Godfather of Tech

Weekend Word - Sunday, Aug 17

2008-08-17T23:19:00.006-05:00

I got to the office around 8:15 am again this morning. I had a rather slow one on the bench and it was taking forever to get updated.

Kathy brought breakfast in about 8:30 am from Mickey D's.

We worked on the couple of machines left to finish up, teaming up on the slow one to keep it always updating or rebooting when needed. Since it was so slow (needs more RAM), updates took much longer, so I tended to start them and walk away, coming back in 20-30 minutes to see if it was ready to reboot.

I finalized the notebook with the keyboard and he came to pick it up and the one with the replacement LCD was ready, so the owner came to pick it up. I have another of her's as well to repair, it also needs an LCD, so I will order it Monday and she will pick it up next weekend. I have gotten pretty efficient at LCD replacements and working on notebooks even with my large hands.

A guy came in with a Mac and needed some assistance. Me, being the confident one, give him a half-hour training session on how to use his new Mac. Chris B and Smiley will be proud, I didn't curse it one time, but I did have to reboot it because the Finder kept crashing when reading his Kodak Photo CD and then it wouldn't eject the CD since the files were 'still in use'. Rather than try to kill each process, I found it was easier to have him reboot.

The guy who bought the power supply came back in with the PC. It was running, but it was running Vista, so he couldn't get into it, not knowing the password.

My confidence level high, I told him I could get in. I put it on the bench and booted it up. It came up to a screen waiting on 'Vanessa' to log on. I tried the obvious password of 'password', to no avail. I thought for a second and typed in 'love' and BOOM I was in.

That's right, people, I guessed the password based upon the user's name. Today, I was on top of my game. If I were a swimmer I would be Michael Phelps today. I was almost quicker than Usain Bolt running the 100-meters. Nothing could stop me now.

The guy was astounded. I created him a local administrator account and sent him on his way.

I had a few more PCs come in and I finished them up. One of them, an eMachine, arrived about 4:10 pm. It was getting hot and shutting down. I knew it probably needed a good cleaning. I opened it up and it was packed with gunk. I cleaned it up and suggested to the owner she replace the Bestec Power supply that was in it with a more robust one. She agreed.

I had one more to finish removing some pesky spyware on, so I finished it up and then proceeded to clean this one up, taking the aluminum off the CPU fan and washing it in the sink to removed the caked-on gunk. I applied some of the CPU paste and reassembled everything, adding the new power supply and called the owner to tell her it would be ready in 10 minutes.

She arrived just as I finished scanning it for spyware. Amazingly, I found *nothing* wrong. No malware. Nothing. There is a first time for everything I guess.

After finishing all of that up, I headed for the house about 7 pm.

Weekend Word - Saturday, Aug 16

2008-08-16T23:45:00.004-05:00

Since I was coming in early this morning from the Metroplex, I arrived at 8:15 am at the office. No sooner had I gotten there than a lady came in with her PC, needing it looked at.

It looked like it was going to be a busy day, as I received another one to work on shortly after 9 am. I still had the one from last weekend to finish up, a notebook to repair with a new LCD that had just arrived and notebook I had been waiting on a keyboard to replace. That made 5 on the bench and it wasn't even 10 am yet.

I worked my way through them and got most of them done before the end of the day. I had the one with the replacement LCD finished and the notebook with the bad keyboard finished and just needing Windows updates applied, so I left it running overnight upgrading it.

As the day wore on, I got a few more things to troubleshoot, one resulting in a power supply sale for an eMachine that the guy got given to him. He was lucky, as I have an eMachine motherboard graveyard hanging on the wall from bad power supplies. This one was just the power supply. I tested it and it showed bad. I placed a used power supply on the board and the box came up, so he bought the new power supply and was going to put it in by himself. Nowadays it's pretty easy to do that. Most things will only fit one way. Back in the early 90's you pretty much had to know how to wire one up or you would pop a breaker or toast the power supply.

I ran out about 1:00 pm and grabbed a Mini Capt's Mate burger from BnB and came back to the office since I didn't have anyone to keep things open while I ate lunch.

Overall the day was pretty busy. I looked up at 7:00 pm and decided to call it a day. I wanted to get home to watch the Cowboy's preseason game against the Bronco's and the Phantastic Phelps Pheat of winning 8 gold medals at the Olympics, so I hurried home, grabbing a quick dinner at the K-N Root Beer to eat when I got home.

I watched the first quarter and some of the second and then turned over to watch the Olympics and don't recall anything else until about 1:00 am when I woke up, missing the rest of the Cowboy game and the record-breaking 8th win for Phelps. I will have to catch both on replay.

Weekend Work - Sunday, Aug 10

2008-08-10T23:01:00.003-05:00

As usual, Kathy opened the office up first thing and worked on updating the two PCs that were left to complete from last night.

I arrived around 11 am and finished those two machines up, one a Vista machine and one an XP box.

Sunday's can be quiet for PC repair. Today wasn't much different.

I contacted the contractor and told him to move forward on the bathroom. It was going to cost much more than I wanted to spend, but the work he was planning was going to make the place look great.

He came in and we discussed paint colors, choice of tile for the shower and choice of tile for the floor. I think it will look great when it is done.

Kathy left around 2:00 pm to go clean out the bathroom at the lake house and I finished up the two PCs. The customers came in and picked them up. I used the time to wrap up things I have been meaning to get done for a few weeks around the office.

Around 3:00 pm a customer dropped off an older Dell GX1 that needed cleaning up. I explained it would be next weekend before it was completed because I wasn't going to have time to finish it today.

At 4:00 pm I closed up the shop and headed to the lake. I have to be at the office in downtown Fort Worth at midnight to upgrade a server, so I wanted to make sure we got away as soon as possible to get home in time.

Weekend Work - Saturday, Aug 9

2008-08-09T23:57:00.006-05:00

After my debacle this morning at the local McDonald's, I arrived at the office at just about 9:00 am. When I opened the door, I noticed a hint of what smelled like a decomposing body.

I immediately tried to open the door and air the place out while I looked for the source of the odor. I found it just behind the printer on the sticky mat I laid out for him, a little mouse.

Cycle back about a year.

I came in one Saturday to find the lid on the mixed nuts can had been nibbled into by a mouse. I immediately placed glue traps out and hoped to snag him. I did. And his brother the next month.

I kept the traps out just in case his relatives sent out a search party. Well, they must have, cause I got another one sometime this week.

I disposed of the carcass and opened the front door.

No sooner had I done that than a customer walked him with his PC. I explained the situation and apologized. I was embarrassed that the mouse got in, despite trying to plug every possible entryway.

I started working on his PC when another one came in for repair. The customer felt compelled to stay and talk, preventing me from starting on either one as soon as I wanted to.

Soon after he left I started working on both of them and then hung the new OPEN sign we picked up at Home Depot this week.

Kathy came in and I had planned to meet a contractor to look at redoing my bathroom at the lake, so I called him and asked if he would come by and I would take him out there. He arrived within minutes and we left to go do that.

When I arrived back, there were two additional PCs on the bench to repair.

I ordered up a couple of personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut after giving the assistant manager a good chewing out about the dining experience there a few weeks back. He apologized and took the order, giving me 10% off. I asked for delivery and it arrived hot and on time.

Jason came by and invited us out to see his new project in action. I hesitate to describe if here, I think he is keeping it under wraps for the Briar Creek Bash. They were also going to grill up some chicken and shrimp, so Kathy offered to make some dessert and a salad.

She left to go do that while I worked on the four PCs on the bench, finishing two of them up just as the customers arrived to pick them up.

I concentrated on the other two, removing some spyware and a few viruses. Despite having an anti-virus application and a spyware-removal tool installed, they were infected. It could be that they were infected first and the AV and anti-spyware client was an effort to get the machine back to a usable status.

At any rate, one of them was really bad while the other was only mildly annoying to resolve.

I left the office about 6:30 pm and headed to the Bryan's. I made sure to put some money aside, since I knew they would probably want to play some 31 and I intended on taking their money this time.

If only Shawn were here so I could take his too.

When fast food isn't

2008-08-09T10:25:00.006-05:00

My Saturday routine usually consists of me awaking about 7:30-7:45 am, geting in the shower and then heading into town. I open the office at 9:00 am, so this gives me plenty of time.

Most of the time I like to grab breakfast at one of the fast-food type local establishments, be it the McDonald's, the What-A-Burger or the local Donut shop.

This morning I arrived at the McDonald's and got in line at the drive thru. It was 8:30 am and the line was around the building. There were no parking places on the South side of the building except for the blue ones, so I thought it was best I just waited in line instead of going inside.

At that time a spot opened up in the parking lot and I peered into the building and saw only three people in line. Surely this would be faster than waiting in line and wasting fuel, so I parked and went inside.

My mistake.

As I watched the chaos and seemingly unmanaged group try and fill the drive-thru orders and the counter orders, I knew this wasn't going to be fast.

I never dreamed it would take as long as it did.

I got to the register and waited. There was no one there to take the order. Since I was pressed for time, needing to open by 9:00 am, I was getting a little concerned. A youngster walked up and asked if I minded he cut in front of me. I told him, politely, that I did.

The counter person finally arrived and I placed my order. It was a simple one, a small order of Sausage Gravy and Biscuits and a regular, non-flavored iced coffee. To Go. Nothing complicated about it.

After placing my order, I stepped back and let others attempt to get their order placed while I could hear the chaos from the back of the house ensuing.

At one point a blue-shirted lady came out and told the crew member on the window to '...park 'em...' if they didn't have their food ready. This was an effort to clear the drive thru line, which continued to stretch around the building.

I looked at my watch. It was now 8:45 am and I was still waiting on my food. In fact, the three people ahead of me were still waiting on *their* food. I had already paid my $4.10, but I was considering leaving and calling back later to complain since my office opening time was only 15 minutes away and I was at least 7 minutes by car away.

