2019-06-07:

Fri:

Not my fault after all! Yay! You remember last week how I was (ahem) “upset” that something I had done triggered CC not to work? It seems that when someone (who was not me) changed the “warning” amount from $50 to $20 (it’s the amount the system rejects for a job as being “too much”) it just flat out makes CC not work. Wha? 

It just so happened to coincide with my trying to get the other type of card to work. That’s it- evidence global warming doesn’t exist! Or no, wait? So with that out of the way  I got on with the performance test and finished that up. Both the “redo” of the PDF test and the second run of the performance test on another machine.

Cleaned up the lab, figured out what some loose tablets were. Only one is completely dead, the others are now nicely wrapped, boxed, and stored away. Still a lot of clutter over there though.

Then went and thought about gifts for Mizzy and Neil. I think I've got some good ideas, actually. Neil’s is a little more ambitious than ever before, but I think I can handle it now. I guess we’ll see.

Did the shopping as usual and stopped at my parent's house. Car was gone and I was like “oh, right.” Their day at the shops. But then the alarm wasn’t on and I was like “wha?” and there was noise and suddenly dad was there, feeling lousy. Feel better soon, dad.

Back here, ate a little, sites, etc, then off to Sean's.

One hour on one spell, but hey it's what I signed up for. Didn't beat the rooms yet. Things that can only be hurt by light based attacks are tough. (As Lysanias is learning in another universe altogether)

Sat:

Having gotten two calls the day before I reluctantly put on good clothes thinking I would do jobs today then cut the lawn and do more garage stuff tomorrow. 

Then I checked the weather. It's supposed to rain this afternoon and tomorrow, so I changed plans and did the front lawn today. Then I did more garage cleaning. Picked all the wood up off the floor and stowed it in the upper area. Also put some stuff out to *gasp* throw away! I know, it's a bizarre twist but it has to be done.

Brought some stuff in to clean off, mostly the old mouse stuff. Found the big wheel from the metal cage I had fit into the cage I currently use, so I popped it in there. He doesn't use the small one, I guess he hasn't figured it's a wheel just like his other one, but maybe he'll use this one? 

Talked to the people at York, apparently Peachtree (which doesn't exist anymore BTW) has a certain behavior on one account, but not on another. I walked her through how to maybe check the preference but it's a bizarre situation. 

Also talked to Ellen about her stupid printer, and got it printing.

Cleaned up a bit, sent in my estimated tax, downloaded the first episode of Good Omens, and it's not even… er 2:00. Huh it's later than I thought. Well, I have been busy. Wait, scratch that, 6 episodes. I guess it's all of them. Huh, how did that happen?

Worked on chapter 18, finishing up the combat.

Watched some of Good Omens and then a movie about wrecking the internet.

Sun:

Chillmouse found his wheel at last! He was running and running like a madmouse when I got up. I had the brilliant (if I do say so) idea to put some cheese in there to entice him/her into it. Seems like it worked.

Bit more cleaning, looked over a list of spells for Sean.

Did my paperwork (I know shocker it's like only June 2nd) It was pretty time intensive, what with putting in that first one. And… that second one. Seems I only had two invoices for last month. Yeah, that's bringing in the dough. Technically I had three, but it was *wayyyyyy* over there in the “need to call when get equipment for this person” pile so it’ll be entered as part of this month. Need to get her card reader to her, as it came Saturday.

Another episode of Good Omens.

Worked on Mizzy’s gift, modeling it. I think it could work out.

Baked a pie. Didn’t have enough berries so some store bought ones and some blueberries went into it. They’re expensive, like $2 for a tiny, tiny plastic container of raspberries that was hardly a cup. But I had enough and a few extra blueberries and the pie came out just fine so I’ll yum that up over the next few days.

Did more reading, got all three kids sleeping with me. Would have thought they would be on the breezeway but no, they came and stayed with their dad.

Got sunny! Maybe Specra was finally freed with the help of Rainbow Bite.

