Outsmarting the Robot Lady
Monday, September 9th, 2024 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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61F and clear tonight with a waxing crescent moon now setting.
Gonna be getting closer to 90F as the week rolls on, but the lows are still down in the 50sF.
Summer is rallying to stay in power, but tomorrow begins King of Spades week!.. final week of summer!
Ace of Diamonds begins a week from tomorrow... with the autumnal equinox not happening until the Sunday of that week.
So, it's still more like two weeks until astronomical fall begins.
But man will I be glad when this horrible summer is behind me!
I think it's safe to say this was the worst summer of my life.
Yvette was already gone by June, and I knew with certainty I was moving by July 1st.
I spent all of June packing, and sweating my ass off at PVHS, painting.
July was nothing but a huge heartbreak, from start to end, living here, but still going back to the house every day to feed Prowly, and agonize over how long it was taking to sell the damn place... still sweating and painting all day at work.
It finally sold on August 1st, but that was still heartbreaking in a new way... and I was still very sweaty, painting all day at work.
A new normal is slowly establishing itself, now that we're into September, and school's back in session.
And like I touchd on yesterday, part of it is about replacing old, worn-out things.
It's not just the old smart watch, and the beard trimmer kit, but I had to get new shoes and orthodics recently, and a little before that, a new pair of suspsenders.
So my feet are crazy sore all the time, once again, because I'm breaking in a new pair of shoes at the same time as I'm living this new life of all-concrete, all the time!
Even my floor at home is concrete with hard tile.
So my feet are complaining as loudly as when I first went full time at Cloud, ramping up to 14K steps a day.
I'm back down to 10K a day now, but... that's still a lot when you're in new shoes... and it's all concrete all the time.
Meanwhile my poor back and shoulder muscles!
Thankfully my lower spine has been good since June ended.
But my back and shoulder muscles right now are really sore about three changes;
- The new bed.
- The backpack.
- The new suspenders.
I dunno if anybody else is like this, but my back muscles are way too sensitive to any kind of straps over my shoulders... like the backpack and suspenders.
They're like, Get this off me! You're torturing me! I hate you, for just weeks and weeks.
But the twin bed makes that even worse, because.. it's just a little more firm than the one I slept in for 17 years.
So my back is like, What happened to the old bed? Why did you buy new suspenders? Why do you have to wear this horrible backpack for five minutes every day? Oh my god! This is intolerable!
But in addition to my back and my feet right now, I've got some other lingering tweaks to my arms and my left lower torso that resulted from lifting things wrong at work over the past few weeks.
So these days, my whole body is just alive with ache!.. thanks to this combination of, the new living & working dynamic on the one hand, and the wearing out of old shoes & suspenders on the other hand.
It is, "The Great Muscular Discomfort of September 2024."
And it does suck that I won't be getting that new mattress until around October 1st.
But all of this is why I am looking so forward to October... when both the muscular discomfort, and the sweating, will be in the past, and my life will be more ironed out.
Amazon did deliver the USBC charging block today, for my new watch, and it's working!
Because I left that new watch off all weekend, it did have enough pre-shipping charge left to get me through the shift.
So the only days I spent truly watchless were Saturday and Sunday... which was fine.
I remember getting my original watch... the one that just died... back in like 2017... as part of a package deal with the S8 that August.
The S8 famously went on to become the field recorder for Snoozefest, before it's battery blistered out in march of 23... but that's beside the point.
Back in August of 2017, sitting in the AT&T store, looking at my new smart watch (the Gear S3 Classic) I couldn't really see the point of such a device.
I mean it was neat!
But did I really need it?
And the salesman assured be, No! These are the future! Everybody's gonna have a smart watch soon!
And I said to him, I guess maybe I'll look back in a few years and wonder how I ever got along without one, huh?
That turned out to be very true, for me... but not for everybody.
In all those years, I've only met one other person who really used their smart watch, and that was Chantele.
