I present to you: my Friday from hell.

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Well it's me again. I think this is episode 45. And let me tell you about my Friday

from hell. So as I'm recording this today is August 3rd 2024 Saturday and the

Friday from hell that I'm referencing is yesterday August 2nd. So I typically in

my IT business it is known to my clients that Friday is an off day for me unless

they have a major emergency you know something that just absolutely cannot

wait because most of the time I'm not immediately available for them to

contact because every other Friday pretty much I'm I'm out in the yards

cutting the grass doing what I need to do. And I usually try to do that in the

early morning hours because of the heat. And before that I'm going and I'm

picking up groceries. We we get our groceries from Walmart Supercenter. We

have two locations here that we can get our groceries. We have the Walmart

Supercenter which is on the west side of town and then we have the Walmart

marketplace which is actually closer and up until about year and a half almost

two years now we traditionally would go to the marketplace. But we started

running into some issues with them not having a lot of stuff because it is a

smaller smaller Walmart. They don't carry all the same things of course that a

super center would. And they were having severe personnel issues. So even though

it does take us longer for us to go over to the super center on the west side of

the county you know for the most part the the experience has been positive. Now

this past Friday yesterday as I'm recording this as I said I had something

pre-planned for a client of mine because usually about one Friday out of the

month or one Friday after out of every six weeks they typically do not see

patients. This is not gonna violate any HIPAA but this is a dentist office.

They're one of my they're one of my larger clients and so we were upgrading

their patient software. And in the past this this has been a time-consuming

endeavor. Generally we've we've waited a couple of revisions because we would go

through and there'd be some some issues and so we'd wait and let it break

everybody else and you know then we would do the upgrade. And there'd been

database upgrade process that can take 20-30 minutes and your own pins and

needles if it's even going to be successful or not. Last time I did this

we're upgrading the version yesterday we were upgrading the version 24. Prior to

that and I think it was earlier this year so this is something unusual for us

to do this many upgrades on this software in this short amount of time.

