2020-09-17:

Fri:
As the hands thing worked in the morning I finished up testing on two devices. Looks good, and equitrac even cooperated by installing without too many issues. Went in and put one card with a password one card without just so I didn't have to change the settings on the server during the test. That worked fine, would test again.
And then, uh, not much else.
Wrote the next chapter.

Went and got cat food and litter, they didn't have two boxes of cat litter? That's odd. Had to get the plastic bucket for the second one. Oh well. Saw my parents, the usual.
Saw Gabe, but he stayed away.
Came back home, checked sites, the lady picked up the giant PC.
Did more writing until Sean wanted to do Borderlands.
Or not, Neil backed out. Must have had something better to do.
So I just kept writing. Guess I'm finally though whatever was stopping me before, looks like this thing might get wrapped up soon and we can move onto the Arsenal universe.

Sat:
Did the paperwork from last month right off, as I knew that would be quick. 6 jobs done, nice. I still haven't made enough to max out my IRA, at least officially. People send me checks in the mail sometimes, though I tell them they don't need to. So it could be a little higher unofficially. (Don't tell anybody! It's our secret!)
Couldn't get up after I finished that because I had a kitty, so I did more writing instead. Finished the next chapter. I'm on a roll here.
Once Oliver got off I cut the back lawn, won't do that too many more times this year it's getting cooler out there all the time. I'll need to do the front at least once more though. Next week.
Cleaned up the garage. Put all the stuff from the car that wasn't going back in the card upstairs in the designated computer parts area. You have to keep them away from other stuff, it bites.
Ordered a power supply, as I had used the one I had in the machine that was dropped off last week.
Sanded Mizzy's gift, didn't get very far. Took a razer blade to the paper, that helped a little. I'll have to keep at it, though clearly the "back" is going to become the "front" so I need to figure out how to make the plastic look a little better. It's uneven in spots, need something to fill it in with and then maybe paint it black to match the rest.
Played stupid Xenoblade for two hours, trying to reach and kill a certain monster. No luck. Watched a youtube video on how to get up there to him. You have to climb a tree, jump through the branches, jump on top of a mushroom, then a couple of smaller mushrooms (what is this, Mario?) then make it to a cliff ledge. Then jump around part of the cliff, climb another tree, and finally drop down to him. Easy, why didn't I think of that? I killed him before I went to bed, and good riddance. It's an RPG, not a platformer, I should not need to do this. I should be able to take out the sniper rifle I already have in inventory and blast him from anywhere on the map I can see him. But no, I'm not the right "class" yet, so I can't touch a sniper rifle for some reason. Perfectly reasonable. Your character, I guess, hits a button on themselves? and suddenly they totally forget how to use the weapons they were just using and now have to use a different type of weapon? So immersive.
My parents came to do window stuff, thank you parents. That's all metal coated and paninted up nicely now.
Game at 4:30 it went okay Sean tried to use a card to have the guy kill himself but I played a card to sacrifice myself to keep him alive. I nearly died, but nearly dead isn't dead. Now that was a good finish. The armor needs some repair though. I'm going to have to fly home, get the chest plate off, grab the flight ring out of it, then try and strip the rest of the armor off with one good arm. My legs are 2 into incapacitated, so I can't use them (hence the flight ring) and my right arm is nearly busted as well. It'll be a week until I'm healed up, but that's better than a month or more as a normal person. I'll have to fly around for about a day and a half until I can use my legs. Probably won't be able to repair the armor until after I'm at least mostly healed up. Hopefully I have enough groceries but I suppose I can just order some at this point.

Sun:
Played some Xenoblade died many times. With all the high level monsters roaming around that can one shot you it's easy to get into a tight space where you just can't get out of it without triggering them. And then you're right back where you were, in the tight space. I guess I could have fast traveled, but I needed to be right there! I mean come on, give me a break game. Can't figure out how to run from a battle, despite you just running around on the world map during battle. I mean stop shooting the thing we can't touch, AI, just stay with me and run past the thing. Aarg!
Cleaned a little, especially the table upstairs now that the current Christmas present work is done.
Finally ordered the last piece of Neil's gift, so it's really just cleaning up Mizzy's and my friends are done for the year.
Checked sites.
Worked on writing, trying to get through this reality to get to the next one. Grass is always greener, right? I'm to the last chapter I think, he's about to attack the fortress so that's pretty close to the end, right?
Made calls, I have through Thurs booked. Yay go me. The most bizarre part? All three people that called me are new customers. Three! I haven't had three new customers in a row in years. What the heck? Tomorrow is just a lost iMac password. Which of course means all his keychain passwords are going bye bye and if he doesn't remember the password for his Mac what makes you think he'll remember any password? Right, exactly, he won't. Great. Love having the week all booked before Monday, it's the greatest.
Got ready for tomorrow.

Mon:
Not much in the morning, just finishing up book 8. I'll need to read it over and put titles on the chapters. The boss guy I have 5,000 HP to so there was no way Lysanias could beat him. So I just had him wrapped up in metal and earth with bending until the fortress fell out of the sky. He had two clones out and Rosalina and did just over a hundred damage (which is quite respectable in any other situation) but I didn't want him to have to attack another 50 times. He couldn't! It would have been impossible. Anyway.

After lunch I worked a little on the voice system. I found a few things so it wasn't a total waste of time. Just mostly.

