2015-11-13:

Fri:
Lots of amusement today as I figured out all the ways I can break out of the software and get to google! I found four, my companion found another. Such fun.

Otherwise, the standard reliability test continues. I'm only about 100 and some into it. This is going to take at least until mid week next week.

But at least week two completed successfully. Two weeks from now, Thursday to be exact, was when I was let go from Xerox 13 years ago. Not that I'm still bitter about it, or anything.

Saw my parents, had a yummy dinner with them. Went shopping, still no waffles. So weird. Like how is there a waffle shortage? Can that even be a thing?

But they did have salad, so yay?

Called the guy to deliver the laptop, still no answer. So I went home.

Where I heard a message from him giving a different number. He seemed quite surprised I had called his other number and he hadn't gotten them. Either of them. And one was from yesterday, he didn't even get the message. Get it together, man! So I have to go Sunday, jerk.

Three places to go tomorrow!

And a bit of Skyrim rounds us out. Found out I wasn't actually wearing armor when I thought I was. Oddest thing, I was looking at some new stuff I had picked up and realized "wait a minute, why is my current armor rating a zero?"
I had been wandering around in just clothes the whole time. No wonder I kept getting slaughtered.

Sat:
Quite a busy day. First one at 9:00, the clothing place it was "oh so important" for me to go to friday morning. The guy said he had removed some stuff, and the mbam scan didn't find much, so whatever.

Back here I got the leaves gathered up in the front lawn and went out to my 11:00. Just showed them a few things, updated their GPS, that sort of thing. Pretty short. Sigh.

Back here, a quick lunch, and as it hadn't rained yet and my tree was bare, I started the back lawn. This year I didn't bother gathering into piles, I just raked the leaves right onto the drag and dragged them up. At 2:00 (my appointment was at 2:30) I was sooooo close I called the guy and asked to delay. He said fine. So I finished that up, hurray. The pile in front is HUUUUGA! (As we say in Rochester.)

[[image file="2015-11/leaves2015.jpg" alt="big pile o leaves" ]]

Then the 2:30. Did the standard stuff to the PC, it didn't need to be scanned but it was fairly quick about it. Hooked their VHS/DVD player up. Showed them how everything worked, wrote stuff down.

Of course when I got home I got a call "oh, the TV isn't working. Waaaa!" Oh my goodness, people, it's a TV remote not trying to develop a meaningful relationship with another human being that you know is as mortal as yourself and one day you will either leave them or they will leave you and come into the inevitable embrace of death so what's the point anyway?

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, it's a TV- never mind.

Downloaded my shows, started watching them and ate dinner.

Then more Skyrim.

Sun:
Which continued for most of today.

I did do two jobs. Delivering the laptop and explaining why you can't just plug an HDMI cable into an iPad. Also answered some other questions. Honestly, I should have changed him for three separate appointments at this point.

And back over to paper jamming guy. He had the back all apart, so I can't tell if he made the situation worse or not. (I'm guessing yes) I put it back together as best I could, but it either doesn't pull the paper up, wrinkles on exit, or just jams entirely. Looked it up, I got it for him in October of last year, so the warranty period is no doubt up. Plus he has the receipt, as I didn't record buying it on his invoice. Naturally he has no clue where that could be. Sorry, don't know anything about printer repair, you're on your own.

Bit more xmas shopping, getting through it!

And got ready for tomorrow. It's almost worth going to the bank finally.
Now if I could just get paid by Xerox, that would be great.

Back to Skyrim.

Mon:
A glorious… afternoon… of testing.

Yes, despite the absence of the person that usually runs the monday meeting, we met anyway. We tried to. Our first room the phone didn't work. Our second room was interrupted by the "safe zone" drill about five minutes after we sat down. Fifteen or so minutes later we made our way back to it and finished up, about 12:30. Sheesh.

Once back I managed to work my way through to exactly half the test cases I need to run. Half. In how many days? No wonder this thing has never been run before. It takes a week or more to do it.

I did find a few more things and wrote them up before coming back.

No calls today, so no evening job. It really has died? I do have something for tomorrow, the guy I saw at the clothing shop wants something, so I'm going out to his place.

And more skyrim. I used the forge, and made myself a neat circlet that stores the power of a standing stone. So basically I can get two perks instead of one. Shoot, I now need to travel to one and take its power. I've been wearing it but it doesn't do me any good yet. Me so stupid.

Boss is back tomorrow. Think she'll be impressed or horrified at the 80 some events in the event database we've written between us? (Guess who wrote more?)

We'll see!

Tues:
The reliability test continued. My "supervisor" didn't come in today, mostly because her hot water heater failed and dumped water all over her basement.

This, kids, is why you shut off you hot water heater when you leave home for a few days. Even if it is for a few days. She said she tried to turn it off but it wouldn't go off? Did she twist it the wrong way? I don't know. She had to shut the water off to her whole house. 

Got through to row 200 out of 287 so it's getting there. With meetings tomorrow I expect another two days to finish it. It's going faster because we're not finding as much to write up now and it goes quicker. She basically doubled our workload by turning the original 144 rows into 287, so we're basically doing it four times. Thanks.