When I upgraded to version 23 I ran into a problem where I was on the phone with

that company's tech support for about two hours. Eventually we got it resolved

and I knew what caused it so I was you know I was getting ready I knew what I

had to do I was I was getting in the zone. Well you know what they say about

the less the best late plans of mice and men. Let's just say a mother nature

apparently had a different itinerary. Of course we're we're in the summer months

now we're August and September are really the months where we're gonna

start seeing a lot of tropical storms potential hurricanes forming and a lot

of times kicking the shit out of Florida and sometimes you know we get we get

called in in that that same you know hill of the boot if you will. We haven't

we're not there yet but yesterday morning I'm gonna say around seven o'clock

just out of the blue thunderstorms and I mean heavy heavy thunderstorms and of

course with thunderstorms and lightning and slightly elevated winds you start

having little power blips and of course we started having little power blips and

then I get a text of course my phone's on do not disturb my cell phones on do

not disturb until 830 except for a very select few of people few people and I

just happened to notice I got a text from a person at one of my other clients

we don't have any phones and the Internet's down. Well I'm thinking shit

you know I've got this stuff planned today I got to get out to get the

groceries and as soon as I get back I got a target date of 10 o'clock to start

this this upgrade process and I can already feel how everything is just

coming off the the rails. So fortunately I quickly discovered that this person

was incorrect their phones were not working in their office and the Internet

was perfectly fine and I told them and they're a friend of mine but I told him

I said I called him on the cell phone I said look you're gonna have to help me

troubleshoot this because there's no way I can come out there anytime soon I've

got this other thing that I got to do so unless your network is completely

imploding and burning to the ground I cannot come out there so they were like

yeah no problem I said I told him what to look for they found it reset it

everything was fine all right so it's storming like hell and I'm looking at

the weather map and I'm like okay hopefully by the time we get to the

west side of the county this will have lightened up so my daughter and I

because she always goes with me we left about 815 somewhere between 810 and 815

we get to we had to Walmart we're pulling into the the pickup side

normally there's no more there's sometimes there's nobody there usually

there's no more than three or four people and we always park in like slot

three four five somewhere in there we had to park in slot nine because there

was already like eight people there seven or eight people and I was like

okay I know I knew that we were probably gonna be a little delayed because I

don't expect these people to risk their lives when especially when it's raining

like hell and it's well I mean it's just constantly light lightning I don't

expect them to risk their lives to give him that groceries of course not I

wouldn't so we said there and the rain was just pelting the hell out of our out

of the roof of the vehicle and the hood and and the funny thing was there was a

person that was parked in slot 10 and as the rain kind of we went into a slight

lull I don't know how long she'd been there but she got out of her car and she

goes over to the double doors now you got to have a badge to be able to get

the doors to open so she just stood there and she starts waving at somebody

anyway the doors open person a Walmart employee comes out talks to her and the

next thing I know they bring her groceries out she picks her shit up and

carries it to her car herself and leaves and I'm like well okay you got to be

somewhere I get it and so I'm like okay well you know last time I had to wait any

considerable amount of time to pick my groceries up was back during the the

early stages of the pandemic and you know everybody was trying to get their

groceries picked up I remember going to the marketplace and sitting there for 45

minutes waiting and I mean that they have limited parking space so I literally had

to park in a regular parking spot and wait for somebody to move so I could

slide in and then say I'm here and I'm in slot whatever so we continue to wait

and that lull passes and the rain picks up again and and I'm like okay this I'm

starting to see maybe I'm gonna see a pattern here it probably rains hard for

another 10 minutes and then it we say a lull again and I'm like okay all right

now's the time because by this point we've had additional people show up and

they've started parking in the parking spot behind us and I'm like okay you

guys can do this I know you've got ponchos you've talked about how bad they

are I completely agree Walmart needs a canopy they need to they need to cover

this entire area with a canopy put solar panels on the top of it you know

generate some damn power but put a canopy here so that you can get your

groceries no matter whether it's hot as hell outside the Sun's bearing down or

you got a freaking hurricane coming through okay maybe not the hurricane but

you get my point so we're in this lull and Oriana and I were we're looking

we're looking nobody nobody's you can see people walking back and forth inside

but not a single damn person is coming out to start dropping off groceries and

then the rain picks up again we we go through this about there's probably at

least three lulls and during these other lulls people are getting out of their

cars and going up and trying to get people's attentions and somebody

attention and somebody will come out they'll talk and then the person to go

back and get in their car I think we're at about an hour at this point and the

funny thing is is I don't know if this is all some kind of timer or if they do

this because it looks it otherwise it'll look bad on their numbers but of course

the app notifies us hey your groceries have been have been delivered to you or

brought out or whatever which they had not now normally I've only had this

happen a couple of times and that's usually an indication that the person is

going to be out within the next two to three four minutes 30 minutes later we

finally start having some movement there the rain has subsided of somewhat we've

already had people this is something they were having to contend with we

already have people that gave the hell up and left and so there were at least

two or three instances where they bring out groceries and then they had to take

them back because the person sitting in the slot now is not the person that was

there to pick up the groceries because they said fuck this noise and left now

you can imagine if you know me I've gotten more patient over the years but I

am still not a very patient person and at this point I was literally fit to be

tight I can tell you this I was more patient this time around that I would

have been pre-alcohol retirement because whatever residual alcohol was in my

system at that point I would have made a complete ass of myself and whole and not

only that I mean I was trying to look I understand I would not want to be in

their situation I completely understand it I get it but what we didn't and my

daughter and I both agreed there was no communication they should have at least

come out and tried to tell people hey you know motion get everybody to roll

your windows down and say look we're running behind we're gonna try to get

your groceries out as soon as possible blah blah blah no communication

whatsoever none I even tried to call the number because you know I use the app to

