so, i'm starting to get a better understanding of what happened, although it's not helping me understand what happened.

i have fixed the issue with the firewall, which was an access issue in the registry related to something called internet connection sharing, which i deleted myself quite some time ago. sort of. there may be some compound issues, here.

yes, i deleted it. i didn't want it. but, it was fine.

more confusing, if i go through the event viewer, i can see that this error goes back to more or less the start of the logs, which is nov 15th - after i realized they'd been shut down and turned them back on. it seems to happen fairly regularly, on restart.

however, i know that the firewall was actually loading because:

(1) i'm sure i would have noticed it. i check running services quite frequently. i was turning the spooler off and on all week.

(2) i *did* notice it *was* on as recently as saturday night, because i turned it off to reset the connection. 

(3) there are events as recently as the 28th that indicate that the settings for the firewall have been updated, and i remember doing it. i had to load the service to change the settings.

(4) i've actually been in and out of the virtual machine a couple of times this month, including around 6:00 am sunday morning, and i'm sure that the firewall worked because the computer browser seems to rely on it. that's what tipped me off this afternoon - the browser wouldn't load, so i went to check the services and "shit".

to be clear: i transferred some files on sunday morning. so, the firewall was working sunday morning.

then, i put the machine to sleep, slept for a few hours in the morning, finished what i was doing and stopped to eat.

then it rebooted when i was eating, and went into a loop overnight, to come back up with the busted firewall.

so, it *seems* like somebody targeted the machine yesterday afternoon when i was eating. what did they do?

well, it's ambiguous. but, i'm leaning towards the answer being deeper than i'd like.

i deleted the ics weeks ago and the firewall worked just fine. for it to come up now and tell me "you need ics to connect to the firewall" is exceedingly shady, imo. 

what i did should be benign, but it should also be unnecessary. i should not have to give the firewall service access to ics in the registry, even if it's empty, and even if it's banned. so, before i connect to the internet on this machine again, i'm going to need to be certain that i didn't just open up a back door for the cops to spy on me with.

i could check the logs, right? they're off by default. they're on, now.

i'm going to stop to eat and get back to it after. and, this time, we're going into hibernation.

so, i understand that it's telling me it can't find the files to the remote access software on startup.

but, i can't find the place in the startup sequence where it goes looking for the files.

it just comes up as an error in the task scheduler. hrmmmn.

i'm going to put that aside and go on to the firewall stuff.

"task scheduler service failed to launch tasks triggered by computer startup"

ok.

but, what are the tasks being triggered?

again - going through, i'm noticing a large number of remote connection references. but, now, what i think they're telling me is that they can't find their payloads.

i think what it's saying is "we tried to run the remote connection software, but we couldn't find the executable".

it's also telling me it's trying to run tasks, but can't find them.

so, it's easy enough to understand why somebody tried to disable the firewall.

but, i can't find the information i'm really looking for - even if i'm now convinced that the officer that's trying to hack into the machine is reading this site.

error #2 would have to do with the cryptographic system.

we're just going to let windows rebuild that.

(i do not know why this violates community standards at all.)

this is the first error to fix.

i don't think that has anything to do with anything, but ok.

https://www.techyv.com/questions/session-ready-boot-stopped-due-to-the-following-error-0x0000188/

at least i have an event viewer, this time.

what i should do is go through and figure out each error one by one, and see if they can help me understand anything about whatever's responsible for this.

aaaaaaaaaactually, it would seem as though the situation is quite a bit worse than i thought. i'm on the chromebook.

it's still useless. it will always be useless. it's intended solely for emergencies.

but, i went to install dropbox in a virtual machine (i don't want that software on my laptop.) and realized i can't turn the firewall on. after taking a look around, it seems like the thing has been completely pulled out of the registry altogether.

there was a restart last night around 17:30, which was a few minutes after i got up to eat, indicating somebody is casing me. was the firewall running last night when i got back on?

i'm disabled. i get $1200/month to live on. i have no further income. i'm $100,000 in debt. i'm not of any use to any thieves - i don't have any money. i mean, if somebody is trying to steal my money, they're the dumbest thief of all time - they're casing a person on welfare.

rather, the only potential suspect is that i'm under cyberattack by the police, who are trying to stop me from suing them for illegally arresting me.

get your head around that.

obviously, that machine can't go on the internet until i'm able to get the firewall back up. but, how bad is it? what is the extent of what happened last night?

the legal stuff is done. and, i didn't really want to go anywhere today anyways.

but, it's going to be a long night.

and, so long as this continues, i'm going to have to continue wasting a lot of time trying to understand it.

as of right now, i have very little understanding of what happened.

how do i keep them off this thing, though?

i noticed last night that the machine rebooted when i was eating. this is consistent with bad ram, but it brings up the question.

i need to be extra careful about not leaving the machine online and unattended.

how many times has my computer shut off right after i've sent something to the cops?

i was just about to get started on the next thing, and the machine went into a reboot loop. what do you do?

reboot loops are nasty things, but there's four reasons this happens:

1) your bios is fucked.
2) the circuitry in your board is fucked
3) it's overheating, turning off, overheating - that would be the least bad option
4) bad ram

i mentioned i was kind of sleepy, anyways. so, i let it cycle for a while, turned everything off and went to bed early.

when i woke up, it stopped cycling, but i was back to the pause screen i cannot see, which i must again suggest is profound in weird ways. so, i took everything back out again, and unplugged the bios.

this time, i was able to isolate the issue to a questionable stick of ram. luckily, i had a replacement stick. and, i'm back up.

i've been dealing with random restarts for quite a while now, so a bad stick of ram is not that out to lunch. i can believe that.

but, why does this always happen when it does?

it seemed for a while like they (read: the cops) were to trying to take me out by breaking my boot sector, but when they realized i can fix that, they seemed to target the bios. i've got a fresh stick of ram in there, and let's hope it's stable for a while. but, i'm still more than a little uneasy.

the oiprd wants me to use dropbox instead of google drive. that's fine. and, i'll need to call the dmv before they close.

i didn't want to go anywhere today anyways. so, i got some sleep, and maybe lost a few hours, at most.

i have in fact mailed the stuff to both the cops and the oiprd.

the attorney general is an annoyance in every way. if they don't respond, i'll just fax it near the end of the week. they should really have a submissions email line open...

as it is, i've also got my iso file done up and certificate ready to go.

what i will need to bring to toronto is:

1) three paper copies
2) three cd-rs

they should stamp some things relatively quickly and that'll be that, really.

what i need to do here over the next few days, then, is:

(1) print
(2) get to the dmv & write the test
(3) get to detroit and open an account
(4) actually get back to work?

i'm going to stop and do an overdue vlog, take a shower and potentially sleep for much of the day. i'll need to make some calls tomorrow...

the site still works.