2020-12-23:

Fri:
Got a new build of the voice system. It seems really dumb now, not understanding even yes/no a lot of the time. No regressions otherwise. I told them about it and Brett said he would look into it.
Also did a bit of the auto login, no real issues there, as long as FIPS mode isn't enabled.
Reloaded machines that were busted. Even white-lighting was busted? What the heck? Who is loading crap onto our devices? They're stuck with "a serious fault occurred" messages. Weird. One machine has been sitting there at the boot screen for weeks, finally fixed that one with a reload. Honestly, it's a good thing I actually take care of things or nothing would get done around the lab.
May get more money! Got a letter today with a higher amount that's supposedly sent to the gobment. $25 an hour not $21. Naturally I emailed back to ask what the actual amount was. Got no answer. Thanks! I'm *this* close to throwing the PC business away. If it's really that much it means almost an extra $50 a day, hey look at that the exact amount I would make doing one after work job, and I don't need to go anywhere to get it. Sweet.

Went to the bank, put in my last money into the IRA. Not that it makes anything mind you, but at least it reduces my taxes.
Shopping, got stuff for soup. Got gas, a full tank even! Yup, rather than stop at still being able to put in a gallon, it went all the way up to the top. How about that? Saw my parents.
Came back, put stuff away, finished the current star trek adventure. We don't know if we'll continue the game.

Sat:
That didn't go as planned.
His WI-Fi thing is really weird. I did see it "go down" and it just said "can't connect to network." Gave no reason why. Thanks, MS. As usual you're the best. Also he was using his cell phone on data and not his wireless? Are you crazy? Tried a USB one I had laying around, it seemed fine, then disabled itself? What? Then did it again! Tried a different one. Sigh. That seemed to be okay so I took his other laptop with me. I don't know why he thinks it's slower, this one has an SSD where the other one doesn't. Well, I'll upgrade it to 10 and it'll honestly be a better machine than the other.

Went over to dentist guy right away as it was 12:00 ish and I didn't want to go all the way home just to turn around and go all the back. The transfer went very fast, SSD to SSD for the win. Thanks, past me, for changing everyone you can to SSDs as soon as they were even slightly reasonably priced. You're welcome, future me. Got the bottom cover changed, answered the usual long list of questions, and finally got home about 2:00.

Started work on the upgrade, had lunch, checked sites.
Cleaned up a bit.
Then did game. We ran around, still trying to put the pieces together of why portals are being destroyed, and who is doing them. We are still no closer to any of those answers.

Sun:
Checked sites.
Made the 2020 christmas CD for going to grandpa's house.
Made pie.
Made candy.
Made soup.
Put my deposits from the week in.
Gift wrapping.

Mon:
More wrapping, this time the game gifts.
I got the macbook the lady sent me that won't turn on, so I tore it open (just enough) to copy her data to the PC. Couldn't figure out how to get the cover completely off. Odd. But it came off enough for me to see the drive, so I just yanked it out. She said sending it after Christmas was fine, a wise choice given how mail isn't going anywhere now at the moment. Less chance of it getting lost somewhere.
Comics.
Lunch.
Worked on the game questions. This took a surprising long time.
Watched some Supergirl.
Then did somewhat holiday themed games with the crew. Rudolph is lit.

Tues:
Checked sites, then more Supergirl. So. many. Episodes.
Got Heather's last gift in, so I wrapped her stuff.
More supergirl. This branched off into the crisis so I got to track down 4 other episodes from other series to finish the story. Sheesh, still 9 more episodes of supergirl to go.
Went to give back the laptop I upgraded to win10.
Then to Heather's house for my mother's birthday.

Wed:
Up and out to set up the router. Went just fine, no real issues. It was controlled via smartphone app, which I suppose is fine. We made sure all his devices were connected, like printer, 2 TVs, 3 laptaps.
Then to buy cat food, they changed the store around. Figured it was getting to be about the time, and I was half way there to begin with.
Went to good will, got a few things, including a sharper image e-reader I'll play around with.
Got home, the neighbors have torn up everything. They've cut the branches off their dead tree (and left them) and torn out all the berry bushes by the side fence. And the tree that was growing into their TV antenna. Pretty soon they'll just have a grass yard. Kind of a waste, why did you have to cut down everything? That side of the house looks terrible now. Ah, the guy picked up the branches.
Videos. Finished Supergirl, I'm all caught up! Now to finish Macross, She-ra, Miraculous Ladybug, and a bunch of anime from a long time ago I've never gotten to.

Thurs:
Welcome to Eve. My official day off.
My new video card came, so I messed with getting that to work. It worked the first time- for a few seconds. I plugged the card in, plugged the TV into it, turned everything on, boom, it was fine. Noticed the resolution was not the native resolution so I set it that way. Mistake. It went off, and I couldn't get it back on even setting the lowest resolution it would support. Plus every 10 seconds my main display would go black, and then come back on. Neat! I finally moved the TV over to the better card, and moved my main display to the new, worse, card. I mean I guess it's fine, any game I might want to play on the Mac (and I haven't really played any games on this in forever) I could play on the PC. So it's probably fine. Just odd. Very odd. It seems stable now though so I'm leaving it. So there.
Watched season 5 of She-ra. You know, for testing purposes. Held up fine.
Got ready to go and went over for Eve. Had the Eve game, watched the Christmas shops video, and got a ton of crackers, cookies, and other goodies thanks to my sister's efforts. Even saw Onix- briefly.

Came back, put things away, I'll post this, and head off to bed. Visions of sugar plumbs dancing in my head. Which would be a real miracle I don't think I've ever seen one in real life. What even if it?

So we move into Christmas day. I hope everyone has a good one, even if you are perhaps further from the ones you would normally be closer to. You get the idea.

We'll have one more posting this year, so this isn't quite goodbye so I'll see you all back here for another Eve, where we can finally wave bye-bye to the worst year, and look forward with at least a tiny bit of home for the future. Have a good rest of the year, and I'll see you all then.

Merry Christmas.