About 8:50 am the first of the three people got their food. There was a glimmer of hope.

I glanced up and noticed the customer service toll-free number and dialed it so I would have it in my phone. I knew I was going to need it.

About 8:54 am the person right ahead of me got their order. Perhaps, if they hurried, I could make it to the office on time (a pet peeve of mine).

Hope was fading faster than a unwatered flower in this August heat.

At 8:57 am I saw them push the familar Sausage Gravy and Biscuit box out to a tray, ready to be delivered. They still had not created my drink, so they started working on that. The moment it hit the tray (despite having asked for it TO GO and expecting it in a bag), I grabbed both and headed for the car. I didn't even get a spork, and there were non available at the area set aside for napkins and other accessories. Twenty-eight minutes after pulling into the parking lot I finally had my order.

28 minutes. At a fast food joint. Probably the fastest fast food franchise in the world.

I was going to be late and I was pretty upset about it.

Having complained about this McDonald's in the past, I don't know that calling the customer service line will do any good. I decided I was going to call and air my grievances with them as well as formulating a nice Letter to the Editor of the local paper expressing my complaints and encouraging others who have had similar issues to speak up.

I figure that one voice on the other end of the phone line doesn't do much good. But, perhaps if I embarrass them by voicing my concerns in writing, on this blog and in the local paper, it will make them re-evaluate their need to bring strong leadership to the store.

Weekend Work - Sunday, August 3

2008-08-03T21:25:00.007-05:00

Since I knew I had three to finish this morning and a service call, I arrived at 7:45 am and started working on the Dell notebook with the broken screen.

Having fixed Windows Updates last evening, I applied all of the updates and made sure it was still running well and all malware was gone.

I scanned the Dell desktop and found some additional viruses. I contacted the owner to let them know it would probably be best to completely reinstall from the ground up since a large number of system files were infected with the virus that replicated itself over 100 times.

The owner was out of the house and would call back later. I set the Dell desktop aside and wrapped up the HP just before heading to the service call.

Kathy contacted the owner, but he was at church and would be back later.

I headed out for the service call and arrived to find the owner didn't have their DSL provisioned yet. I hooked everything up, but the DSL light was flashing red, and indication that DSL sync wasn't occurring. I confirmed all of the cables were right and the filters applied appropriately.

When I turned on the desktop, it started booting and hung going into Windows. I powered it down and started it up again. This time it tried to perform a scandisk, but hung at the 10-second countdown.

The owner reported this is the first time this has occurred. I started it up in safe mode, but it would not start in normal mode. This led me to question if they had added any software or hardware lately. As I suspected, they had added a network card a day or so ago.

The guy who added the card, a local guy named Jimmy, offered to remove it. He had pulled it from a junker PC he salvaged. He claimed it was working before.

He pulled the card and I started up the PC and it worked fine. He had another card, so he jumped on his gas-powered bicycle and headed out to get it.

Suspecting the card might be bad or possibly the slot it was occupying was bad, I moved it to another slot and turned on the PC. It worked the first time. I shut it down, replaced the cover and brought it back up again. I fired up Internet Explorer and connected to the local Motorola DSL modem and confirmed the network card was working correctly.

Since DSL wasn't turned on yet, we couldn't complete the network setup. I had everything ready to go, we were simply waiting on the DSL sync to occur.

After about 15 minutes of explaining how to network two PCs and who to use the scanner, I headed back to the office.

The virus scan on the Dell found 117 total viruses. Since some of the files were system files and I was waiting on the owner for direction on reformatting and reinstalling, I applied SP3 to see if it would replace the formerly infected, no missing, files.

It did not.

The owner of the HP and the Dell notebook with the damaged screen came by and picked them up. I explained the work and they both seemed happy with the results.

A guy stopped by and was talking about his notebook being slow. We discussed what might be causing it and I offered that I could correct these issues rather easily. He said he might bring it in this coming weekend, but wanted to warn me if had some pr0n on it and wanted to know if I was offended by pr0n. I told him no. He said he felt compelled to ask because some people get offended by it.

The owner of the Dell desktop called and said she didn't have any data on the drive that was important, so reformatting would be acceptable.

I backed up what I could on the PC and started reinstalling Windows XP.

A county employee stopped by about flash drive issues. She was using a flash drive as her only source of data for Quickbooks and now it appeared the flash drive was dead. I explained that while flash drives are normally dependable, like any electronic component, they can and do go bad. I explained they should be used as a backup solution, and maybe not the only solution if your data is important.

I handed her my business card and told her about Carbonite and explained it was available as a link on my web site.

I finished up the Dell desktop and contacted the owner, but she was unable to come pick it up at the moment as they had company over.

I headed home and put up solar screens to knock down some of the heat and slept a few hours before heading home.

Grillin' with the Bryan's

2008-08-02T23:38:00.004-05:00

David and Sarah stopped by this morning and invited Kathy and I out for dinner. They were going to grill up some burgers and sausages. And, their grandson, Shawn, had $5 burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to play some 31 to possibly win some money.

I left the office around 6:15 pm and arrived there about 6:30 pm to find everyone sitting outside talking. Even though it was over 100°F at the time, the shade and breeze flowing across David's front yard made it quite pleasant.

Kathy had made some Jalapeno Corn Casserole as a side item for the burgers and 'dogs and a Gingerbread cake for dessert.

David cooked up a bunch of sausages of every variety, from plain beef to pork, jalapeno and cheese and some sausages from the meat market in Windthorst. Of course, he had some grilled fresh jalapeno's that brought tears to his eyes and some delicious burgers.

We sat down and ate and watched with amusement when Zach ate everything put in front of him. He really got after the Gingerbread cake with the whipped cream topping. It is quite a fun site to see him put away the groceries. He is such a happy, healthy baby after having a rough time of it when he was born.

After we ate, I played a few round of 'Gone Fishing' on Sarah's touchscreen bartop game. It is pretty cool and I could see how one could spend hours playing it. I have been planning on building one to compliment my MAME machine, maybe I need to really get cracking now.

We sat back outside for a while as Jason worked on his top-secret 'device' to unveil at the Briar Creek Bash in October. We decided to go in an play some 31.

Kathy went home to let the dog out of the 'prison camp' while I stayed to take Shawn's money in 31. We anted up $5 each and proceeded to play. As we worked to eliminate people, it got down to Shawn, Jason and myself. Jason dealt a hand and immediately knocked. I had an ace in my hand, so I knew it was over for me. Shawn dropped a 21 on the table and Jason had 26, eliminating me.

The next hand, Jason and Shawn were at it and the anticipation grew as Shawn and Jason kept drawing cards. Eventually one of them knocked and when the dust settled, Jason had a 28 while Shawn was left holding a 26, not good enough and he was eliminated, leaving Jason to claim the pot.

So, even though I didn't take Shawn's money, which was a goal at the beginning of the night, it was fun to watch Jason take it from him. And, with Zach eating like he does, he might need it.

They started another game, but I had to get home and get some shut eye. I left three machines on the bench in various stages of repair and I had a 10:00 am service call to perform. If I didn't get up early and get in there, I might not finish things in a timely manner.

Weekend Work - Saturday, August 2

2008-08-02T23:30:00.004-05:00

I worked on the teenager's notebook first thing, finishing it up.

Windows XP SP3 had installed overnight and the virus scan had only found 4 infections, which it removed. Since the malware was now gone and the final updates were complete, I put it aside and concentrated on finishing the corporate desktop I had replaced the mainboard on last evening.

Like the notebook, I had installed SP3 on it [the desktop] and virus scanned it over night. A few more updates and it would be ready to go.

David and Sarah stopped by and invited Kathy and I out for dinner and a game of 31. I told them we would see them there.

My weekly visit from Chris occurred about mid-morning. I enjoy visiting with him, even though most of the time I am shuffling back and forth between the two work benches working on multiple PCs. He had a couple of leads on employment and will be following up on those. He is in a tough situation. His career of choice, being a writer, is rather limited in Graham.

I offered up some suggestions on freelance work and he has a couple of ideas that could pay off big dividends. I wish him well.

My cousin, Roy, came in with a customer who brought in an HP notebook that had some slowness issues. He [the customer] said it was slow and the USB mouse wouldn't work. I also noticed a rattle when I moved the notebook from side to side. It looked like I was going to have to open this one up to see what was loose.

I told them I would have it ready by tomorrow.

A lady last week called and wanted to drop off her Dell desktop. She said it was soo infected, it took it 20 minutes to start up. I welcome those type of challenges.

She dropped it off on the way to 'drown the grandkids' at the lake.

I put it on the bench and started working on it. I was just finishing up the corporate desktop on one bench and was looking at the HP notebook on the back bench, so I had three of them going.

I immediately realized this one didn't even have Service Pack 1 installed (Windows XP). No wonder it was infected. It also had no AV protection whatsoever. I started up my custom-written spyware removal scripts and found several hundred issues. I cleaned them up and concentrated on scanning for viruses using a portable AV package that is freely available.

Even though I had removed all of the spyware, there were over 117 active viruses on the machine. I tried a reinstall/upgrade to get to SP2, hoping it would replace the infected files.

It didn't.

I popped in my flash drive and scanned again, leaving it to go the rest of the night in a deep, thorough scan.

A guy dropped by with a Dell notebook. He said it was acting funny after installing Dazzle. I don't like to immediately jump on the malware bandwagon, but when we fired it up and it took over 15 minutes to complete the boot process, I knew something was amiss.

He had scanned for spyware and had ThreatFire and Spyware Doctor installed as well as Registry Mechanic running. The corner of the plastic bezel was damaged and needed to be replaced. I made a note of that on the repair form for reference.

I received a call from someone needing a service call tomorrow at 10 am to set up DSL. I collected the info and told them I would be there at 10 am sharp.

