2014-10-30:

Fri:

Dropped off the PC, but that wasn't the end of the story as the monitor they had didn't work. As my next one was at 10:30ish I went over there. Just cleaning her machine out. Got her router set up right, answered some questions, the usual. She gave me an old laptop and a Sony e-reader, which I'm not sure works. I started charging it, and the screen went on, but there's some weird error message on the screen which I can't read, as it's covered up by a big circle with some arrows on it. Can't make it do anything.

I think the battery is dead?

Then lunch, and back out to sell the guy a monitor. Which I did. Waited for my 3:00 about a half hour in her driveway because I was early, and that was also a pretty far gone machine. Had to run every scan on it before it started behaving. Also set up an old laptop that had lost the backlight, got a modern anti-virus and such on it.

By then it was nearly 6:00. Came home, got the stuff to bring to my parent's house. Went over there, saw my father.

Came back here, Ellen has somehow gotten her camera in Japanese. She said she would be home Friday after 3:00, so I called her at 7:00. No answer. She emailed and called me, but then isn't around when I call her. Typical.

Sat:

Still didn't reach her, so that was that I guess. 

Cleaned up some around here. Watched the first episode of Constantine, it was pretty good. Also watched Dr Who and some new Legend of Korra. Played Borderlands to the point the group is up to, and went to bed early. 

Oh, turned on the laser toy for the cats, as I hadn't let them play with that in a long time. (they had gotten bored with it and didn't play anymore) Well, the laser lit up all right, but it didn't move at all. Sigh. Took it apart, poked at it with my volt meter, loosed and tightened various screws… now the laser doesn't even work! AARG, I made it worse. That's two different laser toys that have busted after very light use. Stupid things, I should go the Ben Heck route and get a microcontroller and some motors and somehow make my own. Yeah, that's the… this will never happen.

Sun:

Cleaned up the leaves from the back, finished just as it started to rain. Still many, many more to go.

Then wrote the next Susan chapter, as I figured I better get back into that before it gets away from me forever.

After that I played a bit of Darksiders 2, the free game for having a Gold account. I'm not so sure about it, having spent ten minutes falling and climbing the same wall, trying to get past a certain point. The controls… not the best.

Did a bit of xmas shopping, as the company has bombarded me with about 5 offers in the last month.  I thought perhaps if I actually ordered, they would stop. We'll see.

Some calls over the weekend, but didn't reach everyone. I have a bit of work M-T-W with T-W just having one thus far. One is Ellen, one of my favorite people ever. 

Ever.

Last week of October- GO!

Mon:

Did the shopping as usual. Put money into my IRA, bought oil for the car, brought in another printer and used up my $20 staples money, and got food. Oh, and gas for the lawnmower/snow blower. 

The first job was pretty quick. She was having email trouble, getting error messages about messages not existing or something. I used the webmail to erase her mail and start it over.

I called a guy as I had gotten a bunch of calls by then, oddly, and went over there rather than, you know, sit around here and play video games or whatever. Yucky Vista Basic machine, which was online but wouldn't allow any traffic apart from pings to actually pass. He also called what he thought was AVG who then gave him another number which turned out to be some scammy tech support place? It wasn't Microsoft like he said, it was just some place with a weird Facebook page. I don't know, he didn't go to the AVG website and get their support number he just searched the internet or something and called some random number that looked right? Because… he couldn't wait a day, got scammed out of a bunch of money and still had to have me over. Yeah. Moron. 

Oh yeah, turned out the problem was AVG all along. Even turning off the "firewall" didn't help. Uninstalling it didn't help, it got half way through and gave an error message. Not an error message "hey, something happened, I'll keep going and take out as much as I can." No, "Something happened, I'm stopping." I had to use the other machine, download the removal tool, and use that. Why isn't the removal tool the actual uninstaller? The world may never know. Any case, once it was gone, boom, browsers worked again. Another AVG victory. Not.

Then at 7:00 I had another quick job, which he couldn't articulate as usual. Despite the fact the error message quite clearly told him what was wrong. I do admit, our software should be a little more robust. I mean someone programmed that error, and the fix was quite simple, couldn't the program itself have offered to do that thing? I guess not.

Many calls today, and I got the HD in for the psychiatrist. So a pretty busy day tomorrow, and I'm picking up her machine Wednesday and giving it back at *shudder* 8:30 AM on Thursday. Yuck. At least I won't have to go 590 at that hour.

Played some more Darksiders 2 and went to bed.

Tues:

Have to hand it to AOL, their customer service is direct. 

They hang up on you directly. The first guy's main problem was his AOL account being taken over, and he couldn't regain control because it wouldn't take his secondary info. So there's a variety of numbers to call, we tried some of them. One just said "we can't answer your call now, try again later." and hung up. This is after going through all the prompts. So yeah, AOL, the sooner you are gone from the world, the better.

Next guy just wanted his laptop gone over before he leaves for Florida. I agreed it was a bit non-responsive while browsing and ordered him some more RAM.

