2025-02-27:

Fri:
Had the demo.
Did more writing.
Had an hour meeting with Don and Christina about this stupid oneDrive testing Karen wants us to do. Has she forgotten the months of testing we put into it, three years ago? The almost 300 bugs we reported? Don said he would take our feedback to her for more specifics, like what specifically she wants us to do.
Got cat food and litter. Turned in my lotto tickets. Then saw my parents.
Came back here, but did FF7, as Sean wasn't quite feeling up to it.


Sat:
Mouse #2 loves his wheel! Found it right away, ran in it past when I got up and T-mouse gave up. Seems to run the opposite direction T-Mouse does. Weird. Maybe one is right handed and the other is left handed?

Sadly, while Sean was willing to have us over as his sore throat was gone Stan said he wasn't feeling up to it, so we did not do game today. Next date for that game: March 22nd.

Instead I did FF7 all day. I am finally in chapter 9 but not yet done with the chapter 8 area. They broke it in half, though I am more than half done. Sheesh, long chapters. At least it was a LOT of story this time, mixed in with the saucer stuff. Still need to go back to the gold saucer, do more races to get more GP and get the materia I have my eye on. Though... I got one when Cait Sith joined the party. So I do I really need another? I would like another...

It's 2,500 GP. Everything else of use is below 100.

Of course I did a few other things, checking sites, eating. But mostly it was FF7. The cactus hitting game annoyed me for a bit. I don't mind the mini-games, for the most part. Not sure why the game is more mini-games that actual game but let's push past that for now. The first time I did the cactus hitting game Yuffie did it. This is right and correct. She's a combat character, fast and resonably strong. But the second time Aerith said she wanted to do it. And I was sitting there shaking my head like, no, not her. Love you to death Aeirth but (too soon?) a combat character you're not. She does have a lighting attack that can hit multiple targets so I led with that. And it went fine, there's these different wards (light/dark) she can put up. (Where did she learn these wards? Don't think about it) The problem is the big 500 point ones. Now you can complete the stage just smacking one 500 point cactus if you don't get hit by anything in the stage. Because you lose 20 points. No hit=just enough points. But of course you're going to get hit. So you have to smack the second 500 one. He has several attacks. Running around like a maniac, an earth stomp that knocks you over, and trying to fall on top of you. This is the attack you want, because he can't get up easily. Then you can smack him all you want. Which attack he does, of course, is random. I watched a video and the guy completed it by sheer luck with 2 seconds left because the thing fell over. There was no strategy he used that was different from mine, I couldn't get mine to fall over. Tried again and again. Finally got him to fall over and smacked him enough with 5 seconds left on the clock. It's just luck based if the algorithm chooses the "fall over" attack in time for you to smack the thing. If you're going to do mini-games, don't make them random like that. It's annoying.

Sun:
And today was getting the things done day.
Got the reading done.
Then did the paperwork and other bankbook stuff.
Couldn't do meter reads yet, system was down. I did get them in before bed.
Looked at mousetrap, and video of mouse going into and out of mousetrap without triggering the dang thing. Gurr...
We could build a better mousetrap. A circular cover over bait which is in the center. Have either a pressure plate or an IR sensor inside the cover. The mouse gets in the middle of the cover and the cover falls, locking down with magnets. Mouse wouldn't be able to reach the edge of the cover before it falls (??) and boom, one trapped mouse. Yes it would be more complex, which usually is a bad thing, but this "gravity assist" one doesn't seem to do anything. Mouse just goes in and out of it.

Finally put up the pony panels from the old calendar.

Finished the proofread from Friday and sent chapters to Alyx.

Did a magicraft run. Don't know how that youtuber does it. His damage numbers are so much crazier than mine. And he has 3 columns of relics half the time. Crazy.

Ate dinner.

Got ready for tomorrow.

One call, 1/2 hour on the phone but it's all fine.

Who isn't fine is Oliver, who is constipated again. Neat! Gave him extra medicine and I'll give him more tomorrow morning. So great, two days before his surgery. The Vet: "Please be aware that Monday 2/24/25, the office will be short staffed due to multiple employees being out sick." Great! This year is going really great. Glad it'll be over soon. *does a double take* It's not even March????
Sean wants to do Xbox.

