Robert Blogs!

I can see Friday

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:55:00 -0400

Almost reach it....

And, oh look, another 11 calls. How thoughtful.

So went back to job #1 and saw what she was talking about. Why wasn't it there yesterday? Huh? HUH? So, fine, got rid of that.

Back to the hotel again. I just rebooted the machine and it was fine. Protip: reboot things before calling computer repair people.

Then over to see Lou, who apparently solved his problem and didn't bother to call and tell me. There was a story about that, right, a boy crying wolf?

So I came home to eat lunch. Then began the afternoon.

My 1:00 didn't tell me there were three machines I needed to look at, so thanks. Cleanouts of various kinds, so I was able to switch between them as scans were run, it would have been nice to know there were three before hand though. But I did get them done in a timely manner, and was only a few minutes late to the next one.

They were people I've known quite a while, they had bought a new computer in January (without consulting me) and they were infected, of course. No teeth on that one at all, so that was pretty easy.

Then to a strange one at 5:00, mail was coming in, but he couldn't read it. It was blank. Never heard of that before. Probably something in the HTML rendering system of IE messed up. I changed him over to Thunderbird, and everything was swell!

The majority of the 11 just had questions, so that was good. I do now have three booked for Saturday. I'll probably get over to the mortgage place tomorrow after the prison place as my plans have changed slightly.

Sadly, my grandmother got worse in the hospital, perhaps due to a deteriorating condition or perhaps as a symptom of her dementia. In either case she doesn't recognize her own daughter and is asleep most of the time so I won't be going over there tomorrow. Life is strange. On the one hand, we have this, the worst thing to be going through, and on the other, we have something really great happening!

I didn't want to reveil it here until I had spoken in person to my mother, but I won't see her tomorrow, as she'll be watching over her mother. You've probably already guessed, what else could it be. Yes, baby Robert has a date tomorrow, with an actual girl! I know what some of you are thinking, the man's thirty three years old, for pete's sake, what's he been waiting for?

Perhaps tomorrow I shall find my answer, and it'll be a cute little Asian girl with blue hair that likes costuming and transformers. Wish me success, okay? Because the luck check has already been thrown.

Just a reminder

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:02:00 -0400

that I hate my job.

But at least I have one, which is something.

First one went fine, her major issue was solved by hitting the "on" button for her wireless on the laptop. Note to manufacturers: please stop including this button. Thank you.

Then over to the mortgage place, for more head shaking action.

Then to the hotel, where I learned some enterprising young thief turned their camera system off and stole some TVs. Really, TVs? Are you that desperate for cash, my friend, when obviously you work for a hotel as that's the only way you would have found you could turn the cameras off. If so, I have a solution: wait. Do your job. Every two weeks money will accumulate, save part of it. Soon, you will have what you require. Easy, and legal!

Then to one not that old, but still her HD was pathetic. I shall soon replace it.

Nextly one who said porn sites were popping up, and she couldn't use firefox, waaaa. I went over there, it was the recent proxy setting trick, and ran Malwarebytes. It found: NOTHING. Okay, machine is clean.

Then to another place overlooking the beautiful bay. The heck? Goddess, are you trying to tell me something?

Very odd message about some .dll being missing or corrupt or whatever, yeah, keep using those dll files you came up with in 1985, Microsoft. Oh, right, you can't help it because of "backwards compatibility" or whatever. Uh huh. So I tried removing the software. It complained. I tried removing the registry entry and removing the software. Complained. Tried repairing the software. Complained. Tried reinstalling the software. Worked! Tried removing the software. Complained. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Did some stuff to a second one. Home.

When I arrived home, many messages greeted me like happy puppies, happy, happy puppies.

Apparently the porn stuff malwarebytes didn't find is back.

The cameras are now not working in the "security room".

And the person I talked to said the router was worse then I was told, though it was working when I was there, so I guess I better duplicate the settings and replace it.

