The Septembers

It's been a pretty stressful last few weeks.  I suppose I should vent a bit about it - I really hate when everything has to be walled away and then you're given permission to do something.  It is fairly difficult trying to use OSS when the assumption is "just update it to the @next version" and it'll be fixed.  I had run into this recently when having to push an Angular 5 project to IIS when it started screaming to install 'extreme-code-plugin' (patent pending) and suddenly I'm missing an entire node_modules folder.  It's even worse when the assumption is that a Dev is the master of his desktop (Administrator) when it is suddenly taken away.  Being hamstrung to security rigour can put a screeching halt to things.

I dunno.  I'm hoping that this project has a light at the end of the tunnel before my vacation time kicks in.  I'd hate to take a week off right in the middle of something and lose face in the process.  If there was any question as to whether or not Americans are hard-working, it should come to light that taking vacation time when there is work to be done is still at the forefront of our thoughts.  I reckon the odd part is how we still manage to be optimistic in the face of this all.

In addition, I'd like to get back to my side projects, but I have been horribly tired the last few weeks as well.  All I want to do is sleep when I get home, but I'm trying to extend my day out (nee unnecessarily) just so my routine doesn't get messed up.

There's always tomorrow.

Service Fabric updates

So after hitting a breakthrough at work, I also came home and knocked a few things outta the park.  For starters, I managed to get all of my framework stuff up and out of 2.1.301 and up to 2.1.4 - I am hoping for 2.2 to be released to production, but those things take time.

I did manage to get the EF stuff migrating and updating the database.  Fears are, however, that since I'm tying Character objects to subscribers, that stuff may be in flux for a while.  At least I got down the basics.  Should be full-steam-ahead however from there.  The best bet would be to have a solid weekend to knock against the SF to see what kind of noise it makes.

Also, I'm kinda dreading having to talk to the installation people - they took way too long to get me a quote (in addition to installing the darn TV) that I'm just going someplace else.  I really don't want to wait a full week just to get a quote and then gawd knows how long to get it up on the wall.

Texas Roadhouse and the weekend

Well, another week has gone by and thankfully there is a 3-day weekend ahead.  I got to start it off with a nice dinner with the siblings at Texas Roadhouse and came home to watch 'How Not to Summon a Demon Lord.'  The anime is really trash, but it is 25 minutes of time to kill whilst I think about code stuff.

Of which, I'm making a test character to see how well it maps up to the bootstrap template I used.  Depending on how easy it is, I can also apply that knowledge towards Tim/George's initiative tracker.  There is just a lot of stuff going on with that tool.  Ultimately, I'll have to also figure out the plumbing for logins, adding people to groups, managing permissions, a database of characters, and then also how to integrate NPCs into the system - which is going to be far trickier, methinks.

Also, the nice thing was that NewEgg decided to put a rush on the package, so hopefully it will actually arrive at its destination instead of getting swallowed up in the USPS hole like the last one did.  This is why it is bad to have unaccountable unions who can just muscle over the government and make it say 'Uncle.'

Gah.

An unexpected first world problem appears

: Having acid reflux but the only last thing you ate was your psych pills.  There are most definitely worse things out there, but having to choke down vomit else you have an episode has to be at least in the upper middle.

Game day playtesting

Today was pretty fun, we got to test out the chase rules system and went over an old map to save someone who we faked their death.  The nice thing about it was there was tension and everyone played their part and it was still fun.  It is cool to not have a game focus just on RP or on combat but still felt like you were using your skills and abilities for your character and accomplish something big.

That is why I really enjoy tabletop games - it is not only participating in a story but have a group of friends to share the enjoyment with.  There is something to be said about being in a room with friends that you don't get with playing online games, seeing a movie, or breaking bread.  It's something I feel is missing in the 21st century and I would wish more people would get into it like they did in the 70s.

Package missed

Well.  Crap.

I had a package that was supposed to go to a friend's house and.. well... it didn't arrive.  Now I'll have to find out what the heck happened to it.  I hope it was just the post office being the post office and not doing something right.  That's what happens when you let a union take over a government office.  Barely get any work done but they still get paid and their precious pensions.

Ugh.

However, I'm not ready for the stress of it, so I'm going to put it off till Monday and see if it resolves itself by then.  Entirely possible that it will and I'll have headaches for nothing.

