2015-09-25:

Fri:
Oh, forgot to mention last time, the cutest cat playground I saw. It started out a window and was basically made of tied together crates, tubing, wood, whatever he could find I guess. But it let his cat climb, hide in trees, and watch stuff going on outside while still being unable to run off. It was neat.

He said a squirrel got in it once somehow, that was fun for the cat.

Anyway, listed a few things on ebay. Cleaned up the last of the gas from the driveway, where I had put litter down on it.

Got a call from the sewing people, something was going on with her ACT! database. Apparently it happened before and I fixed it, so I went down there. Basically the SQL server service wasn't running. I wrote up what to do about it, should it happen again.

Her laptop is completely taken over. Also discovered Lenovo put the absolute slowest HD they could in that machine. All the reviews are "this drive is so freaking slow!" So I'm going back there when I have a replacement for them. That should take care of their malware problem too, so I didn't spend much time on that. It needed the whole treatment otherwise.

Wondering what to do today led me to craigslist. Found 2 xbox 360s that were broken in different ways. One wouldn't boot, one wouldn't read disks. $40 for both. Hoped to combine them. Not working out so well. The one that wouldn't boot had a penny, yes a penny, rattling around inside the drive, which broke at least one gear. I tried just swapping the laser, but didn't get very far. It turns on, but then when it's supposed to be reading the disk it just doesn't come on. It worked ONCE. Got a game to boot and come up. But not again. GURRR.

Further bad news, I thought I had a power cable from when mine died. Can't find it. Found the AV cable and an extra controller, so those can go with it. Bought a replacement DVD drive for $20 and power cords go for about that much. I can handle the soldering (I think) to change the controller board, so hopefully that won't be an issue. Problem is, you can get used units fairly cheap now, so I'm not sure if I'll make all that much. Sigh. Should have looked at that beforehand. At least I'm trying different things now, right?

Oh, the other one? Can't see anything obvious why it's not powering on. Hoped it might be my new favorite, capacitors. They all seem fine. Even tried replacing the power button, just in case. Nope. That's okay, that one I took a risk on, I figured it might not be fixable. But for the drive not to work too, that was a bummer. Guess we'll see how it goes. Might be able to get a few dollars for it on ebay for parts? Don't know, probably not.

If and when I get the other up and running maybe I'll put it in the shops. I can probably charge a little more for it there than on ebay, right? Though if it sells as well as everything else I have there, which is to say it doesn't… hum.

Saw my parents, they were having work on the house done.

Walked a guy through putting his printer back, only took a few minutes.

Sat:
Actually did a job today. Called one guy who left a message yesterday, no answer.

But did take another call about internet trouble. She had changed her password for some reason, (as usual I didn't get a coherent story why) so she needed to put it into the DSL box. Also the D-Link I got for them two years ago was dead. It was one I had gotten a warranty replacement on once, all the ethernet ports were dead. The internet one and the 4 others. Weird. The wireless worked, but wouldn't take the password.

Found just a box with 1 port and a removable antenna, much cheaper, so they said to get that instead. This one obviously doesn't work very well, or at least hold up well.

Looked over that other xbox board, see what it might be. Hard to say really. If it was just the board I could get another, they sell them, with the DVD board even. But it would need everything so that's not worth it. Maybe if I got some others that were busted.

And watched Season 3 of heroes. I was actually missing an episode. I wondered why the transition from season 3 to 4 was so abrupt. Whoops.

Tomorrow? Writing! Just haven't felt like it.

Sun:
I did write a chapter.

Also watched more Heroes and made all those non existent phone calls. Yeah.

Mon:
Did the shopping as normal. Took little sister around to the all the places. Got the big bag of crunchy cat food and returned the oil I now wasn't going to use. One check not signed, sigh. Really do have to look them over before I accept them, don't I?

Got a call right in the morning, the accountant guy did something and turned off one of his monitors. Apparently the intel software has a hotkey (three keys actually) to do that. Why? Who knows! Anyway that was a short one but the ONLY one so… yeah.

What else did I do? How about ->[[popup file="2015-09/chart9-24.png" description="this nifty chart" alt="this nifty chart" ]]<- I made detailing the number of customers I've done each month since my business started? Yes, exactly.

So looking at the data it seems my business peaked in 2009, with 544 total customers or 1.7 average jobs per day (minus sundays.) As you can see, after that it gets worse and worse, apart from that slight rise last year. I've estimated 120 more jobs this year to get that 348 number but the way things are going, that could be generous.

