later in the night need to go peer-to-peer on another hot issue. Two of my agents leave "sick" between 4 and 5am, and everyone seems to be in a generally bad mood across the board, even my peers in management who I generally work very well with. By the time I am done for the night I am fatigued and frazzled, and slightly disgusted, and just unceremoniously leave.
Wednesday, June 3:
Working from home, day 39. It is still very hot -- 93 today, with the heat wave expected to extend into early next week. UPS shipping tells me my new modem/router is supposed to arrive today, but when I wake up, it has not arrived. A second package I was expecting to arrive today -- the shirt I bought to support my pro-wrestler friend, fulfilling my promise to him -- also does not arrive. The recycling trucks come, but the garbage trucks do not -- leaving literal hot garbage outside sitting in the sun all day. This is very odd. I check my work email to see that the stuff I worked on last night got "handled," so to speak, for the most part today -- and that surprisingly, there's not been a lot else that's happened for the day. As you all know, Wednesday is my Friday, and we have overlapping staffing for the overnight shift between Omaha and our sister site in El Paso -- it's the one night of the week we do. Unless it's extremely crazy with issues or large-scale outages or the like, Wednesdays are generally pretty chill because we have the staffing we need and can compartmentalize a bit, meter out work and the like. Anyway, moving onward -- the wife tells me that the person at her office who was exposed to Covid-19 tested negative, so for now they are all safe. Last night was the final night of curfew for Omaha as well, so I either expect things to explode tonight or remain quiet -- depends on the weather, I think. Rain and thunderstorms generally quell violent uprisings, and those are predicted tonight. After being as patient as possible, I reach out today to the seller for batches 7, 8, and 9 and let her know that they never arrived, and shipping apparently stalled out on May 22, meaning (per the USPS) that the shipment is possibly lost. I am very kind and very polite -- after all, it's not really the seller's fault -- and requested a re-shipment or refund, whichever is easier for her based on her own policies in scenarios like this, and I tell her I'm willing to work with her 100% either way, but just wanted to bring it to her attention. If I don't receive a response or resolution by June 9, I am told by eBay to take it up with them and they'll handle it. The seller is apparently "America's #1 Wholesale Media Supplier" and her Facebook page shows warehouses full of CDs and DVDs, so it's likely I'll just get a second shipment from them and that'll be the end of it. I'm fine with this; if I eventually get 7, 8, and 9 in the mail anyhow and they send me three more, I'll have 10, 11, and 12. We'll see, I suppose. I already have one project for the weekend, what with the modem/router arriving soon. That'll be work enough in itself, as I'll have to install, call Cox to get them to activate and configure, and then completely update every wifi-connected device in the house (including my PC, our phones, the Rokus, etc) to use the new connection. For the now almost fourth week in a row after shipments "resumed," no new comics arrive in the mail. As a man who spends close to $800 a year on comic subscriptions (no, that's not a joke), I am getting very, very angry at these books not actually shipping out in a timely fashion after shipping apparently resumed. I make the decision that if I do not see any new books by this time next week, I am filing a claim with the distributor (all Marvel and DC subscriptions are handled via third-party distributor Midtown Comics in NYC, who processes and mails them), but be sure that I will either get refunds or I will have all of my subscriptions across the board extended for 3-4 more months because of this horseshit. Some of you may be saying "Brandon, have a heart, these people are under the stress of delays and distribution problems and are in the heart of the biggest city in the country with the highest count of Covid-19 cases in the United States" -- and I agree with you. I am not vindictive or petty. I fully understand what's been going on. I also fully understand that I should've started getting new issues of my books a few weeks ago, so something's not right. Similar to everything else in my life I am patient and understanding up to a point. After that point I need corrective action to take place. Once I settle down into work for the night, I find that everything is relatively quiet overall, and the hot issues we are able to dispatch quickly or otherwise keep them moving. I work with one of our daytime directors on a few of them between 5 and 7, and leave at about 7:10.
Thursday, June 4:
Day off. The replacement modem/router did not arrive last night, and as of this morning its ETA was removed from the tracking on the UPS website. When I wake up in the afternoon, I see that it is on a truck and scheduled to be delivered today (thus giving me a project to work on tomorrow). I shower, once again refrain from shaving, and go downstairs to feed and water the cats, where I see that it has not yet arrived. I do not yet have a response from the seller on batches 7, 8, and 9, but I do feel a little better that I brought it up and that it hopefully grabs their attention soon. It is once again in the 90s outside today, and strong -- possibly severe -- storms are predicted for the overnight hours tonight. I'll believe it when I see it, honestly. Every time they've predicted storms for the area this spring they either miss us entirely or weren't even worth reporting on in the first place. We've had maybe three thunderstorms of note since the beginning of March, and we've had an unusually quiet tornado season in Nebraska for the last...four years? Something like that. I was working on dayshift when the last sizable tornado in the Omaha area happened, so that would've been 2016. The new modem/router arrives shortly after 5PM. No new comics arrive in the mail today, though I do get two emails (one from Marvel and one from DC) telling me "We're BACK and here's some new stuff to subscribe to" ...the irony is staggering. Ubuntu gets two new updates to the gaming platform I use; I install them, and my game still doesn't work. I can't do anything to fix this; all I can do is hope that further future updates restore functionality. I charge my Switch, which I haven't touched in almost two weeks, just to have something to do in the overnight hours over the weekend so I can decompress. In the evening, it is announced by Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert that the curfew is being reinstated for tomorrow and Saturday nights, as apparently some snitches out there made her aware that there are four events scheduled for this weekend that will bring in thousands of people. Also, the ramps to I-80 in and out of town are conveniently closed for "road work"...and I am at a loss. I don't even know what to think anymore, so I basically "switch off" and the wife quickly mows the back yard. I make dinner for us (spaghetti and vegan meatballs, with garlic bread) while she showers, we watch two episodes of The Flash, and then she goes to bed. I stay up for a bit, writing, before I eventually pass out in my chair as the sun is coming up.
