2019-05-31:

Fri:

Started the day off right, getting #1 off the list done.

I put the decals on the car, cleaned some useless stuff out of it, and tackled one tiny corner of the garage. One part of one tiny corner of the garage. 

Watched today's videos while taking apart the last of the hard drives to give the cases to my father. Anyone want a hundred neodymium magnets?

Cleaned my vacuum cleaner out.

Brought more stuff out to the car to throw away.

General cleanup. More reading. Made my shopping list. 

Went to drop stuff off at my parents, then back to the shopping, then back to their house. Had dinner, then went over to Sean's. Stayed on track well, more spells tested, and some interesting puzzles to solve so that went fine.

Sat:

Got up and checked my sites for the day, then got started on the next chapter.

Well, I tried to, anyway. I wound up fixing some bugs in my battleRunner. They had been annoying me for the most part, but I changed a few things around so it works better, and fixed an odd "bug" where I was removing the first stat for some reason. Couldn't figure out why I had done that. But it's working a lot better now.

Then I went back to working on the combat.

Got through it, didn't even scratch a single one of them this time, despite only being outnumbered by one. Element of surprise and all that? Two people got "killed" but woke up, they'll be sore. Sheesh, these things are dangerous. How did we ever fight them in Sean's original game when we made the rules? Them being insubstantial is just brutal, it's nuts. 

Left to go to Sean's again, still don't know if we're doing Gloomhaven or not.

We did! We dropped the level to 0, and made it through. Manly by gaming the system to take advantage of opening a door before we defeated any enemies in the second room thereby causing half the enemies in that room not to spawn. Go meta-gaming! I didn't contribute much, somehow, but I didn't get any gold either so it was a wash?

Sun:

Got up and cut the grass.

Then did my paperwork for last month. I had cash left over from last year, so technically I've put more into my IRA than I've made from the business! Sweet!

Did some reading. 

Finished chapter 17, I'm at 60,000 words for book 7. 

Watched a movie. One thing I don't understand, if you can build a portal to another world, and you want to move a lot of troops/people through it, why not build it along the ground? Why build it like this:

[[image file="2019-05/tall.jpg" alt="tall portal" ]]

I mean look how tall the freaking thing is! But only a few orcs can go through at a time. If they had built it the same dimensions, but along the ground, they could have moved hundreds more through in the same time it was open. It was like the bad guy specified the dimensions to the work crew, but they were like "bro this guy ain't paying us we mess him up" and built it this way on purpose. It's weird.

More reading. Made some calls, looks like I have a job tomorrow and one for Tuesday. 

Cleaned the mice cages, got ready for tomorrow.

Mon:

Got up bright and early for my next day off. Looked into what I wanted to do about a Sean gift, but didn't have any great ideas by the time 10:45 rolled around. I really need a place that will take a 3D file and cut it out of a block of wood. As the 3D places, one that used to print "wood" doesn't seem to anymore. What to do?

Went to the job, more gmail/thunderbird madness. Seriously, just erase from freaking emails, it'll be fine.

Got back about 1:30, thanks. Ate lunch. More reading. 

Got an ever better idea about Sean's gift. If I could pull it off… I wonder. It's a totally different track than I had previously went, but he would like it I think. I want one and I haven't even started, just came up with the idea.

One call, the same people that never answered from last week. Still no answer. 

Made some changes to Ellen's site.

Tues:

Knew it was going to be rough.

Back to work today, got started on finishing the timing tests. 

Got them done! Yay! But there was no meeting, it wasn't moved to Tuesday it was just canceled outright. What a twist! 

Started on the next AT&T round, to make sure it's still fine. (Spoiler: it is) 

Gina came down to talk about the email I had sent her telling her the translation screenshot work was done, about the translating screenshot work being done. Yeah.

Left for the dentist. No problems, did have a small chip in one filling repaired. 

Got back at 12:40, ugh, an hour and forty minutes to make up. 

