2015-11-20:

Fri:
Pretty boring day, actually. Did the morning meeting, didn't really have anything to contribute because I'm still not back in regular testing mode.

Added to another matrix of test cases, this time performance related. Sent it back but didn't get any feedback on it.

Then made test cases for that one document. It become something of a monster because it grew in size by about 9 times. I wanted to separate out each of the apps because the tests really do have to be run on each. But I got it done.

Finally did get my first paycheck! Woohoo!

My parents weren't around so I didn't get to talk to them.

Did the shopping, they have waffles again! But very low on salad, glad I snagged some. Also went and picked up my .99 ethernet switch.

Now back home I finished up the one stupid gateway and started the win10 install on the other one.

Didn't reach the lady for the desktop, and spent twenty teeth aching minutes trying to get some lady to type "aol.com" into her address bar, hit enter, and then get to her email. Twenty. Minutes. I don't know why I bother, honestly.

Still didn't reach some people from yesterday, and made one appointment for noon tomorrow to replace a busted CD drive. Won't read disks or burn them.

Am going to Sean's as well, we're going to try Demongate High again, we'll see how that goes.

Sat:
About as well as it usual does!

Pretty busy today. First one at 10:00, putting his networking stuff back together. He had a smart TV but was doing netflix through his blue ray player. So I figured I would be a nice guy and get it set up through the TV. Well, after the TV UPDATED itself, I couldn't get on.

I looked at the website. Oh look, there's a further update I can apply by using a flash drive. And why can't it find this itself? So I did that.

I couldn't get on.

Finally I just messed about with it and "disabled" netflix and then suddenly it worked. Ugh.

Then over to change an optical drive, made sure it worked. Vacuumed out her machine, too. Very dirty.

Then over to give the desktop back, she found her passwords so yay!

Then over to see about a mouse and the monitor picture drifting to the side. Wrote up how to fix that, as pressing the buttons on the monitor is a rare and secret skill known only to a few. Yeah, that big button labeled "menu" on your monitor, you can press it and options will appear.

Don't abuse your newfound super powers.

And finally about 1:00 back here for lunch. No system from Ethan Allan so I set up a bookcase I had found at my first appointment, that he was throwing away. My basement looks more video gamey by the moment.

[[image file="2015-11/p1016358.jpg" alt="My chibi bookcase" ]]

Then over to Sean's. Had yummy soup, played a bit of Mario, and came home. Oh, and Demongate High, we got through… a tiny bit of the adventure?

Sun:
No jobs, so I played skyrim in the morning.

After lunch I went out to corral my leaves that had smushed themselves from the pile, figured I would make it easier for the pickup guys. Then did my gutters.

As I walked back in I noticed way in the corner this box. And something covered with a garbage bag? It was the system from Ethan Allan! How long had THAT been there? If I hadn't gone out for the leaves, I never would have even seen it! Idiots.

So I worked on that while I caught up on my weekly shows.

It's gonna be a blast! I did the reload easily enough, I've done it enough time by now (thanks, MS) and then did the "updates" thing. It sat "checking for updates" for an hour or two as usual. Showed me the 200 updates, downloaded the updates. Seemed to be applying the updates.

Then give me "207 updates not needed."

Oh really? A brand new install and EVERY SINGLE update isn't needed? Well, I guess you know best, MS. I'll try it once more and then the heck with it. I'm not getting paid enough to care THAT much. You want to buy crappy windows machines for you store, you get to deal with the quirks.

At least it took the second time. Off to bed.

Mon:
Far too much driving today. Stupid three dimensional space.

Anyway, installed the latest 3.0 build today at work and started banging on it. Hadn't even started testing before I had something to write up. Honestly, it's somehow going backwards. I haven't done the number of reboots I did to my machine today ever. I mean since I got there. And I only started testing one thing.

Had to make sense of the test document, it worked a bit differently than the others I looked at. I tried to make the test cases a bit more clear.

After work (this is at 5:00 now) I left to deliver the system to Ethan Allen.

Due to a bridge out, a train, and a one lane steel bridge, plus some other factors, I arrived a little after 6:00. UGH.

Anyway, set it back up and left.

On the way home I got gas, and stopped in to pick up a gift that had come in at a store. I finally got home a little after 7:00.