That's three, count them, three places I GET TO GO BACK TO! Yay! Plus all the- and you'll love this, before nine o'clock in the morning, I had THREE calls from people, just as I predicted, who had called yesterday, calling again. Can I call them, or what? And then can I call them back, without them needing to call a second time? Yes folks, yes I CAN. As I was saying, plus all the actual calls I got today, so tomorrow is booked, again, with more work then I probably want to do, and one for Saturday. YES!

Oh, and there was a call from my mother, that her mother fell, again, in the night. Apparently, backwards, taking her walker with her. She yelled for help, apparently because she thought she was on a camping trip, and couldn't figure out where everyone had gone. She finally remembered her panic button, which I'm amazed she had on her, given her state of mind, and was taken to the hospital. This was at around midnight. What my grandmother was doing wandering around her house half dressed at midnight is also something to consider. She is in a lot of pain and can't walk, and the two doctors there can't decide if she's broken a rib or if it's an old break. Medical Science, how wonderful you are. She is again in rehab. I am absolutely certain even this event has not penetrated her brain that she needs to move out of that huge house and into a place where she can be watched 24/7. My mother stayed with her until 2:00 the next day, meaning she got no sleep at all, so I have not received another status report as she is probably still sleeping off the ordeal. What happens next is anyone's guess.

At least I have my Friday thing to look forward to! Just have to make it through tomorrow.

The plan for friday is:

Morning and perhaps part of afternoon, prison outreach program computers

Perhaps a quick one after that, depending.

Home to get ready.

See Grandma?

Help move freezers around parent's house.

Thing.

Then game on saturday with Sean. I'll probably have two more appointments to add to my 11:00 one by tomorrow, so don't worry.

Pain Train keeps rolling

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:58:00 -0400

And by pain train, I mean, lots of calls coming in.

And by lots, I mean about 9, again.

Good thing I'm not a slacker!

So we begin the morning with one of the last 6 winME systems in existence. She can't use the latest Avast, firefox or malwarebytes. Super. But she just needed her old Avast relicensed, which I did. My goodness that machine was slow. Having to book at least an hour and a half, because I didn't know what her problem was, (We had left messages back and forth because she works nights), left me time to get home. Viewed my websites. Called the prison outreach and at last talked to someone. So that's friday morning, and perhaps part of the afternoon gone.

The next one was just five minutes away, setting up a new MacBook. Which would be fine, if HP stuff was worth a darn. Trying to connect it to the wireless kept hanging it up. Yes, hanging up A PRINTER. It wouldn't turn off, wouldn't respond to pushing the buttons, aarg! I looked it up, and apparently it's a pretty common problem! And yet they still sell these things? One solution was to have an SSID exactly 12 characters long, which of course makes perfect sense because when things go wrong, just try stuff at random until it works. This works because the universe is random, and random is as random does, and that's what that's all about. And it did, I guess. Still, the view up there was amazing. It was high overlooking the bay, with tiny toy boats lazily sailing to and fro like a picture.

Then a guy who had a pretty rough time of it lately, what with a faulty heart valve, trouble breathing, and being on a cruise. But he lived to tell the tale, which he did upon my arrival. Then I got to work. He had changed, or someone had changed, his smtp settings while he was in florida to comcast and he didn't know how to change them back. So he had 116 outgoing messages to send. And my grandmother says she has nothing to do. Forward mail to people! Oh, right, you don't know anyone. Anyway, so I did that, and checked out his desktop machine which, oh look, had an antivirus a million years out of date. It's not tough people, it's one little string of digits you have to get, and put in. *sigh*

Lastly installing some RAM for a guy and updating AOL because apparently he's stuck in a time warp and still thinks it's 1990. But whatever. Sped his machine up by removing AVG 8.5 and putting in Avast!, you know, the normal stuff I do.

Home! Got some money in the mail from a lady I helped over the phone even though I said she didn't owe me anything, so thanks for that. Gave a half hearted scream/groan when I saw the number of calls I had, and ate dinner.

So I have six places to stop at tomorrow, which I'm sure is both physically possible, ascetically pleasing, and will not turn me huge and green and give me infinite strength. And I still didn't get to everyone because I left a few messages and didn't get called back, so pile those on tomorrow with what I get as new tomorrow. Oh, and the inevitable calls by those that called me yesterday like I was going to forget to call them back the next day.

