2020-09-24:

Fri:
No gabi code, they had some emergency with their already shipped product so our as yet unreleased product took the back seat.
Finished up the hands app, it ran fine. I think we can ship it out, probably won't do anything else with it.
Did another color test, turns out it's not the color itself, it's their word doc that looks terrible printed, for some reason. Go figure. Kevin came in to take the results, I admit it's odd that it happens, shouldn't the color in one document that's the same as the color in another document print the same way in both documents? That's what I would expect.
Writing.
Then left, did the shopping, and saw my parents. No Gabe. They're going so I got the rundown on Jenny and such. "Put this cat here, then do this cat over here..." I hope they leave me some notes.
Came back here, put stuff away, did game.
Got out from underground via the teleporter, rescued a dude from some trolls, who were disguised as ocrs at the time. You had to be there.


Sat:
Cleaning, scrubbed off the oven burner pieces. Of course, now the oven itself looks terrible. Well, I have a job for next week I guess. Got everything pretty for my parents coming over.
The journeyman project CD website is vanished. He who hesitates... Sean was saying he wanted it, so I figured I would throw it in with his birthday present. Nope. I guess not. Wonder what happened?
Ordered a battery for my UPS that's beeping at me again. They don't last long do they? Or maybe they do, I'm going to put a note on it this time because while I suppose I could look it up and find out when it was the last time I ordered batteries, that sounds like work. I'll just save future me the trouble and write it right on there.
Make journal entry for the 3rd night, just after we get out of the tunnel about killing the mind flayer guy.
Did some writing.
Played some Xenoblade. Got a little further in the story killing 3 generic peons but then the boss appeared and totally killed me. Thanks, game. Ironically her name is Geotia, the name of the magical orbs in the orbs game. Weird. Doing some grinding, I guess. Can't find certain places to put signal probes. Huh. Creatures are either too low level to bother with or will one shot me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but until I hit level 20 (in 3 levels) I can't buy new guns. It's a weird 10 level jump for guns. Like the sniper rifle thing, "oh, you just can't handle that very similar gun to your own until you go kill twenty more pig monsters." Oh, okay?
Ate dinner.
Did more writing.
Parents came. My father figured out that you take the front of the dehumidifier off, not the back, stupid, so we cleaned it out. Boy it was yucky. I bet it's not really leaking, it was just flooded with water from all the crud in the top part and spilling out. But the bucket still does leak I found that out so we'll have to do something about that. The old sealant just peeled right off in one clump so clearly it wasn't sticking anymore. Do I mix up more resin and pour it in there (my stuff is pretty old by now) or try some other kind of sealer? Hummmmmm.
Watched a movie, the 2011 Muppet movie, maybe we'll watch the 2014 one next time to keep the ball rolling.
Then did more Borderlands. Close to the end, but not there yet.

Sun:
Worked on the bucket. I'm still not sure if I want to pour more stuff into the bottom like I did last time or get some kind of water sealer. The stuff I have for tubs says "not for below the water line" so obviously it's not waterproof enough to be used. I'll have to track down something else. Wait, what did I use for my little aquarium Mac I made like 20 years ago? I'll have to look into that. That stuff would probably do the job. Would I get it at a pet store?
Checked sites, videos.
Did some writing.
Went out at 1:00 for iMac guy. Strange malware and redirection on the back button in Safari. He would do a search in google, then hit the back button. Instead of going back to google he would wind up in Bing, or Yahoo. But why? It's still the same search, with mostly the same results. What is being accomplish here? But he had mbam, so I updated it and ran it. One thing found and removed and the problem stopped. Huh. Wonder where he got it from? He had some odd apps on there, so maybe from that?
Played more Xenoblade. I found, very near the spawn point, two large creatures I can run to in about a minute. After vaulting over a rhino, love doing that. Run past the pig monsters, vault the rhino, skip the water by jumping onto the cliff and around, behind the dozing creature, up the hill, and there they are. I'm strong enough now that even if both join the fight (I try to attack when one is far away so it doesn't see us) I can win most of the time. They give about 500XP for the pair, and as it's about 2000 to raise a level I can kill them, fast travel back to the point, run over there, kill them, fast travel, etc. It's not ideal, but it will work to raise me to 20 in the most efficiant way possible. I thought those days were over, I remember grinding in FF (one, for you youngsters out there) and it was annoying then. It's annoying now. But given how the boss wiped the floor with me what other choice do I have? Can't buy new weapons until 20 because reasons, so this is what you've pushed me into game. Of course, I'm doing all this while the boss lady just, what, stands around waiting for me to come back? Realistically she would be long gone by now. RPGs are weird.
Wrote. Got through rescuing the lady from the coma so she'll be on the team now along with her husband the doctor super healer. Oh, couldn't heal your wife though, so what good are you?
Many calls, sigh. Ellen, making her CD and showing her, again how to move her emails. Another person with a new printer that I don't think is connected to the wi-fi. Here's a tip, don't buy a printer without a control panel on the front. There's no way to tell anything on it because there's just a little 8 segment display on there. Stupid. And this was $150? Crap! Made an appointment for tomorrow, a half hour away, yay.

