2014-05-01:

Fri:
Such a great day today, I wish I could have twenty more just like it in a row.

So I brought Squeaker to the vet who said he was healthy, but should have his teeth cleaned. He eats tons of dry food, I thought that was supposed to keep them clean? Anyway, of course they must sedate cats because no matter how patiently you explain things to them, trying to hold them down and clean their teeth just doesn't work.

That's not the problem.

The problem is the slight heart mummer we've known about for years. It could be some kind of heart condition, which would complicate the anesthetic. So they want to do a Cardiac Ultrasound… more accurately, he wants one performed as he doesn't. There's some Dr Homco who travels around doing them, and Thursday is her day in this area. Plus it's out in Mendon.

Oh, and guess how much this will cost? No, higher. Higher. Little lower. Right, $350-$400. Ouch.

Who knows what the cleaning will cost.

So after that I left to do some "work."

Went to get My Buddy's cartridges at Metro, but they were out of the color one. That means I'm going to have to go all the way back there. Fun.

I stopped at York as it is near the hotel I was going to put some "new computer" together for. One of their thin clients was dropping the lady's connection so I replaced it with a spare and hope that does it.

Over at the hotel I was presented with… not a new computer. But a newer one then the guy had. Of course it had that software that wipes all changes out installed on it, and who knew what the password to it was? Right, nobody.

So I had to reload it. Of course, it has Win7 Pro on it, and I only have Win7 Home. Unlike Vista, that had all versions together on one disk. "Ah, but Robert," you say, "Can't you do that 'windows anytime upgrade?'" I'm glad you asked! I could. It only needed to download 102 "updates" to make that happen. And believe me, their network is not what I would call "quick." I wouldn't call it slow, either. More like… barely there?

So while that tediously tried to do something, I looked at the second "new" computer, an Intel Core 2 Duo machine. I guess when notices are on the wall "Because revenue is down there is no OT for any staff member" you have to use what you have. But come on, replacing something ancient with something ancient?

That, at least, went better, as it was already loaded with what she needed, having been used elsewhere in the building before that.

Then she sprang the third "new" one on me, for a cook. This machine wasn't even as good as the one I had sold them YEARS ago, so I said, uh, no. I did check his machine out, much cleaner then the last time I looked at it. He said using some website on Sundays caused it to hang? I said use Firefox or Chrome.

Anyway, that made me late for my 4:00 by about an hour, where I stopped the foxit reader plugin from displaying PDFs in the browser. I did this because for some reason, it wasn't printing PDFs, just blank pages. Making them open with foxit worked great though.

So I made $30 dollars for a total of… I left at 12:00 ish? And I got home at 6? So, six hours of work. Oh sure, the hotel now owes me $200 for work I've done this month and last month, and I may see it sometime in June. But my vet bills are NOW. And I am doing some work on his laptop, so I'll get something for that, so it wasn't for nothing. Still.

Got a few calls today, so at least I'll have a little work for next week.

Started proofing and modifying No One to Blame, the ESPer detective story. I had a crazy idea about writing one book for each of Dean's 6 daughters. That would be crazy!

Sat:
More proofing and making changes to No One To Blame. Moved both laser printers downstairs, next to each other. The one can still be used for black, it's only the color that's really screwed up. And now I have a little more room upstairs.

Went to do Stan's game at 3:00, that went pretty good. We tracked the creature down and sadly it was destroyed, as they saw through my cunning plan to use illusion to trick them into thinking they were destroying it. They all have too high a REAson check. Oh well.

Sun:
Went over to my parent's house to get the laptop from the co-op lady. As I was walking out the door I was thinking "Why am I going all the way home, fixing it, then coming all the way back here by Tuesday so my parents can get it back on Wednesday? So I just cleaned it out there and came back here.

Made the changes to Book 3 that my mother caught. Thanks, mom.

Made the bookmarks, at least one batch of them. They came out… okay?

Some calls over the weekend, actually a pretty busy day tomorrow is planned. Which is good, real good.

Mon:
Pretty busy, a good start to the week. Shopping as normal.

After a slightly early lunch I went and dropped off the laptop I had worked on Friday. Also showed her how to rename the aspx file the website she was using gave her to a pdf file so it could be opened. Sigh.

The next one was actually a customer that owed me money, from two years ago because it was using the old rate, and this February would have used the new rate. She had both copies of the receipt so I never thought about it again. So I finally got paid for that job and cleaned up her machine. Mbam didn't find anything but combofix took out some stuff.

Then over to a bizarre Win8 boot message about some "the boot configuration data file is missing some required information" which, if you search has 213,000 results on google. Wow. Of course getting hold of a win8 disk is nearly impossible, so I had no tools to do anything about it. Toshiba did show the win8 options of refresh and whatnot by using the f12 key (which I had to look up because it didn't say anything onscreen about it) so I used that and then rebuilt the thing because it's not a "repair" like XP used to have. Ah, good old XP. You used to have "unmountable boot volume" all the time but at least that was pretty easy to fix. Is BCD error the new thing?

I'll have to look up how to get around this "no product key sticker" nonsense and figure out how to reload win8. Good move forward, MS. Way to make machines easier to repair and troubleshoot. Like taking safe mode away! So nice.

And that was that. Came back here, worked a little on rules for my combo game, if we ever play it, and made calls.

Super busy tomorrow!

Tues:
New ways for life to annoy! Let's get started.

Morning one went fine. Answered some questions, looked at two machines and generally got them back on track again, which was fine.

