so i went to Re-PC yesterday and bought a new socket A mother board which is an Asus A7V. i got it installed and fired it up and, apparently, the mother board sent a signal to the power supply that said “shut down now, before you start frying things”. not only that, but i had to get a video expansion card because it didn’t have onboard video, like the previous mother board had, but i neglected to get a network expansion card, because it doesn’t have onboard network, like the previous mother board had, because i neglected to think of it until i got it installed, so even if it was working perfectly, i still couldn’t get on the network. not only that, but there are two rows of switches, one component with 4 switches, which, according to the review, has something to do with the front-side bus (whatever that is), and one component with 6 switches, which has something to do with the CPU speed, or something like that, but i don’t know what. there’s a good bet that they have something to do with the fact that the mother board thinks the power supply is going to fry something.
Category Archives: depression
aarrggh!! part 3, continued
it’s an ASRock M810LMR mother board, and after clearing the CMOS on it, it still doesn’t work, which is a solid indication that the mother board is defective…
which i don’t get at all… how can a part of the computer that has no moving parts “wear out”?
presumably, if i buy another socket A462 motherboard (because i don’t want to have to buy a new processor), something more than what has been happening will happen. also i have to be careful to get a mother board that takes DIMM memory chips, because i don’t want to have to buy new memory as well. my recollection is that the mother board itself cost around $40, but if i have to buy a new processor and new memory, it will be significantly more.
now it’s just a matter of drumming up enough customers to pay me so that i can actually afford to buy a new mother board… which could be later this week, or it could be early next year. 8/
aaarrgghh! part 3
it’s not the power supply. i just went out to Re-PC and bought a brand new 500 watt AT/ATX power supply, plugged it in, and it didn’t work.
also, boeing surplus is closing it’s doors as of december 21. the guy said that, after that, there will be a few items offered on internet, but most of what boeing surplus sales is now will go in the scrap heap… which means that if you want that sun machine for $25, you’d better go get it now.
aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggghh! part 2
okay, this is getting really frustrating:
one of my two remaining computers is a blue and white G3 mac with a “Sonnet” G4 upgrade chip, running Os9. i keep it running Os9 because all of the software i have for mac is stuff that’s Os9 native (quark xpress 5, photoshop 7, fontographer 4, kai’s super goo, etc.). however, either the computer or the operating system is becoming more and more sketchy as time goes on: i can’t keep the computer running for more than a day without having to reboot it, even with nothing running, and frequently, when i try to print something, it starts to print and then it says it has “lost communication” with the printer, and instructs me to try again, but the document in the queue stays in the queue, it doesn’t get deleted. when i try to delete it manually, it says that it’s “still in use” but it doesn’t print, and nothing else that i have sent to the printer after it will print, and very shortly after that, the whole computer freezes, or doesn’t freeze but loses the keyboard. it won’t shut down when i select “Shut Down” from the menu (presumably because it thinks it’s still printing) and when i use the “programmer’s switch” to shut it down, i have to run disk doctor, because it has developed “serious” errors in the B-Tree directory which only get worse if i don’t run disk doctor.
also, when i first boot up, if my external, USB CD-RW drive is hooked up, it says that it can’t find drivers (?) for the "non-specific QT processor with JG" (whatever that means), but can’t “connect to internet”, despite the fact that i can connect to internet at exactly the same time. admittedly, i get almost exactly the same error from windows when i connect the CD-RW drive to it, so that’s probably a problem with the CD-RW drive and not the mac, but still, with my linux box not working, it means that i can no longer burn CDs, which is a royal pain in the neck.
i’ve been seriously considering “upgrading” to OsX, but then i would have to run all my software using the emulator, which would only slow things down, and i don’t know enough about OsX to be able to do any good at all if something screws up.
meanwhile, i’ve somehow been able to crank out a phone book advertisement for a client, but i have been unable to print invoices, and i have had to run disk doctor eight times since 8:00 this morning… 8/
aaaaaarrrrgggghh!!!!!!!
something is wrong with my linux box – my main computer is offline, and i don’t know why!
