Robert Blogs!

Revelation?

2010-09-02T21:11:00-04:00

Not the biblical kind.

So a thought struck me today, (the non pointy end) and I realized something about myself. But let me start at the beginning-

After watching Psych, where a guy who notices everything solves crimes, I asked myself how I could perhaps become more observant. Brain gave his usual answer, "Heck, I don't know. Maybe a book about it, at the library?" In a flash (that is, several days later, i.e. Monday) I did a library search for "observation". There was maybe one or two, but all in other libraries. But I took a stroll over to the "restricted section" (the "self improvement" section) just to see what else I could come up with. That's how I came up with the shyness book.

So I also found over there a book on reading body language, which I thought might be interesting to kind of study. So I read through the chapter about eyes. I then resolved that, darn it, I was going to start looking people in the eyes. It's hard! At least for me. All you "normals" can do it without even thinking about it. Me, I still have to force myself. Wish I could tell you why. But there it is. Anyway-

In an attempt to force myself to become more observant, after I leave someone's house, or heck even if they step out of the room, I have, for the past two days asked myself, "what was that person wearing?" To my amazement, I had NO ACTUAL CLUE. Oh, I got better at it, as I knew I was going to ask myself later so I started paying more attention, but still. I then realized that, while I saw people, had I never actually LOOKED at them? And that's why I couldn't answer the simple question of what they were wearing? That was a bit of self discovery there, let me tell you. Is that why I've always had trouble relating to people? Because I never really looked at them? This, coupled with the eye thing, is really making me think about how I deal with people.

I am still an egg.

And still very busy! Five both today and yesterday, with another 3+grandma tomorrow. Today went pretty okay. Another machine bleeding memory from "windows update". Cleanout and battery change. Another checkup, only a half hour. One, a PII, yes, that's a pentium TWO, was BSOD and I said, hey, I have all these parts machines people have given me, I'll fix one up for you and you can HAVE IT. So I started that. My XP disk seems to be scratched or something, it doesn't want to read one file. Of course I have no backup? I'll have to look around. I can make another, but my disk is SP2, so I need to slipstream SP3 onto it again. STUPID MICROSOFT.

The most annoying one of the day was me thinking I was moving some machines around, but came to find out it was a BSOD. WHa? Description of job: FAIL!

It was my most favoritest error message in the whole wild worldist: "IRQL Not Less Then or Equal" which is sooooo very helpful. Basically it means "windows suuuuuuuuucks" It would boot in safe mode. I ran malwarebytes. I ran combofix. I ran the XP "repair" which did so very little to help me. No luck. I had to reload XP from scratch and move all his stuff over. weeeeeeee.

So that made me a half hour late, even though she was just down the street. It was pretty nice, everyone was pretty close today. Looks like a pretty good traveling day tomorrow too, that is, not so much of it.

Got a new system ready that had been dropped off around 8:00, didn't take me too long.

Hopefully Sean made it.

I asked day ago if Dad wanted to come see more Dr Who but never got any response, so I'm not sure if he's coming over tomorrow or not. Otherwise, shouldn't be too bad, they all seem pretty standard. And of course Grandma, who I hope is lucid again.

Well, I'm off the clock here, gonna get me a tall cool glass of something and maybe play some more Blue Dragon. So there!

If I don't write again for awhile, have a good labor day. Or whatever.

Gaaaaaa!

2010-08-31T22:37:00-04:00

Haven't written in so long!

Man, am I back to being busy again or what? Well, trust me, I am. That played a part in my absence here, a bit.

In no particular order then, here's the highlights from the last few days.

Sunday went well, the surprise party for Sean Leaving was fun, and I got yummy cake. We all parked down at a church down the street so he didn't know we were there, so he was surprised. I saw Mizzy in a skirt for the first time! I know another girl that doesn't like wearing skirts.... How appropriate is it to complement your best friend's wife's legs? "Hey Mizzy, you should wear skirts more often, you have great legs!" I'm thinking, no? Perhaps the book I'm reading "Shyness, what it is and what to do about it" will have some tips. After all, I don't want to go too far in the other direction either. Hummm...

Walking home I saw a box and in the box was a nearly complete Coleco Vision console! SCORE! Now, you may wonder why the excitement for such an ancient device, but it's one of the only ones from my youth I could have had, but didn't. I would have said, before watching the youtube "history of video game consoles" that my collection was nearly complete, but I realize now it isn't. Oh well, it's still pretty darn cool. It had two funky controllers, a bunch of games, and one regular controller. However, I somehow acquired a Coleco Vision controller from somewhere in the past, so now it's complete again! It's still sitting on my couch where I left it, I haven't had time to even see if it works.

