2016-07-15:

Fri:
Bored, bored, bored. Last night the software was rolled back so the new "patch" release could be installed today and testing could begin.

Guess what we didn't get?

Instead I recalled that I had never finished the email service refit (proofreading the blog from last week reminded me) so I finished that up, instead.

Bought rope, (was disappointed to not find it in the "bulk" quantity I wanted, just small bags, sigh) screws, Heather gift, food, and saw my parents.

Back here about 7:30 I made my three phone calls, reached only one person, then got a forth call, so I have four tomorrow. Yay?

Continued the 22gb download from last night, got the replacement RAM in, a replacement ordered for the bug filled modem…

CRAP.

I forgot to apply the ebay bucks. Why is that stupid box not checked by default?

oh, right, because they don't want you using them, and figure you'll forget. Like I just did for the second time. AARRG.

Checked my sites, got Heather's gift ready, oops, just took another call, from another new person. Now I have five appointments tomorrow, and still haven't reached the two that called earlier.

Weekend? What weekend?

At least I went over the system and decided I had gotten everything off of it. So I started the reload of that.

Sat:
Today wasn't as awful as it could have been! Progress.

Got up, decided to put 10 on the system instead of leaving 7 on it, because why not? Quicker to upgrade, right? So I started that. Made the new machine gobble up the disks Sean gave me, and left for my 9:00.

It was a crappy XP machine, and basically his problem was "it's a crappy XP machine." Apparently dropbox doesn't support it any more, along with a lot of stuff, for some bizarre reason because honestly has windows programming changed all that much in thirty years? I don't see it. But I ran what I could, he had no real issues, and that was that. Early but only by a bit to the next one, I answered various questions and got his machine back online by unplugging his router.

Came back for lunch, worked on the old system, took all the SSDs out of it and buttoned it back up.

The furthest away one was my 1:00, also just some dumb crap like emailing some woman in China that cannot possibly exist. Honestly, the entire site is a scam, how can he not see that? But whatever. All their pictures look professionally taken? Sure, they're real women. Sure they are. Idiot.

Then to the next one where I saw a kitty I feel is probably feral. He wouldn't let me get close, just went under her porch through a hole in the wooden grating. Stay safe, kitty.

She just needed her kindle password punched into her new kindle, took me 10 seconds. She also gave me her brother's old desktop, a windows8 machine so it's fairly recent. Why was the HD changed to a laptop HD though? Odd. She wanted to know if there was anything on it (there wasn't) so she gave it to me to sell and said we could split it. I'll probably SSD it up like this one and put it on ebay, they seem to go for a decent amount.

Next one let me come early, and her main issue was "your Mac is woefully out of date." She couldn't get to certain SSL sites, so I updated her firefox and that solved the bulk of her problems. Answered a few other questions.

Back here (finally) I started work on the cat playground, and got all but the rope done! Because there was not enough rope by a long shot. Have to get it cheeper and in bulk. I'll take the one unopened package back.

My mother suggested carpet on the uprights as well, so I did that on the three upper ones. Took about 2.5 hours, but it's almost done. Hope they appreciate it!

Watched an episode of Supernatural, and tested the old system by running Open Morrowind for a couple of hours. True, it's not skyrim, but it's not crashing either. Nice.

Wonder if I should put it on ebay too…

Got more calls today so answered them. Reached people from yesterday, so booked a job way into next Saturday, and another for tomorrow, in the morning. Yay.

Sun:
Busy morning, and it's not even over.

Picked berries.
Started the install of the SSD into the PC I got yesterday so I can get it ready for sale. Got 8 and then 10 loaded on it.

Finished up the encoding of season 10 Supernatural.

Checked my websites.

Got ready to go. Went to the 11:00, went fine, use dropbox. Seriously.
Set up their new machine so they can live someplace else until they move because their house sold. Seems like poor planning to me.

No news from the book guy so instead I came back here, ate lunch, and cut the front lawn. Not the grass, mind you, just the millions of tall dandelions that were out there.

Picked more berries.

Got the PC on ebay, along with the unpaid for GPS unit and another lot of PS1 controllers.

Got a call from book guy whining about how I wasn't there. Really? Because I didn't think I was supposed to be, given your lack of verifying our appointment time.

Did laundry, then my paperwork for last month.

Put in another mod or two for skyrim, some better textures than the "official" ones. Now I just have to find a time to play it and enjoy all this modding goodness.

Watched some more supernatural, ate dinner.

Made my calls, so I'm going to see book guy tomorrow, oh joy, oh yay. Made a book cover for the two ladies in the style of the 2013 one. Naturally it sucks because of my penalties for ineptitude: design but it gets the point across.

Talked Ellen through using her scanner. Well, by that I mean I took her computer over and did it myself.

Turned out I was watching the episodes in the wrong order. It seemed like I was missing something but it wasn't clear what. Finally figured it out. I so dumb! Reordered them.

Mon:
We got new software! And it didn't even blow anything up. Amazing.

So I did copy and fax today but didn't really find anything new. Nor should I have, that was expected. But I did reopen an old issue, so that's good right? Senpai was my work buddy today as his machine was being used for something else, or being loaded, or something? Ah well, I don't need peace and quiet anyway.

Then over to book guy. As expected, he had about 6 different copies stashed in various places, and all the pages were messed up. Many were missing, none of them were in the the right place, and nearly THREE HOURS LATER I had finally gotten it back into some sort of shape. All while he repeated his mantra of not being stupid, the computer did this itself somehow, that somehow I was to blame for all this, that he couldn't have screwed it up this badly, etc. On and on and on.

