2016-09-09:

Fri:
Did some actual work today. Not too much, want to pace myself.

But I got two new spec documents, though I suppose one was just an update to an earlier one but it had a bunch of changes. So I made a bunch of new test cases, and a whole new test document so I now have 6 of them. So they can't say I'm slacking off that way.

Also thought about using a screen recorder, and after checking a few because the Xerox proxy was being a little snot, I managed to snag a free one. It works! So I can remotely control and high quality record the action of the printer UI. Sweet! If I ever get software to test instead of just stupid documents to write.

The MS guy is still mailing me, "still don't have any news on test cases." Uh, dude, I'm not working THREE projects at once, thanks. I don't think anyone told him of my reassignment.

Found a few staples bugs too, one really neat one where it looks like everything is just fine, but suddenly the whole UI just gets shoved over half the width of the screen. Pop!

Got through the bank quite quickly this week, and did the shopping. Figured out what I want to serve my parents on Labor day, should be the tastiness of it.

Then went to see them, and got home right at 7:00. Oh, only a million calls? Fine, that's just fine. I forgot to get gas, too, darn it. So now I have three for tomorrow, yay? Plus cleaning the deck off, and one for Sunday, just showing the guy with MS where his aid should click in craigslist to repost his ads. Seriously.

Might get a waterbed! If we can squeeze it into my room. I was measuring things to see if it would work.

Also started the vista install. It's being a snot trying to get windows updates.

Checked my sites, then finished the title page for the picture book.

Bedtime! Sigh. Not looking forward to tomorrow's jobs.

But then, when ever do I do that?

Sat:
Running around, as I figured.

First one wasn't too bad. He basically just had a stupid message from a website, though after running mbam for the first time in three years it did pick up a few things.

So I was out of there fairly quickly.
Came back here (after getting gas) and washed the deck off.

Went to Jefferson rd, the spice place, and looked at their dell that isn't turning on. Oh look, it uses some weird power supply instead of a standard one for no reason. It only has two power connectors, and they both go to the MB. Then the drive connectors come off of that. So basically you can't add any drives to the system, so why ship it with such a big case? It's totally unnecessary. Oh, I see why they did it, they just took the smaller case's MB and put it into a larger case so it would seem like you could add more drives in the future. Because Dell doesn't care about your experience using their product, just the fact that you bought something, and will have to buy something else when you realize in a few years time it doesn't do what you need. The chances are low you'll switch to say HP so why not just screw the customer over?

Anyway, some guy is coming next Saturday to "install software" or something so he's buying my old game machine. It has twice the processors, storage space, and RAM of this current machine, and I want half as much as if you went to the dell website (because they apparently still sell them) today. Neat!

Ate lunch, then went over to my parent's house to go get it, because I forgot it last night.

Left them a note as they had proactively moved them to the truck, but my attempt at humor fell flat when the note blew away. Well, I tried.

Over to the guy with the questions, no problem there, and back out to the spice place. Got that set up over there, please don't blue screen any more. Thanks!

Back here I cut the grass and started getting the house ready for Monday.

Did my paperwork at last, but really it's only been three days.

More cleaning. Picking my room up for the possibility of the new bed. Had put some pants aside for one reason or another and tried a pair on that was 30s figuring I could wear them again. I was right. And as I was celebrating that, I found $10 in the back pocket. Score!

House is pretty clean. Tomorrow I'll do the vacuuming, mop the kitchen, possibly paint the back of the front door finally, stuff like that.

Sun:
My goodness where to even begin? I guess I'll start where I began the day, a hearty breakfast. Oh yes, it was delicious. Egg, mushrooms, barbecue sauce, bagel, cheese, I knew I would need the energy for what was to come.

I then painted the other side of the door, which looks great.

I had my weekly stack of comics to put into the inventory program, so I did that. Found out I have two copies of Air Raiders 1. Anyone interested? Lol!

I swept up the kitchen floor and mopped it. If you can't remember the last time you read those words, you're not alone. Honestly it could be done again, that just knocked off the top layer of grime. :-)

Then I continued in that tradition with the "dust room" i.e. the upstairs cat box room. The shelf that was in there was getting pretty bad, so I took most of the stuff off it, shoved it around the corner, and put the stuff back on it. So that room is now nearly empty apart from the cat box. Swept and mopped it. Put more plastic down, hopefully that will help. So dusty!

