2015-10-02:

Fri:
Went a few places today. Got the wireless box in the mail, so I called the people at around 11:30. Busy. Figured they would be there in that case, and it was right down the street from my original 1:00. Score. Oh right, dropped off the invoice to the mortgage company for that work I did. MONEY MONEY MONEY.

Got that set up. Had to put it into 802.11b mode of all things, as the iOS devices didn't like connecting to it in g mode. Weird. Very weird.

Then over to see a new customer! Their machine wouldn't boot unless you went through some gyrations. Figured it was something to do with win10, as it was referencing the invisible folders they keep the files in until they're installed. Fine, I just did the complete upgrade. It was win8, not 8.1 so I was afraid like the 7 machine I complained about last time it wouldn't work for some bizarre reason. But it did! Hurray. I didn't have to load it twice.

Back here, watched the latest Plague video. It was freaking long!

Only one call today, Mr stupid again. gurrr.

What's going on?

Finally got through all the challenge levels of Matching Seasons (remember that?) and made some minor changes to it. Some levels could be beaten in fewer moves, and I made sure the high score list got 10 entries to start. Just in case you did a fantastic game and then never got that high again.

Apparently the Android store accepts GPL code, so I'll probably put it up there first. Also $25 once beats $99 a year, am I right?

Went to feed everyone, they were all fine.

Watched Sky High, haven't seen that in a few years.

Sat:
Worked more on debugging the game.

Put Mr Stupid's signs up on facebook/craigslist. Forgot just how crappy and how sky high his crap is. But now I remember! Ugh.

Got through all the challenges again, got the back and menu button on the phone to do something, other minor changes. Like I figured out how to handle things if someone is dragging a card and just leaves the phone area completely. It was actually easy. Everything looks good!

Fed my parent's cats, and even saw Gabe again, who I gave some food to.

Took the words off the icon, I think it makes it look a little better.

Repainted my really beat up Sailor Moon from my college days. Don't know how she got this beat up, but she did. She feels all pretty again.

[[image file="2015-10/moonpaint.jpg" alt="Painted Moon" ]]

Sun:
More work on the game. Lots of messing with the sounds, trying to get them the same loudness. Changed the background to black. Originally I liked the white better, but looking at it again on the iPad I tried it, and it really does make the cards and leaves on the play field stand out more.

Took the sounds out, the aiff files anyway, resulting in a smaller executable. Tried to figure out why the animation was choppier after the second hand, but can't figure it out. I mean it's not bad, but compared to the original version it doesn't look as good. On the original I was able to tell the animimation system "I want this object at this position in this time" and it took care of it. Now I had to do every step of the animation in code myself. Naturally it's not going to look as nice.

Other minor changes. But I think it's done. I'll probably go through the challenges again tonight, play a bunch of hands, and say it's ready for a 1.0 release.

Oh yeah, one bug fixed, if you quit the game right before making a new game, the new game button was stuck on the screen when you came back into it. Wacky.

Got two whole calls today. One person that I helped over the phone. Said she would send a check, I sincerely hope she does. One other I didn't speak to but he said the morning tomorrow was fine and I had his address so let's hope it stays fine.

Bright moon! Of course by the time the hour rolled around to actually look at the thing that was happening to it, it was too cloudy to actually do so. Couldn't even see it, just a bright spot BEHIND a cloud. Great, thanks. Nature.

Mon:
Another fantastic day, allow me to regale you.

Did my morning job, which went well enough actually. Checked his machines over, took off his second antivirus, you know, the usual. His problem was more about time warner, but at least we ruled his machines out.

On the way home I stopped at the dentist guy, who I'm convinced isn't in town. Picked some stuff off the curb, like some candles, a HUGE picture frame with a dinged corner, some hangers, bunch of junk mostly right?

