2016-09-23:

Fri:
Party! Or more likely a picnic. Anyway, work was short and there was nothing new AT&T wise so… yeah. We left at about 11:00 to go to the park, and I knew about half the people there.

One lady said she had heard good things about the work I had done for staples, and now for ATT, but it's just test cases, I haven't really done anything yet. The Staples stuff I'll happily take credit for, given my numbers.

Stayed there until 2:20, then went to get the car inspected.

Was told at 3:30 it was done. Pulled out, or was going to I mean it's a busy road, and noticed the sticker was the same color. So I hopped out and checked it. Yup, 2016.

Thinking they had just forgotten it, I pulled back in and no, it just turned out they hadn't done it. The one thing I wanted done. Instead they changed the oil and rotated the tires? Huh? What are you people smoking? I need a NYS inspection! Did no one glance at the sticker while so called "inspecting" my car, doing whatever it was they were doing?

Apparently not. (The guy said he had it written down, but didn't enter it into the computer. Soooooo yeah.)

Anyway, another half hour and I was again let go. Thanks!

Went shopping, forgot to go to Staples, and saw my father.

Came back here, worked on chapter 219 as I had finished 218 sitting in the dealership.

Oh, and there was a sort of plain looking girl that sat down opposite me. She had a low looks, probably because she had a high REAson, she pulled out a Mac same as me! Good choice. Naturally I said nothing to her. Because honestly she didn't want me bothering her, did she? No, she did not.

Anyway, that was that. Checked my sites, got ready for tomorrow. No calls today, well, I got three, but one was the fan guy he's dropping it off tomorrow, and one called later to say it was fine. So just the ones I had previously tomorrow.
Hopefully they'll be as easy as I expect. (When does this happen?)

Sat:
Forgot I had wanted to order some stuff from newegg, so got that done. Ordered a new PC to "convert" to SSD and have to sell, as I had neglected to do that once I had been paid for the other. So I should have one of those pretty soon.

Now you know me. You know I always try to look on the bright side of things. So I will say this- the morning wasn't a complete waste?

And I'll tell you why; a small bookcase.

On the way out to see the spice guy I saw a small bookcase by the side of the road. Naturally, here's me thinking "if I can't make use of a small bookcase, I might as well just give up now and go live in a cave."

So I went to see spice guy. Great, it's not the power supply, the machine doesn't turn on with it installed. So there's a $70 part that's now somewhat useless. Maybe I'll sell it again, I guess?

Then over to the lady with "internet trouble." Did she have anything wrong, at all? Well, no, no, she did not. What she did have was a firefox window that opened so only the top bar was visible. But she was telling me over the phone how it was giving her a message about not being connected, not that the window wasn't showing up.

So what money did I make in the morning? Zero! Yes, another case where staying home and doing nothing would have saved me money.

But then I would not have found this nice bookcase. On the way back I thought, "what about all those comic books? Still have no place for them!" It was still there so I napped it. Which is like nabbing, only lazier. The back was kind of messed up so I took it off, cut a piece of board stuff that we had used on the breezeway, and nailed that to the back instead. Had to use the circular saw, because I believe in using the right tool for the job.

(Later I ordered some blades for my jigsaw, so maybe I can finally use that one of these days instead of the completely wrong tool?)

Carried it downstairs, put some comics onto it. Nice.

[[image file="2016-09/bookshelf_1.jpg" alt="with comics" ]]

Only a small part of the collection, believe me.

Then out for my 1:30. Walked in, pushed a couple of buttons of her printer control panel, and it was on the network. And you had such trouble why?

Cleaned her machine out, not that mbam found anything, and came back home.

Found the laptop that needed the fan on the breezeway, so I cracked that open. The reason the fan failed is that a screw got into it from when he cracked the plastic bits that held the hinge together. Nice going.

The fan thus replaced, I called him and he said "can you clean it out too." Sigh. Fine. Got the password, oh my goodness she has everything on her desktop! Has no one told her about the documents folder? Someone do so, immediately!

Got that done.

Cleaned up the rest of the stuff in the collection room, and finally broke that box down that's been sitting on the breezeway for a couple of weeks.

That brought us to 5:00.

Ate dinner, finished chapter 219. Guy came for the laptop, gave him the story.
Wind picked up, will we get more than 2 minutes of rain tonight?

Watched the next episode of Andromeda and came up with some story. Started chapter 220.

Sun:
Fairly good day. Finished chapter 220 and watched the next episode. As I've written Tyr out of the story, and he is a major player in the next episode, I'll have to find a way to do something similar but not the same. Which is what I always do, so there.

Rained a bunch today. A group of people walked by the house down to the corner store. They regretted this action when it started pouring on their way back.

Put in the latest edits, got through "volume 1" the first 100 chapters, so it's on to the next 100.

Read some comics.

Made phone calls, again with the stupid HP solution center. At least reloading it (for a half hour) worked fine.

Nothing for tomorrow, oddly. I also talked to the lady with the broken/not broken LCD, it's doing it again. I offered an external monitor, she said that would be fine. I ordered two, as I have none now and I do sell them occasionally. So that will come as soon as the monitor arrives.

Got ready for tomorrow, and done.

Mon:
Happy Monday, and such.

Smattering of stuff today. More cake, that was a thing. Leftover, but still good.

Did a few more test cases for AT&T, we're up to 232 now.

Someone was messing around with the machine that basically runs the internet on my staples machine, and the guy I'm getting training from figured out someone changed the IP address and turned a certain type of encryption off. Lab policy is to put something back the way you found it, so nice job there. It even says "don't waste someone's time putting back something you broke." Right there. It's right there on the site.