Oh well,  I'm going to fiddle around with the literary character sheets for now - should be a snap with Dreamweaver to help do all of the fancy bootstrap stuff.

Yay! Frickin' YAY!

I got the cards set up, they are showing the proper dialogue boxes, the card deck doesn't have a horizontal scroll box, and now I'm on the bit for the tag clouds.  I'll probably have to dig around for a good look on the items (I kinda want to have stylable items like pills or rounded boxes) but I can push this to my fabric and see how that pans out.

I think the next big step is adding user registration, cookie caching (a quirk of fabric), and a full character generation system.

Also, Bright was pretty good.  It seemed like standard fare and 'The Dark Lord' bit somehow felt shoehorned into it - most of the actors seemed to choke on saying it.  Otherwise, the action was pretty good and the acting was passable.  The corrupt-cops-fighting-over-the-wand scene was a low point in the movie.  It cheapened the characters as villains.

Working card-columns

I finally figured out what the issue was: since I was invoking the trait multiple times, each card was getting refreshed by subsequent invokes. Derp.  Also, since it was a singleton, all queries were happening to all cards.

With that experiment done, I've got to decide if I like that or if I should do it another way.

Meh.  For now, I'm going to work on the card-deck layout - the issue with that one is that bootstrap 4 doesn't have that layout as responsive.  That may mean there is some javascript jimmy'ing to get it to work and no raw CSS fixes.  Which I think I'm fine with, but I'd rather do it the "proper way."

So stoked

I'm pretty excited about this - I finally have cards working if they are only the child of HomeComponent - but I want each card to have its own template.  I think the whole nesting thing has kinda broken it.  However, this is what the experimentation is all about.  I will figure this darn thing out and move on to other cool stuff.  I had wanted to make my own custom loader using SVG and some maths to do the arc magic

Now I just gotta figure out why the trait string I am supposed to be passing in is null. >.>

Red Robin and a Birthday

Red Robin was good food as always and apparently, I'm 5 more meals from a free one.  So that is good. :)  The A1 peppercorn was pretty tasty (I recommend it) and the chili cheese fries could have been better without the jalapeno, but the campfire sauce was good.

I also went to my buddy's wife's 40th birthday.  Sometimes I'm not a huge fan of being around alot of people, which is one of the benefits of being a smoker/vaper that I have an excuse to go outside.  Gawd, I hate hot evenings though.  I need a personal A/C unit stat!

As far as the SF stuff, I'm still struggling with SignalR, but I think it may have something to do with doing Invokes before the document is ready to send messages.  I'm not sure if that is something I can do in the service.ts or do the connection in the component itself.  Troubleshooting it shouldn't be this hard, but Angular seems pretty set on not being Server-Side-Rendered (SSR).

I mean, I get it, client lives in client and only talks to the server - nothing is rendered on the server, blah-blah-blah, but there is stuff that can't live on the client's side for security or database-level stuff.  This kind of thinking is why we have a plethora of hackers cackling madly at how insecure your stuff is.

Service Fabric and the failing angular builds

Okay - I seriously don't know what happened, but the site that was running peacefully and fine in SF is now failing on XMLHttpRequest on the last install.  W. T. F.  Jeezus.  Look, I get that angular is constantly in flux right now... we're up to 7 now?  VS just barely got into supporting 5... even still some stuff floating around with v4.  Honest to gott, if it weren't that is was a hot framework to use with cool features and all - if you can't keep up to speed, have usable documentation, or at least a fan base that is willing to build with it (looking at you StackOverflow).  I dunno.

I dunno.

I have to stick with Angular because of work, but at this point, it is becoming a Sisyphean task of keeping a project going, let alone starting one up from scratch.  God help me, I may just crawl back into the MVC hole and just feck with... I dunno, moustache/handlebars templates?  It is getting ridiculous.

Thursday - the day to end all days (not the weekend yet!)

I don't know why I keep watching 'How (not) to Summon a Demon Lord."  I think the whole ecchi thing, even when combined with i-sekai-style storyline has gotten grating.  The slime thing was completely unnecessary and eye-rollingly bad.  I'm just biding my time for the next Overlord episode since I have been jonesing for that one for a while.  I'd be more excited for the new season of One Punch Man, but that isn't till April of next year.  Though I wouldn't mind seeing the next season of RE:Zero or No Game No Life, too.  I'm not going to hold on for hope, though.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get ahold of the custom furniture company sometime next week to talk about the new desk.