Most people either don't wear a watch... wear a conventional watch... or wear a FitBit type fitness tracking device.
Even among Apple people, the Apple Watch is not super popular... and only used for fitness tracking by those who wear one.
Now, before I get into this, I'm gonna say that the Gear S3 Classic looked like a conventional watch... hence the term, "classic."
And it was the only watch I'd ever worn that drew random compliments from strangers young and old.
Nice Watch!
Like, I NEVER get that for anything I ever wear!
Okay, so I loved it for that reason, but when I'd tell people, Thanks! it's a smart watch!, they always responded like, Oh!.. a fitness tracker?
Because, and this is what i'm on about here, most people still don't realize that you can have a wearable device that is made by the people who made your phone... that is essentially a satellite of your phone on your wrist!
Meaning that it talks to your phone about everything that your phone does, and tells you what your phone is thinking, when your phone is in your pocket!
And the most fundamental, yet critical thing it gets from your phone... is the UTC Atomic time... down to the second!
Since I started with Geostaff, I use this all the time!
With Geostaff, if your start time is, say 1PM, then you are not allowed to clock-in any earlier than 12:55PM.
If you try to clock in at 12:54 and 59 seconds... the robot lady will say, "I'm sorry! You are not scheduled to begin your shift yet."
And that's annoying when you want to make sure you can leave five minutes early at the end of the shift!
They also require us to punch out for lunch, and punch back in 30 minutes later.
And if you punch back in from lunch 29 minutes and 59 seconds after you punched out... "I'm sorry! You have not yet completed your 30 minute meal break!"
And all the employees just kinda suffer with this headache... of trying to get in on 55, but having to settle for 57 or 58... or taking a 31 minute lunch to be on the safe side.
But I'm anal about stuff like this, so I always have a digital watch face that counts the seconds... and because it's getting the time from my phone... I KNOW it's showing me the EXACT SAME TIME that robot lady has!
So many are the coworkers, at both Cloud and Potawatomi, that have given me quizzical looks, with knitted brows, as I go to the clock station... then stand there and stare at my watch for 20 seconds, before hitting the button to start the whole clocking procedure.
Because she goes through this whole greeting, before prompting you to punch in your employee ID code, and then she's like, Welcome... Patrick Melody... If you would like to punch in... press 1...
It's a whole long spiel.
But through trial and error, I've learned that in order to punch at exactly 12:55PM (or 2:55PM back at Cloud) I need to hit the speed dial that calls the robot lady at exactly 12:54:30!
But then as she's talking, I'm still staring at my watch to make sure I dare not press 1, until 12:55:00 or later!
So... there will be people huddled around the desk phone waiting to punch in, and I'll make my way through the crowd to the phone, looking at my watch, and everybody will be like, What is he doing? It's too early to punch in! He's going to fail! Wait until it's safe!
And I'll be like, Not to worry!... aaand.... now!
Thank you for calling the GeoStaff timekeeping system...
He's crazy! It's too early! His punch is going to be rejected!
Why is he looking at his watch? How does he know it's not fast, or slow?.. You can't synch up a digital watch to a computer system? OMG!
And then I fucking hit 1, and robot lady says, Punch accepted at... 12:55PM! and I immediately hit 3 to allow the next person to begin their punch routine.
And everybody's always like, How did he do that? We can punch now? Okay! Let's go!
That atomic clock-punching super power would be enough to justify having a smart watch, in my mind!
But the watch also immediately shows me any texts and emails that have come in on the phone, such that I can read them, without having to pull the phone out of my pocket.
And when you're running around with your hands full all day on shift, that's absolutely priceless!
Especially over the past, almost two years, where because of Dad's dying, death, and post death insanity, there was a hell of a lot of texting going on between me and my siblings, and a hell of a lot of important emails and texts to stay on top of with banks, lawyers, employers, landlords, etc.
Because I don't just sit in a cubicle all day.
