2016-09-16:

Fri:
Still pretty slow at work. I did get another new spec, hopefully not too many more at this point, and wrote up about 100 new test cases. That brings the total to 206 in case you wondered. You didn't? Ah, moving on then.

Did the shopping, went to the bank as usual.

Saw my parents. The bed was loaded so I asked why we just didn't do what we were going to do that night. They agreed so we set up up. Well, my father did most of the work. He's the expert!

It was pretty late by that point so I checked my websites for the day and that was that.

Sat:
Bed was pretty good. Looks like I made a good choice.

After breakfast I put my room back together.

Left at 10:15 to get to my 10:30. Crap, as usual. The laptop does indeed have a busted fan, but looking it up online it doesn't seem too hard to change.

The desktop was a different story. He had some crappy CRT monitor that wouldn't work hooked up to it, and his brought out another crappy CRT monitor to try. That one "worked" but looking at it was almost physically painful because it wouldn't stay still. It was just jittering and stretching and bouncing constantly.

His drive is nearly full, which didn't help, but I finally got past the "updates 3 of 3" crap that was keeping it from booting. And of course it had both McCrappy antivirus and the MS one. So that didn't help. Tried taking off McCrappy but the machine hung. By then it was 12:30 so I took the desktop to try and get some results out of it at home.

Was a few minutes early to my 1:00, just answering some questions for him. No problems.

Back here I started work on the desktop. My goodness that was dirty. Blew it out, managed to run Mbam and take out 774 things. Also CCleaner so he has a little space left now. Found him 10 whole gb! Sheesh.

Put in the latest Susan corrections. Invested a bit of money.

Looked around for other things I missed in my room. My one box of comics fits right under the bed. The others? Huh, not so much. Not sure where they're going. Under the couch?

Got some calls today, helped someone install their printers for half an hour. XP. Ugh.
And I have one more job tomorrow, for a total of two. She's five minutes away.

Sun:
Marvelous.

Got up, and got straight to writing. In all I finished chapter 215, then 216 and started 217. Not sure what I'm going to do with that one, but we'll see I guess.

Also I went to see the lady with the all in one unit, yup, it's dead. There's a light on the power supply that goes on when you plug it in, and off when you turn it on. Odd. Ordered her the part, and it was a pain getting it apart let me tell you.

Then at 3:00 I went down to the five minutes away lady and her excited tiny puppy. She replaced her modem by taking it back to RR, when it was her router bugging out that was the issue. Silly lady.

Didn't get any calls, but already had one for tomorrow, just dropping off the vista machine.

And that's about what I did today. So great to write again, you have no idea. Or do you? Maybe you do.

Mon:
Got woken up this morning at 6:00 by a cat voicing his utmost concern about what could only be an outside cat. The tones are quite consistent. This discourse continued and I figured I had better see what was up. I headed downstairs but there was no cat to be found. Odd. I checked the breezeway, and there was a Tinker, who had somehow gotten the protector screen down, and then pushed out the actual screen, and gone outside. Squeaker was yelling at him.

He was right outside the door, so either he had just gotten out or hadn't gone anywhere or gone somewhere and come back, so I got him back inside. They went at each other like they had never seen the other before. Cats! I called a time out and put Tinker upstairs until 7:00, but even now twelve hours later they're still not buddies again. They're not trying to kill each other or anything, but they're not acting right.

Did some more test cases at work, from the new design document I got. No new specs though. Wrote one new bug, the home button icon changes size. OOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhh.

But no one else wrote anything, so there.

After work I dropped the system off. She wasn't there, of course, so I put it behind her house. I mean you do someone a favor. You work for hours on some piece of crap PC trying to get it updating. You say you won't change them the full rate. You take time out of your busy life to return the thing. And you don't even show up to take it from me? Well done lady. Well done.

Hope she found it okay, or whatever.

Back here I checked my sites, got the replacement LCD, and what a trip that was, let me tell you.

I put it in, and the HP logo appeared! Hurray! It was the screen after all.
I turned away to get the screws and when I turned back, the stupid colored lines had reappeared. Arrg.

I rebooted, this time watching it more carefully. The HP logo would appear, then the windows logo with the spinning dots, then the lines.
Thinking it might be some windows glitch, I booted the system up with my linux USB flash drive. That booted just fine, and the LCD stayed on for several minutes.

So changing nothing at all, I rebooted again, this time normally, intending to use the external monitor to update the driver or something.

The LCD worked.

????

I then put the old LCD back, on a hunch.

It worked too.

I’ve booted it 11 times with the old LCD (I messed with the driver too just in case) and it’s been perfect.

Is that not just so bizarre? I’ve never seen a machine act this way before. Just booting into a different OS, not touching the BIOS or anything, should not have produced this result.

