Day 2 - Work work work.

Sleep is necessary for life, but the big city disagree.

⏰ Wake and Bake (I wish)

A picture of the networking cabinet I get to work with. It doesn't use rack nuts or anything but self tapping screws. Wish I could move the shelves up closer but that's ok. Ill deal with it.

Watched some reals on my phone, then finally got up, and had a shower. Best shower in the world. Got dressed then had some breaky. Coffee, muffin and some cereal thanks to the hotel. The hotel is pretty cheap honestly.

Headed over to the store around 9:30 am since thats when the mall was open. Got there and Joe (the foreman on site) and another dude where the only people there. I started work and got the second cash up and running.

🍟 Lunch

I'm just using filler as you can tell, but this is a picture of under the cash counter where all the hookups are. Each cash setup gets a full set of plugs, and 2 ethernet drops each.

Chick-Fil-A is amazing. Best chicken sandwich ever. Better than Popeyes. Service goes hard too. Oh and the best sweet tea ever made by mankind.

I went with the spicy chicken burger, waffle fries, and the sweet tea. Amazing. Even came with a wet nap.

Oh and they just give you 3 sauces too. I used one and am going to save the other two.

⚙️ Setup

A picture of the inside of the store without anything in it. I wanted to grab a picture of the ceiling showing that all the speakers needed to be hooked up. The cabling dangling from the ceiling is where they go.

After lunch, I grabbed some more ethernet cables, stopped to get a big bottle of water and some advil. I was dehydrated, and hurting.

Got in, other guy left and it was just Joe and I left. I got to work and finished setup on the second cash, got the stuff installed and we where ready to roll.

Conor remoted in and we worked on getting the cashes prepped and rolling.

Its now almost 4pm and we got both test transactions done on both POS's which means we are good to sell. I still have some work to do including cable management. But today was extremely productive.

🚪 Getting Ready to Leave

Cash 2, and my laptop. As you see I have a version of this exact article open while I wait for things to happen.

Im writing this now as I wait for both cashes to finish their windows check. Cash 2 has a problem with the search so running the DISM tool to make sure everything is good.

Other than that, I am not sure if I want to do some more cable management, or just go back to the apartment and chill for a bit. Im physically tired today rather than mentally like I was yesterday.

I need to come back tomorrow anyway to drop off the big folder full of goodies for the store. Left it in the apartment cuz I thought that was the best place for it.

Most likely going to go back to the hotel room, watch a movie or something, maybe play some Skyrim and chill veg. I shouldn't need my tools anymore now that everything is done, so I may take the time to get ready for Sundays flight out to Ottawa.

🛜 Internet Sucks

There is one thing I learned very quickly a long time ago in my tech career. Encryption is everything.

I remember a time when I was playing around with FTP and my server locally. I had TLS turned off (at the time it was difficult to get a cert for local servers), which means I had no encryption with the connection. Its local, its not a huge problem.

But I remember I was messing around with Wireshark when I logged into the FTP connection to my server, and was able to read the credentials in plain text via Wireshark. This terrified me. My password sitting there. Anyone can see it.

Thats when I dedicated a lot of my efforts to encryption and keeping my shit secure. I was an early adopter with LastPass and when they had that massive databreach I moved to Bitwarden. I am tempted to run a local bitwarden instance locally but whatever.

How does this story relate to the trip? Well another thing I learned is that an open network is in-fact just that. Open. Wide open. The issue with this is that its insanely insecure. Nothing is encrypted. At all. My hotel just has an open network. Its insane. I did join it to test with my VPN (full tunnel) enabled and yup. Wide open. Insane.

So while I write this little section, I am actually waiting for a bunch of shit to download at the store so I can take it back there and watch youtube videos etc.. without DESTORYING my data plan. I still need it.

Now sometimes when connect to one of those "open" networks it takes you to a landing page where you need to enter a password or accept a EULA. This was not the case. I connected, and immediately had internet access. Nuts.

Luckily the internet is not so bad here at the store, and I hope that the Ottawa hotel actually has some half decent wireless. I was going to bring a LTE modem from head office, but I wanted more room to pack Gundam.

Oh well..

💻 The Laptop

I am very grateful that work has given me a laptop, and it does work. The track pad is just gross. I hate it. I was thinking about bringing my small mech keyboard and a mouse but again... Wanted more room for Gundam.

Oh well whatever, I think I may see if I can buy a Macbook Pro myself on some sort of plan. That way I can use it for both work and personal without having to worry much.

🍖 Fooooooooood

Finally back at the hotel, just chilling, but I am getting hungry. The thing about a big city is that there is almost too many places to eat. Too many options. Just now also realizing its bloody Friday night so EVERYTHING will most likely be busy. But my eye is set on a sushi place just up the road. If its too busy Ill most likely wait.

Well I ended up going to the sushi place, and I am glad I did. Spent way to much but I think it was worth it.

This was the AK-47. Don't know how exactly it was made, but it was good. I believe they make the roll, then deep fry it completely, then put all the sauces on it and cut it up. Baller, would eat again.

This was even better. This was torched butter fish with a bit of caviar on top. Smokey, buttery, and delicious!

Over all, a great end to a pretty decent day. My feet hurt, my back aches, but I am happy and feeling good.

Hopefully the rest of the trip follows suit.