2019-09-12:

Fri:

Love doing work I've already done, it's the best.

So I started the day putting in 44 bugs against the staples code. It wasn't as many as I thought it would be, and it only took me until 10:00. Then I went and did performance testing on the new tablet with our software and with staples software. Looks like the tablet does just about nothing for the speed of the apps, which is reasonable. So much for getting "faster" hardware. 

Then Gina wanted the logs for some bizarre reason, as though simply identifying where the problems were wasn't enough. It is, by the way. They'll have to do actual profiling of the code to see if they can speed it up. (They can't. Not without a rewrite. It's just the way the apps are made, sorry Gina!) 

So I got to capture the videos for the old tablet again because it had been too long or something, the old logs were gone off that tablet I used. There should have been 10, but there was only 7. Odd. 

Oh, and I wrote one real bug about the tablet being hung in the morning because I've seen that three times now. So there.

Had cake, a muffin, and that was that.

Went to drop stuff off at my parent's house, got the groceries, and came home. 

One call, the psychiatrist lady wants a new PC. I think she's still running XP? Is that possible? 

Cut the grass, got it done just before the rain started. 

Checked sites, ate dinner.

Played some bug shooting game. I raised the difficulty for a stage and got though it fine. Got some sweet drops from it, way higher level weapons than I had been getting.

Encouraged, I kept it on that difficulty and got destroyed on the next level.

Uh, whoops?

Sat:

Started with updating the PC because it had been sitting around for months. Started at about 8:30 I think? Still not done at 9:30. Finally turned off the antivirus that was taking 18% of the CPU. Thanks, MS.

Why does the update itself only take about 25% of the CPU? It's not disk bound, that's only getting 1-2MB per second and this is (like all the systems I would sell) rocking an SSD so it should be capable of much more. Weird.

Reached the lady, she wants later in the afternoon so that's fine. I'll be more than happy to get rid of this all-in-one PC and get that money back out of it.

Cleaned up, mostly the basement so we can get that stove out of there next month. Don't get too excited, there won't be a stove sized hole there I can use for other stuff after almost 20 years. A spare washer is going there instead. Could be more useful.

Ate lunch, read some comics, and left for my 3 afternoon jobs. Wow, haven't had that many in one day in some time now.

First one has a 5400 RPM drive and wonders why their laptop is so slow. Gee, can't imagine. I cleaned it up but they're probably going to get a new one. It's win8 so they didn't want to just change the drive. 

Then over back towards home to the next one. Very strange. Riddle me this- you can connect to the router, wired and wireless. You can type the printer address, 192.168.1.4 and get to the printer page just fine. But when you try to access the router, 192.168.1.1 you get a big fat nothing. Why? Router obviously works. It'll pass local traffic, just not internet traffic or tell you its there. 

I called Netgear who read me from a script as I expected and finally had "technical issues" and they would call back "in an hour." Ah huh, how likely is that? About the same likelihood as me dating anytime soon. I told them to take it back, they only bought it monday.

Just made it to deliver the refurb system. Took off her speakers, wi-fi adapter, tower, monitor in place of the larger all in one. Thank you for finally letting me get rid of that thing. 

Left before the printer driver was downloaded, it was getting 20kb/sec so it was going verrrry slowly. Must be Frontier. Get off it for Pete's sake. I hope it wasn't internet speed she was worried about, because a new machine isn't helping that.

Came back, had dinner. 

Played more Halo with Sean. Or to be more accurate, we tried to. Didn't work out so well, either because it wouldn't start, wouldn't let us play without kicking us out, or was to laggy to play. We switched over to Gears of War 4 (which sadly was only 2 player????) and it was fine. So… it was the Halo servers? I guess? Ah well.

Sun:

Got to work paring down that list I've been staring at.

Put Sean's gift up on shapeways with pictures, in case others want to order it. (They won't, I don't sell anything on there, *pouts*)

Then worked on the box for Neil's gift. I think it's going to come out looking pretty good!