Friday, June 5:
Day off. Payday for both of us, finally. I awaken around 1PM to find that it is already 95 degrees outside, no exaggeration -- which ruins plans I had to mow the grass, because I'd rather not die of heatstroke. I make sure the cats are fed and watered, and unplug and scrub out their water fountain in the kitchen, which had gotten rather nasty. I then strip the bed and wash the bedsheets and blankets, and once that's running make some coffee and set up the new modem/router. This takes me literally five minutes to do and it works perfectly as soon as it's connected. I then go through the long and arduous process of reconnecting my phone, the Roku, the two Alexas, and my computer to the new network. Despite the fact that the new box is super new and larger/more powerful than the old system I was using before, its signal is still just as weak to my home office upstairs without the wifi extender, but it is remarkably faster. I'll still have to mess with reconnecting the wifi extender to it and hopefully I won't have to mess with it anymore. I have still received no response from the eBay seller for batches 7, 8, and 9, so I reach out to the USPS personally to open an inquiry with them, provide them the tracking number, and basically say "find out wherever this package is and give me an ETA for it." The shirt I bought to support my professional wrestler friend arrives. It looks far better than I thought it would. Still no comics arrive. Since it's payday, Daisy goes to Fresh Thyme on her lunch hour and picks up a few grocery things. I also make a $175 order on Amazon (and still have to hold back on getting everything I need). In the afternoon hours, I find out that they're very quickly seriously ramping up the work at home/bring-your-PCs-home process, and my team is scheduled to pick up theirs one by one on this coming Wednesday night, a night where I will also need to be in the office for the first time since March in order to supervise and bring my own machine home at the end of it. I had previously relayed to one of our site directors that Wednesday would be the best night because we have redundancy/overlap with our sister site in El Paso, and said site director agreed. I will relay the news to the team on Sunday when we all log back on. Some of them will take the news better than others will, and I can guarantee this now as I've already had some rumblings from at least two of my agents. This also means that I must have some sort of table/desk/chair setup for the living room ASAP after Wednesday so that I can get everything put together and ready myself for, well, work from the living room for the foreseeable future, as there doesn't seem to be any way around that. I can use my old computer chair and a small table I brought with me from Kansas when I moved up here if absolutely necessary, but it'll still be somewhat of a pain overall. I do not look forward to working downstairs in the living room, and I outright dread going back into that office for one last shift, even if it's the last time I'll ever have to work in that building. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to get out of there early (once everyone has picked up their PCs), come home and set up my machine there, and finish my shift from the house. Daisy arrives home and decides to mow the front yard in the 95 degree weather, which almost gives her heatstroke, and while she decompresses and showers, I take a quick nap in my chair. She wakes up, we eat dinner and watch most of an episode of The Flash, and she goes to bed shortly before 2. I stay up for some time and continue writing before eventually joining her.
