2014-10-09:

Fri:
Very busy day today.

Did an extra job, figuring I would be called, which I was, so next week is going to be interesting. And I don't mean in the good way.

So today: Got the power supply in, that was no problem.

Went over to check the guy's mail settings, he still had it wrong even though he said he put something different in last night. But even that was wrong, he had some weird smtp server in there. Weird.

Then over to what I thought was a failing hard drive, nope. Turned out to be iexplorer launching itself every few seconds and then chewing up 100% of the CPU. If killed, it would just reload itself. Ran Malwarebytes and combofix, neither which helped. What did help was tdsskiller, of all things. That took out something and after a reboot, the problem stopped.

Whew. Just in time too, I wanted to leave so I could, you know, get some lunch? And get to my 2:00?

Returned the laptop, got her router settings in so she was back online and printing. That went okay.

Saw my parents for about a minute on their way out to set up for the craft show.

Then came back here, saw how many freaking calls I had, and called the first person. Turned out I had the number written wrong, that's why I didn't reach her before. Got the right number with my past caller ID thing, went over there. That machine… ugh. Ancient, and slow, and it had problems.

Finally got back about 7:00, made some phone calls (on a Friday! Blasphemy!)

So I have three places to go tomorrow. I guess we made up for Wednesday in a big way.

There will be game tomorrow, Which, I'm not sure, but something run by Stan.
So one of two.

Apparently there are 1100 people in my juror block, as that's how many are listed on the site. 500 go in at 8:30, 501-800 "could be required to report" at 1:45 and 801-1100 don't need to report on Monday at all.

This is really the best way to go about this?

Sat:
Jobs were pretty short, so the day worked out well. First up was the monitor lady. As I had suggested over the phone, she had plugged her cable in, after moving, into the wrong VGA port. Silly.

Next up was a cleanout, he was using the Frontier antivirus so that got taken off immediately. Machine seemed much faster after that! Did the standard stuff, no problem.

Then in the afternoon, the guy had somehow removed one of his email accounts, so I had to put it back. Of course he didn't know his password, and really why should he?

Then over to Sean's for game. We got a lot of things introduced, and I'm not sure how they tie all together. But I think we did pretty good. Watched Dr Who and came home. Sean said he's never had to go in for Jury Duty. I doubt Mizzy has, she's not actually an american citizen.

Sun:
Finished up the Princess Guard.

Played some Borderlands, then put the color version of the Luca's Pendent up.

The thin wall stuff still annoys me. I mean look at Spike's tooth here, how is that not a "thin wall?" Why did I have to re-edge the staff if this kind of thing gets through?

[[image file="2014-10/how-is-this-not-a-thin-wall.png" alt="Spike Tooth" ]]

Returned what calls I could, went to be early.

Mon:
So the Jury Duty saga ends with nary a whimper. It's a confusing thing, really. You get, in the mail, this sort of pamphlet that seems to indicate "we own you for the next week. You will be here every day or at least be ready to be here every day." Like if one case was over on Tuesday, you would be back the next day until the week was out.

But then you get there… and the story is "yeah, you serve one case and you're done for eight years."

Oh, okay?

So there were five groups, and apparently Taylor, one of my cousins was there! I had no clue what he looked like, of course, as longtime readers will already know. Weird though, how "random" is this selection that TWO people with the same last name, and in fact who are related (because there are no other people around with my last name who are not related to me, at least around here, and there can't be another Taylor with my last name who isn't related to me) Just seems odd. There was also a person with a customer's name I recognized, but again, I didn't spot him even if I would have.

Right, five groups. I was in the fifth, and both the 3rd and 5th apparently took a plea. So I got to wait to see if I was needed the rest of the day, I wasn't, I was let go at around 1:00.

I did the shopping, bought stuff for Taco Soup as it's getting colder. (My heat was on this morning)
Got Sean's gift, and it turned out perfect! I want one now! Really, it's so cool. I'll have pictures for you after I give it to him.

Then went out at 5:00 do to my one job, putting the monitor back in for the lady with the busted laptop screen. (As she unplugged her external monitor and now it won't recognize it. Silly.)

Made and ate soup. So good!

Made some changes to Ellen's website.

Made two things I hope to sell in the co-op (sorry, the shops).

[[image file="2014-10/itsaboy.png" alt="boy achievement" ]]

[[image file="2014-10/itsagirl.png" alt="Girl Achievement" ]]

Tues:
Was going to spend the morning painting Sean's birthday present.

Got my better camera set, found the lenses, took some pictures. Was not happy with pictures. Went back to take more pictures.

Oh look, a cat has jumped up on the table and knocked the gift off, so now it's in pieces.

Thanks, cat!

