2017-04-06:

Fri:
In the morning I got Chris an account on that PC we took out of the trash many moons ago so he could use it in the manner he wished. Go me.

Had a meeting about a new project we will be taking on, something about ThinPrint. Honestly, there's about 10X the complexity than there needs to be. It's printing. Do we really need whole servers dedicated to print queues when the printers already do whatever you want just on their own? I don't think you do.

Then I poked around the site and wrote 7 new bugs. Minor UI stuff to be sure, but still not bad, not bad.

Went shopping, (very rainy) and got cat food, then over to my parent's house. Thanks for the haircut! And dinner. And snacks. And pie. Everything, really.

From there I came home, put everything away, and made phone calls. I have a stupid amount of work tomorrow. Returning the desktop I finished after making calls. Delivering the laptop. Upgrading someone's Mac so they can use a new printer, which they lost what I told her to buy and rather than call and say "what was it again?" she just bought some crappy inkjet. (no doubt) Why don't people listen to me? I'm trying to help them. When I say, "go and get this on sale printer tomorrow" and three months later they call and have bought completely the wrong thing to suit their needs… laser printers people. Haven't you had enough problems with your inkjet?

And the guy who I couldn't make heads or tails of what he was talking about so I wrote down "printer?" so it could be anything.

Got ready for tomorrow, it was by that time 8:00. Was not in the mood to write.

Guy that dropped the desktop off said his machine blue screened. Great. I let it run all day Wednesday and it was fine. What the heck.

Sat:
As expected, pretty busy today. Went down the street to install a Mac upgrade, that went far too long. What is it about Macs that I can now install Win10 faster? Of course most PCs I install have SSDs, which does make a huge difference.

Then I set up the new laptop for the lady. That went fine, though again slowly and I couldn't move her mail over because windows live mail doesn't exist anymore. Thanks MS, way to go.

A quick lunch at home and out again. The "printer?" guy was in fact setting up a new printer. Of course he's using an ancient XP machine and the printer he got doesn't support XP. Well done. So I have to go back there when he gets one that still does.

And finally early to bring the desktop back. No issues there.

Went to Sean's, we stayed mostly on track but Shadowrun is very different from Paragon. For one thing, the rules aren't spread across 7 books. We know the system, so every time someone wants to do something we don't have to spend 20-30 minutes looking up how to do it.

Oh, and Sean doesn't want to speak so he insisted on setting up a chat, which as an "immersion scientist" I approve of, but honestly you don't make it difficult for the IRL part of the trip. I couldn't get Messages to work because, apparently, "access for less secure apps" was turned off. Then why does messages work at home then, Google? Hmmmmmm? Answer me that one. Figured that out Sunday. I think. I could see the chat we tried to have on the desktop but still not on the laptop. Odd. We'll have to try it before we play that game again, a minimum of three weeks away. Anyway, we set up a temp chat on a website and that worked.

In the end, hacking solved everything and both Sean and myself (other sean, not proper sean) did nothing. I can't complain, when I was the hacker for the group I did everything too.

Sun:
Up around 9:00 and out for my 10:00. She didn't have the bios thing going so I don't know what "number" she was talking about to get back into her PC. Weird. Anyway, I went over it and she bemoaned the fact of how stupid she had been. Her relatives all told her so. Well, can't argue with them.

Came back, ate lunch, checked my Sunday sites, and did some changes to Ellen's site. Went out again, looked at the printer. Somehow his desktop was getting the IP address automatically, but the laptop wasn't. It was at 104 but become 106 and an iPhone became 104. So I changed it to 150 and pointed the laptop to it. Also looked at the radio in his new RV. The speakers work because a CD will play and my iPod worked fine. Radio, not so much. Not even static. Weird.

Came back here, guy brought the misbehaving desktop back. I put the video card in. Wouldn't boot. Just sat there and spun. Took it out. Spun. Tried safe mode, worked, but not all that fast. I gave him some options.

Finished Susan's Chronicles! Yes, the final chapter, the final battles, the happy ending. I just have to proofread it and that's that. I somehow copied one chapter into the next number so everything past 234 is one chapter off. Grr. Still, it's finally done.

