I'm trying to post more regularly these days so I'm falling back on a tool I haven't used for more than a year - Imagination Prompt Generator.  It's a great way to come up with an interesting topic to type about without needing something specific to say - kinda like creative writing assignments back in high school!

It's hard to pin down the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me - there have been a lot of nice things!  I'm not even sure I could narrow it down to the nicest thing anyone's done for me this year... so I'm going to opt for the nicest thing anyone's done for me this week (bearing in mind that it's only Tuesday!)...

Jeremy started out as a friend of a friend who happens to know a lot about computers.  I've got a laptop that I've had for a few years and it's still running just fine but it's not been running at it's peak for quite awhile, so he was recruited to help me out.  Bear in mind, prior to his helping me with my laptop, our entire relationship was based on two short meals...

Anyway, Jeremy works nights so I went to his home a couple weeks ago at about 8:00 in the morning (after he had just finished working an overnight shift) - the plan was that he was going to install some memory and upgrade my operating system... we both figured it would be a couple of hours, tops.  Plans changed though when he discovered that my laptop didn't have enough space to run an updated operating system... oh well, we could still back it up and install some memory, right?  The memory was installed but when the laptop was restarted, it required a force shut down.  What's more, when Jeremy tested the computer to see what might be the problem, we discovered it had a damaged hard drive.  Fortunately, we figured all of this out by 8:00 - TWELVE HOURS LATER...

Fast forward two weeks and I've purchased a new hard drive.  I went to Jeremy's again at 8:00 in the morning (after he had just finished working another overnight shift) with the goal that he would simply install a new hard drive and show me how to back up my laptop effectively.  Again, a couple of hours... tops.

The hard drive swap was flawless and he removed the memory that was causing the forced shut downs (we were flying along) and he even upgraded the operating system (possible now that the hard drive was bigger)!  We went to back the computer up and everything came to a screeching halt!

It seems the first time you back up a hard drive it takes a long time because it has to be partitioned.  That didn't mean a lot to me except that we had time to go get lunch and come back - hopefully it would be done by the time we returned.

... it was 8:00 before I left his house - another TWELVE HOUR DAY!

Jeremy's work on my computer would have to qualify as the nicest thing anyone's done for me this week as he worked for hours with no sleep and few complaints - and the only thing he charged me was the cost of lunch (which he didn't even ask for!)... and in the end I have a more pimped-out laptop and a new friend.  I totally got the sweet end of this deal!

Thanks, Jeremy!