2017-10-13:

Usual after work stuff, no real surprises there. Saw my parents, got goodies, thanks!

Came back here, checked my sites, checked my cone head kitty, wrapped Sean's gift in case I don't see him next week as he texted me around 10:00 that we were still on for tomorrow.

One call, like 5 minutes away from him. Nice! So I'll go over there and when I'm done, Sean's is just a second or two away. Millage!

Worked on the game more. Well, I started to, but then Ellen called with the usual round of stupidity so that was a thing.

Went back to work on it. This "hybrid" approach has brought its own share of problems, sadly. May have come up with a solution?

Sat:
I think I did! I again did a sort of hybrid, where the yellow "guides" I made put the pieces back if you go away from them, and the pieces move as I direct them. It looks just like the match 3 game I'm trying to replicate. I honestly didn't think I would be able to do the same thing, it looked pretty complex. But in the end that was the only way I could do it. Weird how that worked out, isn't it? The pieces go forward and back, I can move any number of them, it doesn't crash, and they snap back when they should. No bugs so far.

The "I want to print checks" guy canceled, so that's even more good news. Such good news all over.

Spoke too soon. It is possible to get them to move diagonally. You have to be very exact, but it works. AARRGG.

Started to work on that. Ellen called again. Yay! Her machine is dead. So I lost my 2:00 annoyance and gained a 1:00 annoyance. So good!

Tell you a cute Squeaker story. It was time for his tooth treat and he was in my bedroom while I was in the kitchen. I called his name one time and he came running. You're not a dog, silly!

Went to my 3:00, not far from Sean's. Pretty standard cleanout, but one (massive) windows update wasn't going in. I tried it a few ways but after almost 2 hours I didn't care much anymore and went to Sean's.

Stayed on task pretty well, get back from the dungeon, poked around the town, and went back with floor 5 as our goal. It'll only take us about that many play sessions to get there.

Forgot his gift. Didn't go out the door, robot is guarding it to make sure Squeak doesn't try to go out there. What a dumb.

Sun:
Worked on the game, did not get anywhere. Naturally the more I looked at it, the more it fell apart. Turns out the guides I was using weren't working at all, so I did that another way, which seemed to work, but now the pieces don't snap back when you let them go. But they do if a match was made, meaning the snapback code could actually not be done at all. So that's a head scratcher. Feeling like I should just somehow redesign it like I was going to. Maybe make the board do more and the pieces do less? I don't know. It looked so good for a few minutes though, I tell ya that.

Went to my one job at 10:00, fairly easy stuff. Yahoo seems to cut off the first message when the mail is sorted by date. But sort it by "unread" and the headers go away, so the whole mailbox shows up. Does it remember this preference, or have a place to set it? Why no, I'm glad you asked. His other issue was getting malwarebytes back, which I did and then ran it. Pulled a bunch of stuff out, but all related to one thing.

Squeaker continues to improve, but I'm not taking the collar off just yet.

Nice day, fairly warm. Looks like a fairly nice week as well. Let's hope it continues.

Mon:
Complete success!

I printed the code out at work (it was only 9 pages) and looked it over a bit. Refactored a bunch of it (that means if there's code in two places that does the same thing, you pull it out, call it, and have less to mess up) and looked it over for problems. I wasn't sure if it would fix all the bugs (spoiler, it didn't) but I was hopeful at least it would be easier to understand and then fix bugs.

Otherwise work was boring. We got a new build, but pretty late. Probably load it tomorrow? Wrote one bug, but honestly the system is pretty well tested at this point.
Was chasing a timing issue, but didn't capture it on film.

Came back, put the changes into the code. It actually fixed a few things. With a bit more work (after dinner) I got it working! Yes, I got the thing working. You can pick things up, put them down, move them around, (not diagonally) and matches are made and change. I need to know what to do with the piece you're holding if it's only indirectly making a match, but otherwise it actually looks great. I know, I know, I've said that before. But I'm pretty hopeful this time, given the refinements I've been forced to make. Now to get the pieces to reappear above everything and fall again.

Squeaker's sore is pretty much gone. It's not red anymore, but that didn't stop him almost immediately trying to lick it when his cone was removed. Probably itchy? It's healed pretty fast. The collar must be itchy, he's started to scratch it.

Two calls, but one was from yesterday, the guy that wants a new laptop.

Then helped someone out with a printer IP issue, and then another lady with email trouble, she needed SSL checked which apparently 3 calls to "spectrum" didn't reveal. Nice ones, spectrumites.