Got ready for tomorrow, have to do paperwork at some point again. Pretty thin stack though.

Made phone calls, no jobs for tomorrow. Fallout 4 time.

Oh, and I made flatbread.

Mon:
Back to work, but again sort of boring. Wrote up one new bug and verified another. Printed out the last chapters to proofread, started a little of that today.

No after work job so I came back and played some Fallout. Going okay I guess. No closer to the city but it least I'm a few levels ahead. Killed a couple of really tough creatures by backing into a house where they couldn't reach and shooting them repeatedly. Seemed to work okay.

Plenty of calls though. Dentist guy is once again unable to sync his calendar with google. Not knowing iOS very well it's hard to diagnose over the phone too.

One job for tomorrow, but at 6:30. Ugh. Hopefully won't take too long, it's just an old guy with some questions. He admits he may have asked me some of them before. Great.

Tues:
Looked at another product today, the companion to the one I've been testing. As we got a bunch of them into the lab to help us, you know, do our jobs I thought I might go ahead and do my job! What a silly guy I am!

Anyway, couldn't get it updated at first, I wonder if anyone but me has used it? Can't be sure, it was running some pretty old stuff. Then I remembered I needed a patch, and so applied the patch. Then it worked! Yay!

Looked it over, seems to have come though just fine. Like another family of products, one tiny bit is missing but that bug was closed for the older product. So I asked what I should do, and she said she would ask. Yay for asking people things. It's the best. (spoiler, never got an answer to that question. Huh)

Got invited out at the last second by "the guys" for a garbage plate. For those that don't know, this is a food item "native" to where I live, it is not actual garbage for lunch. I don't know why it's called that either! It was yummy, and I didn't need to eat anything the rest of the day. So handy to get two days worth of calories in one meal, don't you think? I do.

Stayed late because of it. But will have to do so again tomorrow to make up the full time. Curse you social activity! Came back home, checked my sites, then went out to see the guy with the questions. He had his screen up to 175% magnification and then wondered why UI elements were now out past the boundary of the screen. Gee, I wonder why that could be.

Other questions answered, and I came back here.

Made some calls, booked Saturday morning for dropping off the desktop, and ordered a cable modem for a lady. The other desktop guy hasn't gotten back to me. Huh.

Time for some fallout 4?

Wed:
Bit of excitement this morning. I heard the chirping of a chipmunk in the house. Fortunately (for him) he was under the metal display shelf right by the door to the breezeway. I simply had to block off access to the rest of the room with cardboard, shoo the cats out, open both doors, and carefully use a yardstick to gently suggest the way to go. He/She was out the door in a flash. Mission accomplished.

Only exciting thing to happen at work was a short meeting about the recent bugs. Otherwise did more poking around, not much else to report.

No job so I came home, late to make up for Monday's plate. Got the SSDs in so I got that "spinning" at it were for the laptop. 1.6Ghz Celeron? Ugh, you've got to be kidding me. Well, it's as good as I can make it, I guess.

One call, some nut who was a contractor for some company six months ago. They're suing him, and he wants to take their stuff off the PC. Buh? I guess we'll see when I get there.

Also put an SSD into the desktop I've still got as he hasn't gotten back to me. We'll see how that runs, but so far so good.

They're both updating now, which is taking a loooong time.

Got ready for tomorrow, it's now almost 8:00. Hmm, an hour of fallout? Doesn't seem worth it, what can you do in that game in only an hour?

Hey, I think the laptop finished updating! Checking for updates takes 60% of the CPU? Really? *shakes head*

Thurs:
More of the same at work, not much to report. Rainy.

Went to my after work job. He was talking about how "locked down" the machine was, I think he just didn't realize his search engine was not a search engine? I don't know, it was weird. But what I did made him happy so… yeah.

Came back here, ate dinner, checked sites, made one call so I have Saturday morning all booked up. Shouldn't take too long, the second one I mean. No Sean I guess so hopefully some quality Fallout 4 time.

Tomorrow is work, bank, shopping, and parents!

Must do paperwork this weekend too. Looks like it might start to warm up after Sunday too, so looking forward to that.

Can't think of much else at the moment, so I guess I'll sign off and go play some Fallout. See you all next week.