Author: anthony Page 5 of 79

It started with a storm. 

There are a lot of old trees in the neighborhood so after a storm one of the tasks is to check the yard to see if there are branches down or any damage has occured.  

This time, it was both.  A branch had fallen onto the power line to the house and was still hanging there.   The line wasn’t down or broken and we hadn’t lost power, but it was hanging low and pulled away from the house. 

I didn’t approach it – I’ve read the inserts in the utility bill – and called Ohio Edison.   They sent a guy out within a couple of hours and he got the branch down, but said I would need to contact an electrician to get the line re-attached to the house.    And to do it soon in case there was another storm that might take it down the rest of the way.

That was a Friday and over the weekend we tried to find the name the electricians that had replaced the fusebox for us.  

When I called them on Monday, the number was out of service. 

I did some research and found another local company that had good reviews, then called them up.  At their request, I submitted pictures of the connection point and a zoomed out shot of the area – and a picture of the fuse box for some reason.

I got a compliment back on the quality of my photos and they said they would call with a quote. 

I didn’t hear back for a few days and followed up.  They said they were working on the quote and would let me know, but I gave up a few days later.

I called a third electrician and the phone rang and rang – and then connected me with an A.I.

Uh-oh.

I did my best to explain the problem and it offered an appointment for Thursday morning. 

A few hours later I got a call back from a human at the company who corrected what they had for my name and the nature of the problem – and they rescheduled for a real appointment since the A.I. had lied.  Now, it was the following Tuesday.

When that Tuesday rolled around I met the electrician when he arrived. While all this was going on, we’d also realized the attic fan had been disconnected.  I hadn’t been able to get that going so when he arrived we checked that out first . He didn’t do much more diagnosis than I had but determined the fan itself was broken.

That long-ago home inspection is looking more and more like a scam. Costly wanker…

Anyway, back outside and he looked at the connection point – and decided he couldn’t do anything with that.  He told me Ohio Edison would need to come out and run a new longer line – in his opinion – and include a loop to connect to the house and reduce the tension.  And to reconnect the “weatherhead” to the house. 

And then he charged me $150.00 for that.

I paid the bill – slightly more educated, but cranky. 

So, I called Ohio Edison again and navigated their A.I. system to get to a person.  I re-reported the problem and they gave me a new reference number – but no estimate on the time.

The next day, a technician showed up and I showed him the problem.  But, he was a “forestry guy” and what I needed was a “troubleman” or a “loopman”:   I took quick notes on what he was telling me to ask for and he was on his way with an apology.

I called Ohio Editson again to update the DR number – whatever that is – and got a new number and the promise of a new technician. 

That afternoon, a guy showed up with a truck and a cherry picker.  He examined the problem and said he could fix it and it wouldn’t take long.  I moved my car so he could put his truck into place and I kept an eye on the lift.  When it started back down I met him at the truck and he showed me the fix he had made – but noted a lot of squirrel damage to the neutral line.   We were good for the time being, but he would send a crew out in a couple of hours to run a new neutral line from the pole to the house.   This was early afternoon so I expected they would be back by early evening at the latest. 

I updated Jim when he got home and as time went on I figured I’d instead see them the next day.

Instead, around 9:30 that night, 4 huge cherry picker trucks rolled up to the house and parked along the street.  Jim had been out for a walk and met me at the door.

“I think some people are here to see you,” he said and I went out to meet the crew.  I guided them by flashlight around the backyard and explained the problem.  They brought back ladders and cable, then set to work.  We had the backyard floodlight on and it helped when they cut the power and our generator came back on. 

We waited in the house until there was a clicking sound that told us the power was restored.  The generator stopped shortly after that and I met the crew outside.   While they were wrapping up, I responded to the neighborhood group text about what was happening. 

The new neutral was in place, the line no longer slack with the right amount of tension with a loop of wire, and the power back on.

I thanked the team and went back inside.  I did some checking and realized I’d been after this a full month between all the wrong answers and false starts.  

So, that project is finally done.

