2023-03-02:

Fri:
Pretty busy today, we did get the new onedrive late last night. Whoops, it didn't work.
Some things were my "fault" but he had to get me a new build. He says it's not a bug the customer won't be affected by it.
Anyway, that took most of the day to work out. We were going back and forth trying different things.
Meanwhile I did more Gabi stuff to help the developer. My gabi box seems to like to hang now, and it's making a funny noise which is good for a laugh every time I walk by it! Wait, not that kind of funny noise. So it's a quality device that much is sure. Had to reset it several times during the day.
Got a pretty good haul, I got some of the Market C stuff I was talking about a few weeks ago. 3 fresh sandwiches and 3 salad.
I ate one sandwich, brought the other two home for the weekend. My parents got the salad, it needs to be eaten up pretty fast.
Went to the bank, went shopping, saw my parents.
Then home, checked sites.
Warframe rather unexpectedly. I bought the wrong part with my hard earned crystals because the game UI is pretty terrible. So I had to do the mission another 3 times to get enough again. Sigh. Sorry about that.

Sat:
Cleaned up a bit before leaving.
Went over to see the window lady. Did I say what her problem was before? She was complaining that she could open stuff, and see the tiny window representation in the taskbar, but no window. In my infinite wisdom (and making a successful computer use check and a KNOledge check) I asked her "don't you have a second monitor? Is that on right now?" And she swore up and down that had nothing to do with it? Well, I arrived. I turned on the second monitor. And Guess. What? Her problem was mysteriously solved. How about that? How a freaking bout that? Amazing! It's almost as if I know what I'm talking about. So I wasted an hour of the morning getting ready to go over there, driving, turning something on, and driving home. How do you get by? How do you put on socks, then shoes and not the other way around?
But you can't blame her. It's not fair. We, somehow, our education system, some part of it failed her. Maybe all parts of it. Oh you may say "but Robert, maybe she can do lots of things you can't." I doubt this, you haven't seen this person or the house she lives in, but let's say that's true. There could be. But by the same token I'm pretty sure if someone asks me "hey, is that appliance right next to you on or off?" I'm pretty sure I could answer that question. It's not a hard one.
Took my frustrations out on the ice in front of the driveway, cleared it out.
Checked sites, videos.
Went out to second job of the day. She was simply adding a laptop so she didn't want anything moved. Naturally, she knew no passwords, not google, or Apple, which are the worst to reset. They do some kind of manual review or something? The soonest they would get back to her was 6 hours. Nice. But I did find her facebook, aol, and other minor passwords. Set her up the usual package of software to actually make the computer do stuff, and it was back here.

Watched some Fate Zero, then my parents came over. One Puss in Boots later, and I watched a bit more Fate and went to bed.

Sun:
Checked sites, did a few Sunday things, and went over to set up the router. No trouble there, but interference is certainly going to be a problem. He was still getting 90mb/sec over it which I was impressed with, of course that was a few feet from it.

Back here, ate lunch.

Finished Fate Zero. Not impressed. Too many characters, the story is all over the place between them, magic exists but it's the modern world? So is magic secret or is everything powered by it and electricity doesn't exist? Oh, we're having a flashback 20 episodes in about one of the characters being a kid? Sure, that makes sense. Why him specifically? He's no more the main character than anyone else. Why are these people talking through some kind of gramophone looking thing when cell phone exist? What happened to the alliance between the characters? Why is the grail active when two episodes ago it was explained all the summons had to be dead? There's still at least two fighting. Why is the grail overflowing with blood? lava? and burning the town? If the wish was destruction shouldn't it had gone further? It should grant any wish, so it must be more powerful than that. Why does no one seem to notice the destruction? There's no news reports about it shown. Why are the summons so far apart in power and abilities? Didn't you get the healing scabbard an episode ago? Why aren't you using it to heal this person in front of you? What happened to that thing anyway? It vanishes from the story completely. How was all this begun? It's happened 3 times, what were the other 3 wishes? How did they shape and change the world? Seems like not very much, so what's the point? I could go on and on.

Started Fate Stay. It's now a gag anime? What? Many more visual gags, and it's easier to follow because there's less characters. Why are they all in high school now? In the last series they were all adults, which made sense. The grail "selects" worthy, powerful mages because that's who can do the summoning of the champions. But now some kid with no magic abilities has somehow summoned? And didn't they need an object to tie the summon here, and that's how they got the specific person? I mean the one guy stole something to do the summoning. Now, it's like a lottery, and no objects needed. The characters were saying "oh I lucked out with my summon" but that's... not how it worked before? Why is this 12 year old girl gleefully killing people? How did she get so messed up? Where are her parents? She lives in a huge mansion, she must have some. What do they think about all this? This whole anime just makes no sense.

