2016-12-02:

Fri:

Continued from previous entry.

Good news and bad news.

Good news- did not have to go see book guy! Yay!
Bad news- I have to go tomorrow instead. Boo!

So I have one stupid thing tomorrow. Grr.

Worked more on the bankbook. Good progress. Of the menus I can open, save, save as, close, the recent items works (never did in the original) and the print works. Copy and paste works, and the end of month stuff works. You can save and open in the exact format used by the old version so you could go back and forth if you wanted. (Don't know why you would want that?)

It only crashed about 4 times! So I save every minute or so, or at least I try to remember to. Stupid thing.

It's now 5:00, time to eat something and put the tree up.

Which I did! I watched the claymation special while I did so, and had cookies, and it was christmastastic.

That's a word now.

Went back to work on Bankbook 3. Got the "new year" function working. My goodness is it almost done? I want to do some more error checking on saves/open/close and I have to put the stuff in for opening when you double click and such. But that I can copy from the Paragon Database (I hope). Oh, and I want to see if somehow I can have multiple windows open, livecode isn't too great about that I don't think. It's not a document model app, which is sort of annoying? I guess we'll have to see. But it's getting there, the main functions all work and it seems to look exactly like the old one. Neat.

Sat:
Moving right along.

Rainy and yucky today, so leaves still coat the ground around here.

Did a ton of work on the Bankbook all day, maybe finished it? I'll have to poke around it some more, but I think it's pretty well set. All kinds of error checking (even for loading a file, it'll tell you if it's corrupt and ask if you want to continue or stop) and the recent menu works.

Otherwise went to see book guy. He's talking about buying his own printer, and asked about an epson. HAHAHAHA. No. Dude, you need a black and white, duplex, laser printer. We found one at Staples for a good price, he said he would get it. Fine. Oh, and the book was missing stuff, not page numbers, just content. He seemed to have forgotten the fact he had about 11 versions on his hard drive at one time, and we sort of pieced together a "good" copy. Baka.

Then to see the guy with the laptop. His HD is dead! Sooooo dead. So I ordered him a 2013 Mac. With SSD, naturally.

They make adapters (they being… china I guess) to turn the whatever SSD apple uses into the more industry standard slot. Neat.

That was basically today. Still, well worth it if all the bugs are squashed out of BankBook 3 and I can at least send it to the one lady and see what she thinks, and use it myself for a bit. Then release it to THE WORLD!

Then watched a movie, because by that point even I was tried of working on code.

Sun:
But not tired enough to not do so today. I woke up thinking "I forgot to add the search feature!" So I had to put that in. Didn't take too long.

Put some more bugs out of their misery, and tested it. Looks good! Mailed the lady it was done, we'll see how it works out of her.
Book guy emailed me complaining he's screwed things up already. Wonderful sir, well done.

That took the morning, now to find something else fun to do with what remains of my time out. Time off. Time off, that's what I meant to write.

Watched some movies, because I never actually get to do that.

And then raked up the leaves from the back. Looking at the time the sun goes down, the weather, and general number of leaves I figured I better get it done today despite them being wet and nasty. Took an hour, but the back is done. Hope the town comes to pick them up, they're all over the neighborhood. The front? well, it's probably fine?

Spent most of 7-9 helping two people do stuff. Very odd "pause" behavior with one machine, and windows live mail taking 1GB+ of RAM trying to open. Obviously something was corrupted. That's why my Bankbook program checks for that kind of thing. Wait, does that make me a better programmer then those at MS? Hmmmmmmmm.

Not going straight into work tomorrow, my dentist appointment is happening instead. 9:20, so it seems silly to go in for an hour, then come back out.

The lady said she didn't have any problems at least opening the new Bankbook, so that's a good sign.

Mon:
Dentist time! But before that, I went out and raked up the leaves in front. There weren't many, but I figured it should be done. Now I just have to hope they come again. There's plies all over the street.

