2019-02-01:

Fri:

Usual work stuff, nothing exciting. A few bugs written.

Went shopping, got gas, had my card rejected at the pump but it worked inside.

Had dinner with my parents, then headed over to Sean's.

We got through at least one part of the adventure, confronting the dwarf that was selling the names of fae in the community. Turns out he was just a person looking to make some extra cash, not part of any grand conspiracy at all. We did come up with a plan to somewhat expose the company and cover up the death of the guy buying the names, so we'll just have to do what we can there.

Sat:

Had a call when I got back last night, so after I got up I called her. No answer.

As my parents are coming for movie night I cleaned up, vacuumed even, then the lady called. She just needed help plugging some stuff in, so I went over there and plugged some stuff in.

Back here I checked my sites, videos for the day, and worked on chapter 20.

Got it just about done before my parents arrived, and we watched the first 2 Hotel Transylvania movies. Hope they liked them.

Sun:

Got up, finished chapter 20.

Did various things through the day. Looked for old movies we used to have on the disk player.

Did some arcade games.

Worked on chapter 21. Got to the fight, of course that's where I stopped. But I need more plot anyway. I can think about that tomorrow.

Read more of the next wheel of time book.

Checked my sites.

Watched some stuff.

Mon:

Got bug 5555 today, how about that? 

That brought my total up to 808 and we now have 1001 open bugs. In two days we get our new build and I have a whole 4 to verify. 

Sweet.

The morning was consumed with meetings, first the usual monday one for an hour, then more of the spec meeting where we got through two pages, two new graphics. Really, we're supposed to be talking about specs, not business decisions. That's a different meeting, with different people. Get it right.

Otherwise just poking at it. Fixed two bugs in my paragon program though.

Thought about writing something that could chart battles for me, but there's so many variables. I don't know.

Fairly cold, but it's going to get colder before its done.

Came home, did the usual at home stuff. 

No calls, that's a plus.

Tues:

Starting to get colder. I mean much colder. Tomorrow is a low of 4 degrees.

Yipes.

But you came here to learn about poking at stuff, and boy howdy did I poke at stuff. I wrote, er, one bug today. 

Not much else, though I did set up for the big battle to come. Didn't write any of it when I got home, got consumed by Wizardhood, it was interesting.

No calls, so looks like straight home tomorrow if we haven't all frozen.

We get the new build tomorrow though, so at least there's that to look forward to. I don't think I have any more than the 4 bugs to look at, so they're hard at work all right. 

I really should get that battle started, but setting it up and just playing it out as I plan to do, writing down enough to know at the end if anyone was hurt (which I doubt but their stats are all 10s so it could happen) will take hours. Maybe tomorrow when I get home. 

Wed:

So it's a single degree out, could be worse I guess it could be one degree lower.

Got the new build today as expected, saw the demo. Loaded it up and looked over my 4 bugs. Then got busy writing up bugs caused by all the stuff they changed. 

Like multi page TIFFs don't preview or print right if you preview them, but do print right if you don't preview them. I mean come on, people!

Wrote up I think the final count was 6 bugs today? Pretty good day.

Apart from the cold, I mean.

Went out to see accountant guy, his wife who I have seen many times didn't recognize me. Super! His machine was fine but I did a speed test on his internet. 6mb/s? Huh? For some bizarre reason he has three phone lines (1 for the fax, ugh, shoot me) and two are right there in the room but the third is way downstairs so he was using a wireless signal from the basement across the entire house. 

I ran a wire that distance and got his internet speed up to 120mb/sec. Little bit better, maybe? I mean it's not 500, not that I'm bragging about it.

Came back here, did the usual stuff. The tree and the gift came out great, the gift I'm quite happy with actually. Won't need to reorder it. Now it's someone else's turn to shine with it. Hopefully the tree is the right size this time, but I like the looks of it a lot better in either case.

[[image file="2019-02/greentree.jpg" alt="green tree" ]]

[[image file="2019-02/whitetree.jpg" alt="white tree" ]]

Talked to a lady about her gmail accounts and apparently when you change the recovery email they don't make you verify it, they make you un-verify it if it's not right? Seems a bit dangerous to me but that's how it goes.

Got ready for bed. I'll put more details in tomorrow's entry as I'm sure you've noticed these have been a bit thin, and I should have finished that combat days ago. 