i’ve noticed over the past few days that, when i run any one of the seven HTML browsers that are on it, that the HTML browser crashes intermittently, and occasionally the whole computer freezes up and has to be rebooted. i know that the 7.1 upgrade for feisty fawn is due out on friday, so i’ve been biting the bullet and not running a HTML browser on that machine except when i absolutely have to, and then shutting it down politely when i’m finished with it. i had also noticed that, occasionally, the power supply doesn’t completely turn off when i turn off the power switch, but continues running for a half-second or so before it turns off. then, yesterday, i did something on the web and the whole computer froze up, and when i tried to reboot it, there wasn’t even the “BEEP” sound to indicate that the POST had completed successfully.
so, i took everything apart, which meant totaly tearing apart my office, and plugged it directly into the monitor, to see if something was wrong with the KVM switch (i have three computers, but only one monitor), but it’s not that, because the KVM switch works perfectly well with my windoesn’t box and my mac, and the linux box doesn’t work, even when it is plugged directly into the monitor…
so, now, i have the linux box completely separated from the rest of the computer systems, and i don’t know what to do. i don’t have ANY money, so taking it somewhere is out of the question, and even if it was, i don’t have ANY money to buy new parts, no matter how inexpensive they are. also, my schedule is on the linux box, and, apart from an appointment with ned at 3:00 today – for which i have a paper reminder separate from my schedule – i have no clue what rehearsals are when. i think i have a trolloween rehearsal on sunday, and i think i have a banda gozona rehearsal on the 25th, but beyond that, i’m totally lost.
more brain injury/SSDI stuff
University of Washington Neurological Vocational Services – Harborview Medical Center
Dear Sir/Madam:
We have appreciated working with you for purposes of vocational rehabilitation. As per our discussion, we unfortunately need to terminate our service arrangement at this time for the following reason(s):
We have been unable to identify a funding source for your service. Please consider WorkSource and call us as we may know of a community program in your area.
[handwritten]recommend EnSo for your business needs. Good luck.[/handwritten]
Again, our best wishes in your future employment efforts.
except that EnSo is a place that gets personal assistants for people with developmental disabilities, and doesn’t have any way to deal with a person with a brain injury who wants help with his business.
i also talked with the legal assistant for the attorney that is supposedly handling my SSDI appeal yesterday. she says that there is a fourteen to sixteen MONTH waiting period for a hearing, and they just submitted my request for a hearing in july, so it’s probably going to be september to november of 2008 before i even hear anything from them… what do they want me to do in the mean time? the only way they are willing to "expedite" the waiting list process is if the person requesting the hearihg is dying. they also said that the hearing is where most people get approved. i wonder how many people go homeless and starve while waiting for a hearing because they don’t have enough money to shop or pay rent… i wonder how many people die because they’re waiting for a hearing and they can’t get it "expedited" because they’re "not dying"… but, instead, our government is apparently willing to ignore our lying president and fund two wars over a commodity that is going to be gone in 50 years anyway…
and people wonder why i’m depressed…
however, there is a bright spot in all of this. i called the woman at EnSo, and she told me that she had received email indicating that DVR had actually got a new director and was eliminating their waiting list. she forwarded this article to me and encouraged me to call DVR and “light a fire under ’em”, which i did. the result is that instead of 2 years, they have me down to 3 months, so it’s possible that, by january, i might have some help with my business… but i’m not gonna hold my breath, because i’ve been burned by government organisations that were supposed to help me in the past.
when will they ever learn?
Oil Prices Hit New Record of $86 Per Barrel – meanwhile, there are people affected by homelessness, hunger, and disease who are suffering because the United States, collectively, can’t get off it’s ass and change things… 8/
slight relief from depression
i transcribed a song for uglinessman yesterday. it was ridiculously easy and i had it done in about ¼ the time i thought it was going to take. i have done projects like this before my injury and they took a lot longer and took some considerable tweaking before they could be deemed correct, but this time it just sort of “fell” out of my hands into the keyboard, and it’s not just because it’s an easy song (although that didn’t hurt things any). the only real difficulty i had was that i had to put my musical keyboard on my desk (which meant that i had to clear off my desk), so that i could reach both the musical keyboard and the computer keyboard without having to get up and move to another part of the room (which was a job all its own), and my computer desk chair is way lower than i need it to be if i am doing stuff with the musical keyboard.
