2013-10-03:

Fri:

Not too exciting today. My 9:30 canceled, so I went to feed the babies and wait for the afternoon one that did not. 

That one didn't take long, I didn't really find anything wrong with it. He said the internet was slow, but he had a router sitting there so I had hooked that up for him, figuring I might as well if he owned it. That may have cleared the problem up. 

Then back home, did some work on chapter 99, and then completed my tour on the Franklin and got my orders for my next assignment. This was of course in the IV game. And we're getting a new PC as well, one of the people that played a spirit hunter in the Demon Artist game. So that should be… good?

Sat:

Again with the feeding of the cats. Straightened out around here because Drew was supposed to come at 1:00. At least he said he wanted to like on monday but then I didn't hear anything else. 

So I worked on writing more instead.

I did get ahold of the guy a half hour away for the PCI USB card, so at 5:00 I went down there to see what other trouble his machine was in. He said it had stopped working, but it seemed fine when I got there. I put in the new USB card and it remained fine. What a wasted hour of driving. Oh well.

No game, so I did another chapter, and finished CHAPTER 100 of the Harry Potter story. It's now 416,000 words long. Wow. I'm about half way through Half Blood Prince. And Susan just learned something quite troubling. 

Sun: 

Once more to feed the animals over at my parent's house, and then came back to watch an anime suggested to me by a reader of the Harry Potter story for perhaps future crossover material. Of course I have to finish the last two Demongate High books before more adventures of Susan can be written but I already have an idea how I would get her there and how things would go. At 1.5x speed I got through almost all four seasons of it.

Mom called that they got back all right. Had great weather and had fun, so that's done.

Mon:

Cider is back! The only good thing about Fall has arrived! Thank you, Apple Family. Now keep it away from Pinky, you know what cider does to her.

Shopping as normal. Made my final IRA deposit so I don't have to worry about that the rest of the year. I wanted to do $400 a month, with only the cash I made throughout the year. Well, I got enough extra that Oct/Nov/Dec was covered, and to start getting the interest on it I just popped it all in there so I don't have to worry about it. Not knowing, of course, the horror that was to come. Pepperoni is back, but now salad has disappeared. At least the premade stuff I usually get. I had to get individual ingredients. Weird that one thing comes back, but the thing I put that into then goes away. It's a strange world. 

The first job was just setting up a monitor. 

I then left for my second job, and look, another crappy week begins. Remember my entry from a few days ago, like less then two weeks maybe? When I wrote about being nervous because I was getting lots of work, and every time that happened, something bad happened later I would have to pay for? 

Let's see… *looks back in the entries* it was 9/13 I posted that. And what do you know, I can predict the future: "… whenever I get busy, and think I'm finally getting ahead rather then slowly falling behind, some big charge like a car repair comes up. It happens every time."

Yeah, it happened. I even called what it would be, too. Am I not the best at Precognition or what?

There was a bunch of slow traffic on penfield road because they had cut it down to one lane. Well, the young woman in front of me stopped suddenly. 

Me? Not so much.

I smashed into her. Well, banged really. I more hit her spare tire on the back end, which tore the cover a bit, but seemed to do no other damage to her vehicle. It smashed my front end up pretty well, though. That energy had to go someplace, after all. 

Then I used the Repair spell and went on my way….. NOT.

The irony was, two cops were just a little ways back up the street for another accident. So they just moved down a little. 

Naturally the one time I actually needed the cell phone I didn't have it. It was sitting in my bathroom, safely away from any danger. Which is why I have no pictures of it, I usually would have at least snapped one. It's like the time my battery was dead and I saw the coolest custom painted motorcycle with transformers all over it. I'll never see it again. And I check my phone battery all the time, but somehow, exactly when I most wanted it- I couldn't use it. Honestly, am I that terrible a person the universe has to go out of its way to cause me niggling misfortunes?

So I tried to email my mother from my kindle, thinking someone would have to come pick me up. Because who memorizes phone numbers anymore? Not me! Of course my machine was on at home, sucking my mail in and deleting it from the server. I had the kindle because of the hour I figured I would be waiting in the parking lot of the place I was previously in. That's the only reason. Normally I forget to bring it with me, or not bother. That's what I used to email her. Which worked. Of course I had to turn the wireless on to do it, and shortly after that I thought the battery had died, as it didn't respond anymore. Apparently it was doing a software update without my say so, thanks kindle. Didn't need you doing that at that exact moment, you know?

So anyway, I emailed her, and saw no reply, but the tow truck dude (and that vehicle didn't seem all that stable, riding in it, but maybe that's normal?) said he could take me to the dealership rather then were he usually would, so I got a ride back from there.

