CozyNet Blog

General Update v26

Iris's I planted last year are blooming!

Howdy there CozyNet readers, welcome to another general update blog post where I ramble about some of the things I've been up to. It's been little over a month since I've last posted anything, so I suppose I better get something out there!

I'll start off with the house and where my status is at on it.

So things are pretty slow around this time of year. I'm arranging a list of things that'll need to get done because I've been talking with some friends that are willing to help out. I'm thinking of tackling the junk in the back yard soon, which consists of a 70's camper falling apart and a barn filled to the brim with junk. Also that camper is full of junk too.

I've still not finished my windows in the kitchen. Just haven't had the time to do it really...

I spent some time climbing around in the attics to note down some things that might need repair. The ridge line of the roof sags a few inches down the center and half the floor on the second level slopes down a good three inches toward the front of the house. I'm trying to decide to either address it structurally or work around it like the previous owners.

I can tell that it's been this way probably half its life because of how it was worked around from previous remodels. It's caused by the upper portion of the walls bowing out which affects the roof ridge line. As for the floor sloping, I'm not kidding you, but it was made that way... I don't know why other than there have been some serious remodels over the decades because it use to be a smaller wing and gable style house in another life time. Due to the age, the joists have developed a bit of a sag in them which doesn't help any, but they're in alright condition; just doesn't look nice.

My bathroom is still torn apart from last years shenanigans. I'm planning to repair the leech pit instead of put in a new tank and system because there's nothing but solid limestone boulders three feet down. I couldn't ever dig a deep enough hole to fit a small tank in which made me pretty upset. Upset not because I couldn't carry out my plan, but upset to discover that after all this time and waiting, I could have just spared myself the headache and spent a few days repairing what was already there and have a functioning bathroom in no time. This is to say, I've spent the better part of two years without a functioning bathroom, using an outhouse and bathing in a livestock water trough I picked up at Tractor Supply because I was saving up and planning on installing a significantly better system than the pitiful handmade caved-in 70 year old leech-pit. Well that's not going to happen now, so yeah... guess I'm repairing the leech-pit after all!

I think I wrote last time about my truck and needing to repair the brakes. Well I got that work done, which wasn't cheap. It came out a little over $2,000 because I wanted new brakes all the way around. It also seriously needed new tires which I finally caved in and got after spinning out one night driving home in the dark.

I hate driving in the dark! My eyes play tricks on me and I can't tell if I'm seeing something in the road ahead of me or not, and it certainly doesn't help that every jerk on the road drives with their head beams full blast into oncoming traffic. I thought I saw something in the road and hit the brakes which locked up one of the tires and caused me to spin out almost hitting mister high beams! Fortunately all was well, but it was a close call. I decided to get new tires ASAP.

In case you don't have a car or understand what happened, the low tread on the tires paired with new brakes caused one of the brakes to lock one of the tires unexpectedly because it didn't have enough traction to keep rolling with the rest. This caused the tire to skid and lose braking force, disrupting the overall balance. I should mention that this truck does have an ABS system, but this was on dry ground and happened too quick for it to be of any use since the tires are trash. Anyhow, that's minus $800 for new tires woohoo!

Oh but we're not done yet... You see, there was another night wherein I was in my snazzy little car and hit a friggin man hole without the cover over it! It was at an inner section where I couldn't see it nor was I paying attention because I was watching for other cars. Fortunately I was going quick enough while making a turn that only my front wheel was sort of able to glide over it, but it was just enough to take a good chunk of rubber off the inner side of the tire. I wouldn't find out about this until a few days later because I noticed my steering wheel kept vibrating and the alignment was messed up. I felt around on the backside of the tire and could feel wires poking out!

It's been a busy week of car maintenance here. Oh and also, that was minus $1000 something dollars too because the tires are expensive low profiles. I don't know if I'll ever get this house done at this rate...

Video of Poochie during the ice over in January.

I suppose I'll mention the work life and how things have been going back at the office.

One day I was assigned to work with this newly hired tech. He was tasked to setup a policy in Intune that would block browser extensions while permitting a few required by the company. I instructed him on what to do since I've done this before, but it didn't work this time because I forgot that Microsoft is a backwards company with their left hand on the right and right hand on the left; you don't even want to know where their mouth is!

So the correct terminology is a whitelist or "allowlist" if you want to be a hyper-pedant about it, but in Microsoft land there's no such thing. No no, you have to also make a blacklist to block everything on top of your whitelist! Gee doesn't that just sound sensible? If you've worked with firewalls in networking at all, Microsoft will break your mind over order of operations, but let's not concern ourselves with such details.

Anyhow I forgot to instruct the rookie that he needed to setup an implicit block everything list with a precious little "*" star in it, which meant that our allow list was a sad joke missing its punchline. So queue up the next day and I follow up with him on the status because nobody these days bothers to keep each other up-to-date unless you poke and prod them. He tells me it didn't work and that he got with his BFF "Co-Pilot" to concoct a harebrained solution. I really despise these stupid chat bots... All he had to do was read the documentation which is literally linked to by the policy we were working on, but no, he consulted a schizophrenic chat bot with out of date information instead. What is wrong with people?

It had him setup some custom policies that relied on ancient configurations only available by an ADMX template which of course isn't included on our tenant nor required since said template only exists for legacy purposes that are no longer relevant (say you want to configure MS Edge browser settings on server 2012 which didn't have the group policy options built in.) He couldn't get it to work and was very persistent that his BFF was correct and wouldn't let him down, so we take it up to one of our "specialists" that quickly shot down the harebrained plan to upload an old ADMX template and told him to set it back up the way we had it before.

So back to square one. He sets up the policy again and I point out in a chat after re-reading over the Microsoft documentation, which I must admit is quite decent despite MS being such a backwards company, the missing block-friggin-everything option that's required in tandem with the allow list so the whole joke comes together. It works, he's happy, I'm happy, end of story.

At any point I could have flipped out over a number of things, take over the task and do it myself, and complain to my manager that the new guy is talking to imaginary people on his computer giving bad advice, but I didn't. The reason why is that I've been trying to correct some flaws in my own character over the past few months here. It's not uncommon to hear about people upset with their jobs, and I was no exception, but I've come to realize that a lot of what bothers me tends to conflict with my self image.

Let's say you're transported into an alternate timeline where the culture is completely foreign and the way people work totally backwards and sometimes even straight-up stupid. Now imagine having to work with them and to do things their way, and anytime you try to make a correction or improvement, it creates pandemonium. Are you going to die on the hill of your ego just because you think you're right or will you adapt to the situation? There's a system here that you have to adapt to and it might seem totally stupid, but if you really think about it, the system you come from is probably just as stupid as the next.

This is what the world feels like to me now. It's like I've been transported to some wacko alternate reality with no way back to where I came from. I've looked all around too and everywhere is just as messed up and crazy as the next. I can either adapt or spiral out of control. I'm no longer concerned with proving myself like I use to, I just have to survive now. Yeah I know that square peg isn't going to fit thru that round hole, but you know what, they're paying me to do it. I do have my limits, but where my ego is concerned, it's not a problem.

I find myself getting along with people too now. Things have been turning around, but I guess that's no surprise since I'm trying to work with people instead of against them for the sake of self image. I'll maintain that I see a lot of things I do not like or agree with, but my place of occupation isn't the all of my life. I work so that I might live in this world, but I live to work for the Lord.

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward."

Thanks for reading my blog!

A beautiful late evening view of the pasture.