2020-10-08:

Fri:
Did a various number of things today. Did some more looking at the copy app, wrote up a few things.
Wrote up the fact our 2-1 sided copy is backwards from how Versalink does it. Nothing will happen. I mean I would be happy enough if they changed the picture to match what the machine actually does. But our machines continuing to produce backwards results is crazy. What, do customers just laugh at us "ha ha xerox can't even make their machines copy pages correctly" or what? How am I the only one complaining about this?
Looked a little at the card stuff, there was a request by Joe I needed to check something. Turning things on one way gives a warning, turning them on the other way does not. At least we're consistently backwards I guess?
And saw if a certain NVM value would turn USB ports off. Important stuff.

Got groceries, saw my parents. Gabe and Onix too! One more briefly than the other, I'll let you all guess which one was which.
Came back, put stuff away. Set up router. Trying to reset the password it asked for the serial number, which I gave it. Then it asked for the "security questions." What? I already gave you a number off the bottom of the thing. I clearly have physical access to the unit, why are you making me jump through all these hoops? So I hit the reset button (properly this time I guess, I had done it before but I guess not long enough or something because it still wasn't reset) and put my own stupid questions on it. Working fine now, can't imagine why they got rid of it. Got ready for game. Despite not having anything planned it still went to 11:30.

Sat:
Went over to see about the iPad. Very strange, apps just wouldn't download, like she said. The "get" button would turn into the cloud button, but nothing would happen. I tried various things but nothing worked. I had to burn it to the ground and restore from backup, which luckily worked just fine. It's the same software release, it can't have been a setting thing because there's a separate "reset all settings" I tried that didn't work. It knew the new speedtest app I tried to download (just to try something she had never downloaded) had to be installed, so it was connected to the account and everything. So what was the holdup?

Came back here, ate lunch.

Next one was indeed as horrible as I imagined. A system restore didn't help, thanks for that one MS it never does. Well, it did that one time, maybe? Anyway. Of course it just sat there with a progress bar that tells you nothing. It really can't say how many things it still has to do? It must know, because it has to do them. So why can't it tell us? Then it changed to "finishing up" and I was like, "ah, it's almost done!" Nope. It stayed like that for far longer than I would have liked, then went to "finalizing" and I was like, "are you really though?" But it finally said it worked. Did it though? No. It still blue screened on boot. So I took it home to copy her stuff off and reload it. What a shock! It's copying really slowly, I guess, linux isn't showing me a progress indicator. Odd. I think most of her stuff, if not all of it, was on OneDrive anyway. Well, I wiped it after the copy finally finished. No more blue screen. Another triumph MS.
Upgraded it, didn't go through her drive I'll do that tomorrow.

I finished chapter 11, two people almost died in the attack. I though one had, but I forgot she probably has a DTR of 7 not 1 so her health would be higher. So I just had her be stunned after some shots to the head. The doctor gets to keep his wife I guess.

No parents, my father wasn't feeling well from his shingles vaccine shot. Still better than the alternative, dad! I watched a FF7 remake playthrough for a bit, as SE doesn't want to release the PC version and take my money. Skipped some bits he was just sitting there talking or looking at posters. Dude, you're not the Dark Souls lore guy wondering about bricks being left next to unfinished walls and why they never finished them, so stop pretending you are and play the stupid game! I want to see Aerith again!

Sun:
Wrote the next chapter, up to 12 so it's going fine.

