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Winter 2011 (Dec-Feb)
I never expected to be so long in preparation for my planned move. Having all the extra time on my hands has actually done more to work against me than for me.
With the exception of paying necessary bills at crucial deadline intervals throughout the past several months, and about four separate times in between to restock literally bare cupboards & refrigerator when I'd gone entirely thorough my food reserves, I've been keeping myself holed up inside this small apartment the entire time -- my almost exclusive focus (whenever I was not being burdened with the hated chore of cooking for myself or sleeping at all of the oddest hours of the day & night) was on these life-draining computers. The largest bulk of that time was spent collecting, sorting & manipulating the screen images gathered for background themes and screensavers; significant time was also spent between moving & arranging files over from ''Macintosh'' to my ''Windows XP'' system. And whenever I was too strung-out, depressed or plain dead tired to do any ''actual'' work on the computers (getting my files arranged & backed-up, etc.), the Internet was largely being used as my 'window to the world'... movies, online tv shows, news programs, projects & ''vlogs'' posted in ''video sharing'' hosting sites, and listening to & downloading select online radio dramas/series. A number of significant 'activity altering' situations arose as a result of all the aforementioned computer involvement, which I'll relate later.
My entrapment has proven to me just how disorganized and overbearing my life and day-to-day existence truly is. The main intent behind my whole purpose in leaving my job late last year was so that I could make serious preparations to plan & execute my permanent departure from Hawaii back to the Mainland (...and for a while, serious consideration was also being given to Canada as a result of my eyes experiencing ever more frightening symptoms -- my concern being that a guaranteed taxpayer funded ''Single Payer'' healthcare system in an excruciatingly cold winter climate was preferable to the ''Russian Roulette'' system of healthcare in the United States where winters are still not my idea of a picnic). But still, after all these months, I've done nothing in the way of organizing personal items (whether as personal effects to return with me, or those items which have been designated as ''sell-offs''), the same stack of laundry is still sitting there untouched, important paperwork is scattered all about sorted but unfiled, over 200 redeemable beer bottles & soda cans all from last year keep gathering dust, and I've not mopped the floor in I cannot recall how long. The only ''preparations'' I've even made were those shortly after I'd quit my job when I ran about various places ''stocking up'' on mostly food & food-related items (Asian) I'd lose having ready access to as a result of my departure from Hawaii.
I'm especially concerned now because the property management company is going through its shenanigans again, this time trying to say (via yet another new resident manager) that I'm supposedly something like over $700 in arrears; I then submitted my bank statements for the entire past year to call them out on their bullshark: it's been quiet on their end since (at least as far as I know up to this date), but of course that doesn't mean they're still not planning something devious.
The cover on my motorcycle seemed to have been the subject of someone's destructive vandalism, each time finding it in furthering states of being ripped & severely damaged far beyond ''weathering'' in the Honolulu sun. The problem seemed to have subsided when I discovered that local cats had been regularly hanging around it, crawling underneath the machine and jumping up on seats using it as a lounging bed, whereupon I'd set up a literal ''bed of pins & needles'' on the seat. So even though vandalism cannot be entirely ruled out (based upon past track records), it seemed that the cats were the likely culprits in this particular instance.
As for the motorcycle itself, the last time I'd ridden it anywhere was just before the dealership's Xmas shutdown, when I'd taken it in to finish the scheduled maintenance service on it which had actually begun at the end of November when they were out of stock of a part I'd needed -- an air filter. The servicing was requested about 200 miles shy of when I'd actually intended to send it in for the work all as part of preparation for and anticipation of having it shipped to the Mainland with me). Fate would have it, of course, that after I'd ridden it out of the mechanic's station to check my post office box downtown that the thing would not start again... the battery had been completely drained! So not only was I stuck at the old courthouse building, but I was running about trying to find phone books for the dealership's number, and damned if I didn't lose half a dollar in the phonebooth because the number printed in the directory was incorrect, then lost another half dollar in the same phone because a defect in the unit would not permit me to be heard by the party on the other end, so now I'm running frantically against the clock trying to find the next nearest phonebooth in an ''accessible'' place (since everything downtown was shutting down both for the day and the holiday), hoping like crazy someone is still at the shop, find a phone in one of the buildings two blocks away (''Davies Pacific Center'') make the call, and... you've guessed it... get a recording (even though they said they were going to remain open until 14:00 that day). After a while I tried calling again, finally got through, told the guy there what had happened, only for him to tell me there was probably not much that could be done, but I'd left him the number of the phonebooth I was at, then he called back after about ten or fifteen minutes saying that he'd meet me at where I'd been parked and that he would bring the service truck in about half an hour. At first I'd thought the intent was to tow it out & hang onto it until they reopened after the holiday break, or he was going to drop it off at my apartment complex so I could just bring the battery in to be charged later. Instead, he only gave me a cable jump -- enough to get me started, but would not permit me to do anymore stops-&-starts, so I rode it out on the highway for about 20 minutes hoping it could get a sufficient enough charge on it (which I've not one iota of an idea how well that went over, because once I'd wheeled her back into the courtyard she's remained parked and unmoved -- by me, anyway). All these headaches because one of their clueless mechanics had inadvertently twisted the ignition port to the full left position which ran the lights and drained the battery. In one side note to the fury-inducing madness, I did finally begin to see the real value of cellphones, though ''Techno-Luddite'' still will not likely invest in one.
