This Happening?

 

It's not about complaining. I want to be clear about that. I'm asking, again, that age old question. Because I don't have a good answer. And when you don't have an answer, you keep asking until one day you do. I know I never will. It's like, "where is that particle going?" "I only can tell you where it is right now." I accept that people (by that I mean "normal" people) probably use their computers more in colder months. But how can I go from just a couple of months ago getting a single phone call in a day was cause for celebration, and getting another seven calls today? Oh, I need the work. I like… money you see. And while possibly I can pretend my job, where I get to sit in relative comfort and literally work magic in front of non-believer's eyes is somewhat crappy, I could be much worse off. I could be Bruce. But five appointments a day, and then another two laptops I brought home, and another system dropped off that needs a video card replacement, how is that possible? 

 

Do computers break more when it's cold outside? Are user's brains more sluggish and thus, easier to trick into infecting themselves? Where were all these people two months ago? Was there some miracle that enveloped the Earth that fought back entropy for a little while, and has now gotten tired? Because I'd like to know.

 

Anyway, another busy day today. The first one I couldn't save, his hard drive is dead-dead-dead. Even the Mac won't pick up there even is a drive there. He went on about how he got warning signs and didn't call me and is now going to make sure and back things up (now that he's lost everything. Yeah good plan)

 

Back up your files, people. The more the better.

 

Over to see Barbra, nothing major. Except I was 45 minutes early, rang the bell twice, thought no one was home, and sat in the car, in the cold, for that 45 minutes until she came out. Oh, uh, where you were 45 minutes ago lady? Why have I been sitting out here?

 

A fake antivirus went down next, hardly without a fight. One snag, his windows folder (every file on his system had been turned invisible. Bravo) wouldn't become visible again. I had to resort to DOS commands. Scary.

 

And then lastly in Hilton to show someone with a parrot (a quiet bird) how to use Picasa.

 

Back home. Quick look at laptop number one, my favorite UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME which I fixed. He wants more RAM for the machine. I have a whole bucket of DDR2 laptop RAM, not so much DDR ram. Sigh. Machine number two sorta died. I tried reloading XP, twice, but it powered off or something, and now it won't come on at all. 

 

And pulled the video card out of the PC. I have a replacement for that, so that's easy enough. The front of the box reads 512MB RAM! While the back of the box reads 256mb of RAM. Uh, really?

 

More washing the cigarette stench of the gift, I have them locked in plastic containers now with baking soda sprinkled all over them. Hope that works.

 

Well, no character making today, looks like it's about time for bed. Super.

 

Oh right, phone calls. Five places to go tomorrow too, so expect reports of more "mischief managed" same approximate time, same approximate ip address. 

 

Welcome to December, by the way. Please keep all hands and arms inside the month at all time. You have 24 days until Christmas.