2014-05-22:

Fri:
Waited around to have the water meter changed. He was in and out, nothing to it. Watched more Familiar of Zero, got to the last season, so my notes on what did happen should be complete, and I can start working on what will happen.

Did my one job, checking three machines over. Nothing too strenuous there.

Then went to visit my parents, showed my mother the bypass tray on her printer. Then came back here.

Sat:
Got the lawn mower started, did the front, the back can wait another week.
Did the one job at 2:00, just checking two machines over. One laptop needs a new battery, of course it can't just be a standard battery, it has to have leads on it. So instead of a $1.00 battery, I got to order at $10.00 battery and get to go back sometime.

Game went pretty well, we didn't stop until after 12:00 which was a good sign. We captured the guy kid who was making trouble in town, and didn't blow up anything to do it. Go us?

Sun:
Watched Season 4 of Friendship is Magic, as promised. Got through the whole thing, and yes, it became Dragon Ball Z, further lending evidence to my First Rule that states everything becomes Dragon Ball Z. But they brought back a very classic villain, though in a quite different way then he was originally portrayed.

Busy day planned tomorrow, four in the afternoon! One is only three minutes away from another, which I always like happening.

Mon:
Pretty standard day, meaning about half of everything went right.

Shopping was done as usual, no troubles there. After going everywhere last week, it seemed I wasn't buying anything this week.

Then out to jobs. The first one at 12:00 was cleaning two machines out. The newer machine took more then a half hour to run Mbam. This was a brand new, windows 8 machine. I was sitting there tediously watching it and wondering why in heaven's name it was taking so long, and I looked at the speed. 1.3 Ghz. Ouch. They must have put a crappy hard drive in there too for it to take that long. And I mean crappy. Remember, the speed to beat is less then two minutes, done on a machine with an SSD.

In any case, my next one was at 2:00, and I had written the directions down as though I was at my 6:00 one at the time, because I am dumb. So I thought it was three minutes away, but my GPS said it was more like 25 minutes away. Sigh. So I went over there. Two of her capacitors were shot, making her machine useless. I told her I had a vista machine that needed a hard drive, did she just want that one. She took it, so I brought the machine home and got that ready. She was going out so I could not bring it back to her at 5:30, so I could do the two close ones together. Sigh.

The next one was just a spelling error, he put in smpt-server instead of smtp-server in his email client. Silly.

The last one was just talking over options for two new machines to get with some people. I nudged them towards Macs, and they said they had other family members that had switched too, and were happy about it. So that might be okay.

Then back here, made calls, reached about half the people, and I have a few to do in the afternoon tomorrow, as well as a router issue in the morning. So that shouldn't be too bad.

Finished Familiar of Zero so I can start writing some notes about that one. Got a check for $175.80 from the hotel, thank you very much! Wow, they finally paid me for the job I did in November of LAST YEAR. What is their accounting department DOING?????? They still owe me $100. Sheesh.

My paperback says shipped, so hopefully I'll get it soon.

And that's all.

Tues:
And it came! WOOHOO. It's such an odd size, why do they only offer this size? It's not a book like every other book I have on my shelves. Looked it over.

Oh my goodness, it's crap.

I mean, really. Somehow I changed font sizes in the middle of chapter 6. Just suddenly, *bloop* the font size changes. Plus I went from justified with trailing lines to just align left from one chapter to another. Huh? Then I found I somehow was still using an old name that was wrong, don't ask me how that happened.

So I read it over carefully, fixed a bunch of the errors, (okay I fixed all of them) and put in a new revision. Also fixed the ebook, as that had the same problems. Man, that was weird.

Oh, and I did some work? Let's see, close by in the morning was the guy's router acting up a bit. Got his old parallel printer plugged in, just general stuff like that.

A cleanout, nothing odd there. Returning the traded system for the one that had bad capacitors. And at the end of the day an all in one system that wasn't powering on. I thought maybe I could open it up and look inside, but I couldn't figure out how. It was under warranty, so I just told him to take it to best buy, where he had bought it.

Made some phone calls, and worked on getting the next revision done. Got through the whole thing, but it was 12:30ish at that point, so I went to bed.

Wed:
Only two jobs today. In the morning I got the new files submitted, and got another softcover proof winging its way towards me.

Let's see, the first job was a cleanout, though there wasn't really anything wrong with her machine other then age. It was a 1.4Ghz machine, what can you expect from it?

Oddly, the machine I set up at 6:00 was about that slow, and it's brand new. Some all in one Lenovo, that was crazy slow. Sure, it had dual processors, but it was a desktop machine with a laptop processor. A processor that sat so far down on speed tests as to be nonexistent. How can companies even sell such crap? I mean, really?

Oh, wait, I did have a third job, at 9:30 I went down the street. He said his printer wasn't printing, it was. I also had to unplug his speakers and plug them back in. Money maker.

The rest of the day was spent getting book 2 around. I am doing the smart thing and going over the PDF with a fine tooth comb before sending it to Lulu. Oh my goodness, so many errors. Like, did I actually proofread this book at all errors! Yipes.

But at least I know now how the image on the screen will be translated to the physical thing, so I redid the margins a little and I think it'll look a bit better. I think, however, that I still did them wrong. My margins were .45 but looking at the nice email they sent me about globalREACH distribution, they say margins should be at least .5 on each side. Also that left and right margans should be the same, and mine weren't. I made the left one much further over to keep it away from the spine. So even when I approve the proof, I may still have to do it all over. The second one wouldn't be so bad, but I would have to really reformat the first one. Well, I guess we'll see what they say. I did redo the template to match what they said, so at least 2.5 on will be right. 

Thurs:
Three places I went today. All in the afternoon. Spent the morning going over my PDF and finding more errors. But I finally believed I got it to a good place, and at least made the ebook version of it available. I'll probably print all the book proofs at once, save on the shipping costs. I should have them done soon, and it's not like people are scrambling to read my stuff. It only takes a few days (while doing other things) to get one done, after all. And there's only five more.

On the lulu page, it says they've helped self publish 1,647,698 books. That's what I'm up against. Sheesh.

So, I answered various questions for the guy with the ancient Mac, that only took a half hour. Then went over to the accountant guy. Moved one of his employes to a different room, and hooked them up with second video cards so they could do two monitors. The one machine I was not happy with at all, it just sort of went black after showing the icons for a split second after booting. I could see the mouse, I knew they were both working. Updated the drivers and that finally fixed it.

Then delivered the battery I ordered about a week ago and got paid for that job. Done.

Finished up the Lulu stuff for book 2 and started looking at book 2.5, getting that ready to go.

Busy day tomorrow, one in the morning, two in the afternoon, plus seeing my parents.

No game this week? Haven't heard anything. Oh well, more time to work on books I guess?

Finally getting some sunshine, and a little warmth around here. Oh look, it's gone, not even going to be 60 tomorrow. Oh well.

That about does it for this week.

Apart from your weekly gibberish:

The last season, so I went to another lending everything it to go.

But at least I knew they only take it can't just suddenly, *bloop* the directions down there. Oh well.

Then I found I meaning why do two machine other the shipping went from another, which was not bring it back somehow was about a week.
Did my stuff. It was a cleanout, the front, they were both working. Oh look inside, but it to order at 5:30, so many errors. Like, did happy about does it for a spelling errors! Yipes.