2016-08-19:

Fri:
The usual at work, got through scan to email, basically bringing my total number of services done to about all of them apart from the one Senpai did. I'll probably start on the less visible stuff now.

Not sure where we're going with it from here, 6 will be delivered pretty soon.

After that I went to my parent's house, fed everybody, and then did the shopping. They had a tiny amount of cat food, so I got half a one to leave some for others.

Out to Sean's, where we stayed mostly on track and figured out what the "lost" object was, and made two, yes, not just one but two plans to get it back. We need a way to get money though, my resources now that I'm using them after 6 worlds, won't last.

But that's a minor concern. We made plans for next Saturday so it isn't three months until we next meet, and that was that.

Sat:
Returned the system pretty much first thing because of how late I got up. No trouble there.

Then back here to eat lunch (wait, didn't I just have breakfast?) and then left for the guy a half hour away (ugh) to help him with his self made problems. His "friend" "helped" him by screwing his partitions up, so he now has a tiny C drive, windows boots from E (which by the way, windows doesn't even like) and a small D drive for some reason. He was also running a bunch of crap programs but he didn't ask about that. His main issue was some ancient photo editing software he was trying to use complaining about a plug in that needed updating, and then that the scratch disk was too small.

As to the first, I downloaded the installer for the so called plug in, but it wouldn't install because it was hard coded to look for c:\something so of course it couldn't find the program. Or he was running it someplace weird? I don't know. Luckily it was just a zip in the end, so I renamed the exe to zip, copied it out, and installed it manually.

As to the second problem, I just told it to use E: for the scratch and it was happy.

He had an old XP laptop (now running 7, probably the same hacked version all his other machines were running, probably more "help" from his "friend.") that wouldn't boot except in safe mode. He admitted it probably wasn't worth my time and that was that.

Then we looked at a two monitor setup (instead of just buying one larger monitor, I mean it wasn't bigger than my 27" let me tell you) that he said the colors were wonky on. Nope, they were fine. Oh, that's after we got it booted because it wouldn't recognize mouse or keyboard input when we first turned it on.

Here's a idea! Instead of several ancient machines that don't really work all that great, how about one decent laptop you can just carry around so you don't need a PC in every room? Just a thought.

And a half an hour drive home in the rain. Took a half hour to get there, too.

Super hot, even after the rain.

Watched a movie Sean had given me, decent.

Played some skyrim, naturally.

Sun:
And more! More skyrim I mean.

Cleaned up the house, did laundry, the usual stuff. Book guy had mailed me "what time sunday?" Uh, have you forgotten that I'm only dealing with you over the phone now? I think you did! Now you get to wait until I've called everyone else back. Sorry.

Watched the first couple of episodes of the new (and failed?) Thundercats.

Mon:
Went to the old standby at work today, Copy. But also two other minor areas. Finally got hire buddy's name off the website by doing the last one with his name on it. Logging. Not many in that one, nor in the other boot up. At least I think it was that??? Anyway, the afternoon was copy.

Drove a half hour, and why are all my appointments lately that far away? More on that later. Did the setup. She had installed webroot while not taking off the mcafee trial, so I took both of them off. Stupid paid for antivirus. Gee, wonder why Best Buy "suggests" that one? Oh, their name is all over the package, meaning they're getting some kind of kickback? Funny that!

Then back here, which didn't take as long because I was 10 minutes closer to here.

6 calls? You've got to be kidding me!

Plus book guy.

So I booked the rest of this week, and one for Saturday, and I still have to reach two people. Great! And tomorrow my job is in Hilton, and a nebulous "yeah, it just goes black when it boots up" so who knows if that's even fixable without a reload. One is in Webster, then another out someplace far away. Great.

Maybe I shouldn't change by the job, but by the mile. $2 per minute I spend getting to and from your place, but the job is free. I would make more money!

Tues:
Whipping through more test cases, finished up copy and moved on to admin rolls and then looked though payment integration. Sheesh, there isn't much left to test!

