Erm... A Week... Are you sure...?

Uh, sorry. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

So, in the last week, I've worked 11.4 million hours at the store, fixed a half dozen computers, told several thousand people about the great deal that is Cartridge World, and got about fifteen minutes sleep. Cuz I'm a slacker.

Yeah, we livin large here, boss.

Interviewed a lad today for the store, and we interview a lass tomorrow morning. We needs us some hep in there afore we combust. I've lined up a few business customers, and sales volume is increasing. But so is the tension to get more inventory, and make sure we are capturing useful sales figures.

So while I do all that, I also try to fix and upgrade the PCs of the world, and sell them ink. Yeah, I'm crabbing. Where else will I complain? Get yer own blog, Gary!

Le Hump

I delivered that PC I built way-back-when. New owner is all giddy n stuff.

Slow day in CW. I sent quotes to some business contacts. Took some time to take stock of the situation, in more ways than one. Might be hiring real soon now.

I'll be out of pocket all day Thursday.
* Saline Leadership does the ropes course tomorrow, make of that what you will.
* I'll get to be in the store for about an hour during which I'll send more quotes.
* AA Chamber is having a reception
* Its the eldest's birthday. Big 1-8. I asked him if he has his stuff packed. He didn't see the humor. We'll go to Seoul Garden for dinner.
* I'll have a client's PC to optimize, so that will round out my evening.

See Ya Friday!

Go Phish?

First thing in this morning's email is a nasty-gram from Comcast. It says:

Dear Comcast Subscriber:

ACTION REQUIRED: Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email ("spam"), which is generally an indicator of a virus. For your own protection and that of other Comcast customers, we have taken steps to prevent further transmission of spam from your computer(s).

And then goes on to give URLs that I can click on to remedy the problem.

Its really authentic looking, and Comcast is my cable/VOIP/ISP provider, so it is possible, right? Except that I haven't used that account to send any email whatsoever. Its basically a receiving account for things like newsletters. Therefore, I'm calling BS on the phishy email. My PC(s) are without any spambot infestations, and I'm not interested in downloading any right now.

I haven't called Comcast and I probably won't. Try to get through their phone maze of gatekeepers... I dare you. Truthfully, if they blocked my account from outbound mail, I'd never notice anyway.

Today's lesson: Be very careful about clicking on any links in an email if the email seems at all, in the tiniest bit, suspicious.

The Next Day

Was much like the first.

I subcontracted a repair; a slow laptop. No real malfunction, just slow.

Then back to the store and busy with cartridgey stuff.

Picked up another old PC to recycle...

Hmmm. Pretty boring stuff. I'll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

First, A Monday

Busy, busy.

First full day at CW, and it was busy. I called a few people to inquire about their toner needs, we sold a fair amount of product (well, fair for it being the first day), and I went on a few calls.

I helped a nice older lady get back on line - her second phone line was very noisy and dropped the dial-up connection frequently. I suggested DSL after solving the problem. I also had occasion to speak to one of EarthLink's customer disservice people in Indiana (give or take a few letters). She was absolutely no help at all - all I wanted to do was verify that the old dear's account was still valid, and this bint treated me like I might not be right in the head and needed a good hand-holding.

Then, I went to a company for whom I take overflow. And did they have overflow. Two machines, the first of which has the dreaded XPAntiVirus2008 rogue program. Take Note: Nothing called Windows Anti Virus or XP Anti Virus is valid.

So, with that demon in there, all the rest of hell had taken up residence.

Tomorrow, I will finish up the exorcism, and attend to the second PC. This one suffers in that it doesn't boot up since having XP SP3 installed. Apparently, that happened a few times to people with AMD processors. The fix was said to be to boot into safe mode, and selectively disable drivers until the PC booted. I'll also check the system logs and for minidumps. If all else fails, I'll try to do a restorative install, and then to remove SP3.

Then its back to the store. Still a bit surrealistic, to have my own storefront...

Has it been that long?

Lordy, Lordy. So, how ya been? Me? Well...

I've been toughing it out in San Francisco, on a two-week training course. Yeah, poor me. We've been eating a lot of sushi, a lot of dim-sum, kind of a lot of Indian... yeah, life's tough out here.

And we've learned a lot about the CW way of doing things. I feel pretty good about our choice to go through with this.

We return Saturday evening and normal programming will resume shortly thereafter.

In the interim, please enjoy the following: Maybe you knew about it, maybe you didn't, but you can get streaming music through your very own PC. Its free, its safe and its got something for every taste (except Gary... that boy just scares me). Go to shoutcast.com and begin. It requires Media Player, but you have that already.