And finally the really long one. Honestly, if my 7 year old Mac was as slow as her fairly new dell, I would immediately look into buying a new machine. How can she stand it? Anyway, she (more then likely) infected herself with a piece of software that encrypted all her files. She had a backup… that someone had copied the encrypted files to? Huh? Okay, that's useful. Anyway, ran ccleaner and it was just taking forever so I look, and she had 31,000+ folders left to delete in her temp folder. AARG. That finally finished, and then mbam finished. She had an old "my documents" folder from 2012, a previous machine. So I at least got that back so she only lost the last two years of stuff. 

Also set her backup drive up properly, and ran combofix and the standard updates. It's 2014, windows still hasn't figured out that "UAC" isn't working and to try something else? It's not working whales… I mean microsoft.

Three jobs tomorrow as well, including my good friend Ellen.

Wed:

Today went pretty well. First one was supposedly not starting right. I got it going in safe mode on the first try, ran the various things I do. Mbam found a few minor things but nothing to explain what he was talking about. Rebooted it a few times, started up fine. Huh.

Ate lunch, then went over to the lawyer's office. He just needed it cleaned out, which I did.

Had a bunch of time until seeing Ellen and getting the PC from the psychologist lady. Wish I had the thing earlier, I could have used that time. 

Got the PC all done here, waited for Sean but he never showed, so I just did some more Darksiders.

Thurs:

I'm not sure today balanced out, really.

The first job was delivering the system. I plugged it all back in and hey, presto, it wouldn't boot. I had to replace the power supply to make it turn on. Then once it was on, the video card fan started making a racket and I had to oil it. Of course the thing has to be in the little cubby built into the desk, so it's impossible to work with. Why did it work for hours the night before but have problems today?

Came home, found my shapeways order. And got an email they were still sending me a new *Sean's gift* even though I said they didn't have to! I'll still try gluing the busted one though.

Also got my LED lightbulbs from woot.

The other stuff came out pretty well, and the staff for Aerith fits her perfectly. 

[[image file="2014-10/p1015846-2.jpg" alt="Aerith before and after" ]]

[[image file="2014-10/p1015859.jpg" alt="red pendent" ]]

[[image file="2014-10/p1015863.jpg" alt="Pendent from Lunar" ]]

[[image file="2014-10/p1015870.jpg" alt="It's a boy" ]]

[[image file="2014-10/p1015871.jpg" alt="It's a girl" ]]

Then over to the lady from last week. Man, her machine was again terrible. Mbam found over 1000 things if I remember correctly. That was after I took a bunch of stuff out myself. I didn't charge her, and found her a sandbox program for the browser, so hopefully that doesn't happen again.

Ellen called, more foolishness from that corner. And I'll be talking to her again, tonight.

And oh good, the somewhat decent machine I sold the guy has a problem, and hangs. Super! Plus his main system won't turn on now? I was just there! So I get to go back there, for the third time, and probably either buy that machine back or offer him my next best one… which is much worse.

My 1:30 was "the flash updater hangs." As I got near the place I was thinking, "doesn't this guy have a Mac?" He did. I opened the installer, and it worked perfectly. He was kind enough to give me some money though I said it was fine.

Remembered my little fake hard drive had a compact flash adapter in it, so I can use that to transfer pictures from the old pro camera. That's how I got the above pictures, it worked fine.

Got the battery for the sony e-reader. Changed the battery. Now it's totally dead. Put the old battery back. Still dead. Wonderful. Doesn't show the "i'm charging" on the screen or flash the light or anything. It worked just last week, what the heck? I even tried a power adapter I found that fit it and was the right voltage. Nothing. 

Today sucks.

Wait, spoke too soon, I pressed the reset button it and it came back to life!

Huh.

The next one was a BSOD on windows8 of all places. I bet windows 9 will solve those for goo- wait. 

I ran it in safe mode, did the usual. Man even this mostly new machine was freaking slow. Two hours to get it going again, strip off the three antivirus products on there, get the updates going. I got home just in time to make phone calls. Had a few, so I have three for tomorrow and two for Saturday. One at 9:30 for a guy who boots his machine and then his mouse and keyboard just conk out. Wow, really MS? You've surprised me again.

Looks like the glue I tried is holding on the gift, we'll see.

So tomorrow, a cleanout, back to the place, and a RAM install. Then to see my parents and home to see if it's raining or any kids come by. And eating candy. Oh yes, I'll be eating candy. Sweet, sweet, tiny candy. I've been eating the Whoppers, two of the packages had only two instead of three. Now there's a white person problem if I ever saw one.

Still, seems like they should measure them and reject any that don't have three at the end. Oh well.

That, I think, is how October ends. Probably play one video game or another right now, so I'll see you all next week.  

Have a good candy day, and remember, Halloween isn't about the sexy costumes for women, it's really about ethics in video game journal- wait, that's something else.