We moved. My brother and I are now living in my cousin's house. My aunt's former house. It's more expensive than advertised. It's not as nice as I remember. I can't smoke in it (and yes, that's driving me crazy). I'm spending a lot of money on making it home, while at the same time NOT making it home.
Expense: When I thought about moving in here back in March and (God... I already want to smoke again!) ended up moving mom here, I figured it would be rent free. Thinking back, that was naive, and I'm glad that mom took the initiative to pay my cousins something for staying here. I don't know if Mom just came up with this number or if they talked about it, but she ended up with $300 a month in 'rent'. When she decided to come back home and I decided to move in, I figured I'd keep that up and just make it so that my cousins weren't paying for maintenance on the house. Electricity, cable, internet, garbage, water... stuff like that. Taxes; that's all them!
So here's the breakdown of what it costs to live here without paying rent each month:
- Power/Gas (on a monthly budget payment), Sewer, Water
- $207.33 / Month
- These are all paid by my cousins, so I pay them this money.
- Internet/Television
- $205 / Month
- This is through Xfinity. If I were here alone, I'd get gigabit internet and nothing else. I have no idea what that would have cost as I moved in with my brother B and he needs/wants cable TV. We have the 600Mbps internet with unlimited data and 200+ channel package.
- Lawn Service
- $160 / Month
- The guy charges $40 a week. Admittedly the lawn looks nice and this is a nice neighborhood, so while I'm not happy about paying that much for someone to cut grass, it's okay.
- Garbage
- $25.70 / Month
Put that all together and the monthly bills come to just under $600. Admittedly, I'd be paying most of this in an apartment too PLUS the $700 monthly rent. But damn, $600 is a LOT more than $0.
If I step back though, its still saving money. It's still making mom happy. Its still preventing me from buying everything on my list of stuff to buy for an apartment (we'll come back to this). So, I won't be upset about the costs.
Niceness: You know, as a child I remembered my aunt's home as being really really nice. Over the years she's kept it up too. Professionally. Where my dad would jerry-rig just about everything repair wise, my aunt had contractors coming out to paint or install a new sliding glass door. Even as an adult, when we'd come here for holidays and such, it always felt like a nicer place than my parent's. Not as homey... not as lived in or loved... but nicer. Now? Yeah, not so much.
It's not like this is a bad place, but maybe its age is catching up. Mom's house is old. I think the original part of the house was built in the 20s or 30s with additions put on in the 40s/50s, and then my parent's addition in the 80s. This house, on the other hand, was built in the early 70s. That 40 year difference could be what I'm seeing now as she creeks and bends and bows. And it's not just that.... I always thought of her kitchen cabinets as nicer... but they're lightweight with cheap hardware. I thought the carpet was in better condition, but honestly it all needs to be replaced. I thought the exterior of the house was nicer.... okay, that's still nicer. Brick lower facade with traditional siding above it. So, it's a nice house, but not as nice as I remember.
Spending Money: I knew going in that I wouldn't be satisfied with a lot of my aunts stuff. The TV was a big one. I might not watch a lot of television/movies, but when I do watch it I want to enjoy it. At home I have a 55 inch OLED TV that cost me over two grand (about $1500 if I were to buy it today). I didn't want to drop that kind of cash on a TV, so I went with a $550 55 inch QLED Roku TV. It's nice. Of course with a new TV comes a new cabinet and that cost $150. Plus a decent 5.1 speaker system for $180. The room has too much sunlight, so $50 in blackout curtains. The layout of the house and the position of the internet router means bad wifi, so $250 in a Google mesh wifi.
Yeah, all in all I spent $1200 on 'stuff' for the house before even moving in.
And that hit parade just keeps on going. Coffee mugs (my aunt oddly didn't have enough). Frying pan. Cutting board. New lamp for my computer desk (a table from her garage). Groceries (she had canned goods that went bad 5 years ago!!!!). Light bulbs. Yeah, I didn't have to spend the $3000 I was expecting for everything, but I'm creeping my way up to that number anyway.
The money wouldn't be bad if it were my place. My apartment. But its my cousin's and until I hear otherwise, it's a living memory for my aunt. My aunt was a devote Christian where I am NOT. I don't like all the Jesus art around and Christian themed sayings. I don't like her bed. Yeah, it's free, but my back says it has a cost associated with it that's paid in pain. I don't like her garbage can. Her Thomas Kincaid art. I'd throw up some of my own art, my photography, some University of Michigan stuff... I'd make it mine. But I can't do that.
