Amazing Days
Oct. 21st, 2006 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogBlah blah still no power blah blah blah 8,900 out of 265,000 still out and we're among them blah blah blah computer's dead blah blah bl....
Enough.
It's all true, and damn it's annoying, but these past few days have brought out tons of the best even in the midst of some of the worst.
Thursday, for instance.
At about 3 p.m., my laptop arrived at its diagnostic center. It was almost 12 hours later that I finally arrived back at home, safe and with my miraculously saved laptop hard disk now residing, and apparently working, at the heart of a built-on-the-spot new, switchable between Windows XP and Linux, desktop PC.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, Damen und Herren, from what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless circuits, may I present a cultured, sophisticated, PC About Town!
Frank N. Puter.
I won't be able to shlep it with me from place to place anymore, but hell, I haven't needed to do that for months. The goal is for (not My Cousin) Vinny to find me a compatible laptop with a dead hard drive and put Frank's Windows brain (the one labeled "Abby Normal" on the outside) into it. Failing that, I'll just leave it the way it is and get a new laptop in the fullness of time. It even has cool shit the old laptop didn't have- DVD burning capability, far better anti-virus than that useless crap provided by AOL, and if I do make the switchover to the Linux mode, a whole Open Office suite which, I am promised by my mad scientist/certified Microsoft consultant, I will never want to go back to Windows again after using.
In exchange for his 10 hours of work and dedication and, yes, even the homemade lasagna he provided as my first meal in about 16 hours that night? I'm handling a court matter for his girlfriend next week, and for about four of the 10 hours I was there, I was deputized as his new phone tech support person. Crap, I was fixing programs for people over the phone I don't even use. It was an awesome display of dedication, intuitive thinking and cameraderie. And of course with no power, I still have no idea whether it'll even work. But I have faith, which makes most things possible.
----
Then there's work, or some semblance of it. I earned all of about 100 bucks this week and was able to do about a stitch and a half of actual production, but picked up two pieces of business at the end of the week which should cushion recent blows.
One cushion, purely financial: a nice and needed piece of business involving some heavy hitters in the construction field which, unlike many of my defendants, aren't likely to fold tents and not pay. The other, more of an emotional cushioning, from the things-could-be-worse area.
This particular client, sister of a longtime client, is at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
I'd never been into the place, though we're certainly familiar with both its work and its carcinogenic enemy. It tries so hard to be warm and welcoming to its patients and their families, but still, its specialty is what people of a certain age still refer to as "the Big C." I arrived just as the client was being checked on by her doctor, so I headed to the waiting room for a few minutes. There, I heard words being exchanged among already-grieving members of another waiting family.
"Don't take it too hard, Joe," said a younger woman to an older man. "She could be one of the lucky two percent."
I tried not to grimace at that, but then, I'm currently residing in the last 3½ percent of my utility's customers to still be powerless, so who am I to second-guess fate, much less faith?
----
We should be back on by tonight. When I left (again with Eleanor's computer, bless her) for Wifi land, there were trucks all around the already-delivered new utility pole. The power line on our eastern property line services the entire set of homes on the inside of the "island" formed by our street and two others, which makes fixing it both a priority and a problem (it's a 4,700 volt line, I think the guy said).
There are still clean clothes, there is wine, there's still some of Vinny's lasagna to thaw, and despite all the bitching, life is still good.
Enough.
It's all true, and damn it's annoying, but these past few days have brought out tons of the best even in the midst of some of the worst.
Thursday, for instance.
At about 3 p.m., my laptop arrived at its diagnostic center. It was almost 12 hours later that I finally arrived back at home, safe and with my miraculously saved laptop hard disk now residing, and apparently working, at the heart of a built-on-the-spot new, switchable between Windows XP and Linux, desktop PC.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, Damen und Herren, from what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless circuits, may I present a cultured, sophisticated, PC About Town!
Frank N. Puter.
I won't be able to shlep it with me from place to place anymore, but hell, I haven't needed to do that for months. The goal is for (not My Cousin) Vinny to find me a compatible laptop with a dead hard drive and put Frank's Windows brain (the one labeled "Abby Normal" on the outside) into it. Failing that, I'll just leave it the way it is and get a new laptop in the fullness of time. It even has cool shit the old laptop didn't have- DVD burning capability, far better anti-virus than that useless crap provided by AOL, and if I do make the switchover to the Linux mode, a whole Open Office suite which, I am promised by my mad scientist/certified Microsoft consultant, I will never want to go back to Windows again after using.
In exchange for his 10 hours of work and dedication and, yes, even the homemade lasagna he provided as my first meal in about 16 hours that night? I'm handling a court matter for his girlfriend next week, and for about four of the 10 hours I was there, I was deputized as his new phone tech support person. Crap, I was fixing programs for people over the phone I don't even use. It was an awesome display of dedication, intuitive thinking and cameraderie. And of course with no power, I still have no idea whether it'll even work. But I have faith, which makes most things possible.
----
Then there's work, or some semblance of it. I earned all of about 100 bucks this week and was able to do about a stitch and a half of actual production, but picked up two pieces of business at the end of the week which should cushion recent blows.
One cushion, purely financial: a nice and needed piece of business involving some heavy hitters in the construction field which, unlike many of my defendants, aren't likely to fold tents and not pay. The other, more of an emotional cushioning, from the things-could-be-worse area.
This particular client, sister of a longtime client, is at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
I'd never been into the place, though we're certainly familiar with both its work and its carcinogenic enemy. It tries so hard to be warm and welcoming to its patients and their families, but still, its specialty is what people of a certain age still refer to as "the Big C." I arrived just as the client was being checked on by her doctor, so I headed to the waiting room for a few minutes. There, I heard words being exchanged among already-grieving members of another waiting family.
"Don't take it too hard, Joe," said a younger woman to an older man. "She could be one of the lucky two percent."
I tried not to grimace at that, but then, I'm currently residing in the last 3½ percent of my utility's customers to still be powerless, so who am I to second-guess fate, much less faith?
----
We should be back on by tonight. When I left (again with Eleanor's computer, bless her) for Wifi land, there were trucks all around the already-delivered new utility pole. The power line on our eastern property line services the entire set of homes on the inside of the "island" formed by our street and two others, which makes fixing it both a priority and a problem (it's a 4,700 volt line, I think the guy said).
There are still clean clothes, there is wine, there's still some of Vinny's lasagna to thaw, and despite all the bitching, life is still good.