so, i'm back up in my primary typing environment, and where were we?

i did not get paid last night, so i didn't blow the opportunity to get tickets and stuff. and, i am trying to save on the electrical...

i just lost 24 hours, though. what happened?

well, i stopped around 17:00 to take a nap due to a migraine. it was getting to the point that i couldn't see; i didn't have the choice, i had to stop. this is rare, but it's become a known issue for me since moving to windsor (and i'm sure it's the pollution). this was after having really been up all night the day before, so, whatever the primary cause was, i'm sure the lack of sleep wasn't helping.

i got up a little after 19:00 and the power in half the building was out, but i was able to connect to the internet by plugging the power bar for the modem & router into the stove (despite the stove not working). i also plugged the fridge into the stove. it's the end of the month, but the eggs and bread and cheese and salami i've got left in there seem to be ok.

i tried to focus, but the headache was too much, and i took a shower instead. then, i spent some time thinking about the electrical.

this was good until about 23:30, when the power went out entirely, taking everything - including the fridge - with it. so, i napped until it came back on around 1:00.

i noticed that the battery wasn't charging. so, i took it out and rebooted and the thing wouldn't get a video out through the port. i did some testing with the pc, and concluded the drive was fine. did the surge fry the battery? i spent the next several hours fighting with this.

what fixed it?

i don't know, but i think it was power related.

by close to 7:00, which was bed time, i'd decided that i was probably dealing with some combo ram/power issue. i had managed to get the thing to boot, but it was by mashing buttons on an imaginary pause screen that i didn't understand - and could never experience, because the backlight is burnt out. so, it was kind of like operating on faith, and i don't like doing that.

before i went to sleep, i took everything out of the back panel of the machine - hard drive, battery, ram, cmos, wireless - and just let it sit until i woke up. i think it was about 15:00 when i got up, indicating i slept well, but there wasn't a reprogrammed clock in the apartment to check the time for until i could get the machine back up. well, i could have launched the chromebook. i didn't.

but, i started slowly putting the machine back together and a problem didn't present itself - it just worked.

if all of the hardware is actually fine, could i have fucked something up in the registry? if i did, i didn't actually undo it.

i think the thing just got zapped and needed some time to balance out into equilibrium - to lose it's charge, to drain it's capacitors, to become one with the environment around it. electricity is inherently holistic, actually. and, large amounts of physics and chemistry are intrinsically about trying to find that balance....

this is what i thought the problem with the chromebook was, and what i did to try to fix it, but it didn't work - if there was some excess charge in the electrical components then that charge needed to be pushed out or otherwise just dissipate before the components would work properly again. and, while i wish there was a better answer, there doesn't appear to be one.

the battery is back to charging again, too.

so, what am i doing now? well, as before, i have to clean up last night's mess. then, i need to finish the last part of the application, which is piecing together emails between myself and the various police organizations. that's what i was doing last night before i stopped...

i haven't updated the vlog in a while either, and that's what the next part is for:

- slept all night wednesday
- was up early thursday morning. smoked. got info on po box from money mart. went home. ate. vegged. smoked a second time. slept very quickly.
- was up (very) early friday morning. smoked the last of it. came home. slept all day.
- tried to wake myself up with large amounts of fruit on saturday, but still slept.
- finished the form 10 on sunday. got some more fruit.
- had trouble getting started on monday, but got my head around the process, and did the concert look ahead over the evening.
- i got started more seriously on tuesday.
- i got mostly done on wednesday.
- and, now i've slept all day thursday - but am confident i'll be done in the morning.

yeah. that seemed to get stuck on the login page, actually, and if there's a power problem, it's on the whole side of the device.....

i'm going to swap a few power settings, change the time, etc.

wait.

i seemed to need to unplug the video and plug it back in. is that it? let's try another reboot...

but, i mean...

i don't want to use my brain at work at all. if i have to go to work, i just want to go in and do something stupid and go home and read and think by myself.

i'd rather be a dishwasher than a lawyer or a computer scientist or a mathematician.

it's not booting. ugh. i'm going to see if i can figure out how to change the cmos in a laptop, because i've never done that before.

broadly speaking, i have very little interest in computer science as a topic.

i did it because i was a kid, and when you're a kid, you do what you're told.

but, my disinterest is why i avoided it for ten years, and dropped out a half credit before finishing it, in the end.

my degree is in mathematics, not computer science.

i would be miserable working in the field - that's why i switched into law, because i knew i'd be happier in that field.

well....

i don't completely understand how i got the thing to boot, but i did.

albeit dated to jan 1, 2001.

i suspect i reset something, but i don't know where or how. i've been kind of smashing buttons, looking at lights, until it worked.

i disconnected the wireless and took out some of the ram, but i don't think that's it.

i may need to swap the bios chip. or, it may be that virus, again.

but, i've pretty much concluded that i don't have time to concern myself with this for right now.

and, i went to try and reboot and it didn't work again, indicating that whatever the magic keys were were important...

what if that machine is down for a while? i have no intention of moving to the chromebook - i just don't want to, i want to use windows as the gateway. and, the pcs are not allowed on the internet, because it's not safe. clearly.

so, i dunno.

i don't have the cash to buy a new windows laptop, right now. 

i wanted to replace the board in the newer laptop and use it for editing. i don't know if i can even get it to work.

and, i've mused about it, but i'm not going to pretend i can get the 90s laptop to work for this task.

i may have to use the windows machines at the library, i guess. 

i just have no interest in doing this in anything but word.

but, i mean...

word 2003 is probably the best word processor of all time, too.

being rich doesn't mean you're smart. and, my experience is usually kind of the opposite.

so, macs are for rich people, but they're also kind of for dumb people, too.

the blunt reality is that macs are for rich people.

i'm poor. i use word.

i can convert it to pdf in a printer, but i don't have the software to create pdf files natively, except through using crappy software in the cloud.

i don't know what i did this time, but i think it's stuck on a screen.

the power went out completely around 11:30 and came back a bit before 1:00. i noticed that the battery wasn't charging, so i thought maybe something got stuck and i could drain the capacitor....

the machine rebooted a few times just fine, but wouldn't come back after a few tries.

the drive is fine - i can load it in the pc. but, the laptop just won't boot. like, at all. and i don't actually really know where to begin, because i can't get a screen on the device. i have to wait for windows to load to get the video drivers out through the projector out, and i'm not getting that far.

i tried a boot log, and it's not loading, indicating it's not getting there. but, it isn't beeping. it's not shutting down. i don't get it.

it kind of seems like a bios, but i'd need a bios emulator to try to do it blind.

so, i don't know. is it possible that the boot database is fine for the pc but corrupted for the laptop? if so, i don't have time to work that out.

like i say: i don't actually know what happened, but i'm a little worried that the power outage may have fried the board. i just don't understand why it's not beeping, if that's the case.

so, i'm going to run a startup repair and otherwise see if i can get some kind of way to get the bios to read the projector out so i can see what it's actually doing.

with the american holiday this week (it's not a holiday in canada.), it's not clear when i'll get paid, but i'm going to need to get this stuff mailed or faxed by monday at the latest. i wanted this done by (last) monday. i'm not spending days and days fucking around. the chromebook is useless for this; i bought it for blogging. i'll have to install word 2003 on the 90s laptop, if it comes down to it...