2014-03-20:

Fri:
Busy day. Got over to Rebath/Rochester Bath and he said things were okay for the moment and they had been. But there was a printer issue? But the reason I had gone there, the pickup of some piece of equipment, didn't happen. Sigh.

So I went on to my 10:00, and it was a pretty standard clean out.

Then over to my parent's house early, as I was passing there and it would have taken me a half hour to drive past there, home, and then back. So I would have been home fifteen minutes before I had to leave again. Big deal.

They weren't there, so I petted their fuzzy and waited.

Had lunch, did my taxes and as I expected, after deductions and IRA contributions I made zero dollars last year. Fun!

So I only owed "self employment tax" of $2000 odd dollars, and had overpaid by… some amount. Super. Better news- I owned nothing, and got a credit from the state. So I won't send them anything this year.

Saw deer.

Then had dinner, got presents, thank you everyone for that.

Came back and worked on the website. Realized I hadn't updated it since last year, as according to them that the third Demongate High book wasn't even in progress yet, and it's finished! So I reorganized that a little, and made it make more sense.

It was then about 9:30 but I did get in a little Valkyria Chronicles playtime in before bed. Three appointments tomorrow and Sean, so it's going to be a busy day there too. Hope it goes well!

Sat:
Very busy day! Went to three places, set up a new machine, that took about an hour and a half. Just stuck his old HD into the new case. Love it when the old machine isn't so ancient as to still use PATA, it speeds the transfer process tremendously. Plus he can now have a whole drive dedicated to his page file. He already had a backup, otherwise I would have used it for that.

Then the second one was supposed to be a setup… but it was an ancient machine that still used PATA. He wanted to use an old SATA drive from another machine and I told him- uh, no. So I took his HD and fitted it into one of these clunker systems I had on my breezeway (the lesser one, nach) to get rid of it. Hey, I'm not charging him anything for it. So I got that started, pulling his files off it so I could properly reload XP onto the thing.

Then lunch. Then out to do a cleanout, the usual crap I'm seeing now that's popular with all the mustache twirling nefarious types.

Then over to Sean's for… one board game. It took awhile to get it set up and get a flow going, but once we figured it out it moved along. I lost terribly. I did something that tied my hands later in the game so if I ever play it again I'll have a much better strategy in mind. But that one I did not think through.

Oh well.

Sun:
Played Valkyra Chronicles. It's okay. The way they've broken up the (minor number of) skirmishes with the animated bits is interesting. The battles seem like they have one thing they want you to do, and if you don't do it, you die. I replayed one battle three times and the last time I did one thing, blowing up a sandbag line, that tipped the whole thing in my favor. Having watched the anime, the animated bits seem rather poorly done, but they're 3D models, not cell shading. So it's not really fair to compare them.

The last battle I played was very annoying, and I beat it mostly by luck. One dude, and I mean one dude, was just standing there killing all my troops. I could not hit the guy. I fired rockets at him, regular bullets, nothing. I was even in a trench. When I finally managed it I had my tank and two soldiers left on the field. And I scraped by a victory at literally the last second. One more turn and it would have been over.

Oh yeah, and I think most of the people in my squad are drunks. I mean there's this tank, right? Facing away from me, so the glowy bit is towards me. I roll my tank up the center, knowing I can take that enemy tank out in one shot by hitting the back.

THREE TIMES I missed that sucker. I had to literally roll up behind it and fire at point blank range to destroy it. Luckily the other side is just as bad, if not worse. That tank just sat there, then rolled around uselessly (not attacking anything), and then went back to facing the wrong direction for two full rounds. They must have known I was there, I was shooting at them! Huh?

Oh, and that's to say nothing of the gate I was supposed to be guarding. I had crippled a tank in front of it and rolled up behind it to take it out, right? Missed that sucker AND HIT MY OWN GATE which tore it apart, ending the mission. Nice job, fellows. You couldn't get a bead on a stationary tank.

At least I'll have plenty of war stories to tell the grandchildren, right?

Mon:
Today shared many things with me to complain about. I did the shopping as normal, dropped off my empty ink cartridges and found one for $13 to fulfill the staples requirements. That went fine. The bank teller I worked for (the first one, not the second one) had her twin girls in the snowstorm and they are fine.

But the afternoon- oh, how I loathed you, afternoon. I went out to my 1:00 and stood out in the cold. I rang the bell. I heard a TV in the background, or radio, so I knew she was there. I knocked. I rang some more. I called her. I waited. I rang. I called again. Nothing. Waited there 15 minutes and left. Thanks lady. She called me three times after that, the last time apologizing for "missing me yesterday" uh, lady, I got news for you, it was today.

She probably fell asleep and didn't want to admit it.

So I went over to the lawyers place to get the screen put back on from where she broke the hinge off. She had brought in her other machine that needed cleaning out. It was doing the whole "a million internet radio stations" thing which usually clears right up. Not this time. Spent from about 2:00 to like 5:00 trying different things. Narrowed it down to a certain dll file (I think?) Replaced said file with another copy. (Windows likes to keep around about 8 different copies of files for whatever bizarre reason) Then it would only boot to a black screen with a cursor. Put original file back. No change. Ran sfc which "couldn't repair certain files." Really? What's the point of you then? Stupid PCs. Of course I can't just do a "repair" like I could (you know, on a Mac) or with XP, I have to reload the whole thing.

She said she didn't think there was anything on the machine… I guess 25GB of files is "nothing" where she comes from? Got all her files off the thing (some of which wouldn't copy, great going NTFS) and it's finally reloading.

Have I mentioned I hate windows?

So tomorrow I get to go back to the missing lady, and hope she's conscious this time, then in the afternoon I have one other job. We'll see how far I get tonight reloading this one, it may also go back tomorrow. I'll finish it after my first job if I don't get it down now.

