2015-01-29:

Fri:
Day went well, if you count not actually making any money "well." I guess at least I got the money for both SSDs I ordered, and sold that 120GB one far sooner then I thought was possible. Here's the breakdown.

Dropped off the original at 11:00, set it up, as it was just a copy of the other one, nothing much needed to be done.

Back here, lunch. Writing, finished chapter 82, which was 4,398 words. Probably not my longest chapter but among the longer ones.

Then out at 3:30 to return the other laptop. She somehow turned the wireless off on her chromebook, so I had to show her where to turn it back on. Of course I had never done that on a chromebook, so why she couldn't figure that out, yet I could…

Over to my parent's house, didn't see any kitties but Emily. Weird. Must have been off sleeping someplace. Oh, and I brought that red paper back to Staples.

Got current on The Gamer, and wrote chapter 83. Wow, that one was easy. Maybe a little too easy…

Sat:
Worked a little on the website again.

Straightened up around here, ordered some plastic RAM trays to organize my RAM collection which has been floating around loose for far too long. (what it's 13 years now?) I got some RAM in the cute little trays that's how I knew they existed.

Out at 12:45 to my 1:00, cleaning up and taking care of three machines. One ancient one with a 4200 RPM hard drive. Ugh, don't even bother showing me that crap.

Back here for a little bit, then out at 3:55 to go to Sean's for Demongate High.

It went pretty well, as we stayed on task. Even got dinner made by Stan, which was quite good. We didn't get through the whole dungeon, but what can you do?

Also tried to get through Streets of Rage 3, which was much harder than the other game.

Sun:
Got up a bit late, made some CDs for the lady that always wants them.
Watched the latest constantine, and log horizon.
Did some thinking about new spells/techniques for Susan/Kayami.

Found a dead mouse in the bathtub. How does a mouse get into a bathtub? And then die there?

No calls this weekend. Like, none. I have no work for tomorrow. Sigh, and things were going so well, too.

Wrote all of chapter 84, just to be different.

Mon:
Shopping as normal. Staples still did not have job invoice forms. The little card by the space they used to be said "order these" and gave a sku number. That number didn't exist when I asked about ordering them. Nor did they seem to exist at all in the staples system. Huh? So I ordered some online instead. They said the next nearest store had some, but who knows when I might get over there. This way was cheaper anyway, I believe. I did get some CDs, as the last CDs I made for the two woman exactly used up all I had.

After lunch I went out to see the lawyer people. Thought I might make some money today. Wrong. I was there fifteen minutes, the "issues" they had were so minor it wasn't worth my time. At least I got gas just down the street, so the trip was not wasted.

Saw a truck with "free" estimates for fencing. I guess they're "free" but he gets to punch you in the face or something? Not sure.

Finished chapter 85. One more and it'll be 300,000 words!

I did get some calls today thankfully.

Tues:
Continued cold, but at least we didn't get, like, three feet of snow overnight. Some did. (or as part of the system all day today) So though I may complain, I know it could be worse, and I'll take what I can get for a day that's half sunny.

Went to the dentist guy, did 20 minutes of work in an hour and a half, because he kept seeing patients. Like they were important, or something. Honestly, it wasn't all that important that it couldn't have waited until he got home later today.

Oh well.

Stopped to drop off the CDs I had made, and I helped her buy a book so she could review it. Buy my book(s)!

HAHAHAH. What A silly I am. No one will ever do that.

Got a form from the book company, that I made like $18 in "royalties." Uh, really? Don't recall seeing any of that money in my bank account, so where did go? OH, it went into paypal! Ha! And of the $18.08 "earnings" they kept $5.06 "withholdings." They took 25% of what piddly little money I earned? Sheesh. Or was it 33%, and I only earned $13.02? Not worried about it either way, but come on.

Just enough time to eat lunch, then out to a machine very badly worked over. Why he didn't have me set the thing up when he got it, rather than let it become a cesspool of filth I'll never know. Three hours I was there, and even then, one of his services had disappeared, so windows either insisted the antivirus wasn't turned on, but then couldn't be, or that everything was just fine because it didn't even realize there should BE one.

I installed Panda and left it at that. Because you just can't open Windows Defender and have it turn on, no, you have to go through the "action center" because that's logical.

Back here, did some reading.

Thinking about how I want to have the thousands of warlocks attack Susan, and what I want to write her doing for the next few chapters. Haven't really decided yet?

Not many calls today. One person I put a printer in for, said the scanner wasn't working. Ten minutes later he called back to say it was. Uh huh.

