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Archive Page: ''Lost Spring: 2013''

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Winter 2011 (Dec-Feb) / Spring 2012 (Mar-May) / ''Long-Vacation'' 2012* (Jun-Jul) / ''Lost-Summer'' 2012* (Jul-Aug) / ''Lost-Autumn'' 2012* (Sep-Nov) / ''Lost-Winter'' 2012* (Dec-Feb) / ''Lost-Spring'' 2013* (Mar-May) / ''Lost-Summer'' 2013* (Jun-Aug) / ''Lost-Autumn'' 2013* (Sep-Nov) / ''Lost-Winter'' 2013* (Dec-Feb) / Spring 2014 (Mar-May) / Summer 2014 (Jun-Aug) / Autumn 2014 (Sep-Nov) / Winter 2014 (Dec-Feb) / Spring 2015 (Mar-May) / Summer 2015 (Jun-Aug) / Autumn 2015 (Sep-Nov) / Winter 2015 (Dec-Feb) / Spring 2016 (Mar-May) / Summer 2016 (Jun-Aug) / Autumn 2016 (Sep-Nov) / Winter 2016 (Dec-Feb)

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Re: the 1.5 Year Time-Gap...

Following the journal entry dated  18-24 June 2012,  the subsequent entries recorded in these  ''Lost Seasons''  segments are reflective of events which took place when ''routine'' journal entries were not being kept-up with.

The time-gap was  initially  the result of what I'd referred to as my period of  ''Radio Silence''... whereby I'd unintentionally fell behind on posting regular updates due to the circumstances mentioned from thence forward, namely, the result of having to shut down my computer system out of unavoidable necessity as part of my period of departure from the ''State of Hawaii'' to my subsequent ''transitional'' re-establishment in the ''Commonwealth of Virginia.''

This ''black-out'' period would regrettably extend into a much longer period of lost time, as I had allowed numerous other developments and circumstances to interfere with and hinder my commitment to update & maintain my personal records of activity (as will come to light as everything unfolds during this ''reclamation'' phase), which led me to adopt ''alternative'' methods of continuing to keep track of my experiences and exploits. Although the original intent for these alternate methods had simply been as a way of ''keeping current'' until the computer equipment I'd shipped ahead of my departure had arrived and had gotten ''established'' & ''connected,'' because of all of my misestimations and needless delays, I kept progressively getting bogged down further-and-deeper into backlog.

So what follows after the last dated entry of June 2012 are  first  the ''detailed'' record of what I'd originally planned on posting once I'd found myself in a situation where I could again focus time & attention to this activity -- then once those inclusions have been completed, all subsequent entries from thenceforth will be indicative of where various ''physical records'' (primarily in the form of calendar notations, as well as other types of loose ''jotted notes,'' ''sales/service receipts'' of various types, and ''dated photographs'') were resorted to in order to refresh cloudy memories and to compile the most accurate chain of events as they occurred.

In each instance, up until the point where the backlogged information has all been brought completely up-to-date, the day during which the actual typing of the new ''old'' entry is taking place during this ''catch-up'' phase will be plainly noted. Also, since a considerable amount of explanatory ''exposition'' is also necessary and unavoidable due to the loss of normal structure (as a result of not having maintained this journal with regular & timely updates), there will likewise occasionally be such disruptions in the normal flow of each dated entry for the purpose of supplying ''back story'' and additional insights (past or subsequent): such notations/inclusions will be indicated ((in this manner, i.e. enclosed within ''double parentheticals)).

~ (November 22, 2013 - Friday)


March 14, 2013 (Thursday)

Received a ''rebate check'' from my motorcycle insurance company after I'd switched my coverage over from Hawaii to Virginia -- in the amount of something like $20 or $24; also in the mail I'd received my ''custom-designed''  ''VISA''  credit card (which I'd adopted a ''tropical beach'' scene with a yellow plumeria lei).

Later in the day I took the old hair dryer my mother was no longer interested in and used it as a ''heat gun'' to peel-off those obnoxious and tacky ''warning'' stickers from my motorcycle's ''glove compartment.''

[[*Meds: perhaps in reference to prescribed pain killers I'd picked up on Gracie's behalf?]]

