2015-10-16:

Fri:
Called the only person from yesterday I thought might have a job. (the other two were mr stupid and laptop lady with another question) Nope. He was calling to let me know someone else was going to call me, with a job. Aarg.

So I had nothing.

Put in my resume for a temporary (2 month) position testing printers at xerox. Why only two months? Who knows! Watch as I again do not get called about it.

Or, whoops, I get called about it TODAY. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I called a lady after lunch figuring I might as well do something today, which of course didn't exactly work out as planned.

I got there at 1:00 and her problem was quite odd. Running the seagate diagnostic (quick test) showed the drive was fine. So I ran chkdsk which took forever just to get to from the CD. It repaired some things but then gave me an I/O error of all things.

So I ran the full test, and let it get to 60%, where it was still just tooling along. Trying to mount it on my Mac, in Linux, and another PC all did the same thing. They could see the drive, just not do anything to it.

So I went back and forth about her options for replacement, and she called Staples who said they had a 240 GB drive for $157. Weird price, and too expensive, but she didn't want to wait. Fine. I took her machine and went over there, to the Henrietta one.

Of course their 240GB drive was actually $220 which is about what I figured. So I called her and she said to just order the thing I was suggesting I order in the first place. (Funny how that turns out)

So I drove it back to her so she could at least use the linux disk and get her email in the meantime. I came back here and ordered a 256GB drive for $90. Yeah, more space and half the cost. Just as I predicted.

Before I left I checked what calls I had. Weird, there's an out of state number several times and staples called. What could that all be-

YIPES. Staples called me in for an interview. Xerox called me in for an interview. Whaaaaaat? And I got a bunch of other calls too, but one was a question and one was the guy the other guy said would call, so I can't get back to him as I think that's a business number. So that'll be next week.

Still, it never rains, huh?

The Xerox thing is basically app testing, full time, but only for two months. Which is sort of weird, but the pay would be good. I would have to work it so I would come home, check my messages, and get right out to whoever that day. Or push it off to the weekend if it could wait. It would be tricky, but I think it could work. Could it lead into more work from them? Would I be insane by that time? Who can say. But earning ~$4000 (after taxes, I took out 20% from the hourly rate the site said they offered) in two months would be boss. That's what the cool kids are saying now, right? On top of what I would earn otherwise, I mean.

And if it doesn't work out, well, it's only two months. Anyone calling me after that wouldn't even know anything had happened.

I would have to take that milage out separately, of course. Which I could do, it's a constant distance after all. I just find that distance and multiply by two, for the length of time I work there. But I would still be able to take the car off, meaning my taxes would still be pretty much zero.

Ah well, all speculation at this point. They all may hate me with one glance.

Sat:
Morning one took me far longer than I expected. Oh, it booted right up after I ran chkdsk, but I offered to update him to 10 figuring the laptop with the SSD took like twenty minutes to do it. I should have figured this one didn't move quite that quickly.

It took two hours.

So I didn't get to each lunch, I just went to my 1:00. That went fine, just setting up his new laptop. He was the old theater teacher at my high school, hasn't changed much, still the same mustache.

Came back, ate lunch, and then called the laptop person to see if they would be around. I was going to drop it off on my way to Sean's.

She didn't answer but immediately called me back, so I left. Apparently the unit had been owned years ago by someone else, and they were just now finally getting it repaired. What does this mean? They didn't know the password to it. I had to hook up a CD drive to it and rip the password out. You're welcome.

Only a few minutes late to Sean's, not that it mattered. We didn't actually get that far due to various circumstances, including Stan being called away for work. Played the castle building game again and while it looked like Mizzy was going to take it away, Sean overtook her, leaving myself totally in the dust. Why did I do so well the first time? Weird.

Sun:
Did some cleaning.
Listed the router on ebay.
Watched Black Swan.
Watched two episodes of Orphan Black.
Played two chapters of The Wolf Among us. Good story, very bad technical issues.

