2017-12-08:

Fri:
Good news, my complaining has been doubled! No, what's the opposite of that? Halved. My complaining has been halved. Turns out I don't need to do the older printer stuff again, just the newer printer stuff. Whew. That's somewhat of a relief. Got a machine (barely) and loaded it up, then got to work.

Then left work to go to the orthodontist. Took the old posts off (with a drill, I'm not kidding) and put the new ones on. Hate that stupid thing they put in your mouth. And now I have… a number of trays to go.

He's not sure how many it'll take, which is weird, isn't it a program of "here is where we want your teeth to be, it'll take this long" sort of deal? I guess not. So it's either 140 days or around 70, as again my appointment is push out a week because they aren't there the week I'm supposed to go back. So I might get a nice birthday present of getting these things off for good. Or not. But 140 is the max, because that's how many trays I have left.

Man actually thanked me for wearing the blasted things. I told him it was in my own best interest and he said I would be surprised at how many people didn't realize that basic fact. He said teenagers do better with them, probably because it's easier for an adult to nag a kid about doing something than do it themselves. My parents can confirm/deny. Weird.

Asked me to leave a review, so they got some exposure in their new place. I said "maybe for a little something-something?" while rubbing my fingers together. (I kid, I didn't say that.)

Back to work, finished up most of the AT&T testing. It's actually a good thing I did it, some problems have developed. Blank screens, things not getting cloned that were before. Bizarre!

Went to the bank, the store, and over to my parent's house. A meal, a haircut, stole some painting supplies, the usual. Thanks!

Back here I made some calls but didn't reach anyone. I did get the battery for the laptop so I slapped that in. Did reach her, she'll come pick it up tomorrow.

Wrote up the last of chapter 19, made a few changes to 20 to account for stuff in 19 and went to bed.

Sat:
Put up some more christmas lights my father had given me. Then cleaned the place up.
Got the downstairs ready for the work down there, and it was only 9:00. Nice.

That left only one. Thing. To. Do.

Leaves.

The back tree is about as shed as it's going to get, so out came the mower one last time to get rid of them. Then did the front, and a new pile is created. After that I ate lunch and went to see bluetooth lady.

She really did have an issue, oddly. She was doing everything right, but it just wasn't connecting on bluetooth anymore. I messed around with it and finally in desperation did a system update. Yes, on a speaker. Read that again. A software update. On a speaker. What a world we live in.

That did the trick. So some setting or something got whacked, but luckily the update put it to rights. Stupid thing.

Back here I had just a few minutes and my father arrived, and "we" got busy cutting up wood and such. I helped! Sure I did. Anyway, it came out great, just needs painting.

[[image file="2017-12/arcade-12-2.jpg" alt="wood wood wood" ]]

We did some pac-man, and some gauntlet. Come play again, dad, there's two controllers for a reason.
Cleaned up the floor and the tools, glued some of the original molding on where there was just bare wood now, and went to eat dinner. I think just painting is left!

After dinner watched a few shorts and went back to writing.

Hit a snag as I wanted to know if the mountain spirit could even tip a mecha tank over even at a +3 size modifier but the rules for tackling reference charging, and both say different things. Emailed Sean about it.

And went to play arcade games.
Sinistar is still fairly impossible, I found the goonies game I wanted to play (listed under Vs. Goonies) and boy oh boy are there a lot of copies of street fighter in there.

Sun:
Got up, sprang out of bed, and did my paperwork. Next on the list was listing my stupid arcade stick on ebay. I really hope this sells for some fraction of what I bought it for. Live and learn, you know?

Made the changes to movie guy's "movie" and put the music in.
I figured out why his stuff is so boring. He's shooting a sequence of events. Stuff happens. But it's not a story. That overwatch short of the woman sleeping in a stasis pod for 9 years and waking up was better, but it was shorter and only had one speaking character. (And one robot.) It was a clear story, a journey undertaken by a woman finding herself alone after the world passed her by for almost a decade. This? I don't feel anything for these characters, there's nobody to root for, it's just stuff that happens.

Ate lunch, continued down the to-do list.

Made changes to Ellen's website, a thing I'll be doing the rest of my natural life. (or hers)
Put the latest stack of comics into the database.
Various times turning on the radio to hear christmas music. Hearing an ad instead. Turning it off.
The last of the christmas shopping was done.
Checked my Sunday websites because I had a kitty and didn't want to get up.
My glue hadn't held on the plastic downstairs overnight so I tried a different glue.
Meanwhile, I painted the sides!

[[image file="2017-12/what_was_once_bubbles.jpg" alt="bubbles on the side" ]]

[[image file="2017-12/is_blue_yet_incomplete.jpg" alt="blue sides" ]]

Coming along nicely. I'll get a nice vinyl "multicade" for the side and it will be done. Now to get black paint and do the front, and it'll be essentially finished. Whew!

Finished up chapter 20, called the guy to put the RAM in, he's only 5 minutes from work tomorrow. So I'll do that, grab some black paint, and come back here for some painting action.

Got ready for tomorrow, gonna finish up those AT&T tests and do the thinprint stuff.

OOOOh, just remembered, the IP addresses of everything changed because we sold our 13.xxx block of address. So that should be interesting, getting everything straight again. (And by that I mean Hell)

Mon:
Or not, actually. The transition hasn't left us paralyzed, though a lot of stuff still has the old addresses. What was more frustrating was the stuff I was testing.