I guess I can't complain too loudly. It's not BAD and I haven't even been here a week yet. Maybe in a few months it will become home. Oh, and my cousins are coming on Monday, so just when I hit being here for the week, I have to go to a hotel.
New Smart Watch: My history of smart watches is fraught with bad choices, bad timing, and just bad luck. Let's see if I can remember them all.
- Pebble Steel
- I got this about 6 years ago and I absolutely loved it. It was a black and w
hite e-paper display so a single charge lasted like a week. This was the 'grown up' version of the original Pebble
Pebble Steel - The original Pebble was a kickstarter darling. I only heard about it after it was released, so unfortunately I wasn't part of that group... but I kept reading about how awesome the watch's OS was and how cheap the physical watch was... the Steel was an attempt to bridge those two things and make a really good adult watch.
- Compared to today's smart watches, this thing was pathetic. It was just black and white and tried its very best at not changing the screen to much as that's the only time it used the battery. It had almost no processing power and it had incredibly limited apps. But it could let me know who was calling, display my test messages, let me control music on my phone... the basics of what I still do today.
- I used this everywhere, but eventually got in trouble for having a smart watch at prison and had to make it my 'casual' watch while my work watches returned to everyday regular dumb watches.
- Huawei Watch
- I loved my Pebble, but soon enough the little upstart smart watch company had competition from Android and Apple. The Android Wear watches were particularly exciting to me as they'd work better with my Android smartphone. At the time the easily best watch in this category was from China. Huawei had the best processor, the highest res screen, the cleanest professional look, and easily won my heart over.
Unfortunately it seemed that battery life was an issue. Remember, I only wore this watch on the weekends or outside of work so it was powered down most of the time. Even then, it only lasted a day before it needed to be charged. I could travel with my Pebble and not worry about the charging cable, but I might not make it through a long night if I started wearing my Huawei first thing in the morning. That only got worse overtime as the battery degraded as fast as a cell phone batter.
Huawei Watch - Still... I think to this day (including my newest purchase), the Huawei was the best looking watch I ever had. Just so damned clean and minimalist!
- Pebble Time Steel
- This was the 2nd generation of the Pebble watch. Unlike the previous Pebble, it used a color e-paper display. It came with a new version of the OS that took advantage of the color too, but this wasn't the full sweeping beautiful colors of the Android and Apple offerings. This was literally six bit color. 64 colors. Yikes!
Pebble Time Steel - I didn't use this that long at all. It's not like I replaced my Huawei with this, I got it a few months after I started using the Huawei, and stopped a few weeks later. Compared to the original Pebble Steel it was grand! It was more useful, faster, and even though it only had 64 colors, it used them well and it looked good. The styling wasn't quite as clean as the Huawei, but it was still better than most watches out there, especially in the gold color (Yes, my Pebble Time Steel was gold and it came with both the red leather band shown here and a gold metal band.
- My nephew was in high school at this time and enamored with tech, so I ended up giving it to him. I should see if he still has it, just so I can add it to my nostalgia collection.
- Fitbit Blaze
- I'll only mention this briefly as I tried it out for a few weeks. This wasn't so much an attempt at a smart watch I'd wear around all the time outside of work because, frankly, it was ugly as sin and barely met my requirements. BUT as it was technically a very smart fitness tracker and NOT a smartwatch, I could get it into the gates. A few officers actually stopped me and asked me if it was a smart watch and I could answer them with a straight face as I said "It's a Fitbit". I didn't technically say it WASN'T a smart watch and was honest in saying that it was a Fitbit. It got it into the gate and when I was outside of the prison it would hook up to my phone and deliver text messages and such to my wrist but...
- This thing sucked. It really WAS a fitness tracker that could pair up with a phone and do a few essential functions. It was, in fact, a GREAT fitness tracker. It was just also a really bad smart watch. I ended up selling it to a co-worker for a quarter of the price I paid a few weeks before. She loved it.
- Diesel On Full Guard 2.5
- This was the sequel to a watch I'd never seen. But Wow, I fell in love with it. At this point (maybe a couple years ago?) the Huawei was giving up the ghost. Its battery didn't last a light day, let alone a full day out. This was actually a sad time to search for watches by Android, now WearOS, as they hadn't really improved. They had just came out with a new version of the OS that was buggy as all get out. At the same time, I didn't want any of the alternative smart watches out there. Then I saw the Diesel.
Diesel On Full Guard 2.5 - If you're like me, youve never heard of Diesel. They're a fashion brand with jeans, shirts, watches, sunglasses, and blah blah blah. Obviously, they don't make smart watches. Fossil does though, and they work with brands by putting their names on Fossil's fairly generic but usable watches. Some of those brands include Misfit, Skagen, Emporio Armani, Kate Spade, Michael Kors, Puma, and of course Diesel. The Diesel watch in this group was by far the biggest, chunkiest, and in my humble opinion... the most stylish. Burled alluminum, big heavy handed burled buttons, metal on metal on metal with a leather band that has metal piercing it.
