2014-12-04:

Fri:
Three turned into two today, but that was fine. First one was in the morning, dropping the system off. That went fine, though the optical drive wasn't plugged in. Took care of that quickly enough. Hope she's happy with it.

The one I was meeting here canceled, she wants to come tomorrow now, so I waited until my 1:00, which was just setting the printer up. Part of the plastic cover was busted right out of the box. Man, that was some thin plastic.

Found a cool gift for Heather, and got something for James. Also found something for dad's birthday, which comes quite soon after Christmas, so that's usually a struggle. Not this year.

More work on the reorganization project mostly. I'm crushing them down, I'm on page 1065 but saving page 460, so not exactly 1/3 but pretty close.

The system I sold the guy with the two little girls is still hanging. Sigh.

That's pretty much it for today. After the lady comes at 11:00 I'll probably put my christmas stuff up.

That's about all the excitement for today.

Sat:
So the lady didn't come, big shocker.

Put up the tree, a lot of the lights are out. :-( They're mostly on one side so I just turned that side to the wall. There's just something so christmassy about having the tree... right next to my sword rack. Don't you agree?

[[image file="2014-12/tree2014.jpg" alt="xmas tree 2014" ]]

Promised you guys a look at the lights outside too, didn't I? Braved the nasty weather and cold to get you this shot. I took a bunch, none but this one were in focus. 

[[image file="2014-12/house2014.jpg" alt="House at Night" ]]

Took apart and cleaned my little heater. Oiled it as I could, but I'm not sure it helped. It's still pretty noisy.

Took another look at the Epson 2200 to get it out of my living room. It's totally clogged now. I mean, like, totally. No ink out at all. Tried the cleaning, tried some alcohol on a cloth and slipping it under the heads… no luck. Cleaning kits are available, but honestly, I can hardly keep my little epson going, and trying to ship that freaking heavy thing would be a problem for what little I would make (after buying cartridges and cleaning etc) So to Staples it goes.

Worked on the reorganization project.

Sun:
And today as well. Got up to last week. Compressed 1648 comics down to 665. Whew.

Nice out, the snow all melted.

Wrote the latest Susan chapter, got the sword of air, and Susan was pretty rude to some elves. That won't come back to bite her.

Got some calls, but not many. So I just have two appointments for tomorrow. The guy two minutes away and one a bit further with printer/email trouble.

A pretty restful weekend!

Mon:
Worked out pretty well. Got rid of the printer at Staples, bye-bye really expensive, hard to maintain Epson.

Otherwise, normal. 1:00 went fine, he somehow lost his password on the SMTP server for outgoing mail, so I got that back in there for him. Answered a few other questions.

Finished last week and this week's The Gamer, so I'm caught up.

Went out at 2:15, looked at a printer that said it was on wireless, but wasn't? It wouldn't respond, anyway. But I plugged it in via ethernet cable and it worked just fine. As the router was right there, thus it stayed. Couple of other little things, no big deal. Updated their crappy 2013 AVG to the crappy 2015 AVG because they paid for it. Why didn't crappy AVG update itself? Who knows.

And over to see Ellen. Went over her new camera (which she did nothing but complain about) and found out two of her old flash cards seem to be dead.

Not many calls today.

Tues:
Sold a Starbug to someone! Woowoo, made $3.00. Hope they like it, but I did post enough pictures, I think, to accurately represent it. Wow, I'm a better 3D artist than writer, given I've sold one print and zero books. (family doesn't count) How did that happen?

Did my one job in the morning, very quick, only a half hour. Some cookie thing. Ran Mbam (500 days out of date) and straightened up a few other things for him.

Did paperwork. Made $20 more this November than last. I'm really in the money! I also only need 9 more appointments (-3 that I've done already this month) to do the same number of jobs, total, as last year. So I'll have a month's worth of extra customers this year, as well. How about that?

Then I spent the afternoon trying to work out what could be wrong with the machine I sold the guy with the two little girls. It seems it won't boot without the 40gb drive installed? And I somehow made it worse because it's dog slow now? I don't know. I gave him my current best machine, which isn't much slower than this one I think, but still isn't that great.

Sigh.

