2015-10-30:

Fri:
Whew. Got real today.

Helped my parents at the house hold sale today, not that I was really much help. But I watched the upstairs and carried some things, so it wasn't a total loss. Also I reread a bunch of chapters of the second story now that I am posting it. Found a few mistakes to correct.

Freaked out when I got home, as I immediately checked my email to see if my contract place had mailed me. They had. I start monday.

But the freaking continued when I hit play on my answering machine and was informed that I had 9 messages. Oh really? That's interesting. *delete.*

But seriously, I didn't have that many, and after doing the shopping as per the new Friday night schedule, I got back to most of them and fixed their issues over the phone. Phew.

So I filled out the form and got the payment/timesheet thing done he wanted. Hopefully everything is okay as I got it in after business hours. I called him as his message said to, and he didn't seem concerned.

Well, I report to building 205 at 8:00 monday to get my badge and have the "new employee orientation" so we'll see how that goes.

Checked my Friday webpages.

Changed my phone message to reflect the new reality.

All that took until about 9:00.

Don't have to get up quite as early tomorrow, they're coming here. Still, busy day tomorrow as Sean wants me to come over, so we'll see how long packing up takes.

Won't be able to stay long, made some appointments for Sunday, though only one phone one, York. The other was for the router I got today, setting it up. So that shouldn't take long at all. Still, it'll be an adjustment.

Not sure what you should expect blog wise. I'll of course try to keep it up to date, but we'll see how it goes with my new far busier schedule. Maybe everything will work out just perfectly from now on.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

Sorry, have to go lie down.

Sat:
Got the sale and the cleanup all done. All trace of one life erased so that another can take its place. But what ripples still resound in this world because that life was lived?

Sorry, watched Dr Who. You know how that goes.

Came back, decided not to go to Sean's, couldn't have really stayed long, I have work tomorrow!

Only had one call, just a question about wireless as it was now useful because they finally had wireless devices to use. She must have figured it out, she didn't call again. So I added no new appointments to tomorrow. Of course I could get calls tomorrow, which I'll try and take care of.

Watched a few things instead and went to bed.

Sun:
The new thing is working out so far. Not that I had much to do today but at least no one stoned me for working on a Sunday.

Hey, check your bible, it's there.

Worked on Mizzy's xmas gift as they finally got around to offering the material I want to use. And the lead time is 20 days so I needed to get started to get it in time.

Went out at 9:45. Set up the router. Apparently their one electric outlet was dead and so he plugged his power line router thing into the DVD player. That made it three jumps so it didn't want to work at all. Naturally I had to discover this fun fact for myself, looking behind the thing as some sort of last resort because I couldn't get it to work. Grr.

Dropped off the office package and tried to give the monitor, but they weren't there. (And really, why should they be?) So no clue how I'm going to get time to get over there when they're there.

Then over to York, had to start the rebuild process on their RAID. Again. What is with that controller, it needs rebuilding all the freaking time. Replace that whole system already, would you? You said you would years ago!

Back here, more work on the gift, took the 2:00 call about the Mac. We narrowed a few things down and I ordered her a new power adapter.

Finished the gift and uploaded the file. As usual there was the standard "thin wall" nonsense. I mean how can two nearly symmetrical shapes have only one side be suspect while the other is fine? And it was only the upper part, not the lower part. So there will be something there, even if it's not perfect. So few things are I attempt.

Got other stuff done; Cleaned the mouse. Made my weekly rice mixture. Added up the checks. Did laundry. Checked my websites. Tore apart the PC my parents gave me, I think it was Roger's. Yup, it was, it has his pictures and such on it. Made a copy in case one of his relatives wants them, and then I'll put the HDs down in my stack of drives that will never get torn apart.

Made my calls for the evening.
Strangely enough, I have no job for tomorrow! That was nice of the universe, ease me in slowly. Though I'll probably have something by the end of the day. I got calls today, but they were just questions.

Normally at this time I would freaking out about not having any work after a weekend. Now I'm relieved. How things change, right?

And even better news, my fund is up again, $40+ from my starting point. Let's keep that going.

Mon:
Survived the first day!

Had a 2 hour orientation to start, safety and security basically. Then had no idea what to do afterwords. Had no real direction from anyone, because I figured I would be met by my manager or get other direction. No, no so much.

