2023-05-25:

Fri:
Meetings, lots of meetings. Got the dual 9:30 meetings changed so I met with Don at 9:00 about one thing, then had a demo at 9:30 - 11:00. I still have no clue what the demo was for? It seems like something another company is working on, yet another kofax like software because we really need another one of them. Don't know what we need to do, no one said anything about it.
Met with Don again at 1:00, talking about challenge password. I really wish Don would use the right words for things. He keeps talking about this "tool" I supposedly have and finally explained oh, it wasn't a tool, it was just that CWIS page the developer made that had the challenge password field. That's it. That's not a tool, Don. Ugh. So I can easily do what we wants with the real, actual tool I got from the other guy.
At least, that's the hope. Still can't run the actual tool I got of course. He gave me a cert but it didn't help. MS won't let me run it, at least Macs will still allow you to right click something and bypass the signature requirement. Thanks, MS.
Worked with Christina on setting up the card swipe armature to run a weekend test for another group. It was funny, he's like "hey does someone has this specialized piece of hardware we can borrow to do a test?" "Yes, we have this thing you can borrow, come and get it." "I'm glad you have this thing I can borrow. Please set it up and do this test for me." "Huh? I thought... what?"
Hilarious.

Did the shopping, saw my parents.
No game, we finished Reach and did some warframe though. We're looking for bird puzzles! When we get enough we can buy a cute little bio-mechanical owl we can put in our landers as a decoration.

Sat:
Raining, no outside work at the moment. It rained pretty hard too.
Checked sites and videos. In doing so, saw an excellent Chris Hayes piece. I'm not going to name any names, but if you voted Republican at some time in the past, I urge you to watch it and ask yourself one simple question: Am I okay with the direction my party is going? Watch it, and ask yourself the question. I'll wait, you can come back later.



So, are you? No matter what your "party" has promised you in the past, this is what you got. This is the reality and it will only get worse if you continue to be part of the problem. Are YOU okay with that? Are you okay with what you just watched happen? Because I hope not.

Made a vet appointment for Tinker. He was very excited to hear it.

Ordered some parts for the new motherboard. Not halving my RAM as an "upgrade." That would be silly. Got another m.2 drive as this MB has two slots. May as well get rid of the SSDs and some cables and power needs. Should be faster, though this MB only has PCI 3.0 still, not 4. So I got the cheaper M.2 drive as it won't benefit.

Looked into why PowWeb suddenly wants $500+ for two years of hosting when last year it was $300. They have one plan, and their product page lists $334 for two years. Not cool, PowWeb. Had to chat with someone, their number vanished from the site, because of course it did. Turns out they're just sort of raising their rates, because fuck you, that's why. They haven't bothered to update their site, it's listed as one price on the home page which doesn't jive with the amount on the rates page. I got them to knock 20% off so it's only $100 more than before (roughly) and I've put 2025 on the calendar so I have more time then to consider my options. If they really want $500 for hosting my dinky little site for two years, they can forget it. I'll pay the $10 a month more greenlight wanted for a "real" ipv4 address and host the site in my basement like I did before I moved to PowWeb. Don't think I won't, because I will!



There's the home page
 


There's what is on the rates page



And there's my invoice. So I'm paying more than three years cost fol only two years? Without any warning or explanation? And you think customers aren't going to be furious about this? Who is making the decisions over there? Do they not know what competition is?


Had lunch. How much rage can one person contain in a day, anyway? Oh they made me mad.

Did some reading.

Watched a movie and had dinner.

Then parents came.

Then did Halo 1 with the others.

Sun:
Got up fairly late for obvious reasons, we played a bit late.
Cut the back lawn for the first time this year.
Weeded.
Moved some berry bushes from the side of the driveway where there really isn't any dirt to the side of the house where there used to be many bushes. Hopefully there will be again. The big bushes are looking good already, they have lots of leaves and even the start of some flowers! Nice.
Checked sites, videos.
Did some Legacy. Got to the part where you're murdering your way (with a rather squeamish boy from your class but he sticks it out and helps you murder things so go team?) through a mine to see the plans for the giant drills. That we already know exist. We've seen several examples out in the fields. "Ah" you say to yourself, "but it's an 'open world' game isn't it? So maybe your character hasn't seen those drills." You think you have me logiced into a corner, don't you? But nay, nay I say a second time. In an earlier required mission you see one of them driven into the wall and stuck there, and later you hear the two bad guys (that you don't just, I don't know, murder right then and there?) talking about drilling under the one guy's "family home." You know they are drilling by this point. You've seen all the evidence of it you need. It's a very strange mission.
Did some reading.
All in all, a terrible weekend, for a reason you will read... right now:

Mon:
Squeaker, the third cat in my adult life, passed away sometime between 2:30 AM and 6:00 Am this morning. I heard a kitty distress cry and went looking for him at 2:00. Sat with him until 2:30 as it seemed he wasn't doing all that well. I never expected he was doing that poorly. He had been losing his appetite for a few days. But with the 26th vet appointment already set I figured he would be fine until then. He was always my chunky boy. And he was still drinking, I made sure of that so figured it was maybe just a kitty hunger strike. And he would eat a bit if I brought him something, like salmon or crunchies. But Sunday he was just hiding, and seemed a bit stiff. But he still made an appearance, so I didn't think to much of it. I checked on him through the day, he was awake and alert. But he was clearly in a bad way when I saw him, he was down on the basement floor just lying there. I put him on a soft pad and that's how I found him later. He didn't seem to be in pain, he didn't yelp when I petted him, even purred but of course that's a false security. Sorry my friend, maybe if I had acted sooner you could have been saved a bit longer. But he was 15 at least, with a bad heart. I'm kind of surprised he lasted this long. Farewell old Squeak, perhaps we shall meet again, or perhaps, as a Jellicle Cat, you have already  passed though the Heaviside Layer and are already enjoying your new life.


