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A Different Kind of Friday
Aug. 26th, 2017 12:52 amUp and out at the usual time. AG tried to make an Alexa call to my echo dot, but I was in another room, and the dot doesn't have enough volume for that. Talked to him later on the phone en route to work.
Middle sister posted a YouTube video of special interest, which I emailed to my work and watched as part of my testing. Here it is:
Okay, I know you can't follow it well because it's all in Hebrew, and poorly recorded at that. But here's the hook: The girl they follow from the bus crash to the hospital to rehab to teaching yoga is my grand niece Miriam. The woman in the head wrap next to the skinny guy with the scraggly beard is my eldest niece Rivka. The skinny guy is her husband. Rivka looks and sounds so much like her mother (my older sister Briana) it is frightening. Funny, you don't look deja-vuish.
Briana rarely writes, which is ironic since she has an MA in creative writing, so I had no idea Miriam was in this horrible off-a-cliff bus accident, let alone all the turmoil around it. But then, I never ask. The whole family, 3 nieces, 2 nephews and somewhere upwards of 27 grandchildren are all completely brainwashed super-Orthodox Jews who live on their own little planet. But it still makes me happy to see how many friends have her back. She has inherited her grandmother's social gene.
The three young men on the sofa are her brothers. With them I am not at all impressed.
Anyhow, even without understanding the language, it's an uplifting story.
It was a day to run the short automation test suite. First on a pre-release STB and then on the current version. Different hardware & software.
Took an online break to find out where Spook's favorite water fountain came from. Turns out it is from PetSmart, which is still selling it even though the company which made it is out of business. So I ordered one to pick up at lunchtime. Almost ordered some other things, but none of them were in stock.
So at lunchtime I drove the 3 miles, picked up the unit, then had a Reuben and some clam chowder at Eric's.
Back to the hole. Got word that I was supposed to update the James Bond box and run the over the weekend automation test on it, but the test rig was still cranking away at the STB. Stayed till 6 to get that done.
More driving - up Shoreline and down El Camino to the Xfinity store in Palo Alto, which is open till 8. It was a 10-minute wait just to be noticed, the "check in here" box at the front had been logged out, it needed an employee to make it work. Then another 15 minutes to wait for actual help. But with a minumum of fuss they gave me a cable card to replace the one UPS lost, and I took Alma/Central until the post rush hour blockage, then Shoreline to my usual back roads route, which was pretty much deserted that late (7:20).
First priority was to log into to my time sheet and fill it out, but my internet connection wasn't working, so I punted, installed the cable card in the Tivo, called the 8xx number to get it activated, but got stuck when the Tivo couldn't log into my router. Did all the things, but no joy. My router said it was working, the cable modem had all the right lights on, but there was no internet service anywhere in the house.
Called Comcast again, and it seems that when they issued me the cable card they reset the cable service, and used an old cable modem mac address. Once that was fixed, everything worked, and after half an hour of Tivo's excruciatingly slow first-time setup I was back to watching all the channels.
But they were breaking up, and disappearing. Checked the connections, and the cable to the tivo was loose. Fixed that and now it's all good. Except I need to go through the channel list and un-choose the SD and Spanish stations. And probably the Vietnamese ones too. I've set it to record all the local and Seattle football. And Penn & Teller.
Watched some CNN, which has become the half-Trump/half-Harvey channel. Switched to the weather channel, and they clearly found the shallow end of the gene pool to send to Texas to report on the hurricane first hand. With instructions to always call the guy at HQ "doctor". As if there's anything practical in getting a doctorate in atmospheric sciences other than beaing able to teach it.
One thing the cable and streaming channels have in common are those awful prescription drug ads which tell you how many ways this drug will kill you as it is helping you battle euphemized symptoms. I need to write my new sleazy Congressscritter about that. It used to be illegl to advertise prescription drugs.
Dinner was a smoked turkey leg and some corn on the cob. Ice cream dessert.
Delivered by a neighbor was the 3-pack of kitty litter cartridges. UPS dropped it at #17 instead of #7. Nothing in the mailbox.
Plans for tomorrow:
Fasting lab test at Kaiser Santa Clara. Because checkup Monday afternoon
Ford service department with charger. May get turned away with no appointment, but their appointment system is clearly for scheduled maintenance, not for repairs.
