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Current Mood: tired
Current Music: George Thorogood - "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer"

Entry tags:

Bumpity-bump-bump

I accomplished what I thought would be a difficult delivery goal for this week. I made 50 UberEats deliveries between Monday and tonight, so I earned a $100 bonus.

One of my deliveries tonight was a HUGE grocery order from Walmart. I had to deliver it to an extremely rural part of the county with not just dirt roads, but really rough dirt roads. These roads didn't have potholes, they had canyons! Even though my Subaru could have handled them easily, I still took it very easy so I wouldn't damage any of the groceries.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Tina Turner - "Proud Mary"

Entry tags:

Not a smooth day

In addition to yesterday's car oil change, yesterday's workday was interrupted by taking my dad to a routine doctor's appointment and my cell phone's battery dying. I bought a new wireless charger since the phone's wired charging port doesn't always work. I hope I can eventually get a new phone.

I haven't gotten a poop cup in the mail yet for my doctor's colonoscopy request. I also haven't received a ticket in the mail yet for speeding in a school zone earlier this month. Hopefully I've been let off the hook for that.

I had a catering delivery today. I ended up making the delivery about 15 minutes late because a delivery before that had to go all the way to Woodland Park. Another delivery later today ended up being late because an accident closed part of the street I was on. It took me about 15-20 minutes to get out of the jam and onto a detour.

Search maintenance

Happy Wednesday!

I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!

Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!

Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: Yes - "Roundabout"

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I'm fine, really

I've found myself using the word "fine" a lot when people ask me how I am. Most of the time, fine means not great but not terrible. When I use it with the furry artists who message me while I'm working, there's usually an unspoken "now quit bugging me" after it.

During my last delivery Monday night, the customer asked me to take a picture with his friend who was passed out drunk in the back of a truck.

While delivering today, I discovered my car was overdue for an oil change. In a bit of perfect timing, I got a catering order for an hour later after I pulled into a quick lube place.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Leo - "The Muffin Man"

Entry tags:

A really nice 69 (dollar bonus)

Happy 4/20!!!

UberEats offers drivers bonuses for completing a certain number of deliveries during the week or the weekend. Between Friday and Sunday, I completed 20 deliveries for a $43 bonus, then another 10 deliveries for $26, making a total of $69 in addition to the regular delivery pay and tips. My delivery total for the week was $838.56.

Some new art I got (A.I., sadly) shows Jerzei working at a bakery called Twilight Treats. Just out of curiosity, I searched the name and found there is a store with that name in Massachusetts.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: The Fantastic Plastics - "Perfect Strangers"

Entry tags:

Free dessert

Today's snow wasn't too bad. Visibility was a bit lower, but it was just warm enough for the snow to not stick to the roads.

One of my UberEats customers called me after I had picked up his order but before I delivered it. He said he was called into work unexpectedly and didn't want his ice cream to melt while he was away, so he canceled his order and said I could keep it.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Donovan - "Mellow Yellow"

Entry tags:

employment,
job

I Shaved and Put on a Tie for This, Part 2

I was supposed to have an online job interview Tuesday afternoon, but the interviewer didn't show up. I'm guessing this was another employer that already filled the position.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Betty Boop - "I Wanna Be Loved by You"

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Brief return to Winter

The forecast for Colorado Springs shows a 40-50% chance of snow showers on Friday and 20% on Saturday morning.

My delivery shifts usually start out on the north end of the city and gradually work their way south to Fountain and Fort Carson. Monday went in the opposite direction, starting up north but moving further north to Monument and Black Forest.

I really hope one of the furry artist's claim of a medical emergency is authentic and not a repeat of another scam from about 20 years ago. Back in 2007, I had sent several hundred dollars to a woman from the Philippines who I dubbed "hney" because of how she misspelled "honey."

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Eric Clapton - "After Midnight"

Entry tags:

Bigger payday

For some reason, the GPS directions' voice stopped playing over my car's Bluetooth when the radio is playing. I downloaded classic hits station KDZA's phone app so I can still listen to it while being able to hear the GPS voice.

The past week's delivery earnings were $714.05. I'll need to work even harder this week since I need to pay the bills for my Visa card, telephone/internet and license plate renewal.

I uploaded one of the recent artworks I got to FurAffinity Sunday night. Almost immediately, I got a few comments saying the art was AI. I deleted the submission so I wouldn't get in trouble.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Steelwoulfe's Jackbox Games stream

Entry tags:

Deja vu show

I didn't realize I had forgotten to pay to renew the Second Life server that I use for the Rabbit Hole. I purchased a new server with the Lindens I have and made a note on my phone calendar when the server rental is about to expire.

Today's Rabbit Hole was kind of a rerun. I was so busy during the week, I couldn't put together a playlist for the show. I just took one of my playlists from last November and played four hours from that.

The case of the missing notifications

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: Metallica - "Enter Sandman"

Entry tags:

Herding cats

Sleep with one eye open
Stop messaging me at night

Two of the furry artists I've been trying to pay off over the last few months decided to do more "surprise" art for me. Even though I'm working more and longer delivery shifts, I'm making just enough to keep my account in the black. The certificate of deposit I had forgotten to cash out last year is maturing later this month, so I will cash it out then. I won't make the same mistake with this as I did with my tax refund.

I need to get a haircut soon. I'm also waiting for something from my doctor, who wanted me to get a colonoscopy. He'll be sending a kit in the mail to send him a stool sample.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: I've Made Too Much Pasta - "God of Outer Space"

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Cha-ching!

I took my change jar to the credit union to pad my account a little. I was expecting to only have $30-40 worth of change based on past trips. This time, I had $88.29!

One of the reasons I hate driving at night is that the delivery customers sometimes don't turn their house lights on. If I ever owned an actual house, one thing I'd do is paint the address numbers in glow-in-the-dark paint to make things easier at night.

UPDATE (10:20 PM): I had forgotten that my dad was going to take me out to dinner tonight. We went to Cracker Barrel because Dad heard great things about their fish and chips. I had a hamburger steak with corn and mac & cheese, along with some "biscuit beignets" for dessert. Those are biscuit pieces covered in cinnamon and sugar, and served with a butter pecan dipping sauce.