Tag: broken

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 575: Vancouver, BC – A Broken Battery

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis got some admin and tickets done in the first part of the morning and then at 10:00 he walked down to the office to meet someone and replace their laptop battery.

The person arrived shortly after Curtis did so he got the battery swapped out and tested it and all seemed to be working as expected, which was excellent.

Curtis then walked back home and had some tickets to do as well as a meeting with his team and some others from the company to discuss some processes and how they can be improved.

After that was done, it was time to action on some of the points they made in the meeting and also do some tickets.

We then had lunch together and after lunch it was fairly quiet for Curtis but he did do some tickets, admin and helped a colleague figure out something strange.

Kim’s Day

Kim had a meeting in the morning to discuss the org chart and hiring for the next few months. She then popped out to pick up a cocktail kit for someone. Kim had planned to drop it off too, but it took so long for her to get to the car that she didn’t have time.

Once Kim was home she joined a meeting straight away and discussed recruitment with all the hiring managers. she then hosted a dance party where everyone danced to Bye Bye Bye, then Stop by Spice girls and Kim showed her colleagues the Fast Food Song they were confused!!

For the beginning of the afternoon Kim was able to get some admin done and then she joined a few meetings. The first was a team meeting, the second was a follow on from the marketing meeting yesterday and then the third was an end of week catch up with her teammate.

To finish the day Kim delivered a cocktail and then spent some time writing up job descriptions.

Evening

Kim worked fairly late and we didn’t plan anything for dinner, so we had pizza.

Once we ate, we watched some more of Drive To Survive in anticipation for the new season tomorrow!

We watched that and some other things and then we headed to bed. There was some construction going on outside our apartment this morning which woke us, so we were tired.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

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Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 572: Vancouver, BC – Shipping Many Exciting Packages

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis began the day with a first day IT orientation. This one took a while as the person had not set anything up or even logged in, but it was good to be able to go thr whole way through the process with them.

Not long after that, Curtis had a team meeting for an hour or so and then did some tickets and some admin before having lunch.

After lunch, it was time for another long team meeting, and during this, some external software and some issues so Curtis helped inform the company about the outage.

The rest of the afternoon was catching up with tickets and still fielding issues about the software that had broken.

Kim’s Day

The even Kim has recently been planning is on this week so she started her day by making stickers for the cocktail kits that are being sent and delivered this week. She then had a team meeting to catch up, start the week and talk about projects and plans.

As there is a new starter Kim hosted and then sat in on the onboarding. The great thing is with the new team member Kim has been able to hand off a good amount of the work she didn’t understand to them. Its great for Kim because then she can focus on other things and it also means that the new starters get better support!

Kim then left to go and pick up the cocktail kits that are being mailed out but before she picked them up Kim went and got some gift vouchers to go in a couple of the kits. She then took the cocktail kits and went to FedEx to send them.

For the afternoon Kim had a meeting with her colleague about logistics for delivering the kits for later in the week. She then focused on some HR paperwork.

Evening

We had wine and cheese again for dinner to get rid of both the wine and the cheese.

We ate that and then watched more TV, including some more F1: Drive to Survive which we are really enjoying…almost too much!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 566: Vancouver, BC – The Worst Timing

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had to get an onboard done this morning, but as with ever, something broke which prevented him from getting the accounts created.

He spoke with him team as the figured out the issue so he could get the work done and also get the system working again. Luckily, this only affected Curtis’ team and no one else.

Once that was done, he was able to get the onboard completed and get on with other work.

Curtis was able to get a lot of tickets done and then in the late afternoon he had to do some project work and some project admin, too. Overall, a very successful day!

Kim’s Day

Kim was able to get a few smaller admin tasks done in the morning before all of her meetings. She then hosted her first team meeting where Kim went over some of the projects and everyone had a nice little catch up. She then presented and gave a lot of information in the weekly company wide meeting before joining the weekly project catch up.

Kim arrived late to the project catch up because she joined the wrong call and didn’t notice for 10 minutes.

After lunch Kim worked with a teammate to update a guide send out information, send out a form for everyone to complete and update a process for new starters. It was a very successful and productive hour!

