2017-12-15:

Fri:
Highlight of the day was reopening a bug and as a consequence of the reopened bug, write another bug. Somehow Adnan had closed it months ago, so I didn't even see it? Odd, but there it was, no checkout button on a certain screen. So I reopened it, and then wrote up the fact that if you used a certain paper and did see the checkout button, and then (gasp) pressed the checkout button… you would see another screen with another checkout button. But only in email service, not copy. So weird.

Otherwise it is so quiet around work. Seriously.

It's funny, looking at the calendar, a lot of people took this friday off, and next, but to see the number of people gone just grow and grow as it gets nearer to the 25th is amusing.

Did the usual stuff after work, and saw my parents.

Came back here, made my phone calls. Yay, I have three for tomorrow and one for Sunday.

Checked my sites, read a little bit, got ready for tomorrow, and after a few arcade hits, went to bed.

Oh yeah, and some person wrote and told me they loved me for making Matching Seasons. Huh.

Sat:
About what I expected.

Started the day answering the matching seasons person. Figured out how to actually put it on my iPad, yay.

Left for my first appointment, looking at his crappy celeron with XP. Honestly, chuck it! Took a few things off, and set up his son's old laptop as a "backup." Yeah, it's crap too. Somehow got in my head that his printer was a 2240 but it was a 1440 so that didn't help. I left the machine (after nearly two and a half hours) struggling with windows update to get the proper driver, as I couldn't download it from the brother website. Thanks, guys.

Why is it I can plug a printer into a mac and it immediately starts downloading the correct driver, but plug a printer into a windows box and it has to download every printer driver on the freaking planet, and then I further have to choose it? Weird, no?

So I was late to the second one, and it wasn't that she wasn't on the internet, she was. Her machine was just all taken over. So I got that all taken care of and came home for lunch.

Checked my sites, and out again. Setting up a printer for the lady a week or so ago, the HP I hoped continued to work? If you recall? So she was complaining about something and decided it was the printer, not her, and bought a new one. I would have told her that was nonsense, but I wasn't consulted. Also, had I been consulted, she would have gotten a decent laser printer but no, she got a canon with 6 ink tanks.

Guess what happened next? I set it up, tried printing, and the black didn't work. I was suspicious because on the "alignment" page there was no black, or instructions. And then twenty minutes later I tried a test pattern, and there was no black there either. Super. Brand new printer. She's going to have to take it back now. And I get to go back there for another hour or so to set up the new/new one, which will probably work no better for her because her printer was fine!

That was 1:30 to 3:00, so finally home I got to work on the game again.
The chips can be removed now, and they become "used" chips and can't be put back. Of course, some chips are used immediately so I'll have to account for that someplace.

Wrote a chapter and a half, wow both things today. Nice.

Sun:
With "nothing better to do" I did more work on the game. I got 8 overdrive chips programed in, though to be fair, 7 of the eight are all the same code with a different name. I'm (obviously) doing the ones that are single use only first, get them out of the way. So you can now grab all of one type of piece on the board, and you can reset the whole board. Neat!

Made another book cover for the book ladies.

Ate lunch.

Finished chapter 21 and started chapter 22, then went out to the cleanout. Or what I thought was a cleanout. Her/His problem was not the ancient and pathetic XP system as much as it was the fact no one can keep any passwords straight. Oh, and what's with all the XP systems lately? Weird.

Anyway, her iPad was claiming it was activation locked, and naturally she didn't know the password for the account. Well done. She didn't even know the password for her own wireless, but she did have it written down, on tape, stuck to the inside of her iPad case. Written down wrong, I should have said there. I had to look it up myself, because see above.

So I started the procedure to recover the password, got the phone call, put in the code, and was told… what? That another phone call would be made with further instructions? What is this, a spy network? I put in the code, that proves it's the person that owns the account. It's that stupid android lockout all over again. Great.

Whoever came up with all this activation crap didn't stop to think that nobody can remember their passwords. And it's a problem that's only going to get worse. So that was a dead end, I told them to wait for the phone call. Sorry! Maybe keep better track of your passwords next time? I don't know.

Stopped at the post office, got the weight of the controller, then came back and printed the label.

Went on with chapter 22.

Got home just in time, the snow really started coming down after that. First day of winter isn't until the 21st, you know?

Finished chapter 22.

Mon:
Snow, snow, and snow. That's all I see on the weather report for the next few days. What did I saw winter? What did I say?

So got in to work, planned to do thinprint (again) with the 4.0 build. Didn't exactly go smoothly. In fact it didn't go anywhere. Because of the IP address shenanigans I can't get to the thinprint server. Sigh.

So I did what I could of it, at least. Then went back over to tablet land. Wrote only one bug, and I'll probably start "reliability" tomorrow which will be so fun. So fun.

Back here because I had no job, I started wrapping the gifts. Boxing them up, pretty paper and tape, and of course a pony! All done. Just Sean/Neil/Mizzy to do. That took a bit.