Was on the phone for a half hour with my insurance company (and it takes two weeks to get the accident report from the police? It's the freaking information age, you should already have it. You should have had it 10 seconds after it was filed. Heck, in the age of the PRISIM you should have picked it up on a camera somewhere and had it a second after I… anyway)

ahem. I had rental car coverage as well in my insurance policy, so at least that's somewhat taken care of. They are coming to pick me up soon so I can get another car.

My deductible is $500, and just when put that huge stack of cash into my IRA too. Funny how that works out, huh? 

Don't know how extensive the damage is. My radiator was leaking all over, that's for sure. I didn't start it back up, though I tried to move it out of the way a little more. I didn't really push it to start though. Hopefully it's not too bad.

Wonder how much my insurance is going to go up because of this? The damage appraiser is going down there Thursday, so it'll be a week before I get poor Onee-san back at the least. 

Sorry nee-san, I guess I let you down. Get better soon.

I suppose if there is one tiny bright spot, it's that September ended on a crappy note rather then October starting really badly?

So a great start to the week, right? 

Didn't feel like writing, just finished Zero no Tsukaima and wrote up a few notes on what I want to happen to Susan after the Harry Potter story is over.

Hey, things can only get better, right?

Tues:

Morning one went fine, just a cleanout. One of those fake FBI things I guess, though it just showed a white screen rather then the actual thing and rebooted the machine in safe mode. Luckily the Safe Mode With Command Prompt worked okay so I was able to download malwarebytes and combofix in linux and run them. Mbam ran in one minute and 17 seconds, which I was astonished at. I looked though, and apparently I had put an SSD in that machine at some time in the past. So that explained it. Honestly, creaky old machines still today I've seen take a half hour to run a scan, and this machine (with only a Core 2 Duo I might add) took less then two minutes? Sheesh. She had on two antivirus programs, McAfee and MSE. Now, I would have put MSE on when I reloaded the machine. She was protected, for free. Why did she then go and install McCrappy? For money? Also she had Foxit Reader and Adobe Reader. Lady, I gave you everything you needed, why did you go out of your way to put crap on your machine that you didn't?

Named the car Arcee, for Rental Car. (Get it? RC) Inventive, I know. Plus I stole the name from an actual transformer. It doesn't have enough glass, it feels too enclosed, like I can't see what's around me as well as in nee-san. Oh well.

 [[image file="arcee.jpg" alt="Rental Car" title="Arcee" ]]

I mean look at those back windows! So tiny!

Home for lunch, and did part of my paperwork, then out again at 12:00 for my 12:30.

Which was a machine running 2 antivirus programs. What is it with running two antivirus programs? Seriously. Took them both off, put Panda on, cleaned it up, etc.

The next guy said he was seeing a message about his hard drives and the machine wouldn't boot. Surprise, it booted. Then he said he was having trouble with a CD. Surprise, it was fine too. I vacuumed the inside out (this machine is ancient, barely over 1ghz) and took off some junk. 

Came home to see if the router (or rooter as the owner calls it) and it had, so I went back out to deliver that at 4:00. It was the warranty replacement from a week or so ago. He even gave me some money, even though I said he didn't have to because it was a warranty replacement. So I was grateful for that.

No auto mishaps today! Yay! I can flip the sign that says "We have gone 1 day without a workplace accident"

Did the rest of my paperwork. Had a - instead of a + for the tax money I had collected in my spreadsheet, so I thought I was not as far behind as I actually was. Whoops. Did that sentence make sense?

Lots of calls today. Going to see the lawyer guy in the morning, then the ill fated appointment, see if I can get there without running into anything. Then back home for lunch and out to try and recover a machine that had a HD that I bought new fail- from June.

So I get to give them their money back, ($70) not make anything for the job, and have to go through the hassle of shipping it back so I can get a replacement and hope to tell it to someone when I hardly ever sell spinning rust drives anymore. 

FUN.

What was also fun was finishing chapter 101, which was longer then I thought as a slightly different thing happened then I expected, so I'll return to where the book was in 102 rather then 101. HA.

Oh, and there was some kind of "government shutdown" or something? I don't know, it happened a few years ago too, that I remember. Crazy.

Wed:

Went in the morning to see the lawyer, his machine was all junked up, especially with firefox addons, and so it wasn't closing when he quit it. Thus it wouldn't come back. Took care of that, and then the other secretary said she was having trouble pasting into word. Huh? How can microsoft mess up something as simple as pasting? But they did. I read about it, and some people pointed to skype?? as the problem, so I figured what the heck. Took it out and it was pasting again. Weird.

Then to the ill fated appointment, which I reached without smashing anything up, and just answered some questions and such for her. 

Back home for lunch, then out at 1:40 to take care of the case of the busted hard drive.

