2015-12-11:

Fri:
Busy day today, but that'll be nothing in comparison to tomorrow.

Got through my test cases and wondered what next to do. Meeting was canceled so didn't have that to distract me. I was going to go through the new timeout table Jonh came up with and affix it to the test cases that didn't have it. But then a wild boss appeared!

She wanted me to do copy stuff, as that's the area most used by Staples customers. So I did a bunch of stuff to that. Wrote up some new bugs, too. I forget the exact number of new ones since Wednesday but it was somewhere near 50 I think. (Total, for the team. Not just me. That would be insane. Interesting, but insane.)

After that madness was over I went to pick up the PC and got an SD card across the street at Staples. Had to turn in my monthly ink anyway.

Then over to my parent's house for a nice meal and looking at my father's computer.

After that I went out and got new shoes, food for Mystery (I got rabbit food as it looked to be basically the same thing, came in a larger bag, and cost less. Go figure.)

Then food for myself which I had to actually remember because I lost my grocery list somewhere along the line. Sigh.

Finally got home about 8:00, put everything away, made some phone calls so I have two appointments for Sunday, yippee.

So let's see, sunday is

paperwork
2 pcs, though I could just do the one, I guess.
Two jobs.
Plus any other calls I get on Saturday?

Should be fun. Of course still looking forward to tomorrow!

Sat:
Didn't work out exactly as planned, but what does.

My 12:00 called that someone had come over and solved her issue days ago, "sorry I didn't call earlier." Yeah, so am I.

Anyway, right after that I left for my 9:00, the first big mystery of the day. Her machine is dropping wireless left and right. The printer looses it too.

Thought it was the router. Changed it for a used one I had, as I hadn't picked up another yet. Nope, still dropped. By then about 2 hours had gone by with me trying different things, including my little usb wireless adapter from years ago I didn't even would think would work. It actually found drivers for it! Still dropped.

So I brought it back here.

Reloaded the laptop. Of course, the keyboard didn't work so I couldn't get into the startup menu because apparently USB keyboards aren't recognized at that stage. So it wouldn't boot from the flash drive. "No problem," I thought to myself, "I'll just erase the hard drive, then it'll have to boot from other media."

No.

It just decided to throw up a "no boot device." with a raspberry.

So I downloaded it to DVD thinking that might be higher in the boot order? Nope.

Finally reset the BIOS by taking the battery out and hey presto, it booted that time.

The desktop I got upgraded to win10. Went to get the number, "oh, this copy of windows isn't activated because the previous version wasn't activated." Uh, what? Okay, so let me punch in the old number, activate it and… why are you laughing?

I had to erase 10, put 7 back on, "activate" it, then redownload 10 all over again and install it on that machine. Thanks, MS, you're the greatest.

Went to my 2:00, the upgrade guy. 10.11 won't go over 10.6, only 10.6.8 for some reason. Of course his crappy DSL connection was going to take 4 hours to get the 1 GB file so I said forget this crap. Left him a copy of the 10.11 updater, told him to click it when the machine booted. Also gave him the messed up copy of his book and told him to fix it before I printed it again.

Then to my 4:00, a very difficult job of changing some batteries in a mouse.

Go find a 2 year old. Ask them this: "If something battery powered stopped working, what would you do first?" $10 says their first response is "change the batteries." But an 80 year old man doesn't think to try that?

And finally over to Sean's. No Other Sean, so Sean won some board games. Watched a bit of Titans and Get Smart, and came back to bed.

Sun:
The laptop is working fine, both on my wireless and the Netgear I had it connected to over there. What the literal freak?

My 10:00, another quite tricky job, involved me carrying a monitor around because they said the bottom half of their screen was messed up. Figured it was the panel.

Nope.

They had just dragged their taskbar up to cover half the screen. Oddly enough I cannot find a google image of this hilarious scenario so you'll just have to imagine it. Why did some coder at MS believe stretching your task bar to take up half the screen would be something ANYONE actually wanted to do? Why was that even a thought in their minds?

Back here I got my shows downloaded, called laptop lady to set up a time to get this back to her (and curse it out some more over there for probably not working any better now than before) and ate lunch.

Out immediately for my 1:00. I had hopes (faint ones, but there they are) about maybe getting done in an hour, and having time to do one of the people that called yesterday. Nope. Took two. Nothing really major, windows update using 1.5gb of RAM for some bizarre reason, turned off. Bye bye. Various other little things, I don't even care.

Picked up a new router to sell to the lady I took the laptop back to. It had stayed up fine when I wasn't using it, but when I went to Facebook (to watch the FF 7 HD remake footage, nach) it died immediately again.

So I guess there's something wrong with this Netgear, trashed.

Anyway, hooked that up, went 20 minutes without an issue, guess that was it.

By then it was 4:00 and I didn't care anymore, so I came home. Did my dishes, other house type stuff. Got ready for tomorrow.

Got to play a little skyrim before Ellen called. Very little, because she needed a half hour to email the label she wanted to get from eBay to the lady she accidentally sent a spoon to so she could forward it to the person that should have actually gotten it.

Wheeee…

Mon:
I don't know, today just wasn't. I've been tired and vaguely headache-y all day, and I'm never like that. Even now I'm still not at 100%, not that I would be because why would I get better over time? I've been known to, shall we say, not be optimal after staying really late at Sean's house but I was good and came home early, and got plenty of sleep the night before. So I don't know where this is coming from. I got a solid 8 hours last night.

Anyway, mostly looked over the database of past failures in the copy app to see if any sounded familiar. Wrote up a few new bugs regardless, including one nasty one that crashed everything several times right at the end of the day. Repeatable, so write up able. There's one more I'll write up first thing, the thing I was actually investigating when the crash happened, actually. The crash was more interesting, and I only had time for one, so it happened.