Thurs:

So I promised you the story, and I will tell it all. About that mountain boy who ran illegal alcohol. Or wait, that’s something different.

So our story begins Saturday with a bit of a scratchy throat. I was not concerned, this happens in winter because my humidifier system is broken in every possible way. If I turn it on, the valve leaks. When it didn’t, the system would either get gummed up and stop delivering water if I didn’t open the value up enough, or simply not shut off at all if I opened it up too much. And the sponge/brush thing that spins don’t spin no more because it’s too broken. It just slides around and then stops. Anyway I felt fine so I dumped some water in and figured I would watch it and dump more in when needed. It emptied pretty quick, so the air was fairly dry.

Then Sunday came, and it was a little worse. Now I grew somewhat concerned. By the end of the day the sore throat was gone but now my nose was starting to run. I was having trouble falling asleep so I took the last 2/3 of a dose of medicine I had left.

Monday my nose ran all day, and of course I forgot to buy more medicine on the way home. You may think to yourself, “your nose ran all day, how could you forget?” It was easy. I don’t normally think about that stuff. The last bottle of stuff I had expired in 2015. Think about that. The bottle I just got has a 2020 expiration so figure it expires 1 year after you buy it. That means I bought it in 2014, five years ago. I made a 12oz bottle of cold medicine last 5 years. And here’s an odd thing- the bottle I just got was only 8oz. I appreciate that I obviously didn’t need 12oz at the time, I just hope the price went down by ¼ as well. Maybe there was a larger bottle? I don’t know. In all honesty if it wasn’t so much plastic I would prefer exactly 1 weeks’ worth of liquid in the bottle. Say 6 days? 6*30ml = 180ml? That would be ideal, then you wouldn’t have bottles from 5 years ago hanging around. 

[[image file="2019-02/lessismore.jpg" alt="syrup" ]]

Anyway, Tuesday I remembered and got some. Wednesday it was starting to subside and today was pretty good as well. But the reason I haven’t done much at home this week is because I was going to bed so early. I was in bed by 9:00 just about every day this week. 

I felt okay, but of course you get run down a bit blowing your nose constantly. No cough, hardly any sneezing, just runny nose. But then I’ve never been hit as hard as my mother was back in the day. 

So that’s the story. Hopefully over the weekend I can work out this enormous combat and figure out what’s going to happen next in the story. I’m thinking the live action he-man? They jump into our world, I’d have to watch that movie and see what the plot is, it’s been quite some time since I saw it.

Otherwise had the tablet meeting today and got my newest directive. Start making the videos to send to translation. The first ones to do: English? Wait, what the Hell? No, see, we did English videos to "get them used to the workflow" previously. We only needed it done the once. We did it! Why must we (I) do it again? 

So between the other Thursday meeting and the impromptu meeting about moving the DCE stuff into the print spec, I got that about half done. They're worried about February being a busy month, maybe they need to look at what work we're doing and figure out it's just "busy" work rather than real work?

Anyway, far better today, hardly any nose running at all. Still very cold though. I walked into "my" lab after lunch and there was actual, honest to goodness warm air coming out of the vents. It's usually only cold air. It was actually warm in the room. I couldn't believe it.

Got one call, a guy with what may be a bad LCD. My favorite. I'm going out there and take it apart to get the part number so I don't order the wrong thing. That's Saturday.

So looking to the future I'll do more videos tomorrow. All day. Because once I finish the English ones I can start doing the whole thing all over for the Spanish and French. Good thing we can automate that whole process. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Ha.

Then go to the bank, shopping, get gas, and see my parents. 

Then over to Sean's for more Monster Mash. Maybe we'll not be totally useless this time?

Then Saturday the morning job, anything that comes in between now and then. Have to buy some stuff for Valentine's day for my mother, and hopefully work on the combat. Which I have set up and started, by the way. It's not going well, Rosalina has had her left arm (her wand arm) almost torn off already. 10 stat creatures are tough. I'll have my parents over if they want to come and finish off Hotel Transylvania. We'll see.

Then Sunday is the big game and my father's "birthday" which is really Friday but go figure. So I'll go over to my sister's house for that in the evening.

As for right now I feel perfectly fine but I'm still heading to bed somewhat early. I know I have a late night tomorrow so let's get all the healing rest we can, no?

And that's January, folks. It's over. Hope it wasn't a total loss for you all out there, I'll see you back here next week for the continuing adventures.