Good report from the dentist. Apart from the pressure I'm feeling on my bottom teeth that is apparently caused by my canines shifting position and driving them all all over the place. Neat! So I probably will need some orthodontic work to correct that before it gets worse. They have one, a sort of visiting one, that comes in a few days a week. Busy, my appointment with him is 30th of next month. It's not painful, I just can feel them under pressure and figure I better have it taken care of before it's a lot more effort down the line. Sigh. And of course Tinker goes in for his blood work this saturday, and then for his cleaning the week after that. Eh, it's only money.

Went in to work. The manager of the project wants me to stay testing the release we're giving AT&T. uh, okay? But I've tested everything with it. There's really no more to do. Whatever, I can be bored and whatnot, it's fine.

Stayed until 5:30, so I'm only missing an hour. Not too bad.

Came back here, had a bunch of calls, so I have Tues and Wed book and going two places tomorrow and someone getting back to me about upgrading their Mac. The first tomorrow is just down the street, I was just there, her machine apparently doesn't turn on. Shoot, I forgot to have her turn the darn thing off! Oh well, it's been running like that for at least a day so if it's fried, it's already fried.

Then over to the prison outreach place, something about a donated printer and getting it on the wireless.

Found a bug in the bankbook program messing with it it at work, (for a few minutes only!) and came up with a few minor improvements, so I put those in.

Had thought of a change to the last Susan chapter so I got it out of my head at last (I had quite forgotten it actually, but remembered there was something I wanted to do) and then got ready for bed.

Tues:
Another somewhat boring day at work. Did find one one bug they missed in the CWW product. You drop down a certain menu that's empty and click on it- bam, you've killed going to that window almost ever again. I did find a work around, but it was pretty sweet to see that error message come up. I was like, "Aw yea, who's the man in the house!?"

I… didn't actually say that.

Otherwise, went to some meetings, yay Tuesdays, and watched a guy struggle more than half a day to put a hinge on a machine so it could be decked out in the "customer configuration" for a demo someplace. Apparently it's being shipped someplace, but that's about all I know.

About that printer. All I know about that printer. I know a few other things. Like I have a kitty on my lap. I know that.

Worked a little on Bankbook 3 at work, made a few minor improvements even. Neat.

Went to see the lady with the "bad motherboard" that's down the street from work. She just needed her RAM reseated. Easy peasy. (lemon squeezy)

Then out to the outreach place, simply standard HP setup. No troubles there. (Apart from it hanging at the last step, sigh, thanks HP)

Came back here, ate dinner, xmas lights are going up all over! It was nice today, it's the last chance you'll get, people. Gonna start being nasty again.

Checked my sites, one call, ordered some parts for a "slow" mac laptop. I suppose it could be, it's a 2011 model with spinning rust. Guess what I ordered? You're such a good guesser.

Here's a random fact that's both timely and fun. My car is almost to 20,000 miles. Sheesh, didn't think I did that much driving anymore, but apparently I do.

Worked on the next chapter, 236. Getting closer and closer!

Wed:
As we move into December, let us take a moment to recall all the things we despise about it.

The Snow

That's really it, actually.

Anyway, finished up the admin tests with the saved build, ran into a new issue that had passed before. Three days before. Weird. Noted it.

Had some meetings as usual, talked about what we'll do next because we'll have to start testing on our unreleased product to make sure there are no bugs with it, in addition to the older stuff. I'm only one man!

We went through the stuff I had found that I hadn't written up yet, and so I have a bunch of new stuff to write up. Ah, my life has purpose again. I think I'm up to 39 bugs so far written? Not too bad given the 50 average by Chris, especially as that's a year for him and it's only been what two months for me?

Also did a bit of work on the bankbook (yeah yeah, I was bored! Sue me) Tried to make the "clone" function work out, and nearly managed it. Sadly, with my use of the global array the saving gets messed up. I tried to divorce myself from it, but ran out of time.

My after work job went fairly quickly. Put in the right mail settings, got his printer working, answered a few other questions. Done and home a little after 5:30. Ate dinner, replied to the mail from the lady I'm reworking bankbook for, fixed a few issues she brought up, and did the code changes to get rid of the global. Really wish there was a general "here's how tables work" instead of "here's how you do this specific thing in this specific type of table" online. I got through it, turns out I was trying to do a bit too much actually, but I think it's done and ready to put the code for keeping track of multiple documents back. Not very well tested, but global doesn't appear in the code and it seems to still work the same way, so that's a good start.

