2023-08-31:

Fri:
For work today I finished off the D4.0 tests. Two devices, it was just email a couple of times. Done it many times before, and I'll do it for other releases in the future because that's how we roll. Marked it done.

Worked on the story a bit, not too much though.

Watered the plants as I didn't get to yesterday.

Oh and we had yesterday's meeting. A fitting end to my employment with A+. They have not emailed me to say farewell, or congrats on being hired. Maybe because they're losing my income? Could be that. *waves goodbye* Hope I never see you again.

Did the shopping, saw my parents. Gave my father his newly printed glossy Trump Mug Shot. It's a beauty. Has many quotes from The Man Himself like needing to find votes and declassifying records with his mind. Normal, everyday things people say. And I listed all his charges on the back. There were a lot of them!

Came back home, put stuff away.

Did a kitty walk, checked sites, and did game.
We fought a boat. Don't worry, I suplexed it into submission. For serious though, it was a ghost ship and it had been long enough I guess the boat itself was the ghost? I think the "crew" was just an extension of the boat and the actual ghostly crew was the smudges of energy we saw drifting around. But the captain was there, Neil convinced him to give up the orb without violence, and we ritualed (well, he did, it's my job or whatever but I'm useless at it) the boat away and got dumped in the ocean.

Sat:
Checked sites.
Got shopping list together for Lowes, I may as well go today.
Went on a kitty walk.
Priced stuff for garage sale.
Cut the plants free, grow big and strong my little ones!
Made my 10:00 call. It lasted 7 minutes, so she really had no problems.
Brought everything over to my parent's house for the garage sale. Let's hope the stuff sells, I have no idea what to do with it otherwise. I could put it on ebay but selling this sort of thing is a real hassle there because of fraud.
Got the labor day stuff.
Had lunch.
With the filler I worked on the xmas gifts, they're drying now and I'll sand them a bit later.
Put the rest (or most of the rest) of the filler into the hole in the front doorstep. The critters had chewed it all up over the last year. Silly critters, why you do that?
Did some Remnant II, I actually beat the cube boss all on my own! Shock! I was fairly proud of myself. Of course I had watched Mizzy beat it twice because I was dead, so I couldn't have done it without her.
Went to game. We, uh, all almost died. We got past the wolves easily enough because we were phased, we didn't want to kill a bunch of wolves that just wanted to get out of the cold. We're not monsters, after all. Mostly? But then we met some ghosts and took care of them pretty easily. One even ran away, or floated away really. We figured it would be smooth sailing from then on. But then the ice monsters showed up. They had an ice attack that was both ranged, AOE, and could hurt us when phased. Their first attack hit two of us, doing massive damage. With equal action economy on each side but with their ability to hit more than one target they tore us to pieces. I got hit trying to get Hans out of there and as I can only take one hit I was out of it. The other two, wounded, still did manage to take care of it. (Again because the last one ran away. Doesn't that mean we'll just have to face it later? It's not a ghost it can't phase through the wall. Great) But now they have to get the healer (i.e. me) up to tend to them. Thankfully we have healing potions from before so it should be okay? But I'm still exhausted, not that my magic uses energy but I still managed to burn though all of it in that one fight. And there's no bodies for me to reanimate for more firepower, as I usually do. They were magical constructs or something and just vanished. Or ghosts, like I said before. So we're in pretty bad shape.

And we won't resolve that until mid October. Sigh.

Watched the next Furious movie. Oh, we're fighting cyborgs now? Sure, why not?

Sun:
Got up pretty late.
Checked sites, did reading.
Videos.
Lunch.
Did the lawn.
Did a kitty walk. He really doesn't like seeing Oliver in the breezeway. I think from now on I'm going to put him inside and close the door? That should help. It's like they forget the other exists as soon as he passes through the door and now there's a "strange" cat outside. Dude, you've known each other for years. Knock it off.
Then some Remnant II. Found the item I was hoping to find, so when next we play I can just lead the others right to it. Nice.
Had dinner.
Worked on the optional rules. Made a new spell and a new skill.
Got ready for tomorrow. Got my new S3. Sucks. You don't even know how annoying it's going to be. You don't. I don't, and I've been through it. That was ages ago, it's going to be worse now. Mark my words. So much worse.
Did Remnant II with the others. They have the turrets now. We have the power.

Mon:
Well, they let me in so that's still working. Didn't get any instruction in my home email or work email about doing anything special so I'll just carry on I guess? Ah hah, turns out they made me a new email address? With a 2 on the end of it. And didn't bother to tell me. So some email was going there, great job. All the links don't work in it for the training, so that's also great. It's going to be a big mess.

