2019-10-17:

Fri:

Some annoyance to speak of about last night. Went to update the blog, and despite my having done nothing to the site, pivotX didn’t want to work. It sort of worked, if I deleted cache files it would work and do one thing, then give me an error. Something about locking files for writing. Very bizarre. I spent about an hour reading up on what it could be, and finally gave up. Learned a few things. PivotX development stopped in 2017. I’m not running the last version. Nothing I did helped.

Got up today and checked it. Working perfectly again. AARG. But spoiler alert, it didn’t stay that way.

Also last night played some Borderlands, and then at 10:00 Sean texed but didn’t actually get on until 10:15, soooooo… Yeah.

Today!

Bug fixes. At least that’s the theory. I kept seeing stuff I wasn’t even testing. Like I went into copy for something. Font size of something. A line of text that was fine before is now screwed up. What? And the inches mark shouldn’t be there, but there it is, and it wasn’t there before. Why are you guys changing stuff that worked? Stop it! Stop making it worse, I’m supposed to be closing bugs, not writing new ones for stuff you shouldn’t even have been modifying!

That took until after lunch. There are a few machine sort of things I don’t want to do on my Canada machine that isn’t technically supported. Still can’t register my “real” machine so I’m off by myself in the lonely lab. 

Worked a little on the copyrightInserter code, figured out how to get the drag and drop messages in livecode and parse them.

Meanwhile I updated my machine so it’s not as far behind as it was. The code we’re using in the “official” machines is still in there for the slower unofficial one so at least it’s 90% legit. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Strangely, updating to this version didn’t fix the deletion of secure jobs issue as I had thought. Curious. But it works where it should so I guess I won’t write it up?

Got my tablet registered again. To the Canada area, as our main area is still not letting anything be downloaded. At least it gives an error, not that the text of the error is useful in determining the actual problem.

Worked on more bugs over there, as that’s the official machine. Got through them, so I can get back to testing (unless they have some other crazy thing for me to do) Monday.

The usual after work stuff.

Stayed on track at Sean's, got through the abandoned lab and we’re off to a nearby “something” to restock. Of course, now something will happen there. Those people’s lives (who hadn’t existed before this) will be disrupted because the PCs chose to head in that direction. They should be ashamed. :-)

And the website is busted again. Neat.

Sat:

Still busted. Neat.

Couldn't worry about that I wanted to work on the copyrightInserter as I had promised. It’s a simple thing, I wanted to finish at least most of it this weekend. Made a lot of progress on it! I didn't come up with the code to actually combine the two images, that I stole from another. But with plenty of error checking it will take items from one folder, and either put a copyright notice (text or picture) over the image and overwrite the image or save it to a different folder. Nice. Kind of slow but what can you do? We’re working with the actual pixel data as a string of numbers and letters, I’m glad I can do it at all. No threading, I can’t have it work on more than one picture at a time, we’re stuck with sequential execution. 

If the copyright is fairly large (I don't know the exact limit) it tends to hang. Whoops! Bug I need to fix. And I don't have the scale code in at all but I think I found some sample code to do that too.

So much error checking, I wonder if I even got it all. (if the files are images, if they loaded right, if the copyright is there, etc.)

That took until 4:30 and I was just not able to continue. Dinner.

Blog still dead. Sweet.

Played borderlands the rest of the night. First alone and then with the gang. Mizzy says we’re about halfway through the game.

Sun:

Site still dead. I guess I'll have to look further into it. Have no idea what it could be though. Can powweb help? It must be something they're doing, after all.

Finished up the copyrightInserter code. Only took until 11:00, so I would count that as one full day of work given I didn't start at 8:00 either day. Now to test it a bit (I had been during the process don't worry) and ship it! Spoiler- it wasn’t finished. I hadn’t actually checked against JPG format and they weren’t saving right. Turns out you need an export command for that format, and I didn’t realize it. I had just used a png on my desktop to test with, but at the last second I threw some jpgs in the folder figuring “might want to check that.” Good thing I did.

Ate lunch.

Cleaned up the house.

Wrapped Neil's gift. Only two more to go.

Worked on Mizzy's gift. It didn't work out as well, must not be as strong a <thing>. Sigh. Ah well. The batteries in the thing are minuscule, so I guess I can’t ask for much. They included a second pair though, that was nice of them. The glue is drying now. Seems like about time to box them up. Just in time, it’s only about 11 weeks to Christmas. Do you have your tree up yet?

Played more borderlands. My right trigger was acting up, but taking it apart seems to have cleared that up. Now if only the thumbstick action could be improved. Sigh. I took it apart originally to see if I could tighten it up, but no, it’s a closed box. I’m learning to live with it.

Site is working again? "Working" I mean. It was up, but had no entries. Uploaded the old folder, which I of course kept duh. 

Okay, it's still not working. I even uploaded the default package, newly downloaded from the site, to a new folder. Tried to set up my username, got the same errors. Goodness this is frustrating.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Mon:

Got some sad news first thing. Sue had died. She hadn’t been around, and the last time I saw her, some weeks ago, she wasn’t looking too good. But I didn’t know it was that serious. She’ll be missed.

Had the meeting, oh we're "behind" are we? Maybe because instead of 5 people doing the work we have 3? Could that be a factor? Maybe?

He said we could have overtime. Sure, I'll get right on that.

I did stay an hour later to finish up sharepoint. Wrote a bunch of bugs about it, it crashed once, twice? Twice I think. I've never had as much problem with it as I did today. Crazy. Anyway, that took the rest of the day.