Kim then worked on a guide for another project that she has been working on. Then into the evening Kim made a few orders for people before working on some job descriptions.

Evening

Curtis watched hockey whilst Kim worked a little more in the evening and then we had some veggie chilli for dinner. We couldn’t be bothered with rice, so we had it in a wrap with a nice fresh salad on the side.

We watched some TV and played some games as usual in the evening.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 446: Vancouver, BC – Broken Things!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a busy day all in all!

He started with catching up from the weekend and other emails, then he had a long team meeting.

After that team meeting, it was pretty much lunch time!

Once he finished lunch, he had a long, long call trying to fix something he created a long time ago. This was tough to remember how to do things but there was a little bit of progress made after a 1.5 hour call!

After that, Curtis had a couple more tickets to do and some admin, then he was done for the day.

Kim’s Day

BC added new restrictions over the weekend and as a result Kim decided to take some time to research what this means and learn a little more about how it impacts work spaces. She also started making some more signs for the office that arespecific to the workspace, as well as finding some official materials.

For some of the morning Kim worked on more research for a new software, updated the spreadsheet and sent it over to her manager with some questions and for her to review.

As there are a few employees in difflocations Kim wanted to make a list of all the public holidays that the company might celebrate. At some point she will add it to the new HR software so its easily accessible for everyone.

In the afternoon Kim did a bit of organising of files and then moved on to trying to understanding the recruitment process and add a job posting to LinkedIn. However, after a number of tries Kim can’t seem to get it to post right. So she will take a look and try again tomorrow.

Evening

We had some tomato and mushroom pasta with a ceasar salad for dinner.

We then watched some TV and played some Need For Speed. After that, Kim did a bit of admin for her visa.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 401: Vancouver, BC – It’s All Broken!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a message from a colleague in another office that someone had to head into the Vancouver office to help fix something that broke during maintenance.

Curtis said he would go, so once he was ready in the morning, he walked to the office.

When Curtis got there, he found out that the was stopping people from accessing some websites and no one could use their desk phones.

To fix this, Curtis found a special cable which he plugged into the server and then into his laptop.

His colleague then took control of Curtis’ laptop and attempted to fix whilst explaining a bit about how it all works.

This lasted for about 2 hours and then another issue arose once the main part was fixed! Phones were back working but no one could call out to external numbers.

This took another hour to fix, but eventually it got fixed!

Curtis walked back home, had his first coffee of the day at around 12:45, did some tickets and then had lunch.

After lunch, Curtis had a long team meeting and then did a couple more tickets after that before finishing up for the week.

Kim’s Day

Kim had a nice long lie in this morning and then she watched Parks and Recreation while having some breakfast. She then had a massive spur of thoughts for her CV so sat and wrote down a lot of notes before getting ready for the day.

Once she was ready Kim finally added her latest job to her CV. Then she worked on cleaning up the formatting of the document. She wasn’t 100% happy with it, so she also saved another version that has a few amendments and she will revisit them and see which she prefers after a break away.

After lunch Kim went back to her old office to drop off her IT equipment and pick up a few things she had forgotten. She stayed and had a quick chat with her colleague.

Kim then went to a rooftop bar nearby where she met her colleague and two other friends she used to work with for food and drink. It was amazing. For the few hours they were catching up Kim managed to completely forget COVID and the fact she lost her job. It felt like a lovely evening out Pre-COVID and it has done Kim the world of good. Kim got some flowers as a gift which was lovely, too!

Evening

Once Kim got back from being out, we had some chicken & mushroom pasta with hoisin sauce.

We watched some TV for the evening and that was it!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 310: Vancouver, BC – Fixing Telephony

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

All of Curtis’ morning was helping fix some telephony things.

There were some changes made but the team which broke a few things, so a bunch of Curtis’ team, including him, had to go through and click a few buttons on each user’s profile to fix it. This took all morning but it was good that it got fixed.

Curtis had his weekly team meeting at 13:00 and then ate lunch after.

After lunch, Curtis and to organise tickets for a bunch of computer checkups and then he had to contact each of the people to setup these checkups.

There was also a couple of tickets for Curtis to get to at the end of the day.