Back to the Dell with the damaged bezel.

The systray looked like a gathering place for icons. There were at least 15 icons in the tray, mostly junk that is unnecessary. I told him I could optimize it and asked how much RAM he had. He stated 2GiB.

I was surprised by this, since the drive was being totally trashed spooling to the pagefile. He left it with me and I started working on it as well as the other three machines.

I finished up the corporate Dell desktop and put it aside to concentrate on the two notebooks and the other desktop.

Another issue with the bezel-damaged notebook was the Automatic Update service would not function. I pulled out my trusty script to unregister and register all of the DLLs for Windows Update and ran it, only to find BITS was dorked. I grabbed the support tools and fixed BITS and proceeded to optimize the startup files, pagefile and scan the machine, again, for malware, finding one reference to it.

I removed the malware and cleaned the registry. At this point all I needed to do was apply all of the missing Windows Updates since AU was broken for some time.

While this was going on, I had determined the cause of the rattle in the HP was a CD that had slipped between the top of the CD-ROM drive and the case.

Of course, I had the thing almost completely apart when I found it. That's my luck.

I glanced at the clock and it was nearly 6:15 pm. I had to rush off to the Bryan's for dinner, meeting Kathy there.

With the HP notebook, the severely-infected Dell desktop and the battle-damaged Dell notebook all on the work bench and a mid-morning service call looming, I would have to get to the office early tomorrow to wrap all of this up.

Day off? Hardly

2008-08-01T23:39:00.005-05:00

So, today was supposed to be my day off. I was supposed to try and get quotes from people to redo my bathroom. I want to remove the tub and replace it with a good shower. And, I was going to ride my motorcycle. So much for those ideas.

I came in to town around 10:30 and did a few things and then went to lunch at Burger's and Billiards. It was about 12:50 pm and the place was packed.

When I walked in, Bucket was on the phone taking an order. As soon as she hung up, she said '...Mr Computerman, I ain't got no ham....' knowing I was there for the Mini Captain's Mate burger.

Shaking my head, I ordered up a Mini Bacon Cheeseburger and a side of onion rings with a 50/50 Tea. This is a trend I have gotten into lately where I get half a glass of unsweet tea and half a glass of sweet tea. It adds just enough sweetness to it to make it good without too many calories or grams of sugar.

As I ate my lunch I listened to ex-county commissioner, Sam Whittenburg, wheelin' and a dealin' with someone on the phone. I wasn't *trying* to listen in, but Sam has a deep, very distinctive voice that travels well. If you know Sam or have ever heard him, you can't mistake his voice.

When I finished I headed back to the shop and proceeded to flash a new ROM to my ATT 8525 phone. I had done this a few days ago, but was never able to pair it with my car. I have a car with the UConnect hands-free feature and the phone has worked in the past. I backed everything up, flashed a different version of the ROM on it and then restored the info (contacts, calendar, etc). When I tried to pair it this time, it worked flawlessly. You don't realize how much you like hands-free phone usage in the car until it doesn't work.

About 3:00 pm someone knocked on the office door. Since I wasn't officially open, I had the mini-blinds closed to keep out all of the heat I could. With forecasted temps in the 105-107°F range today, every little bit helps.

When I opened the door, there was Schulyer with his notebook in tow.

I had walked him through a spyware issue over the phone on Tuesday, but I knew he would be coming by since complete removal of spyware is something one really has to work at. It is rare for a novice user to be able to remove everything.

Sure, you can download a few tools to remove it, but unless you remove *everything* and every reference to it, the spyware will continue to haunt you. Hey to the Geek Squad. I have cleaned up after those guys on more than one occassion.

As I suspected, that's what was happening to Schuyler's notebook. He removed the major threats, but there were some hanging around that kept re-infecting him.

I took the notebook and started working on it. He had a few tough ones on there, but once I tracked them down, I was able to remove them and all references to them. I performed a virus scan and found the culprit that started it all in his My Documents folder. I moved it to the quarantine area and then deleted it.

While I had his machine on the bench, I figured I might as well work on two more I had there as well. One of them was a company's desktop that was 'dead' and the other was a notebook that belonged to a teenager and I knew it would be infected pretty badly.

I diagnosed the desktop with a bad motherboard. It was a Compaq mini-tower. As luck would have it, I had a replacement board and it fit in the case. I talked to the company representative and we determined it would be more cost effective to repair this one than buy a new PC since they required XP Professional for their custom software.

They had the license for XP, but figured that waiting on a new Dell and then removing Vista and putting XP on the new Dell was more expensive, in the long run, than repairing this one. And, they could get this one back this weekend. Try doing that mailorder. Fu-get-about-it. Ain't gonna happen. Besides, I was pretty sure I could repair/install XP and not loose any data.

And, that's just what I did.

I put the new board it and popped their XP CD in and proceeded to boot up and perform a repair/install. Everything worked great except we could not authenticate because their domain controller was not there and no one knew the local admin password.

I fired up a custom-built CD with some scripts I had cobbled together and reset the password to a known one for the local account, rebooted, logged in and installed all of the necessary drivers to get the PC on the network.

From there I applied Windows XP SP3 and all of the updates and then left it scanning overnight for viruses and other malware.

The teenagers notebook was just as I expected. It was riddled with malware, including 4 viruses. I guess they never updated their AV defs. I removed the malware and left it scanning for viruses overnight as well.

Schuyler came by and picked up his notebook on his way to do a late evening service call. Oh, the life of a plumber/electrician/AC man. Kinda like a computer-repair man, always busy and working at all hours of the nights or weekends.

By this time Kathy had arrived and we headed to the house. Luckily it was going to be cool inside since I had left the AC running (in power save mode) when I left the house this morning. Some Friday evenings during the summer we arrive to a house that's over 100°F at 9:00 pm and it is stifling for the first 20 minutes.

The house faces the West and soaks up all of the sunshine. I think the lake amplifies it even more since there are no trees to shade the sun from naking the house.

We ordered up some custom-fit solar screens, but they where too large to get 'in' the car when I came down on Thursday night. I could have probably strapped them on top, but opted to ask my buddy Jason to bring them by when he arrives this weekend.

Once we get those installed it should help with the heat in the house late in the day.

Weekend Work - Sunday, July 27

2008-07-27T22:30:00.008-05:00

Per our agreement, Kathy opens up the office on Sunday. I arrived around 10:15 am to find my friend Kelly in town from the Metroplex. Kelly and I go way back to the Young County Rural Volunteer Fire Department, where we were both members in the 80s.

I visited with him when the Vista-to-XP migration owner came in for his PC. I explained the work, he paid for it and went on his way to play some golf.

Kelly had to get out to check on his mom, so he bid adieu and I started finishing up the used PC. My friend Will stopped by from the Metroplex as well. He was in town to go to a family reunion and apply for a job or two while in town.

I assisted him in applying online for some positions.

After he left, I added a new 512mb stick to the used PC and finished it up. I waited until after church to call the owner and let her know about the bad stick of RAM.

I called a few people who needed to come get their PC and one of them dropped by about 2:00 pm to get it. No sooner than he had left when a guy pulls up in a van, comes in and asks some questions about his PC. After describing the issue I asked two questions, was it an eMachine and did it show power when you turned it on.

He stated it was an eMachine and it didn't show power. I pointed to the wall of motherboards I have, one of them a 'clock' and the others going to be soon. Two of the four are eMachine motherboards. I have others, I just don't have them 'on the wall'.

Without looking at it, I figured the board was bad. He happened to have it in the van, so I asked him to bring it in and we would test it. I tested the power supply and showed it was working and pulled the power from all drives and reseated the RAM. If it were a bad chip, it would likely power on. This one was D-E-A-D. Without going into great detail troubleshooting, it appeared the board was bad.

We discussed options, including a new board from eMachine, a replacement board off eBay and even buying a used PC and moving his data to the new chassis. He left with it to ponder the route he would take.

My washing of the keyboard didn't work, the Toshiba still has some stuck keys. I found a keyboard in Hong Kong on eBay and I will order it up. I called the owner and he was in agreement.

A writer, who's PC I have fixed in the recent past, dropped by to ask some technical questions about mail delivery and the like. He is either working on a murder mystery or plotting a mob hit. Of course, I am joking, but he did need some technical background to make his story more authentic, so I obliged.

At the end of the day I was able to deliver the used PC, pick up the check and deliver it to the owner and receive payment for the memory stick. In the whole process, it looks like I might have picked up a web site job. I took some pictures and gathered some background info so I could mock up a site for the owner.

I brokered the used PC deal Pro Bono as I was merely trying to provide good customer service to two of my customers. One of them had a need, the other a surplus and I was able to fill the void. I didn't expect any type of compensation, but, it just goes to show that good deeds often times lead to rewards when you make good faith efforts to do the right thing.

Dinner at Vetoni's - Saturday night

2008-07-27T14:36:00.008-05:00

After last week's fiasco at Pizza Hut and yesterday's sad lunch from Clayton's, I was looking forward to a good meal after a long day. We chose to go to Vetoni's.

We arrived at Vetoni's and were seated promptly. The waitress took out drink order, but they were out of iced coffee, even though it was on the menu board when we walked in.

After a few times, Kathy was able to get them to bring her a fresh cup of coffee, a tall glass of ice and a shot of milk. She made her own version of iced coffee.

We ordered and Victor, the owner, (I think that is his name) came over to see how we were doing. He seemed surprised at the iced coffee concoction and said he had tried a 'bag' of it recently and hadn't ordered any more, but several people had asked about it.

Kathy explained all he needed to do was offer his existing coffee with a shot of milk, some ice and maybe a shot of expresso and he would be just fine. He shrugged, saying he would think about that.

