Computers, Straight Up
Well, it's been over a week. I'm sure you've missed me and my wonderful posts about my wonderful life, so here's another installment.

Block party was last Saturday. Thanks to everyone who didn't come. Quite an uneventful day. I think EasyMOD was released around that time, but I can't remember.

Fast forward to Thursday. I went to the library, to renew my C book and to take out some books on the Beatles. I really wanted Anthology, but they didn't have it. (In fact, it appears that someone took it out that very same day!) Anyway, afterwards, we went to Radio Shack to pick up a router and this switch thingy that can switch between speakers and headphones (since my wonderful motherboard doesn't have a Line Out port). While the girls went shopping, I caught up on some Beatles history.

I also forgot to mention that earlier in the week, my cousin sent me a corrupted CD that I had to recover data from. More on that later.

So, the new router was meant to split the Internet connection that feeds to the basement here into two so that we can give both computers Internet without having to rewire everything. I started working on that that night, but after I spent hours on it without getting it to work, I gave up and moved on to something else.

During this time, the CD recovery was also continuing. It took a couple days before it was done.

So, what I actually moved onto (and this was at 3:00 in the morning) was reading more about the Beatles. I had gotten the book Ticket to Ride, which was written by the only American reporter allowed to accompany the Beatles on their 1964 North America tour. I had seen a short interview with him recently (even though the book was released last year), and I knew then that I wanted to read it. So anyway, I read that, along with the other books that I had taken out, for about 2 hours. Then the 5:00 news came on (I had had the Olympics on while I was reading, though I didn't watch much of it), and it was too distracting to continue reading. So, I think my mom had gotten up by then and convinced me to go read in bed, so I could go to sleep afterward. I remember now that I had also been reading about how John and Paul composed songs, namely With A Little Help From My Friends (I think that's the correct title...). So anyway, I read some more, and then I went to bed.

Now I'm wondering if I blended two days into that sentence... but it's not that important, so let's move on....

Last night I finally decided to try again with the Internet connection. Smart me, I actually looked up an article on the Linksys website that told me exactly what to do. For hours, I was running back and forth, up and down, to make reset everything and make sure all computers worked. And next time I follow one of those articles, I won't assume that they're wrong and I'm right when things happen. I will actually follow, word for word, what they're saying, even if what they say doesn't directly give me what they say it should.

Anyway, by 5:00, I finally got everything working together. So, then I finished up the CD recovery by burning the data onto a new CD. And I still wasn't ready to go to bed, so I hooked up that switch thingy. I got three things done last night, so then I was like, now what?

My parents and I came to a mutual decision (sorta) that it was now time for bed. So I went to sleep. Woke up at 5:00 (that's pm, by the way). Bla bla... Installed some more programs on that curs-ed computer, yadda yadda.

Cut to me going to somebody's house at 8:30 to fix their computer. It was the usual Computer Optimization, with anti-*ware installation, and disk cleanup/defrag. And it took 3 and a half hours to complete. BUT, I got 50 bucks. It seems everybody likes to pay me for just sitting there (I mean, yeah, that's how much I charge for it, but I didn't say anything about that—that's how much was offered to me).

Also, I'm apparently making another 50 bucks for recovering the data from the CD. So, basically, I've gotten a total of 150 bucks for just waiting, and 500+ bucks for sitting around being bored (see last entry).

But, in case you haven't noticed, I make more money in less time doing the Computer Optimization—and I don't have to do them every weekday at the same time. So, I made a good decision quitting.

And that's about all the news I have to report for this past week, except that we got our bus passes today. And mine still has the wrong address on it, even though my sister's was changed (due to the move that happened in February). Also, pardon my grammatical mistakes (and something else that I was going to mention here but forgot in the process), since I'm really just writing this to keep me occupied.

I leave you with this: Why is the logo for updating settings on Windows 98 a drum with drumsticks hitting it? Are they saying "You're changing stuff on the computer. Let's see what happens now. Drum roll, please!"?

Time Now: 1:32 AM
Posted by Gordon P. Hemsley @ 8/22/2004 01:00:00 AM