2021-11-18:

Fri:
What a shock, nothing new at work. Finished off the pizza though. Don wasn't in and out of the room a first for the last few days, so it was nice and quiet in my part of the lab.
Finished the next chapter, and part of the next.
Did the shopping, saw my parents.
Came back here, checked sites.
Did miracle game. More of the town's mysteries solved, whoops got a guy killed I thought for sure was a demon. I had done a test to see if he was possessed earlier and he wasn't. Ergo, he had been replaced because why would just a normal townsfolk NPC attack us? But apparently he was "brainwashed" to do so because I guess that's how that works? But we saved someone with all the answers, yay! More adventures in tunneling to come next time.

Sat:
I did a lot today!
Did a bit of cleaning, I knew I didn't have much time before leaving for my 10:00 but I got a start on it.
Started file coping over network. See, I ordered 4x4TB drives and I'm going to RAID them together in the MacPro to create one giant 16TB drive. Sweet! Backing it up is a problem because I only have 8TB of backup at the moment but I won't use that much for some time so it's fine for now. I'll worry about that problem when I actually use that much space. I of course needed a fast way to get everything from the old drives (2x4TB and 2x2TB one of which was empty) to the new array. USB2? Not going to cut it. But I discovered one of my iMacs was new enough to have USB3 ports, so I started the hours long network copy from there to the new storage drive. When done I'll have one place everything is, and any machine in the house can just access it. Or so I thought. My emulator says "you can break things if you share it!" which is odd. So I guess that's not getting shared. Oh well. The copy is going well, not many problems, but the drive got really, really hot. I piled aluminum rings on the top for more mass and thermal management.
Left for the 10:00 setup.
Went perfectly, with one typo when I set up his google account so he could use the google mini thing he got. Whoops. Set up his google mini, he also had no smart phone? Why? He did have a fairly "recent" android tablet (andriod 8) which would accept the google home app so that much worked out at least.
Came back. Ate lunch, checked sites, videos.
Started the second drive copying.
Christmas shopping, a tiny, tiny bit.
Ordered medicine for Oliver.
Put up the new switch in the basement. Networking portion complete. It's not pretty, I don't have a nice rack like Linus Tech Tips does, it's just a piece of wood I've hung some stuff on, but he doesn't need a whole rack in his house and he knows it. I mean come on, how many cameras do you need in your house, are you really in that high a crime area? And if you are, why did you move there? But anyway, I can now run ethernet cables to the printer down there and the MacPro once it moves down there. I was one port short before. Sigh. Why don't they make routers with more than four ports? It's odd. Maybe someday I'll have a more professional installation so cables aren't just running every which way and through holes drilled in the floors, but for now it's fine.
Finished cleaning up.
Cleaned up the macs I got from my morning appointment. He gave me his old mac minis, so now I have a stack of three of them. One is a 2011 machine, just shy of being useful. Not sure what I would do with it. Wiped both, they are ready for use if I do come up with something. I mean the old one is an old intel core duo so that's totally out, but the other is an i5, it's fast enough to do stuff. I have thought of a home automation project so the lights are a bit smarter than just "turn on" "turn off" with motion. The one in the collection room is totally annoying. 90% of the time I just want to pass through. The light turns on, it turns off again 20 seconds later. Easy. But 10% of the time I want to do something in the room, so it turning off all the time is really annoying. I hate to turn the timer up because it's only 10% of the time and requires taking the cover off and using a screwdriver. So I would have to go do that to use the room, then turn it back down again when I was done. It could be done but it seems a little silly. A smarter system I would program with "if this sensor is tripped, turn off all other lights because I am now in this room, and turn this room light on. It would follow me around. That would be cool. So it would be perfect for that. Low power, SSD based, huh I wonder how complicated that would really be? I saved a bunch of money (not on car insurance) by going for the cheeper machine, maybe put some of that money I "saved" into that project? I got the $1000 mac mini instead of the $3000 macbook pro so I "have" $2000 "extra" I wouldn't have had. I could put it into some home improvement type stuff.
More shopping.
Some arcade games, haven't done that in forever.
Watched an episode of Nancy Drew.
Parents came for movie.
Then did warframe.