So now I get to order another. The parts that broke are too small to glue back together. Sigh. I've sort of stuck them together, and the one side seems to have worked. But the other broke into a bunch of pieces. I made a clay substitute, it's just so thin that it looks totally different. It's fine for me, I wanted one anyway, but I'm not giving Sean a busted one.

Went over some of the other stuff I've done for the inevitable "thin wall" problem, as I put in a big order now that I have some stuff I want to put in the shops. The prices are supposed to drop today, but they haven't yet.

AARG.

And you can't really punish a cat. It doesn't know what you're saying, or anything like that. I know the fault is mine, I left it there, but honestly, why did you have to jump up there at that exact moment? I wasn't even in the room! I was only gone long enough to look the pictures over. Usually you follow me around, but no, this one time you had to jump up there and knock it. Why? WHY?

So after the price drop I put another order in. The estimated ship isn't until a week after his birthday. Wonderful. Maybe I should have done it as two orders?I hate everything.

Expect the stuff I got at the Ronald Sale. A monitor and mouse, as usual. A neat speaker, a USB hub, a router (I almost bricked, but got the DD-WRT firmware uploaded into, sweet!) and… of yeah, some CD labels and some tiny rubber scrapers. I need a wheeled cart walking around that place. Carrying a monitor and a speaker around is no fun.

Know what else is no fun? No calls. Yeah, figured this week would be one of two things. Either I would get way more work then I could handle and not be able to do any, or get none, and have all the time in the world.

Stopped on the way home to get two keyboards from a lady.

Fund is down $61 today. So that's nice. I shouldn't even look, I know I'm just going to be depressed.

Got my old compact flash card reader working… in linux. Least I can use my "pro" camera again, and get pictures from it. Don't know if I ever had the USB cable for it. It's a funny shape, because why stick to a standard?

Wed
Puttered around in the morning. Made a base for the shield I made last week. Did a bit of straightening up. Thought about what new thing I could make to sell at the shops, didn't come up with much. Looked up what I needed to finish my toner refill, apparently it somehow does know that one was empty. I need some kind of gear to put on the side so it thinks it is new again. Got it for free thanks to ebay bucks.

Very windy these past two days.
Tested the USB keyboard the lady gave me yesterday. Bunch of keys don't work on it. *trashed*

Then left at 5:00 to see about "an old machine." It wasn't that old, but it did suck. A single processor machine running Vista. Ugh, didn't get out of there for three hours. Mbam took an hour to run and found 991 things (when I finally canceled it) Combofix found a few things. He was running AVG, which took way too long to get rid of. And in the end, it wasn't running that much better. Some, but still not great. Some process was using a bunch of CPU, but after running all those scans I think it was just windows being stupid rather than an actual unwanted program.

Finally got home to eat dinner (and make my two calls) at 9:00. Didn't reach one, the other may just need new speakers. I gave her some things to try to narrow it down.

Thurs:
No work. Called the lady in the morning, but she wanted tomorrow, so there was nothing I could do about that.

I did get some calls, didn't reach two people, but do have two jobs for tomorrow. Uck, one at 6:00. Sheesh.

Worked on making stuff to sell, finally using my Makerbot again. Made 5 Little Pony pins I hope go, that I am going to make copies of. I have a tiny amount of silicon left, but probably not enough. I'll have to get more, sigh. Also a container I'm going to try making a slush mold, that's where you just swish the stuff around so the object comes out hollow. I guess we'll see. I'll get you pictures later, they're still kind of rough. I'm letting the bottoms dry, where they curled a bit I popped some clay on to straighten them out. Also filled in any holes. I'll make them prototype colored and take pictures. They each took about a 1/2 hour to print, so making a mold will be much, much faster. If they sell. I'll paint them and everything, and they're tiny so I'll sell them cheap, so hopefully I'll make a little money on them.

The printer performed perfectly though, which is great after so long. Glad to be getting some more use out of it. Having it just sit there is rather galling. I've had the idea for these pony pins for quite some time, so hopefully they'll go down well. (I don't mean eat them)

Speaking of eating: Noticed by accident my rods are less now. I mean the pretzel rods sold at Aldi. Look for yourself. The old one was 2lbs 8oz while the new one is 1lb 12oz. I didn't even notice the smaller package!

[[image file="2014-10/rods_1.jpg" alt="stack of rods" ]]

Jerks.

No game this week, maybe I'll have my father over to start watching those Dr Who episodes.

My fund lost $100 today. I'm now down a total of $300! All I wanted was more than .14¢ every two weeks. Was that so much to ask? Maybe .14¢ every week? A quarter once a week? That would be fine.

So yeah, crappy week. Very, very crappy week. I've got like one check. Last week was much better.

No doubt there will be more complaining next week, so be sure to tune back in.