2020-10-15:

Fri:
Wasn't sure if I would have something for the afternoon, but then at the end of the lunch time a new version of the copy app came in so I had that to do. Did that. The morning was a mix of things, tracking down a bug, getting Gina's machine (that she didn't actually come in and use) all set up. Posting a decrypted log. Various requests, you know.

Left at 3:00, did the shopping.
Got the kitties. Squeaker is like, oh, we're going in there again? Fine... And then yells at me the whole trip. Tinker is like "I don't want to go on the cart" but then is like, okay he shoved me in here, no need to be upset about it.
Brought the kitties to the vet at 4:00. Left there at 5:40. Yes, a 10 minute exam for two cats somehow took almost two hours. Blows the mind. Didn't get in until 4:25 or so. Then there was more waiting. Then they took them for getting blood, so I had to wait for the technician for each of them. It was a different vet too, never seen her before. Squeaker was a good little man, Tinker did not live up to his namesake and was a little brat. I'm now supposed to get a urine sample so I figure maybe next week I'll give one cat a bunch of salmon water and put them upstairs because apparently it has to be "fresh" as well. I suppose it degrades into ammonia or something? I know in the caveman books my mother and I read as a kid (I was a kid, she was an adult) they were saving it to turn leather white... but I digress. So it'll have to be captured on a Saturday that I can check it every few hours and get it over there. Fun.
Came back home as my parents were out getting a new freezer (thanks 2020, the hits just keep coming huh?) and got some dinner before game.
We did good, endangered a halfling village and learned we have competition (or had it) from 10 years ago, another person probably from our world.

Crushing Press for the win!

Sat:
Called the lady for the laptop but she wanted tomorrow because she was "having a picnic in two hours." A socially distant picnic I hope. Honestly, some people. Apparently she screwed something up and needs more help than just a drop off. Sigh.

Played a bit of Xenoblade, found some, shall we call them cheats? Did I turn them on? You bet it I did. Are you kidding? Did some cleaning, even with no parents coming. I know!
Watched an episode of Supergirl.
Honestly not much game was at 4:00 so it added up.

Did game at 4:00. We caught A suspect, could be innocent, who knows? We stopped at 9:00 to do the Halloween stuff in Borderlands. Wow, it's been a year already.

Sun:
Watched another episode of Supergirl. They're really hitting us over the head with the theme this season.
Ate lunch at 11:00 and left for my 12:00.
Dropped the laptop off, her wireless printers or something are screwy. And she didn't have any of the stuff I had put on her PC anymore? Huh? I don't know. I got it all working for the moment. (All being the PC, the printers, and the TV.) How does a coax cable not even connected to a TV disrupt certain channels? It doesn't make sense.

Picked up a shelving unit that I just managed to shove into the mini-car by moving the front seats all the way up. That was a very, uh, compressed driving experience.

Went over to my parent's house, it was just the power supply thankfully. Cleaned the machine out, put some shorter cables in it because I had some. Should help with airflow though it's been many years since I made that machine and it's still going so eh. I left the shelf they're going to deliver it so I don't kill myself driving like that.

Made a place for the shelf in the basement.

Realized I completely forgot to stop at Lowes to look for chain. Again. And a huge thing of soap stuff, I'm almost out of it. I only buy one huge jug every few years, much better than buying tiny bottles. Environmentalism, yo.

Dad came with the shelf, put it downstairs. Now to find something to put on it. Maybe those Jump magazines I got for Christmas a year or two ago? They're just in a box under the pool table. Could be nice to display them. They're pretty heavy but the thing is "wood" so maybe it would be fine? I'll have to see.
Xenoblade was crashing basically every few minutes, didn't get anywhere in an hour of playing. Turned off some of the "enhancements" I discovered and the problem seems to have gone away. Weird. Ah well, what is left is enough.
Made my calls. I booked Tuesday for a tuneup and told guy who does not have his MS account password to get his MS account password. Again. The recovery email he says doesn't exist so he filled out the form, we'll see what they say. So stupid. Just let him use the account email he's signing in with, is that so hard MS?
So nothing for tomorrow.
Got ready for tomorrow, the second week of Oct. Begins.

Mon:
  Boringmorning, really nothing to talk about. No new build of the voice, I tested the latest build of the copy thing before, we're waiting on the new build of the card drop down. What else is there?

The afternoon had a few tasks in mind for me. I looked into some cards that were delivered. I found some old motherboards in the trash that had what looked like the correct size fan to replace some old fans that were noisy in the lab. They fit, so now it's a little quieter over there. I worked on trying to get a card to work from some person I don't know, the user works and I made some changes to the device IP he gave me, but no response after that.

Came back here, the little PC my parents gave me doesn't keep time, the battery must be dead. I took it apart enough to get the battery, it's one of these jobs that's wrapped up in tape with little wires out of it. I haven't called him but given nothing else seemed wrong with it, that's probably it. I'll call him tonight.

One other call, a new machine that's hanging? Probably hardware then. She wanted Thursday.
Spent about an hour and a half on the phone setting up a wi-fi extender. The problem? Windows copied a SPACE at the end of the password. Thanks, MS. You're a peach, as always. Did not do game with the others because of this.