Worked on the gift some more, figuring out how to take the line drawing into 3D (it will need plenty of tweaking) , then proofread Chapter 18.

“Apple” called me like 6 times today, but they finally gave up. Stop caller-ID spoofing today! Call your senator.

That’s how that works, right?

Then got ready for another week. We’re halfway though, don’t falter now.

I mean, unless you want to…

Mon:

Not sure what to do at work. But that didn't last long.

Worked on the 3D model a little and went to the monday meeting. Got assigned another service, for reasons I guess. Went and talked to the guy that has a set of the credit cards and got one of the cards we're missing for some reason. I know we had one, where did it go? Anyway, did the test with that card, and got my new laptop at the same time.

I plugged it in and started it going, then went to lunch. Guess what? It won't connect to the xerox part of the xerox network. Wait time was 1.5 hours or so the chat window said, so that wasn't going to happen. 

Went and did the service I was assigned. Actually found a few things too. Wrote them up. Didn't completely finish, so I'll have some stuff to do tomorrow. At 4:00 I went back to "my" lab and got back on the IT site to see if 1.5 hours was real or not. Got in right away, the person on the other end of the chat had me try a few things, but decided the issue was the laptop not having an active directly record. Whatever that means. Of course, it's another department which is supposed to get back to me. Sometime. 

Honestly, it's so stupid. Why when I get a laptop does it have to go through all sorts of hoops before it becomes useable? They know it's coming to me. They know what building I'm in, they could look up (or ask) my user ID. Why is all this setup crap not done on their end? Why do I have to play IT guy and mess with stuff, taking time away from my actual job? I mean, this is ITs job, not my job. So shouldn't they do their job? Oh right, what IT department? 

Came back here, one call. Ate dinner, checked sites, made the call. He wants 6:00 tomorrow, his machine only boots in safe mode he said. Yay. Gonna be so fun.

Tues:

I got fiber a year ago today! Wow. 

But what I did not get was any help setting up my new laptop. Someone will contact me, my fuzzy buttocks.

So I finished up the service I was working on, wrote up only one bug I believe. Investigated a few things, cleaned my PC out and moved stuff to a flash drive so if I ever get my PC set up I can move stuff over that way. Everything else is contained on my one drive so it should just flow down without me doing a thing. Ordered some more RAM for it, and while the design is the stupidest ever, allowing either a hard drive or an M.2 drive but not both, because they share the same space, there's a way around it so I can get a bit more space shoved into the machine. As a work machine it's probably not really kosher to go upgrading it but who's going to care, and I'll return it without the stuff so who's going to know? This way I double the RAM and the storage space because both are fairly meager. I mean come on, an empty RAM slot? Really? Yes I may not be doing tasks that need a $6,000 mac pro but currently turning my machine on and opening outlook typically takes 5 minutes. I'd like to maybe cut that time down a little with my next machine? I mean seriously. It's a junky old dell that's sat around for 6 months (from the date on the box) before making its way to me, and is seriously underpowered at every level. But I've gone on about it long enough, I can't even use the dang thing yet!

Where was I? Going home. Checked my sites, ate, then went out to see Mr. "it only boots in safe mode." Yeah, when you attach your monitor to the built in video and not the video card you probably don't get any signal and you just shut it down over and over. Oh, and he had BOTH DVI and VGA plugged into the same monitor. 

So I plugged in DVI, his other monitor with HDMI (both in the right place) straightened his wires out, ran Mbam, set up his speakers, and got home a little after 7:00. Nice. Guy took my last 6 dollars in ones in change, how am I going to give the lotto guy a dollar now?

Back here I finished up the videos, got ready for tomorrow, heard the bad news about Oreo, who did suddenly this afternoon. She seemed fine in the morning but just kinda died for no reason? Sorry little kitty, bye for now. 

Just goes to show, I guess, we can go at any time for no reason at all. Well I mean there must have been a reason, one that wasn't obvious, I mean. Live dangerously, that's my motto!

Did some reading and went to bed. Ugh, no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow…

Wed:

The new build, of course! So silly, how could I have forgotten? 

