2022-02-03:

Fri:
Nothing new came in and my bugs weren't fixed nor did they request more information so I just went back to sculpting. After like two/three hours I realized it wasn't working. I just couldn't get it looking right. In desperation I even built up the leg to a ridiculous degree and shaved it down with the smoothing function which basically shrinks it a millimeter at a time. Didn't help, in the end it still looked wrong. I have no idea how to fix it.

So then I had the bright idea of trying to model it a different way. I recalled when I made that render of the fairy (or something else, I forget) I was using circles and joining them which I did try for this piece initially. More and less vertices didn't help. But I recalled another method I had used in the past, basically tracing just the edges and then building up the rounded bits between them as needed. So I gave that a shot. Much better results almost immediately. In much less time I had something I was much happier with. It just goes to show you. What I have no idea, but something. I got the body, back and front legs, hair poof, ears, and part of the "mane" done. It looks good! I'll show you... later.

Did the shopping and went to my parent's house. Set up the Xbox over there, some oddness with one of his HDMI cables. Must be poor quality, as we learned from Linus and his $10,000 cable tester even expensive cables can have issues.

Saw Heather, and had pizza.

Came back for game, we defeated the angels using stealth and underhanded tactics to strike from hiding and kill them before they even knew what was happening. We're the chosen of the heavens, may I remind you! We started the next adventure. Our second field trip, and we're tasked with patroling a forest and taking care of any demons we find. We've just spotted two tiny demons and so you know what that means! Yes, tea party, you're exactly right.

Sat:
Cleaned up, as I'm having my father over for the movie rather than going to a theater. It was his choice.
Checked my sites, watched more tutorial videos.
Got ready to leave for my 11:00. There has been a light snow, but I don't think the driveway needs to be done.
The 11:00 went pretty fast. Showed her how to put the toner cartridge in. Cleaned off her imaging roller, which I'm glad worked I wasn't sure even just touching it with alcohol would be safe. I saw a site that said it would be so, and it was ruined one way or the other so I went into a dark place and chanced it. Printed okay after I got all the gunk off it. Scanned her system, it was fine, and gently admonished her for falling for a scam but praised her for not giving any details of her financials.
Picked up my father, (I was halfway to his house anyway) went to Subway, then came back for the movie. Did some Rampage after that, he seems to enjoy that game.
Then some Back 4 Blood with the others. We beat the stage we had ended on before the whole radon thing, and moved on. Still plenty of the game to go.

Sun:
Mostly The Expanse. Seemed to watch a lot of episodes but was shocked to find I still have a whole season to go. I'm sure I've not seen any of this later content but why does it seem so familiar to me? Very strange.
But I also made pie. A bit late in the month, I agree, but this just means when this pie is gone I can make next month's right away and have even more pie. It's a plan with no drawbacks.
Called dentist guy and again reminded him of his task to talk to Apple to get his account straight. Technically he called me again, I just picked up figuring "may as well get it over with." My words of wisdom: "Until you do that, there is nothing I can do for you." And he was like writing this all down. Did you somehow... forget? Like my being there for an hour of download time trying to restore your iPhone? I mean you didn't, right? Is "go down to see Apple" really that complicated a direction for you right now that you have to write it down to remember it? I fear for you.
Got ready for tomorrow, did Sunday things. Back to it, I can see February from here.

Mon:
Loaded a D7.6 release as I had done before to check if a bug fix was in. I know someone is going to ask, despite it not being my bug in the first place.
Then we got the last release of the new D5.6 software. They're just working me to the bone over there! (They're really not)
Loaded that up on a machine and tried it out. My pull the card bug is still there, big surprise. Huge. Otherwise it was fine. No issues.
Then I worked on ninetales. Here it was on Friday.



And here it is today.



The pieces aren't together of course, don't mind that. I'll smooth them all out with sculpting, I can do that much at least. As you can see on the mane I originally tried to just carry on extending it downwards but it looked really wrong at the end. So I chucked it. Watched the first tutorial for hair on youtube (not on my personal work PC duh) and tried that instead. We'll see how it looks all smoothed out. Believe me, this looks a lot better than the way I was doing the body/legs in the first place.

Got back home, had dinner, watched more Expanse. One call, going to put the doorbell in.

Worked on a Valentine's gift too. Need nails, don't ask why. Small nails. Hopefully I'll remember to get some tomorrow.

Tues:
Happy birthday to my father!

"Finished" ninetales. Here he is.



I mean from that angle he looks okay. But he's not. Take a look at the original and mine compared.