We ordered and the food arrived in a timely manner. It was way more food than we needed. Kathy, of course, ordered spaghetti with meat sauce while I opted for the pasta sampler (manicotti, lasagna and ravioli). I am not a ravenous fan of Italian food, I prefer burgers and Tex-Mex, but I enjoy the food at Vetoni's, especially with the pink sauce they have.

After a nice quiet dinner, I drove back to the office to finish some work up and Kathy headed home to let the dog out of the prison camp.

Weekend Work - Saturday, July 26

2008-07-26T23:33:00.005-05:00

First thing this morning, Chris stopped by. His father wasn't doing well and he has been checking in on him in Fort Worth. He stayed here at the office for about 20 minutes and had to get on along.

A customer of mine dropped off his brother-in-law's (BIL) HP PC. It was a 600mhz model with 64mb RAM. He had tried to upgrade it to XP, but it locked up and would need a reinstall. Reviewing the specs, I explained it would be painfully slow *if* we could get XP to install on 64mb RAM. I recommended a RAM upgrade at a minimum.

I offered another solution that might make more sense. I had a used PC that was much, much faster with XP Home already installed. It would make more sense to go this route.

He would check with his brother-in-law and let me know.

I got a call from a guy who used to be involved with the Graham Fire Department. He may still be, I am not sure. He wanted to downgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows XP Home. He had the disks and the license, but wasn't sure how to proceed. I explained it would involve backing everything up and then reformatting and installing XP. At that point, once all of the Windows updates had been applied, it would mean moving the data back into the correct places. It wasn't something one can just toss a disk in and do, it must be planned to assure you have the drivers before hand to get back online as well as the disks and license for the software you use daily so it can be reinstalled.

He said he would drop it by tomorrow.

A former boss from Graham Auto Electric arrived with his Toshiba notebook in hand. It seems one of the grandkids might have spilled something on the keyboard. Several of the keys were stuck down with some kind of 'gunk'. He also had a bad memory slot and wanted to add the largest stick of RAM into the only working slot the PC had.

I explained it would be best to get a new keyboard for the stuck key issue. In the past, on a notebook given to me that had soda spilled on the keyboard, I 'washed' the keyboard in hot water and allowed it to air dry (after swinging the keyboard back and forth, forcibly, to remove the excess water). That worked then and it might work not to get him by until the new keyboard arrived.

It was a good possibility I had the RAM in stock to upgrade the notebook. He left it with me to see what I could find out.

The Fire Department guy who called arrived with his Dell C521 PC and the XP Home media, licenses and other applications. I told him I would get it done today and he could pick it up tomorrow morning. He had a golf appointment mid-day tomorrow, so that would work out perfect.

I called the lady who owned the used PC and told her someone was interested in it. She agreed to the asking/offer price. I took it over to the workbench and fired it up to update it with the most current Windows updates.

While the machine was updating I got a call from the guy who was interested in the used PC and he stated his BIL had worked a deal to get a used PC from his nephew. Having the used PC on the bench, I continued the updates anyway.

We decided it was time for some lunch and opted to grab some BBQ from Clayton's BBQ. If I was running a BBQ joint and served up the meal we received, I would shut down the place. We both ordered brisket with various sides. The brisket arrived *full* of fat with no hint of a smoke ring and absolutely no bark. You BBQ lovers will know what I am talking about. The meal we received was somewhat cold, the meat was gray and there was no taste of smoke whatsoever. The saving grace was the sauce. They have two kinds, a sweet and a regular sauce. The sweet sauce was pretty good and made eating the food palatable.

If it has just been the meat, I might have went back, but the sides were equally bad. The beans were cooked *way too long*, the remnants of bacon used to flavor them looked like a rubbery, burned piece of leather shriveled up. The potato and macaroni salad tasted like it was out of a can to me.

Oh, well. Some of the caveats of living in a small town, lack of choice. Back to work.

I started working on the Vista-to-XP migration by backing up the drive data. It took several hours to complete. I popped in the XP Home CD and reinstalled XP.

About 4:00 I got a call from a lady who needed a used PC for work. This was her lucky day. I explained I had the one on the bench and it wasn't mine, but the lady who owned it wanted to sell it. She agreed to it and I told her I would make it ready for her.

I took the keyboard out of the Toshiba and ran it under hot water in the sink. I don't condone this by any means, but we knew it would need a new keyboard, so it wouldn't hurt to at least see if the PC would start up later.

While I was cleaning it up, it appeared the 'gunk' was fishing 'stink' bait. At least, it smelled that way. I got all of the 'gunk' out and whipped the keyboard about outside to remove the excess water. I then used compressed air to blow out even more water and left it attached to the front of the fan to force air into the unit. I would leave it overnight to dry and test it tomorrow.

Kathy and I went to eat around 7:45 pm and I came back afterward and finished the updates on the Vista-to-XP machine and found the used PC was sitting at a blue screen of death (BSOD).

Rats. What could be wrong.

I turned it off and it would not come back on. I did some troubleshooting and found it was a bad memory stick. I replaced the stick and it fired back up. I put the 'bad' stick in and it wouldn't boot.

Now, I would have to tell the owner of the PC that her profit margin just got smaller since she would have to buy a new stick of RAM to sell the PC.

I finished up the Vista-to-XP migration, applied all Windows updates and moved his data back. I dialed up to his ISP to confirm everything was working and called it a night about 10:20 pm.

Weekend Work - Sunday, July 20

2008-07-20T20:33:00.003-05:00

I slept in a bit today while Kathy opened up the office. I watched some TV and then headed in to town about 11:15 am to grab some lunch at Subway. I picked up a foot-long sub and split it with Kathy back at the office.

When I arrived, I followed up on the two PCs on the bench, installing all Windows updates on them and removing any malware the virus scan found.

A former co-worker, Will, stopped by. His HP PC had a motherboard go out on it and I swapped it out. It required I reinstall everything, as it was a different board and the Windows drivers that were installed prior were not compatible. Since it was also infected with some malware, a clean install certainly wouldn't hurt.

I called a couple of remodeling guys from the paper, trying to get some more quotes on my potential bathroom remodel. One guy was too busy to even get to it until September and the other came out and will provide me with a bid.

The bids so far have been a bit high. I estimate there is about $700-$900 in materials and I am seeing bids from $3400 to $3900. That seems a little high for me. I estimate this is a two-man job and it might take 1.5 days to do. Two if you are slow.

If I can't find a price that is more in line with what I think it should cost, I will have to do it myself. I will take off a Monday-Tuesday and attack it Sunday evening, ripping out the tub Sunday evening, removing the flooring and small area of sheetrock Monday morning and then reinstalling the floor and plumbing Monday afternoon and finishing up on Tuesday.

Pitfalls of dining out in Graham on a Saturday night

2008-07-19T23:56:00.015-05:00

After a long day at the office today, Kathy and I decided to go to the new Pizza Hut in Graham. She loves the personal pan pizzas and I and a fan of their cheese sticks.

I worked until almost 6:00 pm and then headed home. We watched some TV and decided to go grab some food around 8:30 pm. For those who have never been to Graham, TX nor have lived in small-town America, let me let you in one a little secret. Dining out at non fast-food restaurant after 9:00 pm on a Saturday night is possible. However, your choices are rather limited. Extremely limited in Graham.

We arrived just about 9:00 pm and were seated at the back of the place as requested. The new joint is nice and a welcome relief from the ancient one they moved out of just down the street. The menu selection, with the addition of the Wing Street stuff, was much larger.

Kathy knew what she wanted when we left the house, so there wasn't any need for her to study the menu. I had all but decided I wanted a personal pan pizza and some cheese sticks.

We placed our drink order. I noticed the table was dirty and grabbed a paper towel from the table and wiped up the mess and scooped off the crunchy bits as best I could. The waitress delivered our drinks and I was still looking at the menu, so I asked for a moment more. She returned in a reasonable amount of time and begin to take our food order.

It started downhill here.

Kathy ordered a personal pan and was told they were out of personal pans, but she could get the individual pizza. Sure, it's a few bucks more, smart move on their part to be 'out' of personal pans.

'What will you do for tomorrow', Kathy quizzed the waitress, who ignored the question. This would be a pattern this evening, unfortunately. She opted for the individual pizza and loaded it up with pepperoni, green peppers and onions.

Realizing I would have to change my order some, I begin looking at the menu again. I am not a big fan of the Wing Street Wings. They aren't like Buffalo Wild Wings or Wing Stop, where they cook the coating into the wing. Wing Street Wings, at least all of the ones I have tried, are cooked and then appear to be basted in sauce, resulting in wings that is too 'wet' for my tastes.

As I got ready to order some cheese sticks, the waitress threw me into a tailspin saying they were out of anything 'sticks' along with the personal pans. No cheesesticks. No breadsticks. No cinnamon sticks.

Frak me. Yeah, yeah, another BSG reference, but this is a family-friendly blog.

Well, there goes half the appetizers and my whole meal choice. I immediately asked if this was a corporate store or individually owned, since I would be making a formal complaint the next day.

She attempted to say it was a busy night, blah, blah, blah, but at this point I was frustrated and I simply wasn't hearing her.

I looked over at Kathy and she knew I was thinking, 'let's make like Moses and get the flock out of here' at this point. I resisted the temptation to give her 'the nod' for two reasons. I can find something else to eat and what other choices did we have at this point (9:10 pm) on a Saturday night in Graham?

Dejected, I ordered up the Honey BBQ sandwich and stewed, at one point asking aloud 'how in the frak this could happen on a Saturday night knowing they (Pizza Hut) were one of only about two or three 'non-fast food joints' open after 9:00 pm'.

But, alas, I wasn't going to ruin the evening.

Our food arrived and I ate my sandwich. It wasn't bad, the curley fries that came with it were a surprise. I guess in my tailspin of having to scramble to decide on something else, I missed their inclusion. Kathy picked at her pizza. She didn't eat all of it, and basically scraped the toppings off the crust. Those personal pans are much better than the individual, I could tell. Later on, she told me the crust was bland and tasteless and didn't seem to be 'cooked'. It wasn't doughy, but had no crispness to it.

