2015-02-26:

Fri:
Sunny again! Yay!

Worked on chapter 102. Looking back, there were 127 chapters of the original Harry Potter and the Magic of Paragon, so by the time this world is done, I should have more chapters in the second 'arc' than in the first. How about that?

Let's see, the first chapter seems to have been created April 3, 2013 and the last was Jan 4, 2014. 9 months to create 127 chapters. Thus far the chronicles began (duh) on Jan 4, 2014 and it's now Feb 20, 2015. Guess I slowed down. But I do recall a couple of months I got away from writing and was doing video games, so that makes sense.

Anyway, straightened up a little, wrote, ate lunch, then went over to my parent's house to do taxes.

Always a fun activity, but at least I got a nice dinner at the end of it. Driving home was a freeze fest, saw one degree on my temperature gauge. Super.

Oh, and the 1:00 went fine, got the hard drive in no problem.

Back here, worked on chapter 102 some more until I finished it.

Sat:
Morning one went fine. She was talking about getting an iPad so I sold her a router. Cleaned the machine out, 300+ things so the usual.

Came back here, knocked snow off my car that had been building up around the wheels. Tore through the side where it's rusted, found it's rusted straight through. Oops? And also sigh. Both my previous cars I lost to rust, not engine trouble or anything like that. When can I buy a car completely made of carbon fiber?

Snow and more snow.

Worked on chapter 103 until it was time to leave.

And leave I did. It had been snowing but the expressways were decent enough to travel on. Dinner was excellent, thank you me. Game went fine, we even stayed on task for the most part. Got through the dungeon, managed to save a golden statue and one painted mural before our Spirit Energist's attack brought the whole place down on our heads.

Played some mario kart and 3d mario games, which were pretty fun. Kart I did terrible at, despite coming in first a couple of times. Oh well.

Sun:
Cleaned up around here, watched a bit of anime Sean had given me.

Watched John Wick, or "Reves shoots everybody" the movie.

Then wanted to watch Equilibrium again, so I did.

Not very productive today.

A perfect sunday!

Mon:
Three jobs today, and it was somewhat nice. Which is good, because the corridor of snow exactly reaches my car windows as I drive by, so any higher is going to be a problem.

Shopping as normal, didn't actually need much. One check I got last week wasn't signed, aargh.

First one went over two hours, but mainly because her internet was so slow. Found out where the add-on in chrome was that kept putting itself back. How can they even live outside the extensions folder anyway? Hooked up a printer and monitor to an ancient laptop.

Then over to look an another laptop. It has a dead hard drive.

Lastly to redo work I had done previously, because apparently his HD died and he had it replaced.

Got my soldering iron. In the video he just touches the thing to the bottom of the circuit board and it liquifies. Not so here. AARG. I can feel the thing heating, the stupid capacitor gets warm.

Managed to get the caps out by basically pressing the iron directly down onto the posts and melting them through. But now how do I install the replacements? Need something majorly tiny to clean out the hole I think?

I used a pin. And despite the abuse I dished out trying to get them all in, it's working? I guess I'll run it for like a week, on and off, and see how it does. How about that, I actually replaced capacitors. Now I'm a real man!

Finished 103.

Tues:
Day went pretty well. Morning one was just the setup, no issues there.

Then went to the guy down the street just to answer a few questions he had.

Ate lunch, then went out to answer more questions. He was trying to use iTunes, rather than Picasa, to try and get photos off his iPad. Silly guy.
I straightened him out, ran Mbam (600 things found) and came back for a bit. Read over 103 as I hadn't had a chance to.

Then out to drop off the external. Warm today, almost 25! Yes, I'm still talking about fahrenheit. That's what this winter has done to me, to make me long for a temperature even slightly above freezing.

Worked on chapter 104.

Not many calls today, so only two jobs for tomorrow.

Wed:
Which I did. First one had three machines to look at. All laptops. Two of them needed new hard drives, so that's a bit odd. The other needed to be cleaned out, so that was done.

The 12:00 one was setting up a new modem for a guy. But he has the phone service, so he's keeping the old modem for that, and not sending it back. Uh, what? Why charge a fee for the "lease" if… never mind, I'll never understand it.

Came back here, ate lunch. Ordered three hard drives, as the lenovo seems to be holding up so far.

Hooked up my TV equipment so I can tape an episode of Sesame Street but then realized that's on in April, not March, and this is still only February. Sigh. Oh well.

Finished chapter 104. Finished 105.

Not many calls today. Just two junk calls, actually. What happened?

No jobs for tomorrow, boo!

Thurs:
With no real work to do, I made some up. I figured there must be an easier way to get capacitors off a board, and went to my friend and yours, the internet, to discover it. The first video I watched had a different technique than the first guy which proved FAR superior. Almost mother superior. I wouldn't have considered adding more solder when what I wanted was less, but I have to admit, it worked a treat. I got a whole bag of the things now, so bring on the circuit boards with bad caps!

Odd though, how some just slid right out and others I really had to work on. I suppose there's a tolerance and some holes are bigger than others?

Finished chapter 106.

Got only one call today, a guy who insists his iPad has a virus. Uh huh.

So I'm going there at 2:00, then my parent's house after that. Have to look at their machines, which are giving them trouble now. Sigh.

Going to Sean's saturday, just doing board games not Paragon games. Ah well. The one job out in Farmington, too, at 12:00. Ugh, an hour driving.

Snowing now, so that's a change, right? It might be all of 16 tomorrow, so that's something to look forward to.

That's it for month 2, we're 1/6 the way through 2015. I just hope business starts up again, two days without calls is a bit much.

See you all next week.