I do have two for tomorrow. Bringing the laptop back that the kid dropped that he was supposed to pick up. I'm taking it back because his machine is now BSODing because of some random website he downloaded some random crap from, or some crap. Why do people do this crap? Don't they know PCs are crap? That can't do… anything right.

You thought I was going to put a different word, didn't you? Admit it.

And seeing about a printer. "It's not that old." "She's been complaining about it for a year." Uh, that's somewhat old?

Got a new addition! No, I haven't knocked someone up in secret. I found a mouse. He was huddled into the tiniest space by the first step going upstairs. There's a little hole there, and a cat was pawing at it. I went over to see what was up, and there was a little tail peaking out. Well, he was squished in there vertically, so I got a container, very, VERY gently pulled him out, and plopped him inside. What has this mouse been eating for two months, anyway?

He doesn't seem hurt, at least he seems more lively than the others recently. (Especially the most recent one… the one that was dead?)

So we'll see about putting him someplace the cats won't make too big a fuss over him. (dreaming)

Worked on chapter 86. Figured out, at least for the moment, what Susan's next move is. Beat up warlocks.

She's, uh, not doing so well, actually.

Wed:
Man, I was just there a week ago. How did he get that machine so full of cr…ud already? Anyway, cleaned the machine out, returned the laptop. Stupid PCs. Stupid people downloading random stuff of the internet.

Hey, Apple made tons of money last quarter. I mean, like, Scrooge McDuck levels of money. Huh. They have, no lie, 178billion in cash right now. What are they doing with it all? They could give $550 to every person in the US. They could actually buy an iPad for every person and still have money left over. Talk about 1% ers. 

Sunny! Mouse lived!

Out again at 12:45, to look at a BSOD machine. This one was odd, but at least it was odd quickly.
I ran the memory test, after discovering my tools disk was missing for some reason. Where the heck did I leave it? Sigh. Anyway, the self contained malware scanner disk had it, so I used that one. It showed memory errors after only a moment.

Of course she has four chips, and we have no way of knowing which one it was. So I tested them individually. They all tested fine. I put them all back. They now still tested fine. Uh, sure?

It ran a half hour after that, and I left. Somehow both MSE and Mbam were missing, so I ran ninite and they got put back. Strange.

Put the mouse cage in the kitchen. He's not even investigated the peanut butter I gave him, I hope he's okay. He's still alive, but he just kind of huddles in the corner. I rigged up a better (I think) system to keep the cats off it, seems to be working so far.

Finished chapter 86. A good fight with four warlocks, they put up a good resistance. 4,245 words. And more are on the way. (both words and warlocks)

Some calls today, so I have three places to go tomorrow. That's a good amount.

Thurs:
When I went to write up the bill for number one I realized- no pen. And it's not around here either. Did I not get my spiffy pen with the soft tip for tablets back yesterday? *mad*

The first one was longer than I would have guessed. He had lost the paper with all his passwords on it, so I had to make him a new one. (He had other, worthless papers from like 2013 though. But the one he actually needed? No.) Set up his chromecast and reset his router so he could get on the internet.

Had like, negative five minutes to each lunch, was late to #2 at 12:00. That went fine, copying stuff to a "new" machine. That mbam found 1100+ problems with. So cleaned that out, ordered her a new card reader because it was acting flakey, and… that was it, really.

Then over to the hotel, to clean that machine out. It had a lot of crap in it as well, much of which I took out manually. It rebooted for some reason (or crashed, hard to tell with windows) during the scan, so I had to start it over. Ugh.

Not many calls, two from printer guy again that he now couldn't print from the iOS devices, then that he could. Just one other one, otherwise.

Looking at the weekend, my father's birthday on Sunday, so I'm headed to heather's then. Probably should wrap his gift pretty soon, I guess.

No news on game.

Finished chapter 87. Figured out how to take out a dozen warlocks at a time without killing them when they fall out of the sky. It only took five spells to fully pull off, I'm pretty proud of it.

Only one job for tomorrow, garnered at the literal last minute. 8:59 she called me. Not sure what it is, I think it's the deaf guy because he always has his mother call. He has a Mac, so who knows.

Mouse is still alive, but still huddling in the corner. I think he's eating, the apple piece I gave him earlier disappeared, so I gave him another. And during the day he was in his little hut, and he was running in the wheel too, so hopefully he works out.

Snowing.

And that's January. Only eleven months more of 2015… though it's probably a little bit too early to start counting them down. After all, January has been pretty kind, to me at least. Let's consider those it has been less than kind to, and say we'll meet back here next week in a proper state of mind.

That's the ticket.