2019-01-11:

Fri:

The biggest thing that happened today was the lunch, which Don actually did pick up! The message said it was his treat for directs, which maybe means something else to him or was a mistake? Odd.

Got a call, or actually called, my contact at CTG. Apparently I am getting a bit of a raise. Almost two whole american dollars. That's about .66 cents a year as it's the first raise I've gotten. And everyone was all, oh, we don't see increases that high very often. Uh, really? Sixty cents a year? You know inflation is 3% right? If I don't get at least that, you're actually paying me 3% less every year. So 3 years * 3% is, uh, 9% which is what I got. So don't give me that this is all so great. It's basically where I should be at this point.

Otherwise wrote up about 10 bugs, relating to the new layout because I asked "should I write bugs relating to the new layout or give them this 2 week period to implement" and Gina said "go ahead and write the bugs." How foolish. Because then after lunch she sent a message "let's not write up bugs relating to the new layout." Make up your mind, woman! Ah well, it's only me that writes up bugs anyway. 

So I finished chapter 6 and started 7 (only got the first line done though, it wasn't all that much) because if you don't want me to do my job, well, then I'm not going to do my job!

She's the one complaining they only have a month left. Shouldn't they know exactly what they have to fix so they can figure out if that's reasonable? Apparently not.

Anyway, did the after work stuff as usual and went over to Sean's. 

Got introduced to "the party" by being ordered to kill a guy they were investigating or something? Who knows. I don't, I wasn't there. So I went and did it. He's given me a power set very well suited to that sort of thing. Then he was like, "don't you want help from these people in getting out of your mind control situation?" and I'm thinking "I've just flat out murdered a guy. You know what you don't do after you commit a crime? Hang around." So no, I'm not going let them catch me, because why would they believe I was mind controlled anyway?

So we ended with them knocking on the door to my house in the middle of night. Because that will go well. I guess we'll see. So we're still not a party yet, and I don't even have any idea what's going on, because I was just in and out to murder the guy. 

(Oh, and the only reason they saw me was because he made them coincidently open the door literally before I vanished.)

Sat:

Cleaned up a bit. Wrote chapter 7, that took most of the day. 

Dad came over at 6:00 so I went at 5:30ish to get the food. Then we finished off the Dr Who episodes, including the new years day special. They were all right, but as many have pointed out, quite political.

Then went to bed! Yeah, not much happened. Sorry.

Sun:

Got up fairly late and checked my sites, nothing too exciting. Then went out to my first one. Standard cleanout, and the usual spinning rust awfulness I've come to expect. Showed him how to print from google maps, why do they hide menus everywhere?

Then out to the car selling guy. He needed his mail moved because thunderbird was dragging with imap. Yeah, thousands of messages will do that. I cleaned out his one machine and figured out how to connect the bluetooth keyboard he had to his stupid flip phone. Dude, if you're texting on that thing, are you really going to whip out that huge keyboard to do it with? Somehow I doubt it.

Back here I watched episode 1 of stranger things 2.

Cracks are developing in the door, so I patched them up, at least on this side.

Watched more Stranger Things.

Mon:

Plenty of work today, all alone in my little corner of the lab. 

Got to work on the test cases for the next round of audit log improvements. Of course testing won't begin for some time, but I do like to get things done early. 

At the very end of the day I looked at your favorite and mine, the SNMP stuff. That's, as usual, the tricky part. The first one I couldn't find, the second one I got working at the last second by changing a 7 into a 10. I think I know why I had to do it, but of course nothing is really clear about all this. Of course it makes sense that I would immediately be given one from a table I didn't use before. Sort of. I used it with the thinprint tests, which is where I got the 10 from. I think I finally understand what it was doing a little better, rather than just pasting in what they gave me.

Came back home and dropped off another bulb, it had completely blown out so I replaced it. Glad I got that 3 pack earlier. It was freezing rain, no really it was 26 degrees out, rain was falling, and turning to ice everywhere. Luckily it wasn't exactly pouring or we might have really been in trouble.

More rain and nasty stuff on the horizon.

Finished off Season 2, I liked it.

My new video card finally shipped, only took them a week. Glad my machine hasn't been crashing so I wonder if that's the issue at all. Sigh.

Tues:

More slaving away, doing the, uh, work they pay me to do. Wait, isn't that just regular work?

