Y9 D309

Showered, packed, and ready to go. Still have to get gas. But I will do that much closer to the airport. I am over 30 miles away. I should be fine and have plenty of time.

Day three went fine. No major issues. Finished around 4pm and got the hell out of there. Got back to the hotel, dinner, then "bed" at 8. I had a rough time trying to sleep. This room has been weird. I tried taking a bath to soak my back and that didn't go over well. I made a mess of the bathroom mostly. I am going to tell them downstairs when I check out that I was disappointed.

Land around 9 or 9:30. Take train. Should be home by 11am. Nap time to follow.

Y9 D308

Here's something I don't miss about living down here, the traffic. Not just like stopped traffic either. My room overlooks the 210 freeway. No matter what time of day I look out my window, there are constantly cars on the road. Whether it's 4:30 in the morning or 8:30 at night, there's always people on the road. Just car after car. It never stops. Like when I am in a place like OH and it's 4 in the morning, it's dead, No one on the road, silence forever. Not here. Noise. Always. People going and coming all the time. People say NY is the city that never sleeps but they've obviously never been on a SoCal freeway. Just a never ending flow of people.

I slept like shit, again. I can't wait until I get home and can only moderately sleep like shit. Maintenance was supposed to come look at my AC unit but as I was afraid, they either didn't come, couldn't hear the noise I am hearing, or couldn't do anything about it. Yet again I was forced to sleep with no air because of the high pitched whine.

Class was rough. There are too many people in the room (18 yesterday) and they don't know how to shut up. Plus some of them just don't belong in there. They can't keep up. When you have a room that large it's impossible for me to go any slower. Just one more day.

After class, I went to target to get a nice little gift for the admin who has been taking care of us this week. On that front, this client excels. She has made sure we've had breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks, etc. Total mother hen but I am not complaining. I put together a little bag that has some cookies, some bath products, and a card. She earned it.

Got back to the hotel around 7 after doing all that, ate leftovers, watched some TV and went to bed around 9:30 where I proceeded to sweat to death until 4:30. Fun times.

I go home now?

Y9 D307

Strange dreams. Some day we will figure out how to either recall dreams or record them. They fade too fast when you wake up. So many different images and things going through your head that it's hard when you wake up to remember everything. But there's snippets of things. Being in a bar. Yelling at someone to pull up their damn pants. Yeah, I'm old even in my dreams. Damn kids with their butts showing. That trend has seemed to fade away a bit hasn't it? You see less people with their pants hanging down than you used to. Not a bad thing if you ask me.

Had an okay day yesterday. Way too large of a class and I started to lose control of them in the afternoon. I had to be a bit of a hard ass and get people to shut up with private side conversations. This is why we don't like classes with more than 12 people. I have 17 and it's just a little too big. Plus with a group this size, there's always going to be at least one person who doesn't want to be there, one or two who are moving ahead on their own, etc. It makes it hard to control the room. We did okay for the majority of the day. We experienced some technical glitches near the end of the day and I ended us at 4:30 because I didn't want to deal with it any more. I ended up losing about 20 minutes and didn't get quite as far as I would have liked, but I will make up the lost time today. This is still only 2.5 days worth of material spread over three days. I should have plenty of time come tomorrow.

Got back to the hotel around 5:15, went to dinner, came back to the room, and relaxed. Talked with B, played some video games, and was in bed by 9. I had a bit of a headache so I just needed to lie down. Was able to get much better sleep than the night before. Still not a perfect sleep, but better. I have a bit of a sore throat this morning but I think it's due to snoring too hard. It's dry in here and that pushes me over the edge.

Day two. Let's do it.

Y9 D306

I had the worst night of sleep ever. I wouldn't even call it sleep. It was tossing and turning until it was time to get up again. Too hot. Too cold. The A/C makes this whine that just pierces my ears. Can't turn it off though or I will die. Bed pillows are weirdly shaped and too squishy. Horrible. Add to that the hotel room itself is weird. It's got hardwood floors and a layout that makes no sense. There's no doors on the bathroom just a curtain and a piece of glass. WTF?

