2018-11-09:

Filled out many forms for the new place. They just kept coming. I have to remember to put my bank stuff in when I get home, I didn't know the routing number and such.

But I did finish another model, this time using the latest software, go me. It was, as expected, fine.

Did the shopping, then saw my parents.

Had my father over for Who. No calls made, but there would have been only one anyway. I'll call dentist guy in the morning and then the lady with the laptop going on and off in the evening.

Then bed.

Sat:
Started off right with dentist guy calling me at exactly seven o'clock. I was, of course, still in bed. With my kitties. Asleep. Oh, by the way, they had me shoved to the other side of my own bed. Thanks kitties, how do you take up a whole half a bed by yourselves? Anyway, was not pleased to hear a phone ringing. Can you, maybe, think of other people but yourself? I mean I know I can't, but I would like you to try, dentist guy.

So a bit of modeling and I went over there.

The usual two hours passed, but I got his new SSD in, loaded, and questions answered. No bizarre stuff this time, just normal questions. Odd.

Came back here and started on the list. After lunch, of course. Did some changes for Ellen's site. Ordered a new base for Mizzy. Bought two more SSDs. Looked at a dad gift but may have to make it myself because it doesn't seem to exist. Paid bills, why is my security system bill only $2.00 this month? Signed up for auto-billing to avoid a $2.00 charge on the bill.

Got a dad gift squared away.

Then my Amazon ordered arrived, which contained some goodies. Like my new bathroom electrical outlet. Changed that in a hurry, and didn't even ectrocute mzself.
Eecto cute. Didn't cektolute. Lute. Lectocute.

I'm pretty. Are you pretty?

I have a kitty.

Pretty kitty.

Sparkly. My teeth feel weird.

Sorry, wasn't sure what I was tying there, what was I saying?

Dad's gift isn't going to work out, over $100 just to do the proof. And forget metal, even the cheapest was hundreds of dollars. A replicator shapeways is not. Man, the ring was $5.00, was this really that much more expensive to produce? I guess. Sigh.

Was going to play more FF8 but I was reading though the guide and somewhat despairing over all the things I still had to do, being only halfway through the game. So I said forget it, and got the FF7 monomod up and running instead.

It was the last scene that really did it for me. The group realized they had all been raised at the same orphanage, and without any evidence or investigation decided they had forgotten because of the "junction" system the game employs. It lets you "attach" monster like creatures to yourself in exchange for greater power by attaching magic to your stats.

But the thing is, they hadn't forgotten! When it was motioned they all remembered it, quite vividly in fact. So it would be better to say they just hadn't thought about it before. I mean if I forget where my keys are, I have to go look for them. Mentioning the keys doesn't bring their location to mind. But I'm not thinking about my keys 24/7 so can I be said to be "forgetting" them? No. So why did they talk about "forgetting" an event they all remembered perfectly? Why did they blame GFs? They're fighting a "sorceress" which apparently can use magic without drawing it from other creatures so how do you know she didn't put a spell on you to make you not think about it? That's just a valid a reason, right? Why would they have forgotten just this specific thing? Wouldn't some of them have forgotten other things, like it was completely random? That's basically how memory works, right?

For that matter what is magic in that game? It's a consumable resource, and you can hand it to someone. But only in discrete packets. You don't have the capacity for 8000 "magic" but you do have the capacity for 8 "pages" worth of 100 "spells" of each type. You can't have 200 cure magic, but you can have 100 cure magic and 100 curaga magic. Why? What is it? Where is it? Where are the GFs hanging out? One character said she junctioned one, where is it? Was it killed? Did it leave?

Nothing makes sense in that game.

So FF7 it is!

Having a blast with no stats/all armors and materia.

Sun:
More FF7, then ate lunch and put my Christmas lights up. Sunny. One string seemed to be fine but the end part wasn't which I of course noticed only after it was up there. It's getting harder to put them on the gutters because the one area is so overgrown. I might just wrap them around the trees next year.

Checked my sites. Did some reading, and more FF7 of course. Still enjoying it.

Took a look at my lights in the dark, they look fine. But that big bush on the side being bare… well, that's the price I pay I guess. Next year for sure, skipping the gutters and just doing the front bushes.

