2019-11-14:

Fri:

Tried doing reliability. Then got sucked into doing payment stuff. Went back to reliability after that. Don't get a receipt for jobs over $5.00 it seems, they'll have to look into that.

Saw the kitten, dropped stuff off.

Back here, just enough time and went out again.

Stayed on track, didn't get through the whole adventure despite having the extra hour.

I feel like I didn't do a good enough job involving everyone. They didn't find all the content that may have helped, maybe not.

Still have work to do to learn to give them choice but still give everyone a part to play even if they solve problems in a different way than I expect. (For example they solved all the issues in very different ways than I expected, like he has a power to make air, there was a vacuum, you do the math. No, they just used another door. Problem solved, but not in the way I intended. You see?)

Sat:

Fairly busy through the day. Slow morning, did some cleaning, checked videos from yesterday.

Then went out to the 11:00, changed her HD out, so much better. Forgot my briefcase and had to go back. Go me!

Dropped off the external case that should have been in the car in the first place.

Got a few more game gifts.

Ate lunch.

Didn't have to go to see book guy because he finally figured out how to hit enter and get into his machine again.

Then called the print shop guy and got his printer going remotely.

Things were drying out, I'll be able to do leaves tomorrow? They are coming down all right.

Watched a movie and played some Borderlands.

Sun:

Workday. Spent the morning doing a little straightening in case Alyssa showed up, then put my christmas lights up. Nothing on the ladder, I figured more on the ground was better. I even put my light rope up in the living room window and that stuff is a real pain to work with. The picture looks fairly light but I took it at almost dusk, my camera compensated. Well, you can see them, right?

Then did the leaves. The front trees are all down, so I probably won't have to do them again. The back tree is maybe half down? More snow predicted for this week.

Ate lunch, it was just 12:00 when I got that finished.

Checked sites, videos, hooked my old dvd/vhs combo downstairs to my actual tube TV I still have for my retro game systems so all the stuff I never use can be all in one place. Oddly, I can't get sound out of the DVD part and the VCR part doesn't seem to engage, I just see the "no disk" from the DVD part despite switching the switch over to VCR. The speakers work, I turned my Wii on and heard it, so that's fine. It's really weird.

Ah well.

And then I discovered magic. I can just hold my phone up to my speaker and get all sorts of info about a song that happens to be playing. Now, I knew this, in a general sense. But when I was going through my christmas music collection and trying to figure out if I had duplicates and who sung what song it was rather magical (if I may say so) to just see it pop up. Sometimes after only a second. It was like, "yup, it's that song of course." HOW? HOW? (I know how. Math. Lots and lots of math.)

Spent way too much time doing that on songs in my library that didn't have all the info. I need some way of automating that...

Someone called wanting a laptop, turned the one I have on again. Fan sometimes spins up just fine, sometimes makes a funny noise and does nothing. Took it apart, put new thermal grease on the heatsink, made sure I hadn't overtightened or undertightened. Does the same thing. Sometimes comes on strong, sometimes nothing. It was only $7.00 I'll order another. There's only one ebay seller that has a picture of that actual fan, because there's this baffle on the side. Others claim to have the fan, but do they? How would I know, the picture isn't right! Well, it's not their fault if the fan doesn't work I guess. And what are the odds of getting two busted ones?

Mon:

Getting snow dumped on us today. Good thing I got alllllll my leaves from the tree raked up. Wait, there's still how many up there?

Anyway, meetings today and then did a half a day of reliability. Then my task was to make sure a tablet was good. All afternoon. It's the goodest tablet it can be. Back to reliability tomorrow though. I'm 50/200. Certainly did not work on notes for the next part of the adventure after they get off the station. If they do, but at least I'll be ready. (I don't mean they'll be dead or anything just that the fight and cleanup might take some time)

Came back home, called the lady at 4:30 and she installed the package she needed. And done.

Two calls today, York and another guy. York guy can't seem to drag an icon from one place to another. Other guy is just down the street and got in first, so he gets tomorrow.

Tues:

Today was "let's interrupt Robert with all these bug info requests" day. Oh, and writing more bugs while looking for other bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugs. I'm not mad.

Got up, should have gotten up earlier, as little car struggled in vain to get out of the driveway. Whoops. There was more snow out there than I had anticipated. Yucky, heavy, wet snow we hates it yes we do.

Got that cleared out, got into work and it was one info request after another. Oh, look back into this bug, Robert. Oh, attach a log for this bug, Robert. Oh, close this bug and write this almost exactly the same bug, Robert.

