2018-12-07:

Fri:

Dove right in to the retest of the AT&T features, got through them all. The remove admin feature is just as broken as it ever was. Wonder why? Oh, right, because nothing has been done with it. "So why test it" I hear you asking.

Why indeed, gentle reader, why indeed?

Talked to Adnan about when we were getting paid and how, actually got a bit of an answer in the mail today. Huh, how about that? Oddly, nothing was taken out for the IRA. Huh?

But I did make $60 back in the markets today. It's a long climb back to where I had been though.

Anything else interesting happen? Huh, not really I guess. Pretty boring in the lab, no real action there.

Went to the bank, bought stuff for Mac & cheese for the party next week, did the other shopping, and saw my parents.

Back here had a call, the person I dropped the tablet off for? Yesterday, was it? Wednesday? Yeah, she's screwed it up already. So I have to go back and I'll probably just reload it, honestly. She's lost her desktop folder or something and it takes a long time to boot so she's clearly done something to it. In a day. A DAY. I hate this stupid job.

Checked my sites, the usual.

Sat:

Probably some unneeded work done today, but what can you do?

It's somewhat ironic, within the last two days I got a card from Spectrum, "oh, we'll give you 400Mb/sec for only $40 for two years.

The next day I find out I'm upgraded to 500Mb/sec on greenlight. Odd that, isn't it? I was stuck at 15Mb/sec for *how long* until you had actual competition? Spectrum? Hmm???

Anyway, doing speed tests showed I was getting only 1/4 of that speed. That can't be right!

So I replaced cables, moved both PC and Mac down to the basement for more tests, read forum posts… and it turns out Safari can't handle that kind of speed? At least not the old version I'm using. Downloading an app allowed me to see the full speed I should be getting. Huh. Silly.

Anyway, that was the afternoon, after I got back from shopping for game gifts and reloading the tablet. The tablet went pretty smoothly, some drivers didn't exactly want to load but I managed to get them all in anyway. That took from 9:00 to 10:30. Then went to the one goodwill and got oil as it's going to be "warm" tomorrow, (near 60s come on, rooting for ya!) and I'm at about 14% the last time I looked and that was a couple of weeks ago. So I'm lower now. Let's get that done before the real snow starts.

The other goodwill was closed! Huh. Good thing I got some good stuff at the one I went to then, isn't it?

Then the bandwidth thing.

Looked at my goodies, got ready to go, and left for Sean's.

Gloomhaven was, well, it was a video game role playing game in a board game form. Trouble is, with the amount of time Sean spent watching videos, punching out pieces, setting it up, looking up rules… we could have just played the same adventure in Pyre *and nothing of value would have been lost.* It's just an RPG with a GM that's a book, not a person.

Review: If you want to do an RPG and nobody wants to GM it, go for it.

If you already do RPGs and are deep in a campaign, just keep going with it.

Sun:

Found out my RadioShark hasn't actually been working since Oct 3, 2015! I was going to put these recordings, that I've been doing since 2012 on the phone so I could actually listen to them. I found out the files after Oct 3rd were empty. Looking into it the LED doesn't light up. Oddly, if I plug in the headphone jack the radio part does still work. Huh? That's odd. Ordered another, $25, they've been discontinued for years but ebay saves the day. Didn't even notice, of course I'm not usually around when it would be recording and so the LED being off didn't register with me. Sigh.

Wrapped gifts.

Did the paperwork. 

Changed the oil. It was actually somewhat nice out. I mean it wasn't snowing or pouring rain, and that's a change from usual around here. It worked out perfectly. 

Spent much time (40 minutes) listening to Ellen whine about stuff.

Spent 30 minutes looking into why Chrome was giving a certificate error for the frontier webmail but Firefox wasn't. Didn't come up with a good answer. 

Got ready for tomorrow, day 1 of December 2018 and the countdown begins. It's 14.

Mon:

All the versaLink machines are signed out! Sheesh, we only have like 4 people that would even do anything with them, and 2 weeks seems a bit excessive. So I just took one over that hadn't been updated at all anyway. Got the majority of testing done with it, so that's another model out of the way.

Worked a little on the Demon Tower game Sean wants me to run. Basically testing all the skills and backgrounds we haven't seen yet to make sure they're balanced and work right. I figured out a way to let them switch out, and have an actual adventure while doing it. Sort of a super one shot using time travel.

A little work on Boris book.

No after job work so I came home. Wrapped more presents because I had gotten more. 

No rings, hopefully tomorrow.

Talked a lady through starting to upgrade her (ancient) Mac from 10.9 to 10.11 so she's at least not as much out of date as she was. (It's a 10 year old machine)

Tues:

My rings didn't arrive. It's a familiar message though, "your package will arrive later then expected, but it's still no the way." How many bets for it never arriving? All of them? All the bets? Yeah.

