2020-01-02:

Fri:

I'm always sad... when a story ends.

And so it ends. Chris left, never to return, around 1:00 today. It hit me harder than I would have expected. I didn't care that Joe left, for example. Barely a twinge when John went back to nursing. But this? Seems to have hit me harder than when I heard Sue died. Am I a bad person? I guess I can't help the way I fell but it's still odd.
Of course I'm trying to understand why. Perhaps it's because so many things are happening around this. I'm essentially "losing" my job and being "hired" at another job I never applied for. In fact, if I was looking for work today and read the job description of the job I'm about to be performing, I wouldn't have applied. I liked doing tablet stuff. I was good at it. Nothing says I won't ultimately be good at this job. But this guy has been there for years, he knows what people's needs are, was always happy to help. It's going to be different around there, I can tell you that.

Anyway, we went over a few last things, and he was gone. I carried on with the one test I've been doing because I  got a new build of the "fake" app we're using to test with. It solves the issue of the error message, I guess it was getting it all along just not displaying it.

I also rewrote 3/5 of my bugs in the correct database this time. Sigh.

Then did some server stuff, coping stuff off the old one, and making sure the software installed was as similar as I could make it. It was only missing a few things. Then took screenshots of all the exchange server screens because I think that one actually does have to go away before the new one can be made.
Christina had left by that point, it was 3:30, so I cleaned up a little and left. There were less than 8 cars in the parking lot. Place was really quiet.

Got gas, went to the bank, then shopping, then came home. Checked my sites, ate dinner, and was off to Sean's at 5:10 or so.

I've gotten more millage out of the mining scenario than I ever expected, even if it had a somewhat, for me, unsatisfying end. Still, if they think that's the end of it, they'll probably be a bit surprised when it isn't. evil laugh.

They landed on the next planet and took care of the amalgamation beast I cooked up. Hardly even a threat. Now what will they do next... That's the hard part to plan.

Sat:
Got a few things done today.

Cleaned up the kitchen, there was stuff all over.

Put food away, thanks to my sister again, my pantry is full again.

Installed circuit board into the iPod. Of course it goes in opposite the drive so it didn't work at first. Sheesh. Would some step by step instructions have been that hard to make? Anyway, it turned on the second time so it's syncing now

Installed circuit board - playing great, so it works, as I knew it would. I can hold 1000+ songs more than I could before and I still have over 100GB of space for more songs. Neat.

Robots - or in this case "droid" made a place for them by moving some of my pac-man stuff onto the shelf and Bob's your uncle. Oh, you have no idea what I'm talking about. I got a cool R2-D2 "toy"? Figure? What would you even call it? Anyway, wanted to display it of course so he needed a space. Found him a space.

Found a sniper rifle I really liked in Borderlands 3. It wasn't the one I was originally going for, but it's an equivalent. I was then like, maybe my luck is running high today I'll look for a shield too. I got a second one of that sniper rifle. I was like, what? This enemy doesn't even have that in their loot pool. It just dropped at random. I've been looking for a good sniper for days and I get two of the same one on the same day? What?

Looked for the missing batteries and controller battery cover. Still can't find either. I did find several batteries scattered about that I charged up, so I'll be able to take lots of pictures tomorrow.

Watched videos, checked sites, the usual.

Waited for Sean to be ready and then did more Borderlands.

Sun:
Success! It took me all morning but I finally got the shield I wanted. Accidentally, almost. Of course I was under attack from various directions and there were two legendaries  by the big spiderant I was fighting and another way over there from just a normal enemy. So I grabbed up everything, raced over there, picked it up, then fought them off and made my way back to the safe area. I was looking over my spoils and there it was! On my last run of the day! Swhifty!

I found some other neat/rare/interesting pieces of gear as well so the whole thing was a complete success. I now have legendary in every slot but grenade, but I've got a pretty neat one anyway. My current setup is the super-sniper that does hundreds of percent bonus damage while aiming, my shield adds 150% damage on top on that (draining half my shields), my artifact doubles my shields but makes my health 1, and lets my shields recharge 25% sooner and faster. My grenade heals shields and health.

Wait, am I a glass canon?

Huh. well, my first shot simply reduces my shields to where they would be without the artifact, and I've got a "boss killer" mode that uses different shield/artifact when I know I'm going to be up close and personal. With my other fancy guns I think I'm in good shape.

Ate lunch, made a call but he wanted to see what happened with his account tomorrow so sure dude, whatever.

Checked sites, watched videos, finished up the episode of SOA I started yesterday.

My father asked if I could digitize a VHS tape so I figured out if I could. Turns out there's a "DVD" and a "DVD/VHS" set of ports on my combo machine. They are different. Who knew.

So I texted him back I could and... he never texted me back. Okay?

And went over to photograph Ellen's stuff. It was as exciting as it sounds. But wait, after 3 hours the fun isn't over. No sir. I thought she was doing this for legal reasons to document the ivory was over a certain age. No, no. Silly boy. She wants to have it, as well as tons of small vaces and other crap that's worthless, appraised. So she's already "oh when can you come back?" (Yes I'm going back tomorrow. Pity me)

It's going to be the job that never ends. She wants me to also do her typing for her, writing up the descriptions. Really? You can't type? REALLY?

Finally got back after 7:00 (I left at 2:45) and had dinner. Got ready for tomorrow, there was one call, a new PC setup. Figured I might as well, I already had to go out once for Ellen. So much for a day off.

Suddenly it was 10:00 so I went to bed.

