2016-06-03:

Fri:
Finished up chapter 213, wow it's going a bit slower than I thought, but the start is more active as the middle episodes are more spaced out I think. Eh, it's fine.

Went to the dentist.

Came back alive. AL-IVE! Oh, wait, it wasn't that dangerous? Huh. Anyway, took until about 3:00 for the feeling to come back. Must be doing okay, I didn't even get a "you're missing when you brush here" or anything. That was just a week's pay, but I should be good for many years to come, now.

Wrote up a bunch of chapter 214 and got invited to Sean's tomorrow for board games. With two people I don't know. Ah well, I'm sure I'll manage to convince them what a weirdo I am without much effort, and everything will continue on as it has done.

Did that until it was time to leave at 4:30, get the shopping done.

Bank took a bit, as usual when putting money into the IRA. I even tried to leave early.

Then went to Staples, who actually had the forms they never have which I got free thank you ink cartridges. Shopping, and over to my parent's house. Took care of their ancient computer in the basement that prints receipts, looked for a saw on a stick, and had a yummy dinner.

Then back here to put stuff away.

Made some phone calls, but no new appointments tomorrow. The one guy I did reach wants Thursday next week because he's getting a new laptop then.

Sat:
Went to the early appointment and that went fine. Standard cleanout, and she had a bunch of those fake pc "cleaners" popping up. Trashed.

Finally was over by Bob Johnson so I got the spare key to Little Sister. I won't be able to hide it quite as easily on the car itself because it has that huge plastic "grip" or whatever you call it. Protip: don't lock yourself out of your own car and you won't need it.

Back here for lunch.

Worked on chapter 214 until the fedex guy arrived with the enclosure, so I put that in. Worked fine.

Went back to writing for a bit and left about 1:20.

Got his machine decrapizfied, and took out his second router because you don't need two, people. One will do.

Had to come back here, the container I was carrying the lemonade in leaked, and I forgot the little second batch container I had made in case we ran out, so I found a new container, put the leaking one into the recycling and headed off again. Yes, the spilled stuff has stained the car seat, sigh.

Met the two new people, Kay and Justin. Now Kay was wearing a Homestuck shirt, of all things, so I figured she was okay. I wanted to ask her if she was more sad or relieved that after the time the comic hadn't been updated it was finally over. But anyone reading my blog for this long knows that wasn't going to happen. I mean talk... to a girl? Or really anyone in general? Can't be done.

Justin has the same exact car as myself, a Spark. He was talking about the "great" gas milage he gets, at 34 MPG and I was like, dude, you're doing it wrong. I get 45. His is an automatic, does it really make that much difference? I suppose he could drive like a maniac, studies have shown that the way you drive makes a lot of difference to that.

Anyway, there was a bit of food related shenanigans that resulted in us ordering pizza, which the pizza place got wrong. Apparently he "hadn't made it in a while and forgot what went on it" according to Mizzy, who went back to complain. She got the correct order and of course brought back the wrong one, so we had some to spare.

The personal one I got was really good, better than the previous one I ordered from there. I could feel my arteries clogging even as I bit into it, is was that good.

And we went out for ice cream. Was going to get peanut butter/chocolate but then figured, why not live a little? I got Caramel instead and it was yummy!

Otherwise, played some games, it was a good night.

Sun:
Was awoken by a cat nuzzling me. "oh, it's 7:00 you always get up at 7:00 and feed us, so it's feeding time right? I love you. Feed me. Hello. Feeding. etc." Honestly, how do you know?

Did some proofreading in the morning, then when I felt it was late enough I cut the back lawn. Did it front to back this time instead of side to side, and that made a huge difference. So much easier.

Did stuff around here, put the Mac into the collection. Ran a RAM test on my PC to see if that's what was crashing it playing Skyrim. Straightened up, packed up a box of games that sold, watched my one show, checked my sunday websites, all kinds of stuff today.

Worked on trying to figure out why Skyrim was crashing, as my sister is offering me several video cards that are better than mine. In the middle of this, it crashed (yet again) and then the stupid PC wouldn't boot anymore. Indeed! You know what I love doing in my free time? Not playing the one game I built the PC to play and instead smashing my head against the wall trying to get it just to boot.

I did finally manage it. Stupid thing.

It's skyrim somehow. I can run it for hours otherwise. I've been re-patching FF7 as I figure I can play that too just to see if it holds up playing another game. Not that they are in the same category of processor/memory/video card intensive. But still.

Ran a memory test too, nothing. Grr.

The patching of FF7 now works totally different than it used to, but at least I'm to the last file I need to download. (the largest one, of course.)

Got a few calls today, just going to one place tomorrow, and finally dropping that battery off. The job should be quick, something about dancing girls on the desktop? I don't know, guy always sounds like he's two minutes late for the grave, but he's still kicking I guess.

Oh, right. The reason for the FF7 reload was that when the SSDs were installed and the machine somewhat rebuilt, that was the only thing that didn't make it. Because it had been so heavily modded, you see.