Then finished up the AT&T stuff, started an SNMP test because I haven't done that in a hot minute, and then did not work on chapter 18 in the final two hours because I had nothing much else to do. No, certainly did not do that. I did, uh, work. Very important work.

Then went over to "move my pictures" lady. She waited until every possible camera she had was full. Her iPhone? Full. Her iPad? Full. Her camera cards? Full. So it took about 1.5 hours to move her pictures from one machine to another which was actually quicker than I had thought. But then I had to do the other devices and show her the editing and show her how to use folders and drag stuff around. You know, using a computer type stuff.

That she somehow hasn't picked up in the last 35 years the modern computer has existed.

Finally got back after 7:00, made one call and finally reached the person. Yay. Set up a few things on their new computer and got to eat dinner around 8:00. Checked sites, videos, got ready for tomorrow, oh look, it's 10:00.

Time for bed. Good thing I had no wants or needs of my own!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!

!!!

Wed:

If I needed or wanted a new version of software, I got it. 

The first thing I was doing in the morning was checking out a bug to reproduce. I can't email receipts to myself. But other machines can. Strange much?

With the new version of software loaded I checked into my resolved bugs. There were very few, despite being 400+ open bugs currently so obviously that priority has shifted. To not be a priority.

Ate lunch, was left with the old stand by, poking at it. Sweet. Gave up at 3:00 and certainly didn't work on the 3D model for Sean's next gift. Because I hadn't been able to the night before. No no, I did, uh, work, over in the other section, until 5:00(ish) because I was making up the time for the dentist. Still have "40 minutes" to go. We'll see how it goes.

Back here, no calls, so that's looking up. 

Placed an order for a few things, including the card reader for the lady from yesterday. 

Checked sites, ate dinner, the usual stuff.

Worked on the design some more and finalized it. Hopefully the "thin walls" won't come back to haunt me. If it works it's gonna be so cool.

Thurs:

The model was accepted, so the human that looked at it must have felt it was okay, so that's good.

To balance this, the day ended… somewhat poorly.

It begins innocently enough. I did a bit of writing- I mean work, only work, to pass the time until the meeting. Then I got assigned the payment bits that the offshore team couldn't do. Fine, I thought to myself, I'm usually the one doing that anyway. It's just checking every service to make sure the credit card icon shows up in the right spot. Glamorous. 

That done I ate lunch, and tried to figure out where the cards were I was missing. I found one type but it wouldn't work. So I messed around with the server trying to get it to work. No dice.

Then The Bob wanted me to do another pass on the performance test so I went to do that. But first I had to set the tablet up because it has no card reader, recorder software, table next to it, nothing. I put my card reader on it. I tried the card reader. It won't take the card. I try another card on another machine. No dice. 

So somehow, despite my not changing anything about the server controlling the standard cards (master card, visa, etc) now we can't use any cards. And I have no clue why or who to talk to to fix it. It's not like we have useful error messages or anything like that. I mean come on. But more to the point I changed nothing that would mess with that. 

So I left work 40 minutes later than normal having not gotten the redo of the previous test done, not having started the new test, and finding out tomorrow I have to figure out if I actually did something to the card server and correct it. Sweet.

Other things to do tomorrow- shopping, seeing my parents, and going to Sean's. Hopefully I can get the performance test done, I'll work on the card thing if the overnight doesn't fix it (hey, it could have been out of my control, and simply a coincidence they're not working now) after a time just to finish it. 

Then hopefully into a nice, restful weekend. 

Worked on chapter 18, the latest combat against 10 of the shadow things. There were 9 on our side, the shadows like to have the advantage in numbers. It's going fairly well, they weren't taken by surprise this time, the shadows were further away, and they're using more area effect attacks. Nice, but the shadows just wounded someone so it's not going to be a "perfect" on the side of the good guys. 

Man, May is gone. And Good Omens starts tomorrow, interested in that show. Check it out, if you can. I'll see you in June, bug.