2019-12-26:

Fri:

Started the day writing up the 5 things I found in my earlier testing, something I don't mind doing because that's just an exercise in attention to detail and I've got that in clubs. Diamonds? Clovers? Hearts? Spades! That's the one.

Training today was mostly focused on 802.1x which I guess I'm an expert in now? That's how that works, right? Chris was surprised what he did even worked the first time because usually it doesn't. Thanks, you're filling me with confidence to brimming here, you know? Oh, and Christina, my new partner in crime through all this is taking a week in January off leaving me an entire week all on my own. Whoever is reading my story in the next dimension better be lapping this drama up like cream.

(you do know we're all in a story, right? That's why drama happens, to keep the reader's intrest. Right?)

Or like I ate up the Hawaiian Pizza I had for lunch because I was invited out to Uno's. Good stuff.

Deposited my last money of the year into the IRA, didn't even make it to $5000 this year, that's how bad business was. Didn't get enough cash and had to put checks in, too. Ah well. Then shopping, getting gas, and I just made it to my sister's house on time. Done. Gave mom her Present Days presents and talked about cats, deporting people, Jim's work, silly people ordering things on ebay 4 days before Christmas and still wanting it by Christmas, and how can this saturday be the best shopping day when that's supposed to be a couple of fridays ago? Maybe they meant most desperate?

Anyway, got home, found out the Moxy DLC wasn't automatically installed you have to do it manually, and won through Battleborn. Sheesh, the length of the two games is very, very different. Borderlands just goes on and on like a... a... land... with no... borders.

Sat:

Up late because of last night. Checked my sites from yesterday/today while setting up the machine I took home from the Thursday appointment. Got it all done, shiny new SSD installed.

Unrelated to any of this is this picture:

One of these is the old product bottle, one of them is the new product bottle. Can you tell which is which?
Of course you can. It's the smaller one. 8.45 oz vs 13.5 oz. I have two concerns:
1) If this trend continues eventually everything will be sold in single use packets, much like ketchup. I mean, the trend is that way, isn't it? Where do we go from here? 5oz bottles? Then 3oz? How far does it shrink?
2) Environmental concerns. You want to raise the price of your product? Fine, do it! I doubt I'll remember what I paid last time anyway. And what am I going to do, choose a different product? Please. But to increase your costs by having to make more bottles of your product than I would need to buy before, thus adding to the amount of plastic you need to buy, and that we later need to dispose of, is just crazy. I mean it's not that much smaller that you can ship so many more bottles than you could before in the same space, and you're saving so much plastic that it's a net win. It's not. It can't be. Machine time was increased, electricity to run the machines was increased, all so you could not give us 5.05oz of liquid is crazy town no matter where you are. Raise the price, it's fine. Sell your product in a huge drum, I'll buy it that way believe me I have done in the past. Shrinking it can't be the answer in any situation.

Anyway, watched my videos from yesterday and today, checked my sites. Did a bit of cleaning, can never have enough of that.

Called the guy for the PC at 1:00ish, he didn't answer but latter called me back that he would be there. So I left a little early to get it dropped off. Sean was actually late so we were standing around a bit but that's fine. We stayed on track fairly well, even if it was mostly combat and me trying to keep my husband alive.

Made the CD for this year's drive to Grandpa's house. Nothing else really major I don't think, just chilling until The Big Day.

Sun:

Got the game stuff in order so that's all done for The Eve. Wrapped one gift for mom. Of course her last gift must remain frozen so it won't be wrapped until the very last second.

More videos and checking sites. Watched the latest Rick & Morty, Dark Materials, and SOA.

Did a little work on the book putting the titles in and proofreading. Nothing new written. Sigh. I wanted to, but then... Uh, took a nap.

Played more Borderlands with the team, still going to the Hansome Jackpot which screwed up and made up leave and come back to find a guy stuck in the ceiling apparently. *shakes head* oh you. Got ready for tomorrow, hopefully more training. Otherwise it's going to be a lot of sitting around.

Mon:
There was more training, rejoice, rejoice. Learned more about cards and got the tools to work with them. Some of them. There are many different card types, and many different ways of putting certificates on cards. Why? Why do we need all these different methods? Why not just one card that works? Why are we making things so much harder on ourselves?

Anyway, Gina and Mitch brought us goodies before they left. Hardly anyone around, wonder why? Meanwhile at the very end of the day I got a new build of the thing I was testing, at least the fake portion we're using to test so I'll probably install that and see what's different when I return to twerk I mean work on Thursday. Maybe I can do that right in the morning it was fairly short before so it can get done before Chris wants to do the next thing.

