2015-01-08:

Fri:
The new year continues, one day at a time.

Morning one featured lots of busted computers. An ancient WinME system I've worked on over the years that finally, blissfully, died the True Death. No really, it won't power up, and even the HD is dead and won't spin up.
Also her laptop is dead. Plug it in, the little power light goes on. Press the button- nothing.

I cleaned out her son's machine, sold her some RAM for her daughter's MacBook (someone has good taste in the family, thank goodness) and I'm ordering them some parts for another laptop.

Came back here, ate lunch, and out for my 1:00. Another Mac user, had an old 10.4 iMac and a newer MacBook, so I moved her files over and moved the iMac off the desk. Also looked at her printer and backed her stuff up.

Went over to see my parents, my father isn't feeling well, hope you get better soon, dad.

Then directly from there to my 3:00, a cleanout, which went as well as you might expect.

Back home I finished Orgus, and… that was that.

Sat:
Made sure the HD really wasn't spinning up, and I wasn't imagining things.
Paid my county taxes.
Straightened up around here.
Looked into things I had possibly overlooked for game tonight, and brushed up on the story thus far as it's been about five months since we played last.
Reloaded a laptop I had gotten some time ago. Ugh, 40 GB hard drive? What am I going to do with this thing, it's useless. I just hate to get rid of working hardware, you know? (I mean somewhat working, the wireless card in it is busted)
And watched some Bleach.

Went over to Sean's at 4:30. Stan was not feeling well, didn't have his character done (from five months ago) so we didn't actually do DgH. We watched a somewhat strange movie about the last surviving humans riding a train around the world after we caused a new ice age. Then I came home and I played some Gears of War with Sean.

Sun:
High winds today, though all the snow melted. Don't get too excited, it'll be back.

Watched a bit of the next Jojo series, but just like sailor moon crystal, it seems to just be retelling the story in HD.

Worked on Chapter 72.

Mon:

Balmy today. Fifteen degrees and very windy. Loved it! (Only one of these statements is true)

Went to pick up a laptop for hard drive replacement. The page I looked at for the size lied, it wasn't a 120GB drive, it was 250. Sigh. Of course, it wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have 91+ GB worth of pictures. It wouldn't even fit. But she said she had the pictures on her external already, so I didn't have to worry about that. Still, what the heck?

Did the shopping, got yummy soup ingredients.

Then over to the first quick one. He was saying how firefox wasn't coming it. It was. He just got the ask toolbar and homepage somehow. Honestly, if everything doesn't look exactly the same time after time, people just get paralyzed. He also got a smart TV so I traded his old router that didn't have working wireless for another older router that did. I'm so nice.

The next one was similarly quick. He said he was having trouble printing. Also that someone else tied for twenty minutes (thirty originally the first time he said it) without result. I reseated the cable at both ends, and look, it works fine.

Came back here, finished the laptop up and did not go to my 2:30, who wasn't answering the phone. I emailed them yesterday to say "how about 2:30 tomorrow" and he came back with "tuesday at 2:30 is fine" and I was like "no, tomorrow in this case means today!" But he wasn't there.

Finished Jojo while I wanted for the laptop to do stuff, I guess I don't have all episodes. Turned out to actually be expanded content, not just the originial story. I do have to wonder how many "stand" users exist in the world, but I suppose the bad guy would have sought them out. How did he find them? Anyway, some were pretty interesting, and ripple energy is still around, though he only used it twice. (They kept going on about how only a stand can defeat a stand. Whatever)

Then left at 4:10 for my 4:30.

Somehow her machine had started booting from the PATA drive instead of the SATA drive. Odd. Worked that out by yanking the cable for the old drive. She's getting a new machine so I'll be back there to move her files and set it up.

Got a few calls today, pretty busy tomorrow, four places to go. Returning the laptop, the guy who said 'oh there won't be any more corrections to the book' well guess what that was a lie. He has more corrections, and invariably he has messed everything up. Always fun working with him.
A cleanout, and something minor at 9:30, I didn't even make an invoice so I actually have no idea.

Bit more Gears with Sean after phone time.

Oh, Oh! My fund lost $133 today! I'm back down to below my initial investment again! WHY DO I FEEL LIKE PARTYING HARD?

