2016-08-05:

Fri:
The testing madness continues.

Looking over the new stuff I scanned to a locked USB drive and got charged.
Then scanning to a full one I got that the job was canceled, and still got charged.
Whoops. She had me write a bug for the first one, and I sent her the logs for the second so she could look it over.

We can't fax, something odd is happening where it will send the pages, but then hang indefinitely on the calculating screen. And I did a bunch of copy jobs, saw the endless processing twice, which was written up some time ago. Quality. Simply quality.

Got right through the bank, and did the shopping.

There was a 32" TV sitting in front of the neighbor's house by my parent's so I grabbed it. Took it apart right there just to see if it was a capacitor issue, the one thing I can actually deal with. Didn't look it, but the buttons are on this little board which seems to be broken. Odd. Did they just use the buttons and not the remote? Does that board being broken impact the remote somehow?

Brought it home, the part was less than $20 (there were cheeper ones, but they didn't have the exact numbers and you know how that goes, so I got the one that was exactly exact) so we'll see if that fixes it.

Looks like a nice set if I can get it going again.

Back here, called the guy from last weekend, apparently he bought a PC thereby paying probably double what I would have charged for a PC 4 times as slow. Nicely done! So I'm going there Sunday which will be a real treat, as always. Idiot.

Checked my websites, made sure the PC was ready to go, got ready for tomorrow, and it's basically bedtime. Huh.

Sat:
Went to drop the system off, was only there a few minutes so that went okay.

Cleaned up around here, finally vacuumed the breezeway where all the carpet mess was from making the cat playground. Looks much better.

Took apart the good case and the heather motherboard case to get them ready for transplanting. I've ordered a new MB for that one so we'll see if that solves the crashing issue.

Finished dominion. That series, I don't know. Same basic premise as the latest series of Supernatural, who did it far better.

Rebate arrived. Ten whole dollars on a visa card. Honestly, is it so hard to provide checks like they used to? Thinks of the environmental impact of all these throw away plastic cards where before at least paper could be recycled. Or just "here's a bank account number, put it in there." Or paypal it to me. Stupid visa card.

One call, Dentist guy and scanning, didn't call him back.

Sailor Moon Drops is infuriating me at the moment. I'm trying this one "optional" stage with a gift behind it. This stage is ringed at the bottom with double break bricks. These are bricks you need to clear a piece next to, twice, before they disappear. I have learned that unless you get two special pieces next to each other that can take out the whole board at once and at least hit those spaces and take most of them out in one move, you can forget the stage, it isn't happening.
The goal is to drop various "accessories" from the top to the bottom. I have been playing it for a couple of days now and gotten close a couple of times.

The one time I got close- one piece left- AND saw a clear path to victory, you know what happened? Boom. Game "crashes" on me. Thanks. Thanks a bunch. I swear, the pieces are not random. Multiple times during each stage it'll go "no more matches? All new pieces!" so the game is admitting it gave me crap, and the new pieces aren't usually much better. And I just "happen" to get two pieces the same every time in the upper rows so I have to use up moves because those are the only matches I get? Right. Tell me another one.

Sun:
Got a few things done in the morning. Checked my websites, started encoding Rebels, got a call an hour early to come do the setup.

Which we almost did! Sadly, as he knows nothing he bought a machine actually slower than his own. Yes, slower! Well done. So we packed it back up again after I brought up the fact that, once again, a machine loaded with 4GB of RAM has a 32bit OS installed. Do people take some kind of perverse pleasure in doing that? It's not a driver thing, usually both are made available. I don't get it.

But got back about when I would normally have left.

Made biscuits.

Shouted more obscenities at Sailor Moon Drops.

Ate lunch, and finally got to play skyrim for a bit! So nice to be able to play it without worrying about blue screen, or hangs!

Couple of phone calls, got stuck on the phone from 8:00 to 9:30 reloading dentist guy's printer driver. Because it wouldn't scan. It's like saying to a mechanic "I can't turn left." and the mechanic says 'I'm going to take the engine out, set it aside, and then after making no changes to it whatsoever, I'm going to put the engine back in. That should fix it right up." Would you allow your mechanic to do that? Of course not. But it's expected, nay demanded, in the PC world. Why? Why is this?

So I didn't get to play in the evening, but that's okay. One appointment for tomorrow, of course I have no idea what I'm walking into as usual. They might just as well make a nonsense noise with their lips for all the information they can convey to me about what the machine is not doing that they think it should be doing. And it's a half hour away, so fun times for everyone.

(Everyone being just me, I mean)

Got ready for tomorrow, and it's time for bed. I demand another Sunday!

Mon:
Did some actual new work at work today. I know, what a shocker. Worked on the scan to completion stuff, at least gathering some results even if I'm not entirely clear on how it should be looked at.

After work one was basically her having windows 8. Not 8.1, mind you, just straight 8. How she stood using it for this long, I'll never know. But I do know how she was still there. 1.2mb/s DSL. Her problem was that she was using "modern" IE which we all know was crap, even for IE. It improved a little in 8.1, enough that she wouldn't have her current issue anymore. And the printer needed to be put on the wireless again, so I did that. I left 8.1 updating, I figure it might be done by tomorrow sometime. ~4 GB of data over a connection 15 times slower than mine here? No thank you.

Got back here, ate dinner, checked my sites, made my calls. Got stuck for over an hour trying to get a linksys router on. Apparently they don't secure them by default? Anyway, once we got skype screen sharing going, it went much faster. Honestly, you tell someone to click the word Skype up by the apple, and then "check for updates." How does this turn into a ten minute "where's Waldo" adventure?