- This had many of the same problems as the Huawei, primarily battery. Once I had all the option set right, it could get me through a busy day, but just barely. And a few months after using it, it dipped below that. There was more than one occasion that I forgot to charge it at night while out on a trip and just had to accept I couldn't wear it the next day because it took hours to charge it.
- Even with this problem, I would probably still be using it as I really liked the design and it got me through MOST of my uses... but it broke. It used a magnetic charging puck and on my recent Dallas/SanFran trip, I ripped the back off by lifting it from the charger. It must have used a cheap glue as it didn't technically break anything inside except for pulling the internal charging cable from it's connection. When I got it home and under a magnifying glass I was able to reconnect it and press the back into place, but it came off the next time I tried to charge it. And the warranty didn't cover this type of defect.
- I briefly considered going to a nearby Fossil store to see how much it would be to fix it as I hadn't even got a year out of it and it had cost nearly $400, but I eventually found...
- Skagen Falster 2
- I know, I know... I bought another Fossil watch after my last one broke. BUT in my defense, it was a really good price. These were still selling for just under $300 and I got it on sale for $125 (iknowihaveaproblem).
Skagen Falster 2 - This was... well it was the deathknell for WearOS as far as I was concerned. Fossil was/is generally considered to be making the best WearOS watches and even though this watch (and more importantly, it's screen) were tiny in comparison to the Diesel, it still couldn't last a day with the same battery size. I have no idea how that works as it seems it should last a LONG time pushing fewer pixels, but practice shows me otherwise.
- Maybe... MAYBE if it lasted a full day I'd still be using this, but without that durability the fact that it was small on my wrist made it just unacceptable. I put it in my watch case, but it won't get worn again.
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| Nixon Regulus |
These both serve that purpose well. I've put a brown leather strap on the Suunto so I it really accessorizes anything I wear with my tan/khaki pants and brown shoes while the Nixon accessorizes anything I wear with the black pants and shoes. At work they're nice as they aren't smart watches, but that means I have nothing to help me with my daily phone duties outside of work. I'm talking about getting email messages or text messages. Checking the weather. Pulling up a shopping list while trying to go one way through all the store aisles and stay six feet away from everybody (and actively bumping into anybody walking the wrong way down the new one way aisles).
 |
| Suunto Essential |
I'd looked at hybrid smart watches, Garmin mapping smart watches, Samsung Galaxy smart watches, fitness trackers, and all the experimental weird watches that thought they'd be the next WearOS or Apple Wat....
OH MY!
I'd never before considered the Apple Watch because I didn't have an iPhone. And when I got the iPhone, I initially was trying to not get sucked into the apple eco system because that's often a one way trip. But at some point my brother B and I got to talking and I mentioned that I'd already thought about and dismissed the Apple Watch because it would end up locking me into an iPhone and I wanted the flexibility of leaving the iPhone behind if I find a good Android device in a year or so. B just hit me with a big bucketful of truth.... I'd spent about $1,300 over the past few years on watches that I either didn't like or didn't meet my needs. Only one of which lasted more than a couple years. If I bought the Apple Watch and only used it for the next 18 months (my plan of keeping the iPhone for that long), then I'd still be right in line with my current smartwatch trend.
Yeah... so I started looking at Apple Watches.
I hadn't taken a close look at Apple Watches since the Series 2 and I didn't know they had worked out most of the bugs by now. It had shipped with watchOS 3 and they are now on watchOS 6.26 with watchOS 7 already announced for later this year. They now, with the most recent Series 5 watches, have always on displays, which was always something I thought the watch needed. Their heart rate readers are fairly accurate. They still don't have third party faces, but they do have quite a few faces to choose from now. And at the lower tier, they're not all that expensive. I paid over $300 for my Huawei and almost $400 for my Diesel. Apple watches start at $399 for the Series 5.
So I looked at the varieties. Here's what I learned in a nutshell, and understand I'll only be talking about the Series 5 as the previous editions don't have the always on display.
There are two basic versions. One version with GPS/Wifi only, and one version with those and a cellular modem (LTE). There are two different sizes; 40mm and 44mm. There are four different materials; Aluminium, Stainless Steel, Titanium, and Ceramic. Titanium and Ceramic are collectively called Apple Watch Editions (yeah, it confuses me too). There are two special editions; Nike in Aluminum and Hermes in Stainless Steel. There are a total of six different colors between the materials. Aluminum has Space Gray, Silver, and Gold. Stainless Steel comes in Silver, Gold, and Space Black. Titanium is available in Space Black and Titanium while Ceramic is exclusively available in White.
