2015-07-16:

Thought I would throw that out there.

Fri:
Out in the morning to straighten some things for both of them, the PC and a few iPad questions. No trouble there.

Back here, did my webpages, more video, then ate lunch.

Picked berries, lots and lots of berries.

Went to see my parents, James is doing better so that's good. Lots of mosquitos over there, yipes.

Then back here. Worked on figuring out if there was any rhyme or reason to spell grades like there is for the darkbolt techniques that have an actual formula. Nope. It's all over the place. So I just winged it for Sparkle's two new spells.

Ate dinner and thought about more plot for them.

Wrote it up. I think it'll be pretty good. But then I've been wrong before.

Sat:
Not too busy a weekend, but there were some highlights.

I was going to pick up a laptop in the morning, but she called to move it to 1:00 so I baked 2 pies instead. And I still have unfrozen berries. Both to pick and already picked. So many!

Then I went to get it and started work on it. I hate how long it takes to reload a machine. It did the "download updates seem to apply them then claim they didn't need to be applied after all" trick. After a reboot they actually started going in.

Office was of course being crappy. I had to find the right version out of the 6-8 versions of office they sell (hate you MS) and when I finally found the right one, it insists the serial number isn't valid. Well, you thought it was before, jerk! Of course she has no idea when or how or (even why) she bought it, so no help there. Really?

Anyway, left it updating because even with an SSD it takes hours and went to Sean's with pie. Other Sean wasn't there but Stan came and ran his game, and we stayed on task pretty well. How about that.

Played more Mario, thought we beat it, nope, there's a whole other world after that.

Sun:
Did not do any writing. Whoops. Watched stuff mostly, oh, and cut the front lawn. Mower continues to function within normal parameters. Still rolling slow in my opinion though.

Yeah, pretty lazy all day. Sean gave me more stuff, started to work though it.

This will no doubt continue.

Hardly any calls, so that's fun. Just returning the laptop tomorrow, and two jobs for Friday oddly. One at 5:00, ugh. Why me?

Mon:
Shopping as normal. Then out to deliver the laptop. Back here, ate lunch, then watched more stuff.

Did work on more challenges for the game, or at least thinking about how best to make these challenges. I printed some stuff out, we'll see how it goes.

Not easily. Got 10 total done. I think it'll be easier when I add more cards. It's just too easy with only half of them, because there's only a few ways the cards go together. If it really doesn't get "harder" (for the player) I may just scrap the idea. But I want to do 100, so I'm 1/10 the way there.

Went to my parent's house for my sister's birthday. Hope you enjoy the games.

Then back here, made my phone calls. Two for tomorrow, one in the morning and one at 2:00, going to sell that 3TB drive I got from the whole iPhoto thing a month or so ago. So finally going to get some money for all that.

Onward.

Tues:
Couple of jobs. In the morning was a cleanout, though I didn't realize it as such at the time. Did the usual stuff, figured out she had two Facebook accounts, that sort of thing. The afternoon one was horrendously long. The job was simply to set up the new backup drive as he's been complaining his current one keeps unmounting. (I've brought it home for further study, so we'll see.) I wound up putting in song titles on iTunes for a bunch of CDs of his father playing piano so he could make further copies. Odd that disk utility lets you copy data CDs but not audio cds. I tried to get hit to use Burn but something happened with it before… like his title for the disk was so freaking long I think it had trouble with it or something. I don't remember. Anyway, finally got out of there at like 5:00 and back here.

Just one call, just one job tomorrow. Watched videos, not much else to say.

Wed:
The job was at 1:00 so I basically didn't do much until then. Guy from yesterday wrote that he messed up the check, and can't follow the 8 step process I wrote down to get the songs into iTunes and make the copies, <sigh> so I get to go back there sometime. I called him after the 1:00 but he wasn't there.

That job was sort of pointless. She said she was having trouble with the printer, it worked just fine. Other minor issues that really were nothing.
Came back here, picked berries. Got more than I expected, so I now have 4 bags frozen. Plus still enough for one more pie. I might be able to pick them over and get a few more, we'll see, we'll see.

Went back to working on challenges for the game.

Got some done, even added a little more animation to make the cards that become phenomenon cards look snazzier.