Ate lunch, then put the latest stack of comics into the database.

Looked at upgrading that PC I took from the lady yesterday. Honestly there's nothing wrong with it, nothing that an SSD wouldn't fix anyway. Even if it is an e-machine. Looks like you can still upgrade to 10 from 7 using the tool, at least it hasn't crapped out on me yet.

Made a few adjustments to Sean's gift after another design weakness was shown in mine.

Checked my sites.

The PC has been stuck on "checking for updates 46%" for far too long. What the heck?

Did more cleaning. No idea what I'm going to do with all this LED rope I have. It's hard to work with, filthy (that can be mitigated) and draws a lot of power as I recall. I cleaned some of it, made sure they all worked (95% did, one tiny bit of one doesn't) and put it in a garbage bag to keep it cleaner. 

Also cleaned up the breezeway. 

Then worked on the pony pictures project I had in mind, er, before last Christmas. Found the frame and decided to finally get that done!

[[image file="2019-09/ponysquares.jpg" alt="pony squares" ]]

Hung it on the wall.

PC is still stuck on 46%. Sigh.

Ate dinner.

Glued one of the wings on my poor fairy that's had her wings busted for years.

Vacuumed the breezeway.

Looked over my phone collection, going to toss some phones at the next electronics event.

Basically just a lot of stuff I had been putting off for a very long time.

Watched some Blender 2.8 videos as that's come out so I know what I'm doing when next I wish to do that.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Mon:

Was put to work today. 

Doing stuff I had already done.

Went to the meeting in the morning, and Gina was all like "now we do reliability on the new code. No wait, alerts. Yeah, that's it." 

But then later she was like "more performance but on *this* machine instead." Sigh.

So I finished up the performance numbers from last week, looked over the spec changes (there were not that many) and made changes to test cases, then had lunch.

After that I did the next performance test, because those numbers sure are a'changing! (They're not)

Then started on alerts. It's mostly skipping down because of their different architecture or design decisions. Eh, whatever.

Joe has 4 days left!

Came home via Lowes to drop off two more bulbs for them to recycle, and found my parents in my driveway. They were stealing me sticks! And I helped them as best I could. I also helped them help me steal their old washing machine. Or as the cats call it "a new cat perch."

Then the usual, sites, dinner, oh, and the emachine finally finished. The boot performance was not great though, despite the SSD I found inside the thing. Wha? I looked into it, and it's only SATA II not III. GUA! That explains it? So we'll have to look into a card to improve that, they're not expensive and as I didn't pay anything for the PC, and it already had (a small but serviceable) SSD I might as well throw a little money at it rather than dump it.

Watched videos, got ready for bed in case Sean wants to try Halo again tonight.

No calls, but did call a lady from a few days ago I haven't yet reached. Still didn't reach her.

No Halo, did more bug shooting. I don't know, hard seems impossible, but normal I can get through the stage the first time. There's no middle ground I guess.

Tues:

Not too much exciting today, as I finished the alerts testing or at least what passes for it. Some couldn't be done because we can't power the machine off currently, other screens don't appear the same way between the two softwares, that sort of thing.

Mostly just poked at it in the afternoon. How soon the new become the mundane.

With Joe leaving Gina got a card for him, I went to sign it on the way out. I went into her cube, she was sitting there, I set my stuff down, and I went to the card.

"Oh, the card, right!" she gushed. "I was afraid you were coming in here to tell me you quit!"

Er, do I seem like I'm seconds away from quitting? Seems an odd thing to be concerned about. Weird.

Came back home, sites, videos, dinner, I don't think the fairy wing dried exactly as I wanted but the hot glue is holding so that's a plus I guess. I filled in the cracks in the wings that I saw and I'll probably get some spray paint and repaint her. She can be all pretty again.

No calls.

Got ready for tomorrow, new build and we're starting the test we most recently finished… over again? You know how much I love doing things I've already done, so it'll be a real treat. We have 2.5 weeks to finish and we're a man down. Super.