Checked the machines for Christina's error condition. Still good! The fix may actually work.

Then worked on the D7.8 stuff. As there's no "trunk" Don wants me to check the new login type thing on the R23-10. I can do that. I loaded a machine that was already set up and it rebooted. It rebooted again. No problem. It rebooted again. Huh. It rebooted again. That's not... it rebooted again. Okay you can stop now. It did, with an error message. Sigh. Wrote up that bug!
Thankfully another device loaded fine so I was able to perform the test. No issues, as expected. (I've already done this test so many times)

Finished the current chapter at last.

Tried to do new hire stuff, couldn't.

Went to good will. Brought out a whole bag of... nothing. At least I got a good deal on it. No cute kitty stuff at all? What is that place coming to?

Came back here, checked sites.

Went for a kitty walk. Keeping Oliver in helped a lot!

Got ready for tomorrow.

Tues:
If today had a theme it would be: frustration.

So I sauntered up to the door as one does and beeped my badgie-daddy-o against that hip cat card reader and the door refused to budge. Thanks for telling me that would happen, and all that. So I drive over to the security office and the nice lady tells me I need a form filled out to get my new badge. Fair enough, we love our forms. But she does temporarily reinstate it so I can get into the building. Neat.

So I do, open up my laptop, log in, and bam- I've been cut off. That's right. I can't log into teams, onedrive, jira, sharepoint, nothing. It's all gone. Can't get email at my old address. Great! Thanks for telling me this is going to happen, and all that.

So I limp along with an analog phone and my secondary email account while Don works on the problem from his end. I am assured that I can get my old email up and running again. Neat.

But it get worse. It can always get worse.

I lock my machine as per company policy after lunch to do private things and when I return I'm told my account is deactivated. Uh, what? I'm in the middle of stuff. I have a bunch of open windows. Websites open. Stuff! I can log in with my new account, but that's basically a new PC. I have access to nothing. Not my old documents, not my old bookmarks, nothing. Don says we probably can't get into the old account again. What? Are you telling me I have to hack my own laptop, the laptop sitting in front of me right now, in order to get at my own documents that are sitting on the same drive right next to the new user folder? Really? Thanks for telling me this would happen, and all that. He says maybe local IT can help. Yeah, great. How about helping by not snapping your fingers and turning my stuff off? Maybe think of that beforehand?

So everything is messed up. Partly because they're going back to my original employee number from 20 years ago. Huh? Some payroll thing I guess? So stupid.

So I managed some of the "new hire" stuff and a bit of "training" in between all that. You would think there would be some kind of process document that could have been sent to me, like, a week ago that this was all going to happen? Maybe gradually move things over? Maybe "try to log in with the new stuff and see what happens, before we disable the old stuff?" No? Too logical? Of course it is.

Apparently Don is putting in some kind of formal complaint because he has to keep going through this and it hasn't gotten any better. (Like when Adnan did it a year ago or whatever it was)

Oh, and only got half the haul. Checked it in the morning, I think in the afternoon, but at 3:30 I went and it had been changed, and the cans already emptied. Sigh. But the other can wasn't. So I got a few things at least. Enough for the rest of the week but no spare for my parents. Sorry!

Got home, got a notice about the recall for the car. They are not changing the batteries. They are putting in new software that will limit my charge to 80% for the next 6,000+ miles, and if no "irregularities" are detected, they'll graciously once again allow me 100% charge. That's your solution? Makes me want to, uh, not even bother.

Checked sites, ate dinner.

Went for a kitty walk, and saw a doggo a few houses down decide to run across the road, almost get hit by a car, and ignore their owner. They didn't get too far, everything worked out. Silly doggo.

One call, an iMac setup sometime mid next month. Likes to plan things early I guess? I'll just walk her through turning migration assistant on and letting it run. No big deal.

Wed:
Today dragged on. I did training all day. Yes, all day. With some interruptions for checking if my badge worked or if other logins worked. Still no clue how to access my old data. I put in an IT request "My account is disabled." and they came back with "to unlock your S3 account do this!" No. Did you read what I wrote? It's gone. My S3 is gone. I need it back. No reply. Great, just great. Tomorrow, after I finish my benefits stuff I haven't gotten to, I'll do that. It's the hardest and longest (that's what she said) thing I'll need to take care of to get this all wrapped up. (I think?)