We waited on our check, but it didn't arrive in a timely manner, so we strolled to the register and paid up. When the guy at the register asked how things were, Kathy replied 'not so good' and he ignored the comment.

I grabbed the last business card and found out that I knew the manager. I can't wait to tell her my story.

As much as I love being here (Graham), it is quite frustrating trying to dine out unless you are content with fast food options. If you want a burger, taco or chicken, they got you covered like a jimmy hat.

What I wouldn't give for a good restaurant that actually stays open past 8:00 pm *any* day of the week. Places like The Dinner Bell are only open during lunch Monday through Friday and others like Third Street Cafe close at 2:00 on Saturday or Sunday.

Perhaps when Montana's arrives in the coming weeks it will bring a new breath of fresh air to dining out in Graham. Maybe it will encourage other places to stay open later or maybe someone will move into the old Vetoni's place and offer us an alternative to the fast food nation. What I wouldn't give for a Braum's, a burrito place like Chipotle, Qdoba or Freebirds or a Baja Fresh. I mean, darn, there sits an old Taco Bell across the street from Montana's new location just waiting for a new tenant.

If not, I am gonna have to start my own joint up. People in Graham are starved (pardon the pun) for good food at times other than during lunch. I will either get a new restaurant to come to Graham or I will start my own.

Weekend Work - Saturday, July 19

2008-07-19T23:34:00.005-05:00

My friend Chris stopped by first thing this morning. His head was all wet and his shirt was drenched. It seemed he was out at the lake early and the water looked so inviting his dunked his head in it to cool off.

While he was there a customer dropped off two PCs. The first, an old Dell GX1 desktop, the second a Dell mini tower, the Dimension L1000R. He wanted the older desktop to have Windows 95 reinstalled so he could get to his data. The mini tower 'won't power up' he said.

After the customer left and while Chris was still there, David and Sarah dropped by to say hello. It's been a while since I seen them, so we visited for a bit. Sarah was telling me about her recent car trouble and how the trip to the local Ford place for a replacement key fob resulted in replacing the car. She was also excited about 'the King' coming to Graham in August.

After they left, a previous customer arrived with his PC in hand. I had worked on it earlier this year and he was having trouble with it. The symptoms sounded like some malware had gotten installed. He stated it was freezing up and he was unable to get to some web pages, etc. I did a quick scan. Nothing out of the ordinary was going on, process wise, so I started asking more questions. The more we talked, the more it sounded like he might be having DSL issues. It sounded like he wasn't getting connected to AT&T and therefore the various apps that were expecting a network connection were 'hanging'.

I give him some pointers and what to check and how to power cycle the modem to get a new connection and sent him home to reconnect it.

Kathy arrived about this time.

Shortly afterward, he came back to say it wouldn't work. I knew it must be a DSL issue at this point, as it worked flawlessly on the bench. Since he was right down the street, I went by and sure enough, it wasn't connecting to AT&T. I power cycled the modem and everything started working again.

I got back to the shop and started working on the Win95 machine and the PC that my former boss dropped off last Sunday.

The former bosses machine needed a RAM upgrade, it was choking on 256mb and had a few hundred malware references on it. I removed those and scanned it for viruses, finding one active one, which I removed.

Back and forth, I worked between the two PCs.

I tried to reinstall Win95 on the old desktop and succeeded, but every time it would boot into 'enhanced' mode, it would give me an explorer.exe error. I switched the shell to progman.exe and it started up fine. I reinstalled IE 5.5 SP2 and tried explorer again, only to find it crashed again.

At this point I was hours into this issue and knew it wasn't worth continuing, so I began working on the mini tower. I found some loose connections and got it to power up. I replaced the drive that the customer had pulled and booted it up, to find it was running Windows XP.

I called the customer and told him about the '95 machine and that I had the XP machine up. He was happy to hear that and I asked if he needed me to copy the data from the desktop to the mini-tower and he confirmed this was the best solution.

Since this machine hadn't been on in some time, I scanned it and found some malware and found its AV database was out of sync. I updated it and scanned for viruses, but didn't find any. Since it was a Pentium III, 1ghz with 256mb RAM, it was a little slow, so I left it running overnight.

Weekend Work - Sunday, July 13

2008-07-13T23:39:00.005-05:00

I got to work early and finished up the PC with over 1000 malware items on it and then turned my attention to finishing up the other two desktops on the bench. One of them was from a former boss, the other was infected with some type of virus that made it reboot as soon as the desktop appeared.

The desktop from my former boss was somewhat limited with only 256mb of RAM. I called him and let him know it was done after I had finished removing the malware and told him it could use a bump in RAM and recommended adding a 512mb stick to it. He agreed and said he would be by late to pick it up.

I pulled it apart, assured the inside was clean and added the RAM and then put it under a quick stress test to make sure the RAM was going to work with the PC. It passed with flying colors.

I turned my attention to the PC that would reboot on startup and found it would not start in safe mode, but would work if started as the administrator. That let me know it was a profile-related issue, most likely a piece of malware was running on startup with the user profile.

I ran a few tools on it and found the AV client was not updating. I updated it and scanned it, only to find the moment it started cleaning the malware from the machine, it would reboot once again.

I decided to take a quick break and go grab some lunch. Since I was by myself this weekend, I placed a note on the door and ran up the street to Golden Chick to get some food. I arrived and got in line, opting for the walk-in rather than the drive thru, thinking it would be quicker.

Was I wrong.

After about 20 minutes I had my food and headed back to the office to eat and finish up the day.

Back to the rebooting PC.

This one was gonna be tough, so I got tough with it and booted up on my custom-created BartPE disk and scanned it with it, finding it was infected with some nasty stuff. I cleaned it up and then booted back into the profile and it didn't automatically reboot.

I updated the AV client and all Windows updates and then scanned again with the newest definitions. It found a few dozen more infections and removed them. I contacted the owner and he said he would come get it later today.

My former boss dropped by and picked up his desktop and laptop. He left and was right back in a few minutes with his desktop. Or so I thought. This was his daughters desktop and he wanted me to clean it up and add memory if needed.

I put it on the bench and would start on it later.

My recently-unemployed friend, Chris, stopped by for a bit. He and I chatted while I finished up the work I had slated for the day. About 15 minutes into his visit my buddy Robert called. I talked to him a bit. He wants me to 'swing by' his house when I get an opportunity. He lives in Henrietta, so swinging by isn't as easy as if he lived down the street. I told him I would get with him and come by one weekend in the near future.

About 2:30 a somewhat frantic customer dropped by with his company laptop. It had become infected and he was facing some severe penalty if his boss found out. It seems his nephew was using it and got it in this shape.

Ever confident, I told him I could fix it. His only issue, he lived in Weatherford and would not be back in Graham until tomorrow. Of course, since I am only here on weekends, that was somewhat of a dilemma.

I told him I drive right through Weatherford on my way home each weekend, and he provided me with his address. As luck would have it, his house was within two blocks of my normal route. I offered to fix his PC and get it back to him today when I went back through Weatherford. He gladly left it and gave me his cell and home address.

Up to the challenge that I can fix anything, I tackled it head on and found it had several hundred infecting items. I systematically removed them and by 4:00 pm, I was getting close to wrapping it up. I called him and told him I needed a bit more time, but would be in Weatherford by 7:00, 7:30 at the latest. He asked how much the bill would be, to which I told him and he said he would got to the ATM and get the cash.

I finished it up and waited on two more customers to come pick up their PCs and then left shortly after 5:00 pm and headed to the house here to shut down everything and lock it all up.

Knowing I wouldn't get home until late, I stopped by the Dairy Queen in town and grabbed a burger on my way out.

I arrived in Weatherford just about 7:30 pm and found his place. He paid me in cash, I left him a receipt and headed home, arriving at the house about 8:30 pm.

Weekend Work - Saturday, July 12

2008-07-12T23:37:00.006-05:00

What a Saturday.

It started with a PC that had been at the office for a week or more. The owner was away on vacation and I was working on trying to get it to come back up. It arrived 'dead' and appeared to have suffered from a virus outbreak, trashing the registry.

The owner was mostly just concerned about the drive data, in particular, their purchased iTunes music. I told them I could recover it and then reinstall Windows, which is what I was doing.

It was an eventful day, with one of my former bosses bringing his two PCs by to get them processed and cleaned up. One of them, a Windows 98 notebook with a 4gb drive, just needed some apps removed as it had less than 100mb free on boot. I cleared off 1gb of unneeded junk.

The second PC, a desktop, was not so lucky. It had several dozen malware apps running on it. Boot time for the desktop was just about 7 minutes with the malware running. When it left the office, malware free, boot time was under one minute and 30 seconds.

My buddy, Ken, stopped for a few minutes as well. After having been led astray on two recent business ventures, he was 'cooling his jets' a little and trying to recover some spent capital from some questionable business men. I hope he can, but I think the money is long gone. Time will tell.

I placed the micro-ATX power supply in the Sony Vaio desktop and was able to get it off the bench. I scanned it for malware just in case and it was mostly clean. I removed everything nefarious, optimized it for speed and sent the owner on his way with it.

A recent customer brought in another PC for repair, this time by proxy. It was for him, but someone else dropped it off. It wasn't the one I had worked on before and the person dropping it off had no idea what was wrong with it. I tagged it and put it aside while I cleared the bench of the three I was working on.

A new customer dropped off a PC that he said had a virus. It was rebooting as soon as it started up. I have seen that before and told him it would be tomorrow before I could look at it. Under promise and over deliver, that's my motto. He was in no hurry, he said, so I tagged it and put it aside as well.

As I was working on three machines at once, I saw someone open the door about 4 pm and it was Leroy. Those who have read my other stuff know about Leroy.

