2014-12-25:

Fri:
Decent day, which is terrible because this blog is all about complaining about stuff!

Odd issue with the DVD player setup, for some reason his TV didn't like Component inputs. I tried both the DVD player and the cable box, but it just gave "no signal." Silly thing. So he's stuck with stupid composite. Oh well, it's a VCR/DVD combo on a huge LCD TV. It's not going to look good any way you slice it.

Came back here, ate lunch, worked on a laptop that had been dropped off. Just cleaning it out, which went fine.

Went out again for the 1:00. Found the files the guy was talking about, they had some funny extension but they were actually zip files. Why give them a funny extension, then? Ugh. Wrote up how to extract the audio out of them, again, why does he always want to do such weird things?

Then over to the lawyers office. She said her main machines were running fine, so that was good. She had the laptop, which wasn't, somehow the antivirus was missing and she was pretty infected. Got that taken care of, and went to see my mother. Hopefully she likes her gift, and I've put up the procedure for making it so look right here for that.

Then came back here. Looks like we might do some game tonight!

Sat:
Went to go see the Mac lady, there were no updates to Office 2008 so there wasn't much I could think to do about her crashing problem.
Gave her an old version of OpenOffice, the only thing that would run on her 10.6.

Came back here, watched both of the DVDs. The David Copperfield one was a good reminder for me, the next Susan adventure is taking place in a magical version of that kind of world. Attitudes, especially towards kids, was VERY different in the time of Charles Dickens. The other one kept pushing the sin counter up, but it was based on a real story, so I guess that was somewhat fine.

Made some changes to the Elysian Spells document, specifically turning it into a spreadsheet.
For some reason, the rtf file I made got a bit messed up. Oh well.

Figured out how I want Susan's battle to go, wrote that up.

Went over to Sean's, Neil wasn't in, apparently he's having some joint problems, and I don't mean the green weed. Feel better soon, Neil!

Got through the battle with the local bad guy, he got chopped in half in one blow thanks to some buffs by yours truly. We went to the next world, the one I was most concerned about. It's basically inside a computer, and I blow up electric stuff with my magic. So the world isn't taking my presence well. I climbed into a party member's pocket dimension after meeting the locals.

Also played an odd dice game, that was supposedly about "bluffing" but really was more about random chance.
Then a poetry game, of all things. I don't write well with time constraints. I like to consider my words carefully, and getting a topic like "the time" (our final one) leaves me a bit baffled. "So I'm supposed to make a poem about it being one in the morning?" Anyway, the "travel" doggrel I came up got some approval, and it's simple enough that I remember it. I duplicate it here for your amusement. Try to read it as fast as possible for maximum effect.

Go through the turnstile
every body single file.
Sit down on your bum
take out your snack, yum.

See, told you.

Sun:
Watched some Supernatural Season 8 that Sean gave me.
Wrapped the gifts for the game.

Only other thing of note was going to Heather's for mom's birthday party. Gave her the nativity I painted, basically the larger version of the one I got her last year.

[[image file="2014-12/painted12-22.jpg" alt="Figures painted" ]]

No calls over the weekend. Not one. Sheesh.

Mon:
Did the shopping as normal. Aldi sells tiny cans of catfood now that are twice as expensive as the normal stuff. Got them a couple for Christmas, not that they know.

Everything else was normal, but there was a bit more traffic than usual. CRAP I forgot to buy the stuff for candy making! AARG.

Guess I'll have to do that tomorrow.

Watched a bit more Supernatural, then did some writing.

Chapter 66 finished, and she found the little crying girl she's going to help.
Chapter 67 almost finished, just got to the docks.

Tues:
Not much to tell today, though I did go do a short job. Also helped a York guy over the phone, somehow one of the thin client units lost its settings. Weird. The job was all about speakers, and why his weren't working. Still couldn't tell you, but reseating the connection fixed it just fine.

After that I went to go get the candy stuff. Wegmans. Knew it would be a zoo, it was. Never seen all registers open in that place, but they were.

Made candy. Watched the rest of season 8.

Warm-ish today. Snow melting, looks like we might not get that white christmas after all. In fact it's supposed to be in the fifties tomorrow, so, yeah.

Got one other call, 12:00 tomorrow, a cleanout. So at least I'll make a little money this week.

Figured out why my Mac was suddenly stuttering and freaking out suddenly. Turns out one of the daughter cards, that holds the RAM, got busted on me! What the heck? It just isn't recognized by the machine anymore. It's about $100 to replace, I just bought 4x2GB chips to replace the 1gb chips I have now, so I can just use the one, and have more memory to boot. That was about half the price. Sigh.

Then went back to writing. Got up to half way through chapter 68.

Wed:
More writing. The one appointment went fine, didn't even take the full hour. It was really just one thing that had installed a bunch of other stuff. Once that was removed, it was smooth sailing.

Got almost all of chapter 69 done.

Went over to my parent's house for the eve. My christmas rhymes stumped them on only a few, they managed to work out what the rest were. Go them!

Thurs:
Merry Christmas everyone. Got home at 7:00 so after putting my gifts away I figured I would post.
First of all, thank you everyone for everything. The food filled up my pantry nicely, and I appreciate everything else. (Except those lottery tickets that didn't win anything)

[[image file="2014-12/pantry2015.jpg" alt="all kids of food" ]]

Had a great day with the family, and saw my grandfather. Got a blender!
The cats found the catnip immediately, and I mean immediately, they even passed up yummy food to root around in the box I set on the table because they smelled it.

Put my new ponies up on the pony shelf, my pinky pie ornament up, and my pony calendar ready for the new year.

What?

Actually got a call today. What? He says his machine has been acting up for two days, and the day you choose to call and complain about it… is christmas day? Really? Really. Not yesterday when I would have gladly gone out there and helped you out. Not the day before when it started, when I would have gladly come out and helped. No, you picked today. Baka.

So I'll call him tomorrow I guess.

Tear it all down, folks, it's over for another year. In one week it'll be 2015, which is where I shall find you.

Hope everyone had a good day, I'll see you all again next year.