2021-04-08:

Fri:

Okay, clearly the display is in hours, minutes, not minutes seconds. That makes a lot more sense. I stopped it at 13% and it's an odd looking thing. I don't know if the filament is really going to work though it's 1.75mm PLA which is what it should use. Sigh.

Maybe I'll feed the sample into it and see what that stuff does.

Back to the regularly scheduled blog.

Plenty of work today, which I finished. I did the two D2.9 machines, which went fine, and then two D5.4 machines. So I did the same test a total of 4 times. This is exciting in ways you can't imagine.

I also made a new appointment for my shot. It's tomorrow. Whoosh. That escelated quickly. I had to wait to get home to cancel the other one, which I did. 9:45 tomorrow, neat. I had already moved the email to another folder that wasn't online, but clicking the link brought up a page with a single "are you sure" and as I was sure, I clicked it. Appointment canceled. If only all things in life were that easy.
Thanks to my sister who pointed it out to me.

Had a meeting about why the thing I wrote up wasn't a bug, apparently the way we do things it doesn't check if someone is logged in, I suppose because the call could come from a different source while someone was logged in and there would be no way for the system to know? And that messed me up because I thought it shouldn't work that way initially? But I was convinced that was for the best, and closed the bug as actually working as expected. The problem is there's so many features on our devices, and they're so interconnected, having one thing changed in some area that seemingly is unrelated may not be unrelated. That's why the original difference between machines, because I had somethig turned on in one machine, but off in another, and I didn't even realize it.

Otherwise got groceries, had more than half a tank of gas so I didn't stop there, but did see my parents.

Came back home, ran game, got through the end of the ninja adventure. I actually damaged someone for once. Neat! The next one should be crazier.

Sat:

Got stuck with a needle, place seemed smaller than I remember it. It was there we did the toy shows, right? Strange. Anyway, we moved right along and that was that. See you in three weeks, suckers.

Came back here, played with my 3D printer a bit, made a test file I want to try to see what's going on, something not as tall.
Ate lunch and went to my 12:00. Went fine, got all her passwords straightened out and she can use whatsapp to talk to her friend tomorrow for Easter. Of course all this took me two hours but it was well spent I assure you. (Yes I'm trying to assure myself)

Came back here, made the print. It's weird, it's like it stayed melted waaaaaaaay too long. It eventually hardened, but it was transparent when it was melted and finally became white again. I don't know. I'm going to unload this filament, use their sample filament, and see what the difference is.

Okay, I did that, and it's even worse than I expected. I originally ordered ABS plastic for the makebot, right? This is a type of plastic with certain physical characteristics the most important of which is the temperature it melts at. I was shipped "MakerBox Flexible Filament." This is PLA but not exactly PLA either. As I thought, it was coming out wrong because according to the website I found when looking it up whatever this stuff is actually made of it "flows and melts at significantly lower temperatures than the MakerBot PLA Filament" So the question is, can I even use it? I mean it did work, and for something with only a few layers it might be okay, but it's a risk because the material isn't really made for this machine. Something about it pulling through the machines and the gears and everything.

I got some new filament. Only $20 so it's not expensive really. There's a big difference between the two.

Did some reading.

Parents came for movie, watched the second Fantastic Beasts, which really only had one beast in it.
Then waframe with the crew.

Sun:
So far no negative effects from the serum. Wings are coming in nicely.

Happy Easter, if you're into that sort of thing.

Looked into fixing my Xbox controller. The left stick is really loose now. I think I can unsolder the good one from the controller I originally bought to replace the battery hungry wireless controller because that one the right stick was loose. Then I don't generate as much e-waste. In the meantime I plugged the wireless one into the wall, if this doesn't work I can use it for now. I seem to recall it even being plugged in draining the battery to nothing, but maybe the power supply wasn't enough. I have it plugged into my 2A USB hub now, we'll see how it holds up. Didn't want to start the soldering project only had a little time before going over to my parent's house. Why do these things break so much? My first one ate batteries (despite my wireless mouse lasting months with only a single AA battery so I know we can do efficient wireless stuff) The second one had the wonky right stick but that one was used so that's on me. The third one I bought new has the auto problem where it doesn't transmit all the time, and now this one that replaced that one developed a loose left stick. It's crazy! I should not need 5 controllers in two years!