Mon:
So what was today's big excitement? I'll tell you, but you have to go sit down. Are you sitting?
Are you?
Okay, here it is. Today's big excitement slash achievement was:


Moving a chair from Joe's cube to the west entrance so he could take it home with him.

Yes, friends, that was my sacred duty today. And the biggest win.

Otherwise the hands thing was posted literally while I was testing it. I was putting the old version on machines to make sure the upgrade would go okay, walked across the hall, and the new version was there for install. Wow. So quickness. So I went back across and did the upgrade. Our stuff is terrible, by the way. Older machines (all of them) give a DNS error when you open the app store. Some altalinks also give the error. Some work. Two of them hung at a black screen. One of them didn't have it at all. Great job all around, people.

That was pretty much today. Glad I have writing to do or there would be not that much to do. Maybe we'll get the touch-free copy app? Some voice stuff Wednesday if they don't miss that deadline.

Waited too long to make Squeaker's appointment. They came back with Oct 9th, a Friday so no having dinner with my parents that night.
I'll have to do the shopping a day early too.

Went out to see about the dead HD. Yup, it was dead. Funny how that happens, how it works one day and doesn't the next. The man who owned the drive made this observation somehow ignoring that yes, that's how everything has even broken or will ever break in your life. Even you. One day you get up as normal. The next you do not. That's what living in a entrophic universe means for us fleshbags.

Came back, checked sites, dinner.

One lady had a laptop that was buzzing, but it wasn't buzzing now. And her backup drive apparently died in like February? And windows never notified her, or she ignored it? So I'm ordering her a new one.

The other call was router lady. Still doesn't have the password, and doesn't have what the default wireless password would be to reset it. She'll probably have to plug it in. I should just go over there...

But with no appointment tomorrow I can go buy sealing stuff and maybe get my dehumidifier working. Sorry, my "moisture vaporator" as they say.

Got ready for bed, and playing game with the crew. We played the game we wanted to just a few times, and then couldn't reach the server anymore. Sigh.

Tues:
Biggest excitement today was for some reason getting 4 more altalink machines. With no explanation. Just dropped in the center of the room and they left. Thanks? I guess? I mean I suppose it's cool, I only had one in my room so now I have 5. But it's weird to get that many at one time.

Otherwise, nothing. No copy app, and the voice thing is tomorrow hopefully.

No job, went to get waterproof sealer. Found some that I can use that's made for boats, that should do the job. 24 hours later we'll see. It's weird that so many chemical processes take exactly 24 hours. Don't you find? What if our planet had revolved every 25 hours? Would it now take that long? Or 23? Why is this number magical?

Three calls, email lady who says it's happening again. Yay. Router lady, still no info, yay! And the carpet guy, haven't heard from in awhile. Got ready for tomorrow as early as I could because it's going to be a long night.