Got home at 5:00, ate dinner, sites. Two calls today, both referrals. Great, thanks. One person with a busted HD. What do you want me to do about it?

Didn't hear from the copyrightInserter person.

Thing I suggested for the first lady didn't work out (not that first lady!) so I'm going over there. I'll stay another hour later at work to make The Bob happy she's right down the street from me on Bay road. So it's fine, I'll get there at 5:00.

Worked on the new blog site. Maybe you're looking at the code right now? I hope so.

The code works. I just have to take <b>8 years of entries</b> and strip out the php stuff pivotx put in so it can be html and load into the window right. Right, should take about ten minutes, right? 

*sudder*

But hey, it didn't take long. I had looked up a few things and made some notes in the morning, and in an hour or two totally had it working. Sweet. I have to say I really like the solution I came up with. It's elegant, for a more civilized time. I'll work on it more tomorrow, got ready for bed and Borderlands with Sean if he ever gives the word to go.

Tues:

Full speed ahead with the services, got through all but the timing tests in scan to sharepoint and everything in FAX. Good old fax. Wrote 4-5 bugs today, as usual I was the only one. Adnan was late, he's got some sick kiddos I guess. 

Certainly didn't work on a small program to strip out the unwanted text in my blog entries so they can be fed into the new system. If I had I would tell you it went really quickly, it's not a complex task but thank goodness for livecode. I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise. Maybe with python? I remember using that back in the day.

No perl, sorry, it was perl, not python. Wow.

Stayed an hour late again, went to my 5:00. She wasn't there. Waited 15 minutes, came home. She had left me a message it was fine she didn't need me. Thanks lady!

Checked sites, the usual dinner stuff, got ready for tomorrow, and told Sean I was ready to play Borderlands.

Wed:

Still quite busy. Er, worked on the backup entries, trying to get them all into a format I could use for the new blog. It mostly worked, I think I got a lot of them.

Got the new code today so I got that ready. Finished up the timing tests from last night before lunch, then upgrade the tablet. 

Went through my closed bugs, wrote another few because of course we can't <b>not</b> break things, can we? 

That took the rest of the day. That and doing some investigation type stuff for Gina. Tomorrow I'll get right in with the payment stuff. After the meeting, of course. Can't not have a meeting.

Went to the post office, posted the power adapter I got yesterday. Then over to set up the router. Whoops, she didn't need it, she already had a wi-fi router from Frontier. Sigh.

Back here the usual after work stuff, and looked into the entries that are empty from this morning. I think I can just change the directory names and boom, it'll just go live just like that.

Ah, the files were not empty, after all. They simply had not had the first line of PHP taken out that for some reason killed it if it wasn't pivotx. Don't get me wrong, there were a few of 0 size which was odd. With luck you're reading this on the new site. 

I wonder how hard a search would be to make?

Talked to a few people. A lady with new phones for Sunday (yay!) York apparently their PC is totally not turning on, though you recall the last time where I told him "go look for the switch, it is over by the printer, see if the lights are on it" and he said "yup they are!" but it was actually unplugged? It's probably that again. He was trying to guilt me into coming there "on my lunch hour." Dude:

1) I have a real job now. My message even says it. Be glad you're getting service within 24 hours of the call.

2) My "lunch hour" is ten minutes. That way I can leave at 4:00 and maybe not spend all day <em>and all night</em> working. Have I mentioned this job has made me in total about $800 because I "hide" the rest in my IRA? I'll be putting more money in there before the year is out so it might actually make me negative dollars. So it's not really a priority for me.

3) You are ~25 minutes away. Taking "an hour lunch" would mean I had ten whole minutes to look at your system before I had to leave again. Not really all that long, is it? No, it's not.

4) You have a single point of failure. It has now failed. You had the opportunity years ago to replace all your dumb terminals with real PCs. You did not. Now you are lying in the bed of your own making.

So no, you get me when you get me. 

And Ellen who magically has her printer working again. She insists she "touches the cord with her foot" and that makes it go off. Okay, maybe another outlet that isn't right by your foot?

Got ready for tomorrow, maybe some Borderlands?

I was playing my game for just a few minutes and a wild Sean appeared! So I played my other character.

Thurs:

So boring. I'm doing the card testing, didn't get through it, and not because I took a short break to work on the blog code. It wasn't showing them in year order, and apparently the way I was doing it didn't guarantee any kind of order "based on operating system." Great. So I totally rewrote the algorithm and now it is in year order. 

Oh, you should be reading the new site now, have a look around. To your left you'll see the archive links. Er, that's about the only major feature. Sorry.

Otherwise, had the meetings as normal, Shoot, I'm still a week out for bringing breakfast, right? I'm pretty sure but I forgot to check. Well, if it is me I'll just run out and get something in the morning. The others usually don't get there very early anyway.

I only have three more cards to do for the test, so it won't take me too much longer tomorrow.

Then I'll pick whatever else catches my interest, and they're all the worst ones so looking forward to it.

Let's see, so that's tomorrow. Saturday is finally resurfacing the driveway. I have no idea how long it'll take but here's hoping not too long. 

Then work on Sunday, no calls today yet so hopefully not too much. 

I'll finish up getting ready for tomorrow, put this up and make the new blog code go live. I don't know if I'll go and try to find the "missing" entries I guess we'll see. 

Anyway, that's another week gone, and there's only two more weeks to go. Next month we celebrate Oliver joining us in 2016, the ronald mcDonald sale is the 24th, and on the 26th I'll have been back at Xerox for 4 years. I could celebrate somehow. 

See you all then!