The mane didn't work out, the legs are too thin, the poof on his head isn't all that great (I remade it 3 times). But I don't know how to fix those problems. Am I using the tools incorrectly? The wrong tools? Am I just not being careful enough? I guess for the moment I'm going back to hard surface modeling and away from sculpting. I mean the tutorial took this and turned it into this




So it must be doable. But it's armor I want to 3D print (a tiny armor) at the moment so that's really what I should be practicing anyway. Hard surfaces.

Not much at work, made sure the expired cards were in one place so we can send them to have new certs put on. Nothing new came in.

Went to see doorbell guy, got the thing set up, it was fairly easy. But he wanted it on two phones, so either he or his wife could see the doorbell ring. Well, when you open the software it makes you log in. But only if you've logged in on the other phone first. So you can't get both at the same time. Not what he wanted. He called them, and I sent them a screenshot of the app, for reasons, and she said "oh I see the problem I'll send you some new units" and they didn't want the old (2) units back. Huh? What? So I get to go back there.

Four calls tonight, so that's a real treat. Checked sites, ate dinner.

Yay! One person reseated their cords and it booted. So only three then.

One person wants a new monitor.
One person wants a printer hooked up and for me to plug in a fire stick into their TV because apparently that's too tough.
And a guy I didn't reach.

Almost done with season 4.

Wed:
Big snow on the horizon? It rained today so if the temps drop tonight there well be plenty of ice for everyone. On the ground. Where ice lives.
The only exciting work thing was the paper we were promised in December finally showed up. It was stuck in some random rack and Christina and I wandered around trying to find it. We did! Nice.

Otherwise, worked on the next 3D model. The robot puppy from Perfect Horizon. I have only one tiny 3/4 view of it, so we'll see how it goes.

Printer guy canceled, calling at 7:00 this morning so I went to deliver the monitor instead. It was the one I got from a pile of stuff from a customer. He noticed one corner of it was darker than the others. Neat! So I get to go back there with another one. Luckily when I went to good will I found one for the price I offered him that one for, meaning the only thing I lost was time, the most irreplaceable thing in the entire universe. Neat! So worth it! Or wait, no, what's the opposite of that?

Got back here, checked sites, had dinner, watched videos. Checked monitor out. Talked to the guy I didn't reach yesterday, he wants Tuesday of next week.

Finished season 4 and went to bed.

Thurs:
We did get some snow, it's true. But more through the day so it was pretty bad at night, more than it was in the morning.

Meeting day, so we had the two meetings. The fix for the smartcard login apparently went in, so I checked it out. Logging in twice with the card made the machine freak out, so now they get to look at that. Helped the guy at home look at that. Christina went home early. I also walked all the way down to where I saw that monitor in the bin yesterday, it looked like a nice one even if it was beat up. I was proud of myself for finding my way through the manufacturing plant to find it. Buuuuut it had no power supply, as it didn't use the standard cable. Sigh.

Otherwise went through the tutorial I saved yesterday.

Called printer guy that I was on my way. "Okay I'll be there in half an hour." Uh, no? You were supposed to be there at 4:00? So I just went home, had pie, fed kittens their treat, checked sites, and went back out. He's only 6 minutes away of course that's without a snowstorm. But I got there. A nice, simple job. Ha!

First of all, why are all his lightbulbs blue? Blue light is the worst light, no?
Second, the printer was a crappy no control panel deal (at least it's laser) and he uses a linux notebook for some bizzare reason. So getting it set up was more of a challenge than I would like to admit. I tried the phone app (and there's so much wireless interference in the place I turned off wi-fi to speed up his download of the app), tried WPS (the spectrum router doesn't have a button?) tried my laptop, finally I just plugged it into Ethernet, found out how to print a status page (hold a random button on the thing) got the IP, connected to it, and got on the wireless that way. The laptop, to its credit, did connect to it. But it doesn't support airprint so his phone can't print to it? What? How do you make a printer in this day and age without airprint? So stupid.

Anyway, slogged home the roads were pretty bad by that time (6:00) and got back here. Had dinner, did the rest of the stuff.

Looking forward I'll have to do the driveway before I leave tomorrow, so that'll be fun. Seeing my parents, I wonder how the trial is going? That my mother is a juror for, they're not on trial. Shopping, probably not the bank. Then home for game. Nothing Saturday game wise. I'll see how the weather is and bring the monitor over to the guy. Otherwise I acquired "somehow" season 5 of the expanse so I'll probably be watching that a bunch. Working on the pup maybe. Just now did a search for 3D robot dog. Should not have done that. My model sucks.

Anyway, where was I? Right. Oh, working on the Valentine's gift for sure, it's painted so...

So that's the first part of Feb. How is it going for you? See you next week!