Made my one phone call so I have jobs the next two days, and started the install of the SSD into the laptop.
Oddly the HD adapter didn't come in the same package, so it can't go back just yet. Weird. The tracking stopped in Penn. yesterday.

You'll notice I didn't say I went to the bank. No point, not enough checks to bother with.

Got a breakdown of all the withholdings from my paycheck in the mail. Which is bizarre, because I thought as part of being a contractor I didn't HAVE any withholdings, I had to keep track of all that crap myself. How am I going to track that with the computer business? Would have been far easier if they had not taken anything away from me. Gurr.

Tues:
Testing and more testing. Got through the print from email feature I think. Those test cases though. Sheesh. I rewrote most of them, and made sure the stuff from the requirements documents was captured. I'll go over it one more time in the morning before the meeting, and see if there's any other test cases I might want to add.

Wrote up quite a few bugs too. Couple of hangs that are reproducible, and of course some stuff from previous tests that hadn't been fixed I noted down.

My after work work was a laptop with a dead keyboard. I should have remembered to ask before I went all the way over there if it was a desktop or not. Could have saved myself the trip. Oh well. Ordered her a new one and lent her one so she can use it until then.

Supposed to be 60 tomorrow? That's nice.

The town came, no more leaf pile.

Dad's gift came, but not the enclosure for the hard drive. Hmm.

No calls today. Not a one. But I do have the cleanout tomorrow that I set up yesterday. Ah well, only a problem if I don't continue the good job. Still no news on that.

That's all for today. Became a vampire in skyrim. We'll see how it goes. I saved before hand so if it doesn't work out, I'll just choose the other path. Wish I had that ability in real life!

Wed:
The first meeting was canceled, but the second one… didn't get finished. So. Many. Bugs.

For those of you keeping count at home, I have 119 bugs logged. In three and a half weeks. Plus the 70 or so "events" from the reliability thing we still haven't gone over.

The guy who was hired with me? Less than twenty. Yeah.

Anyway, got the document finished up, asked for the next thing to do.

Did the next thing, which was pretty short, and asked for the next thing to do.

That's going to take me longer. It's another that doesn't have a lot of descriptions for what really to do, plus I need to put in all the new requirement changes and figure out what is even ready to test. So I left that undone when I left at 5:00.

Went to the tuneup, no troubles there. Got my first and only check so far this week.

Two calls today, so I made tomorrow's appointment and one for Saturday.

Got the enclosure for the old drive, so called the guy that his system was done.

And skyrim. Man, the place I'm wandering around in is huge!

Thurs:
Not too productive today, not because I didn't do a bunch of stuff, it's that my results are now called into question. See, it turns out that while I had upgraded to the latest software as instructed, the install didn't go quite right. I was left with old versions of the apps on my machine! Huh?

We were all trying to figure out why certain things were acting the way they were and came to find it out.

Well, I was told to erase the apps and reload the whole thing. So I did.

Whoops. That triggered a chain of events where "oh, that's a bug" was uttered several times.

And in the end, my machine is still unusable. I'll have to go in tomorrow and try to get it back up and running again. So I lost part of the day to that, and all the stuff I failed I'll have to go back and retest to make sure what I saw is still an issue. More than likely it is, you understand, they only fix what's broken. And they only know what's broken when the test team tells them.

Oh, and 2.3 is dead. I guess it was some kind of validation release that has been pushed out to January, so we're using 3.0 in place of it. Ah well.

One job in the evening, a cleanout that only took a half hour. Wasn't too far away, so that was fine.

One call, "no rush" but "if you can come in the next two days…" Yeah, no rush means "sometime in the next week" not "tomorrow or the next day." He called some random person thinking it was malwarebytes (who doesn't have a phone number, by the way) who tried to scam him. So I've got to go through his machine, and make sure he didn't actually pay for the real malwarebytes product, which will only slow his machine down to no purpose.

Looking ahead, getting my machine working and getting back to testing tomorrow. Meeting, though of course my bugs are all suspect now. Grr.

Seeing my parents and shopping, as is the new norm.

Weekend, two jobs planned, but no Sean for three weeks so that's out. I'll find something to do.

Then maybe a normal Sunday, playing skyrim.

Which reminds me, time for some Skyrim.

Have a good weekend everyone, and get ready for the three day week next week.

(for some)