Saturday, June 6:
Day off. Today marks the 11-year anniversary of me leaving the grocery store job that was the reason I started this blog in the first place. I was moving back to Kansas City for the summer before later moving to Wichita a few months later in order for my ex to begin her graduate school career at Wichita State. I, in turn, by the fall would be working as a newspaper reporter and part time overnight grocery stocker there -- but 11 years ago today was the prologue to, basically, the third large chapter of my life (the first two being my time in WV and the second being my time in St. Joseph/Kansas City). It does not seem that long ago now -- I mean hell, some of the music on my mp3 player was originally discovered and put on there during that three-month summer interlude in Kansas City, and I still listen to most of the same podcasts 11 years on, most of them on the original player I used then, because it still works. When I think of that time, I think of the stuff I did and the material possessions I acquired during it, the clothing I wore, the movies I saw. That spring/early summer I saw both Star Trek and Watchmen in theaters. That summer I was using my tiny pink netbook (which I later gave to a friend after wiping it and restoring it to factory settings) to write blog posts that I would post later, as I had no reliable internet in the house in Kansas City. I would also use that netbook for transferring files to and from my mp3 player(s). That summer I spent a lot of time playing Super Robot Taisen and Card Fighters DS on my DS Lite, for lack of much else to do. That summer I flew home and visited my parents for the first time since I'd left West Virginia. Having just acquired an original XBOX (a giveaway from one of the people I used to work with at the grocery store, actually), I spent about $50 on a bunch of very cheap, used games on Amazon and played those, too. It was really the last summer of my life I could have classified as a true "summer vacation," as every year following I was either teaching, newspaper-reporting, or trying to survive on what little I could between paychecks -- or working for the company I now work for and have been working for since 2014. Anyway. Daisy and I both wake up shortly after noon, and it is already (again) nearly 100 degrees. Her mother asked that we pick her up pine nuts at Trader Joe's, so after I shower and put on my new wrestling t-shirt, we venture out into the sweltering heat to do that. We quickly get the pine nuts and some other minor groceries, drop them off at the parents' house on the porch (social distancing) and then head to Home Depot, as Daisy also needs more topsoil and garden soil; we get those things and return home, where I feel like I am goddamn dying of heatstroke. June has sucked the life out of me so far when it comes to temperature -- it saps my energy, it saps my ability to stay awake, it makes it hard to breathe, to eat, to move, etc. I make a late "lunch" at 6ish in the evening, and Daisy begins watching the new live-action Aladdin on Disney+. About 40 minutes of it is all I can stand -- the movie is, in my opinion, utter garbage. I didn't even make it long enough to see Will Smith as the genie because a) the movie was taking FOREVER to get there, and b) I thought it was terrible. No new comics today. No reply from the seller of batches 7, 8, and 9. No update on my tracking for those batches either, but it was noted on the tracking report that an investigation was opened for it. The heat and the impatience makes me weary, as does the dread of actually having to leave the house for work at least one day this week, and then having to work in the living room thereafter. In the evening, I pay all of my current outstanding bills and then the wife and I look into merging our cell phone plans (we currently have two different plans and could save a large amount of money every year by combining them into one) and upgrading my iPhone to the new SE, as my old 7's battery is finally starting to die and not hold a charge for very long. It involves a paperwork process that I have to do a bit more research into, but at first glance, seems do-able. We eat dinner and watch an episode of The Flash before she goes to bed. Because I have to keep my sleep schedule on some semblance of what it should be, I force myself to stay awake a few more hours before finally joining her. My weekend, sadly, is now over.
Sunday, June 7:
Working from home, day 40. This is the last week I'll be able to work from home remotely on my own PC, before I have to bring the machine from the office home and work on that. This is, ahem, quite a step down for me as my home PC is a beast (i7 processor, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD, etc). The machine in the office is an old HP that was originally built for Windows Vista and has been upgraded a few times to get it up to speed on the most lightweight version of Windows 10 possible. It is ancient and was possibly originally assembled before I graduated from college. I graduated from college 15 years ago last month -- a milestone I actually should have celebrated, but it's not like there's not enough going on in the world right now to where any real nostalgic distractions would be feasibly possible. I receive a response from the eBay seller for batches 7, 8, and 9, and said seller is extremely apologetic for the delay, but she saw that the tracking had been updated just yesterday so I should have those CDs soon. I go in to check the tracking, and it has updated -- with the case number for the USPS showing that it's under investigation, and nothing else. I reply back to her with that, and let her know that it's not actually updated, just that I opened an investigatory case with the USPS for it, and that case got tagged on the tracking for it. After considerable dicking around with it, I find out that my wifi extender I was using to give myself full signal in my upstairs office is wholly incompatible with our new router setup (2.4ghz vs. the new router being 5ghz). I am forced to go purchase the upgraded version for $60, which I am not happy about, but can't really be helped if I want to get full signal in my home office. It is set to arrive by Thursday, Prime. I don't know why it takes four days to arrive when all of my other stuff I ordered via Prime on Friday night arrived by Saturday evening (with the exception of the Prime Pantry stuff, which arrives tomorrow). Work is very slow and quiet, but it is made clear to me by the weekend team that the "unhook your PCs and bring them home" initiative does not work well because the VPN software we need to use is buggy and/or does not properly function in most cases -- the weekend team is the pilot team, and they were given less than a day's notice that they were going to be the pilot team for this initiative. In the background, I scramble to create a schedule for myself and my nine agents currently reporting to me to go in, test their equipment, and bring it home, and I gather volunteers for days to do it -- one tomorrow, four on Tuesday, and the remaining five (including myself in that) on Wednesday.
Monday, June 8:
Working from home, day 41. I get a response from both the USPS and from the eBay seller for batches 7, 8, and 9, and both of them basically just say the same thing -- "the USPS is experiencing delays due to Covid-19, please wait a few more days for your item to arrive."