Finished up the PC, I'll bring it back to her Monday if she's available.
Moved the plants upstairs. Thought about getting the christmas decorations out, but no, decided that might be going a little too far. Can you blame me for wanting it to all be over? I mean 2020, I'm not slitting my wrists or anything.
Ordered another SSD and a battery for the laptop the lady gave me to get working. She just had it in a closet.
Played some Xenoblade. It suffers from Skyrim syndrome something bad. "Go over here." "Sure." *looks in that direction" "UH, there's a huge mountain range in that direction."
I'm looking for this one part to fix a helicopter, right? So I'm running around, and I find a small outpost. What do I see in that outpost? Right, a freaking helicopter. Just go over there and rescue those two guys, will you? Don't make me try and scale a mountain to get to the north that I seemingly can't reach anyway because it's all massive cliffs in my way. Why is it massive cliffs? We're running around an area the size of where I live, are there massive cliffs everywhere? No. There's the bay, and that cliff would actually be easily climbable it's covered with trees and is a fairly gradual slope. Otherwise, flat. The earth is flat! Wait, did I just say that? Anyway, what's with these sheer cliffs all over the place?
Got ready for tomorrow, not sure what I'll do but I'll think of something.
Had a little time left, figured out where to go to get the stupid machine part they needed. (Watched a youtube video.) Great game design there. Stupid follow ball. Oh, it'll (sometimes) take you where you need to go, but this was a world collectible you're just supposed to wander around and find. It's not a waypoint, so the ball is useless. Why couldn't I head back to base where they were sure to have one somewhere, instead of wandering around in the wild to find a rusty one that's been sitting out in the rain for who knows how long? Or just borrow the one from the chopper I saw just sitting there, get them back to base, and bring the part back to the chopper I borrowed it from? REASONS Okay, sure. On the bright side I picked up 6 of some other RNG collectible I needed from a mission I took before I realized taking missions with collectables was dumb, because it's RNG and they'll just sit there in your mission log forever. So that was a nice benefit.

Mon:
Finished up this round of testing for the card dropdown, no real problems except for the card reader not cooperating at the end. I tried another, maybe that card reader isn't supported in that configuration? Who knows? Otherwise I'll get another version of the copy app, well I got another version but it was 3:30 at that point, so I'll do that tomorrow morning.
This morning I tried to save a machine that just boots up to "enter current password" which is not ideal. Tried loading it four different files and none worked. Sigh. The other machine that needed work was one with 'fatal error, machine can't boot" but that took an upgrade file and it was fine.

Dropped off the tower, she can't find her office CDs of course. Didn't know her wi-fi password. Of course. Did know her MS account password though, so she's one for three.

Then dropped off a keyboard for the lady right down the street. I just gave her that keyboard, now some keys don't work. What did she do to it?

Got back, had no calls, was happy. Then got two calls. Was not so happy.

Checked sites. Made calls.
Made an appointment for nasty Hilton. The general 'it's slow' complaint, great, guess what it needs? Not a tuneup, but a new drive, an SSD. So I'll go all the way out there for nothing. Mark my words.

Got ready for tomorrow so I could try Among us with the crew again.
We joined a bigger crew. But is bigger, better?

Tues:
As promised, I loaded the new version of the copy app and looked at the bugs that had been fixed. All but one was, so that's progress. Wrote up a few more things i had noticed though. Tested it on a new device, the full test I mean, so it was fully tested at least once.

Don wanted us to test a new feature in a new build for Versalink. He asked if we could do it. I asked him, isn't there a key to enable it? He said yes, but he didn't have the key. So I guess the answer is no then, isn't it?

Not much else exciting, er, certainly not writing a new chapter.

Went out to Hilton, as expected his machine needs an SSD to replace the 5400 RPM laptop drive he has. At least getting rid of some of the crap on the machine helped a little. Still didn't get home until 6:30 though. But he did make me a sandwich, so, there's that.

Got the SSDs in, so I popped that in and got it started. Did the copy. It didn't like my multiboot flash but it took the other one easily enough. Stupid PCs. He said he didn't want it back until Thursday so at least it's not a total rush. I'll get to play some Battleborn with the crew. The other one is going into the laptop, but I need the battery as well so that's a project for another day anyway.
Got ready for tomorrow, checked sites. One call, but he's coming here. Thinks he has a fan problem, so I'll have to tear his machine apart by the sound of it. Then order a fan, and have him come back.

