Daily - 2025-11-22

Previously…

Yesterday recap

Once again I was up early, but did nothing with the time. I wrote my daily notes at the slowest pace with coffee until my wife came down.

I had to be out the door early, too, for my winterization stops. Just when I was going to leave I peeked at my route and saw there was a major traffic problem and that set the tone for the rest of the day. A trip that should have taken me 32 minutes took 78.

All my stops were folks from our commercial contract that flat ignored us contacting them to schedule the winterization. These are all rental properties managed by our commercial account. We had to send the list of folks who wouldn’t cooperate back to the management and then the management contacted them for scheduling. This means my stops were whatever time the management company booked, so it was all over the place.

First stop the people weren’t home. Fantastic. Off to a great start. I was able to find the valve box and do the winterization manually. I always get nervous being on someone’s property without speaking to them first. This is the US and I don’t want to get shot putting air into a sprinkler system.

Next stop the person was asleep and took 10 minutes of knocking and ringing the doorbell to get their attention. At 11:30AM…

Third stop the people were nice, but there was no reason for me to be there. When I got there I found the water point of connection was installed, but they had no sprinkler system. The valves were removed. Cool.

Fourth stop was a 25 minute drive back into the Olympia area for one of our own clients. They were nice and I had a funny conversation with them. Totally unprompted one of them went on this tirade about being forced to upgrade to Windows 11. Apparently they tried to do the Win10 extension, but their PC was having all kinds of problems since doing the necessary steps (I have no idea what those steps are). The two probably aren’t related, but they thought it was. The crux of the issue is they don’t want any of the A.I. stuff in Win11 and they are pissed to upgrade and be forced to have it. They were at their wits end and essentially said they are going to switch to mobile devices only and give up on having a desktop/laptop.

I enjoyed the conversation because I love to hear about how other people use their computers and what their expectations are. I did a brief mention of running Linux, but not my place at the moment. They were ready for me to winterize their sprinkler system, not do technical support for their operating system.

Came home and emptied the truck. We have this problem with people parking in front of our house. I don’t care if you do as long as you don’t park like a jackass and do things like hit my plants or block my driveway. However, this is a constant problem and once again someone was partially blocking our driveway. I took this opportunity to fix another parking spot so these folks will park somewhere else. The house to our right is vacant waiting for a new renter. The tree in the front yard hasn’t been pruned in a long time, so the branches are too low for people to park underneath it. I had enough, so I got my chainsaw, pruned the tree, cut up the branches, and stuck the debris in their backyard. The property management will figure it out and now there’s a better parking spot than ontop of my lavendar.

We watched Smackdown and the hype is getting pretty big in our house for Survivor Series War Games next weekend. This storyline has been better than what the WWE has been producing lately.

I also took the time to take down the digital photo frame that is mounted where the xmas tree will go. I don’t want it on and running while buried behind the tree. I did not get to writing notes/post about building a portable homelab in a ridiculous way. I’m going to work on it this weekend.

Dinner, gorls bed routine, and then wife and I built a Dollar Tree Lego set while having a snack. We built a small flower in a pot and was perfect for a little game night together.

After we watched some Tommy Boy and went to bed.

Gratitude

Fun evening with wife, even if it got interrupted a few times.

How are you feeling today?

Honestly, I’ve been fighting off the big sad for a few weeks. I’ve been trying to ignore it and posting lies in this section. I’m currently winning a few battles, but losing the war.

Todo

Chores

• Investigate what is happening with the ethernet run to the boys room. He told me his wired internet isn’t working and hasn’t worked since he built a new PC. So I need to figure out if there’s something wrong with the cable run or drivers on his desktop.
• Run the generator. I like to run it for 30 minutes or so every 90 days. I also need to verify it all works before we get into bad weather season.

Fun

• Play some Rubber Bandits with the gorls.
• Movie night with wife. I’m thinking something from our holiday movie list. Probably Edward Scissorhands.

Projects

• Carry over from yesterday: I have been trying to figure out how to make a portable homelab with the components I have at the house. I like to keep my EDC bag minimal and I think that is what is getting in my way of getting this project done. I am mentally stuck trying to figure out how to keep a portable homelab small for this bag. Since I’m so stuck, it is time to switch tactics. Rather than trying to find the perfect solution, I need to start with the worst possible solution. Do that, see what I learn, make adjustments, and then I will find the perfect answer along the way.

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