Mizzy then failed her driver's test on Monday, but she managed to get a spot on Wednesday before Sean leaves, so good luck Mizzy!

How do you fail a driver's test anyway?

I've gotten four crappy old PCs from various people over the last several days, yippee? They're all stacked out on my breezeway while I decide what to do with them. Don't nobody steal them now.

Saturday was Laser Tag with Sean, Neil, Mizzy, and Whitney. That was fun, there were a ton of little kids there. People our age were in the minority. In fact, we were the only people there our age. Wonder why? Some parents of course, but they mostly waited rather then playing. *shakes head* those fools.

Friday I visited grandma, she was quite lucid! Amazing.

Monday I moved the "computers" such as they are for York Furniture, which turned into a huge deal and made me actually cancel an appointment, a first. I figured all the stuff would be over there, I would just hook it up. No. They still had offices set up in the old building, so I had to pack everything up and move it. Then figure out what to do about frontier changing all the network settings (another router in between the building's hub and their router, ugly, ugly hack) and I didn't even get the one office done because nothing was done to it so I had no place to put anything. AARG. Thought it would take me half an hour, scheduled two hours, wasn't done after three hours. So I got home at like 7:30. I did the canceled one today.

One canceled for today, so I only did three. I have another five to do tomorrow, another five for thursday, and two friday! What day is it? And I've already pretty much booked this week?

Got a ton of stuff from Sean on Saturday. Dragon Ball, most of Dragon Ball Z, season 2 Dexter, two books, Mass Effect 2, Dead Rising. I won't lack for stuff to watch/play while he's gone. He leaves tomorrow, *tear*.

Mostly cleanouts today, nothing too spectacular, just the same old stuff.

I guess that's about it. Now, what to do tonight?

Bit boring

2010-08-26T23:35:00-04:00

Hard to write

about boring.

I mean, after last week, elephants better parade down my street so I can have something to write about. A couple of mambly-pamply jobs (that's a technical term) just don't cut it!

Yesterday I only did one, in fact.

Otherwise I've been consumed with those new shows Sean "lent" me. Finished up Dexter, not as good as psych, but minus the whole serial killing thing, Dexter is totally me. I am often baffled by both human emotion and behavior. Just normal human behavior, stuff you don't even think about, just totally blows my mind. Most people want to "go out" to "hook up" to "connect". I want people to leave me alone. I mean, come on, is that normal? Why do you think it's taken me so long to even consider dating? But at least I'm open to the possibility now. Problem is finding the girl for me, when she's probably just as introverted and socially awkward as I am. Tricky.

Anyway, also I've been watching Star Trek, Next Generation, which he gave me all of. I have a book "The nitpickers guide for NG trekkers" that gives the little slip ups in each episode, it's fun watching for them.

Today was better, though again it was all crappy stuff. Firstly a short tutorial on iMovie that lasted a half hour because the guy just basically wanted a still frame from some video footage. Next up, downloading a user guide for a printer. Weighty stuff, no? Then another printer... that was just fine! And I ran malwarebytes... and it came up clean! Totally floored me!

I did go over to Grandma's house, I had hours between my 9:30 and my 2:30 and Jim asked about her which reminded me! Silly me! I just pulled in and had walked downstairs when Mom walked in. "Cosmic" I thought.

Okay, I tell a lie. I didn't think that at all, but I did get more stuff cleaned out and found... wait for it... a ton of nickels in a fruit basket! Best find yet!

Okay, the gold dust stuff was pretty cool. Second best find yet, you happy?

Won WfC on hard with Sean/Neil couple days ago, nothing since. He has like... four more days here? So I think we're going to laser tag again with Neil who's coming up on Saturday and that'll be it. For three months. I'll miss him.

Couple for tomorrow, and one canceled, so not as many as I thought. And I get to visit grandma, which is always a treat. What bizarre tale will I hear tomorrow? One for Saturday, in the morning.

So you can see why I didn't write anything yesterday, there was just no point. Anyway, late now, must bedtime, have a good weekend all you normal thinking, right minded people. Go "connect" with someone. If you have someone, re"connect" with them. Go on, you're with them for a reason, go tell them what that reason is. Unless it's a bad reason, then lie, because that's what every solid relationship is based on, right? Lies and deceit? Am I close?

Hey, I have

2010-08-23T19:56:00-04:00

a blog!

Whoops. Yeah, busy busy around here, though of course that's no excuse even if I made excuses which I don't. So there.

Let's see, highlights from the past couple of days.

