2010-02-28:

Oh, wait, the sun is shining right now? Well. Good. As long as we're clear on the snow issue. Anyway, having received an entire winter's worth of snow in two days, I decided to stay in on Friday. People are nuts, man. The guy, and keep in mind it's snowing like mad when I make this call, is all like, "well, I can't force you to come out." Can't force me? Can't FORCE me? Are you serious? You want me to risk my LIFE for your stupid computer crap? It's snowing out. Travel is not advised. You say "No, you better not come out, it's too dangerous." not "oh, I can't force you." MORON. But wait, it gets better. So I finish up the last of the system reloads I need to do (there was like a plague of them, really) and some guy (works for the electric company, so at least he has a reason to be out) drops off some crap Win2k system (they need to pay their people better I guess) which I get working. I finally get some programming done, took care of those bugs I found in the HDL touch program. So there was that system with the dead motherboard, right? At least, that IS what it turned out to be. Because I plugged everything into the new board and it worked like a champ. But there was one small problem. The case. It was too small to contain the awsomeness of said new motherboard. It had to go. But fear not, I have plenty of cases, I chose a big enough one, put her stuff in there, got it all working, told her about it, and left it for her. She came by, but it was still out there! "Strange," Brain said to me. "What do you make of it?" To which I replied, "You're asking me?" So I get this phone call. And this case is "just not acceptable" and it's something "she just doesn't want in her home." I couldn't be sure I wasn't on some hidden camera program. I checked, nope, no cameras. So she said that I could either send that motherboard back and try to get a smaller one, or just reassemble her broken machine and she would take it back. I was.... astonished, to say the least. It's a case. It's a vaguely rectangular thingy that holds the guts in place so you can carry them around and plug stuff into it easily. It sits under the desk and you don't look it at. It's a CASE. Who cares? I mean, if you're really THAT hung up on how the thing looks, why didn't you buy a Mac and you wouldn't have had all the problems you told me you had with it in the first place? So I very angrily shoved her broken machine back together and told her to come get it. I'm not going to fix the machine twice, after all. Then I added her to the blacklist. Wait, reverse those. I haven't added anyone to the blacklist in ages, I was really starting to think I didn't need it. Huh. So she drove back and and picked up her broken machine, which she now can have fun paying someone double or triple what I would have charged her to fix it, again. All so she can have her pretty case. And don't give me any crap about the "customer is always right." The customer are stupid. The customer are idiots. Japanese people can fly. Yes. I want to go on record with that . And I'm not sending back a perfectly good motherboard with the reason "would not fit in case. Replacement case not pretty enough." So I'll buy the rest of the components it needs, put it BACK in the case and have one to sell. Idiot. Saturday I lost wi-fi on MacBook Macro so I messed about with that. Got it back, but later learned I also lost sound? I'm going to redo it, I accidentally fried my flash drive doing something dumb, so I ordered a replacement. Once that comes, I can move the files off the "storage" dive I am using in the meantime, and use that for the newer, better, install, which will let me load 10.5.8 and hopefully make the SD card slot work. I've read it will, so.... That research took most of the morning, so Sean called to discuss a time to get a rat. Yes, I has got rat! [[image:morie.jpg:Rats everywhere:center:0]] Moriarty the Rat. Don't know why he's named that, but that's what Mizzy choose. Yes, apparently they are going to Jamaica for the whole week, which must be nice. Jerk. So I get to watch le rat. We decided instead of 1:00, to try and start game early and then do this at night. I guess to hope the snow would taper off, which it did, until we got back to Webster anyway. Anyway, so "get here whenever!" Right. I drop off the system by Grandma's house. Drive by her house and see her garage door is up, so pull into the plaza, walk up the hill, put it down, and walk back down again. Get over to Mom's. Move her system up onto the kitchen table and get the cute little wireless gizmo hooked up. Her homepage is ebay (don't ask) which doesn't load. Odd, I think to myself. "We can't have messed it up!" wailed Brain. "Could we?" Well, turns out, apparently not. The story is, some websites just can't be reached with this unit. Fantastic design there, no? So I'll have to see about what they'll do for me. And of course the neighbor calls, "oh, send Robert over" like I didn't have anything better to do. His CD drive is stuck, somehow. When I take the case all apart, it'll open. When it's together, no go. So I see the machine has SATA ports, great, I think, I mistakenly ordered this SATA DVD writer I can now put to use. Of course, hooking it all up produces... nada. I check the bios, the SATA ports aren't even really being recognized? Wha? So that's another half an hour down the drain as the PC once again lets me down. Nice job! So I finally get over to Sean's, so much for starting early. Carlita learns the technique I came up with to make sure her demon doesn't take her over, and lets her spend energy on the RES check to use it's power, we have a big fight with some angels come to kill Ewen. We don't let them. Sunday, purty typical, some light cleaning. Watching disk 1 of season 3 of Supernatural (thanks Sean) and I'll probably play some more Bioshock after dinner. Liking it so far, very good atmosphere in that game. Though one time all the lights went out as I was wading through this hallway full of water and watching this silhouette on the wall and suddenly it's dark. I don't think "did my projector just die?" was exactly what the creators intended. Seven calls so far, that seems about right for three days. Better then 12, that's for sure. Well, my rice is about done, I'm gonna have me some suppers!