2019-09-06:

Fri:

Started the day off right, with a muffin. 

As I had finished copy yesterday, the last set of test cases needed for this current push, I went back to the staples code to mess about with it. Basically I ran copy, scan/print to USB as if they were our apps, just to see what would pass and fail in that test. Of course some things don’t exist, but I did shake loose a few things. I just noted it down, I don’t know if he’ll ask if I have any further thoughts but if he does, I’ll be ready.

Joe is leaving us in two weeks. Got a new job at some Kodak subsidiary. So we lose our weakest link, huh? Wonder if he’ll be replaced? We still have no John replacement so maybe not? Monday that “part” of the team is moving into their new lab space with the windows, so after two weeks is Giuseppe going to be over there alone, while I’m over in my lab, alone, and Adnan is here in the “big” lab, alone? Crazy. Seriously though, what is happening to this place? (except it never happened!)

Wonder how much more he’s going to be making? He says it’s an “engineering position” whatever that means. 

Scan matrix for scan and copy, because that's really going to change at this point. NOT.

So stupid.

I was the last one in the lab for once. Weird.

Did the afternoon stuff, saw my parents

Came back here, made one call, router guy again, sigh.

Then did Halo with Sean.

Finished Halo 2!

Sat:

Got up and went to see router guy. Set up the router, and apart from it coming up and asking for a password instead of asking to create a password it went fine.

Came back, made brownies and bacon. Also cooked up some chicken. Then had lunch. 

Washed the floor in the kitchen.

Vacuumed the rugs. Vacuumed the car! 

Picked up everything from the living room so the floor can be washed.

Sorted my books, there's a big stack of them I can get rid of.

Watched a movie.

Previously felt I was not going to drag the boxes out of the upstairs crawlspace. Opened it up. Decided I better drag the boxes out of the upstairs crawlspace.

Put all the video game boxes downstairs.

Put Jetfire back in his box. Where did his gun go? I have it someplace.

He's broken in several places. Ah, aren't we all?

Waited for Sean to be ready to play.

Played!

After some trials. Apparently despite actually being on the disk (or having been subsequently downloaded in the background) we could not play ODST. It forced us to buy it again. Despite having the official disks that proved we owned it. We tried playing that official disk, but Mizzy must have been playing it split screen with Sean. The two games wouldn't work together, despite being the same game, because they were "different games." So MS, congrats on getting another $15 out of the three of us. (collectively) I hope the person responsible for that decision (to nickel and dime us into buying what we all already possessed in both disk and on drive form) slips on a nickel and sprains their ankle really badly.

Sun:

Works day! Did many works of great import, with the help of my parents. A large thanks to them as always for turning two days of work into a little more than half a day. Hope the lunch was yummy.

We did the usual suspects, cutting lots of vine out of the berries, trimming, cutting old berries out, sealing the deck, deciding on when to do the garage floor, hammering in tiles, washing the carpet.

Then I relaxed by scraping some paint off the heat collector so I could paint it, washing the dishes, putting things back, hammering in nails into the board coming off the deck, finishing JoJo's, eating dinner, figuring out what I want to do tomorrow.

More work to do tomorrow!

Played my new Xbox Gold free game, shooting giant bugs! Or really tiny people shooting regular sized bugs?

Mon:

I knew, right from the start, that today was going to be a great day.

How did I know? I knew with a "beep beep beep beep."

It woke me up, by the way, and I wondered if I had heard it at all.

But then I heard it again. It sounded too far away to be the alarm, but what could it be?

I heard it again. I looked over at my clock, and time had simply ceased to exist on the material plane!

Or actually, my clock had stopped reporting it, as presumably clocks do not cause time, they simply display it. I came to the lightning fast conclusion that my power was out. 

So I got up, made sure all the devices connected to UPS units were off, and went back to bed.

I got up about 8:30 and called RG&E who said, yes, my side of the street was without power. Naturally. Not both sides of the street. Not the other side of the street. My side of the street. 

Service restoration was estimated for 10:00. (Spoiler, it's not back until 11:30)

Without power I readied myself for the day and managed a few things. I cut the pattern for the pac-man out. I put more comics into the database. (I'm finally up to the turtles comics!)

I finished Gold Digger.

I couldn't paint, it was raining out, but by then it was back on and I ate lunch.

Then I finished the Pac-man.

[[image file="2019-09/yellow_pac_1.jpg" alt="so crappy" ]]

Carefully cutting out the yellow, stitching it together, I'm making Rainbow's dress! Wait, no, sorry what was I saying? Right. It's 90% done, the last, most difficult, and most annoying part of hand sewing the back half I used to slip the thing inside still must be done. But it's finally all put together. Nearly two years of collecting bottles, then gluing them, getting the covers, it's done. I'm not completely happy with it, of course. The mouth should have extended further into the middle. Probably should have not had this bottle where it was.

[[image file="2019-09/should_have_removed.jpg" alt="removed" ]]

Sigh. But it's done, it's somewhat round, and a bunch of milk cartons found a new life. And kitties like it. At least before I put the yellow on, but I'm sure they don't care about that.