So I guess it was a fitting last Sunday of freedom, if it goes that way?

Anyway, didn't get any calls over the weekend until after 7:00 when they just kept coming. Weird. I'm not going to regret looking for other work now am I? I mean that would be the way. Still, two weeks ago I hardly did anything, and honestly most of this stuff can wait.

Mon:
Looking destiny right in the face!

Did the shopping of course. Not many there, and you think they would be more busy as people have off today and go shopping. But then it was early.

Out at 11:30 to set up the printer. It was a laser, good choice, and he gave me the old one. It is an older unit, it has parallel! But I just did a test print and it worked fine. Weird. Wonder why he got rid of it. But it's mine now. Who's a cute little laser printer? Who is?

Okay, I know why he got rid if it. It will only grab the paper after you open and close the tray. Sheet feeder seems to work though. I might keep it around, who knows.

Left at 1:30 to go down to Staples and see what the job offer is all about. It went fine, they seemed interested in hiring me, though they did have other candidates. The ad actually listed two positions open. The next step is agreeing to the background check, which I haven't actually gotten yet.

Of course the actual manager was on vacation, so they said by the time that went through (three days) he would be back. Also I don't know if their policies changed or they just need someone sooner (It seems the head tech was currently working alone! So maybe they do) but they said I wouldn't exactly start on the floor and work up, or just work on the tech counter. Basically everyone does what's needed at the time. It's true, the blue shirted print people were ringing people up when I arrived, there was a pretty long line.

Now for the Xerox one. At this moment I'm leaning more towards the staples job. Yes, it's less money, (but maybe not much less? She said they might be able to offer a little more because of my experience) but it's also less hours, which is what I wanted. Is it fair to make my customers wait days because I took a full time but temporary job?

But then I think back to the times years ago when I did book several days in advance. They lived with it then. But running myself ragged, I don't know. Guess we'll see how it goes, and what they say. Maybe I won't even have to make a choice.

But of course I will, because why else would the two companies call me back on the exact same day, despite the two week gap in when I contacted them? Left or Right, as they once said on Dr. Who. So bizarre how this worked out.

Then I went about the rest of the day. A minor appointment at 4:00, just reloading a sound driver, which brought sound back to a laptop. My 6:00 called to say her issue had vanished, so instead I delivered the toner cartridges I had bought for a guy and received that day.

Got a bunch of calls, didn't take anything in the morning, didn't want to get held up. So I have three for tomorrow in the afternoon. The lady with the freezing firefox I thought I had helped before, perhaps her firefox extensions came back. Have to go through that machine and see what's up. Then cleaning a machine off and backing them up, and then another sound issue, of all things. Weird.

Also have one for Thursday, in the morning.

Finished Wolf Among Us. Did my choices really change anything?

Tues:
Well!

A day can certainly change things. Went at 11:00 for the Xerox interview, and wasn't home an hour before the contracting company contacted me that they wanted to move forward. Guess that's what I'm doing, as staples still has to contact me. (I know, I should have given them more time but from what they said it was somewhat automated, an email should have been sent right away.)

The best news was the potential for extending the contract or even being hired at the end of the two months. Having a regular paycheck again would be very nice. So it seems I'll be very busy soon. Maybe I can transition out of the repair business somewhat gradually after all. Which is what it seemed to be doing anyway, quite without any effort on my part.

After that it went back to normal. My 2/3:00 canceled (husband and wife just in different locations) but I got the SSD for the lady so I'm glad they did, went over there and reloaded her machine. Went okay, apart from the USB 3.0 ports not working at all right at first.

She gave me some extra, which I appreciated.

Then over to the sound guy. Some odd issues there, and I plugged his microphone into the out port because I didn't check his nest of cables quite closely enough. So I'm not sure what fixed it, in the end. Just that I did, once I realized "wait a minute."
Came back, made two calls, so I'll be doing them tomorrow. Plus a drug screening.

Hope they don't find out I'm high on believing.