Oh, and there are about a gajillion varieties on the bands. From rubberized sports bands to leather to metal to.... well, they have a lot.
So, lets narrow this down a bit. First thing is size. I quickly read that the battery was bigger in the 44mm and as I don't want another WearOS battery debacle, that's reason enough to get the bigger battery. Honestly though, I like big watches so I probably would have gone that way anyway. The Ceramic starts at $1,399 and since I don't even like the idea of a white watch, let alone spending that kind of cash on one, it's out. The Titanium starts at $849, so it's likely out but not necessarily. The Stainless Steel starts at $749 and the Aluminum at $429.
Those are all doable, but as I got the prices in my head, I realized quickly I needed to decide between the GPS only or the version with LTE. ONLY the Aluminum has the GPS only variety. While Aluminum is available with LTE, Stainless Steel and up all come with it standard. I'm torn about it in two ways. First, if I get LTE I absolutely will never ever ever be able to take it into the prison. It's bascially a full phone and internet devise at that point. I've seen officers and administrators wearing Apple Watches inside the secured perimeter so it might be able for me to wear one, but just NOT with LTE. Plus, to get the cellular modem to work you have to have a cellular service on your phone that supports it AND pay an extra $10 a month for it (it varies a little, but its mostly $10). My phone service provider, Google Fi, doesn't support Apple Watches, so if I wanted to pay that extra money and get the service, I'd have to change providers entirely.
So it seems like the GPS only version is the winner winner chicken dinner. BUT... idon'tlikethealuminumfinish
I tried to be reasonable, but I'm not a reasonable person.
The Titanium finish looks too much like the Aluminum, so I came down at the Stainless Steel. And since there is a sizable bezel between the screen an the metal edge, I went with the Stainless Steel in black, so that it would all just look like metal (or glass.. whichever). I got it with a lame band only because the Apple bands and straps are not all that attractive and entirely too expensive. I got a blue leather band for $33, the Apple Protection (protecting a $750 watch here!), and I so far really enjoy it. The screen is lovely. We'll see how the batter acts once I have a day out and about.... yeah, with the 'Rona still running rampant, that might be quite awhile!
Speaking of the Apple Ecosystem: I'm considering buying a Mac. Yeah, as long as I'm diving into the Apple ecosystem, I may as well try it full bore. I have the iPad. The iPhone. Now the Apple Watch. Next up is Mac right?
And before that thought gets any attitude, NO this would not be a replacement for my big mamma jamma legendary windows system I got from Origin twenty months ago.
So, why would I want a Mac? Well first there's just playing with it. I haven't played with a Mac for more than a few seconds since Mac OS 8 in 1998. I used to be able to say I was fluent in Mac but that hasn't been true for almost 20 years now. I haven't ever played with OS X and that's being replaced this year with OS 11 (BigSur?). So there's that. But I'd also like to see how these handoffs work. I start looking at something on my iPad, then flip it to the Apple Watch as I head out the door. Once I get into the car it flows into Car Play then over to my phone as I get out at my destination. I view some web pages and get involved in a text message conversation (iMessage) and then once I'm home, its all there on the computer. Right now there's a big huge brick wall between my computer and my phone, and like many people I interact with my phone a LOT more than my computer on an hour by hour basis.
I would NOT be buying it to play games. I haven't drank that much of the Apple iKool-Aid. My computer is built from the ground up to game. A mac at its very best can barely compete. I also wouldn't just be buying it to brows the web as... well, frankly my computer does that just fine. And if I want it portable, the iPad does that too. No, this is for desktop use, flipping between windows and Mac and exploring to see if it would be worth ever doing it right with a main system. So... it has to be cheap. I don't want to drop $3500 on a computer like I did my current rig. At the same time, I accept that Apple products are expensive, so it's probably going to be more than I want.
Okay, with that out of the way, lets see what I could do. Apple computers come in three styles. All in ones; the iMac and iMac Pro. Laptops; Macbook Air and Macbook Pro in a couple sizes. Desktop; The old and the new Mac Pro.
iMac: these look slick, but they've been out for quite awhile with only some minor interior changes. Getting one of these would also mean having two monitors on the desktop and while a 27" iMac would be nice, it's not as nice as my 34" ultra widescreen monitor. I DID consider an iMac as a temporary replacement for my computer while I was in this temporary home, but I brought my computer and therefore it just doesn't make sense. Oh, and entry price for a 21.5 inch iMac is $1099. The 27? $1799. The pro? Five grand.
