2022-12-22:

Fri:
Finally pulled another haul out of the garbage. About 20 butterfinger bars, 8 soup/chili mix, 6 "add water" mac and cheese, 5 sandwiches, 2 carrots, 1 cheese and crackers, and some very good for you honey buns. Nice. Stop food waste!!!!
No work came in, no surprise there. Looking at the dates it'll be after Christmas at the earliest I think.
Found neat keyboard in the trash. It's completely separated on the left and right sides. I mean there's a cable between the two don't get me wrong but it still works perfectly. The only reason I can see for "trashing" it was the plastic bit at the top broke so it wouldn't stay together. Can't imagine why it was very sturdy. HA! No it wasn't it was a flimsy plastic I'm shocked didn't break right away. But I tested all the keys and they all work. So it's mine now. It was neat to use, typing that far apart. Not sure where I'll put it, but it's not going to the e-waste graveyard just yet. Stop e-waste!!!
So what did I do? Uh, mostly a final fantasy game on my DS. Real time hack 'n slash just isn't final fantasy, you know?
Shopping and going to the bank after work.
Then of course saw my parents. Had dad over for the Dr Who episode. The old guy is back! Yay? I doubt we'll go fully back to the man figuring stuff out in a rational way to solve the issue of the day rather than just waving his magic wand around but at least the "questionable" guy in charge is out of it now.
Am I having some kind of audio issue? (Spoiler, no I'm just dumb)
Checked sites after he left, and then did some xbox.

Sat:
Looked unto my "audio issue." Was it always video 2? I would have sworn it was video 1 for the Mac. Very odd. Whoops! Labled it. I thought I tried that last nigth too, very strange.
Got more DS games on the card, for when I finish the FF game I'm doing now.
Cleaning up a bit.
Put in requests for my TWO lost packages, after 10 days I figure that's enough time. Strange that both Neil's gift and some newegg stuff entered UPS at almost the same time and were both lost. Head scratcher. I can see the newegg stuff being stolen but the gift I ordered? Doesn't make sense, it's only of value to him...
Played a little of the new slash a slash game from xbox. Killed me in the first stage, a big no-no and then hung on the loading screen. Not the only one that's happened to by the looks of it from reading the reviews on the store page. But I got the hang of it and it's okay.
Wrapping the main gifts. I have to do the game gifts yet but that can be done tomorrow.
Checked sites.
Had dinner.
Won the slashy game. Pretty short. Won... On easy, I should say. I may revisit on normal mode, but the difficulty spike was pretty harsh. "Hey, you know all those regular mobs you were fighting with maybe one guy with "super armor" thrown into it? Well, those days are over, it's now only super armor fighters. Enjoy!"
Also I think my monitor is dying. It's flickering? Odd. Do not like.
"Borrowed" the wizard game I've been looking into, wizard of legend. I don't know. It's a rogue like which apart from risk of rain 2 I haven't had much luck with. I want to like it, but it's making it hard. More info as it comes.
Did some xbox.

Sun:
Turning the monitor brightness down to minimum has fixed the flashy issue. But now it's dark. Huh. I mean it's not so bad, I guess, again see the e-waste comment above. But a moniter without brightness is like... uh, a day without brightness? Silver without shine? Apple pie without some cheese like a kiss without a squeeze? You get it.
More wizard game. I have issues. Without doing a million runs how do you get access to all the cool magic they have included? You have to buy robes, accessories, and spells with gems, but because I can't beat the first boss (one shots me every time within seconds, thanks) I only get maybe 20-30 per two stages. That will take forever. They promised me hundreds of spells, but give me only a few in the beginning. So basically the game is saying "you must play perfectly now when you are just starting out, and only after you have mastered the game do you get to have the "fun" of mixing and matching spells." What? Isn't that backwards? I can only take four into the trail, let me have all of them at the start but, I don't know, you can't use the same group twice or something? Also, let's talk difficulty. The game can be difficult, sure, I guess. That's the kind of game it is, I mostly accept that though more options are always good. This isn't the old NES days nor is it an arcade game. (And I had game genie in those days so don't get me started) Maybe let me beat the first boss at least so I imagine I'm making progress instead of cutting me down time and again just making me frustrated? But what I'm really talking about are regular enemies, just joe rando enemies that will hit you for 50-75 damage. You start with 500. You get enough coin in the level to maybe get two things. But more often than not just one. So that one thing has to be a healing potion, that doesn't even fully heal you if you're below a certain amount. So you can't buy relics in the trial, meaning you get no stronger because you're struggling to just survive. But back to being hit for 1/6 to 1/5 of your total health. That's crap. Why have "so much" health if you're just going to punish one wrong move so much? Just have 50 health and they do 5-7 damage. Should a single enemy be able to hit for 75 out of 500 damage? And you're trying to fight two or three of them at the same time? I just don't think that's fair.
The inconsistencies stand out. Why can I have only one relic to start, when clearly I can carry more if I buy them in the trial? Why can I have extra magic if I pick it up in the trail but can only start with 4? Clearly I can carry more, why am I not doing so all the time? How do these venders get into the trail? Do the "monsters" not attack them so they can set up shop? Why do I lose all the gold I earn but not gems? Why are robes so much more expensive than relics? It just goes on.
I watched a video promising a more gentle experience. It involved things I already had, having, uh, "been granted a boon of many gems by the gods and not through manipulation of the game's variables with what is essentially a debugger." That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Wanted to see if actually getting the robes and maybe some more spells would help. (It didn't.) But anyway. Wear the yellow robe, put on the glasses, and your two main spells should be a lighting "shield" and an ice "shield" and you can just bash into enemies. The glasses give health back for critical hits, which the yellow robes makes happen more often. Great! It's playing on easy, according to him. So I tried it. Now the first failure was sort of on me, as the game doesn't exactly make it clear. Relics are divided into offence/defence/other. This, foolishly, led me to believe I could pick THREE to take with me. So I picked the glasses, something else, and my little sprite buddy that froze enemies randomly. Love that little guy. He got picked LAST. So that's the only thing I got. Whoops! Finally realized I wasn't getting health back like he was, and fixed that issue. He was saying stuff like "I'm not playing very well" and "I'm not dodging like I should," nonsense like that. He still tore the game a new one in twenty minutes. I was impressed, it seemed workable. But even following this strategy I struggled mightily. And I still couldn't get past the first boss. So I guess it's just me? I'm bad at it? What other conclusion can I draw? I guess games with no difficulty curve, that are just "you're going to die right at the start" aren't for me. Just stick to games for babies, that's the takeway here the game is telling me. (this is actually not true, it does get harder as later bosses throw more attacks at you before "resting," so meeting a boss first but then third in a different run means that boss acts differently. YAY!!! So you basically start on hard mode and then progress to impossible mode, neat. Think you figured out the boss pattern? Nope, now that boss is "second" and so does something different now. Neat.) Anyway, rant over, I'm going back to FF 7 remake I guess. I need to finish my second playthrough of that before I start anything new. At least I know I can beat that game easily enough. I did it before, so I got to keep all my stuff. I wanted to like it, I really did. But being unable to beat the first boss, even with "the best" build I only got by accident, doesn't endear me to the process. If I buy it on Mac I would have to start over. Play the "proper" way and hope I get the gems and the random luck to get those exact spells again. Which didn't even work, so why bother?
Lunch!
Time to wrap gifts for the game. Did that. Didn't take too long.
Sites, videos, getting ready for tomorrow. One call, the guy down the street with the usual password nonsese I guess? We'll see.