Wed:
No voice system update because he was out, so after that meeting I worked on the new "change the login screen" that came in. Something that should be super easy, barely an inconvenience but Christina had a heck of a time setting up her device. Mine worked just fine. We rebooted the server, and it worked fine. Nice. Stupid thing. Anyway, for some bizarre reason the company wants the picture of the printer removed and just a black screen with the white icon. Uh, you're paying us for this? Sure, why not? So we put the key in, and the screen should change to having a bit of text and no picture.

The screen changed.

No text.

How did you screw that up?????????


So Christina wrote that up. I mean you guys had one job. (Turns out, we learned later, this text can be changed on the server side. Who knew? Because mine couldn't contact the server at first there was no text, and when it could it was just a short message. We're debating which way to go, to make it always the same thing or make the customer do it)

That took the morning.

Nothing too exciting in the afternoon. Set up a device so Gina (remember her?) can do some performance testing on a machine in the lab.

Came back here, sites, dinner. The guy came, his wife's machine is messed up, the wireless doesn't work. He called it a "booster" but it's just a regular old USB wi-fi adapter. I said to keep using that. His fan did sound noisy but as a nod from the universe you just have to take the screws off the bottom and boom, it's all right there. Oddly, the machine can use an M.2 drive but they designed, and installed, a crappy spinning rust drive. Nice one Dell. I took the fan off, didn't seem clogged or broken. But I took the model down so I can order one if he hears it again.

Then spent an hour on the phone getting some crappy HP printer to print. It won't go on the network. She said it was actually plugged in, so I figured I would try the wireless wizard from there. Saw the printer, but nope, couldn't get "the credentials" and wouldn't let me put them in manually, so thanks for that, HP. So I figured I would just allow it to be used with the wire, I mean she had it right there, so told the printer wizard to just find it. It found... a wireless printer? And the wired one. I told it the wired one. No, fatal error, not going to do it. Thanks, MS. So I installed the wireless one. It worked and printed???????? Why? It's not connected, according to the router. The machine found it via MAC address, apparently. So it's not on wireless or wired but still it's printing. HOW?

So that was that. Tomorrow it's driving a half hour to return the system with the dead drive.
Oh right, I worked on that getting his files back in place too.

Thurs:
Very busy today, but mostly for the wrong reasons. Had the morning meeting, a meeting about laying people off, the normal afternoon meeting, and the plantos. But the morning was mostly wasted by me trying to make a card. I got some screenshots as to how to set up the cert template so that wasn't too bad, but then I pulled a card out of the pack to use. Little did I know it was an 840 card not an 830b card. They were in the same pack. It turned out the 5 at the back (I tried two initially) were 840s. The rest were the proper 830b. The tool I was using just wasn't happy with the 840s but of course here's me thinking I'm doing something wrong. The directions are pretty simple (once I figured out how to present the cert in the way it wanted, sigh) so it's not easy to mess up. Finally realized it was the wrong card.

The one test I did with it was fine, the test on the other machine was not. It didn't work. Well, you lose some and.

The afternoon was mostly meetings.

Delivered the PC after work, of course he doesn't know his microsoft password. He says he used outlook but I don't find any outlook files on his system.

Came back here, sites, dinner. No calls! Yay!

So tomorrow is work, leave at 3:30, come back here, get cats. Go to vet with cats. Then stop at my parent's house on the way home because their "ebay" machine is not turning on. Power supply? Then go home for game. I should have enough time, it's not until 7:00.

Nothing yet for the weekend, writing for sure, maybe a little Xenoblade. Gotta stop watching the FF7 remake let's play video. When coming to PC square? Do you not like my money? I don't know about a Saturday game at this point. It would be the week for it, I think. Right, because I would have had my parents over last week. Haven't heard.

That's it for this week everyone, have a good weekend and I'll see you back here this time tomorrow.