Speaking of computers... my luck with them has been worse then scratchers (even though I haven't been buying scratchers the last few weeks)
My uncle works for a car dealership, and the handheld diagnostic scan tools they use interface with the laptop. He calls me up because his
machine was running slow. Claims he will be working on a car and all of a sudden a bass fishing video will pop up on the screen. The next
day he said he was working on a car and a video came on with a guy talking about how he lost his daughter. So the "computer guy" there
had it two days and couldn't find anything wrong. They took it to a local shop, that had it 3 days and basically did nothing. Sent it back
saying it was working fine. My uncle told the guy as he was dropping it off that it couldn't be fine because it takes five min to open up
internet explorer.
So he asks me if I would take a look. I spend an entire day doing scans with the usual tools, checking drive health, checking hardware
before I notice that theres a process running called browser.exe with a description of google chrome. Odd since chrome isn't installed.
This process also hogs like all of the available CPU. So I do a few more scans, and run some rootkit utilities. Turns out there are several
rootkits installed, which after they were wiped out the normal scanners started finding things. Took me 10+ hours all in to fix it, but he
told me after he got it back that it ran better than it ever had. The punchline of this story -- the dealership he works for won't pay me
because I'm not "a business". Even the though one they did take it too didn't do crap.
A few months ago someone brought me a laptop with a dead screen. Turns out the cable came loose on the board side, but required me
to rip it pretty far apart to get at it. I reseat the cable, and test to make sure the screen works well. I have about an hour and a half in it
at this point. I only charge $60 for the repair, and it's a decent machine. I've had it nearly 4 months now because she "doesn't have the
money" although I know better than that. It is what it is I guess. I'll keep ahold of it and hope she eventually does pay.
On the scratching side, I've been tempted to play. I might start trying a little each week in october.