2014-09-11:

Fri:
Toshiba! Leading Innovation- Right down the toilet.

So I got this laptop dropped off at 9:30. It seemed to exhibit the same symptom as the win7 machine I worked on for hours earlier this week. That being that all the network stuff had exclamation points and wouldn't work. Funky! Could it be some kind of virus? But what virus would cut off its own Internet access? Well, I ran sfc /scannow just for kicks.It told me that certain files had indeed been repaired and upon reboot it would replace them.

So I rebooted.

And guess what greeted me? Our old friend the sad face, which is the "new and improved" BSOD (I originally wrote BSOF by accident, blue screen of fail, I like it) with our old buddy (not Bruce) IRQL_Less_Then_Or_Equal. I haven't seen you in ages my friend!

So then it took me ten minutes of looking crap up to find out how to boot the machine from CD. Apparently you have to hold F2 before you hit the power button, and keep holding it. This will let you into the bios options so you can change the boot order so the CD comes first. Why this wasn't the option in the first place… I don't know. Wow, 30 years and you still can't match "hold down the option/C key" that the Mac has ALWAYS enjoyed. But I digress.

So I booted my win8.1 CD hoping against hope that it would allow me to upgrade the 8 that was on there. NOPE. You have to do that from within windows. Which I can't boot anymore because it BSOD instantly. So I got to reload the sucker. As a funny note, it's already been reloaded at least once, because I noticed a windows.old from before while I was looking at the HD. HAHAHA. Can't wait to see the FAIL that's windows 9, at the current rate of decent, it'll crash through the Earth and emerge out the other side, thinking it's back in the air again.

How long should it be "getting ready"?

I hate not having the light for activity on PC machines. You can never tell if they're actually doing something or not. See, Macs don't need them because they just do stuff, and you don't have to wonder. PCs sit there and spin their wheels (or not) and you have no clue if something will eventually happen, or if it's stuck. On the plus side, the little light for the wireless connection (which is totally necessary I'm sure) is now amber rather than off, so that's progress, right?

IT FINALLY GOT PAST IT! FLEXINGTON!

Oh, sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah, it finally booted up normally, and stuff is installing. Looks like it won't take all freaking day after all. Just 3 hours.

Hey, at least I got to do so in the comfort of my own home, right? So I love my job now, right?

Making a lot of assumptions there…

Went out to the lady with the printer issue. Well, it was a print head issue, as before. We think we changed it once before. I suggested a laser printer, as they aren't much more and typically last a lot longer. She agreed. Especially because of all the refurbished printheads on ebay. HP must get tons of them back?

Some drama at Heather's house, it was believed a cat had gotten out, and he hadn't. So that happened.

Unloaded the stuff I brought over and set it up. Hope at least something sells.

And in more positive news regarding money, my fund made up almost all it had lost! I'm now only down $3 rather than twenty. Because it made up 20.95 today. How about that? See, that's why you can't panic over one day. I shouldn't even look at it apart from maybe once a week.

Have two jobs for tomorrow, a setup/cleanout I guess because his newish machine is infected? And moving someone away from their ancient PC and setting up their new iMac.

Played more FF7. Beat the Pagada, and with no cheating this time. Money is much tighter, at least it was. I've been fighting through a bunch of areas and not buying anything, so I think I'm set for gold again. Go Yuffie!

Sat:
Went out in the morning to do the cleanout. That went fine, even sold a USB wireless adapter for his old machine.

It was the next one that was annoying. Mostly because of Time Warner. Took about an hour on the phone (after being cut off and having to call again) to get his new modem hooked up. Ugh. Three hours total there, but at least the new iMac is set up and working. He wants me to come back next week to answer any follow up questions.

Played FF7, duh.

Sun:
And again today, just about all day. Got to the final dungeon, where I am currently grinding for AP, that stuff that makes my stuff go yay! Apart from some annoying enemies that attack in an annoying configuration (and they are becoming less annoying as time goes on and my materia levels) it's going great. I missed buying ONE earth spell. So I have every green Materia mastered except that one. I'm going to have to leave the dungeon, go buy one, then come back… if I want to get a master Matera for magic. I'm not sure I want to bother.

Anyway, grind grind grind.

Got no calls today, but a few over the weekend. So I have two for tomorrow, setting up a router after someone tried and totally messed everything up, and picking up a laptop to change the screen on it.

Shopping of course, in the morning.

Mon:
Shopping went normally, no surprises there. Did get my ink cartridges in and the next one bought. I bought the same one as I had to sell for the lady I'm setting the printer up for tomorrow, as I figure they might sell better as a set of 2x black and all color.

Jobs went fairly easily. Set up a used router for the first lady, and she is going to take the terrible Apple router back. She only has an iPad, no other Apple products. Heck, even people with Apple products don't need to pay the big bucks for that crappy piece of plastic. I charged her 10x less for mine, so I hope she's grateful.

Then picked up the laptop with the busted screen. Be about $100 for the screen, $10 for the power adapter she couldn't find, and labor.

And played more FF7. Got my Materia raised how I wanted, and then went and beat Emerald weapon… normally. Not even using Knights of Round and Mimic (neither of which I have) I just beat it into submission. Wow, this many years later and I can finally say I did it, and with only a minimal glitch exploit to make more elixirs to fight Magic Pots.

Now on to Ruby weapon, and we'll see how I do there.

Not many calls, but I do have two for tomorrow. Three, actually, I keep forgetting to get back to book guy.

Tues:
Book guy couldn't do today, so I'm going there tomorrow.

Otherwise the day went as expected. Both jobs were not that bad. The one lady just down the street who said her machine wouldn't come on… went on with the first press of the button. Huh.

