2015-06-25:

Fri:
Got the scoring done, woohoo!

And got a working router for the guy in the afternoon, eventually. Went to the nearest Staples, who didn't have any of the one I got from the other place. But they did have the one I originally wanted, with no router. So I got that and got my $20 back. It had been enough of an issue that I didn't ask "why can't you apply the $20 to this transaction and put $20 back on my card" but that might be a little too complex for them.

Worked on the high score and bonus score stuff.

Then went to see my parents. Got my hair cut, the latest news, and showed my mother the progress in the game. She found a bug! No really. Turns out you can "worry" a card out of the pile in round two. Huh? Fixed that when I got back. Guess who's getting their name in the credits as a tester?

Had my father over to watch the Dr Who from 6 months ago, and he chose The Dark Knight to watch, so we did that.

Played a few rounds of the game, got an incredible hand (20,000+ points!) and thought about what next to do. Art? The controls? I want to come up with a visual sort of theme for the thing, based around the seasons. I think I want the buttons to be leaves, and the high score list a waterfall? I'm still thinking about it.

Sat:
Worked on the game. Got the options button working, (turns the sound on and off) put in the credits, and dragged my OS 9 machine out to see if there were any other minor differences between mine and the original. You could change the board colors and the back of the cards would change. Didn't remember that. They put a red border around the last selected card to, not sure of the point of that, though I could do it I suppose.

They also showed the trick value when you ran the mouse over it. Can't do that for the mobile platform that's why I didn't when I rewrote it. I could for the desktop though, I suppose. Just run through part of the algorithm and find out which one the mouse is pointing to. I don't know…

They also let you change your mind, if the card was still in the "choose" area if you let the mouse go. Do I want to be that nice? I don't think it would be hard to do.

*thinks about it*

I see, they separated the behavior. If it wasn't in the original position, it stayed, but if you simply clicked on it without dragging, it would go over. Ugh, I had enough problems with getting mouseMoved events even when it hadn't, I have no idea how I would do that actually.

Watched a couple of movies, thought about how Susan could make a green lantern ring, but Sean's system really doesn't allow for something like that.

Then spent THREE HOURS (maybe a little more) on the phone with Ellen trying to get outlook express to behave. She had (ONCE AGAIN) run into the 2GB limit on her inbox, and compacting it just gave errors. I tediously moved all her mail into a new folder, had to toggle back and forth because it wouldn't update the display otherwise.

Why me?

Sun:
Realized the high score list was not being saved in Android, so looked into why. Apparently android doesn't allow saving the "stack" in the same way the desktop does. Anything you want to be carried over you have to take matter into your own hands and explicitly save and load it. Who knew? Fixed that.

Also fixed the opening screen animation, I wasn't happy with the built in push, so I made the leaves fall myself.

Got the mower working again, question mark. Mowed the front with the "backup mower #1" and figured I would disassemble the other to the extent I could, and perhaps look some things up because I live in the information age, not the stone age. Found the manual online. Their recommendation to change the oil is tip the thing over. Seriously. There's a crudely drawn picture and everything. And it sort of listed how to clean the air filter, with not so much as a crudely drawn picture. I did find it. WOWZERS. It was packed full of crud. I cleaned that out. Changed the oil, ran cleaner through the gas tank. It doesn't sound like it's going to die at any moment! Hazza! Walking speed still seems pathetic, but maybe that's just me. I guess we'll see how it goes next week?

Ate lunch, then started work on a chapter for this week, as I haven't written anything.

Finished chapter 150, just back and forth between Susan and one of the generals, really. Oh well.

Did more graphics for the game, got the card back done I think. It actually came out pretty well! How about that?

[[image file="2015-06/cardback.png" alt="back of the card" ]]

Mon:

The usual, shopping in the morning, bought oil for the car. Then past my house to go to Aldi, which I zipped through now that I have learned vaguely where everything is.

Quickly over to set up the replacement printer for the lady. Took the old one to be dropped off.

Ate lunch, then out for my 1:30. Pretty quick, she just needed flash updated apparently. Not that it said that, it just sat there, but I figured that was a good first step, and it worked. Videos started playing again.

Then at 2:30 to replace a monitor. It was just flickering on and off. Driving away I realized I should have taken it, maybe it was the capacitors in the power supply, which I'm into changing now. Too late.