Figured I could repair the frame with some clay stuff. Pack it in the hole, smooth it over, paint the whole frame so it's a uniform color, no one would know. So I'm taking the glass out, right? Being extra careful, bending all the tabs down, making sure it wasn't catching. Easing it out a little at a time.

Snapped it and broke it. AARG!

Called the person that called me at 9:30 last night, she wants tomorrow. So I started looking at the candles. They're used, but not that used. There were 5 red decorative votive and two long tapered ones. Also red. So here's the clever bit. I got the candles out of the glass and melted them down with one of the tapered. Took the wick from the tapered, cut it into five pieces, poured the melted wax into the glass. It's hardening now. I think it'll work?

So there's that.

Oh, and a printer I got two cartridges out of. So there's $4 I guess.

The sewing place called, they're having trouble booting. Grr. I go over there, it seems like it'll boot every third time. It hangs twice, does the "repair" and then boots. Repeats.
Updated the graphics card driver as that was one suggestion, and turned off "fast boot" which honestly an SSD doesn't need anyway, amiright? Now it at least boots every OTHER time. I offered the following; either just put it to sleep or I'll keep banging my head against it. (This was after like an hour.) She said she would just put it to sleep.

Not many calls today, the lady from last night with more questions and a printer issue, so who even knows if I can handle that. Naturally it's going to take me 25 minutes to find out, she lives almost near Sean's house, so that's a 25 minute drive. Why would the job I probably can't do be right down the street? Doesn't work like that.

The power adapter for the xbox 360 came, and it works at least, so I bundled that up to go to the shops.

Cleaned up the two daggers I pulled out of the trash. Here's the one.

[[image file="2015-10/knife1.jpg" alt="Now that's a rogue's dagger" ]]

It was covered in fake diamonds, and wrapped in electrical tape, so all that went. Tried to figure out what to do with the handle, which was yucky from the tape and not meant to be seen anyway. Was looking at pictures and saw one wrapped in wire, and said "hey I have that!" And it worked. Took almost all I had left on the spool, but it came out pretty nice.

The other, well, can't do much about the broken tip, but it needed less work. Yes, that's a claw for the pommel.

[[image file="2015-10/knife2.jpg" alt="Wizard's knife that is" ]]

Tues:
Three jobs, things are looking up. (You'll read later they aren't.)

First one at 11:00 after going through the challenges again. I once again found a couple that could be completed in less moves, so I'll have to do them all again.

Coming back home I tried to get in the front door. Couldn't, there was a huge spider web in the way. This spider web.

[[image file="2015-10/spider.jpg" alt="Tangle web we weave" ]]

I put a piece of black cloth in the door as it was hard to see against the screen otherwise. Must have taken hours. Leaving again there was a big hole in it, so maybe he/she caught something? It was raining, so a raindrop could have taken part of it down I suppose. Spider was still there so must have been hopeful.

The printer one, as expected, I couldn't do anything about. HP but with a non replaceable printhead. Thanks, HP. I recommended a laser printer.

Then over past my parents house a bit. Profile trouble, but I had the directions written down and they worked. Went over a few things with her, no problem.

Haven't been writing because of trying to get Matching Seasons done and watching Flash. Voted best super hero series of last year by a couple of random dudes on the internet. So you know it's legit. It's okay, maybe it gets better?

Only one call today, but it was the out of state lady, and I didn't even reach her. So I have no work for tomorrow. Brilliant.

Got most of chapter 185 done.

Wed:

Worked the entire morning on a "new" bug I found. Somehow, don't ask me how I hadn't run into this before, but if you have the game active and put the machine to "sleep" the game crashes/hangs when you bring the phone back up.

Finally figured it out. I had recently changed the "minimum android version" from 2.3 to 4.0, figuring maybe that would be newer devices and so, a bit faster. Changing it back fixed the bug. WHAT? How does that have ANY bearing on anything? Just the version it requires introduces a bug? That wasn't even in my code? AARG.