Mon:
With the download complete I played FF7 a few hours in the morning, and that worked great. I left at 11:40 or so to see mr. dancing girls, and of course he didn't answer his door.

I had to go around the front, sign in, and find him at the lunch table. Why did you say 12:00? Did you somehow forget that's when you eat lunch? Anyway, the next two hours were looking at his machine and waiting for him to come back and listen to his ramblings about some text editor that 'came with his machine' that he somehow didn't have anymore. He had word, abiword, notepad, libreoffice. What other word processors do you need?

As far as dancing girls? Nope. Mbam didn't even find much. But his Avast was expired so I changed that out, looked it over. Whatever.

Dropped the battery off and went home.

Tried a new Skyrim game, but nope, didn't even get through walking in the woods (with little red riding hood) before it crashed and burned again. So it's not the save, which is somewhat of a relief because if I can find what's causing the crash, I can keep going with that one.

So I went back to playing FF7. Found out it wasn't saving properly. Came back to it and found a whole bunch of saves at the starting scene, but my two (I alternated them) were just gone.

Before I threw the thing out the window in rage I looked up what could be causing that. Didn't find anything but I did find a FF7 save pack that basically chronicled someone's entire journey through the game. So I loaded up where I had been, found a save editor to put back the Materia I had bought, and continued.

I saved and then quit, which seemed to make it save better. Also I didn't alternate, who knows if that has anything to do with it.

I just want to play a couple of games. Without wanting to bang my head against the wall. Is that so much to ask?

Other news: Saw a baby deer and a toad today. Tried to get a picture of the fawn but it scurried away. It was hanging out in my berry bushes, probably kinking them so I won't have any berries this year. (inside joke)

The toad Squeaker actually found, I heard him pawing at the downstairs window and went to see what was up. There was the toad. A big one, too.

Rained, but was nice most of the day.

No calls today, so I'll probably play more FF7 tomorrow. I hadn't planned to play it so soon, but after having done all that modding work I figure I'll keep at it. It looks pretty good, for fan efforts to spruce it up. Sounds good too, a lot of the music was upgraded.

Tues:
So I no longer believe it's just Skyrim. FF7 did the same thing to me twice today, either freezing and repeating the last note it played, or just blue screening completely. Wonder if it's the sound card? Huh, hadn't considered that…

Other things done: Paperwork for this month. Brought package to post office. Swept ants out of kitchen and plugged hole in the annual ritual. Sent estimated tax money to gobmint. Brushed a kitty. Did more proofreading. Talked a lady through some stuff for a bit, then another guy through some stuff for a longer time. Booked tomorrow, so I have Wed/Thurs booked. Sat out in the sun and breathed in the corrosive gas that turns metals into dust.

Now THAT is a day off. Got to Cosmo Canyon in FF7, not that this fact means much to most of you out there.

Back to work tomorrow! Hope I remember the way, and everything.

Wed:
Hey, I did. Amazing. Boring day. Nothing new to test yet, probably not until next week even. Didn't really write anything up either, but then, neither did anyone else so there's that.

After work job was fairly fast. Of course he didn't know the password to the router so I just reset it. Got the printer back on, looked things over, done.

Finished chapter 214 and started the next episode. Huh, not sure how I'm going to do that one. I thought the next one was a different one, which I did have mental plans for. Whoops.

No calls, but still a setup job tomorrow so that's fine.

Thurs:
Not much to report work wise today, and it's going to be even more sparse tomorrow. No new builds, and once again I'll be the only one in my lab from my group.

Cyndi is now off the project completely, so we talked to "new Cyndi" who I actually knew from her working on the project before, so I guess Cyndi was actually "new Kathy?" So we're back to "original Kathy?" Something like that.

Should be very dull tomorrow.

After work job went fine. The new laptop was surprisingly quick so I looked at the HD. Nope, not even a hybrid, just a crappy spinning rust drive. Odd. It kept dropping the old drive but as it was USB3 and an SSD the speed of the copy made up for it. Got it all installed and that was fine.

Back here, had two calls so I have two jobs for Saturday. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Both seem pretty easy, the morning one is the desktop not getting email? Maybe it's just unplugged, you know how that goes.

The other is a machine that updated (itself) to 10 and now the printer doesn't work. Should be easy enough right?

Started chapter 215 because of course I did.

What else? Normal routine tomorrow, after what will be a very long day. Shopping, then going to see my parents. I'll be getting my sister's video cards so I'll pop them in and see if my Skyrim problem goes away.

Saturday as specified, no Sean news yet.

Then Sunday mowing the front lawn and probably more writing. Maybe more Skyrim/FF7 playing if my hanging problem has gone away. And I sincerely hope it does.

And that's the close of the Memorial day week.

With my contract now again less than a month from expiring, I am at least somewhat hopeful as our next delivery is supposedly mid July, meaning they probably wouldn't kick us out with 2/3 weeks of testing still to do, right?

Let's hope it gets extended again.

Bye for now, see everyone next week.