[[*Recording: seems to be in reference to the time I'd recorded a ''custom CD'' for my mother from the selections she'd made from the pair of   Wynonna Judd  albums I'd purchased online the previous month]]

March 15, 2013 (Friday)

[[*All-Day Arguing: Who? With whom? About what?]]

Gracie kept a follow-up OB-Gyn appointment.

On my end, I finally decided to bring in my the computer repair shop ((read: ''incompetent bastards'')) located in the ''Roanoke-Salem Plaza,'' which I'd considered initially because of their location being so close to the house, but I was ''sold'' on all of the glowing ''positive'' reviews the place kept receiving in online review forums, whereas the ''feedback'' all of the other local repair businesses were receiving was extremely little or none at all, so I'd called them the previous night to arrange to have my unit brought in for them to take a look at.

The trashy inside of the place  should  have been sufficient as my  ''first''  ((and in retrospect, ''only'')) clue that it was a place I should have avoided, but I was determined to get to a solution of the problem so I could start being active on my OWN system again, instead of relying on Gracie's laptop all of the time. ((It would be one of the biggest and most expensive mistakes of my m*therf*cking life!))

As they looked over my system with me, while I again explained about how the monitor screen went dead, as well as explaining how since I could remember I'd always had the ''cracking/popping'' problem from audio playback and recording, except for whenever I was operating via  Linux ''LiveCD,''  they informed me that my problem was that I had several failed  capacitors  on the circuit board which were responsible for both issues. After a while of trying to weigh the different options the clerk was laying out for me, I'd allowed myself to be sold on the idea (the one he kept pushing, by the way) of letting them switch-out the motherboard entirely, even though I'd tried to get every reassurance from them that my personal files folder (where I keep *ALL* of my stuff, circumventing Windows' garbage ''default'' forced compliance) would be preserved and not negatively affected in any way, because they had informed ((read: ''forewarned'')) me that the operating system would have to be reinstalled if I switched the insides out, and that by doing so I would no longer be able to reinstall my operating system suite that came with my original configuration. ((Little did I realize what agreeing to this would lead up to in the weeks ahead.))

~ ''catch-up'' entry date: (December 29, 2013 - Sunday)

March 16, 2013 (Saturday)

((According to the sales receipt I referred back to, timestamped just shy of 10 minutes past Noon)) I picked up my supposedly ''fixed'' system after having been left in the shop overnight.

After returning to the house, I was compelled (out of a sense of pride of having new ''innards,'' esp. in the form of a ''dual core''  AMD ''Athlon''  processor) to make an ''intended for public upload'' video documentary of my ''new'' old system, whereupon I'd discovered that those ass-wipes had not only left the ''exhaust'' fan completely unconnected and with no way in Heaven or Hell for me to connect it, but they had also improperly mounted the ''cooling'' fan over the CPU to where it could be rocked off of its base!!! So after my mother had returned home from whatever small errands she was running after she'd dropped me and my system off at the house, I'd enlisted her help in taking me and the machine back out to their so-called ''repair'' shop for them to fix what they had left  ''unfixed,''  so that they could correct their errors!

After picking up the device back up for the second time in the day, and after checking things out once again, I had to call these idiots yet again because I'd discovered that I was no longer able to use my original mouse and keyboard together because the circuit board they'd switched my original out with could only accommodate one of what they referred to as ''legacy'' peripherals -- and they didn't think this was a significant enough change to ''inform'' me about? ((Wait... it gets ''better'' in regard to all of the little ''changes''...)) So in response, they said I could bring my original mouse down to their shop and they would exchange it with a ''USB'' mouse (not ''new,'' of course), so I walked back for it: while there I'd also requested the return of my  ''IED/SATA converter''  which they had just tossed aside indiscriminately among one of their ''junk piles'' (...they had also %@X#ed-up my  Mandriva Linux ''LiveCD''  disc with a bunch of nicks & scratches).

March 18 - 22 2013 (Monday-Friday)
''Week in Review''

((In trying to sort through all the convoluted notations and documents of those which are available to me at this time, the best picture of what I can recreate for the events of this particular week is:)) I took my computer back to the shop again on Monday (Mar. 18), complaining about how my USB devices were no longer working properly (keyboard, mouse, webcam).