Mon:
Oliver still not feeling well. Gave him medicine. Honestly wonder if it's doing anything, given this keeps happening. I thought it was because of the scratching post fibers he was always chewing on but no. His paws don't get messed up since I moved the box. He doesn't chew on stuff. Why does he still get blocked up???
Warming up! 40s, so not terrible out. Not great, but not terrible. Ice everywhere of course.
Called RG&E. The nice lady couldn't schedule my meter change. She could take away the opt-out that shouldn't have even been there for another two weeks, and generate some kind of ticket so the installer would call me. Why is this so complicated? Why can't anyone do anything? Why, every time you call a company do you have to press through 8 menus to reach the person that can't actually do the thing you need to do? It's very odd.
Worked with Christina to get SSO on onedrive working. Hey! We didn't. Yay? We'll have to ask Hunter what's going on. No error message, just no prompt. We had trouble setting it up before, and the server got wiped so we're doing it all from scratch again. It's been 3 years, you think we remember what we did?

No writing. Wasn't in the mood. Too worried about Oliver. I know I can't do anything, and taking him in Wednesday hopefully they'll be able to do that as well as the rest of it. But I'm still not in a good place for it. Just did reading.

Mouse #2 is really on the move. He was running when I got home. You're nocturnal, silly!

Oliver still blocked up. Gave him more med.

Another hour on the phone. Two calls. So actually longer than that. The one guy it seems has a RAM problem, which was found by the built in diagnostics, for a wonder. Sadly, HP took a page out of Apple's playbook. RAM is soldered on. Throw it in the garbage.

More FF7, as if there was some doubt.
Almost done with the area!

Went to bed early, bank a little sleep because I'm doing xbox tomorrow and have to get up early on Wed. That's how that works, right?

Tues:
No good news on the Oliver front. He's still straining.

Christina is still struggling to get SSO working on onedrive, and I don't think Karen has gotten back to Don anyway so that's fine.

Did some writing today. Almost got a chapter done. Kept getting interrupted, by like work stuff, and Ken coming over, and Christina coming over. So rude. Had the Joe meeting.

No call from RG&E.

Went home at noon to tend to Oliver. He'll mostly sit still while I squirt water up his butt, so that's what I've been doing. Hope to knock something lose in there. No luck.

Went to good will, found a few goodies.

Back here, more water. No movement. I don't even know if we should do the surgery, he's not really eaten since Sunday. We'll see what they say. I've big a big note taped to the carrier, and I'll be sure to tell the tech and hopefully she'll tell the doctor.

Checked sites, ate dinner.

Did a bit of Magicraft while I was waiting on Sean. Much happier with how this build is going.

Then xbox.

Wed:
Got up early to bring Oliver in. There's good news and okay news there.

Good news is, the blockage was removed! She's agreed that I can increase his dose to 2 times a day to help prevent this happening again. I'm also going to try and limit dry food, give him more churu as treats as those are wet. Just to get him all the moisture I can.
Okay news is she also agreed doing the surgery/teeth now would be inadvisable and so we held off. We want him at his best for it. She also wants a $400 blood test for a bacterial infection that could be causing his anemia.

Not much at work, not even any meetings. Still no SSO so we're not doing onedrive yet.

Put in the corrections from Alyx, replied to their email, and wrote the next 2 chapters. I had an idea for a direction of the story as they were unhappy with the dialog surrounding one character. So I changed the entire world.

Stayed late, no sense going home, then vet, then back. I'll just leave early tomorrow.

To go to second work! Yay! Ugh. Had one call, scanner issue I guess. He's only 6 minutes from work though, it's okay.

Did the sites, ate dinner. Had to finish the Magicraft run, did not do FF7. So very happy with the run. I beat the producer the proper way, rather than cheesing him. It was close but I got him!

Thurs:
Still no action on the SSO, but they are "looking into it." Okay.

Had the usual meetings, OneDrive and status. Nothing exciting there.

Worked on the next chapter, and proofreading the last one. Didn't quite get the chapter done.

Oliver is doing better. Eating more and not laying around as much. So that's good.

Yeah, just sort of a normal day.

Went to see scanner guy. It's one of those tank epsons. The wi-fi doesn't work, and it won't print. Just sits there at "printing" and doing nothing. Got the scanner working though, so he can scan his stuff. Slowly.

Came back here, checked sites, had dinner.

Then FF7, making it to a new area. And we start the whole process all over again.

Let's look ahead. Feb is done! Bye. Tomorrow is the usual, I'll do the shopping, see my parents. Probably stop at the bank, I have 3 checks to put in, one from the 8th so it should probably go in soon. Then run game, I'll have to make sure I have the dungeon ready (I'm sure I do I had it ready 3 weeks ago) and come up with a few things in case they go looking for the Changlings. I have the plot ready, no quest or anything just them saying what they did so no big deal.

Saturday should be the color game. Otherwise no big plans.

Sunday do the paperwork so I can calculate the sales tax. Do the reading. Check oliver's inhaler prescription, I think the vet will need to write another one. It's about time to order it.

That takes us into March. See you then.