2018-10-26:

Fri:
Got so much done today, it's probably illegal.

HA, who am I kidding?

Certainly didn't work on the ring, and it get it looking actually pretty good if I had to put a fine point on it. I mean it's me, so you can't expect too much but come on.

Poked at the tablet stuff in the afternoon, and as no one wrote any bugs today I was in good company.

Went to the post office to see about my wayward package, shipped Oct 8th, they didn't have much good to say about it. Great. I guess I'll just wait another week then? Sigh. It's part of Mizzy's gift, so I hope it comes soon.

You might say it the base for the whole thing! Hyuck, hyuck.

Then dropped the stuff off at my parent's house, did the shopping, and came back here. Checked my sites, then talked to serval people over the phone. Helped a guy with a crashing Mac Mail app, we deleted 150 old emails from the time warner system and it stopped crashing! Yay!

And got another person with Windows Live Mail set putting their sent emails into the sent email folder. Weird that it wasn't.

So just the one place to go tomorrow, plus getting the fabric. I did invite my parents over and they said sure, so I'll see them.

Sat:
Got up, got started on sculpting the ring. In reality I'm not happy with the head so I didn't save it. It's too bulbous, it needs to be more triangular, like a snake. Got many reference pictures.

Left for Jo-an's. Got the felt I deserved (but not the felt I needed) for a whole buck with the coupon I had. Still had a few minutes so I went to target (next door) and got a christmas gift, so there. Getting the shopping done!

To the guy's place, looked his machine over and answered questions. No issues.

Back here I ate lunch and put the lights project together. I think it came out pretty good!

[[image file="2018-10/sphere_lights.jpg" alt="light my world" ]]

Cleaned up, got the PC up and running so I can sell it.

Worked on the snake ring. Think I finished it? I'm actually pretty happy with the head, though a snake's head is smooth with "plates" and mine is all lumpy. It'll get cut down when it's polished I think, just as with the body. And I don't want to get "your detail is too small" next to my favorite "thin walls" when I upload it.

Sun:
I got it! My good buddy thin walls. Hey, I wonder what ever happened to "my buddy." That's a lie, I don't care.

Anyway, spent most of the morning on that, bringing the polygon count down and making some last second changes. It's chunkier than even I thought, in terms of being pretty wide. I should have looked at that beforehand. Ah well, we'll see. The proof in yellow plastic cost me $5.00 but $5.00 to ship so we'll see how it looks. About $100 for the fancy silver version. Totally worth it.

Did some reading, ate lunch. Made yummy soup.

Huh? I put my ring design in at 1:30 or so, by 3:30 (on a Sunday!!) I got an email saying it had passed the manual review and was being printed. I expected the usual "we can't print this and here's why" email days from now. Now a hearty "good job here it comes" email. Weird. Maybe I'm getting better at this stuff despite everything? (everything being my Ineptitude (art) weakness)

Oliver must have known it was his adoption day. He was on my lap almost all day.

Mon:
Much excitement to talk of tonight.

First there was the

And then that happened! It went like

Then there was this huge

Apparently Xerox is consolidating contract houses? Because certain people got emailed with a basic "find a new contract house." Or you could just, I don't know, hire us? Nah, that's crazy talk. Haven't heard the same, so I guess me and my SilverXis are safe. Learned John makes $7.00 more an hour than I do. I'm sure he's worth it.

Went out to set up a printer. That went fine, though it didn't support XP so I had to (slowly and tortuously) lead her through saving her crappy autoCAD drawings from XP to PDF and printing them indirectly. So fun.

Got home after 7:00, but at least she gave me a little extra.

Checked my sites, had yummy soup I had been looking forward to all day, did some reading and went to bed.

Tues:
Just realized a moment ago that I forgot to do my paperwork for last month. Crazy.

Not much excitement at work, that comes thursday, but maybe I am on the list for the whole contract house thing? Still no email, but my current manager was saying something about it. *shrugs* If Xerox wants me to do something, they darn well better officially tell me.

I did write two bugs today, so that was a thing. It was sort of one bug, I noticed certain values changed when you went back into certain services. I wrote up the scan first, then realized it was for the print service as well, so I wrote that up separately. Eh, who cares?

Otherwise I looked over a remoteUI machine, as expected it was fine, so really I'm hanging on for the next build with some bug fixes.

My ring shipped, that was super quick. Let's hope it fits and I can get the real silver one started. Oddly, the gold plated is actually cheaper. In the series the rings are gold, but of course those are "current" rings worn by women. I'm designing something worn by men channelers "in the past." Would they have been silver to distinguish themselves? And do I want it polished, super polished, or "antique" where "recessed details are darkened" making it look older? Would be nice if there was a way to get a preview of what each would look like. Can't have everything I guess.

Came back here, checked my sites, videos as usual. Just one call, about a laptop shutting down but is with someone at collage. Can't really help then, can I?

