2015-12-04:

Fri:
Mostly I played skyrim.

Got my outside lights going, they look okay.

Did the shopping, about 2:00 in the afternoon so there was no craziness. There wasn't. Didn't actually need all that much, honestly.

Except for maybe a little honesty?

Sat:
Here's what I did NOT do: Play Skyrim all day.

Oh wait.

Seriously though, I did other stuff. Like putting my Christmas tree up. And listening to some Christmas music. And maybe… getting into the spirit just a little bit? The snow can hold off as much as it likes though. I won't mind.

Got a call, and an email so I have two jobs tomorrow. That should make up for it.

Also watched Supergirl, and that's it, as apparently all other show episodes are delayed for some reason. Dr Who of course I held off on.

For now.

Sun:
And here's something I did not do all day… Play Skyrim.

I tried of course.

I did play a bunch in the morning. Then I went and did the two jobs. The Win10 one was about as expected. For the first half hour it wouldn't install at all, some error about "we can't tell how much free space you have." Uh, really? I looked that up and some people had success with booting their install disk and running the "repair" procedure. According to some it detected a problem, fixed it, and the install would then, you know, begin. 
So I tried it. And what do you know, it actually did that very thing. Something about the boot record I guess? But then how did the machine even boot in the first… you know, I don't want to know.

Then about 4:30 over to set up the router, which went smoothly.
Got back here, ate dinner. No calls to make from today so I just have the one I set up a few days ago, switching her Yahoo account over to the company that bought them, or whatever. Because a simple rename job wouldn't require you to set up new accounts, is what I'm thinking.

Got ready for tomorrow, did the laundry. Huh, work tomorrow. My job. Feels odd.

Mon:
Here's a thing I did not do at all today. Play Skyrim. Let me tell you why.

First I went into work. No meeting today, I guess it was decided that it wasn't worth it? Anyway, finished up the test cases I could, and there's a depressing number that I could not. But as I took that on of my own free will, I'm not complaining.

Came home for lunch, checked my bank balance. Hey, I got paid.
This means I end a month with a slight but noticeable positive balance! In fact it hasn't been that high in a long time!

I'm lying of course.

Until I "repay" myself for the car I just bought I'm still running a deficit. Which will take, if I don't spend any of the money I make at Xerox, 6.5 months to replace. Or more than my current contract runs for. Le Sigh. Think I'll get some new shoes though, these are pretty much falling apart, have I have them one year or two??? Huh. Yeah, that's the plan for Sat/Sun I think. Shoe hunting. (And by hunting, I mean going down to Walmart.)

I know, you get a little money and suddenly you're buying all kinds of stuff. For shame!

But at least now there's the possibility of it going up, right? And other work should help a bit.

(I'm not making it on the stock market, I lost $9 on that today. If it doesn't go up soon I'll have made roughly zero in my fund all year. I suppose some might tell me to be glad I did't loose all that much, as I just as easily could have. 10% yearly gains my butt.)

Went back to work. With a new build loaded I started going through all the fixed issues assigned to me. For a wonder most were. I found a flew new things though.

That took me the rest of the day.

After work I went to my two jobs, the first which was quite easy. Just filling out the form to move her yahoo account to the new thing they're calling themselves, and why couldn't they just do that? Who knows. Then the checkup, that went from 6:00 to 7:00, he got one of those stupid cold calls and naturally followed all their directions to a certain point. Honestly, hasn't word gotten out about that scam yet? It's been years! Stop picking up the phone and talking to people claiming to be "from windows" or whatever.

Got gas on the way home ($14!) and made my phone calls.

Spent exactly an hour getting a canon scanner to somewhat work remotely for a guy. The carpet place I know is a million miles away, and that I would not have time (or the willpower) to drive to in the blinding darkness and cold that comprises my after work experience currently.

It still wouldn't use the canon software after the upgrade ("scan failed" Yeah that's a big help, thanks) but he could right click on the printer icon and do a scan that way. So he said that was fine.

