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Everything that goes on in Robert's life is recorded here. Well, not everything.

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Book: Random stuff on my kindle.

Game: Alan Wake.


Computers:
Lenovo thin notebook (carried in briefcase)
M1 Mac Mini (Main machine)
Early 2008 8-core Mac Pro (downstairs machine)
2017 MacBook Pro (used for tabletop gaming)
Custom Built 6-core Intel Gaming PC
iMac from a customer (Bedroom, not used much honestly)

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2023-11-23:

Fri:
Pretty boring at work, parking lot was empty!
It filled out some on the way out though.
Donated another mouse, would have been two but one escaped.
Changed Olaph's spells a little, but didn't do any writing. Just reading. So lazy!
Did the shopping. Whoops I completely forgot to go to the bank. I'm dumb. Won't be able to go Monday as I'm going to the vet. Maybe I'll remember for Tuesday but who can say?
Saw my parents, and a few deer, and an outdoor kitty.
Came back here, checked sites.
Then did game. Ugh, I totally forgot about doing game here! I can't open my character. Great.
For the moment I set the laptop up. Horrible solution, would not recommend. I had that going on some books to my left, then the main monitor with the notes because I couldn't exactly type in that position and then roll20 on the monitor to my right. Sheesh. I really do have to get going on mac os X programming again I guess. This isn't going to work out.
Anyway, game was a bit short but I found more stuff at my old family home. And I apparently turned into a demon so that's new. We chased off the big bad so he'll think twice about attacking us again, you better believe it. I gave our guy the magical object we recovered from the site because I don't feel like having my house explode in the night as he goes to retrieve it.

Sat:
Cleaned up a bit.
Moved my desk around a little too, it's just not convenient where I have things now.
There, that should be much better. It was the headset really, where it was wayyyyyy over there made it very stretched out. Now it can be a bit more slack. I wanted to sort of "hide" the mini in the cupbord but it's just not working out. So now it's on the desk, which is fine.
Ordered more SSDs, as I just put the last one I had into the laptop for the guy.
Watched the last episode of Wheel of Time.
More straighting up while I waited.
Sean was delayed I guess he has a flat tire? So I didn't leave quite when we had agreed on to go to Stan's. Ah, it was Mizzy who had the flat.
But leave I did! He actually showed up right after I did. How about that. We visited, met some people I've never seen and one person I'm suspicious of actually seeing in anime club back in the day. Huh.
Back here we did xbox. Still are not through the new content, it's pretty big!

Sun:
Did the leaves before the rain started, but there wasn't any and it actually got sunnier. Sigh.
Checked sites.
Ate lunch.
Then did reading.
Ah, it did rain while I was reading. Good work, past me! But then got sunny again, so it probably would have been fine.

Looked into my old bankbook project. Some things that are deprecated baffle me. For example my alerts

NSRunAlertPanel(@"Error",@"I can only delete one row at a time.\nPlease select only one row to delete!",@"OK",NULL,NULL);

Now have to be

        NSAlert *alert = [[NSAlert alloc] init];
            [alert addButtonWithTitle:@"OK"];
            [alert setInformativeText:@"I can only delete one row at a time.\nPlease select only one row to delete!"];
            [alert setAlertStyle:NSAlertStyleInformational];

            [alert runModal];

How is that easier or more elegant programming? One line becomes 5? I don't get it.

I also love how the apple developer pages that talk about how to (no longer) use these (as they did originally) don't offer any suggestion as to what to do instead. Thanks, Apple!

Here's another. This one line of code

[Date setStringValue: [[NSDate  date] descriptionWithCalendarFormat:@"%m/%d/%Y" timeZone:nil
                                            locale:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] dictionaryRepresentation]]];

Becomes this

        NSDate *currentDateNTime        = [NSDate date];
        NSDateFormatter *dateformater = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
        [dateformater setDateFormat:@"MM/dd/yyyy"];
        [Date setStringValue: [dateformater stringFromDate: currentDateNTime]];

Well, I hope it does. I haven't gotten anything to run yet, of course. I'm still fixing crap like this! What was wrong with the way I did it before?

Why do I have to change

 [autoNumberPref setState:NSOffState];

to

   [autoNumberPref setState:NSControlStateValueOff]; 

Is that really so much better? I don't get that either.

Huh. Got rid of all the code warnings but it won't link? There's some weird error messages and of course I have no idea what to do about them.

NEAT. I may create a new project and just copy the files into it? I recall doing that once before actually, when I had weird issues. Hummmm.

Got ready for tomorrow.
At literally the last second before Sean wanted to do some xbox I got it to link and run. I took out the code that tried to limit what the program can open to be just my bankbook documents. I did the proper #include to use that because it's another thing that's gone from 1 line of code to several but it still doesn't like it. I suppose it's fine for now, possibly forever I can maybe do more checks in the program to see if it's the right format but it really should have complained at compile time if I did something wrong? I opened my current bankbook, it wasn't really happy about it though it did show data. There were messages in the console behind it so clearly it's not 100% happy. I was just elated to see it actually open!
Got to the end boss, but didn't beat it. A real slog, I'll have to totally redo my character to provide more healing and more damage.

