howeird: (Default)
Up late again. Every time I have some event at night I push bedtime that much later. Woke up at 9:30,  totally surprised me. Got to work an hour later, still stumped by the issue from the day before. Finally got the Expert to go over the bug with me, decided it was a new bug.

Usually when we find something this blatant, we install the previous build to see if it was there then. The test case docs indicated it was working in a build three months ago, so I fired that one up - and it did not work correctly. The tester only checked to see that the right error messages displayed, he did not check that the feature actually worked correctly. So I went back about a year, and it still failed.

Something this important doesn't usually make it through so many tests unnoticed, so I emailed engineering with the "is it a bug or a feature?" question. They are looking into it. May not have an answer till next week, what with vacations.

So I went on to the next one on my list, and got that written up in a format which automation can turn into a test suite. One test case is really about 40 tests this time.

Home, sausages, corn & sauerkraut for dinner. Took out the garbage, and then put the tall wastebasket into which I had been dumping the cat poo, wheeled it out to the dumpster and unloaded. It was all in a big black trash bag, tied up, so no worries. While I ate I watched HLN's play by play of the trial where this redneck who killed his stepson and blamed his biological son, is trying to get his son off the hook by saying he lied when he blamed his son. To me it looked like they did it together.

Managed to assemble the cargo holder. The instructions did not point out that the netting had an up side and a down side. Once I figured that out, and realized there was a much neater way than theirs to set the tension strap, it only took a couple of minutes.

Domino parked herself on the couch for the first time in months, and let me cut off a lot of her mats. But when I started getting near the worst ones she made rude noises and got ready to be elsewhere, so I left it at that. She has very fine undercoat fur, and it gets tangled easily.

The "World's Best Cat Litter" turns out to be the worst for the machines - it doesn't clump neatly, and it seems to intensify the urine smell. I had to vacuum the area all around the machines because it spills out the sides. Back to Arm & Hammer, but I need to make sure I get the right type.

One of my photog friends is now editor in chief of an online photo magazine, NSW stuff, but not pron. I subscribed and looked at the first issue (which someone else edited) and the last two (which he did) and have to say his is a vast improvement. But we differ a lot on what we like to shoot and look at, he's a lot more hardcore than I am, and is more into what they call Fashion™ - models wearing tons of makeup, or ludicrous wigs, or lots of bling. But out of the two issues of his I looked at, there were only a couple of pieces I would have sent pink slips to.

Toyota failed me again. No contact from the customer relations person. I emailed her at 9:55 pm and she answered 10 minutes later that her child was injured at school. I suppose I believe her, but doubt if that took up so much time that she couldn't have texted me sometime today.

Also, I phoned to find out if the business office had my check, but they transferred me to the used car office and it went to voicemail. I didn't have time to go there today, anyway.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Manicure
Toyota
YOTB
howeird: (Default)

I left the apartment at 11:30 with a croissant and a baritone, took a slightly alternate route to Shoup Park which did not include the bumper car merge lanes of San Antonio Blvd or the jaywalk capitol of the west bay, Los Altos' Main Street. It took maybe 7 minutes longer, but was much safer. Someone was parked in my spot, the same someone was parked there Thursday night, so I'm thinking it may be an abandoned vehicle. I don't think it was a band member because there were still plenty of spots down in the park's lot.

It was about noon, th concert doesn't start till 1:30, but everything was already set up.

I had brought my Kindle, but instead of reading I found a nice shaded park bench  and phoned my Baltimore sister. We had a nice chat, she encouraged me to try a gluten-free diet to see if it solves my tummy issue. I told her I don't have any cellulite. She laughed. Both because it's celiac, but also because "everyone has cellulite".

We chatted a little about my missing the Princess Bride quote-along. Her one and only son named his one and only (so far) son Wesley. Wes is 4 months old, and nephew says the first thing they are teaching him to say is "As you wish". :-)

We had nice but not optimal weather for the concert, it started out windy and stayed chilly through the whole thing. I got a chance to try out my new fancy music holders, see-through plastic strips about an inch wide, with a short L on one end with a magnetic strip to help hold it onto the stand. It took a little experimentation, but by the 3rd or 4th number I was able to use them without the aid of clothes pins. Much easier to flip pages and slide multi-page music into place.

