2024-05-16:

Fri:
Decided to focus on a smaller machine with no scanner. Our code should be a "platform" and so work the same everywhere. However, I suspected as there was no focus on these devices while the code would "work" we may have made incorrect assumptions. I was correct.
Wrote up a few bugs UI related, as we don't account for the smaller screen. It's not too bad except in one case. Things off center and such. But one screen has two buttons at the bottom, which on this device are totally off screen so you can't proceed with the login. Whoops.
Took most of the day.

Got mouse food, a huge bag of it, that was cheaper. It'll keep, right? I can't freeze it, there's no room in my freezer. Strange to basically get 4lbs of food free just because I happened to buy the bigger bag.

Saw my parents, and the two new little ones. One little one was at least somewhat interested in meeting me. The other little one wanted nothing to do with me, to vanish from the earth, and never be seen again by anyone. He was gone the second time I went into the room. Poor kitty. That one will take some time, but maybe he'll get better. Onix does come and see me at least, now.

Came back here, checked sites. No game, so nothing too exciting happened.

Sat:
Went right out and got the trimming done around the berry bushes. Lots of new growth for next year I'm happy to report. That ground cover stuff grows fast. It was barely a leaf last week but now it was fully grown. If I thought I could dig up the current bushes safely I would. Just dig the whole area up and maybe get some rows going on or something. Oh well, we do what we must, because we can.
Got a few pulled through the fence as well. The three I started rooting in a small pot last year have taken and are growing a new stalk! I'll wait a bit more though, until I cut them and plant them elsewhere. Want them nice and healthy for the move.
Clouding up as the afternoon started.
Checked sites, videos.
Had lunch.
Then out to paper jam guy. He did have one. It tried to pick up all the paper at once. And you couldn't pull it back, as I did? Really? He asked a few more questions, who knows if he'll remember the answers.
Back here, got ready for tomorrow, wrapped the gift.
Had a bit of a nap.
Then left for Sean's.
Got through more of it. But probably only 1/3? We made it through the ruined city, then over to the other part where the key was, shrunk a golem, got the key, brought it to the guy, met the being of light they were trying to summon, and timeskipped forward. We're back to the original cave, having no clue what just happened. Again.
Left with everyone else to go to bed early.

Sun:
Got up early.
Went to Clarence. The others filled up a whole cart and more, and my father made his RESolve check against buying a neat Fossil watch sign he doesn't have room for. I didn't expect to get anything, but then, at the very end, I found a goodie after all. Allow me to regale you:
We were walking around one of the co-ops there and I saw a pile of NES games. These are antiques now, it's totally valid. One of the cartridges apart from the others caught my eye because it didn't seem familiar to me. Now don't get me wrong I'm not going to claim to be an NES cartridge expert, able to tell what game something is just from the label. But this one seemed... off. It was megaman, but not. The sticker said it was "megaman 2000" which, again, I'm not going to claim to be a megaman expert of any kind, but even I know those games started at 1 and went from there. There were not 2000 of them made. Maybe 8? But getting it out of the case that's what the label said too. I was walking around searching to see what this thing could be, and the closest I could come was a "rockman 2000" rom hack of the original Rockman game. It was $18 so I figured either I was being rick rolled, and someone put a weird label on a cart, or this was something special. I brought it home with much trepidation.



Here's the inside of the cart, for those curious what it might look like.



Look like a daughterboard, probably programmable, that you can take out, stick into another device to write the game, and then stick back into the card that connects to the NES. Interesting.

I opened up my pony cart too, just to see if it was the same. It was not!



Looks very different. Looking at the retrostage website it seems the "state of the art" has moved on since 2016 as they don't even sell anything like this now. Just smaller programmable boards. Makes sense. Still pretty neat though.

It worked! And just as the label said, it was Rockman 2000.
This triggers the question- what was it doing there? This is a custom made NES cartridge. Someone went through a lot of trouble to burn this ROM onto a physical chip, put it on a board, put it into a cartridge, and make sure it would run on a standard NES. It's a one of a kind item! I can't find any place I would buy it, like my special Dr. Discord's Quest pony NES game was purchased. (The site just says "hello" if you go to it now so it's clearly gone, I couldn't get another copy of that even if I wanted it) You don't just do that. Was it part of a larger collection that got sold at some point, someone didn't know what it was, and the buyer just labeled it for sale? It's so weird. But I'm glad it worked, I just have to find a place to display it now.
Checked sites, read stories.
Got ready for tomorrow.
Two calls. One password thing, one "your mac is too old" thing. I'm going to sort out someone's new TV tomorrow, should be a blast.

