2015-09-18:

Fri:
Actually managed two jobs today, one quite late.

My morning activity was to rip apart a couple of machines, including that ancient server machine I've had kicking around forever. Thought I might sell the parts. No. It didn't want to turn on. It did the last time I used it. Sigh.

With that done I went looking for the first place to go to. Why she couldn't tell me the name of the street her street was off of I'll never know. But it's a new development tract and doesn't appear on any map. I finally did find it.

Her monitor was dead. Having taken it apart I see one slightly bulged capacitor, which I suppose could be the culprit. I'll see about changing it and putting the darn thing back together.

Cleaned her machine out as well, since I was there. Good thing too, mbam found over 900 things! Sheesh.

Back here I got everything into the car and went to see my parents. In the mail I got the LCD but no answer so I didn't go there.

Until 5:00 when I walked in the door and the phone rang. So I went right out there. Took way longer to get there, a car was straight up flipped over the guardrail and upside down on the other side of the road. Yeah, trying to shave off a couple of seconds in your trip doesn't seem like such a great idea now, does it? Drive the limit, it's there for a reason.

Putting in the new one went fine, and I came back here.

Ate dinner, I have one short story that'll make you laugh. And laugh. And laugh. (Because you're a terrible person. :- )

You know that screwdriver incident, with the iPhone battery, and I had to order a screwdriver?

Yeah, that one. I found one. In a bag with some other tools, and a suction cup. Probably as part of something I ordered some time ago, threw into my soldering box, and forgot about. Until I went to try fixing that capacitor.

Funny, huh?

Yeah.

But some good news. I actually fixed the monitor. It seems it was that capacitor, as it's sitting next to my main monitor acting perfectly. No spark and *fftt* dead, just clear picture and steady image. I can't believe it. Well, I can, I mean I'm as capable as the next person to change a capacitor right? It's just my track record hasn't been great with monitors. But this one seems okay! Neat!

Now, do I offer it back to her for the repair fee?

Sat:
Printed my weekly sheet to try and avoid nozzle clogs. Printed perfectly last week. Now the yellow is completely clogged. Super. It was doing so well lately too.

Called a guy and went out to do a job, just straightening things out.

Messed with the printer some more after lunch when I got back. Didn't get very far. Yellow got better, all other colors got worse, somehow? Uh, what? Well, I printed the sheet but everything looks way too dark. Weird. Not streaky, or missing color, just way too dark.

In honor of Heroes returning to TV soon I started watching that again.

Sun:
Finished season 1 of heroes.

Cleaned up a bit, moved a few more things into the "new" basement. Worked on chapter 181.

Got a few calls over the weekend, but not many. One person out of state I talked to. One appointment made about a noise. Reached the dentist guy, he's finally back and I can drop his stuff off. And the outreach place said the machine is taking a long time to load something? I don't know. I mean I just reloaded the thing, it can't have problems now, right?

And finished. Mor'du is dead, rather messily I might add, and it's all Susan's fault. And she suspects who did it to him, too. Ah well, what can I say?

Mon:
Had a bit more work than I expected today.

Went shopping of course. Got the stuff for changing my oil, I'm a bit overdue on it.
Also more cream. My last batch of ice cream came out… weird. Does brown sugar go bad? I tried making it with that and it tasted funny. This batch, where I didn't use that, was far superior.

Dropped off the iPhone and laptop feet to the dentist guy. His machine wasn't turning off? Well, I couldn't stay so I went to my 12:00 down the street. Which had no problems. I oiled the fan just in case, but I didn't see what she was describing.

Then went right to the outreach place again. Added RAM to that machine I worked on before. Not sure it was slow because it was doing updates or what, as it went through "step 5 of 5" "35%" three times before it finally came up, (oh, how I love you windows!) but the RAM I think helped. They only had 2gb in that one. Now they have 4.

Called the ice cream guy, he also said his machine was fine so not to stop out at the moment.

