2014-02-21:

I thought I was just cleaning a machine out, but it turned out to be a setup as well, as she wanted stuff moved from an old machine. Her new machine was pretty infected though. And I found out combofix doesn't work on Win8 yet, how long has it been out? So I think she's still infected by something, but what can I do if my tools don't work on it?

Anyway, back to the camera thing. I followed all the directions, and in between "there is already an administrator logged in" messages and messing with the security settings, the best I could do was bring up the page but with no video.

I had given up, and told her so, instead putting the iPad app on and letting her see the cameras that way. She still wanted it on the PC so I reset IE again, ticked everything off (I was already ticked off) and for some bizarre reason it worked.

AAARRGGGG.

Went over to see my parents, as I was right down the street.

Came home just in time for my 2:00, got lunch ready, called about 2:01 to talk to the guy "recovering from back surgery" but he didn't answer. Great. Just great. I called again at 2:13, 2:30 and 3:00. No answer.

Thanks a bunch, dude.

So I continued reading over the Demongate High book and went out at 4:00 for the next job.
He had somehow lost the keyboard settings he wanted, which has taken from a bunch of stickers he had put on the keys.

I looked into making it again but the Microsoft Keyboard Thingy wouldn't show the keyboard! I finally figured out by reading forum posts on the internet this was a bug caused by setting the scaling from 90 to 120. Nice job once again, microsoft. So after setting it back down and rebooting (which takes his machine wayyyy too long) it worked and I found the keyboard someone else had made sitting on his desktop, by accident. I just happened to notice it, he has a lot of icons on his desktop. It was missing a key, so I looked up the code for it, got that installed, and he was happy again.

He had also somehow gotten yahoo and a bunch of other sites in his "compatibility mode" (USE FIREFOX YOU MORON) so Yahoo was giving him an error message about turning that off, as well they should. Odd that a website can even tell that. Huh.

Use Firefox.

Then more reading demongate high and a few chapters of Worm before bed.

Sat/Sun:

Nothing too exciting either of these days, I fear. Just more slacking off. Highlights include trying to download the KOR manga from a site that doesn't have any "download this whole thing.zip" I had to figure out how to use curl to download the individualized numbered pages.
A little more writing, some reading of Worm. More snow. Cold.

That's about it. Didn't go to RIT, Sean said not enough people came Friday.

Mon:
Did not go shopping, which was weird. I needed only two things, a thing of salad and a frozen apple juice. Really! So I figured I would just grab them Wednesday when I went to pick up the machine at Xceed, it seems I'm their official computer guy now. Of course there was no bank today, further reducing my need to go over there.

Which is fine.

So I stayed here until 12:00, went out to do what I thought was a simple moving mail from one machine to another. (She spilled water into her laptop) Nope! It was moving mail, AND a cleanout, because it was totally infected.

So that was more money then I expected, which was nice. It left me just enough time to see the lawyer guy about his machine. His secretary had called me in the morning, so I went over there. His basic problem was not being able to get into gmail, and he said he called someone… and that's impossible because there are no google support personal you can call. So I don't know who he called. Anyway, his machine was clean and I get him back into gmail.

Then at 3:00 a cleanout, and man was that machine taken over as well! Nearly every icon on his desktop was a fake or junk program. Sheesh.

Then finally over to my 5:00 a bit early. Changed their power supply in the hope the machine would stop powering itself off, and in the two hours I was there it didn't. So I'm pretty confident about that. It was hanging up though, and I was turning stuff off and finally settled on the antivirus. Panda. Bad panda! Removed it and reloaded it, and it seemed fine again. Sigh. Anyway, didn't get paid there yet, we'll see if it goes off with the new power supply.

Got all of KOR finally. Good number of calls today, I've got plenty of work for tomorrow and even some for later in the week. How about that?

Tues:
Things went pretty smoothly today, though my morning one was more involved then I was made aware. Her video card fan was not spinning right, but luckily some oil took care of that.
The bigger issue was how infected the thing was. It's like some kind of plague lately.

So that took much longer then I anticipated, leaving me to come home and quickly have lunch and be 10 minutes late to my 1:00.
That was a short one, I just checked the machine over and figured out why man wasn't loading properly for him.

Then over to the sauce people to clean out yet another laptop for this guy, that's #3 I guess. How many laptops does he have? Again, very, very bad, thanks McAfee for all your hard work.
NOT.

Then came home!

Finally got the next chapter started, and then finished. 81,018 words. Still one date and a bunch of months to go!

Weds:
Rained. Wow. Not frigid all day today, even better.