😑
I try to be a patient person; anger and stress makes me deteriorate and turns me mean and spiteful, so I must also step back and look at the bigger picture to realize there is great injustice in this world and that we're being ravaged by a pandemic (which is worse now that people ignored social distancing rules and hundreds of thousands went out protesting over the course of the past several weeks). Me not getting 300 CDs in the mail on time is but a minor inconvenience, as is me not getting any new comics yet -- people are getting killed in the streets and Flint MI still doesn't have clean water, and I'm over here bitching about comics and CDs. I go out and purchase my professional wrestler friend's new shirt design as I support the shit out of my friends' endeavors, and he designs cool stuff. Plus, the first shirt I got from his merch site was incredibly high quality and well worth the money. I can justify supporting a friend's dreams here and there. At work, our first "guinea pig" for 3rd shift's systems testing works tonight, and he's in the office to get his computer ready and take it home -- despite the fact that we have been given no instructions whatsoever on what to test and how to make it work. My escalation manager colleague shoots me a text message saying that his machine does not work correctly from home and that it's either a bad driver or his entire tower will need to be replaced (neither of which really make any sense for the issues at hand, but whatever). Anyway, he lets me know as well as lets our director know that as he's been dicking around for the past six hours trying to get his machine to work, he probably won't be in tonight. I tell my director that without any sort of instructions or any sort of prepping, my team will basically be going into the office, unhooking their boxes, and taking them home on a wing and a prayer that they'll actually be able to connect to the network once they're plugged in. Ironically, my agent who is our "guinea pig" retrieves his machine, brings it home, and it works perfectly -- after a few small tweaks he had to do in the office. I have now asked for any instructory materials whatsoever three times now, so if nobody is willing to deliver those to me, my team, or our leadership team, we're going to have an entire shift unable to work -- probably including myself -- and it'll 100% be the fault of our parent company. I have no sympathy; they did this to themselves. In those emails asking for instructions, I also asked our site director as to a timeframe and if this can be pushed back a week if everyone onsite is having problems -- this was denied as apparently our offices are being "dismantled" starting Thursday. Whether our teams can work or not, they'll have their machines at home from Wednesday forward and they'll just have to deal with it. I do not like these answers, but (to look at it from a selfish perspective for a moment) I am salaried, so regardless of whether my machine works or not, and regardless of whether my machine or the rest of the team's machines work or not, I still get paid. I never thought I would be one of "those people" because my sense of honor was too high, but I've been so beaten down by some of this crap at this point. I take pride in my work and always have, but not knowing for certain how much or how little your company is gonna have your back takes its toll after a while. Aside from that, the night itself at work is mostly quiet, but ramps up in the morning hours before I logout.
Tuesday, June 9:
Working from home, day 42. No CDs. No update on them. No comics in the mail. New wifi extender doesn't arrive for two more days and hasn't even shipped yet. We're under a tornado watch; severe storms and 60mph winds are moving into the area, and my allergies have gone bugshit. One of my agents has to get curbside pickup of her PC because she was exposed to Covid-19. This is postponed until tomorrow as they couldn't get a good time for it today. My escalation manager colleague, who was OOO last night because of the PC-take-home debacle, got a new box today and it now mostly works. I have three agents tonight going into the office to pick up theirs and take them home, and I realize that this is probably the last night I will ever work from home upstairs in my own office from my own PC. This really depresses me, to tell you the truth. My home office is my sanctuary, it is where I can feel at peace and where I can relax, even when I'm working. The same can't be said for me working in the living room, with my back to all the doors in the house and where I'm in a large open room. It is not the same. On the only night of the year where we have a strong chance of tornadoes thus far, The Weather Channel's website has crashed and will not load anything, nor will Weather Underground. I check the servers and both are currently down, which never happens. I am forced to use one of the local news channels' radar to see when the storms are going to hit. I foresee this throwing a wrench into my team's efforts to go retrieve their work PCs this evening, and am surprised when it really does not. Connection issues once they're home with their PCs are abundant though, and it takes me until 5:20 AM, working nearly nonstop, to get all three of tonight's people up, online, and working. Exhausted, I leave as on time as possible -- and so ends my last night of working from my actual PC upstairs.
Wednesday, June 10:
Working from home, day 43. I am told with about two hours' notice that the building is shutting down tonight between 6:30pm and 7:30am, so none of my team will be able to pick up their machines tonight -- including myself. It is rescheduled for the vague timeframe of "tomorrow." My director tells us that he is not approving OT for this, so I tell my agents they can leave a little early this morning if they need to in order to save a bit of time for going in to pick up their machines tomorrow, and I'll adjust times as necessary later -- to the point where if they do go into OT I will take it over his head if I have to; we can't ask our agents to go pick up their machines, take them home and set them up, and be on support bridges and the like to do so without paying them for it. That's just how it goes. There are rules and there are laws, and both must be followed. Also, this isn't really my director's fault as much as it is the company's fault for their planning being so disorganized and non-transparent, and because of that they can eat it. I relay this info to the team, and we work from home much as we always have...except they made some network changes during the day today, which screws up connectivity for a number of systems and programs we use. The people who already have their machines home don't experience this, as the network changes were for better connectivity from the people already on the new VPN from home...all of us with our machines still in the office, however, who were supposed to bring their machines home but weren't able to, are fairly boned for several hours while the IT team is making these changes, until I get an all clear from IT around 11 or so. The night (thankfully) remains mostly quiet on my end, but my director and my escalation manager colleague were pretty busy with a few hot issues. By the time 7AM rolls around, I am beginning to nod off at my desk, so I log off of my remote connection for the last time, wake up the wife, make breakfast, and then very quickly pass out in my chair.
