2012-07-26:

Work has been somewhat okay, I guess, this week. Monday I finally got Stewart's HD in and his machine going. Amazing. Also did the shopping of course. 

Only an hour on Tuesday, someone having trouble opening Second Life. It would crash with some error when she tried. Well, forum posts suggested scanning for malware, which I did. Ran combofix, mbam, the works. Still crashing. TDSSKiller actually found something combofix missed, which I was quite surprised with, and that did the trick. Huh.

Yesterday. Woo boy let me tell you about yesterday. First up was the ice cream place. His machine is going off randomly, so I replaced the power supply, figuring that was it. Nope. Of course it ran fine while I was there, so I had to go back today to put the original back in and try changing some more components. 

Went to straighten out someone who made a mess of their network cables. Got a system to bring home, wasn't even running XP SP1, if you can believe that. Couldn't put an antivirus on it, explained that was rather dangerous, so I finished up making that machine internet ready today. I was a bit concerned with how slow it was, but then looked up the hard drive inside- found a benchmarking site, it got the lowest ratings in every category. Concern answered.

Then was handed a package from China, a laptop monitor. I called and spoke to the idiot kid. 

"XXX Webster Road."

*Le me looks at map*

"Off lake ave?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Great, see you in ten minutes."

*Le me, driving around. Must use cell to call, gurrrrr*

"What number did you say?"

"XXX"

"There is no XXX on this street. Are you sure you're off lake road?"

"You know West Ridge Road?"

"You mean 104?" *Consults le map again* "You're in Spencerport?"

"Yeah, that's it!"

Oh, I was mad. Left home at 1:50, didn't get there until 2:50. But he wanted me to clean out his brother's laptop (100% cpu usage by a rouge svchost.exe process) so I felt justified in charging him the hour. 

Who names a road "Webster Rd" that's nowhere near Webster? Does that make sense to you? 

Then the final one, the way she explained it on the phone it seemed like her backlight was shutting off on her laptop. Easy to fix, replace the panel. Well when I got there, reality was the laptop was just power cycling over and over. Great, no fix there. Glad I hadn't ordered a panel for her before that, based on her description. 

So all kinds of running around, hardly any money. Figures, even when I have tons of work I get nothing out of it.

Today my morning one canceled, so I set up yet another refurbished system not that I've sold any of the others. Still, this one's a little better then the rest so maybe it'll go. 

Went to give the system I took home yesterday back a day early because she said her DSL was offline again. I would wiggle it and it would come on for a minute, then go off again. Must have been the phone cable, I replaced it and that was that. 

It was a fun experience. A house full of 4-5 boys, (I lost track) all different ages. She's screaming and swearing at them over nothing. Usually people are on their best behavior when some stranger is around, right? Not her! Wow, what a psycho. Then she tries to justify her behavior "oh, they were fighting over this twenty dollars all day." I don't care what they were doing, you're the adult and must SET THE EXAMPLE. You were setting an example when I was there- a bad one. Some people just should not be parents, you know?

Then back over to the ice cream place, ah hah, I was trying to get a different CPU booting the machine to see if that was the issue, and I noticed 6 tiny, leaking capacitors that sit under the heatsink. Whoops, there's your problem. Only viable MB replacement on ebay was a set of two with RAM and processors still attached, and $22 shipping! Sheesh, but at least I'll be able to sell some of the extra parts. Gave him his check back from yesterday, *sadface*

Then the last one was a quick one, their router was giving them trouble but they didn't know that, so her husband messed up the wireless settings on the printer somehow so I needed to straighten that out. Just down the stairs they were getting only one bar of signal, which is what tipped me off to it. Unplugged-Replugged and it was back up to 4/5 bars, and got it all connected again. 

What else went on this week- oh yeah, grandma turned 93, I doubt she noticed. Mom signed her into hospice on monday and stopped all her medications, so her journey's end is probably near. She's been really, really out of it the past couple of weeks, so technically my grandmother is already gone. Her spring just hasn't quite run down yet. 

TF Con in Canada this saturday, the one day a year (apart from Sundays of course) that I won't work. Of course, when they stop in toy stores to look for transformers, I'll be over in the Pony section. *wicked grin*

Finally rained quite a bit last night, first time in many weeks. This year's berries look like they committed suicide to give the newer stalks all the water they could. The old ones are just shriveled up husks now, but the new ones are looking fine. Weird. Hopefully the nice long water they had will help. Everything out there.

They oil and chipped our road again, so now there are tiny rocks everywhere. And a lot of noisy, dusty cars going down the street. Thanks road guys!

Edited up to chapter 16 in book one, using Sean's "don't give anything away" policy. It was going fine, but I'm stuck now. I need Ewan because I need someone that can 1) recognize the world is different 2) be petitionable and 3) be a summoner. I can't do that, call him someone else, and still not give it away that "this is Ewan". I'm thinking maybe I'll have to "break him up" into three separate people? That would mean a lot of rewriting. 

So I'm kind of stumped and haven't gone any further in a couple of days. 

One job on tap for tomorrow, and of course he can't articulate his problem other then "you need to come look at it" which could mean something simple to it being dead FOREVER!

Apparently going to do some Gears Of War for the first time in 8 months tonight, but Sean didn't get much sleep last night so we'll see how it goes. 

Wow, that's it for this week, and it was a lot I guess. 

Don't forget Milk Chocolate Day is Saturday, be sure to have a candy bar in celebration.