Now, I have to do something about that fan…

My former co-worker posted on Facebook that he had written and published a children’s book – and was going to be doing a “book launch” at an Art In The Park event at the Medina Public Square.

I thought it would be nice to surprise him and buy a couple of copies for the families with kids in the neighborhood.

Jim had plans that Saturday morning and needed me to get a little later start after I took care of the dogs.  So, it was a little after 11 before I started out.  

I usually eat lunch then and decided to stop at Sheetz on the way for a sandwich.

I still don’t know what kind of “meat” was in that chicken sandwich or how old it was – but if this was an omen on how the day was going to go, it wasn’t a good one.

I made do with a bag of chips and a soda, then was on my way again.

I didn’t have an exact address for the Public Square, but found an entry in the GPS for a Public Square restaurant and assumed that would get me close enough. 

And that part did work.  I got near enough, found a side street nearby and parked – then headed to the square.

I knew the booth number, but all I could find was a small section of food vendors. I wandered around a bit, confused, and then found the info booth.  

“I’m looking for the…” I said and then my eyes saw a stack of cards advertising the event and finished with, “Art in the Park”.

“Oh, that’s tomorrow,” the staff person said and then proceeded to tell me all about it. 

I paid about ⅛ of my attention to all of that, wondering how I’d gotten this wrong.   I thanked her for the info and looked back through the facebook posts to figure out where I had messed up.

I had assumed it was a Saturday event and the post from that morning was “I’m at booth 55 with my daughter for Art in the Park” – but included the flyer that I hadn’t opened that clearly said it was on a Sunday.

Cranky at my own mistake, I headed back to my car.  I had been wanting to go to a paper store to get materials for a christmas wreath and it was only 6 miles away from where I was. 

Hoping to salvage the trip, I set the GPS and headed out. 

The paper store was open – but didn’t have any big sheets of green paper.     They don’t have regular supplies, but I had hoped for something I could use or adapt.  

I bought some supplies for other potential projects, but it still felt like a wasted trip.

On the way back to Akron, I stopped at Dick’s Sporting goods.  My niece has a birthday coming up and I’d gotten some guidance on clothes – but on my first trip there I didn’t realize I was missing the sizes.

And guessing on the sizes for an almost-teenaged girl sounds like a felony. 

Even though I’d just been in the store earlier in the week, I couldn’t find the sweatshirts again.  If there’s an underlying order to the layout of Dick’s Sporting Goods it is lost on me – I’ve never found anything there without searching the entire store and then asking someone.

With help, I found and bought the surprisingly expensive sweatshirt and headed out.

I had a headache by this point, but while I was out I decided to stop at Target and get soda and birthday cards.   Not my favorite tasks – 80-90% of cards are completely stupid – but I found them and managed to get checked out.

I was overheated, hungry, cranky, and disappointed in myself – but I got through my trip.

On Sunday – the correct day for the event – I took a deep breath and headed out again. I was earlier this time and didn’t stop for lunch.  I also found the location more easily and a better parking spot.  It was also clear I was in the right space and the booths were numbered. 

I found my former co-worker and surprised him.  He was happy to see me and re-introduced me to his daughters – it had been a long time – and he showed me his painting he was working on and his artwork.  He also walked me through the book and offered to autograph it.  I said yes and decided I’d keep it instead of giving it away.  

We chatted a bit, but he had other people coming into his booth.  I thanked him and his daughters and headed out.   I walked around a little bit, but it looked like rain and I decided to leave. 

This was my only errand for the trip so I just headed back home.  It took me two days and 2 hours of driving total, but I got done the one thing I really needed to accomplish. 

Next time, I need to read the facebook post more carefully before I try to be clever and surprise someone.

Our main website for work is hosted in the cloud and is maintained by a company we’ve worked with for over 15 years.  It’s generally very reliable and so are the periodic patches/updates they do. 

There was a patch scheduled for a recent Wednesday night and I made a mental note to check on things on Thursday morning – just in case. This check is usually nothing more than logging in to the website and making sure things are where I expect them to be – then updating the team.

