2010-01-20:

But I did get a bit behind, which made me leave early, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So myself woke up and went to his first one, which ran over just a smidgen. Cleanout, regular stuff. Though he had lost his sound card driver somehow. I stayed a bit longer then I wanted because though his machine was cleaned up, he was using the crappy old version of Norton Corporate from years ago which I thought was okay, but his machine still didn't have the pep I expected. So I took it off and gave him avast instead. Next up was the one near chili, which gave me a few problems. Walking in it was all about half crashing. Basically, it went to a black screen but the power light stayed on. Weird. I suspected the power supply. Also she only had 256 of RAM, surprise, surprise. So I plugged in my "test" power supply and it ran fine for awhile. Problem solved, right? Well, I put in a brand new power supply and the new 1GB of RAM chip and her machine now wouldn't even boot. The power light came up but nothing else. Huh? So I put the test power supply back in, and that worked again. I later brought the power supply home and verified it worked in another system, so I'm not sure at all why it didn't like it. But back to the job. Now, it's freezing and the video is doing really bizarre things. So I dig around in the car and find a 512MB I can try. That seems to do the trick. Enough memory for her to run and the power supply that's not new maybe, but works just the same. So I'm now running about a half hour behind. That gives me 45 minutes before the next person has to leave (when I arrive). I try one thing, but calling them tonight it didn't work. So that'll need more work. Picked up a system from a guy down the street from that, said he put in a 1GB stick and now the system won't even go on. And you know what, he's right. Oh, it powers up* but doesn't do anything. Back to chili ave. I fuss with the laptop and decide it's a hard drive problem, the diagnostic said bad sectors, and you don't want to mess around once a drive start showing that symptom. So time for a new drive. While Vista was trying, in vain, to repair the problem "This may take more then an hour" I called the other person in Chili I keep forgetting when I go to Sean's and got her RAM put in. Came back, it was still "more then an hour" but finally gave up maybe fifteen minutes later. But at least I didn't sit there the whole time. Man, wouldn't teleportation just be the best power? Got back at 6:00. Ate dinner. Only one call, and I managed to help him over iChat Screen Sharing because Macs are the best. So I just have one in the morning for tomorrow. Ordered my father's birthday present. Now I'll get ready for tomorrow. Then perhaps do something starting with the letter V? Humm?