Mon:
Started in with the onedrive stuff. At least that's what I wanted to do. Nope. I had a 9:00 meeting with Gina. Sigh. She loves her meetings, let me tell you.
Got through that. Did some upgrades to the newest release and did a gabi test. She's saying I need to do a full test with gabi? No. Emphatically not. Who is paying for that? Get them to do their own testing, on their own product. We should not be testing this product forever, for free. Sorry. No.

So I pushed back on that. If Don does want me to do some kind of test it will in no way be a full test. We can't have broken EIP copy so just forget it.

Looked at the onedrive bugs.

With that done I took lunch, and saw the lady restocking the drink cooler. When I came out of the bathroom I picked up a haul! 8 salad? More breakfast stuff, two cheesecake, and more sandwiches. Sheesh. The freezer is full, I brought a ton of stuff to my parents, and I still have more than I can eat this week in the fridge. Yipes.

Then I did onedrive testing. Took a little doing to get it on a device with the SSO capability. Not being able to run it on 1.6 versalink is very annoying. They should fix that. But we found a 1.5 machine and loaded it up. Got through pretty much all I wanted to. I may do a little more tomorrow, we'll see. Depends on if the upgrade test comes in. Oh and Sanja wants us to test on some specific machines we made during the parts shortage? Nope, sorry, we don't actually have any of those devices in any lab. Again, if we messed that up it wouldn't be in our feature, the printer just wouldn't boot. Stop trying to make us do busywork. We have enough actual work to do, especially as it's your team that's supposed to be doing all the upgrade testing, and not farming it out to us.

Saw my parents, well my one parent anyway, handed off tons of food, and came home.

Checked sites. Ate dinner. Two calls. Someone who was scammed, and honestly I might start handing out pamphlets to every customer. "Do not give some stranger you calls you on the phone access to your computer." That sort of thing. And the lady from yesterday claims to have found her google password. Sure. Ugh, another one came in. Nice. A setup, those are only two hours on average, it'll be fine. fine.

So I'm heading to the scammed lady tomorrow, I've told her to get new bank accounts, as her account numbers are clearly compromised now. And I get to change all her passwords and such. Fun. A laugh a minute. Maybe even two.

Google lady I didn't reach.

And setup lady is Wed. It'll be quick because she's only... 35 minutes away???? Sigh. Never mind. I'll be getting home at 7:00 mark my words.

Mark them well.

Did you? Did you do it? No I don't know what it means either. Just... I  don't know write them down or something. Then put a checkmark next to it, I don't know.

Tues:
Couldn't get Don on my side that testing Gabi yet again was pointless, he wants it tested. Okay then.
So had a meeting about priority, did he even really say what was the highest priority? I don't think so. Well, as long as he feels useful I guess.
Got back to work.

Today's work consisted of finishing up the onedrive test from yesterday, signing my card in. Huh, that's odd, it goes into the app but then gives a network error. Honestly these guys are the worst.

Then gabi testing, so pointless. But I did 'er. Don did say hold off on the smaller machine that's only about to launch rather than having launched. I'll be so glad when customers can finally get them. And we can stop all this "oh, but it's not quite out yet" nonsense, look it's going to be out sooner or later and the sooner we find the bugs, the less scrambling around we'll have to do a month from launch wondering why we didn't catch all this stuff months ago! I mean how long have you been in software development?

Then upgrade testing. That's going well at least. Not that I got to much of it because it takes so darn long. I left the machine in a blank slate state on the way out so Gina can come and start from scratch and check out her directions. I admire her dedication. Then I'll apply the clone file and those two upgrade tests are done.

Went to second work, she has her finance stuff taken care of (I hope) so I changed all the important passwords she could think of connected to finance or personal data like her doctor and pharmacy.

Came back here, checked sites, had dinner.

No calls, but did call the lady back from yesterday. So hopefully that's all taken care of, as I did reach her.

Then xbox with the others.

Wed:
Back to doing the upgrade tests and nothing but the upgrade tests, all the time.

But first I went through the directions for USDA setup with Gina so she had them right in the directions. That didn't take too long.
Then it was upgrade tests. I did all I could do with the machines available.

