2019-11-07:

Fri:

Biggest contribution to today was writing some of the next chapter! I mean looking at Staples bugs! That's what I meant to write. Only that, and nothing else. Certainly didn't read the last two chapters and write some of the next one where they run into the Nightmare. Nope. Just work.

No candy? Usually there's buckets of it around the day after, odd. I did get a mini-cupcake, a muffin for breakfast oh and some Smarties. Love those things.

Yeah, pretty boring all around. Need more work to do.

Went shopping, stopped at the bank, forgot the cruddy light bulb, and saw my parents. Got to pet a Gabe and a kitten in one day.

With all of the wind and rain we had I found several branches down my parents have generously agreed to haul away for me. And we'll get the washer downstairs. Maybe get the stove out of here? That's the afternoon tomorrow.

No Sean but am I really here? I had three calls, one guy wants to get a new iPad, the restaurant guy wants to hand me cash? Dude, just mail it. I don't want to drive another half hour (or whatever) (okay 22 minutes I looked it up but still) it's not worth it. That time I spent is already in the past, it's over. Just send me the check. The stamp is far more efficient than even my car driving all the way over there. And one guy for his annual tuneup.

But I had this stupid laptop to try and update. Finally it shows that it's doing the update. It's back at 5%. Let's hope we don't lose power again. I wanted to get this back and so call them first, so I haven't called anyone else. It's now 8:30. I hate that you just can't boot the bootable drive, and just tell it to upgrade. You know, like on a Mac? The way we've done it... forever? Nope, have to be running windows to upgrade windows. It's so stupid. But I finally got it past "we can't do updates because we're already doing updates hurk hyuck" so let's hope it goes all the way. It's up to 7%!

Checked my sites, youtube, the usual. Tomorrow I'll clean up around here before my parents come and probably do some yardwork before then too. Tonight? Borderlands?

The upgrade finally finished, it only took until 11:00 PM.

About to fight a vault monster solo. Scared.

Sat:

Got a few things done. Cleaned the house because my parents were coming over. I mean you have to do that. You have to.

Checked my sites, ate lunch, and went out to do the leaves. There's a few but still more on the tree. The one tree is bare, that's the one in my neighbor's yard to the left. Mine not so much.

Then my parents came for sticks and putting the washer downstairs. He didn't want to take the stove yet so I am still stuck with it.

After that I returned the laptop, and good riddance to it. Farewell! You are the weakest laptop! Goodbye!

Back here I started my supper cooking and hey, Sean wants to do Borderlands. No problem with that. Watched some videos while I ate and then...

Something odd. My back center speaker doesn't seem to be working. Don't ask me how I noticed this, but I did. I tried the test tone, and nothing. Played around with it, but couldn't get it back. Have to look into it tomorrow. Did Borderlands and went to bed.

Sun:

Did you fall back? Stupid clock moving.

Hi! Had a dream last night that my mother and I were shopping. The person stocking was throwing something into a metal bin and I was like "I recognize that pattern." I grabbed one and it was a Sailor Moon bedspread. My mother told the stock person "just start putting them into my cart." We were both pretty excited about the find.

So I spent the morning tearing my audio system apart and basically deciding to get rid of the giant speakers. I wanted it a little bit more accessible, it's "around the bend" so I couldn't sit down and adjust the volume, and with the oddness with the speakers I had the perfect excuse.

So I replaced the honking huge speakers with some smaller ones, but found out that not only the back center was acting up, the front center didn't always give the test tone either. Gurrr. So I hooked up my previous Sony amp because I had no idea why I stopped using it, and it seemed to be fine. Weird. Took the 360 downstairs to be in the museum, I doubt I'll want to use it with the One up and running. Put the amp on the top and facing me so I can get to it easier, tested everything, and cleaned up the living room. With the cabinet turned the other way the couch can move back just a touch, there are less wires, I moved the lamps around again, and the room isn't dominated by the gigantic speakers anymore. Still sounds pretty good.

Oh, the dust!

Ate lunch, being careful not to burn my pie this time, as I put it in for 20 minutes not 30 and monitored it a little more. It was hot and crusty at 10 so that was fine. No smoke!

After lunch checked my sites, listened to music using my smaller speakers and it seems it'll work out. The one is blocked a little by the platform for the (useless?) 3D printer but before it was on the other side of the room so maybe it's better. Have to see with my next borderlands session.

Huh, was actually shooting myself in the foot because I selected 96000 hz instead of 44100 hz.

Watched V is for Vengeance because I remember the fifth of november. The new projector placement and speaker setup worked just fine. My projector only has 24% of the lamp. Wait, is that used or remaining? Shoot, I don't actually know. So I checked the manual, which I conveniently placed near the unit many years ago. It says that operating the projector on the econo setting (as I do) the bulb should last 3,000 hours. As my hours are over 2,000 I have my answer. 

New bulb on Ebay was about $60 so that's actually not too bad. Hardly worth buying a new projector over, even to get one that does 1080p at the very least. (Mine is 720p) Ah well, I don't need more pixels.

Mon:

Welcome to the first Monday of Novemday! Wait.

My task, assigned to me by Bob himself, was to poke at the staples code for today because you might as well. But tomorrow? Oh, tomorrow, glorious tomorrow, I get to do another reliability test. How did I get so fortunate?

So that's mainly what I did. I mean I didn't finish chapter 26 and bring Lysanias and Jason face to face with a nightmare. No sir. It was just work, work and more work. Nothing really found, sadly. Very boring.

What was not boring, but was tedious, was my after work, work. 25 minutes away he had three machines to look at. All were Core 2 Duo class, so that gives you some idea as to the speed. The one had nearly 4,000 things removed by mbam. The other about 200. The third... wouldn't install it. I ran some other tools, and they removed a few things, but nope, still wouldn't install. I left it doing 139 windows updates. (Windows 8, if you cared, ugh) so maybe that's the problem?

