2019-12-12:

Fri:

Finished up the other 3 installs with hardly a problem, I'm missing one small plastic cover though. Where the heck did that thing go?

Had a short meeting about the performance data, nothing really exciting. Then had three boxes of tablets dropped off that we need to check over, to see if the manufacturing process actually worked this time. We got through the first box, so the second and third should be no problem when we return bright eyed and bushy tailed on the second Monday of the month. With only 2 weeks until The Big Night.

Had forgotten to throw together my grocery list so I had to do that at work, but I managed to only forget one thing I needed but no big deal. Got gas and went to my parent's house. Saw their Gabe and even played a little with a kitten who doesn't seem to like "strangers." Uh, I played with you that first week and fed you, did you forget? He forgot.

Then home to put stuff away and got to Sean's maybe 15 minutes earlier than usual. We stayed on track quite well, and the thieves had a few things we can, uh, "use." While we look for the proper owners, of course. And the answer to a mystery the others knew about but I was clueless about. So that all worked out in the end.

Sat:

It was as annoying as I expected. Got up and ready to go, cleaned the driveway off as it has snowed more in the night.

First one had weird DNS numbers, gee how could that have... oh you have no antivirus? Got it. Ran mbam and it found 5,000+ things! Sheesh.

Got to dentist guy at 12:00, an hour later than I wanted but hey, when your scan takes almost an hour what are you going to do?

Putting me through my paces as always, like he has a chromecast right? It isn't been seen by his phone. So I reset it. The phone sees it. The phone connects to it. The phone controls it and connects it to the wireless. The phone says it is connected to the wireless. The phone says "this device is set up but we can't connect to it." Are you kidding me?

That sort of thing. Until 2:00. It was awful.

Ate lunch finally, checked sites, videos from the last two days. Cleaned up the keyboard a little that Sean got for me. One of the eys doesn't wor. Great, just great.

And it's... time for dinner? That was fast.

Finished up She-Ra. That's a show that really got better as it went on. Weird.

Then played some Battleborn with the crew. Much better multi-player, and of course my new controller I bought to replace the one with the wonky stick which I bought to replace the wireless one that munches batteries like there's no tomorrow is busted. I could hear them, they could not hear me. I plugged it into my PC and it picked up as an audio source. I could just barely hear myself where there other controller it was much louder. Sigh. Guess I'll head back down there and see about exchanging it tomorrow.

Sun:

Figured I would go first thing and get my controller situation resolved. Or should I say "resolved." Anyway, after poking at it a bit and trying a voice message just to see what would happen, I went down to GameStop and exchanged it. Took only 15 minutes. Boom. Problem... not solved. Digging deeper into it I found one post where someone went through the same thing as me, saying the lot number (which was the same as mine) didn't work for him but another lot number did. Super. So now what? I'll tell you. I emailed their "support" to see what they had to say. Updated my wireless controller firmware, because apparently that's a thing? Maybe that will help the battery life so I'll try it.

Checked out a few other Battleborn characters. Checked sites. Videos for today. Ordered my last christmas gift I need to get in. (Perishable so it's been done last, there's only two weeks left you know.)

Made the candy for this year, so that's all taken care of.

Watched the latest Dark Materials episode.

Helped a guy for an hour, it's a BSOD that points to a driver and all his drivers are from 2015 and have no updates. Brilliant.

Cleaned a little. Worked on the game for the Eve, have all my "questions" ready.

Tomorrow I'm going to stop procrastinating. Or maybe the day after.

Mon:

Tablets. Tablets. Tablets. Spent the day or at least the part where I wasn't in meetings, pulling a tablet out of a box, then pulling it out of the smaller box, then hooking it up, then turning the machine on and off several times, and then putting it back in the box, and then making a stack of the box, and then putting them back in the box. And I still have ten more to do. Five with some sort of new button.

Neat. Glad I went to collage.

Found one issue. An SD card slot that didn't work. So I guess it was worth it?

Also hooked up my little HDMI to DVI adapter to drive the absolutely monstrously huge Apple monitor that got left behind when the people in our "new" lab area went away. Sadly, it can't be driven at the full resolution so it looks like crap. Sigh. Oh well, it's better than nothing.

Came back here, checked sites, the usual. Spent a half hour on the phone with a guy simply trying to put what he thought was his password into the webmail site. Yes, an activity that should take 30 seconds, and it took 30 minutes. He still does not have a working password. Despite his claim he was on the phone for an hour and a half with spectrum. Somehow I believe him. I told him to open safari or whatever browser he used and he spent two minutes looking for the address bar in the Mail application. No, I said the browser. *shakes head*

Made some notes for the upcoming adventure with Sean and the gang, came up with a good enemy encounter I think.

The controller company is I guess going to replace my controller they wanted to see the receipt. Black was not available. How can black controllers not be available at the company that makes the black controllers? I don't get it. I really hope a replacement is from a different "lot" or whatever they call them. I don't know, they said black was not available, I sent back "okay so I'll take this color instead" and that was it. No answer yet.

And then I spent 40 minutes on the phone trying to get RR email to work. He finally has a working password or so he said, as he claimed to be able to log into webmail. His mail settings are right, and the connection doctor says he connects to the server he just can't log in. I really hate Spectrum, you know that? Oh, and the selfpage page I tried to get him to use to reset the password himself? Busted. It just gives an error message. Sweet.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to do all night. Not anything for myself, try and make stupid RR work. And look at that, my dream has been fulfilled! At least he's only 5 minutes from work, I can head down there before I pick up Squeak tomorrow after his dental.

