2014-01-02:

Fri:
Ran late today. It started well. Just setting up a new machine, and while I was there I ran mbam on two others. He even gave me a little extra, which I always appreciate. Came home, ate, then went out for what I believed would be a challenging but no doubt fixable virus infection.

Well, I couldn't run in safe mode for every long, because of the BSOD. Now usually the virus activity I've seen shuts it down on boot so I was curious if it was really a virus. I ran a memtest which crashed the whole machine. Huh? Never seen that before. So I took out one module and ran it again for several minutes. Ran fine. Figured "maybe it was a bad module!" and rebooted it again. Again I was greeted with my friend the Screen of Blue. So I downloaded the tools in linux and ran them. Mbam found some stuff, combofix found more. But the machine still wasn't right!

So I ran hitman pro, which found a possible rootkit and MBR issue. I allowed the repair to proceed. After that it rebooted the machine and no matter how I started it, it would BSOD before booting all the way.

By now, of course, it's 3:00 and my next appointment is… you guess it. 3:00. So I offer her my loaner, which is Mizzy's old machine, but the "system" process is chewing up the CPU and I can't figure out why.

Finally I say "I'll get it back to you tomorrow, this is pointless, I could be reloading your machine at this very minute" and leave.

I get to my 3:00 at 4:00. Aarg. His "one click" backup, that I had a bad memory of previously, is complaining about the "volume shadow copy" or some nonsense. I just start the seagate tool making a copy of his hard drive to another HD he had, the first actual use of that weird slotted system HP used to use on the front of their machines. He plans to upgrade this XP machine to 7. It's a pentium 4. That'll go well.

Anyway, that was near home so I stopped there, started the lady's HD backing up to a flash drive (she didn't have really anything) and went over to my parent's. They offered me something to eat, mom cut my hair, and I got back here to finish the job. It went smoothly, thank goodness, and at 9:00 I closed it with everything done.

So I have three for tomorrow, setting up a router/iPad, Sew Creative had some issue so I'll go see them, and drop the laptop off at 2:00. Which is just inconvenient enough to probably keep me doing the screen or optical drive replacements I need to do for two people because I've had their parts a couple of days now, but no time to go do them. Well, next week, maybe?

Oh yeah, because game! I still don't have a firm time though. Oh well, whenever I guess.

Eye is better. Cough is better, but I do still have bouts. Oddly stuffed up too, but my nose hardly runs. Voice is still weird. All in all though, my tiny body defenders seem to be driving it back. Go Team!

Sat:

Did exactly what I said. The router setup, of course, went smoothly. The sewing people were having trouble with outlook. Basically, it was dog slow. Like twenty seconds to erase an email, slow. I did what I could, like compacting it and reading about all the other complaints people have about Outlook, but I needed to leave before the performance was acceptable. I told them I could keep looking into it. 

Brought the laptop back, got the printer hooked back up and answered any other questions she had. Then went over for game. That went well, we saved Christmas, though we didn't exactly find out what was threating it. Some lady made of ice, is there such thing as an ice elemental? Oh well. Nice to be doing Demongate High again.

Sun:
Watched Veronica Mars all day. I know, I shouldn't have, but I got most of the way through the second season. I'm a slacker!

I did have to listen to Buddy ramble on for nearly an hour about his prison friend I think he's now "cut it off" with for the third time. And about Gary, who was made out to be the devil himself and how he's going to buy this bed for his apartment. Why? Was I bad at some point? I the universe punishing me in some way?

Mon:
Found another reason to dislike Microsoft. (I'm not bragging, anyone could have done it.)

Anyway, did the shopping as normal, no surprises there. I did remember to pick up a new appointment calendar as I'll apparently need one. Shoot, I have to worry about estimated tax tomorrow too.

Anyway, first one was the Jamaican lady I have trouble understanding. I'm still not exactly clear on what her issue was, but I think she got stuck in the "metro" interface and couldn't get out? Anyway, she also said something about updating to 8.1 and her internet connection is terrible, so to stop it asking and confusing her again I offered to take the machine home and do it. Also I figured I would download the update so I could apply it quickly for anyone else in that situation.

Nope.

Turns out it's almost 4 GB. Huh? What happened to service packs that were a couple of hundred kilobytes? And you can't download the ISO of it without a valid win8 serial number. "No problem," I thought to myself, flipping the laptop over, "I'll just punch in the one from… the… sticker on… the… bottom." Yes, I pause a lot in my thoughts to myself. No sticker.

So apparently MS has gone from cute little labels of plastic that last forever to cloth labels that wear out and become unreadable to not bothering to make any at all. Super. Thanks MS.

Plus it took about 2.5-3 hours to complete. I started it, left for me next appointment, did that one, came back, waited a bit, called someone, and when I left it still wasn't done. Wow. How did any engineer go through that process and think- "Yup, that's acceptable." I mean, really? Even going from 10.6 -> 10.6.8 was only like a GB and didn't take more then an hour. You guys have reached a new low, and that, I didn't even think… okay, it's you, I guess it's possible.