Thursday, June 11:
Day off. Well, sort of. I awaken around 4:20, covered in sweat. While I've been sleeping during the day, the temperature outside has risen to 88 degrees, and because it was in the 50s in the morning hours I did not turn the thermostat back down to run the AC. As a result, it is 78 degrees in my closed up, stuffy home office. In a daze, as I have to make myself presentable to go to the office to get my PC along with the remainder of my folks, and check my email -- to see an email from the USPS that out of the blue, batches 7, 8, and 9 arrived today. I go downstairs and this is indeed true -- the box is banged up all to hell and the tracking number is written on it in ballpoint pen, which probably helped contribute to the lack of scanned tracking (obviously). I immediately open batch 7 and begin archiving -- I can already tell it's a winner as there are at least 20-30 albums I want to keep. Daisy arrives home and puts together the table that will serve as my downstairs work desk, and we drive to my office -- which is completely empty and looking like a ghost town, chairs askew, papers and trash all over the place, and not a soul around. I log on to my machine and let the director at our sister site in El Paso know that I'm there and am helping to get everyone's stuff home, and log off/unhook my machine, clean everything, and start to place it into the tub I brought with me. My remaining team members file in slowly, one by one, and do the same. The entire process takes about 90ish minutes from start to finish for all parties involved, and we return home by around 9:30ish -- the tub with my PC in it is placed on the new table the wife put together (actually an old, old table I had from when I was living in Kansas) and we both shower. I continue archiving CDs. My two employees who had to start their shifts tonight after bringing the machines home are able to do so with few incidents and relative ease, and I keep in contact via Facebook with our sister site's director (who's on shift and the lead guy tonight) while they get their stuff done and put together. I'll set my stuff up tomorrow or Saturday, depending on time and energy, and see if it works. If it doesn't I'll reach out to the director as well and we'll get it sorted out; I am relatively unconcerned about the whole ordeal now. We have pesto pasta for dinner and watch two episodes of The Flash, and then the wife goes to bed. I stay up archiving more CDs and watching my boss play Magic: The Gathering on Twitch before eventually (again) falling asleep in my chair.
Friday, June 12:
Day off. No new comics in the mail. I wake up around noon and am feeling really out of it. Between last night and the afternoon hours today I have gotten through 32 albums of batch 7. After previously going haywire earlier in the week (but finishing two loads normally afterwards) the washing machine once again starts malfunctioning during a load of whites and I finally just snap. I instruct the wife to call the warranty people and send a repairman out to the house as I am pretty sure it's the control board and I'm fed up with trying to fuck around with it myself and crossing my fingers every time I want to wash some clothes. The appointment is set for between 12 and 5 on Wednesday, which isn't incredibly ideal but it'll do, and I'll power my way through being awake for it (not much of a choice anyway) just to be able to get it fixed and taken care of. I find out that my team had relatively few issues last night after picking up their computers, as mentioned, and in the afternoon hours decide to set up my own. It takes literally ten minutes and a thorough scrubbing of the machine via Windows CleanUp! to get it to be the way I want it. It's in my house now; even though the company still technically "owns" it, this 10-12 year old computer is mine. I attempt to log on to our new VPN, fully expecting it to not work and for the process to break down there, just like it has for many of my employees....and it magically lets me in with no issues whatsoever. I instantly have access to everything I need, all of my company websites and programs, and all is well -- it's just as if I were still in the office. I let my director as well as his counterpart in El Paso know, and I correct times for my team, send a few emails, check out a few tickets, etc -- everything I would do on a normal shift. Everything works flawlessly. Daisy arrives home, I show her that everything's good, and shortly thereafter, one of our mutual friends comes over for some socially-distanced porch time on the back deck. Dave Chappelle releases a new special, and I watch it. It is a hard watch, as it's some heavy stuff. The wife makes a fresh homemade pizza for dinner (with fresh oregano and basil from our garden) in the night hours after our mutual friend leaves, and we watch an episode of The Flash before she goes to bed shortly after 3. I stay up for a bit to archive more CDs.
