2015-01-15:

Fri:

53.99*2 = 107.98

44 * 2 = 88

107.98 - 88 = 19.98

19.98 - 25 = -5.02

So what is all that math? The amount Staples paid me to take 10,000 sheets of paper out of their store. They had a promotion that was a "secret rewards" of $5-1000 and I figured I would get $5. That would bring the total cost for the second set of paper I bought to $4.99. But LO! The rebate was actually $25 instead! So glad I tried it, so worth it. So yeah, they paid me to take some product out of the store, which seems like a good deal to me. (If I get the visa rebate cards, and I should, right?)

As far as appointments go, they went pretty well. First one was just some general stuff, password issues and the like.

The TV guy had done something to his remote, it wouldn't even work with his little directTV box anymore. Found out how to reset it, but couldn't get it to work with the TV. Supposedly there was some way to program it from the box, but going to the menu didn't get me anywhere. So you have to use two remotes. Deal with it.

Back for lunch, then out to see about some gmail issues. Figured out a little bit more how gmail itself worked, and got that taken care of. Then my last one at 3:00 which was a cleanout, I also added some RAM and gave her a new mouse, as hers was shorting out. So that went fine.

Over to see my parents, my father is feeling better so that's good. He might come put up shelves tomorrow, we'll see.

Sat:
He did! I now have some nice shelves and all my fabric is out of those silly plastic bags it was in and folded up nicely. That corner of the room looks much better.

Not much else fun until Sean's. Didn't get very far, but at least we made it to where the action is going to take place.
Also played Streets of Rage 1 + 2, nostalgia trip for the win. (Not so much for me, I didn't play them back in the day except maybe once at Sean's)

Sun:
Got back to writing, though it was sort of a transition chapter, the next chapter should be infiltrating the kingdom to see if the king really is a demon or not. (spoiler: he is)

Watched more bleach, finished the current book I was reading, read half another, and made phone calls.

Lots of calls over the weekend, so that was good. Made five appointments from that, two tomorrow, one wednesday, and ordered a part for a guy.

Got another call about a laptop hanging (ugh) so I have three places to go tomorrow, and of course the shopping.

Hopefully warming up a little this week?

Mon:
Busy day today and another one coming up tomorrow.

Did she shopping, bought oil for the car.

My 12:00 had a lot of crap malwarebytes cleaned out. Also he was getting his rr mail through gmail and was concerned he wasn't getting it all. I turned that off and just the gmail settings into live mail, so he can check his three accounts in one place rather than two.

Stopped in to the bath remodelers, he was just having trouble getting pdf files. Stupid adobe. People, you have foxit reader, you don't need to get adobe reader, too.

Then back here for about… three minutes. The person I was going to see if I had time to drop her stuff off called just after I walked in the door. So I headed over there… and found out I had ordered the wrong battery for her. Sigh. I've asked if I can exchange it for the right one, we'll see what they say.

Then off the laptop with the odd problems. He said it was hanging, but under "approved interrogation techniques" revealed it really was just chrome going "not responding." I took his freaking 21 screws laptop apart to check the fan anyway. Mbam came up clear. We'll hope that helps. His other problem was loading this java app thing from a website. His wife's machine could do it. His would just hang at the start for some reason. Then I turned off his antivirus, and his problem went away. Keep in mind, they were running the same antivirus. So I showed him how to turn it off for the time it needs to load that program.

Ten calls today, total. Well, one guy called twice because he forgot to leave his number. One was an 800 number. One is having an email problem with all his machines, so it's a RR problem, not anything I can do. One was the lady getting the new laptop, she got it.

Otherwise I have four places to go tomorrow, one of them is the guy to sell him the audio adapter I got… last year. I'm finally going down there so I can give it to him.

Some unexpected things received today:
1) $50 from some people I helped last year over the phone (who lived here but have moved and still call me)
2) A hot from the oven biscuit from my last appointment

Tues:
Busy days keep coming, let's talk about this one.

The first lady didn't tell me about the laptop until after I had done a bunch of stuff on the desktop. Probably because she is limited to thinking linearly about things, while I am fully capable of screwing up more than one thing at a time.

I mean fixing things. FIXING more then one thing a time. That's what I meant.

Ahem.

