2016-05-06:

Fri:
And so we say goodbye to some of the Staples team, and never, ever, do anything related to that… what? Oh, just keep testing? Okay?

But we did lose a developer (1 of 2) and the guy doing reliability so… yeah.

Wrote up a few things, like a back arrow going back too far, but nothing really major. Hey, at least I'll still have a job next week.

Did the shopping, etc, and ate dinner at my parent's. Yes, I went back. I saw Gabe and left corn for the deer. Figured I would go see the meowing ones, give them some petting time. As I was nearby anyway.

Oh look, the vista machine is hung on update 107 of 195. I get to start it all over again! So great.

Nothing much else exciting today. A few calls, but he wanted Monday, so nothing for tomorrow! Yay!

Sat:
Fed my parent's animals, no surprises there. Bunny didn't want to go back into his cage!

Came back here, checked websites, ate a bit of an early lunch and went to return the laptop. Mr "oh I'll be there all day" wasn't there. What a shock.

Came back here, tried to get star fox playable with two different controllers. That stupid N64 controller though, am I right? Finally got it so I wouldn't accidentally hit "first person mode" (who thought that up?) and could reliably boost and brake but then the left tilt wouldn't work. By that time I was tired of it and gave up.

Should have just fired up the actual N64 and put in my physical cartridge, I could have been up and playing in minutes. Oh well.

Watched the latest agents of shield episode, and a laptop was dropped off so I took a look at that. Seems it can't access secure sites? Ah, MS, what a lovely hot mess you are. 715 things found by mbam. Yeah, that's what not scanning for 1300+ days will do to a PC. And it still can't access SSL sites. Marvelous.

WHAT'S THIS? sfc /scannow actually worked? That's the first time I think it's done anything helpful. Usually it just says "yeah, I found some stuff but can't do anything, LOL." I'm honestly floored right now.

Did my paperwork for this month. And last month, apparently, as I hadn't done it? Odd.

And that's done. Let's just say I'm glad I still have a job now. Stupid two months at a time. Still…

Hey, laptop guy came here. Thanks, dude!

Tore apart four systems that had been sitting on the breezeway far too long. Put them in the car to go over to my parents, along with a bunch of other stuff.

Had the random thought of needing to ship an ebay package randomly paid for yesterday. Whoops. Got that packed up.

Then just watched stuff, as I'm somewhat unsure how the next bit of the story is going to go.

Sun:
Went to feed the kitties one last time, it was raining. I guess the deer didn't come as the corn was mostly still there. Come back deer!

Back here, checked my Sunday websites, and made cornbread. Then buckled down to get the next chapter created. Still don't know how the actual attack on the military base is going to go.

Finished chapter 199. No closer to a plan, but at least Susan got all the bad news she's going to get. Next chapter she'll have already put some thought into it (that means I will have) so chapter 200 can be the big battle at the base.

Played a bit of Skyrim after all this time. Got tiny Serana back, and put a couple of new mods on. One that makes things SO much more convenient. Before to loot something you had to open a separate menu, pick what you wanted, then close the menu. This just pops up a little window with the contents in it, and you just chose it and move on. So nice! It's actually an implementation of a fallout 4 system, and makes you wonder why it was never like that.

Anyway, watched a bit of anime, got ready for tomorrow, made some calls, cleaned up around here. The usual Sunday stuff.

Wonder what I'll be doing tomorrow? Hope they let me in, this will be the second extension of the contract so hopefully the badge works. First time I'll have tried it since the date passed.

Started Chapter 200, got 1/3 of the way through, or at least for a normal chapter. Not sure how long this one will be, the attack hasn't even started yet. Just discussing how they're going to approach the problem.

Mon:
Got my answer about what I was doing that day fairly early. My supervisor apparently emailed Senpai about doing all the more "minor" test cases that were not done during the push towards a final 5.0. So I got to do my two other areas, which I finished up rather nicely today. Not much had changed, but I did write up a few things.

Tomorrow I take back copy. There was yet another new build, they want us to test it for a single day, then deliver it to Staples at Noon Wednesday. Uh, okay? I found one somewhat minor problem with touching the check out button twice but he thinks it's major. Whatever, I just write them up. This happened just about at 4:30 so tomorrow I'll begin that in ernest. For one day.

