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Back to reality

01 06 09 - 19:56 After Sunday, a bight new Monday dawns. Isn't it weird how you can wake up in the middle of the night and be totally refreshed, like you could get up that minute and start the day, but when the time comes to actually do so, it takes an effort just to keep your eyes open? Very weird. Just thought I would share that.

Amazing how fast Sundays go, especially when you have days like Tuesday to look forward to. Today didn't seem like it was going to be too bad, and I suppose it wasn't. My first task was helping someone figure out why the video from their HD camera was importing funny. And it was, like every couple of frames the video went back five frames for one frame. Very odd. Turns out all the forums I went trawling through said "great camera, poor software support." Luckily she had a program that could convert the video into another format, so she just has to live with the extra step. It's all HD, so the transcoding quality loss should be minimal. And given that she's not making blue ray disks anyway, she can let it spin for awhile and convert.

Then off to the bank, grocery shopping. weeeeeeeee

Then I stopped off at the copy shop I work for. It's run by this old guy, and I mean, like 85 years old. I can't believe he makes money off the place, but anyway he was having trouble with his printer. This ancient, 15 year old HP piece of crap. It can only feed one sheet at a time or else it grabs the whole stack at once. But that wasn't the problem. The problem is, he's an idiot. He originally used this beat up old windows ME system (we call ME Mistake Edition. It's only 10 years old.) I bought for him, at his request so he could run some more modern stuff, a very nice (for the price I paid) P4 with like a gig of RAM, very nice sized HD, the works. He complained about it constantly. "Oh, it doesn't work the same as the old one." Uh, yes, yes it does. It's windows, that's the whole point- it's worked exactly the same since windows 95 came out. So he took it upon himself to unhook this system and put his crappy ME system back, which "fixed" his printer problem. The cable was probably loose or something, it sits on the front desk of his store, someone probably bumped it. He complained again how "different" XP was, but then I pointed out that he had been using XP quite successfully on the machine I had previously bought him, like a year and a half ago that's in the back room with the camera. He didn't believe me, so I had to go physically turn it on and show him it was XP.

Now, I set up both these systems, and I set every system up the exact same way, with the exact same software, but this new one he couldn't handle. Why? Because he THOUGHT he couldn't. He didn't know he was using XP on the machine in back, so he had no problem with it. But because this machine was "different" he "had problems" with it. Moron. So his shiny machine can sit and collect dust, see if I care. Use your crappy ME system with a fraction of the power, memory and storage. I'm sure you know best, old guy! Honestly, he should have retired like 20 years ago, he must be losing money there. He was playing solitaire when I walked in, and he's always complaining about not having any customers. Gee, wonder why not, you're half deaf and you never have have your hearing aid in, you're crotchety, senile, etc, etc.

The favorite saying of any old person is "You're going to be old someday." Go ahead, ask any person over 80 what their favorite phase is: I'll bet it'll be that. My answer to that is, yes, with luck, I might. But unlike you, I'm going to keep learning and doing new things while I get older so my brain doesn't shrivel up into the size of a grape like yours did.

Then I got to set up a new Mac Mini. Had to take the hard drive out of the old one, the new minis only have firewire 800, and I didn't have a firewire 800 -> 400 cable. That's okay, the transfer wizard got everything (with a slight mail mess up, easily solved) and that was done.

Lastly I got to take some pictures for a guy so I could put his garage sale posting up on craigslist. It's a sad case- the guy was in a band, he knew tons of people- now he has MS and is paralyzed from the neck down. He can hardly talk, gets around with a sip and puff system on a motorized wheelchair. Always in good spirits. Trapped inside his own body. MS scares the crap out of me you know. It's just one of those things you can just get. It just happens. You don't catch it, you just suddenly have it. And then your life is over. You slowly degrade untel you are totally dependent on someone else for everything. You take walking to the kitchen for a glass of water for granted. For that guy, that simple act would be the best day of his life.

Now I get to do paperwork. Yay! Or not. And not JUST paperwork, mind you, I get to send in my estimated tax for May and June. Odd that there' s a three month stretch, then a two, then three, then four? I will never understand government. And it's the only time I have to use an actual envelope, and a freaking stamp. What is this, the 1800s? Doing tax is so fun, takes so long, makes baby Jesus cry.

I'm already one comic behind, I have to do three this week. Hope I get a chance. And I have some parts to order for someone, get ready for tomorrow (five appointments, gonna be so fun!).

The year is just shy of half over. Wasn't it just Christmas?