2017-06-09:

Fri:
More bad news. Kmart is closing! Back to that in a minute.

Better night's sleep, but still quite painful in the ear area. Eating is pretty bad.

So it was back on the rice packet at work. Wiped the machine and miraculously the errors stopped for both machines again. So weird. The one machine shouldn't influence the other. Who's testing this software, anyway?

Worked on the next adventure in case its me running game tomorrow.

Did the shopping, went to the bank, saw my parents.

Went over to Kmart, they are closing. 20%+ off on everything. If I had more time I might have browsed. Once again forgot to tell my parents to look for a soap dispenser for me. Pinky doesn't like the soap I put in her since she ran out of her own. I could have bought one.

What I was looking for was a better heat source. Didn't find one. On my way to target I passed a drug store. "Of course!" I said. "They would have one!" So I pulled in there and they did. Score!

It's much better than the rice. For one thing I don't need to keep running to heat it up every few minutes. It's bigger too. More even heat, it really made my face feel better. At least in the short term.

My aspirin expired in 2006. Tells you how often I buy stuff like that. Would it even work?

Anyway, checked my sites, worked on this stupid tiny HP that got dropped off. Got the password off it, now it's struggling to update as usual. Doesn't even have SP1 on it.

Didn't reach anyone. Two calls. The rebath guy called, said he's having trouble with the printer again which I highly doubt. And PDFs? Whatever, I'll see about calling him tomorrow. Just the one at 10:00, the lawyer's office and updating Java. Spare me.

Sat:
Did the morning job, ear was not much better. She was trying to use firefox which doesn't support Java anymore. Neither does Edge to be fair. So I had to set her up to use ancient IE to us the site she was trying to use. All it does is basically load an image, why does it need Java anyway?

Called the bath place, Jim was busy but the lady at the front wanted to load her email into the outlook because apparently there are two people that work the front desk part time? *shakes head* Anyway, I ate a quick lunch and went out there. Jim tried to demonstrate his problem. Couldn't, what a shocker. And I managed to get the other address loaded. Why are they using domains and exchange and crap anyway? They have so few machines it's not worth it.

Went to Sean's. Got the deck half ripped up. Well, more than, we sawed the railing off and got half the boards up off the actual deck. So a little more than half. Would have done more with another drill. Oh well.

Watched Dr. Who and a movie, had pizza burgers and yummy cinnamon rolls and cinnamon pepsi of all things.

Came back pretty early for a Saturday as we were all pretty tired. I put the heat pad on my ear and watched a little more avatar, then went to bed. On the couch, with he heat pad.

Sun:
Got up and got ready to go to my 10:00. Didn't expect to get back at 2:00 but I did! Yay! The transfer took three hours, it was only 80GB what the heck took so long? I had them connected directly it should have been gigabit between them. GRRR.

More heating pad and avatar today. Ear feels a bit better, still stuffy though. I can eat without wanting to stop eating because of the pain in my jaw.

Talked a few people through some things so I have nothing for tomorrow. Wonder what I'll do at work? Hum…

Well, off to bed, and by bed I mean the couch, with the heating pad.

Mon:
Not much to talk about work wise, so let's not dwell on it.

In ear news, more steady improvements to be had. Woke up last night with it cracking and popping like crazy. Didn't concern me too much, as it was somewhat like watching a thin layer of ice evaporate and disappear. My ear felt as if it was draining and felt better.

Which is not to say it's perfect today but it's better.

Got a bunch of calls, yay. So I have tomorrow booked with the guy that has the ancient XP machine he runs without the case walls. It isn't finding the HD. And on Wednesday someone screwed their Mac up installing junk like "cleaners" and supposedly McAfee? But I don't think they actually did that… so yeah.

Tues:
I guess I got assigned a new project at work? Yeah. Like, two months ago Mitch was all like "thinprint and stuff, yay!" And then talked with Chris about certificates and whatever. Not a word was said about it since then.

So today out of the blue its like "hey, can you start on the test plan for the thinprint stuff?" So that's true to form if you remember how the EIP thing went and oh yeah the AT&T project. I was like, no, no I can't, because it's been two months, I have no idea what you were talking about or what the request even was from then.

