2014-01-30:

Fri:
Morning went fine, even got some sun. Though it was only about 10 degrees.
Got the printer set up no problems. Then went over to see the accountant guy. Apparently the lady I just set the newest machine up for somehow restored it, meaning it had nothing on it again and needed to be reloaded. But her documents folder was intact, as were the actual program folders. Of course without their registry entries they couldn't be used, so I had to reload everything.
In effect, doing all the work I did to set it up again. Great.

Came home for lunch, the credit union guy had come for his system, so that's taken care of.

Then left for the woman who, of course, couldn't articulate what her problem was.
It turned out to just be a cleanout.

Then went over to finish up the lawyer guy who found the CD, which I did just fine.

Then finally to check the machine of the employee of the lawyer guy, who has having some trouble. Turned out to just be the router, I reset it and that was that.

Saw my parents, and invited them over to see the last disney movie I had for them.

Figured out chapter 2/3 of the new Dean novel while driving around. A good lead in to getting him back to school. Should be fun.

Sat:
Busy day, went to see a guy about Office. I thought the Panda Cloud antivirus installer was the worst ever because it crashes so much and you have to run it two or three times a lot of the time. Nope. The office installer is much worse. The "error" message it gave upon being launched was "something went wrong" and that was that. No error codes, no hints, just "blah." Helpful! I tried the full installer I downloaded a week or so ago facing a similar but unrelated issue with office, and the same thing happened. I followed some random directions on the web and sort of manually installed it. It took the office product key but he also bought Publisher separately. When I launched publisher it told me the key was valid for publisher, but that publisher wasn't installed and would I like to install it? It wouldn't let me go forward. Yes, the product in question told me it wasn't installed. Now that's some fine software engineering right there.

I know, I know, make your own then.

After fighting with that for way too long I went way out 490 to do a cleanout. Mostly just chrome add ons showing ads, but I did the standard, high standard job people have come to expect from me, and got that taken care of. Nearby I dropped off the system for the guy still apparently waiting for his disability check, but I figured I had his machine two weeks now and it wasn't doing me any good. He said he would send the money as soon as he was able. Let's hope so.

Oh, right, my GPS sent me to the wrong leroy st, so I had to turn around. That was fun. At least I realized it much faster then I usually do in those situations. 

Then to wegmans, a wegmans I had passed earlier in the day but didn't go into because then I wouldn't have been able to go to in then. I live a complex life.

Got the stuff for "make your own sub" day down at the Sean compound and went over there. My time estimates were slightly off- well, I tell a lie, my time estimates were 100% accurate, just my spacial estimates were off. I thought I would be pulling into Sean's at 3:30 but instead I was pulling into Wegmans. Ah well. So I arrived at around 4:00, a half hour early but Sean/Stan where already there, so that worked out.

Had a pretty good session, actually. More storytelling like then normal, if that makes sense. A lot of pigs died. But only a couple of people.

Roads were bad at first coming home, but got better as I got into the city.

Sun:
Finished up chapter 2 of the novel, and saved Disney World from being torn apart from Gremlins. 11,510 words already. I'm pretty excited, next chapter should be the beginning of the 3rd year and the start of the Helping People Club. Elizabeth will show up, Yasui will be jealous, it'll be a blast!

Then watched a bunch of Season 3 of Veronica Mars. I know, I wanted to work on the Skyrim quest. I'm weak, what can I tell you?

Not many calls this weekend, not many calls at all. Just Buddy, calling for the third time about March 27th to move him to his apartment or the street. Wow, they're kicking you out of a nursing home, Bruce? That's got to be a new low for you. Am I going to be stuck with his crap forever? I mean they keep kicking you out of places, maybe it's not them, it's you.

I mean, look, I may do a lot of complaining about my job and about people yes, I always expect more of them then they give me, but I don't think I've ever made excuses for my life. I made choices, I live with them. Right? I just want that made clear. Computers have been around in their current form for 30 years now. But no other things that people use on a daily basis and are complicated, cars, plumbing, wiring are people so happy to be ignorant. I would never announce to my mechanic "I'm just not a car person" like I hear people bragging about how technically inept they are. Maybe that's a thing people do say to other service personal? I don't know. I don't go around saying "I'm just not a hammer guy" when I need to nail something in.