Mon:
Fairly empty parking lot again.
Tried to fix the machine Adnan broke last week. Gives me an error about not being able to decrypt the file and to do a "special altboot" whatever the heck that means! I did get it booting finally, but there's still something wrong with it. It was turned from an 8030 to an 8036 but it's now insisting it's an 8035. And that the "sim card" isn't right. So it needs to be put back to an 8036 I guess but I have no idea how to do that! At least I got it that far I guess?

Got a small haul, mostly a ton of hot pickles. But 3 salads I'll bring on Thursday, and two meals enough for the rest of the week. I'm happy!

Otherwise not much else.

Took Oliver in. He was very well behaved. I made Tinker's appointment, for next year. Sigh. Still booking 2 months out, huh?

Back here, checked sites. No calls. Looked at bankbook. Huh, it was complaining about Sparkle (which I took out) not anything about my program. How do I turn dark mode off? It doesn't look good in dark mode like only every other line is there because it's black text on a black background. Humm, the new version of Sparkle is much more complex, and needs https and signing so that's going to go away for sure!

Got ready for tomorrow.

Redid my build in Remnant for more healing and staying alive as it's a slog so doing a bit less damage isn't really a concern.

Messed with the bankbook app more. Figured out the weird window issue, was able to open my document, put in the vet bill, and save it. Huh. How about that? The end of month feature doesn't work because of the weird "we don't like drawers anymore" and actually the LiveCode version was a bit smarter about things. I could more easily enter a transaction between two things, not that I did that a bunch. I guess as a proof of concept it's fine, I can open my document again, and no one is really scrambling to use it. I can take this and see what I did to start creating the Paragon replacement. I don't need all the features of it, I'm just glad I can open it on this machine at all again and see my bankbook. I won't post it anywhere. Not without a lot more work. It would be weird- upgrade from v3 to v2.2! Wait... I mean this could be v4 I guess?

Watched some Rick and Morty and went to bed.

Tues:
Super rainy today. It rained pretty hard all day. Cold too, just above freezing thankfully.

No real work, looked into how to handle all the fields I will need for the paragon app but didn't get too far. Hard to do when you can't try something.

I did write a full chapter, and started the next though. Olaph has had a busy day of helping people with their new magic!

Came back here, one call, but she later called and said she had put her machine in airplane mode (A vital feature for a desktop pc) so she was doing fine.

Checked sites, watched videos. Found a Remnant video that pointed out some good interactions with the bleed mechanic. You put a ring on that makes you bleed, then a ring that gives you "bulwark" when you are damaged. As you are always being damaged, you thus take 25% less damage. With bulwark active you put on an amulet that keys off that and gives you more damage and haste, then you put on another ring that says when you are near a bleeding creature (i.e. yourself right now) your regeneration is increased by 2. That's a little less than double what it already is. Nice.

While waiting for Sean (he was in a meeting, yes, at 7:00 PM until after 8:00 PM) I downloaded some sample code and looked more into using Swift, which is apparently "easier" than obj-c. There's a "playgrounds" app that supposedly teaches you swift? Interesting, I downloaded it and took a look. It literally crashed in the middle of my trying to do something. Neat. Thanks, Apple, well done.

We did get to do game. Wow, we crushed it this time. Before he stomped all over us. But a few different rings later and bam, taken down. Huh. We restarted to do the things we couldn't do the first time. Like talk to people.

Wed:
Did the server check, as I won't be able to do it tomorrow as I would, the 23rd.

Otherwise, not much exciting. Did writing. Got the latest chapter done and another 1/3 of the next chapter. Seems about what I can do.

Did the plant watering and moving of nickle bottles. When I left there were two other cars in the parking lot. Wow. So many.

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

Tried to use playgrounds more. Crashed twice in twenty minutes. You know, if I'm trying to do something, like learn a new language, it helps if the program trying to teach me that language doesn't crash every few minutes. Like, really, it's a big help! Maybe you should look into that, Apple? I can't be the only one using this and getting it to crash? Looking at reviews, from 3y ago???????? Seems it was crashy back then too. Great! How am I supposed to use this to learn, Apple? Seriously. Maybe I'll just quit it between lessons? That might help?

Thurs:
Caught two mice last night! Are you the guys stealing all my stuff and not setting the trap off? Well, you'll be going to a new home soon.

Checked sites, videos.

More Playgrounds. One thread I saw said turning off sound made it more stable? So I tried that. I also did quit between exercises. It did seem to work better, but did still crash... once? I think once. Did that until 11:00 when I got ready to go. I don't want to forget anything. Like I did last time. I promised salad and did not deliver. Much shame.

Took a kitty walk as it wasn't too awful out. Cold and cloudy, yes. Raining? Snowing? No. So he got out.

Went over to the parent's house. I got to hold a bunny! But no kitties, because they are all silly kitties that don't like laps.

Came back here, checked videos, nothing too exciting before bed.

Let's look ahead as we always do! Ah, not much this weekend. I hope to do more Swift training tomorrow. We're not sure about game, still up in the air about it. Then the actual weekend. Not many leaves down as I would like, not many fell despite the rain and wind we've had this week. My parents will come Saturday for movie night but that's all that's planned at the moment. Humm by this time next week November will be all done. The final month will begin.

See you then.