Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

I can't believe that a month (plus) has gone by since my last post. It's not like I haven't done any computer work, actually, it's the opposite - I have been too busy to jot down the details of my daily computer related adventures.

Today I was hired to transfer settings and data from an old laptop to a new one, install a new printer, set up an Internet connection and give some basic tutorials. I spent five hours in a beautiful home working with with two Dell laptops. Personally, I don't know why people go with Dell but, then again, they are cheap! My first step was to check the older Dell for viruses and spyware so that when I transfered files to the new computer there wouldn't be a risk of infection. I scanned with the usual software but only found tracking cookies. I couldn't believe it; here was this old laptop running Windows XP, no firewall, no antivirus protection, no spyware protection and Windows wasn't updated - and no problems? Honestly, it was nice to see. I was glad to be able to work with two clean machines.

My plan of action was to use a USB data-transfer cable and software to make the migration. I installed the software (PC Relocator - by Alohabob, which was given to me by a neighbor) on both machines, plugged in the USB cable and ran the software to set up the migration process (there are other steps involved but I figured that I would save you some reading time). The cable was recognized by both computers but when I ran the application on the old computer it got to a certain point and the program stopped functioning. I tried updating the software but that didn't work. I reinstalled, double checked all the settings and after about an hour I decided that I should go another route. I found a thumb drive in the new Dell laptop box and realized that this was my solution. (The old laptop didn't have a floppy drive nor a CD burner.) First I configured the DSL connection. Secondly, I configured her email client (Outlook Express) and began searching her computer for files that she might want to keep. To my surprise, all of her data fit on the 256 MB thumbdrive! I was glad that PC Relocator did not work. In my experience using PC Relocator I found that there is a bunch of useless (pardon my lack of vocabulary) crap that also gets transfered as well as those files and applications that the client needs.

All went well. The printer installed flawlessly, XP detected the Internet connection with ease, I gladly answered many questions, gave some advice (ex: install Picasa 2 - www.picasa.com (she is into photography and Picasa 2 is a wonderful application for organizing (amoungst other things) photos) and Firefox - www.mozilla.org) and was on my way back to West Bolton.

What else have I done lately? I was hired to install PCs for Amerigas. I created some PDFs for a client using Adobe PageMaker. My task was to duplicate some existing documents (that were saved as image files) in PageMaker and export them to PDF format. I shot and edited digital video for a construction company that is looking to create online tutorials (I will post a link when it all comes together.) I updated this homepage www.soho2go.com and created this page www.soho2go.com/pago2goda.html. The catering website I was working on has stopped in its tracks. I am eager to go on but the client has other priorieties. I have been taking photographs of food and manipulating them in Photoshop for this company www.soea.com, although you won't find any samples of my orignal photographs on the site itself. They will be used for internal instruction manuals and maybe some marketing projects. Scattered throughout these projects I have been making house calls removing viruses, spyware and adware.

These are just a few examples of the exciting work that a computer repair techician can experience in a months worth of time! Aren't you glad you read this?