Monday

I’m not super excited to be reminded that it’s only Monday. I think that’s as much about how I associate robots with being done for the week than about how today went, but I’d still rather it was Friday.

Didn’t get anyone to talk to me about windows today, though I did only reach out to a few — didn’t get to the bulk of it until I was on the bus this afternoon. Window repair feels like a thing that should regularly accommodate same/next day service, but no one seems to be set up for it. I keep thinking there’s a market to be had in tech integration services for small businesses. Something that lets people use their phone to interact with your booking system. Tablet ordering systems to reduce waitstaff load. There’s tech available but it’s still big money consulting not something you can rent or sync with employee cell phones. I feel like that’s a thing I could do, but that job requires phone support hours and on-site techs and being on-call 24/7 is the thing I wanted to stop doing when I moved out here**. The answer is clearly staff but I don’t know how to make the project go for long enough to be profitable if I have to pay for staff. Hell I don’t know how to pay myself for long enough, even if I only wanted staff in a couple years.

Work was not sane today, which is why I didn’t get to the window. 16 new SRs in queue, and a fair amount of bitching about them. Some of them I’ll be able to throw to the hardware team but there are also a bunch of PHP evaluations and those are always the worst. So I’ll be busy with those all week on top of whatever else is going on. I did get my presentation (mostly) done, and got through all the release process stuff for the week, so I feel reasonably accomplished even though I’m booked solid.

Today was hard for Shanda. She’s still sick; getting better but still not well. And B had a bad experience today that made her very angry in sympathy. And I was gone until 8 PM so she spent all day alone. Made it hard to connect tonight, even though that’s what she needed. Finally got most of the right sharing in the moments before bed, though the “unload before passing out” thing works a lot better for her than it does for me.

Got my annual raise today. Like last year it was negative* on “merit”, but this year there was a wide-scale readjustment that gave me another 5%, so it’s positive overall. And RSUs for the first time in years, assuming I’m around long enough to vest. So nothing to relieve my distaste for the company but at least I get a bit more of their money, which will make the rest of my life better. I might finally be able to get back into the college savings business again, once I’m free from Melissa debt. I started those accounts in an attempt to divest myself of the dangers of capitalism, but even absent that fear I miss funding them.

We’re getting closer to something coherent. It’s still more parts than a whole, but at least the parts have some integral edges today. It could have used a picture of the Cheese Wizards truck and their condiment ark. I could have used a sandwich from the truck, but I never found time.

ZiB

*After adjusting for an inflation rate of at least 2.7%, which F5 unsurprisingly neglects to do.

**It took a couple of years after I got here but I did eventually get down to only a single day job, and one with no mandatory on-call time.