I just want to make it clear I make no excuses for my life or how I live it. This blog isn't about that. I hope it doesn't read like that anyway. If it does, tell me, okay?

Mon:
Went to the store, as usual. Not as usual they seemed to be out of milk. Normally rows of milk, today; no milk. Weird. What store runs out of milk?

As an experiment I last week got Premium gas that didn't have ethanol in it. I went 263 miles and then put 10 gallons in the tank. My normal MPG is 24. But with the Premium stuff I did 26. If I had bought the cheap stuff I would have paid $6.00 less. However, I would have had to buy gas earlier because I got an extra 20 miles before I needed to fill up. That's about a gallon, or basically putting in 11 gallons of cheap stuff vs 10 gallons of premium. So the cost savings was only about $2.00. The real question is, do I pay $2.00 more for gas based solely on the testimony of my aunt's husband who believes the ethanol in the fuel is the reason both their subaru vehicles needed major engine work over 100,000 miles?

One website has this to say: "Some refuse to believe this, claiming, for example, that premium gives the family Toyota better mileage or more power. These people are in dreamland."

Interesting, because I seem to have proven it rather conclusively. Okay, I admit, one data point isn't proving anything. Clearly, further evidence gathering is necessary. Of course, it could be the difference in the energy density of not having 10% corn product in the tank rather then the higher octane rating. Yeah, that's probably it.

A check I deposited was written for last year, and I looked them over too. And she looked them over. And it wasn't until I left and she looked them over again that this was discovered. I am thankful it wasn't put in and then came back with a fee. But it's almost February, so shouldn't people be past making that mistake?

Oh, and in other bank news, found out they started charging me $2.00 for a paper statement. Not by them telling me this in any paper statement, I logged onto the website to see what the new deposit total was with the check taken out (I didn't ask because I'm me) and saw it. I mean, cutting costs and everything is fine, but seriously guys? I'm letting you use quite a bit of my money and getting almost nothing for it, and you're charging me $2.00 to mail me a piece of paper? Maybe it would be lighter, and thus take less postage, if it wasn't stuffed with advertisements for services I didn't need the month before, and won't need next month either.

Hey, the unintended consequence of this action is I won't see the advertisements anymore. Didn't think that one through, did you, Xceed?

Anyway, got back, ate lunch, then went to see about two laptops. Cleaned them up, no problem. Came back here, straightened up as someone was dropping a desktop off.

Received said desktop. Very infected, big surprise. And it's an ancient dell to boot. Well, when it would boot. Which it didn't for a while. But I managed to save it, go me.

Watched the rest of Veronica Mars while I worked on it.

Giving it back tomorrow and one cleanout in the morning. After that, only future me knows for sure.

Tues:
Got something interesting from the credit union today. A bill for my credit card… for zero dollars. Okay, you're going to charge me $2.00 to send me a paper statement, how about not sending me a bill for zero dollars and just sending the statement instead? Seems like the same about of paper/shipping/work to me.

Anyway, cold again. Seems to be a trend.

Had the guy pick up the system, and left to go up north west. They said stuff was happening but the machine was perfectly behaved for me. Mbam didn't find a thing, and combofix found only one thing. *shrug* It had been quite a while since I had been there, so it was good to check it over and update stuff anyway.

Came back, recorded the NPC voice for the carpenter that's going to fix the library. Got the dialog into the game (which crashed twice while I was trying to do it, thanks) so I just have to hook up the logic at the end where you decide to give him the 5000 gold for the job or go beat up the bandits. Then make the bandits + cave. Oh well, another baby step.

Only one call today? Huh?

But I did get a few this evening, like a car guy in Florida (Jealous!) trying to use On Time. It was complaining about SQL database something, and I finally (after a half hour) figured it must be because the computer name wasn't the same anymore for some bizarre reason? At least, when I changed it the thing started working again. So, whatever.