Saturday, June 13:
Day off. No new comics in the mail. It is beginning to set in more and more that I am now one of those people who work from home. I mean, I have been working from home since March, but there was always an office to tether me before. Now there's nothing to tether; my office PC is downstairs, my office itself apparently closed. I completely work from home now. I have a badge on a lanyard that I have no idea will actually work anymore or on what building it would possibly work on -- perhaps they'll encode it to work on the only building my company has left in town, the office building in which I trained six years ago. Working from home was something I always thought of as a dream, a fantasy, something that I never thought I'd be able to do outside of being self-employed as a writer or artist. This is a bittersweet interpretation of that dream, for sure. I re-up my subscription to Popular Mechanics as it is one of the few magazines I enjoy reading anymore. Batch 7 is complete, and from it I get a total of 70 albums, both well known and obscure. I open batch 8 to find Morrissey, Adele, and Led Zeppelin right on top, which is a good omen in my eyes. Daisy and I watch Artemis Fowl on Disney+ and it is...interesting but disappointing. I get the feeling that a lot was cut out of the book and it feels very, very rushed and sort of disjointed, but it is very pretty. In the evening hours, the internet bounces a bit before going completely hard down. I call Cox, and there's another outage in the area, with no estimated time to repair. Two hours into the outage, I pull up my wifi hotspot on my iPhone for the first time ever, fed up with not being able to actually do anything, and use that (there's a reason I pay for unlimited talk, text, and data). It's at least an acceptable way to kill my phone's battery. The wife and I spend a little quiet time together, since we can't watch anything else together while the internet is down, and as she's exhausted, she goes to bed well before midnight. The internet comes back around 1am and remains stable. I recharge my phone while I continue through batch 8 and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. When my director opens his Twitch channel to play Magic, I watch that for a while as well, then finally leave the computer to veg out in my chair before bed. Tomorrow starts my first night of really-really working from home with no real safety net.
Sunday, June 14:
Working from home, day 44. Ten years ago today, one of my best friends from high school succumbed to cancer. I know she's in a better place now; I know she's okay, somehow, but I always feel a little bit of grief on this day. I've had a lot of friends die over the years via many different ways (suicides, car accidents, and two were legit, straight-up murdered); however, I may have grieved for her the most. It was hard to process then and it's only slightly less difficult now. Moving on, I wake up around 3PM and immediately get into the shower. I am not hungry, which is odd because I usually am on Sundays when I get up. As I'm working downstairs now, though, it's not like I won't have access to actual food when I want it (this could also be a problem). I feel as if my weekend was stolen from me -- I had to spend Thursday evening dealing with the computer stuff, Friday evening was spent on the porch with our friend who stayed for 3.5 hours visiting with us, and last night felt like my only "night off" where I could actually somewhat decompress. I'm a little more than a third of the way through batch 8, and while I'm finding some good stuff here and there, it's wholly mediocre for the most part. I'm finding more CDs that the wife would want than ones that I'm excited about, but meh. I've decided that I may eventually continue the archiving a few months down the road, but after these last three are done, I'm done for some time and won't be ordering any more batches. I'd like to be able to continue paying off my credit cards, not add more to them. Tonight at work is payroll, and it's one of the first things I take care of when I'm in on payroll Sunday, and shortly thereafter I get another robo-text from Cox telling me that they're still working on my outage (which started Saturday night) and that there was currently no estimated time to repair. I laugh at this, as I haven't had a problem since Saturday night; however, Daisy tells me that it had gone out earlier in the day when she'd gotten up in the morning and was trying to watch TV. I have no problems connecting normally as I had on Friday when I set everything up, and I go on with my shift as per the usual. By around 12-1, everything gradually slows to a crawl, and the VPN boots not only me, but everyone else at least once or twice. By 2 it won't hold a connection to the VPN at all for longer than 30 seconds. From 2:30 to 6 the internet dies completely at least three times, and will not hold a stable connection at all for longer than a few minutes (apparently, the VPN we're using now is very resource-heavy). I text Cox numerous times in the night but there is no update available on repairs; they tell me the next updates should be available after 7AM (they're not). In frustration and anger, I order a wifi dongle on Amazon for the work computer for $12, so that if this shit is going to continue, I'll just run it off the iPhone's hotspot. I am exceedingly angry that the internet that I pay $80 a month for isn't stable enough for me to work on when my computer is plugged directly into it via cable. Finally around 6, it stabilizes enough to where I can run both of my mailboxes via webmail and can logon to our chat server and workboard, but I can do little else -- Outlook will not open without crashing the VPN, nor will a few other programs we use. It takes all my patience to wait until 7 to log off before, so angry, I come back upstairs to archive more CDs and wake the wife.