Got that installed right away, had 12 bugs to verify. Well, 10 at the most, one needs documentation done before I can say it looks right, and the other was a sort of once happening thing so I'm not sure what to do with it. I'll probably just pass it.

Did write a few new ones, can't let a day pass without that, of course. 

Had a meeting with Bob as well, as we didn't have the usual demo. Probably because they didn't fix that much, I guess? Who can say? 

Still no help on the PC front. My manger doesn't know who to talk to either. Great. So it continues to sit there, useless. The inventory system still says it's in another building, too. So yeah, we're doing real good.

In the afternoon I did even more work which I can't recall the extent of, but it wasn't working on Mizzy's gift, no, no, it was work. Of course.

And may I take this opportunity to say how shipping prices are suddenly bonkers.

[[image file="2019-06/shipping1.png" alt="shipping1" ]]

[[image file="2019-06/shipping2.png" alt="shipping 2" ]]

Anyway, called lady for the card reader, but she didn't answer. So I came home.

Finished up Good Omens, which was okay, and looked into how I'm going to model Neil's gift.

One call, a machine that won't boot (or something) which is probably just a loose cable or something. Down by where my sister lives, so it's not far.

Thurs:

Still no word on the laptop front, but I got one of the parts in I ordered for it, should I ever actually get to use it.

Work wise I started off, uh, not writing! But then I did go to the meeting. The only thing I got assigned was checking other people's bugs. I went and looked, there was one minor one under Gina's name and that's it. So mission accomplished I guess? Waited around until lunchtime.

After lunch I figured I would get started on a task not required until next week, the USDA tablet reload effort. Why not? Got it about half done, so I should have it all the way half done tomorrow. This is just the reload part, we still have to test at least some of them to make sure the new software package words. In reality it's just adding the driver for the newer display so really it should be fine.

But those are famous last words so really, I should have made sure it worked before I did the hundred but, *shrugs*.

Went out to see the stupid, stupid man. The lady who owns the machine was having trouble with her email. (according to her) Then the stupid, stupid man started messing around and somehow (don't ask me how) got into the system restore function and wiped the thing back to factory defaults. At least, that's what it was trying to do. He said (in 30 seconds, uh huh) that once he figured out what has happening he pulled the power cable. Like that's always a good idea. Looking at the thing in linux the user folder was empty and no, the machine wouldn't boot because it said the windows folder was jacked up. (I'm paraphrasing of course) No problem, just restore from the backup. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

He thought their actual data was coming from a "server" machine but no, no it was not. 

I should have actually left the drive alone, hooked it up to another machine and begun the arduous process of sector scanning it to see if any data was recoverable. But I actually got windows loaded properly on it, then started a scan as such. Honestly her data probably isn't at the edges where windows would load anyway, and he had already screwed the pooch so recovery percentages are probably low in the first place. Eh, whatever. She said maybe her accountant has a copy of the file, but of course there's no quickbooks disk anywhere to be found. So even if she had the data, she would have no program to open it with! Sigh.

So current estimate for the scan was 48 hours, so we'll see what it comes up with! Morons. He turned a fairly easy "email issue" into them losing their entire business! Great!

Back here I checked sites, the usual. 

Let's look to the future: Nothing tomorrow after work? No notes from Sean on the matter yet so I guess not. Odd. But before work will be my last Ortho appointment, should be "yup looks fine you're free to go." $6000 well spent.

Wonder if my father will be up to a movie Saturday?

Otherwise I have at least one job, probably the person that called today as well if I reach them sometime, and I have to drop the card reader off at some point. I would be going that way if I go down to Ethan Ellen.

More cleaning the garage, maybe work on Mizzy's gift (it's almost ready to go) and then start Neil's? 

Shouldn't be too rainy this weekend, maybe I'll even move a few new berry bushes around, I've got some growing where I would not prefer them.

So that's the first week of July everyone. Hope it's warming up for you, and not flooding you out or anything. Hang in there, we're all in this together.

See you next week.