As for my progress re: these computers, a number of situations arose whose sole purpose, it seems, was to do all that could be done to continue hindering my progress. First was my decision to completely abandon any further use of ''GoogleTube'' (''YouTube''), first as a response to the unevenhandedness of the ''censors'' (so-called review board), especially with regard to their entirely bogus handling ''copyright,'' ''ethics'' and ''terms of use'' supposed ''violations,'' which I'd decided I'd had more than enough of after my then most recent couple of projects were targeted. The timing of the smear was in a way a godsend, because no sooner than the very next day of my expressing my disappointment with GoogleTube and their miserable way of handling things & ignoring users' concerns that they shit upon us with yet ANOTHER of their dog-puke looking/behaving mandatory ''upgrades'' which just made ''Who?Tube'' disgusting to look at & work with & navigate around! Since then, I've been making slow progress in reformatting & transferring many of my classic projects over to the YouTube-rival ''DailyMotion'' site, where, despite keeping my YouTube channel page open to announce updates & new projects I'm posting on the ''DayMo'' site, I get absolutely no exposure, no following, and no interest -- which showed to prove just how ''interested'' in me and/or my ideas or talents all of my so-called ''subscribers'' truly were.
The ''other'' cyber-punch to the jaw came when after attempting to remove a very stubborn trojan which got planted on my PC system which refused to budge (one which, as it turned out, was likewise an excruciatingly stubborn & seemingly indefatigable nuisance which resisted virtually all conventional attempts at removal for anyone else who fell victim to this specific bug) I finally had to resort to reinstalling my system software, at one point frightened that I'd accidentally sent all of my personal files to oblivion. Fortunately, my personal stuff (much of which had absolutely *NO* back-up sources whatsoever) was kept safe in the process, but I still had to go through all the headaches & hemorrhoids of redownloading & reinstalling nearly all of my 3rd-party applications (every originally saved ''zip file'' I'd downloaded originally had all been swiped out in the process), not to mention resetting all of my user preferences. As an afterthought, however, I'd made the subsequent decision not to perform a complete system scrub & reinstall as had been part of the ''pre-return to the Mainland'' plan, which in all honesty was mainly a tact to have the ''symantec/Norton's'' anti-virus/firewall suite 15-month trial reactivated, but was deemed unnecessary when I'd decided to install & activate the ''COMODO'' firewall, partnered with my second trial run of ''avast!'' anti-virus (which I'd switched back to after having become utterly disgusted & frustrated with how ''Avira'' anti-virus kept freezing & locking my system during the program's ''updating'' process... not to mention their constant screen-filling ''banner ad'' grew from a minor inconvenience to a major bombastically irritating nuisance.
Throughout all these processes and headaches though, I did manage to come to one painful but excruciatingly logical and inevitable conclusion: ''Macintosh'' serves me absolutely no practical purpose anymore! Of course, the largest part of the problem are the ''compatibility'' issues and all the ''upgrade'' scams (still being locked in OSX-2 keeps me calcifying with all the other dinosaurs of Macs past), but my fury went seriously up my nostrils & into my brain stem with all the non-cooperation I've been getting with Macintosh hardware historically. After reviewing everything I've done, have been doing, and intend to do, Macintosh serves no purpose but to be a dead weight and an increasing drain on the wallet. The only things I can ever see myself keeping Mac around for now are [1] streaming audio recording (unless I can discover and correct why the WinPC audio is constantly being flooded with all sorts of irritating cracks & pops, and [2] ... MAYBE as an opportunity to give ''iMovie'' a chance, in comparison or compliment to ''Windows Movie Maker,'' which I've been becoming somewhat prolific with, but which is still pissing me off to no end, because it becomes more & more apparent that the people who wrote the program for it have never ''used'' it themselves. Outside of that, the only other consideration I'd give Mac is the ease of use of its word processing program, ESPECIALLY the ease of transition & use of Japanese script.