It was a fairly easy set as far as lips go, but challenging reading. Lots of medleys with lots of time and key signature changes, and we had one case where two numbers in a row were in the same time signature but one was at 120 and the other at 40. Threw me off big-time.

At halftime one of the tuba players (we have 4! - 2 of them female) raved about a new Thai place which just happens to be one I have triued to go to many times, it is in the same stip mall where Janice and I have coffee every week we are both in town, but we usually do that on Sunday, and this new place is closed Sundays. I was pleasantly surprised that she uses Phad Thai as her test for whether it's a good place. She said their "medium" is very spicy. It really shouldn't be. But she said they barely speak English and the waitress is cute, so I need to get there on a non-Sunday and check it out.

Home by way of an auto supply which had a pair of the right size bug-eye mirrors. Then to the Milk Pail, which only had one piece of my favorite sheep milk cheese, but they also had French brie on sale for $5/lb so I bought two $3 wedges. And 99 cents a pound for green grapes. I skipped the limes, 8 for $1 but too small and coloring looked like they were picked off the ground.

Kaan was waiting right at the door, but he's scared of the baritone case, so he scooted away. Come to think of it he's scared of anything I'm carrying low to the ground. A couple of days ago he did bolt, but came right back when I shouted at him. Good doggie.

Put the stuff away, checked on the computer's restore program (16 hours to go. It was 32 when I left this morning. Their estimator sucks). Got undressed and tried to take a nap, but Domino decided to park herself near my head, and then Kaan jumped on the bed and there was hissing and growling and they both took off for parts unknown.

Remembering I had not showered this morning, so I took care of that, got dressed and headed for Starbucks. Cookie crumble frapp. Cute barista, some nice customer eye candy both at the tables and coming through for "to-go".

Time to go home and have some dinner and do some more reading, and maybe preview the DVD I'm auctioning at BASFA tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Talk to boss about the new automation foo and other things to do
BASFA


howeird: (Default)
I had hoped to sleep in, on account of staying up late. What woke me was low blood sugar - at 9:30 am it was 77. Luckily there was some chocolate milk in the fridge, and that got me back up. 127 by noon. Okay, so I over-shot a little, but my target is 130, so there.

Also got my blood test numbers back, they are all better than 3 months ago, but still nothing to write home (or here) about. Got my exercise taking out the garbage from the bathroom and livingroom. And hauling my baritone and the heavy music stand to the car. And from the car down the hill to the park. And playing from 1:30 till about 3:30 with a 15-minute intermission. Talking with the baritone player I sit next to, he may be bowing out temporarily while the pain drugs for his damaged foot get balanced. He said he was having trouble finding the notes on the page, and it sounded that way too. According to an article in a long ago Stanford newspaper, he started grad school there in 1962, which would make him at least 76.

I wasn't playing very well either, but we had an easy set of tunes, not a lot of high notes, and my lip lasted until the last number before the finale. The finale is easy, so I was okay for that.

At showtime it was only 77°, and we were in the shade of our huge oak tree, and it was breezy. It had climbed to 81° by intermission, I didn't check after that. We were expecting high 90s.

Went straight from there, hungry, to Starbucks where I was meeting Janice at 5:30, the plan was to have lunch before she arrived, at the new Thai place there (Rengstorff & Middlefield) but it's closed Sundays. So I went to Starbucks and had a pair of their yummy croissant hot dogs. And a huge iced tea.

Read on the Kindle while I ate, then put that away and launched the laptop and Facebooked and Twittered. I build a dummy Twitter account to follow news and a couple of personalities, but it isn't linked to anything and I'm not accepting followers. Hope that will prevent the hackers. If it doesn't, well, I don't care if CNN, BBC or Recall Nancy Pelosi get invitations to watch gay porn.