Thursday morning I opened up my email to a flurry of system messages indicating an extended downtime – much longer than we usually see.    I quickly checked and the system let me log in – and we appeared to be up and running – so my message to the team was that things looked a little bumpier than usual and we should be a little extra vigilant in our review. 

And then things started to get weird.

I edited a page just fine, but the second page wouldn’t save.  I could download an image, but not upload it to a new folder.  If I changed the format and tried again, it would work. Some pages wouldn’t update and some would. 

I reached out to my colleagues and their testing was all over the map.  Some things that worked for me didn’t work for them.  In a couple of cases, an entire function wouldn’t load.  

Then I got a note from another editor on campus reporting a new problem. 

But, there was no pattern.  My notes continued to grow with problems and exceptions – making it challenging to even figure out how to report.  I opened a ticket with our support, assumed it was the patch, and shared all the conflicting notes.

I updated the team and we continued to try and test.  It wasn’t time to update all the editors across campus, but I was starting to think about that email. 

Support got back to me asking for screenshots and noting they were looking into it.  Which suggested that this was just us and not a buggy patch that they would roll back from all the clients.

I sent out a note to the editors and explained where we were and that they should stop editing until we had more information.  I promised to keep them in the loop.

My boss was out this week and I sent a note to his peers to update them in case they got any questions. 

And then, things got worse.

I got another update from support – another person this time – and they reported that the night before (and continuing into the day) our website was the subject of a DDOS attack.  

DDOS stands for Distributed Denial of Service – where hundreds or thousands of compromised computers in a network are directed to send potentially millions of requests to a website. 

This is usually more than enough to crash the site.  And keep it down until they stop. 

Our support had been battling this overnight and managed to get some degree of stability by blocking traffic from 14 different countries.   It cut the attack in half and got the site up and running again, but since the attack was ongoing it made the editing unstable. 

And, they had tried to notify us of the problem by emailing a staff member that hadn’t worked at UA in over 5 years.  Sigh.

I was supposed to lead a training session/office hours meeting with about 30 people that afternoon, but knew there was no way I could do that and keep on top of the problem. 

I hadn’t created the meeting so I couldn’t cancel it in the system, but sent out an email to the potential participants to let them know the situation – and promised to join the call anyway for a few minutes in case anyone missed the cancellation notice.

I updated the team again, then got on a call with support about the situation and options – which ran long so I had to have another colleague hop on the call in my place to explain what was going on. 

With the support call finished, I joined the call and used that time to copy the information from the support tickets to a separate system used by our IT department. 

When I ended that call, our IT department reached out and suggested the proposed solution from support sounded like a scam. 

The only good news was that during the support call it appeared that the attack had halted, for the time being. 

I sent another note to the editors explaining where we were and told them I would do more testing in the evening.  I finished up the workday with a call to the team on our next steps. 

After a short break to eat, I logged in back and did another round of testing and tried to catch up on updates. 

On Friday, I did more testing with the team and then sent a note to the editors to let them back into the system. 

As the morning went on, support started to pressure me to make the switch to this new system. From my own research it had some serious problems and I needed a consultation with our IT department to clarify.  We ultimately decided to leave things as they were for over the weekend and regroup on Monday.  

In the meantime, a potential law student reached out from another country and reported through the channels that they couldn’t access our website.

Support confirmed the error they were getting matched with their country being blocked.  I explained what was going on and promised a quick resolution. 

It was an exhausting couple of days, but I did get some good feedback from the editors about how I handled the situation and I did my best with what I had at every step.

Still, I feel responsible as the caretaker and webmaster of the site. 

I had some homework over the weekend to get a better handle on the solution – a CDN (Content Delivery  Network) – and we regrouped on Monday to keep working the problem.

Though, I suspect I won’t sleep well until we’re finally past this hurdle since we could easily get attacked again – and there’s no way of knowing why. 

Update: the CDN is working, though not without some bumps. Our log-in stopped working for a bit and we had to work around that.  There’s also an update delay we’re trying to get used to.   And I’ve got some subsites to add to a list to resolve.   

But, we’re generally safer and now more stable. 

Though, I kinda wish it had just been a buggy patch we could roll back.