Mon:
Went out in the morning to set up the new PC for the lady. Went fine, and she gave me the old one. It's decent enough to recondition, but I already have one so it'll be done some time later.

Cleaned the mouse as I wasn't able to last night.

Then did a bit of farming for another shield, didn't get it though. Some other unique stuff, like I got a shield that, uh, has 0 shield! So with my artifact that only allows 1 health, I can have no shield and no health! Wait, how is this a good idea?

Checked sites, lunch, then went to Ellen and offered her The Choice. Maximum 2 hours for $50 per time or as long as she wanted for $50 an hour. She picked per hour. 4 hours later I went home with $200 and I have to go back on the 7th. We got a lot of the list done though, but there's still a long way to go.

Ate dinner while watching the last of this season's Dark Materials.

Then started installing Mass Effect and got an invite to play Borderlands. I guess he did want to, I figured once it was around 8:30 or 9:00 he wouldn't message me. But he did. So we finished the heist and that was that.

Tues:
Made muffins

Worked on, and finally finished, chapter 27, the final chapter (for now) in the wheel of time universe. I'll have to go back and clean it up sometime, Lysanias has left a lot of things undone there, but he has no choice for now. He can't fight the person in front of him, and his plan to clean the world up isn't going so well. I wasn't sure if it would be this chapter or the next, but I figure I write so little now, best to get the end done and over.
Which I did.

Played a little Andromeda and went over to Sean's for New Year's Eve.

Wed:
Put Christmas away. Not really as fun, honestly. Weird how that happens, isn't it?

Did my paperwork for last month, I did 8 whole jobs and after my IRA contribution I made about... *checks number again* $40. Sweet. If ellen hadn't paid me so much because of the "by the hour" thing (oh and she wants Sunday night now. She's a black hole, I swear) it would have been in the negative. Somehow. Probably because of cash I still had from the year before, that would be it. Not happening this year, it all went in there.

Sent in my estimated tax, which I probably won't do next year at all. If these numbers are right and I'm not making anything from the business, it's silly to give them money I just get back later. So forget it.

Checked sites, ate lunch.

Played more Mass Effect, but only before playing more Borderlands.

Basically enjoying my last day before going back to work.

Thurs:
I survived.

Granted, it's only the first day, but I made it all the way through. I was pretty sure Chris left me with nothing to do (spoiler, I was wrong) so I just worked on my own little private project. Basically taking all the scattered notes I had and turning it into a cohesive template. Basically a spreadsheet with several parts. The first is the summary page, just showing a pass or fail for the categories of "can you log in?" That sort of thing.
The next is the steps to arrive at that pass or fail, like a usual set of test cases. Then the next tab is machine configuration, provided by Chris actually so I just copied it in there and changed some values like the IP addresses that were old. Then finally the high level overview of card testing. Basically a few lines of "first you do this. To do this, see the 'how to do that' document. Second do this, etc." Then I wrote up all the procedures for getting certificates on and off cards, on and off the server, and what tools to use with what cards. Of course I went though all the cards we have to make sure I knew what type they were, and what reader I could use to read them. So my confidence level is up by at least 20%.

At the meeting it was found out that Chris had run a test earlier than I had thought, so I will need to do it with a current release. So that's fine. With the new fixes and build of the other project I was working on and that, I'll have plenty to do tomorrow. If I can find the release and the plugin I'm supposed to be testing. I think Chris was being emailed it directly so that's a problem. At least I'll have his test plan so I can just follow his steps. Hopefully follow his steps.

In other work news we only get 9 "corporate" days off this year, and they've shifted one of them to... January 20th? Bhua? That's weird.

Came back here, had a few calls. And Mr. Stupid just called. Yeah. After all this time. Wants me to put things on ebay for him. Dude, do you think I magically forgot how horrible it was to work with you? The absolute garbage you wanted listed? Using my yard as your personal dump? Why would I even want to speak to you? It baffles the mind.

Played Mass Effect for an hour and then made calls. Spent 50 minutes getting a guy with iCloud password issues onto the gmail account he first insisted he didn't have. I was sure, given his troubles with iCloud in the past, that we had set one up. Oh no, he assured me, we did not. Oh look at that, going to gmail.com logs you in, so yes, yes we did set you up with a gmail account. Naturally he did not know the password, and he couldn't find it in his keychain. Luckily it was on his phone, so he could reset it and he finally got it into mail and is using that instead. 50 minutes.

The other lady wanted to know if she could "move" a program "with her pictures" from her old machine. Uh, is it a Mac? No? Then no, you can't move programs, and besides your pictures are not "in" that program. Just use Photos, it's built in, free, and does what you want or at least 90% of it.

So now we are to the part where we talk about the future. Plenty to do tomorrow, work wise, so that's fine. I have several checks but I'll probably wait to go to the bank, get at least $1000 to start this year's IRA contribution. But I'll still do the shopping, see my parents, get gas. No Sean, we've temporarily switched it to Saturday. We will probably play something though, we have one more circle of slaughter to get through in borderlands, after all.

So I'll go back there, then. And see their multiplying pups. They're watching 2 dogs from Alisa, (I think?) so now they have 4. It's pup time!

And Sunday going to see Ellen so the week will be complete. Yay.

And that's 2019 shoved out the door never to be seen again, and a new, possibly even crappier 2020 saunters in to take its place. Welcome! Welcome! Faho doore!

See you all next week, hope I have some gripping stories to tell about my new position. (NOT!)

Hopefully you are actually reading this, I had to modify my RSS code for the new year. If so, everything worked out! Great! If not... uh, that would be odd, how are you...

Later!