2023-01-26:

Fri:
Pretty busy today. Worked on finishing up the D7.7 stuff, then took on the task of again testing the versalink delete jobs on logout. We've only tested it like 3 times. But sure, test it again. Got through one machine, but the other doesn't want to load the software! AArg! I did figure out it was on a very old release and needed a "bridge" because we felt the need to encrypt the software (why?) so the old software wouldn't know how to accept it. But even after that it didn't want to load anything. Very strange. I guess next week I'll try it via USB directly and if that doesn't work, just pick a different device. I do want to be done with this.

Got cat food, me food, saw my parents.
Back here, checked sites, did game. Sean wasn't exactly prepared for it??? He was feeling tired and we didn't really get that far. One battle and we got to the center of town, where something is happening involving the guys in robes bringing in the monsters. That's where we stopped.
Then I did some bounties for debt bonds. Got all I needed! I'll never have to do that again.

Sat:
With the bonds I was able to do the mission Sean had done without me, so we can now do phase 4 together. Got the ability to use my space gun in normal, non-space missions, though why I want to give up my super weapon and awesome bow is beyond me.
Checked sites.

Want to talk about something I saw in my recent budk catalog and a little thing I like to call cognitive dissonance. (I think that's what I would call this...) Haven't gotten one in some time, was surprised to get it. Anyway, the thing under discussion:



Let's take this sign apart, shall we? The first line says "When all the guns have been banned" so you know this is only going to be in front, or inside of, a republican's house. Do we agree? Those poor, poor republicans that like to play the victim about how the "radical" "left" is "coming" for their "second amendment" "rights." Did I get that all right? Never mind people shooting up schools, or churches, or movie theaters, they have a fantasy that should it be "required", they would somehow muster the willpower to take their "precious" and overthrow the government. Weird how they tried it that one time, but hardly anyone actually brought any guns... Weird how that worked. Anyway, good luck with that. The government has actual soldiers, and many, many more guns than you do. So put that fantasy out of your mind. What are you left with? Average Joes going out to by assault weapons they don't need. Hey, you want a small pistol for home defense or target shooting? You want a shotgun loaded with rubber balls for home defense, or target shooting? Go nuts. You want a weapon made for war? Now we have a problem. So it's not really that "guns have been banned" that's on the table anyway, most people just want sane gun laws. That's it.

Now we come to line two. "words have been censored." Again, remember who now owns and is displaying this sign: Republicans. See line one. But who, exactly, is censoring who? Are democrats trying to ban books in libraries they don't like? NOPE. That's republicans. Who doesn't want who to say the word "gay?" Republicans. Who changed the meaning of "Critical Race Theory" to mean "anything relating to non-white people?" Republicans.

Let's look at line three: "History has been erased." Which group of people wants to erase history? One place they're actively doing it is Texas. Is Texas a "red" or a "blue" state? Huh, I think it's "red." Red states want to teach a history where the civil war was not about slavery. That old Chris Columbus wasn't a total whack job. Where we didn't brutally murder the people we found here to take their land. I mean there are people that believe the holocaust didn't happen. People in government believe this. As well as a certain orange man winning an election he did not? Sound familiar? Who wants to look at history as it is, so we stop making the same mistakes and who wants to cover it up? So again we are left with a piece of republican propaganda that is trying to make you think it's not. Next line.

"Freedom has been taken." Oh boy. Wow. I mean, let's be real here a second. Which party has been trying, and lately succeeding, to take your "freedom" away? Especially if you happen to become pregnant. Even if it was through rape or incest, or you just happen to be ten years old? That's right, the republican party. Which party wants to demonize LGBTQ folks and prevent them from... to be perfectly honest, existing, but their stance can only be so strong so it's just getting married and such. Who wants to make sure men are real men, and woman are real woman, and there's no inbetween? Thus limiting your freedom of expression? That's right, again, republicans. Democrats want to give you the freedom of choice. The choice to decide for yourself if you feel getting an abortion is morally right or not. The choice of how to express your gender. The choice of what to read, what to think, who to worship, or not to if you think it's a load of baloney, to decide without the government getting involved what is personally right for you. Odd that, wasn't the republican side supposed to be the personal responsibility people, the small government people? Weird how that happened isn't it? Seems like lately they want to decide what I can and can't read, what kids study, how we should live our lives. Not so "personal" anymore, are they?

So there you have it. Because it mentions "taking your guns away" the rest is supposed to somehow lead you to believe it's not your own party leading you down the path of the rest. But it is. How you can read this and not immediately recognize that, hey, the people that want my guns don't want the rest of that, but the people that want me to have guns do want the rest of that.

Am I wrong? Can you show counter examples? I'd love to hear it.

Had lunch!

And then Sean canceled. Boo! He's not feeling well. Hope he feels better soon! Sore throat.

Worked on the pony story. Ah, there is a G5 series. Whoops. Well, that's okay. So we do know why the crystal was created. Seems a bit harsh though. I mean it's odd, Tirek tried taking all the magic from everypony, and Twilight beat him. How is this princess different? And knowing that magic may one day come back just kicks the can down the road. Why are you making other ponies clean up you mess? I mean it's a proud tradition begun with Celestia herself but still, did she not learn that lesson the hard way? My story still stands, she can be trying to make that future not happen, that's all.

