Pretty Boring, followed by shopping

Left the PC on all day to download all my music files to a new player for the car. Of course when I got home it had stalled at 75%. I needed to tell it to skip an empty folder to continue.

Left 15 minutes late for work, got there on time. Took the back roads half way then the freeway.

Found something to do at work, some tests to re-run which I missed yesterday. Need to ping boss tomorrow about a new project.

There were people in the building I had never seen before. An especially attractive young woman seems to have moved into the far corner of the building. Or maybe it was just a visit.

Lunch was Thai coconut chicken from Safeway.

After work I headed for the Baily Safeway, just past where I usually turn off Shoreline to go home. Lots of lunches obtained. Then on to 99 Ranch Market on a whim. In the Alaska Airlines magazine a writer mentioned that THE Chinese New Year drink is called Baijiu and the favorite brand is Moutai. They had Bei Nian Niu Lan Shan Bai Jiu and Moutai Prince Chiew, so I bought one of each. I don't know why. I don't drink. But I'm curious. Also got some longans, ngaw and chicken hearts. And Cha siu bow.

Home, in the mail was yet another unwanted pile of paper from Kaiser. I need to re-enroll in paperless...again...I guess.

In the park slot was the once every 2 years form stating someone over 55 lives here. I filled that out, and also the one from last week updating my info.

Dinner was Marie C chicken fried beef, diet cola & ice cream. Watched another episode of Sherlock on Netflix. Once again 30 minutes of plot jam packed into 90 minutes. Moffat is a regular writer and one of the creators, so why are there so few fart jokes?

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
CHM at 1, chat with my contract handler.
Probably straight home after work.

Fake-it Day

Very late leaving this morning, after a night of too many wake-ups. Spook did her too-early walk on me thing, but after trying to lead me to the kitchen she gave up and curled up back in her bed by the laundry.

Automation Guy called, I should have been stuck in traffic like him but I was still loading my lunch box.

Plugged the new MP3 player into the car, about 50GB of music loaded onto the SD card was ignored, it only wanted to play the three bloody awful demo songs pre-loaded on the internal drive. More on that later.

Got to work at a reasonable 9:15, checked to see if there was a TV in the room which matched the brand I was supposed to test. Did not see it at first, messaged Boss who said ask the guys in the next room, but they had not arrived. My contact there was a no-show today. Boss also suggested one of her neighbors but he just punted me to lunchtime and the contact in the next room. Who wasn't there. I finally found a unit, but it was not what I expected. Instead of a production TV set, it's a TV set connected by ribbon cable to a motherboard/power supply. I plugged in a keyboard to act as a remote, and saw that the firmware in the motherboard was the wrong version.

Boss' neighbor contacted me at noon, I told him what I'd found, he punted me next door again.

So I did a lot of reading and watched some videos, which after all is part of the job.

1 pm I was at the CHM where my contract rep was waiting. We walked through the new exhibits as we chatted about work and such. She bought some T-shirts for her daughters, I used my membership card to get the discount for her.

Back to the hole, Boss messages she was dentalling for the afternoon. Before she left she forwarded email to me from a distant co-worker who was asking for a second opinion on an Android app one of our partners was having a problem with. I had to dig out a particular brand of TV set, scrounge a power cable, and between a USB keyboard, the Android TV app and a lot of patience, I was able to run the test. It was pretty cool, I got to look in on an HD webcam in someone's lab far away, and play back the last 12 hours or so. Each time someone passed by the camera it marked the timeline. It was all I could do to refrain from commenting on the fashion show in my report.

The trip to CHM drained the car battery to 1/3, so at 5:30 I drove across the street to the garage and plugged in, went upstairs and plopped myself down in the cafeteria seating area. Way on the other side, two guys were juggling bowling pins. Indoors. Not far from the main entrance.

The cafeteria opened at about 6:35 (late) and by then there was a LONG line, which is silly because it's mostly a free for all in there. The menu said split pea and ham soup, but it lied, so I got curried chicken soup. It was okay but not what I was hoping for. Also took a couple of small pieces of their soggy pepperoni pizza.

People-watched for a while, went back to the car at about 7, it was charged enough to get home on.

Delivered was a pair of slip-on shoes by the folks who made the really nice half-boots. They fit nicely, plenty of toe room. Keepers. So I can add the too-small pair to the Goodwill pile.

Grabbed the MP3 player from the car and had it format the SD card, and it looks like the issue is it used NTFS which the car cannot read, so I re-formatted it to FAT32. I loaded the 78s onto the internal drive and everything else is now sliding down the USB cable into the SD card. Will see in the morning if that did it.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work, follow up on tonight's project and hopefully get to work on what I'd wanted to this morning.
Vanguard is having a webinar on IRAs I may watch.

Politics

I am once again furious with many of my friends.

Yes, it was mean and cruel and heartless of the majority party to flex their majority muscle and not allow a confirmation vote for lame duck Barak's supreme court nominee. But in this country, last I heard, majority rules.

Setting that aside, the idea is not to slip someone in as a last gasp measure, the idea is to find the best person for the job. And having watched both Obama's and Trump's Supreme Court nominee press conferences, and having read their bios, amazing but true, Trump's guy is by far the better person for the position.

But now the politics begins, because among many of my friends, and most of the Democrats in DC, it's more important to answer one asinine act with another, regardless of the quality of the nominee.