Let's see, important stats. There were 10 new hires there that day. Only three were women. At least there was some racial diversity. But I think Xerox has always been pretty good about that, even 15 years ago.

So I called my employer, and sat in the car waiting for him to get back to me. Finally decided I would just head in, see if I could find the guy's office or whatever. Security actually helped, summoning him from the ether and bringing me into a meeting. (they have 3 times a week. Sheesh. We only had one.)

The security desk in the front was a sad sight. Obviously abandoned many years ago, with dusty closed circuit TVs and wires everywhere. Seems odd they wouldn't repurpose that space somehow, I mean they have to heat it and everything, and that can't be the only station like that. To just leave it there to decay like that… *shakes head*

After the meeting- and why would they meet on Monday, of all days? They wouldn't have done anything new over the weekend. Weird. Anyway, after that I toured the labs and learned what I was going to be doing. Basically it's an established product, they're just ripping the front control panel off and replacing it with a tablet. So no more zillions of buttons, just basically an app. This also allows them to customize the interface for various partners, which is what I'm testing. The sort of UI "reskinning" for a client of theirs. Or sort of like the transition from the original starship enterprise to the enterprise in Next Generation. See? Now you've got the idea.

I've already run into a few things I'll see if anyone else has seen, once I get access to the bug database.

So basically I'm doing what the team that shared our lab space was doing all those years ago. They did UI testing while we did the fault insertion. Everyone seems nice, and they didn't freak out about the dentist appointment I made 6 months ago. I told them I should only be "missing" an hour, as I'll just take an early lunch and be back a little late. If they get me right in (never happens) it may only be half an hour, so we'll see.

Came home for lunch, went to the bank, and just made it back by 1:00, so that proved that was doable. Only have that slight rush Mondays, not that depositing my checks takes that long. Also called the vet, scheduled Tinker's checkup for Saturday. (Easy come, easy go eh?)

Then was out by 5:00. Came back, called the first person that called me that day (of three calls) and went out there. Just a quick one, showing her how to do a few things.

The other call was the old guy, needing me to change his ink cartridges again. I'll go there tomorrow, probably on the way to somewhere else.

Got back, and it was only about 6:30. Of course a longer job would have pushed it later, but at least I know it's possible.

Super great moon on the way home. Big, full, bright. So cool.

Made my third call, actually she called me when she got home, just a question.

So far so good. I'll get ready for tomorrow (I want a couple of flash drives to do some testing of that functionality) and say this could *actually* work out.

(please don't punish me for thinking that universe, I'll be good.)

Tues:
And so things proceed. More testing (duh) at work today. Finished up the first printouts worth for scanning to usb and then started on printing from usb. Got my xerox email set up, but still have no laptop to use it with. Maybe tomorrow. Not sure what I'm going to actually DO with said laptop, I have no place to put it as I'm not getting a cube. Maybe I could take the old guard station? :-) So I can't exactly lock it up at night like you're supposed to. Weird.

Also got a tour of the bug database, which I intend to study carefully because I probably have a lot to put inside it, should I find that what I have discovered has not yet been discovered. My counterpart found a bug I found, but I found it first, so there. Odd to have another person running similar tests on the same product after working basically alone before. No really, the lab was usually empty, though I did have my little nook, a separate room with doors that closed. Now I don't even get my own space, and developers are just on the other side of the room. So I guess they don't get their own space either. But they do want bugs, even ones similar to others in different parts of the software logged separately, because different people could be working on different aspects. Which makes sense.

Oh, one other odd thing to note. The original listing said the position was for two months. My badge expires 12/11. That means without extending it, I'll only work there a total of 35 days. That's one month, not two. Lies! Of course Xerox may just sort of shut down around that time. I remember there not being that much to do during that time, as no new builds came out to test around the hollidays. They may make me a new badge for January and then decide to keep me or not? Who knows.

Speaking of work, I had just the ink cartridge guy to do after work. Had no calls when I came home for lunch, and none again when I stopped home before leaving to go out there (a perk of having to basically pass your house on the way from xerox to basically anywhere else nearby, because everything else is that way ->). Weird.

Of course, had I not been working all day the past two days of basically having no calls, my reaction would have been quite different. Now it's just a "eh. Okay." Of course I realize there will be times I'm far busier, but again easing in this way is appreciated.

