2017-01-27:

That can't be right.

Fri:
The script I had made worked 2/3 to my exceptions, which was nice. I added a new part that moved the file once it was finished so they didn't pile up and get confused. Somehow one of the three didn't download fully, but of course the printer didn't say anything like "hey, this isn't a complete file you moron" as it should. It should just scream it out like that.

We have the technology.

Once I figured that out I loaded the next machine up in the list of busywork and completed that test. No issues. Checked a bunch of my bugs to make sure both the old product and the new product were written up. A bunch of the more minor ones have just been closed. Uh, thanks? So you're just not going to fix them… ever? Okay.

Went to the bank, the store, and got cat food.

Then over to my parent's house for a nice dinner, and back here. No calls? Huh? But I got one later so I have three as of now for tomorrow. The Win7 machine survived the day and even got the updates it needed so it's 136/217 at the moment. So it can probably go back tomorrow.

Ordered the wireless adapter I promised to.

Changed the battery in the little tablet, started it charging up.

Wrote the last chapter of the Andromeda arc. Yay?

Sat:
Ran a RAM test on the two chips originally in the machine. First one passed a whole 24 minutes, second one got 20 minutes in and sort of hung up. Guess that's the one that's going bye bye.

Left for my 8:30.

She just had some general stuff, and not "oh my email doesn't work" as I thought she had told me over the phone. Also did a few things for her housemate and arrived slightly early to my 10:00. He was still using outlook express on XP, so the cutting edge of technology he was not. He was having trouble accessing gmail so I switched him over to thunderbird. A few other questions answered and I was free.

Back here I worked on the PC more. Odd, it worked fine if I just left it alone doing the updates but use it even a few minutes and it crashes. I tried a new video card, switching up the RAM, a new ethernet card, moving the SATA cables- nothing.

New machine it is!

Took down the lower christmas lights, didn't have the RESolve to drag the ladder out and get the upper ones. Maybe tomorrow it should be just as nice.

Ordered the new PC for the lady, straightened up a bit.

Thought about what the solar avatars gave Susan, didn't come up with a good answer yet. I don't need to make her more powerful, just more interesting.

Went over to see about the scanner. Epson software didn't want to find it, had to force the IP address. Then once the scanner found it, the printer didn't want to. Sigh. Good old MS. Innovating left and right.

Came back to find the person I worked for at 8:30 had lost her 10,000+ emails. Yippie. Why even keep around 10,000+ emails? Why keep around 1000? Why keep 100? After an email scrolls off the main window, are you really going to think about it again? Very likely no. And to just let them build up to that level… anyway, got to back there because I love, love, love doing that. Of course she hadn't backed up for 40 days. (and 40 nights) All you have to do to back up is flick the power switch on your external drive lady. How was that so difficult that you couldn't manage it for more than month? Of course it's gmail, which does some bizarre crap to begin with. Anyway, finally got the bulk of it back by started uploading it, so that the two are synced again. My estimate was 5 hours for it to finish, so I left. Hopefully that's the end of it.

Got home a bit after 7:00, ate dinner. Decided to watch something while I ate, that was a mistake. Chose "Class" thinking it was an anime, as I had been given it by Sean with the other anime. Nope, it's a spin off of Dr Who! Huh. And then I continued watching it. It features a girl with darkness powers, weird eyes, and who wields two shadow swords she conjures from nothing. Sound familiar? Oh, and she just opened a teleportal to a planet 9,000 years away (by their methods of travel) and leapt through in order to challenge the ruler of the world to single combat in order to protect her planet and friends. Dang. Susan would play the love interest card there and make no mistake.

Bedtime.

Sun:
Got woken up at 7:00 by the phone. Yup, you guessed who it was. The procedure didn't exactly work, which really it should have. But was 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning really the time to tell me this? (Hint: No it wasn't.) Called again at 8:00 to see if I had "gotten the message." Lady, it's a sunday morning. CHILL OUT.

Got her all calmed down and wrote Chapter 240.