But he threw me a bone with "schedule a half hour meeting if you need help getting started." Thanks for offering so much of your time! That was sarcasm. I know, most of this blog is sarcasm. Sarcasm and complaining, that's me. Just wanted to make sure you realized it. Anyway.

So I at least got the beginnings of what could later be called a test plan started. Go me. I thought I was going to get back to doing tablet stuff, now that new tablet stuff was coming up. You know, the thing I was actually hired for? Let Chris do this printer stuff, that's what he was hired for. It's so bizarre.

Also mapped out the room, so there's a big whiteboard with where the printers are now so people don't have to wander around looking at them all.

Ear has been fairly good today. Still feels plugged up but it doesn't hurt much anymore. There are still stabbing pains that fade in a second or two, which I take as normal for this sort of thing. I can chew normally at least.

The big tree across the way is losing a limb. It just sort of cracked and came down. It'll have to be sawed off. In other tree news, came home today and saw something was missing in the back yard. Couldn't put my finger on it until I went back there. I have two less trees than I did, and two more stumps. Huh? Who came into my back yard, cut down two of my trees, dragged them away without a trace, and faded into the… daylight? So weird. They weren't THAT close to the lines out back. I don't get it.

Rainy but we might start seeing a little more sun soon.

One call, a lady with an inkjet that has a blocked black print head. And of course it's not easily replaceable. Stupid inkjet.

Almost watched all of Avatar.

Wed:
Had the "kick off" meeting for the thin print stuff. I guess it's business as usual? The company was late signing the agreement, but wants us to stick to the original date of… three months from now? Sure, we'll just develop a whole new feature for you, test it, certify it, and all in three months. Easy. Oh by the way the person that is writing the spec is on vacation the first two weeks of july and hasn't even started the work yet. Will that be a problem? Yes? Maybe?

Anyway, the first realistic date is January of next year. So will I be testing anything for that project any time soon? Why no, I don't think so.

Anyway, changed the test cases from what I learned in the meeting and that was that. No server virtual machine yet so no playing around with the feature.

Finally did some more work no the book, didn't get through a chapter though.

Went out to look at the iMac which became iMacs, cleaned them up.

Came back here, finished Avatar. Made one call, just telling the guy where the print feature he wanted was.

In ear news- getting better still. Hardly feels plugged up at all at the moment, though it's still not 100%. Few more days at the most should shake it.

Got ready for tomorrow, the usual evening stuff. Have to do paperwork at some point from last month.

Thurs:
More thinprint nonsense today. Trying to install it is like "here's the directions, but there's a dozen things we depend on that we're not going to tell you anything about. Have fun!" Like why do they need the web server? It's nothing to do with a website, it's a printing thing. It so stupid.

Anyway, did not get even past the first checks, so there.
Of course, that's what he gets for asking me to do it. I sat there and got past some of the errors it gave me, thank you google. But you want it done quickly? Too bad, you asked someone who has no idea about Windows Server stuff. So you'll just have to take what you can get.

Also rebooted a printer about 60 times. Turning off zero config actually helped, so I added that to the report.

Finished the latest chapter, and my ear is feeling better. Still not perfect, but still a little better every day.

Nice today too.

No calls, and the outreach place lady figured out her printing thing so I didn't have to go there. Checked my sites, ate dinner.

Usual plan for tomorrow, dropping off a nice "present" in the morning at my parent's house, then work. Shopping, bank, then back to my parent's house.

No news on Saturday so probably no Sean this week. Might be a quiet weekend.

Worked on chapter 24 a bit. How do I get them to eat the cookies, that's the current problem. I was originally going to say the shadow kin longed for new experiences that taking over physical bodies provided them but that's too coincidental, isn't it? It is, you can tell me. Coincidence can't save characters, it's too cheep. They were going to scarf the cookies down but that's dumb. So I might have to rewrite the end of 23 when I bring up the cookies. But how else can I get this stuff into people all at once so they can be paralyzed by it? I can't lace anything with it, it's glowing, which is the whole point. Maybe shooting them with the stuff is the only way?

Guess I'll see what I come up with. Hopefully going to warm up, so get out there and enjoy it.

See you next week everyone.