do all that I tried to call the number nobody was picking up that's poor

customer service right there I've only had that happen one other time that I've

had to call and that was at the marketplace and nobody answered I wound

up calling the main number and it took them several minutes for them to finally

let me know that there wasn't anybody in that department at the time they

literally had to pull somebody off the floor because nobody had shown up to

work that day to be able to dispense groceries yet the pickers have been

picking but there was nobody to actually carry them out because apparently it's

two different two different people sometimes there's cross-pollination

between them but that's my understanding and yes I am a former Walmart employee I

worked in the Walmart Garden Center in Fitzgerald Georgia in 1989 I've also

worked for two years in a Walmart distribution center in Douglas Georgia I

know Walmart I know it's changed over the years but I can speak as a former

Walmart employee all of this was fucked up so the lady finally she comes she

comes out and I roll the window down and we verify the name and she's like I just

I just had to make sure because we've we've had a lot of people leave and I

said yeah I understand and she apologized you know and I was not cruel

or anything I said look I completely understand I was not gonna get into a

conversation as well you should have you should have been more communicative and

let us know what was going on I was like fuck it I just want to get my groceries

because by this point we're approaching 10 o'clock okay we're approaching the

deadline of when I needed to start doing my upgrade well during this I was

notified by my client their power was out okay well that gives me a little bit

of time but that also causes me some other problems because I had 44

computers I needed to remote into and with the power going out and only the

server and maybe one or two like laptops that would survive a power outage that

meant I was gonna have to make sure that they would go around and turn them all

back on then I found out our power was out so when Oriana and I got home we got

home to to Lee and a dark house so we got all the groceries out my UPS's had

done all they could they couldn't keep the internet up well Tyler because we've

done this before back in 2017 2018 when the hurricanes were coming through and

we didn't have power for a couple of days Tyler recently bought this huge

like marine type battery motherfucker is 60 pounds I literally had to get a hand

truck and wheel that thing around so I've had it out here in my office

trickle charging keeping it charged so I come out here and I grabbed it and I

wheeled it to the house luckily it's got a strap on it and I took it into our

utility room where we've now got all our revamped revamped stuff you know the the