Then over to book guy, always a treat dealing with him. He had 21 things in this print queue, and insisted he hadn't printed them. Despite his printing something TWICE right in front of me while insisting he had not done so. Oh really? I have eyes, friend. Oh I have eyes everywhere.

But mostly right here. *indicates general face area*

Back here, viewed my websites. Made my one phone call, booked tomorrow, a cleanout. Then started back in on chapter 200. Got another thousand words into it, and Susan is making her approach towards what she thinks is the battle zone.

Tues:
Woke this morning with the super most awesome idea for Susan's battle. Worked out some particulars today, gonna be a thing!

Did three services today. Started on copy because that's what I was asked to do. Did a bunch of that, then Senpai came over and wanted me to verify a Fax bug that required at least 18 fax jobs in a row. So I spent the rest of the morning doing that.

Then had a mini-meeting to give our status and after that we found out a couple of people hadn't gotten "the memo" about what was going on (sigh) so he switched me over to scan to USB which hadn't been done. So I did about 50 jobs in that too.

Seems okay, and I think we're shipping with our odd double press on the check out button from the home screen oddness I found. Yeah, that was me.

Tomorrow? Who knows.

Went to the cleanout after that, it went fine. Mbam scanned pretty quick, but then sat there removing the last 7 things forever. (I'm still there, how am I home typing this?)

Made my calls, job for tomorrow and Saturday already.

Shoot, almost 4000 words into chapter 200 and still have one more person to beat up before Susan can go after Ifruita and have the thing happen. I wanted this chapter to be long, but maybe not that long. OH well.

Time for bed. Sigh. Writing!

Wed:
Not much more writing today, got home pretty late.

Messed about in the morning, just more poking at stuff. In the afternoon they had worked on the fax server of all things, so Senpai asked me to try more fax tests. So I did. I did all the fax tests. It actually worked fine, so that was a relief to me, let me tell you.

Went to my next job. Set up the new equipment okay but did get cut off in the middle and had to start over, sigh. He was on imap for some bizarre reason, which I'm surprised worked at all. He lost his sent mail folder, which he was using to store things? I don't know. Anyway, as it was imap it was gone everywhere. And the "backup" that windows was doing (via the yucky Vista backup method) got the folder the outlook file was, but not the outlook file itself. Thanks, MS. Another job well done.

I did manage to get his messages from at least 2014 and earlier back from his old PC, which he still had. So that's better than nothing, right?

Got back at 8:00, no calls, so I checked my websites and got back to chapter 200, that I've been writing in my head all freaking day.

Didn't get to that part. AARG.

Thurs:
Finally got chapter 200 done. Yes! 8,397 words which is almost 3 chapters long. Whew.

So I did a bunch more FAX testing today, and even ran the actual test cases as I noticed it hadn't been done in some time. Wrote up some new bugs even! John is gone for two days (today and tomorrow) so he didn't mind.

Got some "good/bad" news as well, right at the end of the day. Xerox is making all, apparently ALL contract workers take two weeks off between now and the 24th of June. Somewhat odd, no? Apparently whoever told my boss this said the fieldglass people were going to "assign" the time but he suggested we just come up with it ourselves. So hopefully at least that goes through. Between us, my hire buddy decided he would take thurs/fri off and I would take Mon/Tues off for the rest of this month, then one day a week off until the 24th. Of course we already get the 28th and 30th off, so that'll be a five day weekend?

We figured it was better to stagger it such, just so there's someone in the lab most of the time.

So… yeah. I get to take a lot of time off for the next two months. To save the company money, I guess? But really, can two weeks pay be all that much for Xerox to save, given the loss of productivity that will result?

Weird.

No job, just came home and wrote up the stuff. Susan can take the demon out and play around with her 'new' powers, but mostly dodge questions about why her eyes are now a solid black instead of being, you know, eyes. Should be somewhat amusing.

Weekend plans: Tomorrow, maybe more fax, I don't know. Shopping of course, and seeing my parents.

One job at the moment Saturday, and I did get a call from someone I didn't reach so perhaps another. Still no invite from Sean, so I guess he hates me now. I've got cake to make for Mizzy! And a gift to give her.

More writing of course, Susan still has a busy day ahead, people to save, agents of Darkness to kill, you know the drill.

Might finally get a little warmer too, that would be nice. I'm still wearing my winter jacket, but I'm a weirdo.

So that's another week gone. See you all next week.