2023-09-21:

Fri:
As expected, not much to say about work.
Found a good food for Oliver, has more fiber. And the treats I was looking for has even more! Thankfully he seems to like the treats, and I've mixed the two foods together so he can get used to it (cats are so weird) and to use the old stuff up. Poop well, my tiny friend!
The guy at the pet store was like, hey do you repair computers? I was like, "How do you know this, random stranger?"
Went to the bank, guy was like, where did you get that jacket with Trunks on it??? No dude, that's a patch, and it's 20+ years old. What's with people talking to me today? I don't want to talk about DBZ in the middle of the credit union my guy. Strange afternoon.
Saw my parents.
Came back here, put stuff away.
Did a quick NMS check with my Xbox controller. Works just fine. So it's not the Mac or the game...
Checked sites, then did game. Touch and go for a bit, but we did "win" in the end. We were a bit outnumbered, and our sword guy got caught in the immobilize but after getting him out the tide started to turn and we won. Also kinda sorta killed him. Whoops. Lighting 'aint non-lethal! That's the problem, either I'm hitting way too softly and it takes forever to get anywhere, or I'm hitting way too hard and doing more damage than I want. Well, we brought him back to life but his two minions that did stop attacking us carried him away suddenly after knocking me out. So we don't know if he's dead or alive. (Of course he's alive he can't be a recurring villain if he dies!) But my conscience is clear and my new bird companion worked a real treat. Going to implement that strat in other games! (1000 IQ strat!) I got carted home (thankfully I had called my grandfather to come get this guy right before that) and recovered the next day.

Sat:
Cleaned up.
Did a firmware update on the controller, we'll see if NMS likes it a little better now. Interesting. Had to do a "second" firmware update in a different way, there's the "usb flash drive" way (where the controller acts like a drive and you just drop the file on it) and the "run an app" way. Glad I checked the site for all this. I had it connected to the PC at the time so I don't even know if they offer a Mac version of the tool. If they didn't, and I didn't have a PC, and I couldn't fix this problem I would have been (I think) rightly a bit annoyed! But it seems to have all worked out for the best. At least it wasn't the Mac's problem, it was the controller. Sorry for blaming you, NMS, you were not at fault.
Made a new magical companion for the pyre game. As the tiny bird worked out so well yesterday, why not replicate that success in the game where we all almost died? No reason at all, I figured.
Played some NMS. Works great now that I'm not spinning in circles and able to have the game read all my inputs.
What is your fault is crashing twice, NMS. But you picked up pretty much where you left off so I can't fault you too much.
So glad to have the controller working though, it's a lot better.
Mostly did that the rest of the day. I'll work tomorrow!
Did a longer kitty walk than usual to make up for yesterday. He appreciated it, I could tell.
Had dinner.
Parents came over.
Then xbox with the others.
We're on our way to getting a new heart and getting into those sweet, sweet, secret rooms. (Or hallways, as they turned out to be)

Sun:
Started gluing. I don't know, we'll just have to see how it comes out I guess. It's not going to be perfect. Not even close. Sigh. What happened? I printed everything at the same scale, how did the original artist fit them together?
Ordered the stuff to finish Neil's gift. Uh, my resin is all hard, must be from the summer heat. Have to buy more. And get rid of 1/2 the product somehow. I hate to just chuck it, it's a liquid. Half a resin that will never harden. Sigh. Wait, why do I have two separate packages? I bought more when I had some? In the other room? I'm so dumb! That stuff seems fine, it's not as hot in that area. Gurr. What a waste.
Cut the back lawn.
Looked for grapes.
Boxed and wrapped Mizzy's gift, before something happened to it around here. 1/3 done!
Checked sites. Did my reading.
Then a bit on NMS, of course.
Got ready for tomorrow.

We did make it into the back rooms at the last second, and got the hidden items.
Didn't really get a chance to look them over maybe tomorrow?

Mon:
No haul in the morning, dates are tomorrow so we'll check it as they can do it any time today, tomorrow, or two days from now based on what's happened in the past.
Almost finished the next chapter at work. I know how I want it to go I just have to write it.
Not much else exciting, no haul, checked 3 times.
I am looking into a new authentication method so I downloaded some software for it. I need the hardware the guy that has it didn't respond to my email.
Emailed Don about XDM and challenge password, there's no requirement he's talking about so... what he's talking about doesn't matter in the slightest!

Came back here, checked sites, had dinner.
Had a short kitty walk, it started to rain.
Did a little Remnant.
Talked to 3 people. 30 minutes with iMac lady doing final setup.
30 minutes about a fire stick and wireless. (Hate wireless!)
And 5 minutes about a printer. It's a stupid one with no panel, so she can't see what wi-fi (there it is again!!!) she's connected to. Sigh, I have to go there tomorrow.

Doing xbox with the others, Sean's other plans didn't go through or what?

Tues:
Still no haul at work, checked it several times. No movement, everything from the 19th is still just there.
Uh, no work either. Finished the chapter and started the next. I have to design a vampire encounter for them, so that'll take a bit.
Didn't hear from the guy to get the hardware I needed. Is he even in? I'll have to email him again tomorrow.