One final reason not to get an iMac... I've heard there is a redesign right around the corner as the current models came out in 2015 with only minor tweaks to the internals.
Macbooks: I don't need the power of the Pro. Plain and simple. So the Macbook Air had a big redesign in 2018 and a minor one earlier this year. So, it's at least up to date. But you're paying a pretty penny for portability. An entry price of $999. I could get a dock and hook up to my monitor or thorugh some software share a portion of my screen to the computer. I've even seen videos of people sharing the keyboard and mouse between their Mac laptop and Windows desktop. But a grand? I'm not sure about Macs and their needs, but the starting thousand dollar price is pretty light on specs. 8 gigs of ram, 256 gigs of SSD storage. 1.1 ghz dual core i3 processor. Pump it up to 16 gigs of ram, 512 of storage, and a quad core 10th generation 3.5 ghz i5 and that jumps the price by $500. $1499. Yeah, I think thats too much to just play with.
Mac Pro: Fuck no. I've seen the youtube videos. They start out at OMG expensive and end at 'scratch my eyes out' hideously expensive.
When I was researching this the other morning, I came across one I had forgotten... the Mac Mini. It kind of straddles the line between laptop and desktop. When I think desktop, I think expandable and changeable. The Mac Mini isn't that as some models have both the ram and the storage soldered to the motherboard. But at the same time it has plenty of ports and no screen, so it's no lap top. New, with 16 gigs of ram and 512 of storage, it comes in at $1299. Better than the $1499 of the Macbook Air... but if we're talking price like that, then a $200 premium for portability might just be worth it even if I only rarely use it.
So that led me down the used market. If I could have found what I wanted for $300, I'd be talking about my new purchase, but it looks like what I want is going to be between $400 and $500. First and foremost, if I'm playing, I don't want to play in the past. The new OS coming out has to be compatible. Here's where we start dropping down the damned rabbit hole. And by the way, no I didn't go down this hole for a used Macbook as I figure they'll hold their value more because of the portability. So this is it for now.
Mac Minis started in 2009. They had a minor update in Late 2009 and that set the standard for how they differentiate:
- Mac mini (Early 2009)
- Mac mini (Late 2009)
- Mac mini (Mid 2010) (this is where it got short like the current version)
- Mac mini (Mid 2011 (this is where it lost the optical drive, so at a glance it looks like the newest ones)
- Mac mini (Late 2012)
- Mac mini (Late 2014)
- Mac mini (2018)
No, I don't have any idea why it's just 2018 where all the others were early, mid, or late. The latest one went to a darker gray, but otherwise look like the previous version cosmetically (ports are really different). So.. which ones can get BigSur? The Late 2014 edition. And according to Ebay, like I said above, one of those with 16 and 512 goes for between $400 and $500.
It's certainly doable. I mean come on, I just dropped over $800 into a watch! But where I know I'll utilize the watch, I don't know that I'll do that with a Mac computer. Plus that's $800 for brand new, top of the line vs $400 for 6 year old POS.
It's not something I'm going to do, but it IS something I'm going to keep considering. Don't be surprised if I talk about my 'new' Mac soon.
It's not fair, but it's a condition of employment: Fucking idiot nurses. So I put out a schedule every 4 weeks. Up until earlier this year that was every 6 weeks, but that's a big task and making it for was a lot easier on everybody. When I put it out it's a best guess as to where I'm going to put people but its biggest purpose is to layout and define what the nurses days off will be. Whether it's their normal schedule, their annual leave, holidays, or planned sick leave. There's other purposes on my side, but that's the big thing they get out of it.
Our holiday system has gone through some major changes. Without going into to much depth, it used to be no system at all. If your normal schedule had you working on the holidays, you worked the holiday. If you weren't normally scheduled there, then you didn't work it. Man, if you worked Mondays you were just screwed as many of the holidays end up on Mondays. Anywho, the Civil Service Commission took the bargaining rights away from the unions and laid out how it was going to be from now on.
The current system works like this. I start by giving everybody the day off. Their holiday hours go to making sure they still get paid. If they didn't work on the holiday, then they get a different day off in that week, assigned by me with clinic needs in mind. Basically that means I put their 'extra' day off where we have the most staff and it won't cause overtime. Only then does the holiday get filled up. Nurses have to sign up for holidays months in advance. I fill up withe volunteers in order of seniority all the open spots regardless of shift. Part of them signing up is signing up for which shift they want. So I go through those that want morning shifts and fill the holes, then go through the afternoon slots and fill those holes. Ideally, I have enough volunteers and everybody is more or less happy.
