2015-02-19:

Fri:
The morning one was yuck. The machine was hanging, right? Ran the WD HD test, ran a memory test, no capacitors were leaking.

It's windows, then?

So I start turning stuff off.

Three hours later!!! I narrow it down to the "power" service. When it's active, the machine hangs within a minute. With it turned off, no hang.

Also, according to others, turning this off kills your speakers, too. She didn't care because it was a business machine, basically doing quicken, and didn't have speakers. How is windows SO BAD that having a single service turned on can totally hang the machine on boot? I mean how is that even let out the door?

So I just left it off and came back here to eat lunch.

On the way back my iPod died. Click-Click-Click. Sigh.

Set up the printer for the lady, that went fine.

Back here, called the lawyer guy about a $200 piece of crap PC he saw advertised at staples. Single processor, by the looks of it, but the site doesn't say. There's an HP with a slightly faster processor (again, doesn't say how many) for $200 more. But that's it, the RAM, HD, everything else is the same. Huh?

I'm going over there tomorrow to see if their machine can be saved. He didn't know what was wrong with it, sigh.

Remembered that HD I bought for the iPod before this one, that died after I tried changing it. Dug that out, took the HD out of it, put it into this one, and it's syncing just fine. Might have just saved the unit and justified the purchase! Woohoo.

iPod works!

Didn't go over to my parent's house. Apparently, in hospitals you don't get taken care of and moved along, you wait and then you wait some more. Hasn't anyone played SimCity? There should be hospitals, like, every couple of blocks, right? So she got home late and said to come tomorrow.

Finished up the plot for the 20 days Susan is in this world.

Sat:
Supposed to be rather snowy, didn't see it. This wrecked all plans.

Went out at 10:00 the see about that dying machine. It was. Some capacitors were leaking, so that was that. He went to staples and got another. The design of it was really bad. I wanted to install his HD, but the way they mounted the one there was no space for another. If they had turned it 90º it would have been just fine. Honestly, do your jobs. I know, your jobs are to shove components into cases for the absolute minimum money possible. Anyway, he said don't bother, he didn't think the old machine had anything worth transferring. Okay, why not get a tablet then?

Anyway, they didn't have the $200 machines (this is what we call the bait-and-switch) so he got a machine with a better processor, at least.

Set that up, went to see my parents.

After that, came back, read some web comics, a series I was getting out of the library but I think I got all of them I could and it wasn't over. There's like 200+ volumes posted. Sheesh.

Sean called it off, but just afterwords the snow stopped, and there basically wasn't any more snow the rest of the day. Sigh.

Watched the latest Constantine and Log Horizon.

Had two PCs dropped off, the laptop was really, really far gone. 2000+ things mbam found I think? I don't recall the exact number now, it was high.
The desktop wasn't that bad, but it needed cleaning.

More web comic reading, and then bedtimes.

Happy Valentines Day.

Sun:
Modified the latest The Gamer comic. Read some stuff. Looks like it hardly snowed last night, so that's good.

Finished chapter 99, got Susan's equipment away from her, but she got it back. Still, getting into a building has never been so exciting.

Tons of calls over the weekend, for some bizarre reason. Because it was so cold? (It was, it's -1 right now.)

So I booked pretty much all of tomorrow and Tuesday already. One is the ice cream guy, his issue is back. Sigh.

Mon:
I saw the sun today! In fact it was pretty sunny all day today. Wasn't more than 15 degrees, but we take what we can get.

Job before shopping, putting in the LCD panel for the lady. That went fine. Trying to set up an android tablet to print did not, ugh. But I managed it. Man, iPads are so much easier.

Then shopping. No bank, so I just got groceries.

Back here, lunch, then out again. Next one was setting up a router and cleaning a machine out. Why the time warner supplied modem had to be added to their system, I'll never know. Also the scan went pretty slow, but finally got through. Good looking dog, big dog, but just kept barking at me and wouldn't get close. Silly dog!

Slightly late (just a few minutes) to the next one. 450+ things mbam found with it. Which also dragged on like it would never finish. Her profile wouldn't load sometimes, (good old windows) so I moved everything over to a new one. Couldn't remove AVG, tried twice, finally downloaded the removal tool, which had to reboot twice. Also reloaded the printer as she said she sometimes had issues with that.

Got back about 6:00, ate dinner. Only one phone call today, thankfully, but I did reach someone I hadn't yesterday. Upshot is I have five jobs for tomorrow. One is the ice cream guy, apparently his problem is back. Sigh. The others I should actually get paid for.

Went on a hunt for the "Apple Extended Keyboard" in the pile of keyboards I have upstairs. And downstairs. And various places. I have tons of ones older than than, and some that are newer, but not that exact one. Weird.

Tues:
More sun today!

