Aqua Display of Maim

Unlike the usual blue screen, what faced me first thing this morning told me there was an issue with a drive, and I knew it had to be for the USB 3.0 card I'd just installed. Made the mistake of letting Windows try to repair it, finally went into safe mode and disabled the two conflicting drivers (I'd pulled out a defective card and replaced it with a working one) and now everything is back. But I had to wait till I got home from work to try it out.

Well, almost, safe mode disabled Norton, I had to weak that when it came back into unsafe mode.

While I was messing with the blue screen, what looked like an 18-wheeler parked itself in front of my computer room window, and started making horrendous noises.  A closer look showed it was a chipper/mulcher service. They were done mulching and were snowblowing when I went out to my car, and had also moved so they were not blocking the carport. I'm not sure what they had done, I didn't see any trees missing. The stuff they were blowing around was landscape quality wood chips, so maybe they were just filling in the empty spaces. 

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My Care and Feeding of Performers panel looked like I was the only performer on it who needed care and feeding. I may be wrong, but from what I see on the web, one is a storyteller, which does not strike me as at all a needy performance type; and the other is mostly a writer. So I was very happy when figmo agreed to be on that panel, and I got her added by the program chair.

I would also have liked to have johno and Chris, but they are burning both candles at all four ends and the middles doing con suite and other crucial constuff.

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Work today was too much fun. An engineer found a bug, and between his challenging English syntax and typos, I needed Boss to translate what exactly it was I needed to test. Boss was in the bug meetings where things are hashed out in more detail than in the database. It turned out to be one of those tests which required starting a process then going into the lab and pulling the plug on the machine. Then plug it back in, wait for it to boot, and check to see what the logs showed. I had to repeat that several times to know whether it was fixed in the current build.

While doing this, I uncovered two other bugs, and one of those reminded the program manager that there was a third one - misspelled error message - to fix at the same time.

That done, it was about 1:30, I left voicemail for the sales manager at Toyota who had promised to find out by EOD yesterday where my license plates had gone, saying I was filing a police report. Police report is required when asking the DMV to replace both plates. Called Sunnyvale PD and asked, they said I could file a police report online. Went online, it said in bright red letters that missing license plates could not be reported online, and to call the same number I had just called, and ask to speak to an officer. Which I did, but there apparently is only on desk officer, and he was on his phone. I left my name & work number and ws told it woud be a while. Turned out to not be today. :-(

I went online and filled in a DMV license replacement request form, which I printed out. It needs to be mailed in with the $76 fee for whale tail vanity plates.

Fresh out of bugs to test, I opened up the HEVC tutorial (written by 3 German engineers) and made my way through it. If you have seen Sony's ads for their super-duper 4K TV sets, that's basically a stop-gap until the HEVC standard is solid.

I knew it was going to be too hot to go out to eat, so at about 3 pm I joined Automation Guy in the break room. I had brought corn dogs. My afternoon snack was a can of sardines. pre-lunch was celery dipped in Trader Joe crunchy peanut butter.

Somewhere around 10:30 am my diabetes doctor called as planned, he liked my lower A1C number, all my other blood test results were better than last time.  Looks like the key is simply to eat dinner before 9 pm and not keep a pile of Oreos by the bed.

Came  home by way of my local gas station/car wash and squirted about half a tankful - didn't want to have to stop for gas on the way to Sacto tomorrow.

The PC took a while but fired up normally. Safe mode had totally munged my icons, so I spent some time putting them back where they belonged, mostly. Caught up on email and Quicken. Put the whites in the dryer and shirts in the washer. In a minute I need to put away the whites and put the shirts in the dryer.

Had dinner out on the patio with the cats. It had cooled down to about 76° after a high of 90.

Took about 20 minutes to pack. This is a rare treat - I almost never drive to a con I'm staying at. I either fly, take the train or do the commute thing. It means I can over-pack and not worry about having to lug things around.

Just remembered - packed swimsuits and sandals.

All that's left to pack are meds and toiletries.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
UPS store - hard rives & cables have been delivered
Early dinner, finish packing
Change the litterboxes (already topped off the food & water)
7-ish, drive to Sacramento and westercon. Get there ~ 9.