Bill Roper's Journal

It was the sort of day where I took Gretchen out to Chili's for lunch and then ate the appetizer platter special *as* my lunch.

I have to say that I have missed fried mozzarella...

The sound problems were largely corrected in today's show and everything was much more audible than it had been before. There was one brief mic malfunction which (per K) mysteriously corrected itself without anything being done to it, but other than that, everything was fine and it was a lovely performance. (I'm suspecting that the headset mic got knocked a bit out of position and then got moved back to where it was supposed to be, but I could be wrong. It had that sort of hollow, off-axis sound to it, so...)

Meanwhile, I'm not sure *which* thing that we did fixed the problem, but the new work computer is now working, which means that I had better do some of that next week. :) (It may have been a fix to the proxy settings, as that was one of the things that we tried.)

Right now, K is out at the after-party and we are trying to decide how long we will stay up waiting for her to come home. :)

Today was mostly spent trying to get the new work laptop configured. This would have been easier if any of the instructions on line had been updated. As it was, I made a small mistake and ended up falling down a rabbit hole of mismatched documentation.

Ah, well. Tech support got back to me after 10 PM tonight (*sheesh*) and the problem is now sorted out, I think. At least things *seem* to be working.

It's being complex. That's a good word for it.

Progress is being made at work, which is good.

This damned cough continues. It is gradually getting better, but I am royally tired of it.

I got the rear brakes done on my car, which was an annoying amount of money. And my 12-string guitar is ready to be redeemed from the shop, which is good, because I would like to have it back. :)

Whether I *can* redeem it from the shop tomorrow depends on what the roads are like, because it's an hour or so away in Downers Grove. So we'll see how that goes...

It feels like I am pushing a lot of string uphill lately, not helped by the very slow recovery from this darned cold. Today, I sent an email out to a number of folks responsible for the string and the hill, so we'll see if that does any good.

It was back to work today for what is going to be an short week, as I'm scheduled to head off for GAFilk on Thursday, assuming that the weather doesn't go completely to crap. So far, the forecast is good. I have way too many things to do and the month of January is going to be a complete mess. But I'm making progress.

In the meantime, I have too many things to finish up at home. This includes tomorrow's ultrasound to check on how things are after last summer's lithotripsy.

And packing. And updating software. And inventory. And...

Whee!

Our big group meeting is originating from India this go-round, so I will be logging in around 10 PM local time.

And maybe sleeping in tomorrow morning. :)

Today, it was back to work following Windycon and the Veterans Day holiday. This was delayed by this morning's physical, but actual work was accomplished in the afternoon, so progress is being made.

I'm hoping for more progress tomorrow, because the fellow whose help I need was out sick today, although I ended up bothering him on the phone because I didn't know that. But he understands the parameters of the problem, so if he's feeling better tomorrow, we may get this mess cleaned up.

Whee!

I was talking with one of my co-workers today about how to fix some particularly intractable problems with the build, when I suddenly had the "Eureka!" moment and realized how to simplify things. Better yet, not just how to simplify things for me and my group, but for all the people in my related group of co-workers on the other side of the wall.

It's nice when something like that happens.

And so far, it's testing out ok.

I spent most of the afternoon today trying to clean up some things in our setup at work. The fellow who made the suggestions tells me that I'm generally on the right track, so that's a good thing.

Meanwhile, back at the "Getting Ready for the Con" category, I have pulled out the electronics and am now starting to make sure that everything is charged and updated, because it is *so* much better if I don't discover that something needs to update over Wi-fi at the con.

Charge!