Left work, did the after work job. I was under the impression it was the Mac password he didn't know, but it turned out to be the google password. Uh, then how did you reset it 6 days ago? Got that done, hooked up their sound bar correctly, updated their machine, got the iCloud account on his google account not the old frontier account. Stuff like that. Seemed like nice enough people.

Came back here, one call, so I have a job for Sunday of all days. Yeeha. Checked sites, got ready for tomorrow.
Did more proofreading.

Tues:
Did so much work today. Like the hands thing, checking that out because it was crapping out. And, you know, other work related stuff.
And not proofreading chapter 8 and starting chapter 9. Nope. Just work. Workity work.

Came back here, after a hard day at work, doing work stuff, and did after work, work stuff, like changing a battery, and showing a guy his 2007 iMac worked just fine. Ugh, a core 2 duo. Maybe upgrade? I don't know, it's a thing. Oh, and making his machine not BSOD anymore, that was a fun one. Stupid windows.

Got ready for tomorrow, checked sites, was on the phone a half hour with a lady answering questions.

Then at 8:00 did Borderlands.
I couldn't connect to Sean's game, but they could connect to mine? What? No bugs, what are you talking about?

Wed:
Same again today, off and on with the hands things. We got it loaded (again? Why did it not show up for him despite being loaded?) to make sure it would run for a long time. Otherwise I'm up to chapter 4.

Went to see the lady about her full C: drive. It was full. Of what, you may ask? C:\Windows\Temp\cab* files. About 400GB of them. 16,000+. yeah, that's great, MS. Another shining example of just how good your programers are. Hopefully the little script I ran fixed it. I suppose if she ran CCleaner more often that would also take care of the problem. Stupid windows.

Came back here, a few sites checked, a few videos watched, a few more words written to the pages.
No calls? Oh thank goodness.
Got ready for bed and did Borderlands at 8:00.

Thurs:
Well squire, what news of the kingdom?
    Sir, sir, tis terrible news for sure! The castle dehumidifier has apparently leaked for a week or more and the carpet is all wet and smelly!
By thunder! Does the king know of this?
    Oh yes sir! He ordered his most powerful wizards to activate ye ol fan and help dry the carpet. And it is currently propped upon whatever was handy.
That's our king! He'll set it to rights for sure.
   But sir, tragedy! The fan worked for only the blink of an eye and then stopped! Nothing could be done.
We Gods, the very fates are against- boy!
   Yes sir?
Wherefore the plant?
   The what sir?
The plant I bade you to carry with you from the stable of course!
    Oh no sir! I have left it upon the sable wall and forgotten it. Oh sir, beat me terribly I beg of you that I may never be so stupid again!
You wish to be beaten?
    Oh sir, how I long for it. I will take my trousers down at-
Never mind, boy, never mind, we shall simply retrieve it on the morrow. No doubt it will still be there. Any other news?
    Nothing of note sir.

So, that happened.

Did a bit more work on the hands app today, got it loaded on a Y-soft controlled machine and made sure it worked. It did. That should really do it.
Tried to figure out what was wrong with out 3655. Looks like another dead drive, yay.  It just would sit there or reboot constantly. I plugged the serial cable into it and didn't like what it was telling me. The PC wouldn't even show it to do the diagnostic, which is never a good sign, and the raid controller showed in bright yellow "SMART event" or something to that effect. I found a spare in the cabinet which let it boot again. And emailed Ken if he heard anything about those replacement drives he ordered. Seems like it's going to be a theme.

Did writing. Had the two meetings, watered the plants. Was going to bring another of the "runner" plants home but walked right past it, forgot it.

Went to see email lady. Her windows live mail (2011) was totally messed up. It gave the usual non-informative error on receive but on send was just like, yeah, I'm not doing that. No error number I could look up? Nothing? Really? Thanks, MS, as usual a testament to your dedication to the needs of your customers. I figured I would move the mail to another folder, blow the account away, and try setting back up. Well, I moved the mail, checked the folder to see if it had moved, and suddenly couldn't open her mail anymore. Looking at the "Inbox" and "old inbox" folders showed them as empty. What? Where did they go? I hate you, MS. So she lost all her mail. I just whacked the folder for WLM completely, and set it up from scratch. At least chrome had remembered the password. Got home at 6:00.

To find the leak problem was worse than I had thought. I figured maybe the bucket was just a bit out of whack because there was water on the floor. I adjusted it, propped the carpet up, and got on with things. I mean I didn't want to cause a panic. Nope, checked it again today and then kept pulling the carpet back to find more wet. Sigh. How does it leak? The water drips down in to a bucket. Where else can it go?

Checked sites. Made calls, fixed it all over the interwebs, like a boss. So nothing for the weekend but what I already have. That's not so bad.

So tomorrow I'll revisit the hands app a little and make sure it made it through the night. Make sure it still logs in, that sort of thing.
I have a new request, checking jobs for a color based flaw I said they weren't going to go for months ago. So there's that to do.
And maybe some new Gabi stuff if they get it to me. So should be a busy day, unlike most of the days this week because why not just dump everything into one day? Why not?

See my parents, do the shopping, and come home for game. No Saturday game this week. So I can have my parents over for a movie. Probably do boarderlands after that, but who can say?

Writing is the plan for Saturday, now that I'm back into it. Maybe some Xenoblade, we'll see. Nothing big is in the works, that's for sure. Then one job Sunday.

September is half over already, people! Do you have your Christmas decorations up? You should! Let's see if we can fast track this year to a close and put it behind us. See you all next week.