2020-03-05:

Fri:
Mostly just continuing with the card tests, with a little bit of other stuff on the side. The XDM team got back to me with really no solutions so that was nice of them. Spent some time fighting my machine, like it telling me I needed to set up email, and clearly it was set up. Finally realized there was a printer I could clone that Christina had been using, so I did that. It went much smoother after that. Only one more model to go, and she has a machine signed out Monday for that. Of course, I still have to do the trunk test which is the same thing, on a different machine. Still don't actually have all the cards we need to test. Oh, one of my bugs is half fixed? The XDM lady I was helping/was helping me figured out there was an error when the cert request didn't have an email address. Her machine still failed, but I was getting my device ready for her to look at and put the email address in so the two would be the same. Mine worked. Huh?
So yeah, lots of small things done but it's over.

Still quite cold out. And the stock market is still falling, hurray.

Did the shopping, saw my parents, came back here. Garage looks good! It better. It's not perfect, but it would take a lot of effort to have smoothed it down completely. Now for the top coat and it's done.

Put stuff away, was checking sites and Sean was ready. So we played through the rest of Halo 4 and started the spartan ops.

Ugh, got three more calls today, plus the one from late last night. Four in all. Yay.

Sat:

Was out at 10:00 to take care of the ransomware guy. That stuff was brutal, I put a flash drive in to try and copy a decryption tool and it encrypted everything on it. Thanks! And it wasn't just documents, it was everything. EXEs and all. Weird, never saw one do that. Formatted both his drives and tried to make window's stupid backup system actually recover his stuff, which of course isn't easy. I had to copy some files to a certain part of the C drive??? before it would acknowledge there even were backup files to restore. I mean what kind of backup system makes you go through all sorts of gyrations to, you know, restore the machine from the backup?

Got home about 1:00, didn't have long until I had to leave. Put the comics into the database as I knew I had a lot of stuff to do tomorrow.
Also got the laptop ready, it's running fine.

The workman didn't come back. Did they do the top coat already? I thought it had to be done after the epoxy cured? Odd. I mean it seems shiny enough...

Checked my sites, looked into if I wanted to develop any plot for the Stan game (I didn't) and left for Sean's.

We watched a movie, played a Bob Ross game (Mizzy was the most chill) and a game in a tin that hurt my brain. A few Get Smart episodes and I was on my way home.

Sun:
Got up and went out to the lady with the busted monitor. Or so she claimed. I think it's the power adapter, it doesn't light up no more. I'll order her a new one, meanwhile she's borrowing mine. Logged her into her chromebook, which she somehow got for free, so good for her.

Came home, had lunch, checked sites, and left again. His problem, as far as I can determine, apart from his crappy Frontier connection at 6mb/sec (recall I get over 500mb/sec here) is DNS. He was clearly on, but going to sites wouldn't connect every time. I switched him over to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 and that seemed fine. Ran the usual scans just in case, he was clean. Stupid Frontier.

Came back again, ordered the power adapter. Did my paperwork for last month. Sent in my collected tax, always a treat. Got a treat, pumpkin bread from a customer.

Oh, and I learned a customer with my name died a year and a half ago. Searched his name, no obituary.


Then the usual stuff of getting ready for tomorrow.

Mon:
It came, tomorrow came! Happy March everybody.
Worked on the D5.4 card test and, uh, one card out of the three worked. I forgot actually one of the cards had a separate project to enable it, but the other, I don't know if it should have worked or not. I emailed Joe about it, he didn't get back to me.

Emailed the USDA people as I finally figured out I hadn't actually emailed them from Thursday. I thought they had been in the email thread but no, they were not. Whoops. He said he couldn't get back to me until tomorrow.

So there wasn't much done in the afternoon. The list is done. Everything is either blocked, not ready to test, or something Christina has done so she can do it again more easily than I can. So a pretty boring day.

Dropped off the laptop. Copying his stuff off the old one was painful, but it was only 3gb or so and thus copied to the new one lighting fast.

Got home, the floor out there still isn't hard like rock, I can squish my thumb into it. Was the top layer done? I called the guy, apparently it wasn't? Anyway he's coming Wednesday to look at it.


Figured out where to get a Conference Call, the gun Sean is always looking for. I farmed for one. Got one too. Wasn't impressed just fighting mobs but it took down a large boss fairly quickly, so I'll probably try to get another so I can give one and keep one.

Looked into the backstory of Secret of Mana, it's the story I'm doing next. If I ever get time to write again. (I wrote a little at work, don't tell anyone)

Tues:

Got some new cards in so we checked them out. One of them is an updated version of a card we've already seen, while the other is completely new. Christina took care of the VersaLink machines, she figured only doing two models would be good enough. For some reason we can't email with the one card, only the other. I tried them on my D5.4 machine and while the one worked perfectly, the other wasn't supported at all.

