2020-01-09:

Fri:

And so the true fun begins. Last night I installed the latest build, which was done on the 31st of last year. At 9:00PM apparently there was another build so of course I didn't think to look this morning for anything newer. Then everyone is all like, oh, did you test the latest build? Dudes, it's one day older. Chill out. Not that much changed between yesterday and today.

But then we got into trying this transition card stuff, and neither Christina or I can make it work. My issue is the device I'm using simply does nothing when I put the card in. Oh, it asks for the password, but nothing gets sent to the server. I can log in with that user if I type it, so I know it's set up properly. So why doesn't the card work? Her issue is that the server asks if the user can log in, but is told no. For reasons. We even tried the last machine Chris used, which supposedly hasn't been touched by anyone. Still didn't work.

So now what? My worst fear is already coming true, that we have no idea what we're doing and the person who did is gone. It's the worst. Possible. Thing!

So I left in disgrace and hope once everyone is back Monday we can get some answers.

Went shopping, turned in my scratch tickets, got gas, and saw my parents.

Came back here, checked sites, then did some Mass Effect.

Sat:
Which continued today. I spent the morning doing that.

After lunch I cleaned a bit, vacuumed the rug finally, did a bit of reading, and left for Sean's.

We rescued my husband and went down to the planet below the ship he was on to try and figure out the deal with it.

Sun:

More playing Mass Effect, finally off the ice planet. Got ready for tomorrow, checked my sites, watched a few videos.

Then left to see Ellen. Wasn't too bad, finished up putting the pictures and descriptions into the ivory document. Got cookies.

Sorry it wasn't more exciting, but that's still to come!

Oh, how I dread the... Monday... coming on?

Mon:

Progress has been made! Not a lot, mind you, but some.

Over the weekend I had the bright idea of loading another plugin, an official one, to test device and server communication. Worked like a champ. But Joe wanted me to further look into it by loading the "misbehaving" plugin and the old version of software Chris was using. So I did. Didn't exactly "work" but it was better. The device talked to the server, and now I'm facing the same thing Christina is, some kind of certificate thing.

So I fought with that, found her card had an expired certificate, one of them. The other should by all rights work. But then, so should mine.

We've emailed someone named Tim who Ted thinks can help. I moved on (in the final hour) to installing thinprint in case we ever need it again now that the new sever is set up. Honestly, what's the point of having virtual machines if you can't run them on any hardware. Why couldn't it have just been copied over to building 300?

Baby steps, as long as I can say I'm making progress it's fine, right? At least I came up with some good ideas for both of us.

Joe was also digging into it, and the reason it might not have worked is that build may have been special, and the code in it not promoted to get put into the normal build process. So it might never have worked. Because reasons... I'm not exactly clear on.

Feeling some sense of accomplishment I went to go set up a lady's new laptop, which went fine.

Came back here, three calls, so after dinner and checking sites I got to work doing that. 25 minutes looking a machine over, didn't see what he told me he was seeing, a half hour drive to look at a printer that would probably take 2 minutes to diagnose over the phone, and a lady from November calling me about some stuff, who knows. (She's calling me back in 10 minutes as I write this)

Then hopefully some battleborn with the crew.

Tues:

That took an hour and 20 minutes, her machine was stuck on 100% updates and still was when we hung up. Hey MS, can you, I don't know, maybe not say you're 100% complete until you actually are? That's a peach, thanks, sweetie.

Anyway, that was last night, what crappy thing has the universe done to me lately? Patience, little one, and draw near for the tale.

Achieved enlightenment today! Got help from the cert guy and realized I was screwed from the start. Turns out there's a sort of base package of certs you have to install from this really crappy looking website that no one really mentioned before. Whoops?! After that's installed two of the certs that were showing up in the list "magically" vanish and the "third" one down becomes the "new" "root" cert. It would then install without complaining which made the whole thing, you know, work?

But before that I set up the thinprint server, got that working with the demo license. Hope someone around there knows how to make it permanent again. 

And went through Chris' folder looking for gems.

