2024-07-18:

Fri:
Another quick OneDrive meeting, after installing and testing the final build. It looks good, hopefully they don't find anything wrong with it at the customer site again.

Still no answer on the admin privileged ask. Emailed Louis as he's standing in for Tim (my manger, off for 3 weeks? Yeah maybe take it one day at a time not 3 weeks in a block I see you like twice a year but when I need you, I sort of need you? But I digress) to see if he could do something. He was like "uh, what? I don't know what you're talking about." Sigh. I sent him the URL to the form I filled out, and he said he would look into it.

Dude.

Got the PPD with the new defaults, so Christina and I each took a machine and sort of built a test plan as we went as Kevin hasn't told us a darn thing about it. The email is going on about click counts and app overrides the driver and we're both like what the heck are you talking about? Our test was going to be 1) install the driver 2) are the defaults correct 3) does a print actually use the defaults. That's it. What's this lady going on about? See, we aren't driver testers. We actually have people for that. Why are they not doing this work, you ask? Good question! I asked Christina to ask Jen to get us some kind of test plan, like I have a template for cards does she have a template for drivers? But I don't think she has yet. So we're just kinda shooting in the dark.

And if she's testing it or has a team testing it, why the heck are we doing it?

I had to use a lap laptop to do this, I can't install anything anywhere else. So yeah, great stuff. So great. Christina did as well, but for a different reason. It's a windows11 driver. Supposedly. I mean it's a PPD, how can it be "for" anything? It literally stands for postscript printer description shouldn't it be universal? It's just a description. It's right there in the name.

Oh right, had to put a user back we deleted like two days ago. I emailed Ken. "Hey just put that user back, and this other group is complaining their cards don't work. Are we keeping track of how much time these new policies are wasting so management knows?" I'm keeping track on my own. Should be fun. He's emailing me about the cards next week, he just wanted his login back. It's all sooooooo stupid.

Got cat food, dropped off stuff because I got an okay haul, went shopping, and saw my sister. She's a day older now! But then, aren't we all?

Back for no game. Checked in with Warframe and Descendant, buying special stuff in Frame and inventory management in Descendant. Better to do it offline as it were, than make everyone wait. Though Mizzy loves to do it in game but you know, we can wait on her. It's fine.

Sat:
Picked berries. Got a pretty good amount too.
Then did more trimming. Always with the clingy vine. Found a nice tree that's grown fairly tall right by the back of the house. Sorry tree, you're going to have to go. It's an oak and it really can't be shouldn't be that close to the house. My one oak is huge, I can't let it get that out of control.
Did more reading. Stopping. I'm at chapter 192 and there are still 100 chapters to go. I just can't. Anyway, Eric made Gate so I'm not getting much more out of it rules wise for my magic system. I just have so many other things to do. I have to stop.

Did other things! Uh, mostly anime I have queued up to watch. I should have worked on the pony game, I know.

But I will say something good almost happened today! We were this close. I won't say what it is, we know- you know what it is. But I will ask; do you think this will move the needle on the republican fetish (you heard me) for selling guns to every Voldemort, Dick, and Harry Potter that wants one? ... ...  ... No? Yeah, you're probably right. It's going to be very interesting, in the coming days, to see what knots they tie themselves in to continue to justify it. "Well, we have to keep selling guns to every irresponsible American but when they get turned against us? That's a no-no, people, please don't do that. Pretty please?

Oh well. Maybe next time. After all, with one person getting this close, you have to wonder how many other "true patriots" are sitting there thinking "My aim is better than that guy's, I could have made the shot."

Hold on, this is worrying.



Huh, maybe there's more to the story?

Sun:
Picked a few more berries, took care of a few more weeds I missed yesterday.
Checked sites, did my reading for the day.
Then more anime. Wow, they really put everybody through the wringer in that series. And the whole thing was just them in the dungeon. Though thinking about it he did try to pick up a girl while in the dungeon so the title of the anime checks out. Oh well.
Pie. Made a pie, and put my first batch of this year's berries in the freezer. I should have at least 2 more bags? One picked, and there will be more to pick.
More anime.
Then getting ready for tomorrow. No calls, yay!

Mon:
Spent almost 2 hours getting that guy's cards working again. I had to add one user back, of course he picked that one to test out first. I had mistyped the UPN (I didn't get the .A on the end) so it was giving an error. Finally figured it out. Also that when you change the password, there's a tiny checkbox to make sure the user doesn't have to change it on next login. I know to uncheck that now.

Not much else. I worked on the pony game, just solidifying a few things.

Waited for my admin access to come in. Still nothing, but it did move forward I guess? It can take 15 minutes to a couple of hours to go through? Why? What's preventing it? Has it gone through? The email was very confusing. Does my manger need to approve it or has it been approved? I still don't know!

Then home. Checked sites, ate dinner.

