2017-10-06:

Fri:
One thing you can say for sure, it was better than last Friday.

Mostly meetings today so I did no testing. The thinprint build came, and we found out our "wipe the tablet" didn't actually do so. Whoops. So we may have been testing in a non-standard config. So they all got wiped again.

Left at around noon for the picnic. It was raining and fairly cold but the food was great. Left with the rest of the team pretty much right after we ate.

Went to staples, got a router for tomorrow, then did the shopping.

Came back here and worked on the game for two hours, then went out for my 4:00. Brought the laptop back here, turning it into an SSD because it's SOOOO slow. Painful. The other machine was fine.

Found a weird sore on Squeaker. Wasn't he just at the vet? And there's a funny lump right next to it. Did he get bruised somehow? Some hair has pulled away, it's not bleeding or anything, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on it. He acts okay, and doesn't seem to mind me looking/touching it. Pets.

Back here started the transfer, talked to some people on the phone, and worked on the game some more. SO close to being able to move the pieces forward and have them move back into place like they should. The very last one screws up. Grr.

Was washing my face and a thought struck me. "Isn't there a way to make the execution of a line of code wait for just a fraction of a second? That's all I need, because I need the square to pass through the other before turning on the collider again." There was. It looks great now. YES!

Sat:
Is… is it over?

A bit more running around than I expected today, but I guess that's fine?

Went to go feed the kids, nothing wrong there. Then to my 9:00 which wasn't that far away. Her machine wasn't exactly hanging, but from her perspective it was. The icons weren't there, but the names were, which was odd. And the start button didn't work. I started it in safe mode that seemed to do the trick, so I cleaned it out normally and it came back fine.

Went to the mortgage place, thinking maybe I could find the key left behind. I called the guy and he didn't answer, so thanks for that. Didn't find the key, came back here. Worked on the game a bit. Have it mostly debugged, but if you go back and forth with one piece it gets messed up. Somehow it's not realizing it already has those coordinates? It's pretty neat, actually, there's no central "you move here" sort of routine the pieces are just constantly looking to see if they should be someplace else. If not, cool, if they should, they start moving towards that spot. When it works it looks great.

He called me, told me where the key was, so I went out there to grab the laptops. I knew he had hundreds of GB of stuff to move, so I wanted the earliest start possible. From there just a checkup, she said she saw this "virus" message sometimes but I didn't see anything, and mbam said the machine was clean. Odd.

Back here I started the copy, and at 1:00 the guy came to pick up the iMac.

Work progressed on the laptop quite slowly, wasn't done copying until after I had to leave at 3:40. Final one went fine, turned off her second wireless, got her router straightened out, ran the usual scans.

Came back here, picked up the laptop, and drove it back to the place.

Finally back here around 6:30. Ate dinner, got ready for tomorrow. Hey, it's October. Cold today, so yeah, I can see it. Forecast for Wednesday is 80s though, so there's that.

Sun:
It's over!

Got through it all.

Went over to feed the kids, lumpy still has his lump. Everyone was fine over there.

Came back here, worked on the game. Getting closer but I summarize at the end of the day.

First one went fine, the extender really is doing the job well. Good thing I had it, not that I couldn't have ordered one. But I think she'll be pleased.

Next one went better than I expected because she already had a wireless router. I thought it was just wired, it was pretty old. But no, it was wireless. So I hooked it up and answered a few things.

Came back here again. More game work.

Then out again for my 5:00. Her backup took about an hour but it did work. She was trying to use the built in windows one and the seagate one (or whatever the manufacturer was) so I just set the windows one to be it. Took out the other. The battery issue I didn't really solve.

Back here I finalized the changes to the game. See, I got the pieces moving like I wanted, contained to X or Y based on where you went first. I was pleased. Then I tested it and found you could carefully move the piece diagonally. Not what I wanted. So I added code to prevent that. Then I waved the piece back and forth across the board. That really made it lose it's mind. I thought I might have to redesign the whole thing, but in the end I put in a system to contain the movement even more, basically if you start going in one direction, you can't go back! I think it works, adds a little more depth of strategy, right? The finishing touch was constraining to the game board itself, so I think it's coming along well.

Squeaker's lump went away! But now he has this weird sore he keeps licking. Smells funny too. Still acting okay, hungry as usual. Guess we'll keep an eye on it. There's no hair there, but it's not really bleeding. I don't know.

Have found several errors in the first book, which I am now re-reading now that it's October. Le Sigh.

Got ready for tomorrow. ThinPrint time!

Mon:
Got in, the build had been loaded probably by Chris Friday, as he hadn't come to the "party" so I got to work. Tested the thinPrint that I could, verified the 2 bugs they fixed were fixed. I couldn't do everything because whoops, the key I had didn't work to activate the software.

Went back to tablet stuff. Finished the one service and got a new key, so after lunch I went back and did the ones I had missed. No issues, thank goodness.

Then went back and chose another service, started it at least.

Dropped off the laptop and came home.

Ate dinner, checked my sites, checked my kitty. The one small sore is healing up nicely. The other one, that he keeps licking, is at least no worse? I don't think it's better though. It's pretty big. *worried*

Worked on the game. Didn't get far. Trying to tell when pieces are matched. I wanted to do it differently than the tutorial, have gotten into all kinds of trouble. I didn't think the way he did it would account for certain types of matches, like a five match, two on each side and you get the one in the middle. I don't know. Have to watch it again, this code is getting more and more complex but the main issue remains. His seemed a lot easier, but again I don't know if it would cover everything. The problem is you can trigger a piece saying "I have new neighbors" before you trigger "I just lost my old neighbors" so the neighbors change, then go away, leaving them with none. He just had a list, and it seemed to work out. I don't know though, wouldn't he have the same issue of the list growing and growing? They weren't getting removed for me. I don't know.