Then yet another person talking to scammers? And a Mac user at that? How… what? It's the guy just down the street. What, do these people have talismans of PERsonality or something? What the heck? So I'm going over there tomorrow and he's getting a new credit card in the mail. *shakes head*

Didn't reach one person, and my friend Ellen called about her pictures being weird, as usual, because she has no life apart from listing stuff on ebay.

Finally ate dinner, went through my websites, and didn't have time to play Skyrim. Ah well, I played enough the past few days.

So that was my Monday, last day November 2015. Christmas in 25 days!

Tues:
A good bit of testing done today. Started and nearly finished the performance matrix I had previously helped create. It was somewhat slow going for a few reasons, the first that some services I could only use 2/3 of the time because they either did something weird, invalidating the test or stopped altogether. 
When I was able to do it, I insisted on doing the test twice, rebooting the tablet, running one job, then running the job again, then rebooting again. I figured this way it would reveal any change in performance from the first job to the next, but it was pretty consistent. 
I made movies of every test so I could go over it and get the times. That seemed the easiest way. Got two new bugs out of catching things that were hard to reproduce, so there's that.

Meeting tomorrow, the long one, and possibly longer because of number of bugs? Who knows. Anyway, I'll probably finish that performance thing up right before the meeting as I only had 5 more tests to do, and then we'll move on to the next thing.

My evening activities were two. Mr "my camera doesn't work" but it did. I also looked his machine over after the scam attack, and there didn't seem to be anything there that shouldn't be.

Then called the guy with the laser printer that is jamming (and not in the good way) because his router was down. When I got there he was all "oh, I played with it and now it's working again. AARG. But it was double AARG when he wanted me to take the printer.

Note, I specifically found and gave him the number of a place that did ON SITE repair work. But he didn't even ask, the moron.

Now I've got to see when they're open and drag that heavy thing down there, and then go get it when (if) it works again. I don't have time for that! I have paying customers to service!

Made a crude but effective carrying case for the phone/flash drives/cord as I'm going to be taking them in to work every day. Nicer to carry than trying to put them in the paper folder thing they're always falling out of. Sort of cut up cardboard and glue holding everything in place, inside an old VHS tape holder as near as I can tell. I don't know what it originally was, actually. Some kind of plastic case for something that I saved. I'd put a picture, but it's not for human eyes.

My "partner" in back actually left before I did toady, and it wasn't even five! Never done that before. Very different styles, he and I. I lock everything up (as per policy) and make sure the area is free of papers and such in case someone wants to use my machine when I'm not there. (One lady comes in at 9:00 and stays later) All saved papers in their place, neat and clean.

He, on the other hand, just leaves his laptop (running, I might add, I could have done ANYTHING to it) along with his glasses, flashlight, papers, etc. all over the table he uses. It just struck me as… I don't know. Like if you walked back there you would find no trace of me, but he was "claiming" the space? Something like that.

Two new calls today, reached one person. Victor. Ugh. That's an hour of driving tomorrow to look forward to. Setting up a printer (AARG!) and checking his machine over, I guess. We'll see.

Think I'm going to play a bit of Skyrim.

Wed:
Got started on some new test cases, that I didn't even know I had been assigned.

Didn't actually finish the performance stuff as I had hoped. I still had two more to go as we all went to the meeting to talk about not having the meeting anymore. Turns out developers aren't coming? Though I think at least one was there today. Ah well, she's leaving it in the air for the moment.

But she did have a new spreadsheet, and apparently version 3 is going out to Staples by the end of the month? Uh, is that such a good idea? There's some major bugs in this product you know. Oh well.

So after the meeting I finished up the performance stuff and had lunch. Then came back and started my next tasks. Two separate areas, one that has results from before but not a lot of detail as to how to actually accomplish the tests.

The other, shorter one, apparently had never been worked on, leaving me to construct all of it. I got through it, but did email the person I found in the document for clarity on certain points. I wrote up… two new bugs I think? Just minor stuff, believe me.