Got ready for bed, didn't have much time left so just did some proofreading.

Tues:
My goodness it actually works. Hopefully below you will see a movie of the current implementation.

The pieces actually disappear and are redone. It even does combos! Sweetness. I sat and went through the logic for it at work, seeing as how it's boring again. It worked almost without modification. Almost. But I did get it to work. There are still some bugs, I saw one trying to get this movie, where if you put the piece back it blows up for some reason. If you watch, near the end a piece chances color but it wasn't matched. Weird. But IT WORKS. I sat and played it. Oh, it's still very rough but given I was thinking about giving up on the whole thing two days ago, I'm pretty pleased.

Oh yeah, work, or whatever. Boring. Found someone in NY, NY trying to get into the account so google put a red banner on our login screen saying that. And I was out on the web again. Sigh. Reopened that bug. That was the main excitement of the day.

Came back, Squeaker is still improving, but I won't take the collar off until tomorrow, just in case.

Talked a few people through some stuff, but now kitties are circling. Must go to feed them, or be consumed myself.

I do have a job for tomorrow, she moved and has screwed things up. It's on the way home, so that shouldn't be too bad.

Oh, saw this ages ago. On our printers you can install apps, right? One of them is a translation app. Look at the icon!

[[image file="2017-10/the-app-icon.jpg" alt="getting my hopes up" ]]

I was quite excited. Japanese? It can translate Japanese? Because that is clearly a Japanese "a" but then I read the actual supported languages.

[[image file="2017-10/the-actual-languages.jpg" alt="Actual language are not" ]]

You see Japanese on that list anyplace? No? Didn't think so. For shame.

Did more debugging the game. Put in more logic so you can't move pieces when the board is rearranging itself. That gave me a bit of trouble but I managed it. Also included a calculation so if you let a piece go, the time the board is inactive for is the exact time the piece needs to get back into place. (And the pieces don't sparkle when you can't move them, one addition to an if statement that makes it look a lot better) Before I just picked the largest number that seemed to work so even if you only moved one space, it still paused a lot. Now it doesn't. I think I leave it tonight with no bugs? (He said crossing his fingers?)

Wed:
Did not get the new build, they delayed it a day. This gave me time to, uh, poke at it more with a stick. OD says they're losing files from the USB drive they use, so I ran job after job trying to make that happen. It didn't. They're crazy.

After work went and straightened out some people who had moved. You're going to need to plug the router in if you want more than one machine on the internet. That sort of thing.

Came back here, checked sites, did not eat dinner because I had a hot dog and some salad at work. Did a few game things. Masked the board so the pieces look like they're coming right from the top despite falling from further up, making it look better. Made the matches that are the result of other matches glow before vanishing. Implemented the "energy" bar, got the text right and it shrinks by .05 every time you make a move. Nice!

Cone head is still in his cone, he licked it for five seconds this morning and tore it a little. It's my fault, I realize this. Sorry kid.

Ordered a PC for a guy, tried to call book guy who emailed me. No answer. And then it was basically time for bed.

Thurs:
With John gone I set up the upgrades to the new build, it went fine, just fine. Met to discuss our next moves, oh, more testing? The stuff we're already doing? Sure, we needed a meeting for that.

By then it was lunch time so I ate lunch, then went over to the other lab to do "reliability" testing some more with the fake credit cards. Yay.

No after work job so came back here. Got the "money" bar working, and worked on the background image a little. Now it looks like this!

[[image file="2017-10/10-12-17_game_progress.png" alt="coming along" ]]

Next to implement is the dollar amounts for each piece and the "stock ticker" to make them worth more/less on the open market.

Busy days ahead. Tomorrow the usual after work stuff.

Saturday I'm going to see Blade Runner with Sean/Mizzy/Others. Wow, he hasn't invited me out to a movie since, gee, transformers 1 or 2? No appointments for that day but I have one person I haven't reached yet. The guy I sold the iMac to. Maybe he just has a question? I don't know.

Then Sunday I go see book guy, who has probably messed everything up again, despite this being "the last" because he wanted me to print it for some bizarre reason. Oh, and I made some corrections to it so I hope he hasn't gone mucking about in it. Because it'll be screwed up for sure if he has. Please, just let this stupid "book" end.

And that's it for the second week of October. Weather continues to be fair, not too bitterly cold. Squeaker I hope will be off the cone this time next week. Nearly done with the book 1 proofread. So many mistakes!!!!!! Arg.

See you all here next week.