I am almost always running down a hall, pushing something with one hand, carrying something with the other, and then struggling to get onto and off of an elevator with that shit!
So having the watch ring with a notification, and present it to me to read on my wrist has been invaluable.
And it also shows me at a glance the caller ID of any cold call that's coming in, which is priceless!
Because 99 times out of 100, it's a spam call, that I can cancel with a swipe to the watch face.
But when it's that rare critical call I was waiting for... I can drop everything and answer it!
Of course, if I put some kind of reminder into my phone's calendar, the watch alerts me to that, whenever the moment arrives, which is also quite useful.
Because I can snooze the reminder quickly, while following up with whatever task I'm engaged with, and know that it'll come back again in five minutes... by which time I will have forgotten all about the important thing!
But HANDS DOWN!.. The most valuable feature of my smart watch has been that it will buzz me the second we've walked out of bluetooth range of my phone!
Because that only happens, if I set my phone down... then go running off somewhere, having forgotten to grab it!
Beeboop! BZZZZZ! You forgot your phone, dude!
Oh shit!
And it can also call my phone... because it is part of my phone plan, and can call out over the network.
And over the years, I have had to use that, "find my phone," feature, a few times.
So... fitness?... sure!
It tracks my steps, and heart rate and all that stuff too.
It used to congratulate me for a cycling workout whenever I mowed the lawn, for example.
But the fitness aspect is an afterthought.
So, with all that said, I'm happy my old Gear S3 Classic lasted long enough for Samsung to finally release a new, classic-style watch... because they did abandon that for a few years.
And I'm happy with the new Galaxy Watch 6, which I ordered as a belated upgrade through AT&T, and will be paying off gradually over time as part of the phone bill.
It came with a generic, black rubber watch band, so I did order a nicer set of fabric-elastic bands for it today.
They're like... black, green, and gray bands.
But it is now, really easy to switch bands.
You no longer need a little jewler's tool and a magnifying glass to undo some crazy little hinge pins.
The bands just have buttons on the underside to detach them!
I have two work uniform outfits nowadays... one with green shirts and a green cap, and the other with gray/black shirts and a gray cap.
So it'll be fun to change the watch band to match the uniform, throughout the week.
This watch charged up in about 30 minutes tonight, so I'm gonna sleep with it on, and see if it can make it through the whole shift tomorrow, before needing a charge again after work.
The reason to do that is because it does do sleep tracking... if you sleep with it on.
And that's something I'm really interested to know about right now... sleeping on this new bed.
I'd like to compare that data to what things are like after I get the new mattress in Ocober.
If the watch can make it 22 hours on a charge, then great!
That's just one more way it's usefully overlapping with my real life!
As I said at the start of this watch ramble... Chantele is the only other human I've seen, in seven years, who reads texts and emails from her watch!
She's even used it to make calls!
But as long as most people don't get it... that's fine with me!
Because it means I have spooky super powers they don't understand!
As I aluded to at the start of this entry... September is turning out to be this kind of rebirth phase, where old things are getting replaced with new things.
And my body's all disgruntled and achey as it tries to adjust to the ways life has changed.
The foreclosure nightmare is behind me... and the raw heartbreak of parting ways with the pets and the house has finally dulled a little bit.
It'll be years getting fully over that, if ever... but the flashbacks and dissociation have at least died down to a dull roar.
And I only cry like... once a week now?
As opposed to three times a day, back in July.
For all these reasons, I am still pining for October, to lock this nasty summer away forever into the past.
And I'm looking forward to this winter, to make this whole nasty year go away, and bring me a new one!.. where the horrible ghost of Dad can no longer hurt me!.. or fuck my shit up!
I'll hit the two-year mark with Geostaff next week.
And it struck me today, that by this time next year... at the three-year mark... I could be in a position to rent or buy a house and start fresh.
But that's a long way off.
Let's just get to that new mattress first!
°¦}