Monday, June 15:
Working from home, day 45. No new comics in the mail. Today is weigh-in day, though I actually weighed myself yesterday -- I am down almost three pounds compared to my last weigh-in. This is a plus and marks the first time I've actually been down some weight on a weigh-in day in several months. I am now roughly halfway through batch 8 and look to have it finished by Wednesday evening, more than likely -- sooner if possible. I awaken in the afternoon and my foot, which has been aching recently, aches more. I take a colchicine in the event that it's another gout attack trying to begin and make sure I take ibuprofen for good measure. It is still in the 90s, and my allergies are killing me (just as they have been for the past few days). I don't go downstairs when I awaken, as I'll have to spend the entire night down there -- instead, I retreat to my office and continue archiving CDs. My computer tells me there's a small distribution upgrade I must do as well, so I also do that. I must get through batch 8 by Wednesday-ish, for reasons I'll explain later as to not ruin any surprises for anyone. I wait for the wife to return home from work before I go downstairs, with the plan not to come back upstairs until the morning. The wifi dongle arrives tomorrow. I'm hoping I don't have to use it very often, and that the larger internet outage gets fixed or is already fixed; I haven't had any connectivity problems upstairs on my actual computer at all, not even this morning when I know the connection was being unreliable -- and it's remained stable thus far this evening. Fast, even. In the overnight hours, which are made hectic by a massive T-Mobile outage that affects many of our customers as well, I am able to get my foot pain to disappear via drinking 64oz of water and at least 32oz of coffee, and by taking three more ibuprofen. Around 3, I get hungry, and I realize that with the wife upstairs in bed and with me downstairs in the living room working, I have the full run of the downstairs of the house...including the kitchen. This means I can cook, I can bake. I summarily bake a cauliflower gratin at 4AM just because I can (it is delicious), and make plans to bake bread and rolls tomorrow night. I actually take a lunch hour, and I let the leadership know that I'll be leaving around 5AM tomorrow night because I have to sleep fast before the washing machine repairman comes during the day on Wednesday. 7AM rolls around without incident and I log off, empty, reload, and run the dishwasher, and make a pot of tea for the wife before I come upstairs and end my day by working through more of batch 8 before bed.
Tuesday, June 16:
Working from home, day 46. Still no comics in the mail. Today is the birthday of yet another deceased friend, this one from college. This one hurts a lot; she and I were very close and one of my favorite poems I've ever written is dedicated to her -- one of the few people I've ever written a poem for or about with a dedication. She never read the poem, nor do I remember if she even knew of it before she died, but it is included in my first poetry collection (which, eventually, I will re-edit and publish). I re-read the poem and realize that holy shit, does it need some revision work. I put it away; it is but a snapshot of another time, another place, another headspace. Moving on, I have seventeen discs yet to get through for batch 8, and as such, cracked open batch 9 to take a look and see what was in there. Batches 8 and 9 I've seen a lot of duplicates in; duplicates of other batches, but not necessarily in the same batch. Batch 9 seems fine at a first glance, with 10-15 albums in it I'm really interested in, and about 30 others that are worth having in a digital collection, at the very least. Compared with earlier stuff, though, it's simply mediocre. The wife lets me know that she needs to switch out her upcoming time off from next Friday to this coming Friday, as she'll have to be in the office on the day she'd originally planned due to a death in the family of one of her coworkers. I tell her that's fine, it is what it is; can't do much about it. It's in the 90s outside again this afternoon, which makes the house stuffy and miserable. I don't wake up until after 5PM, and basically run to the shower. My foot is aching again, so I take more ibuprofen (part of why I don't think it's gout this time is because ibuprofen actually works on it). We're supposed to get nasty storms and a few inches of rain pretty much tomorrow night through the entire weekend, so I guess that means we won't be mowing the grass or doing other yard or garden work. Plus side is that Friday is payday for me, so I can finally get a few essentials on Amazon that I've been holding back on...like a headset for my computer, so I can actually use my work phone again and not my cell for everything. At 5AM I wrap everything up at work (it's still a relatively quiet night, which is really odd for a Tuesday) and log off so that I can come upstairs and slowly decompress before I go to sleep; I've got a longer Wednesday than usual ahead of me.
Wednesday, June 17:
Working from home, day 47. No new comics in the mail. The ache in my foot has migrated around to my ankle, so it probably is a gout thing. However, it is exceedingly mild and more of a slight annoyance more than anything else; it's also a little swollen too, but nothing major. Just enough to be noticeable. It responds well to ibuprofen, so it's probably on its way out. I make sure to drink more water than usual and internally thank my doctor for getting me on the higher dose of Allopurinol a month ago, which the wife refilled for me yesterday on the way home from work. It's due to that higher dose, I'm guessing, why this "attack" is really mild and not debilitating or crippling. As I go to sleep in the morning, I hope the worst of it is behind me, especially since I have a washer repairman coming this afternoon that I have to, y'know, be able to walk for. I sleep from shortly before 7 to...shortly before 8, when my phone rings and it's the repairman, who says he'll be here between "8:30 and 9." This was not the agreed upon time. I also check my email to find a lengthy coaching email from one of my colleagues about one of my employees, an email that warrants a reply and a call to my executive director to explain some points more in detail. It is a good call overall (I was expecting it to go poorly). The washer repairman arrives, runs some diagnostics, and informs me that it's either the control panel, the control board itself, or both -- as I'm under warranty, he's ordering the parts and will replace them for free; it'll take a few days to get them in, and then he'll call us and come back out at the same time of the morning to do it (apparently our house is really close to the shop, so he can make it his first stop of the day). I am also told that in order to not cause any damage or risk frying it completely during a load, I should not run the washer until it's fixed. I sort of scoff at this but I see his point -- if it blows out the board completely mid-wash and it won't rinse, spin, or drain, that's a problem. After this, I finish up batch 8 and head to bed. Batch 8 gave me 66 albums of varying quality, some hits and some misses. When I awaken in the afternoon, my foot feels a lot better (not completely better, but a lot) and I begin batch 9. The night at work is mostly quiet; my employee I need to coach and/or discipline calls out sick, and I spend the night taking care of various administrative things before logging out on time.
