Missing Link

As the old saying goes, when it rains – it pours.  We all have “those days”, where you just can’t seem to catch a break and, before the day even really starts you want to go back to bed and not wake up until the next day.  Today is one of those days for me.

As some of you MAY know, either from having experienced it or having read about it on my tech blog YWGAV, I have a home automation system that automates a lot of functions around the home.  One of those functions is waking me up in the morning, then streaming music from my media server to my bedroom after reading me the weather report for the day.  On most days this all works without a glitch, but not today.   While the house DID wake me up on time, and my lights DID turn on appropriately, the music and weather report did not work.  I tried turning everything off and restarting it all, but that too didn’t work as planned.   And subsequent attempts also didn’t work.  Too late I realized what was happening.   My home’s brain has to establish a remote connection with my media server and for whatever reason could not, so it waited for the attempt to time out before executing any further commands.  Consider that each of the next 6 commands required the timeout, and each command subsequently turned lights on and off.    Specifically, they turned my bathroom lights on and off.  Multiple times.   While I was showering.  I most certainly need to modify the system to eliminate this particular issue.

Figuring that was the worst of the day, glad to have gotten it out of the way early on, I dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast and feed Poppi.   Before leaving for work I moved some boards that were behind my car drying (after having been painted yesterday),  got in the car and backed out of the garage… only to hear *ChrunchGRINDDDDDDDDD*.   I pulled forward again and got out to look…. To find the PAINT CAN with a giant dent in it and paint in a nice big puddle on my driveway.  Ugh.  I went   inside and got some paper towel to try to clean up the puddle, in the process getting it on my pants and coat (and hand).  I got it mostly cleaned up and the paint can thankfully was still structurally worthy of holding paint, albeit with a GIANT dent in it.  I also thankfully did NOT get paint on my car.

I was, however, about 20 minutes later getting into work than I would have liked.

I hadn’t realized I got paint on my pants until I got to the office and noticed it.  I had known about the coat, and got it out while still at the house. 

A few other minor things have happened too:  Forgot my keys at my desk when I was going to the gas station to get some caffeine with Mike, necessitating having to go back to get them.  Then, while attempting to fill up at the pump it timed out reading my credit card, making me have to do the whole swipe and enter zip code a second time.    Minor things to be sure, and by themselves they’d be nothing but a minor annoyance,   but on a day like today it’s just another piece of evidence that I need to watch my back.

I propose that companies should have a “bad day” policy that lets employees take the day off every once in a while when they’re having days like I am today. The policy should state that the employee should go home, go back to bed and not get up until tomorrow.