So I was later then I wanted to my 11:30, dropping the adapter off… that he didn't need. I thought the port next to the headphone jack was for apple's funny speakers. Not so, I learned, when looking at the preferences for the input. It was an audio in jack. Oh well. Sold him the cable he needed, anyway.

Back here, ate lunch, went out to setup a really, really crappy PC. Very cheap, with a soldered in 2GB of RAM and 32 yes 32GB of flash storage. Ten of which was hidden, probably by the annoying "restore partition" that PCs love so very much. I mean seriously, include a flash drive if nothing else, stealing ten GB of a 32 GB drive is not acceptable. So he ended up with 8GB left after I transferred the docs from his old machine. Good luck not running out of space in the future.

Then the last one was very easy, it just needed the RAM reseated, as it was beeping on boot.

Done.

Found a new automation tool, possibly to replace/supplement ninite. It seems to not download as fast, but it can do things like flash and ccleaner that ninite can't. Also getting it to run on XP (my test environment, the somewhat broken laptop I still don't know what to do with) was a hassle. But it worked.

Had plenty of calls, but no jobs from them, it was just questions about stuff. I have two jobs tomorrow anyway, so there.

Wed:
Sunny!

But still in the twenties.

Went to see the spice guy. Took care of his issues, and the new installer thing I found works pretty well on newer machines I don't have to load tons of stuff into. So that'll continue to be used, I think.

Came back, worked on Ellen's website, just made a few changes to things.

Called the lady with the undersized laptop SSD as I was handed her replacement. She's leaving tomorrow, so that's no good. We set it up for next week for me to come get it.

Started chapter 77.

Went out to my 3:30, it was a Mac. Some odd issues, like the screensaver getting set back all the time. Others have had that problem though. Oh well, I did what I could.

Finished chapter 77.

Started chapter 78, get about half way done. Susan met the Shatra, and the first fight with one of them is about to begin.

Got a good number of calls today, got back to most, and I have three jobs tomorrow. One right down the street from another, which is nice. Shouldn't be too bad!

Thurs:
You made it. It's halfway through the first month of the new year, that is. It's all downhill from here.

Morning one was fine. He was on the internet, but something was preventing him from actually browsing. I restarted in safe mode and it worked, so I ran the usual scans. Didn't find much, but when I rebooted back into normal mode it was fine. Maybe it was Norton messing up? Who knows.

Back here, ate lunch, did more website work for Ellen, and then more of chapter 78. Nearly done, and Time Anchor saved my witch. The half-demon Shata took her out in one hit with a 29 roll and 18 damage to the body. Susan and Sparkle both tried to counter it, no going. She died instantly. In fact I had to go back and add her using Time Anchor at the beginning because I forgot to!

How does Sean complain about everything he throws at us going down too easy? My guys didn't stand a chance, and this thing isn't even that Uber. And this is against Susan, she's FAR and AWAY more powerful than Sean would ever allow any character in his games to become. Seriously. 

Out at 2:40 for my next two.

3:00 one didn't have much found by mbam, his problem was mainly his printer. I printed something. Waited a bit. Printed again. It didn't print that time? I unplugged the USB cable, plugged it back in, and it printed. Huh. So we changed the cable, hopefully that will do it.

Right down the street for the 4:30, just had to wait about a half hour in the freezing cold. Really, driving home was pointless, I would have had to start back out minutes after I got home. Oh well. Anyway, got her new machine set up. Ugh, she bought a $200 airport router. Oh well. And Quickbooks wouldn't install because it wanted to install this old version of flash player which isn't compatible. I mean, really, you can't check to see there's a newer version? Huh?

Anyway, apart from that it went well.

Several calls today, so I have two for tomorrow, the laptop screen install on Tuesday, and one Saturday. Seeing my parents, of course, tomorrow.
No word from Sean on anything this weekend. I know Neil was coming in, unless that changed between then and now.

Now if we could just stop the stock market from going down… I'm down $143 there. Woohoo?

Guess I'll just consider the positive!

I'm thinking.

Still thinking.

There must be something. Well, anyway, have a good weekend everyone, and I'll see you back here next week. I'm probably going to finish chapter 78 and maybe watch a moon episode or two before I turn in for the night.

Bye.