Got a call at 9:00, the exceed lady had forgotten to bring the desktop with her, so I couldn't go get it.
Went shopping for the two items I needed instead. Also got batteries for my security system smoke alarm. These weird sort of half sized AA batteries. They had regular ones at buy two get two free so I picked up a variety. Never know what sort of batteries you might need.

Then did work. Three clean outs today, more or less. The lady that gives me cookies in the morning, she had AVG and MSE running… or not, as the case may be. Cleaned that up good.

Two in the afternoon, a short one at 1:00 where I took Norton off and improved his performance and then a guy with a toy dog I took a few things off of, and installed a bit torrent client for him.

So a pretty good day, all in all. Got some of the snow off the driveway, and shoved the water down the street. (This was before it started raining)

Then worked on the current chapter. Had an idea of who they should meet at the park while I was working, so got that written up.

Nearly finished it.

Thurs:
Finished it. 85,946 words. Hopefully it won't be more then 100,000…

Anyway, there were some less then stellar parts of the day, allow me to tell you about them in the form of complaining.

Got to the first job, it was just down the road really. Setup a new system. I actually had to install AOL desktop. Ugh.
He had gotten it for christmas, I guess, so there are procrastinators in the world greater then myself, apparently. Two months, that must be some kind of record. Anyway, tried to update to 8.1 using the image I had download previously.

Nope.

It wanted me to put in the product key. You know, the one MS doesn't provide anymore? That sticker they used to throw down? So he had to download all 6 trillion bytes of it or however that works out. Not at first though, no, he had to download 86 updates before that, then he could apply the 8.1 "upgrade." Seriously, 86 updates for a product that's been out… not that long, I don't know how long. I mean XP only has like 130 total when you set up a new machine. 8 must be terrible. Guess I can get that flash drive space back, as that upgrade I download is pointless.

Honestly, microsoft is going out of its way to annoy people. Apple goes ahead and says "You know what? Have our OS for free, it's on us for being Mac users." This OS brings back a simpler interface that people liked better, is faster, more memory efficient, and doesn't require any fooling around with numbers, hundreds of updates or terrible new interfaces that belong on tablets and need 3rd party tools to get rid of.
Microsoft says "You get nothing, everything you try is going to be twice as difficult, forget about reloading anything, or getting into safe mode to troubleshoot anything or having any clue what program you're in because everything's full screen."

Thanks, just thanks.

So I left him to do the first round of updates, and started for home. Got almost the way there when I realized I needed to pick up the PC for the credit union lady. So I went back the way I came because I had passed the place, like an idiot.

That road, by the way, is not so much a road as it is a series of small caves with what used to be a flat surface above them. I swear I saw a zoobat down one of them.

So I went all the way back and picked up the PC. Got it home, wouldn't turn on. Huh? She didn't mention anything about not turning on. So I called her, "Have you had trouble turning it on in the past?"
"Oh yeah."
Thanks for telling me that little tidbit, I thought I had killed it somehow! AAARG.
Also had to get the password for it, she forgot that as well.
I got it started with another power supply, so I ordered one for her, this being a thin tower and using a quarter size one.
She also said she was having trouble with "outlook." Outlook- specifically, she said. Of course she doesn't even have outlook on the machine, she was talking about Windows Live Mail.

iPod had to be reset. It was doing the click of doom that plagued my old one, so I hope that's not dying already. Stupid hard drives.

Then out at 3:00 to take care of the power supply job from Monday. They said it held up fine, so it must have been the old power supply flaking out. They must smoke a lot, their machine is always filthy, and that probably killed it. And them, ultimately.

Got back, the 8.1 guy had called, he had gotten through updating to 8.1 but had somehow gotten into the "modern" mail program. He could not articulate this, so I couldn't tell what he was doing. I thought he was still in the upgrade process where it tries, again, to get him to sign up for a microsoft account. No thanks. But he wasn't, he was in mail. I got him out of that.

And then came back.

Worked on a website for a guy, haven't done that in a long time. Pretty simple stuff, but he liked what I did, so I'll finish up the rest pretty quick. I did it in such a way as to make updating really easy.

Made a bunch of phone calls, tomorrow will be very busy. Very. Busy. I have four jobs to go to, plus visiting my parents and going over to RIT in the evening for the IV game.
Hopefully I'll find some time to eat something in there.

Then Saturday it's back to Sean's for the Demongate High game. No appointments on Saturday. I should have bumped someone over, but I hate to make people wait if I can avoid it.

Rainy. Been raining for hours. Don't go down four more degrees, please.

And that's about an end to February. Have to get some paperwork done, see how it compares to last year. My guess is- not favorably.

Anyway, see you all next week.