Which, surprise, surprise, was not busted in the least. Got there, undid some of the damage Staples had done (thanks fellows) to the new machine, and started poking around to see what they had done with the old data. I had no idea where anything had come from, and stuff was all over the place so I figured I would start with the new drive, that staples said would cost "$400 to get anything off of". It came up immediately. I started copying the 300gb of crap off of it. I asked "staples said this drive was dead?" She indicated that was the case. Well, the time estimate (and we know how accurate are microsoft time estimates) said 3 hours, so I came home again. It had gotten through about 8% and I told her to watch it from time to time to make sure it was still going, so it will probably copy everything. I brought the "old" PC back with me, and booted it with linux to see if there was something wrong with the machine. Hey guess what? Worked fine.

So… exactly what was the problem that made you decide to go out, buy a whole new machine (and this one is only 2 years old) pay staples a bunch of money ($99) to basically mess everything up, and then lie to you about the state of the drive that is only 3 months old? Because it seems like if you had just called me, for $40 I probably could have set things to rights and been done with it. 

Seriously, people just have no… I just… AARG.

So when I returned, I found that even though I had asked, rather plainly, "watch this copy indicator" she did not. Shock, surprise and astonishment. So it was stuck at 44% asking something. Of course I take part of the blame myself. I should have called and said "how is that copy coming along?" but I did not. I just drove over there, like a fool. 

So after her husband came home he said he would drop my stuff off tomorrow morning, and I once again drove home. I gave him instructions to call me when it finished and I would remotely put everything where it belonged.

At least I don't lose out on the cost of the drive, and he said I could have it. I'll give it the long test somehow and see what the actual status is, but I'm pretty sure it's fine. Otherwise it goes back, I guess. 

You really couldn't follow the direction of "watch this progress bar." Really? 

He didn't call me, furthering my shock and surprise.

I worked on chapter 102, and decided what should happen next. 

Looking forward to seeing what's going to happen with the car tomorrow!

It was Tinker's "birthday" today, and he turned "3" so I've had him a few years now. It seems like only yesterday little one.

Thurs:

Two jobs, both pretty easy. The first was just delivering the card reader and using it to get the guy's pictures back he accidentally erased. That went pretty well. 

Then the second one was just delivering the router I bought earlier today, and setting it up. 

The appraiser called at 2:30, and said the estimate was over NINE THOUSAND no sorry almost $5000 so it was pretty close to the "total loss" category. Of course, it's $500 less because I have to pay that part. A little bang like that? And that doesn't include the oil leak they found when they inspected it last, for $1500. 

That would probably push it over and make it not worth repairing. I mean, I bought it for what, less then $10,000 if I recall. Still, how can just the hood be worth $400? It's just a piece of metal in a certain shape. Even the headlights are $334. I didn't even think they were damaged. Sheesh. I wonder if I should have just said "don't bother" and gone to look for a used car less then $6,000. Would they have given me the amount it would have cost to repair?

But they are going to proceed so I guess that's a good sign. Come back to me nee-san!

Wait, it cost $153 to tow it? It was just up the street, not 5 miles. 

So $2,682 for parts, $1,6060 for labor, I see tax listed three times at about $400. Wait, if my government it shut down, do I still have to pay them? That doesn't seem fair to me.

The labor is 35 hours, so that's five days, right? Just to repair one car. I guess maybe I'll get it back in a week, and that's if they can get all the parts quickly. The estimator didn't say, but then, he doesn't control the shop, does he? He said they had it "torn down" so at least that part is over, right? 

I'm just glad it doesn't seem like the engine was damaged, it's all just body work and radiator and such. So that was lucky.

Worked on chapter 103 and posted the weekly chapter. You have all been reading it right?

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9214556/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Magic-of-Paragon

I then started work on Sean's christmas present! Yes, it's a little early, but I want to get it done and out of the way. After all, some of December is already spoken for. Now Mizzy and Neil on the other hand… no clue. So I made some progress, at least in the very, very early design stages.

My Buddy is back in the hospital!? What sorcery is this? I thought he told me his insurance wasn't covering his little "extended vacations" at the hospital? And in further shocking news, now it doesn't look like he'll get the apartment because of some form his former landlord is refusing to provide. Seriously? If I sold my house and looked for an apartment I couldn't get one because I wouldn't have a previous landlord, so why would he need one? It was nice not hearing from him… while it lasted. It was all too brief a time. 

Oh, here's something to tickle your brainstem. How is faster shipping cheaper then slower shipping? Explain that one to me, if you could. Can't? Didn't think so.

 [[image file="mailrates.png" alt="Mail Rates Are Weird" title="Mail Rates" ]]

And so the first week of October fades away. The weather has been great so I hope you've all been out there enjoying it, and not just as you wait for a tow truck on the side of the road. 

See you all next week.