Turned things off, watered the plants, and made my way home.

Watched videos, checked sites, the usual stuff. No calls, so just Borderlands.

Tues:
It's the Eve! Was the Eve good to you? I hope so.
I wanted to do some Borderlands farming but it was odd. The last time I tried, uh, yesterday? I was getting legendary gear left and right killing the bug guy that supposedly drops the sniper rifle I want. But today I didn't get a single thing. Super weird. Spent way too much time doing that, even tried it with a relic that boosted luck. Nothing.

Had lunch, checked sites.

Tried to do writing. I honestly tried. But I found more stupid errors in my battlerunner, which I'm tying to use to run, you know, a battle? I think I finally figured it out though, but I still have to ask, wha? This makes no sense, I'm sure I've used the battlerunner just fine before now, so the code must have worked at some point. Why all these errors all of a sudden?

Got ready to go, and left to see my family for The Eve.

We did the game, my movie quotes was harder than I had thought, sorry everyone! Hope you had a good Eve anyway.

Came back, farmed a little more. Got another copy of the shotgun I sent to Mizzy, a neat shield I'll offer them, and a sniper rifle... I already had. I was so excited- "that's a sniper! Is it? Is it!" I was disappoint.

Went to bed.

Wed:
Merry Christmas everyone.

Hope you, as I did, spent a wonderful day with family and got lots of cheer and goodies.

Thurs:
More tutorials, as always. I got his whole project folder, 35GB or so of stuff. Naturally I'll have to go through it, there's probably a lot of printer releases in there I don't need. We looked at the exchange server, I'll have to take movies off all the screens there's a lot of things that just can't be exported. Because why would there be? Other card types, other ways to do cert stuff. I think I've got most of my list answered at least in a general sense. We also went over his work process, basically it's much less structured than what I'm used to. I don't know if that's good or bad. The requirements from fugi are basically a "here's a text file of stuff we think we can implement" and it's up to me in some cases to make sense of it and make test cases. Super. Our requirements are clearly defined, numbered, standardized. Not looking forward to it.

But time marches on and he has one day left. Neat-o.

Came back here, set up my table and my shelf. Only needed the one, the books fit right on it. I'll take a picture when the light is better. Oh, don't worry I have places I can put another shelf.

Right now I'm going to install my PCI card to run my SSD, hopefully making it faster. If you're reading this my system is at least up and running again, with or without it. I'm turning it off now, hopefully I'll see it back on in a moment.

Welcome back! It worked the first time with no issues. whew How about that? My machine has always felt pretty snappy but it seems even snappier than that, now. An excellent addition. And I put a 2TB drive in place of that one, bringing my total # of drives in this machine to 5. Not sure what I'll do with the extra 2TB but I'll find something? I have a total of 12.5TB of storage in this machine.

What next? I wanted to try out my flashlight bulb but I can't find my spare 4AA batteries! It's so weird, they were powering the controller for the XBOX, the "xbox controller" if you will but both they and the battery cover are gone. I know I rearranged the area some time ago but that shouldn't have made them flat out disappear. Right? I'll have to track them down.

I did get a call, so I'll have to return it, I suppose.

So, weekend plans, and then boy howdy the 30th and 31st and 1st off!

I want to install my circuit board into the iPod and get it up to speed with all my music. (I got a board that accepts 4 micro-sd cards and replaces the spinning drive in my old iPod. So cool! If it works, and it should)

Put my yummy food away that my sister gave me.

Pick up Christmas.

Find those batteries.

Do more farming for the sniper rifle?

Finish chapter 27 now that I've finally started writing it.

Play some Mass Effect Andromeda that I got.

Probably a job or two, and going to see Ellen about her photographing the ivory.

I would love to put my comics on the other shelf, having them just hidden away under my bed isn't fun. Maybe find a place for them? I have one in mind already...

That's a pretty good list, right?

More specifically tomorrow it seems we're doing my game so it'll be my last day with Chris, shopping, bank, then over there. Finish up dealing with the mining incident, head to the academy, and have some fun there.

That's it for now. In a bit I'll go over my plans for them, make my call, get ready for tomorrow. The usual. 

Hope you all had a good holiday, have a fun New Year's Eve, and that your 2019 wasn't too bad. Forget about it! It's over. It's 2020, baby! Time for that hindsight to start kicking in.

See you all next time.

p.s. I have to play around with the blog code for next year. It should just be adding a new folder and telling the script where to find it, but don't worry if you don't see something right away, I'll be working on it.