2015-06-11:

Fri:
Bit of back and forth. Morning one was pretty short. Needed the router reset, and I answered a few questions. Ordering him a new modem so he doesn't have to pay time warner anymore.

Then back here, ate lunch.

Out again right after that, the dentist guy who, as usual, had his enormous list of crap and two phones and a tablet. That took two hours and a bit.

Over to return the PC, the guy wasn't there, but I was let into the office so I set it up there. Hope I see that money given I left the whole invoice there so I have no proof I did the work, unlike with the others.

Got to see my parents at around 5:00, got a donut.

And back here to have dinner.

Rained a bit today, then was much warmer.

Worked on the next chapter. Got it almost done, I just need to plan out how Sailor Jupiter joins the group. The whole wedding dress thing, I don't know if either side would really go for that.

Sat:
My 1:00 canceled on me, moved it to monday specifically. So the day went a bit differently than I had expected.

Went in the morning and did a quick job, someone just down the street got hit with the VNC takeover I may have inadvertently caused. He got rid of his second machine, apparently, and took out the router that was protecting him! His monitor settings got all screwed up somehow, so I got that fixed, put VNC in without it being a system service (stupid installer) and generally checked the machine out.

Ate lunch, then went out to see the lady with the cutting machine. Apparently you can buy these little cartridge things that then get 'linked" to the account. They hold patterns apparently, and are quite expensive.

Too bad it didn't work. Trying to link it with the iPad, oh and their site is horrible, by the way, anyway trying to link it just makes it sit there at "please wait." Why can't I "link" it with the iPad app? Isn't that the same thing? I have to log into it too, so it seems like it would be. How does the site find the machine anyway? I don't get it.

I tried it on their XP machine, whoops, the software doesn't support XP OR Vista. Seriously? You know how many older machines are still out there? Tons. Support for Vista hasn't even ended yet, so why drop support for that product? Are you really using something that won't work an on older windows machine?

This cartridge thing blows my mind anyway. Why not just a code? I mean it gets put into the account and the "linking" I assume is so you can't sell the thing after you "download" it. Does not a code do that same thing? It's a one time use code, far easier to explain to someone than "you can't sell this physical object, despite the first sale doctrine, because 'reasons.'" I mean they sell the designs on the site that are in the module. They have to, you're not getting the designs from this stupid bit of plastic and metal, are you? I mean, are you? Because then a USB flash drive would be far cheaper no? Smaller too, that thing had this huge atari style connector on it. Bizarre. Like you have this sleek looking device of the future and then this ugly 1980 style video game cartridge thing you have to plug into it. What sense does that make?

Was going to actually call the freaking people but look, they are not around on saturday. These machines are hundreds of dollars, I think you guys can work weekends. Really.

Anyway, an hour and a half later I had accomplished nothing there. Sorry. I got cookies though. Cookies I did not deserve. Cookies of shame.

Went to Aldi to enjoy the store one last time before they close. Busiest I've ever seen it. Wonder if that's because it's closing or because it's Saturday or some combination? Saw the tallest girl there. Tallest I had ever seen in person. Now I'm not all that tall, but to need to look UP to see someone's face, and a woman at that, is vary rare for me. Wow she was tall.

So tall.

Worked on chapter 148 when I got back. Finished it. Turned Jupiter against Susan for a bit, and destroyed tons of energy stealing constructs made by the four kings. Good stuff. Now the reporters swoop in. Hehehe.

Sun:
Worked on the darkbolt document a bit, wrote up a few things, added some pictures, and fixed formatting issues.

Read some of the magic comic, still not even half done, that tournament thing went on for hundreds of pages.

Finished chapter 149!

Had a few calls over the weekend, but nothing crazy. I have three jobs, four places to go tomorrow. Finally taking that laptop back, it's only 10 minutes from one. They're all after 1:00, so I have the morning free. I'll still go to the bank as usual, but I already did the shopping as you know. Let's get more calls, please!

Mon:
Pretty hectic afternoon, in contrast to the morning that was very quiet, it was hunting wabbits.

Just to the bank and then reading over chapter 149, as I hadn't yet before.

Went down to get gas, forgot to put gas in the can. Wonderful. The first one went on far too long, basically because he had nothing written down, didn't know what to ask time warner for so we somehow got transferred to cyber identity or something, then finally back to get the one piece of information we actually needed.

Anyway, left there far too late, and dropped off the laptop. That went fine, though she has to send me a check as she said she ran out.

Then a few minutes away to the next one, who had a variety of small issues. One junk program, other useless stuff, settings that were odd, that sort of thing.

