2020-08-13:

Fri:
Had the meeting, we think it's a cert thing. It's always a cert thing. Any problem you have, right now, is probably at some level a cert thing.
Nothing else exciting, but I did get a log for the prox card working in the device. It may be the reader isn't sending the proper "I'm done" signal but it does do the carrage return when plugged into the PC so I'm not sure that's it. Hgopefully with a working log to compare against, the team can figure out why the non-working one is, as you might guess, not working.
Saw my parents. Petted their Jenny.
7 Put stuff away and did game, which did not start on time because chibis.
But we moved the story forward and that's basically the whole point, right?

Sat:
First thing I did was go back to bed. I had gotten to sleep for about 10 minutes and the phone rang. Thanks dude. So I got up, wasn't getting back to sleep again after that.
Once up I called the router lady. No answer. (I called her again in an hour, and again after lunch. No answer. Where are you lady?)
So I changed clothes and moved my catnip plants. Some into pots, some into the back where the sun is. Grow little ones!
I moved more althea bushes too, I think I counted 20 or so back there now. I counted. I forgot now. It is what it is.
Ate lunch.
Finally started/finished the base for Mizzy's gift. Now let's just hope it stays together while it dries. This claims to be "air dry" clay but I think it's actually clay, not the plastic clay substitue that they call "air dry clay" on the package. Never had good luck with real clay. I sprayed it down and put it under a towel, maybe if it dries out slower it'll be fine? I took a tiny chunk off the 10lb block I bought, because there wasn't anything smaller. What am I going to do with 9.75lbs of clay now?
Watched a movie.
Then another when my parents got here. It was from 1977, and the problems and messages of the film are still relevant today. Imagine that.
Then did some Borderlands with the crew. It hung, but only for Sean (the host so of course all of us went down as the game could no longer continue) and only after 1/5 rounds so we didn't lose much. Still, testing, anyone? It's a thing you can do to make sure your software doesn't have bugs. Shocking, I know. We were doing the slaughterstar 3000 as Neil hadn't seen it. Got some good stuff, but nothing beats the Krakatoa.
Router lady called me back in the afternoon. I'm going over there tomorrow, which is my favorite thing to do. Working on a Sunday. I guess I didn't have to go out today so that's something at least.
Sun:
Morning appt. She basically just needed her router password. Of course if she had said that we could have done it over the phone. But she made it out to be that she needed help hooking the router up, which had been done just fine. She had been scammed previously, she admitted, so I went through her system. Otherwise it would have been a two minute job. Told her to get a new credit card as well. Mbam only found good old "ask" so that would have been fine, but it had to be done. With her pathetic 5400rpm drive the whole thing took far longer than it should have, but at least it wasn't too long. I was back before lunch.
Cut the front lawn, checked all my little plants. Catnip looks good, all green and no wilting so I think they'll be fine. The two bushes that were turning a little yellow look better too, I'll have to keep them wet, maybe part of their root system was damaged. So they're only getting some of the water they should be. But if I keep them wet while it heals they should be fine if what I'm seeing happen is true.
Watched a movie.
Watered everybody at night, doing good still.
Sites, the usual Sunday stuff. Getting ready for another exciting week.

Mon:
The developer had given us a new cert to try after I had left Friday but as Christina is in earlier than I get here she tried it. No "key usage" so it didn't work. So still really had nothing to do. We were going over primelink with Vinu at 10:00 so he could update some directions for loading plugins, that was the only real excitement of the morning.

We got a working cert so the print and encrypt thing works now. Of course, I had thought that before but I did check that taking the cert out made it not work, putting it back made it work. Again, that had seemed to work before so who knows what that means but hey, maybe it really works this time.

Not much else than that. Yes, it was a very slow, very boring day. I really need to get back into writing.

Did after work job, took until 7:00 stupid ancient emachine with a SATA II interface. BSOD was registry? File system stuff? ??? His BSOD was something about registry files, so I did a chkdsk and it found some stuff. Then to be "safe" I started a system restore. A half hour later with no real progress bar to say how close it was to being done I closed my eyes and kicked them machine in the head, pulling the power. It booted. I wanted to run mbam because that's the kinda guy I am, doing all that "complete breakfast" sort of deal but mcafee wasn't doing me any favors his machine was slooooooooow. It found a bunch of stuff so good job mcafee and I was finally free. I got home just in time to make 2 1/2 hours of phone calls. Three of them. One person it turned out had just turned his sidebar off so his "I can't get email" was actually "I am dumb." Person number two XXXXXXX????? And then person #3 who wanted to upgrade to Win 10 and then set up her backup drive, a position I support fully. So I started 10 installing here to save myself much driving later. Finally ate dinner around 9:00 so no doing online stuff with the crew tonight. Got ready for bed. Went to bed.

Yay.