One short meeting about one design document which added two checkboxes to one screen. Woohoo.

Came home, worked on chapter 221. Got about 2,000 words into it and I know how I want the rest to go.

Let's see, got in two birthday gifts for those with birthdays coming up. Ordered a PC and SSD for the car selling guy, and had no other calls.

But I do have the appointment for tomorrow that I made last week, so that's a thing.

Less than two weeks until October. Three months for 2016 and it's over. Huh.

Tues:
Had a bunch of yummy, if funny looking grapes, at work today. Long things, like someone took a grape and stretched it out. Senpai brought them. Did I mention Senpai is actually a year younger than myself. I'm the Senpai.

Did some testing with the card reader that they wanted me to do. All I proved was the new code wasn't doing what it was supposed to. Nice job. So getting the machines ready (they wanted a really old version tested) and such took some time, so that was good.

Cleaned up the test cases a bit for the meeting later that day. Then had the meeting later that day. Got through some, added a few, no major issues they had with them.

After work job went fine, just setting up a new machine. Got his printer on the wireless, of course he doesn't know the router password, but he did have one wireless password, and the WPS button took care of the printer (after like the third try) so whatever. He did not call to get his wife's machine on it so I still have that to look forward to. That and moving outlook, love that.

Came back here, had dinner, checked my sites. Finished chapter 221 so the attack happened, and now Susan gets arrested for killing the president. But she didn't do that? OR DID SHE? HAHAHAHAHAH.

Wait, am I on a watch list now for what I wrote above? Huh.

Couple of calls today, so I have something Saturday morning, and something for tomorrow. Something about wireless saturday, and a bank website/tuneup for tomorrow. Not too far away, shouldn't be too bad.

Still pretty nice out, for the day before Autumn starts.

Wed:
Did not get any new specs or updates today, as I had figured. What with the meeting the day before, and changes made. I did get a new visual spec so I at least made sure things made sense in what I had already done.

Not much on the Staples front either.

Did the two jobs. The first had 2mb/s internet, but was only paying $15 a month for it. Her modem lease fee was $10, so figure that out. I sold her one, so that saves her 1/3 of the bill every month. I think her equipment was dying, personally. Before I changed it she was not getting even that much speed.

Ran the usual stuff, nothing much else on the machine.

Then stopped at the other place. Punched in the stupid password into the printer, oh look, it worked just fine. Of course windows still refused to connect the printer so it wouldn't go away from being "offline." I took it out and put it back, and that was fine.

Got the saw blades, some SSDs I had ordered, and the new PC, which I haven't even cracked the box on. I got home at just before 7:00, ate dinner, made my one phone call, and it's now 7:30. I'm looking at a piece of absolute junk netbook which has no information about what's wrong but at least he left his business card, so that's something right? It has an atom processor, and 1 GB of RAM, trying to run Win7. Yeah, it's pretty slow.

Oops, I think it's the display. It just went bonkers. Sorry, don't replace them anymore because it's too much hassle.

I'm going to bed early tonight to get up at 6:00 tomorrow to feed my parent's animals. Yes, it's that time again. So to bed super early for me, no writing tonight.

Well I feel silly. It was the monitors I ordered, not the PC. Glad I cracked it open.

Didn't reach the lady to deliver it.

Thurs:
Went early as expected to feed the kitties. They were all meowey as usual. Got to work a little late, but left late due to the meeting to so that evened out.

Got a few things done at work today. Set up a new PC to run the "fiddler" tool we use in conjunction with the file conversion for my tablet. So he doesn't have to tie up a lab machine and we have control of it. Didn't take too much, but did get Chris in on the action, who helped a bunch.

Only other thing of note was the meeting at the end of the day, going over the test cases with the SE and… whatever Mitch is to the program. Lead? Manager? Not sure about that one. He's right up there though. Got some new test cases to put in, I'll finish that up tomorrow. I get two whole weeks to test and put in my initial findings. Two! Such luxury. Wait, that was sarcasm.

Senpai may get switched over to our new inkjet print on object program, which I guess is already shipping so I don't know what more testing they need. But he was talking about it. Those things are freaking expensive. $145,000? I couldn't sell my entire house for that! What the heck are they made of, unicorn tears?

It's a neat device, you load in an object, it waves it up and down, and magically you have something printed on it. Up to 30 an hour, according to the specs. I don't know if I should be impressed or disgusted.

Did not reach either the person that called me at 6:30 this morning (and be glad I was up lady, robbing me of a half hour of sleep would not have gone down well with me. Could we, I don't know, show a tiny bit of respect for others?) or the monitor lady, so I came back here. 6:30 lady was the lady from yesterday, apparently her internet is down again. Sigh.

Time Warner is coming out to have a look tomorrow, hopefully they'll find something.

So I set up the laptop I got for the car guy's wife, and looked at the laptop I had gotten yesterday with the busted LCD. Display (if I even did it) is about $30, my labor is $50. You can get them used on ebay for $100. Cost effective? I think no.
Works fine on an external display though. The laptop I took the old spinning rust nastiness out, and slipped in the shiny SSD goodness. Stupid thing, had to disassemble the whole top part, it didn't just slide out. Grrrrr.

So weekend- getting up early Fri Sat Sun to feed kitties. Tomorrow is shopping, I'll probably go check on everybody after that, I mean I'll be right there. Two jobs Sat, a "wireless" issue and setting up the laptop. Nothing yet for Sunday. (Let's keep it that way.) No Sean news.

Going to start getting cooler. Like, 20% cooler.

Not much time before I have to go to bed so I'll leave you here. See you next week everyone.