--and some days not so much.

Sometimes it happens in the same day!

Yesterday was one of those days--

First thing I did when I hit the basement was find out my old Trusty E-server XP was dying. This machine does nothing but steer jobs to FIVE of my machines. So it DOES need to work. But I was getting a "hal.dll file missing or corrupted" error. After 3-4 hours of trying to figure out how to copy a new file to the system32 folder via the original XP disk (yeah, I still have it) and Recovery Console, it became clear the error was just a symptom of total drive failure. When your BIOS lists it as a 'Generic Hard Drive', it's bad. No problem, I have about a dozen good drives, I find a 60gig drive with 'good' written on it, and proceed to install XP on it. Because it was the original disk, I had no driver issues-- except with all the extra ports I stuck in it. And the '30 days to activate Windows!' issue, which took about an hour to 'fix'. Then another hour or two of finding the right disks and figuring out the correct procedure to load the drivers. Then another hour figuring out which ports were which, as I had to do that thru the network... By 8:45 last night I finally had things nearly back to normal.
--that was the 'not so much' part..

So at 9pm I finally start actually WORKING. I was exactly half way thru a $2700 job I'd promised out by this morning, and I needed to make up a few ski lift operator panels to keep my best customer happy. The big job was fiber laser work, I had the Triumph doing part of it, and my 'ebay2' machine doing part. My IS7000 that I cut panels with is right between them. Nice little cul-de-sac of machinery

By 1:30 am I had 4 op panels complete, $100 each less $18 each material cost, and the balance of my big job done, which was their parts. I cleared $1678 in 4-1/2 hours, turning a crap day into a smilie face day... Doesn't happen often, but those days when you can make lawyer money sure are nice!

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-- and the main reason for sharing this story, is I'm hoping to spark a little conversation on the forum! Been so slow lately it's scary....