This is perhaps my favorite story of A.I.

I was working with a colleague that had built a subsite with a lot of custom code and formatting. One of her pages, critical for an upcoming project, wouldn’t load at all.  It was just blank when it tried to display.

She called me up and we did a screen-share to look at the code for the page.  After some back and forth and scrolling up and down, I thought I had it figured out. 

“I think,” I said, “that this is missing a DIV tag,”

On a webpage, a set of DIV tags will define a region for something to happen on a page.  They come in pairs and if there’s a mismatch, that could be part of the problem. 

Since this is an easy thing to try, I expected that she would drop in an extra closing DIV tag at the end and try it out.  

Instead, she suggested, “Let’s put this in ChatGPT”

It seemed an odd approach to add another step to try  – and in a way I felt like I was being tested.  If ChatGPT agreed, would we try adding the tag?

She copied the code into ChatGPT and asked for an analysis.  The A.I. suggested that there were instead too many DIV tags.  

She removed one of the closing tags and tried this again – and the page still failed.   And she was now at a loss.

“Let’s add in two tags,” I suggested, “One that ChatGPT suggested you remove and the one I thought was missing,”

Oddly dubious, she edited the page to add in the missing tags – and the page loaded perfectly.

I got a happy “thank you” and we ended the call. 

As one might imagine, I rode that victory for days afterwards.  

The troubling bit was not that A.I. got this wrong, but that it was the only tool she was using – rather than it being one of the tools and resources.  

Like, perhaps, a trusted colleague. 

I could have just as easily gotten this wrong – we were scrolling pretty fast  – but I’m glad it worked out.

Humans: 1, A.I.: 0

Of the many – many – ways that users can report problems to me, my least favorite is the Offices and Departments update request form. This is for part of the website where we list the contact information for departments and it has a tendency to go out of date. So much so that we created a form departments to notify us of a correction.

In addition to the updates, we’ll frequently have a user attempt to complete the form to contact someone – instead of using the clearly labled Contact Us link.

I guess it works, though, since I get those too and try to figure out what they are really asking for.

A recent update asked about Financial Aid and Scholarships. And the requestor had put in the full email address and their name. It all “looked” legit – though no less dumb than any of these.

I pulled the name and email address out, composed my own message, and sent them an email with more information on the topic.

I figured that was done, but then I got a response – of sorts:

Thank you, for sharing your attention to these matters that have been ongoing – similar to the full house investigation- do your best to turn this issue around / on behalf’s of Evelyn Steen.  Jameer Butts. Jarrid Butts and variations of our biometrics being masked by other names – others have cooperated- signed orphan for life from a sovereign nation –

A search on that turns up half-way blocked posts on Linkedin and Facebook. I’ve seen these before where some invents injustice or warps a real one to either scam people or just generally be a nusance on the internet.

Like we need another way to do that.

The form response was garbage and the email back was garbage too. Likely automated, though you’d think if they were going to automate it, they would at least take the time to be coherent.

I did my best, as I do with all of these, but it wears me down.

It was getting late and I was hungry. Too late to wait for a proper meal and so I found myself again at Taco Bell.

I walked in – not willing to endure being trapped in line in my car and being shouted at by an AI to order my food. 

At the kiosk I start to put in my order next to a guy doing the same.  One of the staff members got our attention from behind the counter and told us there would be a wait – there were to-go orders and drive-thru orders ahead of us.    It would be about 20 minutes.  

The other guy ordering decided that was too long and left.  I was irritated that the door dashers were getting priority over the direct customers, but it was still my most expedient option.  The devil you know, and all that.

I finished putting in my order, paid for it, then stepped off to the side out of the way.  I got out some paper to fold and settled in for the wait. 

A few moments later, a family of four came in – a mom and three little girls.  They were speaking Spanish, loudly, and I remember thinking if they were looking for authentic Mexican food, they were in the wrong restaurant. 

They crowded up to the counter – all of them talking at once – and I wondered how long they would have to wait before being directed back to the kiosks. 