The SNMP stuff isn't in at all, apparently, while everything else basically works. Tested four machines, five in total because we wanted to see if a log not being written was the machine or the software. Didn't get through the whole test, but with a little luck I will tomorrow. I need a new key to actually send some jobs to the machine, see if TLS 1.2 actually works now.

At least these machines aren't in demand, I reserved all of them for today and tomorrow. One of them isn't even on the calendar, and had to have some "Chris magic" applied after I updated it. Working now though.

Went to install the RAM after work, he gave me extra, I told him I wouldn't charge him any labor because he was right on Salt road. Thanks. Of course I was there longer too, talking about upgrades or his next machine.

Bought paint, there was exactly one can of black, outdoor, door paint. Smells foul. Won't clean up with water so I bought a brush to throw away when I'm done. But it's drying and looks pretty good. Touched up all the wood, don't know about the metal. Do I want everything that shiny black? A nice flat black would be nice for the metal bits. Or like a gray? I don't know.

Anyway, painted when I got home, then ate dinner.

[[image file="2017-12/final_build.jpg" alt="cabinet done" ]]

In the near future I (hope to) put together a whole page on the process, and all the things that went wrong. Look for it! (soon/never)

Made my calls. Someone wanted late tomorrow (yay) so against my better judgement I'll do two tomorrow. (yay) Hopefully the first is fairly easy, and it's also just down the street from work. I'll probably eat at work, then go over. Did that so I didn't book the entire week today. Guy in victor (30 minute drive, yay) is having phantom issues with his machine, it's probably just windows being windows. Nothing I can do about that, dude.

Have to make my foodstuff tomorrow for the party too. Great. Maybe I'll go do it now?

I did! It was 8:00 and I knew as my appointment tomorrow was at 6:30, I would be lucky (I'm not) to get out at 7:30, meaning I would be home around… you guessed it. 8:00. So what did it matter? It mattered, I said to myself, because at least right then I knew it was 8:00. My one tomorrow could easily keep me out until 8:00 and I wouldn't get home until 8:30. Because of course it would. So I cooked it up and it's baking now. Smells good.

Is it bedtime yet?

Tues:
Things went fairly well today, all told.

Got the thinprint stuff done, four machines, and they all survived. Only SNMP doesn't work so that's less to test later. That's basically a script I run and if the output looks good, ship it!

Went back to some tablet stuff, got answers to the security spec questions so I did that. Of course, a lot of the answers were "just trust us, it's fine." Ooookay?

Out to my first job, changing his homepage and I guess unplugging and replugging his speakers. Came back here, listened to my messages and 6:30 wanted to cancel. Yay! It's now Saturday, boo?

So I stayed here, typed all 1099 games on my arcade thing into a text file for the ebay auction. I'm so nice.

Checked my sites, no calls to make, so that's fine.

Worked on the game. The main screen shows the items in inventory and gives you the description when you click on them. Now to make them mooooove.

Wed:
They move a little too much. They sort of drift off the screen. Odd.

Anyway, fixed up Moe after I sort of broke it yesterday, and finished up the very quick EIP test just to say I did it. The only other ported code is the thinprint stuff, hopefully won't take too long once the machines stop being all booked up for validations. Next week.

Loaded the new tablet release, only a few bugs of mine fixed that I can currently test, they're fixing bugs in apps like google that don't even exist? How is that possible?

Then went to the party! As before, much booze was given as prizes. Only one case of beer, last year there was a lot more. Odd.

Came back here, checked my sites, then out to see the laptop. Didn't really find anything, but did the usual checks.

Back here I made my calls. Two of them. Deduced the reason a lady couldn't get on the internet was packet loss, and told her to contact frontier. The other guy was printing to the PDF maker not his printer.

A third person I didn't reach.

Ate dinner a bit late, sort of forgot actually, that's what such a huge lunch will do to you. Got ready for tomorrow, generally didn't work on the game. I know, I'm a slacker. Hopefully tomorrow, though I'm calling the guy I didn't reach tonight tomorrow after work. Get stuff done!

Tomorrow I guess it's back to tablet testing. Yay.

Thurs:
Sort of, anyway. Didn't actually do very much. Had some meetings, thought about it, never actually got to it. How odd.

The problem with SNMP may be the baseline of code that was used. If it's 1.0 there was a known issue with some SNMP stuff. If it's 1.1 it should be fixed. And why isn't the latest being used, I hear myself asking?

Otherwise, only two weeks until my first actual vacation day.

Snowed a bit today. I guess we're still getting off easy.

Called print shop guy, he initially said 5:00 so I was like, sure. I went home for all of twenty minutes, and he called again. He then wanted Saturday. So I have two for the morning.

No other calls today, yay.

Ate dinner, which was mostly me finishing the beans, very happy with how they came out actually. Checked my sites, then worked on the game. Yay, the chips aren't flying away to who knows where anymore. They get slotted in when they get close, and you can't move them when you don't have the crystals for it. Next up will be to have the crystals decremented and the effect of the overdrive programed in. Shouldn't be too hard.

Looking to the future I'll try to get some testing done tomorrow, and then go to the bank and shopping. See my parents as usual, though thanks to the show my mother will probably be a bit late again.

Two jobs for saturday, no Sean news as of yet, so either writing or work on the game or both. Probably won't wrap the gifts as of yet. Still a little too early.

That would seem to about do it. Have a good weekend everyone, see you next time.