the deep moans round with many voices

I have been working on a project to write down the stamps of all our apartment keys, and also request that the Maintenance department make extra copies of anything where we only have a single key in the office. (We can't give out a key if it's the last copy, because then we won't have any spares left.)

This really should have been done several years ago, but when I first started making a key spreadsheet I was told to go do other more immediately important things so I backburnered it and then forgot it existed. Well, now it is apparently top priority, so here we are.

Thus far I have gotten through our largest building and one of the smaller ones. Tomorrow I think I will tackle the second of the large buildings -- that one should be less trouble because we did a big re-numbering project a few years ago, which included making extra copies of anything we were low on. However, I don't think anyone's been tracking that data since the re-numbering, so if any tenants have lost keys and we've changed the locks, the key numbers will have iterated in the interim.

Oh right, explanations. So, our key numbering system works like this:

Each building is assigned a 1- or 2-letter code. Then each apartment is assigned a number. So a key to apartment 201 in Sample Building might have the code SB15. (Sometimes there is a pattern to the numbers, sometimes not. The main point is that they should not match the apartment number so as to confuse anyone who might steal keys or find a lost set.) Then if the tenant of Sample Building apt 201 loses their keys and we change the lock, the key stamp iterates and the new keys will be SB15-A. The next time we change the lock, the key stamp will change to SB15-B, and so on.

The Collegetown office has had spreadsheets and printed records of their key stamps for years, and back around 2019 switched to tracking keys electronically through FileMaker and signing them out on an iPad. The downtown office had none of this, which is why I initially wanted to create a key tracking spreadsheet. I don't think we're going to be ready to track keys via FileMaker any time soon, but at the least we will have SOME kind of tangible inventory.

Ah well, better late than never, I suppose.

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In other news, my office computer updated and restarted itself over the weekend, which gunked up one of my big floor plan files with a lot of crufty artifacting. I finally got all of that cleared up this afternoon... and then accidentally closed the file and when I reopened it, about 75% of the artifacting had reappeared.

Such are the woes of fucking MS Paint. :(

(The cleanup is going faster the second time through, thankfully.)

This past weekend I finished several tax returns and made good progress on a handful of drop-offs.

Yesterday I showed New Hire how to process Collegetown parking leases, which was, shall we say, interesting in what it revealed about her lack of computer skills. (This seems to be a common theme among people currently between 15 and 25-ish.)

1. She didn't realize that a two page lease should be scanned as a single document (feed both pages into the scanner at once) and instead asked me if she needed to scan the second page at all and if so what to name it.

2. She didn't know how to type control-Z to undo an error when she accidentally deleted some text in an email.

3. Her method of highlighting a string of cells in MS Excel was to select one cell, highlight it, select another cell, highlight it, and so on instead of selecting a group and highlight them all at once.

This is honestly kind of worrying.

Anyway, I spent yesterday handling package deliveries and working on floor plans. Today I continued to work on floor plans -- I am nearly done with the fourth floor key plan of [building name redacted], after which I can get to work cleaning up the fifth floor key plan. That one should be slightly less work since the source image is less sketchy and warped than my source files for the second, third, and fourth floors. It's still pretty scuzzy, though, so I will need to spend time fixing assorted nonsense.

In other rental company news, Horrible Tenant was arrested over the weekend (we do not have any details) and is undergoing some kind of inpatient treatment. He left his key inserted in the lock of his apartment door where anyone could grab it, and on the advice of our lawyer we ( cut for a vague gesture at anonymity )

1. This evening I did laundry. ALL OF THE LAUNDRY.

My apartment is currently buried beneath air-drying clothes. I maxed out my three drying racks, used all the chair backs, and resorted to hanging items on lamps, on doorknobs, and on the pole for my shower curtain.

There are two reasons for this sudden laundrypocalypse. First, I do laundry on a two week cycle that I have carefully set up to alternate with the two week recycling collection cycle -- in other words, if it's a laundry week, I do NOT put out recycling on Sunday night, but if it's NOT a laundry week, I DO put out my recycling on Sunday night. But my cycle got munged up due to holiday travels and I have been unsuccessful at resetting it for various reasons until today.