Nothing too exciting about yesterday. Got on my flight at 8:30, arrived in Burbank a little after 11, got my car, drove to the store for supplies for the week. Got to the hotel around 1:30, checked in, unpacked, ironed, then headed to the mall nearby.

The mall was weird too. A strange mix of Korean, Latino, and random stuff. Got two bath bombs one for this week, one to take home. Got the manuals from FedEx which luckily is right across the street from hotel. One positive about this hotel/area is there's a lot more options for things in a much smaller radius than the last two trips.

Came back, watched some TV, went to Claim Jumpers for dinner. It's right in the same parking lot as my hotel which means I will probably eat there all week. I get Landry's points and I don't have to drive anywhere. Seems like a win to me. Speaking of driving, my rental car has no AC. I don't know what's wrong with it, but the air is not getting cold. I won't be in it enough to bring it back, but what a pain. I know this afternoon when I finish it will be boiling. Whatever. I will survive.

Man I hate using this laptop without an external keyboard. My fingers constantly stray from the letters and hit the stupid touchbar. Which I can say I never use. It was supposed to 'change our experience' but yeah, no.

Breakfast, drive, teach. Three days of this and then I can put this client behind me for a while.

Y9 D305

Up early, but not too early. I have a 9:15am flight today. Car is coming at 5:30 so we don't have to sit in too much traffic. We will sit in some, but not as much if we left later. I don't mind waiting at the airport.

Did odds and ends stuff yesterday. Tested out a new server, answered random emails, stuff like that. I don't come home until Saturday and I wasn't about to do anything too intense.

We ordered pizza for dinner so I can have leftovers to take with me today. I land at 11:30 and will want an afternoon snack.

Went to bed around 9. Not much else. I am going to fight with these people tomorrow. They are trying to shove 20 people into the class. The contract says 15. I fucking hate this group. Not happy with them at all. Can't wait until the TX group in two weeks. They seem like they have their shit together so much better.

Got to go shower.

Y9 D304

I have a genuine question. This is not me being a smart ass or anything along those lines. Why is spam still allowed to exist? Why isn't it a crime that the US Government is actively handling? Every day I wake up to no less than 20 pieces of unwanted mail across my two primary accounts. That's nearly 150 pieces of email a week I didn't ask for, that are 99% scams, that just shouldn't exist. And they are the same variation of each other. There's really about 4 messages tweaked 100 different ways. Why? Why is this allowed to go on? And don't tell me it's because you can't find them. It would take little resources for them to stop it. But yet it just keeps going. What a load of shit. I could run for president just on the platform "NO MORE SPAM" and get a good chunk of the vote. We need a candidate at some level to come out and start addressing digital concerns as much as physical concerns. Maybe once we stop getting old white people to run...

We had a relatively quiet day. Did some errand running but for the most part stayed inside and read and relaxed. We had breakfast for dinner. Like full on - pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns. Was pretty tasty. Did laundry, cleaned house, packed.

I leave tomorrow until Saturday so going to be doing personal stuff today whether anyone likes it or not. They can all kiss my ass.

Y9 D303

Yes, it's 6:30am. I slept in! Just like B needs to sometimes go to bed early to reset her clock, I need the opposite. I need to go to bed late. I went to bed around midnight which helped me. I woke up once at 4:15 and said screw it. I got me some good sleeping!

Did wake up to some good news. Got my tax info for the year - Fed owe $333, State refund of $1300. Net of $1000 to the good for us. Game played well once more. I am going to use part of that money to buy my birthday present - a new camera. I have been wanting one for a while and this is a big birthday for me so that's what I want.

We had a really fun day yesterday.

I got up and went to the grocery store to make sure B had food while I am gone this week. I leave Tuesday and am back Saturday so a full week of food is needed. Plus her avocado tree has picked up some fruit flies and needed something to kill those off. Took care of that and was back by 7:30.

Once B was up at 8:30, we took a drive over to the coast. It was okay going over weather wise. There was about six inches of snow on the side of the road and some flurries at the higher elevations. But nothing that slowed us down too much. We got over the hill around 10am.

Our goal going over was to go some place new, specifically Jacobsen Salt Company. We have been watching these Bon Appetit videos and they went there in one. It's a really tiny place when you get there but they have a great tasting room with 20 different salts and 10 different honeys you can try. Because of the weather we were the only ones there which was kind of cool. It's a small building and if there had been more people it would have been overwhelming.