Kim’s Day

Kim started her week at home and caught up on emails. At mid morning she had organised another cello recital and it was amazing. She recorded it and uploaded both recordings to the Wiki.

After that Kim headed into the office and made some more progress on her signs before having a meeting a catch up with her colleague.

After lunch Kim had a meeting with her team which went well. Then her she went out to a few shops with her colleague to sort a few things out.

When she got back to the office Kim worked on the signs a little more and ordered flowers for the cellist from today.

Homemade Curry, Again!

Kim made the marinade for a curry last night, so it was pretty much good to go today, she just had to make the sauce and some coconut rice!

When Kim got home we made that and homemade naan too!

We watched some TV and relaxed for the evening.

We both had a busy day, so were pretty tired!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 189: Vancouver, BC – Broken Elevators

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis got to work and 3 out of the 6 elevators weren’t working!

Curtis crammed into one of them and just after he arrived at work, he was told that all of the elevators had stopped working, so he got there at the perfect time.

Curtis had his standard team meeting after doing a lot of a admin for the morning, but then really had nothing planned.

His day became busy, in a good way, and he was able to get a lot of tickets completed.

A concern was raised about something project related, so that is what Curtis spent most of his afternoon doing, after his team strategy meeting which lasted for an hour.

Right at the end of the day, Curtis did some project admin but also helped someone who had been having some issues for a few days.

Once that was done, it took Curtis perfectly to the end of the day.

Luckily, the elevators were working.

Kim’s Day

Today Kim had a day of getting the things she has been putting off done.

Kim started by sending out a chaser message about the Holiday party so she collected the RSVPs and gave the spreadsheets formulas so Kim doesnt have to do maths anymore, then the fruit arrived so Kim sorted all of that and then reorganised one of the other cupboards in the kitchen. Kim gutted it, sorted through plastic cutlery boxed up some plastic lids and just generally had a good clean up.

Kim then spent some time drafting up business cards and got them sent out to be made up.

Kim then sent a few emails about the holiday party and added more points to the to do list and moved some from ‘to do’ to ‘completed’ which is a win!

Throughout the day there were many deliveries, which Kim can only expect will increase over the next few coming months!

One of the deliveries for Kim’s colleague was ful of decorations for the holiday party. The only issue was that one of the things ordered was about a third of the size they wanted! So they will have to get more!

Kim then got her head down and scanned all of her receipts for the past month and saved them all too! This is so great as it means she will have done it just in time to reconcile!

Costco

We went over to Costco to get a few things from there on the way home.

We didn’t get much at all and were out within 20 minutes!

The weather was foul, so all of our bags and the box we carried got wet, but at least we got the items we needed.

Weekly Clean

We got home and did our weekly clean.

We took the rubbish and recycling out and then cleaned up around the apartment.

Kim walked up to the shop to get a few things and then when she got back, we had dinner.

Chicken Baguette

We had a chicken baguette for dinner, with mayonnaise and sweetcorn, accompanied by turkey stuffing crisps and some of our leftover “fancy” cheese.

We watched some TV, made some lunch for tomorrow and that was our evening!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 127: Vancouver, BC – Taking The Train Home?!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis did the usual admin for the morning, as well as got some old and new tickets completed.

It was a slow morning, but there was enough to keep him busy.

At 13:00, which is usually his lunchtime, Curtis had a team meeting that went on for an hour, but it was productive and helped Curtis move on with one of his projects.

In the afternoon, something broken which some of Curtis’ colleagues started fixing and Curtis had a few people asking him about different things that stopped working as a result.

At 16:20, the rain really started to come down and Curtis had hoped it would stop by time he had to walk home, but it did not.

It was a bit too heavy to walk in, so Curtis got the train instead, which takes just 5 or so minutes to get him to the station near home.

Curtis walked back home and was able stay dry!

Once he got home, Curtis emptied the dishwasher, cleaned down the sides, vacuumed and cleaned the sink in the bathroom. Pretty productive!

Kim’s Day

Kim got into work a fair bit earlier today as she had 2 full day meetings to set up for. On the way into work Kim stopped by Starbucks to order a large 2.5 gallon coffee urn for one of the meetings.