Checked sites, did some Sunday stuff in case I get back late. Sean wanted to do Warframe so we'll see how it all works out.

Sent an email to Ellen that no, there was no "easier" program for pictures and please to stop whining like a baby because you have to make a folder. It's not hard. Honest.

Spent the day with my family.

Got ready for tomorrow and did some warframe. The battery light on the unit itself was green, but the Xbox reported the battery as about 50% full. It stayed green a half hour, then went red again. It stayed at 50% on the status screen and held up so if the project doesn't work out at least I can use that one until I get yet another controller.

A PC was dropped off at like 10:00, remember the guy who kept trying different processors as his machine wouldn't boot with the new one? He I guess got it to work and was going to give his old processor to his daughter because he doesn't learn from his mistakes. So he bought a new motherboard for her machine and now it won't even power on. Good job. Honestly, leave well enough alone!

Had calls, a guy who claims it can take 20 minutes to boot his machine. I've heard claims like that before and they've never been true. Maybe they will be this time, but we'll see. He's of course 30 minutes away. Sigh.

Mon:
As I suspected, not much new at work. Having finished the D2.9 stuff with all models tested and the D5.4 stuff with one model for the one test and two for the other, the next big release is the versalink stuff which was delayed but we don't know for how long. Possibly another two week?

So nothing to do at work.

I did work on the next adventure though.

Then the pain begins.

Left for second job. HD. Is it bad? Who knows! It was running so poorly I decided to do the trick I thought of. I took both drives, plugged them in, and cloned it using my laptop. Clone failed with a BSOD. Neat. So I started it again, this time inside the laptop which did have USB 3 so I hoped it wouldn't be too slow. It didn't make it through this time. Neat^2. So I just put the SSD into the thing, wiped it, reloaded windows and set the whole thing up manually. So much fun. At last that worked. Got back at almost 9:00. Called farm lady, no answer. Called a lady with a friend whose husband just died apparently she doesn't know anything. Like passwords, or billing. Great, that should be a real treat.

Looked at the system that came in until 10:15. He had screwed it down to the case with the standoff screws. Uh, what? Please, stop messing with things you don't understand. Finally got it put the right way around and booting. Go me. I'm charging him the full rate even though he dropped it off. You want to remove something, then put it back wrong? I mean it must have been right in the first place, yes? He went out of his way to do it wrong. And it took me more than an hour and I didn't want to do it at that time anyway (no reasonable business would have) so I think I'm justified.

Checked sites (no videos) and went to bed!

Tues:
Another super long day.

Nothing at work to talk about. Still done with everything for now. I did write another chapter of the dragon warrior saga.

Out to second job. This was a lady whose husband just died, and she doesn't know anything. Like passwords to his PC, or accounts in general. So I figured the first step is just getting his PC booted. Whoops! LOL It's a linux box. Neat. With SAS drives, not SATA? The heck? The password reset did work, but I realized only too late that oh, I'm resetting the ROOT password not the user password so I have to log in with that. Then use the root account to reset the password for the user account. Obvious, in retrospect. This after taking the drives out, trying them in her linux box, putting them back, trying other directions for the reset. He knew what Macs were, by the way. He had a 2009 Mac laptop. If he was soooooo keen on avoiding MS, and I can't blame him for that honestly, why not just use Macs? You clearly bought one at least once, though it had nothing on it. What? The? Heck?