Oh, also got the laser unit for the Xbox 360 that was dropped off. Apparently you can't just drop it in place of the old one. They put this solder ball on it that you have to scrape off before the laser will work. WHY? WHY WHOULD THEY DO THAT? Of course I didn't know this until I put it back together (not all the way, I'm not stupid you know) and it still didn't work. So I had to look up how to install it. Some included directions might have been nice, fellows!

So that was today! About 18 degrees out, but somewhat sunny. Hopefully much warmer tomorrow.

Tues:
I forgot to mention earlier, props to Kodak, of all places. Most companies, and I've complained about this before, have on their websites a million different software downloads. This is for your "convenience" like the straps on the dentist chair tying you down. Wait, your dentist doesn't have those? Weird. Anyway, I needed to load a printer and went to the Kodak website where they offered exactly ONE download. I momentarily panicked, this was not how things were supposed to go. But after downloading said package and running it, I realized the tool was going to go get the proper drivers for the printer I had, itself. It did, and without a lot of prompting, installed what the printer needed.

I was floored. Here's a company that finally gets it, I thought to myself.

Unlike dell, that to this day offers machines with different hardware inside despite the fact the model number is the same, forcing you to hunt through a list of drivers to try and find the one you need.

How fantastic would it be if Dell (and others) offered a single download which probed the system, downloaded and installed the drives you needed, and did this with no interaction? No downloading half a dozen little files. No opening each one, tediously, telling them where to unpack, then running them, then hitting next a bunch of times for the "fancy" installer, repeat.

I'll tell you. VERY fantastic. Possibly even a light fantastic. I'm not sure where that came from, I remember hearing it somewhere?

Anyway, went back to the lady from yesterday, her machine was just stuck on "Shutting Down" so I powered it off and back on. The way she was talking (and I asked her) it wasn't coming on at all. Why can't people say what their actual problem is? Right, too easy.

Anyway, she was trying to run Vista with only 1GB of RAM, making her machine painfully slow to use. I sold her some more, shouted THE MEMORY HAS BEEN DOUBLED and left.

Back here I finished up the laptop, read a little bit, had lunch, and went out at 2:30 to return said laptop. She said one of the fans in the desktops was making noise so I had to go back there after my 3:00 dropping off the tower I had fixed up. She said she had paid (well, he had) $150 for the piece of junk desktop that I wouldn't even refurbish and sell for $40. I would just scrap it, that thing sucked.
Maybe next time call me before you pay half the cost of a brand new machine? I mean, $150 is what I wanted for my old PC gaming machine with two video cards and a brand new SSD.

Anyway, back to the law firm, was oiling all the fans and he finally agreed to get a new machine, so I come home and ordered the parts. I'm building it myself, not easy to get an SSD in a big box model, and I wanted to use up some old parts I had laying around. Like this processor that's brand new, I've been carrying that sucker around since 2008. It's a Dual 2Ghz processor, so with 3GB of RAM and an SSD that'll be plenty fast for her needs. Plus the other SSD I ordered will pep up her other machine. A bit of work moving everything around, but it'll be worth it for them. Hopefully I can take the machines on a Friday night and get them back Monday morning.

Wed:
No jobs. Nada. Nothing.

But I did get the hard drive for the laptop from last week, so I did get that installed and loaded up.

Otherwise I played more V.C. and did a spot of writing, old bean. Up to 31,536 words and I'm partway through chapter 11. I skipped one of the ideas I had because I wasn't sure how to make it work. And I wasn't too pleased with how chapter 10 was shaping up, but I guess it worked out in the end. I don't know, I'll have to read it through to know I guess. It's not that it's jarring, but I wonder if it fits. I wanted to do something with the bully, and take away Dean's toys and force him to rely on just his innate skills. But does it move the story forward? I try to put in a little clue or something related to the greater plot in each chapter. I'm still not sure if I can do that here, and if I should worry about it.

Made a heaping helping of both stickers and magnets, to sell at the shops.

Three jobs for tomorrow, one of which is dropping off the laptop. Another is setting up a replacement Mac for one with a failing screen, and setting up a printer.

Raining at the moment, let's see that snow disappear overnight!

Thurs:
IT DIDN'T. In fact we added some more snow today. Well, it snowed a bit, but it didn't stick.

Got 13 calls today for no discernible reason. Yes, I had sod all to do Wednesday but today I get all these phone calls. What?

Busy today though, went in the morning and set up the new iMac. Forgot new machines don't have firewire, so I had to copy his files over via ethernet. It worked, finally, but I was there two hours. Have to pick up a firewire adapter for thunderbolt.

Back here, with his old iMac, an even older iMac, and another customer's machine. I'll put the iMac that works, but is slightly newer then mine, down in place of mine to do maps on. (I have one with the messed up display, and so I have a monitor next to it. I can get rid of that now) The other one with the busted screen I'm not sure how I'll proceed. It would cost $200 for the part to replace it, plus some suction cups to lift the glass off the front. But I could probably get $500 for it on ebay. Selling a Mac though, it just seems wrong.

Took care of the PC, then went back out. Set up the printer and answered a few questions for the lady.

Then dropped the laptop off.

Possibly going to Sean's twice this week because Neil is around. No idea about Friday, haven't heard back about that.

So from all the calls today I have three for tomorrow, one for Saturday, and I think two for Monday. Things are looking up!

Got the smaller, older iMac set up, with the files I copied from my even smaller, older, iMac. The larger screen has already come in handy, as I viewed a customer's screen and did not have to move my virtual display back and forth.

Looked into health care, it may not cost me anything because I make, like, $0 per year now.

I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad about that.

Anyway, happy first day of spring. Enjoy the second day of spring, it might be sunny and 40. But don't get used to it, Saturday is back to nasty.