2017-11-24:

Fri:
Boring boring boring. Actually wrote up the manual for my new version of bankbook, something I've been putting off for months, that's how bad it was.

But there's only three days to go.

Went to the bank, did the shopping, then bought a ton of cat food, litter, etc with my 10% off coupon. Came back home.

Got another gift in, the list is growing smaller.

Made my calls, looked at a Mac that was dropped off. It needs a new power cord, nothing serious.

Sat:
Guess I survived, somehow.

First one through off the rest of the day. It was "set up this printer" right? A ten minute job at worst. But no, it turned into "I can't log into my Mac. Update my wife's machine. Look at her iPad. Fix our TV. Update netflix."

Aarg.

So I was late to the next one. "This machine doesn't boot." Which of course turned into "check my wife's laptop. Install this security camera software. Why does my machine "freeze" for twenty seconds but I can't demonstrate it for you?"

So I was then an hour late to my next one!

It was a cleanout, and yet, mbam found a lot of things. But it was running a 5400 RPM laptop drive. Uh, yeah, that's going to be slow. Talked about replacements.

Luckily my appointment with iMac guy was canceled, apparently he has shingles. I don't envy the man. So I went to my ~3:00 "set up my printer." "Set up android pay. Why do I get spam? I have two routers."

Let me go home!

Finally got home at around 2:30 to eat lunch, spent until dark / rain getting the leaves raked to the front. So many still up on the trees.

Looking into putting my mac mini into the cabinet too, as I can't figure out how to load games onto the arcade stick. I'll still figure out and use the games on it, but when I want to play those games that aren't, boom, there it is.

Can't do it, the emulator front end I want to use doesn't support 10.6, and why would it?

How about a pi instead? That could work. Hmmmm. Anyway, more arcade stuff.

Sun:
Started the day with cleaning. Well, I started with breakfast to be fair. But you get what I mean. Vacuumed the rug finally. Then I decided since I hadn't done it in so long, I would do it again. I got up another full canister of stuff. So I decided to do it again. I got another full canister of stuff. At that point I figured I better stop because it could go on all day. Maybe I should do it more?

Got the PC installers made for the bankbook program, which is posted at last, (it's been almost a year, sheesh) and the paragon program, as I haven't made changes to that in some time. Did I throw out the changes to the tremorworks page I worked on? Shoot. I might still have it at work, I'll have to check. Otherwise I'll just redo it and upload those monday.

Checked my sites.

As promised, worked on the game. Got the beginning logic for the store in place. Items show up, well, blank items anyway. But when you click on them the totals change so it's a good start. Here's a picture of later progress when the items actually showed up.

[[image file="2017-11/screen-shot-2017-11-23-at-8.26.15-am.png" alt="game progress" ]]

Organized things on my computer, I've been downloading ROMS for no reason whatsoever. It's not like I'll have time to play the thousands, I mean hundreds, I mean I didn't download any games.

Also cleaned up my videos, I had some waiting to be filed, and I started transcoding the Lost Girl stuff to be smaller. That's taking forever.

Made my calls. A lady I'm convinced needs to put batteries in her keyboard (but thought she wasn't getting on the internet) for Monday, then she canceled and said her daughter would come over. Good, I don't need to drive 40 minutes to change batteries.

The two woman that got the iMac seem to have lost their email, odd. So that took her place.

Then Wednesday, though maybe tuesday we'll have to see what calls I get tomorrow, the lady I was just at for 2 hours with the printer and the TV and stuff is still having issues. So yeah, it's a full week already, as usual. Great!

A productive Sunday, snow and all.
Week looks fairly blah, welcome, welcome, winter, yahoo.

Mon:
Guess who is at 280 bugs? This guy, of course, who else would I be talking about?

So much snow! It snowed hard last night. Ground was covered. Just covered. As were roads, tress, the deck, really any surface snow would stick to. Imagine that.

[[image file="2017-11/p1016800.jpg" alt="snow and tree" ]]

Got a new build of the office depot payment app today. Two people were going to test with a new build of the OS, two without. That left me to just "try breaking it."

So I did. 12/15 times, to be exact. Yes, my 5 other co-workers put in a total of three bugs, a fantastic showing on their part. It's less than one bug per person, true, but they tried, bless their little hearts.

Went over to see about the email, got it back. Could not get them on the old smtp server for RR. IMAP was just fine. Don't like the RR IMAP server, it doesn't seem very good. But they're stuck with it. Sigh.

Got the panel in to replace the panel with hundreds of stuck pixels. It looks fantastic now. Assembled it and stuck it in.

[[image file="2017-11/withnewpanel.jpg" alt="looking better" ]]

Honestly doesn't do it justice, and I was a split second too late to catch their energy blasts. Ah well, I'll see about a better picture later.

Then struggled to get my epson working, the only printer capable of printing a long enough sheet of paper that the marquee wouldn't have a break in it. Just trying stuff. I found this long roll of paper at work and cut myself some. Cut the paper some, I didn't cut myself. Not my thing. Anyway, ruined it later because I'm an idiot and I don't care who knows it. (I was lying then) so I'll have to cut another piece. But at least I got the printer "working" again. I'll have to have the background white not black, there's too many streaks in the black. Sigh. But it might look okay?

Made my calls, a person I sold a new system too says it goes off. Whatever. But I'll come take a look.

And that was pretty much the day. More testing tomorrow, but we're back to "where do we go from here?" We'll see what I find.

Tues:
Not quite as many bugs written today, but I did find a few things. Go me!

Still pretty boring though. I did get an old donut though. Still good. Parking lot is so empty. And anyone actually employed there gets paid! It's so few, I know, but tomorrow will be even worse.

