Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday. I slept in a little this morning and didn’t get started on work until after eight. It ended up turning into an absolutely crazy and exhausting work day like you would not believe.

I got to my desk and was essentially on the phone for the entire day. Phone calls, emails, training videos, meetings, it just went on and on. I did just about every possible type of work today. I was a tech manager, a people manager, a ticket triage person, a helpdesk tech, a server engineer, a sales person, etc. Every hat you can imagine, all in one day, all day.

So really no news, in any way. Grocery shopping happened today. Cooking for Mia happened today. Tonight was billiards league for Paul. So the house was pretty quiet, although the girls really wanted to spend time with me today and I was just not able to be available all day, which sucked.

Even after the normal work day was over I was on deck to support a new tech on her first day out in Denver doing an on site with a customer there. And supporting an email migration that somehow was much harder than it should have been.

It was all that I could do to get a small break at ten to grab some food out of the microwave that Dominica had thrown in for me. Then I sat in the living room for two episodes of The Thundermans with Liesl and Luciana. Luciana had been requesting this all day. But I could only hang out for an hour. Then it was back to work.

I worked on an unrelated email project from eleven until one in the morning. I got the day’s SGL video filmed and posted, got the tiny update that we have written up. And that’s it. Off to bed at one thirty. Exhausted, but the day went well.

Wednesday. Today the whole family, including Paul and Kat, are going to the Great Texas State Fair… except for me. I am staying home to work and to watch Mia. So really, I’m the big winner today.

The family was off to the Trinity Mills train station at nine thirty. And I went to work on what was an extremely busy day. I worked like crazy all day. So much of it on the phone. Lots of customer issues (issues induced by the customers, in fact.)

So my day was very busy and the time just flew by. It was like the day never existed. I didn’t eat anything all day, either. It was just work, work, work. Even Mia left me alone. She was in the living room sleeping on the black couch all day. I almost forgot that she was even here.

The family got back from the fair earlier than I expected. The girls’ legs hurt from having walked so much.

I worked a long time, but we took some time for Dominica and I to hang out and watch some Brooklyn Nine Nine tonight.

Then there was more work to do and I stayed up until after one in the morning doing it. A very long day for sure.

Tuesday. A pretty busy day for me, again. I didn’t get up until well after eight this morning. I just felt like I needed the sleep.

I was at my desk all day. Nothing really special happening, a pretty normal work day. Lots of people management, and lots of code review and deployment stuff.

Today Steam had a big sale on The Escapist 2, which Liesl has really been wanting, she has played the original a lot. So I went ahead and got it for her. She is super excited.

The kids are going to the Texas State Fair tomorrow. That should be fun. There is just no reasonable way for me to go, I have so much to do. Nothing for me to do there, anyway. I don’t ride rides, the exhibits don’t sound interesting, and I can’t eat any of the food and stay healthy. So best just to stay home, work, and save money.

Luciana played some of the first Eventide game today now that we own the entire trilogy. She is excited about those. But after a while she let Liesl have the Steam machine because she was so excited to have The Escapist 2.

A lot of this evening was spent doing code reviews, staging testing, and pushing to production new changes for WasteWatcher.

My evening flew by. I have no idea where it went. I worked until close to seven thirty. Then the girls and I made rice krispy treats together. Then I ordered Domino’s pizza for dinner. While we waited for it, the girls played The Escapist 2 together on the local two player mode. They are super excited about that. Apparently it is a lot of fun.

Once the pizza arrived we watched three episodes of The Thundermans together while we had dinner. It is a “new” Nickelodeon sitcom that they really like. I have never seen it before.

Then I took a shower and the girls played video games again. Luciana had to take one tonight, too. So that they are ready for the fair tomorrow.

It was eleven thirty when Paul, Dominica, and Kat got home from billiards. Kat is staying over to make it easier to go to the fair tomorrow.

Before going to bed, Mia discovered a giant American cockroach running around in my office. She spent a good half of an hour hunting it and actually managed to catch and eat it!

Rachel was supposed to come over to work this afternoon but didn’t make it. Then was supposed to come over tonight, but didn’t make it. But she called around twelve thirty and we talked till one. Boy was I tired after that.

Monday. After having worked until three thirty last night, I slept in until after eight this morning. I did not manage to go swimming today. Just too tired to do it. But I was very productive last night and happy with the work that I got done.

Today was mostly a normal, but solidly busy, day in the office. Nothing super special, a lot of time on the phone managing humans.

Allen and I put in a few hours on the phone tonight making plans for Nicaragua. We managed to get our hotels booked for the trip. In San Juan del Sur we are staying at Barrio Cafe San Juan which looks amazing, especially the food. That’s where we will be most of the time. Then for just a little bit we are staying at the Hotel El Almirante in Granada, right down the street from where I used to live. I had just found out this week that my old house had sold there, too! A bit sad that we can’t rent it again. That was a lot of work getting all of the details finalized. We are skipping Ometepe, it just doesn’t work to try to fit it into this trip.

Luciana tried playing Doodle Kingdom tonight on Steam and likes it. We’ve had a good run of new games this week.

For dinner tonight Dominica made some cheesy broccoli and rice casserole that was really amazing. I made her notate the recipe and put it on Pinterest so that we have a hope of getting that again sometime.

I watched some Taxi tonight while working. I miss this show. I’ve not seen it since I was little. It was a popular show when I was very young, but not one that I ever really noticed going into reruns. It is a bit surreal seeing it now. I remember it well, and yet don’t remember any specifics from it. So it feels super familiar, and yet every episode is fresh to me.

Tonight I found my old videos from when I taught Technical Web Design with HTML down in Castile from around, I think, 2005. I can’t believe that they have never been posted on YouTube before. So I got them all uploaded tonight. Super low quality, but they work. I have all twelve of them available in this thread on Republic of IT. At least good for nostalgic reasons.

Sunday. Today ended up being a busy day for me. I started doing some light work this morning and then by the afternoon I had come up with a new business idea and just had to get started with it right away. So my day went from “not sure what I am working on” to “major project stuff” really quickly.

My new business is oneNica, a business helping to promote and develop local businesses around Nicaragua. First by providing free web site creation and hosting, in partnership with Hostadillo of course, and free email. Then building local guides around Nicaragua to help both locals and tourists to find resources in different areas. And a lot of cool ideas to come from that. But that is where we are starting. A good chance to help out small businesses and give them a way to get online that they have not had before. Getting business email is extremely hard down there.

I went swimming this afternoon. I did not have much time so just did one thousand yards and called it a day. Then on the way home I stopped at Taco Cabana hoping to get breakfast tacos. Only to find out that they discontinued doing breakfast tacos after breakfast time on Monday. That really sucks because that’s what I like to eat there and now they don’t sell them. And I only just learned about them like a month ago.

Luciana discovered Doodle God Alchemy Jam on Steam today and started playing that. She really likes it.

This evening I built the new website, and built a new MailCow email server! So quite a busy day. I ended up working until three thirty in the morning to get everything done.