Checked my sites, mail.

Changed my oil, it was at 5% and I had the time so I figured it was nice out I might as well.

Made a few calls, just minor stuff handled over the phone.

More bug blasting and maybe Halo?

There was! And we finished ODST so it’s on to Halo 3.

Tues:

Fairly busy today but only because everything seemed to be a bit more obstinate than it should have been. 

We got some new tablets in and tried to load them. Both didn’t power on at first, but reseating the cable fixed that little glitch. Once we got them on the second part of our troubles began, the SD card slots either flat out don’t work or seem to work, as in you can see a card has been put in, but it doesn’t actually work, as in reading what’s there. Sigh.

Finally put my old tablet back on to finish the preview testing in Print from USB, because that’s changed. (note: it hasn’t changed) But you have to keep Bob happy. You do. It’s in the contract.

Of course putting the old tablet back was not without its share of hassles, given I forgot to make sure the file I was trying to install on the new tablet wouldn’t re-install itself on the old tablet. It did. So I had to wait for that.

Just a fairly draining day. I set up my machine to accept a new printer firmware file that I kicked off before I left.

Headed home, took a look at the wood to see if it was dry enough to paint. It was, so I painted the frame of the heat engine and a little by the garage door that had been wearing away.

Checking sites, movies, then made a few calls.

Setting up a printer tomorrow, and then security camera guy says his mystery vandal struck again and both he and the police looked for camera footage and couldn't find it, could I come look. Uh, okay?

Got ready for tomorrow.

Played some Halo 3.

Wed:

Long day.

Loaded the new versa link release (after finding out what my username and password were to get into the place I could download it from). Verified 2 bugs, they were actually fixed so well done.

Then went looking for card readers. They've been after this one guy to do it, but he's busy with stuff, so they said to give me the readers, but he didn't, so I went and found him and took them as my due.

Got them working. No thanks to him. "Oh, you have to load a different build. I forgot to tell you." Thanks. So much for just "reboot the tablet."

Then had to put it all back because Gina wanted that one card done. To attach the reader I have to take out the old one. That means taking the whole kiosk bit apart. It's not all that bad, but it's still annoying. 

Then lunch.

Then Canada. EFI set us up (the bomb) with a Canada area so we could test and make sure everything worked there. Spoiler, it didn't. I actually wrote 4 of the 5 bugs today. Some odd stuff, to be sure. Tested all the cards I could get working, I don't have some of the passwords to set up everything. Setting it up from scratch is annoying, by the way. Lots of fiddly bits to fill in.

Left work.

Set up the printer. Nice little unit, sorta dumb the HP software one way couldn't find it wireless, had to use an "app" to scan. Usually there's a little "convert USB to wireless" program but not here. Weird. It worked, whatever.

Came back, put some stuff on ebay. That Apple II card I found, Windows 386 and an IBM DOS, mint in the box. Let's get them gone.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Padded my headset so it's not the most uncomfortable headset in the world. Then waited. No Halo tonight?

Thurs:

Wasn't sure what I would be doing today, but I sure found out. And for tomorrow. And Monday more than likely. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Had the morning meeting as usual. Still no tablet as they're trying to figure out what was wrong. Bob wants me to do performance on it, along with reliability and then the portal testing. Luckily Adnan took reliability so I went to do portal. I found a ton of things to write up, nothing really serious (expect performance which seems to have taken a nose dive) some inconsistencies across pages, some stupid things we've done. The usual.

That took all the rest of the afternoon. Around 3:30 he was like "you know all those staples things you wrote down? We want them all written up. Separately."

What? 

I have four pages of just raw notes. They've already been given to staples which is where our engagement with the project ends. It's their code. They're not writing bugs against our code. It's a pointless activity. And it's going to take forever because of everything I found. Why clutter up the database with all this? They're not paying us, Xerox, to do this, we're not doing their testing. But hey, I guess if they want to pay me to sit there and do this, who am I to say it's not worth doing? Even though I think we all know it is.

Went to see vandal guy. Yeah, turns out his complaint was that his side mirrors were turned in. He blamed this mystery vandal (he's been trying to catch for years now) but in reality he did it to himself. We watched as, on camera, he went out to the car, fiddled with his keys by the door, and the mirrors turned in because he must have hit the button that made them turn in!

Sweet.

Then over to blog guy. His problem: He turned his DSL box off. Yeah, no lights on it. Great job.

So I came home. Did the usual, checked sites, I have one bid on Windows 386!

Made two calls, reached one person. I have 1:00 on Saturday booked.

Tonight, probably playing a bit more of the bug shooting game, not sure. 

Looking to the future- no parents tomorrow and no Sean so after writing pointless bugs up all day I'll do the shopping, probably not enough to worry about the bank, then come back here. 

Over the weekend I'll cut the lawn, do the one or two jobs I have, fix the upstairs if I remember to get my parent's heavy duty stapler. And anything else suitable off the list. Doesn't look like rain, only one week until Borderlands 3 drops!

See you all then!