Went to see about the new machine. Maybe it was the power cord? It seemed pretty loose in the socket, and the one I put in place of it seemed much less so. I'll strongly hope that's the case.

Saw some christmas lights going up as I pulled into/out of his street. Only half lit but still very nice. I'll turn mine on the 24th I think.

Got home and printed the banner. I prefer the glossy paper one with the break in the middle to this one. The streaks aren't bad, and I could try the white version, but the laser version just looks so much better. Maybe it's the paper, I don't know. I always thought this was a decent printer. Well, it's probably going bye-bye at this point.

Got the proof books in! Yay, the look great. The hardcover got everything in the right place, no worries. Great printing, cover looks great. On a whim I took the jacket off to see what the spine looked like. Uh, what's OUT OF THE FOOD? My book is Out of the Flood.

*Major Sigh*

A little more shopping and making some calls. Oh goody, I have two for Friday now, someone with a printing issue (who thinks she has a virus) and movie guy to see what he thinks of his jumbled up film so far.

And two for Saturday, a HD transfer and iMac guy, if he's over his shingles.

I love working on my days off. And there's always so much to do, I'm never without being able to do the things I love. (hurling sound in the background)

Wed:
Such an empty parking lot, but it's to be expected at this time.

For my part, we got two new builds today. Mostly OS level problems, but I had a few things to verify. With not much else to do I worked on the game, putting some of the logic together for the store. I'm pretty happy with what I've come up with (I think) but we'll see if it compiles.

Went over to the 3 cat lady. Her bluetooth worked just fine. The printer (an epson) had clogged nozzles, which is weird because it was just printing. Very strange. Got it somewhat cleaned out. She found her remote, the cable I bought for the audio thing we were trying worked just fine, etc.

Got back around 5:30 and ate dinner, checked my sites, the usual after work stuff.

Got the cord in for the laptop, but didn't reach her.

Thurs:
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Want to digress a little and talk about something, I suppose it's a little relevant, what with all the baking and such that will go on today.

Potion making.

Yeah. I've had this idea bouncing around to write a one chapter fanfic about Hermione's first potion lesson where she asks a million questions like what is the optimal stir rate, as the books don't really say. One revolution per second? Per minute? Large or small radius? Is a different sized spoon going to change the mixture?

But then a thought entered my addled brain this morning. The spoon. What is potion making? Taking, presumably, clear water and then heating it while adding certain things. Right? And stirring. The key point is adding things. How does the "potion" or "magic" realize the spoon you're shoving in isn't an ingredient? Seriously, you've just added 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves, and the feathers from a partridge that sat in a pear tree and now you've plunked a spoon in. How come the spoon just doesn't get absorbed as another ingredient?

Though in one picture she's using what is clearly a plastic rod, though I suppose it could be glass? Looks plastic to me.

[[image file="2017-11/thereisnospoon.jpg" alt="There is no spoon" ]]

While in this shot of her making polyjuice she's not using a spoon at all! Wait, there is no spoon?

[[image file="2017-11/nospoonatall.jpg" alt="no spoon at all" ]]

Nor is she actually measuring anything, a clearly important component of potion making. She's just dumping stuff in right from the bottle. No wonder it came out like it did. You're a horrible potion maker, Hermione, I'm sorry. Great wizard (to the extent that's possible) but clearly not a potion maker. Also is that tiny fire under there magic? Because there's no way that little flame is heating something up to boiling. I'm just saying, there's steam coming off the thing but... never mind.

What gives? And what are the spoons, anyway? Wood? That seems dangerous because if some part of the potion soaks into the wood and then you use that spoon for the next potion too, doesn't that change the composition of the potion even slightly? What if the first person to make potion X did so after making potion Y and nobody could ever figure out why they couldn't replicate it and gave up. The key was a thin film of potion Y on the spoon they were using.

This is what I think about, people. I need help, clearly.

Anyway, after that I fed the kitties and got back to work on the game.

Put the code I wrote basically "blind" into the game. It actually, really, honestly, astonishingly works. Nice!

And someone is actually calling me, at 9:00 on thanksgiving day. Do you expect a response? It's about his "other" laptop and from what I gleaned from his long and rambling explanation he can't turn it on anymore? If you have another laptop, just use it, and call me maybe next week when it isn't a holiday weekend. You know, just a suggestion.

Anyway, made more changes to the code. The window scrolls exactly as I want (if a trifle slowly) and the items show up where I want. The descriptions work, and the cart total changes. Getting closer!

After about 2.5 hours of that I went to look through my arcade list some more.

Some of the games are flat out unplayable because of the control scheme. Some games are listed 3 times, right after the other. Some are just dumb. Arrg, there's one pinball game at the end listed five total times. Right after the other. I can excuse the Simpson's game twice because it's quite far apart. But five of the same pinball game? Doesn't make sense to me.

Had a nice pre-christmas with my family, petted some kitties, watched some fire, and came home.

Installed the plexiglass my father had cut for me, it was a bit too thick but with a bit of jiggery pokery I got it installed. I think it looks fairly good.

[[image file="2017-11/shieldsup.jpg" alt="plexiglass in place" ]]

And here it is thus far.

[[image file="2017-11/11-23_progress.jpg" alt="the whole thing" ]]

That's about it for now. All that digesting has me beat. Tomorrow, one job away, a printer. Movie guy here, then out to the shopping. No checks to cash, I didn't make a cent this week, so there's that. Wait.

Then a couple of jobs Saturday, the guy coming here for the transfer and maybe iMac guy. Also maybe Sean's. There's a lot of maybe's in life. Go for them all!

Yeah! That's my inspirational quote of the day. See you all next week, about to enter December.