We started going through the thing, of course he didn't have a convenient text file or anything with his passwords in it. (Such as you might find on my Mac for those that come after me should something happen) No sir. Why would he? But he did use lastpass. His password hint was an animal, (as that's all lastpass will give you, there's no password reset function) and the browser extension let us see his saved passwords without the master password. Neat! This seems totally legit. So we were going through them, and there were a million of them, and we got lucky. His google password (which was at the top of the list) referenced this animal! Yes! It worked. I was able to log into his account and do an export to a comma list, and that let me import it to a spreadsheet, neatening it up and allowing me to print it (to his ancient laser printer) so she has all his accounts and passwords. This guy, I tell ya. He has at least three VOiP boxes in the house, he's using a TV as a monitor, his machine was ancient, yet running an OS nobody uses, some things are plugged into some VPN router? Is she paying some VPN service as well? There's wires everywhere, and his wife knows nothing about any of it. She has a real mess to clean up because of this guy. (She admits to having two car payments she can't afford because she's on social security having retired years ago. So this is the least of her problems but even small problems can add up. Just play Tetris for two minutes to discover this) What are you doing buddy? I never met the guy and I hate him! He was all over the place, left no plan of action in the event of his death, and left his wife holding the bag who is now in over her head at the time she needs the most support! (she says her granddaughter has been very helpful, yeah, that's gotta be gauling to a certain extent. Hey person that is 1/6 my age, can you help me computer because I don't know anything?) I hope she can take it from there but after four hours of this I had to go home. I offered to come back though in case she had trouble with the accounts. I'm not a monster, I wasn't like, "you figure it out lady." But she has to have at least tried, and logging into accounts and seeing "do I need to cancel this" is a low bar, I think? She may never get back into the phone as it's probably PIN protected (her friend had it, she knew I was coming that day but didn't bring it back so we could look at it? Okay, thanks!) so lastpass wouldn't have recorded that. Don't know what Apple can do in that case, they go out of their way to make it so they can't get back into phones but maybe with the appleID something can be done? But he had two factor authentication turned on which needs the phone to be unlocked to log into the apple account! AARG! I could go on, but I'm going to end this rant here. Don't let this happen to you!

Came back, it was almost 8:00. No calls, thank goodness. Called the iMac lady again with the farm, no answer. Ate dinner, got ready for tomorrow. Took some pictures of townsfolk dialog in Dragon Warrior to see what they said and what was in each town, and at 9:30 decided everything was in order enough to do some warframe.

Wed:
Knowing I had no job today I sat and made of list of everything I've neglected to do since Sunday so I can hopefully get through it today when I get home. Nothing much new at work in the morning.

And nothing much new in the afternoon either. Huh. The voice system work is stalled, apparently they're fighting some issue at USDA itself, so they don't have time to work on my thing. Oh well. No news about versalink, maybe we will get some more news tomorrow.

Wrote two chapters, see what having preparations will do for you?

No after work work so I came home, did things off the list. Now I need to work on the game, finding some graphics for it. Found some, just need to tweak the map scenes a bit.

Thurs:
Had one task at work after the meeting, oh and the "return to work" meeting that really doesn't impact us at all. I needed to check if a card works on D2.9 (it doesn't seem to?) and make sure a bug was fixed. As that was also D2.9 I did both of those things. The card I played around with more later as well, getting the root cert and messing with the login name. But no luck. Still can't get it to log in. The developer says he got it to work with a different server, but honestly, I don't trust that.

Otherwise meetings, watering plants, did some writing, and left a tiny bit early to get kitties to take them to the vet. Fastest time getting in, ever. I was brought right in to the room, and she was in and done 12 minutes later. Heck I waited longer for the tech with the rabies shot. Usually it's an hour or more, but not today. Huh.

Came back, did that map stuff I wanted to do. Checked sites. One call, so I called her back and explained that even though she was the same person, and her old MB will never be booted again, MS considers it a different machine and so she has to buy windows again. Sucker!

I'll get ready for tomorrow, probably no soldering until the weekend.

Now to talk about the future.

Let's see, I'm seeing my favoritist person ever, Ellen, 4:00 PM on Sunday. Yay.
Nothing Saturday, but we are doing the Iron Man game, gonna fight me some big, ugly... boy... thing. Yeah have to try and take him down without hurting him too much, seems like a victim to me. So hopefully I'll start a piece of the sword printing and go fix my controller.

Tomorrow is the usual stuff. Work, shopping, get some cat treats, see my parents. Then do my game. I hope it works out, we'll see, it's a very different adventure than they are used to.

And that's this week. One week closer to my second shot, and leaving winter behind. It was near 80 today, sweet! Plants have tiny leaves, there's no clouds in the sky, everything is going to get better from here.

Aarg, one got in at the last minute. Wi-fi issue, so I do have something on Saturday. It's not far away, so it's not terrible but still.

Like I was saying, hope your week is sunshine and fluffy bunnies, I'll see you next time at this very station.