2021-03-25:

Fri:
Last day for a bit.
Voice thing was worked on, they think it's a cert issue. Is it though?
Worked on the dragon warrior story, mostly just cleanup and reading over what I wrote to see where I thought I was going with it.
Nothing exciting work wise.
Went to get groceries, gas, and see my parents.
Then game. Didn't make it to the big bad which was supposed to be the midpoint but they wanted to sleep because one person was at so many penalties. I wanted his bad traveler weakness to kick in for once but I didn't think it would be that bad. So I had them running around getting the clues the guy would have just told them, which was fine, but couldn't figure out how to get them together as he wouldn't want to attack during the day. But I think I figured it out now.

Sat:
Sites, cleaned up a little.
Lunch.
Went out at 1:00 for dentist guy. As usual he was all over the place and his calendar worked just fine. I went to the thing I told him to look at and everything was on, and when I opened it everything had synced properly. But he had more questions, on three different paper pads, and we jumped around from placing a signature in a PDF to grammer checking word docs and installing whatsapp. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Then I went to my 3:00. Who wasn't there. I don't even get to see the cute girl? Come on!

Waited 15 minutes and came home.

Watched some dragon quest. Actually, watched all of Dragon Quest. Finally, after all these years.

Warframe!

Sun:
Did some more cleanup type stuff.
Sites, videos.
Left for doing taxes.
Did the taxes, started this year with the e-file instead of doing the paper and then putting in the values for e-file. Much easier!
Didn't take as long either, was back by 3:30.

Did some reading.
Did my Sunday stuff like watering plants.
Watched a movie, as dad said he got it and watched it, so I won't wait to watch it with him.
Made my calls, didn't reach Dentist guy and his mailbox was full. How many messages do you have to have to get a full mailbox? I just need to tell him to click start, go to programs, and then word. Yes, he's used a computer for 20 years or whatever, but still this basic fact about windows eludes him.
Played warframe.

Mon:
Looked into unemployment. Their site is so slow! You know, when this all started Fidelity simplified their page, making sure they were serving the least amount of data possible to keep their site responsive. But the NY website has 20 different pages I have to go to, rather than just filling out one page and just being done with it. It seems a bit stupid, if your servers are getting hammered like this, and you're a government entity that you don't take steps to help mitigate the problem. I mean the ebay page must get 10x or 100x the traffic as the NY site but you don't see it ever timing out. I mean we know how to do this. Site load balancing has been a thing since the web began. I'm not saying it's easy but that's what we have experts for, who just do that kind of thing. Hire them. Do it!
Of course I didn't have a number I needed, because I don't have a W2 from my new "employer" and they didn't have it on file so I had to get it. Of course the site timed me out, and it was horrible getting back into it.
While I did this I wrote up the dialog for the game that Jon heard between the mob guys.

When I got back into the site, I had to start all over again. Neat! Thanks NY state. You're the bestest.
And it's timing out again. I've been trying for two hours to fill out a form that should take 2 minutes. Maybe I'll try late tonight? This doesn't seem to be working.

Washed the rugs, the floors inside as they were filthy from cat litter dust being picked up and tracked in from the garage when it was wet.
Mopped the garage floor. I'll spray it out when it gets a little warmer.
Ate lunch.
Cleaned up the basement. Decided not to move the table around, yes it would be nice to be right in line with the heat but am I really down there enough on the phone now to make it worth turning on? Doing phone stuff I come up here because I have to use the PC to do remote stuff. So it didn't make sense. But I moved a few things, cleaned up the floor. Not mopped, but I cleaned up a lot of shavings from the mice. Poor little mice.

Worked on Sean's birthday present. Yes it's in October or something. Why does that matter?

Cleaned out the breezeway. The floor was of course filthy. Vacuumed and straightened up, now that it's nice and sunny out.

Warframe. Tried to get through the single player mission. The boss fight is so stupid. Even with watching a movie I'm not sure I understand it. But don't worry, even if I ever built that warframe I wouldn't be able to do what it's doing, because reasons.

Ate dinner. Did some reading. Tried the boss fight again after watching a video. Managed to make it through.

Made my calls, 3 in all. Booked a second one for tomorrow afternoon, because why not? Talked a lady through hooking her monitor up to her camera systems to verify it doesn't work anymore. And a guy with a dead laptop, who I told "if a different power adapter doesn't work, that's it for it." Which was the truth.

Did some warframe. The level 9 mastery test is stupid and dumb. More so than the bullet jumping one.

After that tried to do the unemployment thing again. Oh, the system is only "open" Monday through Thursday from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm and Friday 7:30 am to 5:00 pm. Really? A website needs a "rest?" It needs "time off?" No, no it does not. It could be available now, such that maybe I could use it. But no, because they don't want me to actually have these benefits, there's a roadblock in my way. Thanks, NY, you're a real peach.

Tues:
Got up at 7:30 to use the website when it "opened" and for a wonder it was totally responsive. Weird. The form is so nuts. They ask "is this because of lack of work?" then later ask for a reason one of which was "lack of work." Really? Asking the same thing twice? I had to choose no and yes, respectively, because the other choices were "quit" "fired" "etc" nothing about being furloughed for a week. Super. And who cares about stuff 18 months ago? I'm talking about this week, today. Not then. Today. Having filed I now have to go back and claim it (or something?) on March 31st. Uh, I'll be back to work by then. The whole thing is so stupid. Which is what they want, so you give up, and they don't have to pay out. I mean it's obvious but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

"Continue to claim weekly benefits each week you are unemployed. If you are eligible, it will take three to six weeks to receive your first payment."
How long?

