#72

Well, I am back in the great 48 today. I survived four days of terror and misinformation and I hope I came out on top. This was probably the most difficult installation/setup I have ever done. ***Warning I am about to whine and complain about my stressful week in Puerto Rico*** First, my companies software requires QuickBooks(QB) to run. Because of this all of our customers have to be running QB. Well, this new marina was a new installation and they will be transferring all of their info, by hand, into the system. Well, Intuit,the company that makes QB, decided to screw me and not send my the installation codes inorder to install this important software. So, I get there and I install our software and wait for the codes. Oh wait, when they said they were shipping them to us over night last Friday, what they really meant was that they were going to set the box on a table and do jack. That is ok though, because we were able to get a new set of codes over the phone and I was able to have everything installed by the end of day one. On Day two I discovered that QB now has a brand spanking new database manager that needs to be installed to make everything work properly. Well, no one told me. Oh yeah, and the installation did not run properly, so I had to hack around in the admin tools to fix the bad install. The second hurdle of day two was the virus software NOD32, which is a very impressive virus software, but it kills the communication that QB does. Again after several hours on the phone with Intuit we finally got it working. Day 3, we start some training. I go through the property managment side of things and everything kinda work ok, except now our software will not open up on all of the workstations. Fantastic. So I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure that out. Several hours on the phone with intuit later, the office assitant tells me that there is an update for QB. Ok, this is the newest version(7.0, as in 2007) and this is actually the 3rd update so far. Wow, R&D people, R&D. well, we get that all worked out and on the fourth day I sat down with two of the people and we went through and answered their questions and trained as much as I could***Thus ends my stressful week*** After we were done in the office last night, we went out to eat. The first place we tried was a little Mexican restaurant downtown. Well, that restaurant no longer serves food. That is ok, and it does not stop us from getting our drink on. Well, ok I guess it was on, but we did have a margarita. Then we headed over to another mexican restaurant and ate some seriously good food and had another margarita, but I went with the strawberry variaty. Let it be know, that I do not typically drink, but there is just something about being in a foreign country and when I am not in America is the only time I have ever really had a drink, so these margaritas were more then enough to get me giddy. Then back to the room to call the wife, go to bed, wake up, eat leftover mexican food and head home. Except my plane flight was not scheduled for today, but for tomorrow. Blessedly, I was able to change my first flight time to today for no extra fee. My other three flights were scheduled for today, so it was a good thing that I was able to change it. For future reference the Orlando airport has free wireless that if full access, you do not get this in Little Rock, Atlanta, or Cinncinati, which are three airports I frequent. If I can remember I will post some pictures from my trip. Mostly of my planes, I think my next flight is a 747 or something, it has seven seats across and is probly the largest plane I have been on. Atleast until my next trip(Dominic Republic???) or our trip to France in the spring. Man, I really am blessed. Oh yeah, I think I am going to start learning Spanish. The reason for this is the fact that I feel like I am suppose to speak spanish. I will try to expain. When in spanish speaking countries I pick up a couple of the common words, Buinos Dias, Hola, Como esta, things like that. The problem comes when I try to use them, once I get to the end of the words I know, there is nothing and it is a pretty sick feeling to want to say something but have no words and no way to make up words(which I do ALOT). Anyway, I am going to try to watch a movie with sub-titles, I think my laptop speakers went out on me. Grrrrr. Later.