Back here, worked on graphics a bit, then out for my 4:00. His keyboard was dead, so I replaced that. Also ran the usual scans, but didn't find anything.

Back here, dinner, then a few calls. Have two jobs tomorrow and I got the bottom in for the laptop, but didn't reach the guy. I'll probably call him after the two.

Then more graphics work. Getting the edges of the cards done, they're coming out okay? I guess?
Only have "spring" left to do, then 4 centers, then… 22 phenomenon cards adding up to 88 total scenes… yeah.

Tues:
More graphics work. Tried calling the lady for the laptop, no answer.

Out at 12:00 to reset a password for the outreach people. Oddly the Power Options control panel wouldn't open on that machine. Windows surprises me yet again with stupidity.

Back here, a little more drawing, (Got desert done) then out to straighten out an older guy I've known some time. He may want me to convert some old Super8 tapes and slides. He has most of the equipment, just not the technical knowhow (or the digitizer). I've ordered him a new laptop power adapter because he things he left his in Florida. Nice going.

Picked up the laptop, so that's in progress.

And a bit more drawing work until I changed my oil and then ate dinner.

Oil changed with no problems!

Made a few phone calls, reached the guy for the bottom. Then he called back and said to come Friday to set up his phones too. Sooooo hard, but whatever.

Finished the card centers! Here they are!
And you know something? I think they came out pretty well. Not pro level, by any means, but good for me.

[[image file="2015-06/centers.png" alt="card centers" ]]

Hey, the person finally sent me the money for the ebay item. Only took a week and a day. Thanks, friend!

Wed:
More work on the art. Made a mistake that cost me like an hour and a half, which we'll get to in sequence.

Only had the two minor jobs today, so I really didn't make anything. The first was setting the phone up. The other guy in the office was with someone, so we couldn't test the fax out. She said it worked before but the settings didn't bear that out. I don't know. I changed them to what I figured would work.

Then over to drop off the laptop. That went fine, of course she didn't know her RR password. Why would she? I mean, duh! She's not even the main user? Or at least she's only using a sub-account?

Thought I found a bug, as I was testing in the car, but no, 3-2=1, just like always. I did come to the conclusion the game seemed "stingy" with the phenomenon because I had only 1 card per group able to turn. Whoops. Every card has the same chance to grow up and be something special. So I fixed that.

As for the graphics thing, I was tooling along, having made the "darkness" cards so I could put the various phenomenon inside them, did a couple, and then realized I somehow was using an older version of the day cards for the night ones! Huh? See, after seeing them on the tiny screen I increased the size of the tiny elements, like the bunny and the palm tree so they could be seen easier. But somehow I was still using the smaller ones for the night cards. So I had to redo all I had done. It didn't take too long, drawing the elements was the time consuming task, I could then just paste them into the new cards, but still. Annoying.

Got that done, ate dinner. Only one call today, gurrr, and it wasn't even a job. At first it wasn't even a call, it was a busy signal.

I do have a job for tomorrow, just getting the mail setting in right for a guy.

Looked into the dead keyboard I had sitting here, turns out it's the receiver, not the keyboard, which is working fine. How about that? Looking into replacing it.
(I typed these two sentences on it)

And this one.

Cheapest on ebay is $11. I charged him $10 for the whole shot! Ugh.

More artwork done. Will it ever be finished?

Thurs:
Mostly work on the art, and my one job of the email account. Of course he either didn't know the password or didn't type it with the correct capitalization, so we had to reset it.

As I write this, just before dinner, I have only 7 more sets of phenomena cards to create. My bunny found gold!

Oh, and for some reason my allergies are really acting up today. Itchy eyeballs!

Five left before dinner time.

Started solar eclipse but then had to talk to Margret for 40 minutes. Luckily doing a repair permissions actually solved her issue of the drives disappearing from the sidebar.

Good number of calls today, oddly, but that's fine. So I have four places to go tomorrow. Some rather vague stuff, honestly, we'll see how it goes.

Going to Sean's on Saturday, no game probably though.

And that's about it for this week.

Went to feed the kitties, came back, worked far too long getting my sunrise to look right, but I think I managed it in the end. Only got desert done, but the rest should be easy now that I have the sun part of the sunrise. The rest is just shadow and making it look purdy.

Later then I wanted, see you all next week!