2017-11-03:

Got cat food, went to the bank, did the shopping, and came back here. Checked my sites, did not work on the game because I was looking into finally using my old bubbles arcade cabinet for something. Tore the old TV out of it, looked into using the arcade stick thing I found and making it a complete cabinet. I think it'll work. A little sawing, a little paint, no problem.

[[image file="2017-11/oldbubbles.jpg" alt="bubbles" ]]

[[image file="2017-11/bubblesempty.jpg" alt="bubbles After" ]]

No calls, well, three calls, all crazy book lady, who just wasn't online. She got it back, so yeah. Didn't reach crazy book guy, so I don't know if I'm going over there.

Got the store started. No code yet but at least the buttons light up and the chat window is in there.

Watched some Rick and Morty.

Sat:
My plate toppers for my egg are taking a beating, which reminds me I need to clean my microwave. Anyway, they're cracking they've been microwaved so much. So I designed a topper for my teacups that has a hole at the top. Uploaded it to shapeways, I can ask for it for Christmas. I don't know, asking for some object you yourself designed… well, I need it don't I? Can't use my tiny plates anymore.

After that I watched more Rick and Morty and then went out to my 10:00. No real problems, we reset her passwords, set up dropbox for her phone pictures, answered questions, the lot. I had gotten a call earlier from someone that was just down the street. Called him, he was there. Thank goodness, his problem amounted to "remove this office trial so LibraOffice opens" so that took all of a few seconds.

Back here I ate lunch, finished Rick and Morty, and went to go clean my microwave.

Then did some cleanup on the cabinet. Put some speakers in there, that should work out fine. Found a monitor I think will fit pretty well, in fact it should fix exactly if I've measured properly. (And there's no guarantee of that)

The hard part will be waiting the month it'll take the actual joystick thing to arrive from China.

Worked on the 3D models for the game board. I need them to then make the plugin chips because I want to show them so it's more clear what the chip does. Got done overdrive, purification, radioactive rock, and quartz. They don't look horrible? Sort of?

[[image file="2017-11/overdrive.png" alt="overdrive" ]][[image file="2017-11/purification.png" alt="purify" ]][[image file="2017-11/radioactive.png" alt="radioactive" ]][[image file="2017-11/quartz.png" alt="quartz" ]]

Emerald, gold, manganite, and silver to go.

Listened to christmas music while I did so. So there.

Sun:
Worked on Gold, Emerald, and silver.

[[image file="2017-11/gold.png" alt="gold" ]][[image file="2017-11/emerald.png" alt="emerald" ]][[image file="2017-11/silver.png" alt="silver" ]]

That's odd, why are they different sizes? I did them all the same way. Bizzare.

Went to go see iMac guy. He could only have me there and hour, he was going to a birthday party. And he wasn't as clueless as he had been, so good job there.

Moved the plants in. That top one. Would you believe I was afraid it would die? Looks like it came back just fine. The cats were quite interested in the plants moving inside. "Oh, we get to eat those, right?"

[[image file="2017-11/kitchenplants2017.jpg" alt="plants" ]]

[[image file="2017-11/eatthese.jpg" alt="2 of three cats" ]]

My christmas cactus has a few blossoms.

[[image file="2017-11/blossoms2017.jpg" alt="flowers" ]]

Finished book 2, need to put in the changes and make the adjustment to the cover.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Tried to get book lady to drag a file onto a flash drive. She couldn't manage it. Wow. So I get to go over there tuesday do to 1 second of work. Tomorrow is book guy, so I have lots of stuff to look forward to this week.

Wednesday is also booked, a cleanout for the son of a current customer.

Mon:
Pretty busy today, I guess. Got the machine to do the thinprint stuff on, and loaded it up. Huh, that's funny, half the settings I need are missing. Chris did a more severe system reset than I knew about and they came back. So I made sure thinprint worked, it did, yay.

At lunch I saw some pizza boxes go by. "I'll be having some of that later" I said to myself.

Went back to the tablet stuff. Did the timers, then switched over to the demo machine, that is the machine we're going to be demoing at some show or another. I was just running a job in each service and it crashed. Super great.

It behaved after that, though.

Back to the newer tablet, finished up the email service.

Went out to book guy, who assures me this time, really honestly, no more changes. Uh huh. Sure.

Back here I had some of the pizza that, as predicted, was left in the kitchen area. How did I know? So weird.

Had three calls, first was a hang up. Fine. Second one was the orthodontist place, yay, I have to go back for another scan, because somehow this last one got messed up. That's two hours of my life I would rather be doing something else.

The third was someone with data on a flash drive that had no backup. Tried the file system check, it failed. Yup, nothing else I can do.

Put the book 2 changes in and fixed the cover.

Checked my sites.

Remade my radioactive rock. It now looks like this.

[[image file="2017-11/radioactive2.png" alt="take 2 radioactive rock" ]]

Ugh, the other one is so… horrible! I'm glad I changed it. Quite a difference a single day makes after you've learned a few things about texturing and how to use the tool, eh? Unlike some, that struggle to make a square, not naming names.

Tomorrow- manganite!

Tues:
Or not. You know, that's the key in life. Flexibility.