Anyway, got to the end of the SNMP stuff, though there are still some questions. Various areas I'm not sure how to control with SNMP. Still, most of the script works, at least in pieces being tested, so it should be ready to go when the actual testing begins. Doing all that work before certainly made it easier, to a certain extent. Once I figured out what table to use, generally just plugging the values in made it work.

That took basically all day, I did watch our CEO's webcast from a few days ago, the one I couldn't get to watch live because it wasn't letting anyone in. Nothing too revelatory or shocking.

Came back here, updated the projects page and ordered my refill from the pharmacy. 

Has my video card actually shipped? It's still not actually in the system. 

Checked my sites, the usual. 

May go to Sean's both days this weekend, he's asking about it.

Had two calls, Craig with just a browser extension, easily removed.

The other lady I talked though running her hardware diagnostics. Good thing I did. Her drive was dead! So sad. So she's going to talk it over with her husband and see what they want to do next.

Started the next chapter, almost finished it.

Wed:

Back to the boring tablet stuff, as I had finished the SNMP stuff yesterday. No answers to my questions, but what did I expect? 

I did write up a few bugs, strings in the wrong place, and some untranslated text I don't know how everyone missed up until now. Weird.

But nothing really exciting. Meetings tomorrow, and more of the same. Oh, I did finish the last chapter.

When I got home I had the notice that my license needed to be renewed, so I looked online (because they didn't list any DMV locations, thanks a lot guys) and the one not too far away was open until 6:30. Let's get it done.

Got it done. They weren't taking credit cards because apparently the state is charging twice. Isn't that illegal? Odd. The $100 I always carry was just enough to get through it. Ugh, how do they do any business in that state? It took until I got home that evening to wonder "if they know it's going to be charged twice, couldn't they just put it through for half the amount?" But maybe it's not everyone that is changed twice? Random thoughts.

Started to snow on the way home, going to be pretty bad tonight and tomorrow I guess.

No calls, so what did you decide, dead HD lady? What did you deeeecciiiidddeee????

Apparently book guy is getting a new computer. I've told him time and again, just like I told the last person who bought a new Mac when nothing was wrong with his system. But whatever. I'm just the expert. He wanted Friday after 4:00. Uh, no? In the first place I usually visit my parents. Even if I didn't, which I'm not tomorrow, I'm going to Sean's. Even if I wasn't, the answer would STILL be no because I'm not doing your stupid unneeded job at 4:00 on a Friday night. Just no. No. A million times, no. You don't even need a new machine. You are so dumb!

Aarg that makes me angry. It's another machine in a landfill that didn't need to be there, because some old man thinks the problem is not with him. It is with you. Believe me.

Anyway…

Thurs:

Here's something I didn't do while waiting for the morning meeting. Write part of chapter 9.

But a thing I did do after the meeting was eat lunch. But after that I changed the fan on the machine I work with. The fan I bought, the smallest one in the box, was yet too large, so another solution needed to present itself. It did, in the form of taking a fan from a machine in the lab I usually sit in (and not write anything) and switch them. This machine doesn't get turned on very much, it's running a very old version of software. And it's far enough away no one would care. But now I have silence (of a sort) instead of that awful fan noise that was driving me even more bonkers than usual.

Poked at the tablet, but didn't really get anywhere. 

Had the afternoon meeting, no Chris so it was fairly short, as he's usually the one doing the exciting stuff.

Then of course not finishing chapter 9, and then coming home.

Not as much snow as they were calling for, thank goodness for that. 

My tree and Dark One's seal arrived. Think I did a fairly excellent job on both! I'll picture them later, I already packed the camera to go over tomorrow and take a picture of the santa holding the tree.

Markets have continued to rise, but I'm still not where I was a few months ago. 

Had one call, a lady that can't get her laptop started, and couldn't get on the internet. She finally figured out how to unplug it, then was going on about her start menu being empty? I don't know, it's not worth it, really it isn't. But I'm headed over there Saturday, so yay.

Other looking to the future. Figure something out to do at work tomorrow, then drop some stuff off at my parent's house. Get gas, shopping, no bank there's no point. Drop stuff off at home, then go out to Sean's. Still not entirely sure about Saturday, Stan needs to give the ultimate yay or neigh.

And hopefully a quiet Sunday, leading into the middle of January. 

My video card might ship tomorrow, finally. Wasn't picked up my butt.

That's about it for now, tune in next week for what will probably be more of the same!