Then over to install the printer, which went fine. Is HP not pushing a million different softwares to install anymore? If so I applaud their decision. Oh, there was still a lot of crap to uncheck, but not as much as there once was.

Watched the new Apple hardware being announced. New phones, a new way to pay with phones that probably won't catch on very well because it's Apple only, and an watch for $350 that requires an iPhone. It looks pretty interesting… for $50. For $350 I would rather have a $200 iPod Touch… and $150. Oh well.

Won FF7. Not like it was hard, I was way too overpowered for the end boss. As Cloud had killed Ruby weapon by himself, Sephy was looking a mite weak. I killed the "one winged angel" in two actions. Yuffie 4x shotted him and Cloud pounded the heck out of him with his Limit Break. Done.

Now it's back to writing so I can finish the current world Susan is in and get to the FF7 world!

Some calls today, one person looking for dad. Everyone else I didn't reach. So there's still only 2 for tomorrow. Book guy and before that a cleanout.

Then get back to writing. Even put in a little twist, but didn't get through chapter 23. There's always tomorrow, as a young reindeer once sang.

Wed:
Today started out fine, anyway. Finished chapter 23, that was good.

Got my mail, oh look, I have jury duty next month. That's what I didn't need. I did have some fun filling the form out.

"Name of employer: Self Employed"
"How much will your employer pay you while you are on jury duty: NOTHING"
"What is your hourly wage: I DON'T CHARGE BY THE HOUR"
"If you did not have jury duty, what would your work schedule be for the next 7 days: START TIME 9:30 AM FINISH TIME 9:00 PM"

And they're still giving only $40, the same as in 2006 when they called me the first time. $64 would be minimum wage, and thanks to inflation that $40 is worth less 8 years later. Don't even know why they bother, but I guess it's half of what I need to make every day…

First appointment was quick, the machine is still basically new, and just needed to be cleaned out. She didn't have any checks, so I couldn't be paid. She's been a customer for some time, I'm sure she'll get it to me.

Went to pick some stuff up as I had time before my 3:00.

Book guy was trying to be "helpful" and made PDFs from his RTF files… and threw all his RTF files away. Then he wants changes made to a couple, and there's some pages missing. Of course. So as he's so screwed up his computer so many times he's got folders inside folders that are all the same, so I managed to retrieve some older copies of RTF files and put them in place of the PDF files. Went through and got rid of the blank pages. Of course the little applescript program I made is also missing, but luckily I found it on the web again without too much effort this time.

Made the PDFs, he's going to make me another page that's missing, and the last 6 pages that didn't have equivalents over again.

Of course I lost my flash drive that I had put the stuff on between his house and mine. No clue where it went. Just vanished. I wanted it right away, I wasn't home long. Maybe I did set it down over there and just don't remember. Would I have walked off with it? I was rather perturbed, making no money on a job will do that to me. I just charged him for the copies, not that I could recall how much per page I charged him last time. He gave me a little extra because there were a few more pages now. Whatever. Mailed him to look, he mailed me the missing page, I mailed him what about my flash drive, he said he didn't get it, what does it look like, I mailed him back and haven't heard. Sweet.

Noticed (again) the little flappy part that's flappy on my car because the bolt rusted away. I noticed it earlier but forgot it, but I didn't this time. Was trying very carefully to find another bolt that might hold it up and brushed against the exhaust pipe and burned myself.

My fund has lost a total of $42.

Wonderful. Wonderful day. Got a few calls, so I'm collecting more junk tomorrow, then heading to see about a possible broken monitor. Didn't reach two people.

Oh good, my flash drive was over there. When did I set it down? Stupid of me. At least I'm heading in that direction tomorrow anyway. I guess I'm only losing it a little, rather than a lot.

Worked on chapter 24 and almost finished 25. Susan gets to meet Silverstreak!

Thurs:
Is this week over yet?

So I got the stuff from the church, an ancient XP machine and printer. One empty cartridge, so that's worth $2.00. My 11:00 just had a loose power cable on her monitor. And an antivirus 402 days out of date. So I saved her some money there and ran some scans, cleaned out old stuff.

Picked up the flash drive I left at the book guy's place. Started running those copies off… and ran out of toner printing the last copy. Did 2500+ sheets with the starter cartridge, so that's pretty good!

The biker guy said his laptop, despite having a fresh copy of 8.1 put on days ago "had popups all over the place" and probably made it worse screwing around rather then, at the first sign, calling me and having me take a look. So he's bringing that back tomorrow. So I get to possibly reload the thing for the third (total) time.

Couple of calls today, Friday would have been great but with the car thing, I have no idea how long it'll take. So I have some for Saturday and if I get it back soon enough, I'll call the others.

Started reloading the machine I got along with the other stuff, as I found a Vista license I could on it, and hope that makes it sell a little better.

Put in the screen on the laptop, and did the 176 updates it needed. Honestly, don't you people ever do any updates? Ever? At least the display worked out, it looks good, and went in pretty easy.

My fund is… well, it's still down by $26 but at least it gained today rather than losing more. So that's a positive.

Dad fixed my snowblower, so a big thank you to him. I couldn't have done it. One part was really seized up, he had to chop it up to get the thing apart. So I'm ready for that snow we'll be getting next week or whenever. (As one place got 8 inches today. No lie. Unless they're lying about it. Filthy snow liars.)

Not sure about game this week. Sean texted me… yesterday? Today? Who knows. About it, but nothing since then.

Got chapter 26 done, and Susan returns to the world of Zero for the showdown with the Ancient Dragon. She got her new toys, skills, and a background, so she's riding high. She just has to take out a military base to get the hardware they need to bring it down. It'll be a snap.

Going to bed early so I can get up early tomorrow. Should be fun.

Have a great weekend everyone.