Unmentioned Highlights From Previous Quarter THREE-QUARTERS
June 1 - July 31, 2010
What I had intended to be my focus on trying to re-enter the workforce again went sour. I'd only gotten outside the first night of June to do another desperate grocery run, made the error of giving in to the temptation of low priced "empty calories" sweetwater in the process, trying to balance four ''12-packs'' of ''Cherry Pepsi'' and ''Sierra Mist'' on the handlebars of my bicycle while strapping my two backpacks filled with groceries to my front and back, and wound up losing my headlight in the process. By the first week in July I'd managed to go through all the soda pop then found the motivation to finally gather all my empty soda/juice cans and beer bottles and cart them off to the recycling/rebate lot across from Aala Park, but I was so impatient & uncertain when I'd requested that my returnables be physically ''counted'' instead of ''weighed'' that I had miscounted and cheated my own self out of nearly three additional dollars I was owed on the ''5-cent'' deposits I'd paid, so I'd only managed to turn it all back into a little over $11, and because it was my own dimwitted $#!T miscount that shorted me (even though I'm sure he knew I'd done so) I chose not to dispute the total and left *HOPING* I'd learned an important and (literally) valuable lesson.
Between more depression and headaches with digestive discomforts (which finally seem to have been linked with the latest purchase these ice cream bars I'm partial to) I've been staying wrapped up in these computers and not doing much else: messing around mostly with ''GoogleTube'' and my channels at ''DailyMotion'' and being otherwise distracted with other online audio and/or video activities which have only pushing me further behind on things that I've desperately been needing to get done in preparation for this next big move.
In relation to those relocation plans, ''Lawrence, Kansas'' brutally got drop-kicked off of the highest spot on my list of considerations when I'd read that the latest sales tax increase approved by the state legislature, combined with the additional tack-ons approved by Lawrence City and/or Douglas County had raised the local sales tax rate to almost 9% (8.85%)... with NO exemptions for groceries (except, as I was to learn later, as a partial credit during income tax filings). Highly disturbed by this (and after learning a couple of weeks later that the City planned to discuss establishing ''special'' sales tax districts which would tack on an additional cent to the city's general sales tax rate), and determined to find the most ''tax-friendly'' location in the country (as though there were even such a thing), I began researching comparative tax rates & assessments of all the states and counties, planning to use the information I was learning as one of the major factors in determining where I might next like to consider re-planting roots.
Up until that point I'd given consideration to a number of various and contrasting locales, including Denver, which I'd immediately turned down upon learning Colorado has a one-income-bracket ''flat tax,'' which I think is a brutally unfair way to assess taxes on a population. I'd also given brief consideration to Madison, Wisconsin. I'd given some real consideration Grand Forks (or Fargo), North Dakota, and I had strongly considered Toledo, Ohio, mainly for their close proximity to the Canadian border -- especially the latter, being just over an hour's drive to Windsor, Ontario (...still drawn by the appeal of Canada's ''Single Payer'' healthcare system). Ultimately I'd given up on both locations: Grand Forks because of their never-ending mosquito blight; and Toledo for no other reason than its sickeningly ugly skyline and the fact that no other ''majorish'' city in the vicinity of Toledo was close enough to the Detroit/Ontario border or seemingly within ''reasonable'' housing cost areas.
The most bizarre aspect of it all, in relation to my focus on Toledo, was that whenever I'd deliberately focus my thoughts on it, I'd almost without exception slip by initially thinking the name ''Dayton'' (Ohio) for some inexplicable reason.
