This is just a rehash of my latest side-job. I thought it was interesting, but I’m sure the following story won’t have much entertainment value to many others.

There’s a person I’ve met through work that needed some work done on her computer.  We were having a really hard time trying to find a good time for me to come over & work on her computer. We started trying to set a time back in September… She’d cancel a few times, then I’d have a conflict pop up… Her house caught fire & she got burnt pretty badly & wasn’t too worried about it for a while. (Crazy stuff, I’m telling you!)

Anyhow, she’s feeling better & bought a computer from me to replace the old one because it was just causing her so much trouble. She sent her niece to come & pick up the computer from me & told me she’d need some help transferring data from her old PC to the new one.

She said she thinks it’s Windows 95 or 98, but really isn’t sure. I pack my briefcase with the usual assortment of IDE-USB adapter, USB hard drive, multi-tool, etc… I walk out thinking I’ll just pull the files off on the the USB drive & put them into the other PC, no problem.

The only worries I had were that she said she’s using Quicken to manage multiple accounts and she’s trying to bring that data into the newest version. I’m not an accountant & I have learned to hate accounting concepts (from working with implementing Epicor’s ERP software @ work), but I can figure most things out when it comes to software & computers. I was just hoping Quicken could easily import data from it’s older versions.

Anyhow, I get there & see the computer case is OLD… By old, I mean it didn’t originally come with a CD-ROM drive… It still had a 5-1/4″ Floppy drive in it! When she turned it on it booted up to a C:> prompt (DOS). I thought… OK… I’m good with the DOS Prompt… I told her to drive & show me what she knew & needed & I’d take it from there. (She is the type that wants to know everything about what’s going on, so I figured I’d make sure to let her show me around so she didn’t feel like I was the rude IT guy telling her to get out of the way).

Anyhow, she types “win” and up pops the Windows 3.1 logo… Woh! I laughed out loud & told her this definitely predates Windows 95 & that this was before I even started messing with Windows PCs. She got a kick out of that too.

It looked like the memory was starting to fail because it was complaining that there wasn’t enough memory to open Quicken and there was nothing else open at the time. Instead of struggling with the old machine, I went ahead & took her 2GB drive from the old PC & copied all 95MB of it’s contents into a folder on her new computer…  Wow… 95MB… A complete install of Windows, Quicken, and her Quicken data dating 1994 to 2008.

Well, I set everything up, imported her old Quicken Data into her new setup and she had a ton of basic computing questions (which is always fun because it makes me look like a genius! hehe… No ego boost there). She told me her work computer is just as old if not older than the one here at her house and she’ll need me to work my magic there too.

If only I could find a steady stream of people who need this kind of help, I could start working for myself!

Got any ideas?

Yesterday was no fun… Taven stayed the night at Granny & Bakkaw’s with Winter & apparently he woke up half a dozen times that night… Then he was mad at us when we got there, so it took a while for him to warm back up to us. He didn’t want to take a nap that afternoon either… I figured that was because he thought we wouldn’t be there when he woke up. So he ended up throwing all kinds of tantrums because he was mad at us, but he really wanted us around. oy…

Then we went to the Hodge house & since Taven hadn’t had a nap he was a all over the place… Poor child didn’t know what to do with himself. Bradey also didn’t want to go down for a nap. Then we ended up eating dinner an hour after we expected, so Melisa was having a hard time with that, and I was just sneezing my head off (dog allergies) so I was miserable.

Of course no trip to the Hodge house is complete without some sort of confrontation, so Melisa decided to try & get some things off her chest with her parents when we were getting things ready to go… That didn’t go over so well…

Last night, I was in the kitchen at about 9:30PM and all of a sudden I hear one of the boys’ bedroom doors close… Bradey went to bed at 7:20-ish and Taven was put down about 9:15. I flip on the hall light & open up Taven’s door to see him flipping over the crib rail into his crib. That little stinker! He’s done this at nap time before, but this was the first time he’s done this at bed time.

Welp, we put together his Big-Boy-Bed today (no point in a crib if he won’t stay in it). He was all excited & didn’t take a nap. No amount of threatenings or spankings would keep him in that bed. At bed time it was the same story for almost an hour. We tried the above mentioned approach, then the silently tucking him back in (over & over), then went back to the spankings because the silently getting him back to bed became a game for him (how fast can I jump back in bed before they get to me).

Finally we decided that if we can’t hear him or see him from the living room, we’d leave him alone. That was about the time he was getting really tired, because we only heard his door shut one more time after that & I told him to go to bed (from the kitchen) & I think he finally passed out after that. I did check on him before going to bed & he was wrapped up in the sheets passed out cold (thank God!)

What a way to start the new year.