It wasn't because I didn't actually reach 2 of the three. Huh. At least at 8:00 when we were supposed to start.
So I killed those two 500xp creatures for an hour. Only a couple more times and I'm level 20 and can get some new gear. Then I'll go back and hopefully beat up that lady who beat me up before.

Wed:
Got the new voice code, not as many fixes as I would have liked, but when does that happen. Of course, then it went bad.
Here was me, thinking to myself, self, with all these new altaLinks in this room why not move your voice system over here? Then you can give that machine that is on the calendar back, and just take over one of these that is not for the months of testing we still have to go. Yes, why not do that, self? So I did that. I set it all up, and then realized, oh, the cert was specifically made for that IP and it won't work over here. Neato.

So I emailed the guy to see how difficult a new cert would be. He said he would get it to me tomorrow.
I tell ya, if you have a problem, it's a cert problem.

So I finished up the latest chapter and was just going over it when Louis emailed and said the less copy app was ready for testing. Hey, I can do stuff after all! So I got that, and got invited to a demo a minute after that. During the demo we... uh... found a few bugs! Yay! So I had to do part of the demo because only I could put paper in the machine because only I was there at work. Slackers, why aren't they at work? Trump's virus response grade he gave himself was an "A" so it's over, right? Over? Right? Oh, what's that, we hit more than 200,000 dead? Great, thanks Trump.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right. So after that I took it for a quick spin. Wrote up a few things I saw and left.

Came back here, checked sites, the bucket was cured so I put it back. Put some tape on it instead of three Macs to try and stop the squeaking. So far so good. We'll have to see about a leak of course. Basically got ready for tomorrow super early because I'm going to bed early and I still have yesterday's people to call, plus one other one today. Yay! So that's going to be fun.

Did finally get to play at 8:00ish and we did get through the new content. Tried to get through the takedown but I think I died while being shoved off a ledge in the latter half and it was 10:00 so I went to bed.

Thurs:
Got up and went to see my parent's babies. Wait, I'm my parent's baby! You know what I mean. Got everybody fed, didn't even see Onix hope he's not dead somewhere.

Went in to work. Got started on the actual test cases for the copy app. Found a few things. Including how to reproduce the issue with the defaults button. Nice. He said that helped him figure out where the fault was so that was a win. Got it tested on two machines, so that's about half the total I'll need to do. Oh, sure, I should test it on a wide variety of discovery devices and I'm sure I'll spot check it everywhere but I'm not doing the full test everywhere. It's the same app. I mean come on.

Of course had the meetings today and watered the (slightly less) plants. A bunch were gone, what was it get your plants week and no one told me? Like bring your chair home day from before? Well, whatever.

Came home, checked sites, no calls! (Two hang ups, they don't count) Yay! Just one person to call back from yesterday about their stupid AOL password.


So looking to the future I'll be up feeding kittens through Sunday. Tomorrow more of the copy app and maybe if I get the cert (which he promised me today and didn't deliver) I'll look into the voice changes. Next week we should get the first build of the new "we're not as stupid as we look honest" card ATR string generic card selection feature. We never should have done it the way we did. But that's true of so many things, isn't it? So I want to get this stuff out of the way for that. Then over the weekend, I don't know? Game Friday for sure, don't know about Saturday this would be the week for it.

Probably writing, working on Mizzy's gift I think the front is okay needs a little more painting but otherwise it's... passable? The back needs more sanding though let the light through. Otherwise not much else. Maybe some Xenoblade as I'm close to 20.

Yup, that was it. I mean I did that tonight. Beat them easily this time, being 4 levels above your opponent and outnumbering them is pretty much the best place to be when you want to beat the snot of them. Nothing can stop me now! *stops playing* Okay you know what I mean.

Writing of course, I know what the next part is going to be. Just not how they're going to solve it. Ah well, they'll think of something I guess.

See you next week, which is also next month, which is also October (full moon on Halloween!) and only three months until Christmas. Can we finally put 2020 behind us? Pretty please?