This morning I attempted putting a wireless card into the server hosting the website, so that I could turn off some of my routing hardware (specifically, the Magnum ST80 hub and CompUSA switch) while I'm out of the house. For whatever reason, the machine kept BSODing on startup, which is a development I haven't experienced involving my wireless cards (Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE PCMCIA cards) since I quit using Windows 98. I pulled the card out, and managed to take part of the bay door with it. I didn't have time to tweezer out the third or so of the door that was now lodged in the PCMCIA bay, so as a result the site was down until I got home (from about 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM EST). I apologize.
My friend needed his Gericom Hummer laptop back, so I no longer have a power cord for my scanner server and reverted back to my standalone JetDirect EX Plus3 print server. I'm trying to figure out how to connect this one to the DC power supply I'd built earlier: though it uses a standard 12-volt adapter, I don't have a spare cable that uses the same power pin arrangement, and I'd rather not hack off the cord to the AC adapter if I don't need to. If I get some time and a correctly-sized Torx screwdriver, I may open up the print server and solder in a spare power cord.
I'm now working part-time after school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for two hours each day. As much as I enjoy it, on-call PC repair simply doesn't bring in enough money. I'm now working for minimum wage ($8/hour in this state), which translates to a bit over $2000 a year once holidays and taxes are factored in. In retrospect, one of the worst decisions I'd made with PC repair is not charging people I know directly for service unless they insisted on paying me. That said, I'd previously been taking in a few hundred per year, paid sporadically, so this is an improvement.
On the downside, this leaves me with virtually no free time. I'll be out of the house on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 6:30AM to 6PM, and from 6:30AM to 4:30PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. During the month of February I'll additionally be taking SAT preparation courses on Saturdays from 7AM to 1PM. Factor in three hours of homework per day, long-running assignments, and study time, and it seems that I'll have roughly an hour and a half per weekday and about half of Saturday for everything that's not school or work.
I suppose it's a taste of the real world, well in advance.