So fun. And keep in mind this is about the 3rd or 4th time I've had to completely rebuild this guy's book. At least 3 times, I'm sure of that much.

Getting home I had 5 phone calls to look forward to, so I booked tomorrow with dentist guy who can't get his printer back online now that he's moved (a five minute job no doubt) and Wednesday setting up two new machines for a guy a half an hour away. Yippie.

Finally ate dinner.

Checked my sites but have not watched or played anything because I enjoy working every waking minute I'm not asleep, just like a cave man!

Did manage to squeeze in one Supernatural episode, so it's not a total loss, right?

Tues:
More somewhat useless testing continued today. Got through two services, scan to USB and Dropbox. Nothing really unexpected, as expected.

After work also wasn't too bad, as dentist guy didn't have a 3 hour list of crap for me to do. What he had done was plug his printer into the network, then neglect to actually activate the port. Now, in fairness, the printer should have known it was plugged in and turned that on itself. But we live in an imperfect world.
He also somehow had airplane mode turned on, and it was quite a long journey to get it turned off again. It even said it was still on, while I was bringing up a website, so nice job there MS.
Reset his router because he was using WEP for his encryption (which is totally worthless by the way) and using a different name for the SSID. We know how that works out on RR equipment now don't we? Or Charter, or whatever company owns us now.
Then had to reset his three! TVs, assorted set top boxes, how many TVs does one person need? I suppose someone has to balance out the fact some don't even have one.

Though I do watch, and continued to watch, Supernatural on the computer so I can't be too uptight about three TVs in one house. I mean the man lives alone, he can only watch one at a time.

One call, so I made my Thursday appointment. Finished the latest book cover for the book writing ladies. Checked my websites, and watched a few episodes.

Tomorrow is two setups, and further away, so probably won't be home quite as early as I was today. Not that 6:00 was all that early.

Wed:
I wasn't!

Work proceeded normally. I think we're basically done with 5.1.3 testing as it should have gone out. I got through google and email today, and even found one very nice spectacular crash! So that was written up.

Ate there, then went to the set up. It was not two, but rather three laptops he wanted set up. Dude, you know that laptops are portable, right? Like, you only need one because you can PICK IT UP. But whatever. One of them had the worst trackpad, and it was weird because two of them were identical and the other one wasn't acting that badly. *shrugs* He's giving his ancient, dual booting piece of crap dell to an 11 year old. Who will probably look at the ginormous tower, hefty CRT monitor and mechanical mouse and say 'what the *expletive* is that ancient piece of *expletive* doing here?' and then go back to using her FAR MORE POWERFUL cell phone.

But sure, maybe she's into retro computing? That she couldn't even play candy crush (or I suppose the hip new thing, Pokemon Go) on?

Let me drive that point home: An 11 year old GIRL. He's giving this ancient thing to. I don't see it.

(That's why the above sentence is so hilarious, by the way)

Got home a little after 7 and made phone calls. Didn't actually reach anyone. Huh. But then I checked my email and had gotten something from a customer that had moved away some time ago, he is back in town for a month and wanted a bit of advice on some things so he's coming here Sunday.

Got the replacement, replacement cable modem in, so I'm going out there *shudder* at 8:30 saturday morning. Yippie. But that and the HD shouldn't take too long and I can got to my 10:00 on time.

Checked my sites, had a bit of ice cream, got ready for tomorrow.

Day over, time for bed.

Why does it seem like I just have no time for anything lately?

Thurs:
Actual NEW stuff to test! Amazing.

Got the new software and a lesson in how to reload the tablets if needed. (As the guy that is the expert in that is off tomorrow. What, the two weeks off before wasn't enough for you?)

Did the security training for this year, must have gotten a minor portion of one of the questions wrong as I got something weird like 96.4%. Curse you exact percentages!

After that we got the new software and I quickly realized not much work had been done on the new page range feature so I thought "maybe I should write up all those bugs I've noticed" and wrote up 8 bugs.

Felt soooooo good.

Then back past home, guy with low disk space. In my experience, that happens for just a couple of reasons. That ancient version of norton that goes nuts and fills up the drive. Someone has the crappy backup turned on which never gets rid of anything. A genuinely small HD.

Guess which this was. No go on guess.

The backup, right. Turned it off, turned on file history instead (as it had updated to 10) and answered some questions for him. His laptop LCD was busted, but given the expense vs buying a refurb machine with an SSD and quad core processor, he figured he would buy the other machine.
Good choice down the road guy.

Back here my parent's/mother had dropped off my rope, so I got the first pillar wrapped up. Also wrapped my sister's gift as it came a day early. Whew, didn't know what I would have done had that not come. Probably come back here after work to quickly wrap it.

Then it was calls time, made a few so I have three now for saturday and still the one for Sunday.

Did another pillar, it looks pretty good and the amount of rope was exactly enough. And I mean exactly. I had about a 2" piece left, so when I write "exact" I mean it.

Watched an episode of Supernatural, and tried a few tricks to figure out why skyrim didn't seem to be loading from my RAMdisk any faster than my normal disk. It shaved a few seconds, but when I see a youtube video of it loading in 8 seconds, I have to wonder if there still isn't something odd going on. Though now that I think about it maybe that person timed it from the title screen and not from a cold boot?

Anyway, that about does this week. Tomorrow it's just Senpai and me, then Heather's party. Of course I'll hit the bank and shopping before that.

Then my jobs for Saturday, no Sean I guess.

One for Sunday and berry picking again, I probably have tons out there. Was supposed to rain today, not a drop as far as I can see. Maybe tomorrow?

Have a geed second half of July, and think Christmas, because it'll be here before you know it.