So the week began, as most weeks do (in the US, at least), on Sunday. I'd been doing my laundry, so that night I was finishing up and trying to get everything put away. Literally everything seemed to be trying to fight me, so I said fuck it, left half my clean clothes and all my towels in the hamper in the living room--a couple pieces I'd bought a short while ago for Colombina's enclosure that still haven't been implemented due to the lack of sufficient substrate had been leaning on the hamper in the bedroom and had since fallen down into its spot as a result, so didn't feel like dealing with that even--and decided that, after the vet appointment in the afternoon, I'd get stupid-drunk the next day, as a multitude of things had been piling up and I really just needed some strain relief.
One other item of note had happened that afternoon / early evening: One of our domes, which we've just gotten up and running for a client whose equipment has given us nothing but trouble since the beginning, had a major failure immediately after having literally just fixed another major failure on the dome. While typically Mondays are one of my days off, I agreed to come in after that vet appointment to help fix it, as another of our nighttime crew had asked for some additional days off this week to spend New Year's with his family, and thus we'd only have one person on otherwise.
Monday, went down with LeChuck and Coquelicot for their vet appointments, for their second Ivermectin dose each. None of my lizards like being transported, and I do completely understand; LeChuck in particular, he naturally gets the biggest carrier when he goes (because even though he's not the heaviest--Coquelicot's about four times his weight--his tail makes him the longest by far, and he's definitely the fastest), but even so he is constantly trying to escape. Generally, this just means climbing up the two sides of the carrier that he actually can climb, trying to reach the top (which has a big plastic window), only to realize he can't shove himself through that "opening"--but still staying up there for a bit, before clambering back down and trying the other side. Over and over again.
Coquelicot on the other hand, she also definitely doesn't like the ride, but she generally stays put, I suspect mostly also out of fear of what's going on, hoping that nothing will see or notice her. But, as we got into Alamogordo and the sun started to hit her--the carrier I had to use for her is a clear-shell backpack, just laid on the side that'd normally be against the wearer's back--her colors came in REAL bright, and she started to actually show a bit of curiosity! It was so nice to see, quite unexpected.
So the truth is, I'd mentioned a couple days before that, that Coquelicot's gut-swelling had appeared to be going down; that WAS true at the time, but then like the next day she dropped a NASTY poop, not QUITE diarrheal but definitely formless and full of water, which stank so bad you could smell it all throughout the house. It smelled so bad she fled from it, and refused to go back to her basking spot--where she'd dropped it--until I cleaned it up (which I had to do anyway, because OH MY GOD the smell). So, I was worried the coccidia might've come back with a vengeance, but unfortunately because she still needed a second dose of Ivermectin (which, hookworms do also cause diarrhea, so that might've been the cause too), we really couldn't do another stool sample for her just yet. But, the doctor didn't mention any abnormalities or anything; while this visit did not include an exam for either one, he DID have to administer the medication orally, meaning he did get a good look at 'em anyway.
Both did behave, actually; while they definitely were NOT happy about having their mouths forced open or having a medication dumped into 'em, they weren't too bad about it. Last time, Coquelicot puffed up and blackened her beard, and threatened to bite both the vet and the attendant (she didn't, but she did threaten). While LeChuck WAS a bit squirmy this time, he's just kinda always like that when someone's holding him; I've not gotten him used to being handled yet, mostly just trying to get him CONTENT first.
But, I DID bring in a stool sample for Colombina at the same time, as it had been three weeks since her last Ivermectin dose; while her worms were ALMOST completely gone, they did find five in the (quite large, swear to god that girl drops logs half her body length and bigger around than her tail) sample, so we scheduled another appointment for the next day, Tuesday, so she could get a third dose of Ivermectin to hopefully get rid of them once and for all.
Before heading back up the mountain, I had to swing by Walmart to pick up a grocery order, part of which included some much-needed greens for both these lizards. (Alas, they were out of all I'd ordered but one of them, but the one they gave me was sizeable; not GREAT, a variety really is the best option, but still, better than nothing.) I also had a few phone calls to make, which I'd decided I'd make in the parking lot there, after having picked up the groceries. I should've made the calls while waiting, as I ended up waiting close to half an hour for the SINGLE employee to get through the four other customers who'd come up, before he could get me my stuff. But, during that time, in an attempt to get her some more sunlight, I put Coquelicot's carrier on the dash (LeChuck's carrier, while it actually has more open-ness for light, I'd pulled down the side flaps to try to reduce his stress, so he wouldn't have benefitted); while she didn't get much more sun, she DID show a lot more curiosity, craning her body up as high as she could and watching all the people and cars moving around the lot. It was super-cute!
But, as a result of that wait--and an additional wait in a drive-thru so I could get ANY food that day, lengthened by the time it took me to get there--I was significantly later than I'd expected to be getting home. I hurriedly put the lizards back in their tank and bolted to the office.
The repair was surprisingly arduous. We'd initially suspected a magnetic sensor, located at the very top of the dome (which, this is one of our two tallest domes), but when we replaced that, the problem didn't go away. So, I figured the only other thing that could be causing it was a fused relay on a little daughter board; alas, we didn't have any of those boards as spare (and I didn't know we had a whole sleeve of those relays, as the aforementioned individual who'd asked off was probably the only person who knew that, much less even where they were), so we took one out of a dome that isn't currently in-use. The good news was, this did fix the problem! The bad news was, we had to put that suspect board into the other unused dome in order to get it closed again, and we did confirm for a second time it was the board because this other dome had the exact same problem, but in reverse. (We DID get it closed though.)
One thing we had noted was, the "new" board we'd put in that in-use dome had a resistor that had CLEARLY been overheating, but since the dome DID work in the moment and the resistor didn't appear otherwise compromised, we simply made a note of it.
So, that all having been done and it then being after 6, I grabbed some collard greens from the greenhouse and ran back home to feed everyone; this is actually when I'd found LeChuck in that somewhat compromising position. Because of his time in the carrier, he tends to get stuck in "escape mode" for a bit after coming home from the vet, and in this case he'd climbed some of the wires connected to various sensors in the enclosure (which help regulate temperature and humidity), then slid down two opposing sets and had gotten stuck. I did help him out (after taking those pictures, of course), after which he bolted to the other side of the enclosure to be as far away from me as possible. But, then I fed all three of them; Coquelicot didn't seem too terribly interested in food, but I gave it to her anyway. (And LeChuck never eats when I feed him; he prefers to eat in the morning, well before I wake up, so this is the next best thing in terms of feeding times.)
Then, everything and everyone taken care of, I proceeded to get shitfaced. I'd wanted to go with a mixed drink I'd created some time ago called a fuit gummy, as I'd discovered I had 99 Bananas (one of the key ingredients); I actually picked up another ingredient, a fruit juice (primarily mango), at the store earlier, for that purpose. Alas, I didn't really have any of the other ingredients, Midori and grenadine; I knew about the Midori, but unfortunately Walmart can't legally sell alcohol for pickup (because they need to verify your age, and also in the state of New Mexico the sale of alcohol is pretty strictly regulated), but I hadn't noticed the grenadine or else I would've ordered some of that too. So, in lieu of those two ingredients, I added Mountain Dew. It was... not a good substitution, but it DID help a bit. Even so, by the end I was just drinking the 99 Bananas practically straight.
I'd realized at around 1am that I was supposed to have a meeting with my advisor the next day, for which this newly-scheduled vet appointment would conflict. So, apologizing profusely, I explained the situation in an email to my advisor, and we rescheduled for Thursday--though, she'd asked what time when she agreed to reschedule, which of course was after I was asleep.
Thoroughly drunk and absolutely exhausted, I got to bed around 4:30am.
At around 7am, when our sunrise closures happen this time of year, that very same dome failed to close, and my dome alarm began sounding off. But, I was so very exhausted, it didn't actually manage to wake me up until after 9, and even then it was more because I had to pee. Seeing the time, not realizing the alarm had been going off and further reasoning the daytime crew had already gotten in and thus would likely be working on it, I shut the alarm off and crawled right back into bed.
Then, around 10am, LeChuck came out of his hide and resumed Escape Mode. This alerted the cats, and Kingsley managed to wake me up, then keep me awake for an hour, by repeatedly slamming himself into LeChuck's enclosure trying to get in at this surprisingly-active lizard. This is not hyperbole. He normally jumps up and thrusts his paws at the front of the tank, or tries to bat around the sides hoping to get in; that morning however, he was climbing up onto any surface he could that was REMOTELY close enough, then leaping full-force head-first at the glass. This of course did nothing to calm LeChuck, who redoubled his efforts, which only served to rile up the cats even more. I was already exhausted, and this was only making it SO much worse.
For context here: Colombina's scheduled vet appointment was 2:15pm. It takes me about 50 minutes to get there, 45 if I'm actually able to open it up on 82, but I still like to allot an hour travel time any time I go to Alamogordo, as both 82 and Alamogordo itself often feature just the absolute worst drivers mankind can offer; on 82 in particular, almost every driver on that road is going AT LEAST 5mph below the speed limit, often 10, and I'd say still about 50% are over 20mph below. Additionally, I wanted to be sure Colombina had had a chance to not only eat, but then get a bit of heat to digest at least some of that food before getting on the road. As such, I'd set five alarms from noon to 12:30pm, with the intent of getting up, feeding her and Coquelicot, then getting on the road by 1:15.
At 1:29, I rolled over, looked at my watch, and immediately recognized my collosal fuck-up.
I then looked at my phone, where I saw I'd received a text from one of the daytime crew members telling me they'd managed to close that dome, but not all the way--and at around 11:30am, after having realized at 10:37 that the dome was even still open in the first place (and had texted me asking if it should be, which of course I hadn't seen either). The one daytime crew member who would've seen the alarm upon coming in and thus would've noticed, had unfortunately been bitten on the heel by a recluse, the bite of which had turned severely necrotic, and so he hadn't come in. (It still is, and he hasn't been in all week as a result. I hadn't known, because of course Monday, my usual day off, I'd arrived later anyway, which would've been after he would've gone home anyway so I'd assumed I'd just missed him.)