Once we finished with the salt we found a 2nd hand store nearby and browsed around that for a while. B found some salt and pepper shakers for her friend. Every birthday she sends her random salt and pepper shakers. She found some imprinted with NEBRASKA to celebrate their trip across country 5 years ago and their hatred for the state of NE.

After that we went to the Blue Heron Cheese Company for some lunch, cheese, mustard, and jam tasting. We ended up getting multiple jars of mustard, salad dressing, and jam to bring home.

Got home around 1:45, took a nap, and then had good Mexican for dinner. Came back, played some games together, went off to bed.

A nice day.

Y9 D302

Taught my new class. Since it was the first time I expected some hiccups. Mostly what I found were typos in the manual no one caught. I need to run through it and clean some things up. All of my demos worked fine though and there weren't any serious issues. We finished a little earlier than I would have liked and I will probably add one more demo to the material to flesh that out. I think that will work fine. Since I didn't want anyone feeling like they didn't get their money's worth, I spent an extra half hour taking general questions. Worked out perfect for the time.

After class we went and ran a couple of errands. Nothing big, just some small things for dinner. I am going to the grocery store in a little while myself to make sure B has food while I am gone next week. It's one of those weird travel weeks where I am leaving on a Tuesday. Has me thrown off a bit but I will manage.

B made chicken casserole for dinner. After we took care of the cats. They needed furminating in preparation for a bath tonight. This of course resulted in me having to vacuum afterwards because hair was everywhere even though the doors were all closed. Just the way it is. We then watched a little tv and relaxed. Went to bed around 10.

Today we are going to try and take a ride to the coast to go to a salt farm. We found out about it through Bon Appetit magazine. A salt farm right in our own backyard. It will make for a nice day trip.

Y9 D301

Some clients are easy to work with, some are not. The folks in SoCal? Asshats. The ones in TX? So far so good. I had two issues yesterday while working on their stuff and they were quick to respond, able to help me, and overall easy to deal with on the issues. As such, I was able to finish all their material this week as planned. I now have Monday open for changes, and the week after next back for classes. Thank goodness.

Spent the whole day working on stuff. Finished around 4. We had leftovers for dinner. Cleaned house a bit after dinner because the clutter was bugging us both.

Talked to the kid for a while. She is doing well. I am proud of her and her choices. She's gonna be okay ya know?

Went to bed around 10.

Normal class today finally. It's a new class and this may be interesting. We will see how it goes. Then bills. Then laundry. Got to get packed for next week's trip.

Y9 D300

I haven't commented on it up until now, but in 65 days, I will be in my tenth year of writing. That's amazing to me. 3,650 entries. (Not counting the rare day where I posted twice.) Millions of words. Imagine if this was printed out. The sheer volume of it. I will probably archive it at some point just for posterity reasons. And just in case this site ever vanishes. But my goodness. 10 years later. I am still alive too despite some close calls.

I got back on track somewhat yesterday. I decided to work around the client. If they weren't going to respond to me, I would figure a way to get shit done. I did. I managed to backdoor into an older version of their system which allowed me to move forward. Some of the screenshots aren't perfect but to the casual eye, you'd never know. I sent them a new revision of the documents to review around noon and guess what? Haven't heard a thing. What a shock.

I also got to spend a half day on the TX people. I made some more progress there. My goal for today is to finish their stuff to get me back on track and free up Monday. Especially since I travel Tuesday through Saturday next week.

Took the car in for service yesterday morning. No issues. They found a warranty covered repair they need to do but parts had to be ordered. This is why I like having newer cars. The piece they need to replace is $1000 plus labor. Not a cent out of pocket. It's the little things like that people don't amortize into the overall cost of owning a vehicle for more than 3-4 years. This is even worse on newer cars where a headlight assembly is a grand. Thank goodness I don't have to pay for it.

B made peppers for dinner. She finished her blanket and got it in the mail yesterday. We went to the pet store after dinner to get some PH strips. Ended up getting a new snail for the small tank and some plants. Came back, played some games together, went to bed around 10.

Time to get stuff done.