2020-10-29:

Fri:
Worked on figuring out the machine problem. SSL had been turned off? Went through some gyrations to try and fix it. Had to apply a clone file as I couldn't get to the normal admin screen on the voice system device. That at least took the voice system screen away so I could log in as an admin and make the change. Wish I could have found the SNMP command that had been used but that's darn near impossible. This way was actually simpler. As a side effect it stopped the "please wait" issue I was having as well so that's a plus?
A little more copy work, noted two things, but we're already into "yeah, it's not that bad so we're not going to fix it" territory. Neat.
And then just dreading the coming week.

Shopping, saw my parents and even an Onix. As long as you don't make any sudden moves he will come and see you. Maybe. Sometimes. Keep it in mind.
Came back for game. We after an hour decided to leave the kobolds alone with their orb, and almost got killed by a demon thing later. Some more personally than others, such as myself and one of our dark elf companions.
We had to get saved by "just a wanderer" because we couldn't even scratch the guy. Reminds me of the only time I played D&D. You know, the time my burly dwarf was attacking the wooden shaft of an enemy's weapon to try and break it and couldn't manage it, and had to run away because I was about to die. Good times.

Sat:
Did the paperwork. Actually did twice as much business as last month! (12 people)
Went out at 11:00, tuned up her system. It was basically fine but I started the latest update. Ran the usual stuff, answered questions, nothing I couldn't have done remotely, but whatever.
Came back, lunch.
Went back out for my 1:00. Replaced his drive, managed to get info off the old one. Yay! Had to use Linux, it crapped out setting permissions in stupid Windows. I got the bright idea to boot linux right on his device, that way I could make the copy right to where I needed it to be without a bunch of hassle. That's the new go-to strategy by the way, for this kind of situation. Which is kinda crazy if you think about it. "Oh, I need to do something, better boot into another OS completely and go back into windows when the real work is done. Nice one MS, you never cease to amaze.
Just made it back for game at 4:00.
Of course we didn't start until 4:30.
Tried to replace the battery on the little unit while I was waiting, of course it's the wrong one. Sigh. Oh, it would fit, and the battery would work, it's just the connectors are in the wrong place. Great, huh? There's about four different numbers on this thing so it took some doing and careful noting of the pictures to get what I hope is finally the right one.
But then we ended at 8:00 so it was a very short game!
Played some Borderlands, doing the spooky mission, wow has it been a year since I got the Xbox? I got it for Borderlands alone. And now it's time to get the latest Xbox... Sigh.

Sun:
Moved the living room around to get everything ready for the TV Heather is selling me.
That took the morning. I moved the big old cabinet from the side of the room to where the projector screen used to be. Tried to paint the wall before that, but all I have is that white paint that isn't white paint. It dries a different color white than is already up on the wall. So it looks kinda bad at the moment. I'll probably have to paint the whole wall, and that means moving a lot of heavy stuff around. So you know when that'll get done. Never. Moved the sound system to inside the cabinet, along with the Xbox itself. So with the games sitting all nice in a row, and the speakers right there, and the TV on top it actually looks pretty nice. Of course the piece of board the thing is now attached to looks sorta bad but you can't have everything. (I'm getting ahead of myself, see below) Can I paint over that contact paper stuff? I don't know... Have to ask when my parents come over again. Maybe I could tear it off without moving the TV? Probably should have thought of that before I bolted the thing down, huh? I put the old stereo cabinet to use holding DVDs turned 90 degrees from where it had been, so it has a use, and moved the smaller stand I picked up at the curb to where the big cabinet was so I still have a small "working on a PC" station there with the monitor. Don't know if I'll put the PC out there as well or not. I'd love to get rid of the chair in my room, it's very awkward since the waterbed went in there. I do help customers in there, do I want to try doing that on the giant 60" screen? Not so much I think. I could go the other way though. Run one of those really long HDMI cables to my normal monitor I use with the Mac (Which now only has VGA plugged in) and use the switchbox I also already have. When I need to be over there just use the wireless keyboard and mouse and when I'm gaming use the mechanical keyboard/wired mouse with a lapdesk or controller. Huh, that could actually work, and reduce some clutter in my bedroom. Honestly it would have to go in the middle of all that, I wonder if the cords would just reach and I could just put them where I wanted them at the time? I could play games that don't need the huge screen on the smaller monitor, those that do on the bigger. Not that I do a ton of games on it but seeing Xenoblade on the big screen would be pretty neat...
Lady canceled, so that's fine with me.
Ate lunch, checked sites, waited for Heather to arrive.
She arrived! The literature on the site lied to me, the stated number of inches the legs could be set at was measured, I believe, at the point of insertion not the point it contacted the ground. This point was just slightly too large for the shelf. But I did have a board it could sit on, so I guess that's a thing.
After they left I secured it to the board, using some old drawer pulls, which took far too long mainly because I have such low ratings in handyman skills. I do have to ask myself, this slotted screwdriver design, is that really still the best we can come up with? Trying to get the holes in the right place, then put the screws in upside down was quite annoying.
But at least it's not going anywhere. Thanks!
Checked it out, seems I got everything hooked up okay and I don't have to buy any new cables as it only has HDMI. I moved the connection to my monitor over to VGA and used my DVI->HDMI cable to go over there. Movie night is still on for this week. Huh, will they want to come on Halloween?
Baked a pie! It was pie time to do so.
Also did other Sunday stuff, like cleaning the mouse and getting ready for another great day at Xerox, where I've been for 5 years tomorrow!
Two calls, one guy that already figured out if volume is 0, you don't hear nothing. The other lady was asleep. So nothing for tomorrow? Nothing at this point.

