2021-09-16:

Fri:
Plenty of work today. Got through the new DUID entry on the config sheets. I had about 6 printers signed out, and just went across the tabs. This is of course far easier than completing one model, then moving to the next, because I can make the same change to 6 machines, and if they all look the same, everything is fine. Why do we need all these extremely similar machines you may ask? What a person that asks silly questions you are! Have a cookie.
Then just finished the increased password limits for SNMP login. I had one odd result, I cloned my settings to two machines, and one machine worked fine, while the other didn't. I didn't have time to look into it though so that's future Robert's problem.
No writing, what a switch.

Went to the bank, shopping, and saw my parents. One more deposit into the IRA should finish it off for this year. With 3.5 months to go I may actually make slightly more than $5000 this year, instead of less like last year. What shall I do with such wealth?
No game, put stuff away, checked sites.

Got my first holiday catalogs! Neat. The first of many to come I am sure.

Watched 2 Rick and Morty episodes, I thought I was only one behind, but no, the "last" episode was a two parter.
Did some writing, as I hadn't before. Came up with a neat solution to the problem I created, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience. I have a dog that can go invisible and teleport people. You figure it out.

Sat:
Still no word on the package. Something else I ordered (the laptop keyboard) seems to have made its way to the post office so I am not hopeful. I'll give it to Monday and then start the dispute to get my money back. So bizarre. Why generate a number if you're not going to slap the label on a package and send it? Did he pay for two labels then get them refunded somehow? I just... ????
Checked sites, videos.
Went out to the first job. Updated 2016 driver to 2019 (windows didn't find it) manually. Left him an adapter and we'll see what happens. Hopefully at some point I can just grab the adapter back, because the driver thing fixed his issue. If not he can just have the driver and can send me a check. It seemed the best solution, as his machine was connected to wi-fi just fine so there was nothing to troubleshoot. Came back.
Put more plants in containers, I think I have more now than I had to sell before. In fact I know I do. Wow these spider plants really go at it. Accidentally broke one of the little "umbilical cords" between the main plant and the baby, so hopefully it has enough roots to, uh, take root. Some of the others are a bit odd. Because of how they were growing I guess both the roots and the leaves are going in the same direction. I shoved them into the dirt as best I could but I don't know, I guess the roots will grow and turn around, going downward.
Had lunch.
Took pictures of the gift, had to find a good place to set up for it, couldn't use the light box it's too big.
Puttered around until I had to leave again.
Next guy had, uh, no problems at all. His PC turned on just fine, that was his main "issue" that it wouldn't turn on after he got back from vacation. His laptop had some weird program I had never heard of, that complained about a skin when he booted, so I took it out. And I switched his TV to turn on to the last input instead of home.
Came home.
Finally cutting the grass across the street. Need to go look in the dumpster, I keep forgetting.
Had an hour before I had to leave for Sean's. Did more reading.
Then went over there. We stayed on track very well, it was actually one of our better sessions in my mind. Sean gave us people to help, not just a problem to punch in the face. And though he said it was supposed to only be an hour of "content" we ran with it for most of the session. There is still no easy answer for the 5 we want to help, but at least we're trying to move in that direction. It had a lot of good elements, a mystery to solve in what the ritual did, another "mystery" to solve in how to help the kids desperate enough for the ritual, taking to them about what they wanted, the teachers about their punishment and how they maybe should have known better but they had the best of intentions. Talking to the guy we summoned to get the story out of him. We did good.

Sun:
Made "cake" basically just zucchini bread but I didn't have the right sized pans so I just used my cake pan. It came out okay, I'm glad I had all the ingredients and I used up the last of the zucchini. Had to bake it a little longer than it said, the center was clean but still wasn't cooked after I cut it. That was fine, it baked up when I put it back in there and I had two pieces. Separately, of course, sillies. I'll have to keep that around for next year.
Checked sites, videos, as usual.
Did some reading.
Cleaned up after baking. I like doing it, but boy oh boy does it make a mess in the kitchen. I should have done a pie at the same time, warmed the oven up once. Oh well. I have enough bags to last until next year I believe, even if I started using them now. Oh well, maybe next week once I've eaten my "cake."
Then I took a bit of a nap.
More reading and dinner.
Got ready for tomorrow.
Made my phone calls, booked tomorrow with the guy that has lots of computers for reasons, he just wants the usual checkup. Should be no problem, I do this every year at least.
And Tuesday to switch wi-fi adapters with a guy to see if that will solve his issue. He's the guy using the inferior laptop for reasons I gave the adapter to some time ago. He said also his printer wasn't working but he got that going so it's just the wi-fi thing now. Dude, use the faster/better laptop instead of this crappy one. Come on!

Mon:
Helped Christina move a machine back into my lab and unboxed some toner we got that was sitting in the hall. Then looked into that cloning issue. I put in the password for the account and the email sent. So what gives, why didn't that clone? I switched the account, applied the clone file again, and it was fine that time. Huh. Well, no issues then. This leaves me waiting for more stuff to do.

Did some writing, finished the next chapter, started the next, and figured out how they're going to get past the three mini-kracken.

