Today, the day started off with another team’s manager asking for access to the secret server account details. Later we had our Sprint Planning Session #43. I see two stories on my board one of which has rolled over from previous sprint.
In the Afternoon we had sprint demo where 3 people presented boring stuff 🙂
Almost at the end of the day one colleague noticed my yesterday’s teams’ message and promised to look into that.
A colleague was trying to spin-up a VM and was failing, provided him with a hint about the issue.
One guy wanted something done in Azure and pinged me after 5 PM. Working from Home is Great!
I’m here at the basketball game of my daughter. This is the last game of the Spring 23 Season at the Church. Wife is at the School participating in the planning for Summer school. She started early in the morning and would be back by 4 PM.
Before that I have to do some grocery shopping and the long-awaited haircut, that should have been done 2 weeks ago.
Tomorrow we plan to go for Strawberry picking and then to a friend’s place for their Daughter’s Graduation Party. She is graduating high school and would start college in August.
We got 2 apple products. the Apple Watch SE 44 MM from Costco and the EarPods 2nd Gen from Best Buy. And actually, we got two of them so that both of us can use with our devices. She is going to use it with iPhone, and I would use it with almost all my devices that include my Android Phone, DELL and Lenovo PC and of course with iPhone and MacBook Pro.
We also purchased some household items from Amazon 2 x bedside table and 3 x bedside lamps.
Recently many people received the Payment from IRS due to the situation created by Novel COVID-19 Pandemic. Soon after first set of payments were delivered as Direct Deposit, Donald Trump wanted his name to be on the Checks being sent out. Later, everyone who received the direct deposit also got a letter from him through IRS Notice 1444 (EN-SP) in English and Spanish that you have received the money.
It has “Your Economic impact payment has arrived” as the subject and reads My Fellow American:
Our great country is experiencing an unprecedented public health and economic challenge as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic. our top priority is your health and safety. As we wage total war on this invisible enemy, we are also working around the clock to protect hardworking Americans like you from the consequences of the economic shutdown. We are fully committed to ensuring that you and your family have the support you need to get through this time.
On 8th September, started the drive from the suburb of Atlanta to a Satellite town of Raleigh metro area. Wen we first planned for the trip, Google Maps said it’s almost 425 miles and is going to take 6 hours of driving. Taking into account the rest breaks/ fueling the vehicle total time of the trip was estimated to be around 7 hours.
On the day of the Trip, The drive started around 1:30 PM, filled the tank of the vehicle after less than one mile of the trip at a QT gas station.
Sun Trust Bank was recently in the news regarding its merger with BB&T. Few days ago I received, a pre-approved invitation to apply for this card. I have credit cards from all major bank and few months back I was looking for Bonus Cash offers from Sun Trust.
I got lucky to get this opportunity, however after visiting their website, I found there is another open offer for 250 $ Statement Credit on a Travel Rewards Credit Card. Requirement for that offer is to spend 3000 $ in first 3 months/90 days of account opening. Had I not got the current offer, which only require to spend $1000 in three months to receive 200$ bonus. I would have been interested in that too.
Now, let’s come to the point which motivated me to write all this, :). So, after getting the card, I immediately activated it over the internet and was excited to setup online access. I used the signup link on their website and tried to with the required info. What I got was an error message that details are invalid, please check. I was entering all details carefully, so it was strange.
And then, I called the customer care, she took sometime and created an account key and also a sign-up code, which was never mentioned on their website. I received an email at my registered email address with the link for signup using secure code.
Like last year, this year too we planned for beach vacation with one of our friends. Initially we planned for the 3rd week of June but later postponed it for first week of July. This resulted in high prices of hotels so, we had to resort to week-day trip starting Sunday from Atlanta area staying for two nights in panhandle and return by Tuesday evening.
Dell Inspiron 11 – 3153, is a touch screen 11.6 inch laptop with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of installed Solid State Drive. When I purchased this laptop from Best Buy in 2015, I had in mind that I would upgrade it to 250/500 GB SSD. This configuration was not available on Dell’s website and was sold under Best Buy Blue Label.
After almost 3 years, I found that I really need to upgrade the SSD in this laptop, watched a few videos and decided to upgrade to a 256 GB Crucial SSD. After receiving the SSD, cloned the current disc using Acronis True Image, that I got with PNY SSD. I had upgrdaded my Sony Vaio laptop from 500 GB HDD to 256 GB SSD last year (2017). Before that, I had upgraded disc drive in my ASUS EEEPC running Windows XP with a Sandisk 128 GB SSD. I was confident that I would do it quickly.
I opened the laptop, removed two of the three screws securing the hard drive and was working on 3rd one. It was a Samsung SSD that came with laptop. After a few trials when I found that I am starting to strip the screw, I stopped. Closed the cover and planned to go to Geek Squad at Best Buy.
I gave them the SSD that I bought and the laptop for replacing the drive. They said it would be 40 $. It was OK that even though I am going to spend another 40 $, after all I would be able to expand the Storage on this Dell laptop.