It was during this particular ''repair'' job that the technician told me over the phone that my 2TB  Hitachi ''DeskStar''  (or as I call it, ''DeathStar'') hard drive was running ''hot,'' which I thought was bogus.

~ ''catch-up'' entry date: (December 30, 2013 - Monday)

((At this point, I became somewhat confused about the dates in conjunction with the specific details, but in working from the information based on the second date noted on the same ''work order'' and according to a string of seemingly inconsistent calender notations, all while trying to match it all up with what I can best remember of the events, it appears that the following order of events are the most accurate account of how the remainder of my ''computer-related'' hassles transpired...))

I picked the machine back up from the so-called ''repair shop'' on Wednesday (Mar. 20), after they'd (according to their ''work order'')  ''reactivated Windows''  and  ''restarted default services'' 

But the problems still were far from over, because I had to return the unit the next day (Thu., Mar. 21) after I'd discovered that I was no longer able to get on the Internet (which was *not* a modem/ISP problem), that my  ''FireWire''  jack & nearly ALL of my front-facing connection ports, except for the pair of USB ports located there, were now non-functioning, and that my ''super'' optical drive would no longer navigate ''data discs'' nor read or render Cds/DVDs (identified by the system as an ''I/O device error'')! I was also upset that I could not access the ''color management'' controls. This was also when I'd paid closer attention to the fact that they had taken my  ''C-drive''  (hard drive ''default'' letter) and reassigned it as the  ''I-drive''  ((which I thought nothing of at the time, and which I thought was kind of cool, but which would later come back to bite me in the ass from there on out)).

When I brought the unit back in this time, the S.O.B. behind the counter had the audacity to imply that  *I*  had somehow been responsible for all of these failures of the system by ''tampering'' with their set-up! I was so incensed at that arrogant accusation that it SHOULD have been my cue to leave them the phukk alone and take my business elsewhere, but I'd rationalized that they would cover ''their'' work to make right what they kept making wrong, but it still bothered me enough to the point that I'd remained in bed for most of that and the following day (Fri., Mar. 22).

March 23, 2013 (Saturday)

Gracie received her hospital bill -- in the amount of around $4,500, and I wondered how she was going to pay for it, since she wasn't working and I had no intentions whatsoever of paying her bill. ((I would later learn that she would have the visits covered by something called ''charity care.''))

March 27, 2013 (Wednesday)

Gracie had been throwing-up sick since Monday (Mar. 25), and by time she'd gotten over her illness here, I'd come down with my own ((which would be a stretch of headaches lasting three days straight)).

[[*Fuel Line: mentioned in notation on Monday, but with no clue as to what it was in reference to, but it was mentioned in connection with an intent to ride out to the post office to check my mailbox after my workshift had ended -- I cannot recall when I'd ever had any problems with my fuel line]]

March 28, 2013 (Thursday)

As a result of more of  ''Google's''  infuriating horseshit with how they were destroying  ''YouTube''  and turning it into something horrendously unrecognizable and impersonal, I used Gracie's laptop while my system was still in the shop to begin putting more intense effort into trying to see about establishing my own personal webpage so I could circumvent, and perhaps leave altogether, Google's  ''Who?Tube''  thumbed nose in our faces!

March 29, 2013 (Friday)

Although it was not what I'd have preferred to do in response to  ''Fuck-YouTube,''  I'd decided to re-purpose my  Angelfire  channel that I had dedicated to my ''journal pages'' activity as my new ''hub'' for all of my  ''Who?Tube''  activity, setting it up so that any future videos I decided to upload would only (or ''initially'') be accessible from the ''embeds'' on ''Angelfire,'' along with any ''playlist'' feature vids from my extensive archive. The idea was to in time transition the ''journal pages'' web shell over to the main  ''Planet''  web shell and do away with the current project in that section altogether.

March 30, 2013 (Saturday)

My mother spent the weekend with family in North Carolina, leaving the house to myself and Gracie (which I did not feel too good about).

April 1, 2013 (Monday)

Reclaimed my computer after having been in the shop since Mar. 21, and the schittz was still phukking-up on me! This time my ''super'' optical drive was not performing properly again! When I called to explain, they suspected that the ''master/slave'' ribbon needed to be replaced.