Once she was at work Kim orgnaised a coffee urn for the other meeting room and soft drinks for both rooms. Kim then went back to Starbucks to pick up the urn and then took it all upstairs to the 25th floor just as the meeting was settling down.

Kim then finally sat down and turned on her computer, an hour and a half after she had arrived. Kim decided to be ahead of the game and updated the bingo sheet for the next meet and eat as she had already emailed herself ideas and needed a small and easy task to get herself sorted!

After this Kim started to sort out some travel for a customer but ended up getting called away from her desk to sort out the fruit. As Kim put the fruit away she sectioned off some for the visitors and made each meeting a little fruit bowl.

After sorting the fruit the first batch of catering arrived so Kim quickly ran out to get the smaller items for the other catering that was due to arrive. While she was out the other catering arrived, so Kims colleague put it in the meeting room.

When she got back Kim and her teammate then both handled the catering by getting soft drinks ready ensuring that the plating was nice and taking out the drinks from earlier that hadn’t been drunk.

Kim then sat down to make the travel reservation and it all went through easily.

After booking the travel Kim and her colleague went to both rooms and cleared out the catering and then sat down to some lunch. They had a lovely catch up!

After lunch Kim and her colleague went straight into a meeting with the corporate travel company as they now have a new account manager so it was great to meet him and it really gave Kim a good understanding of how it all works.

After the meeting Kim processed and then delivered a FedEx package, as it was too late in the day Kim did have to deliver it and it was absolutely pouring it down!

Kim was feeling really stupid for not wearing new new waterproof shoes she got yesterday!

Kim then spent the rest of the afternoon/ evening packing up after the meetings and saying goodbye to an awesome lady who left the company today!

After wor Kim checked out a few shops for tights and couldn’t see any she liked too much!

Free Dinner!

When Kim got home, we had a small dinner. We had half of a leftover sandwich each which Kim got from work, and it was great! A spicy shreaded pork sandwich…delicious!

After dinner, we watched a couple of YYouTube videos and then could smell an odd smell, which smelled like burning plastic.

We investigated and could confirm it wasn’t us, but the whole building and outside seemed to smell of it, so we were unsure what it was.

We messaged our building manager to let him know, but we assume it is nothing worry about.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 115: Vancouver, BC – Oh, Smashing!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis’ day started off with the wrong breakfast! Unfortunately, he had forgotten to get yoghurt at the supermarket yesterday, so he had to just have toast this morning, which didn’t really fill him up.

Once he got to work, Curtis was able to get the day started, most importantly with a coffee.

The day went really well. Curtis did a few tickets before lunch, most of which took a bit of time so it was a little more interesting. He also did some training on some network things from one of his managers, so that was interesting and useful.

After lunch, Curtis was able to get on with some other tickets and with some laptop setups he needed to get done.

Curtis left the office and walked home, whilst Kim stayed late.

Kim’s Day

When Kim arrived she started her day by finalising the accommodation for someone who is interviewing in the Ontario office.

Kim had agreed to join the end of another teams weekly catch up to field any questions they may have about the Wiki project. So she went and joined and had a quick 15 minute chat before being kicked out of the meeting room. She then went back to her desk to catch up on a few emails.

Kim then went into the social team meeting where they caught up and discussed the plans for the upcoming month. It went well and they agreed on running a few things here and there so that people weren’t bombarded with too much going on!

After this meeting Kim decided to start emptying the cupboard behind her as there is a box full of stuff that she has not once used since she started. Kim went though everything, boxed things up in categories for things she doesn’t often use and moved things she uses even less to other areas in the office. This allowed Kim to get rid of loads of things that are simply not used or needed anymore, free up space which makes the whole area neater and easier to use!

One of the doors on the drinks fridge stopped working so Kim chased the company to see when they would be coming out.

A colleague of Kims asked her to collect some company swag to send out so the teo of them worked together into boxing the gifts up and making them look pretty. After Kim went to FedEx to get them sent out and it was meant to be a 15 minute job but ended up taking about 30 minutes because there were extra forms!

