2018-06-29:

Fri:
Rewrote the card tests today, so that should be a little bit easier to keep track of. Also got a few more pieces of the puzzle, such as an intro into the third party software we need to test with. Well, one test anyway. Technically as long as the card works to get into the system, we should be set. But best to make sure the whole workflow works.

Otherwise did my tablet bugs, wrote a few for the ones I closed, and I need to write one more next week.

Went to the bank, shopping, and naturally forgot to use the gift card. Because I'm a dumb.

Got pizza, petted a Gabe, then put the pizza in. My parents walked in just as the timer went off. Talk about timing. They had many stories to tell about the sale they're helping run, and I came back here.

Watched more SHIELD, sites, the usual. No calls. Someone's giving me a gift.

Sat:
Mostly watching more SHIELD, though I did make the salad for later. Went to Sean's, saw Alisa and her fiancé. Why she suddenly came out of nowhere I'll never know, but it was nice to see her. We played some stuff, had some fun. No law against it!

Sun:
Finished season 4 of SHIELD and started 5. Rainy, it's good for my berries. They're just starting to get ripe, I can almost taste the pie already. The ones on the side aren't growing that much, do they not get enough sun? But the ones under the big tree must not get much sun and they're okay. Well, not lately but they were.

Otherwise the usual Sunday stuff. No calls, too wet to mow the back which has tiny trees springing up again, thanks whoever cut that down last year. Got ready for tomorrow, didn't finish season 5. Pretty good though.

Mon:
Back to it. Not much tablet stuff to do today, so just wrote 5 or so bugs. You know, the usual nitpicky stuff I'm famous for. Got fed up with scroll bars that just act that little bit weird, you know?

Maybe you don't.

Then got back to the new card stuff. Takes longer to set the machine up than run the test. There's so many fiddly things that can go wrong, it's bizarre.

Anyway, no after work job so I came home and watched more Agents. One call, the guy I was just helping, libreoffice wouldn't open, something about the MS Visual C++ runtime. Hate those things, honestly. There's like 6 of them on his machine. It's stupid.

Nice out but rain is coming.

Tues:
Went fairly quickly today, spent the whole day doing card stuff. There's a lot of machines to cover, and I worked on some automation bits for it. Given this testing is exactly like the tablet testing, do the same things over and over and over until your eyeballs explode, but can actually be controlled through a PC, I made a macro to do the bulk of the testing. Of course it's the setup that takes the most time, because of all the fiddly bits that need to be set. But once the macro worked I got through a lot of the testing right in a row.

Then we worked on the last piece, the secure jobs. Chris was going to show me the various places the settings are to test and got stopped by a weird bug that doesn't exist on the platform I'm testing. So weird. So we were working on that a bunch, most of the afternoon. He figured out what it was that was causing it, glad he did I wouldn't have known what was going on. Or know the tools he used to track it down.

Then I came home!

No calls, just checked my sites, watched more Agents. Getting close to get up early time!

Wed:
Looking at how many models I still have to test even after testing all day today it's a little disheartening. Even with the macro, it goes pretty slowly, but I am getting better at getting it set up. I think. There was an error that we fixed doing one thing last time, but turned out to be a different time zone this time. Sheesh.

Chris spent most (all?) of the day tracking down the bug he found yesterday. Trying to understand it enough to explain it. It's an odd situation.

I got through 2 models completely, the new secure print tests as well, and they're all 100% pass. Nice. I'm supposed to do a quick AT&T test (sigh) tomorrow so hopefully I can finish a 4th model and be (sigh again) half done. Maybe less if he wants the refurb 7835s done.

Rainy. Came back here and made one call, a guy on the way home tomorrow so that should be fairly quick. Otherwise finished season 5 of Agents and got ready for an early tomorrow to take care of my parent's babies.

Thurs:
Went to feed every cat, everybody was fine. Saw Gabe, he was sleeping in the garage. Silly Gabe, it wasn't raining anymore.

More of the same at work I fear. And some meetings, as usual for Thursday. It's going to start getting dead around there, the vacation notices are piling up. I did finish the AT&T test, so minor it wasn't worth the effort, but it got done so there was one thing on the "done" list for the weekly status meeting.

Still nothing really found, the Macro continues to work though, saving me some effort. The good news is, only three machines left to test and one is set up. The other two are just different speeds of something I've already tested (pointless) so I have the clone file for them. I can set them up in one shot.

Went to see the guy down the street. He let some random dude on his machine who encrypted the registry. Wow, they're still doing that? Managed to recover the backup, got him back. His printer wouldn't go on though.

Back here I got ready for tomorrow, made a call so I have another printer issue (which I could probably have taken care of but he didn't want to do it over the phone) Saturday. Yay. Watched the Pacific Rim sequel so I could get it back to Sean if I go there this weekend, but no word on that yet.

So tomorrow it's hopefully finish up the card stuff for awhile, go shopping, feed everybody of course, and get back here.

Then a quiet weekend for the most part? Need to cut the back lawn, it's going to start getting hotter apparently, too. We'll see, we'll see.

Oh, we got new thermostats in the lab, maybe it'll be a little more comfortable now? The fans were going today, don't know if that's good or bad.

Anyway, need to get to bed early again today, so that's it for this week. Enjoy your 4th next week, I know most of you will given the amount of time most people are taking off. Unless you have to actually work for a living in which case… I'm sorry.

See you next time!