Also on this night I learned that a piece of the key to my motorcycle cable lock (which I was so determined to bring with me from Hawaii) had broken inside the lock and rendered the product almost entirely  useless,  except as a ''psychological'' deterrent.

April 2, 2013 (Tuesday)

Came into the shop to pick-up the replacement ribbon for my unresponsive optical drive, and upon switching it out everything finally seemed to be working out, until I discovered that I'd lost one of my ''media burner'' programs and, most infuriatingly, lost my (factory pre-installed)  HP ''Image Zone''  photo editing program, which I could not replace.

April 5, 2013 (Friday)

During an attempt to ''update'' system files as part of my trying to ''re-establish'' the system, something again went wrong to where I could no longer access the hard drive registry at all, going through an endless series of ''automatic restarts'' regardless of which ''workaround'' I tried, so I ended up removing the hard drive and sending it to the ''repair'' shop thinking that I'd be getting something ''fixed'' again.

April 8, 2013 (Monday)

The ''repair'' shop called to inform me that they were going to need to do a complete system reinstallation on the hard drive I'd brought in to them.

April 10, 2013 (Wednesday)

Today was my first time attending what has become a ''monthly ritual'' with my mother and several of her cousins where on a given Wednesday of each month they all get together over ''lunch'' (almost always at the ''Golden Corral'' feeding trough).

The ''repair'' shop called to inform me that they'd successfully reinstalled all the operating system files I'd need to begin using my computer ''normally'' again... but it came at the cost of my having to lose my ENTIRE ''personal folder,'' which (yet again, as though by ''tradition'') had all of my most recent and ''heavily formatted/perfected'' audio files! (Somebody in this great Cosmos REALLY *hates* me!)

April 11, 2013 (Thursday)

Made runs about the ''government building'' district to collect a couple of copies of the local ''state'' tax forms for myself and Gracie, and was of course met with another of those ''Why-Are-You-Bothering-Me'' type of attitude ''Black Women'' (by contrast, the interaction I'd had with the ''White'' woman who had assisted me with trying to understand my ''personal property tax'' assessment for my motorcycle inside the same lobby of that same building just two doors away was extremely pleasant).

After gathering what I needed of the tax reporting documents, I rode out to ''Crossroads Mall'' where I'd intended to shop for a new, cheap ''micro-sized'' computer mouse to use with the laptop whenever I was working on it, and to purchase a solar-powered pocket calculator to replace the one I'd ignorantly left behind at ''Food Lion'' which no one decided to turn in. Prior to making those electronics purchases at ''kmart,'' I decided to check out the ''Going-Out-Of-Business'' sale they were having at ''Books-a-Million,'' and I was lured in by the promise of ''50% off,'' only to find out after I'd gathered a stack of close to a half-dozen books and seeing all of the book shelves marked only ''20% off''' that I'd misread the notice stating that books were ''20%'' while the ''50%'' related to things like ''greeting cards,'' ''stationery,'' and the like -- so expressing the fact that I could easily do better with the ''regular sale prices'' offered on ''Amazon,'' I put everything back (...and there were a couple of books I truly did want to leave the store with: one was a [auto?]biography of  ''Frederick Douglass,''  and the other was about the  ''Tuskeegee Airmen'').

April 12 - 14, 2013 (Friday-Sunday)
''Weekend in Review''

Rode back out to the ''Downtown'' area Friday (Apr. 12) to the main library branch to gather copies of the ''federal'' tax return documents and to use their computers on site to make printouts of the ''Hawaii'' state forms designed for ''part-year residents,'' which I'd worked on and completed some time during the day after a great deal of difficulty in trying to figure out the ''part-time resident'' forms...  especially  Virginia's.

Experienced a bit of a scary kitchen mishap the next day (Sat., Apr. 13) when I was trying to heat some oil in a small pot ((for what specific purpose I can no longer remember)), and while I was in the bedroom trying to set things up with the computer again, Gracie was hollering for me in a panic: it had turned out that the oil inside the pot had overheated and ignited (which I had no idea could actually happen like that) -- I removed the pot from the stove, set it out on the back entrance deck, then came back out to dowse it with baking soda as my mother had instructed. (''Electric'' phukking ranges! Hate the dambed things!)