I found a bunch of things I had been looking for while doing all this. The top to my bug catching kit, and the magnet I used to secure the broom to the fridge. (Which continues to work just fine, by the way) Knew I would at some point.

While figuring out where the new bed might go I noticed something I had long forgotten about- a coax cable sticking out of the floor in the corner of the room! Bingo! I have a way to run ethernet into my room without stringing it though half the house. So I pulled that out, put an ethernet cable in its place, and ran it over to the switch in the basement. Sweet, it works. That'll save me some hassle, not that it was that much hassle, you understand. But it's a nicer solution all around.

That was 7:00 - 11:00. Yes, all that in four hours.

Only thing on the list left for today is vacuum the living room rug. Going to do that last as I have to take everything off it so it can be washed tomorrow.

So now what?

Ate lunch, then just looked for anything that needed straightening up in general.

Went to see the guy at 3:00, that old version of Safari doesn't like modern websites, let me tell you.

Then back here. Did some more proofing of the story, more straightening up. Made cornbread, did laundry, generally took it easy.

Tomorrow we work!

Mon:
We did all the things!

My father put up the new mailbox post, sealed the deck, took sticks away. The carpet was washed, bed plans discussed, tons of dead berry bushes and other trimmings taken away. Oh and yummy lunch was consumed. I helped!

Anyway, a big thank you to my parents for the annual ritual, performed once again without fail. Let's do it again next year.

Then I put stuff away, played some Metroid remake while I waited for the carpet to dry, an then watched Zootopia. Hey, it is technically a day off!

Took one call, so I have a job for tomorrow, transferring files to a new Mac.

Tues:
That went fine, at least. But I get ahead of myself.

In the morning the one tree we replanted looked good, not wilted at all. When I got home it was all wilted again. I gave it extra water, feel better soon!

No new documents relating to AT&T at work but I did go over what I had already done, made some additions based on stuff I had thought of and had learned in the meantime. Wrote up another Staples bug, too. Apparently some people from staples will be hanging around the lab the next two days.

Then to the new Mac. It was almost smart enough to take the files off the PC by itself, but you had to have the old machine running and download a program. It wouldn't just recognize the bare drive. As her machine was dead, bare drive and transferring it manually it is!

USB3 finished that off pretty quick, and I set up her two printers (super easy, thanks Apple) and that was that.

When I got home I had received the LCD (and the mailbox looks good, post still standing thanks again dad!) so I put that in.

And it doesn't work. The backlight comes on no problem, but it's just a mass of lines. Ugh. I swear I am never replacing one of these stupid things again. So I emailed the company and got a return label. More delays, wonderful.

[[image file="2016-09/displaylines.jpg" alt="another busted thing" ]]

And some dude showed up with his daughter's laptop, an old Mac running 10.6. She was saying it was shutting down or something? But it worked fine for me, once I cleaned it out a bit, anyway. She only had 5GB of space left! Yipes. Of course it's a pretty small drive.

So that ate some time up.

Set up the vista machine I still haven't finished with, got that going again. At least what I can do, I'll leave it trying to update once more. It didn't after more than 24 hours last time. Stupid thing.

Got the check for the PC I sold the outreach place. Cha-ching!

No calls, at least not any repair calls. There was a hang up and a somewhat flummoxed political "we hope you support candidate X" message. Are we even near any elections? Huh.

Ate dinner somewhere in all that of.

So yeah, basically more of the same!

Wed/Thurs:
Compiling these days into one because last night we lost power three times so I was in bed early and not writing up what had happened that day. Seriously, it went off, came back on, went off, came back on longer, then went off for over a half hour. It was getting late so I just said "I'm going to bed." By the time it came back on I wasn't going to get up and write the entry.

It's about the same as today anyway. Minor changes to the specs I've already got, minor poking at Staples stuff.

We did get a new build today, so I did close out some bugs, but didn't find anything new.

Went to see the book guy, surprisingly not that many errors! Amazing.
Now I just have to print the thing.

Let's see, anything else exciting? No calls today, so not much going for the weekend. One job Saturday I think in the afternoon. No word from Sean about Saturday.

Tomorrow the usual banking and shopping. Seeing my parents. Sunday helping them put their new bed in, and then helping them put in mine. So I'll be cleaning my room up a bit Saturday too.

My tree is still a bit wilty, gave him/her plenty of water. Was supposed to rain but didn't see much. A few drops is all. Hot yesterday and today. Looks like that will continue.

Not much else I guess. Have a good weekend everyone, see you next time.