Anyway, called her, left a message. Called the lady I did the picture book for, she's having some odd problem she can't describe, so I'm going over there tomorrow. Hung up the phone, it rang again. It was laptop lady. So I agreed to go over there tomorrow as well, as I'll be halfway there anyway.

Sigh.

So much for writing. Last night while trying to get to sleep and this morning I wrote exactly what I want to happen, in my head. I just have to put it down on "paper." I'm basically ignoring the episode. It has nothing to do with the plot, so I'm taking the girls on a separate adventure because I like them better. Sorry Dylan.

Not happening tonight though. Or probably tomorrow, either.

Tried to, at least a bit. Got one short paragraph done at at 8:54 (or so) the guy I just sold the mac mini to called. Spent twenty minutes getting him to click on the wireless icon in the menubar and click his wireless network. Oh well.

Tues:
Wrote a good bug today, if you use certain characters in the encryption password for PDF it either fails (and still charges) or doesn't let you decrypt it later for some reason. Neat.

Got a little training in how to do some of the new AT&T stuff by one of the other people in the lab, and was promised more perhaps tomorrow. So that's somewhat of a relief, that someone knows what they're doing.

Of course all this crap should be written down in process documents somewhere, but you know how that goes.

After work I dropped the pictures from the picture book off, and was shown that everything about her PC was just fine. Was it ever not fine, I wondered to myself?

And we went over playing a DVD again with the other lady that lives there.

Then I dropped the laptop off, and made my way slowly home due to traffic.

There I ate dinner, and finished chapter 217. Hurray.

Wed:
Had an early meeting, went over about 30 of the 196 test cases and realized that one needed a bit better origination. So afterwords I did that. I had done them in a block, the webpage then the printer, but I figured doing the same test for the printer and then the webpage in groups of two would make sure I didn't miss any.

Got a new Staples build, so after lunch I got to my open bugs and cleaned them out pretty fast.

After work saw the book guy. Explained a few things to him and was home a little after 5:00.

He mailed me less than an hour later with "It still isn''t working for me." Well, too bad, because I got two calls, two pieces of PCs I had ordered, so maybe sometime next week. Oh, and you're getting charged this time, too!

Moron.

Didn't need to eat dinner, I had most of a sub at work at about 3:30, a platter had been left out so obviously some meeting or another didn't finish all they had ordered. You have to move fast with that stuff, around our building stuff disappears in a flash.

Called the lady for the power supply, reached her, I'll go there tomorrow.
Did not reach the guy with the fan issue, so I'll try that person again.

Got a few calls, spent half an hour for 10 seconds of work trying to get a lady to

1. unplug modem and router
2. type something into a window

She eventually managed to do #1, but couldn't quite manage #2. How do you do anything? I told her to call time warner, I just didn't have the patience after a half hour of that. I usually like to be sure it's not the router, but as she was unable to type a four letter word into a command window, there was no way to tell. I think she was connected to her router though.

Reached the other person with the printer issue, but she said she had to call me back.

It's been half an hour and she hasn't.

Got ready for tomorrow, took a call, it was router lady, RR says it isn't them. Super.

Then a few minutes later I got called back by printer lady. Another half hour on the phone trying to get her to connect it to her wireless. Didn't manage it. Even brought up the HP website/directions for her printer, it was five steps. Touch here, here, here, here, and here. Couldn't manage it. So now I have there to go as well. Another two minute job.

And with an hour wasted tonight, I can do no more writing. I'm just setting up the combat, it's going to take a bit because it's our 3 heroes against 16 goons. Susan is going to wish she had Gun Fu now, rather than later.

I hate my job. (Not the good one. The phone one.)

Thurs:
Much training. Very knowledge. Wow.

Got together with Chris before he left today and went over more of what I would need to do/know to test the AT&T stuff. We realized depending on how exacting the new error messages are in the log, just the one part of the test could be very, very large.
Because each method of doing things has so many things to go wrong, and if I need to check the messages for all of them…
You get the idea.

Otherwise, not much else to report. Picnic tomorrow, and getting the car inspected in the afternoon. So that worked out perfectly.

Put the power supply in no problem, and luckily that's what it was, the machine started right up.

Got back here, ate dinner, tried to set up another peer-to-peer investor account with another company (so I don't have all my money in just one, so that it folding means I lose everything) and it's for accredited investors only. Sigh.

Looked at buying gold? I don't know.

Got a few calls today, so made my calls. Made appointments for Tuesday of next week, and oddly the first of October.

Started the huge combat!

Didn't quite get all the way through, but almost.

Let's see, picnic tomorrow, then car inspection, then shopping. Visiting my parents, of course.

Saturday I have a couple of jobs, no Sean invite as of yet. Nothing for Sunday. (crosses fingers)

And that's that. Next week Autumn begins, boo hiss, but I think we had a pretty good summer, all told. Dry, but good.

See you all next time.