Thursday, June 18:
Day off. No new comics in the mail. I am awakened for the first time around 11:30am by a very loud clap of thunder; the storms have arrived. Another storm rolls through around 2:30, with some really hard rain, and some more thunder rolls through the area in the evening hours, but nothing major. The foot/ankle pain is now completely gone, which tells me that it was probably a good idea to drink over a gallon of water last night during my shift. I get up for the day around 5PM and immediately jump into the shower, then by the time I get out and sit down at my desk, Daisy has arrived back home. I continue to work my way through batch 9 but keep getting sidetracked; my director suggested I download Magic The Gathering: Arena for my machine to play it online like he does, so I do so. It does work on Linux, but it is slow and extremely buggy. The community is in the process of trying to make it work better, so they say. As it stands, the app keeps crashing for me, so it is what it is at the moment and I don't let it concern me too much. We have spaghetti and pizza bread for dinner, and watch the final episode of season 6 of The Flash before the wife goes to bed. I stay up a bit longer to try to decompress somewhat and just get some quiet me-time before falling asleep in my chair in the night.
Friday, June 19:
Day off. Payday for me. Day off for the wife, too, as she specifically took it off. No new comics in the mail. As I don't have any bills that are immediately due (soonest one is three weeks out), I make a large order on Amazon for stuff I need for around the house. This includes a new mouse for my PC upstairs (the old one is fine, but is being moved to the work PC downstairs because that one is dying), a headset for my work phone, and a wrist pad for the work PC desk. The wife awakens and we go out and do our shopping -- getting cat litter and hitting up Walmart and the grocery store. It is the first time I've been inside a Walmart in literally six months. The shopping trips are not cheap. We drop off our power drill at the parents' as well, with a fresh battery, as mama needs to use it for something. We return home and eat dinner, and watch the first episode of the latest season of Supergirl, and I take a nap because I'm exhausted while the wife watches Dead to Me. When I awaken, she's already in bed next to me and I've been asleep for a few hours. What awakens me is some of the worst diarrhea I've had in months (I'm sure you didn't need to know that, but whatever). I stay awake a few more hours, working slowly through the last stack of CDs from batch 9 and watching my director play Magic on Twitch, before I retire to the chair once more.
Saturday, June 20:
Day off. West Virginia Day! It's the day my home state became a state in 1863. Because it has now been four days since the washer repairman was here, and he has not yet returned to fix it, laundry is piling up. Generally on the weekends I wash everything that needs to be washed, including the bedsheets and blankets, but until the repairman comes back to replace the parts, I can't do that. I'm hoping he calls on Monday or Tuesday, because I really need to be able to wash things soon. While I don't necessarily go through a lot of clothing working from home, the wife is still going to and from work every day, and she does. I finally get a notification that my second t-shirt I ordered to support my professional wrestler buddy shipped today, almost a week and a half after I ordered it. I finish batch 9; it gives me 59 albums total, far less than usual batches do -- mainly because some of the discs included in it were unplayable or were foreign and my computer wouldn't recognize them. I almost don't want to do it, but as I have so little else to look forward to and to bring me some excitement...I order batches 10, 11, and 12. So little else is keeping me going right now -- I'm not getting any comics in the mail (none again today), I'm not buying any real clothing (aside from the aforementioned t-shirt, and that was a favor for a friend), I can't go out to eat or see a movie -- hell, I barely leave the house -- and my visit home this fall to visit my family is in serious jeopardy because people just won't wear masks and the virus is spreading more. I have nothing else to look forward to. I was supposed to have at least one more tattoo by now. I would've gotten my hair cut at least once more to make it short for summer, too. I wanted to buy a car this year. I wanted to go on vacation again either for our anniversary or for the wife's birthday (which is this week, actually). None of those things have happened -- instead I work from home on a slow-ass VPN on an ancient computer brought home from the office and I have a broken washing machine. All I have right now is this CD archiving project. It is one of the very few things keeping me sane and staving off the depression. Some of you folks may laugh or scoff at that, but it's true. 2020 has been so awful on multiple levels as a whole. Sure, there have been good things too, but most of them have been far outweighed by the bad. Anyway, moving forward -- the wife makes muffins this morning and then we venture out to Whole Foods to get a bottle of wine for her father for Father's Day, which is tomorrow. We take it to him, along with a painting the wife did, and do some socially-distanced visiting with the parents for a while before hitting up Whole Foods, again, on the way home in order to get ingredients for the vegan chicken and broccoli lasagna that the wife wants to make. I take a nap in my chair in the evening, and awaken shortly before dinner finishes. Apparently I sleep through the wife watching a few hours of TV, working in the garden, and taking a shower. I guess I'm sleeping heavier than I used to. After dinner -- during which we watch another episode of Supergirl -- I hook up the new wifi extender, watch my director play more Magic on Twitch, go out and download my podcasts to catch up on them, and eventually retire back to my chair.
So there we go, another month down, and we continue...
