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.

...

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.)

I unexpectedly finished four tax returns in one day, go me! (Okay, one I actually did all the work on Sunday, but I don't work at Not the IRS on Mondays and therefore only got it uploaded for the client to approve and pay this morning, which means it still counts.)

One was a long-term client (who may need an amendment later -- we took a conservative position on the return and assumed part of their fellowship was taxable, but Cornell's bursar office is TERRIBLE at communication so who even knows the truth), one was a person who made an appointment via the internet sometime Monday afternoon (mostly straightforward aside from a small virtual currency purchase and sale), and one was an unexpected walk-in who does gig economy driving on the side of a full-time job (actually also pretty straightforward due to nicely kept mileage records -- thank you anonymous client!!! -- but we ran into a persistent computer glitch for which I had to invent a workaround, which was annoying and time-consuming).

In fact, my whole day was plagued by minor technology woes. I got a most unpropitious reading from my clock solitaire game last night (I use clock solitaire for fortune-telling; it's more about feelings than any sort of logic, but turning up all four kings before finishing any hand on the clock is the worst possible sign, okay) and resolved to exercise caution, but there isn't a lot you can do when computers and staplers and pencil sharpeners turn against you for no reason. *headdesk* Still, I persevered!

And now I think I shall go work some more on my newest paint-by-number project, because I want to do something creative but have not had the correct alignment of spoons to write for... uh... a while now. *sigh*

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Oh! In other news, I got an ambulatory blood pressure test done last Thursday/Friday -- basically, I had a blood pressure cuff and machine strapped to my arm for 24 hours and it took a reading every hour on the hour -- the upshot of which is that while my blood pressure isn't dangerously high, it is still significantly higher than ideal, so I will be starting a blood pressure medication this week. Hopefully it will work as intended without any continuing side effects. *crosses fingers*

Today was my first shift at Not the IRS for the 2022 tax season, and predictably nothing happened. I was actually entirely on my own after the first fifteen minutes, but I was able to get the passcode to the doohickey where we keep the spare key so locking up was not an issue.

I didn't bother to close out the cash drawer because nobody used it all day.

My schedule had been fucked to hell and back for January peak (the back half of the month, when most people with simple returns get their W2s and are then ready to file) because corporate had overridden my self-reported availability and decided ON NO BASIS WHATSOEVER that I was available from 8am to 10pm seven days a week, and scheduled me accordingly, but I emailed Tax Boss and was able to get that fixed. I will have to do something similar for April, where corporate similarly overrode my availability and scheduled me willy-nilly, but we have a few months to get that worked out.

(Like. I have another job, you know? I have a proper FULL-TIME job. I don't actually need to do taxes at all, financially speaking. I just like to keep my hand in, and also working for a national company is fairly portable.)

Also I have apparently been signed up (without my knowledge or consent) to do some kind of internal resource tech thing??? My email forwarding got disconnected over the summer and I don't usually check my company email until January, so I had no idea that was going on and have missed all the training deadlines as well as a number of Microsoft Teams meetings. I dunno, I guess I'll try to finish the training anyway -- I don't have a huge client list so troubleshooting other people's nonsense might help fill shifts. But seriously, that is not how you organize and staff new programs! *headdesk*

This day has been a little weird all around, starting with the part where I attempted to reset my alarm by an hour and accidentally reset my actual clock instead and thus didn't get up until after noon. Obviously I needed the sleep! But waking to a clock that said 1:19 when I'd expected an alarm several hours earlier was a heck of an adrenaline shot, only slightly diminished when I checked my phone and it reported the time was really 12:19.

But I returned a library book, deposited a check and got quarters for laundry, sorted through my backlogged Not the IRS email, finished a work training task that I couldn't do out of office (...admittedly the program glitched on me partway through so I skipped the final two segments and bullshitted my way through the test because I have a knack for standardized tests, but whatever), bought groceries, and started reading a new library book about the Sahara Desert, so I think it's been a reasonably productive day. :)

Things about today:

1. Two apartment tours. I have a good feeling about the first prospect; I think they will apply within a day or three. I think the second prospect is still in the shopping around stage, but they did seem positive about the apartment and building, so.

I have another tour scheduled for tomorrow, but my read on that prospect (from our brief phone call) is that they are also still in the shopping around stage. Still, it's good to keep my hand in at the apartment showing part of my job. *wry*

2. Apparently New York's emergency rent assistance program has run out of funds (they had a bit over 2 billion earmarked, a bit over 1 billion has been disbursed, and the rest is now all assigned though still in process) and may shut down unless the federal government kicks in some money. So who even knows what's going on there.

3. I was THIS CLOSE to finishing the key plan for the 3rd floor of [redacted] building when MS Paint glitched and turned all my black lines white and then froze and wouldn't let me undo the glitch. So I had to start over from the file I saved from midway through the cleanup process -- and let me tell you, I am so glad I saved that as a separate file. I was able to copypaste a few things to save me trying to reconstruct them wholesale, but wow that was annoying.

I think I will be able to finish tomorrow morning before I head up to the Collegetown office.