Mon:
Work on loading a device to see if a bug fix got into the build. Latest build was from Saturday???
Yup, it was fixed all right. Way to go!

Otherwise, just waiting for the final build. I got some screenshots for Joe. Talked to Christina. Got some haul, about half a box? Grilled cheese for tomorrow, two buckets of mac & cheese for Wed/Thurs, of course a lot of breakfast stuff and more for my lunch, and plenty to bring to my parents. Next date is Friday. Good gravy.

Worked on translating spells mostly, came up with some clarifications and rules, so that's going okay.

Out to TV lady. It was hooked up fine, she just needed a bit of tutoring on what buttons to push. We got her remotes set up too, so the cable remote can turn the TV on/off. No more DVD/VCR unit, this TV doesn't have composite or ... what was the other one? Component! That was it.

Back here, checked sites. Ate dinner. No calls, yay! Got ready for tomorrow.
Xbox with the others. Need to order a new controller, my left stick is acting up. Sigh.

Tues:
Still no word on a final release to test. I did have some meetings, the usual Joe meeting. We went over some things, and I got closer to being able to do the demo for USDA. Should be fun! Worked with the developer guy to make sure authentication app worked okay, it does, so that's another hurdle passed.

Otherwise just more translating of spells. Got past elemental group, should be downhill from here.

Delivered food to my parents, could not find Penny the cat. They later did find her though. So she didn't get any pats from me, silly!

Back here checked sites.

Oh, ordered a new controller. Found an xbox one that has hall effect sensors, is corded, and has the audio jack. Why didn't I look more into that before I bought the gulikit one? Very odd. I thought they had the technology on lockdown and no one else used it. I thought wrong. Bad Robert. No cookie. I'm hungry, time for dinner.

Ate dinner.

Xbox, with the others.

Wed:
And still no word. What happened to needing to get this done? I don't get it.

So another day of working on spells. I'm more than halfway done. Sheesh, there's too many spells.

No demo news from Joe, and the lexmark device won't be ready until tomorrow either. Will it though? We'll see.

Loaded D8.0 to check a bug, a long login time they saw in the log so it was proven I wasn't incorrect but as usual the logs said nothing of use. So why have them? Anyway it's fine now I guess so I closed it.

Came back here, checked sites, ate dinner.

Finished up the latest season of Lower Decks.

Thurs:
Got the final build, and another haul! An overflowing box, so I'll have plenty to bring to my parents. Twice in one week? Madness. Next date is next Tuesday. Plenty of cheesecake. Mine, you can't have it!

Anyway, spent the day checking out the final build. Got through the cert thing, LDAP log, and the key authentication method. Wrote one bug, two actually, but only one related one. I can't encrypt an email with the cert on the key. But at the end of the day someone else said they could? Will need to investigate further.

Probably a cert issue. I hate certs.

Oh yeah, the man! The man came to do the thing! He did the thing! He replaced the thermostats in the room. All 3 of them, why the room needs three I have no idea. There's... air? Behind them? Weird. Anyway, maybe my room won't be a freaking fridge anymore and people that come into it can stop saying "oh, it's so cold in here!" Little tip, if you want to convince me you aren't an NPC, stop saying the same ding dang thing every freaking time you come into the room. Maybe sometimes say "wow, you keep it pretty chill in here don't you?" or "Are you trying to get me out of my clothes, it's so hot!" (this is ironic humor I think? Also maybe grounds for a lawsuit? Don't use that one at work, forget I mentioned it) Or "I know you give people the cold shoulder but this is ridiculous." No, it's the same line, spoken by everyone, every. Single. Time. But now, maybe, it can finally be over. They can switch to a new dialog tree at last.

Had the meetings of course. OneDrive people updated the libraries and now they can't select folders so that's about par for the course. So who knows when we'll get another look at that and if it'll be ready on schedule.

Oh, got the lexmark code too. They added the field to modify the cert date (ugh, certs again???) but when I selected the cert it didn't seem to be served. Odd. I've never really used these tiny little machines before, so maybe I did something wrong.

Back here I did the usual stuff, a kitty walk, sites, dinner, videos.

Looking ahead we'll have plenty to do tomorrow. Probably Monday and Tuesday as well.
I'll do the shopping, I didn't get anything last week I must need something this week? Oh right fake sugar. I should make a pie.... What was I saying? Oh right. See my parents. I don't know about game, nothing has been said. But Sean should be done with school stuff so he should be fine.

Then Saturday I believe I'm going over there for a movie and maybe to play the turtles game.

Otherwise making a pie. Cut the lawn. Watch more Sandman. Yeah, that should do it. Time to get ready for tomorrow and whatnot. See you all next time!