Watch some football.
Middle sister posted a YouTube video of special interest, which I emailed to my work and watched as part of my testing. Here it is:
Okay, I know you can't follow it well because it's all in Hebrew, and poorly recorded at that. But here's the hook: The girl they follow from the bus crash to the hospital to rehab to teaching yoga is my grand niece Miriam. The woman in the head wrap next to the skinny guy with the scraggly beard is my eldest niece Rivka. The skinny guy is her husband. Rivka looks and sounds so much like her mother (my older sister Briana) it is frightening. Funny, you don't look deja-vuish.
Briana rarely writes, which is ironic since she has an MA in creative writing, so I had no idea Miriam was in this horrible off-a-cliff bus accident, let alone all the turmoil around it. But then, I never ask. The whole family, 3 nieces, 2 nephews and somewhere upwards of 27 grandchildren are all completely brainwashed super-Orthodox Jews who live on their own little planet. But it still makes me happy to see how many friends have her back. She has inherited her grandmother's social gene.
The three young men on the sofa are her brothers. With them I am not at all impressed.
Anyhow, even without understanding the language, it's an uplifting story.
It was a day to run the short automation test suite. First on a pre-release STB and then on the current version. Different hardware & software.
Took an online break to find out where Spook's favorite water fountain came from. Turns out it is from PetSmart, which is still selling it even though the company which made it is out of business. So I ordered one to pick up at lunchtime. Almost ordered some other things, but none of them were in stock.
So at lunchtime I drove the 3 miles, picked up the unit, then had a Reuben and some clam chowder at Eric's.
Back to the hole. Got word that I was supposed to update the James Bond box and run the over the weekend automation test on it, but the test rig was still cranking away at the STB. Stayed till 6 to get that done.
More driving - up Shoreline and down El Camino to the Xfinity store in Palo Alto, which is open till 8. It was a 10-minute wait just to be noticed, the "check in here" box at the front had been logged out, it needed an employee to make it work. Then another 15 minutes to wait for actual help. But with a minumum of fuss they gave me a cable card to replace the one UPS lost, and I took Alma/Central until the post rush hour blockage, then Shoreline to my usual back roads route, which was pretty much deserted that late (7:20).
First priority was to log into to my time sheet and fill it out, but my internet connection wasn't working, so I punted, installed the cable card in the Tivo, called the 8xx number to get it activated, but got stuck when the Tivo couldn't log into my router. Did all the things, but no joy. My router said it was working, the cable modem had all the right lights on, but there was no internet service anywhere in the house.
Called Comcast again, and it seems that when they issued me the cable card they reset the cable service, and used an old cable modem mac address. Once that was fixed, everything worked, and after half an hour of Tivo's excruciatingly slow first-time setup I was back to watching all the channels.
But they were breaking up, and disappearing. Checked the connections, and the cable to the tivo was loose. Fixed that and now it's all good. Except I need to go through the channel list and un-choose the SD and Spanish stations. And probably the Vietnamese ones too. I've set it to record all the local and Seattle football. And Penn & Teller.
Watched some CNN, which has become the half-Trump/half-Harvey channel. Switched to the weather channel, and they clearly found the shallow end of the gene pool to send to Texas to report on the hurricane first hand. With instructions to always call the guy at HQ "doctor". As if there's anything practical in getting a doctorate in atmospheric sciences other than beaing able to teach it.
One thing the cable and streaming channels have in common are those awful prescription drug ads which tell you how many ways this drug will kill you as it is helping you battle euphemized symptoms. I need to write my new sleazy Congressscritter about that. It used to be illegl to advertise prescription drugs.
Dinner was a smoked turkey leg and some corn on the cob. Ice cream dessert.
Delivered by a neighbor was the 3-pack of kitty litter cartridges. UPS dropped it at #17 instead of #7. Nothing in the mailbox.
Plans for tomorrow:
Fasting lab test at Kaiser Santa Clara. Because checkup Monday afternoon
Ford service department with charger. May get turned away with no appointment, but their appointment system is clearly for scheduled maintenance, not for repairs.
Watch some football.
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