I know, whine whine whine, it's what you come here to read, don't deny it. Reading about my problems makes you feel better about yours, and don't say it doesn't because I know.

Things are all set for Friday, hehehehe. Now all I need to do is develop a personality... *strokes chin* hummmm. Tricky.

Switch

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:12:00 -0400

Still in the UP position

Which I guess is good!

Normal every day Monday stuff today. Dropped off my 10 ink cartridges as this is the last week for this month. The lady at the bank, who had to put in my huge stack of checks, apologized to me... for having to put in my huge stack of checks. She thanked me for my patience. Not your fault I did a lot of work, but I appreciate the gesture anyway. Got out "stranger in a strange land" from the library, and purchased an oil filter I believed was way too small, but was correct in the end. Got gas, and it didn't stop when it was full, it kind of sloshed out, whoops. How did that happen?

Not too much that was difficult today, just three to do.

The first was a printer unable to print. Took me a few minutes, but I finally realized it was plugged into the network (I set it up, but I forgot) and that was the issue. Somehow the lightning strike she said happened nearby fried it? Anything's possible. But it worked with the USB cable and I just shared it, so her two month old printer doesn't have to be chucked.

Next up a lady who said her machine wasn't turning on, which it was. Okay. That's fine. Also Skype isn't bright enough to assume if you are using a webcam, you probably want to use the webcam microphone. No, you have to tell it. After we got past the, okay, it started up, I showed her where the setting was. Ugh.

Lastly installing a new hard drive and reloading vista. But at least I got there early so I finished early.

Also finished up the book Sean leant me, started the library book. Dinner. Whole bunch of calls today again, so tomorrow is booked up with 4, and I have two for wednesday. Or is it three? It's a number greater then one. Made said calls.

Know that thing I teased you with that I said might happen Tuesday? Well, looks like it's been postponed until Friday. Which is fine. But I will tell you it rhymes with "sorry".

Let the speculation commence.

Okay, tell the truth, you don't care, do you? Or do you?

August a coming

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:32:00 -0400

Like a freight train! Boom!

And you know what that signals the end of.

July. Right. So, yeah.

So, weekend went as expected. Still quite busy friday and saturday, anything remarkable? Got the mini system back to the daycare lady, I was actually just down the road from her for another appointment, so that worked out very well. Made the easiest money ever by reloading Opera for a guy. And a bunch of boring cleanouts.

Sean's game went, uh... he doesn't read this does he? I don't think so. Well, anyway, it went like this. 4 bad guys all standing on a platform connected to where we are by a bridge. They are 50 meters away from us. In our party, we have 3 player characters and 5 NPCs. So that's an 12 person fight right there. What takes less then 20 seconds takes hours to get though in our time. So we start running across the bridge. And it turns into "the NPCs beat each other up." Because they were so much faster then us, or could fly, or whatever, Mizzy got one hit on one guy, and I did absolutely nothing. But run. But I got to watch as Sean's good guy characters beat up Sean's bad guy characters. Whiteye (Neil) could fly, so at least he got to do stuff.

What is more telling is Mizzy vs. my reaction to this situation. I of course laugh it off, like "whoops, that didn't go very well, did it? Well, it happens because people never do what you expect." Mizzy has a very short temper (in general) and gets surly about the whole thing. Sean apologizes, but I tell him, hey, Kyosuke could probably have dumped them all in the lava by himself if he wanted to reveal his powers, so it's my own fault for playing my character properly. I could have teleported over there, but that would give my secret away, so I choose not to and I live with that choice. I still get to hang out with my friends, and see how they're doing, and play with Fritzi, and hear their funny stories from the week, and isn't that the point? Mizzy needs to learn there are very few things actually worth getting upset over, and just laugh the rest off, because you'll go crazy otherwise. (I've been and back, twice even, so I know what I'm talking 'bout)

Today I read through the box of transformers comics he lent me. I really like what they're doing with the franchise now, it's not about giant robots bashing each other over the heads, it's about people in a desperate situation, that just happen to be giant robots and not made of flesh. It's much more humanistic, which is probably the incorrect usage of that word, but you get the point.

