Sheep Guarding Llama

Saturday.

I put in a lot of time today getting a new video game laptop build for the girls as they have been without Steam for weeks now.  What we are doing is taking the old Steam laptop whose Nvidia graphics card burned out and re-purposing that as Dominica’s work laptop where she doesn’t need the GPU.  And her old work laptop, which used to be my work laptop and is still, by far, the fastest computer in the house, is being made into the girls’ video game rig.  The two laptops are the same model and all but identical.  So it is not all that hard to do, in theory.

This evening, the girls and I made it a movie night again, as we had such a nice time yesterday.  First Liesl and I watched Elle Enchanted together.  Which is always fun, that’s a very cute movie and just up Liesl’s alley.  Luciana watched some, but was not all that interested.

Then, after that, we watched Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest which is way more Luciana’s style.  The girls loved having a movie night all together.

Friday.  After a few years, three I believe, today is Gene’s last full time day with NTG.  This morning Rodrigo and I reassigned all of Gene’s tickets that were still left lingering and he is now a free agent.  He starts his new job sometime next week, Tuesday, I think.  We are going to be extra busy in the coming weeks as we get used to not having Gene on the team.

So it was a busy morning doing Gene’s final sign off for departure.  Lots of last minute knowledge transfer stuff and trying to make sure that everything was clear so that he wouldn’t have to worry about anything after today.

This evening, after work, the girls wanted to hang out.  They talked me into ordering them Domino’s Pizza, of which I cannot have any, and watching some shows and stuff together. They are really loving this silly Netflix cooking show called Nailed It! which we have been watching together.  They have both seen all of the episodes already and are just rewatching it with me, now.

Thursday.  Today is the second day of our office in Nicaragua officially being up and running.  So my day was spent almost entirely working with Karla and doing training with her and getting her set up in all of our systems.  There is a lot to train people on, and remote training is not very efficient.

It’s very exciting, though.  Having staff in Matagalpa, finally, after all of this time is great.  I have been trying to make this happen for a year.  So this is a major accomplishment and a huge part of my long term strategy and goals for the company.

Very little time for anything extra today.  I still had all of my usual work, plus full time training.

This evening, Dominica made a Mexican stew for dinner that was absolutely delicious.  I’m not generally into these soup and stew kinds of dinners.  I like them, but without bread they are normally too watery for me to find satisfying.  This one was so good and so loaded with beans that it really worked for me.

Wednesday.  This morning I am an uncle again for the sixth time.  My new niece, Reagan Tocco, was born this morning.  We will be going down next weekend to see her, down in Houston.

This morning started with loads of tickets, phone issues, and more.  I was very busy as we tried to get ready for our big news…

Today is a major day for NTG.  After a year of work and planning, today we officially brought on our first person in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.  Not only did we manage to get into Nicaragua like we had been talking about for so long, but we managed to do it in the city that we wanted to be in!  This is a major accomplishment for us and a big step towards our goals.  We are very excited.

Of course, being day one, we have only a single person in the country, our Country Coordinator position, but that is how it starts.  We have multiple people considering moving to the city in the future, once the unrest there reaches a stable, steady state.

But we hope to have more needs for more people from Nicaragua as well in the future.  I am very hopeful that we will be able to hire one or two more before the end of the year.  Our plan is to have everyone in the same city, so that we have the benefits of people being able to work together.

For lunch today, just olives for me.

Had to build another Rocket server today.  I have been very busy with those, recently.

 

Woke up before five this morning, but had gotten enough sleep so decided to just get up and get to work.  Might as well not waste the morning.  I made coffee and did some of the dishes before getting signed in and working by five thirty.  A very productive morning.  Closed a number of tickets, had a number of conversations.  Very excited about having Rocket.Chat working for so many customers now.

I have lots to prep as our office in Matagalpa, Nicaragua will officially start tomorrow morning.  Although Karla has been helping out for a few weeks to try to find other staff for the location.  She’s been a busy bee, even before officially beginning.

Lots of meetings this afternoon.  Kept me very tied to my desk.

Tonight I finally started Season Four of Star Trek: Deep Space 9.  It’s far enough in that all of the episodes are new to me, but as they are from the same general era as TNG and Voyager they seem very nostalgic while also being brand new to me, but now I am past the famously sluggish and annoying early seasons and am starting to get into the good stuff that made the series so popular with people who managed to hold out long enough to get to this part.

This evening, Paul made us tuna salad for dinner.  For me, that’s just plain tuna salad eaten straight.  Everyone else had a tuna salad on pasta.