Mon:
Had a demo for adding fax to copy PIN, why it's going to take three half hour sessions is beyond me. But there you have it.

We also got in the TWAIN driver. The basic functionality works, but more error checking could be done. Like renaming the file causes it to crash, and you can overwrite things in the folder you probably shouldn't be able to. I emailed my results we'll see what they say.

Otherwise not much work wise. I think I'm to the end of the final fantasy game.

No news on my missing packages.

Some snow today as well, but nothing significant.

Went to see the guy down the street, got him on amazon and walmart again, and ordered him a book. He already owned. Hey, I don't ask, I just do what I'm told.

Back here I checked sites. Videos and dinner. No calls, yay! Then got ready for tomorrow so I could do xbox.

Tues:
Got some work in. Emailed the guy back because of course my email about all the flaws in the code for the twain stuff was "oh, that will never happen. We'll 'for sure' fix it in the next version. Wink." 20 years later and developers are still making the same excuses. That's why software is so terrible, by the way. We don't learn. It was the excuse when I was doing printer testing for xerox in 2001, and it's the excuse now.

Got the new onedrive stuff. Much of what was "fixed" uh, wasn't. So there's that. Only did versalink, everything else should be similar. But Christina offered to do that tomorrow.

Saw Don, will I actually get my 3% this year? Because I didn't last year!!!
Not holding my breath.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner.

Looked into mods for FF7. But my game is crashing now?

Wed:
Did a bunch of onedrive stuff. Christina figured out locking the jobs "app" makes an error appear. It still scans, but there's an error. Great. Wrote up a few more things, the usual.

Had some treats from leftovers out in the hall. Nice.

Cut up a pizza box and tossed it. It kept getting put into the recycling bin, even after I put a sign on it saying why it couldn't be recycled. Great. Thanks. It even still had the little plastic tables in it. We only recycle clean cardboard you losers!

Not much else, came back home, no calls. Checked sites, got ready for tomorrow, and then did xbox.

Thurs:
No onedrive meeting, our contact is of course off for Christmas. As he should be. But we did have the status meeting. Lots of status to go around. Sure, let's go with that.

I have been directed to test the new fax feature despite it not being complete, so if I go into work tomorrow (winter is coming) I'll do that.
I'll probably go in, then just carefully monitor the situation as it develops.

Got a nice haul today, biggest in awhile. More soup (4), sandwiches, cookies, 3 salad, a thing of sugar that's partly empty? Huh? Okay, sure. 2 muffins, cheese and crackers.

Brought a lot of it to my parent's house, the freezer is still pretty full because I've been eating soup. Went today because of the weather report for tomorrow. We'll see how bad it gets. Many times it doesn't you know. Get bad I mean. I did the shopping, didn't need much though.

Back here checked sites, videos, one call. Just that stupid edge bar people are seeing. Stop making that thing auto open MS no one wants it.

Played some FF7. Updated my video drivers, no more crashing.

Let's look ahead. We were doing my mother's birthday tomorrow but because of the coming storm we've pushed it off. Hopefully it's blown out by Eve, but let's get through tomorrow first. Going to work, did the shopping as I said. So I'll just come home. Then of course it's Christmas day. I'll have the next day off. Then the last week of 2022 begins.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and I'll see you all back here for the last 22 entry. Byeee!