Digital Impulses

Wednesday, October 29

• Worked from Carson today. 
• The spousal unit was home on her day off.
• Unfortunate, testy exchange with Bert over the Rojas Inc. email and domain name issues.
• I completed (finally!) the Rojas Inc Domain name and Email switch from Earthlink to Network solutions as his new hosting provider.  The transfer was completed at 0930.
• Met A.J. and Cindi at T Mobile after work. I bought A.J. a T Mobile Sidekick for $300.00
• Watched American Gangster and ate Pizza for dinner with them after coming home from T Mobile.
• OK visit with Mom, although she was a little frustrated.

Another Day.

Friday, October 24: Life being life

• Worked from Carson once again this morning.
• In the morning after dropping off the wife at work, I helped her and Daniel with a security camera issue tied to the computer that they have connected to all of the security cameras.
• Spent 1 HOUR on the phone this morning with Earthlink, helping him get his spam email issue under control.
• A.J. is being a jerk about staying in touch.
• I had lunch with Reyna this afternoon @ Playa Blanca.
• Picked up the Corvette from Champion this morning: Total Bill: $2,614.00
• Scrabble was OK.  I won one out of three.

Regular Saturday

Spent the morning at Robert's hockey game in Torrance.  I was there to take pictures of the game, but since I guess it misted a little overnight, the roof of the skating rink where they were going to play was leaking and causing the surface to be dangerously slippery.

As a result, the game was canceled and all of the time it took for them to get suited up and then warmed up was for naught.  The referees (city employees, naturally) simply felt that it wasn't safe to play and so they will have to play again at another date.

After the hockey, we all drove to a hole-in-the-wall diner in Redondo Beach called "Eat at Joe's" and had a really good breakfast there.  We then agreed to get together soon after Robert returns from his upcoming trip to Vegas.

I returned home from Breakfast to find that Reyna was once again in FULL DRAMA mode, this time regarding health issues her mom is facing in Colima.  I dealt with that as best I could and then spent the rest of the afternoon at home before going to Boston Market for dinner by myself.

Scrabble was late this evening, where I split a pair of games with Bert.

Busy Friday, No Scrabble

This evening after my visit with Isa at TMMC, my brother Pete picked me up from the hospital and we went to the Redondo Beach pier to have dinner with Robert Hoppenrath (an old HS friend) and his cousin Mike.

Dinner at El Torito, was really good and the conversation was genial enough.  After dinner we drove over to Mr. Pockets in Manhattan Beach and played pool for about an hour or so.  It had been at least 1o years since I've played pool so all in all I think I did pretty well.

We played in teams of two and it was Robert and Pete against Mike and me. We lost all of the games we played but had a really good time. It's made me want to take up playing pool again.

Evan has Surgery

The reason we didn't play Scrabble tonight was that Bert's son Evan had Scoliosis surgery today and Bert spent all day at TMMC with his family awaiting the results of Evan's surgery.  That went well (thank God) and now it's a matter of Evan starting on his road to recovery also.

Lazy Saturday and a crappy Acer PC bought at Office Depot

Didn't really accomplish today, just spent the day lounging around the office and trying to get Windows XP installed on a piece of crap $432.00 Acer-branded box that I picked up at Office Depot.

OMG, what an absolute piece of crap the support web site for Acer is.  I guess that is the only way they can manage to sell a complete computer (sans monitor, of course) for that price.

I won't bother you with the details save to say that Acer has a bare-bones support page that has links on it for Windows Vista drivers ONLY.  Try as I might, I could not locate a single Windows XP driver.  This was later confirmed with an exchange of emails that netted this response:

"Thank you for contacting Acer America.

I apologize for the inconvenience that you have experienced. It is your choice to remove the Acer OEM operating system if you prefer however Acer's support is for the shipping OEM only. We have not tested non-Acer OEM or retail versions of Windows. Some drivers may be missing after the installation of a non-Acer OEM operating system. If this occurs, you may be able to locate the needed drivers by going to http://www.acerpanam.com under Drivers. From here, search for your model of computer. If the drivers you need are not provided there, or those offered do not resolve the problem, we do not have others available."