So at the moment I have nothing planned for tomorrow after work. Maybe I'll finally get over to Staples and spend that ink reward money I have before it expires. Have to see what item I can get 15% off with using my coupon and still spend more than $20. Found it! I'll replace my planner early. Usually I would get job invoice forms, but the space for them is always blank. And honestly I can get them at newegg way cheaper. I mean price wise, if I'm not getting them free. You know what I mean.

One happy coincidence of my getting up earlier, I get to see Mystery Mouse in the mornings now, as he's up and active. So at least even if the sun isn't up, I still get a little ray of light. And two cats of course. Who want to be fed, despite it being 1.5 hours before they normally used to. I guess they know only of their hunger, not the time on the wall. And at least one of my little fuzzy wrecking balls is hungry all the time.

Watched Supergirl episode 1! Neat.

Wed:
Mid week. Wow, it seems to be going pretty slowly, actually.
Didn't get much additional testing done today, due to various factors. The first was the meeting in the morning about previously created bugs and what rating to assign them and such.

Then I got my laptop, and needed to set it up. With that done I could finally start putting my bugs in. Went over about half of the notes I had made, and she agreed some of them should be written up. So I did that as well.

We loaded a new build, so we'll be looking that over.

Again, not many calls today. None when I went home for lunch, but two candidates when I got back. First one couldn't do today, settled on Saturday. The other I went to see. Printer issue, the paper was jamming. Some little plastic tabs inside that guide the paper were chewed up and out of position. I put them back, hopefully, so that should be that. It printed, anyway.

Got gas and came back here. Ate dinner, checked my websites, and got a few things together I'd like to bring to work tomorrow, such as a lock so I can put my laptop in an unused cabinet.

Looked around the lab a little today. Cleaned up some stuff. There's this little trunk sitting there with floppy disks and all other weird crap inside it. Probably hadn't been moved in years. Found a soda can and other garbage behind the table. Took care of it. Sheesh.

Got my planner during lunch. Oh, and it rained tons today. The parking lot I use was totally flooded, the drains couldn't keep up and were not draining the water.

Thurs:
Another day of not much testing getting done. With access to the document repository everyone uses, I got caught up putting my results in from all the tests I did the previous three days. Added a bunch more bugs in the system after making sure they still existed in the new build we got.
Not to brag, but I have 18 in the database while the other new hire has… one.
I'll have 19 soon enough. There's a bug that seems to only trigger after it's been sitting for like an hour, and I forgot I had the phone my mother gave me so I could record it. When I tested it again (right after lunch) to see if it would trigger, I wasn't recording it. Shoot. Oh well, I'll do that first thing tomorrow and hopefully still see it.

Some odd copy issues right at the end of the day. Weird. I'll be running through that whole list of test cases tomorrow, though I think there's the third bug talk meeting so that'll use up most if not all of the morning.

My PC started doing updates about 3:00, which totally slowed the thing to a crawl. Thanks. Thanks a bunch. As I put it to sleep because it hadn't finished it'll be crawling along tomorrow as well. Sigh.

Otherwise, no real calls today so I had no work to go to after work. I got the power adapter in for the macbook but there was no answer when I called her.

Tomorrow's plan, work, of course, then come get my stuff from here, then go over to my parent's house, then go shopping, and look forward to the weekend. One job thus far. I was originally planning to go there and bring what I bring in the morning, but that seems like too much.

H - P - W - H - W - P - S - H
H - W - H - W - H - P - S - H

I guess it's the same number of stops.

H - P = 7.5
P - W = 4
H - W = 6

7.5 + 4 + 6 + 6 + 4 + 7.5 = 27.5
6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 7.5 + 7.5 = 39

Wow, I guess going there early in the day is the way to go. And I don't really have to get up earlier, as the trip is about 20 minutes and I leave twenty minutes ahead getting there 10 minutes early. That'll just take care of that. Done!

Not sure if going to Sean's or not, he was asking what I might want to do, Stan's game or his. Otherwise the one job in the afternoon and taking Tinker in for his checkup in the morning. Might get this Sunday off!

Wow, this would have been a terrible week if not for the full time job. Naturally that will catch up to me as it always does but still, odd how last week was so much better. Not complaining!

So I guess in the end it works. I didn't get much to test against (HA!) as all my jobs this week (such as they were) were hardly worth doing. But we'll see how it goes from here.

Have a good spooks day everyone, see you in the time where it's two months to 2016.

Yeah.