Then watched the rest of Class, and moved on to 241. Didn't do much of it, need to get the actual plan together. This one will be short and sweet.

Ate dinner, cleaned up a bit. One call, didn't reach him.

Did spend 45 minutes with dentist guy getting his scanner to work. Love it.

Mon:
Know what I didn't do for 45 minutes? Update the printer software! It mostly worked over the weekend, updating twice but not today? Odd.

Attending a meeting about the new feature to get some questions (by the developers and spec writers) answered. I think I raised some good points.

And that was about my biggest contribution to the day. The software doesn't work very well so I couldn't fulfill the request to try something with it. Nothing new to test on the newer product either. To be fair the others aren't exactly lighting the world on fire with their testing either so…

Dropped off the tablet on the way to the after work job. She just had some minor issues which were very easily taken care of.

On the way there/back I rewrote the intro to the next Susan world in my head to be more interesting. I feel I may have gotten away from that. Silly Robert. Then put it down in electronic form when I got home. (After dinner, of course.)

No calls, reached the guy who called yesterday, but he thinks he got his printer working okay.

Wed:
Did a few things today. Tried to track down the source of a bug by seeing what the printer got when we sent it a certain file. Actually managed it, and found it was being sent with an extra line break for some reason. Tried loading some older software and it did the same thing. We tried various encodings of files and such, but no luck.

Still no networking log, and no real fixes for the newer machine so no action there.

No job, so got to come back home through the snow. It was somewhat pretty, I'll admit.

Worked on finishing chapter 240 and started 241.

One call, didn't reach her. It just rang and rang. Two other people called with questions, I answered them.

Wed:
Had a pleasant surprise when I got into work. All three machines had updated properly! Yes, even the new one that has never really done so. But someone else wanted to run some tests with it so I gave the unit over to her.

Meantime I had some meetings, and I got time on the only one of a certain model and ran the sanity test on it. No problems. It's one of the two that wasn't doing a proper erase customer data, and that worked perfectly. So that's good news. Also talked to Fred about the extra line problem a little more.

Tomorrow I'll try more cloning which now seems to work properly (apart from CWW, sigh) before the 9:30 meeting. Finish up the cloning and cloning web service test cases for the new machine, and feel like I've actually accomplished something.

Called the nearby lady to see about her printer, went over there. Either the tank is totally dry or it's just totally clogged. I recommended a laser printer.

Back here, worked on Chapter 241 and ate dinner. Made a few calls, took off that stupid mbam notice for a lady. Also increased her cursor size as he said she was losing it.

(The cursor, not her marbles)

Got ready for tomorrow.

Thurs:
Which did not exactly go according to plan. Oddly, cloning stopped working again, so obviously they're doing something to it. So I reported those findings at the first meeting. Stayed busy in the morning, making sure the bug list was up to date, and writing up some things that had been fixed awhile ago in the older product so they could be looked at in the newer.

Afternoon wasn't as productive, but I managed to get through it somehow.

Drove about a half hour to see about a guy's android tablet. I didn't really see anything wrong with it so I didn't reload it or anything.

When I got home the two PCs were there waiting for me. Forgot to order the brackets again, sigh. Hopefully I can rig of something at least for the one. Haven't reached the lady it's going to yet.

Did talk to a bunch of other people, so Saturday morning is jam packed with people. Three of them, all with very minor stuff.

Started the clone of the PC onto the SSD, probably should have just reloaded it from scratch, it would have been faster. Oh well.

Stopped it, was taking way too long. Just did the regular install in a fraction of the time. Stupid spinning rust.

Nothing new on the Sean front so I don't know if we're doing Shadowrun this week or not. Tomorrow is the usual, bank and shopping and parents visiting. Maybe cloning will work and I can do more test cases? We'll see.

Saturday probably one or two in the afternoon. At least handing this PC over and getting paid for it. Hopefully a quiet Sunday!

Snow is melting, mostly all gone. Very happy with this winter so far, let's keep it up.

See you next week.