I also cleaned, and went to Grandma's 91st birthday party. I'm worried about her, she seems to have gone downhill rather rapidly the past week. She asked me why the sunlight in the room kept getting brighter and dimmer, apparently she forgot about clouds. I fear that this may just the first pebble in the final avalanche of her decline.

Good number of calls over the weekend, I have three for tomorrow and I forget now but at least most of tuesday booked.

And there may be something special about tuesday, we'll have to wait and see, won't we?

I leave you in the same place I am.

Suspense.

Enjoy!

Before I leave

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:00:00 -0400

Two More

As promised.

As the spirit moves!

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:36:00 -0400

Holy Lonely Night!

Sorry, bit of Fire Bomber there.

Much more teeth sinking today, into meaty, juicy, pc problems. The first of which involved setting up one a person had given another person. So not only did I have to take off all their crap, I had to add my crap- I mean, important security considerations. I was late, because her brain worked very slowly and choosing a skype name and password took far too long. Ugh. Amazing how much more responsive PCs are without antivirus software on them. I stripped the old one off and did everything, thinking, wow, for being only 1.5ghz this machine doesn't seem too awful! Then I put Avast! on there and was, like, oh, there it is. (By it I mean teh slownez)

Ah, AOL guy. I remember you. Somehow his avast stopped working, so I had to unload it and reload it. Ran malwarebytes, the usual.

Over to rebath. He was saying the wireless didn't connect, it did. He was also trying to use a busted ethernet cable, which I replaced with a new one, made by me, which went super on the one end, but the other end just kept slipping up. Got it in the end though.

Another one to clean out, but this one hooked up to a gigantic TV. I don't know, there comes a point where big becomes too big, and trying to use a machine with everyday stuff, on a monitor that huge? Reading a web site? Start at one end, and go 30" over that way to get to the end of one line, then back. Exercise, I guess.

Then over to Victor, a half hour drive. I was an hour early, but his wife was just opening the door, so that worked out. After I finished his main problem, he wanted to get his crappy ME machine online so his grandkids stopped messing with his. I told him, $15 for the card, and he said he was going to hold off. ooookay? But I said, look, save me the hour round trip, I'll put the card in now, you can pay me later. So that worked out, and you owe me, future me, for saving you that driving!

Someone on okcupid actually messaged me !? It was only like two lines:

"Hi, I need my computer fixed.

Kidding! But you seem nice."

And that was it. Okay, are you really trying, or... what? But looking at her pictures she's a cute little asian girl (4' 11") and her username references transformers, so that's points right there. And she likes cosplay? And is looking for a nerd? Hummmmm Now if she just likes role playing...

Back to almost not absurd levels of calls today. So I have three each tomorrow and saturday. Along with Dr. Who night, confirmed!

Well, I got slacking off to do. I do have two more garfields to... butcher? Gotta get to that sometime. Look forward to it!

As Expected

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:02:00 -0400

These last two days were.

Yup, a bunch of teeny-tiny jobs I had to run back and forth across the whole of creation to get done. And the fun doesn't stop there!

But yeah, mostly half hour jobs interspersed with half an hour of driving. Fun. The good thing was, because I usually overestimate my time, I managed to get things done early, not that cut down on driving or whatever.

And then I got another 7 calls again today. Looking back at my calendar I haven't had a booked solid week like this in months. Why, suddenly, out of the blue, all this work? All this crappy, make-no-money, drive from Fairport to Chili to Hilton, work? (I charge half hours, it would look pretty bad to be someplace for fifteen minutes and change them an hour) Looks a little bit more substantial tomorrow, but again, five scheduled. Blows my mind.

Hail today. Hail! Like pelt you with ice, pea sized chunks of falling sky. Rained pretty hard where I was for quite a while. Oh, right. The guy who put the numbers up on the "adult community" or whatever they're calling it now is mad. MAD I tell you. They had some fun I bet, like "Okay, here's 173, let's put 193 right next to it instead of 183. We'll put 183 way over there. Across from the 500s. Muwahahahahahah!" It is my sincere hope he or she steps in something very unpleasant soon and is laughed at by a six year old.