If I'm missing some LPNs, i.e. I don't have enough volunteers for all of their shifts, I can use RNs but that only works if there are extra RNs volunteering. For President's Day, Election Day, Veteran's Day... those are easy. But for Christmas, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving... those days are harder to fill and I often end up with some open shifts. Those I then fill through the holiday equalization list. That list keeps track of how many holidays that particular nurse worked (voluntary or mandatory) and then the nurse with the least amount of holidays worked gets mandated first.
This worked fine the first few times I did it... but then we started losing LPNs. We're now down to six LPNs for six shifts on every holiday. That means if I don't have an over abundance of RNs, ALL of the LPNs will be working.
So this particular nurse go the schedule on June 3rd. I use color to indicate a lot in the schedule and the two relevant colors here are orange, to indicate holidays and green to indicate shift switching. So if you're working the holiday, you'll see your shift highlighted in orange. If you're working the holiday and working a shift other than your normal shift, you'll see your name highlighted in green. It should stand out as those are the only times I use those colors.
Her shift on July 4th was highlighted in green. She hasn't volunteered to work but three LPNs DID volunteer for the morning, so she got pushed to the afternoon. This is one of the very exact reasons that I say every single time I send out the schedules "Be sure to check and make sure all of your days are correct". I sent out this schedule with minor changes about 5 times in the past month. Her holiday was ALWAYS highlighted in green.
So, we'll hold the holiday there and move on to a normal mandation. When we don't have enough nurses on the schedule for a particular day, I offer up that shift as overtime. 3-5 days before the shift, as is laid out in our scheduling guidelines, I assign the overtime. If no one volunteers for it, I call around and make one last request to a bunch of nurses that requested to be on this last minute volunteer list. If none of them pick it up, I then look at the overtime equalization list (same basic concept as the holiday equalization list except it counts hours of overtime instead of holidays) find out who has the least amount of hours, and they get mandated for that shift.
The OEL gets reset each quarter, and that means July 1st. Well I had a spot of overtime on July 3rd and after not being able to fill it I mandated this particular nurse. She's the most senior nurse, but she hardly ever volunteers for overtime except when it's going to be mandated anyway. So she accepts the overtime.
And then she doesn't. She realizes it's after the OEL should reset, which if it was assigned then she wouldn't get mandated as she's queen of the hill again with her seniority. BUT, I have to assign the nurses and use the OEL as it is THEN. It doesn't make any sense to try and figure out what the OEL would be three days from now because there might be some sudden overtime or change, and the order would change. It doesn't matter that it's past July 1st as that has nothing to do with the scheduling, that's just the arbitrary day it gets reset.
But I'm not a horrible person and the language is of course less than crystal clear. So I asked my temp boss who said to ask her boss. The director of nurseing... punts. She said to wait a day and then assign it when the new OEL is in affect even though that means I'm mandating someone two days before and not the required 3. She doesn't solve the problem, she doesn't define it so that I can solve the problem in the future... she just takes care of this one particular incident.
<sarcasm> Thanks </sarcasm>
So she got out of it and the next day I publish the daily sheet with her off and a different nurse getting screwed being assigned that shift. She supposedly doesn't see it and assumes she's still mandated, even though I specifically told her that I'll talk to the bosses about it, but then she sees the holiday daily sheet.
Yeah, she blows a fucking gasket. According to her I changed the schedule at the last minute and am trying to ruin her life. We must have gone back and forth about a dozen times on Thursday. She actually went into all caps mode and said that I was trying to screw her over. I held my ground as I knew I was right on this and felt that she was only fighting because fighting got her out of the last overtime.
My day is supposed to end at 5pm, but most days I have to go to the other side of the prison so I'm out of my office at 4pm. I still leave the facility at 5, but I don't get to my email in those last minutes. So I head home, have some McDonalds, and then check my email because I'm looking for a specific lab result for the Warden. The first email I see is easily ignored as it's from outside the state network. An external email. So I get the lab situation handled and go back to that email and see that its from Her. That nurse. She's informing me "in writing" that she does not accept her being mandated for the holiday and will therefore not be there. She followed that up 20 minutes later with an email stating how 'furious' she was.
Lemme tell you, she wasn't half as furious as me. But I digress.
She actually said in her email that shes doing it in email for two reasons. One was to keep it in 'writing' "long before the holiday". Umm... this is two days before the holiday and as a Monday through Friday employee I'm off on Friday. If I didn't have to check my email for the warden, I might not have seen this AT ALL before the holiday. The other reason? "you are able to think quick and change things around making it impossible to communicate with you about this matter."
