Busking, "That's Your Spiritual Health."

I suppose, as long as you still have things to learn, you will live on....

When you reach a point where knowledge meets understanding (as if a light bulb suspended above your head suddenly illuminates-nowadays, it would be an LED bulb) you die, taking all of this wisdom with you.

This is why it might be important to have a blog....

Locked Out, And Things Breaking

I was up early the other day; seems like a week ago, now.

I guess I had been taking for granted the smooth operation of this 12 year old laptop that I am once again on, this Monday afternoon, after having gone busking at the weird to me hour of noontime. I felt I had to get away from troubleshooting the laptop; and from Jr., who had gotten money from the plasma place and whose standing offer of purchasing my friendship with whatever spoils obtained in exchange for that plasma money; I rejected.

Better to get on my bike, totally broke (well, I had 15 cents) and to ride down to The Quarter on a Monday; after having made only 6 bucks on Saturday night, albeit after having arrived there at about 12:15 a.m. and played for only about 45 minutes..

This (Monday) morning, it was a chilly 62 degrees, and so I put on a long sleeved "thermal" type shirt, which became my undoing after I got to the Lilly Pad after the sun had broken through the clouds on my way down there and sat on her stoop, where Jacob usually sits. I didn't need the spotlight, as the sun was doing a much better job, and allowed me to sit away from under the vine where I hang the rechargeable light.

I played about 4 songs and was tipped during the performance of each, which was nice, and confirmed that I am playing as well as ever now. I have to credit Jr. with having cajoled me to his place to "make some noise" quite a bit over the past week. Sunday morning, after I had busked and only made the 6 bucks, I got back at around 2 a.m., and there the guy was, showing up and wanting to jam.

The reason I had arrived so late at the Lilly Pad was because, after grabbing and drinking along the way, a half bottle of wine, I stopped at Patrick's house around 10:30. 

Already feeling the wine, I was then handed, by him, a THC vape pen. The first time he passed the thing to me, I didn't really get much out of it. He then instructed me to hold the button down on it and draw really hard on it, which I did; and the cloud of smoke I exhaled was more suited to getting an elephant stoned than my 139 pound self. I felt like I had been hit with a tranquilizer dart and just wanted to sit there and melt into the chair. When I closed my eyes it was like an out of body experience.

Unfortunately, Patrick was trying to get me to go with him somewhere nearby and help him drag some large item (that I don't even remember what was, now) and I kept telling him: "Yeah in just a bit; I feel really tranquilized right now..." until such a point that he got angry and told me to leave and never go back there. He said something like: Go, and enjoy your dope; because he thought I must have done some heroin, in order for me to be so languid (if that's the word). So, that friendship broken, and more than an hour wasted, I then left for the Lilly Pad. Who knows how much more than 6 bucks I would have made, had I not stopped there.

After that, and the busking; it was to Jr's where we jammed until the sun was about to rise. I woke up, right after it had, on his couch; kind of surprised to find myself there for a second, then, seeing him asleep on his bed in the other room, I tip-toed out with my guitar and went back to my apartment, where I probably only got another 2 hours of sleep before his familiar knock woke me up. He was wide awake; it was about 9 in the morning, and he had resumed working on the half gallon of vodka that he had started the night before. He told me he felt great and wanted to jam; and so we did, with him passing me the bottle until such a point when I felt great, and wanted to watch golf on my TV instead of continuing to "make some noise" with him...

About a week ago it seems, this very laptop that I am using now, went on the blink.

I was watching a Rumble video and thought about how, after about 15 minutes of watching any videos, the screen would fade to black -ostensibly to save energy when on battery power, but kind of incomprehensible when the thing is plugged in.

I went into the settings and adjusted the "timeout" value from 15 minutes up to 30; and then I tinkered with a few other settings that I didn't really understand and had no business touching; especially when I was running the wi-fi and the browser and the video player- kind of like trying to do a minor repair on a car's engine when it's running 50 miles per hour down the highway.

The screen went black, although I could still hear the video. There was nothing I could do; nowhere to click and bring up a menu to even attempt to undo what I had tampered with. I had to unplug the thing and pull the battery out; and then wait until it finally came back up- another bug in the ol' Thinkpad; I think it doesn't reboot until the internal temperature drops to room level; somewhere between 3 and 5 hours...

From there, it has been a convoluted mess; with me having to boot up from an old USB stick that had Linux on it; but which was 3 years old and had all of the unattended security vulnerabilities that 3 years of updates and patches would have kept up with. So, I brought up a working system, just so I could copy all my files painstakingly to another computer; while using a system from the Sacred Heart computer room to download the latest version of Linux onto a USB stick.

Only, those computers run the Windows system and so I had to use a special application in order to make a Linux USB using Bill Gates proprietary garbage...

I have only scratched the surface.of the monumental obstacles I faced.

Having a 3 year old Linux system, I should have just used it to take all my files off and then wipe the disk clean and re-install. But I got lazy and decided to run the old software and go online and watch some videos and...get hacked, freezing the system so that I wound up unplugging and removing the battery and finally getting all my files moved to the other computer and putting an up to date Linux on it, only to learn that "the hacker" had changed all my passwords. I couldn't get into this blog until an hour ago (it was my smartphone that saved me -I was able to change the passwords by using the phone, which I guess Google knows and trusts....

If you are still awake, dear reader, after all that technical gobbledeegook, I guess I will recap with. I can once again blog here.

The cable for my electric guitar broke and needs to be wiggled and positioned in a certain way in order to play. My Snoball recording mic needs to be wiggled and positioned in a certain way to record. I knocked my singing bird clock off the wall with my guitar case, which I was wearing on my back, causing the glass cover to shatter. Just after I transferred my files to the other computer, it started emitting a whirling noise, which means I might have just one more chance to back all those files up onto a huge USB stick before whatever is making noise burns out...

My little fan that I use to blow warm air from the oven into the living room (to take the chill off the air in lieu of turning the heater on; blew it's fuse this morning...

My phone's battery dies after a minute of being unplugged....

That's all the things that have recently broken that I can think of; with the laptop being the most glaring item. In fact I have some slight doubt that this will even post when I hit "publish." You never know what the hacker might have done.

It kind of started shortly after I commented on a Youtube video asking how much nuclear bombs cost and which companies would rake in the profit off of them, should the U.S. need to manufacture a few more in the coming weeks...mere coincidence? Or was it me messing with system setting while an application was running? This is why I study computer stuff; I hate not knowing things...