Got a few calls today, so I have three places to go tomorrow. Of course one is back to audio CD guy. I'm bringing my laptop, hopefully that will let me do it twice as fast. Or about, who knows how fast my machine is compared to his, and of course the copy time must be accounted for.

The other two are probably both cleanouts, which is always a treat. Less and less of them these days, are virus writers just getting lazy too? Oh well, time for an apple. (I mean a real apple. That you eat. Not the computer kind. Just making that clear.)

Thurs:
Did the cleanout, that went fine. A whole hour to run mbam, but at least it got the machine in a good state again.

Worked on the game. Added the move counter I had originally thought to use. I think the puzzles were too easy, just letting you move cards willy-nilly. So no more of that. Did up to 20, only 80 more to go.

Left at 3:00 for my next two.

The first was quite fast. Her machine was messed up, I noticed, from the first moment I sat down at it. No antivirus, seemingly doing nothing, but still amazingly slow. I mean yes, windows is slow, but not that slow. There's different types of windows slowdown I've noticed. It's a thing, believe me. There's "not enough RAM" slowdown. There's "infected" slowdown. There's "hardware problem" slowdown. It all feels different. I don't know, maybe I'm imagining it, but I don't think so.

Also it didn't sound right. When it finally got around to rebooting I tried the built in diagnostics, but it started doing RAM and that was just dumb. So I stopped that and moved it over to my tools disk, which didn't run for 10 seconds before letting me know that yes, it was the hard drive that was failing. She tried to reach her husband about what do about it, but he didn't answer. I went away unpaid, and they're going to get back to me.

So I was an hour early to CD guy, and thank goodness I brought my laptop, which I just now realize is still in the car. Be right back.

And we are back. You didn't even realize I was gone, did you? I'm just that fast.
Anyway, I was distracted when I got home by my "great find" which I'll go into in a second. CD guy. His machine did not like the second CD I put in there, and I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to get it out of there. Also trying to guess his password, as he was unlocking his sister's house with the key she doesn't know he has? I don't know. Anyway, my machine got through the rest of the CDs, so I copied them over, guessed his password from his hint and the phone dialer he had next to the machine, and got that all set up. I left him completing the rest now that it was a four step process rather than a 12 step process. Sure.

Right as I pulled out of his driveway I saw what I thought was going to be a great find. A fake christmas tree covered with fake snow. "That looks expensive!" I said to myself, and threw it in the car. (Of course the fake snow comes off and gets everywhere, so it needs a huge bag around it.) Also found some wood I can give my parents. Little did I know that it seems to have sat in water or something because one side seems a bit… rusted? I was very disappointed to see it. Also they cut the cords on the lights all over the place. Weird. So I stripped them off, I'll keep the bulbs for replacements I guess, or just sell them? Anyway, two strings survived so that's good.
Maybe I can spray paint the rusted bits white? I'll ask my parents about that. It's so tall, it won't fit in my breezeway fully assembled. Must have cost a small fortune.

$200? Looking online. Maybe. Too bad it might be ruined, and now I have to get rid of the thing. Maybe I'll just wait until after christmas and just leave it out by the side of the road. Side note, they called that "frocked" when they spray a tree with fake snow like that. Did you know that? I didn't. Don't lie, you didn't. I learned something today! Thanks, ruined, rusted, froked, christmas tree!

Ate dinner, made my one phone call, so I have two jobs tomorrow. One at 11:00 and one at 5:00, so I'll have to visit my parents a bit early. Of course it's nowhere near them, because why would it be? One machine not getting any power, and the other says "cleanout- hanging?" so that should be normal/hideous?

As far as the weekend goes, getting near the end of the Dark Souls videos so hopefully I can finish them up. Then get back to writing a bit? Of course I need to do more challenges. No real work, of course. No game either, Sean is at the transformers convention, staying two days like last year. Probably should look over the berry bushes one last time. Make my last pie for the time being.

Forecast has changed a little. Was solid rain before but now saturday just looks cloudy. It's been very cold, like it was 65 today. No summer this year. Expect for now, because it looks like it's going to be in the 90s sunday, but rain. The lawn doesn't need cutting, so that's fine.

That about covers this week. Join me next week for what is sure to be even more of the same. See you all then.