the the floor rack is is actually on the in the carport under the carport and

everything is now wall mounted in a rack at a shelving unit and then a small

small little table so I took his inverter hooked it up to the battery

and plugged everything up that was absolutely needed for internet access

and once all that came back up because of the type of connection I have

fortunately if the power is out out here it's a fiber to the home variant called

our fog there are no elective electronics between here and the head in

so as long as I can power up my side and the head in still has power I got

internet so we ran like that probably for about 10-15 minutes it gave me a

chance to use my laptop check some stuff because the power finally came back at

my came back on at my client and then about 10 or 15 minutes later like I said

our power came back on and so then I had to get everything swapped over so about

11 o'clock I started work excuse me I started working on the upgrade and I

made sure the server would had had all the windows updates I rebooted like

you're supposed to I started the install I went through the process of making

sure all of these services that could interfere with the upgrade word were

disabled temporarily they were all shut down I did the install it had to reboot

again which you know I was like okay dumbass you needed to wait till the that

that reboot so I rebooted again it came up and that server takes a few minutes

to reboot because it's a hoss and I remote it in and instead of getting what

I expected to be the hey this upgrades gonna take a while blah blah blah no I

got the server screen the server DB screen that says no upgrade needed you're

good I'm like wait this is too easy scared the shit out of me I'm sorry okay

can this be true so I logged in using the client software and sure enough we

were on version 24 and everything worked I'm like holy shit well I was like

alright so I hopped into a workstation read of the software and somewhere around

about version 20 or 21 I forget they they changed it where you didn't have to

go to each machine and manually install it'll actually you launch the client

it'll find the server and the server will tell it hey you need to update and

then it'll download it and it'll do it takes takes about five minutes on

average some of the slower machines can take a little longer so I did that on

the first one rebooted logged in everything's good I'm like huh but one

thing I noticed on my dashboard there were about 14 machines that were saying

hey the last time we got any communication from these was around

about 8 o'clock so I contacted the practice manager and I said hey I need

you to go I guess I got these machines that I can't get into so I gave her the

list and supposedly she was going to make sure that they were turned on well

I managed to get about 14 of them done and then the other ones I could not get

and so I'd take it a break for lunch and I was like well I neither go out there

in the morning why you do it this afternoon well also during this this

thing we've got other machines that we were replacing so I got these little

mini PCs that are I mean they're awesome you know price points good they're so

small they actually will mount on the back of a monitor it has a standard base

amount excellent and I got two ready to go where I'm literally image the old

machine it's on the new machine so when the person gets it they're not gonna

really see a difference in their environment other than this thing is

working way faster than I'm accustomed to so I was like okay the practice

manager asked me she said do you have these PCs ready to go and I'm like yeah

she said well the monitors came in I was like all right well that's cool I said

I'd say you what I'll come on up there this afternoon and I'll get these other

machines upgraded which I discovered they were off I'll get these machines

upgraded and I'll do these two swap outs and she's like cool so I got up there

she was still there she left a few minutes later so I've got all the

machines upgraded and then I went out to my car and I got these little PCs and I

started working on the first setup I pulled her I disconnected her PC and I

took one of the monitors because we were only replacing one monitor she was gonna

get to 24 she already had an existing 24 she's gonna get a new 24 well I had

instructed the practice manager because I'd gone to Amazon and we were looking

for a particular 22 and 24 inch that had DisplayPort in HDMI and had to have a

standard PC style plug could not have an adapter because if we wound up getting

this same model particularly the 22s they put these monitors at the end of

the chairs where the patient sits so they can watch TV or whatever well

there's a power cable already run there and so you can't have one of these

barrel connectors that goes into the back of the monitor and then the actual

power adapter or transformer is a is you know is like a brick and then comes down

you can't do that so we made sure that these were the right type of monitors

well whenever I was specking these things out I discovered hey I get a

single or they had a two-pack this is where I discovered later on that I had

fucked up and felt really bad about it and this just capped off my Friday from

hell I was I opened the box that had the two monitors in it I was like I looked

down I was like this is neat they send you two monitors and one box saves a lot

of packaging I pulled the monitor out I put it on the countertop face down I

shimmied the protective covering up so that I could put the foot in and

discovered that these monitors the reason why they were shipped the way

they were shipped they didn't come with stands the monitor foot was missing and

I had to have the feet on these because we were not putting these on arms or a

monitor stand that you know the stand would mount to the back of the monitor I

needed it to have the standard foot that it normally would have 22s and the 24s

neither one of them these were all designed as I would later discover these

were sold as head only now I took full responsibility for this I called the

practice manager and I said look we got a problem and here's the problem I did

not realize what I suggested that we buy the two-pack because it saves you a

little bit of money that they don't come with the feet they expect you to put

these on monitor arms or stands and to her credit she was like all right well

we can use those at other locations where we have to we don't need to feet

so I'll just order a 24 and a single 24 and a single 22 and we could try this

again next week I said I am so sorry I felt really shitty you know you it's

that feeling that the life just literally drains out of you as you're

standing there and you're like okay and you suddenly realize there's a critical

piece to making this monitor actually stand up correctly is missing out of the

box and it's not missing because they screwed up it's missing because you

screwed up and I kind of explained all this and signal in the family channel in

the chat and my son Tyler was like well that's very nice and so later that later

yet Friday evening I went back and I started scoping over how did I make this

mistake on Amazon and so I looked at the same monitor and you go to that page and