i wonder how i could work that talent into a way of making money…
depression
i’m feeling like i shouldn’t be saying this, if for no other reason than it would have been tough on moe, but i really wish i had died four years ago, instead of surviving, and recovering 99.8% of what i had before my injury. i can see what that extra .2% meant to my ability to survive, and it’s the lack of that .2% that is making me really miserable. it took me 15 minutes to type up to here, for example, because i have had to backspace and correct mistakes 5 times every third word. it’s that .2% that makes it practically impossible for me to keep my mouth shut when something stupid is happening, which has meant that i haven’t had a job for longer than 6 months since my injury, and currently i haven’t brought in more than $10 in the past month. it’s that .2% that makes me so depressed i just want to curl up in the corner and disappear when i discover that we don’t have enough money to go shopping until a week from friday, and we have about enough money for food for that period of time if i don’t drive anywhere until then, and we don’t have enough money to pay for my car insurance, so even if i did drive somewhere, it would have to be illegally. and we live out in the tooleys, at least a mile from the nearest small town, which is a gas station and a grocery store. there’s nothing for me to do within easy walking distance unless i want to busk on the streets of milton, which would succeed only in getting me arrested. and i don’t have enough room to turn around in what passes for a workshop, i can only use hand tools and only a few of those at a time, i don’t have room for my band saw or my drill press, or my grinder, so i can’t make anything…
more blah
i have a Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band performance at the oyster festival in shelton tomorrow, for which i have to leave at 11:00 tomorrow morning. i’ll probably be getting back around 5:00. liz is going to pay us for gas.
they finally decided on a design for the business cards, but they’re only going to get 500 of them to start because there’s something going on with their addresses that’s going to change before they would be able to run through any more. they asked for light green paper with some flecking or texture, so i decided for them that they want sage green classic crest cover, and if they don’t we can change it next time. by this time next week i will probably be $70 richer than i am now… at least. whee.
depression is coming back again. i bit the bullet and sacrificed my last bong hit. i actually split it in half and put it in my vapouriser, which will make it last longer, but this is the longest i have gone without cannabis since my injury – at which time i didn’t really notice it anyway. i’ve basically had two bong hits that i’ve been vapourising slowly for a month now. i hope i make enough money to buy more at some point. it’s pretty miserable and depressing without cannabis.
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photo by starrchilde, who was driving with her kids outside of loisville, kentucky. if you look carefully you can even see the sign.
by the way, DON’T SEND HTML IN EMAIL!! it’s rude and it uses up a lot more computer resources than plain text. web browsers and email clients are two entirely different programs with entirely different functions. if you want to communicate something on the web, i expect to see HTML code, but when i get two pages of HTML code in email, especially when it’s to convey a FOUR WORD message, i’m going to get pissed. make email messages PLAIN TEXT by default! if you can’t learn how to control your email client, or you use a web-based email service that doesn’t give you the option, then you need to learn, you need to get a different service (i know yahoo, gmail hotmail, and even AOL have a plain-text-only option), then you DON’T deserve to send your HTML crap to me. next time, i’ll block your IP address at the server level, so any further email to me, from you, will bounce. i’m not kidding.
Frownland – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica
the depression is slowly lifting, and the table is still clean enough that my keyboard has not been covered up yet. i still haven’t been inspired enough to do anything with it yet, but i’m leaving the option open.
they agreed that what they wanted couldn’t be done on the artwork for the business card, but they changed the font to one of those “fonts in word” which may or may not be a “real” font. fortunately, it’s a font for which i have a “real” analogue (Americana), and i changed it for ’em. haven’t heard back yet, but as this is the third go-round with artwork, i’m hoping that they’re gonna be happy with it pretty soon. i still have to talk with them about paper (shudder) which is a whole different miasma to which i’m not looking forward.
i updated the schedule for agilityfun, and posted the updated schedule at noon on monday. i then wrote an email to diana at 2:00 that said i had updated the schedule. at 4:00, diana wrote me and said that doug had sent an updated schedule on the 26th, it wasn’t showing up, and they need me to update it right away. O_o i wrote back today and said that they need to flush their cache, which moe said was “pretty confrontational”. i think it’s “pretty confrontational” that diana assumes that i’m not gonna update the schedule unless she reminds me, but i guess part of being a person that “removes your obstacles” is being able to respond to confrontation with another level of happy, which i’m not sure if i posess any longer.
