2010-02-25:

Return day today. I was kind of worried because of all the doom and gloom "ah, major snow" but it hasn't amounted to much yet. We might just sleep through it. So first up was an ordinary cleanout. How boring. But not to worry, there was excitement aplenty when I went back to Lou's as he had messed his machine up, yet again. He had brought the very nice mini tower dell for me to hook back up, because apparently even he's getting fed up with winME. Imagine that! But he had allowed some freak to install Vista on it? Uh, no? I did a ton of work on that thing, getting it all set up for him, and all my work was for naught. Great. Also his camera died, the CF slot he had somehow broken previously, but now his other slot (the camera had two) wasn't working either! He cracks me up. So I took mini dell with me to reload and get ready, again. Just made it to my 12:30. She had put one of the batteries in her wireless mouse in backwards, and then was astonished when it no longer worked. Also she didn't know her own wireless password, and Keperski was crashing when it tried to open (new out of the box, great product) so I wiped it off and installed Avast as normal instead. Went to staples to buy a monitor for the hotel. I wanted a normal one, but all they had were wide screens? The place it's going wasn't that big, so I wasn't sure a widescreen would fit. They had three different brands at 18.5" so I thought, okay, maybe it'll work out. Two of them had "Sorry, out of stock" tags on them, and the third it turned out was MIA as well! So I took a 20" and it just fit, luckily. Was there a sudden rush on monitors or something? Oh, and are they becoming walmart/radio shack? There was a "greeter" at the door. I understand the japanese tradition of bowing you into the store, but places where you walk in and it's immediately someone "in your face" are places I tend not to go back to. I know what I want, please leave me alone! I mean, yes, okay, she was cute and everything, but you don't think they'd stick an ugly girl up in front, do you? Then over to the hotel to see about installing it. Also brought in the system I had prepared for them yesterday. Then took care of a bunch of other problems I found out at the time. You know, they really need someone on staff to do their IT stuff. Rather then calling me and hoping I can come sometime in the near future. Came back, got the motherboard transplanted successfully, though I had to use another case, as the MB didn't fit in the case they had. Whoops. Oh well, it worked, and I didn't even have to reload Vista, it just took the drivers, made me type in the stupid number, reactivate, done. Then finished up the other system I had laying around, got firefox et al. loaded. Then as I type right now the mini dell is busy reloading itself. It's madness around here I tell you! Had a couple of calls, made two appointments tomorrow, one just down the street a bit so it shouldn't be too bad. The other past grandma I'll do before moving Mom's machine around. She broke her ankle and can't go downstairs, so I'm going to bring her G4 upstairs. And bring a care package of books, movies and other things she can enjoy while recovering. What the rest of the night holds is known only to the future. Crap, I have to get the dishwasher started! Well, peace out and all that.