Hate.

Hate.

Stupid.

Hate.

Aarg!

Hate.

Be on trees, not on the ground!

Be green, not red and brown!

I don't see people raking palm tree leaves

Why must I rake oak tree leaves.

Hate.

Hate.

 

I admit, it could use some polish. Anyway.

 

Friday of last week saw a dead monitor, which was a surprise. Hardly ever that. The SSD replacement I got makes the machine BSOD so I ordered a different brand a left a negative review. I'm a rebel. The night before I had asked "Does it say 'unmountable boot volume' at the top" to which I received a "no" answer. This was of course a lie, that's what it was. Fixed that pretty easily. Did the paperwork, weeeeee. Tried to order the LiveCode update, but both cards were declined. If you look a year ago (that is, if the archive feature actually worked) you would see one card was declined, but the other wasn't. I got a call, some automated system about "fraud prevention" and was this a legitimate transaction. Yes, yes it was! I went through all the stuff, thinking that, oh, that will allow it to go through, right? Not so much. I had to call them on the phone and have them allow it. What was the point of the automatic call then? It had already been rejected, so they wouldn't have allowed it again in any case. Weird. 

Made some changes to the database, but nothing major. The new release did fix one really, really annoying bug that had been bothering me for some time. And no more delay when it opens!

 

Saturday: No game. Sean was grading and Mizzy was doing "contract work" so… there you have it. I called my 10:30 appointment at 10:00 like she wanted, but got no answer. So I called the lady with the new PC but she wanted 1:00. A few minutes later, it was a good thing I didn't leave right away, because 10:30 lady called me. Sigh. That house had the most busted up laptop I had ever seen. The case was cracked, the hinge was broken right off the case, the power cord was all taped up. Sheesh. The desktop was totally taken over. I got it cleaned out, but had to run hitman pro on it, something I don't normally have to do. 

Went to the 1:00 directly. Got to see Windows 8 for the first time! Oh joy! It blue screens within two minutes of being turned on! Great job, Mikeysoft. Figured out when the external hard drive is plugged in, it blue screens. So left that off and just set her up with dropbox. Of course her old printer loaded just fine, but the new printer wouldn't work at all. Just gave an error when the driver was loaded. Not liking it, not liking it at all. (did you expect something different?)

Finally got home at 4:00. Finished the Wheel of Time series, the next book comes out in… January? Arg. Cold, got out the winter coat. Not used to not having game on Saturday, didn't know what to do with myself.

 

Sunday: Love waking up on some early November Sunday and seeing snow drift by the windows. Makes one want to just go back to bed. Played Skyrim and watched Thundercats for the win. I want to watch as much as that as possible before this Christmas, as it was a gift from last Christmas, so I figure it's been sitting there unwatched long enough. *embarrassed face*

 

Monday: Shopping as usual. The first one was another one of those lying people. She was saying websites were giving her "certificate error" so I asked "Is your clock right?" She said yeah. When I got there, I must have gone through a timewarp because it was 2812. You should have seen the technology we have then! Stone age tools and a lot of radioactive bugs… I mean, flying cars! Yeah. Saved her money by installing a free antivirus, you're welcome. Then a cleanout and setting up a router.

 

Tuesday: When I got there, his internet was out, though he said he had used it earlier that day. I spent half an hour on the phone convincing the person it was the modem. It was getting a self assigned IP address, and I had already done the "did you unplug it" dance. I know what I doing. I know most don't lady, but I do. Sometimes. He also had a bad RAM chip which I replaced.

I changed the RAM for the hotel lady, though it turned out not to need it. More on that later.

Then at 1:30 I drove twenty minutes to hook up a monitor. Yes, two cables, and she couldn't handle it. Wow.

Then back home for a 10 minute phone call. Hate my job.

Then back out again for Win8 lady, who said Dell wanted to reload the machine (again) because it wasn't shutting off properly. I backed up her mail (tedious) to dropbox, she had more then I expected. It also shut down just fine, so what's the problem? She was going to call me about what Dell said to do with the printer (which wasn't working again) but she never did. :-(

Got the replacement SSD in, so I reloaded that machine, which actually went perfectly! How about that, Corsair, looks like it was your crappy drive after all. Now what do I do with a crappy busted "refurbished" SSD? No magnets in that sucker!

 

Finished the first batch of Pony stickers. Didn't have time to make any more, it's been busy around here, as you'll read.

The hotel lady called, it still blue screened when she got it home again. AARG. She has no devices plugged in though, so what the heck? Guess it just likes to waste my time.

Finally sunny! Orb has returned to us! Weather report says no rain the next few days.

 

Wednesday: My 9:30 took until 12:45. Ugh. Why do you need 4 machine anyway? The longest was the BSOD laptop (which was fairly new) but everything had been taken off it, so I just reloaded the sucker. Slowly.

Went over to move some data around, and got a busted up laptop to show for it.

The hotel lady's machine I ran Hitman on and it found something, so figure that out. Why didn't it BSOD when it was with me at the hotel? I thought of an interesting method- virus runs, right? Checks resolution of screen or make of screen or something. Sees it's different, so it says "I must be at a shop, I'll not do anything" and closes down. Then it gets home, checks again, says "okay, I'm home." Runs normally. That could totally work.

At least I finally got it.

Went to get Halo 4. Got Doritos too, as a special promotion.

Then went to set up printer. HP inkjet. Wouldn't print in color. Super. It's going back.

 

Played some Halo 4. Mizzy was still busy doing stuff, so just solo missions (whatever they're called) and some online slayer. Liking it. The manual: it's so awesome it cannot be contained in this universe! (i.e. no manual) They printed the warrantee and "if you experience seizures" warning on the outer label cover. Tacky fellows, tacky. I mean, yes, reduce waste and all, but come on. At least show me the controls.

 

Additional note: Tinker likes both Bugles and Doritos. I suppose Tamara liked chips so it's not that much of a stretch.  

 

Today: Leaves! All out front like they should be. Used new technique of dual deposits. Usually I use the cart, which works, but this year I had a pool cover piece at each end of the yard, so I could do one row and dump the bag right there. Rather then walking every other time back to the cart. It worked out. Started at 9:30 got done 11:45. Not many left on the tree, but some. So I'll probably have to do some more later. But the bulk is done. Blew the ones in front out, that was easy.

 

At 1:00 I went to the cleanout. Was trying all these things because exe files wouldn't open. I see that on XP sometimes, I have a little COM file I run that repairs it. Tried running something similar for 7, it just gave me some weird error message. Turns out she wasn't the admin user anymore, her daughter was. After I figured that out it went much smoother!

Back to the frontier guy, got his new DSL in. Then back to the HP guy to get the new printer set. This one actually prints in color? Amazing. 

 

Should be game this week, though I'll probably stay here. It's at 6:00 because of one late home getter, and the space game, so two people are remote. May as well be three.

 

Well, a few more things to get done before calls so I can play Halo some more, so I'm off. As usual, have a good weekend out there folks, don't let it beat you down.