Finished up the email service today, no real problems. Reloaded the older payment app onto the machines, as I guess we weren't supposed to even have it yet. Whoops. Did a quick test on the demo machine and it was ready to go.

Probably do boot up tomorrow. When I get in at 7:00.

See, when I called the orthodontist place they offered me tomorrow at 9:40. So I'm going to work at 7:00, leave at 9:00, get there at 9:40, get back by 11:00, leave at 4:00 to do the cleanout. That's of course only 7 hours for those mathematically inclined among you. So I get to go at 7:00 Thursday too. What a treat. Thanks incompetent? tooth picture taker!!!!

So I went to my after work job, showed her how to drag a file to her flash drive, so tough. Answered some other questions, left there at 5:30. I had hoped to just do that and go over to the one for tomorrow, then not have to get up so early. Nope, she had a bunch of questions, so event that was denied me.

Huh, my front bell wasn't working all that well. It is now. Good to know, at 8:00. Sigh.

Not that I usually get all that many… oh by the way happy Halloween or whatever.

Gonna be a fun next two days.

Made calls, booked saturday morning as he didn't want Thursday.

Huh, maybe I will work on maganite, I'm ready for tomorrow otherwise and have an hour.

Wed:
The driving day.

Got in to work an hour early, yay go me. Worked on the boot up test cases, hardly got through it when I got assigned another task. Not even tablet related, though it sort of is, it's getting the machine ready to accept more commands from the tablet. But there's no tablet involved yet. So I started getting that ready to go in the afternoon.

Naturally this was all broken up by driving 40 minutes, doing a 15 minutes scan, and driving back 40 minutes.

AGAIN.

This scan she said looked better, and it was a different person so, who knows? One bright spot. The extra week of delay insures I probably won't have to remake the appointment. So it's not pushed out another week, because we already had that week buffer.

Went out to my after work job, about 30 minutes away. Rainy. Cold. Yuck. (same for the next 5 days?) Just a cleanout, nothing really spectacular.

Now back here, my panel arrived for the arcade machine, and boy howdy does it JUST fit.

[[image file="2017-11/tightsqueeze.jpg" alt="tight" ]]

Like, I had to wedge it in there and it's just hanging out now. The glass won't go over it so it's a good thing the metal frame fits okay. Tons of dead pixels? Hope that's just condensation or something from being out in the cold and the rain. Works great, the limited testing I did with it.

[[image file="2017-11/workinglcd.jpg" alt="working lcd" ]]

Got a rather humorous email today from "our" CEO. Here's the best part: "Let’s restore our Xerox pride, and move forward as one team, one Xerox family, driving aggressively together toward the goals that will make us proud to work for a winning company."

See, the trouble is, I don't work for "a winning company." Neither do any of my fellow testers. In fact all work for different companies, like I work for someplace in Texas, literally. A shell that just sucks money up so Xerox doesn't actually have to pay me what I'm worth or offer me any benefits. Half the programers work for HCL, in India. They probably get paid a fraction of what I do, yet again. You want us as one team? One family? Great! HIRE US! Oh, what's that? No chance? Then stop spouting nonsense. Because you're not fooling anyone, Jeff.

No calls, so I don't have anything booked for tomorrow. Thank goodness, I'll just stay later rather then arriving earlier.

Looks like Pyre this weekend, unless there is some change.

Finished up maganite but could not get it to look like wet rock or shiny rock or really anything but blah. Oh well.

[[image file="2017-11/maganite.png" alt="maganite" ]]

Now I can design the chips and hopefully start putting the store together.

That does it for today I guess.

Thurs:
Figured out the EIP stuff I needed to do, naturally with some help. Spent most of the day on that. Wrote up one bug, yay! Stayed late, started looking through the print spec that was just posted. It's missing a lot of stuff, and there were a bunch of typo like stuff too. Odd. That was approved? By whom?

Anyway, came back here, ate dinner, worked on chips for the game.

[[image file="2017-11/chip.png" alt="chips of all kinds" ]]

This is the base chip. The various functions the chip does are represented by shapes I'll put on the top. But that's about what it'll look like.

Oh look, book guy is still complaining he's finding errors in his books. No, you think? You slapped a "book" together out of hundreds of single documents all with different margins, fonts, sizes, and styles, and are shocked to find that you've screwed it all up? Really? I'm on my third read through of my Lysanias trilogy and I'm still finding errors in it. And I (presumably) know what I'm doing.

Anyway, one cancelation and a job to replace it. Saturday at 8:00 in the morning. Yay. I wanted to get up then, no it's fine. Fine.

Got a $30 off $60 purchase at Staples and that's like half or something so I ordered some stuff from there. A light for the arcade cabinet, a power strip (for the arcade cabinet) and a 2018 appointment book (not for the arcade cabinet).

Realized I hadn't changed my air filter this year, did that. Whoops.

Which brings us to the future, I guess. No bank tomorrow, but shopping and seeing my parents after three weeks. Early job saturday, then 1:00 is iMac guy. Hopefully Sean after that, haven't heard anything since the inital query about this week. Nothing for Sunday yet.

And rain, rain, and more rain. Sunday the clocks. Monday Tinker goes in.

So that's the week. Did we learn anything?

See you all next week. 

P.S. Told you there would be a few.