2010-11-16:

So how did your day go?

Actually, mine was okay apart from the whole dripping thing. Oh, and monday. Right.

Got  my usual three books out, and... read all three. I actually read four books that day because my... well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, Conrad's Fate. It was actually pretty darn good! I had developed a headache sometime in the afternoon, just a light one mind you, but still worrisome because the only time I've gotten headaches in the past was because of Sean. I would sometimes be up late Friday doing Xbox games with him, then go over there the next day and get home late. When I got up Sunday, not having gotten enough sleep the past two nights, I would have one. That's the only time, so I'm more careful about that now, or will be, once he gets home in.. what, TWO DAYS? But I've been getting enough sleep, so it was a small concern. 

Anyway, I was going to bed early and thought, this is way too early, I'll read for while, and ended up finishing it. HA!

Not sure what it was, somehow it was just good. You know how it is, some people do something and it's just good. Others do the same thing and it's mediocre or worse. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Anyway, three books, shopping. Tried to buy a new LED net to replace the one long time readers will recall getting burnt up last year, but they didn't have any! Oh, they had one, pure white. So, one white net, one multicolored, and then red lights around the house? No. So I just got a regular strand, which I then draped around the holly bush (haha mom) then left the middle empty and put the net on the other end for balance. And I just went out to look at it, and it does kinda still look bizarre. I think I'll have to watch for another net.

Had just the one job, which was annoying for several reasons, one of them which was my own fault. I am still working on this laptop which seems to be getting worse, and forgot I left my XP disk in there. aarg! So this person is getting a BSOD and as I try various things, I realize that, no, I am really going to have to at least do a repair of XP. They do find their disk though! Yay, an hour of driving saved! Oh, it's an XP SP 0 disk? As in, no updates at all? Nothing? How old is this... oh 8 years, right. Well, that works, but then I have to go through loading SP1 and then SP3. Ugh. That was the forth book I read that day, which I can't for the life of me recall the title. It was "something something seventh grade." Whipped through that one, it was just for, you know, seventh graders, but I was glad for the distraction, watching windows installs is like watching paint dry. At least at the end of that you have something that looks nice.

So went to bed, got up, no headache, good start to the day. First today was a cleanout, another ancient machine. He may have had a 40GB HD, but the reported space was like 34GB. And he had about 3GB free, mostly because of junk and 5 GB worth of email, both sent and in the trash. EMPTY YOUR TRASH. He was one of the "attachment fellows", sending 10MB email attachments to six people at once. No. Just. No.

Next up another XP trick but one I hadn't seen before. He was having mouse trouble of all things, and I was sure it was going to be "ha, ha, ha, you put the batteries in wrong you silly, silly man! HA ha ha! give me money!" But no, it just would not work. It was a *shock* microsoft bluetooth dangle with keyboard and mouse. Well, both were not working. I tried all kinds of stuff. Naturally, plugging them into BlackBook Mini produced the Bluetooth Pairing Window and it found them fine. So the actual hardware was not at fault. Turned out, the bluetooth service had somehow been started as NT\Local User instead of Administrator? So I messed around with that and it worked, it finally recognized them. It's great, just when I think I've seen all the crappy ways Windows can fail, it goes ahead and surprises me with a new one. Hats off to you.

Then the book guy who bought the Mac, just a couple more questions and downloading his free copy of Office 2011 as he bought 2008 just a while ago. No problem, half on hour, done.

Went over to Mom's for wire, scarred her of course because she always fails her perception checks. Remember, it's HDL[luck] + INSight, just raise your INS score and you'll be fine, mom. Then dropped the three books back off at the library (they were like, didn't we just come from here?) got out another book by that author and saw "Howl's moving castle." next to it. I was like, wah? Isn't that an Anime Movie? What's it doing over here with this crappy 1980s era cover? Wait, what? Printed 1986? Weird. And I got out two books on Polymer Clay. Not the same stuff as my "Air dry Modeling Clay" but maybe it would have tips. In fact... well, just a second.

Then at 4:00 it turned sour. Imagine you are watching DTV in a very low reception area. What do you see? Blockiness of picture, breaking up, artifacts. Right? Multiply that by a billion. That's what this guy was seeing on his computer screen. Really! I used the machine for like twenty minutes, then went to look something up on it, and bamm, there it was. Freaky. Tried taking out the SO-DIMMS one at a time (of course it's a laptop so forget swapping video card/processor, etc) no luck. Could not figure that out. Sorry buddy, buy a Mac next time.

So, a half hour to get there at 4:00, left at 5:30, half an hour driving in the dark/rain, for what? Not money, that's for sure, just some bad news delivered. Makes me feel great! To be alive!

Ate dinner, two calls? Sigh. One person having trouble with her Mac, she thinks it's the hard drive, oh, you have an intel Mac? Take it back to Apple, I'm not taking that thing apart.

The other was all "oh, call us after 8:30 we have something going until then" so I do, but then it's busy for half an hour. Great.

So I just have 1 that I scheduled from before for tomorrow. Sigh.

But what I did do tonight is take the nasty old CF light bulb that never worked right (I had three of them, they all didn't) and turned it into a clay project! From one of the books I got out. Tada!

[[image:santaunpainted.jpg:Santa!:center:0]]

They originally used a night light bulb, but I had this one, and doing something that small seemed a bit beyond me at the moment. I think it turned out kinda... okay, actually. Now I just need to dry it and paint it. I did it to try and get the hang of working with the clay better, and I think I know now a little what I did wrong before. I needed to keep it much moister, and work it more before putting it on there. Hopefully it dries okay. He's about 8" tall. I kept thinking I need to finish Blue Dragon to give back to Mizzy, but I really was enjoying working the clay! Huh.