2015-04-30:

Fri:
Before I begin, allow me to preface anything that comes below with the statement that I am an idiot.

I've seen people do a lot of idiot things and I call them out on it, so I must be prepared to take the same myself.
And I am. I own this mistake. I own it so hard. Let's talk and yes, there will be math but follow along.

The morning is uninteresting. Skip.

The afternoon saw me deliver the replacement PC for the one with the bad motherboard. (because I could get the whole unit for the same price.)
But I forgot her tiny mouse receiver, so I had to drive a half hour (approximately) back home to get it and back again.

Then I went to see Boris. He just had a few piddly things for me and wanted 5 more books.
And here comes the part where I am an idiot.

My thinking is, I got an email about how staples members get $25 worth of free printing. So I figure I'll take it over there, get it printed it, save myself some effort, etc.
I think this because I erroneously believe I one time calculated how much staples would change for the printing and used that as a rough idea for what I was charging him. I figure if it's a few dollars more, fine, it's worth it.

A FEW DOLLARS MORE WAS NOT THE CASE.

The total bill was over a hundred dollars. A HUNDRED DOLLARS. I charge him $25.

So in the first place I am MASSIVELY under charging this guy, but that's nothing new with me.
But secondly, if I take the amount of printing, subtract the $25 free, subtract what he paid me, subtract what he gave me for coming over subtract what I made on the previous job…

(25 + 25 + 20 + 30) - 110 = -$10

I LOST ten dollars today. Oh, I'll get a little of that back as my 5% reward on the purchase, and another tiny piece of it back from the credit card company, but still.

Not sure why I bother trying to be fair and nice and not rip people off. It doesn't seem to pay and in fact I lose money usually. In gas, in time, in raw dollars.

Now sure, I'll be able to take that as a loss on the business, but I shouldn't have to do that.

All because I couldn't ask the girl behind the counter "how much would five copies be" beforehand. That's the only reason. Don't think the thought didn't cross my mind, it did. But I can't, I physically can't and it cost me. Like I can't say people's names or any of the other quirks that make being me such a wonder and delight.

But I own that mistake, and now I know better. No more printing at Staples, ever.

Now that I think about it, I had a whole box of flyers printed (that I didn't use half of) when I first started this business. I don't recall the same shock there that I have now. Did printing costs really go up that much in 12 years? Weird.

I did get to pet kitties though, even Angel, who hardly ever comes to be petted. So that's a plus.

Then I played Borderlands, because I can't screw that up. Got to level 50, couldn't beat Zarpadon, went to bet up Nel a couple of times and found it surprisingly easy now that I was level 50 and not in the low 40s, and got my fancy sniper rifle I was looking forward to. Also picked up a legendary Oz kit that had a 43 HP/s heal and upgraded my healing class mod to be in the 40s. Combined all of those things made taking her down an absolute cinch, and I stopped just before shutting the eye down because it was almost 12:30 by that point.

Something about that game bothers me, though. I mean Zarpadon goes on and on about how the information in the vault shouldn't be used. She spends the entire game trying to BLOW UP THE MOON in order to keep it out of anyone's hands. But then Lilith comes along and destroys it easily, so my question is why didn't Zarpadon just do that? Is it because Lilith is a siren that she can do that? It's never explained. It's weird.

Sat:
Not much to report, but I did do one job I didn't have scheduled. While downloading a manga I was reading at the library years ago a long time customer of mine said her iPhoto disk disappeared. So I went over to see about that.

It's dead, Jim.

But the good news is it's still under warranty, so I'll be sending that sucker back for a replacement.

In other news, the end boss of the main story in borderlands is rustling my jimmies.

Sun:
Got a few things accomplished. Got the hard drive in a box and labeled. Put my story (an older less proofed copy) on my kindle so my mother can read it while she recovers from her surgery. Did laundry.

Then tried some borderlands. Figured I would do the same trick, leave and raise some levels. Uh, no. Went to the holodome, which is a DLC thinking since the blurb text is all "climb to level 60 in the holodome) maybe I could do that. No. Not only does it have a huge hole in the center that keeps killing me, I played for hours and didn't raise one level. The enemies drop crap guns so I didn't get any new equipment either.

And yes, you read that right. The hole in the stage killed me more times then actual being shot in the face killed me. After falling to my death, yet again because I'm trying to shoot something or use a "jump pad" that tosses me while looking for red dots or whatever, I rage quit. I accept getting killed by enemies. That's to be expected. But for the stage itself to kill me, over and over, shows EXTREMELY poor design.

So now to go online and look up strategies to kill the final boss.

Seems lots of people think she's too fragile and have trouble with her and bosses. Mobs, yes. Bosses- no. Seems about right.
Gurrrr.

Got lots of calls over the weekend, tomorrow is going to be… interesting.

Mon:
I hate it when I'm right.

Shopping as normal, ate lunch quite early and left for my 11:30. She didn't have too much for me to do, hook up another printer and put a kindle in her name, basically.

Then to york, where I can't do half what they need because no one has the passwords to change what I need changed. I mean someone does, but he wasn't there. Apparently the owner only comes in after 2:30. Must be nice.

