Rantings of a Queer Pagan

I must quash this rebellion or I shall go insane!

The following is a true story, though fragmented and probably missing a bunch of stuff:

Due to the events of the last three weeks I've come under the impression that anything with a microchip in it has declared war on me. This is an odd sensation, I've been known to walk into a customers site and seemingly (and occasionally literally) solve a problem with their computer equipment without doing a thing. Sometimes my mere presence is enough.

Not this month. No, this month is the month of Complete Technological Meltdown. It all started one day when I decided I would double the ram in my motherboard. OOPS, a little too much pressure (I assume, but don't see how) and now instead of going from one to 3 GB of ram, my computer will only recognize 256mb. Frick. Then the fans start acting up, the processor fan thumps and the graphic card fan things it's a drill. Double frick. No problem, I can deal, it's time for a bit of a hardware upgrade anyway. I have a new computer still boxed in the office that I bought for a customer a few months ago that he ended up refusing (asshole). So, I figure I can handle this. I go to prep the new machine. It will only accept 512mb of ram in one particular bank (out of two) and it has to be a certain kind. And it will only accept one hard drive. No graphics card or other extras thanks. Oh, and plugging a floppy into the board to update the firm (which chokes) causes the screen to start refreshing at 85hz. Not good as I have an lcd which prefers 65hz. This is how the rebellion started.

I give up and get ready to go to bed, with two computers down I decided to check my palm pilot for tomorrows’ appointments, except, it decided to drain it's battery and needs a reinstall off the pc. Great. Fuck you all. I'm going to bed.

I wake up in the morning and power on the old machine (the one that will only recognize the 256mb card) and try to get online to price out hardware. No can do, no internet access. Check the modem, seems, fine, call Shaw Cable to find out what's up. Sorry, phones are down. I look at the voip gateways and they’re flashing away like everything is hunky-dory. Pick up my new Treo, hit the power button, it burps and resets. I haven't even gone pee yet. This is not going good. I go to the washroom, the toilet chain is broken. The world hates me I decide. I crawl back into bed.

I emerge a few hours later and contact Gigabyte tech support (the MOBO vendor of the new machine), they're preparing for Chinese new year and won't get back to me until the 25th. I try to get my internet working, Shaw doesn't have a clue, but wait, I’m a Primus Voip customer?! Perfect, they did a firmware update last night that knocked out half their network and locked up all their customers cable modems, you have to call them to get instructions on how to fix the problem. Uh, sorry Miss, no phones... Oh, well go to their website. Um... okay. I reset the modem, unplug the voip gateways (I have three voip lines) and plug my laptop into the switch. Nothing. Hm... oh, looky, my switch is fried. Port 2 (the port the Primus ATA's were on) is permanently stuck on and blocking all traffic. Grrrreat. Swap that out with an old hub after spending an hour looking for it's power cord. Oh, and the router reset too, won't accept any connections, needs a hard reset and to be programmed. Two hours later, I'm back online, but still no phones.

Okay, fine. I'm too broke right now to just up and buy a whole new PC, mostly cause I dropped a tonne of money on a new Treo 680 and a whole bunch of software for it. I decide to salvage what I can and determine I need some thermal grease, two new motherboards and a couple of fans. When I return I go on salvage duty dissecting the two uncooperative machines so I can rebuild them and give Tavish my old(ish) machine (an upgrade from his old Compaq) and keep the AMD 64 that my customer bailed on. I get started and the os chokes on installation. Figure out it's not detecting the sata drives properly, fix that. Hard drive starts rattling. Frick. Swap that out with a new one. Get XP 64 installed and discover (of course) that it won't run some of my software. It has a thing against 16bit software, even if they're just installers or drivers. Okay, no problem, wipe it out and reinstall XP 32. Can't, customer calls. She's got a big presentation tomorrow and needs emergency onsite recovery done. It's 8 pm and she's an hour out of town. YAY!

Next afternoon I resume my quest for a working PC. Everything throws a fit, nothing works properly. Drivers won't install. Updated drivers won't install. Oh, swap the cards, now it works, but now my cameras install (one of which has gone awol) and the printers think this is fun and won't accept their drivers either. One scanner does, one doesn't. I'm a mess in cable and realizing I have way too much shit. Try getting DVD burner in case. Case designed wired, require 8 screws and 8 tabs to get front panel off just to remove 1 drive guard. Case draws blood while I try to figure this out. I don't care, my fingers bleeding I wrestle with it. I win. Little bit of blood smeared on the chassis. I leave it there and put the cover back on. It just feels right.

Get one computer up and running (80%) and start setting it up to access my data, install Office and do a Windows update. Internet dies. Cat chews through cat-5. *Sigh* Go to Memory Express buy some more stuff (purple cat-5 yay!) and away we go. Phones still down. Build Tavish’s computer. No hassle. Set up computers, network laser printer, go to bed.

Next days, fans squealing, take apart machines, fix fans, everything okay. Backup software insists on staying in recover mode, and after 20 minutes of telling it no, don't restore over my files it finally listens. Phones still down.

Login to Primus website, read instructions to fix Voip gateways, they fail. Check the forums, yep, failed for everyone else. Could be a 4 hour wait on the cell if I'm brave enough. A little digging someone finds an little known server with the new firmware... 10 minutes later, phone back online. Pick up phone to test dial tone. Treo resets for no reason... must feel abandoned.

Friday the 23 comes around, things seem to be going good, I can relax this weekend. Nope, another client needs emergency data recovery and laptop rebuilt. Takes 27 hours in total. Finish today, Sunday afternoon, figure I can relax and enjoy myself. Except, my domain name registrar is imploding. My client’s domains and mine (around 40) are being held hostage due to a now terminated CEO who's messing with the backend and locked the whole company out. I spend next 4 hours trying to move my domains out, get 80% of them out safely, other 20% will have to wait until business tomorrow. In the last three weeks I’ve had to reinstall every piece of software I own and replace every piece of hardware except the laptop and router.

I go to check e-mail. Router fries itself.

Fuck it. I should've stuck to delivering pizzas. I'm going to bed.

posted by Kasper @ 22:37