Otherwise, the morning was almost a complete waste of time. I left at 9:30 to get there by 10:00, and while there were plenty of cars in the driveway, the door was open, and there was a kitty inside, no one answered the door. I called. No answer. This is a farm, a real one, with real animals and such, so I found a "hired hand?" I guess you would call them? They called. No answer. Didn't know anything about it. I waited 45 minutes. (because it took me a half hour and I didn't want to go back?) I was pulling out of the driveway when she called and said she had it marked down for next week. Even though I told her the only reason I could do it at this time this week was because of the furlough. So I get to go back. Neato.

Now I said "almost" because I did get to pet 4 pups. Two big white shaggy pups that drooled all over. One bulldog. One brown midsized pup that was not trained not to jump up. And I went over to the pen and everybody jumped up and came over like "you have something for me?" I felt bad because I didn't, but I did get to pet and see some baby lambs (white with black spots), sheep, goats, and I got to pet the pony!


Wasn't worth the trip. So I'm going back 10:00 Friday. Yay. Came back, tried my brush on the toilet because it came in the mail (thanks Lowes) but it's too big? I guess the hole is a lot smaller than it looks. What else can I use to clean it out? Hummmmmmmmmmm.

Ate lunch, checked sites.

Worked on the next battle map, as we'll probably be in the parking lot of the pachinko place.

Worked on the sword blade. Took a bit before I remembered enough and figured out enough about Blender to do what I wanted. My boolean wasn't working to cut out the shape, so I redid the mesh, oh and when I opened it on Mac it was just a color riot. Had to move over to PC as Blender doesn't support 10.11 anymore. Sigh.

Left for my 4:00. That wasn't a disaster, but only petted two pups so it was half the pups! And they were smaller pups so it was like only 1/8 the pups. Anyway, replaced his crappy drive with an SSD which will hopefully solve his problem. Cutting out the games he wasn't using (he bought it from someone) cut the copy down from 100+GB to 35GB which was a relief. Didn't take too long, it had USB 3.

Went to lowes again to get some patch material for the hole left when I took the keypad down off the side of the garage. Tomorrow I'll patch that up and later paint it.

No warframe, the power of the radon was too strong tonight. Went back to working on the sword design.

Got that done, I think, so tomorrow we'll finally the new, wrong, filament I got sent.

Finally set up my Excellus account. That paper has been sitting there a month. But my account exists so I can log into it now.

Did some warframe because I had some new weapons to pick up. Then did some reading before bed.

Wed:
Did not patch and paint. It was raining outside. It would probably be fine, the area was dry, but it may be humidity as well so I figured I would hold off.

Instead, checked sites, put in an order for invoices, batteries, a case for my parent's old hackintosh so I can use a normal power supply, and more SSDs now that I have sold the one I had.

Tried to start 3D printing my sword blades again. And then I had a bad time. Kept getting read errors and ignoring this and pressing on, it didn't build anything. It just warmed up the plate, moved it around, and said "yup I'm done!" I'm not sure the other filament would work anyway, it was coming out weird when I loaded it. So yeah, my makerbot might be toast. Sigh. Maybe shapeways can do it, I could remake them to fit in their machine and probably only have to print 5 pieces because they could do both sides at once. Hummmmm. But I hear what you're saying- why not just use the SD card slot? No USB cable there, right? Well, that would work! If the display didn't just print garbage making it useless. Yeah, all in all this thing didn't really work out all that well. I mean I printed some nice stuff with it, but it was temperamental at best. You can get 3D printers for $500 now, or less, I don't know why some are more expensive because you can buy $5,000 ones too. Should I replace it? It's not like I use it more than a few times a year, but it's come in handy. I tried a different USB cable, but what else can I really do?

So I washed the rust stains off the back of my car. They came off pretty well, could hardly tell they were there unless you were really looking for them.

One bit of good news: My toilet flushes again. So my whacking it with the coat hanger seems to have done the trick.

Worked on new sword pieces for printing by shapeways. And it would cost over $200 to print. For a straight piece of plastic. Uh, no. Sigh. I figured out they could print the whole blade in one piece, given their build volume is longer than 24" which is what the blade was. It would be really nice. But $200 nice? I don't know...

Looked at 3D printers. I don't know. Strangely, my model doesn't even appear on ebay. Even busted ones with parts that might be broken in a different way from mine.

By that time the rain had stopped, and the sun was out, so I patched that hole in the garage wood. Should be fine.

Finished the next book.

Looked into other 3D printers.

Warframe time.

Thurs:
Did the painting.

Sorted my pictures folder a little.

More 3D printer research. Decided to get one, as I found what seems to be a good model for $250. It accepts the filament I was mistakenly sent (PLA 1.75mm) and isn't much more expensive than having shapeways print the thing I want. So we'll see what happens. Anyone want a busted, wooden, makerbot? I suppose it could be a collectable, it is one of the earliest 3D printers, after all.

Did some warframe, another single player mission to get it out of the way.

More reading.

Checked sites, not much exciting today I had done basically everything I wanted to do. I didn't start on Sean's Christmas present that was really the last thing.

Made some calls, I'll go over to the printhead lady tomorrow, she's right down the street. And a tuneup of some kind, which also isn't that far away.

So we made it! Time to look forward.

So two jobs tomorrow, I'll go over to good will as I haven't this month yet, do the grocery shopping, get gas, and see my parents.
Then back here for the continuation of game from last week. They'll finally see the ninja! Depending on how far they get maybe into the next adventure as well?

Then Saturday I have one job, the one I didn't do last week because she canceled. I'll probably have my parents over for a movie as well, no Saturday game until next month.
Then my last day off and I can go back to work and I should have actual work to do because everything should come in next week. As it should.

So how did your week go? I hope it was as productive as mine. I'll see you all next week as we head into April, with springtime birds and flowers and bugs making their presence known.