Had the USDA meeting, it was fairly short as I've been down the whole week after my test blew the thing up.

Wasn't much exciting until after lunch when I had another meeting with the voice people, he couldn't fix the machine so they're making a new build. Something about an old value being used I guess?

Looked into the email thing. Very little info on the error message and I didn't get anywhere.

Stayed late, did some thinking about the next book.

Got back here, picked up another conference call, so I have one to keep and one to give away.

Then played Secret of Mana. I totally forget you shook the treasure chests and slammed them to the ground to open them. So fun.

Wed:
Garage floor still isn't set up. Sigh.

Used up my extra hour and he didn't show so I went to work.

Was somewhat all over the place today. No USDA but I found that you can't print config sheets unless you are logged in.
Did a card and card reader inventory for the other cabinet, the one in the tablet lab, because we have stuff in there for some bizarre reason. Lots of card readers, a lot of proximity cards, some stuff going back 5 years or more.
Talked to Joe about the 5.4 card test, if the versalink was being called done, should this be too? He agreed so I closed that up. Worked a little on a test matrix for later. Tried to figure out why a machine Adnan wanted wasn't showing the web page despite being online. Oh, and Christina got the card emailing to work from yesterday. Just a reboot? She wasn't sure.

Came home, and as the snow was melted I took the christmas lights down.
The garage stunk of chemicals so they did apply the stuff. I wouldn't have, but they must have stepped on it so it must have been set up enough? It's still sticky now so I guess we'll see.

Played more Secret of Mana, got ready for tomorrow, no calls. Sites, the usual.


Thurs:
Varied tasks today, as that's about all we've got at the moment. The developer enabled a certain card, so I tested that in the usual way. Showed him email worked, that's what he wanted to see. Had the usual thursday meeting. Labeled some more cards. Did another card test Vinu put on the list just recently because I had the cards and the setup, so it only took me a few minutes. Tried to help Boris with MS Custom Auth, found where the user database is (I think) but still have no idea how to tell what it's doing. The device says the card or user or something isn't valid. Weird. Looked into XDM some more, as my device stopped working (it worked a few days ago) but her device now worked, so we switched? She said she found a reason, there was a fix in the build she put on that day, but another device in her lab showed the symptom it was timing out so the investigation continues. Whew. I think that's everything.

We're going to make another stab at USDA tomorrow, maybe get a build that works for more than three minutes.

Came back here, the garage floor finally seems set up. Let the cats out there, they've never had a huge space like that to run around in. They checked it up and came back inside. "It's feeding time, right?" Go play with the toys I put out there, you can run around all you want! I'll probably start parking there on Monday. Need to figure out a way to keep the oil off it. (The oil filter tends to vibrate loose and I have to tighten it every so often. Should probably do that again come to think of it.)

Book guy called, and I got the power adapter in for the monitor which worked, so I can take that back over the weekend. Of course she picked Sunday. Well, I'm going to Sean's Saturday anyway. Have to see book guy at 1:00 though.

Which brings us to the future. Not sure what I'll do at work tomorrow, oh wait yes I do the USDA stuff once I get a build that works. Right. So that's taken care of. Then do the shopping. No parents, so I'll go get cat food, litter, etc. I don't need cat food but it's been suggested I stock a bit for reasons. I'll probably buy a bit more than usual as well. For reasons. I mean Our Dear Leader says it's a hoax by democrats, that I should just go to work if I get it because I'll be fine, and the death rate is, according to his "hunch" way less than 1% so really, there's nothing to worry about. Weird that like, in the US, 150 people are confirmed to have it, but 11 people have already died of it. Isn't that like... close to 10%? I'm no math major but someone has a decimal point mix-up going on.

Still losing money in the stock market though. Weird how that happens, huh? Maybe it's not because of fears of what is to come, but the fact that people know, deep down, that the guy in charge is an incompetent, lying, asshole. That's what they fear, not a virus, but our Dear Leader's response to it, because the man's an idiot. Oh really, it's Obama's fault we have less crisis response? No, it's because of you. You did that. You cut programs that could have helped. But noooooooooo. You can't figure out how to close an umbrella, do you really think you are competent enough to run a country? In crisis? Somehow it doesn't seem like it.

Anyway!

Stocking up on a few things! Right! Don't know if we'll do any Halo, we'll have to see. Saturday is at least book guy, then Sean's at 4:30 for his Infinite Vector game. Neil got himself into a bit of trouble by actively calling all the monsters who want to murder him in the area to his exact location. Luckily he has the cops there, and I'm about to arrive because, uh, psychic? So he'll be fine.

Hope your March is going fine, don't forget we lose an hour (another thing that should be done away with, BTW) this Sunday. Get some rest!

See you later!