Work, BBQ, Pandemic, TV
By Derek | March 19, 2020
A good Thursday. (19th)
Regular work day for me. Still learning tons of new things from our engineer that’s departing.
Jill brought us BBQ potatoes fro our favorite BBQ place. They’re still open, fortunately. The governor (Abbot) has closed down eat-in places, for now, but takeout or drive through is still an option. I hope this panic doesn’t kill 90% of the small businesses. Tons of people can’t work right now. Stores are crazy. This is really the first time I’ve mentioned all of this publicly, but we feel for the most part that we are prepared. We’ve been discussing options with family and friends.
Stay safe.
Watched an episode of Star Trek Picard. We missed last week, so we’re a week behind. Probably for the best, as this week’s episode is a Part 1. I’m guessing next week will be the season finale, so we’ll watch both of them together.
Bed time.
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Health, Work, New Things
By Derek | March 18, 2020
A busy Wednesday. (18th)
Got up and exercised first thing.
“Went” to work. Of course, I’m working from home, so there’s that.
Found out that one of our most talented engineers is leaving for another opportunity. That leaves some opportunity open for myself and another guy on my team, though. We spent the day learning and deploying our product. I’ve been involved in the deploy process in the past, but only in a support / monitoring role.
This time, my counterpart and I were actually performing the deployment. The documentation is very good, but even still, as we were both first timers, we did some make a few small enhancements to both the process and the documentation.
As we have six data centers to deploy to, and run “regression” tests in, it pretty much took all day. We started at 11am today, and finished about 1am in the morning.
Time for bed.
Topics: Health, Linux, Me, Technology, Work | No Comments »
Slept, TV, Frito Pie, Star Citizen
By Derek | March 17, 2020
A green Tuesday. (17th)
Slept in a bit.
Got up and did my exercise. Watched a couple of episodes of Knights of Sidonia while I pedaled.
Jill, our younger son and I went to our local BBQ place for lunch, I actually ordered the Frito Pie.
Came back home, we had already decided to cancel all activities at our house this week.
Played some Star Citizen with my younger son. We ended up hanging out with a guy from my org ( Synchronizerz https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/SYNCH ) and did some exploring in his Carrack.
Found this cool Lego Carrack online.
Become a Star Citizen and get 5,000 free Credits
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/enlist?referral=STAR-H4F3-KZZH
Stayed up too late, though.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Food, Games, Health, Me, Star Citizen, TV | No Comments »
Sleep Study, Slept, Pokemon
By Derek | March 16, 2020
Pokémon Monday. (16th)
Completed my sleep study around 5am, the attendant told me I did pretty well, he said I slept for about 6 hours. That’s pretty normal for me, but I’m not used to getting up at 5am.
Drove home and went back to bed for a few hours. When I got up, I went ahead and did my exercise for the day.
Jill, our younger son and I went out to play some Pokémon. We did a few raids, and our younger son got a shiny Giratina, but the rest of us did not.
Came home to eat lunch. Still working on the goulash that’s Jill made a few days ago.
We went back out and played a bunch more Pokémon.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Health, Library, Appliance, Pokemon, Driving, Sleep
By Derek | March 15, 2020
A good Sunday. (15th)
Got up and exercised first thing. Still doing this every day, just sometimes I forget to mention it. I currently have a streak going since Sept. 30th.
Jill and our younger son went to make a quick trip to the library, to drop off some items, but of course, they’re closed. I used the after hours slot, there a definitely people working inside, but the doors were closed.
We went to Conn’s and Lowe’s to check prices on a new washing machine. We ended up buying one at Lowe’s with a 10 year limited warranty for under $600. Also, Lowe’s has free delivery if you buy new hoses ($29) and a $30 haul away fee for the old washer. Conn’s prices were similar, but their delivery fee is $79 if the price of the appliance is over $600 and we don’t think it included haul away.
We played a bit of Pokémon before I had to go pick up our older son and his wife to take them driving. Mostly they practiced parallel parking, since that’s primarily what they need.
I had my older son drop himself off at work, and then hurried back to the house so that we could go to my sleep study.
Jill told me she wouldn’t be able to stay the night, since we hadn’t found someone to keep our younger son.
So we took two cars, and they both stayed with me until after all the wires were hooked up and it was time to start the study. This study is with a CPAP. Hopefully I’ll sleep well this time.
Topics: Auto, Entertainment, Family, Games, Health, Me | No Comments »
Work, Tax, TV, Movie
By Derek | March 14, 2020
A good Saturday. (14th)
Regular work day for me.
Got one host evac done, then Jill and I had to leave to go to the tax office to work with our tax lady.