Respectfully,
Acer America
Online Technical Support

So there you have it.  It's Windows Vista or bust as far as Acer is concerned.  So much for this experiment.  The whole idea was to get Windows XP installed on a new, reliable box for the factory and it wasn't going to happen with this PC.

During a Bar-B-Que at our next door's neighbor, I managed to get a hold of Bert and we decided to just have me pack up the computer and get a refund at Office Depot the next day.

What a ginormous waste of time that was.  It seem like everything I do for Bert usually ends up like this.  Geeze.

A job for Rojas Inc.

Worked from home on this sunny Friday. 

With Bert gone to Vegas for the weekend, there will be no Scrabble played this weekend, so it's the perfect time for me to work on getting his server upgraded from Windows 98 (!!) to Windows XP.

So, with that in mind, I drove over to the factory, aiming to get there right around 1600 so as to be able to disconnect the server and take it with me and not impact daily operations very much.

I arrived right at the stroke of 1600 and after saying "hi" to Bert's crew, I disconnected the server and took it home to work on it later in the evening.  Now to see about what Bert really wants to do with it.

Another blow-up with BR

So.

Bert has once again flown off the handle and has decided to cancel a project we are working on.  This time it involved upgrading the Server at his factory with XP.

I came up with the excellent idea of exchanging emails with him, that detailed the specifics of whatever we happen to be working on.  This morning he was undecided as to which PC to use and so he called me up and changed his mind yet again.

When I had the audacity of clarifying with him that he was switching once again, he had a hernia, we hung up and he fired off two pissed-off emails at me, officially CANCELLING the Project.

Good.

I have enough shit in my life without him and his drama.

Christ.

S-L-E-E-P and Scrabble

SLEEP.

That is all I did this morning g and this afternoon, save for a quick trip to the Bakery and breakfast at PIggies.

Bert called me and woke me up at 1600 and was in utter disbelief that I had been sleeping all day.  After he called me, I roused myself out of bed and went in to my office to sit at Zeus to kill time until it was time to head to Asela's for dinner.

Dinner was great save for a bit of indigestion as I arrived at the Rojas residence.  After dinner, I drove up to Palos Verdes with Evan and we stopped at Seven-11 for some snacks.  Scrabble was OK, with a split of the 4 games being a repeat of the night before.

The mood at the table was, of course, set by Bert being a dick at some point or another.  Of course.

Fun Saturday

This morning I took a little time to go to the Sports Authority in Hawthorne to look at the Elliptical cardio machines.  They have a bunch of models, with some that have some neat features and that will accept an MP3 player as an entertainment source.

After checking out the Elliptical machines, I stopped by Denny's in El Segundo for some breakfast that was great. After breakfast I came home and just puttered around the house and my office until it was time to go to Bert's parent's house for dinner.

Dinner was fine and the atmosphere at the table was pretty good also.  Scrabble in PV was excellent, as I won both games, placing 3 bingos and scoring +450 points in the first game and then placing another bingo and some other high-scoring words to win the 2nd game by a healthy margin.

Nice!

Dinner at McCormicks and Scrabble in PV

This evening we met up with the Rojas for dinner at McCormick's & Schmicks seafood restaurant in El Segundo.  We had dinner reservations at 1815 and we arrived on time, but, typically, we had to wait for The Rojas to show up.   Thankfully, we only had to wait a few minutes since they were not running that late.

Dinner was pretty good and the service was very good.  Amazingly, even Bert found little to complain about.  The only real negative of the evening was the fact that after a tip, the bill came to an even $300.00

After dinner, I dropped the wife off at home and drove off to play Scrabble in PV, where the atmosphere was pleasant enough and I won one out of three games.