He stayed until I shut the doors at 5 pm (closing time). I had so many things to go, but I couldn't get any work done with him sitting there talking. I left, grabbed some food at Burgers and Billiard's and then went back to the office later. I worked until about 10:30 pm and then headed home.

During my 'evening shift', I accomplished quite a bit. I was able to get the data off the dead PC and reinstalled Windows. I applied all of the updates and then moved the data back onto the drive. I still needed to reimport the iTunes data, but that would have to wait until tomorrow to complete.

The PC that came in by proxy was infested with malware. I found over 1000 pieces of malware on the system, over 500 of them the difficult-to-remove Virtumonde. My the time I had it completely clean, I had invested several hours in it. But, it was clean now and with the discountinued use of Limewire, would probably stay that way. It had a virus scanner on it, but the malware had disabled it. I re-enabled and updated it and started a complete scan.

The former bosses PC was also one I worked on mostly during the evening and left it scanning all night, removing dormant viruses.

I left the office with the proxy PC, the former bosses PC and the data-recovery PC all busy working. Seemed like a good time to go catch some shut eye. Minus the hour for dinner (no lunch today), I had been at it since 8:30 am this morning and it was just after 10:30 pm.

Last day of vacation

2008-07-08T21:07:00.002-05:00

My last vacation day for some time. I woke up at 10 am after going to bed at 6 am updating my MAME collection.

We needed to go to Fry's to look for a very small power supply to fit a Sony Vaio desktop. I had ordered one and received it in, but it was too deep to fit the case.

As we headed over to Irving, to Fry's, I recalled that Ali Baba's was over there. Kathy had never eaten there, so I decided that was the lunch place today. We arrived just about 11:30 am, right before the lunch rush.

It is a buffet place, so people are coming and going all over the place. I am sitting there, finished with my plate of food, and ready to pay the check and leave when a former co-worker, Andrew Rubalacaba, walks up. He seemed to be doing well, working at Neiman Marcus in the IT department. I believe he said he was contracting there, at any rate, he seemed to be doing well.

We left and dropped by Fry's to grab a KVM switch, a micro-ATX power supply and some more canned air. I make sure every PC I work on leaves clean inside and out. I use the canned air to clear out the dust. I have one of those vaccuum/blower, and it works for most things, but the cooked-in dirt needs the higher pressure of the canned air.

We stopped by Home Depot to get some bathroom ideas and picked up a light for the dock. Since I have electricty there, I can hook up a light and we can enjoy the dock on the cooler evenings.

I had been working on a friend's PC and was trying to go a recover/reinstall of Windows after replacing a defecting motherboard. There were just too many driver changes and it wasn't going to work out. I had spent a number of hours trying and finally gave in, opting to back up the 'data' and reinstall Windows from scratch.

I went around and removed all of the screens at the house in preparation for the sola screens to be installled to try and cut down on some of the heat in the house late in the day.

Since I am not a fan of ladders, particularly falling from them, I hired a guy to come by and wash all of the windows so they would be clean when the solar screeens went on.

Vacation Day: Monday

2008-07-08T05:16:00.004-05:00

I woke up around 9 am, looked at the thermometer, and saw it was already 86°F outside. Another hot one in store for us.

During the dog days of summer, I usually just hang out in the air conditioning until late in the way. I had a few tasks to get done, so I took a nice cool shower and then we went in to town.

I stopped by the courthouse about noon to get the Jeep tags renewed. I saw my friend Chris' wife, but she was busy with another customer, so another nice lady assisted us. We left there and drove over to the local cable company to place an ad on the local cable channel "2". I figure it might generate some additional customers.

We stopped by Burgers and Billiards and grabbed a mini-burger and rings and then drove by the office to water the plants Kathy had planted outside in the new planters.

I had called a couple of contractors to get a quote on the bathroom remodel I wanted to do. One of them could be by today, and the other would be by next Saturday.

I pulled out the power washer to try and knock down some of the spider webs on the lake house. Of course, I get it all pulled out and hooked up only to find a small piece of metal had broken off the sprayer, making it useless. I used the garden hose and knocked some of them down and trimmed up some weeds with the weedeater before the first contractor arrived for the quote.

They came in, measured everything and took my wish list down. It looks like a fairly easy job, but I will find out when I get the quote back, I guess.

By this time it was late in the day and I wanted to get back to go to Home Depot and Fry's tomorrow to pick up some things. We stopped by the shop to button everything up and then headed home.

I got home and stayed up all night updating my MAME collection, compiling the newest version and using ClrMAME to fix up the missing sets. I don't get to do this (stay up late) often (work and all).

Vacation day Sunday

2008-07-06T21:53:00.003-05:00

I woke up about 8:30 am and watched a bunch of Tivo'ed TV shows, namely Guy's Big Bite, from the Food Network. Guy was making some asian-inspired things and that got me to craving some lettuce wraps like those at PF Changs or Pei Wei.

Since I was in Graham, there was no chance of that, so I opted to make my own. This would call for a trip to either United or Wal-Mart to pick up the stuff later.

I had picked up some Jalapeno-salsa cream creese from Einstein Brothers a month ago and it was unopened in the fridge, so when Kathy woke up, she toasted up some bagels and loaded one up for me with the spicy cream cheese. It was delicious.

Late in the day, after a day of sitting around watching the tube, we opted to go to Wal-Mart to pick up the stuff to cook. We didn't figure United would have some of the asian spices we were looking for and we could kill two birds with one stone by going to Wal-Mart, since I needed to pick up an extension cord to power wash the porch later today (or tomorrow).

We cruised in to Wal-Mart and picked up everything we needed. Well, they didn't have an hoisen sauce, but we didn't figure they would, not a large population of Asian people in Graham. We did get some lettuce, kickin' chicken hot sauce, stir fry and soy sauce along with a good selection of ginger, green onions and garlic.

Of course, the checkout lines were long and we picked the slowest one in the place.

The girl at the checkout was continually chatting with the two ladies ahead of us, causing the length of time to grow and my patience to shrink.

When we finally started checking out, I was 'catching' the bags as the came off the little lazy susan and was making sure the plastic bag was open and ready to receive the next items. I always try to do this to speed up the checkout process since they don't have any self-checkouts here, but desperately need them.

She quizzed us on what we were making with the strange (to her) group of items. When we replied, 'lettuce wraps', she stared at us like a monkey perplexed with a long division problem. I guess she hasn't seen them before. I offered my 15-second explaination, grabbed the last bags off the carousel and waited on Kathy to complete the debit-card transaction so we could 'make like a tree and leave'.

We got home, unpacked the car and I proceeded to cook up some asian-inspired chicken for the lettuce wraps. I must say, it was quite tasty. We watched some more TV, this time a movie I had recorded, 'Evan Almighty', and then went to bed.

Change(s) of plans

2008-07-06T02:14:00.003-05:00

Things didn't go exactly as planned for our long Independence Day holiday. We had planned on dropping off the dog at Man's Best Friend for the long weekend so we could go do things without having to worry with her.

Well, it seems, in *all* of the discussions back and forth with *those* people about shots for kennel cough, etc, they never explained we had to reserve a spot up front with a payment. Sure enough, it's on the web site, but no one ever bothered to inform us of this little tidbit of information. Had we known, we would have been right down there, paid the reservation fee and boarding fee up front and not had to worry with it when we dropped the pup off.

However, they didn't occur. So, when Kathy tried to drop off the pooch, the ~~teenage bimbo~~ er.. ~~Paris-Hilton airhead~~ um.... ~~waste of human flesh~~ employee, told her we didn't pre-arrange for a space and they couldn't take the dog.

So, not preparing to do so, we took her with us. Change of plans.

We gathered up everything and headed to Graham. We arrived pretty late Thursday night, but we planned on getting up early, going in to town to eat some pancakes at the American Legion Building and then watching the Red, White and You Celebration around the square. By the time we got out of the house, the pancake breakfast was winding down. Change of plans.

I woke up early and watched some TV while Kathy slept. She woke up about 10 am and we got ready to go in to the parade. As I was taking a shower, my 'fed up' quota hit the boiling point and I decided I was going to rip the tub out of the lake place and put in a shower. I have been contemplating this for some time, but today was the day that I had 'had enough' of this ill-designed bathroom. Since I am pretty busy on weekends at the office, I would have to hire this out.

We headed in to town and were met at the 5th Street with a cop detouring traffic. The parade wasn't going on, yet, but they were already redirecting traffic. The chance of finding a parking spot close to the square were remote, so we opted to bypass the festivities and go grab some lunch at Mi Familia. Change of plans.

It was a good thing we got there before the parade was over. We arrived and were seated rather quickly. By the time we finished and were ready to leave, the waiting area was full and people were still pouring in. Graham is in desperate need of more quality restaurants.

We drove over to the shop and checked on things. Everything seemed ok. I placed a vacation sign out announcing our first weekend closing since we opened last year and then we headed to Tractor Supply to pick up a slightly bigger doggie 'prison camp' so the pooch had a little room to breath in while we were gone on our planned excursion on Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up really early and headed out. Our plans were to stop in Newcastle at the Bobcat Cafe for some breakfast and then head to Oklahoma for some gaming action at one of the Indian Casinos. We arrived in Newcastle about 7:15 am to find the Bobcat was dark. Change of plans.

Knowing there is a place to get some breakfast grub in Olney, we headed over there. We drove through town to the outskirts and the place I thought would be open wasn't. Change of plans.

No fear, there is a Texas Stop Sign (that's a Dairy Queen to you folks north of the border), and they serve breakfast. We pulled into the driveway and found it was dark as well. Change of plans.