Drove a long way to get to my after work fun, which turned out to be a disconnected USB hub! Fun! Her machine was booting but then as win10 sort of goes dark if you don't do anything for a second the screen would just turn off on them. As both their keyboard and mouse were plugged into the hub, and the hub was unplugged, it was a simple matter to plug it back in and it was working again. It was misleading because the light was on for the keyboard, but it didn't do anything. Didn't take long to figure out though.

I did run through the usual, mbam took out 1000+ things, or was it 2000+? I forget now. Her laptop was totally dead, wouldn't turn on at all.

And back home just in time to make phone calls. Got them done, I now have one a half hour away saturday morning, in addition to book guy in the afternoon. With going to Sean's, that's about all for that day, and it's still only Tuesday. Wonderful.

Wed:
Spent a part of the morning scanning in the first batch of photos given to me earlier that morning by the two ladies. Waste of time, can't use them. Yup, they scanned in terrible, so I'm going too have to either scan them in piecemeal if they're full page here at home so I get an actual good quality scan, (because they're 9x11") or just as individual ones for the smaller ones. Fun! You would think the work equipment would be far superior to anything I had laying around the house, but that's turning out not to be the case. Huh. Strange.

Anyway, worked on alerts today, and a bit of scan to email as we got a new build of that. Just that and USB. We'll get the full build tomorrow, which should be exactly the same thing.

After work was the famous "registry lockout" so I figured I would have to wipe the machine. Not so! I took it home and thought about the backup it makes, and just hooked it up to another machine and copied it over and it booted! Yes!

Brought it back.

Started the photo book project, very slow going, I mean it took about two hours at work, and that was with presumably better equipment. Not so!

No calls, but I worked someone through updating foxit reader because windows went crazy and won't let anything delete the now empty folder. That took an hour, didn't really solve it just worked around it. Good old windows.

And now it's time for bed! Wheeee.

Thurs:
Finished up alerts so I have literally done 15 of 17 test documents since 8/3. That's a lot of test cases. And apart from the stuff John is doing about install and such, it's over. That's the most complete test any version has had. Done by me. In 15 days. Where's my raise?

We also had a great day of pulling stuff out of the garbage. I got a great monitor to replace my previously pulled from the garbage one

 [[image file="2016-08/20160818_124625.jpg" alt="Xerox monitor" ]]

Who knew Xerox made monitors?

And the keyboard I pulled out (to replace the previous one I pulled out) was proven to work like a champ. I had to bring my bulky usb "docking station" because it was the only thing that had ps/2 ports, but I'll order a better one. Anyway, it cleaned it nice, and look what it is! An original IBM Model M! Those things go for mad money! MAD I tell you. And some idiot was just going to throw it away. Typing on it feels great, so great, even after all these years of service. Sweet! (It was filthy, it badly needed the cleaning. But it came out like new.)

[[image file="2016-08/20160818_124619.jpg" alt="clackity clack" ]]

Senpai got a better monitor too, and John decided to fish some out and replace his (that he had… you get the idea.) His was actually somewhat broken so hopefully one of these he found will be better. Also dug out an old floppy based digital camera for the collection. Still works.

They're talking about moving me to a microsoft test of some kind, which is better than being moved out of the building and everyone waves bye bye to me. So we'll see what comes of that. Stupid microsoft.

After work job was setting a machine up, and I brought her old one home to wipe and reload to try and get rid of the evil spirits that currently inhabit the thing. That job paid for itself as I told her to take back the stupid "webroot" so she won't have to pay until the end of time. (Like she will for office, despite my telling her this.)

Not many calls, well, I had 6 calls but 5 of them were hang ups. Huh. Then I got another so I have a job for Sunday. Yay.

(not yay)

Ordered the adapter from Staples, shipping it to the store (by slow boat, it'll come on the 30th?) and using my $4 rewards made it… $2.50. Nice.

Tried to find the part for the TV finally, but there's two numbers on the board and I can't find any replacements with the second number. Grr.

No word from Sean about Saturday so I don't know.

The usual tomorrow, though testing I have no idea what. Seeing the parental units, of course.

So that's this week. Hope to see everybody back here next week, for what I'm sure will be more complaining goodness.