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I had a dream where someone in the neighborhood managed to capture a werewolf the first night of a full moon.  They butchered the creature while it was still alive so it didn’t turn back into a human. And then ground the meat into burger patties and served it at a community cook-out.

Apparently, biting a werewolf is the same as being bitten by a werewolf.  So, several dozen people were infected and all of them turned into werewolves the next night.

I don’t remember if I ate a hotdog or grilled chicken at the cookout, but I was not infected.  I was hiding out in a ghost kitchen/warehouse when they all caught up with me. Dozens of howling, slavering, human-sized wolves destroying everything in their way as they tore through the kitchen to get to me. I was backed into a dead-end row of shelves when they fell on me.

I woke up in absolute terror and shivered so hard that my muscles hurt.

Some people dream of being back in high school and forgetting their locker combination or “I have to give a speech and I’m not wearing pants.  Oh no!”

My nightmares are not for amatures or the faint of heart.

A couple of years ago, we implemented a new Enterprise (no, not that one) administrative system at work that came with a new HR package.  We were then instructed to develop “Goals” to complete over the course of the year as part of a performance review system.  

It wasn’t half assed – maybe more like a three-quarters assed – and it wasn’t too complicated to set up in the system and we dutifully added in our goals. I had high hopes that this would add some much needed depth and usefulness to the performance review system.

One of mine was to complete a large upgrade project – which was on my radar anyway – and to learn more about CSS.  

Over that year, I completed the upgrade successfully and went through several hours of online training for CSS to augment my knowledge.

I met with my supervisor at the appropriate intervals and guided my own direct reports through entering their goals and meeting with them. 

At the end, we signed off on all the successfully completed goals.

And that was it.

Nobody got written up or fired. But nobody got raises. The completed goals are sitting in the system’s archive, but there’s been nothing done with them.  And no one, to my knowledge, has reviewed or asked about them.  It’s as if they didn’t happen.

The following year was more chaotic than usual and while we got some notices from HR to go through the process, nobody in my division did.  It was such a non-starter that we didn’t want to start.   So we just didn’t.

Apparently, a lot of departments felt the same way and this year HR has once again made a big push for Goals and Performance review.  

So, I’ve developed goals and sent those to my supervisor and gotten my direct reports started on theirs. 

My “goal for the goals” is to make sure we don’t commit to anything we can’t do or didn’t already have planned. I doubt we’ll be looking at a bright and shiny raise at the end of the fiscal year if we meet all our goals – but I strongly suspect that if UA wanted to get rid of any of us for any reason, a failed goal or a bad review would go right to the top.

HR used the term Flourish in the communications and if the successful goals were lined up with some benefit or salary increase, I’d be a lot more engaged.

Instead, I just set my goals to things I needed to do anyway and I’ll keep doing my best – even if the only reward is “not fired”.

I’m a very task-oriented individual and I love putting together a plan.  This comes out in my work, when I’m cleaning, and when I’m running errands.  I like lining up the tasks and finding the best route and most optimal sequence. 

When it works, I get a deep feeling of satisfaction.  A check-list, crossed off neatly,  in order and in the most efficient way? Gold. 

But if that plan starts to fall apart, so do I.

Yesterday, I had planned to go to McDonald’s for lunch, eat there, then go to Five Below just for fun to buy some junk, then buy Jim some bottled water on the way home at Giant eagle. 

McDonald’s was the furthest destination and if I ate first then I wouldn’t feel rushed when I went to Five Below.   Then Giant Eagle would be last on the list since it’s close to home.

I grabbed a book and headed out to get lunch on the first stop on my list.

McDonald’s was busy when I got there and I went to the kiosk since that’s the only option anymore. I put in my order and then it asked for the table tent number.  

But, there weren’t any.  I looked at all the kiosks and around the store.  With no table tent, they wouldn’t be able to deliver the food.  Eating in suddenly became impossible and I suspected they did that on purpose.  

So, I ordered the food to go and while I waited I decided I would eat lunch in the park. I got my food and headed out. 

It was nice and sunny in the park, but it wasn’t part of The Plan.  When I was done, I was faced with a decision.  Head the “wrong way” – i.e. back towards McDonald’s to get to Five Below where I would likely just waste money – or skip Five Below and head the Right Way towards Giant Eagle and home. 

Not that Five Below was really far away from the park – I could have easily driven there in a few minutes.  But, it wasn’t on the path of my plan and that, coupled with some vague guilt about wasting money on junk I didn’t need, caused me to guilt myself into skipping the fun part of the trip. 

I got in my car, went to Giant Eagle to pick up water for Jim, and then went home. I can justify that by having saved time and money, but I was still angry at myself for not making the trip.

No task-completed-endorphens for me. 

I get so frustrated when I’m thwarted and it usually happens when I hit some variable – like the missing table-tent numbers – that I couldn’t have accounted for. 