Cursing to myself the whole time, I hurriedly scooped Colombina into her carrier, then called the vet's office to let them know I was gonna be late; by this point it was 1:45. They asked HOW late, and I informed them that I was leaving right that moment, and that I could be down there in 45 minutes if I really busted ass; they told me that that would be fine, but any later and they'd likely have to reschedule me. (This had been a lie by myself; I had one other thing I needed to do before I left, but right now I don't remember what that thing was. I left about five minutes later.)
Luckily, the first half was pretty uneventful. The road was mostly clear; there were a couple cars going kinda slow, but I was able to get around all of them with relative ease. My phone reported a bit of a traffic jam just shy of Cloudcroft and had adjusted my ETA accordingly, but no such jam existed; this caused my ETA to jump five minutes, and I didn't worry about it. There's always a slowdown AT Cloudcroft because the speed limit through town drops to 35mph (and of course, literally nobody but myself drives that), but luckily I was able to actually go the speed limit with nobody else in front of me--right up until the other side of town, when I caught up with someone who'd been on the road, going 10mph below the speed limit, as one does.
There are no legal passing zones for four miles on the west side of Cloudcroft, and there are no even remotely SAFE places to pass illegally for that length either. Coming down the hill, the speed limit remains 35mph for about a mile and a half, at which point it jumps five whole miles per hour--unless you're in a truck (the sign refers to tractor-trailers, who are warned in-advance and many, MANY times throughout about the grade, as it can be quite treacherous and indeed many have gone out of control coming down--including one earlier this year who rolled off the highway just after the tunnel trying to avoid plowing into other vehicles while ALREADY ON FIRE and plummeted 200+feet into the canyon below--but many drivers--especially those who aren't FROM here, which is an important detail for later I promise--assume it means ALL trucks, even the shitty oversized-but-underweight Ford F150-class flatbeds that couldn't haul a load if they tried but many people buy 'em for the perceived safety factor anyway, even though those things are no safer than your average sedan and actually make driving LESS safe, for the driver and everyone around 'em), in which case the speed limit stays the same. Then, in that passing zone, the speed limit increases to 45--unless you're in a truck, in which case it actually drops to 25mph. This other person did indeed increase their speed from 25 to 30 at that first jump, but yeah, they were still going pretty slowly.
So, one other item I didn't mention earlier is the traffic pattern that results from so many drivers at wildly-varying but still all entirely too-slow speeds. I call it "The Stacker"; it's where you're stuck behind someone going well below the speed limit, and invariably they catch up to someone ahead of them going slower. This happens ALL THE TIME on 82, usually with multiple instances in one eventual chain, and as 82 is a one-lane each-way "highway", not only does this traffic pattern slow you down, it also makes it near-impossible to pass at safe locations due to the exact same phenomenon occurring in the opposing lane--and of course, you're gonna have to try to pass increasing numbers of cars as The Stacker invariably grows. At least traveling eastward between Alamogordo and a short jog past Cloudcroft, there are occasional passing LANES, but as about 70% of drivers in this state don't know what a passing lane even IS, much less what it's FOR, even that's kind of a crapshoot to get around a Stacker.
As we rounded the bend toward that first passing zone out of Cloudcroft, I saw, at the bottom of this straightaway, another driver, easily, EASILY going 25mph below the FORMER speed limit. I was about to get caught in a Stacker. Wanting to avoid AT LEAST having to try to pass two cars, and as the opposing lane was surprisingly free, I pulled around that first car going 70--because of course, the moment you try to pass someone, they always get super fucking offended and speed right the fuck up--and, while I did slow down once I got back over, I was still definitely speeding as I approached the other driver in the distance, hoping to be able to overcome them at the next passing zone (where they'd gotten in that time), just a couple hundred feet later.
Alas, I wasn't fast enough, BUT, by some miracle, that other, slower driver actually pulled over into the runaway truck ramp immediately below that passing zone; this literally never happens, and I'm about 98% sure they pulled over--which, I hadn't actually caught up to them, so they were a little early even--to call the police about the "dangerous lunatic" barreling down the road toward them who simply wanted to drive the goddamn speed limit, but you know, I wasn't gonna complain, because I was actually able to just fucking drive.
Riiiight up until High Rolls, where I discovered the cause of the reported traffic jam in Cloudcroft.
A TWAT--that is, a Texan With A Trailer (though I should really call them a TWATWAFFLE, a Texan With A Trailer Who Ain't Fucking Following Laws or Etiquette, but that's a lot longer)--was going down this 45mph road, 25 if you're GENEROUS with your definition of "truck", at 15. They had accumulated a chain of certainly no fewer than 20, probably closer to 50 vehicles behind them, because they had not pulled over to let any other traffic pass the entire way down the mountain.
That "50" number may sound HUGE if you know this road, but I promise I'm not over-exaggerating, and it's actually related to the TWAT itself. Because, recall, it was December 31, New Year's Eve.
Tourist season is in the summer (mostly because Cloudcroft is about 20 degrees F cooler than Alamogordo, and even that's cooler than east Texas where most tourists are coming from), and generally ends around Labor Day. While this year's season was stretched quite a bit for some inexplicable reason, with me getting caught behind TWATs many afternoons driving back from class well into October, this is EXORBITANTLY late, literally the exact opposite time of year. So why the FUCK was a TWAT coming down the mountain, and why were there SO MANY cars trapped behind it?
This was a question I discovered the answer to in the waiting room at the vet, so I'll wait to share it until we get there. Fact is, at this point, I was going 15, behind a Stacker I had NO CHANCE of even TRYING to pass, all stuck behind a TWAT.
There were plenty of opportunities for the TWAT to pull off the road, including a large parking lot and tiny gas station at the High Rolls General Store, but they took none, dashing my hopes of getting to the vet on time.
Luckily for me though, the TWAT actually DID get off the road on the other side of the tunnel, where there's another sizeable pull-off and parking lot because of the beautiful canyon vista right there--which, let's be honest, is likely the actual and ONLY reason they got off the road. But of course, even though the TWAT had moved, the rest of the Stacker was shit-and-piss-your-pants, white-knuckle-gripping-the-steering-wheel, sweating-like-a-fat-hog-left-outside-in-July-in-Timbuktu, aspen-leaf-in-autumn-trembling goddamn TERRIFIED at that point, and so it took us, I shit you not, over a mile before we'd sped up from the 15mph of the TWAT, to 25mph--at which point the speed limit had increased to 50.
Thankfully, by some sheer force of the Universe rolling a series of 1s in its literal constant attempt to royally fuck me sideways, while we do not get a passing lane going this direction, the opposing direction does, and we get a passing zone in the same place; and, in yet another miraculous chain of 1-rolls, SOME of the drivers in the Stacker ACTUALLY MANAGED to pass the ones who were still flooding their footwells with piss and shit. Which, of course, offended those passed drivers so deeply that they ACTUALLY sped up--not to the speed limit mind you, we were still about 10mph below, but hey, that's better than 25! (And of course, not a goddamn one of 'em, not a single goddamn driver in the entire fucking line pulled over into the runaway truck ramp right past the passing zone, because THEY aren't the goddamn PROBLEM people, obviously THEY just need to get down the mountain same as the rest of us, and FUCK YOU for even EXPECTING to go any faster!)
Into Alamogordo, managed to get out from behind MOST of 'em simply by merit of turning at Florida, except the one who'd been leading this new chain had also turned here--but, again by sheer goddamn blind luck against the Universe, that person had to turn on Scenic, so I wasn't stuck behind 'em for TOO terribly long. I managed to get to the vet's office only about five minutes later than I'd told them I would, which is truly a testament to how fast I was actually driving west of Cloudcroft more than any-goddamn-thing else. In spite of this lateness, they WERE able to see me, though I did have to wait for a couple minutes in the waiting room because he was seeing other patients (of course, and I DO NOT blame him AT ALL).
Early on in the drive, Colombina had fallen off the little rope perch I'd given her (because both carriers I use for my lizards were sold as bird carriers, and this one came with a piece of rope to string between any two of the holes provided), so since I'd been unable to stop the entire way to meet this deadline, I pulled her out in the waiting room and let her sit on my warmer hand for a bit, which tickled the other patrons. They hadn't expected to see a chameleon.
But, with my other hand, I was browsing Facebook, trying to catch up with my notifications (since I'd normally do this in bed after waking up), and it was in this that I'd discovered the cause of the TWAT and all those cars behind 'em:
It being New Year's Eve, people in Alamogordo (and the surrounding area, including much of east Texas) had the brilliant idea that, gosh, the folks in Cloudcroft must be doing SOMETHING interesting today! So while there were many, MANY posts on the Cloudcroft Facebook groups from wannabe-tourists inquiring about any goings-on in town today--which were answered, of course, no, because the residents of Cloudcroft are 95% wealthy Texans, who in some weird twist of fate actually seem to like spending any holiday excuse with their families at home--I'd say about 90% of the people who'd had this thought--and probably 50% of the people who HAD actually asked, but didn't bother waiting for an answer before getting on the road because SURELY a tourist-trap town like Cloudcroft had SOMETHING going on--just spontaneously got in the car and drove up to Cloudcroft. Only to find upon arrival that, no, not a goddamn thing was happening, and indeed all places of business that a tourist might consider a consolation prize were closed for the holiday. So they all had to make the Drive of Shame back down the mountain, stuck behind a TWAT who'd likely had the same BRILLIANT goddamn idea.
(And before you ask, no, Ruidoso wasn't doing anything either, for exactly the same reason. Plus, y'know, half the city and easily twice (maybe thrice?) the city's size in area around it burned to the fucking ground over the summer, then was summarily washed entirely off the face of the planet by excessive, multiple, and repeated flooding during the monsoon--not that they got an excessive amount of rain, this was actually one of the driest years on-record, but because of the scorched earth the water collected there in torrents--so they were in no position to hold any festivities anyway.)
But, got called into the usual exam room, whereupon Colombina decided to climb the Grady tree onto my shoulders--across my back even--before the vet came in. The assistant with him had never handled a chameleon before (I'm not sure if she'd ever handled a reptile before), so she wasn't really sure how to hold her, but the vet was able to scapula her mouth open and pump the dose of Ivermectin right in. When the assistant opened her hands, Colombina's spots were BLACK, darker than I'd EVER seen her, so thoroughly angry at both the handling and the medication, but thankfully for me, in her attempt to hurry away from the whole thing, she climbed right back onto my hand, no problem. (It was significantly more difficult to get her into the carrier, which I finally managed to do while at the reception desk waiting for my bill, but couldn't zip it up all the way because she'd managed to grip the edge of the thing with one foot. Thankfully, by the time we got to the car, while she was still clinging to that side, she HAD pulled her foot back in, so I was able to zip it back up.)
Knowing I'd have to come back to the office to help handle that dome yet again, I raced back up the mountain--but, thankfully, the idiots who'd come up had all come up in the morning, so the drive was relatively uneventful, arriving back at the house at ten minutes before 4 (which is about the time I'd leave the house to go to the office anyway). Hurried inside to drop Colombina off in her enclosure and feed her and Coquelicot, only to find that about half my climate-control equipment between both Colombina and LeChuck had shut down in the interim. Thankfully the heat and UV had MOSTLY stayed on, but both the foggers had completely shut off, resulting in not only their complaining, but also the climate-control system for LeChuck's tank in particular complaining, since he needs around 75% humidity during the day and without that fogger it drops to around 35% in like five minutes. (Colombina's wasn't complaining simply because she only needs ~45% humidity during the day, so her fogger is USUALLY off anyway. Didn't hurt that the misters in her setup are set to run every four hours, unlike LeChuck's 12, simply because the substrate in her enclosure is still quite dry and I've been trying to get it properly wet without, y'know, just dumping a bunch of water in there.) In the case of LeChuck's fogger, which is a smaller but significantly more robust model, it had simply run out of water, but on Colombina's fogger, on which the reservoir was still about half-full, it was complaining about having overheated--which shouldn't have happened.
So, this fogger is kinda... weird. It's made by the same folks who made the other fogger--which I'd bought because basically everyone had given it great reviews for humidifying their reptile enclosures, but apparently had been discontinued IMMEDIATELY after I'd bought that one, because holy shit I absolutely bought the last one for-sale goddamn anywhere--but has twice the reservoir, and can be filled from the top without taking the thing apart, both good things! However, unlike the smaller unit which simply has a volume knob to turn it on and increase the amount of fog it produces (which, of course, is always cranked all the way up), this unit, assuming you're going to be using it without a hygrostat--even though they insist with BOTH products that you do, even putting multiple warnings across the web listing, the packaging, and the instruction manual, fact is the vast majority of negative complaints on the smaller unit came from people who didn't and expected the manufacturer to fix it--has a surprisingly-sophisticated controller on the front, allowing for timing between fogging instances, adjusting the length of time OF each fogging instance, and three different "volumes" of fog to dispense, all controlled by a programmed microcontroller and set using a backlit LCD screen and the most sensitive touch-buttons on god's green earth. (The power button is also one of these, making it a set of four, surrounding the round screen in a rectangle.)
The fog itself is dispensed up a long plastic extendable tube by a small squirrel-cage-type fan, which pulls in outside air through a thin black sponge as an air filter--mounted on the very bottom of the unit, with a hard plastic lip all around it to hold that sponge in place. I'd realized VERY early-on that the unit cannot pull sufficient air--and thus complains about overheating and shuts down--when sitting on the carpet, while on any of the two higher "volumes", because that lip effectively seals itself against the carpet. So, in an attempt to help, I put the whole thing on a piece of cardboard, to avoid the carpet entirely--except, that's when I realized, that lip is actually level with the feet of the unit, meaning that even on a perfectly-flat surface, the air intake is kissing that surface. But, with the cardboard under it, it HAD been able to run at the second "volume" level without bitching, so I left it. It hadn't bitched for like two weeks by this point, save for when it runs out of water--which it does quite frequently, as between the two foggers, I use about a gallon of RO water a DAY. (And no, that does not include the misting system for both.)
This unit, also unlike the first, has a large plastic float on a fulcrum that it uses to determine if it has any water left; as the volume of water diminishes, that float starts to lower, and once it gets to a certain level, the unit shuts off and beeps in complaint. Unfortunately, the moment arm on that float is quite short, only about an inch long, and additionally the float is flattened toward the plane of that moment arm, meaning this reading is WILDLY inconsistent. Further, the float is actually in the body of the fogger itself, as opposed to the reservoir; while I'm sure this was an attempt by the designer to only alarm when the water level in the very bottom is depleted--which makes perfect sense, because even when the reservoir is fully depleted, there's usually about a cup of water left in the base--this does not account for the design of the float itself, nor does it account for the possibility of stuck air in the cavities above any given "lip" in the base. As a result, I've seen this unit complain of overheating with a visible cm of water left in the reservoir--and I know it was complaining about the water level itself because the complaint went away entirely upon adding water to the reservoir.
In this case, the reservoir had only been depleted by half, BUT, given the wildly-inconsistent readings of that float and the lack of complaints from the unit otherwise to that point, I'd assumed the thing was misguidedly complaining about the water level, as LeChuck's fogger definitely WAS doing (but correctly). And indeed, filling the reservoir, it DID stop bitching--for a couple seconds, anyway. So, reasoning that the poorly-designed air intake had finally caught up with it, I dropped the "volume" back to the lowest, and it did indeed finally start working again. Just, y'know, nowhere near well enough to hydrate Colombina's enclosure overnight, since it's bigger in volume than LeChuck's (by a WILD margin), has to be about the same humidity overnight as LeChuck's (which is frankly approaching 100%, but even on that second volume could only get to around 65% running full-time), and is a hybrid tank with glass and mesh on the sides--a necessity for Colombina, as a veiled chameleon. (They're QUITE prone to respiratory infections.) But, already running late now thanks to those multiple failures at home, it'd have to work for now, so I hurriedly filled LeChuck's fogger reservoir as well, fed both Colombina and Coquelicot for the first time that day...
Only for Coquelicot to barely show interest in her bugs.
Unfortunately I don't remember, and don't keep track even though I absolutely should and even have an app specifically FOR that purpose, but I BELIEVE the feeder that day was banded crickets; these are not her favorite, that being dubia roaches, but she'd still normally go after them quite ravenously. With the roaches, while she'd initially turned her nose up at them because she didn't know what they were, once she figured it out, they were a favored feeder, frankly even beating out crickets. She'd glass-surf in excitement if she even THOUGHT she'd seen me opening the lid of the roach bin--which, while she would do the same for crickets too, she'd wait until I'd opened their (separate for gut-loading, kept in the closet because otherwise the cats would absolutely destroy it) enclosure and actually started dumping them into the calcium-dusting cup. (Probably even then only because usually one or two will escape during this time, both jumping out of the enclosure and missing the cup, so she was SEEING them there on the floor and trying to go after 'em. Not that she dislikes crickets AT ALL, but she goes fucking NUTS for dubia roaches.)
In this case, not only did she not glass-surf--which lately hadn't been TOO terribly uncommon, so I kinda shrugged it off--but she didn't even move from where she'd been sitting when I dumped 'em in her bug feeder bowl, only really showing ANY interest by turning her head to side-eye down at them.
This IMMEDIATELY concerned me. While she'd refused food before, it had been a LONG time since the last time she'd done so, which was during her last round of Albon and Ivermecting treatments back in August because the medications were causing enough of an upset stomach (and it didn't help that she was being treated because she still had a MASSIVE parasite load, including hookworms that HAD NOT been treated before that point because of her weight) that she was starting to not be terribly interested in eating.
For the record, this is USUALLY the first sign most beardie keepers notice that something's wrong, and unfortunately for many, is usually right around the time it becomes an emergency. For Coquelicot, the moment she starts showing disinterest in food (with no other discernible cause, like recent medication) is too late; even when I first got her, while she was a light eater even for her absolutely minuscule size, she WOULD eat bugs, and even with her WILDLY-oversized parasite load, she didn't show disinterest until after the second dose or so of Albon--which, you may recall, at her eight GRAMS, the vet was apprehensive about the prescription because of how much it can mess up the GI, only giving it BECAUSE of how bad her parasites were, and even then she could only be given ONE DROP of medication per 24-hour period. So, it was probably the medication more than the parasites that were making her uneasy about eating. (And it didn't help that she already had no trust in me to begin with, and each time I was reaching in, it was to give her MEDS. Which, yes, by the end of that round she was expecting and even somewhat anticipating it, even leaping at the end of the syringe a bit--as I recall it had been banana-flavored, and even smelled pretty good--but it was still a giant monster man reaching in to grab her.) She's just such an angry, feisty little fighter, she's never let the parasites get her down. And you can see in her coloration, while she absolutely still does have parasites in her gut, her colors fucking EXPLODED after about a month, and have only been getting more vibrant and beautiful. We ARE getting there.
But, that refusal of food, especially with the earlier return of gut-bloat and admittedly mild diarrhea, set off ALL the red flags. But unfortunately, I had somewhere to be RIGHT FUCKING NOW, so I hoped in the back of my mind that it was just tummy-upset-ness from the Ivermectin dose she'd received the day before. And, after confirming much later on the cameras that LeChuck's earlier Escape-Mode shenanigans had actually been the shortest time he'd come out of his hide in weeks--even discluding his huffiness with Colombina--I breathed a sigh of relief, that MAYBE I was right.
Everyone fed and all hardware at home having been patched together with duct tape for the moment, I FINALLY raced over to the office, about 15 minutes later than I'd expected. While the dome shutter WAS closing now--exclusively with the "Close" button, not with the button that automatically opens / closes it--it would NOT open.
I had two hypotheses, both stemming from the same idea, that the dome wouldn't open because for some reason it thought it already was open--which we'd confirmed was the case, as attempting to auto-open it with that aforementioned button (after resetting the problem IT was having), it was behaving as though it thought it was already open: First, that something had gone wrong in the last 24 hours with that new board we'd put in; and second, that the sensor at the very top of the dome--which senses with a magnet that the shutter is open--had managed to fuse itself open when we'd tested it opening. This didn't explain why the shutter hadn't closed that morning, but both possibilities DID explain the strange behavior we were seeing in the moment.
Fully expecting the problem to have been that resistor, we popped the cover for the board off--and indeed, that resistor's casing had actually crumbled overnight. With that apparent confirmation, we grabbed another board from another currently-unused dome, hurriedly swapping it in and not even bothering to move the other over--only to find that, upon testing, the problem was still present. While that resistor ABSOLUTELY needs to be replaced, it was NOT the issue.
So, I shrugged and pointed to the switch we'd just put in yesterday. My coworker--who, again, would've otherwise been the only person on that night--hung his head, then went to grab a ladder.
Fact is, this sensor was not new either; I'd pulled it out of a box we'd been keeping those, but in which there were only two sensors left, both of which were quite old, otherwise filled with magnets. Between the two, this switch had actuated with the greater distance from a test magnet, so I went with that one. And, when we'd tested it the night before, I'd noticed and even verbally commented, "Hey, it even sparked, clearly THAT'S working!" Not thinking that, y'know, when a switch sparks like that, it CAN fuse.
So, since the problem the night before had not been the switch, but rather the board, we hoped that same switch would work. (I did verify with another magnet, holding the switch up to my ear, that it WAS moving.) And indeed, swapping it out, the shutter opened and closed without issue. Testing the "faulty" switch then with the magnet, I was able to confirm that it WAS moving as well now, but given that it almost certainly HAD fused--and once a switch does that, it's more likely to do it again in the future--we went ahead and tossed it.
Hungry, cold, and exhausted, I grabbed another collard green (since the greenhouse is literally right there) and went back home, hoping to get drunk again after the day's events (though not necessarily COMPLETELY shitfaced, just, y'know, taking the edge off after a LONG fucking day, full of 10/10 stress literally since I'd gone to sleep). Thankfully, Coquelicot HAD eaten her roaches in the interim, so while I was still EXTREMELY concerned, that concern was alleviated somewhat. (This was more akin to her behavior during aforementioned previous medication regimens, which was that she WOULD still eat, but waited until I was out of the room.)
I'd also had the thought that she might just be upset and cold; when I'd gotten home from the vet, she was NOT in her usual basking spot, rather on top of her older hide that she'd since outgrown (which is still nearby, and still does get SOME heat). Additionally, I'd noticed at the time that she'd managed to smear poop EVERYWHERE. This behavior is not terribly uncommon in beardies--though she doesn't usually TRY to do it, usually only accidentally smearing poop anywhere because she pooped on her basking spot then proceeded to nestle down into it. Given her earlier NASTY poop from the other day, I'd reasoned that this one might've been particularly fragrant as well, and in her attempts to escape the smell, she'd just smeared it everywhere, then being upset that it was on her basking spot, she decided to try basking nearby, resulting in her being colder than usual. Since I had to clean everything up anyway--parasites only stay in the system after such rigorous medical treatment through accidental injestion of fecal matter, which often only happens because a feeder bug happened to walk across it before being eaten (though feeder bugs CAN have these parasites themselves, which is why it's important to get them from a trusted source; I can guarantee EVERY feeder bug, especially crickets, one can grab at a pet store is LOADED)--I cleaned her basking spot first (a rarity, as she's usually on it), working my way around the tank and methodically cleaning everything up with double-hits of 10:1 dilluted chlorhexadine (a relatively pet-safe disinfectant that most vets use for cleaning up their various surfaces as well, which I've been using since getting her), JUST to be sure. While she was upset--she never likes it when I clean her tank--she DID settle down pretty quickly, and I offered her a hornworm for her trouble, which she did eat.
Hoping to entice her a bit with the salad, while I didn't want to use butternut squash--definitely an easy win with her, but considering her earlier diarrhea, I didn't want to contribute to that problem and overshadow any other causes--I did sprinkle her greens with bee pollen, a relatively recent addition to her diet which she definitely enjoys. (It's a good general supplement, providing a bunch of microvitamins that otherwise might be absent, especially in a poor diet. But it IS also an appetite stimulant, especially for beardies.) Alas, she showed no interest there either, but reasoning she was just acting the same as before because of the Ivermectin making her tummy do flips--and she still does this with her greens most of the time anyway, just usually not when bee pollen is added--I figured I'd give her some time, go get drunk in the meantime.
(And yes, everyone else got fed too, including LeChuck getting some Fuji apple chunks to try to entice HIM. Yes, iguanas can--and SHOULD--have fruit in their diets, but it should only make up about 20%. Supposedly they DO love apples--and I went with Fuji because they're soft and sweet, with little to no sour bite--but LeChuck has always dug around any fruit I give him--including papaya and mango, two fruits iguanas are supposed to absolutely love--to go after the greens. Go figure. He'll figure it out one of these days; it's pretty likely the store he'd been at had just never offered him fruit, so he's not ENTIRELY sure it's food.)
That night, while I did get drunk, I definitely did not get shitfaced, only really enough for a mild buzz and light slurring at any given time. In fact, a couple hours in, I decided to try a project I'd been unable to touch since it had arrived a few days prior--putting together a new desk.
So, I've definitely mentioned before, LeChuck's future enclosure is going to be HUGE, by necessity; if he is indeed a male as we suspect--and that suspicion is growing, as in the last day or so I've noticed his jowls have started to grow too--he could get upwards of six feet long, weighing potentially upwards of 20 pounds. Just considering necessary range of motion, the shortest any dimension on the thing can be is six feet, and with my planned 6x8x8-foot enclosure, even that's frankly the bare minimum; it'll be sufficient, but an enclosure upwards of TEN feet in the longest dimension--which should be height--is really a better option, and as is the case with ALL reptiles, bigger is ALWAYS better. But, the ceilings in this current place aren't high enough for that--only the ceiling in the living room, which is vaulted, is tall enough to even accommodate the eight-foot plan--and the ceilings at the Socorro house (which I don't visit NEARLY frequently or long enough anyway) are nowhere near high enough to even accommodate the eight-foot height. (He WILL be getting a large outdoor enclosure too, but of course, since we experience this thing called winter, that CANNOT be a permanent enclosure for him. Frankly, our nights over the summer even are too cold for him, so that's really just gonna be a "let's go outside and hang out for a few hours" kind of thing.) This WILL be big enough, it just won't be ideal.
But, the only place in this current house it'll fit is the aforementioned vaulted-ceiling living room, and then, the only place I could think to put it was where the current dining table is now. That table's really only holding doomstacks anyway, and technically belongs to the observatory besides, so I SHOULD be able to replace it. The problem is, I also use the dining table as my primary computer desk, so in order to remove it entirely, I'd need a new desk--preferably one that doesn't interfere with the mbuna tank, and will still allow LeChuck's future enclosure--itself bigger in ALL dimensions than that table, by at least a foot--to fit in the allotted space without losing too much walkway.
And, since I was replacing the table with a new desk anyway, I decided it'd be REALLY nice if I could find an L-shaped desk. My art workstation had been experiencing some growing pains; in addition to being sequestered off in the back "vintage computer" room, which I rarely otherwise go into because it's a little cramped and honestly most of those computers are shut off because they'd run the electricity through the roof running all the time, when I'd set the art station up initially, I did so on a little "drafting table" I'd originally gotten specifically for animation, but that I hadn't been using at the time; that table, while smaller than an average drafting table and really only as deep and tall as a standard desk, nonetheless was NOT a good fit. First, the only seating that'd fit between it and the desk behind it (holding some of the aforementioned vintage computers) is the stool it came with, which was a happy coincidence but is SORELY uncomfortable, and further gets in the way if I actually need to get into the room. (And there's not really enough room for my legs anyway.) Then, the cats REALLY like being with me wherever I go, and that tiny cramped space is not terribly conducive to that. Finally, there isn't really good entertainment in that room; while I HAD set up this computer as both an entertainment station and an art station, including a large 4K monitor in addition to the monitor tablet, as well as a 4K Blu-Ray drive--which I learned after the fact WILL NOT play 4K disks, even though it CAN, simply because that computer's an AMD processor, not an Intel--it wasn't really ENOUGH. This last semester, I'd worked almost exclusively on my iPad at my main computer station, and was MUCH happier for it, even though the hardware was SIGNIFICANTLY lower-quality or capability. I wanted to fix that.
I'd found my solution last week. Browsing for ideas, I found an L-shaped desk on Wayfair, on extreme clearance--for less than $60, free shipping. It was SMALL, but after measuring everything out, I determined it not only would fit in the space comfortably, but would also fit BOTH computer systems and all peripherals I'd need. The only real issue was that it didn't have any keyboard trays, which I'd absolutely need for both setups even discounting the tight size of the desk (the cats like to climb in front of whatever monitor I'm at, which often results in me needing to tuck the keyboard somewhere, something I can't do here because the desk is too small), but at that price point, I couldn't complain--hell, I'd MAKE keyboard trays if I had to. So I bought it, and it arrived on Monday--you know, when all the shit went down.
So, Tuesday night, still tipsy, I assembled that desk. It went surprisingly well, and while it LOOKED smaller than I'd expected, it EXACTLY fit where it needed to go, and all the stuff I'd measured fit EXACTLY onto it. It was the perfect solution! (Save for the aforementioned keyboard trays, which I've been looking for something that isn't outrageously expensive--you know, more than I'd paid for the goddamn DESK--and I've got a POSSIBLE candidate coming next week.) And it's a good thing too, because that was the LAST desk of that manufacture Wayfair had. Everything worked out! So far. Still waiting for that keyboard tray, but it's fine for now.
On to Wednesday. Finally. New Year's Day. (Remember, all that way back like 20 fucking pages ago, complaining about traffic because of New Year's EVE? Yeah, that was ALL the same goddamn day.)
Wednesday morning, the dome alarm went off again, and again for the same dome; this time however, the user had tried to close it BEFORE sunrise, so the alarm came in around 5am. While I HAD gone to sleep, and WAS entirely exhausted, I did manage to wake up and check it out. First, I checked the dome remotely, hoping to see anything; the dome had over-currented while trying to close, meaning our lockout system had kicked in to prevent possible damage. However, knowing that, if it WAS snagged it would just over-current again immediately if I tried, I went ahead and tried to close the dome again. As I watched, the current reading was not unduly high, and it stayed pretty reasonable for about ten seconds, whereupon it over-currented again--but in that instant, it had JUMPED to that limit rather suddenly. If there was a snag or some other cause that'd potentially damage the dome, it would've ramped up to that current, attempting to get past whatever blockage was occurring (which is exactly how they get damaged, if we don't have a current limit).
But, not wanting to risk it, I ran out to the dome to finish closing it from there. Indeed, nothing was caught, snagged, or otherwise wrong, and closing it a third time, it didn't over-current the rest of the way down. My hypothesis in the moment was, it had gotten cold enough that morning that the fiberglass had shrunk JUST enough to raise the coefficient of friction JUST enough that it was unhappy.
There was one other thing I'd noted, which I'd actually noticed during the FIRST issue we were fixing in that dome the weekend prior, but at the time didn't seem to be causing an issue--these domes have a strip of HDPE on either side, which is used to overcome the friction otherwise caused by the walls of that shutter slot; on one side, this strip had managed to move off that wall, just from the natural variance of allowed movement of the shutter, but then managed to pull itself back over shortly thereafter. That morning, I'd noticed that the position where it was over-currenting just happened to be the same position where that strip had pushed over to the side. Making note of this as well, I watched it close fully, before going back home and going back to bed.
That morning, LeChuck was NOT in Escape Mode, but he also didn't come out of his hide for very long, really only about two hours before ducking back in. This, too, was another data point for both him and Coquelicot, that they both likely were feeling the adverse effects of that recent dose of Ivermectin. (Colombina, meanwhile, has yet to show really ANY adverse reaction to her now-THIRD dose, even now as I write this.) So, while I was still a little worried about both of them--and indeed, Coquelicot effectively hadn't touched her salad at all in the interim, and while she DID go down to her bowl straightaway upon feeding her dubia roaches that afternoon, she stopped just shy of eating them in the moment--it did ease my concerns a little more. Though, her gut-swelling in particular was starting to get worrisome, so I wanted to keep an eye on her.
Other than that initial morning interruption, this HAD been my first day this week to be able to sleep in, and while I didn't really get enough sleep--I was still thoroughly exhausted from Monday and Tuesday--it was still BETTER than I'd gotten in a little bit. That night, while I was officially on-shift and we did have to check out that dome first-thing, the night was otherwise uneventful. Thus, being the reasonable, rational person I am, I decided to bring some of the supplies for LeChuck's enclosure over so I could begin machining them, primarily tapping the central end-holes of the T-slot aluminum extrusion (because they'll all basically need it, particularly the pieces I'd ordered and received). I began with the six-foot pieces, as while I'd wanted to bring at least one of the eight-foot tubes over to get started on those as well, each one of the three tubes those were shipped in was 99 pounds, and I didn't want to deal with all that just yet.
There was just one problem: I'd gotten 3030 extrusion, since it's a little sturdier than 2020 and I'd designed shelves into the unit for LeChuck to climb up and hang out. 3030 is the first size where they "hollow" the extrusion, including four square-shaped holes at the box corners and four notches in a cross along that central hole (which is present in all sizes). If you know taps, you might be able to see where this is going.
Yeah, so thread taps, in order to work, have these little grooves going up the entire length of the tap, so the metal shaved off by the tap itself can collect in those rather than gumming up the threads. They also generally have a taper to them, which allows you to start (and continue, in the case of deeper holes) threading the hole (which does need to be present) without too much resistance from the full depth of the thread cutting at the same time.
The tap's grooves just happened to line up exactly perfectly with those notches around the center hole, meaning while I could easily get it to bite at the correct depth, there was no way to CLEANLY create threads without the tap moving the MOMENT the grooves and notches line up.
Slightly defeated but always looking for a solution, I had a realization: The screws that needed to be threaded for, are steel. These frame pieces are aluminum. Steel is harder than aluminum. Additionally, the hole did itself have those notches, which COULD act as the grooves of the tap.
I could "tap" these aluminum pieces using the steel screws.
Now, it wasn't pretty. The screws, not at all designed for this kind of work, DO NOT have any sort of cutting edge, and so I was forcing it in pretty hard. As a result, the aluminum, which is already a pretty soft and "gummy" metal, was gumming up the threads, even in spite of those notches (which WERE collecting MOST of the aluminum coming off). So, every couple pushes into any given piece, I'd have to pull the screw completely out and run it through a matching die. (I recognized after the first hole that this would probably be a lot easier with tap-cutting fluid, which I knew we had, but... the container was totally empty. So I took a small break and ordered some for the shop.) But it DID work, and I did tap several pieces this way.
Until I got tired of it. The work was HARD, for barely a quarter-turn each push until I'd back out for safety, and having to pull the thing fully out to re-die it after only a few turns was becoming annoying. So I looked over at the tap, and got another idea: I'd START the hole with the screw, then come in with the tap, line it up as best as I could with the threads that had already been cut as far down as the tap needed before the taper bottomed out on those notches, then cut the rest of the way with the tap. While there was a bit of a struggle finding that initial position, it DID work! And this hole, of course having been cut by a tap and not the screw itself, could accommodate the screw much better.
But, I didn't want to do all that initial work again, and having proven my initial concept, I had another thought--being aluminum, it should cut with the tap RELATIVELY easily, even if I just start it down where the taper bottoms out. So I tried this, and aside from that initial cut requiring a decent amount of force, it DID work! So I did this for the rest of the six-foot pieces, making frankly quick work of them.
Then, still having some energy left and having other, different screws for these other pieces (same size, but SLIGHTLY different in overall construction, resulting in them not being able to fit in the holes threaded by those other screws, but absolutely able to fit in the holes threaded by the tap), I decided to try tapping a two-foot piece. These I'd gotten as the framework to hold the substrate tray at the bottom, but unfortunately will have to be cut to remove 30mm in length--but, I could tap one side safely.
The first two-foot piece, put in a vise as I had all the others, I sunk the tap in and... it wouldn't budge. Reasoning that the aluminum SHOULD have been soft enough--the same stuff as before--and that, as someone who's lost a good chunk of my arm strength due to my debilitating connective tissue disorder doctors still refuse to diagnose, I likely wouldn't posess the strength to do any real damage, I pushed a bit harder, feeling the threads start to cut...
And the tap snapped clean off, stuck in the aluminum.
I was mad. OH, I was mad. Not only had it snapped off, it had done so entirely below the square part of the tap used to grip it with the handle, meaning there wasn't a good way to grab it to even get it OUT.
But I wasn't going to be defeated so easily. Not by what must have been the absolute cheapest tap ever manufactured.
I undid the handle-grip, let the top piece fall out, then pushed it down onto the thoroughly-round shaft of the bottom piece of the tap, and tightened the absolute piss out of it with a wrench. I tried to turn, the handle turned without the tap, so I tightened again. And again. And again. And again. At a point, I said fuck it and grabbed the threaded part of the tap with the wrench--since, with those grooves acting as flats, it'd be pretty easy to grab--and began trying to twist it. It DID start cutting a little bit... before starting to cut into the wrench itself. At which point, of course, it would go no further.
So, I turned it slightly the other direction--it had only cut a short distance--and pulled it out. I then started the tap significantly further out, at that point not caring anymore, I was GOING to beat this cheap motherfucker. And indeed, I did get it started, and with the handle tightened as hard as it was around that shaft, once it was started it was DEAD simple to keep going. That hole was threaded, and I tested with one of those different screws--it did indeed work.
So I grabbed a second, and did the same thing, able to get the threads started well-enough early-on that it cut like butter the rest of the way. But at that point, I'd exhausted myself again, so I pulled the tap out of the handle, put everything away, then went back to my desk, where I ordered a new tap to replace the one I'd managed to break off, in aluminum, as a cripple.
Got home that night and a particular problem that had been present the whole time it had been here, was finally annoying me on the art station now that it was set up right next to me: Aside from a short jaunt at the VERY beginning of setting it up, the screensaver has never worked. It was set up properly, something I confirmed repeatedly (which, since literally nobody at Microsoft gives a fuck because they've tried like absolute hell to engineer every goddamn thing they make to be not just user-friendly but user-apprehensive, the only tutorials available--written by clickbait-aggregators, every one--are all, "You sure it's ON, you stupid motherfucker???" because that's literally ALL they CAN ask), so the only other item I could find, found after MUCH digging through useless goddamn content-farms, was that something ELSE must be interfering with the screensaver, causing it not to come on. After checking for hours over literally EVERY piece of software and driver for updates, making sure literally everything was set up on the most recent version AND shouldn't be interfering with the screensaver, I began unplugging peripherals. Mouse, nothing. Keyboard, nothing. The tablet control part of the tablet, nothing. The tablet video output itself, nothing. The only things remaining were the video output to the 4K monitor--which wouldn't allow me to check--and the USB-C on the speakers I'd had on this machine, which I didn't THINK could be the problem, but I tried that anyway.
Sure enough, a minute later, the screensaver kicked in. Plugged everything else back in, and the screensaver continued unperturbed. Plugged the speakers back in, and sure enough, the screensaver immediately stopped. I didn't know HOW--they certainly SHOULDN'T have--but the speakers were the item blocking the screensaver. I'd left 'em unplugged for the night--sending a nastygram to Microsoft anyway because the screensaver itself wasn't really working properly, but god help you Microsoft is fucking ALLERGIC to giving their users ANY goddamn options WHATSOEVER, least of all on an operating system they're trying to phase out because it's eight years old and the "New Hotness" was designed to remove EVEN MORE user agency so CLEARLY everybody WANTED this, NEEDED this "upgrade" that, the moment it's installed on your computer it handicaps the thing and behaves like a fucking virus. I am, with no exaggeration and frankly quite a bit of holding-back, goddamn fucking TIRED of Microsoft, and if Windows weren't the only operating system family with drivers for this tablet written for it, I would IMMEDIATELY jump ship to LITERALLY anything else. Even though Firefox STILL shits itself in Linux Mint, because hey, at least that's consistent with Windows too! (I primarily use Chrome anyway. It sucks SIGNIFICANTLY less, and I do wholly and entirely believe that's because it isn't Open-Sores like Firefox.)
But, as a result of all that, I hadn't gotten to sleep until around 6:15am, with a meeting with my advisor early that afternoon--we'd managed to nail down the time at 1pm, which wasn't IDEAL considering my exhaustion but had been acceptable at the time--I was already anticipating not getting ENOUGH sleep, but maybe I'd be okay.
Until the sunrise closure event around 7am, and another dome alarm went off. For the third day. This week. In a ROW.
I wasn't having any of it this time, coming over to my main computer to check it out remotely again--but, to my surprise, it was NOT the same dome! That dome, while it had still been open when the alarm went off, WAS closing, and closed safely without any issue. No, this was ANOTHER dome, which like the one I'd expected had done the morning before, had overcurrented for absolutely no apparent goddamn reason. As before, I hit the manual close button, and the dome closed WITHOUT ISSUE the ENTIRE goddamn way down. There had been, and after an inspection and several nights operating without issue continues to be, absolutely NO GODDAMN REASON that dome alarmed.
Except, y'know, to deprive me of just that much more sleep. Because the Universe had gotten goddamn MAD it rolled all those 1s on Tuesday on my drive to the vet, and needed to take it out on me some-goddamn-how.
But, aside from exhaustion--which I did explain to my professor in short-form, so she was understanding of me stumbling over words on occasion--the meeting went well. But I was genuinely SO goddamn tired, I went down for a nap on the floor immediately thereafter.
And, as I lay there on the floor, videos playing in the background to ease me to sleep, I had a realization.
I'd been worrying about Coquelicot this whole time, but it had already kinda moved into the back of my mind with the explanation of the Ivermectin; however, that morning, as I was getting ready for bed around 5:30am, I was startled to see LeChuck, standing up and fully visible--still in his hide mind you--peering out in anticipation of coming out for the morning. This was ABSURDLY early for him, and while he did duck back in as I continued to prepare for bed, he was fully out and "basking"--in quotes because, his basking lights weren't even on, but his deep heat projector was at 50% at least--by the time I'd fallen asleep. He was out when the alarm went off, and he'd stayed out the whole time I was in the living room fixing it, and even when I came back and went right back to sleep. Indeed, he'd stayed out of his hide, basking and exploring (and occasionally eating) until shortly before my alarms started going off to wake me up for that meeting--which, yes, WAS early for his usual "retirement" time, but meant he'd stayed out of his hide for longer than most days, and certainly longer than he had since Monday.
So, at the very least HE was feeling better, maybe not up to snuff but better, but that afternoon when I fed Coquelicot--who again had not touched her greens from the night before--she acted much the same way she had been. She DID go after the bugs--crickets this time--but with decidedly reduced gusto, and ultimately leaving like three or four of 'em to run around by the time I'd gotten out of the meeting, and this had been a reduced feeding because I didn't want her to be stressed out by not being able to catch the crickets. (She DID eventually eat the remainder, before I left for work.) So, I was starting to get worried again, and was thinking about it as I lay on the floor, listening to those videos in the background, trying to get some more sleep.
And it hit me. I had to do a quick search to confirm, as I'd had no experience with this before so I wasn't COMPLETELY sure, but after that search, I was convinced, everything lined up perfectly:
She's around 10 months old at this point. Her gut has been swelling, AFTER her gut-swelling from parasites had started going down, and at this point had gotten to a worrying degree. She WANTED to eat, but then when food was provided, she didn't FEEL like eating. Her poops had been liquid-y and formless, and the last poop she'd smeared around her entire enclosure in a fit of activity. And another item I'd noticed but thought nothing of until that moment, as she'd been doing it when going to sleep for weeks now, except exclusively where she was sleeping: She'd been trying to dig into her paper towel substrate. She'd find the seam in the center of the tank between the two sets of towels and dig there with such vigor it was displacing the items on top.
I got up and rushed in to verify in the shape of her bloating. As I looked, I saw the bloat was NOT throughout the gut, but was indeed split down the middle along her belly, which itself was actually relatively flat along that split, then bulged out to either side. And in those bulges, you could see the SLIGHTEST, the tiniest little hint, of defined bulges WITHIN them.
She wasn't sick. (Though the Ivermectin likely didn't help.)
She's GRAVID.
Her body was producing her first-ever clutch of eggs--which even without fertilization, DOES happen on regular intervals, kinda like humans; and, similar to humans as well, they DO need to expel those eggs, though in their case by laying the what are known as "slugs"--and she, wholly unfamiliar with the strange new feelings, was simultaneously trying to get away from them in those flurries of activity, and TRYING to follow her instincts in those fits of "digging". And, when she couldn't do either, on top of the lack of eating already associated with these lizards when they're gravid, she'd gotten depressed and stopped caring (much the same as LeChuck had when he realized he couldn't get Colombina to leave, though in his case it was with a hefty helping of frustration). While she IS a little on the young side, 10 months is well within the expected range for a healthy female beardie, and their sexual maturity can be spurned on by size (which I do NOT think is the case with her, but still, she did grow AWFULLY quickly after the previous medications).
I couldn't go back to sleep. I was too excited! And, I knew what I had to do--because it was similar to what I'd been doing with Colombina, who is ALSO right around that age to start producing eggs (they do reach sexual maturity sooner, around four to six months or so) and has ALSO started to put on some pudge, but that I'd already associated in her with being gravid because she's still kinda small so the eggs are pretty obvious; for Colombina, you may have noticed I'd been trying to hurry up getting her a good substrate, and had noted that this particular stuff I'd settled on, once set up properly, would be good for digging. That's because veiled chameleons ALSO need to dig a hole in which to deposit their eggs.
I didn't have anything that'd fit in her enclosure that would simultaneously be deep enough to dig--at least six inches--and wide and long enough to properly fit HER; most people produce a dedicated dig box that's outside the usual enclosure, a bin on the order of 18 quarts or so filled with adequate digging substrate, letting the animal run loose in the thing until either she's laid or she shows she's not ready yet, but with my cats, I cannot do this. (And besides, I was PRETTY sure she wasn't ready yet, as I was pretty sure she'd only started producing her eggs about a week ago; it usually takes 'em at least three weeks before they're ready to lay.) So, I decided to get her something she could at least dig IN, and as we approached the right time, I'd set up an external bin that I could CLOSE, so the cats couldn't get into it while we tested with more certainty--especially if she was showing increased interest in this smaller dig box--to see if she was ready to do her business.
I'd had some play sand left over from the substrate I'd mixed months ago for the isopods I'd pulled from the greenhouse hoping to put in her eventual permanent enclosure--which since it hasn't arrived even now, and I've not even received notification of it shipping, those isopods have grown into a HUGE and proper culture, and I was even able to pull from it for Colombina's bioactive substrate--and, after a bit of searching, I was able to find an old ice cream tub Lynn had given me, originally intended to separate out and hold the ingredients of those meal kits I used to get, but since I'd gotten tired of all the work necessary to even prep BEFORE cooking, had just kinda been sitting in my kitchen, collecting odds and ends because I am nothing if not a messy motherfucker. (Mike and Lynn ate ice cream after every meal and recognized the utility of the sturdy plastic bins, so they'd collected quite a few of 'em in the time they were both alive. Also of course it was more Earth-conscious than throwing them away, though I'm pretty sure that thought basically never crossed their minds.)
I washed out the bin thoroughly, filled it with that play sand--which I still have SOME left over, not enough for a full-sized bin but SOME--wetted down the sand with RO water until it stuck together in my hands, and put it in her enclosure JUST in time for me to head to work--but, not before picking her up, both because she was actually in the way of where I'd wanted to put it, and so I could set her back down on top of it. She was definitely curious at first! She licked at the sides of the bin frequently, gave the sand a few little experimental digs while I was there--but, what with all that water, the sand WAS cold, so I wasn't surprised to see her having moved to her basking spot when I checked her camera from the office half an hour later.
That evening, coming home for my own dinner and their regular evening feeding, I again cleaned up the uneaten greens from the day before, then offered her fresh greens, with no additional items to entice her to eat like butternut squash or bee pollen. In this case, it was just straight-up collard greens from the greenhouse, and cilantro from the last time I'd been to Las Cruces but was still looking okay.
And, with no prompting at all, no enticements, and while I was still in the room feeding Colombina (so admittedly on the other side of the room, but in a place she'd come to associate as a bad place for me to be for some reason and as such would often get MORE stressed), Coquelicot came right off her basking spot, walked over to her salad bowl, and began eating.
I shit you not, I almost cried. Seeing her eating of her own accord, while I was still in the room, greens that she DID like just fine on their own but had always been the first things to go when she was feeling stressed, was such a monumental relief after the days, literal DAYS of stress worried sick about her health, on top of everything else that had been going on.
She'd been gravid, and with the lack of ability to dig, she'd gotten depressed. While she had not dug basically AT ALL in that dig box, the very fact of its EXISTENCE was enough for her to feel that much better.
And indeed, once she'd gotten her fill, she actually climbed up onto the dig box of her own accord. She didn't dig, but she did sit up there, fully-alert posture, just happy as a clam.
She knew now that she COULD dig. And that alone had made all the difference for her.
Without that planned nap in the afternoon, I was EXHAUSTED upon getting back to work. Thankfully, while we WERE open for the entire night, the service calls were relatively few; I didn't actually get any sleep at the desk (which HAS happened before, usually during the semester), but while I'd been hoping to do anything at all for myself--including trying to write this long-ass bitch up, maybe drawing one of the MANY things that have been floating around in my head for the last three weeks, or maybe drilling some holes that need to be drilled in those aluminum framing pieces (since the tap hadn't arrived yet so I couldn't really tap anything else)--I was just too tired to even TRY any of the above.
But, there HAD been a service request for that client whose equipment had been a problem since day one, whose dome had fucked up multiple times this week; while the request itself wasn't tremendously intensive, it HAD reminded me of an issue he'd brought to my attention on Sunday, that I'd planned to address when I came in on Wednesday before Tuesday's slaugh through hell--his filter wheel wasn't moving, and we needed to submit a trouble ticket to the manufacturer for help on how to get it working. So, with this reminder, I did indeed submit that trouble ticket--and, a few hours later (they're in China, so the timing worked out for them), they'd come back with a response that ACTUALLY sparked an idea for me--not an idea they themselves had provided, but admittedly they WERE trying to confirm the problem--that I'd made note to try when I came in the next afternoon, as by that point it was 1am and, in addition to the hardware being in active use in the moment (just, y'know, only running the Luminance filter), I was also fucking exhausted and that was the official end of the shift, so I was ready to go to bed.
(This would be our third such ticket, the other two being issues with the camera, by the same manufacturer--the latter of which, after MONTHS of back and forth with them, we'd discovered from someone entirely unrelated that the problem was NOT the camera itself--no matter how much it appeared to be the case--but was a bug in THIS SPECIFIC version of the imaging software itself, itself written by an entirely different entity; the bug was fixed in the immediately-following version, except the license we had for that software only allowed us up-to this version, itself five years old at this point. So, with a trial license from the client--and a full license once that expired--we upgraded, and indeed, that problem magically disappeared after literal months of back-and-forth. So, before closing the ticket, I INFORMED them of the problem, so they could be aware the next time someone wrote about it. As I said, this hardware had been a fucking PROBLEM since day one, and frankly I've gotten a little jaded with this manufacturer. Yes, they have a ticket system, and yes, they do respond to most messages within 24 hours, but holy shit for them to have all the relevant information--and they DID, from the very first message, because as you might be able to tell from the length of this post, I do like to be verbose when asking for help with a problem--they had NO IDEA this problem, with a VERY COMMON piece of software, the software almost every amateur astronomer uses, the software THEY THEMSELVES RECOMMEND ON THEIR SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD PAGE, EVEN THOUGH THEY PROVIDE THEIR OWN IMAGING SOFTWARE WITH THEIR DRIVERS, was a KNOWN bug with THAT version, so well-known that some rando--admittedly an amateur astronomer themselves, so not ENTIRELY random, but still, no relation to that software--who saw our post about it was able to correctly diagnose it WITHIN TWELVE HOURS IN THE VERY FIRST RESPONSE POST. So yeah, I had, and still frankly have, basically no faith in them. But, we had no idea how to proceed, so it was literally the only choice we had.)
So, Friday afternoon, after having slept in for a nice long time for the first time this week--not counting Wednesday, as that was interrupted by a dome alarm, and this sleep was not--I was ready to ACTUALLY face the day. Coquelicot ate with vigor when I got up and fed her; LeChuck retreated to his hide while I was still laying in bed but WAS out when I woke up; the day was going well, and while I was still tired, I felt ready. I'd planned to finish working on that filter wheel problem early-on, then work on this very post once we were done.
Oh, how naive I was.
I was able to confirm my own suspicion--and the suspicion the manufacturer was working toward--so I fixed that, verified that the new setting was holding with a fresh initialization from power-cycling... but, as before, when I attempted, the filter wheel didn't move.
At this point, I'd gotten mad again, and mostly at that manufacturer, so I ran a number of diangostics myself, trying to figure out what the problem still was. (For the record, this change I'd already made WAS necessary, so that much was not wasted effort. I was just angry that the problem persisted.) I checked the device manager, and while I couldn't find anything immediately that would sensibly correspond to the filter wheel, when I unplugged it, something DID change, and when I plugged it back in, something changed again. After some testing, I figured out that the ONLY item that was disappearing upon unplugging, and reappearing plugging it back in, was a serial port, of all things.
This gave me an idea, but to explain I need to explain a couple other things first. This imaging software, in version 6 (which, the previous bugged version HAD been a build of 6, but they'd released a build that fixed that problem, along with a number of later builds), had a number of built-in drivers for various different manufacturers' equipment, and many manufacturers whose drivers were not built-in had written their own, making connecting to this software pretty damn easy. Alas, version 6 was 32-bit, and version 7, which had come out like a month or two ago, was 64-bit; as a result, literally NONE of those drivers worked anymore, and the only way to continue using the software with your extant hardware in version 7 was to use an interface called ASCOM. We'd learned this a short while ago with another client, who after a two-year yacht trip around the Pacific had returned and wanted to re-engage with astronomy, deciding to update literally everything to the latest bleeding-edge version, which is how we learned of this problem.
This in and of itself ISN'T a problem, per se; while the imaging software was absolutely offloading the task of driver management and 32-bit management to ASCOM, itself ALSO a 64-bit suite of software at this point and so also potentially scrambling with this incompatability in its own way, it DID seem to be managing. While this is absolutely problematic on the part of the imaging software developer for upgrading to an exlusively 64-bit framework--itself not NECESSARILY a problem, but definitely becomes one when you realize many amateur astronomers, still running on ancient hardware, ARE THEMSELVES running EXCLUSIVELY 32-bit operating systems BY NECESSITY on 32-bit architecture, and so you've potentially SEVERELY alienated a HUGE percentage of your still-paying clientele (but they weren't the FIRST to do this, so it's totally fucking fine, right???)--with absolutely NO plan themselves on how to deal with the many, MANY drivers that would suddenly be orphaned, this kludgey, secondhand afterthought workaround DOES work, for the most part. (And, this manufacturer never had native nor ever wrote their own native drivers for this software, they themselves entirely relying on the ASCOM platform to support them from the get-go. Which, unfortunately, was already becoming a problem with EVERY CMOS camera, as their operation COULD NOT be programmed as a native driver.)
So, all that to say, I was using an ASCOM driver to connect to the filter wheel already. And, this manufacturer actually had THREE different ASCOM drivers for filter wheels: The first, which I'd been using, was just called "[filter wheel name] Filter Wheel Driver"; the second, which I knew clients here WERE using but as a result knew we didn't need here, is called "[filter wheel name] 2ND Driver" (or something like that), and is actually present so you can use two filter wheels of theirs, the second being set up in the second camera slot. (Which is itself exclusively used to control a secondary guide camera, and thus is never used because normally it'd cause problems by forcing the user to set up filters FOR their guide camera, which is something nobody in the history of ever would EVER want to do; however, somehow, and I do know for a fact they'd done it exclusively FOR the aforementioned clients of ours (who had pestered a LARGE NUMBER of software writers to cater SPECIFICALLY AND EXCLUSIVELY TO THEM for features many of which they absolutely DID NOT NEED, a member of their team I KNOW FOR A FACT KNEW THIS because he is a WELL-RESPECTED, WELL-KNOWN, and EXTREMELY PUBLIC PROFESSIONAL ASTRONOMER, but not only did nothing to stop the other member, singular, of their team pushing for these features, but then JOINED IN THE DEMAND FOR THEM, which I know because HE was the one who ASKED US HOW TO IMPLEMENT THEM, MULTIPLE TIMES, which I had to explain, again MULTIPLE TIMES, that those features not only didn't exist, but THEY DIDN'T NEED THEM BECAUSE WHAT THEY WERE ASKING FOR WAS READILY AVAILABLE WITH EXTANT DATA IN THE GODDAMN PLACE THEY WERE ASKING THESE FEATURES BE PLACED, WITH A CURSORY, *CURSORY* BIT OF MATHEMATICS I *KNEW HE KNEW BECAUSE EVERY PROFESSIONAL ASTRONOMER KNOWS THIS*, IT'S LITERALLY THE FIRST THING THEY TEACH IN *ANY* FUCKING ASTRONOMY CLASS, but even with these repeated, REPEATED explanations on HOW to fucking do this with literally Baby's First Algebra Formula for Astronomers, they still went on to pester these software writers because BY GOD WE NEED THEM, THEREFORE A NEED MUST EXIST!), they managed to write an ASCOM driver, by some miracle and likely sweatshop-level programmer-whipping, that actually succeeded at using that second filter wheel slot, to populate filters for the first camera.)
The third driver was "[filter wheel name]RS232 Driver". And it was that name that sparked my next idea.
For those of you who don't know, which I'd bet is 98% of my followers and 100% of those who've made it this far (which, thank you by the way, I know I'm writing a fucking novel here and honestly I'm not expecting ANYONE to make it this far in one sitting, meaning you willingly came back, so yes thank you), RS232 is a common serial communication protocol. Which, you may recall, that filter wheel was only showing up in the device list as a serial device.
Which, this was confusing, as the OTHER connection these filter wheels are capable of--which is what it had been configured for previously, which is why that little change I'd already made was indeed still necessary, is a wired connection directly to the camera--and ABSOLUTELY ALSO USES RS232, and is REFERRED to as "THE" serial connection in the manual for this filter wheel. So, I wasn't sure I'd had the correct idea, and without the manual in front of me--I was still in the dome, trying to confirm movement of the filter wheel--I just went ahead and tried it. I gave it the COM port the filter wheel reported, with the correct model, and... the driver saw nothing. And when I tried the other COM ports on the system--which I knew weren't correct, since they were all already in-use and accounted-for--nothing came up either (and it even crashed a couple times, as some of those COM ports were not only already in use, but were already CONNECTED to other pieces of software, which unfortunately basically no serial connection software is able to handle gracefully).
I had also found a means to update the firmware of the filter wheel, which I thought might also solve this problem; however, upon attempting to do so, that software returned with an error, effectively saying it couldn't actually see the device at the specified COM port. This, too, seemed like a dead end.
So, unsure where to go next, I returned to the office, wrote up a lengthy response to the trouble ticket to describe everything I'd tested (because I really did run a thorough diagnostic), including ALL results of that testing. Then, I went back to the manual, where I found... My gut instinct about the drivers was 100% correct, that the driver I'd been using originally was ACTUALLY for filter wheels connected through the camera, and the driver I'd tried to use in the dome WAS for filter wheels connected via USB, even though the naming schemes were ass-backwards from what one might expect--and, even though I'd provided the full name of the ASCOM driver I'd been using TO the original trouble ticket, and their first instinct WAS to ask if I was connecting via USB, they NEVER ONCE thought to mention that the driver I was using was incorrect also.
But, obviously, the CORRECT driver was not seeing the filter wheel. What was I doing wrong? I continued digging in the manual.
Deep in the recesses of the description of how to set up the filter wheel for aforementioned through-the-camera operation--and thus, well outside any expected need here, and written in broken, barely-legible, likely-Google-Translated English besides--there was a link that claimed to be the latest ASCOM drivers, but specifically for that configuration.
I downloaded it anyway.
Indeed, from the README included, this seemed to include all three ASCOM drivers--but, checking the version numbers, they all appeared to be exactly the same as what was on that system anyway. Which made sense, as those drivers had been installed by this manufacturer's general-purpose installer, which itself claimed to also be the latest version.
I installed it anyway.
Indeed, upon testing this supposedly exact-same version of the drivers, the RS232 driver WAS able to see the filter wheel now. It knew exactly the number of filters it had--this manufacturer sells different filter wheels with different numbers and sizes of filters, all under the same name and basic hardware, so that actually did mean something.
I ran back out to the dome, and... it worked! The correct setting on the hardware of the filter wheel, combined with the correct ASCOM driver, including specifically the correct VERSION of that driver--which itself could ONLY be found by digging through that manual--was working. I wrote to the client, ecstatic about the news, then followed up on the trouble ticket--but did not close the ticket. As far as I was concerned, the ticket was still open and relevant because, at this point, what they CLEARLY needed to do was to update that general installer with THIS version of the drivers (and frankly give these drivers new version numbers), and I wasn't about to close the ticket until they'd done that.
It was a good thing I hadn't closed the ticket, because just a hair over three hours later--as the client was taking darks, because we were closed in the moment due to clouds--the filter wheel stopped turning. And refused to turn any more.
Upon disconnecting everything, reconnecting it, and trying again with a fresh slate, the imaging software returned with the message "Waiting for filter wheel"--even though the filter wheel had not been told to change filters, nor should it have been changing filters via initialization because that had already been done.
I hurriedly updated the trouble ticket with this new information, as obviously we weren't through this quagmire of suck just yet.
I spent literally an hour and a half trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Luckily for me, I'd already installed an ASCOM-based script that tests all hardware via the ASCOM driver on that system (at the recommendation of the writer of ASCOM, when we'd been having an earlier problem with this exact same system's hardware); deciding to give this a go since obviously the imaging software kept hanging, I put in the information about this filter wheel and turned it loose.
Indeed, it stopped almost immediately to "wait" for the filter wheel to "stop moving"--which, again, it absolutely WAS NOT. But, unlike the imaging software, THIS script had a failsafe for something taking an inordinate amount of time--note the issue, then skip over it to test the next thing. The next thing to test was the current position of the filter wheel, where we found our smoking gun--it was reporting a position of "-1". The script noted this as illegal, but kept right on going; indeed, this is an illegal position. The filter wheel has positions 0 through 6, and as one would expect from software running hardware, it CAN NOT REPORT a position of -1. That number DOES NOT EXIST, as far as the firmware SHOULD be aware.
But, the next test of the script was the movement of the filter wheel--which, amazingly, when TOLD to actually move while not waiting for the filter wheel to report it's DONE moving, it DID move! Every test after that passed with flying colors. I'd hoped we'd maybe even cleared the erroneous state from the filter wheel... but alas, bringing it back up in the imaging software, it returned to the previous state. Reconnecting to the script and re-running it, it did indeed hang in exactly the same place, but still got past it and managed to operate the filter wheel with no issues.
Wanting to test it, without disconnecting, I re-ran the script again. And this time, it DIDN'T hang at the beginning--once it had cleared that weird state, it WAS staying cleared. So, I went back over to the imaging software--where the problem IMMEDIATELY came back.
Suspecting that software, I uninstalled it, then re-installed it, running that script in the background to "free up" the filter wheel again. Reconnected, and... the problem persisted.
I uninstalled the software again, making sure to remove any and all traces of it from the computer. I wiped it from the hard drive. I wiped it from the registry. Literally any possible place it could be hanging on, I found it and expunged it. Then, again re-running the script in the background, I again re-installed the software. The problem returned again.
I was scrambling for ideas at this point, but I decided to try one more thing: This time, I ran the script, then closed it. Then, without doing anything else, I re-opened the script and re-connected to the filter wheel, running the script again.
It hung again the second time. The problem wasn't the imaging software, but the ASCOM driver itself.
So, as before, I deleted the driver, wiped any and all mention of it from the computer, then re-installed it from the same download I'd gotten to work before. Alas, the same issue came up.
Recalling my earlier attempt to install the "latest" firmware, I returned to that. I didn't expect it to work since it hadn't worked before, but... for some reason, it did! Or at least, it REPORTED success, because when I checked the version of the firmware, it was exactly the same as it had been, 20181114. This "new" version was supposed to be 202207xx. Or at least, that's what they'd claimed on their website where I'd downloaded it.
I tried a number of times, in a number of configurations, but the firmware never seemed to update to a different version number. Suspecting the ASCOM driver was simply reporting that number from memory, I deleted it from the ASCOM registry entirely, then reconnected to the filter wheel, FORCING it to re-check the number--and it was exactly the same. And, of course, the problem persisted, so even if this was updating the firmware, that wasn't solving it.
I still had one more idea, frankly the dumbest idea I'd had thus far but it was still an idea. Recognizing the problematic nature of the imaging software's most recent version, and additionally recognizing it was still a buggy-as-fuck mess, with bugs we'd already encountered, had been known, but had not been fixed yet, I'd kept version 6, upgraded to the latest build of course, on that computer, JUST in case. I opened it up, connected everything, started an exposure, and...
It worked. No waiting for filter wheel, no hanging on startup, it just worked. I tested moving the filter wheel, just to be sure THAT was working, and yeah, it was.
This was a KLUDGE. This was the software equivalent of totalling your car, but the engine still runs somewhat so you're holding it together with masking tape. But, it WAS working for the moment, so I reported to the client that he could use it, and reported to the manufacturer these updated results. I also provided them my then-current hypothesis on WHY this kludge was working:
As stated before, version 7 of this imaging software was written exclusively 64-bit. ASCOM, too, was 64-bit. This manufacturer's drivers, I knew for a fact (because they directly stated as much), were 32-bit. The imaging software had been using ASCOM as a crutch and expecting it to rationalize and deal with 32-bit drivers, but it was entirely possible--not likely, but possible--that ASCOM COULDN'T do that anymore for this specific driver, for whatever reason. Thus, version 6 of that imaging software, itself 32-bit, while it still needed to rely on ASCOM to connect because the native driver didn't exist, didn't CARE that ASCOM wasn't able to reconcile the driver--it WAS able, and so it was just going about its business like nothing was wrong, because indeed, nothing WAS wrong.
...Until it stopped working again an hour later, with the exact same symptom, this time in version 6.
I tried again, even though every avenue I could think of had been exhausted, for another hour, to get the stupid thing to work. But, this time there was no clearing the issue.
I threw up my hands, and sent one more update to the still-open trouble ticket, detailing what had gone wrong (again), what I'd tried to fix it this time, and then giving them access to that computer so THEY could get on and try to figure out what was going wrong. (This IS something they can do, and often will ask to do for more problematic items; I was just cutting out the chit-chat to get to that point.)
I was done. After trying to fix this exact same goddamn problem literally all fucking night--it was 12:30am at this point--I was FUCKING done.
It has now been well over 24 hours, and they not only haven't gotten on, they haven't even acknowledged the fucking THREAD of responses I'd made to the trouble ticket. I do recognize it's the weekend, but this is a Chinese manufacturer, and further, they pride themselves--reporting so in multiple places throughout the trouble ticket system, as well as all over their main website--on at least RESPONDING to additional trouble tickets in no more than 24 hours. (Which, you may recall, my first response to the ticket that day had actually been around 5:30pm, after which point they NEVER responded, even as I continued adding to the ticket--even after I'd initially reported that the problem HAD been SOLVED.)
I came home, I went to bed, I woke up, took care of everyone here, went to the office, where we were closed and thoroughly battened down because we'd gotten winds in excess of 47mph during the day and were still seeing winds well in excess of 30mph--so, after checking that trouble ticket for any replies (which I knew hadn't come in because I get an email each time, but still, JUST to be sure), I began writing this lengthy post at around 4:30pm.
It is now almost 5am. I DID take a roughly hour-long break for dinner, but otherwise I've been writing this basically nonstop for those 12.5 hours. THAT'S how long this took, to write this fucking novel just DESCRIBING MY LIFE for the last week.