I forgot my password

I feel like such a dip, I forgot my password to my gmail account so I've been locked out of all of my classic mac related forum postings & emails.... whoops

Oh well, since the last post I did indeed find a job, in fact, it wasn't long after I posted that I got a job with a company called Qualxserv repairing IBM's. Yes, I know I'm on the dark side, at least professionally lol. They also do Apple warranty repairs, which might be a future possibility. I'm now working on my associates degree in computer information systems and as much as I hate the company, I'll be starting the process of becoming a MCSA soon. I'm glad I finally found a good job, but I want some more stability, benefits, and I dont really enjoy people screaming at me all day.

Geeky personal news of the month
I FINALLY got another Mac notebook, I also picked up an eMac for a steal but I searched hard to find a suitable iBook 14" it needs more memory, a bigger HDD, and a new keyboard, but hey... thats why I waited to find one so cheap. I'm going to tether it to my new blackberry (got a curve 8310 after I got this job, sold the other one on fleabay after using it a month for a profit... go me LOL) not much left to say... now I just need to remember my Gmail password :-P

Interesting Find, Cool new toy, and still no job.

Things are still pretty dry in the job-market, it's officially been a month since I closed my shop and as I go into another month of unemployment, tension is high. I did manage to find some money after I got my Mac collection out of storage and even managed to make a small addition to the collection. First, I found a copy of "The Dead Mac Scrolls" on half.com for about $7 shipped. This was an exceptional find since most of my classic macs that have issues are old enough to be in this book :-) Another find I made was a nice-looking Mac IIsi, one of my favorite 030 Macs, at a Salvation Army thrift store. Both the book and the IIsi are in great shape, only I have yet to test the IIsi, so I have no clue if it works. But hey, it's a good case if nothing else. I had to sell my Motorola L6 SLVR phone a few weeks ago, and while being without my cell phone was hard, it was worth it with what took the place of the L6, a BlackBerry 7290. Now I know technically speaking it was a step-backward, but now I have the complete "power-geek" setup. I still don't have the data plan on my account, and wont until I get a job, but I have been told I can still surf the internet using OperaLite or some similar browser. It's the only BlackBerry with bluetooth I could afford and even though I only got it yesterday I can say I'm hooked on it!

Not much to talk about.... but still stressed

Well I've started posting stuff on fleabay to help offset my debt from being out of work. Months ago I sold my MacBook in a plan to buy a black MacBook Core2 Duo but the cards didn't fall into place, so as far as fast macs go, I'm mac-less. I'm very hesitant to sell my Acer notebook because I know it will not fetch much even with upgraded memory, but because I dont want to gamble that I can use that money to push into buying another low-end MacBook, because I'd still be about $700 shy of my goal, and without any extra memory to toss in. If I sold all three of my remaining PC's (two Cel 3.0's, both with DVD-RW's and 250gb HD's and my Acer 3960) I may be able to raise enough money to get another MacBook. But in order to do that I need to buy a HUGE hard-drive to back all of my data up to, I'm talking about nearly a tera-byte. as I have other HD's in those machines. I feel bad about selling my MacBook, I'm such a Mac-fanatic and now I don't even have a recent enough computer to run Tiger, much less Leopard that comes out in a few days. I'm trying to fire up my old Macs in what I call "local storage" my storage building outside so I can catalog and check all of my vintage Macs in my collection. I also just opened a Flickr account so I can show off my collection, I know it's not much, but I've worked on it for years.

Opening Entry.... the stressed geek.

A little background information....

Since 1996 I've been repairing computers. That was before you could order pre-built kits out of catalogs and pass them off as hand-built computers. Most working techs have probably never had to set a clock multiplier. I also fell in love with Mac's that year, getting my first Mac a LCII which I used for many years. I've always preferred Macs over PC's, especially since I rarely play games on PC's and now that Apple has started using the Intel processors, Mac gaming has actually picked up. I don't have a problem saying stuff is crap... AMD's are shit, Dell's are trash... but that's not really news. I have a degree in PC Repair, A+ Certification, and I'm working on other Technical Certifications.

Me personally, I live in a rural toilet called Maiden, North Carolina. It's a typical trailer-park infested country hell-hole. People around here are ignorant and rude, which makes life generally unpleasant because these people are all you have to deal with at grocery stores, gas stations, so really it's no wonder I prefer to drive at least 20 miles away to do all shopping, and "pay at the pump" was a real blessing, so now I can buy gas without having to confuse someone by paying for $48 in gas with $50 (I have been told "you gave me too much" before!). Once my family situation is settled I'm actually leaving this area.

Life being unemployed does suck, every day I cannot find a steady job I come closer to losing the contents of my storage unit. Luckily I'm mostly out of debt, I only owe my grandparents about $3k from carrying cost of my business that I closed, not to mention what I owe the IRS from past mistakes of letting people pay me as contract labor. I get job offers every week, but it's all the same, they want me to basically give up my customer list and do on-site work, and have me make cold-calls for prospective customers. Why should I do that for $10/hr when i was doing that exact job for $75/hr?! Then they all want to pay me as contract, which is something I will not tolerate anymore. I would rather wait for a good job to come across that offers benefits and will pay me properly so I can finally address some of my health issues that are keeping me side-lined from taking a temporary job which is usually working on my feet in some sort of demeaning retail environment, pitching service plans and answering dumb questions by blithering idiots. I have more than one story which will be posted on this blog of the stupidity that can be seen working with the general public in this area.