So, got through today, let me tell you all about it.

First one had a 70gb HD and had 33 GB worth of pictures. She's nowhere near some other lady I could mention. So we talked about options and I ordered her an internal drive so we can just copy them over and she won't have to worry about running out of space. Did a bit of cleanup, she had less then 100mb free so I had to make some space. Which I did.

Back for lunch, then out to the never ending string of them.
The first, the ice cream guy, was puzzling. I figured I would reboot his machine with a bunch of services off, because windows. Well, after turning them all back on, it was fine. So what causes him to lose the internet and have that weird issue? Who knows. I suggested just putting it to sleep.

Then to go help with a slideshow creation process. That went fine, though there are apparently no actual options for exporting the movie from picassa. Even worse, what options do seem to be there don't actually seem to do anything. Huh?

Then over to see Bob- huh, I worked for two Roberts today. (Both who go by Bob.) Weird. Anyway, he thought he had lost songs, but he was booting the wrong drive, it's a long story. And his backup was dead. I made it boot the external again and hopefully that should stick.

Half an hour late to the 5:30, which turned out to be a standard cleanout. Why mbam is taking so long recently, (45 minutes) on fairly fast hardware is a mystery to me.

So I get to go back to two places from today when the equipment comes in. Got a fair number of calls today, so I have three places to go tomorrow, and one for Thursday. Business is good.

Wed:
Morning went fine, not really sunny but not snowing either.

Both were quick. The first one just had plugged the speakers in the wrong place. She said watching videos from AOL worked, but I don't see how that would have been possible.

Then the second one needed her printer ink changed, and she got a funny message when she opened up AOL Desktop. (Why yes she was over the age of 80, how did you know?)

Apparently if you don't log in within 90 days AOL deactivates your account. Well, she could log in, just not get email. I had to log in via the website which set the mail back up apparently, and then she could use the desktop app. Wow, AOL itself is ignoring its own products. Well done.

Back to eat lunch, worked a bit on chapter 100. Started snowing in the afternoon. It got worse as the day went on, too.

Then tried to get my soldering iron to work to replace the capacitors on the lenovo motherboard. I figure I can take some good ones from some of the other junk boards I have around here, see if I can get it working. Sadly, I think the tip is too large (that's what she said?) so I looked on ebay and locally for one with a smaller tip. Found a set with solder, desoldering pump, the works for $12.00. iFixit wanted $45 (that included the shipping) and Lowes/others locally had a very small selection.

ebay it is!

Then out at 5:15 for my next appointment. It was dead in a rather strange way. it wouldn't turn on at all. If I unplugged it, reset the CMOS and plugged it back in, it would power on, but beep five times. Then a second time it would power on. Then it would complain about certain flags being tripped by the hard drive. So I ran the WD tool and it wouldn't even start the quick test because of these flags. Then it wouldn't boot again.

I told him I would get off what I could (which wasn't much, by the way) and sell him one of my crap machines. He said that would be fine until he could get another.

Wind chills as low as -40? Sounds fun. And lasting through tomorrow, till Friday? What joy. Plus a couple more inches of snow.

Rainbow, I'm telling you, get Stormy under control, will you? Even Florida might freeze tonight!

Lots of calls again, so I have four places to go tomorrow. But will I actually make any money, that's the real question. Certainly didn't today.
Well, three places to go, as one person is coming here, so basically just the afternoon is when I'll need to go out. Maybe it'll have warmed up a little by then?

Yeah, I'm not hopeful.

Thurs:
Didn't snow too much last night, but enough to make me have to clear the driveway again. Cleaned up the kitchen and finished chapter 100.
Then the guy got here, right on time. Just some general maintenance stuff, no big deal.

Ate lunch, then went out to deliver the crappy PC to the guy.

Weather was really crappy today. Like single digits, winds, hardly any sun. Is it June yet?

Jobs were all pretty quick. Delivered the PC, got his printer hooked up. Apparently HP made two printers with the same number so of course I downloaded the wrong one first.

Then another printer issue after that, got his laser printer back on the wireless network. The last one was odd. He lost his trackpad drivers, along with USB port and something with the printer. Took some doing to get it back into a state, using only the keyboard, where I could use a mouse again. But I managed it. That one took an hour, I ran mbam and cleaned it up some.

Got gas, came back here. Probably do game this week, hopefully it won't be blizzarding out this time.

Only one call today. Going to do taxes at 2:00 with mom, but I have a 1:00 to put the hard drive that I got in, in. That hopefully won't take long.

Finished chapter 101.

Didn't reach the one person that called me, so whatever, you get nothing.

So, weekend plans: being cold. One job Saturday and Sean's place. Probably more writing on Sunday.

At least work keeps coming in, can't complain about that, right?

See you next week as the last week of February begins.