And lest we forget, the guy with "pending updates" who I was sure I was well rid of by this time, nope ha ha, called. Still the same errors. Super! So I get to research that more tonight though the answer is probably going to be "wipe and reload." I mean it's windows, isn't it?

Tues:

Lots of things to tell you about today. Found out that Chris, the guy that basically does all the things, is leaving. He's following his brother to Paychex because we can't retain talent. Wonder why that is? I mean, when Chris told our manager he was leaving my manager immediately
made a counter-offer, right? AHAHAHH no of course he didn't. I don't think I'm even getting a meager cost of living raise this year. So are we hiring someone to take his place? Because I don't know what he knows, about certs and domains and all that crap. Are you kidding? So next year should be interesting.

The controller company is just going to send me another controller. They don't even want the old one back apparently, as I'm to dispose of it. So wait, I could totally take it back to gamestop and try my luck again? And still get the one in the mail? I mean I won't, but a lesser person might of. Let's hope that solves it.

They can't all be bad, right?

Spent a bunch of the day today poking more at the other kiosk stuff. It's 20 days out of date so I don't know how useful that is. Still don't have access to the site with the specs, despite asking 24 days ago. So does anyone but me actually care about this?

Squeaker survived his teeth extraction. He can't have any crunching bits until Christmas. But he acts fine and is probably glad that's all over.

Went to see email guy. Typed his password in. His email downloaded. Dude. Dude. I mean, dude. Come on, dude.

Checked sites, the usual stuff, watched the latest Rick and Morty. BSOD guy called again, found a new reliability check windows keeps around that I never knew about. Within a minute of a Garmin report, windows was crashing. Coincidence? I think not. Took that out, we'll see how it goes from here.

Also pending updates guy called, I'm going over there tomorrow. Try a few more things before wiping his system out.

Did a little Battleborn before bed.

Wed:

A few surprises to tell you about today, gather round children and I will make them plain to you.

Got invited to Chris' going away lunch, his last day is officially the 27th. Just so he can start "in december" at his "new" "job" "elsewhere."

Got access to the site with the specs for the new stuff, looked through them because the version didn't change and change tracking wasn't turned on. Thanks a bunch. Now that I think about it though aren't there tools to see the differences between Word files? Maybe... huh. Anyway, not much changed but it took awhile. Maybe I'll use my smarts instead of my brute force next time?

Not much else going on, meeting tomorrow but no Bob so...

Then over to updates guy. Still no luck after trying a whole bunch 'o stuff so I dragged it home. He's only 5 minutes or so away so no big deal. I was backing his system up (he has a second drive so I was just copying stuff over) it occurred to me to try it just once more "for the grins." Imagine how shocked my face looked when it merrily started updating just fine.

So, why? There was no change to the machine from his place to mine. Can it be his Spectrum connection somehow? Is MS really that bad that a machine that can get on the internet yet cannot get updates for reasons? That seems, what's the word, perfectly in character? So I took it back. Reset his router to factory defaults to see if that'll help and I wash my hands of the freaking thing. It's over. Done.

Got back, made a call to yahoo mail guy. He was having problems with the site, he couldn't click on certain elements. Huh? It worked in crummy old Edge so I knew it wasn't Yahoo itself. I reset chrome to factory defaults and it started working again. Bizarre.

That takes us to 9:00. Time to get ready for bed and maybe do a Battleborn stage.

Two weeks until Christmas!

Thurs:

Hints today that I'm going to be re-purposed as "New Chris" despite not actually having any of Chris' actual skills, actually. But I'm the only one on the "new Kiosk" so I I go to be "new Chris" and Giuseppe takes over "new kiosk" that just leaves Adnan on "old Kiosk" a job might I remind you previously done by at least six people. Is that really going to work? It's going to take me 3x as long to do anything he would do because he's actually an expert at all this domain and certificate and card reader garbage. I know nothing about any of it! Reminder: I was hired to do tablet stuff. Don't get me wrong I don't mind learning new stuff but when "current Chris" decides to seek opportunity elsewhere the person replacing him needs to look long and hard and why they left. You think Xerox is going to provide any sort of training? Good luck with that.

Anyway, more new kiosk stuff today as well as the usual meetings, minus Bob. Still took half an hour but then, Adnan was a bit late because once again he forgot every Thursday we have a meeting. Made a few more notes about things I saw, tried the actual phone app which didn't pick up the QR code so it didn't pair with the printer so it was useless.

And told Don that if he wanted I could take off the 30-31st instead of 23/26 if we needed more time for Chris to show me everything he needs to show me. I'm just a team player!

Bought a pup a toy for her birthday party on Saturday and came home.

Then the usual stuff, sites and whatnot. Getting ready for tomorrow. I still need $500 to put the usual $5000 into my IRA so I won't go to the bank this week. Next week for sure though. Ugh, have to do paperwork at some point as well. From last month.

Now it's future time, friends and neighbors. Doing something worthwhile at work tomorrow. I know I have a meeting about transferring servers with Chris and Ken and Don and Christina at 10:00. Maybe other meetings as well? I don't even know what questions to ask to pour his knowledge into myself.

Shopping, getting gas, and seeing my parents of course. Then out to run my game. Finish up the combat where they murder a whole group of miners and then get someplace where the rails end and they tell me what they want to do about what they've been learning instead of me leading them by the nose into things. Should go well.

All ready for the holiday so I don't think I need to do anything about that over the weekend. Maybe that paperwork and staying warm. Oh right, Saturday afternoon is games with Sean! That's right. Can't forget that.

Next week is pretty normal, hardly any vacations on the calendar so we'll see how it goes. 

The year is winding down. See you next week when it'll only be 5 days until The Big Day.