2011-07-06:

Uugh, just got bitten by the Safari command arrow key “bug” whereby I want to go to the beginning of the line like I do in every other Mac program but instead of that I freaking go back to the page before this one and lose everything. So I searched for a way to turn that off, found nothing, so I used the “report a bug” to apple to complain about it. Idiots. So I am now writing this entry in TextEdit so I can actually use key commands without fear. There is a command key to go back, it's command+[. Why do I need yet another key?

Anyway, as I was saying…

No jobs in the morning, but I did do my paperwork so that’s good right? 

The first one of the afternoon was the print shop one, and man was it filthy. Given that I came prepared for this eventuality it was no big deal because I blew the dust out of it like a Pro and also added RAM, given that it had all of 256 MB but was, when I arrived, using over 500. How did you even use that machine? Ugh.

How much does my machine have? Oh right 4000MB. So, twenty times a much? Huh. And you're using this machine in a production facility? An actual print shop? Really?

Then to the radisson, where I was challenged to place a CD in a tray, two times, and install office. So very, very hard. Oh, and an antivirus on one. Whew. With the $40 they still owe me from March they now owe me $60 so I’m hoping to see it by the end of the year?

Then back to the dentist place to do one simple little thing. One SIMPLE little thing that reminds me (as if I needed such) just how freaking awful PCs are. Forty minutes in that place installing a small backup hard drive. Plug in hard drive. “This hardware is not recognized”. Plug into back of machine instead. “This hardware…” but oh look, as it tells me it can’t use the hardware, it’s opening a window showing me the contents of the hard drive. So which is it windows? Double click the installer. It slowly crawls across the cable and then just vanishes from the screen with no explanation given. Super Fun! Start installer again. Crawls again. “Installer is already running.” Oh rly? Manually kill everything running under this user that looks like an installer. Start installer. Dies again. Kill again. Run stupid .NET installer separately because apparently we can’t make a piece of backup software without another 50MB or so library that has its own problems. It craws up into the system and finally gets installed. Keep in mind, through all of this the machine is doing nothing. 80-90% idle on the CPU. Because PCs have two states- 100% CPU usage and crawling, and 100% idle and crawling. Why is it taking so long to put a couple of files on this machine? Hello? My machine can throw GB of info across drives in seconds to minutes, you can't do a couple of megabytes in less then 10 minutes? Hummmkay. That finally stops wasting my time and finishes, then I run the backup program installer. It finally goes through and starts the backup. You know what takes my machine 40 minutes to do? NOTHING. Not ripping whole DVDs, not installing Adobe Creative Suite CS3 (it came close, but that was because Photoshop CS4 was already there and that messed it up I think). Wait, I tell a lie, downloading 40GB worth of Bleach episodes took more then 40 minutes. Installing a backup drive? Let’s see, plug it in, OS X asks “would you like to use this as a time machine volume?” “click yes” done.

Then on the way home (all these appointments were pretty much in a straight line, thankfully, no driving back and forth today) I stopped in and gave the guy the two backup drives I bought for him. That install went much easier, no stupid .NET, no failing, amazing, windows can do something right, sorta, sometimes, maybe. Hopefully he’ll send me a check soon. 

So four jobs, two charged a half hour, one done free, one gladly done free because it took me longer to get the freaking cling plastic off the drive then to actually install the drive so I didn’t charge him. I’m rolling in it!

And came home. What the, 8 phone calls today? Oh, only two appointments made from it? Fine, fine, don’t scare me like that universe, actually giving me real work to do? So one for tomorrow and one for Saturday. Let’s see tomorrow is just replacing a router and Saturday is a cleanout. Or was it the other way around? Too lazy to go look. And that’s it for today.