Friday: Dropped off the two laptops I finished and went over to clean more of Grandma's basement. Got glass jars out of the crawl space, folded rugs, grouped more things together, have I even accomplished anything? Then went over to see her. She said she slept really late and didn't eat breakfast or lunch, though I know Heather stopped earlier that day so I think she probably did. The people there must run the aids ragged, honestly. Going up the elevator I thought to myself how long it was. Found out on the way down why: they were taking a body out. Oh joy! Next time- stairs.

Saturday: Went to the wrong place because the guy hadn't told me he moved. Reloaded the HP system with the dead HD. They had a touch screen model, and you know, I wasn't sold on touch on the desktop, but it really was kinda fun! Then over to Sean's for Cube Zero and game. Game went pretty well, we're in MMORPG world, apparently. It's tough to act like you don't have any clue what's going on when you really do, because your character doesn't. Still, pretty fun. We're working out ways to break the laws of "physics" there to have an edge in combat. Free your mind, Neo! And a yummy ice cream desert was provided, so it was win-win.

Sunday I watched a very interesting series, Psych. It's about this guy who is basically sherlock holmes, he notices and remembers everything. He passes himself off as "psychic", basically solving a case for the police and then having an "episode" where they can see it. Very good casting, stories, characters. He could have billed himself as a Mentalist, rather then a Psychic, and been truthful. Oh well.

Today: Normal stuff, shopping. Gave Timeweb back not even half read, that book just wasn't doing it for me. My first one canceled, so I just had the second one to do. The only person still using AOL dial up. Of course we don't know our password, and we can't actually talk to someone to get it reset. Finally figured out it was still in her husband's name (four years dead) and got it reset. Good thing I could connect to one of the eighteen wireless networks in the place, or we never would have done it! Dial up? Really?

Still a ton of stuff to do tonight before WfC playing, going to get to it!

Yesterday?

2010-08-18T22:59:00-04:00

What went wrong?

Well, I'm not one to dwell on the past, as you know, mainly because I forget it so fast! But two things went wrong yesterday that drove me nuts.

The first was a guy who wasn't getting on the internet. Well, okay, he was, but he had the wiring all messed up so I don't even know how it worked in the first place, as it shouldn't have. So I put the wires the way they should be, and the router got an address of 0.0.0.0. Not too promising. Well, I mess with this thing for quite a while, and find that, when I plug the DSL and the laptop directly together, the laptop gets an address. So I try another router. Same exact thing. So I assign the old router the numbers I just got and it works! So I know the cabling is fine. I know the router works. So I call frontier. And get someone clueless. Honestly, you think a simple question like

"How long is the DHCP lease time? As long as this MAC address keeps showing up, will it try to renew?"

would be answered in one of two ways:

"The DHCP lease time is XXX days."

"I don't have that information, let me transfer you to someone who does."

I get neither of these responses. This is the company that won't give Scoops Ice Cream the password for the frontier router sitting on his own desk so I can set up port forwarding so he can remote access the little NAT device I bought for him. Not exactly liking frontier at this point. So I basically say, you guys are changing out your equipment, because obviously my stuff works, and a brand new router did the same thing as this one, so it's not my network. And he had the audacity to fight me on that too!! So the guy was going to bring it down and get another, but he didn't call with his status so it either worked or he didn't do it.

The other thing was this system that just kept eating up the RAM. I would disable stuff, reboot, it would be fine, then all of a sudden start climbing again. Got home at 8:30. Yeah, my job is fun.

Another very busy day today, though my last two appointments were neighbors and the same thing, setting up a new printer, so that went okay. A cleanout,

another cleanout, actually, they were basically all cleanouts. Sheesh.

Got two hard drives, an 8gb compact flash card, an enclosure, and a free backpack from newegg, so I put the two laptop systems together and got Vista started installing on both. Put the 60GB HD in the enclosure, seems so small still. The CF card I have a special project in mind for.

Oh yeah, this morning I got a call on my cell phone from a customer. I was like, Sean's not calling me this early in the morning, is it Mom? But I didn't recognize the number. It was some lady I called (the "it's not the printer after all" lady) because I wasn't sure where the street was, she wanted to cancel for Friday. I've since changed my voicemail greeting to basically say shove off if you're calling this number and not a) family or b) Sean and call the business number. Want to know why? Apart from the obvious, I totally forgot to get back to her, because I don't think about checking my cell phone messages. Well, hope she calls back tomorrow to hear the new message, and calls the proper number, because I'll probably forget again if she doesn't.

Another five for tomorrow, but friday opened up because everyone canceled. Two for saturday. Have to go over to Sean's street at 9:30, so I have to get up early tomorrow. Bet there'll be traffic, my favorite.

