2016-02-26:

Fri:
Ugh, that document!

Still, spent some of the day going down and getting my questions ready for when/if the person that wrote the spec. Spent more time after talking to my manager about how to best go though the testing of this particular area in future. She agreed smashing it down into 3 rows vs 9 for each service, then taking copy+random copy+random print each pass. So I did that. Turning it into a much more manageable document. Got through my service with tons of cases skipped, some pass, two failed.

So not a bad ending to the week, though I think I left my case behind! I can't find it around here. Not in the car, not in the kitchen. Where in the heck did that thing go? I hope it's just sitting there on the table, and honestly I can't imagine where else it could be. I pick it up, I walk out with it. I didn't leave it on the bathroom shelf on the way out, because I have the bag and my food container. It then would have gone in the car, then in the house.

So it must be there.

Had a very nice meal with my parents after doing the shopping, and came back here. Not many calls, watched a few episodes and went to bed.

Sat:
Very productive, in certain ways. No jobs except one person that came here at 2:00. So I kept going though the large box of games. I found a bunch that just don't work anymore. Some obviously scratched up, others not so.

My dreamcast is totally dead. Won't load anything. It's not a huge deal, of course, but it's not like I've used it that much since receiving it, I only have one game for it. I would like to say my collection is completely playable, but oh well.

The gamecube I got at the ronald sale several years ago came with the game boy attachment on the bottom. Curious, (as it had just gone into the collection and sat there until now) I looked into it. Turns out you need a disk to actually make it work, and they go for at least $50 on ebay. Ouch.

Got though all the PS2 and gamecube games, So I have a few Xbox 360s, some PS3 games I hope my sister can test at some point, and the box of Xbox games.

Some PS2 games I couldn't test, because they require instruments or other add ons I don't possess.

Cleaned up the place so my 2:00 didn't think me a total slob.

Changed the battery in the macbook. Very slow for some reason, I'm worried about that machine.

And then made a pie.

Oh, also noticed someone getting the snow out from around the hydrant in front of my house. Felt a bit bad about him doing that alone, especially as it was my house it was in front of, so I stepped out of character for a moment and went out to offer my assistance. He seemed a bit surprised, though of course it's difficult for me to tell sometimes… never mind. We cleared that out in a few minutes. And of course his name completely escapes me now. I'm a terrible person, I really am. My father would have learned the man's entire life story in the few moments he spent with him, of that I have no doubt.

Found the front of my mailbox. It's somewhat squished (the entire mailbox, not the front part) at the moment so putting it back on doesn't gain me much. I don't think they'll fall over but there's still a lot of snow there so who knows.

Lots of melting out today, it was very nice. Hopefully won't be too bad tomorrow, either.

Got up to episode 17 of Elementary, of course I didn't give it my full attention, with all that other stuff going on.

And that was today.

Sun:
Not nearly as sunny today, but I did see some melting, so that was all to the good.

Got through a large portion of the xBox games, only a few of them didn't work. Many don't have the manual, which may impact salability. I did the ones with manuals first, of course. It's just struck me they even have manuals, as you would be hard pressed to find a modern game with anything resembling that at this stage. Anyway, they're all done so I'll list them first. Maybe the rest in one big lot?

And more Elementary watched. Got through all of season 2 and into season 3.

Only one call, quickly retracted because it was a loose wire. Odd, how business has seemingly vanished overnight. Fine with me at the moment, I completely enjoyed a quiet weekend. But still strange how it happens.

Only other highlight was delicious pie eaten. Just a slice or two, I don't mean I ate the whole thing.

Mon:
Where did today go? Honestly, I feel like I didn't get much done.

Went through several new open bugs, wrote one new "feature request" for a cancel button in a certain spot.

Was going to start testing copy, but the lady that wrote the Alerts spec stopped in to see us. We went over it for about two hours, getting clarification on certain things and pointing out missing sections and such.

Then started putting the changes into the document and writing up new test cases. Didn't actually finish it, and it was time to go!

Weird.

Came back here, no job to go to, so I picked up with Elementary. Checked my websites for Monday, and now it's about time to get ready for tomorrow.

Hopefully I can get the last of the alert stuff done, put it behind me, and get on with copy.

Tues:
Did still more open ones at work, finally the list is getting paired down.

And moved on to copy. Our meeting got canceled, something about the upgrade not going really well, which it didn't, actually. That process used to be quite good, but something happened to it. In other news, apparently 6 were lost in a nearby lab? One of the people in my group said that many people are now gone from where he is. *worried*

Some new bugs written. Some very strange behavior right at the end of the day. Have to look into that tomorrow.

Went out after got home, helped a lady with various issues. Like typing a number into a website, and ripping out her expired norton. And telling her she's being scammed by iYogi or whatever they're called. Good times.

Few calls but no job for tomorrow.

Wed:
Copy copy copy copy. Had a bit of hassle with the new method for updating the printer firmware, but mine went through okay. Two machines needed to be looked at but ultimately survived the process.

Had yesterday's meeting, and then started more copy tests. Couldn't reproduce all of the bizarre stuff from yesterday, but I did get a good chunk of it written up.

Didn't make it all the way through copy, so it'll be back to it tomorrow, and probably friday. Still have to do the matrix for reduce/enlarge and such. Found out that an 11x17" sheet reduced to 64% which is supposed to fit on an 8.5X11 page is rotated and cropped. Whoops. The normal device does it perfectly.

Got the real screensaver images too, looking sharp!

Came back here, ate dinner, then made a phone call. Wasn't sure I could save his machine, but in the end I finally got chkdsk to run and it booted. Twice, even. Checked his awful Win7 backup and freed up some space. Seems to be working okay now.

No other real calls, one guy wants to leave his machine here, fine with me, I can work on it over the weekend.

But now I must call my most favorite person in the world, Ellen.

That only took 45 minutes. Doesn't she have a rochester number cell phone? Why doesn't she take it with her? Who knows how much that long distance call cost me.

Anyway, I guess I have time for one episode and that's it for Wednesday.

Thurs:
Finished copy! Haha! Well, mostly, anyway. I have at least another day or two of the matrix to run. Sigh.

But I had written 10 of the 26 bugs when I looked so there's that. I think 3 more now and I'll have an even 400.

No meeting, our supervisor wasn't feeling well so she "worked from home." Must be nice.

The new build was sanity tested, but it doesn't install well, so it can't be done automatically. We're not sure if we're going to deploy it to the whole team.

Did part of the matrix, realized I really had no direction as to what the copies should look like! So I don't really know if I should pass them or not, apart from the obvious ones, anyway.

Got nasty out on the way home, it's been snowing ever since.

Spent an hour and a half trying to get Act! to talk to outlook. Turns out, if you have outlook installed and install Act!, great! Everything works fine. But if you have Act! installed and load outlook? No… can't let you do that, fox. Taking it away was rather painful. It gave me some crap about an ACT7 database when I tried to load Act 18 again, had to take out SQL Server as well, then put it all back. Fun.

Anyway, that worked, thank goodness, and he was on his way. I get to make him a new machine when he gets it, so looking forward to doing it all again.

Just one call, talked to her and she was having router shenanigans but had worked it out at least partially herself.

So I just have 1 job this Saturday, to help "look for a file" which I expect to go quite badly. No news on Sean, so not sure there.

Tomorrow of course the shopping, and a quiet weekend of putting more ancient video games up on ebay.

Stay warm out there, and I'll see you all next week.