Mon:
It went completely unremarked. I feel like a valued employee and not just a person in a seat. Thanks Xerox you're a peach.
A true princess, so to speak. A princess peach, if you will. And so the busy week begins. I feel I made good progress towards it today.
Started out getting a machine ready for the voice test at 1:00. I had to take over the celiveo machine because it was the only one that was free. Yay. It's fine, I just had to use the other lab which no one was in anyway. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Once the machine was prepped I worked on the versalink product, barely getting 1 model done before 1:00. I found all the same things as Christina already did, and asked a few questions of my own. Didn't actually get any answers though.
After lunch at 1:00 I went over to the other lab, the voice guy got me going and luckily this test is far less intense than the original voice work I was doing. Far fewer commands and in more strict usage. I ran through them, keeping track of what I did and what happened, and got a report together right around 4:00 and sent out. We'll see if they need me to do more tomorrow. Hopefully not.

Came back here, had 5 calls, yay. Checked sites, the usual. Ate dinner. Got ready for bed to do online stuff with the crew if I finish my calls at a reasonable time and made my calls.

Printer lady.
Boris' whatever he is.
A TV hooked to a hearing aid? Ah, it's an external device. I'll head over there tomorrow and see what it's about, they say the Roku audio doesn't go through it. And as it's 1 exit away from Boris I'll head there and get him back on wi-fi or whatever.
A second printer lady who "solved her problem" so that took it down to 4.
Another printing lady, she just needed me to point out the "quantity" field on the screen.
And a Wi-fi guy I didn't reach. So it wasn't as bad as I thought. Huh.
Wi-fi guy called. 47 minutes later he was up and running. Ugh.
Got on at the normal time but half the party wasn't there, so we just went and played Battleborn. Looks good on the new set but honestly not so much better that I should have upgraded years ago. Ah well, we'll see what happens with some actual 4K content if I ever get access to some.

Tues:
No real response to my list of problems from yesterday at this point so I was back in waiting mode. While I waited I noted there's going to be snow on friday? The candy holiday? Seriously? I haven't even started leaves yet, there aren't any down. And it's been raining constantly for the last few days, and will again today by the looks of it. I'm not that looking forward to using the new snow blower Mother Nature, you can hold off as long as you want. (It won't stick around, it's going to be near 50 the next day, but still I should bring in the catnip.)

That didn't last long. Went to see about doing another machine and picked the one we always ignore, the WC6515. It was the same as the other. But at least we can say we did it. Figured out I didn't need to get the card reader working, always the most contentious of the equitrac nonsense I have to deal with, I just logged in with Christina's info as it's nice and short. Boom, test over.