Got back into the office and worked late to finish out my day.
Jill and I watched the rest of the episodes in season 1 of Marvel’s Runaways.
We also watched Good Luck Chuck before bed. Funny.
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Work, Mandatory WFH, Emergency, Games
By Derek | March 13, 2020
Friday the 13th.
Regular work day for me, from the office, this time.
Of course, Rackspace announced that Monday, we’re starting pretty much mandatory work from home.
San Antonio announced that Fiesta was postponed, and Trump called a national state of emergency.
Jill went to Whole Foods, she said it wasn’t too bad.
Got home and helped Jill with the groceries, then we ate dinner.
Played a little MW:CoD:Warzone — just the tutorial sections. I _think_ I did ok in the Battle Royale tutorial, it let me win.
Once that was done, I ended up playing Doom(2016) for a bit. I bought it a few weeks ago, and hadn’t tried it yet. I just needed something super fun and super fast paced.
Topics: Entertainment, Family, Games, Me, Work | No Comments »
Work, WFH, CostCo, TV, Dinner
By Derek | March 12, 2020
A good Thursday. (12th)
Regular work day for me. My employer has requested that most of our teams attempt working from home today, to ensure business continuity. That’s not very difficult for my team, as we were primarily WFH (work from home) before the recent policy change that snubbed that.
Worked mostly on my primary project today.
Jill managed to get in and out of CostCo with only a large passage of time lost. She said the store was crazy.
I managed to watch a couple of episodes of Marvel’s Runaways.
Our friend Jim stopped by today to pick up some mail, near the end of my work shift.
After I got off work, our younger son was home from martial arts, so he showered while Jill took our older son to work. Once she got back, we went to dinner with Jim and his girlfriend. We ended up eating at Papouli’s at Quarry.
Once back from dinner, I went ahead and did my exercise for the day, while we watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb.
Time for bed.
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Work, WHO, TV
By Derek | March 11, 2020
A good Wednesday. (11th)
Regular work day for me. The side entrance to my work is closed, they’re working on the gates and re-paving the parking lot there.
Got a couple of previously evacuated hosts maintenanced today, so that good.
I found an interesting link today. The WHO (World Health Org) has a COVID-19 situation “dashboard” available: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd
I’m not one to subscribe to the mass hysteria panic the media is throwing around, but it’s definitely always good advice to wash your hands, and don’t fricken cough on people. Duh.
A friend at work also sent me this link (a community sourced dashboard, with smaller breakdowns by area): https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1yCPR-ukAgE55sROnmBUFmtLN6riVLTu3&ll=29.523622764696686%2C-87.83430797399251&z=4
Some parts of the world aren’t as fortunate as we are here. San Antonio hasn’t seen much of Coronavirus.
Also, work is doing a “business continuity” test tomorrow, where we’ll work from home, to ensure that we can, in case we need to self-quarantine. They recently (Feb 1st) changed the policy that requires us all to be in the office every day. Interesting times.
Got home and had to take our older son to work.
Came home again and Jill and I watched an episode of Marvel’s Runaways. Started a second episode, but we had to go pick up our older son from work, so we finished it after we came back.
Time for bed.
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Dr, BBQ, Pokemon, Robotics, Martial Arts, TV
By Derek | March 10, 2020
A good Tuesday. (10th)
Got up and had to get ready for a doctors appointment first thing this morning. It’s a routine follow up on my eyes from last year when my optometrist thought I might have a tear in one of my retinas. The ophthalmologist didn’t see anything to worry about, but wanted to see me back in a year. Drove over there and waited and waited for the doctor. He spent literally two minutes in the exam room, after his assistants checked my vision and everything else. Le sigh. Also, they dilated my eyes, so maybe that’s also why I had to wait so long, and they sent me home with a temporary dark sunglasses thing. Good thing, too.
Back home to get ready for lunch. Our standard Tuesday lunch is BBQ, but honestly, as good as the Frito Pie is, I’m a little burned out in it. Last week, I had the BBQ sandwich, and this week, I just had a one meat brisket plate with a side salad.
I made level 40 (max level) in Pokemon Go during lunch! Took me nearly two years, but I finally got it! (pic)
Robotics after lunch, the kids had a play day today, it’s our first meeting after regionals, but the adults discussed strategy for our next few weeks.
We took our younger son to martial arts, and met our BBQ friend there, to go play some Pokémon. Spent just over an hour playing Pokémon.
Picked up our younger son from martial arts, then headed out directly to take our older son to work.
Came home and exercised, watched an episode of Marvel’s Runaways.
Left to take our older son home from work, then realized we needed to get to the grocery store for a few things.
Time for bed.
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