Went to see printer lady. The HP directions were wrong, trying to follow them led nowhere. I did finally figure out how to access the device via USB and set it up to see the wireless. Why did it stop? The SSID and such didn't change. Very odd.

Two calls, one for taking a tree down, clearly a wrong number, and something about a cat walking on the keyboard.

Ate dinner, checked sites. Went for a kitty walk with 5 bonus minutes.

Got ready for tomorrow, made my calls. Tree lady didn't answer, she was a customer of mine from 2015, the other lady didn't have any issues? I had her close whatever she was looking at with alt-f4 and opened her browser and she was fine. Soooooo. Yeah.

Wed:
Got a good haul. And right on time too. I went in the morning and nothing. So I went right around 10:00 to beat the lunch rush and she was there just finishing up. I headed into a side room, waited until I heard the card going away (real spy stuff you know) and dove in. Twenty minutes later I hit the other can. Brought a bunch of stuff to my parents and still have a bit in there. Don't touch it people! Tomorrow, when we clean the labs.

Huh, I wonder if anyone will actually show up?

Anyway, work wise nothing exciting. Still didn't get a response to my second inquiry about the new hardware. And no answer on the software Kevin wants me to install on a device. Okay.

Did finish the next chapter. Met the vampire. The next chapter is the fight. I've got it pretty stacked, uh, against our heroes. There's two vampires, their incredibly beefy boys the magical ally major, and 6 skeletons. Now keep in mind on the hero side we have a robot, a guy made of light, and a guy that just turned into a gargoyle so he's made (as you can see) of rock. Only the elf will really be in danger from them. The real challenge is, whichever vamp goes first is going to cast a darkness spell. Because they can see in the dark. The robot won't be too affected, they don't rely on sight anyway. The light guy will probably be fine. It's just the other two that will have problems. So we'll see how it goes.

Dropped food off at my parent's house to get it out of the freezer, and went home.

Checked sites, had dinner. Went for a kitty walk. Got barked at by the neighbor's dog.

Played a little Remnant 2 for the XP goodness. What to do with the doe, that's the real question.

Made my one call. Just showing someone how to use image capture on a Mac.

Got ready for tomorrow.

Did some NMS. More ships to melt down. I basically spent a half hour going back and forth melting ships down for money. Sheesh.

Thurs:
There was 100% less cleaning than I expected today. Why? Because the big clean is next week, of course. I had the date wrong in my mushy brain matter. Whoops. I was doing stuff and Christina said "are you cleaning early?" and I told her "it's after 9:00 so it's cleaning day right?" She told me the error of my ways. Sigh.

Back to doing nothing.

I built "character sheets" for my two vamps, the creatures, and wrote the intro where Olaph negates the darkness spell of the one vamp. But I'm going to have to write the chapter here. Combats are hard, I need the board, and lots of little pieces to keep track of where everyone is. It's just not practical to do there.

Let's see, normal meeting. No one got back to me about stuff I emailed them about.

Oh, set up a machine for a test and I can't get past an error message. Emailed about it. No response. Have I gone invisible? So odd.
Stupid thing too, it never sets up right. I hate it. Did we really need another authentication method? No, we did not.

Anyway.

Went to good will. Got 3 goodies for the game, and 2 goodies for myself. One a very huge toaster oven, like a commercial one or something. It turns on, haven't actually toasted anything in it yet. We'll see if it works. And an amp with HDMI ports. That took some doing to set up. I got rid of a lot of cables (audio cables mostly both analog and optical) but it's a little wonky at the moment. I need it to be on to pass signal to my main monitor, even when not playing music through it. Hummm. Everything recognizes 5.1 surround though, for a minute I thought because I had the splitter I wouldn't be able to. A different configuration got it working. The PC and Mac can be on the TV and the monitor at the same time, as I do go back and forth. It's not a huge deal, but there must be a way to bypass it sometimes, but not other times. It was getting towards 6:00 by the time I got it all into the cabinet and I wanted to eat and such so I just left it that way for now. Glad it works!

Anyone want my old one?

Ate dinner, checked sites.

One call, didn't reach him yet. He didn't call back either. Oh well.

Did a bit of NMS, set up my first base with unlimited power!!!! No really, it's some really big magnetic doodad or whatever that powers stuff continuously. Love that thing. Set up the base right next to a trading post, so it's a good location, probably the best one could hope for. Could never find the spots for power (easily) in the other game. Maybe I won't in this game. But this one I found pretty easily.

Looking ahead game may be canceled, Sean isn't feeling well. I'll do the shopping, see my parents. If game isn't canceled, we're I guess doing the Star Trek game this Saturday. We'll see how he feels about things.

Over the weekend I want to at least start the next phase of Neil's gift. No lawn work grass is fine. Write the chapter. Do some kitty walks. So not too stressful I guess.

I'll see you in the next one. My parents will be gone so I'll be taking care of kitties and bunnies and birdies over there next week.