Tues:
Spent a lot of the day trying to reproduce a bug I thought I had in the bag. But no, today every machine I tried worked fine. Go figure, right?
The one machine I had left that exhibited the problem was "cured" with a reboot, making me think maybe it was the initial setup that was the problem. So I reproduced it from scratch, altbooting the machine I had seen it fail on and set it up again. Success! It failed. So you perform certain steps and boom, the card doesn't work. At least I proved I'm not crazy.

Otherwise a little of this and a little of that, really. Nothing new on copy or the voice system until tomorrow.

Went to see the guy with the explorer hang issue. No problems I could discover, but at least I made sure it was running as well as it could be.

Came back, 4 calls, yay. Booked tomorrow, an iPad lesson for a 90 year old woman, didn't reach one person, the lady from yesterday complaining a playstation wouldn't connect to the extender, and a guy who already unplugged his router. Extender lady wants to run her machine, at least a couple of phones I saw connected last night, a smart TV, and a PS (4?) over a 6mb/sec DSL line. Lady, it's not going to work.

Watched an episode of Supergirl.

Wed:
Fairly boring at the moment because while we had the Wednesday voice meeting, I still didn't get any new software. Not until next week. So I didn't have that to do.

We did get a build of the versalink software that supposedly has the new "block usernames from jobs" feature. We're supposed to get a key to turn it on and off, but the selection was right there so that's either been changed or is busted. The feature itself, turned on, sort of works I still see my name in some places, as the sender of the job. And then there's equitrac. Oh, good old equitrac. I had loaded the machine I had already used thinking, this will be quick, I've already got it all set up. Right?

WRONG

Spent a half hour trying various stuff to get the card reader to pick up and actually do something when I present a card. It was having none of it. None I tell you. And yes, I rebooted the server first thing, won't go through that again. I reinitialized, I removed the plug-in and put it back, I tried 3 different readers. Nothing. I. Hate. Equitrac.

Got a new version of the copy app, so I'll leave Christina to that feature and go back to the copy app for now. Hopefully that will be it, we should be getting close to the end of test with it. Got that after I had started with the stupid equitrac thing so I didn't do anything with it today.

Went to second work, an iPad pro she had some questions on. Most everything was easy to solve, but her mail password... She clearly knew it, at one time. It was put into mail and mail worked. But logging into webmail did not. So we got through all the stupid phone prompts from Frontier, and reset it. Yay! Problem solved, job over right?

WRONG

What do you think this is, a sitcom? Having logged in to the webmail, which proved the password was changed and she knew what it was I put the password into mail and got the little checkmarks that indicate "I talked to Frontier and verified the account info, it's fine!" Great. But open mail and it's all "oh, the server isn't responding. Did you put the password in right?" What? You just talked to Frontier a second ago. I can mail out fine. That proves the password is in the mail system. What are you doing? Well I went back and forth trying various things. Finally new mail came in and I declared victory. It was almost 6:00 by that point and I had gotten there at 4:30 so as you could guess, I cared little at that point. I want to help and all, but you gotta give me something here.

Came back, ate dinner, checked sites. One call, so I've got 11:00 booked. Humm, how am I going to get a urine sample from a cat? Well, maybe won't happen this week?

Thurs:
Happy Birthday Sean! You'll get your present... uh, at Christmas?

Kept fairly busy today. Had the new build of the copy app to look at, wanted to try reproducing some odd behavior I saw before they had some questions about. I think I managed it, though not exactly what I had seen before. After that I did the full test on another model. A few new things written up. (As usual)

Had the morning meeting, which was mostly a demo of the feature I've already tested??? Just on a different platform. Oh, okay. And Monday is... another demo? For the feature I've already tested???? On yet another platform? We need to calm down on the platforms here, I thought we were supposed to have like one or at the most two. We do things in such a bizarre way.

Otherwise watered the plants, got the clock to work (it would only work when you squeezed it, the contacts must not be working well, so I duct taped it. My father would be appalled but it's just a crappy quartz movement and it saved me buying another) and that was that.

Went to second work. her machine was fine. Even has an SSD, wonder of wonders.

Came back here, one call so ate dinner, finished up the latest chapter where Lysanias almost died. Again. His mountain spirit took a hit and so he took half of it! Whoops, he was one point into gone. That dropped him and Rosalina, leaving his android to save them all. You go, Rommie!

Got ready for tomorrow, and I may play some Xenoblade who knows.

Looking to the future we've gotten through half October so Thanksgiving is 6 weeks away. Do you have your turkey?
Not sure what I'll work on tomorrow, I'll find something I'm sure.
Shopping, no parents so I'll just come home. We're doing game so I'll eat and do that.

Then two appointments Saturday. A setup of a new machine and maybe a monitor issue? We'll monitor the situation, and he says his card slot isn't working. More game playing and writing I'm sure. Having my parents over saturday for a movie.

And that's that for this week. Treated you well? Wasn't too cold? Hope so. See you all next time, as the adventure continues.