2019-10-24:

Fri:
Finished up the icon tests, which I think are probably the most boring set of test cases we actually have. Honestly I probably should have worked on automating it, but I would still have to sit there and look at the icons so it wouldn't really have saved me any time.
Upgraded my machine to the latest software over lunch.
May have worked on the search. Thanks for telling me (in 2008) that some part of php had been disabled! I only found out searching google why the function wasn't returning what everyone said it would return.

The normal stuff after that, no bank but I got food and saw my parents.

Nothing tomorrow? No stuff? You have to order it? Ah.

Sean's, we're hopefully getting close to the mystery of who is causing trouble for the guild. It's just a time heist or two away!

Came back and fixed the search almost without effort. Just have to step away from it. (The problem was a combo of reusing someone else's code and my own stupidity and such. Anyway, give the search a whirl I don't think it ever really worked on the old site.)

Sat:
Realized late that I hadn't implemented the improvements to the code I had wanted. The original code was very (very) bizarre in that it broke out the search terms via if statement. Seven of them. Seven! That's just not right. I replaced it with a for loop that just looked at all the array contents sequentially. You know, like a sane person would do. Of course spelling errors worked against me again… Hard to spell check code, which is dumb because that's where it matters the most! Especially for a language that just lets you make up variable names wherever. It was like, okay, you want to use that name? Sure, it's 0 now but I don't care, maybe you do.

Anyway, you can now search for more than one thing, and the order doesn't even matter! (again, spelling, sigh)

I've used the words "love" and "windows" 510 times but "hate" and "windows" 777 times. Neat. I guess that means I've used “love” less than 200 times? I should just search for that, see what I get.

Even managed to resurrect the RSS feed, at the old URL. Stupid thing, there was some invisible character that was messing me up, and things are actually case sensitive? It's HTML, what sense does that make? Huh? Anyway it worked out finally. At 12:45. Time for lunch. Put the RSS feed icon on the site, how would anyone find it otherwise? That I thought of later, I was like… Wait...

Worked on the laptop, at least the fan stayed running.
Ordered a battery, it wasn't charging at all. I hope I can sell this thing.

Then left for Sean's b-day party.

Played some games, a pizza making game (I won) and a game about collecting arcane knowledge as long as you could. (I won again!)

Sun:
Got up and went to my 10:00. Just some general stuff, need to order them a new power cord because they lost one.

Home for lunch.

Cleaned up. Called the next one. Reached them after a bit.
Went over there.
Not much to do, but it's running now. Couldn't run the boot based disk check I wanted because their laptop keyboard doesn't work and their USB keyboard wasn't recognized past the BIOS prompt. I messed around with their BIOS settings and now it doesn't even work there, and there's no way to (easily) change it back. Great job, me. Get a new machine already.

Back here.

Got ready for tomorrow because Sean wanted to play Borderlands after supper.
Played Borderlands after supper.

Mon:
It's Oliver's anniversary! It's been 3 years since my sister found him in the rain and I gave him a new life. Does his original family miss “Queso?” Would they have tried to get his asthma under control as I have? Signs point to no.

Had the morning meeting. Got my next assignments, more performance testing because of course that's going to have changed a lot since the last time we did it. But he did get me out of the other performance test so I guess the news isn't all bad.

Also got tasked with looking into a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of info requests that had come in recently. That took a chunk of time. Got started capturing the video right after lunch, got done just before I was going to leave. Started putting some of the timings in. Debated staying a bit later but eh, tomorrow is another day. Would have gotten a bit further but Gina came to ask more questions about more info request bugs. Yeah, the problems exist everywhere. Have them fixed. Go do it. Shoo.

Came back here, did the usual after work stuff like eating dinner.
One call, setting up tablets for a guy.

Tues:
Spent all morning putting numbers into a database. Not boring at all!
Then wrote up the bugs I had seen while doing the performance tests. We're sliding backwards.
Then worked on more resolved bugs which somehow snuck in on Saturday? There will be more when the new version comes out tomorrow.
Didn't put too many back to reopened.

Then started the admin tests. Also not boring at all.

Out to see the guy about doorDash and grub hub to set them up. Hope it works out for him.

Back here (at 6:30 ugh) did my evening stuff and played Borderlands with Sean.

Wed:
Very busy today, I don't even know if I can recall all the crap I did.