Gina wants a gabi demo? Didn't she attend my last gabi demo? When will this stupid voice thing die already?

Out to second work, after salad of course, she bought an all in one with a processor really no faster than the one she had. Whoops. Had the same amount of RAM too. Her screen is going... wouldn't just buying a display and using that have been cheaper? Well, anyway, I wasn't asked. Moved her stuff over, got back right around 7 as I expected. At least I got brownies and some soup. I'll eat that... uh over the weekend I guess.

Checked sites, only call was her with a few questions, like how to turn it on. With the power button. The Power. Button.

Did my annual sales tax stuff.

Then videos.

A little warframe on my own, I beat the rank 17 test 3 times in practice but missed it by about 2 seconds "for real" so I have to try again tomorrow. It's a dumb system, I know.

Thurs:
Sheesh, calm down thursday.
We started the day showing the nice lady my problem with the login. Except... it wasn't a problem now. What? I've not been able to log in that way since I set the thing up, but now suddenly I can? What? Did our server change to allow the TLS 1.0 nonsense for the ancient machine for Kevin's test somehow fix it? That's the only thing we've done recently. So frustrating. But she was really nice about it.

Did a bit more onedrive testing on Altalink just to say I did it, so that can be closed out.

Meeting with Gina about certain bugs.

Meeting with Don about a new thing coming up and how many days of effort to put down.

Our 1:00 meeting got moved to 10:00 so that happened.

Meeting with Ken about a machine setup in another lab. (twice)

The usual status meeting.

Oh and I found more trash food, another like 3 salads, it worked out to half a box full of food. Granola bars this time. I gave a few to Christina, the blueberries I gave her she hasn't eaten. They will get moldy you know! Eat the freaking things or they'll just be thrown out again, aarg! So she gets nothing. She looses. Good day sir! We've moved a lot of people into the half cube area again, it's half full! This of course means a ton, and I mean a crap ton of f-ing stupid plastic water bottle waste. Yes! Not even soda bottles like real americans. Water bottles. There are people stupid enough to go to a store, buy a tiny plastic container of water, bring it home, then cut it out of the package (again plastic) then cart it to work simply to consume it and toss the bottle. In the "recycling" bin which we all know is a lie but if we are going to do all that, can we please, please, walk the extra 40 feet to the cans for kids bin? You know, the gives that nickle to charity causes? Please? Can we not be total human garbage? I mean we have special water fountains you can walk up, hold a bottle near, that's right you don't have to touch it, and it'll fill up with crystal clear, cold, refreshing water. Totally free! The same stuff you went to a store to buy, and you're tossing 10% of the product by weight! (the bottle) You don't need a ticket to use it and there's no line either. Socially acceptable, nobody is going to look down on you for doing it. Use those, with a metal or glass bottle you brought from home and can reuse again and again. I myself use a coffee cup I got out of the garbage. Works just as well for me as it did for the original owner. Use anything. An old toner cartridge. A cup you wove out of paperclips because you were bored. A shoe. Stick your head under the thing, I don't care. Anything else is better than more plastic waste. I'm begging you! Super simple stuff!

Was there anything else? You wanted more? Forget about it!

Went to set up the "new" device for a guy. Uh, when I saw it and looked at his current system I said... but wait? His system was two years newer than the one he wanted set up. The refurb unit which he paid $350 for still had the original 2010 HD. Like, that's junk man. Plus you're massively overpaying. I would sell you that system for $250 tops, and I would have a brand new SSD in there. He finally agreed replacing his machine with an even older machine was rather dumb, so we just put an SSD in his and I loaded windows from scratch, just to avoid cloning any problems from the old device. Moved his stuff over and came home.

No calls, thank you.

Checked sites, had a brownie.

40 minutes until I can take the test again. Got ready for tomorrow.

Let us look even further into the future. Probably more work tomorrow, who knows. Gina wants to demo gabi for some german fellow soon, there's a new D4.0 build I need to look at, more upgrade testing I guess. Can we not have to do everything at once? Why are there vast stretches I have nothing to do and then this happens?

I'll do the shopping, see my parents, and then Neil is around so I'll go over to Sean's for a bit.
Yes, we're still doing the space angels game on Saturday so I'll go back there at that time. At least there's no work for that day by the looks, so it will be a bit of driving but not too bad.

Then Sunday, not sure. Maybe I'll make pie, for no reason.

So that's the last of Feb, wave goodbye children. See you all next time, maybe I won't be so frazzled?