Then parents came over, watched two movies as they were kind of short.

Sun:
Watched Owl House latest episode. They had it right on youtube, go figure.
Checked sites, videos.
Watched the two Bond movies my father lent me.
Got ready for tomorrow. No calls, all seems good. Happy Chinese new year.
I was getting corrupted mods to see if I could get the power stretch one for Sean to try, when he got on. So we did a few missions.

Mon:
Back to it. Rainy and snowy today. Yay. Worked on the printer from last week. I did manage to get it going, but only by physically plugging a USB drive into it and installing from there. It just didn't like doing it over network. Very odd.

With that working I finished up the delete jobs on logout test, at least as much as we discussed doing. Christina also tried an XWC job which was also deleted. Yay.

After that there wasn't that much to do, I did a server check, one machine took a very, very long time to do a single update. Oh and I checked the machine we have physically in the lab as well. It just needed to be rebooted to apply the update. No problem.

Otherwise wrote up more of the pony story notes, I think I have the whole adventure but is it long enough? I mean with how often we'll play it'll probably take a year or more so probably???

In the morning I checked the cans and found two lonely sandwiches. Odd I thought, two lonely little guys. I took them. Still hoping for chips, not that I don't have a whole box of them because I still do, I checked again in the afternoon. Whoa! A very good haul! Many salad, many sandwich, two more chili, another cheesecake. As I'm still eating soup I ran the salads and some sandwiches (including a huge one!!) over to my parents. Then I went to good will. Got a few goodies for the next game.

Came back here, no calls, checked sites and had yummy dinner.

I think we're doing xbox stuff soon as Sean isn't going to his after work board game thing.
I had to find a new tool to write the blog on, when I open bluegriffon the app I've used for years, I just get a big, blank, clear window. Very odd. Even the latest version. Guess it's time to ditch it. I found SeaMonkey, seems to work just fine.

Tues:
Had the usual Joe meeting, nothing exciting there.
Got the machine ready for the cert test. All I need is the key to turn the feature on and I can test it. Didn't get it.
Worked on the prolog a little and on the pony game outline. There were some things I had written later in the document that didn't quite jive with the earlier stuff so I fixed it.
And a DS game. Got a few danish in the trash, keep that stuff coming.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner.

Messed around with my warframe loadout. With my secondary weapon reload causing a 60% chance my primary weapon will do 100% more damage (like it needs to, but work with me here) I looked into maybe using the gun that has lifesteal instead of the gun that just does the most damage. I don't know, we'll see how it works out in actual gameplay.

Wed:
No meetings today, by golly. I did take a look at one machine for Christina, she was having trouble getting equetrac to work. What a shock. Not because of any failing on her part I hasten to add, it's just a terrible product. It turned out to be the machine had the proxy server turned on, a suggestion I didn't make and so my suggestions were, in fact, useless. Neat.

Did not get the key I needed to enable the feature to test the onedrive stuff, so that was fun.

I also did not find anything in the trash. Sad face. That seems to cover the whole work situation.

Snowed, enough I wanted to do the driveway when I got home. So I did that. It was yucky out.

Checked sites, ate dinner, played a bit of warframe "nightmare" missions to try and get the mod I wanted. I got it! Now I  just need to get the second one and this pistol will have all the multishot it can handle. The other one has about a 1% chance of dropping from a 20 minute defense mission. I only tried that one once. Sheesh.

Didn't have any calls, but then someone called! Boo! They're a half hour away, because of course they are. They just want a checkup. Boo! Why am I driving for an hour if there's nothing wrong? Do you tune up your shoes? Your oven? No? Exactly.

Thurs:
Meeting day, or so it was to be. The Onedrive meeting got canceled, Karen wasn't feeling well.
We did get the next release, but it was too late in the day to do anything about it.
Had the usual status meeting.
After that I got an email "because of lexmark yadda yadda can you get started on this software right away?" It was the no admin access required for installing something garbage. I mean if we didn't need admin access in the first place, why did the original installer ask for it? But I digress. My answer was "no, because I can't get to the site the software has been placed into." Yup, good old access control to the "rescue" once again.

Anything else work wise? Huh. Oh I got some screenshots of a card reader software for Joe, who I guess couldn't open it himself and get the answers he needed? I mean one he couldn't get, but the others he would have been able to see just fine.

Went to second work, at least it wasn't snowing. Her machine is messed up. Seems fine, ran mbam fine, but when I went to update it I got an error. Windows Update service wouldn't stay running, and disabled itself if I set it to automatic. She was like, oh don't worry about it, and I was like, you haven't updated this machine in 3 years. I'm very worried about it, because I actually know things and you do not. But whatever, you want me to forget, fine, I'll do just that.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner. No calls.

Tomorrow I have plenty to do, the new app and getting the onedrive stuff together. Supposed to be a lot of bug fixes in this one.
Then I'll go to the bank, do the shopping, and see my parents. Game is on as far as I know.

Then Saturday we'll try for the movie day again at Sean's. He has said he's been feeling better every day. I hope that's true.

Sunday the usual farting about I suppose. I don't think I have much chance to get that one mod I've been looking for, but maybe a few rounds of Warframe just in case.

Anyway, that's for the future. Now it is bed time. See you all next time.