Sure, okay. I finally did get back to reliability, at least a little.

New version tomorrow and more bug verification, so there's that.

Did I mention the snow?

Went down the street to help the guy, got his printer working and ran mbam. No problems.

Back here I did the usual, checked sites, got ready for tomorrow.

Boris called at 10:30 last night, wanted me to come today (of course) because he somehow put his machine into Chinese? *shakes head* Yeah, that's how it works. As I'm going to York to drag an icon tomorrow you get Thursday.

Wed:

Or not, as he called later to say it was fine. Great, whatever.

So I brought book guy's number, we'll see if he's around after work.

Work! More of the same, it was new build time and you know what that means. Fixed bugs and new bugs. Giuseppe actually wrote a bug today, good job, you! I saw some strange stuff, like the google login suddenly turning into the google page, letting me search on the tablet, and a job being canceled, and then turning into a blue screen. Fun stuff.

Then back to reliability. I'm halfway through it! Another few weeks and we'll have this whole thing wrapped. Oh, and Don said they probably wouldn't need me after all, so I'm on tablet duty forever. Yay?

Called book guy. Did he answer and then hang up? It happened twice. It rang, and then stopped, and then disconnected. Weird. Screw you then.

Came back here, Alysa had dropped off her machine so I opened 'er right up and put the new SSD in there. Performance is more acceptable but can I say I was hoping for a bit more? Odd, I mean don't get me wrong it's better. But could it be... better still?

Two calls, the guy down the street who I just told to power his machine off and on again with the button.

The other was a lady who wanted next week, so that's fine with me.

Thurs:

Some disappointment later in the day which I'll get to, just wanted to give you the heads up.

Started today of course with the meeting. Went fine, I'll start something new Monday? He wanted me to do more reliability. Joke was on him, I didn't do any. Instead of that they wanted me to try and recreate an issue I observed during the upgrade. This of course meant whacking the tablet back to nothing, installing the older version, and then the newer version. Presto. I observed a completely different but just as broken issue. Neato. It just sorta hung there, it's probably still spinning there as I write this.

So I didn't want to disturb it in case someone wanted me to do something special so I went to the other lab to use one of our other machines. We don't have many left, actually, somehow? Anyway, the one that is "official" was not updated. So I tried updating that. Both the tablet and the printer portion. The tablet part went fine, the printer part... eh, not so much. It just sat there, and sat there, but I discovered that as this machine was hooked up to the serial connection, (quite unlike the rainbow connection) I could hit enter and make it move forward. I did! I sat there spamming the enter key and it got through it. Sorta. I had to manually reboot it, but that may have been from me removing the USB drive early? Don't know. Anyway, it came back up and by that time I had done the other meeting, and it was time to go. How sad. So maybe I'll get through more reliability tomorrow and can do the new thing Monday. How excited am I? Very excited, ladies and gentlemen.

Went over to see bookman as I promised. His driveway wasn't cleared (after two days??) so I had to park in his neighbor's driveway. Luckily I wasn't there long because he actually had no issues. Also he greeted me at the door with "did I call you?" and insisting I hadn't returned his call, when clearly I did. What a guy.

Back here I took delivery of a variety of things, including the new fan for the laptop. Here comes the part I warned you of: it didn't fix the issue. That's right, totally in vain. It does work "more often" which is odd.

I think I'll sell the lady my loaner laptop, the Toshiba that has a rather small SSD, as she said she just uses it for online stuff anyway and is still quite fast, and just put this one in the car to loan out. I can explain about the fan if need be, I mean I hardly ever loan it out in the first place. I just hate to have put all those parts into it and still have to junk it because sometimes the fan doesn't spin. I mean how is that even possible?

I got in the networking stuff so I'll probably do my little network overhaul project this weekend, and the external SSD for the Xbox which in my admittedly short test seems to have given me exactly... no speed boost at all? I mean I didn't think it would be spectacular even though I got a very fast drive as it's "only" USB 3.0 but still. It's an SSD. It should be a little faster, right? Sigh.

So I'm upgrading the Toshiba, it's very behind in windows updates.

And then we look to the future.

Tomorrow back to reliability, unless some other bizarre thing comes up. Going to the bank, shopping, and then seeing my parents. I'm running my game so hopefully everyone gets killed and I'll never have to... wait a minute that's not right.

Maybe delivering this laptop on Saturday? Not raking leaves, that's for sure, we still have tons of snow out there. The home network renovation project for sure. So fairly quiet I think.

Maybe some christmas shopping if someone gets their list to me? Hint Hint!

See you all next week, we're halfway through November!