Job in the evening was pretty standard fare. That awful, ancient version of norton had taken over his disk with 200GB of ".tmp" files which I needed to get rid of. Answered a few other questions, no real problems there. Got home at 7:00. Only had one call, called her. Phone was busy. She called me back and said a phone was off the hook. She can't get on the Internet and TW is blaming her modem. I guess we'll see, not that I have a replacement immediately. She's only 3 minutes from phillips road, so that's the kind of driving I like. Not 30 minutes in the rain in full darkness.

So tomorrow marks the 2.5weeks point. Nearly the half way point to the original contract date. Huh.

Not much else to say. Leaves are still out front, the town is not picking them up. Come on town!

Wed:
So the boss is back, better get back to work.
Oh, what's that? I've entered 70 events into the database, while my contemporary has entered… well this can't be right. Seven? Wait a second. Maybe he didn't understand "log every little thing you see?" Well, sucks to be him.

He did become a grandfather recently though. His daughter gave birth to a baby boy. (I mean obviously she gave birth to a baby, that's understood without me having to say it.)

Anyway, the test is over. I didn't get through all of it, had about 40 more rows to go, but there's a new build and she wants us to test any supposed fixes they've put into it. So we'll be doing that I guess, which will be a welcome change.

Other work events. Got donuts. And a message that my badge was expiring soon. Wow, haven't had it three weeks and they're already looking to kick me out. The double meeting in the morning, and then test test test in the afternoon.

Otherwise, did two quick jobs in the evening. The first was just down the street, she had her router plugged in wrong. Apparently the tab isn't so great so the cable came out.

The other was across the street from my sister's house, she had her aol account password compromised, and had her daughter change it. Would have all been well and good, had she not been trying to log into yahoo at the time. Honestly, did you not see all the yahoo! logos plastered all over the site?

I logged her into AOL and all was fine.

Got a couple of calls today. My good buddy dial up user, who admitted his kids were nagging him about it. Gee, wonder why? Oh right, it's a basic necessity in today's world. I mean if he can't afford the cheapest RR plan, (which is like $14 a month?) his kids don't have cell phones either. And that marks them out in today's world even for school kids!

Didn't get hold of the others. Did get a crappy laptop dropped off. Going to try the same thing, upgrade it to 10, then put in the SSD. If it ever decides to, you know, upgrade to 8.1 so I can get the 10 reservation for it. UGh.

Seriously, what is this machine doing?

Thurs:
I don't know what it was doing, but I let the antivirus chew through it all day on the full system scan, and it came up with some stuff. Then finally got 8.1 installed, at least I hope so, it's still not done.

Anyway, pretty crappy day, let me tell you why!

Work, of course, was fine. Got my new panel, so my machine is "complete" now. It feels so futuristic and special. And you know what? It IS futuristic and special. Ran through some old bugs to make sure they were fixed, wrote up some new test cases. Found out my contemporary had been paid every week so far. Huh? I guess I get paid by the contract place, so I need to contact them about this. If I don't see any money in my checking account tomorrow, you bet I'm going to.

"But Robert," you ask, "how was that so crappy, as you so recently claimed? It doesn't seem all that bad to me, in fact you've been through much worse, haven't you?"

Ah, but my story is far from finished! After work I went to do more work. Dial up guy? Not having any issues at all. "Oh, I waited a week to call you but today it started working." Thanks for calling me to let me know. Even if it was after 12:00 when I get home for lunch, it would have been a thoughtful gesture.

The next one though, that's the real trouble. It would boot. Get to the "Windows 7 home premium" screen with the fancy shmancy gateway logo- it just occurred to me. Both of the pieces of junk I'm working on at the moment are gateway machines. Ha! Sorry, off track. It would boot- no I said that part. The logo, right. Then the screen would flash. And flash. And flash. And not get any further. Well, I tried the usual stuff like safe mode and command prompt mode and whatnot. No help.

In fact it got worse, as now it boots, shows the mouse cursor, and then reboots itself. Great.

So it needs to be reloaded. But here's the real mystery. I got a call today from ethan allen about a machine, an all in one from the sound of it like this one, that's doing the exact same thing. Now two machines doing something I've never seen before in the span of a day? Seems suspicious to me.

He's going to drop it off in the hope I can get to it quicker. I might, depending.

Got an extra $10 from staples in free money so I browsed the site looking for stuff I could get free.

Started the reload on the desktop.

Wondered if the laptop would ever finish. It goes through so many freaking 0-100 screens you can't know what the last one will be. It's awful.

Nothing for saturday yet though, of course I didn't reach 2/3 of the people that called today.

Well, the laptop finally finished. Now to continue updating it so it can get the win10 icon. My goodness updating to 10 is a pain.

And the desktop finished reloading, so it can start updating. That'll just take all night.

Looking to the next couple of days, probably a new build tomorrow so they'll be stuff to test on that. Meeting, of course. Maybe one to go over what we found in the reliability test? Who knows.

Seeing my parents, then shopping.

Working on the two systems once the desktop starts updating, and the other one gets here.

Sunday? Who can say at this point. I'll probably be returning both systems if all goes all.

Tune in next Thursday to find out.