The final one, which I managed to not be that late to was a garden variety cleanout. The book/cat lady. She has many of both. Many more books than myself, and I have a few.

Home just as 7:00, made my phone calls, which I got several of today hurray, but only made one appointment for tomorrow. Huh. The rest are spread out through the week, which is fine.

Ate dinner, had about an hour, then went to feed the kitties over at Mom's house.

Tues:
Very easy job in the morning. For whatever reason the printer believed the original SSID wasn't available. It was. I reconnected it and that was that.

Came back, thought about a new project to work on or a programming thing. I really want to do Heaven and Earth over again, now that I again have a portable device to use. And perhaps the means to program for it, via livecode. So I banged on that for the rest of the day. If I can make it, with minimal changes it should run on Macs, PCs, Android and iPhone/iPad. Huh.

Was thinking I would have to do a lot more work than I had anticipated because of how LiveCode works. I figured I would have to make all the cards, rather then create them pieces at a time like I did before.

Just before I got the delivery I figured out how I can do it. I think. It's what I wanted to do in the first place, tried, thought it wouldn't work, tried to work around, then came back to it after saying "I'm a dumb." I was. I figured out the method and wrote up the code to make sticking the cards together work, and it does. At least for the few minutes I looked at it.

Like I said, got the system in for the guy spending hundreds on foreign dating sites, so I called him. Getting that $400 tomorrow will be nice. So I got that machine ready. Also called the people I'm setting the modem up for, they aren't too far away so I'll do them too. So I have three for tomorrow, despite not getting any calls today. AARG.

With all that done I went over to feed the kitties.

Wed:
About what I expected today, with a slight bit of "what?" for the first job. He said he had a "network issue" but when I got there, the "network issue" turned into "I have a bunch of questions about these three laptops, a machine upstairs and two machines downstairs." Dude, how many machines do you need? Luckily most of his issues were somewhat easy to solve, so that didn't take much longer than I had anticipated.

Back here, ate lunch, then out to deliver the modem. Got lucky and managed to speak to someone who sounded american, and managed to get the new one on right away without having to transfer to some "provisioning team" or whatever. So that went fine.

And then delivered the PC. Switched everything over, he had most everything on dropbox (thanks, past me!) so that made it easier.

And back here.

Worked on the matching game, made sure what I thought was right, was right. It seems it is, I think. The code was greatly simplified and everything still worked.

Tried to get it onto the phone. Little did I know I would need to download 26 GB of stuff. Yes, 26GB. To make a simple app for a phone. Sheesh.

Rained very hard and there was a lot of lighting while I was at my parent's house. In fact I got inside just as it started. And it was over by the time I was leaving. Still lightning though.

The download was done, spent a little more time messing with that.

Got it working! The 3x expanded interface looks perfect, it's actually a wonder how good the old cards look, scaled up and then down like that.

The original cards? SO TINY! So very, very, very, tiny. Almost can't drag them but they do if you get right on them. I think this'll work! At least it's looking promising so far.

Thurs:
Got some great deals (I think) on some stuff at the church sale down the street. A box full of disney books a quarter each. Some tech stuff, some of which worked. (most of, I should say) A neat frame thing I think I'll put the pony's cutie marks into and that might look neat. Here's a picture!

[[image file="2015-06/myfinds.jpg" alt="daily finds" ]]

I'll probably go back Saturday when it's half price.

Spent the rest of the day processing that, listing one thing, and then work on the card game. I finally got the cards to animate where I wanted them, but it looked really bad. Come to find out, I needed to lock the screen for that brief instant of sliding for it to look right. Who knew? I do now. Next up, make all the cards so they all slide to where they are supposed to be, and the game can begin. (I was just testing with two)

That was about 4:30 and I needed to leave at 5:10 to get where I was going.

That was a bust, in more ways than one. Forgot exactly what I was doing, so didn't bring the monitor so I could set up their security system. Didn't matter, she wanted to get the images from her phone, but there was no internet connection in the house. Great. Who doesn't have internet? Somebody weird I bet cha.

But I did take home another system he wants to use to replace the system I already bought parts for. Yeah, that one.

It's full of junk. Oh, and it keeps hanging. So… there's that.

Fed my parent's animals and came home.

Three jobs for tomorrow, mostly minor stuff though.

Might actually do game this week! Stan's game, don't know which one.

And no jobs Saturday. Running some hardware tests on this ancient PC, see if I can do anything with it. Probably not.

Hope you didn't get washed away, or in some cases, your local drought didn't get worse. Whatever's going in on your area.

See you same time next week.