So I'm going to bed, I'm worn out. Is it Sunday yet?

Today

2010-08-17T21:06:00-04:00

was crap.

End of story.

Looking to be

2010-08-16T21:34:00-04:00

Another Banner week.

Bruce Banner.

Hi again! Sorry I didn't write yesterday, Heroes Season 4 and all that, you know? Oh right, you don't because I didn't write. Well, that's what it was.

Saturday was busy too, though I did have some cancelations so it wasn't the day I thought it was going to be. The game went really well, I think. We were fighting this agent of Chaos, and Sean played the disaster strikes on the party and a mutiny on me, so we thought we had it beat, but it just went inside Zelthar. So I almost lose the crystal, Zelthar attacks me, then I get taken over by it, then Whiteye gets possessed, it was pretty crazy. Predictably, Mizzy was all upset, but I'm honestly not sure why, it seemed like an excellent adventure to me. Not many left before he leaves, either. Maybe she's just stressed.

Quite busy today. Did the usual stuff for a Monday morning, though I did have to go back down to the vets after I went to the store because I forgot to get the special catfood. Usually I would just go down the street but this time I went down and back. Other then that, no problems.

Met with a guy wanting to do something to his website. Crazy way of building one, it's this bizarre template system, yuck. But I think we figured out what's best to do, so that's good. Then over to see Rod, of course I had the wrong kind of memory bought, because the page I looked at didn't say so-dimms on the one line, only below that, which I didn't see. Sigh. But I had with me at least a little bit more then he had, so he was taken care of.

Then over to the mortgage place, got an email password straightened out.

Then to a lady who I thought was having trouble printing, by her description, but when I got there the machine was ticking away, meaning the HD was dead. Super, now, thanks to you, (not you reading this, her) instead of ordering the part and making one trip out there, (way past Sean's house, so it's off exit 4, meaning far away) I get to make two!!!! weeeeeeeee

11 calls when I got home? Huh? Okay, one was buddy-bruce saying he "crunched the numbers" (tasty!) and he's not getting his computer yet (whatever bruce) and another lady that called twice, the second time to say, yeah, she was fine. But still!

So I have tomorrow booked with 5, and another 3 for Wednesday, and one for next week, and one for friday, and one for thursday. So, yeah.

Let us not forget the power supply I changed, and the system I finished reloading during my phone calls time.

No WfC tonight, Neil was busy, doing whatever, so I guess I'll read a bit of comic from the library and work on that website thing for that guy.

Grandma moves into her new home tomorrow, so it'll probably be loopyvill for another few days, until that becomes normal.

How ya'll doing?

All booked now

2010-08-11T19:54:00-04:00

k thx bye.

Before I left for my 2:00 I had three calls. Then when I got back, I had five. And that pretty much blew out the rest of the week. I have one slot left, for Saturday. So no more calls this week, k?

Pretty laid back day today though, I finally got the router installed over at the prison place. Came back here, checked my daily websites, had lunch.

PAPERWORK! Woohoo! I really should be holding you! Loving you! Loving you!

Tragedy!

Then the 2:00 one, that was kinda messed up. When I arrived it was using 700+ MB of RAM (and this is XP). Well, I ran malwarebytes and it found a bunch of stuff, but when I rebooted explorer wouldn't come up anymore? Huh? It would run if I ran it manually. So I was trying to look it up in firefox and kept getting redirected.

Honestly, how do you people use windows? I really want to know, because, I don't know, you like pain or something?

So I ran combofix, oh right, it wouldn't boot in safe mode. It just sat there, HD light flashing away, working hard, getting noplace. Finally ran it in "diagnostic" mode, basically only running "essential" services. *rolls eyes* That seemed to take care of the redirector, but could not for the life of me get explorer to open at boot time. Well, it's now two hours later and she needs to leave, so I show her how to open task manager, and use the "run" command to get it running after the machine boots. Honestly, windows SUCKS. When are you going to realize that, take the plunge, and leave it behind, forever? How messed up does it have to GET before you see that? Do flames have to shoot out of it and set your navel afire? Does it have to punch your cat? What?

Too much time to sit around before my 5:30, so I came home and had some... soup? From my grandmother's freezer. On an 85 degree day? It has to be eaten, I guess.

Then out to that one. Setting up a samsung? laptop. And what a great machine it was, too. Had the old Sony trick, cut the HD into two pieces, a 100gb piece and a 350 gb piece. Brilliant! So I put his music and docs file over there, where there's some room to grow.

Came home, booked everybody that called today. Five for tomorrow, three+grandma friday (looking forward to that, let me tell you), then two for saturday with one space left. Oh, and one for Monday. Yeah.