Was looking through my pictures for how I had done it in years past. It was a year ago this month I started work on the arcade cabinet. Neat.

We had snow November 10th, at least a little, but a lot more on the 20th.
My car had 30,000 miles and as it just spun over to 40,000 I've gone exactly 10,000 miles in year.

Strangely I didn't take any pictures of the lights last year? I thought I always did that. So weird. Nor the year before that? The heck? In fact it seems the last time was 4 years ago. *shakes head* I… what? Here's the two compared.

[[image file="2018-11/2014_lights.jpg" alt="2014 lights" ]]

[[image file="2018-11/2018_lights.jpg" alt="2018 lights" ]]

Those strings of red don't work, the last one died this year, and it looks like I've lost more strings and didn't replace them. I was able to do the bushes… right the red ones, duh. They've basically all been pulled back to account for that. So no more wrapping that front bush. Ah well.
One does what one can.

The first year I did it was 2009, here's the daylight pictures compared. There's been a few changes. The front window, the roof, the bushes are far more grown out on the left but not so much on the right side. It even looks like there's more branches on the tree.

[[image file="2018-11/2018_daylight.jpg" alt="2018 daylight" ]]

[[image file="2018-11/2009_daylight.jpg" alt="2009 daylight" ]]

Here's a question. Why is there a set of four wall plaques pointing faith, love, and home one way, but family another? I guess if you want the one you have to give up the others? Weird.

[[image file="2018-11/familythatway.png" alt="arrows" ]]

Did some cleaning, got ready for tomorrow and I went to bed early. I'm getting up early because I have to leave early to go over and take the drug test. Again. Thanks, new contract place. Have to get there before 3:30. And then take Tinker to the vet at 6:00. Going to be a busy day.

Mon:
Did some work today at work, just to see how it would go. Went pretty well. Went in early as per the plan and went through the audit log stuff, just to make sure it was the same at this late date. It was. Then went to the tablet meeting and spent more time talking about what to do next than actually doing it. No really. Our meeting went from 9:30-11:00 and when done I worked on the task less than half an hour (I ate lunch) and then an hour after lunch. It was done. At least the parts not assigned to John anyway.

The task? Just go through and make a list of all the features on the screen so we can be sure to get them all during the recording to send to translation. Because they can't send someone here I guess, because no one in the whole of Xerox Webster speaks Spanish and could be told "go over there, see those guys, talk to them and have them show you the Spanish tablet stuff. Is it okay? Great." No, we have to take movies and get webex accounts and who knows what else at this point.

I left early to do the drug test, and got that done.

Back here the version 2 of the ring arrived, hurray, it's a lot better than the old version. There are still some problems. It was just slightly too small, it went on fine but didn't want to come off. (I finally did manage it) And the pattern nearly disappeared. Sigh. The detail on the face? Nonexistent. So I got out an older file, deepened the pattern from .01 to .03 units, and didn't bother detailing the face. I made it slightly bigger and ordered it in silver. It should be here, uh, sometime in December? Sigh, didn't want to pay the $14 for rush job. Still, it should be pretty good! (crosses fingers)

Took Tinker in, they want to do his teeth again at some point, which with the senior panel will run almost $1,000. That's half a month's pay! Wha? I mean I wouldn't mind so much, but I lost that in the stock market recently. Well, it's only money I guess.

Talked to dentist guy for 45 minutes because the man just can't do anything. He was trying to scan, somehow got a .bmp file, then couldn't find it again despite scanning popping the window up when it was done, then he couldn't download and run the remote assistance program because he still had the old one, it just went on and on.

Then about 20 minutes with iMac guy, the one that got the new machine and the problems followed him? Recall? I do. He said he was having trouble booting but couldn't reproduce it. Also some nonsense about iCloud, but whatever.

Didn't reach the other person calling about bluetooth.

Tues:
Reached them today though. She has a desktop without built in bluetooth, and she claims to have no adapter for it, so she really doesn't have bluetooth as she claims.

But I'm ahead of myself.

Went in to work at the usual time and did the usual things. It was, as usual, raining. I did not finish chapter 15 or work on the ring that had been rejected for "thin walls." I guess because metal has to be thicker than the plastic????? Anyway, didn't do it, so that's fine.