I know I finished up the admin test cases. Apart from one or two I needed time to pass for.
I met with Gina about the other screens I should capture for the translation team.
I put the new version on. (No demo this week)
I captured the screens.
I looked into old bugs.
I wrote some new bugs. 19 total were written in the past 24 hours. I mean, come on, it's 4 year old software shouldn't we be finding less now? I wrote I think 3-4 of them?
It was crazy.

Meeting tomorrow, I don't know if my priority will be fixed bugs verified or the office depot performance test they talked Bob into making me do. Again. (I just did it two weeks ago, if you recall. Look at the archive it's just to the left of this text. It's a thing of beauty. Well, that may be going a bit too far.

Went out to my after work-work. Mostly account passwords, as usual. But I got his ancient 2009 iMac talking to gmail. He had a google account, signed up for another one rather than just adding a gmail address to it, all kinds of crazy. He's using greenlight but he's on wi-fi, and a really crappy wi-fi at that, so he's getting a tiny fraction of the bandwidth he's paying for.

Came back, had two calls. York again, from the sound of it their router? I don't know, he didn't answer when I called back. And someone with a variety of stuff I'll solve in a minute or less each. Great. So that went on Saturday (3 total so far now, I'm feeling it) and I'll stop by York tomorrow if I have to. I want to stop in to the sale, but I suppose that won't take too long? I can get there later than normal. I mean I don't really need to anything but work 24/7 right?

The usual after that, eating dinner, sites, and I'll do a bit of Borderlands all by my alonesome.

Thurs:
So the IRS saga continues. Oh, you thought it was over? No, no, poor, ragged soul. It's never over. Never. You'll recall how they kept asking me for stuff and I kept sending them stuff? And they finally gave up and sent me $2000? Remember that? Well, I got my "you need to enroll in that health care you've never used!" letter and they're not giving me the credit anymore. Can they tell me why? Not exactly. They can give me "some" reasons why it might be the case. Maybe I make too much now. (Not possible, my income only has gone down year over year, not up) Maybe I didn't include a certain form. (It's probably that. I looked and I don't have that form in my packet of documents. But I do have the form electronically, as I copied them all over because remember that one year they sent me nasty letters about how they couldn't read some boxes? Yeah, I type them and print them and send <em>those</em> copies now, so they can't complain about that.) So did I lose it between typing it in and sending the pages? But then wouldn't I still have the original, because I would have sent the copy? Did I just not include the copy? I guess it's possible.

I can file some kind of amended form but I'm guessing that's a lot of work and hassle, more than the savings from the credit would be. According to the letter of my cost ($350 a month) and my checkbook register of what I've been paying them all along ($297) it wasn't all that much. And the plan probably went up, so honestly what was the point? Saving $50? I guess that's nice but all the hassle around various forms I have to keep track of it doesn't seem worth it.

Anyway, I worked today to earn other companies money so let's talk about that! There was the usual morning meeting, then I went and did the office depot performance test. Shock and surprise, it's not all that different from before. I wrote up a weird bug relating to it though. I kept seeing the timer warning. Weird.

Then after lunch I went and tried to get my resolved bugs taken care of. I say tried, it didn't go very well. I need a machine with a bar code reader and we don't really have one, it's not a part of the current configuration, sorta. But I realized my old machine that's now in Canada has one, and went to get that one set up with the current software. That was going on as I left.

Went over to the sale, nothing really grabbed me. I was thinking if I had more time I would shop for the upcoming (haha, it is, don't you think it isn't) game but I had to get over to York. Or so I thought. Their machine magically fixed itself so I guess I should have checked my messages before I went over there. Sigh. I really miss that little phone box that got fried years ago. I really should replace it so I can log into it and get my messages.

Came back here after that, got the good news about my health care, had dinner, checked my sites, and if Sean's feeling up to it, playing some Borderlands. He's got a cold, so we don't know if we're doing tomorrow or not.

So tomorrow, work, finishing up my bugs if I can and doing whatever service is next.
Then bank, I haven't gone in some time but I only have… oh I have 7. That's more than I realized. One is from a month ago, hope it's still going to go through.
Shopping, I got gas today, and seeing my parents. As I said it's ??? on the Sean issue.

Then Saturday three appointments so far, and depending on how Sean is feeling he wanted to do board games. So we'll see about that. But maybe more work? I got one call that I haven't returned yet. Sigh. It's nearly 7:00, would like to eat dinner at some point?

So that's this weekend. Oh yeah, I've been back at Xerox 4 years. Not expecting a raise or anything, it's fine. Next week is Halloween, get your costumes ready.

See you all on that spooky night!