2016-09-30:

Fri:
Came into work after feeding el kittones to find the machine now running our "fiddler" software had blue screened. HAHA. So nice to watch some other person deal with PC crap instead of just me.

Cold and yucky today, welcome to fall.

Rewrote a series of test cases because the spec had dramatically changed. So that took a bit.

Anything else interesting? Not really I guess.

Did the shopping, stopped over at the parental unit's house to check everybody, someone had thrown up on the counter. Lovely. Otherwise everything was fine.

Came back here, ate dinner. The desktop got delivered, but I was working on my <secret project> so I didn't yet start that. Did read the meter.

Made a few calls. I'm going to deliver the monitor and got another job for 3:00 so I plan to eat lunch around 2:00, should be a joy. Let's hope it goes better than I expect and I can eat earlier.

Checked my friday websites, <secret project> finished but did not work out.
Looking into other options. Odd.

Sat:
That was a long day.

Woke up at 6:00 because hey, do that two days in a row and now your body says "You want to wake up at that time now? Sure, I can do that for you!"

So helpful.

Rather than lay there an hour uselessly I went and implemented the solution I found for the <secret project> which for a wonder worked just fine. So the <secret project> is done and I headed to my parent's house on time.

After feeding everybody (and some cuddles of course) I went to the first job of the day, the wireless. It was basically getting their extender working again, and just showing her a few things. That went fine.

As did dropping off the monitor, so that machine is now again useable at least.

Then to set up the laptop. Oh no, wait, there's a 20 year old printer and three laptops on the table. Why? Why do you need four laptops in the mouse? One for each hand? Seriously. And he's all like, "but I bought these manufactured cartridges on ebay why isn't it printing?" You answered your own question buddy.

I recommended a new laser printer, but he "needs color." Uh, okay? It's the business printer, so no, you don't. He was browsing craigslist for printer. *shakes head.* Dude? You know your problem? You buy crap! Yeah, your house is full of it, I can see it from here. You know that laptop I got you? Not crap! You know that printer I showed you? Not crap! Why do you keep wasting money on stuff that's ancient instead of just buying the very cheap thing I suggested that is new and will save you all kinds of money because you're not wasting it buying ink that doesn't work. (For example.)

But whatever.

As his most ancient laptop, the one one that runs the ontime system that exploded years ago (but still updates, how about that?) wouldn't get on the wireless I set him up with virtual box so he could run it in XP on the newer laptops. That took… more time that I would have liked but less time than setting XP up twice on real hardware. SSDs for the win, baby.

So instead of eating lunch at 2:00 and getting to my 3:00 I just went right at 2:30 and got there. I ran the usual stuff, then rebooted. Just after she put her password in, it BSOD. Oh, wonderful. The built in RAM test said that was fine. She says it blue screens all the time when it's booting? Sigh. The next time it was fine. She needed to use it though so she was going to see how it went from there.

John had given me a coupon for buy one get one free at the new Mexican place that opened down the street, and given I had only eaten breakfast up to that point (it was now almost 4:00 or a bit after) I actually went there. I know! It's like I don't even know who I am anymore. Got two huge burritos for the price of one. Which was actually still pretty expensive, now that I think about it. Pretty good though!

Might tear into the other one in a bit. I make no promises.

Oh, and when I got back I had a mac on by breezeway with a kernel panic issue. 2010 machine, it's shot. Memory test returns thousands of errors even with new RAM. Whoops.

Checked my pages, worked on that, it's now about 7:00. My goodness.

Got nearly through chapter 222.

Got one call, it was at almost 10:00 last night, but I was in the bathroom so I didn't hear it. Turns out she was "desperately needing" me (not in that way) this morning because she was leaving town in the afternoon. Really. And she called me with only hours to spare the night before. Well, sorry, but I was super busy this morning.

The other was just about the Mac that had been dropped off.

So I returned no calls tonight, meaning I have the day off tomorrow. Apart from feeding the kitties of course. But that's not work.

Did not eat the other burrito, by the way. I figure it was massive enough for two meals.

I'm going to bed a bit early, make up for that hour I lost.

Sun:
It was a good day of writing.

Went early to feed the kitties, saw Gabe and gave him some stuff. He even let me near him to be petted.

Came back, wrote up chapters 222 and 223.

By then I was burned out on writing and was going to tear into that second burrito, so I watched Hercules, that I totally got legitimately.

