Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

My company is in the process of rolling out Windows 11 updates to all of their computers. This a very large task, as there are thousands of computers all over the world that have to be updated. Fortunately, they didn't require me to go to the Fremont office to get the update. Nevertheless, what probably should have only taken an hour took much of the day. The engineer handling my computer remotely had a whole lot of trouble getting things to install. Even after he handed it back over to me with instructions, there were several more Win10 updates that had to be installed first (and the computer restarted) before we could even start the Win11 update. The Win11 update itself, even over my decently speedy internet connection, took more than an hour to download. (I don't know exactly how long it took because Kayla decided it was time for us to make the trip to Sparks about which she wrote on her journal after an hour of waiting.)

This morning, the computer had downloaded yet more updates, and they also had to be installed and the computer restarted again. That seems to be all of it for now.

So far, Win11 seems to be working okay, and it didn't reorganized my computer or change the user interface as much as I expected it would do.

I slept in an hour this morning, i.e. getting up at 0530 to start at 0630 instead on an hour earlier as usual. Nobody seemed to mind. As I feared, the mess last night was indeed a mess, with conflicting changes causing more problems. This is what happens when the pressure is on to produce things. We'll get it cleaned up.

Speaking of cleaning up, I felt like I did accomplish something meaningful this afternoon when I managed to clear up a multi-million-dollar inventory inaccuracy. It was much more satisfying than sorting out a few missing screws or untangling a mismatch of cardboard boxes.

However, for now, all I want is more sleep. Let's hope I can get some tonight and not dream of trying to fix inventory issues.

The hours I've been working on Day Jobbe plus Worldcon prep caught up with me today. As soon as I could today (about 3 PM) I logged out, had a slight snack in place of dinner, and fell into bed and slept for several hours. I woke up around 9 PM, but will be heading back to bed after dealing with (what else) more Worldcon business.

We got out of Yuba City about 9:30 this morning and convoyed home, staying in touch between me in the Astro and Lisa in the Small Orange Pickup by ham radio. We took our time getting home, including stopping for breakfast in Marysville, coffee in Grass Valley, a leg-stretch at the Alpha-Omega overlook trail of CA-20, and a late lunch at the Peppermill in Reno before getting home around 4:30 or thereabouts.

The Peppermill lunch buffet was closed when we got there, so we tried the seafood restaurant and gave their version of shrimp pan roast a try. Never again. It wasn't as actively bad as the version at the Atlantis, but both of us were feeling uneasy with the dish sitting on our stomachs on the ride home. We'll stick with the Nugget Oyster Bar version as long as the new ownership there allows them to keep making it. (Given the other changes at the Nugget, we're concerned that they'll ruin the Oyster Bar too.)

After unloading our luggage and personal affects, we tried to rest a bit. Lisa lay down for a while and I ground my way through e-mail. Work caught up with me even on my day off and I had several hours of work to do this evening for the Day Jobbe. That's probably just as well because we have to go to Reno tomorrow afternoon for a car-repair issue, then again on Wednesday morning to take Lisa to the TMJ specialist, then probably again to retrieve the vehicle from the air-conditioner-repair place later in the week. I'll be working in the evenings, but I need to get ahead and did so by turning around a request tonight so I could actually start on the things I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow morning.

After getting some rest, Lisa came and got me and we unloaded the "battleship" desk and the various boxes from the Astro. It only took about twenty minutes, and Lisa was able to arrange things so there was still barely enough room to park the pickup when we were done. The desk is in a temporary location until she clears enough space from her workshop for us to install it. I also will need to clear out the drawers in the desk, which are still full of the filed papers from ConFrancisco and other stuff circa 1993.

Finally, we went over to Scolari's for a small grocery trip. We expect to do a larger one tomorrow after dropping the vehicle at the AC repair shop. (We'll be convoying in so that we can leave it with them for a few days.)

It was uncomfortably cold in the house when we got back, enough so that I had to light off the fireplace. And here we thought we were done with the fireplace for this season. Oh, well, we still have some firewood left, and we needed to either use up or move the remaining wood stacked on the front porch anyway.