So I just let the thing update itself, then went over to piratebay and downloaded the file that way. Great job trying to prevent me from doing the very thing I ended up doing, MS. You have once again made the "grey" way of doing things more convenient, faster, and less painful. Well done.

Anyway, #2 was just answering some questions, tracking down a rouge wireless signal (I kept trying to connect to airnet, the wireless name I give everyone, but he used a different one. I guess I had another customer just close enough to see the name? Sigh)

Then I went and installed the screen for the lady from, uh, some time ago (I've been busy) and then straight over to install the DVD drive for the guy. He wanted me to do some at least somewhat possible things this time, which I did, and then came home.

Only had to listen to Buddy for about 5 minutes today, made more calls. Hope to get the laptop back tomorrow, I should have a pretty busy day otherwise, then going to Sean's to play games with Stan/Other Sean and possibly others though I didn't hear about any others.

Still coughing just a bit, like "hey remember me, I'm still not gone!" sort of thing. Voice is 85% there.

Snowed. Which looks like it might continue the rest of the week. Super.

I finished Veronica Mars, time to get back to writing!

Tues:
Couple of jobs, the first was pretty quick. Guy down the street, he just had his paper in wrong in the tray so his printer kept jamming. Imagine that.

Then went over to the sewing place. She said the Outlook was still okay and I showed her how to do the "compacting" thing. Also looked at her MacBook, which seemed to have a stuck trackpad button. Took the keyboard part off and that seemed to free it up, so she didn't need a new one.

Then came come, ate lunch, then out again. Dropped off the laptop, then went over to set a new machine up. He didn't have anything to transfer so that went way too fast. Was too early to head to Sean's so I waited around a bit, then went over there.

Played board games, I actually won the one we had never played before. How about that? Also watched Oblivion, no relation to the Elder Scrolls.

Also did a "hidden object" game, "where is the dead mouse under the fridge" and help Stan/Sean win that. Then it was 2014 and time to go, so I went.

And then it was

Wed:

Wait, it isn't Sunday? I'm all screwed up now.

While waiting for a guy to drop off a system, did some financial stuff. Need to do paperwork and finish 2013 off. Cleaned a little. More like straightening up then anything.

Took delivery of the system. He said it was BSODing and wouldn't turn on now. Indeed, when I went to turn it on it just beeped at me. Reseated video card and RAM and it started up. Oh look, his crappy McAfee is 3 years out of date. I ran all the scans and restarted it, that seems to have done the trick as tonight it was still going strong.

At 12:00 I went over to see my parents for the 'open house.' Saw about half of dad's siblings… less then half? And some people from the co-op. Two that I even knew!

Then hooked up the machine downstairs and ran a line down to it. That worked, so now they can print labels downstairs rather then going up and down when doing ebay.

Made some calls, I have two for tomorrow, and maybe a third from an email. Have to do paperwork, and I still need to get those trip pictures up on my site. And writing.

No one gave me a calendar this year, I guess I'll have to, I don't know, buy one or something? Usually I get a couple, from customers even. Sorry pony calendar, you're out of date now and need to be taken down.

Probably have dad over Friday for Dr Who and then do Wanders on Saturday.

Finally got the pictures up! You can find them HERE.

Thurs:
Big snow! And it keeps coming down, too. Yuck.

Did three jobs in the morning, all on the same street. The first one he said had been taken over by the fake FBI thing but I didn't see it. Also his machine scanned as clean, so, whatever. Then I went to his daughter's house unexpectedly, just down the street. Made sure her two machines were working okay. Then on the way back, still on that same street, I plowed into a guy's driveway who had emailed me the day before. He was there so I answered some questions for him.

Back home, the super job I had done snowplowing my driveway had been undone, making me scowl. Ate some yummy food from the day before, and did my paperwork. I'm just getting stuff done here! Went out again to another cleanout, and that machine actually did need it. She had two cats.

Back here I finished up the paperwork type stuff, paid my estimated fees, etc. It seems as though I earned within like $75 of money taken in from last year. Weird. Never been that close before. However, I took in $2000 less profit on parts, I guess because I sell things closer to the price I pay now? I don't know. But I paid $2000 less on my car this year, so that all worked out. Then posted the chapters for this week.

Did some more writing, but it's much slower then before. Just trying to get through the final "area" and get to the showdown. I know how I want that to go, just getting Susan there properly I have to come up with as I go. The rest went faster because I knew exactly what I wanted to happen. Oh well, I'll get through it.

Two jobs for tomorrow and nothing for Saturday. Hopefully having dad over tomorrow and doing game Saturday.

I guess you could say January was going well, but it has only been 2 days. Plenty of time for disasters to come.

Hope everyone is having a good year so far, see you all next week.