Sun:
More transferring to the new RAID. It finished today, and I told the machine where things were again. Dropbox had to reindex or redownload or something and was going crazy but it too finished, so everything should be fine now. We'll see how it works out. I'll need to combine folders a bit I think, make a more logical arrangement but it should work out just fine.
Sites and movies.
Made bread. Still have enough for another whole recipe of it.
Watched a movie and ate lunch.
Did computer related stuff. With my new MacMini appearing on (hopefully) the 18th I need to move things around. Cleaned up the basement table, figured out how the mac pro is going to live down there.
So dusty. I'm putting it on the table, in hopes that will help with the dust. I mean it should be asleep when I'm not here so that should help. No fans to draw the dust in. I looked around, trying to figure out if I could put it elsewhere down there but I just don't think that's going to be possible. With two litter boxes down there and the other side of the basement dedicated to the electronics collection there's just no other place. I did have the bright idea that for the new machine I don't need to have Dropbox running. Just on the one machine, the old one. Any changes will be synced, so if I'm connecting to the new storage RAID anyway, why bother maintaining another one on a separate machine? It's silly. I'll just open "dropbox" the folder and dropbox the app on the Mac Pro can sync anything that was changed. So I'll just do that. I was going to keep the dropbox stuff on a flash drive I bought, but clearly I didn't think that through. Oh well, it wasn't expensive, and maybe I'll find some other use for it.
101.3 is playing xmas music, I guess it's the time. My leaves have finally turned, maybe they'll come down in the next week or two? The front doesn't need it, but the neighbor was out raking. I see lots of leaves on the driveway. It was pretty rainy though, and will be tomorrow too. Well, I'll get them sooner or later. No rush, still lots of them to fall.

Mon:
Only thing interesting at work was Christina coming over to ask questions about some upcoming test. Then she emailed Don about it, wondering how we were going to test the stuff in the first place.

Otherwise, finished the next chapter.

Went over to password guy, printed out another copy of his passwords, plus a copy to tape to his wall. Hopefully he won't lose the wall.

Came back here, had bread, checked sites, watched videos.

More christmas shopping, from the comfort of my own home. Thanks, post office, sorry your postmaster general is trying to destroy you.

One call, and Ellen emailed me about pictures. Yay. Didn't reach the called guy, but Ellen called me before the time she said I should call. She just had a folder inside a folder and that was just too much for her to comprehend. I dragged it to the parent folder. Wow, I'm such a genius.

Watched Nancy Drew.

Tues:
Not much to talk about today, I checked to make sure the feature they removed from a build earlier was still removed. So that's a thing. Oh, and I helped Adnan restart explorer after it crashed.

Wrote the next chapter.

No after work job so I came home. Checked sites, ate dinner, got ready for tomorrow so I could do some warframe.

Made the call from yesterday to the guy I didn't reach. No new calls today.

Wed:
Did a little work today, was helping Christina set up for the next test, in December or something. She wanted to be sure we knew what we were doing so we could do the test. Pretty smart. Turns out there's a lot of setup involved, it isn't just loading an app and making sure some features are removed, like Ted said. Silly Ted!

Otherwise, writing. Got the next chapter done and started the next. Also tossed a chapter, no kids turning into monsters here. They already are! *rimshot* I kid, I kid the kids, you're all great! Anyway, I'm ahead on the word count for the chapter averaging 4000 words per chapter not 3000 so I could lose that one, it wasn't getting me anywhere story wise.

So the delivery date of my new Mac went from "tomorrow" to "let us get back to you on that one." Er, thanks? Sigh. So I have no idea when it will get here.

Called the "I don't have internet" guy as I left work, no answer. Called again when I got home, and he was fine. Yay! So I didn't have to go there.
Checked sites, ate dinner. No calls today either.

Watched more Nancy Drew.

Thurs:
Mac delivery is still in limbo, and I didn't even get the might, the muscle, the menace of MonStar!

Meeting day, and we did a little more work on the upcoming onedrive app. Which has been delayed because of... the name? Uh, okay.

Wrote two chapters. It was supposed to be one chapter but it was running long and getting to the point I usually break the chapter so I did. It turned into two. This one will probably be a long one, came up with too much content for it. Oh well, it happens, it's "supposed" to be the last monster diary so it's fitting.

What else? Went after work to goodwill, got two things, not very good. (I mean I got three, but the little plush dragon is staying with my big plush dragon so it doesn't really count) Oh, I need to put that into my checkbook. Thanks for reminding me.

Got back, sites, videos, dinner. One call. Moved some things around now that my 3 day backup is done. Sigh, firewire 400. Wish I had a working 800 cable this drive could use it but I only ever had one and I don't think it worked very well. It's fine. Of course I should have been using my new machine now but nooooo.

Future time! Thanksgiving week is coming up, so lots of people are taking off. Not me, we all know why. But more to the point, tomorrow will be more of the same I'm sure. Then shopping, seeing my parents, and coming home for game. The tunnels and finally the town will be safe? We can only hope.

Then Saturday going to Sean's for the monster game. What were we even doing there? Oh yeah, the forest and the mine shaft. Right. Rescuing Neil.

Maybe some leaves on Sunday, if it's nice? Still not many down, really. Weird.

Haven't made that call yet, don't know what it's about. She wanted 8:30, so...

Which has now passed. So apparently, she had a problem with her email, her son looked at it, changed her password, to something she didn't now know, forcing me to change it again five days later (wait you waited five days to call me?) to get her back into her email. Wha? Anyway, crisis averted and I have nothing for the weekend. Yay!

So that's that. Next time we speak it'll be turkey day, so give some thanks you, you, thankful people. Do it.


Santa is watching.

Bye!!!!!