The team leader wants to take us to breakfast for the holiday Wednesday, so that's nice of her.

Oh, and I got the paperwork for getting my new badge, so I guess I'm working there for a couple more months at least. Yay! I'll do that tomorrow morning.

Did my after work job, setting up a new PC. Took about two hours, ugh. Got home, made my phone calls. Oh joy, five calls today? Really? Where did all you people COME from? I haven't had more than three calls in a day in months. Of course, I didn't reach everyone. But still. That's tomorrow and wednesday gone. And it's only Monday.

Anyway, 8:30 right now so I'm going to get ready for bed. Once I'm not on the clock anymore it's nap time for this guy.

Tues:
Felt far more awake and alert today, thanks for asking.

Went and got my new badge in the morning. Almost had to go back, her computer wasn't letting her log on to the system. But she called after me when I was almost back to the car that it had come up.

Of course it wouldn't let me into the building. But it worked later.

More work on the copy service. Not many bugs written today, we may have exhausted that little well. But I do have to try capturing video/logs of a hang after it spits the copy out. As I've only seen it maybe once a day, should be "fun."

My night job was setting up a crappy PC. One of those ultra low cost desktops HP is so fond of making. Laptop motherboard with an external, laptop power brick, no internal expansion, and slow as a slow thing stapled onto another slow thing.

Finally got her stuff moved over and got home about 7:15. Only one call, someone who let scammers onto their machine. Didn't I just rant about that? So that's my Saturday- sorry my first Saturday appointment. The other guy was talking about Dish and setting up an antenna instead. Dude, it's an antenna. Plug it in to the back of the TV, it hasn't changed since radio was invented.

Anyway, checked my sites, got ready for tomorrow. Which is the breakfast by my supervisor, then recreating the hang as best I can. We should be getting a new build too, so I might not even see it?

Then setting the system up for the outreach place. What is it with new systems being set up? Of course, this is a used system with an SSD, because I won't sell a system to someone with spinning rust inside. Because unlike some companies, I actually care about my customers. (To an extent, of course, to an extent.)

Did my weekly printing to keep my printer from gumming up, had to change all cartridges. My goodness, I waste more ink cleaning that thing. Good thing the cartridges were so cheap Staples pays me to use them.

And that's about it for today. After 9:00, not much point me playing Skyrim this late, I'd hardly get anywhere. Guess I'll just pet a kitten instead.

Still no snow, by the way. In fact it could be mid fifties tomorrow. Fifties! In December! And stay that way until Sunday no less. How did we get so lucky?

Wed:
Didn't go into work, instead went a nice breakfast kindly provided by the project manager. Thanks!

Then I did go into work.

Not much to tell, still no new build, poked around the copy utility some more. I did manage to capture the logs and video for it hanging after it did a job, so pretty excited about that.

Afterwords I set up the new machine for the Outreach place. Of course, the person with the checkbook "forgot I was coming" so I had to sit there waiting while she arrived from home. Thanks lady!

Got back at 7:00, two calls today, and then a third canceling tomorrow's. Hum… well, do I call someone from saturday and see if they want tomorrow or just do whoever calls tomorrow, tomorrow? What to do?

Oh, and I don't have to do any more work until the new year! It's true. My boss said goodbye for the year, he's off until the 2nd of next year. I'm kidding, I'll still work. I guess.

Ordered another system from the place I just got this one for the lady, as she wants her machine replaced as well.

Checked my websites, ate dinner, looked at the inkjet I have as theirs is shot. This one did print… in 2014. Doesn't look like it wants to now though. I'll probably just give it to him if he buys the cartridges for it.

Not much else exciting today. These long appointments though, they have to GO. Getting back after 7:00 is killing me.

Of course getting stuck on the phone at 9:15 for twenty minutes with some guy who tried opening LibreOffice, it didn't, and rather than trying to understand what was going on, just tried it again and again and again. It looked like about 50 or so times. I tried to direct him to shut them down, but after I saw how many he still had I just had him reboot. Unasked for and unwanted, good old Windows Update had to slog through whatever it thought was needed. Finally it came back and oh look, it's fine.

ugh.

Well, off to bed. At least I got to watch a pony episode in fits and starts, right?

Thurs:
The parking lot seems emptier. Wonder why.

Somewhat boring at work today. No new build, same old bugs. Mostly I went through the ones I had written as "events" during that big worthless test we ran for days and days. Any that were still not fixed that I saw then got turned into real bugs. Done.

Supposedly getting a new build tomorrow, we'll see. I hope so. Our meetings are canceled, apparently forever, so I don't even have that to waste time with anymore.

I did spy some cake on the way out. I… may have two pieces?

Didn't have any customer calls (apart from the lawyers place who was using a really, really bizarre workflow I wrapped my head around during lunch) I had no job for the evening. I called my 3:00 saturday but no answer, so I came back here.

No answer on the two that called during the afternoon, so I got to actually play some Skyrim for once. Watched another pony episode too.

As the week comes to a close we'll do our normal Friday stuff like the shopping and seeing my parents.
Saturday I have a TON of jobs, like four? Four.

And another one for Sunday already. Where are all you people coming from?

Hope to wrap the gifts, oh, and maybe get out and get some for the game? Don't have too many weekends left to do that, and it's not happening Saturday, that's for sure.

No Sean, maybe my father will come over and finish up those Dr Who episodes I haven't even watched yet.

Otherwise, two weeks to Christmas, it could be 60 Monday, life is good!

See you all next week.