What? I'm not a monster. Okay, I lied, I want him dead. But only a little bit. Maybe just a terminal cancer for two months that clears spontaneously. Nothing with any side to it.

Spent way too much time driving around that place just trying to find the 180s. And what's the point of having a cell phone and calling the person to say "I am near the pool. It is across from 173 and 193. Where is 183? What am I missing?" if they don't answer?

Game saturday, maybe we'll finally clear the adventure from two weeks ago. After all, not many weeks left before it's bye-bye Sean.

Apple posted record profits again, like anyone's surprised. Nearly 4 million Macs sold. So where are they all? Because I'm not seeing them.

Oh, right, I repair computers, but I'm talking about Macs. Huh.

And speaking of that, I hate windows, did you know?

Well, more big fun for tomorrow, looking forward to it!

Uh, what?

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:08:00 -0400

The heck.

Just out of the blue, "let's call the computer guy", I got 10 calls today. Do you know how long it's been since I got ten calls? In one day? Yeah, maybe I'll get close to that over fri/sat/sun but in one day? What? When I already had tomorrow booked?

This makes no sense to me

Soooo, shopping. Did manage to get my money changed at chase. Well, all but $6 worth of coins. Jerks. Got stuff out of the library, most of which I managed to read today. Whoops. No problems there. The rest of the day I might as well not have bothered with, I could have stayed home and done nothing and made the same money.

The first one would go on for a second, then shut off again. It's this mini unit, which I couldn't figure out how to open, of all things. So I brought it home and checked it out, finally figured out the little slider dealie slides one way for the HD cover, the other way for the other cover. Well, push that, then slide it off like you have three hands, but it finally worked. Bad capacitors, I'm afraid. Luckily I can replace the entire unit (sans HD) for $60 on ebay, so I just bought one and I'll move the HD from this one over. Stupid leaky capacitors.

Next up was just the tuneup lady who somehow got Aavst! pro and worried having "too much stuff" on her machine would make it draw more electricity and blow up. Honestly, do phone help "support" places have bets to see what the most outlandish thing is someone will believe? I'm going to start telling people they should only click their mouse between 50-75 times a day, otherwise static electricity will build up and might kill their dog. I'll tell them a close friend of mine lost his dog after only clicking 63 times, so anything above 50 and you're asking for trouble. I'll even provide them a little pad to record their number of clicks. It'll be hilarious.

Then over to Stewart's, who was trying to restore a backup, though he told me he was trying to DO a backup, but whatever. He had them saved all over the place, with these really bizarre names, and no file extension, making them almost impossible to find. But I did find one he had done not too long ago so he got back up and running. He still had the metro! It would be nice to have a little car like that to do errands and drive to Sean's and things rather then use Neesan, but oh well. I again went over the proper procedure for doing the backup. Baka.

Came home, my guitar gently weeped to see the 10 calls I had to answer tonight. Don't get me wrong, as Yoda would say:

Calls leads to Jobs

Jobs leads to Money

Money leads to Happyness

But come on, ten in one day? What the heck?

So I ate dinner, finished Vampire Doll volume 1, which was pretty good. Made my freaking phone calls, and planned out my day for tomorrow. It'll be so fun, running back and forth, back and forth, all day. And then I'll get to do the same thing Wednesday! I've also booked at least one on both thursday and friday.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Observations

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:05:00 -0400

From Canada and Back

I arrived at Sean's five minutes late which I was a little annoyed with because I like to be on time, and he said 7:30. I needn't have worried, as the actual time of our leaving was closer to 7:55. He blamed the fact that Mizzy made him breakfast. I thought he should perhaps not make excuses, but merely acknowledge the situation and apologize. But what do I know of human behavior? Mizzy could have come, but declined, as she is now an official American Citizen now. (she's so proud, I can tell) So she got a day to herself, though I'm not sure that made her more happy or surly. ? But I've already admitted to not knowing about human behavior. And of course, someone had to be with the dog, but I'm sure that could have been done if she had wanted to go. Guess it just isn't her cup of tea. *shrug*

So we were on our way. Now, we were traveling with Whitney, who we rely on as the human road map to get us there and back. At this job, he excels. It is obvious to me why Sean and I are friends. We have known each other for years, we like the same kind of games, I'm the only one he gets actual feedback from for his game stuff. It is also obvious to me why he and Whitney are friends- they are both a bit Transformers crazy.