The volume of their conversation attracted the attention of the staff in short order and a manager came out to literally scold them for trying to order at the counter.  She said they would help them use the kiosks if needed, but they didn’t take orders at the counter.    And implied, frankly, that they should have known better than to dare approach.

And then it turned out that the mom didn’t speak english. At all, apparently.  And the oldest daughter – aged maybe 7 or 8 – was her translator. 

The daughter tried to translate this instruction over the noise of her sisters still shouting their orders and one of the staff members came around the corner to guide them over to the kiosk.

I moved a little further out of the way, furiously minding my own business.

I found myself angry at the mom for forcing her daughter into this situation and sorry for the girl for having this burden.  I was also angry at the policies of “the bell” that wouldn’t budge on the kiosk policy and their low staffing that got us to this point.  And now, there were even fewer people making food in the back. 

The only bright spot was the clerk at the kiosk helping take the order.  Her patience while three people shouted at her in Spanish and one small girl tried to translate was legendary. 

I was distracted when someone stalked past me on a loud speakerphone conversation and missed the food order, but the drink order consisted of several individual and somehow complicated orders of Pepsi.  

As the order finally wrapped up, there came the most challenging step – the name for the order. Somehow, this defeated the translation skills of the eldest daughter and it took several minutes of “any name or just a letter” before they finally decided on what to add to that screen. 

I figured the payment step might also be complicated, but the mom knew what to do there and deftly used her card. 

Freed, the clerk headed back around the counter and a little while later distributed their drink cups. The youngest was also freed and began running around the restaurant while the mom and other two went to get drinks.  

My food order came up while they were still working on the drinks.  They had stopped, still blocking the drink counter, while the oldest went to ask the youngest if she still, indeed, wanted a Pepsi.  

I waited a moment and when they didn’t do anything I stepped up and indicated with my cup that I wanted to get my drinks.  We ended up doing a frustrating dance back and forth while I tried to get my drinks and then get lids and then pick back up my bag of food that I had foolishly set down.

I took my food out to my car and considered a moment after I got in.

I was angry and miserable because it was late and I was hungry.  But nothing that went wrong there was really the fault of the people there.  It was all politics and policies made by people a thousand miles away. 

And, really, when it comes down to it, shouldn’t Taco Bell – of all places – have a Spanish language menu on their kiosks?

In the end I got my food and the order was correct.  I took it home, ate half, lost my appetite, and went to bed early. 

I hope the mom and her daughters enjoyed their food and their Pepsis.  I hope that all the door dashers got good reviews.  And that Taco Bell got their staffing sorted out and caught up on the orders. 

And I wish that I had gone literally anywhere else.

A few years back, not long after we’d moved into our current home, Jim and I joined a health club connected to the hospital where he worked.   He had a free membership and I got a discount as a spouse.   I wanted to use the pool to keep up with my swimming since I was working from home more and the pool on campus wasn’t convenient.

And it started out…okay, most of the time.  Most of the staff were friendly and the check-in process each time was easy – provided someone in front of me hadn’t forgotten their pin. 

The pool was good and usually not too crowded, but on days where the local high school swim team used the pool, all the rec swimmers had to share a single lane.     Sharing with one person is not too bad, but more than that and I would usually get frustrated.  

I don’t like to be one of those “I’m paying good money for…”  but I was and it was not a great experience.  Also, there are few things louder or more obnoxious than teen-age boys in a locker room. 

So, I got tired of it.   Jim changed jobs and it was no longer viable for him to go there – so when my year was up, I went through the needlessly complicated process to quit.  If I didn’t provide a letter of nonrenewal – in writing and signed – they would keep charging my credit card.  

It was irritation upon irritation and I was glad to be done with them.

Except, not quite. 

Every year since then, I’ve gotten a letter from the health club offering – get this:

“Amnesty for Past Members – Pay No Enrollment Fee”

1. An enrollment fee is pure bullshit.  It’s your job to enroll people and you want them to be enrolled. Charging a fee to do that is greedy and dumb. 
2. Amnesty: (noun)

an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses.