And the book guy with a list of problems, some of which I hope I can solve. That's the only appointment I have for tomorrow, anyway.

Wrote a bunch, chapter 3, the forth chapter. Got him through summer and back to school. 14,527 words.

Wed:
Thought I wouldn't be getting many calls today either, but I was surprised!

Did more writing in the morning, figured out what I wanted the first case to be, the details of the case, and then got it partly done. Went out to show the lawyer guy the magic that is Dropbox. Which made me late to my 2:00 because he thought the charging cable for his headset actually connected his headset.

Nope.

Took care of the book guy, cleaned his machine out and answered his questions. I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought.

When I got home, I discovered 7 calls over a two hour period. Super! I can't do any work tomorrow, so you guys all get to wait. Of course, had you called me yesterday or the day before when I was sitting around doing nothing, maybe it would be a different story.

Honestly, how do 7 people call between 1:00 and 3:30? Shouldn't there be an even distribution? Not a clump where someone calls, then someone calls 4 minutes after that, then again 10 minutes after that one, over and over. It makes no sense why it works that way.

And then another call at 4:30. Weeeee.

And then My Buddy at 5:53.

When I stopped writing at 6:14 to have supper I had written 3,742 new words, and my total was 18,435. I'm a quarter of the way done with this book already, and I still have at least 7 more cases for The Helping People Club.

Talked on the phone until 9:30 because people are computer stupid.

Thurs:
Had a new experience today, going to a… well, it's not really a casino. A room full of electronic slot machines, anyway. We all went up with my father because he always wanted to go to one.
It seemed like Heather had a higher LUCk then my mother, as she seemed to hang on to the starter "1000 credits" longer, and had a greater balance. However, both walked away with nothing, but memories.
Hopefully dad had some fun though.

It's funny. They look like these huge boxes, but I saw one open. It's completely empty inside apart from a fan. And the printer for the bits of paper it gives you, on the bottom, I suppose. They're just glorified iPads that are a little bigger, but attached to a huge chunk of wood- for historal reasons. Because that's what size they used to be, they have to remain that size? Not sure about that. There were only a couple of different styles, and the newer ones even had buttons with OLED screen in them (like that insanly expensive keyboard you can individually change each key on) so if they wanted to change the game, they could just load some new software into it and be done. 

Wild.

Of course there were lots of old people there, why? Why? 

After I got home I went out to do a job I had scheduled for Friday, because it was nearby and I had a call from someone nearby the second job tomorrow so hopefully I can do them both one right after the other. Today was just a cleanout, which didn't take me long, the machine is basically brand new. I just set it up properly, took out the crapware she had somehow already accumulated, and that was that.

Came back, thought about the next chapter of the story, and the format in general. Trying to get a good order and maybe get in a field trip too. Plus working in the whole overarching plot about the stones. Have to think about it some more.

Not many calls, but My Buddy did. He now needs me Tuesday morning at 9:00 because they're throwing him out early. Who gets tossed out of a nursing home to be homeless? My Buddy, that's who! Especially a guy in an electric wheelchair. Aren't there, like, laws against that or something? Huh. Guess I'm getting up early that day. Sigh.

Cold, but I guess that's normal at this point. That situation seems to be constant for a few more days at least.

No info on game this week, so there may not be one with Stan/Sean gone. There are still games we could do, though. :-(

Huh, one month of 2014 gone already, how about that?

Very concentrated work tomorrow. The other lawyer guy in the office is apparently having trouble getting online. Then to a guy I used to live down the street from. Then across the street almost directly. Then less then a mile down the street. Then maybe Ellen. All before 1:00. Luckily most should be easy stuff, but still. Weird how that happened.

Of course going to visit my parents tomorrow, so the morning will be rush-rush, then a lull, then out then back. Nothing for saturday I guess, so a nice, cold, weekend of writing and such awaits.

See you all in February.