What Did I Accomplish This Week?
This week I read a book! Not just any book though, a book that motivated me to work harder. And because of that I have started documenting my processes for accounting. But most importantly, I slept in on Sunday for a change.
Back to Work (Monday)
Work
Light schedule today. I made a couple small changes on our website and then began writing a new blog post for the company. This one is meant to highlight each villa individually, “A Villa for Every Vacation” will be a marvel of modern web design while also being informative about which house is right for each vacationer.
Warframe
Tonight’s session consisted mostly of a single survival mission. We ran around in the void for a bit to try to unlock another node for some resources, and although I’d really like to start running Saturn missions, I felt it was important to finish leveling my weapon so I could move onto something better.
Freedom (Tuesday)
Work
I started pretty early this morning. Ran to our old house for a bit to read some numbers on doors. The owner needed information to get the last of the repair work done. Unfortunately I was only able to get numbers on one door, so hopefully that was enough.
Movies
The roommate and intern headed off-island today to visit the bank and do some other things. That left me alone with no work to do most of the day. So I spent that time wisely by watching a couple movies! Zombieland: Double Tap and Terminator: Dark Fate to be exact. Both movies were extremely enjoyable.
Reading
Other than that, I started reading a new book, The Phoenix Project. I got it a while back when they were giving it away on Amazon for some reason. Overall, it’s a good read, but some of the writing just seems so obvious it’s coming from a geek. Like, some of the characters just don’t feel real, like they’re just caricatures. I stayed up late reading the book.
Working (Wednesday)
Reading
Couldn’t help myself, I had to read more, ended up finishing the book. It’s actually a bit insightful and has kinda invigorated my work a little bit. I’ve even recommended the book to a friend who is a sysadmin, but he doesn’t seem to be interested, which is too bad. I think it could really help him.
Accounting
I spent some time working on getting caught up on accounting. Entered some expenses and guest payments that had piled up. Because of the book I read, I actually started something new. I’m going to put together a process list of everything I do in QuickBooks. This will help me with things I do only occasionally, like year-end rollover. But this will also help the business in case something goes wrong.
I’ve also put a plan into motion to work on this at least once a day. Hopefully if I do even the slightest thing in it everyday I will eventually get something useful. Even as I’m typing this, things are coming to mind and I’m updating the process list. So far it’s just a simple ToC of the processes I need to document, but you gotta start somewhere.
Once I’ve got all this done I’ll have a better understanding of what I do, which will allow me to create better processes for getting the information to me so I can streamline my work. Right now it’s not bad, but it could be so much better. And when there’s more people involved (when my brother and his wife move down) there’s more places things can screw up.
Work
While I was in the mindset of creating processes and documentation, I got to thinking about the maintenance side of my job. So I started an idea there about creating better documentation regarding water and power at our villas. So I’m going to put together a spreadsheet for each house documenting the layout of all the breaker boxes.
Along with that I also plan on putting together some sort of water flow chart. Not sure exactly what it’ll be, but I’m envisioning a flow chart, like a Visio drawing, showing all kinds of stuff, including how to switch houses from city water to cistern and back as well as switch between cistern sources on houses with more than one chamber.
The power went off again (Did I mention the day started powerless?) so I headed over to check on our housekeepers, bring them supplies, and switch them to city water. Once the power came back up, they had left because there wasn’t anything more they could do, so I went over the switched back to the cistern. While I was there I decided to draw out a diagram of the water setup at that house.
Pool (Half) Day (Thursday)
Pools
Decided to start pools early this week. Got people coming into two of our houses tomorrow, so I figured I’d whip them out today in case they needed some extra work. I got our old house done, it might still need a touch up tomorrow though. Then I cleaned the amazing house, it wasn’t too bad.
Work
Later in the day my work shifted a bit. I did some accounting and I continued documenting my processes. Who would have expected to be this motivated from what I read? This time I documented how to add expenses into QuickBooks, like cash spent or written checks. I’ve got a lot more processes to document, and a lot of accounting to do still this month.