So I'm able to think clearly and consistently and that is throwing her off? Admittedly I was impervious to her complaints of not being fair as I don't make these choices, the rules make them for me. So yes, in fact I AM being fair. Evidently that confused and bewildered her and it changed things around.
Anyway, I had to mandate another nurse to cover the shift. That nurse at least acted like an adult about it. He wasn't happy, especially at being mandated only a couple days in advance instead of a month, but he's there right now working.
I'm going to ask for the disciplinary equivalent of her head on a pike. If she gets off with this with just a slap on the wrist, then what's to stop EVERY FUCKING NURSE from doing the same thing when they get mandated.
Smart Homes are fucking dumb: Sorry for the cursing... still pissed off at that nurse. Anywho, so I'm in the new home. One of the things that I've gotten used to is all the smart speakers, thermostats, and lights at my house. I have a speaker next to my bed (music to sleep to, music to wake up to, and an alarm), a light next to my bed (automatic illumination upon the alarm and turning off automatically when I'm in bed), and a speaker in the bathroom (music while in the shower) that I all use every single day. There's also the TV and the temperature of the house that get used regularly via voice. As this is fairly new technology, I went ahead and set it up at our home and invited my brothers and mother into that home. So, everything is in my name.
I knew that Google Home can set up multiple houses, so I have 'Home' and 'Temp Home' set up. The other day I set up my new TV in the new house. It's a Roku TV just like our secondary TV at Home. Well evidently while I can have two homes, I can't have smart features using secondary software in the two homes at once. I set up the new Roku TV (which is awesome by the way!), and it knocked the secondary TV off at Home.
Now, understand the only thing at Home that having the TV on the smart home does is allow you to tell Google to turn it on and off. There are other commands, but that's the only ones we do. "Hey Google.... turn on the Roku" and the opposite. Realistically it's just as easy to pick up the remote and do the same tasks. But Mom wants consistency and hates change now a days, so I knew I'd be explaining to my brother how to set it back up over the phone.
Later that night, I get the Nest Smart Thermostat set up at Temp Home.... and you guessed it, it knocked the Nest Smart Thermostat at Home off the smart grid. And the Nest Protect Smoke Detector. And the Nest Yale lock.
The thermostat and smoke detector could wait, but the lock? Mom had a doctors appointment later that day and needed to leave the house empty. Fuck. So before work I headed over. I had my mask on and told mom to stay in the room away from me while I borrowed her phone and went to set it back up. Unfortunately setting it back up didn't fix it, so I literally had to factory reset the lock. I understand that fiddling with a mechanism that provides security SHOULD be difficult... but that was just beyond the pale. I had to take the cover off (requiring a special tool), take the batteries out, then hit the reset button while I put the batteries back in.
And where was the reset button? On the back of the damned lock. I had to unscrew the lock from the door and pull it away. I had to hold a recessed button down (requiring another tool) while inserting AA batteries from the other side. It's just impossible. I tried for like 30 minutes but I needed at least one more hand and preferably two. There's me, and mom, and that's it. So while I'm going through all this effort to social distance from her... refusing even a hug when all she and I together want is a hug.. and now I have to have her 6 inches from my face while we both fiddle with this god damned mother fucking lock.
I got it set up and left as quickly as I could, reminding her to tell me if there were any symptoms over the next two weeks. I swear to god, if I get her infected because of this, I just won't be able to forgive myself.
Anyway, I now have the houses set up and they shouldn't require any more changes.
Damn, I'm getting a good deal on cell phone service: So previously having the Google Pixel (the OG Pixel, the Pixel 2 XL, and the Pixel 4 XL as well as Mom's Pixel 3 XL) paired with Google's cell phone service Google Fi just made sense. It did two things that really made it work for me. First, it tried its very best to knock you over to a wifi signal all the time. Then all of your data was free. When you were on cell service it didn't just rely on one network, it actually relied on three different networks. Sprint, T-Mobil, and US Cellular. And it would seamlessly hand off between Wifi, Sprint, T-Mobil, and US Cellular whenever it needed to. Even in the middle of a network session or the middle of a conversation. This, along with my general internet usage away from home, kept my data use very low. I'd rarely exceed the 1 GB that was the starting point. That's important as Google Fi charges you PER gigabyte. So going over that one gigabyte costs $10. Another gig, another $10. So on and so forth until you get to 10 Gigs, then it goes to unlimited at no additional charge.
