2015-02-05:

Fri:

As expected, the Mac guy didn't really have any real problems. He said he couldn't update flash. I updated flash. I also showed him another add on to download videos from a different site.

Came back here, ate lunch. Called the one person I didn't get back to, she was leaving so wanted Monday. It's right across from the post office, so it looks like I'll be going that way twice in a few days.

Amused myself by tearing about that PC my father dropped off a few weeks ago. Oh, and cleared the driveway, which started getting messy again because it started snowing pretty hard again. Just can't win. 

Straightened up, then thought I might do something completely different…

Some writing.

Finished chapter 88, Susan is just about to leave for beating up (she hopes) about fifty warlocks, summoned demons, and take care of The Darkness on that world. Good luck, Susan.

Sat:

I had watched a video the day before about the differences between Morrowind and more recent Elder Scrolls games, like Skyrim. He said the story was better, with better pacing and such. So I fired up OpenMW and it's surprising playable, as long as you keep the console handy. I got stuck in a rock once, and someone following me got stuck in a rock too, so I had to do a bit of "ghosting" to get out of it. 

The combat is terrible. I mean you can stand there swinging your blade and swinging and swinging and not hit a single time. Really? 

Magic doesn't regenerate either, unless you "rest." Guess who likes playing mages? This guy. Beat one thing, have a nap for an hour, go to beat the next thing. Weird. And enchanting works differently too. Basically I'm saying it kind of sucks. I mean if you can't even GET to the story because you have to slog for a half hour between locations (I raised my speed to 500 with the console, which is finally where it should have been. Well, maybe 300, but it started in the twenties, so you get the idea) and beating one thing takes five minutes of standing there missing your opponent who is also just standing there… You're gonna have a bad time. 

So I'm not sure if I'll continue that or not.

Had dad over, watched some Dr Who. Still have five episodes left.

Sun:

Finished half of mom's valentine's present. Well, more than half, really. Half the last part. The rest shouldn't take nearly as long, I'm getting into it now. Sorta. Of course it looks a lot worse than the picture of the thing I'm trying to do, but that's par for the course. I am doing it "untrained" after all.

Looked over my websites. Cleaned the driveway and went over to Heather's house for dad's birthday at 4:45.

Mon:

Snowed lots overnight. 8 inches, according to a measuring stick I stuck out in the driveway. Came down pretty steadily all day.

Did the shopping as normal. Then back out to across from the post office for job #1 after lunch. Explorer wasn't opening when the machine was booted. Somehow the path to userinit.exe was changed from c:\windows\system32 to <$sysdir> which I would have believed would work. But typing it didn't seem to bring me to the right place, and all the screenshots of the registry showed the full path. Odd. How did it get changed to that? Anyway, once changed back it was fine, and I did the usual scans.

Back here for a little while, then out at 2:30 again for my 3:00. 

That went fine, some minor stuff really.

Did my paperwork. Apparently I'm $235 off from last year. Huh. I thought this year was pretty good, too. Last year I did 53 jobs, this year 45. I guess that adds up. Ah well?

Spent over an hour with a lady on the phone trying to get widows live mail to work. Finally ran mbam and roguekiller (which found really minor stuff) and after a reboot it installed and was fine. Huh? Stupid windows.

Anyway, several jobs tomorrow. Going back to the hotel. A printer issue in the morning (the one from last week I spoke of) and someone hit with my favorite, the encryption virus. *shakes head*

Got caught up on The Gamer.

Tried to put the latest blog entry for the guy who can't seem to do it on vacation. The password doesn't work… so I guess he gets nothing. Sigh.

No writing, I want a large block of time because it's a very complex combat coming up so I want to devote a bunch of time to it. So there.

Tues:

Ate a very early lunch so I didn't have to come back, or at least that was the hope. It worked out.

Left at 10:45 to see about a printer. It was giving a weird message about "check the cartridges" and the awful, piece of crap computer I looked it up on suggested holding the stop button down for fifteen seconds. Well, that worked, but the thing hadn't printed in a year she said so she needs new cartridges. At least I proved it still printed. Yeah, the PC? It was sitting there, on, and complaining the C drive was full, the antivirus had expired and I couldn't get the mouse to work. It was rechargeable, but when I put it in the cradle it didn't light up or anything. I had to use the keyboard completely to get around, thanks DOS, I owe it all to you. I shut the thing down. Honestly, how long was that thing sucking down power and doing nothing?

Then over to the hotel. Apparently the one machine I looked at, the guy saved the website to the desktop rather than saving a link TO the website. Then wondered why the site didn't actually work. Also he had no anti-virus but mbam didn't find anything, shock and surprise.

Also vacuumed a machine out, hopefully to stop it hanging. And looked at how to remove things from her webmail trash.

Then over to my 3:00 an hour early, the encryption one. Their machine was pretty far gone, it was connecting to dozens of IP address for some reason. mbam found a bunch of stuff on it, and I got rid of all the now useless files. Luckily they didn't have much, but I am so glad I don't use a PC. SO GLAD.

And then came home about 4:00. Done!

Got four calls today, so that's good, sadly one was from a guy who lost all his email in his gmail account. Just *zip* gone I guess. I told him to look for the gmail support email as one other customer (the one with a billion emails/pictures) of mine got her email back after it went away like that.

And other was one I talked to before about ordering a screen.

One was from York, so I'll call tomorrow.

And one was an actual job.

1:4 ratio, not that great.

Worked on the next chapter.

Didn't finish it.

Wed:

A little snow had fallen in the night, but not all that much. Went out to see the first lady, (not that first lady) her power supply was indeed dead. Also she only had 512MB of RAM and a bunch of crap installed. Took care of all that.

Came back here, ate lunch.

Second one was the dentist guy. As usual I was there for hours and he had weird stuff for me to try and figure out. Like someone made him this word doc with text boxes in it, like it was an Indesign document. And like Indesign, it wouldn't automatically make a new page you had to manually make one and then link a new text box on that page to the one on the preceding page. Like I was going to be able to explain that and get him to do it. No.

Anyway, back here, light snow, but still slightly above freezing so hopefully that will help a little. Don't worry, it'll plunge tomorrow for that continued winter experience.

Got several calls today, and I have three jobs for tomorrow. How about that, it seems work continues to be good this month.

Finished chapter 89. She's not landed a blow against any warlock, but at least she's developing a strategy against The Darkness in this world.

Thurs:

So my mother has cancer. A tumor in the leg, which hopefully a lot of radiation and some surgery will have taken care of several months from now. That sort of thing really puts other problems in perspective, doesn't it? 

Did some work today. The first one, the scammed lady, didn't actually need too much done oddly enough. I did sell her some extra RAM, she only had 2gb and that's really not enough for Win7. 

Then out after lunch to a major cleanout. She only had 1GB of RAM, and Vista, but given I have to go back there for $14 because she only had $40, she did not get any more. Also I didn't look at the laptop because her son who was "coming home soon" didn't show in an hour and a half. So, yeah. 

The third one was much easier, setting up a printer and installing Quickbooks, both which went fine. 

Came back here, finished watching the current episodes of Agents of Shield. Good stuff.

No news on game, but I do have a little work for tomorrow. A real job in the morning, mostly a cleanout but she has other issues. Then installing the card reader for the lady from last week. 

Then in the afternoon going to get my $14. Woohoo.

I'd like to not bother, but really I can use all I get.

Won't see my parents, they're off doing stuff at the shops this week. 

That's about it for this week. Finish up Mom's V. day gift. Maybe some more writing? 

Stay well out there.