Read my pages, watched episode 7 and went back out to the dentist guy. He said the machine was acting fine but had even more stuff for me to do, so I left there at 6:45, having arrived at 5:30. Got home just in time for calling.

Looked over a machine remotely, customers who moved. Talked to my one other call, so I have that job and one lady who had trouble with her printer but called HD and then some other place and they started messing around with her machine… which is a Mac? I don't know what she was going on about. She wanted me to check it out, so I will.

Got another 5 minutes to nine. Hooking up a new modem for someone no longer wanting to lease theirs.

Got chapter 182 more than half done.

Tues:
I had the most fantastic thing happen today!

Wait, no, what's the opposite of that? Horrible? Yes, that's it.

Turns out my car has been leaking GASOLINE for at least the past two days. I recall going out yesterday and smelling gas, but figured maybe I left the can open? Or the leak in the mower got worse and I had left some in there?

Nope. Got to my 9:30 appointment today, looked over her machine, it was fine. Went back outside. Still smelled gas.

Well, I looked under the car and there it was, merrily dripping along. I rushed to my 11:00, got there at 10:00ish and they had two problems. They keep getting chrome in some weird "chromebook" mode that sort of takes over everything. And the website they were trying to use was at 500% zoom. Try zooming into something 500% and see how well you can use it. (Yes, yes, I'm not looking at you microscope users)

Then brought it in to the shop to be fixed. Wonder how much that's going to run me? So much for any surplus I've managed to accumulate.

Plus I won't be able to do my 1:30. AARG.

Anyway, wasn't idle. No sir. Cleaned up the gas that was all over the garage floor. Don't worry, I did it safely. I just set it on fire. It's fine.

I painted that table that I never use that's on the deck.

So it went from looking like this

[[image file="2015-09/greentableb.jpg" alt="Green Table Before" ]]

to this.

[[image file="2015-09/greentablea.jpg" alt="Green Table after" ]]

It's a work of art, I know. I'm worried that minutes after I post this, museums from all over the world will be clogging my inbox for the merest hint I might consent to allow my works into their insignificant galleries. Yeah.

Also watched more heroes and looked into new cars. STILL nothing to really replace my Geo Metro. This makes me sad. Everything in the 35-40 MGP range is a hybrid, and buying batteries for those things isn't fun. I suppose if I kept the warranty up? I don't know, I've only had this car 5 years, and I've put a lot of money into it, it seems to me. And more if I wanted that oil leak fixed.

Gurr.

$1700 for a new gas tank!
$1400 for a USED gas tank!

What are they, lined with gold? Made by royal dwarves?

And now more serious looking into a new car. Good Bye money.

Didn't reach the one person that called, but did talk the ice cream guy through a few things.

Finished chapter 182.

Wed:
Mostly just buying a new car. Say goodbye to big sister and say hello to little sister.

[[image file="2015-09/littlesis.jpg" alt="Little Sis" ]]

Actualy, she was made in Korea, so it should be yeodongsaeng. Ugh, older sister is Nuna, that I knew from The Gamer comic. Yeodongsaeng is a mouthfull. I'll have to come up with some better Korean name for her.

It's a 2014 Chevy Spark, 5 speed manual. One thing I overlooked- cruse control. That I'm going to miss. And I was wrong, it says 41mgp average, which I'm pretty sure is better then chibi kuruma. So there are cars with that level of milage that are not hybrids. You just have to know where to look.

But I like the little instrument panel. Shows average MPG, shift suggestion, gas tank capacity. Loved seeing that 41 number for the MPG. Sweet.

Such low millage, (4500! That's it!) the sales guy said the original owner had surgery on her hand (sound familiar?) and couldn't shift anymore. I got right back into it, but it does seem to be pretty hard to get into reverse for some reason. Maybe I'm doing it wrong somehow. It'll take some getting used to I'm sure, but it's not too big a deal.

Got all the stuff moved after taking the back seats out. It was pretty easy.