One of my first pictures of him!

So that's what I woke up to this morning.

Got in to work, whoops, the device crashed pretty hard over the weekend. HA HA. Our stuff is so great.

Didn't feel much like writing, can't imagine why. I did do some work though. Went to a meeting with a customer something we don't usually do at our level. Whoops, they declined the meeting at the last minute.

Also got a new set of weblets, to take care of a minor display issue. Stayed late, because of the Friday vet appointment at 2:00. I have to go back that way anyway so I figure I'll leave at 2:00, get Oliver in by 2:20, be back to work by around 3:00, and leave at 4:00. That way I only have to make up an hour. So I did that, it looks fine.

Oh, and made some changes to our email server for the developer guy, so he could get a network trace. He says the customer says it's that setting, but email went through just fine so maybe it's not?

Oh and got the log files for the crashed device. From the log it actually didn't last all that long on Friday. Like maybe two hours? My goodness our stuff is bad.

So yeah, lots of stuff but it was all pretty quick.

Came back here, petted my boys. How do I have so many calls? It's been two weeks, or more, not a single call. But today I get three? Where were all you people the last two weeks? Why all today? Made my calls, only reached the guy in the middle. Something about a picture on his phone, shouldn't take long and it's just down the street.

The other two did get back to me. Restored one lady's email for 40 minutes, my goodness her machine was slow. I did a few other things it wasn't just that.

And the other lady has a laptop, fairly new one actually, that won't turn on. I suggested a new power supply, otherwise toss it.

Tues:
Pretty busy today. Two meetings, the Joe meeting is off for 4 weeks as No Joe.

Worked on setting up the new linux "box" to replace our aging SNMP machine. Tried to get SSH working, but naturally it wouldn't. The problem with linux and many people will try to spin this as a positive, is that every program comes with a million options. And a million versions. Reading the set up guide it's like "oh, just modify this config file" and "here's a value you might want" but that value wasn't in the file. So thanks? Was I reading old directions? Was I supposed to add that line? Who knows! I copied over the old file, no good. Still didn't work. It would connect but tell me the password was wrong. I finally tossed it and set up telnet instead. Hey, something that works! Amazing. And FTP. Another thing that doesn't need a billion bits of encryption to "function." Amazing. You just install it, and it works.

So I got SNMP to work as we had before, and got the terminal logins done. Viewing the display is annoying, remote desktop doesn't seem to work (it just gives an error) so I have to use the console. I'm stuck at 1024x768 resolution. How did I ever get anything done at that size? Yuck.

Did another quick test on the weblet I got yesterday, finished that up.

Went to the guy down the street, didn't take long.

Then back here, checked sites, ate dinner. The usual.

No calls, thank you.

Then Halo. Halo 2 to be specific. Which as you may know, I do try to be.

Wed:
Bit of bouncing around today. Not literally. Did the yearly training I've been though how many times now? Don't be a jerk, don't give up company secrets. I get it already.

Worked more with the guy trying to get his app to work. Still doesn't work. He says it works on his server? Sure buddy. Sure it does.

Got a minor haul, had to stay late as the lady was working on it when I walked by.

Did the server check for the month.

Nothing really big, just being interrupted by stuff.

Came back here, no calls. Sites and videos, dinner.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Some warframe, no Mizzy she plays with others on Wed.

Thurs:
The usual meeting today. Mostly reading, no writing today. Updated all the statuses on my active tasks. I'm waiting for replies on most of them. Like the challenge password thing, I don't think it's working. I used it more than once, and you're not supposed to be able to do that?

We don't know if a guy wants gabi or the other weblet tested, Gina is still trying to find out.

All in all pretty boring today.

Went to good will, didn't really get anything! But I could have gotten a beat up old Arkinoid arcade cabinet! I was tempted... for ten seconds or so. Do I really have room for it? Did it even work? That's the kind of thing you buy as a summer project and put lots of hours into. If you have the needed skills to do that kind of work. Do I have those skills? HA! Would have been neat to restore it, but Arkinoid isn't exactly my most favorite of games. Mostly because I'm terrible at it. So it was neat someone donated such a thing but it's not in my wheelhouse.

Went to savers to see if anything caught my eye there. Nope. Except the Mennonites. Always seem to be some in there every time I go.

Came back here, checked sites. Ate dinner. Got ready for tomorrow and such, Sean wants to do more Xbox after his mother leaves.

Got a nice card from the vet about Squeaker, that was a nice gesture.

One call, made that. Going there saturday, should be easy enough. He's an old customer of mine.

I got the parts for the motherboard. So that will happen over the weekend. I just really hope it works out, I do have a bunch of screenshots for what happens next in Legacy so even if I blow the thing up I have plenty to write but I would rather not blow it up, if that would be okay with everybody?

So it'll be the usual stuff, the lawn may need a trim over the weekend, and there's always weeds to take care of. Grow my pie ingredients, grow big and strong!

No game this week. So tomorrow is the usual shopping. I'll go to the bank, I have a check from April so better to get that in now. I'll see my parents. Do the gabi test, maybe tear myself away from my current story and work out the next part of my own freaking story?

OH, and I have Monday off! So yeah, more messing about on that day is sure to be had.
Guess that's it. Should be doing some xbox stuff in a bit with the others, so I'll sign off for this week.
Maybe next week will be better. See you all then.