I hate to give the business up. For all the complaining I do about it, at least I can do it. And there are people I like working for and who rely on me to do stuff. But if this downward trend continues it's not sustainable even given the low amount of resources I need.

Especially if the stock market keeps plummeting and losing me money.

To that end I put my resume in to a company from a job listing on craigslist. Mostly the same thing, just PC type repair. Not sure how successful that sort of thing really is, but hey, at least my resume is up to date and I can start checking it every day for other opportunities. It was perfect, as it listed as part time, meaning I could probably do it only part of the day then still get in my 1.1 jobs that day.

Also looked at a website purporting to match people up with submitted jobs, but reading reviews it seemed more a hoax than anything. Weird. Like 80% of postings were fake for some reason? I don't get it.

I could look into other ways of getting more customers. I mean those PC shops stay in business somehow, right? But the paper advertising didn't work, and craigslist isn't working, what else is there?

Finished Heroes, ready for the new season!

Tues:
Did my one morning job. Ancient machine, only 512MB of RAM. Also his DSL connection was awful, 700kb/sec? Then when I turned it off and back on, the light blinked for 20 minutes and never connected again. Whoops. Sorry buddy! And the phone company can't come out for two days? Maybe I should go work for them, they seem understaffed.

Otherwise, sold him some RAM and checked the machine over.

Came back, ate lunch, checked craigslist.

Got the first SSD in, tempted to put it into the system but I held off, I'm putting an identical one into the laptop for the sewing shop lady tomorrow, so if it comes later I didn't want to have to wait for it. So I'll use this one for that and the second one I get for the one sitting here. Yes, I have actual work tomorrow.

Thought about other things to do. Didn't come up with much. Sean had asked me once about BestBuy, and I had said they might not like me still working for myself. Plus, Bestbuy? Ugh. But I did look at the staples website, and they have a tech position open. I like stapes, I wouldn't mind working there as a tech. I filled out their online form and we'll see what they say. The final thing was "may be required to sign … non-compete, non-solicitation agreement…" so maybe they wouldn't either? Crap. Well, if they ever get back to me I'll ask them what that means exactly before anything else. Seriously though, you can't offer only part time employment and expect the person not to do what they can do to make up the difference. It's like a waitress can't have two part-time waitress jobs. That would be "non-compete" right?

Went to sew up the pocket on a shirt that's been sitting there a few weeks, and it seems my sewing machine is busted. It works, sorta? Sounds like it's struggling and the needle action wasn't smooth at all.

Got a call from a lady so I went right out. Her main problem was the USB wireless adapter she was using went missing. Unplugging it got it going again. Her secondary problem was her ancient version of norton filling her HD up with temp files. Like, 200+ GB going back to 2008! Yipes! I remember that from years ago. Haven't seen a version that ancient in some time. But she still had over a hundred days on her subscription so they must still support it. Anyway, wiped them out and got her space back. The third problem was pretty shocking. Like, I went to see if her printer was plugged in and it shocked me. Apparently her dog chewed the cord almost in half. It was the easily replaceable end, so I was able to sell her a new one. Mission accomplished.

Ate dinner, made my 0 phone calls and did a bit more stressing about stuff. Fun!

I did write chapter 184 though.

Wed:
Somewhat busy day, all around.

Got the cleanup done on the first one. XP machine, ugh. Has one capacitor that's burst and one that's about to, but it's still running. Sorta. Took too long, but I got through it. Did see a rather bizarre contraption tooling down the road like nobody's business. Imagine if a recumbent bicycle and a stairmaster had a child. That's what it was. A bike that you stood up to ride, and pushed your feet up and down to make go. Weirdest thing. And apparently they are a thing- an Elliptigo. He didn't just make it himself I guess.

Picked up the laptop. Thank goodness I didn't use the SSD for mine, by the time I got back at 5:00 the next one still hadn't showed. Huh. Came back (oh and by the way the road getting there was all torn up with various sections as one way. 250s is a beast at the best of times, you can imagine what this was like) and started the reload. It went… well, actually. Win 8 went on fairly fast, especially considering I only have that on DVD. Then used my flash drive to update to 10, USB 3 must have helped it was done in no time. Did the updates, transferred her stuff, done.

