Posts Tagged ‘life is good’

Unemployment & plan B update

Posted: December 11, 2008 by datechguy in employment, Hiwired, tech
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Well no bites yet on the e-bay stuff for tech support, I’ll likely re-list the virus cleaning for 7 days instead of 3. I was hoping to avoid the chance of anything going beyond my two week trial of LogMeIn Rescue without at least one sale, but it looks like I’m going to have to make a decision on that yearly license before I have any takers.

Logic says it will take a long time to actually build anything since the customer base that used us at HiWired and Ctrl-Center has no reason to find me at eBay or here for that matter. Heck the readers of the old blog don’t know where I am either since it disappeared with everything else rather abruptly. I did back it up after all it was 3+ years of blogging but it really doesn’t belong to me so I can’t really just re-post it. It’s going to take time. I shouldn’t expect to replace the old paycheck in a few days.

I really need to add a networking service and a printer install service, my problem is you never know with networking particularly when done remotely so the price point is an issue. I’ll likely try adding it in the next day or so with the ice storm coming.

On the bright side I do have a job interview on Monday at a college near Boston, I don’t know what will come of it but we will see. The stuff I’ve been seeing on monster is in my old pay range or slightly above but not of course working from home as I was doing before so there is the price of driving 5 days a week vs 1.

With unemployment when it starts coming I’ll be getting 64% of my base 40 hour check with the child allowance before deductions. According to my math with some adroit budgeting we can get by without going into a hole but without getting ahead. That will give me time to either find a job that pays something near what I was making or give the eBay thing a go. Most of my friends and former co-workers seem to think I can do it. I think it will work but it is just a question of time. So I guess I’ll likely buy that LogMeIn license for the year and see what becomes of it.

Hey its already coming in handy tonight, a friend of mine is having a printer issue and I’ll be able to have her sign in remotely to resolve it once she gets home. What what I’m hearing it might just be a wrong default device. If not then I can use the practice.

FYI if your printer ever doesn’t print without erroring out go to the printers area in Control Panel and look to see what device has the check mark. If your printer doesn’t have a check next to it then your system has a different default printer. Right click on the printer you want to print to and set it as the default.

Its a simple fix and will save you a headache. Next week it might save you an eBay bid.

Manheim Steamroller in Lowell thoughts

Posted: December 8, 2008 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Tight times or no da wife decided to give take me to see Mannheim Steamroller in Lowell Mass. My impressions follow:

The Memorial auditorium in Lowell is a great place to watch a concert, we had the “nosebleed” seats literally with our backs to the back wall and they were great for the concert its like watching a game at Fenway without breaking the bank.

Before the concert began the guy in charge of the place plugged gift cards for the place, and then very foolishly wished everyone a “happy holiday” (arbor day perhaps?) Considering the group and the concert and the demographics of the audience I can’t think of anything he could have said that would retard sales to this crowd more.

For some unknown reason the air conditioning was on in the place during the first act. It was freezing so we kept our winter coats , muffs, hats and scarfs on. Somebody took care of it at halftime.

They had a list of war dead in the auditorium, the amount of Civil war deaths from a city the size of Lowell was staggering to see as was the long list of Lowell men who apparently died on the USS Maine in 1898.

The list of 8 medal of honor winners was kinda large too.

I never thought I would see a bust of Gen Ben Butler in a place of high honor, he’s not a guy in history that you think of that way.

In the packed auditorium I noticed something right away:

There was nobody with a visible Tattoo.

There was nobody with a visible piercing.

There was nobody with any kind of shirt with a loud slogan

I didn’t see a single man with an earring

Nobody had hair dyed odd colors or with weird cuts

It has been decades since i saw a crowd composed of totally normal and average people. I suspect that the fact that Steamroller’s music gets a lot of it publicity from the Rush Limbaugh show had something to do with it. It was so striking I kept my eye’s open to see if I could find anyone odd during intermission and when we left. Other than a pair of really odd looking silver boots on a lady not a thing.

If you have heard cd’s and I have several it can’t compare to the visuals of the lights and film used in the performance. It is really something to see. The wife thought the cd’s were ok but decided the performance made her appreciate the Cd’s much more. She thought it was awesome.

It is a shame that the founder Davis is laid up, the idea of dividing the group into two, adding members and splitting them into east and west coast tours is great for the audience to expand the number of people who can see it, but I think I would have liked to see the original group at least once.

The videos and film were really classy. Apparently in larger stadiums they have live dancers and performers either instead of and in addition to the film. I find myself wanting to see it in that setting as well.

It never struck me but when they talked about medieval music and how many carols came from it their music does sound like it comes straight out of the 12-14th century sometimes.

I would really like to be able to buy tickets for an event for the actual face value of the tickets.

I never get sick of Christmas music, if the PC crowd manages to chase the word Christmas out of every other venue the music will keep it alive.

Kudos and things to be thankful for

Posted: December 5, 2008 by datechguy in employment
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I’m been a tad depressing (well other than this post) but I do want to acknowledge a few things:

First of all when a friend of mine heard about our situation he insisted on having us over for thanksgiving. It was in incredible Thanksgiving and fun both socially and in terms of food, (but I was unable to get his CD drives to work, did share out the drive on the 2nd machine the next day as a temp work around.)

Second of all I rent out an apartment to a friend of mine. Been his landlord for 17 years. Every Christmas we discount his rent as a gift. When he showed up on at the house to pay the rent is insisted on paying the full amount , wouldn’t take no for an answer.

That’s just two examples there have been others as well, its nice to know your friends have your back when you need it.

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