Finished Orphan Black.

Wed:
Pretty busy today. Morning one went a little long. The first part of mbam scan finished after 20 minutes, which I figured was pretty good considering how ancient the machine was. Seriously, it still used PATA hard drives. But the next part took another 20. GURR. Anyway, got his second/third fake FBI warning thing off and went to do the drug test. (I know he's gotten at least two of those, if not three, in the last several years. What sort of sites are you browsing, buddy? Oh, right, online gambling. Right...)

Now when I signed up for the thing I was supposed to get a screen with a number. I got a screen with… whiteness. So they didn't know what to do with me, because I had the wrong number copied down. (The only one I had found.)

iPad to the rescue, I got on their wi-fi, got my mail as it was just yesterday, got the phone number for the place and called them.

In all I was there for an hour, barely making it to my 1:00. Ran the standard cleanup stuff for him as well, answered his questions, and came home for lunch. Had just enough time as I just made it to my 3:00 who had moved his iPhoto library file for some bizarre reason. That was really his only issue.

Came back here, was astonished at the number of phone calls I had. Seriously, I got seven total calls today. Seven. Where were you people two weeks ago when I was sitting around with nothing to do for two days in a row? Honestly, I'm not going to be able to handle that many calls very soon.

I did manage to talk most of the people through their issue, so that helped. I only got one new job out of it for tomorrow, one quite far away.

Did something completely different. No, not writing. Haven't done that in a bit. Well, I have stuff to watch and get back to Sean. No, this is something you'll never guess.

No, you won't guess-

Not that, you really won't-

Stop guessing, you'll never-

Look I'll just tell you.

I put up my Christmas lights. I know people going by must have been all "what is that weirdo doing, putting lights up already?"

Well, I won't have much time in the coming months, will I? I don't think so. Better to do it now.

Should really have plugged them in and made sure they worked before putting them up. Whoops. It worked out in the end. I had faith in them, being all LED and such.

Watched a bit of Transformers Prime.

Thurs:
Only the two jobs today. Woke up to find a large spool of fiber optic cable in my yard that was being deployed down the street. It was slowly unspooling. Interesting stuff. I want fiber!

Morning one was fine, really didn't need much. Their backup drive was full and hadn't backed up since April, so well done vista backup team. I erased half the files so it would start backing up again. Ran the usual scans, cleaned her printheads.

The 1:30 one was pretty long. Took 25 or so minutes to get there, and he had an ancient laptop (no really, the company has been out of business since 2012.) he wanted looked at. Figured out his wireless problem was the card he was using only supported WEP encryption. His USB ports were 1.1 not 2.0, and plugging flash drives in you had to point it to c:\windows\inf rather than it just finding it by itself. Sheesh. Machine actually ran okay despite having only 256mb of RAM. Weird. I suggested adding more though, not that I had any PC133 ram, given using IE7 wasn't going to get him very far and firefox would work better. So I'm ordering him some stuff.

Then right over to my parent's house where I helped carry insulation up into the attic area and threw it to my father who was spreading it over the stuff that was already there. Had dinner there, and came back.

Just the one call today, the dentist guy updated to win10 two days before leaving for India for three weeks. And then he expected me to come tomorrow and answer questions about it. Uh, that's not going to happen once I start in with Xerox, my friend.

No word from them, sadly. If I don't hear by tomorrow I'll email the Silver Xis contact and make sure everything is moving along.

Watched more Transformers Prime.

Put some contact paper on the shelves I made for the shelf unit I… acquired recently. Looks a bit better, I think.

[[image file="2015-10/beforeandaftershelf.jpg" alt="shelves" ]]

Why throw something like that out?

No plans for the weekend (my last free one???) yet. Just the one job tomorrow.

Only $40 away from being back where I started with my mutual funds.

Can't think of much else at the moment, but be sure to tune in next time to see if I'm working full time or what. It might be a bit shorter, for obvious reasons. We'll see.

See you then.