Couldn't beat Omega Supreme last night, perhaps we'll try again tonight. It is on Hard.

Didn't have my salad earlier, I'm off to have it now!

Are you crazy?

2010-08-10T23:56:00-04:00

These words were heard

at a job today, from the cutest little boy who turns three tomorrow. He asked the (much) older girl (sister?) what she was doing today and she said "hanging out with you!" He immediately said "are you crazy?" It was too cute. Then they went for a walk and she said "say goodbye!" and he said "good bye, man!"

And that was the only thing that made me smile in the whole of today. That, and knowing there'll always be a little place... called Albuquerque!

Still busy-busy, four today. Cleanout first, that's where the little boy was.

Then over to one "not getting on the internet". Yeah, more like paralyzed from the neck down if you ask me. Somehow Windows Update (which should open, check to see if there's anything new, and then close again) was consuming massive amounts of memory, like 512MB all by itself. Yeah. Turned that off. Hey look, your machine doesn't take thirty seconds to open the control panels anymore!

*shakes head*

Then over to the young woman needing Win7 reloaded. I tried the disk I had downloaded first, but it gave me some crap about missing files or whatever? Sigh. So I had to sit for an hour as the restore disks slowly rebuilt the machine. I was impressed they left her stuff intact though, I guess the restore disk has smartened up a bit. Still don't know why I can't just have a windows 7 disk. New Macs get OS X CDs, and a free pony, but hey, saving that .10¢ on a CD makes a huge difference for HP. Reading about them in the news. And laughing. Anyway, got that system up and working again, finally, it went through three different looking progress screens, giving me a false hope three separate times that I was nearing the end, but only delivering the once.

Then over to see Rita, who has improved a little after her stroke and seems almost back to normal. Oh, she still has no clue what's going on, but at least it was more like talking to a bunny rather then a brick wall.

Got a message on okcupid from a girl in the Philippines, which consisted of "how are you". (no subject). Really? This is what I have to work with?

Four calls, one from my best buddy bruce, he's getting his "new apartment" and some $80 computer from some pawn shop or something, I don't know, the man's ramblings are something to be consumed while distracted by beautiful sunsets or the most intensely pleasurable experience you've ever had.

Just got a call from Sean, more WfC in a bit, as he was "just leaving Best Buy" and Mizzy "wants to have my babies" so, I guess that's good? Or does she want me to have babies with someone else and then give them to her? I was unclear on that point.

Anyway, gotta go get ready! For tomorrow. So I can play. Now.

Finished Heroes 3, ready for Season 4!

Heroes

2010-08-08T22:30:00-04:00

Season 3

I haz it.

Not much to write about this weekend, it seemed to go as planned.

Friday I wanted to get to grandma's house early and help with the clean out, but when I arrived the work was done for the day. Guess it's going to be a pretty big job. I was late because my appointment right before didn't go as planned. Somehow his registry got messed up (as usual) and it sound drivers wouldn't work properly. At least it gave a halfway decent error message, not that it did me any good. I tried various things, escalating from reloading the drivers, to doing an XP repair, and then taking the machine with me to wipe and reload at home. Usually I would just put windows into another folder, but I had already done that with his machine once, so I didn't want THREE separate, broken, copies of windows on the machine. Well, two broken, one "working". Whatever.

I hate windows, have I mentioned that?

Then over to Sean's for game. He's given us quite the moral dilemma on this world, I'm not sure how we're going to reconcile it. But something's happening with the principle so maybe that will shed some light. Still, with the 6 weeks we've been there, my ESPer powers have been honed to perfection, I'm inches away from the ultimate ESPer ability, time control. Better watch out, Greenscale. You're not going to know what hit you next time we meet.

Anyway, did the reload Saturday, then brought it back to the guy. Went over to help Mom and Dad get their freezer up... and they had already done so. I'm standing in the driveway talking to Dad, and Mom calls me to tell me I don't have to come. I think a word describes that, if only I could think of it. Maybe it starts with i? And why am I thinking of pressing clothes?

Wasn't sure if we were doing WfC that night, Neil said it was iffy, and... we didn't! But Sean lent me Season 3 of Heroes so I watched the first bit of that.

I watched all but the last disk on Sunday. Hey, I cut the lawn too, I wasn't totally worthless.

It isn't like I have a GIRLFRIEND to do things with, right?

Booked up tomorrow, and part of tuesday, or maybe all of tuesday, I forget. One Wednesday. But I only got 7 calls over the weekend, so maybe it'll be back to "normal" a bit this week.

Hope everybody had a good weekend, especially you people with powers, watch out for Sylar!