Perhaps the flaming pot was meant to be ''prophetic'' in some way, because it was also on this date that my original 2TB hard drive had decided it was the perfect time to go bad (after all that had already transpired... gee, what a frickin' surprise). So now both hard drives had gone completely to shit: my 2TB ''Hitachi'' and the one ((''Seagate''?)) I'd salvaged from my old  ''iMac,''  which I'd hoped to use as my  ''Linux''  playground but had already had a long history of giving out. After several attempts to ''repair'' or just ''access'' the hard disk, I gave it one final attempt on Sunday (Apr. 14) before bowing out in final defeat. Remarkably, and ironically, it was only a couple of days earlier (Friday) that I'd finally managed to all of the proper and appropriate sounds out of *ALL* of my speakers from that expensive ''5.1'' system I'd shipped over from Hawaii.

~ ''catch-up'' entry date: (December 31, 2013 - Tuesday)

April 15, 2013 (Monday)

Gracie accompanied me to get her Virginia state tax forms after I'd realized that she did not need to be subjecting herself to all of that stress-inducing haphazard mess of a ''part-time'' resident for tax purposes, since she'd never worked anywhere except in the so-called ''Commonwealth'' of Virginia... and yet even as we explained this to the same black woman I'd had issues with just several days before (Thu., Apr. 11), she still tried to insist that Gracie would be required to file a ''part-time resident'' form anyway. We then stopped back at the main library where I'd wanted to apply for & receive my library card.

Knowing that I'd have to be without my system again until they could replace my box with a fresh 2GB hard drive, the butt-wipes at the ''repair'' shop did finally manage to do *ONE* smart & positive thing in recommending that I check my records to see if the Hitachi ''DeathStar'' I'd put in there was still under warranty.

April 17, 2013 (Wednesday)

Returned the ''secondary'' mouse I'd purchased last week to exchange it for another, since one of the buttons kept requiring intense pressure to depress, but that was the only one of its kind, so I had to opt for a different one altogether and pay the difference. While making the transaction I'd inquired about their ''help wanted'' notices in their store windows so I could inform Gracie.

Also, I requested of the ''repair'' people if they had any boxes and/or anti-static sleeves which the ''fulfillment department'' of the company handling warranty exchanges requested that the defective items be shipped to them in -- they obliged.

April 23, 2013 (Tuesday)

Mailed in my ''state'' tax returns (which I'd learned had a ''due date'' which extended beyond the ''April 15'' deadline for ''federal'' returns) and my defective hard drive.

Afterwards I rode Gracie out to a brief OB-Gyn appointment while I waited outside.

April 24, 2013 (Wednesday)

Reclaimed my system with the ''fresh'' hard drive and reloaded system

[[*''Lying XP 7 Crossover'': I recall having asked on several occasions if the addition of a second hard drive would permit me to run them independently of each other with one running ''Windows XP'' and the other running ''Windows 7,'' but I cannot recall what ''lie'' I'm making reference to?]]

Today was also Gracie's last night of ''bleeding,'' as she'd had an unstopping issue which lasted for about two weeks. ((I believe memory serves me correctly in that I seem to recall that it had something to do with her ''inconsistent'' use of birth control pills she had been prescribed.))

April 25, 2013 (Thursday)

Placed my online order for a ''triple-minutes''  ''TRACFONE,''  which I'd finally decided to invest in as my very first ever ''cell phone'' after a co-worker had for the past couple of weekends described how their ''prepaid'' service works.

My attempts to ''cannibalize'' and ''combine'' components from my mother's  ''Gateway''  and my former  ''HP Pavilion''  proved a failure, as were any attempts to access the hard drive taken from her system (''Windows 95'').

In trying to restore all of my old files & folders from what I'd saved over time prior to the drive death, I made the painful discovery that when I'd thought I was saving all of my video project files before leaving Hawaii I had actually overlooked the entire contents of one of my project folders, and the only way I could get *SOME* of it back (namely,  ''most''  of the completed video projects themselves, and NONE of the ''supplemental'' materials used in their production) was to ''download'' them (at least, of those that were still uploaded and thus accessible) from where I'd had them publicly posted on  ''Who?Tube'' -- EXCEPT for one which they refused to allow me to recover because of having triggered several ''copyright'' complaints.