So that's what I'm doing tomorrow I guess. Loading that up and seeing what's what.

Halo with Sean!

Wed:

And so the great doing everything again for the next two and a half weeks begins. We got the new, new tablets in with the hardware change that allows us to use the speaker AND the SD card slot. Who would have guessed we would need to? Except everyone, I mean. 

We had the demo in the morning, lots of exciting stuff, like hiding how long everything takes by minimizing that stupid spinning circle we show everywhere. It only took Staples throwing our code away and literally rewriting the kiosk from scratch to make us say "you know, maybe our software sucks?"

Installed the latest software, checked a few bugs. Then started the second pass with the portal again. Yes, the thing I did just a week ago. Guess what? Nothing changed! Amazing! Who would have thought? 

Got it a little more than halfway finished. I few more tests actually making a package and it'll be done. I took that first because I don't have my tablet loaded. They don't want us taking the cable off, but we have to do the software load that they want us to do. Catch-22. So we don't know what we're doing about that yet.

We'll see if a decision has been made tomorrow.

Came back here, did the usual stuff. Three calls? Reached two, helped one remotely, one person with a seemingly busted printer, and one lady who needs her son's laptop password reset. She was at work… at 8:10 PM? Where in the heck does she work? Yuck.

Oh, and they're offering us overtime. I calculated it out, working an additional 2 hours a day for the 5 days would get me an extra (after taxes) $200 or so dollars. Whoopee. That's basically an entire extra day of work and I would only get about $50 more than if I just worked all of one saturday. Did I calculate that right?

Boxed up my copy of DOS, it sold for all of twenty dollars. Nice. Got paid for it. The Windows 386 sold as well, same price, but I have not been paid for it. Well, hopefully they got some enjoyment out of it.

Got ready for tomorrow, we may play a late game of Halo when Sean gets home.

What to do in the meantime…

Did a little writing at last! Got up to the next combat. Sigh. More combat.

Thurs:

Or maybe not, I might just resolve it all in one action. We'll see if that works out.

Anyway, work today. Right. Tried to work on the portal stuff but didn't get too far into it due to tablet testing needing to be done. And meetings. Had the morning meeting, Joe tried to show us the tool they use to randomize the output for the simple reliability. It didn't go so well. It's a confusing mess at best just to start, and oh, it's still an evaluation version? Xerox isn't even paying for it? Wha? 

I'm thinking of writing my own, honestly. "Our" tool is actually two tools, and he couldn't find the thing he did in the one with the other, and it's really confusing what everything means, and I can't even get into it so yeah.

We got a cute little coupler we could use so we didn't have to unplug the tablets, made of two circuit boards and electrical tape. Hey, I guess it worked so I should applaud the spirit in which it was made. I tested three of the tablets in between trying to run more portal tests. Got informed I would be testing the office depot changes which, while minor, will somehow result in days of work. Go us.

So that was today's fun. We have Joe for another half a day, and part of that will be lunch so he's essentially gone. 

Went to my after work-work and reset the password. It was an online account, which I should have checked for right away rather than believing the lady. *sigh* But that was fine.

Came back here, checked sites, etc. 

Will probably do some writing and maybe think about how to make the tool.

Looking to the future: My parents will be there tomorrow so after a day I'm sure will be very, very productive I'll head to the bank, do the shopping, and then go over to see them. 

No Sean this week and my copy of Borderlands 3 won't come until next week so game playing online is also iffy. Not much planned for Saturday or Sunday maybe cutting the back lawn? It could happen I guess. Oh, maybe painting the fairy, I thought about using my airbrush, I do have one of those after all, and it would work. Maybe more writing now that I'm a little back into it.

Man, Sunday is basically the halfway point of September already. Oh, taking the electronics in on Saturday, that's a thing. Can't forget that, I've got a stack of old phones, more pci/agp cards and a printer I'm finally saying "I'm never doing anything with this printer" to. 

So that's me. Have a good weekend wherever it takes you, and I'll see you back here next week.