Really?  I dropped my membership because I was annoyed and you are equating that to a political crime?   I don’t know if it’s worse if they don’t know what the word means – or if they do, and they really think it’s that bad.

I’m not going to “Rejoin Today!”  and I’m not going to “Contact Membership before it’s too late!”

I’m tossing the letter.

And I’m tired of people and their awful systems.  And the endless amplification of the mundane. Hope about never charging an enrollment fee? And maybe just a friendly, “We’ve love to have you back and we kicked out the swim team,”

Until then, I’m going to skip the “Get out of political prison free” card.

I got an email sent to the webmaster@uakron.edu address today and it was a winner.  I’m not sure what the category was, but it won anyway.  The names have been changed to protect, well, everyone involved. 

The emailing individual  – let’s call him Ron – was reaching out to connect with someone and gave their full name – but let’s just call her Suzy.  Suzy had submitted her thesis – in 2006.

Hmmm…

And Ron would like to connect with her to provide…a correction.  

On the thesis.  Submitted in 2006.

Can you imagine having the audacity to do something like that?  To have read a thesis from 2006  – here in 2025, mind you – and then send an email to a stranger (me) to try and get an email address for the master’s student in question – to correct them?

I, as you can imagine, cannot imagine doing that. 

I was a little dumbfounded for a few minutes, then my problem-solving algorithms kicked in.

1. The academic department would be a dead-end – it was too far back.
2. The thesis would have been published in the library, but any contact info including in the submission would have been long expired.   Likely a UA email address in a system that no longer existed.
3. I could suggest they try social media, but that seemed too obvious.

And then:

1. Well, if they submitted a thesis, chances are they are an alumnus of UA.  

So, I called up a colleague in the Alumni office and explained the situation.   And sure enough, our thesis submitter was an alumni and there was a current email address on file. 

It would be unethical to give out contact information, obviously, but I asked if there was a procedure to pass along a message.  Sure enough, there was – and my colleague was happy to take it from there.

I forwarded the note with some official-sounding language in the hand-off, and then my part was done.

But, I kinda wanna hear how it turns out.   The sensible approach for Suzy would be to just ignore the message. Delete. End of story.

Or, she could point out to Ron that everything was correct – and approved by a committee of expert faculty members – in 2006.  If there’s a correction to be made based on new data, well, sorry about your luck, that’s not how that works.

Or, it could go, “How dare you, Ron!  I’m coming after you and your children!”

In any case, I’m still amazed by the audacity.   

Though I guess – in 2025 – it really shouldn’t surprise me.

It had been a rough day.  Week? Month? Semester? Year?  Whatever the unit of time measurement, it was a rough one.  And while a Friday should have meant a break, the end of my workday was only the beginning of my actual work.

The yard was a mess.

Back at my old house, I had a very small yard and a human-powered reel mower – and a small one at that – was enough to keep the grass under control.

The new house has a much bigger yard and while I felt like an environmentally sound bad-ass, it was a lot of work.  I bought a new-to-me reel mower from my neighbor across the street  that had a wider wheel base and covered more ground with each pass, but it didn’t do a great job at it.  

I read the manual, adjusted the blade, and now it didn’t miss any grass.  At all.  And if the grass was tall and thick, it was no easy task to get through it.  I tried to keep up with the lawn as spring set in so that I would have an easier time of it, but all the rain we had meant I couldn’t get out there.  

And the grass kept growing. 

(Which sounds like something from horror fiction…)

So, on a hot and humid Friday afternoon, I hauled out the recently repaired reel mower and set to work. 

I can usually make quick work of the yard – even with my human-powered self – but the thick grass and the now effective mower meant every pass pushed me to the limit.  The grass was flying everywhere in huge clumps and the mower was constantly bogged down. 

It didn’t help that I was already tired or that it was around 80 degrees out.  And that I didn’t have water with me. 

I could get from the house to the street and back – and sometimes make two trips – but then I would need to stop and rest.

Not just pause and keep on going.  These rest periods were to leave the mower where-ever in the yard and go up to the house and sit on the bench.  Or, more frequently, lay down.

It was taking me forever, but trying to power through the grass was really taking it out of me. 