Went to the yearly tuneup. He had 5 machines, but at least they were all in the same room. He had a work laptop, a home laptop, she had a work laptop, a home laptop, and there were two desktops. Sheesh. Her laptop had 150GB+ of log files from itunes? Huh? So her drive was empty. Figured that that. That was the worst problem, everything else was just waiting for the crappy things to finish the scans and the updates.

Got back around 6:30, cleaned cat boxes, checked ivy, listened to calls (another three ugh) and it was 6:50 by that time. Started my calls. The guy with the machine "on vacation" apparently didn't know he had to, you know, use the power switch to turn stuff on. I feared I would have to go there Thursday but no, he called back and said he figured it out. I got the keyboard cover for the coffee spill machine so put that back together and checked it over. I'll drop it off after wi-fi adapter guy tomorrow. It's nearby so...

And booked Wednesday with setting up the new laptop for a lady who got it at staples.

Finally had dinner at 8:00. Checked sites, no good videos to watch.

Tues:
The usual voice meeting today. Got a new version of the app, which wouldn't load of course. He didn't seem concerned, okay, whatever. Once he manually loaded it I tested the current bugs. Two of the bugs must have been caused by the voice license being expired. So those are okay now. The next version should remove the close button that shouldn't be there, so that should be fixed soon. Otherwise Don didn't get back to me about what the fax configuration should be, and Chris was 15 minutes late and so the meeting had ended already. So I don't know about the other bugs. Baby steps.

Watched the apple event. Just ipads and phones. No mac models. Sadface.

Finished the next chapter, now I have to figure out the army base. That's going to be a tough one.

Went out to drop the USB adapter off. Waited 20 minutes, didn't show up. I left it in his door. When I got home he called me like we hadn't just spoken and made an appointment for today. I left the thing, I'm not going back. Dropped off the laptop. He was worried about his documents folder, not pictures, so his stuff was fine.

Got back here, stock market has been crappy lately. Loss after loss. Checked the usual sites and videos. Two calls, adapter guy and vince with a bad mouse?

Did some warframe.

Wed:
Did a bit of voice stuff today, just to make sure the move to D5.6 didn't mess anything up. It all seems fine, though the thing still has trouble with a simple yes and no response. Stupid thing. It's in the absolute perfect environment, I'm inches away from it, but I have to say yes or no two or three times sometimes. Oh, and it hung once.

Otherwise did some writing, didn't finish the chapter. And Don came to talk about what fields to include when writing versalink bugs. Riveting stuff.

Went to do the setup, it went fine for once, she only had about 40GB of stuff to transfer, so I did, didn't take long over USB3 and to an SSD. It was a 7200RPM drive too, oddly. Rare. Got back about 6:00.
Checked sites, ate dinner. One call, wi-fi guy, says the adapter didn't help but admitted to not really actually reconnecting to the wi-fi network so who knows? I'm just ordering him a replacement wi-fi card so maybe that will solve it. Just use your other, better, laptop! AArg!

Thurs:
Meeting day. Some new things are coming in but they're in the planning stages so we won't be seeing them for some time yet.
Nothing much else, work wise, lots of stuff on the schedule but some of it is in 2022 and I have to wonder if we'll even have the parts to make these new machines we're planning on launching? So we're planning ahead a little bit far in my opinion.

Finished the latest chapter and again solved the problem pretty easily. Magic that can be washed away with a hose really isn't all that strong, I guess. So they're just going to do that.
Checked the plants, and went to see mouse guy. Somehow he switched the receivers so that's why it wasn't working. I only noticed because I happened to look at the thing and said, wait, this mouse over here has this name on it, not that one. Why does he have two wireless mice in the same room and how did they get confused? Doesn't make sense to me.

Came back here, checked sites, videos, and had supper.

Saw a headline today. "Former Trump aids to spearhead $10 million campaign against Biden economic plan." These are GOP members, let me remind you, who are once again soooooo concerned about the deficit. About how much this "economic plan" they're so against will cost. But suddenly they have millions of dollars to throw around on, what, exactly? TV ads? If they channeled all this fake outrage and money into actually improving things in the economy, we wouldn't need the economic plan! That would be the economic plan! Right?

Talked for an hour on the phone, her drive is just chugging along. Going to be painful to change to an SSD but that's what we're doing. Lives out in Victor and has DSL so just trying to download a 550MB drive (a what? Really Intel?) took 20 minutes. I finally got fed up and said if she was going to change the drive anyway, anything else I would do after that. It just wasn't worth me sitting here. So that's saturday afternoon, there's a machine with a possible busted HD before that. Shoot, do I have two SSD? Hummm... Better go look. I actually do. Nice. That's at 10:00.

Getting towards 9:00, let's wrap the day up. Looking to tomorrow it's the usual at work I assume, don't have enough for the bank so I'll just do the shopping. Then I'll see my parents. Humm, next week they're gone, so there's feeding all their guys to do part of the week. Should be fine. I only play with Sean and Mizzy online Tuesday now anyway, so there.

Then the two jobs Saturday, and a relaxing Sunday. That should about wrap it up. Halfway through September. I'm hearing radio ads for Christmas concerts, news of toy shortages this year already so buy early, and it's getting chillier out. Wintertime here we come.

Hope you're not dreading it, see you all next week.