Oh, and I lost $450 in the market today. Neat!

Thanks Mr. Trump, you're doing a great job making America great again. You're a great "president" in your own words.

(Yes, he himself put president in quotes, I am not making this up.)

Anyway, enough with the gloom and doom, did anything get accomplished today? Sure, more testing for the millionth time. I did actually write up a new bug though, so that's something. When you turn something on, but leave a part of it turned off, you go back to discover that other part turned itself on! Whoops.

Otherwise not much to speak of. Not sure what machine I'll be able to find to test on tomorrow, given they're all signed out for PL4-R5 testing. Like, all of them. What?

Got back, did the usual dinner eating.

Worked on the demon tower game. Got all the skills and powers for the objects set, I just have to choose the spells everyone gets.

No calls? It's a good week so far! 

But I have been bugged continuously by a hungry kitty.

Finished up Minette. Couldn't get her dress to move with her arms, and it wasn't really all that worth it to look up how to do it, so she's not really posed. It's fine. 

Or lit.

Or textured.

Or really anything that would make her look good. And her face would still frighten children. 

Sigh.

Wed:

Sort of busy today, I guess. I got sucked into some stuff.

Mainly some thinprint stuff in the afternoon, someone wanted some advice and such. And I thought maybe they broke thinprint with the last release somehow? But no, it was just me setting it up wrong. So yeah, still don't have an answer as to why their machine wasn't accepting the jobs. But it was acting weird, like giving me weird error messages? I think they need to reload it, or set it to factory defaults or something.

Had the Thursday meeting today as we'll be having our party tomorrow.

Had the tablet demo in the morning, then loaded the release. It messed up my tablet for some reason. I only have two languages now, not 3, and I'm stuck with Spanish as the default. Huh? Hard to verify French bugs when the only language you have is not French!

Did write a minor bug up, they missed a word on the UI. A serious one, I know. 

Came back here, finished updating the spell list so now all 630 spells are in the list. Whew. I can now pick out the spells for the objects for the upcoming tower game. Put the list into the paragon app too. 2.0.0.1 baby!

No calls, it's my Christmas gift from the universe to me, I guess. Well, there was one, the orthodontist reminding me of my Friday appointment. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten. 

Got the mac and cheese made for the party tomorrow. Then it was time for bed.

Thurs:

Very quick today. Got through part of the testing on yet another model, because why not? Had a 45 minute meeting about the tablet stuff, always a pleasure. 

Then went, er, back home because I forgot the stupid mac & cheese I made. Yeah, totally forgot it. Like what was I even thinking about? It's nuts.

Had some fun seeing the different kinds of booze offered at the gift exchange, and came home.

Got my new radioShark in. Turned out my old one wasn't broken after all. Nope. It was the radioShark program that didn't work anymore. Duh! Are you stupid? Yes, yes you are. But I still have an old copy of Audio Hijack which can do the same thing, record it on a schedule. At least it says it can, and the audio is being recorded. I changed it to just be Echoes, we'll see how it goes.

Don't get me wrong, the LEDs are in fact burned out. I see that now for sure. Odd though that the official program for recording doesn't work but some other third party program does.

Got the rings in after all. soldering them… didn't work. They are far thinner than I expected. I'm always over or underestimating stuff. A couple of mm on the ring and it's huge. A thin ring I think will solve my problem just leaves me with more problems. Sigh.

Honestly, given how fiddly this stuff is, it's a miracle the leopard ring I have now fits me at all. Maybe I just grew into it and then stopped because that's all the growth I needed.

Got ready for tomorrow. Updated the website with the projects from the last year, that's how long it's been since I did that.

Oh, got Oliver's medicine in as well. We don't like the cup over our face. But then any cat owner could have told you that. I'm not talking about the entire gizmo here by the way. Nope, just the cup to see how he would react. Well, his first "real" dose is in about half an hour, we'll see how that goes. I think I'll be in the bathroom. Less chance for him to escape, closer to the bandages and alcohol.

Probably go to the bank tomorrow, I've been sent some checks this week.

Shopping of course. Then seeing my parents. Hope the first week of the show went okay for my mother.

Oh, and the 8:10 orthro appointment of course. Can't forget about that.

It went about as well as expected. Two scratches that I can feel, I guess he thought I was cutting his tail off, rather than holding a soft plastic cup over his nose for 10 seconds. I'm sure he'll get used to it.

Actually wrote part of a chapter! Nice! 2/3 of it, anyway. Introduced Meg, a mutation I just made up. 

Not sure about Saturday, Sean said he's behind on grading because his aid hasn't grade the last 3 projects, and Jon's car is in the shop. So probably nothing this weekend. 

But it's little more than two weeks to Christmas, so I hope you've thought about gifts.

See you next week.