I had eaten at work, found some pizza and pie left over from something, helped myself, as God helps those that help themselves. So I didn't have to do that. Made my calls, yay, I have the next two days booked. Printer lady again on Wednesday, and a machine that won't boot tomorrow.

Checked my sites, and that was pretty much it.

Tues:
Oh, how heavy this chain I forged in life!

Hmm, didn't see you there. So, what exciting things happened today? Snow, for one. Woke up to lots of it, and hey, more on the way? What could be better?

Got the thinprint server back, so I finished that test case suite up. Let's never, ever do it again. Deal? Okay!

Then started the reliability test. I started at 12:40 and stopped at 3:45 with 90/200 test cases done. And that's skipping all the services we don't have yet. So it would take a solid day doing nothing else, and that's just mindlessly programming the job, running the job, and then repeating until quitting time. Naturally you would be insane by the time the day was done. It's very boring, and very monotonous. Luckily I am already insane so it was no problem for me.

But I did it. Figure maybe 2 days or even 3 of nonstop tedium for the full thing.

Went out to my after work job. His machine wasn't exactly "not starting up" as much as it wasn't shutting down. Oddly, the screen would go dark but the machine would stay on. Turn it on again, and it would not actually boot. Turn it on a SECOND time and magically it would be fine. I repeated this over and over. Bizarre.
Turned off "fast shutdown" which yup, made that slower. Didn't solve the problem. Turned it back on. Wait, it just worked? Crazy.
How stupid does your OS have to be to have an "option" to make shutdown slower, and toggling said option makes the machine actually work properly? I mean who put that feature in? Who sat down and made the business decision "Well, some machines may break with this option, but rather than fix it we'll just let the people using the thing monkey around with it until it works."

I mean seriously?

Got back, ate dinner, not many calls, yay!

Checked my sites, got ready for tomorrow.

Chose to work on the game. Got more of the overdrive chips working, and maybe squished a bug or two? Let's see, of the 46 overdrive chips 23 now work. Hey, that's exactly half, nice job, me.

Wed:
Man, it's only wednesday? This week seems to be taking, like, twice as long. Weird.

Once again, not much to talk about work wise. I did write a few bugs, one I could have sworn was already up there, but no, I couldn't find it. Ah well.

Set up the lady's printer, it went much smoother though she still has the 6 ink tank guzzling monster she had before. Hey, it's your money lady. You want to buy a photo printer in order to print black text on envelopes, you know, more power to you. I can't imagine the cost of 6 cartridges though.

Got back here, cleared the driveway out finally, as I didn't yesterday. Quite cold out, 19 degrees or so. Yuck. Checked my sites, ate dinner, then made the couple of phone calls I had.

No jobs for tomorrow, yay!

As for tonight, did some writing with the time I had left, as I had done the game yesterday. Oscillation!

Thurs:
Everything is great!

I certainly didn't come home to find my front yard all dug up with no explanation.

[[image file="2017-12/front_yard.jpg" alt="front yard" ]]

And that certainly didn't result in my water being contaminated by tiny black particulate no matter how much I've flushed the system. My toilet wasn't flushing black at all, no it wasn't.

And furthermore the person that bought the arcade stick doesn't want to return it, with a "whine whine moan how awful" sort of excuse. Oh, and I have to pay the shipping to return it? Hasn't the person doing the returning always paid the shipping? Since forever? And what part of "no returns" did you not understand, ebay? What if I had tried returning it to China? Would they have even let me?

So yeah, things are going really well tonight. I didn't get two calls, because I actually got three!

I am not super bored at work doing the same things over and over. Will be super quiet tomorrow, as another "take off friday" rolls around. The vacation list on the calendar gets longer and longer.

And I am not looking forward to six days vacation. Oh wait, that one wasn't true. You know I'm going to get a ton of calls and have to work most of those days, right? You know that, because that's how the universe works. Like coming home to no phone calls, then getting a bunch in the span of an hour because of the morphic field. It's just how it works. Don't you dare tell me there's no morphic field. I have actual written evidence there is. There is no way the number of people that call me decide to in the same hour, over and over, without something sparking it. It's real I tell you, real.

It has not been a whole month since I ordered that lockable USB drive so I did not email them as to where it was.

I have just one for Saturday, 11:00. I suppose that's acceptable. It's not too far away.

Looking ahead, nothing from Sean so it may be just me and my kitties again this weekend. I wrapped their stuff tonight, just have to get over there and give it to them. There is one more week so… The usual tomorrow, shopping, and then seeing my parents.

Probably finish up buying gifts Saturday as well, get my game pictures ready, and the last thing I'll need to be totally ready is make the candy. Wrapped the game gifts.

When next we meet it'll be the first day of winter and only 3 days to Christmas. Stay warm and safe out there, everyone.

And watch out for the morphic field. That thing is dangerous!