As the three minute job turned into almost an hour because of passwords I arrived a half hour after I wanted to (and he was a bit further away than google maps led me to believe.) That was a standard cleanout, and I saved him some money by switching his 35 days left in Norton to a free product. Another blow for Norton, and every little bit helps.

Then over to the mortgage place, and boy was her machine dead. I mean dead. Not only that, the video card is dead and so is the HD, as I tried putting both those things into another machine and neither worked. Whoops. Not so much the video card, but of course the office has no backups of anything.

I think it's the little board on the bottom, and offered to look into it. Figured I could just buy that same drive and swap them, right?

WRONG.

At least so various sites tell me. Something about even identical drives not having the same firmware? They need to take a chip off the board and put it on another? What? The? Heck? Anyway, back to that in a moment.

And still a half hour behind to my 5:30 which was a more minor cleanout than the earlier one.

Got home at 7:00, tried to get back to people but… no I did get back to one person. He wanted Wednesday, so I have nothing for tomorrow.

So I'll go to the post office, drop off the kindle to my mother, and probably go back to York so I can get paid for that job.

The post office is to send the HD away, hopefully to a place that is legit. Their site seems it, but who knows, right? Anyway, good luck little guy. I suppose if nothing comes of it she's no worse off, the thing is dead. And they charge $60 for the service, a place like drive savers charges a lot more I think, but they do that platters and such. I guess we'll see. *crosses fingers.*

It now being 10:00 I'm not sure what I'll do.

I read.

Tues:
Wow, was the entirety of today a let down? Yes, yes it was.

Got a few minor things done around here in the morning, like making soup and jello. Hey, it's still cold enough for soup! Even bought fruit I was going to stick in it, but the package said "don't use this this and this fruit or it won't set) and of course that's what I had bought. So I let it set and put the fruit on top, so there. Then started work on a Mother's Day gift. When it was 1/4 done I left to do some out of the house things.

First I went to see my mother. She was not there, so I just left her the kindle.

No, sorry, first I went to the post office and dropped off the hard drive. Then I went to see my mother.

Okay. Then I went to the mortgage place, but she had solved her problem. Thank for letting me know.

Then I went to see Larry at York to get the password and get the new user into peachtree. Despite being told he would be there after 2:30 every day but Thursday, he was not there. So that trip was wasted.

Then I got gas and came back. There is one small consolation to all that driving about. It's warm enough for girls in shorts to be running around again.

But you see what I mean? Disappointing. Started on the second of the four pieces of Mom's gift.

And then realized I had screwed up, as usual, and redid the first piece. It would have been okay, I guess, but it would have looked funny. At least I tried to continue the work. The first one printed out just fine. But the second one wouldn't print anything at all. So I reloaded the filament and it came out. So I started printing again. And a little came out and then none came out. So I had to take the whole thing apart (after waiting for it to cool down) to see what was holding it up.

Nothing, as far as I can see. It just doesn't feed anymore. Wonderful.
You know, this 3D printing stuff just really is not worth it.

Switching the filament over to the other extruder worked. Last time it stopped working I just cleaned it out because little bits of plastic were inside it. Not so much this time, don't know what I'm going to do. Sigh.

Then it was 10:00.

Wed:
Somewhat more productive day.

Went in the morning to see about a router, but it didn't need to be replaced after all. Somehow he had just turned the wireless function off. Don't ask me how.

Back here, started chapter 119.

Then back out at 1:45 to basically answer some questions for a lady. That went fine. She had two really old cats, like one was… 15? 17? she said. Old.
York wasn't far, so I called and Larry was around so I went down there. Added the username to Peachtree and gave user access to the person that IS always there, so I can use her account to do that crap and not have to rely on him being there.

More work on 119 when I got back, it's a battle and with the new "glue" weapon I thought up for the robots, it's not going quickly. In fact Jenny is suffocating right now! But Susan has three more robots to destroy before she can get over there. Actually she can't even see her right now, the tree she's next to is blocking her vision.

No phone calls, but I reached the person from yesterday, and I got some RAM I ordered, so I have two jobs tomorrow.

Finished 119, and it actually turned out so long, I didn't actually get through what I wanted 119 to be about, so I'll write 120 and that will be old 119. Yeah.

Thurs:
Morning went fine, went to the morning job down by the bay and did a cleanout. It wasn't too bad, but mindspark had put about 700 things on her machine that mbam cleared out.

Came back, ate lunch, started chapter 120.

Got pretty far into it, then left to see my mother at the hospital, who got out of surgery at 2:30. Couldn't stay long, and I didn't even get to see her. So much for "she'll wake up in about forty-five minutes." It was a good thing I didn't stay, my father didn't text me until after 7:00 that she was finally awake. I'll go see her tomorrow.

Had to get mostly all the way back here for my next job, putting RAM into an iMac. It only had 2GB, pathetic, and I just made it on time from the hospital. She also wanted a new printer hooked up, and her router was acting up, not recognizing ethernet connections. I just power cycled it and that was done.

Back here I finished up 120.

Got a couple of calls. Two for tomorrow, one for Saturday and maybe one for Monday too.

No game this week either? Doesn't look like it. At least it's slightly warmer, and sunny.

That seems to be that. Have a good weekend everyone.