Moar Website! Graphics Tablet!

Well, I finally managed to figure out what was going on with the signalr service - apparently, I needed to add it to the app.shared.module.ts file instead of the app.browser one.  Go figure.  It is published to the fabric and I get to diddle with it sometime later.

I also got my graphics tablet in and the thing is quite a bit more monstrous than I thought it would be.  I'll test it out tomorrow night on my laptop and then I'll have to talk to a guy about a desk.  Now that I have a permanent room (at least until the bank tries to take it away), I can probably settle for a more permanent desk.  Being fairly tall and having a bunch of doo-dads around, it would have to be custom.

Work has been interesting, the last interview I had to do was a very nice and intelligent lady.  When I started describing what we'd need her to do and why I'd be asking some technical questions she came right out and said that the job wasn't what she had wanted.  I applaud that honesty and wished her well.

The website and SignalR

So as far as Angular 5 goes, it is becoming less of a problem.  I'm now pretty focused on getting the db connection bit done in order to have my NLG stuff pulling.  There are a few ideas for how to generate templates, but I'm not sure about AIML or some other regex matching.  If there was an automated way I can pull templates from Google nGrams and do partial matches with books - then I can at least have a model of existing phrases.

    I'd probably be walking the line with plagiarism if I were to use the actual sentences verbatim - but does style transfer apply to something like that?

Game day and more Angular frustration

Today was a fairly good game day, though unfortunately, it can be sometimes frustrating.  There is much to test and work out in the rules, but I feel that structuring it has made it easier to write on the fly.  I think that if I had made my character beforehand, it might've saved some time - but we usually BS quite a bit before the game starts up.

Speaking of frustration, I've had to resort to SO for an answer to something specific to asp.net core on Angular.  I've tried to move my stuff to a service so that it can be a singleton and not have to keep reconnecting, but the way Microsoft has all their stuff chopped up into different modules, bootscripts, configurations, and all that is obnoxious.  Most of the search results have stuff that should work - but it is only for projects that are for Node.js or PHP or anything else.

Ugh.

asdfmovie11

New box mod and art tablet

I am hoping today that the box mod I ordered from Aspire comes in today.  It said it was in Cincinnati as of this morning so I won't get my hopes up.  I do like that it'll take bigger batteries and has more options than my Glo-230 mod - though I'm not sure about the whole "Pro" thing they insist on taking onto the name.  How can someone vape professionally, honestly?  There is probably competitions for it but doesn't seem like there is any money in it.

Also, I put in an order for a graphics tablet and it is a Huion.  I got one for my sister a while back and she does get some use out of it.  Mostly I need to find a spot to put it on my desk which is pretty cluttered with vape juice bottles and other electronics stuff.

I need to just knuckle down and start building a custom desk for all of this stuff.

Things for stuff and junk

Nothing spectacular in the mail today, but man have these days been long.  I really need to get out of the house earlier instead of showing up at 9AM.  I have been making a tonne of progress on the app at work.  I've got it pulling columns dynamically, and I've decided to use an abstract interface instead of a bunch of copies of the same thing.  I hadn't thought of using overrides, but it would be awesome to do so.  I still gotta do the JWT things, but now that my DAL guy is coming back on Thursday, it should be a bit less of a load.

Overlord seems to have stalled out yesterday, nothing terribly exciting happened, so it seemed to be more of setup.  Entirely too much setup per season.  I see there is a point to building up the badass, but if you can't hint to it more strongly, add some excitement to it.

As far as my home project, I'm disappointed that I can't just switch from Angular 5 to 6 just by deleting the folder and reinitialising it from scratch.  I think it mostly has to do with webpack - but I've looked through it and there is a bunch of references to the boot and server/client scripts.  Searching through Google seems to yield far more generic problems - so I'm kinda on my own.  Maybe it is just the typescript stuff.

IT'S TUESDAY! TUESDAY! TUESDAY!!!!

Cool Thing in the Mail:
    So in the mail came my awesome Psychostick swag: T-shirt, Sticker, Poster, and of course the CD for their DO album.  Alas, the shirt was a bit too small, but I'm betting there is a kid out there who would wear it - though the lyrics for the songs aren't terribly kid-friendly.