Worked on the book, it's up to 45,557 words now which I would like to call the halfway point, so the zombie "stuff" happens. Pyre is bigger than I thought, it's larger than the USA. The entire "supercontinent" spans almost the circumference of the Earth. Sheesh. Glad we have teleport magic.

Played some FF8.

Wed:
Last news first, I got transferred to the new agency. Apparently. My input was neither wanted or desired apparently. I got an email at 9:30 AM (at my house, not the xerox address, for reasons. Good thing that address still worked, it was my RR one!) Basically, yeah, you're not with us anymore. See ya.

The last line was

"SilverXis has enjoyed having you as our employee and we are sad to see you go."

Of course you are. You're a fake company that exists to allow Xerox to have me work for them but not give me a decent wage or benefits. Every week you get part of my salary, for doing nothing at all. So of course you are sad. I would be sad too, if my free revenue was cut off suddenly.

Enjoyed having me as an employee. Really? Despite never having met me, knowing nothing about me, and not caring if I lived or died except for what money I could make for you. Somehow I don't buy it.

Then at 2:06 I got an email from Wolff yes Wolff! That ties with Cho-Drake, a lady that works in Global Purchasing in the hallway I walk down for best last name ever. Anyway, she was like, "yeah, you work for us now. Thanks for being a revenue stream for us!"

Not that last part, I made that up. But it was implied. I mean think about it. If I can be passed around like a parcel, being "hired" by a company that has never spoken to me, does not know what I can do (my skill set in other words) or anything about me. Then that's what I am. A parcel. That makes them money.

So great to work for… CTG now. Yup, so nice.
I'll double my efforts to… poke at stuff and write up tons of bugs in between writing… I mean not writing, more bugs. Yes, more bugs.

Oddly enough they have a Rochester presence. But Wolff has a 716 area code. Odd.

Watched our CEO's webcast in the morning. He was complaining about the process of signing in to go into a building because he's the CEO. Uh, okay, that's the process dude. Everybody signs in. You're not special.

He then went into "detail" about future plans, and was asked about layoffs and such. He replied with a very coy answer of "we'll have to make hard choices in the future and they won't be popular." Any translation needed? No? Didn't think so. So that was uplifting. Made me want to work even harder, poking at stuff and… you know.

Poked at stuff! Had the demo of the newest localization effort, they forgot Fax in the demo, and then I tore it all to pieces. I have this huge document of current flaws, she wants it by "category" but that seems like madness. It would take me a week to get screenshots and write it up that way. By service and just the list would be far, far, far, far, (far) easier because I already have the list. And our developers are (barely) smart enough to look at the screen and see "yes, he's right that does not look correct." Honest. They are. They can do it.

So that was today. Certainly didn't write chapter 14 today, that would have been wrong.

Tomorrow I get the new remoteUI build with the fixes for 3-4 bugs. So I'll be poking at that. Should be a blast.

Got back, checked sites and had yummy soup, tried to play some FF8 but got nowhere as I got a call from the lady I was just at, the control center wouldn't open. Wha? Finally got it open not by just opening the exe, no. She has to open the brother utilities, and then open it from there. Why? Who knows?!

That took about an hour to figure out. So that's about 5 hours I've spent with this person. It's so not worth it.

Nasty and raining. 40s out. 40s the rest of the week. I'm busting out the winter jacket. Still no leaves down.

Did reach one other person, their machine isn't booting up at all. Makes a funny noise. Odd. Going over there tomorrow.

Thurs:
As expected, got the new build in right away, there was no problem. Had three bugs to verify, two related to the feature. One was fixed, one was not. The other random one I had found was fixed, while I came across another weird issue that I wrote a bug for. You can get the machine into a state where only half the screen is used. Very odd.

Otherwise did the entire test on one machine, and I'll probably do a second machine tomorrow. You know, may as well.

Went out to see the lady about the beeping desktop. It was dead. It made the same noise with the RAM out as with it in. Oh, and the fan was so plugged up with cigarette ash… that's what your lungs look like, lady! Don't know how it even ran at all.

I had brought my refurb unit just in case so I didn't have to go back (yes, after 15 years I'm finally thinking ahead) so I sold that to her. Have to get another.

Came back here, two calls.

Oh, my fund is down more than a thousand dollars today, but it rallied up $200 so I only have $1,100 to make up. Nice. At this point I've barely made anything on it.

Reached one person, the old play director back in high school, I think his internet is just slow but he wasn't home. I'll see tomorrow. Probably nothing I can do. The other I didn't reach.

Read some and will hopefully try some FF8 tonight if I don't get interrupted by stupid printer issues.

We have come to the looking ahead portion of our tour. Less than one week remains in October, hope your costumes are ready!

No Sean news but a possible new game in a few months on Friday. Maybe I'll have the fam over for another movie night?

Tomorrow more useless testing of another model, then bank and shopping. Seeing my parents, then making calls.

Just the one for Saturday at the moment, but I'll probably have another or two by then.

And that's it for this week. Stay dry and warm out there people, get your leaves raked up if you have them, and start thinking about dragging those christmas decorations out.

See you next week.