Got gas. Original milage was 4678, I put 7 gallons in and my milage is 4992. That's about 45 mpg. Sweet. Let's hope that number nudges up a little more with the non-ethanol gas. Because I doubt they used something like that.

One call, just the hotel, he's having trouble printing again I guess. We'll see. So the print shop guy and that in the morning.

No news from either company, guess my 12 years experience just wasn't good enough?

Went over chapter 184, as I hadn't last night.

Got Sean's birthday present, if I ever see him again. And the SSD about 7:00ish? I forget, but it was late.

Watched a little The Incredibles, made some notes for what will happen in that world for Susan.

Talked to Mr Stupid about stuff. My goodness I must be hard up if I'm considering doing anything with that guy again. How did he even still have my number after 8 or 9 years? Or more? There will be more rules, I can tell you that much.

Went to feed my parent's kitties and birdies. My first night mission with little sister. Went fine.

Thurs:
Did several jobs in the morning, didn't see a penny. Went to see the print shop guy, his machine was as ancient as I remembered. Only 768 of RAM, wonders why a 2ghz celeron from 10 years ago "is slow." Gee, wonder why.

Did what I could for it. He always sends me a check later.

While leaving, the woman that basically runs the mortgage office (she's the only one there that I ever see) called me over. (The print shop is in the back of the place.) Wanted me to look a machine over that was having IE issues. So I did. Didn't have any invoice forms, I'll have to bring her one.

Then over to the hotel, look at the printer again. Showed an error on the printer screen itself, so it's probably the printer. And the other person I talked to said her problem was also fixed. So I left an invoice with them.

Came back here, started the install off the new SSD. Got win7 loaded and used their awful phone system to punch in the numbers they want. Got the numbers in, because apparently the internet doesn't exist for this crap. Ran the same Win10 upgrade I did for the sewing lady. It seemed to work fine.

Whoops. Looked at the belarc advisor printout, it showed windows as not being activated. And it wouldn't. Super. So the same thing, done with win7 and win8, the win8 one got activated just fine (because I did the same check) but this one didn't? So I rolled it back. It had a cute little "why are you doing this awful thing" and several choices along with OTHER. And a tiny box for comments. I put in "didn't activate despite being upgraded from an activated win7 machine. Great job as usual, MS." Nothing will ever come of it.

So now I get to sit here and watch the "checking for updates" bar scroll endlessly for win7, install enough updates to get the Win10 offer, then tediously download and install that. SO FUN.

Oh, and the drivers all mysteriously vanished, and none of the programs work again. So what's the point of being able to go back if it just wipes out the machine anyway? So stupid.

Wow. SVCHOST is using 25% of the CPU, but 1,520,400 K of memory. That's a gig and a half folks. To simply tell which updates a machine has, in other words, a simple text file's worth of numbers. And the fan is going crazy.

I hate windows.

Skipped the "security" updates bringing the total down to 63. At least once downloaded the SSD loads them in fast enough.
Didn't show. Did the twenty minute checking for updates again, see if I get the one that activates that. All this to get a FREE upgrade. Download tons of updates that are going to get wiped out anyway. It's insane. All they needed was to accept, for the period of july '15 to july '16, was windows 7-8 product keys into a website that would spit out new windows 10 keys. Oh right, windows 8 got rid of them. Sorta. Still, they had them. Or put out a tool that runs on the system and generates the key. Or just accept old windows keys for win10 until the cut off date. But no, it's MS, I have to jump through a million hoops to get the simplest thing done.

Correction, it's been an hour and it's still "checking." Wonderful. Finally finished. Installed 99 updates. Unchecked all the stupid .NET ones, of which there must be about twenty. What's bizarre is it didn't download any of them. It just went right to "installing." Huh?

Had to install all of them. Finally got offered the thing.

Of course it didn't work. Tried it twice. Gave some error, as usual. How did this ever get installed anywhere? The only times I've tried, it's screwed up. Apart from the one time, I mean.

So I tried the USB drive again.

Watched the premiere of Heroes Reborn, supposedly with limited commercials. Wow, if this is less commercials, I would not want to see normal commercials. It was okay, I guess. Not great though, but I'll keep watching. I don't know, I liked the little web series better, if you can beleve it.

Zero calls today, but I still have a job for tomorrow.

Hey, it activated this time! And why couldn't it have done that before?

No weekend plans apart from still checking on my parent's pets. Maybe more writing I suppose.

Not a bad week, all in all. See you next time.