Drained

Here's my day today - but first, some background. It's freakin' snowing here! Last night, Jane got home from a meeting at her boss's home in Rhode Island at about 10:30 or so. So I'd had an all-night Dude-a-thon. This morning, I get up at about 7:30, to go see a customer (#1) here in town at 9. At 8:15, I head downstairs all showered and shaved, and I turn on my cell phone.

With a frantic message on it from a referral customer, looking for Mac help. I call the new customer (#2) and make arrangements to head over after I wrap up with #1. Jane is going to take David to school so I can get started, then head out to meet her boss out near Worcester. In the snow.

So I'm working over at #1's site, curing a malware infestation. Nasty one. About 11 or so, the phone rings, and it's Jane. She's dropped off David, but got stuck back at home on work calls and hasn't left yet for Worcester. Not a good sign. I call #2 and let him know I should be there pretty soon.

Noon: I finally finish beating up the PC and start the SP2 install. That'll take a while, so I head over to #2 and start the work there. Recovery goes well, and the Mac gets a shiny new OS install (preserving settings from the previous one), along with a disk repair and permissions fix. While it downloads the 100MB update over the sluggish DSL line, I prepare to head to my office for a brief respite. Then I get a call from #3 - the customer down the street who'd referred me #2. He has a new (used) PC laptop that can't find a network connection. I figure out a plan to fit him in on my way out the door.

In 20 minutes, I've eaten lunch, put stamps on all my bills, checked my e-mail, and written myself a paycheck. I head back to #2, and complete the reconfiguration, setting up Classic and doing some migration tasks.

Now it's time to head back over the bridge to #1's place. He's back on the computer, but there's still a little bit to be done. I install the post-SP2 fixes, give him some pointers, and make arrangements to return to install his AV update and DSL router that he's been assigned to go buy as homework by me. That'll be a breeze - if it takes the less than 15 minutes I think it will I won't even bother putting it on the bill. Then, I head back over the bridge one more time...

And go visit #3, where I discover that the machine had been shipped with the wrong dongle for the 3Com Ethernet card he'd been given with the laptop. So it ain't gonna work. And the battery won't take a charge, either. He's going to return it, and I show him a new Dell model online that's almost as cheap, and way better. As I wrap up, #2 calls again - there's a question about launching apps.

So after heading up the street again, I looked at the situation, and we decided to just boot back into Classic by default until he can pick up his original disks for his Adobe products (he has OS X-native apps on them, he just installed the OS 9 versions), and buy a copy of Panther. We'll deal with that next week at some point.

By now it's about 4. So I head back to Cummings one more time, and pick up David. He likes snow.

But Jane doesn't. She's running late out west, and finally slogs home about 7ish - right after David and I get home from the grocery store. I wind up whipping up dinner while Jane changes into grubbies, and then she tends the oven while I run up and start doing my bill entry. It would help if I billed for all that time I worked today!

As for this entry? It took me about 20 minutes. I snuck off to do it while Jane gave David a bath and bonded. She hasn't had a lot of quality time with him the last couple of days.