I don’t know how to fix that – other than to treat it like my fear of heights.  I realized at one point that my fear might prevent me from being able to help someone in need and have been forcing myself to climb ladders and walk to the edge of things to get over it.

I don’t really want to go with the flow, but I’m missing out with my rigid structure.

It’s the Akron Pride Fest today and though Jim is out of town I decided to go on my own.  With Senate Bill 1 making it so the University can’t have a place in the parade or a booth, I got a late start as just a festival-goer instead of a participant. 

I parked in the deck – that super expensive parking pass for work finally good for something – and entered the venue from one end.  And, oddly, there were no protesters there.   

I walked down one side and stopped by a booth where I knew some people, then made a loop around the far end to take my picture in front of the giant pride flag.  

Which is where I found the protesters, milling about with their dumb signs, and getting in the way of group photos. I shook my head as I walked past and didn’t engage.  It’s just so dumb and mean-spririted and pointless.  

The music was good and I decided to get some lunch.  I sat on the lawn at Lock 3 while I ate my chicken tenders and fries – I’m not adventurous – and then ran into a couple more people I knew when I was done.   

I ended up not buying anything but lunch and not stopping at many booths or talking to many people.  I’m just not good at large-scale socializing. 

But, I was there and it counted.

(and I’m trying to avoid the comments…)

What I don’t know about cars could easily fill one, but something felt…off about my ride.

When I was on the highway and accelerating, the RPM’s would rev up higher than usual before the gears would shift.  And when decelerating – especially down a hill – it would spike really high before swinging back down. 

I was worried it was the T word – Transmission – and I figured it was better to get it checked out and repaired before the dang thing fell out on the highway.

I did a little research online and found that there could be a lot of things that might mimic a transmission problem so instead of going to a transmission place, I opted to make an appointment at the dealership. 

I got there early on a Saturday morning for the appointment and instead of parking and walking in – which I tried – the protocol was to stay in the car and queue up in front of the garage doors. 

So much for setting an appointment. 

The place opened up, I got in, and explained the problem.  They took down the mileage and took my keys, then sent me to the waiting room to…well…wait. 

It took a couple of hours before they came to talk to me.  There was a lot of jargon about what they tested and what they didn’t find – then asked if I had my transmission fluid changed.  I did – last year – after we got back from vacation and we’d had that overheating problem.

The technician said it might be that and suggested that they could change it.  I gave the go ahead and sat to wait again in the waiting room. 

Jim checked in by text and I gave him the update. 

When the fluid was replaced, I got the bill and went to check out.  I had guessed correctly when I brought my checkbook since they are now charging a fee for using a credit card.

(Checks are making a comeback!)

It was a bit over $200 and they didn’t really find a problem – but since they tested everything related and drove it around, I guess I’ve got a little more piece of mind. 

I collected my keys and headed for my car – and got a few surprises when I got in and started it.

Both rear view mirrors had been adjusted, the seat had been raised and moved forward.  And the radio had been turned back on and was set to a station that I don’t listen to.

Apparently, the technician that drove my car is much shorter than I am  – and really likes talk radio. 

So, I’m still vaguely worried about the car when I drive the highways of Northeast Ohio, but I’m trying to get used to the new normal.

Had a dream that I was in a large house with my family and we all went downstairs to the basement. In the basement was a large shop set up with many circular clothing racks of the same style of tracksuit – with different bright colors and sizes – all with bible verses on them.

The shop had five lines of people standing waiting to check out, but only one cashier (with a calculator) and a record/inventory keeping person. Everyone was waiting patiently, but progress was very slow.

My family picked out their tracksuits and got in line to pay. I moved off to the side to get out of the way and ended up in front of a staffed, but otherwise unoccupied, customer service desk. We didn’t interact with each other and I realized I was only wearing shorts, shoes, and my Akron baseball hat.

I got bored quickly and went partly up the crowded stairs, stopping at a landing. Many people came past me down the stairs – presumably to buy bible tracksuits – and were tossing Halloween candy into a bin near me. I found out that donations of Halloween candy to the poor would results in a discount, but many people would come right back up after seeing the line and not purchase the tracksuits. They would still toss an item in the bin on their way up – since it was for the poor – but would then leave.

I kept waiting and people watching, then decided to help myself to some candy from the bin. I picked out a full sized milky way bar.

After finishing the candy bar and a little while longer of waiting, a full-sized real-live moose came up the stairs. I casually moved around the corner of the stairwell to get out of the way without making it mad and while I was clear, it wasn’t enough for one of the guys that lived in the house.

Apparently the moose was a common occurrence and he had appointed himself the protector. I had my back to the moose and he stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me in a protective bear hug. Since he was much bigger than me, the moose’s rear hoof that would have missed me grazed his back.

When the moose had passed I thanked him – out of courtesy over anything he had actually done – and he decided we were now best friends. He introduced me to his Waifu – calling himself a weeb – and then proceeded to draw me a picture of his favorite anime.

I woke up, confused and disturbed.

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