meanwhile, my Os9 mac is dying slowly, and i’m seriously considering breaking down and putting OsX on it. i somehow, magically, came into possession of an actual DVD of tiger, and even though the only software i currently keep the mac around for is Os9 stuff (quark and photoshop), i’ve run both of them on moe’s OsX laptop, so i know they work. the only problem is that the processor is a 900mhz G3 with a “Sonnet” G4 upgrade, and i don’t know the first thing about whether or not OsX will actually run on it… and if it doesn’t, i’m not sure whether or not i’ll even be able to “downgrade” back to Os9.
i’ve gotten started putting my gallery on flickr, but i abruptly discovered that they want me to pay if i want to have more than three “sets”. i’ve currently got about 25 “sets”, including the stuff that i took on our recent vacation, but i don’t know if i’ve actually got enough money to pay for a “professional” flickr account (one of the reasons why this blog is on hybridelephant is because i don’t have enough money to pay for a livejournal account any longer). also, if you’re not logged in (as me, i don’t know whether or not it works if you’re logged in as anyone else), you can only see two of my three “sets”, although when i’m logged in, i can see all three of them. here is the set that it leaves out. i just uploaded the sets today, so i’m going to wait until tomorrow before i start raising a stink about it.
it would have been a lot easier if i had just died four years ago…
i’m depressed again. 8/
i have made the preliminary artwork for a new business card, but they want something that can’t be done in that format for artwork, and while i know that it can’t be done, aphasia prevents me from telling them why, which reduces the probability that i’m going to be the one that prints it for them, even though they’ll get exactly the same response from any printer.
i went to a punk rock flea market recently, and actually made enough to pay for my space, plus an extra $5. among the reasons i didn’t make more money is because somebody complained that they were “allergic to the smell” of the incense i was burning, which resulted in my having to put the incense out and they turned on an enormous fan to “clear the air” in the underground space in which the flea market was taking place. i have made approximately $100 in the past two months. the only incense order i have gotten for two months has been for a variety of incense that i don’t normally carry, which i had to special order, which meant that i had to order $100 worth of incense, $17.50 of which was for the special order, and the rest of which turned out to be 100% incense that i already had, and in the process of figuring this out, i discovered that there was another $50 to $75 worth of incense that i don’t have, but i need because i’m running low. and i can’t return what i received because it was part of a special order, and i would have to return the entire order, including the stuff that i have already shipped out. i’ve actually got a new product – chandrika soap – which will probably sell pretty well, except that nobody knows i have it, because of the fact that i can’t figure out where to put it on my web site.
i went to the neurology vocational services unit at harborview hospital, on the recommendation of someone at the brain injury association, but they couldn’t help me except to recommend that i get in contact with an organisation that provides life-planning services for developmentally disabled people, which isn’t any help at all. the lady said she would get back to me within a week, but she didn’t. i called the brain injury association out of desperation, because i knew from past experience that they probably couldn’t help me anyway, because they never have before, and i was right. people say that i worry too much about things that i don’t know, but i feel like i’m pretty well assured that nobody can help me, simply because everything i’ve tried in the past hasn’t helped, so i don’t know why i should get my hopes up.
i’ve been cleaning up my office (for a week now… 8/ ) because i want to get out my keyboard and work on some musical ideas, which means that i have had to clear space on a table that usually gets used for storage because my office space is so small. i’ve actually got it cleaned up enough that i’ve been able to get out my keyboard, but i’m depressed enough that i don’t feel as inspired as i did a week ago, when i started on the project, and, if things go the way they have been going recently, by the time i am that inspired again, there’s a good chance that the table will have reverted to storage again, which will be complicated by the fact that my keyboard is at the bottom of the pile and i’ll have to clean up again before i am able to work on anything.
meanwhile, my beloved wife has been working her shapely little ass off, seven days a week, for who knows how long now. she’s frustrated because instead of quitting her job and going back to school, which is what she wants to do, she’s had to work non-stop for months now. we took a week’s worth of vacation last month, for the first time since my injury, four years ago, and went camping. the first three days of which started at 7:00 in the morning when they started on the construction project that was conveniently located across the street from where we were camped. we ended up moving our campsite, which took most of the fourth day, and ended up that we were camped right across from the porta-potties because the sewer system was what they were working on at the construction site. i hate to think what’s going to happen if she gets sick and can’t work, or if she gets in a car crash or something.