May 2, 2013 (Thursday)

Gracie's drastic weight loss finally became blatantly noticeable today when I discovered that I could actually now wrap a single arm almost completely around her waist.

May 5, 2013 (Sunday)

Picked up my  ''TRACFONE''  order when I checked my post office box today... I'd asked my mother to keep it a secret from Gracie, as I did not want her getting used to the idea that she could just call me up any time and burn up both my minutes and any activities I might be trying to devote time & attention to.

May 6, 2013 (Monday)

In order to hit another point close to home, my mother informed Gracie that she would now be required to pay ''rent'' (in the form of $50, said to be for ''laundry detergent.''

May 7, 2013 (Tuesday)

Gracie informed her grandmother about the ''rent'' requirement, and since she had no money of her own she'd asked her grandmother to help her out, which she received today in a ''moneygram'' type of electronic transfer. Prior to her going out to claim the wired money I'd taken a few ''half-nude'' (bottomless) pictures of Gracie to document the radical change in her body size.

May 9, 2013 (Thursday)

Received a call from my employer just to inform me that they had given me a ''promotion'' and they wanted me to come in to the office to take care of all the details: they gave me some identifying markers along with some cheesy framed ''certificate'' and a small bump in my pay scale.

Also received my warranty-replacement hard drive and the package of polarized ''over-lenses'' sunglasses I'd ordered online from ''Sunglasses Hut.''

I'd managed to reclaim all of my unsaved video projects that had still been posted on  ''Who?Tube''  (with the one exception mentioned earlier)... but just as it was beginning to seem as if my computer problems were over, Gracie's were beginning anew again, when she alerted me to the fact that she was no longer able to get her screen to come on, and it would sound an ''error'' beep each time she'd attempt to restart it. (I feigned total ignorance, but as I was working on my own computer I'd heard her drop her laptop off of the bed and make an exasperated remark after having done so, and it was made even more self-evident by the gap in the upper left corner of the system base where the ''tabs'' or whatever was holding the containment unit intact was no longer effective... but that's always been Gracie's method: whenever she breaks or damages something, she overwhelmingly ''shies away'' from acknowledging her accountability.

May 10 - 12, 2013 (Friday-Sunday)
''Weekend in Review''

Took Gracie's laptop to the jobsite with me Friday (May 10) to try working on it to try ''adjusting'' it to where it would restart properly, since I'd already discovered earlier by hooking the VGA cable to her laptop and my mother's old monitor that I sometimes with careful manipulation I could get everything up & running. After managing to get it restarted again, after much patient but frustrating effort, on Saturday (May 11), I deactivate any automatic ''sleep/shutdown'' features in her OS and instructed her to just leave the machine continually running, emphasizing not to at-all touch or move the screen from its position where I'd had it set, lest she worsen the situation and risk losing any future ability to bring it back up.

It was also on Saturday that I decided I wanted to try ''cloning'' all of the system data from the ''fresh'' hard drive the ''repair'' shop put in onto the ''warranty replacement'' drive, so I searched feverishly online for such a program (''free,'' of course) that could aid me in accomplishing that task: I found and settled on a program called which I had to go through numerous steps to get set up.

May 13 - 16, 2013 (Monday-Thursday)
''Week in Review''

Tried to test out my iso burn of  ''Mageia Linux''  on Monday (May 13), which has established itself as the successor to  ''Mandriva,''  when the ''Mandriva'' team decided to discontinue their development of a full-featured ''operation system''), but it turned out that the disc I'd burned was not a ''LiveCD,'' so I had no way of testing it out. Also ran the  ''EaseUS,''  ''cloning'' program in hopes of having the two identical hard drives to be ''back-ups'' of each other, since burning ''data DVDs has almost always been one infuriating disaster after another, and the fact that it would save me all of the hassles of ''reinstalling'' all of my programs and resetting of all of my interface preferences.

Although I'd now had ''dual boot'' capability since Tuesday (May 14), as a result of ''successfully'' cloning the replacement hard drive, it still was not a genuine ''identical'' clone as the ''repair'' guys who had recommended that I clone the system in the first place had assured me, because all of my programs, files and preferences were transferred, accessible, and active... EXCEPT that I could not get *ANY*  ''sounds''  from out of the system -- not from any ''audio'' program, not even the computer's own default sounds! So, naturally, I called the  ''untrained monkeys''  (I'm sorry... I mean the ''computer repair'' technicians) and informed them of the complications, and they suggested that I reload the drivers from the activation disk they gave me with the circuit board switch-out, but still nothing, so I took the hard disk to their [chop] shop the next day (Wed., May 15) showing them what I was getting and watching them trying to figure out what was going before leaving the drive unit in the shop.

