Rosemary. That’s the name. No, not Rosemary Chimko, the hot-to-trot gal that sat behind me in grade 5 who ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Rather, that spice I bought a smidgeon of a month ago. My whole galley smells like it, causing havoc with my appetite. It is not that great as spices go but goes grand with boiled chicken. Two ads I don’t understand. One is those headphones with a built in radio. Don’t want to miss that AM programming, like who wants to hear a silly old siren or burglar alarm anyway? Or GPS in your car. If you are so disoriented you have no idea where you are, should you really be driving in the first place? Another thing, why do I keep hearing that the 12V car plug won’t recharge your cell phone? I have recharged my plenty of times and it works just fine.
Finally, a full day’s work. The system over at the Flamingo (a citrus fruit shipper) had all the signs of long-term neglect. Like bad relationships with older women, most networks require constant tinkering or one day they bite you in the ass. Make that the entire office, not just the computer. For example, the fax timer was wrong, it was plugged into the wrong jack and the memory was clogged up.
Too bad I can’t make a living puttering around fixing such things. The main problem was a DOS program [called OASYS] that would not network. More accurately, it was a great little program that operated client server. Somehow, the switch that shared the server files deactivated itself. I knew what it was right away, but I also know I cannot fix this. The fun was calling around to find somebody who could.
No luck at all. Nobody over 40 knows a damn thing about networking and nobody under 40 has a clue how DOS works. I left it with the software supplier who was quite impressed by my troubleshooting and did mention that they only work seasonally. November through May. Are you thinking what I am thinking?
I took a quick noon break and ran over to visit Dickens. Jerry, the Mad Irishman (not a derogatory term) was there. Since the rain came down in tub-loads, we hung out for a while. We’ve decided due to the church noise, we will open at 1:00. The rainy afternoon was spent getting backup copies off the Flamingo computer, not one had been made since 1980. (I told you it was DOS.) I also showed the staff how to make backups and the one gal there is pretty sharp. I charged $125 for sitting around burning CDs and earned every penny of it.
This is what Don is competing with. Always remember, "I get paid for what I know, not what I do." Mind you, like Don’s situation, I did notice the people over there have a terrible need to find somebody reliable. I am only reliable when you pay me more than I’m worth – paying just what I am worth is called working for a living and all such arrangements are inherently unreliable. I don’t mind taking charge and following up, but too often I get a complaint later that I took too long making the phone call or something. That, folks, is because I am not good at phoning. That is correct, once I tell you the problem, get your secretary to make the call so I can get back to work. I cost the same even when I am put on hold.
The drive problem was strange. Somebody, probably the “brother who knows all about computer stuff” indeed had a large collection of something. Except, it was not there. The word is that he had been told to erase it all, and he did, but there was an unused 89 GB partition on the disk. Once I resized it zero, the disk suddenly started running smoothly again. (The geeks out there will spot the error here and it is intentional, so leave it alone.)
Marion’s number has been disconnected. They are moving to Everett in a rush. I’d like to get out there for a visit before the dead of winter. That is unlikely now, even though I have more cash in the bank than six months ago when business turned sour. I’m secretly hoping the Marco Island store worked out a deal at the last minute, I really need to stock up on small things. Did I mention they even had a book store in the corner? This weekend is a go, rain or sunshine.
*[Author's note 2015-11-02: to this day I have no idea what I was talking about just there. I think I was riding my bicycle, and my car was ten miles away. I dunno, Christ, it's just a blog.]
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