Called my CTG overlord, she was trying to get ahold of me to tell me the good news I already had. About my salary increase of... and wait for it... less than .50 a hour! Yes, it's true, I'll make almost $4 more a day. Almost. Probably closer to $3 after taxes. She seemed oddly excited for me, when the current rate of inflation for the 12 months ending in November 2019 (according to google) was... 2.1%. So her excited "That works out to be a 2% increase!" means I'm only making .1% less than I did a year ago. Neat. Don't get me wrong, it's not nothing, and it's not the full 2.1% less I would have had a gotten no "raise" but come on. Chris left because he was doing a job that he felt wasn't making him enough money. And now you've replaced him with the guy you've admitted makes the lowest amount of money in your group. You don't see a tiny, little problem with that? So you'll have to forgive my, somewhat muted if you will, response.

After the card started working I tried a few things, all which, uh, didn't work. Email signing, wasn't even an option, and scan to home seems MIA as well. Sigh.

Left at 4:00 to do :20 of work. Yeah, his "problem" was opening a PDF, being told "This pdf is from an unknown source. Click here if you trust the place it came from. Otherwise most features are disabled." Guess what? After he clicked here he could print it.

He had no other issues.

Then I left for home. I reached home at 5:50. How many minutes is that to do twenty seconds of work? I leave the math to you. Thanks, dude, maybe next time you'll take me up on the offer to look at it at home and save all of us a lot of time, effort, and aggravation? Maybe?

Checked sites, ate dinner, waited for the lady from yesterday to call me back.

She did, got through her stuff like a champ and played some more Mass Effect. I'm back on the first planet, cleaning it up now the radiation is gone.

Wed:

No big revelations today, and we still can't get scan to home to work. I got a little further in email encryption, it tells me the cert is wrong somehow. With no specifics. Because why would it do that? But Christina is on the case and I'm sure she'll crack it wide open tomorrow.

Meanwhile we went out to lunch, and I did a lot of the USDA stuff. Wrote another bug, got a document with the actual settings, put the actual settings into the actual machine (a little late I know) had a meeting about their cert problems (I just listened, I've got my own dudes). Set up an old machine with USDA for comparison, I don't know, I was busy all day. Maybe not 100% productive, but busy.

No after work job so I came home. Sites, the usual, and now I'll do Mass Effect.

Thurs:

I've gotten like 3 emails now from people in France about my old copyright inserter program. Weird. What's the deal, French people?

Got the scanning to folders to work! Christina announced this revelation this morning and with some some juggling of my settings, I got it to work as well. So that's 2/4 of the test we need to do. Next is signing (which I think is okay?) and email encryption. I say signing is okay because when I log in with the card I get an error message. (You can only sign with the card, because the certificate comes from the card) While email doesn't work at all. Tells me the certificate is in some way invalid. Asked John about it, he had a heck of a time demonstrating (for reasons) but did show that just loading it should allow the thing to work, even if we don't have our mail server working again. No help though. I tried every cert on the card, no go.

Both of us hate certs now. VersaLinks. Servers. Chris leaving. The usual.

Had the Thursday meeting, Christina has gotten all her stuff done for the moment so I'm not buried by stuff when she goes away next week. Yeah, right.

Did a little of the USDA stuff, it's still fine, that works at least. There's some cert thing they're talking about, I don't really know what it's all about. But I'm going to hate it!

No job so I came home after work. Several calls, took me the whole two hours to get through. The lady from yesterday called again, her machine was stuck on a gray screen with a cursor. Luckily she could put it to sleep and it would bring up the login window, and she could reboot it. After that it was fine, but she had (of course) other questions. Yay.

Made two appointments for Saturday, the guy down the street trying to hook up old printers (for reasons) and a person getting odd messages in their browser. Of course we won't forget Ellen on Sunday. No we will not. Should be a great weekend. (He said, sarcastically)

So let's look to the future: Tomorrow we'll get everything 100% working. No questions. We'll load stuff, and do stuff, yeah. Shopping, not enough for the bank yet so that's out. Seeing my parents, then go to run my game. I thought up a little more for them if they get through the stuff they didn't get through last time. I figured out how to hook them into what they skipped by killing the guy instead of taking the deal so there.

Then a fairly crappy weekend. Super. Then Christina is gone for a week, leaving me there alone. Which normally I wouldn't mind but it's going to be interesting. (In the bad way)

So it's about 9:00, I'm going to get ready for bed, and maybe do some Mass Effect instead of stuff for other people for free. Yeah, just a thought.

How's your 2020 going so far? Good? That's good man, that's reallllll goooood.

See you next week.