personal

I just finished up the 60-week course at my school. Straight As in every class. I haven't received the final grade yet, but it's possible that I'm on the "Director's list" again in the most recent course I had (it's sorta like the Dean's list). That would mean that for any class where I didn't test out of it (and get an automatic pass and "credit for previous training") - I will have been on the Director's list, along with having perfect attendance. That's two awards per class that I can hang on my wall. :)

Starting Monday I will begin on the Associate's program (just a short 30 weeks). I don't know if my first class will be Windows networking, general TCP/IP, or Novell networking.

I started printing some business cards (using a printer that I got working using cheap ink refill kits) this past week as well, advertising my services. Web design, Internet services, computer repair and upgrade, and virus and spyware removal. My first customer was some guy that my mother gave a card to. His floppy drive on his computer wasn't working. I checked a dozen different settings, made sure his system was clean (viruses, spyware, un-needed start up items) and properly working, checked the hardware, and even tried another drive and cable. Only after messing around in BIOS could I get it working again. I should have better noted the changes I made, because I'm not sure exactly what change it was that I made that fixed it(!!!). It was already properly installed and enabled in BIOS before - but it just didn't work 98% of the time. It would say disks weren't formatted, or "device busy." It sometimes worked just fine, but mostly not. I had to have altered something that was causing some sort of conflict with the drive, because now it seems to be working totally. I tested several floppies, read/writing in different operating systems, and general use under Windows XP. I couldn't get it to mess up. So even though I didn't know exactly what the fix was, it seemed to be working well enough to state that it was fixed. I thought it was weird that my first job presented me with an issue I've never seen before.
I didn't charge much, only asking for $25 an hour. I spent 1 hour checking Windows stuff and installing updates. There wasn't a lot of updating since we were on his AOL dial up (I was warned that a lot of customers will have that). After being unable to fix things in Windows, and NO luck getting the drive to work in DOS, I felt i needed to check out the hardware side. I took the system home and worked on it off and on for the next few hours. I only charged him for 2 hours though. $75 to fix a system isn't bad. I was told that I should charge more.

While downloading XP SP2 on his system (while it was at my place hooked up to my DSL), I was eating some chicken wings I had brought home from Pizza Hut earlier. While eating, I bit my tongue ring. It's happened before a couple of times, and I usually don't think much about it. This time however, I noticed some weird crunching/crushing sound as I continued eating - part of one of my back teeth chipped/broke off. :( It wasn't much, and I cant even see it when I look in the mirror. I can feel it with my tongue, though. This is the only injury I've received from the tongue ring in the half decade I've had it.

me and my sister drove out to some big park and went riding on some trails.
it was really fun, and also really tiring. at one point we even went riding through a creek, splashing water all over. we lost a lot of traction once we hit some sand, so we had to walk the bikes back out.

the trails were really hilly, with lots of mud and rocks. at one point we had to turn back because things were getting too rough.

its the most fun i've had on a bike in a long time.

so i come home from work, and all my IM apps are sitting at my Desktop saying Connection lost and shit. hitting Connect results in an "unable to connect" error.

i glance over at my DSL modem, and see that the DSL sync light is blinking green/orange (no signal found). i thought the modem was just being crazy and rebooted it. every couple of months or so (or during a thunderstorm) it just does something weird like losing a connection but saying its still connected, all lights stop blinking, or it just loses sync until i reboot it (its a SpeedStream 5260 flashed to a 5660).

i rebooted it, and it still didn't sync up. i picked up my phone to check for a dial tone but only had complete silence. i checked all my wires and they looked fine. basically my phone line was totally dead. i tried calling it from another line that was working, and got an operator message of "All circuits are busy." a quick call to SWBell/SBC tech got me the info that some "cable is down" and "over 900 people have lost their phone service" and "it should be back on in the next 24 hours." great.

so i hook up my external 56k modem and dial up. i think i'm connected at 49,333 or 50,667 or something. i couldn't log into my SBC dial up account, so i'm connected with NetZero. it forces off all data compression and error correction when it connects, so shit is just super slow right now. :(

i just wanted to make a post saying how slow Dial Up is because its pretty slow, and i'm waiting for some stuff to finish downloading.