4. I did another wellness check on our incommunicado elderly tenant, and once again found no sign of them in their apartment. Ms. Random Numbers was able to contact the tenant's adult child, who said they are fine, but we still have no information about where they are. This continues to be worrying.

5. My library hold of Across the Green Grass Fields has come in, but the library closes at 6pm on Friday so I had no chance to pick it up. I think I may do that tomorrow after I finish the apartment showing, since I'll be in the area anyway.

6. Did you know that witch cozies are an actual genre? As in, cozy mysteries where the protagonist/detective is also a witch or some equivalent thereof? Well, my brother and a cowriter have a witch cozy series that I have been enjoying very much though mysteries are not my usual cup of tea. I am about 2/3 through their latest book and am very proud of myself for spotting A Clue. I do not, however, have any idea what the clue in question means, and am looking forward to finding out later tonight. :)

Oh, and I need to ask Nick if he's okay with me promoting the series by name. *makes note*

(FYI, I read Nick's mysteries instead of his romances/erotica because I feel weird reading my little brother's smut scenes except for editing purposes. I think we are both happier this way. *wry*)

Ack, where did the time go?!

Um, anyway, I am alive! I've been a bit swamped at work as we gear up for the 2022-23 rental season (Ithaca is a college town; our rental market is completely skewed by this) and try to finish up the dregs of move-in maintenance problems and virtual tour videos.

What else, what else...

I remembered I had a copy of A Desolation Called Peace checked out from the library when I got a very disappointed second overdue notice, so I dug it out of the stack it had gotten lost in and finished it. I enjoyed it! Not quite as much as the first book of the duology, but I think some of that is just that I am personally a little more into culture clashes among humans and human-like beings and less into ( spoilers? ) But I continue to love Mahit and Three Seagrass a lot, and enjoyed getting to meet Nine Hibiscus and Twenty Cicada. Eight Antidote is also pretty cool for an eleven-year-old with almost no frame of reference for a normal childhood; he definitely has the "but the world should be FAIR, why is it not FAIR, we should FIX THAT" attitude I remember from my childhood and teens.

Two days ago my Kindle phone app broke. I asked it to open a particular book and it got hung up in an infinite loop I couldn't disrupt even by force-stopping the app, closing it, and restarting my phone. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the bloody thing, after which I had to manually go through and remove a whole mess of books from my home screen and re-download the thirty-odd books I am in the middle of reading or intend to read soon. (I nibble at books a lot.)

I have been working on a Paint-by-Number project for the past few weeks, which has been very psychologically helpful. See, I've been having trouble doing anything creative-creative, like writing, but I still want to Make Things, and paint-by-number pictures do a good job of giving me that nice serotonin/dopamine boost of I Made A Thing without requiring me to, you know, actually design anything. (I have also had to mix and rejigger some of the paints due to either errors in packaging or just shades that were too close to each other, which is a small thing but does make me feel a bit more like I am supplying some creative input and not just a pair of hands. *wry*)

I got the bus version of my NFE fic posted, so that's good. I do want to tweak it some before the collection goes live, though.

I have a plan for my Remix Revival assignment, but it involves some canon review so I've been working on that rather than outlining or writing just yet.

A few of my peppers have started to ripen. \o/

This past Sunday, my congregation held our annual Sundae Sunday bash in Stewart Park, where we had enough space to be somewhat socially distanced (and were also outdoors). This was welcomed with great enthusiasm -- I think as much because people are hungry for in-person gatherings as because it was a way to meet our new interim minister and, you know, eat ice cream sundaes.

(I think I've mentioned before that Ithaca is the birthplace of the ice cream sundae, yes? Pay no mind to any other towns and cities that try to claim otherwise. Also, it was invented by a pair of UUs -- the minister of the time, and the church treasurer who owned a local soda fountain. So we celebrate that historic event every year. :D )

And I think that's about all I can be bothered to dredge up and write down.

On Tuesday night, my laptop asked to push a system update from HP (the manufacturer; I have an HP Envy). I looked it over, insofar as I was able, and it seemed reasonable. So I gave it permission to install, my computer restarted, and everything seemed fine.

On Wednesday, I unplugged my laptop and hauled it around all day so I'd have it with me at the Board of Trustees meeting in the evening. Since I am both the Clerk and the scribe, I need a way to access documents and take minutes! It woke up as normal, ran a slightly dimmer screen to save battery life, and general seemed fine.

When I got home after the meeting, however, and plugged my laptop back in to recharge, it utterly failed to start.

It bluescreened me and insisted I had A) no hard drive and B) no BIOS.

I ran a few of the checks I could access via the F2 menu, but they came back either fine or "Sorry, I can't check that because your hard drive doesn't exist," which was both frustrating and discouraging. So I turned it off, did some chores and read part of a hardcover book, and went to bed.

Today I scheduled an appointment to drop my laptop off with Geek Squad Friday afternoon, to look it over and see if they could resolve the problem.

But!

I decided to try turning the laptop on again to see if the problem reproduced itself... and everything is once again fine???

I mean, I'm not complaining! But that was a very strange incident.

I am also backing up all my data onto my external hard drive and I'll test the computer again in the morning to see if the issue has recurred. If things still seem fine, I will cancel the Geek Squad appointment... but not quite yet. *wry*