Then did 4.0 stuff. Looks good, though I was able to log in with a card I shouldn't have been able to, by the way the older product works. So I wrote that up.

Went to see the lady, the hearing aid thing was actually pretty interesting. It was connected with an optical cable of all things, (the connection that is going away last I heard) but they had plugged it into their cable box. Which was plugged into a blue ray player that was plugged into the TV. Odd way of doing it, very odd. Anyway, I simply moved it from there a few feet to the optical connection on the tv. Problem solved. It made total sense when I saw it, being plugged into the cable box means only the cable box is going to send audio, not what's being shown on the TV. And the three people in their family that looked at it couldn't work that out? Huh.
Saw Boris. It was just the internet again. Took off auto connect for the guest network and made him a little diagram of what to if his internet goes away again. No printer, so he'll just have to open it, if he can manage that much. He wants me to print out some awful, blury, light 20pg document for him and "see about getting it published." Uh, where? It's a short story at best and I would have to retype it. No one is going to buy a 10 page pamphlet about your life in 1940. I assume that's what it's about as that's the first sentence of the thing, I didn't read further.

Came back. Looked at PC but had a zillion calls. Had Ellen plug her old transmitter in to get her keyboard to work. Yeah, imagine that, if you take the transmitter away the wireless thing it's talking to don't work no more. Of course getting the whole story out of her was like herding cats. Another long one was a lady in tablet mode, again try to get her to explain what she's seeing. "Oh, when I open chome I just have a blue screen." No, you are not opening chrome and what you are seeing is a blue screen with the tiles you see when you're in tablet mode. Finally connected to her device and instantly realized "oh, you're in tablet mode." You know, the mode nobody in their right mind asked for, is super easy to get into and then nobody knows what's happened and can't get out of? That? I've had several people get into that state and not know what's going on. So I disabled it and removed the icon for it so hopefully at least she won't wander into that trap again. Stupid windows. Anyway, talked with people until 9:00, yes it was right to the wire, got ready for tomorrow, and at 9:30 did some Battleborn.
I was, in between all the phone stuff, looking for some audio cables long enough to get to the receiver in the cabinet, oh and I moved the 3D printer to the other side of the desk, so I think it'll work. May not even need to use the splitter, just because I have the video cards in SLI mode that doesn't mean I can't hook 2 HDMI cables to them and just extend the desktop. Then I can just choose which to use at the time. Right? I mean windows is pretty dumb, see "tablet mode" above. I'll give it a try, but the way is clear so even if I don't have perfect audio at the moment it's fine. I can make it work later with some longer cables. I did find some adapters and one cable that might be long enough, I just need one more, and maybe 1 for the sub? So hopefully I'll get a chance to do that tomorrow. Sean said he'll have grading to do and with all the phone time I solved everyone's problems so no after work job. Whew.

Wed:
Guess who didn't get a new voice system to play with? *points thumbs* This guy.
I did get the hardware, so when I do get some software I'll be ready. Put the old stuff, and the older stuff, in a box to send back. They were supposed to send me a return label. They did not. They are doing well over there.
So instead I figured out what card readers the new machines had, as some had them and some did not. Save someone from having to connect one.
I worked with Christina and Kevin to enable my phone to act as a prox card of sorts, to test a reader. We tested the reader.
Looked at the new version of the copy thing, just checking the bugs nothing too major. Didn't find any new bugs from the bugs being fixed. Whaaaaat? I know. Believe me, I know. I'll do a "full" test on both family of devices tomorrow, mostly the language stuff as that's the major change.
Tried to watch the webcast by our CEO, was rejected as not having access. Thanks a bunch John.

And left. Came back here, hooked the PC up to the new TV and cleaned off the desk in my room. With the wireless mouse and keyboard I can still do customer stuff on the "little" screen (which I did and it worked fine). But now I can play stuff on the big screen. Like I can play Xenoblade in a larger window than I was before and have the second window with the mini-map right next to it. Sweet!

There were problems with this setup, of course. I had to turn off SLI to get the second display to work. Boo. Don't know what kind of performance hit that will give me. I suppose when I don't need the other display I could turn it back on for a gaming session? I was having trouble getting it hooked up, but I finally switched the HDMI cable in desperation and what do you know? That worked. Very odd. Didn't need to buy anything to get the sound hooked up, I managed to extend the cables nicely.

