"Keep a Journal: How else are you going to get a good look at who you were?"

Sunday, March 25, 2012

I once asked; "is this a journal, or a quarterly?".

Guess we know the answer to that one.

Spring is on its way here in the Lower Drainland.  Pollen is BURSTING forth from dormant flora...and sales of Benadryl are at their yearly high peak.  Allergy season is upon us...but I'm not having any sinus trouble.

I'm getting nosebleeds.  Much more fun.

No unfortunate incidents as yet, but it is annoying.

On to the news; let's begin with the vehicular situation:

I sold the Golf.

I'm selling the Passat.  Once it's ready.

I bought a Mini-Van.  I guess I really DID miss ol' Mean Green.

It's a 1997 (thank you, AirCare!) Nissan Quest GXE.  All options except the sun roof and the integrated multimedia system. It does have a Kenwood (tm) multi-CD changer under the passenger seat.  I still haven't completely figured out all the gadgets on this van.  There are buttons on the dashboard that I still don't know what they do!

Next item is computers (what else?), and how I seem to be in the re-homing business.  I don't go looking for these machines...they just show up.  I thought I had only one desktop tower to get rid of and then my Ex up and asks me if I wanted back the custom Acer that I traded to Colin for the Dell I bought him last year.  The Dell itself was upgraded to the max and offered (along with a flat screen monitor) as a door prize at our Scout Troop fundraiser.  It's living at the Inlayo's house now.  I was also fixing a laptop for Marv, and it seems I'm not done there yet as he was phoning me at odd hours yesterday to set up the wireless networking on it.  I wasn't all that available yesterday as I have been spending odd hours myself fixing Kathy and Grant's Sony Viao tower upstairs.  They got a piece of malware on it and while the malware got removed fairly easily, it took pieces of Windows XP networking utilities with it.  Patricia Williams spent a little time consulting on it over the phone and reached the same conclusion that I had: wipe out the hard drive and re-build the Windows XP install.  However, since this is a "work" system, it wasn't that simple.  I had to install a secondary drive to take all their data and programs off the primary before I wiped it.  Of course, not all the data came along...but so far Kath says she can re-construct what is missing.

There were unforeseen difficulties: like re-installing proprietary Sony Viao device drivers, and getting rid of the Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool; somehow in those 130-plus updates it managed to sneak in despite the best Black Magic I could install.  At least it won't ask to be activated...ever.

I was going through an online guide to get rid of the W.G.A. tool and was failing miserably in the "delete the executable and .dll file from the system32 directory".  Kept running into a system flag.  After 20 minutes of this pointless exercise I facepalmed and exclaimed; "I am going about this all wrong!"...and re-started the system in command-line mode.

DOS can be your friend...but how many users today remember 25-year-old DOS commands and syntax?

Anyways, W.G.A. tool has been banished to a carefully made dungeon and shouldn't be bothering the Hastings' at all.  Just like any other piece of nagware, spyware, malware or other things that go bump on your hard drive.  I don't care if it IS an offcially liscensed MicroSoft product!  I don't want it on my system or any other system, for that matter!

Number three on the list is work.  We are finally getting a handle on Manhattan.  We've spent the last three weeks on Cycle Counts; attempting to make our actual inventory match up with our virtual inventory.  By and large we have done this, but human nature dictates that mistakes are still being made, so this is something we'll have to stay on top of.  My section lead, Jackson Jang, is having fits over some of the things I've been doing to keep this process moving forward efficiently, but his boss, Reggie Mahendra, is loving me for it.  I'm able to do more with a handheld RF terminal than some of our more "highly-trained" people can do with a system terminal and full access!  It just takes a little longer.  In short: I know enough to be dangerous...

I thought I had booked off vacation time for Spring Break this week and a vist to my folks in Alberta next week, but I am informed that I actually booked off next month.  Will have to look into that. I also have Paul coming for a visit and we'll see what we can do to get together and catch up.

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