Well, damn. There's a Sonic next door, so we wheeled in and was greeted by a pleasant voice who provided a prompt and courteous delivery of our breakfast burritos shortly after ordering. We finished off breakfast and went in search for fuel, only to be bent over by the stations in Olney ($4.099/gal). We could have made it to Archer City ($3.899/gal) or even Wichita Falls ($3.859/gal) but it is better to start off on a full tank and we weren't sure what the price would be up the road.

Headed North, we crossed the border into Oklahoma and continued north to Norman. Our destination was the Riverwind Casino outside of Oklahoma City. At our rate of speed and number of miles left to go, I estimated our arrival time at 11:00 am. I fired up the GPS and plugged in the address and it confirmed my awesome navigation skills by estimating our arrival time at 11:01 am. What I didn't take into account was the 75mph limit on the HE Bailey Turnpike. After paying all of the trolls, er, tolls, we arrived 17 minutes ahead of schedule at 10:44 am, even though we had a minor snafu with the unmanned toll booth on State Highway 9. It didn't register the 50 cent toll we dropped in, *twice*, and tossed up a red light when we left. I can't wait to get a hunk of some Okie's a$$ when they try to write us a ticket for that.

We went inside, got a player's card and proceeded to donate a chunk of paycheck to the casino. I guess it makes up for our government's treatment of the American Indian. Oh well, we had a good time. It's a nice place with plenty of tables and lots and lots of slots. If you are in the OKC area, it's worth a stop.

Our plans for the Riverwind trip were to go do some gambling and then head on over to Toby Keith's Bar in Oklahoma City [Bricktown]. I have always wanted to go see the place, being a big Toby Keith fan, so this weekend we decided to combine a gambling excursion with a trip to the restaurant.

The GPS took us right to the restaurant. We arrived and got a seat in the bar area. The waitress took our drink order and I had tea (of course) and Kathy ordered up a Jack and Coke.

We decided to get an appetizer. We normally don't when eating out because most portions are so large you get full on the appetizer and don't get to finish your meal. But, the Tumbleweed sounded too good to pass up. And it was. What a choice. Amazing.

Kathy picked out the #672 Sirloin while I opted for the All-American Cheeseburger. Those words, cooked on our flat grill, and fresh ground chuck make my mouth water. I will review the burger on my other blog later this week.

I scrapped the Freedom Fries for some SW Cream Corn. I am certain the Freedom Fries would have been delicious, but the SW Cream Corn was indescribable. Kathy's sirloin came with two sides, so she chose the corn and the Mashed Potatoes. Looking at the plate at the end of the day, one could tell she enjoyed her choices.

When our meal arrived she dropped a dollop of Mashed Potatoes on my plate and I was sorry I didn't order an extra side of those. Mmmmm.

We paid the check and stopped at the ~~tourist trap~~ souvenir area inside. I picked up a Toby Keith I Love This Bar and Grill Trucker's cap and we headed out for Texas. As we drove around looking for a place to park when we arrived, we noticed how clean and nice-looking Oklahoma City was. The restaurant was right in the middle of this cool-looking area called Bricktown. It was right across the street from the Oklahoma City Redhawks Baseball field. I will have to get back up here when I have more time to enjoy Bricktown.

Before leaving we stopped in a pretty rough area of the outskirts of Oklahoma City and filled up with fuel and bought some PowerBall tickets. The area reminded me of Northside Fort Worth or Fair Park in Dallas, places you might not want to go walking around in late at night.

The drive back was mostly uneventful. At one point, with a front door, we were cruising at about 93 mph, making good time, until we had to stop to pay the troll, I mean, toll.

We arrived back at home around 8:30 pm and let the doggie out of her 'prison camp'. She was none the worse for wear and quickly forgot her long day cooped up when she saw us.

Looking back at all of the 'change of plans' that occurred thus far, the last couple of days haven't turned out too bad after all.

Another 'bombing'?

2008-07-01T22:17:00.006-05:00

Perhaps this moving to downtown Fort Worth wasn't such a great idea after all.

If you will recall last week we had a 'bomb' scare up the street when the Fort Worth Bomb Squad was called in to look over a 'Samsonite' left on the curb near a bus stop.

Today I could hear the helicopters circling around, but didn't think to look outside to see what was up. I checked my mail and received this message from NBC5i.com:

BREAKING NEWS: Explosion reported in downtown Fort Worth

Hey, that's why the 'copters are overhead. Slaps forehead. Duh.

Sure enough the NBC5 copter was circling around just over Houston and Eighth street when I checked it out.

The initial reports were it was an explosion. Then, the site was updated to say it was a 'small explosion' on the 6th floor of the Waggoneer Building, home to XTO Energy.

The web site, tonight, shows a bit of a different outcome:

Malfunction Forces Evacuation In Downtown Fort Worth

Don't you love the sensationalism of today's news? Oh well, it made for some exciting moments when we though Al Qaeda had gone all West-side on us. Of course, picking Fort Worth probably isn't a good starting point. The rednecks over here don't play nice with people coming to their house to start some ~~schitt~~ trouble.

Come to think of it, with it being XTO Energy, it could have been a group of highly-organized, environmentally-friendly hippies who were systematically trying to bring down the energy companies over the high gas prices today.

I crack myself up. I should know those types are too busy smoking weed, hugging trees and acting all smug in their Toyota Prius' to get involved.

Weekend Work - Sunday, June 29

2008-06-29T21:42:00.018-05:00

Driving in this morning, I noticed all of the tree limbs down from the storm last evening.

Kathy and I came in early and she proceeded to clean up Dan's second PC. It was a bit dusty, so she took it outside to get rid of the dust and dust bunnies in the case.

I closed up the case and called Dan. Since he was likely at church, I knew it would be later today before he came in.

Last evening, while at Zach's birthday party, I took in another sick PC. It was Shawn's Compaq notebook, running Vista. David told me that when he opened the display up, no image would appear on the monitor, but you could 'see' it was on. Suspecting it might be a backlight or the inverter, I told him to let me look at it, so they brought it to me. Of course, when I picked it up and turned it on, it worked for me. I took it with me to the shop for dissection if necessary since it seems like something is fubar with it.

Angelia's cousin dropped by to pick up her PC and Paul stopped to get his. I told him about the profile issue I was seeing and suggested he back things up and reinstall from the restore CD Dell provided. The spyware and viruses on the machine had corrupted the Default and All Users profile and any new user created would always have a corrupt profile.

I started working on the tower that was dropped off late yesterday. It would boot up in safe mode, but would not switch the monitor 'on' and display any video in normal mode. Suspecting it might be the video card not switching properly, I changed it out. No dice. I removed all of the peripheral cards just in case. Same issue.

I finally booted to a rescue CD and renamed all of the profiles and let it restart. This time it came up and I was able to log in, but it was painfully slow. I opted to scan it for viruses and spyware and it took almost all day to complete. It had several on it, but nothing that appeared to be causing the slowness.

I tore into Shawn's notebook and found the video cable was ever so slightly out of its socket. I don't know for sure if that was the issue, but I couldn't make it 'not' work.

I set it aside and opened and closed it several dozen times to see if it continued to work as expected and it did. Maybe I fixed it?

I moved back to the tower and still scanning for spyware and viruses.

While that was going on, I had Kathy go home and close up the house and set the alarm. Since we were both in town with only one car, there was no sense in going back to the house just to do that after closing time.

Before she left I asked her to go to Golden Chick to pick up me a chicken tender sandwich and some iced tea. I love their iced tea. She left and about that time David came by to inquire about Shawn's notebook.

Since I couldn't positively express that I have resolved the issue and I had only invested about 15 minutes in total time working on it, I told him not to worry about the bill. I explained that the best thing to do was to use it and, if it occurs again, replace the video cable to the LCD.

About 30 minutes after she left, Kathy came back with the food from Golden Chick. She had been in the drive-thru line all of that time. It was so bad, she watched a trucker pull up, get out, go inside, order his food, eat it and leave before she could inch her way through the line. And, of couse, once you get in the line, you can't get out.

Needless to say, she wasn't very happy.

Dan dropped by and picked up his PCs and was thankful they were ready to go.

About 2:00 pm a family dropped by to inquire what it would take to clean a laptop. I explained that it was difficult to say with certainly, but our 'Critical Care Service' topped out at less than $100. During our conversation we learned the machine had LimeWire on it at one time, as well as other peer-to-peer applications. I was certain it would be infected.

The father said he would go get it and bring it back if I could work on it today. Never turning down a customer in need, I told him I would. He came back about 15 minutes later and I started working on it. This one was like Dan's PC from yesterday. It was a trojan that loads up spools.exe for every file you attempt to launch.

I made quick work of that issue and then started scanning for spyware. This machine was an older Dell notebook and was a little slow, so scanning and removing took longer than normal.

The owner came back and was waiting on it at 4:00 pm. It still wasn't finished, so I engaged him in conversation, eventually finding out he was a technical consultant for the windmills that are being built in Jack County. I was quite fascinated by some of the facts about the wind farm.

Each one cost about $2.1MM to build. He said that 26 are 'ready to go' with another 24 or so in various states of completeness. They are being built by the Spanish-firm Gamesa. When finished, the Gamesa-owned farm will be about 70 strong. When completed, Gamesa is expected to sell the farm, probably to an energy company in America.

There are about 40 people building the farm now, but he has worked on much larger farms where as many as 300 people are employed. The blades on the windmills are 146 feet in length and the tower tops out at about 300 feet tall. They hook up to the substation via buried cable and replant all of the grass around the site when they are done.

They climb inside the structure to get to the top and the temps inside, during this time of year, can reach 140°F. He is from the Abilene area, the 'state capitol' of windmills, he said.

I finished their PC up, confirmed it was clean, and sent them on their way.

While all of this was going on, I had been keeping an eye on the tower I was working on. The scan was finished, now, but it wasn't acting right, still. I suspect it might be Norton Internet Security slowing it down. I called the owner and left a message. I will have to continue working on this one once I talk to her and discuss the options.