Checked sites, ate dinner and more pie. Talked to two people, so I have someplace to go tomorrow. Not too far away.

Thurs:
So as expected I looked at the new copy code before the meeting, on both platforms, and horror of horrors... it was fine. He had fixed the bugs and I didn't see any new ones. Shocking, I know. All the translation strings were in, and I told him so in no uncertain terms!

Had the meeting, then worked on adding the new machines to the room listing. Not that there's anyone in the place looking physically for machines but I do like to keep up with things. I guess. That all was the major accomplishments for today at work. No voice stuff, the card stuff is tested, the D2.9 is coming tomorrow, so there wasn't much to do today.

Had the other meeting and went out to water the plants. More have vanished, where are you going little plants? The knocked over one is doing really well, it has a fairly big leaf and many smaller leaves right before the break so I think it'll make it.

Gina showed up. Whoops. Turns out she wasn't done with the machine, and I had already upgraded it to a later release. Sigh. Thanks for telling me. Now I get to put it all back the way it was. Sigh. I'll do that in the morning.

Went to see the guy about his two machines. One machine is a small laptop with... how much? *rustles papers* 32GB of storage? Huh? My keychain flash drive has 4x that amount. And I got it for like ten bucks. What is Asus doing? And it's soldered in? Pulling an Apple I see. Nice. So that's a lost cause. Good job, Asus, he can't even update windows anymore. It uses 18GB of the 28GB available, with his other stuff leaving him 1.66GB free. Back in my day, we had 80MB hard drives. And we liked it! Now get off my lawn.

Brought the catnip in, going to be fairly darn cold in the next few nights, do not like.

Came back here, 5 calls? What is this, the call Robert month?
One was about a check. I had deposited it, but she said I didn't. I looked, it was rejected for some reason but I never got any notice about it? Wha? I found another rejected one too. Thanks Xceed. First you screw up paypal and now this?! So I'll have to call them about that tomorrow. Neat.

Let's see, one guy I haven't reached yet. One lady was having trouble logging in, somehow ctrl-alt-del brought up the password screen? That... shouldn't have worked? I didn't even suggest it, she tried it. Weird. One guy who bought a system and says it's not displaying a picture. I was the one that cleaned it out, it worked when it left here! I'm going there Saturday. One person with questions I answered. Check lady wants a printer hooked up so I'm going there Saturday as well. I keep sitting down and the phone keeps ringing because I didn't reach most on the first try so they keep calling back.

I have to call dentist guy, see if he'll be around Saturday to drop his stuff off and replace his back panel so the hinge works again. But not tonight, I'll call him Saturday afternoon.

Maybe someday I'll write the rest of the fight I'm in the first 2 seconds of. That would be nice!

So looking to tomorrow I'll do the final check on the D2.9 code, probably two machines or more. Call Xceed. Shopping, see my parents. I presume we're doing game but... no we're not doing game! I remember that now, Neil is gone bye-bye. Huh. I suppose my parents could come then, if they didn't want to come Saturday. Well, I leave the choice to them.

Then hopefully some writing on Sunday.

Have a good Halloween everyone, don't go too crazy at the polls in a few days but hey, you don't have to worry about Covid-19 as Our Great Leader lists among his accomplishments "ending the covid-19 pandemic" so it must be over. Our Great Leader truly is great! I'm gonna stop wearing my mas- wait I'm being handed a bulletin. This can't be right, it says here new cases are among the highest ever! Must be because of all that testing we're doing. Just stop testing, the pandemic is over. Our Great Leader says so!

Oh, there's the phone again. Neat. Monitor guy #2, probably with a bad monitor. I just happen to have a plethora of them around here, perhaps this is the time to sell one?

I'm back. What was I saying about Our Great Leader? Ah, who knows, he's just so Great (Leader) one could just go on and on about how great he is. As he often does. Telling only the truth, and nothing but the truth every time.

Stay safe out there, and vote for Bernie Sand- wait I'm being handed a bulletin...