Got ready for tomorrow, cleaned the mouse, made some calls. No job for tomorrow, oddly.

Mon:
Hardly worth talking about work today. We did have a "safe zone" drill which was a bit of excitement.

No new specs for AT&T so nothing done there, and our bug tracker was down not that there are really any new bugs to write.

Did have some yummy soup brought in by John, a little spicy but that's acceptable, right?

Lots of meetings tomorrow, so that'll give me something to do.

Went to Tractor Supply finally, as I figured out where it was. Odd place. They had the special cat food, and given the insane price I paid for cat and mouse litter, I figured it would be cheaper. Nope. When I got home and looked it up, I actually paid a little more than I would normally. Ah well, I was already there.

They do match prices, how do I claim that?

Back here, ate dinner, looked my sites over, made some calls. Have a job for Wednesday, some printer issue, but nothing yet for tomorrow.

Got 224 done.

Tues:
Bit busier today, as I had two meetings and a demo of the win10 print system to attend. The first meeting was the AT&T status meeting. Apparently all the specs won't be done before the first version of software reaches us (friday) so that's a thing. Shouldn't you really define that first, have AT&T sign off on it, and THEN start the code? Just seems logical to me.

Then the demo, which was quite interesting actually. Apparently MS reworked the printing system in win8, who knew? Like everything else it has good and bad points.

Then the spec review right after that, got through the Cloning test cases and I made a few notes about that. So I'll have some work tomorrow to finish that up.

Then back here. Ate dinner, checked sites, then started 225. As the major plot point is spotted by Susan immediately (two different ways no less) I haven't figured out exactly how I want it to go. I would like to save the ship, if at all possible.

Made calls, I had a few. Booked Thursday at least. So that's this week gone. Of course the weekend is thus far free.

Wed:
Bit of excitement at work today. Finished up the changes to the test cases from yesterday's meeting, and that was all the AT&T stuff I did.

We got new software, sadly the performance took a nosedive so we used our new rollback to get that right out of there. We went back to the previous software.

Watched a demo of some new card reader stuff, which was quite boring actually, and then did a bit of testing on the staples credit card reader for the new fix they put in. Basically if it doesn't connect, rather than keep trying they just make the unit reboot over and over until it does.

It works, I guess?

Drove 40+ minutes to see the guy with the printer trouble. He had the old "it's there but it's not there" in windows so I took it out, and added it back with the add printer "wizard." Then installed the scan part of it, which is much nicer than the HP stuff because you can actually run a setup program which will go out and look for the thing, or let you specify it by IP or whatever. Nice!

Then went one house down and ordered a new laptop for them.

Came back here about 6:40 and ate dinner, then made calls. One new appointment for Saturday. Yay.

Got ready for tomorrow, got some writing done. Finished the next chapter, it was a pretty long one.

Thurs:
Couple of meetings today, and technically we got software. Two parts of it, actually. Of course, the machine part bombed out with endless reboots. Whoops.

The web part I'll start looking over tomorrow.

One guy I don't know was "going home" so there was all kinds of food in the lab. Yay!

Went over about half the cloning test cases, there's a lot of them.

So today was pretty busy, actually. But tomorrow I can actually start looking at what they've been coding and get some better detail. At least for the one part.

Got the laptop set up. Silly guy, if he had called me I could have gotten him a much faster machine, cheaper. Well, your loss.

Had a few calls tonight, but no new jobs yet.

Watched the next episode, which was all about Tyr, who I erased. Not sure what I want Susan to do. Have an adventure with Trance telling her she needs to "right a great wrong" or something? Not sure.

So tomorrow and into the weekend plan- actual work tomorrow on the new stuff. Probably eating leftover food, not complaining. Going to the bank, shopping, and seeing my parents. Goodies?

Saturday a few jobs, and hey, Sean's house too. We may even make characters for the game I want to run finally. As we'll never see other Sean again by the looks of it. I should make sure I'm ready if we want to run a bit of it.

Nothing for Sunday yet.

And we're into October. I'm already seeing changed leaves on trees and fake gravestones. Time for pumpkin spice to make a return.

See you all next month. Now look at this picture of a frog. DO IT. LOOK AT IT.

[[image file="2016-09/frog_in_pond.jpg" alt="Von Senior froggy frog" ]]