Additionally, I bought a number of new clothes to replace some old ones that no longer fit or that I just didn't wear much anymore, and those needed a wash cycle before I started wearing them.

I could have done EVEN MORE laundry, but I decided to leave my linens for tomorrow so as to spare myself at least a little psychic damage.

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2. In other news, a few of the worst glitches in our new tax prep program have been resolved, but new glitches keep popping up. It is very frustrating. This program really was not ready for live beta testing -- it needed another six months minimum of alpha development and testing before anyone unleashed it on actual clients.

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3. My new tax office boss brought in homemade chocolate-covered strawberries because of Valentine's Day. I ate one, because goddamn I miss fresh fruit and sometimes you have to treat yourself. I then immediately took a Benadryl to counter my allergic reaction, because treating yourself doesn't mean ignoring medical consequences. So I got away with the strawberry (which was so delicious), but I did end up leaving work half an hour early and then taking a 2.5 hour nap once I got home, because Benadryl is a highly effective sleeping pill in addition to being a highly effective antihistamine.

And now to bed. :)

Today was opening day for Collegetown rentals! Some types of apartment rented well, others much less so. Mom Boss and Aunt Boss are going to try to get Company Owner to recalibrate some prices, so we'll see how that goes over the next few weeks.

I spent a lot of time explaining the rental process to various walk-ins, and also helping groups narrow down their apartment choices until they settled on one specific unit. I also spent a lot of time updating and creating online ads. In most cases the text isn't the hard part -- we have templates, and with Craigslist I can usually even just dig out deleted/inactive ads from the previous year and tweak them as needed. The hard part is the images, particularly on sites where the ads remain year-round and just get hidden for a while -- with those, I had to go delete every single outdated picture (and most rental aggregator sites don't allow batch image deletion! why the fuck would you not allow batch image deletion?! especially when you make me confirm each deletion TWICE!), and then upload, arrange, and label replacement images. That can take for-fucking-ever.

I also did some clerical work, showed Mr. Artistic (formerly known as New Hire 7) how to do some new-lease tasks in Rent Manager, showed Mr. Artistic how the Craigslist ad schedule spreadsheet works (...after I set up the Craigslist ad schedule spreadsheet for this year; sometimes I regret inventing that spreadsheet three or four years ago, but annoying as it is, it's still better than our previous ad tracking methods), signed out packages, answered phone calls, cleaned up powdered sugar that had gotten ground into the carpet (we have complimentary donuts on opening day; it's a thing), and assorted other nonsense.

I feel extremely productive, and also extremely glad that tomorrow I will be back in the downtown office, where I believe our most pressing current issue is the chipmunk that got into somebody's apartment. *hands* What a chipmunk is doing in the middle of the Ithaca Commons is beyond me, but today was the second time we've had to call a wildlife management company in response to the same critter. (What really baffles me is that the tenants of that apartment have an emotional support cat. You'd think that would scare a chipmunk off, but apparently not!)

FYI, am still in Minnesota, on Star Island in Cass Lake. Vacation is wonderful and I am enjoying it greatly, despite the minor inconvenience of our internet service still being borked so I am reduced to using my phone as a mobile hotspot. (Dad was able to get through to CenturyLink yesterday, and they restored our phone service but not our internet. Apparently the internet restoration can't be done until Tuesday, and will also require a new modem which Dad asked them to send to Aunt Jan in Virginia since she will be the next person in the cabin after we leave on Sunday afternoon.)

We've done some useful chores around the cabin, solved one simple puzzle, and are working on a second puzzle that is both NOT rectangular and is actively hostile to humans trying to engage with it. *wry* But we will triumph nonetheless!

Minor annoyance: I got my period this morning. I didn't expect it until next week, so I hadn't brought any supplies aside from the three pads I always keep in my tote bag. Fortunately Dad had a couple things he also wanted to buy in town, so we made a brief shopping run around noon and now I have both pads and tampons. (I already had ibuprofen. I always bring ibuprofen when I travel, for various and sundry reasons.)