Did a quick job. Just installing some RAM for a men's suit shop. I'm not sure the machine needed it, it had 4GB already, but hey, I had it.

Came back, finally was able to do the (hopefully last) challenge run again. While I did that, updated to the latest OS X, 10.11. Made a new flash drive for it.

Finished chapter 185.

Got only a few calls. Someone who wants monday that I didn't reach. Someone with a kids tablet that the cartridge slot doesn't work I said I would take a look at, but who lives in Hilton so she's dropping it off sometime. And the guy I already did the job for.

So I've got nothing for tomorrow. Now that I've gotten through all the challenges without finding any I can do in less moves I'll play a bunch of normal hands and pay google their stupid $25 to post it to the app store. Hey, it's better then Apple's $99 a year. Hope it gets a little interest, and once it's been up a month or so without any complaints I'll think about putting it up everywhere else. Have no idea how to sell it to PC users. Maybe I'll just post it on the site for free, with a "get the mobile version!" badge somewhere. Yeah…

Then maybe start some other project. No idea what it might be at the moment of course. But I'll have plenty time to think about it, am I right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

I hate everything.

Thurs:
Assume gas is $3.00 a gallon. Big sister got an average of (10,309 miles driven this year / 380 gal of gas) = 27 MPG.

Little sister is getting an average of (608 miles driven / 13.2 gal of gas ) = 46 MPG.

So driving 10,000 miles (odd that worked out almost exactly isn't it?) cost me $1145.
This is only $2 off what I actually spent. Wow. I digress.
So driving 10,000 miles in little sister will cost me $652. That's a savings of roughly $500. Driving 10,000 a year in twenty years the car will have paid for itself.

Think she'll last that long? Still, fun to work it out right?

Did my paperwork.

Tied for lowest number of customers for this month with 2012. Would have beat it, but I still haven't gotten that check signed, which would have been one more. And there was that one day I did three jobs and get checks for any of them. So that's not in there either. Well, good to know there is still some hope.

Put Matching Seasons on the Google Play store! Nervous!

Spent the rest of the day building for Mac and PC, getting the PC installer working, and making a new website for the product. My goodness the PC version must have no speed control at all, the Mac version moves exactly how I want it to, while the PC version just zips past everything. Weird. Oh well, that's minor.

It's published to the site. Didn't take long. Unlike apple that can take weeks.

Here's my website
Here's the google play website

Still, I'm no more an android developer than I am an author. I've never sold a single book, and I may never sell a copy of Matching Seasons. But selling a couple of both would be nice, you know?

You know, watching the Flash is odd. These characters, at least some of them, have been around since the 40s. THE FORTIES. Is that because the character was so well written and conceived of she could not be improved upon, or is it just lazy writing?

Apparently, the humble bundle people now have a subscription service, pay monthly and get new games every month. Is everything moving to subscription models now?

Got a last minute call, so I at least have one job tomorrow. I'll call the person I didn't reach too. I would have tried the first number she gave me, but even listening to the message several times, she said it so fast both times I just couldn't make it out. Why do people try to speed through their numbers? You want to leave it as clearly as possible, not as quickly.

And then there's the person that emailed me with no phone number attached. Guess what, my response was bounced back. Had to pull out an invoice from 2013 to find it. I'll call her tomorrow too.

No sales on the game, not that I expected there to be on the first day. Or the second. Or the…

So I'll see my parents tomorrow, not sure about anything for Saturday. Probably not much. Maybe more writing, or thinking about a new game to start. I don't know about Mystic Arena. I do want to turn it into a two player game but I'm not sure it would work that way. I'll keep thinking about it.

One idea, a collection of redone wooden games, like that leave one empty space on the board then jump your pieces until there's only one left. If there were some simple old games like that I could put together a one app with all of them. Work better on bigger screens I guess. Like I said, not sure yet.

Anyway, welcome to October. 50s and 60s in the forceable future.

I do dread the winter coming on.

*ducks*