It's weird. Those on the left are saying things like "political violence is never the answer" but isn't our second amendment saying the exact opposite? (Don't ask what the right is saying, it's all the nonsense you would expect, like "oh don't pay attention to the fact he was republican" and "Joe Biden pulled the trigger!" Whatever)

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Isn't this saying that the reason you can keep all these guns around is because if you don't like your government, you need the tools to change it? That's the "security of a free State" part. That you shouldn't have an imbalance of power where the federal government can enact laws like, I don't know presidents becoming kings overnight to choose a random example, and you would be powerless to stop it?

So yes, please tell me how "political violence is never the answer" when that statement is right there, brandied about by every right winger arguing we should return to the wild west and solve all our problems with a shootout at high noon. You can't have it both ways. You can't have a patriot deciding one of his leaders has gone too far (again, the shooter was republican) and exercising his Second Amendment rights to remove that threat, while simultaneously telling me violence isn't the answer. The "founding fathers" believed it was. They wouldn't have allowed "the people to keep and bear arms" otherwise.

So yeah, get rid of that second amendment, and then we can talk about how violence isn't the answer.

Tues:
Admin access finally came in. Had to sacrifice a goat but it works. And in fact it's working out better than I had planned, or basically how I hoped it would. With VirtualBox installed I wasn't sure if it would pick up the card readers so I installed one of the tools after setting it up. It saw the card! Nice. You basically use the menu for hardware and tell it "that USB device listed there, use it here in the virtual environment" and it does. So I installed only a bare minimum on the "real" machine and the rest of my stuff is now over on the virtual machine, where they can't stop me installing other stuff or updating things without crawling to IT and asking "Oh sir, may I please have just a drop of admin access? Only for a moment? Please sir? I've been ever so good lately you can ask anyone." Thus sidestepping the entire issue. The only stuff on the laptop (like 3 things) are stuff I didn't feel was a good fit for the VM and I never update anyway. I think I got it all done. Got shared folders set up, looks like it'll work out. I won't use the old laptop all day tomorrow, see if I miss anything.

Otherwise went to a Joe meeting. Saw a quick demo of stuff we simply ported to D8.0 and I had already tested. They found some bugs??? Uh, okay? Wrote up one of them.

Met with the onedrive people, they installed the update and please Gorf let it work out for them. Oh, have you met Gorf?

Got a haul, right at the end of the day so I took it straight away to my parent's house. Got back here.

Checked sites, had dinner.

Worked on the pony game. I think I have everything in place! Got more pictures, made more tweaks.

Then xbox. Somewhat productive, we actually got a few of the items we were going for.

Wed:
Spent the whole day with the new laptop, so far so good.

No meetings, but did get clarity on some SNMP stuff, and wrote a cloning bug.

With the release loaded and a stack of bugs to verify I figured I would do work (*gasp I know*) and clear the list out. So I worked on that part of the day.

More pony stuff write up. And more spells put into the modular magic system document.

Christina is gone for the next couple of days. Taking time off of work, what a loser am I right?

I'm not? Oh, right that's a thing normal people do. Weird. Forgot about that.

Got back home, checked sites, ate dinner.

Little more pony stuff, I think I'm set. I just hope they don't go off on some tangent I haven't prepared for. It's always a risk.

Just one call, the usual scam so a reboot solved it.

Thurs:
The usual meetings today. Lots of people are out, and even more people are out tomorrow!

No bad news yet from the onedrive people, but they haven't done much yet.

Worked on spells and on finding out why VirtualBox was sorta slow. Figured it shouldn't be. Well I learned more about type 1 and 2 hypervisor than I ever wanted to. Tried MS's own Hyper-V after converting my disk image over. It blue screened, what a shock. Allowed it to rebuild the whole thing. Turned it off. Back on. It gave an error message. Wasn't going to work anyway, it can't do the USB passthrough and it needed admin privileges just to open. Fail. Leave it to MS to offer an inferior product yet make it so you can't turn that product off so the superior product can run properly. Weird!

Thought I was going to get a haul a day early, the guy was there changing the stuff when I went for my lunch beverage. Nope. He just shoved the 16th stuff to the side and packed the fridge with like 3 dozen wraps. Like, so many wraps. Are there many wraps in my future?

Anything actually work related? Today? Hummm. Not that I can recall. Oh wait I did check out one more bug, it's half fixed so great job.

Came back home, checked sites. Picked a few berries, not many left out there. And did a kitty walk. Haven't done one in a while!

I can look ahead today! Unlike last week.

Let's see, game tomorrow after shopping and seeing my parents. Pyre was pushed off until ... checks date ... 8/10 for reasons unexplained. But maybe twice in August? So won't be doing that. I'll take cans in, my can is full, clean, have my parents over, more yard stuff. I need to cut the front. Not the grass, just the tall weeds. Sigh.

Sunday the usual readings, and working on pony episode 4. Should be a fun one? Wonder if it needs more padding out? Oh I need to work on Christmas gifts as well. The one I've figured out, anyway. I'll have to make the model myself, I didn't find one. Blender don't fail me now! Huh, I just had the most amazing idea... It could work.

Next week is taking Tinker in. I think that about wraps up this week. See you next time.