Then started on the other one. More time was spent going over the various supporting documents, making sure I had the requirements in there, in order, and everything that was testable was marked so. I only got about three or four into in. So I'll have plenty to do tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Three weeks until Christmas eve.

Rainy and nasty today. It was fantastic! Know why? It wasn't snow.
And further it doesn't look like low temps for the next few days either. 
We must have been good this year?

Did my job in Victor. 40 minutes to get there, ugh. It went fine, his machine didn't really need much. Apart from a delay getting into the thing when he logged in, it had "acceptable" performance. Ran mbam in 35 minutes, and stuff opened right up. Didn't find anything. But I looked it over. Then drove home for like a half hour. In the darkness and the rain.

Let's see… not many calls. One person "lost chrome" but really just had her homepage changed. Thanks, Yahoo. And I didn't reach the person from yesterday. So nothing for tomorrow, at least for the moment.

That was it for today. I gave the paperwork to my boss yesterday to get my badge renewed, let's hope that goes through soon, I have only a week left now on this one!

And I have paperwork to do. Weekend!

Already have two jobs for Saturday, so maybe Sunday, or in the morning. We'll see how that goes, it's only Wednesday.

And now it's over.

Thurs:
Looking towards a very busy next couple of days!

Got most of the tests done, I'm down to the infinite ways to power the machine off and on again, and make sure it comes up each time. Those were the ones I myself added to the test cases a little while ago, so that shouldn't be too bad. It's just annoying how long it takes the machine to power itself back on.

One weird thing that happened, my tablet suddenly decided it was 2035, four days from now. That happened right at the end of the day, so I'll try and reproduce that first thing tomorrow.

Called the printer repair place. Guess when they're open? Right, 9-5, Mon-Fri. Guess who is at work during all those times? This guy! So I called him, no answer, to see what he wanted me to do. Because I'm not driving to fairport and back on my lunch break!

The PC for the outreach center came. Or should I say half came? I got a soggy (it rained all day, but it's not snow!) attempted delivery note on the front door, of course he sent it signature needed. Baka jerk. I'll probably stop on my way home for lunch.

After work I went to see Mr million text files. Once again he's got a folder full of 300 of them to print. I printed one copy, it's messed up of course, so he's going to have to go through it again before I print more. That and my printer is low on toner. You'd think $8.00 of toner would last you more than a year, I tell ya.
Took me a half hour to figure out how to best print his 300 text files. Why? WHY?

Didn't reach the person I wanted so I just came back here. Got a bunch of calls.

So Saturday is pretty much booked at this point. I have one in the morning, then three in the afternoon (includes text file guy, I have to go finish his upgrade to 10.11. He was on 10.5 of all things, so I had to take him to 10.6 first. I'm just glad I had RAM for him.) Then Sean's. I thought it would be four weeks before we got together again, but no, it's three. Wonder if I should wrap the gifts up that are going over there and bring them? Hum.. So I'll go there after my 4:00, he wants to upgrade to Win10. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm not staying there for 2 hours doing that. But he just wants it to work as he said it was "frozen up" so we'll see I guess.

I'll probably do the shopping and get new shoes tomorrow. Seems like I have to go that way anyway, might as well go to Target instead of Walmart, it's right across from Aldi anyway.

Took another call, someone switching to Frontier "to save money" and can't get their DSL to work. I think it's the box, the machine hard wired into it won't see it.

With all that it's nearly 9:00.

Then Sunday, probably any calls I get between now and then, and hopefully some time to do this paperwork. Reload that laptop. Go over the desktop for the outreach center.

Why did I think doing two jobs was a good idea? OH, right, money. Strange, I don't seem to be depositing all that much from the repair business. Like the $0 I deposited this week, as it wasn't worth it.

So that's today, tomorrow, the next and the next planned all out for ya. We'll see how close I got when we meet up next week.

See you then. (21 days left!)