Now, while the iPhone is an amazing device, it wasn't set up for this. Using an iPhone with Google Fi means you're on the T-Mobil network. No switching. And half the time when you're on Wifi, it still uses cellular data as it's better quality. None of that is too big of a deal. The data from that difference pushed me up a bit, but I was still going to be regularly below the first gig. Then the music happened.
I don't know why this is occurring as it just doesn't make sense. You know that I set up Apple Music to get all of my music on the iPhone. I know that steaming music isn't much but with all my driving it WOULD be if it was streaming for two hours, five days a week. So I downloaded all the music and keep it up to date each weekend. But for whatever reason it streams SOME of the music. Like for 20 minutes before catching on and then using the downloaded songs. My data use went up to between 3 and 4 gigs every month. I know that's not much in the grand sceme of things, but damn it I didn't want my iPhone to cost me an extra $30 to $40 a month!!!
But it did and that made me wonder about looking at other service providers. And as long as I was looking, I looked at adding the cell service for the Apple Watch knowing it would be an extra $10 a month. I figured a 5Gb data plan should be fine, but if I could get unlimited that would be better.
Now, I've specifically NOT said what I was paying before because.... well I was naive and stupid about how much cell phone costs. You see I was only paying $55 before. For both me AND my mom. The extra money put us up to $85, but looking through the major players (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobil, AT&T) I realized that I just needed to accept the $85 for what it is... cheaper than any other plan out there. With some finagling that would be an absolute pain, I could switch services and pay around $100 including the Apple Watch, but I honestly don't see spending MORE money for the regular cell service as worth it. And if I wanted 'good' service? $150 a month.
Google Fi doesn't discriminate against your data. When I stream video (mostly short youtube clips) I stream it in the highest resolution my data connection will allow. Most of the time that's 4K. Well these other services limit your streaming quality at different tiers. That $100 package? That's SD video.
Uhh... fuck no.
So I'm happily using Google Fi on my iPhone and just waiting to see if they and Apple can ever make friends (I'm not holding my breath on that latter part).
Bad reactions hurt... no reactions hurt just as much: So, I published a new story to fictionmania on June 10th. This is a story I had been working on since January. It's fucking huge at 221.5k (over 41,000 words!). I thought it was really good and that the length worked for it. It has a long setup to really establish the scenario and the characters, a very sexy center portion (definitely XXX), and a good satisfying ending. Tygress was reading it along as I posted it and she really liked it... but then I posted it and only got 4 reviews. Tygress' review is good, so that's 5... but nothing else. It got as many reads as my other stories there (around 6,800 right now).
The first review sent me over the moon. It was from Annabel (I'm not sure if it's an Annabel I know or not) and she had nothing but nice things to say. She did offer criticism of some proof reading errors (site for sight and such), but nothing bad about the story, the characters, the length or anything.
The second review was someone called "The Retired Teacher". I expected a bad grade immediately as I know my writing isn't up to snuff, but surprisingly he gave me an A-. But it kind of felt like a compliment sandwich where you surround a big criticism with a couple mild compliments. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but here's what he wrote (quick note, the story heavily revolves around psychology and psychology students):
"Ah, the social sciences. They’re not really science are they, nor are psychologists really scientists. Just saying...
An initially fun read that played to the novelty of the research but imo gradually devoted into a bit of a trashy sexfest.
That said, well written with sufficient character development and very good grammar.
Grade: A-"
'initially fun' is a nice way of saying it wasn't fun. While I'm happy that he noted it was a trashy sexfest, as that's exactly what I was going for... he make it sound bad. Like that's not what he wanted. So, I'm kind of hurt by that one. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy he wrote a review... but I don't know what do do with it. He didn't enjoy it, didn't like that it was a trashy sexfest, and thought it was technically written well. I have no idea what to do with that information as I don't know how to improve from it.
The next review came a day later and they seemed to like it and even compliment the story on some of the mental aspects. And the final review was a complainton the length where they admit they skipped around and didn't read it all. I can understand that if you're just looking for that trashy sexfest parts... but I honestly think those parts are improved with the story that precedes them.
And finally I have a comment on my blog, but it's from someone that's been struggling to read it all.
I have another story already on the back burner. I've been saving photos as pieces of inspiration for the other story, but I just feel bad that those are the only responses. NO, I'm not fishing for compliments.... I honestly didn't know I'd feel this way and like the reviews, I don't know what to do with this information. Maybe I shouldn't read reviews? Or ever look at the story again and just trust my gut? I don't know.
I'd continue on with the Covid Craziness... but damn this is a long post. Thank God it's a three day weekend as I might write some more tomorrow. For now... ta ta!
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