No calls, well, one call about some verizon access point not letting her connect or something. I told her to call verizon first before I came over.

I'll see if my parents have a kitty shame cone, at least when I'm here (so he doesn't get into trouble with it in) I'd like to put some ointment on his sore and keep him from licking it.

Tues:
Guess we'll get some oddities out of the way first. We apparently added someone to the team. Indian, but a tester not a coder? I don't know, according to Lewis he didn't know he was getting another employee either, which seems strange to me. You're not interviewing your own people? How does that work?

Didn't really need another tester. Our newest member is up to a whole 10 bugs, so he's completely justified to be there. (I'm at 185, by the way. My nearest "competitor" is at 83)

And they took all the fake plants away from the halls. What, were they too hard to take care of? Adnan was like "there's something different about this hallway" and I was "yeah, they took the plants away." I forgot to notice if they got rid of the dead plant that's been in the front of the building for the last two years. Have to make a point to check that tomorrow.

Still, back to it, finished the service I was working on. Managed to find two more ways to get to the web. If you open a door with fairly precise timing the browser address bar shows up, and simply tapping a bunch on the screen will let you access it too. Neat.

Wrote a few others bugs as well, and there were no meetings today. Neat.

Came back here, Squeaker's sore is basically unchanged. He was leaving it alone, (as far as I could tell) so I thought about putting some antibacterial stuff on it. This he promptly licked off. So I went over to the nearest pet store and got a collar for him, and put more on. He's not trying to rip it off, and he was very good about getting it on in the first place. He's such a good cat. Running into things now, and I'm not sure if I'll leave it all all day or what. Would a couple of hours a day be enough? I suppose it's better to see if he can tolerate it until the sore is healed up. I guess we'll see.

Worked on the game. Last night I had an idea for the solution while sitting in bed and petting a cat. That's where you get all your best ideas, you should try it. The solution is not not have a remove routine at all. The only time a piece won't have four neighbors is when they're at the edge of the game board. So just have an add, it replaces whatever was there, and boom.

Expect not boom, because when I'm moving the collider is turned off so the pieces can slide through each other. This meant that the piece I was moving knew the new neighbors it had, but it was a "ghost" from the perspective of the pieces it was sliding past. They didn't know anything was going on.

Solution to that was just tell the piece directly "when your top changes, set the bottom of that piece to yourself." It worked. I can now match vertically and horizontally. Now to make them disappear and reappear!

Only one call when I got home, the guy with the minor problems the last few times. He wanted Friday night (not going to happen) or Sunday morning. UGh. Guess which he got?
And got the mortgage guy's "Point" data back. Apparently it doesn't live in the documents folder, but rather the C drive. Okay…

Wed:
Hey, the sore is healing up! It looks better, and Squeak got through the night without strangling himself. Was on my bed, and he never comes to see me at night. Went back on there in the morning too, so that's fine. I think this collar might work out just fine.

Didn't get the new release until somewhat late, but certain things are fixed. Not to worry though, we wrote up more bugs and had a darn fine time doing it, too.

Nothing after work so I came to work on the game. Not going well, sadly. Matches are made, and sparkle as they should. However, I noticed in sliding the pieces around that sometimes a piece not connected by other pieces would shine as though it was a match. Curious, I looked at these pieces and found their neighbors were totally wrong. Like, sometimes they thought their bottom, top, and left piece were all the same. Buh? And I saw more instances of pieces going crazy and bouncing against each other, too. Super. So I have no idea what either of those things is about. It tries to switch with a piece that is not switching with it, essentially, so it tries and tries but doesn't get anywhere. Oh, and I have seen two pieces occupy the same space too, so there's that. Sigh.

Programming, why you gotta be so hard!? I suppose it didn't help the tutorial was making a very different game than I was, despite both being match 3. Sat and thought about how to redesign the code. Only petted a cone kitty part of the time.

Thurs:
Only wrote one bug today, I was the weakest link. My tablet was plumb hung up when I arrived in the morning. Weird. I was doing reliability all day, it went pretty well, but the others wrote up some good stuff so I'm glad this is the candidate for the beta. 15-20 new bugs a day? Ship it!

Came back here, Squeaker still has his sore, and I have to watch him like a hawk when I take it off to let him eat because he'll just immediately start licking again.

Of course I worked on the game, started trying to implement the array and individual squares on the board that don't move, but instead just track where you clicked. I was thinking more like livecode, where I could do something like that, just a bunch of invisible buttons. Doesn't seem like Unity has a similar thing.

So I cogitated some more and came up with a hybrid system. I can disable everything but the row and column I click on, that will insure I don't get any funny business like trying to move diagonally. Then when I do hit something I just tell the piece to move towards the empty spot, and the board can tell me which way that is. Got it maybe half implemented? The code is all over the place but I can clean it up later.

Looking to the first weekend of October, might get some rain, but warm on Saturday. Tomorrow the usual stuff, bank, shopping, parents. Have no idea what I'll do at work. Oh, the thinprint stuff we missed I guess has been approved to be added to the product. And it's going to be more expensive than the initial effort, because that was just porting from another product? And we still don't even know if the customer can use it the way they want. Seems about right. So we'll be spinning that up pretty soon. 

Three weeks and I'll have been back there 2 years. Let's see if I can beat my previous record.

No calls, so at the moment nothing for Saturday. Nice. No Sean news though, not nice.

Two for Sunday though, yay, so that's my punishment I guess.

Have a happy natives killing day Monday, I'll see you all next week.