I did note down a few more things into the translation issues spreadsheet.

At least tomorrow should be more exciting. With the new build arriving I have about 20 bugs to verify. Neat.

Drove the half hour to the checkup appointment. Reloaded his printer, showed him where the two sided setting was, ran the usual stuff. And drove for an hour back home. Thanks, traffic. You know what one of my favorite things is? Being at a dead stop on the express way, in the dark. It's so fun. I could do it every day. Of course getting INTO the lane where the problem is because it's the lane I needed didn't help my disposition any. But I finally made it.

Made my calls, er, call, from yesterday. The guy that called me at 8:55 yesterday (I was in the bathroom and didn't hear it) got it solved. He was talking about office and whatnot but it was just his internet being down. So of course a day later it was working.

Decided to look through all my recent works because the word "through" had a tendency to be written as "though" so you can see the difference. Whoops. It turns out I've been missing that typo for years now, so the Lysanias Trilogy needed dozens of corrections, as well as the Chronicles. I shudder to go back to the Susan stuff, it's probably there too. Sigh and Gurr simultaneously. So I fixed that up.

Checked sites, videos for today. Then it was 9:00.

Wed:
Figuring I had some time before the demo this morning I went though all the Susan stuff for though->through->thought because I had all three wrong. Thought I only missed I think three times but through I missed dozens. I hate myself.

Went to the demo, that was fine, but still no release so I looked through the Anton stuff for the same typos. Oh, and tried to figure out why my nice clacky keyboard at work (An IBM Model M I feel your jealousy) has the annoying habit of getting a key stuck down. Maybe it is the adapter, that seems to be a common complaint.

Right at lunch I got the new release so loaded it and when I got back, was ready to take on the 20 bugs I needed to verify.

I got through most of them, the ones I didn't were odd, when you enable the bypass tray, you can't seem to choose a language anymore. Huh? How are the two connected? Doesn't even make sense.

Got through that, left. Dropped off the laptop. Win10 is stupid. There are two drives in the machine. I had to install the SSD into the "second" slot and tell the machine to boot from it. Apparently, the Win10 installer also did something to the drive in slot one because putting his old drive in there made the machine not boot. Thanks, MS! Another triumph of design.

Came back here, ate dinner, checked sites, the usual.
The ring passed this time, #excited.

Got the base of Mizzy's gift this time. Maybe don't even paint it? I don't know, it could look cool just all clear and stuff.

Thought about doing things the opposite way than I had originally thought. It could work.

Did some reading and went to bed.

Thurs:
Surprisingly busy today, because I got asked to do some things. And of course the new remoteUI build came out. Sue wanted me to do some audit log tests, so after getting the machine loaded I took care of that. Also did a few tests around that icon that doesn't show up, I don't know, could it be the proxy? I don't think so. Did a little of the old remoteUI testing of course, it was fine, and met my new CTG "boss" and signed more stuff. I ducked into the hallway copy room to make a copy of my license for her, because I forgot earlier, and when I came out there was Adnan. I was like, "where you going?" but he was going to the same place. I guess he's with them as well. The question then becomes why isn't the whole group with this place? Weird.

Also got asked to look into some custom driver PPD for turning a color printer into a black and white printer. It worked, so, mission success?

What else? Certainly no blender sculpting, that's for sure.

Tomorrow I'll do another upgrade test for the icon, and probably more remote UI stuff.

Then later the bank, groceries, then out to the restaurant to see Neil. (I know, who?) Then back to Sean's for game I guess. Pyre of all things.

Other things done today: Took delivery of SSDs, so got the desktop PC ready for the new owner, whoever he/she may be.
Raked some leaves up, mostly off the driveway, but they're starting to come down. Yay?

Let the cats out in the garage, they stayed out there a long time.

Finished Mizzy's gift, it looks good I'd keep it myself.

Sites and youtube, and getting ready for tomorrow.

Two places to go Saturday, and book guy wants 5:00 on the weekend? That means I won't get back until 7:00 if he's true to form. No thank you.

Nothing much for Sunday yet.

It's still early, I may play some FF7 tonight, but then again maybe not.

Hope you all enjoyed the first week of November, it doesn't snow where you are this week, and you have all your Christmas shopping done already!

See you next time.