Tues:
The two morning ones were quick as expected. The first one just had her speakers plugged into the wrong place.
She also has to do this web training stuff, and she primarily uses AOL. Yes, that AOL. Well, it didn't like the webex thing so I switched it over to Firefox. The check complained you needed IE. Seriously. In 2015. Apparently multi-national corporations haven't gotten the memo that lots of people have Macs now, or tablets. I told her to ignore that, it's just videos. To even consider testing for only one browser… oh well, I've ranted on that in the past.

Then dropped the laptop off. Got her printer going, and installed Office. She didn't know why there were 80+ GB in her pictures folder, she thought she had saved them but it was only a like 1 on her external. She said not to worry about it.

Came back here, ate lunch.

Wrote half of chapter 73, then left at 2:15.

He hadn't added any pages, so he hadn't messed anything up for once. So making his latest PDF was easy enough, and I was an hour early to my 4:00.

That went fine, it was just down the street and she was there, so I cleaned out her machine. It was a new one, so of course none of the software to make it useful was installed. Fixed that in a jiffy.

Only one call today, someone lost their icon for word. And of course getting it back took twenty minutes of trying to get them to double click, right click, left click, read number, left click. I know, my expectations are unreasonable, despite the many, many times I've done that with her in the past.

Printed up the copies for the guy.

Wrote most of chapter 74.

And won the gears game with Sean. There is additional content we'll get to sometime.

Wed:
Very cold. Like too cold really. Very, very much a too cold situation. In fact every time I got back into the car, it had fallen a few more degrees. It ended up by the time I got home at 6 degrees.

Anyway, the two jobs went okay. The first was setting up two new Macs, one replacing an ancient G4 machine running OS 9 of all things, and a PC. Woohoo.

But it did take me longer than I planned, so I got the second one late. Just setting up his new router, and answering some questions.

Went to Staples to get some $9.99 paper, hope I get the receipt because otherwise I'm not sure how I'll get the rebate. Also got a USB flash drive to replace the one I sold the lady.

Finally ate lunch at 2:00, went through my websites, and started work on chapter 75.

Only one call today, and I didn't reach her back. Sigh, no work for tomorrow.

I might be glad of that. Wind Chills are brutal right now, in some places, negative 50 degrees! Yipes. It's about 6 degrees with a -15 wind chill around here. Or worse?

* WINDS... WEST 15 TO 25 MPH.
* WIND CHILL VALUES... AVERAGING ABOUT 20 BELOW ZERO.

Eep. I'm staying home.

Didn't get that staples receipt though.

Won the bonus content in Gears and played a quick halo 3 level so Sean could see the inside of a scarab.

Thurs:
Yay, my receipt came! In 8-11 weeks I might have a…

Wait, how long?

[[image file="2015-01/howlong.png" alt="how long" ]]

Yup, what used to be a process of sending things through the mail and so 4-6 weeks was at least somewhat understandable but still quite aggravating, now everything is done digitally online. It should happen instantly. As part of the form, I should be asked "what bank account would you like this money to go into" and that should be that. But no, I have to wait nearly three months until I finally get a visa card (not a check, a visa card) that without my trick of "donating" the money inside it to my paypal account, would be almost impossible to get all the money off of without micromanaging the thing to make sure I don't buy anything more than the card can hold.

Seesh.

Still very cold out, lots of traffic problems this morning when I got up, and usually that's cleared out by then. Probably too cold for salt to work, as it's ten degrees out. We got some snow overnight, too, not a lot, but some.

Didn't accomplish much today, actually. Just finished the one chapter, did some reading. Tried to stay warm.

Got plenty of calls today, so tomorrow is all booked up, that should help a bit. And my fund has gone back up to nearly $100 past my initial investment. Stay there, darn it!

All in all I guess it was a pretty good week. How about that?

Seeing my parents tomorrow, as usual.

Saturday the plan is to try the Demongate High game again. Hopefully Stan is both feeling better, and has a character to play!

So that's it for this week. Fairly positive, on the whole, I think. We've had a week of 2015, I hope it's off to a good start for you all as well.

See you this time next week.