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Dec. 11th, 2006 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geojlcI finished up the computer gig with the nice lady in Seattle today. When I showed up at her house last week, I explained what I thought was wrong. Before I could say anything else, she looked at me and asked, "What about upgrading to a newer computer?" Perfect! Just what I was going to suggest! And Michael sells really cheap ones to low-income people (which she was). So we piled into my car and drove over to Interconnections where we set her up with a computer.
Then came the fun part.
We got the computer up to her room and I pulled the old one (and all it's dust rhinos) off the desk where it had been living. She asked if I could put the new one on the floor. That was fine. A little exciting since it would have to go on it's side, but she doesn't use CDs, so that's ok. I got everything hooked up and did a smoke test. Beautiful! Now it's time to take the hard drive from the old computer and transfer files. Only, I had a hard time figuring out how to take the case off to get to the hard drive. And once I got the case off, I couldn't see the hard drive! Finally I found it in a bay on the back side of the computer. But I couldn't get to the cables to unhook them from the front of the drive. I finally had to pull out the CD rom drive to get to the cables. Then I could finally get to the hard drive. You could tell it was an old drive.
Anyway, I started hooking it up and the computer started powering on. That was wierd, but I thought maybe it was the power strip that it was plugged into. So I turned the power strip off and finished connecting the hard drive. I was really happy that I didn't have any problems getting the new computer to see the hard drive and pull stuff off it. (The old drive had jumpers, but no diagram on how to set them to slave. So I didn't touch them and prayed it would work... :-)
After longer than I thought it would take, I finally got it all set up and then went to test the printer. Which I couldn't make work. So I told her I'd see if Michael had a give-away one that I could have. If he did, I'd come back with it next week. We were both tired and slightly grumpy by this point. So I charged her for some of my time (not as much as I would have liked, but she did just buy a computer and she paid me a bunch of money the day before that didn't make her computer functional) and left with her old computer.
But things got better after that. I went over to pick up Michael from work and Jeff bussed down from Everett and met us over at the house. Michael cooked up some yummy pork chops and we got to spend some nice time with Gene and Kristin and watch a bab 5 episode. We would have liked to stay later, but dang if morning doesn't keep happening no matter what time you crawl into bed...
Friday I got a call from the nice Seattle lady. At first I was all set for her to yell at me that she hated her new computer and why did I talk her into buying it. I'm so glad it was the complete opposite! "I LOVE my new computer! It's so fast and does just what I want it to do!" Yea for good work! I told her I had a printer for her and arranged to take it down today (Monday).
Weekend busyness (but also funness) happened. There was the Norwescon concom meeting with a party following (very good food and I showed great restraint!). After that was the filk sing. I was having one of the totally overwhelming evenings, so I listened more than anything. I had fun, but I was very glad to go home. Church was good, as was the gaming afterward. It's always fun to hang with my friends. Especially once I've eaten and gotten back into myself... :-)
Today I set up the printer. It was a beautiful, smooth install. Win2000 detected the printer when loading. All I had to do was keep hitting 'next' in the install wizard. Then I set the preferences and life was good. She had me set the minimum font size on her copy of Firefox and then I was out of there!
Since I finished so fast and I was already half-way there, I drove down to Fry's to buy Christmas presents for Jeff's nephews. I knew exactly what I wanted so I just ran in and ran back out. Then I headed home through the rain and the wind and the more rain and wind. The wind was totally blowing the rain around. I wasn't just getting sheets of rain, it was like someone dumped a bucket on me, or I drove through a car wash. Then there would be nothing for a few minutes before getting another bucket dumped on me. The wind was bad enough that it was messing with the radio transmitters of the station I was listening to. But my car did ok and I made it home in a reasonable amount of time.
I made cream of broccoli soup for dinner tonight. With a mixture of half and half and milk so that it's not so bad for you... :-) It turned out pretty good. I was going to have a piece of pie for dessert, but that's not an option anymore. It got dropped. I was very sad. It's been waiting for someone to eat it since Jen brought it over on Friday. I told Jeff that if he didn't eat it tonight, I was going to. He had just relinquished his claim on it when it fell... sigh... I guess I'll have a pirouline instead...