Finally got back around 8 or 7 or whatever time it is now. So dark. Much hate. Hate driving in the dark. But the gps in the phone worked well. Ate dinner, made two calls, so I have tomorrow booked with a printer issue, Wednesday with a "full drive" on a Mac, then Thursday taking the cats to the vet, Friday running my game. Sweet!

Checked sites, messed with my sound system a little more. I'm actually using all the speakers I picked up from the trash that one time, it just made more sense as they were already elevated. Sounds pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Went to bed.

Tues:

I was all set to do reliability testing today and even started it, when a wild meeting appeared. It was super effective! Wait, that's not the same... never mind. The point is, I got redirected to more performance, yay! Both of our apps that no one will see because it was 5.2 and the ancient staples tablets they are Hell bent on replacing in the near future anyway! Wha? Why are we... you know what? I don't care, whatever, I'll do whatever you want.

So I started that. I finished 5.2 the video capture part anyway, and I wanted to finish the staples part too but circumstance was against me. The printer Adnan said I could use I actually couldn't because it had their old product on it, and I can't install the video capture program on a tablet that old. AARG! I'm going to bring my "phone arm" the one Heather got me for Christmas for putting my comics into the database, to hold the phone and capture the video. It won't be as good, but it'll hopefully be doable. It serves another purpose, so I'm glad to have it. I would have had to rig up some kind of box or something, it wouldn't have been pretty. So that's tomorrow.

Went out to see about the guy's printer. Very cheep epson, doesn't even have a display so to put it back on the Wi-Fi I had to plug it into USB and let the epson installer sort it out. It worked, no problems, let's hope that's all it is.

Then came back here, did the usual stuff. With my speakers all done I can get ready for bed and be ready if Sean wants to do Borderlands. Tuesday is usually the day so...

Wed:

Let me tell you, I am living my childhood dreams right now. It's true! You can ask anyone that knew me growing up, when they asked me "What do you want to do when you grow up" my answer was always the same. "I want to sit in a room, alone, and put numbers into a spreadsheet."

Yeah, I was a weird kid. But like I said, today I'm living the dream. I put the numbers in for the performance stuff, and man was it exciting. Of course, that was after capturing the video using the arm and my phone like I said yesterday. No problems, it worked fairly well.

No demo, they're just bug fixing and boy howdy there's a lot of them this week. I now have 30 total, some are the ones from before that are "once" or somewhat hard to reproduce. So as I just finished the performance stuff and installing the new version I'll get busy with that tomorrow. After, of course, our meeting with Bob.

After work went to see the Mac lady. Her problem was not what I thought. In fact it was quite a shock. At some point someone turned mail logging on, and apparently it doesn't turn itself off. Nope! So it made a log file that took up half her freaking hard drive. Half. That's some bizarre stuff right there. Once I figured that out (and turned the log off) I answered some other questions and that was that.

Drove home in the dark, but it was just from my old house (Hi Heather!) and so that was fine.

Did the usual stuff around here, got the new lamp in for the projector so I'm ready for that to be changed. No calls as of yet.

Looked over my notes for the upcoming adventure, made a character sheet of a sort for the big bad. It seems good, hopefully it will be a good one.

Thurs:

So we want to buy HP? That seems... odd? well, anyway, nothing to do with me. Or does it?

With the fresh new day came a fresh new coating of snow and yes I wish I was joking. Oh, so badly do I wish it. But it happened. Work happened as well, with meetings after I, uh, ordered some more ethernet cable because I used the rest of mine wiring Sean's Xbox to solve his lag issue.

Got busy with my resolved bugs. Some of them were even fixed. Others not so much. Have you heard this before? That's because it's happened before, and shall happen again, in time. (And in space, but let's forget that for the moment.)

Got through them, so tomorrow I can get back to my favorite activity, or one of them, reliability.

Left work, got home, scooped up two kitties, and took them to the 4:10 appointment. I was seen at about 4:40 which is about right, and she wasn't concerned about Oliver vomiting all the time. He's the same weight as Tinker, but has apparently lost two pounds? That's not cause for concern? Huh.

Anyway, got home after that, they're all shot up and immune to Bad Kitty Stuff for the time being so I did the usual stuff. Sites, videos, and I made two calls. One person didn't answer, the other wanted to use their iMac as a display. Sorry, that only worked on 3 models, and yours ain't one.

Otherwise getting ready for tomorrow, moved my router over to the shelf so that will work fine when the order gets in. (I want to do a minor upgrade to the networking in the house. Nothing too major)

Maybe a bit of Borderlands tonight?

Looking to the future as always at this point is tomorrow, boring work and then shopping. I don't know, can they wait two weeks before I get food? No parents so that's when I like to go over there. I'll have to count the cans. Otherwise normal stuff, and trying to get over to Sean's at 6:00. Should be fine. We'll need the extra hour for my super awesome adventure! (And not because it takes us forever to actually do anything in game. No, it's just that stuffed full of goodness. And dead people. But mostly goodness.)

Saturday hopefully Alissa will have dropped her machine off so I'll work on that, and the one job I have at the moment. Maybe the other lady as well, if she is around. Maybe I'll put my Christmas lights up before it gets worse on Sunday? There's more snow on the way sadly, but not Sunday. Seems like it might be a plan.

Otherwise I guess that's it for this week. There's three weeks until Thanksgiving, me going to the dentist, Squeaker's teeth being done, Xerox Day 2002 on the 19th, my grandfather died on the 22nd in 1994 and my aunt a year ago on the 25th. Sheesh, busy time I guess.

Do you have your Christmas shopping done?