The breaks became longer and it was my inherent tenacity and the threat of more rain that night that kept me going.  But only just.

My next-door neighbors were out in their yard mowing their grass and playing with their kids.  When I at last finished up I left the cursed mower in the driveway and staggered to the front porch steps. 

I saw down, panting and flushed and utterly wiped out.  The front yard was done – but at what cost?

After a few minutes I looked up to see my neighbor walk over, looking a little concerned.

“Are you okay?” he asked and I replied “I think so. Getting there, anyway,”

He joked that he didn’t know CPR, but that his wife did. She was mowing their lawn, sensibly on a riding mower, and I joked back that I would wait until she was done. 

We talked for a few minutes about the weather and the speed at which the grass had grown.

When he was sure that I wasn’t in danger, he started to head back to this house – noting that if it did pass out I should try and flop around so they would see me.  

I replied that I would make it, “as dramatic as I could,” and he was on his way. 

I waited a few more minutes to make sure I wouldn’t keel over, then got up and dragged the mower back to the garage. 

Inside the house, I woke up Jim from his nap and then went to take a cool shower and drink some water. 

My face was still red for a while, but I recovered the rest of the way and slept well that night. 

But, I hadn’t done the backyard.

The promised storm didn’t amount to much rain, but did knock down some branches.  The day was cooler and I went out in the afternoon to clean those up.  With more rain on the horizon, I decided to mow the backyard as well. 

There are spots where the grass is taller and thicker than the front yard, but overall it’s smaller and easier to mow.  

I started with the trimmer to knock out at least some of the height and then got the mower going.  

I was careful with myself this time and worked in smaller sections.  When I got a little tired, I switched what I was doing and picked up more sticks – or dog poop, sigh – and did a little more trimming around the edge. 

I got it done, didn’t pass out (or get close, really) and went inside for another cool shower. 

And, I’m happy with the result.  The reel mower still isn’t “great”, but it’s quiet, safer,  and doesn’t take any fuel.  As long as I’m physically able to do it, I’d still like to.

Next time, I need to mow more frequently and bring water with me.  Lesson learned.

I’m still the bad-ass of my street – but I’ve learned my limits.

I got an email from a colleague recently from the EX[L] Center for Community Engaged Learning at The University of Akron.  Instead of a question or request for help with their website, they were congratulating me on winning an award and inviting me to an awards ceremony. 

I racked my brain for a bit to remember what all I had done for them.  There was help with a website and maybe a form or two – and some help with their listservs.  But nothing that seemed to warrant an award for “Community Engagement Champion”.

Still, there was a promise of snacks and that’s usually enough for me.  I asked if I needed to bring – or prepare – anything as part of RSVP and they replied all I needed was to be ready to have my picture taken. 

On the afternoon of the event I headed over to the venue – wearing a tie and my official name tag.  

I got seated in the middle – an easy path to the exit, but also a direct line to the snacks – and then groaned inwardly when they said that each award recipient would be asked to say a few words about their project. 

Since I couldn’t remember what project qualified me as a Champion, I tried to pull something together in my head based on what other people were doing. 

As other departments got their awards, I realized that I had helped – behind the scenes – on many of the projects they talked about. 

So, when it was my turn, I talked about my contributions to the Center’s website and the surveys, websites, lists, and e-commerce sites that the other projects had done.  It seemed to do the job and I went over to have my picture taken.

Afterwards, I talked to some colleagues that I hadn’t seen in a bit – then headed back to the office briefly to drop off my certificate and get my things before heading home a bit early. 

Hey, if a “Community Engagement Champion” can’t leave early, who can?

I was glad to help and it was nice to be recognised, although mine was apparently more for being “generally awesome” than any specific project.

I learned more about the good work the center and the many academic departments across campus were doing.  It was a “feel good” kind of afternoon.

And the snacks included frosted cookies shaped like our mascot – the kangaroo Zippy.  

It’s not a party unless there are Zippy Cookies. 

So now, in addition to being Director and Webmaster, I’m also a Champion. 

Which is not too bad.