As a ''getaway'' I took Gracie riding about town ((part of some other business along the way?)), and on an impulse, since we were in the area, I took us up to the ''Mill Mountain'' overlook, where we did a small hike of some of the trails and checked out the ''visitor center'' just as they were about to close.

On the walk back to the house after picking up my hard drive on Thursday (May 16), I took Gracie (who had decided to accompany me) on a ''loop'' by returning down ''Shenandoah Avenue'' via ''Peter's Creek Road'' to show her the greater time & distance it takes it travel what would appear to be on the surface the ''same'' route just one or two blocks over, telling her when we got back to the house that the ''looped'' trek we had taken had us covering about five miles total ((a ''guestimation'' on my part at the time, but which would later be confirmed almost to total accuracy when I'd later decide to ''test it out'' by using the ''trip meter'' on my motorcycle)).

May 22, 2013 (Wednesday)

I took Gracie back out to the DMV with whatever bullshit documentation they claimed they needed from her so she could get her Virginia state ID: we managed to get back to the house just ahead of the rainstorm which we saw brewing in the distance after I'd decided to go check for mail at the post office and found that she'd finally gotten her federal income tax rebate check.

Also kept trying to figure out how to copy code into Angelfire's ''web shell'' in order to duplicate the layout & navigation of an earlier version of what was then still ''relatively'' known as  ''YouTube''  ((...and though it was evident that if I'd had greater understanding of what I was doing and knew how to write coding language, the desire for a return to the classic format was neither enough to make me want to devote the time & effort into trying to learn how to do it properly, nor to want to ''hire'' (and ''pay'') somebody who did have the skills and/or know-how to produce it for me, so I'd eventually opt for a totally unique design of my own, working with the most ''basic'' knowledge of HTML that I do understand to some extent.

May 23, 2013 (Thursday)

[[*Finished Project ''Ins/Outs'': not sure what this is about]]

May 27 - 30, 2013 (Monday-Thursday)
''Week in Review''

Taking Gracie to the ''Stellar One'' branch location at ''Crossroads Mall'' Tuesday (May 28) for her to (reluctantly) open a bank account with her tax return check fizzled because of her still not having a valid ''state ID'' and they would not accept the ''confirmation'' slip which showed that her application had been submitted. So that it was not a complete waste, I decided that we should have a ''DVD movie night'' with a few titles I'd borrowed from the library.

Wednesday (May 29) was ''Family Day'' at what Gracie refers to as the ''Golden Feedbag'' ((I believe she'd accompanied us on this trip, where she grabbed a lot of desserts and ate at them)).

On Thursday (May 30), Gracie had received her ''state'' tax rebate in the mail, but instead of issuing actual ''checks'' in the mail, this so-called ''Commonwealth'' issues rebates in the form of ''plastic,'' which I think is totally stupid.

It was also on this day that I'd decided to take Gracie to an appointment I'd scheduled for her to put in a job application to the company I work for. After dropping her off there I came back down to look into the computer servicing establishment across from ''Tanglewood Mall'' called ''PC Land,'' where I spent all sorts of time explaining all of the problems I'd been having with my supposedly ''refurbished'' computer and how I was wanting to know how or if my original circuitry might be ''salvageable'' to keep on hand as a ''family'' computer: they'd told me the same story about how I should just consider the original mother board dead & gone, but the second technician who'd come in later, whom I explained the story to again, said he'd be willing to look at it. It was during these conversations that it was revealed that the reason I could not make a ''perfect'' clone of the system that the ''talentless hacks'' on Melrose Avenue had put on my system was due to the fact that when they installed the new system they assigned it as something  ''other than''  the standard industry *DEFAULT*  ''C:''  drive!

After Gracie's interview, we rode out to ''Valley View Mall'' to purchase a ''name badge'' to replace the one I'd misplaced months ago.


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