it's one of those deals where you know you'll have the description and below it

you might have different options single monitor for 119 dollars and change dual

monitor for 220 so you save a little bit of money by doing it that way and what

what we're pretty much discovered was I did not notice and again this was my bad

you know and I'll own up to my mistakes and this this has told me a lesson

fortunately I have a client that's very understanding and and they aren't

screwed because they they were gonna need these monitors anyway just they

were gonna get them later but now they have them so they can go ahead and do

what they needed to do pay attention I did not realize that whenever I clicked

on the dual monitor setup that the description changed because if I'd paid

attention to that I would have recognized that in the title it said

head only and if I'd have scrolled down to where there's a section from the

manufacturer I would have read in the first paragraph where it said these come

these do not come with stands so yeah that just was the cherry on top of my

fucked up Friday Sunday for my my Friday from from hell it was oh my god and the

weird thing is I already had this unsettling feeling Thursday night that

see we've we've put in a sales order to upgrade their internet service now for

them to do that they've got to make some slight infrastructure changes and I

flat-out told them that the only time this could happen would be on a Friday

afternoon after 2 but it could not happen on August 2nd because I had this

massive upgrade I needed to do it I need to be able to have internet access or

remote in because the whole plan was I was never gonna go up there I mean it's

only about 15 minutes from my house but I was not gonna go up there but I wound

up doing it anyway and and I'm glad I did it yesterday instead of waiting

until this morning and discovering my fuck up on the monitors but I was afraid

that they weren't gonna pay attention to the sales order where the sales guy

which is a friend of mine had put on there they had to contact me before they

did anything so I had this unsettling feeling that this was the way the

universe was gonna go on Friday fortunately I don't know hopefully it

was due to the weather or whatever they didn't do their potential nonsense but

everything else decided to just fall the hell apart and I even made I even

made a comment to one of the ladies that was still was still there she was calling

patients and making sure they were aware of when their appointments were and what

have you I told her I said it's it's a damn good thing that that I don't drink

anymore and I I think it was let me check the calendar I was correct 433

days yesterday and that's what I told her I said I think today is my 433rd day

of alcohol retirement and of course she told me congratulations and that's good

and blah blah blah because yesterday was one of those days where prior to alcohol

retirement I would have if I didn't already have it I would have been down

at the liquor store buying a fifth of something because I was not yesterday

was one of the worst days I've had in a long long long time personally and

professionally so yeah that's my that's my story Friday oh and now it's coming

up on lunchtime and Lee just sent me a message a few minutes ago I'm thinking

beef and gravy with mashed potatoes and biscuits for lunch and that's because I

got up this morning and made biscuits got a recipe called grandma's buttermilk

biscuits they were they turned out okay they didn't rise like I wanted them to

so I'm trying to get back into cooking more like that kind of stuff and I'm

gonna try some variations cuz I do not like store-bought biscuits I don't like

the way they taste I don't know what it is but they just they don't they taste

wrong these turned out to be pretty good I took one and I actually cooked a

sausage patty I buy this these bags they're almost $10 a bag or there may be

$10 a bag I buy these uh just great values thin sausage patties they're

great with pancakes and what-have-you so I cook one of those in a microwave only

takes a minute after my biscuits were done cut cut a biscuit in half put some

mayo and some cheese and put a thing on there and the only thing I was missing

was an egg and I didn't feel like cooking that so I had me a sausage and

cheese biscuit which wound up costing me less than the ones I have in the in the

freezer that are store-bought that's what I was looking at because it cost me

about a little over $10 for eight sausage cheese biscuits Jimmy Dean's

they're good but you know I was like well I can start making biscuits but

anyway we're coming up on lunch so that's my story yeah I hope the rest of

this weekend goes off without a hitch where's some wood that was me knocking

on my own head anyway that's it thanks for listening hope you're doing well if

you are on your own alcohol retirement journey let me know how it's going for

you I hope it's going well and if you just start now trust me you can do this

so until next time I'm on insta and threads Don Adkisson as I said I'm still

on Twitter at that same handle but I don't ever pay attention to it I have

Facebook but I don't have any friends on there and that is by design I'm only on

there to manage pages for tifton talks radio tiffed and some other stuff so you

can always email me the email address is Don do in at call me Donovan comm so

until next time till we have an opportunity for me to know your ear off

vocally hope you have a great one take care