But we did get to do the dumb and dumber routine when they get their tattoos.
"What's the password?"
"Password."
"Yes, what is it?"
"Password."
"Yes, the password."
"Type password!"
"You haven't told me what it is yet!"
"It's password!"
"Stop saying it over and over and tell me what the password is!"

Classic. At least I was able to get ready for tomorrow while he flailed around.

Tues:
Good news! I beat level 32-3 at last in Sailor Moon Drops. Not sure how, just sort of happened. Almost didn't, I had gotten all the accessories but not a high enough score to clear the board. But with only 2 moves left I had done it. Serenity is now totally leveled, and I can (finally) move on. Next stage, boss battle.

My parts came, both the water cooler and the second fan, so while a lady I hadn't heard from in ages (and thank goodness, she just goes on and on about stuff, you can't get rid of her) yacked at me for a half hour I got started moving the stuff over. Seems to have worked, but I haven't stressed it yet so I don't know how quiet it will be under load. It's quieter though, so mission accomplished there. It a pretty tight fit, but it made it. I now have a water cooled gaming PC… something I never thought I would say.

Work went fine. Did more scan to completion stuff, and tested a quick fix which actually worked. Found some junk in the trash bin, like the prototype Staples panel! Complete with smashed tablet. We took it apart, mainly for the very expensive bar code reader they chose to use, and I messed with the tablet and discovered even being broken, it still worked. Not sure what they'll do with this prototype tablet, but Xerox paid for it, someone should get some use out of it, cracked glass and all.

Also made sure an SSD that had been taken apart was actually busted, and it was. Trying to copy to it gave weird errors, and it wouldn't finish formatting. Ah well. Love junk bins!

Checked over the two systems for the guy in Fairport. His two daughters are growing up fast! They're so cute, running around the yard playing with squirt guns and getting soaked. No major problems, though the one mbam reported having more than 2000 things found. How did it run at all? Anyway, took care of that.

Got ahold of book guy, so I guess I'm going over there tomorrow. Should be a bundle of laughs and a barrel of fun.

Wed:
It wasn't too bad! His main problem, this time, was the fact he had turned the nicely formatted rtf file I had left him into a plain txt file, totally wiping out all formatting. Well done. Of course he didn't do it, no sir.

I wasn't sure if I had a backup so I told him he would just have to redo the whole thing. But I did have a backup, so I sent it to him.

Work went fine, I did print from email because that's the oldest one out there, the last one hire buddy did that I didn't do once he left. Found an odd issue too, but Kathy wanted to go over the logs before I wrote it up. I should try it on another machine, too. We were all trying to install new machine software, wasted the morning on it, and didn't get very far. They just had some measure of success when I was leaving. She was sending it to my machine again so hopefully in the morning it'll be done.

Got the replacement motherboard in for Mr Crashy. Changed it out, no crashes thus far but then I thought it was okay before, too. Not sure how to test it.

With the SSD arriving yesterday I popped that into the machine I got, and started it installing. Doing the clone actually worked out well this time, no odd partitions so it went much smoother.

Also got the control board for the TV. It… didn't solve the issue. Really hoped it would, too. Sigh. Well, maybe I can do further research. There are really only two other boards, I could order them one at a time and replace them. Depending on cost it could work out. We'll see.

Can't win them all, right?

Just one call today, the guy that had the laser printer I still have sitting on my breezeway from just before I was hired at Xerox. He says he has some issues, mostly related to his router I think.

Now I'm going to fill out the rebate form so in 8-10 weeks I can get the $10 back on the cooler I got. Shoot, I realized I don't have any freaking STAMPS. UGh.

Found three beans in with my berries somehow. I'll have them tomorrow on my salad. Speaking of the berries, all the plants from this year are just burnt to crisp, dead. The ones for next year look okay, but this year was really harsh on them. Still no rain in the immediate forecast.

Thurs:
Today went pretty quickly for some reason, especially this afternoon. I looked at the clock and was like, it's time to go?

I was doing more scan to completion stuff. It was somewhat improved from before, but there were a few things I wanted Kathy to look at. Also our old manager stopped in, so she said hello. Then John started talking about boats and fish and whatnot.

Senpai left early as it was his birthday, but I didn't get the space to myself as John moved back there immediately. His machine is now endlessly rebooting itself, so that's fun. The print from email issue did not return after the new software was loaded. Odd, that.

After work job was fine, his issue was basically passwords, as usual. Also he was getting gmail inside of his hotmail account, and I couldn't figure out why. I still don't know. There seemed to be no setting for it, and when I looked it up all I found was directions I couldn't follow because the places they said to go didn't exist. Bizarre.

Anyway, got home, no calls, so I played skyrim a bit. Killed some people for the assassin's guild, you know, the usual. Cooler is working a treat, hardly hear the fans now, especially over the noise of the fan I have going in the room. It was so loud before!

No Sean at this point, so it's a pretty open weekend. I do have the install of the SSD Saturday, which I hope will go smoothly. Of course seeing my parents and doing the shopping tomorrow as usual.

Got the PC all updated (overnight) and the 63 "optional" and the other stragglers after that done. So it can go in the corner someplace ready to be sold while I figure out if the motherboard replacement has worked some magic. And by magic I mean SCIENCE!

Hot today. Might get rain tomorrow and Saturday but I've heard that before.
Oh, and I forgot all my stuff like the phone and USB drives and everything because I was focused on the letter and I can only remember one thing at a time. Went to the post office and got stupid stamps it'll take me another year to use. But at least I have some now.

Anyway, I guess that's all the news that's fit to print. You have a good weekend now, you hear?