Back home I got a call that my 3:00 lost power because of a tree limb coming down, so she wanted to cancel. So I crossed my 3:00 off the calendar and figured I would go somewhere else at that time. However, what I didn't know is that I had double booked that time and the other 3:00 was patiently waiting for me. AARG.

The first one in the afternoon dragged on and on. He was using a p4 with 1GB of RAM to try and run Windows 7 but that wasn't the main problem. The main problem was his user/temp folder which had gobbled up literally all of his HD space. After almost 2 hours it had deleted about 30GB worth of crap and showed no signs of slowing down. I left after 2 and a half hours.

I went to Rochester Bath, as they are now called, but found nothing wrong with his machine at all.

Came home, ate dinner quickly and went back out at 5:00, another machine that had been taken over, but they all were ripped out and it went back to normal operation.

Got Mizzy's gift in, which is great because her birthday was today. Left it a little late, but at least I started painting it.

Got a bunch of calls today, so I have 4 again tomorrow. My Buddy on Thursday, as he's getting a new computer. Don't know how, he's whined about only getting $30 a month. Plus, shouldn't he be saving for this apartment he's supposed to be getting? And he's upset because he can't eat kosher, uh, got news for you, you've been there for months. Why is it becoming an issue now? But they won't let him have his microwave, so at least I don't have to lug that over there at the moment.

Then racing back here to call someone at 11:30 to see what she's gripping about, then leaving at 12:00 to take Squeaker in. Half an hour drive there, 40 minutes there, half an hour drive back.

Looking to be an action packed week.

Here's something reality could try- spreading it out more. I don't need a week of inactivity then a week of being so busy I can't think straight. Spread that stuff over the two weeks, okay?

Rainy and cold, and it looks like it's going to stay that way for some time.

Wed:
More steady rain and cold, but hey, it least it isn't piling up outside. But couldn't we ship some of it to California or something?

First one went fine. Pretty standard cleanout, didn't take that long.

Back home to eat lunch, then out again at 1:00 to help the book guy. Finally found a script to turn his folder full of rtf files into pdfs, so I didn't have to tediously do them one by one. Fixed the formatting and such, as usual.

It was the next one that gave me fits. One of those fake "you must pay a fine for looking at child porn" deals but I just couldn't find where it was. I still don't know. As I write this it's being scanned by mbam from another machine, 48,230 files scanned, 0 found.

So yeah, I took it home. He won't be back until Sunday anyway, so I have some time to figure out a plan for it. (Apart from blowing the thing up)

Then the last one just needed to be re-setup as I'm pretty sure she ran the restore procedure. It had a 2010 Norton on it, which was the clue. So that one at least went okay. OH OH, this lady was my third- count them, THIRD customer from the ad I've had in for a year and a half. It's super paying off now!

Came back here finally, made calls, a very busy day tomorrow is planned. My Buddy says his "kidneys are shutting down" but he previously told me (like a year ago?) that his kidney function was down to like 30% so, whatever, dude. But tomorrow is the big day! Getting his new PC… for some bizarre reason.

Then a couple of jobs when I get back with Squeaker. Did a bit more painting, mostly touchups.

And malwarebytes crashes. Wonderful. Quality software there, my friends.

Looked into the procedure for reloading windows 8 (because MS has made it so easy and intuitive. NOT) Perhaps one day my selfless giving up of my own free time shall be rewarded. (dreaming)

Rescued a mouse from Squeaker. He's bleeding a little, and the seed I had left went bad. Really, really bad. Like a ton of moths hatched from it and spun silk all through the package. The top was solid with the stuff. Ugh. I gave him some mouse eaty-things and we'll see if he's alive in the morning.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

Thurs:
Little mouse made it through the night. He's not looking so good though, both his eyes are closed. I guess we'll just keep a watch on him and see what happens.

Got My Buddy's new computer in, which didn't have wireless so I couldn't really do anything with it. Good thing too, he already wants to take it back! Yup, the mouse is too hard to use with his messed up hands so he's now getting a laptop instead. Moron. He didn't even have it three hours before he called me. Oh, and he can't see the screen (which he hooked up to his TV).

Squeaker came through well, he has a slight valve problem, probably a birth defect that doesn't need to be medicated. Rather then a thickening or thinning of the heart muscle. So that's a good sign. Also it wasn't as expensive as the vet said, which is another win. She was a true professional. Is that how people see me using their computers? I mean that was a complex instrument with a ton of dials, functions, and capabilities. She used it like a champ. I salute her rating in that skill, and the XP used to attain it. Plus your higher PER.

He cried at me the whole time there and back through.

Then eating and out again for my 3:00. Making a spreadsheet for a guy, a very simple one. Back here, worked on the "warning" pc some more. Downloaded a tool I had never heard of that will boot the machine itself and run a scan. I left it running. Out at 5:10 to see about some issues with an XP machine. I got it running, it was my favorite "unmountable boot volume" and installing the software for their printer.

Back here again the scan I did actually found something, and when I rebooted the machine, the malware was gone. How about that.

Only two jobs tomorrow, oddly. One at 10:00 and the lady who lost power at 3:00.

Looks like me might be doing the Wanderers game this Saturday. I have one job for Saturday, too.

So this week was pretty good, money wise.

See everyone next week, same PC repair time, same PC repair station.

And your gibberish for this week:

He cried at the hotel I was his kidney function so I had all the last one job and them, trying it out how to get somethings and figure out, the book for worked on it, and capabilities. She used to keep a watch of crap and such, as it becoming a spare and modifying PDFs in the this "kidneys are closed. I gave me money, from displaying to hold of heard of heart mummer we've know how, he's upset becoming a new thin clients can still be rewarded. (dreaming)