Janice showed up on time, we had a nice chat, I told her about Uncle Bonzai, she told me about her latest assignation. I also told her, and she was shoocked, that the Kindle Paperwhite has no audio capability. I showed her mine. Most of her Kindle purchases are audio books, and she was wondering why they dikdn't download, and Kindle support didn't have a clue either. Turns out she usually puts those on her iPod, so no real harm done.

Safeway, I was almost out of TV dinners, and they had a sale on Crystal Lite and Cheez-its.

Home, put the food away, brought the baritone and the laptop inside, heated up a dinner and ate it on the patio with cats wandering around. Looked at the mail - the Kindle Paperlite holder was there, it doesn't quite work as advertised for a unit which has ads. Instead of turning the machine off when the cover closes, it displays an ad forever.

Bought NovaBackup last night, started it up backing up my 2TB mirrored RAID drive to a 3TB network drive. I ordered two more matching drives, now that they are on sale for $90 each, and the plan is to format them, change to RAID 4 or 5, and restore to what will then be a hopefully faster) 6 TB array. At a later date I may need to buy a bigger backup drive. But for now, it says this backup won't be done till late tomorrow night.

Created an email message to all the people on panels I'm moderating for [livejournal.com profile] westercon66. Only one bounced, but he has other addresses and the second one went through.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
BASFA
howeird: (Trumpet)
It's a LONG time between 9 am and 12:30, so I dragged the box with the exercise bike into the livingroom, pulled everything out, and read the directions. "Some" assembly required, my ass. They did make it simpler than most bikes, but by the time I had everything laid out and had read the instructions it was time to stuff my baritone into the trunk and go to Shoup Park for the band concert.

The way the concerts work, we don't know what we are playing, or in what order, until we get there and grab a program. There are hints during the rehearsals, but this first month was also for trying out new numbers and reviewing old ones to see if they should be retired.

Since this is Memorable Day weekend, we did a lot of patriotic stuff. And this is the only time except the 4th of July when we play the Star Sprinkled Banana. I won't be at the 4th ceremonies this year, Westercon calls. [livejournal.com profile] westercon66

On the way home I stopped off at Draeger's expecting them to have the sheep milk cheese I like, but they didn't. They had some other stuff of the goat milk kind which I got. Next stop, The Milk Pail, which did have the sheep milk cheeses, and I also grabbed three chunks of fondue cheese and a sourdough bastard for tonight's dinner. In the back of my mind I thought there might be an ingredient which I also should have bought, but couldn't think what.

Home, tried some almond butter as a snack (Diabetes doc suggested it) but that stuff is not very tasty, I ended up making an & jelly sandwich with it. That worked.

Got down to assembling the bike, and hit a snag right off. The first thing to attach was the rear cross piece on which the bike stands. There is a similar front piece. In the instructions, the two pieces have different part numbers, but their drawings are identical. IRL one has wheel-like inserts, the other doesn't. After a while I just guessed. Managed to not miss any pieces until the very end. There is a holder which needs two screws to attach to the bike. I have no idea what it is supposed to hold. It is too thin to hold a water bottle. Maybe it can hold a cell phone or music player. Anyway, I can't find the second screw. When I vacuumed after the build (lots of Styrofoam bits) I heard what could have been a small screw get sucked up. I don't think it's worth digging for.

Time for dinner. Fondue requires more assembly than I remembered. And the thing I forgot to buy was white wine, but I still had half a jug of something cheap, so no worries. It took a while to grate all the cheese, even using the food processor.

It came out great, I finished about half a loaf of sourdough. There is enough left over for omelets, I just need some eggbeaters which are not past their expiration date.

I bought this particular bike because it's supposed to fold up for storage, but folded up it only takes up about 2 feet less room. :-(

I tried it out, it works well, has a smooth feel (magnetic traction) and I got the seat height right the first time.

Plans for tomorrow:
No clue.

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howard stateman

September 2022

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