After that we got our mail delivery. There was a bit of stuff for the amazing house, so I drove it over there. Installed the propane tank adapter and tested the grill successfully. Then I went to work installing some weatherstripping for the big folding doors. Turns out there already was weatherstripping there, in like one spot. And it was the other kind that I looked at, not the same as what we bought.
Pool (Half) Day Pt. 2 (Thursday)
Pools
Once again, the day started with transporting a housekeeper. Seems like that’s my every morning. Then it was onto pools, or was it? I first delivered some stuff from our house to our old house. While I was there I did work on the pool a bit, some vacuuming, but more scrubbing than anything.
Then I got a message about power problems at the leaky pool. A whole building was without power. Went by there, flipped a breaker and headed out to more pools. While at the next stop, I got another message about a burning smell from that same house. Seems the motor in the washing machine may have burned out. That’s trouble.
Once that was figured out, I went back about my pools, hit up the new pool, it’s in good shape. Got the easy pool done, it was easy, but did need a decent vacuum again. I still need to go back by the leaky pool to service it tomorrow.
Accounting
I continued my daily routine of writing up my processes for accounting. Today was dealing with accommodations tax. Took me a while to do the actual work because I got interrupted. And of course, documenting every step makes things so much slower. But that’s another process written up! I have to remember to read back through this stuff once it’s all written.
Warframe
OMG, I tested out the Penta (grenade launcher) for the first time. It is amazing on survival missions, especially with the mod from Nightwave. Power went out just before playtime with my friend. Ugh, these outages are really becoming a nuisance. Luckily, I still had WiFi thanks to a UPS. So I was still able to play in handheld mode. It was nice that the outage didn’t actually last all that long this time.
Even More Pools (Saturday)
Pools
Well, just one set of pools; the leaky pool and it’s brother. Went over there to add water and do a little work on the pools. The water pressure over there is absolute shit. Took nearly an hour to add a bit to the upper pool. Left the hose filling the lower pool for a few hours. Turns out the power problem there is just not good. All the breakers were on, but the power in that section of the house was mostly non-existent.
Work
I continued work on the process document, although today wasn’t nearly as much as before. No new process documentation, just adding bookmarks to setup a ToC. After that I had a call from our handyman that the toilet in another house sprung a leak. The hose connecting it was bad and the plastics cracked. Got a plumber out there and it was a quick fix luckily. Had the handyman clean up all the water.
Then, while all that was going on I was notified by the intern that I would be needed around dinner time to deal with a grocery delivery! Luckily I was able to convince the roommate to come along and help out so we could hit up Sugarcane for dinner afterwards.
Dinner
As usual, the food at Sugarcane was delicious, even without the intern’s husband working there anymore. We were lucky enough to be there in time to watch the sunset. I even got a few pictures, one of which you’ll see below as this week’s featured image. For dinner I ate the friend chicken sandwich with truffle and parmesan fries and a hard cider to drink.
Off Day (Sunday)
Relaxing
And, of course, my week wouldn’t be complete without a day off to relax. No really, it would suck if I didn’t have at least one day off. It’s happened! But this one was special, I actually got to sleep in. I usually try and fail, but today I slept a whole two hours later than normal. So very nice.
The rest of the day was basically spent playing games. Many hours of Minecraft with my friend. Setup an automatic flower farm. It’s not perfect, but it does the trick. Now I gotta get it prettied up and put somewhere.
I tore down my headphones, the padding was getting all nasty. Going to have to get some replacement padding for them now. I could probably use them without padding, but they’ll likely get uncomfortable fast.
Featured Image
This week’s featured image is the sunset from Sugarcane. I took a few progressive pictures and decided on this as the best of them. I hope you like this one. You can come and see it for yourself in person anytime you want, just head on down to Virgin Gorda!
Remember to go check out my Gallery for more photo goodness!
