2022-01-13:

Fri:
Not much work wise, looks like we had our busy period for now.
Did some Blender work. Looks good if I do say so myself. I modeled my wooden figure thinking that I could use that to design some kind of "shell" for it and maybe turn it into something. Not sure what character I would choose yet but we'll see.




Did the shopping. Snowy.
Grandpa was in the hospital. His vision didn't get better and he went for an MRI. Stroke. He was released though, so he's back at home.
Saw dad just as I was leaving, he had been looking after his father.
Came back, put stuff away, checked sites.
Got a letter from Chevy. No, batteries are not ready, but they've put together a helpful software update (that takes 1-3 hours??? You know Tesla can do updates anywhere in the world overnight over the air, right? Why do I have to drive to a dealer and wait around for someone to plug a cable into my car to update it, and then wait an hour? What's the transfer rate of the port you're using?) to reduce my capacity to 80%! Just what I wanted from my EV! Less range! Neat. Not sure when/if I'll apply this "helpful" "upgrade" though I don't want my house burned down. Decisions, decisions.
Tried the box challenge again. I'm missing a box! And not doing the challenge in time. Sigh.
Then game. We brokered a peace between some fairies and humans at a christmas tree farm. Didn't even have to smash any faces to do it. Though we did get a bit of divine intervention to make it happen.
Then won the box game, somehow, with 15 seconds left. Don't know what I did differently but it worked. I initially thought the prize was a good one, an XP up materia, and didn't understand why the video said it was kinda lame. Didn't realize I was about an hour from the end of the game at that point. In game it's a very bizarre thing, Scarlet was keeping an eye on us trying to figure out why we had broken in, and asked her underling- I mean employee what we had been doing. They should have programmed in a timer, if we spent more than half an hour on the stupid box breaking game they should have had the guy reply "well, they've just been breaking boxes for the longest time" and she would have said "wait, they broke into the Shinra building to use our box breaking simulator?" Would have been hilarious!

Sat:
Won Integrade. Like I said, it was near the end. Oh well, that XP boost materia can be used in my next playthrough.
Checked sites and videos.
Ate lunch.
Did my paperwork for last year. Did one more job than last year in total. Nice. Got everything cleaned out for this year too, so I'm ready to go with even less customers this year! Oh, BTW with the $6000 I put into my IRA I made like -$1000 this year. Think I'll get a nice refund from my gub-ments?
After that I had two hours, which I spent looking for series I hadn't finished, moving my movies folder around, and messing with iTunes.
A good use of time no matter how you approach it.
Went to Sean's. We trailed some people to a museum, but didn't stick much to the plan. When does that happen anyway? We got a name, at least that's something. We took care of the people were following, and hey none died! So next time, in only two weeks this time not a month, we'll figure out who they were after and what it means.

Sun:
Started ripping some disks Sean gave me, and finished organizing my movies folder at least a bit. Moved things like the holiday movies together, the DC animated stuff, and renamed some things. Watched one of the things he gave me, the shortest one, so I could get it back. Can't actually watch season 15 of supernatural because I didn't see series 14! Whoops.
Checked sites.
Went to see Ellen. It was a blast and a half, just as I expected. I solved her camera battery issue with a piece of tape so she can grab it easier, and changed the columns of the ebay page so she doesn't have to scroll anymore. Photos is crashing when she selects a different folder, well programmed MS, so she just has to move them now I guess. Took an hour and a half. She insisted on taking pictures while I was there, and she has this tiny space on her table that is otherwise covered in crap. It's like, one picture or 40, the procedure is the same lady. Get on with it. Such a waste of time.
Came back here, ate dinner. No calls over the weekend, so that's a plus.
Ripped more disks.
Then did some warframe.

Mon:
Got to work on the latest chapter of the Tayna diary now that I had more content.
I mean work, busy, busy doing all the work things I needed to do. Testing! Yes, much testing. Of softwares. Very software.

In fact, nothing at work at all, very boring there. Worked on the next chapter of the Tayna diary, as we had that content now. I then did some more blender stuff, making part of a pair of scissors. I only got the blades done though but I didn't have much time for that.

Also thought about what sort of thing I want to model and put over my little wooden man. I decided on something totally incased in armor so I don't have to mess with clay and trying to get it to stick for any flesh parts. That's why the new interest in Blender, as I don't have anything to write at the moment. Just modeling something is "easy" enough, actually trying to animate something must be a nightmare. I mean you have to know modeling, sculpting, lighting, texturing, camera controls, and probably stuff I don't even know about. Crazy! I don't know how people do it.

No calls, got home and did the usual stuff. Started "The Good Place" and more ripping disks.

Tues:
Still not much to look forward to at work. I finished off the scissors, which I think I got to look pretty good, and then modeled a tiny pirate duck I have sitting on my shelf. Why, you ask? Because I found it of course. Anyway, the duck rendered really weird but that's not really the point so who cares? I think it came out pretty good.




I don't recall changing the light source for these so I don't know why the duck looks so much brighter. Also these aren't renders these are just the preview window screenshots.

Got home, A+ called me? No message left, so no calls. Odd. Checked sites, ate dinner, finished ripping disks. Now to watch them all.

Did warframe.

Wed:
Not much work wise today, I did look over and ask some questions about a new test plan, a short one, for a future product. Otherwise I did more 3D stuff. I had been watching a few videos and revisited the duck. Managed to fix the lighting, I think the scissors had a light value of 1 while the other had like 100 or 1000? It was very odd. Anyway, cleaned it up using the techniques I had learned, and then did a pen, as that's what the first video was about, and then a card reader.
These are renders, by the way, not just the preview window.










Huh, shadows are really harsh, wonder how you fix that?

Otherwise, nothing. Very cold today, no snow until later though. Still no xbox as well, still in limbo I guess.

Got back here, 2 calls, yay! The guy down the street something about some payment he wants done to his address? Doesn't sound like a computer problem to be honest. And some unspecified other.

Checked sites, ate dinner, videos. Watched more The Good Place.

Made my calls.

Thurs:
Meeting day. Good old meeting day. They want me to investigate a bug but no one can tell me what that bug is. Nice. So I have a machine signed out for tomorrow, as it was signed out for today but I don't think anyone actually used it? So I'll load the software and see what happens I guess. I was also assigned a task for next week, wrote that down so I don't forget.

We got a "spec" for an awful looking feature so we'll have to start working on test cases for that pretty soon. It's awful and stupid and should never have gotten past the planning stage.

Othrerwise, tried to see if Samus would be the character I would pick for the armor treatment. But I realize now I didn't put the pictures I made on dropbox, so I can't show you why that's not going to work. Her proportions are very odd, so it's not going to work. You'll see what I mean next week. Next week,  that will be fine. I've picked someone I do think it'll work for. So there.

Started modeling a fan, a small desk fan I found. Only got half done. Watered the plants.

Went to see the guy down the street, hopefully got his social security thing going and started deleting the 20,000+ duplicates in his photos library. I mean, really?

Came back here, checked sites, watched more good place.

Looking forward I see one appointment for Sunday at 1:00. No calls yet today so that's a thing. Still no Xbox. I'll go in to the post office tomorrow and see if I can get any kind of assurance it's not lost. It's been 4 days since the last tracking update, that can't be right.

Shopping tomorrow, seeing my parents, and maybe game if Sean has come up with an adventure for us to go on. He has not as of the time of this writing. I'll have my parents over for a movie Saturday. And Monday I have off, so we'll see what I do then. So far not a bad start to 2022 I guess? No, no I would say not bad.

I hope you can say the same, see you all here next week.