The training was a slog, 2 different courses on bias, 3 different security courses. It's insane. I realize (sort of) why it's happened. The usual "everybody" training happened to drop at the same time I was hired and had to do the "new person" training. Why did we spend money creating two different courses that present the same information? So dumb. And I disagreed with some of what they said. In one example, for example, the guy running the meeting asked "the woman" to take notes. This was evidence of bias. Uh, no? Let's look at the room. The other people in the meeting were the hard of hearing old guy who brought a few sheets of paper, and the middle aged guy who had a tablet. Neither of them was reasonably about to make meeting notes. Especially because the video equipment was down and he admitted he couldn't hear people on the phone! The manager asked the only logical person, the person in the room with a laptop, to do it. Totally reasonable, and not evidence of any kind of bias.

And don't get me started on QuickSolve or whatever it was called. I really hope nobody expects me to fill out a worksheet and give it to my manager about solving some problem with this method in the next two weeks. It's not happening.

The rest was useless or common sense. Oh, don't get involved in insider trading. Yeah, I don't buy stocks so we're fine. Get plenty of sleep before you drive. I mean, really?

Oh, I did get my new badge. It's... the same as the old badge? I wouldn't have bothered if I knew that. He said the old number was fine. Okay, so why can't I get in the labs then? If it's using the old number? I just hope in a month or whatever I'm not complaining about this again.

Yummy lunch though. The apple slices were still good this time out of the meal pack.

Came back here. No calls.

Had dinner. Checked sites.

Had a kitty walk. Getting chilly out!

Got ready for tomorrow and did some Remnant II on my own. Got some neat stuff, but I can't find the plot item! I've been all over the map. Where the heck is it?

Thurs:
Things are slowly improving at work.

Still unable to get to the healthcare or payroll sites I set my sights on getting my files back.

Called IT. He had me log in with some weird account, then log in with my new ID, and was like, you're all set bye! And I was like, dude, you haven't begun to fix my problem yet, where you going? He finally understood my issue and with some flailing around, more than I would have liked, finally admitted the username could be used as an admin to get access to the folder! Yes! So I did just that. Took ownership of it and then gave myself (i.e. my new ID) the permissions to use it. Then I could finally start copying stuff. (And I have an admin account, at least for the moment, that I can use if I need admin access, score! OF course I shouldn't need it, because I should be an admin on my own machine, but that's another story entirely.)

Started moving stuff. Lost some oneDrive files I'm afraid. I guess in the brief window my account didn't exist they tossed them all. Thanks. When I logged into onedrive there was nothing. So I couldn't get the "online only" files back. Well, hopefully it won't be too bad. I didn't have that folder backed up because who knew I would need to? It's a cloud service, the whole point is I don't have to worry about that.

But I got all my settings moved over, so I have my bookmarks, my rainmeter controls, my desktop globe, my fences, my auto typer thing I forget the name of. Got my jira account back and figured out the query to see the backlog. So much unnecessary work. Hate it.

But it's mostly done. I'm sure I'll find things I can't access and such, but my machine looks like my machine again. Thank crap.

Let's never do that again!

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention. Got a pretty good haul. Saw the lady with the cart and she left the area and I ran over there, and the cleaning guy was there. Ugh. Go away! But he didn't change the trash bags and finally left so I managed to get salad, and more sandwiches, and I passed her putting stuff in the cardboard bin after getting the second can empty. I was like, he he he, you don't even know what's in this paper box I'm carrying. Good thing I didn't use the plastic, open, mail container I usually use. I'm so sneaky.

Came back here, checked sites. Did a kitty walk. Had dinner.

No calls. Did some more Remnant II, finally found the stupid jar I was looking for. Killed a guy. Weird looking, monster, tooth guy. Not so immortal now, are you? What happened to the jar? Did I actually let him eat it? It wasn't animated that I did but it was gone. huh.

Started the next world. Killed a rat thing.

So looking forward not much work yet to do, apart  from getting more things back the way they were. Maybe I'll even finally be able to do some writing again? Shopping, see my parents. No game, we'll probably do Remnant.

Saturday is still the sale, so we won't do anything that day. Depending on weather we sometimes don't do labor day itself, but at some point Sun/Mon we'll do all the fall stuff. Trimming the bushes, the driveway, picking the grapes, you know. All of it?

Then Monday off. And I'll even get paid for it. Neat. How do I put that time in? Huh.

So that's this week. Frustrating most of the time, but we all move forward. We all lift... together.

See you next week.