Now don't get me wrong, there are (i hope?) a few topics I could speak about to another person without them making a little circle with their finger near the head region and motioning for someone to come rescue them, but these guys are Pro Transformer Nerds. The whole way down it was "repaint this" and "size class" that and throwing names of transformers around like they actually paid attention to them or something. Huh. Now, I like transformers. I happen to have a whole shelf full them, two shelves, if you want to be specific. I read the comics, heck, I even played the game. But these two, I really must bow to their mastery of all things Transformer. In fact, I salute them.

Naturally, on the way down there, we had to stop at every wall mart at Toys R Us to look for transformers to buy. They both found one right away they had been looking for so they were pretty excited. But this made us later then we wanted to be (well, they wanted) but we arrived.

First time I've ever gone to Canada and gotten less money back then what I gave them. Crazy.

So, the con itself. One dealers room, one booth in the front manned by the official company, several side rooms with different panels. Observations:

Size: if this is the Largest Transformers Convention In Canada then... I would hate to see the second largest, I'll tell you that.

Male vs Female: As one might expect there were probably more guys there then girls, but there were a fair number of girls there nonetheless. However, I had the sense that most of the girls were there along with their guy friends, rather then the other way around. I didn't see to, if any, solitary girls there that seemed to be on their own.

Trend Reversal: Cosplay. All the people in the costume contest (all 6 or so of them) were girls. Interesting. I later saw two others in costume, one I'm pretty sure was a guy who could transform into a cardboard box, (more on that later) and one Jazz, who was probably male but they were covered in cardboard, so... Cardboard box guy was interesting, he even had the jaw wired up so it would move. He had two wing like protrusions on his back that folded over when he crouched down, turning him into a box. No word on the iconic sound effect as he did so.

Otherwise, transformers wise, there was a bit of the older stuff floating around, even a mint in the box Fortress Maximus for $1700, that I'm sure he went home with because no one in their right mind is carrying around $2000 cash at a transformers convention! There was also G-I-Joe, star wars, a little anime, and other miscellaneous stuff to be found. (t-shirts)

I only bought one thing, which was not for myself and shall be disclosed at the appointed time. So HA!

We saw the "new upcoming" models and we left about 4:00. Sean got a very expensive ($250- knocked down to $240) japanese toy, two anime figures in crushed up boxes and didn't find something he wanted for the head to repaint something into something else.

On the way home we again stopped at 5-6 places. We were going to do game, but we were home much later then we expected to be, and Sean was tired (and driving is hard work) so he invited me to stay and watch Hit Man instead. Then I went home.

And that was that. He asked if I was really okay with going because I "didn't do much". What would I have done otherwise, fix crappy computers? Ha! Maybe we just have different goals in going, that's all. I get to see the crazy prices people want, some cool new stuff, hot dressed up ladies doing cosplay, and spend the day with friends. *shakes head*. Okay with going. I even saw the youngest cosplayer ever, a tiny baby with a hat and wings on their back. SO CUTE! Minus the purchase, food, tolls and gas money cost me $50. Seems fair to me. We did cross back over someplace I didn't know, and we didn't stop, so I still have canadian money to change, which I hope Chase can do, because they're the only bank I have an account at!

Oh yeah, don't know if the girls in costume came together or decided to hang out together, but I did see them all in a group later, whatever that meant.

He gave me three movies to watch, so I had a movie day! "10 things I hate about you", "The invention of lying" and "The Game". All of which were good, so thanks.

Now it's about ten to seven, and I got four calls just today? One each friday-saturday, so I'll proof read this and make some calls. Only two weeks left of July, people, make it worthwhile!