Couple of calls today. Spent a half hour on the phone trying to get someone to open their firefox preferences. Seriously, a half hour to make three clicks with the mouse.

Otherwise, two appointments for tomorrow, and one for Wednesday.

Got more gifts in, I think I'm done with my shopping for this year, so it's time to wrap! A winter wrap, perhaps? Even a Winter Wrap Up?

Did some writing, got 2000 words into the next chapter, because I had a really good idea for it and wanted to get it down. Plus, you know, writing. Something different for a change. :-)

Wed:
Cloudy, gray, rainy. Cold. All my favorites.

Went to my 9:30, no real struggle, just basically answering some questions.

Came back here. Went to work on the crappy machine from yesterday, broke the SATA port on the drive while lifting the carriage thing up that held them. Cord wasn't long enough. Sigh. Gluing it now.

The cats were chasing a mouse in the morning. Actually got a cat food can over him, because he was over by the recycle box. Almost felt as good as when that kid caught a fly with chopsticks in The Karate Kid. Used the lid to transport it into the bathroom. Got the aquarium out (it's not full of water, fish != mouse I'm not dumb) and as I was carrying it over, I rolled a critical fumble on my MAN check and dropped the poor guy! He scurried under the door… back to where the cats were. Smart move, mouse.

He then got under the stove. Figured that was that, though the hole that's back there I've long stopped up.

Well, Tinker hooked him out somehow and caught him. I carried the whole bundle to the bathroom again where I got Tinker to drop him in the bathtub, where the aquarium was. It was then a simple matter to put him inside, where he's currently recovering from the whole ordeal.

I don't think he's hurt, but we'll have to see.

My CD stuff came due, went to look at it. There seems to be no money in the accounts now, which sort of worries me. (I checked Thursday, it's all back, yay!) Checked my checking account, had a returned check oh joy. I bet it was that girl that always post dates the checks. I forgot about it. But then wouldn't it have just come back as not being that date yet? Sigh. So there's $75 down the drain. Started the transfer of what was put into the checking account into my various funds, let's make my monster GROW. I mean my money GROW.

Finished chapter 58.

Second one went well, he loses the internet he said, but he had an official DSL box rather than a router I could replace. So I replaced the ethernet cable, ran the standard scans, and that was that.

The guy with the little girls said that machine (a 2.0 ghz machine, mind you) was too slow, so I tried working on this original box. It's so bizarre, without having both HDs plugged in, it doesn't see the one I want to use. When two are plugged in, it still won't boot from the one I want. Booting from the flash drive is super slow. Spent 45 minutes (more minutes) trying to straighten the pins on a processor, only to learn it was slightly different, and wouldn't fit. Thanks Obama. I mean AMD.

So I ordered them a new machine on ebay. Another $30 job, ($20 shipping) that's twice as fast. It has dual processors, anyway.

Honestly, nothing is going right lately.

Thurs:
Pretty busy today.

First off was the retired dentist guy. Was there four hours, because he always has a bunch of weird stuff for me to do. He did insist on paying me more though, even though I no longer charge by the hour. So I do thank him for that.

Didn't have much time to get home and get Tinker, but I had enough. Brought him in for his blood work at 2:00, then ate lunch.

Out again at 3:30, stopped at the mortgage place to tell them their problem was not with their system, and picked up a CD someone wants duplicated.

Then the main job, at 4:30, setting up a new machine for someone who dropped theirs. It still works, just the screen is busted. He wants it fixed, so why did he buy the new one? Odd.

And that was that. I do have three jobs for tomorrow. I have to go back and see about setting up an Apple TV in the morning, a tuneup at noon, and back to the accountant place as he needs older years of his software working for some bizarre reason.

Then I have a box of stuff to bring to my parent's house, though I won't see my mother as she's doing a show. She said it's not going well. Hang in there, mom!

Seems like no game this week, didn't do any Borderlands either, and we're so close to the ending.

Mouse didn't survive, I'm sad to say. Sorry little mouse.

Nothing for Saturday at this point.

It's now three freaking weeks to christmas, and four to 2015. This time last year, in three days I would be the opposite of chillin in Florida. Because it was warm there. Get it? Ugh, we had some bad weather right at that time, let's hope this year stays a bet more calm.

And the first week disappears.

See you at the end of the second.