Just about time to get to bed. I would like to just note down something general that happened today. Not even that I guess, there was just a situation where I wished I could just talk to someone. I mean do people want you to talk to them? I don't, but I'm a nut. Totally cannot use me as the average for this at all. How do you balance trying to strike up a conversation with someone with the fact they may not want to talk to you at all? (Yes, this person is female and I would have to imagine most interaction by males toward females is unasked for, and unwanted. But at the same time I wasn't texting her looking for a hookup, it was just us going the same way briefly. It wouldn't have mattered if it was a guy, I wouldn't have done anything differently) My father can have long conversations with total strangers but this is a person I've seen around work every so often. There must be something I could talk about with them. But no, I did not, then fretted all day that maybe they think I'm snubbing them, or am stuck up. Does she think I think she's not worth talking to? 

I'm so messed up.

Oh, and I made the book cover for the next book the book lady is writing. That I can do in seconds. Ask somehow how they're doing? How's work going for you lately? Any interesting projects you're involved with? What are you involved with here anyway?

Heck no! Why would I be able to do that?

Oh, oh, one good thing to balance out all that angst. My manager was around and basically indicated he was going to start the process to get my badge renewed, so I guess they want to keep me around some more. Yay!

Thurs:
Not only do they want to keep me around, they want to put me on the Office Depot stuff. I guess that's fine, while I'm waiting for the code to catch up to the next features they're adding.

Put together a short list of caveats (read: our bugs but in english) and, uh, worked on Bankbook. Got the two code bases together, and got a bunch of bugs fixed. Sadly there are still a few more.

Started Office D. stuff but there is no actual documentation for what I should be doing. Just some general, "yeah, whatever" type stuff. Uh, okay? Maybe this is part of the problem? Just everybody doing their own thing and no formalization? Just a thought.

Weird.

And they want people to work overtime/weekends on this? Why? It doesn't actually seem that complex, it's three areas to test. Staples had 10. Why does every tester need to be focused on this? It's madness! MADNESS!

Madness? No, this SPART- wait a second.

I'm at least documenting the steps I take in case I do see something the others haven't. I doubt it at this point. But at least I have a record of some kind that I actually did something.

After work job went fine, just getting her network straightened out. Her device is right there, she can't really need an extender. Something else must be going on. I labeled the (4) wireless networks she had and turned off the fifth one from the RR box. Yeah, excessive much?

Came back, no calls today! Finished up Bankbook. (I hope.) It opens multiple things, it quits when you tell it to quit (saving each or not as you like). The find works for the window that's on top, as does the end of month. Things don't get whacked when you save them. (these were all recent bugs) Sweet.

No news from Sean, so not going over there I guess. Tomorrow is more Office D. stuff, I guess, then as going to the bank is pointless I'll just go shopping, get cat food down at the other place because I don't want to be "that guy" that just takes all the turkey and leaves the salmon, and visit my parents.

Saturday is taking the kitty in for his blood work in the morning. Then I'm not sure. More Xerox stuff? I can't even get in, so it may be pointless to go over there. Think they would mind Tinker running around the lab? Probably, I'll have to go home then back there if I decide to do it. I really don't see the point.

And Sunday thus far is free. Ugh, it occurs to me I have to go see book guy at some point. ACrap.

Leaves are still out front, I have a sinking feeling they're going to stay there… forever. Not as nasty as I had feared these last few days but no trace of sun either.

Have to do paperwork, maybe over the weekend?

Not much time left, probably won't get to any writing. Tonight I mean.

That seems to be it for now. Basically 3 weeks until christmas, hope everyone is prepared. I'm prepared.
For what?
For the death of the king.
Why? Is his sick?
No, you fool, we're gonna kill him. And Simba too.
Great idea, who needs a king? No king! No king!
Idiots- there will be a king.
But you said-
I WILL BE KING.

See you next week everyone.