Kim then headed back to the office, finished up the last couple of emails and then headed home.

Oh, Smashing!

When Curtis got back home he emptied the recycling, put away the dishes and then walked up to the supermarket. He made sure to get some yoghurt as well as some hot dogs, cheese and buns for dinner.

Kim really felt like having hot dogs and that felt like a terrific idea to Curtis!

Once Kim eventually got home, we had our hotdogs, as well as mac and cheese.

After dinner, whilst we were watching some YouTube videos, Curtis must have gotten a little excited over the delicious spicy ginger beer we were drinking as he proceeded to drop the glass onto the table, which, as you’d imagine, had consequences.

The glass smashed in half, but didn’t really shatter which is great. We cleared this up (and the remainder of Curtis’ delicious ginger beer!) And then watched the other half of the Bake Off we didn’t watch last night.

We finished the evening with another episode of Peaky Blinders.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 106: Vancouver, BC – Broken Fridge

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis arrived at work and as soon as he walked in, he was asked to help the new hire with setting up his laptop etc.

Curtis spent around 30 minutes doing this and then after that he grabbed some coffee and emptied/refilled the dishwasher as it was finished and there was a lot of stuff piling up.

As soon as Curtis got back to his desk, someone said they had returned from Maternity leave after being off for over a year! Noone knew about this, so it was a bit of a rush and Curtis had to help finding a desk for them, too.

Once Curtis was finished with that, he had someone’s laptop to setup on their desk and ensure that their monitor worked with it as expected.

Finally, 1.5 hours after starting his day, Curtis was able to sit down.

He got some admin done, read through messages/emails and then got on with a few things.

He researched about an issue someone was having and then decided that he would download a new version of windows to test that for their issue.

As he was doing that, he was trying to get the virtual machine working from a couple of weeks ago, for the last time! He was given a code which was meant to fix it and it worked, but he then had to transfer it to another laptop.

It hit lunchtime and Curtis had a well earned break and then went right back to it.

Curtis got a bit of work done and then there was a large meeting at 14:00-15:15.

For the rest of the afternoon, Curtis ensured he was able to get the virtual machine running how it was meant to, tested more and confirmed that it was working!

He gave the person access and let them know how to access. He is glad that is finally done.

Kim’s Day

When Kim got in today she remembered that she hadn’t put through the weekly order so she got that done right away for a delivery for tomorrow morning!

Kim then thought that there was no harm in asking if they could deliver today and they said they would arrive by early afternoon! Success! In the meantime she had to run out and grab milk as the full bottle on Friday was suddenly empty!

Kim then went into the kitchen to find a puddle coming out from the drinks fridge so called that in for a repair. As last week was so busy Kim put of saving a of her receipts so she spent a bit of her morning scanning and saving the receipts and ensuring that any online / emailed invoice were saved also.

Today one team got the go ahead to order the next 4 weeks worth of catering, which was very exciting for Kim as she was then able to set up the online portal for ordering food. She arranged this with the vendor and they had it up and running in a record breaking time!

While organising catering for the next 4 weeks, Kim noticed that the monthly social talks were happening at the end of this week so she sent out a reminder for people to sign up.

Just before Kim went on lunch the fruit arrived, which was amazing! She unpacked it and had a nice chat with the delivery man. Kim then just sat in the kitchen for lunch before returning to listen to all of last weeks missed calls.

The drinks list for the drinks in the fridge finally came through last week so Kim went through it and organised a trial run of different beverages to see which ones people prefer.

Kim’s colleague noticed that she was being charged by a certain delivery website when it shouldn’t be hitting her card. She and Kim then called the company, spent 25 minutes being on hold and getting nowhere before being hung up on and then another 25 minutes being on hold and getting the issue sorted.

Cleaning & Pizza

We got back home and just did nothing for an hour and then did some cleaning. We sorted some laundry, vaccuumed the floor and wiped down the kitchen sides.

Once we had done that, we started to get hungry and, as has been a common theme, we forgot to take any meat out for dinner so we just had a frozen pizza & mac & cheese.

We caught up on some TV & Youtube videos and that was pretty much our evening. Short and sweet.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale