2010-01-03:

So I got up Saturday morning with the intention of visiting a gamestop to pick up one of those used xbox units I saw last week. But I thought I would check the nearby one first, after all they must have some, right? No. Wrong. Incorrect. So I drove out to penfield to where I saw those three last week. They were gone. This is great, yes? No. So I returned the controller at least, and got my money back for that. Went home and checked the website for other locations and phone numbers. There's actually a bunch of them in the area. But no luck actually finding an xbox. sigh. So I go on ebay and see what kind of deals I can come up with. I settled on an official microsoft refurb with a 1 year warranty which came with some extras. Two controllers I'm sure I can sell. A HD, again that will sell. The power brick from my old one can go. As can both component cables. Even if I sell them pretty cheap it's better then nothing, and as long as I can get the final price to below $99 I'll have done better then sending mine in to be "repaired". Then, seeing as I was already in a poor state of mind, I decided to do my end of year paperwork. Very, very odd results for this year. I did 49 more customers then last year. Good, right? Well, interestingly. I made an average of $34.82 last year per person. THIS year I only managed an average of $32.54 per person. How strange is that? Though it's true appointments are taking me less time as I get better at what I'm doing, you would think doing more business would make up for it. For the record, I had 621 invoices in 2008, while in 2009 I had 670. And I wrote my crazy check out for the estimated taxes. Looking at last years, I think I may actually get a refund this year rather then owing them crazy money! Naturally the ideal situation would have been to send in a more exact amount, but hey, I would rather them owe me then the other way around. Any money I get back will go right into the "new car fund". Oh yeah, changed my message so I'm officially at $40 an hour now. After all, who you gonna call instead? Geeksquad? "A live agent can fix your PC now! Prices starting at $49.99". Uh huh. Then I left for Sean's at 2:00. Neil was late, but we managed to not only slay the wizard (we think) but watched Dr Who and a Japanese movie I got for christmas. Got Chinese food for dinner, and had a rollicking good time. What was NOT a good time was the drive home, which was COLD, SNOWY and ANNOYING. Sadly I can expect more of the same all week today as I look at my weather widget, [[image:snowwidget.jpg:That's a lot of snowflakes:center:0]] That's a lot of snowflakes Ugh, it's 12 outside. Gee, no wonder it seemed a bit nippy when I snowblowed my driveway today. Anyway, made it home safe and sound and went immediately to bed, did not pass go, did not collect $200. Today was like, great, now what do I do? I set about setting up the spiffy new video signal changer I bought from Stan for $25. I was hoping it would upconvert, so like I could feed it an RCA signal from my wii and it would put out optical but no such luck. Oh well, it's still nice, and better then the slightly flakey one I was using. [[image:newunit.jpg:Sent Two Units, bringing her down now:center:0]] Then I went down to the basement. You know that Tasmanian devil, he does that spinning thing? That was me. I just attacked the clutter down there with a vengeance, totally making the place exquisite and beautiful again. Anyone in the webster area want any boxes? I have plenty, and now rather then being all over the freaking place, they are nicely stacked and ready to use. [[image:boxes_in_basement.jpg:boxes:center:0]] They are now also in the deepest, darkest corner of the basement where I never go anyway, so they are finally out of the way. Not having them at all would be even more out of the way. *hint hint* Took out a ton of garbage from down there. Also tore apart my old xbox, put the DVD drive and cables up on ebay. Along with a few other things if anyone is interested. Buy them now- buy them- BUY-BUY-B- oh right, christmas is over. Sorry. Cleaned up the house a bit in general. Got two calls, but one's just a "oh, I'm to cheap to buy a new Mac and my version of Safari sucks, what do I do?" sort of plea, to which I'll say "firefox 2". Looks like I have five total then, so it's back into it tomorrow, if I'm not snowed in. Oh yeah, blew the driveout out. Way too much snow out there. Now, sure, I believe one flake is too much (I'm enough of a flake as it is, haha) but that much snow in one night is a bit ridiculous. I'll have to start work on the comic again this week too. Shouldn't be too bad, it's just sprites again for awhile. The end is in sight! No I don't mean 2012 I mean the comic!