Tomorrow is all about picking up cookie ingredients and starting the Christmas baking. There will also be some laundry and software testing and stuff, but it's cookie time!
Then came the fun part.
We got the computer up to her room and I pulled the old one (and all it's dust rhinos) off the desk where it had been living. She asked if I could put the new one on the floor. That was fine. A little exciting since it would have to go on it's side, but she doesn't use CDs, so that's ok. I got everything hooked up and did a smoke test. Beautiful! Now it's time to take the hard drive from the old computer and transfer files. Only, I had a hard time figuring out how to take the case off to get to the hard drive. And once I got the case off, I couldn't see the hard drive! Finally I found it in a bay on the back side of the computer. But I couldn't get to the cables to unhook them from the front of the drive. I finally had to pull out the CD rom drive to get to the cables. Then I could finally get to the hard drive. You could tell it was an old drive.
Anyway, I started hooking it up and the computer started powering on. That was wierd, but I thought maybe it was the power strip that it was plugged into. So I turned the power strip off and finished connecting the hard drive. I was really happy that I didn't have any problems getting the new computer to see the hard drive and pull stuff off it. (The old drive had jumpers, but no diagram on how to set them to slave. So I didn't touch them and prayed it would work... :-)
After longer than I thought it would take, I finally got it all set up and then went to test the printer. Which I couldn't make work. So I told her I'd see if Michael had a give-away one that I could have. If he did, I'd come back with it next week. We were both tired and slightly grumpy by this point. So I charged her for some of my time (not as much as I would have liked, but she did just buy a computer and she paid me a bunch of money the day before that didn't make her computer functional) and left with her old computer.
But things got better after that. I went over to pick up Michael from work and Jeff bussed down from Everett and met us over at the house. Michael cooked up some yummy pork chops and we got to spend some nice time with Gene and Kristin and watch a bab 5 episode. We would have liked to stay later, but dang if morning doesn't keep happening no matter what time you crawl into bed...
Friday I got a call from the nice Seattle lady. At first I was all set for her to yell at me that she hated her new computer and why did I talk her into buying it. I'm so glad it was the complete opposite! "I LOVE my new computer! It's so fast and does just what I want it to do!" Yea for good work! I told her I had a printer for her and arranged to take it down today (Monday).
Weekend busyness (but also funness) happened. There was the Norwescon concom meeting with a party following (very good food and I showed great restraint!). After that was the filk sing. I was having one of the totally overwhelming evenings, so I listened more than anything. I had fun, but I was very glad to go home. Church was good, as was the gaming afterward. It's always fun to hang with my friends. Especially once I've eaten and gotten back into myself... :-)
Today I set up the printer. It was a beautiful, smooth install. Win2000 detected the printer when loading. All I had to do was keep hitting 'next' in the install wizard. Then I set the preferences and life was good. She had me set the minimum font size on her copy of Firefox and then I was out of there!
Since I finished so fast and I was already half-way there, I drove down to Fry's to buy Christmas presents for Jeff's nephews. I knew exactly what I wanted so I just ran in and ran back out. Then I headed home through the rain and the wind and the more rain and wind. The wind was totally blowing the rain around. I wasn't just getting sheets of rain, it was like someone dumped a bucket on me, or I drove through a car wash. Then there would be nothing for a few minutes before getting another bucket dumped on me. The wind was bad enough that it was messing with the radio transmitters of the station I was listening to. But my car did ok and I made it home in a reasonable amount of time.
I made cream of broccoli soup for dinner tonight. With a mixture of half and half and milk so that it's not so bad for you... :-) It turned out pretty good. I was going to have a piece of pie for dessert, but that's not an option anymore. It got dropped. I was very sad. It's been waiting for someone to eat it since Jen brought it over on Friday. I told Jeff that if he didn't eat it tonight, I was going to. He had just relinquished his claim on it when it fell... sigh... I guess I'll have a pirouline instead...
Tomorrow is all about picking up cookie ingredients and starting the Christmas baking. There will also be some laundry and software testing and stuff, but it's cookie time!