Work Stuff:
    I've been doing a work thing with Angular for the last few weeks and it is pretty cool.  I've been dinking with the security portion of it, trying to pass a JWT through SignalR.  It is a bit frustrating that I divided up the work to three folks and the DAL guy has been stupid busy on other projects.  I'm hoping he'll be freed up enough to do it, otherwise I'll have to pick up what he had.  I'm just unsure about it and I don't want to waste time puttering around if someone already knows it.

Home Projects:
    As far as my home projects go, I've got Tinhalo in the fire again - trying to use Angular 6 for it, even though the ASP net core project is Angular 5.  Polymer has been far too temperamental for me to take it seriously... I may visit it later on, but it'll be far later than a couple of years.

   I have a good feeling about the NLP site since I had spent quite a bit of time mining the Angela Ackerman books for data.  I'm thinking about using FSM and some fuzzy logic, even if those two don't really go together.  It is really nice that a bunch of sites out there exist for NLU, but I'll probably have to brush up on AIML in order to make templates.  That is probably going to be the bulk of the grunt work, templating.

    I still haven't touched my music app in a bit, mostly because I have to figure out how to make template tabs and prototype graphs.  Ick.  I'm sure there is an easy way to do it, but I'm kinda hitting a wall there.

Anime:
    I've been super-stoked for Overlord, which I'll probably watch tonight before calling it a night.  Some episodes seem slower than others, but I feel that it's going to steamroll to the end like the last cour did.

  Black Clover is still a bit wincing, like some of the other shows.  I guess it was just that the art style shifted and I don't think it was in a positive way.  Going to continue shouldering through it hoping that it'll be interesting or payout.

    Ultimately, I'm a bit burned out on the other series and can't get excited about them... but that is the nice thing about it - so many hands are involved in producing some good series and stories.. and sometimes they are just not in my bailiwick.

UndeadLord619 Description

UndeadLord619, shortened to UDL, is a slight girl with a fading pink mohawk, at least it would be if she had chosen to spike it, and a tiny bit of acne at the hairline.  Darkened circles ring around her startling amber eyes denoting her late hours and tepid sleep schedule.  The sharp focus with which she navigates them around her environment belies a keen intellect, absorbing the details around her.  She beamed with high cheeks and an almost inviting half-smile, half smirk.  Her slim arms may not be best suited for a menial job, instead hinting to a more comfortable desk job at one of the megacorps - though she'd be pushing the dress code a bit far.  Confidence resonates out from her across any room, drawing looks of appraisal and some jealousy in others.

Her tailored high-collar, floor-length coat - an Ace of Coins - is clean for the little attention she pays to herself.   Some modifications styled her jacket; including a few hodge-podge patches from the Girl Scouts, random Neo-dubstep bands long forgotten, and some custom ones for hacker groups.  Around UDL's neck is a stylish satin choker, centred on which is a faux-ivory cameo depicting a Lovecraftian elder god.  Below that, a respirator hangs slack, looking like something from a favourite anime - oversize teeth with pink gums and a fake zipper separating the top row from the bottom.  Slung around her back is a beaten olive-drab backpack, stitched in places where it had seen the most wear like a precious teddy bear from a childhood long passed.  Currently, her v-neck t-shirt depicts a live feed of her heartbeat, temperature, the current song she is listening to (down to the minute and second, the BPM, Genre, et al.).  Since UDL has gotten off her bike, she hadn't bothered to remove her black leather riding gloves, having a metal plate to the back, the knuckle joints showing the tell-tale rings of an AR interface.  Her long-jean shorts adorned with a massive belt buckle, a large wallet chain, and a military-style black belt pouch.  On her feet are the pride and joy of her ensemble - a pair of shining polished Doc Martens 1914 smoothes, replete with bright pink shoelaces.

UDL seems to be a conflict of themes, while a punk, she is devoid of tattoos or piercings; though the pink band-aid across the bridge of her nose couldn't be for anything other than a homage to Tank Girl.  One of her thumbs are stuck under the strap of the backpack, drumming along to the beat, and she nods her head to the rhythm as she looks around.

* Persona *
UDLs typical persona is that of a man wearing a very sharp pin-striped business suit, gripping a cane behind his back.  But, in place of a head, looms a rotating question mark wreathed in the laurels seen beneath awards.  In the world of the matrix, this blandness is a misdirection, like most of UDLs gaming of the system.  Each movement accentuated by a persistent glitch, pixels hanging place like a drunk file too damaged to display appropriately, missing frames and skipping.