just another brick (in the) wall
so i went to the “intake appointment” at the neurology vocational services unit yesterday, and, rather as i suspected, they “couldn’t help me”. i found this out after driving for 45 minutes, getting caught in a massive traffic jam and finding my way on surface streets from boeing field all the way to harborview, paying $5.00 for parking (for which they only reimbursed me $2.50), filling out a 25-page(!) intake form by hand(!), and talking with an “employment specialist II” for 15 minutes. i think it’s at least partially because i said that i wasn’t really looking for “work” unless it is exactly the right job, but i am looking more for help marketing my own business, but i think it’s primarily because they only help people who have physical problems due to epilepsy, and someone with a head injury, while not totally out of the question, is apparently so rare that they don’t have a lot of resources for such a person. they did recommend that i contact EnSo – ENvisioning SOlutions – (whose server is in samoa?), but from what i’m able to tell, they’re more concerned with people who have developmental disabilities than they are with people who have brain injuries.
the lady i talked to said that she would get back to me later in the week, but i’m not gonna hold my breath.
He liked to pick them good guitars and listen to them ring…
i called the Neurology Vocational Services unit at harborview hospital yesterday, to see if i could get some help finding work. i talked with a guy for about fifteen minutes, told him that i was a brain injury survivor, that i didn’t have any insurance, that i hadn’t worked in over a year, and he encouraged me to come in for an initial consultation next week. he told me to bring whatever medical records i have, because they couldn’t help me if there wasn’t a neurological aspect to my injury. he then asked me if there was a nerological aspect to my injury. i said, “well, my neurologist seems to think so.” but that wasn’t good enough. he wanted me to present him with concrete proof that my injury had a neurological aspect, and warned me, again, that if there wasn’t a neurological aspect to my injury, that they couldn’t help me.
i haven’t even seen a doctor, much less a neurologist, in almost four years. the only piece of evidence that i have that i even had a neurologist at this point is a CD of images, and a note that he gave me to show to the department of clownland security goons at the airport, saying that i “had surgery for a vascular malformation in his brain, and has metal clips in his head” when i set of their metal detectors. i read this note to him, and he said that it sounded like i qualified, but he still wanted me to bring along whatever other evidence i have, and said, again, that if there wasn’t a neurological aspect to my injury, that they couldn’t help me.
i’m sorry if the nine inch scar on my scalp and my misshapen skull isn’t good enough for you… 8/
so i dug around and found the CD of x-ray and CT images that i have, and looked through it today. i don’t know if that’s good enough for them, but it did make me cry, which i found very odd…
four years ago, and i’ve pretty much recovered from the actual injury, and it makes me cry when i look at pictures of my brain in a state of chaos… and the guy insisting that i had to bring evidence of a specific injury, otherwise they can’t help me… it made me cry even more.
and people wonder why i’m not more encouraged to find things that will help me get back to work. bleh.
bleh number two
Upon receipt of your request for reconsideration we had your claim independently reviewed by a physician and disability examiner in the State agency which works with us in making disability determinations. The evidence in your case has been thoroughly evaluated; this includes the medical evidence and the additional information received since hte original decision. We find htat the previous determination denying your claim was proper under the law. Included in this notice is an explanation of the decision we made on your claim and how we arrived at it. This notice also identifies the legal requirements for your type of claim.
You said you are disabled due to mental impairments. The medical evidence indicates that you do have some limitations, but you are still able to move about in a satisfactory manner. You are able to understand, remember and carry instructions [sic] and care for your own needs. We realize that your condition prevents you from doing any of your past work, but it does not prevent you from doing other jobs which require less mental effort. Based on your age, education and past work experience, we have concluded that you can do other work. Therefore, a period of disability cannot be established, and your claim is denied at this time.
even though i was expecting it, that doesn’t make it feel any worse. what they’re saying is that, despite the fact that i used to work as a software tester and a typesetter, now i could work at mcdonald’s or wal-mart, so they won’t give me disability… i’d rather die than work at wal-mart, and forget about my being able to do anything in food service… i guess now i have to get an attorney… 8P