[[image file="2015-09/littlesisinside.jpg" alt="Inside my little sister. Wait that was dirty." ]]

Got no calls today, that's just super. I did reach the lady from yesterday so I have two jobs for tomorrow. Oddly I haven't been able to reach the router people I had to cancel on. Ah, and I reached the last guy a little after 9:00 so I have three places to go, woohoo.

Got big sister all cleaned out and ready to get rid of. Poor big sister. Oh yeah, guess what I found? No really, guess. I'll wait. Go on, guess. Come on, you can't can you? The key I lost like two years ago. Yeah! It was under the passenger side seat. Must have pulled the keys out and it went flying? I don't know, but there it was. I have three keys now, yoohoo?

There was a guy right as we were leaving the dealer that was interested in the car. He bought it. $100. As he works for the dealer he might just not change himself the labor and get the parts to fix the thing? Don't know, didn't ask. Anyway he said he would come tomorrow and get it, and I signed it over to him. (after being handed cash, of course) Bye, big sister. If only it weren't for that inconvenient oxygen stuff.

Thurs:
And big sister was gone. He came while I was gone, probably lunch time. I hope he takes care of her.

Quite busy today!

Got a call about 10:00, the router guy finally getting back to me. Figuring I had an hour and he was pretty close by I went over there. They have a new page when you try and get on, which lists some directions. A nice touch. But he said to wait an hour, usually it happens in a minute or so. Well, guy didn't call me that it wasn't working so I guess it came through.

Then to my 11:30, basic check. Ran the usual stuff, and started his 8.1 upgrade, as he had never done it. Over DSL. Ugh. I left after I started the download. Why can't I download that just once and carry it on a flash drive again, MS? Oh, right, because you're completely out of touch and insane? Got it.

Ate lunch, then out to a rather odd problem. It was a macbook pro, actually, and somehow it believed it had no airport card. I took the bottom off, but I don't think it's a separate card. At least not on that side. Rebooted it and it was fine, so I didn't really get to troubleshoot it. Apparently others have had the issue. She was running an out of date 10.6, so I fixed that. Then did the rest of the updates. Looked at her printer too, clogged. A kodak, seems to be about $90 for a new printhead. Got black printing at least. Mostly. Stupid ink jets.

Then finally a long tuneup, as her machine was nine years old. Took an hour just to run mbam through it. And in another bizarre twist, she was running only SP2 on XP. It's been bugging her to upgrade to SP3 for how many years? Yipes, no wonder MS doesn't really offer "choice" anymore on updating. People never do it!

I did it, reluctantly, to get skype working. I also figured AOL Desktop (yes, that abomination and yes, she was over 80 years old, how did you guess?) which she had recently updated (for some bizarre reason) also needed it. I was right, both started working right after it. But my goodness was that machine dragging. It had enough RAM, but Windows Slowdown Syndrome was strong with it.

So I got home at 7:00, tried to reach a few people. Remember Mr Stupid? The ebay guy? He called me again after all these years! Did I even blog at the time he was getting me to try and sell junk? I don't even know. Still trying to make a buck doing nothing.

I mean I'm trying to make a buck, sure, but at least I'm also trying to serve a customer base.

Which has deserted me. I have no work for tomorrow.

Let's see, car news. I figured out reverse, you have to give it a little zig zag when you go that way, not just do it straight.
Found the second to second MPG meter, which ranges from 0 when stopped to 99 while coasting. I like 99.
And used 1 tiny blip off the digital gas meter. There are 16 blips, so one in a day of all that running around doesn't seem too bad. Shifting is pretty automatic again, though I won't be able to punch in the GPS when I need to, not that I should be doing that and driving anyway, sooooooooooooo, yeah. I passed another Spark the same color as mine that was turning and was like, "good choice, good choice."

So, weekend plans: None. No work so there's that. Probably do some writing, as I haven't the past few days. Can't imagine why.

Hope all you out there didn't spend ten thousand dollars this week and had a good one.

See you all next time.