Tues:
Yesterday wasn't done with me yet, it wanted to see me suffer just a little bit more. So some spilled over into today. When I got to work I didn't have my badge. So I drove all the way home thinking it was still on the table. Nope. Where is the badge? How could it be gone? Looked around the house. No badge. Looked in the car. There it was, just sitting by the seat. It must have come off last night and I never noticed. So I drove it all the way back to work. Neat.
Apparently the cards we use are fairly easy to clone, maybe I'll do that, make a spare or two to keep in the car. Hummm.
Installed the latest D5.4 on a machine to see if the encryption project code was there or not. It was not. So that avenue was denied me.
Checked to see if the card string was in D5.4, it wasn't.
I got the tools to work with the card reader and did the suggested things. I got a little further in that the machine now tells me the card isn't recognized, so at least it's trying now, where it didn't even try before. So that's progress.

The only other progress was on the story. I finished the chapter I had started before and started the next. Full speed ahead, right?

Now come close, because I'm going to tell you something I'm worried about. Our Great Leader, King Trump, tells us that if he doesn't win the election we should start learning Chinese.

"If I don't win the election, China will own the United States you will have to learn to speak Chinese!" --Our Great Leader, King Trump

What worries me is even if I do my own personal best to help reelect Our Great Leader, King Trump, what happens four years from now when I can't help to reelect Our Great Leader, King Trump? Our Great Leader, King Trump can only be Our Great Leader, King Trump, for 8 years. Is electing Our Great Leader, King Trump, only postponing my learning of Chinese by four years? No matter what I do, will China "own the United States" in 5 years, when Our Great Leader, King Trump, is no longer Our Great Leader, King Trump? For that matter, how did we stave off learning Chinese before Our Great Leader, King Trump, was elected? Why did China not "own the United States" 5 or 6 years ago? I am sure Our Great Leader, King Trump, was fighting for us behind the scenes so that China did not "own the United States" before now. That must be it! There is no evidence to say this is not true. Is there? So it must be true! So much depends on Our Great Leader, King Trump, being Our Great Leader, King Trump forever and ever so I hope that they change that pesky 8 years thing. If anyone can do it, Our Great Leader, King Trump, can do it! Soon he will have his face on Mt Rushmore alongside slave owners and that one maybe okay guy. Looking forward to it!

What would be Hi-Larious to me is

1. Biden chooses a black woman as VP
2. Biden wins the election
3. Day two of the presidency Biden says "you know what? I think I've made my point, I'm resigning as president. Your new president is a black woman. *drops mic*

Oh hey, he picked Kamala Harris. Step 1 complete!


Now that would be something.

Came back home, checked sites, ordered cloning equipment (not for me, for the card) and some SSDs to replace the one I used in the laptop.

The base for Mizzy's gift was a complete bust. And not in the good way. The clay had cracked in a few places so I thought, fine, I'll just use a little like "glue" and stick it together, let that dry, and it should be fine, right? Nope. It just crumbled apart as I touched it. How people have done anything with clay astounds me. How? Everything I've done with it just comes apart. As a material, it's crap. So looking to 3D print it now. My bed is big enough to do half of it at a time, which should be fine I can glue it together I guess. Just all that time wasted. Thanks, clay. Knew you weren't the right stuff, I knew it. They should not be able to call two completely different things "air dry clay." They shouldn't!

So I worked on the 3D model of it. I think I got it right, but the proof of the printing is in the filament extrusion. Or something like that. We'll actually turn the machine on and do the printing later.

No calls today, thank goodness.

Wed:
Anything exciting happen today? No? Great.

Thurs:
Just kidding. Let's see, got the card reader working so that project is done for the moment. Tried it on altalink as well at his insistence and it did try to log in but of course the card wasn't in that system so whatever. He said it was fine.

Nothing else really to do, everything is in the future.

I did more writing through, they're trying to convince the sprites to let them put the mana seed in their territory.

Came back here, no calls again? I guess I did good somewhere. Checked sites, movies. Got ready for tomorrow.

Real Thurs:
Still not much exciting going on. Wrote another chapter, because I'm on fire now! No really, call the fire department the flames are engulfing my torso!

We did get a versalink release and after the meeting today Christina was all like "you want to look at that thing?" And I totally lied and said "I would love to look at that thing" but I think I was pretty convincing about it. So I'll have that to look into tomorrow. She did it before but I suppose I can handle it. I know about the cloud thing now so...

Otherwise had the two meetings, watered the plants. That was basically it. Still really no one there, unlike schools, that open and then it turns out, whoops, there's still this pesky virus we have to worry about. And then close again.

Came back here, checked sites. Got ready for tomorrow, the usual.

So what's in the future for me? Tomorrow is of course going to be testing the new print feature. I'll get groceries and see my parents. Then do game where we figure out if we should steal a knife from a guy's collection to trade it for a book the elves have that details our magical items and their construction. Because NPCs in RPGs don't just give out quest rewards without doing the quest. Even if the books are totally worthless to them because they haven't made magical items such as this in perhaps thousands of years! You have to follow the rules of heroing. Where we steal stuff! Wait...

Over the weekend I hope to maybe find more trees to move, 3D print the base of Mizzy's Christmas gift to replace the clay one, and do my paperwork for last month. Saturday afternoon we'll do the monster game, and maybe I'll even get to show up. That would be nice.

So that's about it. With this weekend done August will be half over.
I hope it's doing well by you, and I'll see you next week at this time time.