A customer called on Saturday and wanted me to drop by to look at a PC that was hit by lightning. I dropped by today and it was dead. I filled out the paperwork for the insurance company for them. During the last storm (a few weeks ago) they lost a TV, garbage disposal and some other items. I didn't see anything fried on it, but it was dead, and it happened at the same time as the other items, so it stands to reason the two are related.

Weekend Work - Saturday, June 28

2008-06-28T23:41:00.019-05:00

From my previous post, I wasn't feeling well yesterday. I woke up this morning doing well and decided to open up the shop instead of asking Kathy to do so.

In fact, I woke up early, so I decided to go in and grab some breakfast. I made my way into town and stopped by the Cracker Town Cafe. They have a breakfast buffet with all of the usual items, but I wasn't in the mood for it, so I opted to order off of the menu.

The waitress brought me my iced tea and breakfast burrito pretty quickly. I poured on the hot sauce and went to work on it. It really is more like a breakfast 'quesadilla', really, since it is a 'folded-flat-on-the-grill, eat-with-a-fork meal' and not your usual 'pick-up-and-eat breakfast tacos'.

Either way, it was good, and filling. I am glad I only ordered one.

My quick breakfast got me in to the office earlier than normal. That was good, as last evening when I arrived in town, one of my customers, Dan, called and had two machines that were exhibiting signs of being 'full of spyware' and he dropped them off. I started working on them immediately, putting both of them on the bench and running some spyware-removal tools to see how bad they were.

As it turned out, they were bad.

About 8:45 am I got my first call, asking if I was available to work on one [computer]. I told the caller to bring it in and he arrived in about 10 minutes. He stated the machine would shut down after about 15-20 minutes. Suspecting a clogged CPU fan, I pull the cover and found it was rather clean.

We put it on the bench and quickly found out the power supply fan wasn't functioning. He stated his brother-in-law had bought an identical machine and it 'smoked' and wasn't working any longer. He would bring it in later.

I suggested we replace the power supply fan since this power supply was proprietary. I pulled the power supply apart and put in another used fan that was spinning freely. The fan we pulled was all but locked up, clearly it was at least part of the problem.

We left it running for a good half-an-hour and it didn't restart, reboot, or exhibit any issues with heat while we looked for a replacement power supply for this Sony desktop with little luck.

As we discussed things, I come to find out he and I were related (distant cousins I believe). It is a small world, isn't it?

He left and I proceeded to continue working on Dan's two PCs.

Ken rolled in about that time to discuss our business venture. It didn't seem like things were looking too good. He had spent a good amount of time and money and was not seeing any return on his investment. He had a backup plan and he explained it in detail to me, along with a demonstration. Time will tell if this venture pans out. I hope so.

My cousin rolled back up, 'his' PC in hand.

'You did it good', he said. 'It smoked and won't come on'.

I looked closely and noticed it was a similar PC, but not the same one. My face must have had a puzzled because he took great joy in 'fooling' me. This was his brother-in-laws PC, the one that 'smoked' already. We assumed it was likely a power supply. I took it in, put it on the shelf and decided I would have to get some time to research where to buy a new power supply. We had little luck finding a replacement one for my cousin's (even from Sony). This was a slightly newer model Sony, though, so maybe it was available.

Ken had no longer left than a customer came in to drop off a notebook that was having some issues. The gentleman, Paul, had attempted to clean it up, but by his own admission, had 'made it worse' and he was handing it over to the expert. I took the notebook and put it on the bench next to Dan's and started cleaning it up too.

One of the local restauranters dropped by with a printer issue. It was a multi-function Canon and it was jamming when feeding paper. It was pretty dirty and that might be the issue. I took it in and would set it aside for Kathy when she arrived to work on. She's pretty good with printer issues.

Kathy called to say our friend Angelia's cousin would be bringing a PC in that was 'slow' and the speakers weren't working. They wanted to keep it under $100 to repair. That shouldn't be an issue, we aren't the 'Geek Squad', we offer a complete service at a reasonable price.

Our complete 'Critical Care Service' matches up directly with their 'Advanced Diagnostic & Repair' service at less than half the price. It really is a no-brainer. Not only do you save the 120-mile round trip to Wichita Falls (or Weatherford) from Graham to the nearest Best Buy, but our identical service is half the cost.

Chris dropped by for a quick chat. He regaled me with tales of his ride to San Diego on the train some time ago. It sounded like quite an adventure. It was certainly a chapter in a book he could write one day. He had been there about 15 minutes when the fire truck pulled up out front, lights blazing. Since I knew we weren't serving burgers here (inside joke), I went outside to see what was up. They went into the beauty shop next door. I don't know what happened, but they were there about 30-40 minutes total. I will have to inquire with my little brother, the paramedic, as to the issue.

Angelia's cousin pulled up and brought in her PC. Our initial conversation led me to believe it was malware. But, she said the sound only worked on occasion, so I would check that out too. I put it aside, as at the moment I had three on the bench working. I would get it done today, I told her and took her info down. Try that with the Geek Squad. The chances of getting it back today are virtually zilch. Maybe next week or the week after from all of the horror stories my customer's have told me.

Kathy pulled up and wondered what the fire truck was doing. Chris and I explained what we knew. About that time an ambulance pulled up to replace the fire truck. Whatever it was must be pretty serious.

Chris decided to leave and I continued working on the three PCs on the bench. At this time I realized I needed more monitors and bench space. While the initial scans are occuring, I can literally move from PC to PC to monitor their progress. Multi-tasking is my middle name.

Paul's PC wasn't too bad, overall. It was mostly the run-of-the-mill malware. It cleaned up pretty easily, but had one annoying problem that kept popping up. It seems the registry might be corrupt and it was able to recover itself each time. Unsure if this was a profile issue or not, I created a new user and logged in as it. The registry error persisted. A search on Google showed that sometimes running chkdsk helped. I booted into recovery mode and checked the disk. It found some errors, but didn't resolve the issue. Since Paul wasn't coming until tomorrow to pick it up, I put it aside, now malware free, for more research on the registry issue.

By this time it was lunch time and I was craving a Captain's Mate from Burger's and Billards. I called them up to order one up.

Bucket explained she was out of ham, so no Captain's Mate burgers. I settled for a Mini Bacon Cheeseburger with some onion rings and ordered Kathy the same. She would go pick them up while I continued the malware-removal fest.

I was making headway on Dan's two PCs and started working on Angelia's cousin's PC. It had the typical malware on it, along with the almost-always installed LimeWire. Every PC that comes through the doors with LimeWire has some type of malware running on it. I removed the malware, scanned for any viruses and checked the sound. Everything seemed in order.

Kathy worked on the printer, cleaning it out and wasn't able to reproduce the issue with the jamming of the paper. She printed probably 30-40 pages and it never jammed. I suspect the fine flour and other bits that were in the printer before it was cleaned could have contributed to the jams. We put it aside as 'done'.

I was able to finally put one of Dan's PCs aside as done and finished up with Angelia's cousin's PC. Kathy had gone to the store to pick up some groceries for tomorrow and some other gift items for Zach's first birthday. We would be going there after work today.

A customer from last weekend brought in a tower and said it was on, but nothing would come on the screen and it wouldn't shut down. I took it in and told her it would be tomorrow morning before I could look at it. Her laptop, I worked on last week or the week before, was doing well, she said.

A few moments later I looked outside and saw some rain and heard the thunder. When I glanced across the street I could see the big trees bending in the wind. I grabbed the open flag and brought it inside before it became a missile.

I estimate wind gusts of 60-70mph and a driving rain. Kathy called from the store and wondered how long it would last, so I looked at the radar and said it didn't look like it would last too long. Then, I noticed some pea-sized hail that lasted for about 30-45 seconds and worried about her SRT/4 sitting outside. It cleared up a few minutes and then the bottom dropped out and it drenched us, literally, for about an hour, dumping 3.57" of rain on us in a very short period of time.

I called the restaurant and told them their printer was ready. The owner called back and said he would be right there. When he arrived he accidentally dropped 'two' coins into the back of the printer. I only saw one go in and was able to retrieve it, but he thinks two went in. So, we tore the printer apart on the front counter, but could never find the second coin. I shook the printer every way possible and never heard it. He and I decided if we couldn't shake it loose, it probably wasn't going anywhere and called it good. We tested it to make sure everything still works after our dissection on the counter. It did, so he loaded it up and went back to the restaurant.

I called Angelia's cousin and told her the PC was ready. Since it was raining hard and the baby was asleep she opted to wait until tomorrow to pick it up.

Looking at the clock, it was almost 6:00 pm and still pouring rain. Fourth Street was a river and some of the low-lying intersections down the street were closed due to high water.

Jason called and wondered if we were going to make it to the birthday party and I told him we were just wrapping up, waiting on a break in the weather. He said the burgers were on, so we wrapped everything up and started that way.

Sick day

2008-06-27T21:32:00.003-05:00

It is rare that I take a sick day.

Today, however, was one of those days. I woke up feeling bad with a slight fever. I was somewhat achy all over and just felt kinda of blah.

I got out of bed and sent an email to the boss man, my co-worker and the CTO in case anyone was wondering where I was. I figured on calling later when it was more likely to find someone alive. It was, after all, before the sun came up when I sent the email.

I slept for some time and then woke up in drenched in sweat. My fever had broken, I suppose. I tossed down two more Tylenol and decided to go downstairs for some crackers to get some food in me and some Gatorade to put back the fluids I had lost.

After eating a little something and drinking some Gatorade, I felt a little better and grabbed a quick shower. That cool water really made me feel better. The rest of the day I just took it easy. Things seemed to be under control at work, as the noise ratio in email was quite low.

The bad part about taking sick days is getting back to work and trying to catch up. Next week will be especially challenging since the bossman will be away on vacation and my co-worker will be moving to his new apartment downtown.