But by the time I'd already closed the book on Toledo, I'd begun to re-examine the ''tax structures'' of the different states across the country, and this time found myself taking a much closer and more serious look at the state of ''Florida,'' though I was always mindful of the brutally higher cost-of-living throughout the state. I'd thought that *if* I were going to consider Florida, I'd want to avoid the ''northern'' ('redneck') part of the state, as well as the extreme ''south'' (for too many reasons not worth mentioning), and I sure as hell did not want to be anywhere near Orlando. It was during this ''search & scrutinize'' session that I spotted and began to focus heavily on ''Daytona Beach!'' ... (Were all of those ''Dayton, Ohio'' slips perhaps somebody's way of trying to tell me something?)
With the exception of mountain ranges, Daytona (so far) seems to possess many, if not most, of the advantages I'd feel considerably ''at home'' with: less-severe winter climate; beaches/ocean; no state income tax (though offset by higher state & county-assessed sales taxes); and it would seem (at least according to the number of listings in the ''craigslist'' housing section and from several personal inquiries posited on the ''City-Data'' website) that with a steady 35-40 hr./wk. job it may just be possible to live indoors and maybe still be able to do a little more than just barely ''get by.''
I'd also spent about the last two weeks trying to uncover and exterminate what inevitably turned out to be over a half-dozen different nesting sites where these teeny-tiny but major nuisance pale colored ants had invaded my apartment: the major ones being inside the woodwork underneath & behind the kitchen sink countertop, behind the rubber baseboard under the kitchen cabinet doors, inside my ''iMac G3'' packaging box, underneath a ''burn rubbish'' box I kept in the washroom, and (yet again) inside a couple of my DVD cases.
The last Monday in July (26th) I bicycled out to the UPS terminal to pick up the AC power adapter for my camera, but was too absent-minded to think about bringing the camera along with me anyway to snap some random pictures, since it's been the first time resigning from my job that I've been outside of the apartment for any length of time and for any length of distance!
The next day (Tuesday, the 27th) I'd planned on taking the motorcycle out for the first time since the battery drain fiasco before the Xmas holiday, hoping to ride it out long enough to put a decent charge on it, only to find out it was completely drained... not even a whimper! (Right before then, I decided to use that same time to -- YET AGAIN! -- ''register'' the vehicle with YET ANOTHER ''resident manager!) Since the cycle wouldn't start at all, I ran about town on my bill paying & mail pick-up errands on the bicycle, finally breathing a sigh of relief that my Hawaii State income tax return check had finally arrived. Also received my shipment of ''Vector''(''Atra'') razors I'd ordered online, so now if my now feeble 16-year-old ''Atra'' (which I'm now using strictly for my pubes & underarms) should ever give out completely, I'll not be held captive to ''Schick's'' and ''Gillette's'' despotic stranglehold to rape us of our hard-earned dollars by enslaving us into purchasing their hyper-expensive ''4'' and ''5-blade'' gimmicks!
August 6 - 8, 2010 (Friday-Sunday)
Spent nearly the entire weekend cutting, repairing, then uploading a 3-hour-long webcam interview I'd conducted with my mother at past 1:30 Friday morning (her time on the east coast), which I would not have done had I known at the time that I was in fact making the call on ''Thursday'' night, and not the start of the weekend).
The project was admittedly largely in response to a massive wave of harassment I'd been receiving for about the past couple of weeks from a bunch of classless ''niggers'' putting on big bravado pretenses of being ''black,'' yet going out of their way to verbally attack me personally with a variety of disparaging remarks, aimed particularly at my light skin tone, throwing [what they thought were] bitter insults my way, labeling me as a ''white'' person.
Of course, the nastiness from all parties involved arose from the fact that I at times align myself with certain other black male voices who speak out against ''niggershit'' -- especially where it involves the shameful & ugly behavior of black women and how it is a key factor into helping explain why African-American women are the least likely of all peoples in the United States (not just among ''women'' exclusively) to marry.
It began when some psycho-bitch from ''YouTube'' came to my ''DailyMotion'' channel and launched a slew of vicious personally belittling attacks, then did the same thing over on the hosting site, ''Generation-X.net,'' and I blocked her both times (I'd already blocked her a very long time ago on ''YouTube,'' where I still maintain my channel only as a linking hub to ''DayMo.'' to announce any new projects I'm posting there).
The hate-spewing was resurrected about a week later, after I decided to learn more about the woman who had sent me the ''friend request'' at ''Gen-X,'' which had been in my ''inbox'' since June 5, and upon watching a couple of her video commentaries I decided to ''participate'' by answering a set of questions about dating/marital relationships which I found faulty, one-sided and very ''accusatory.'' Because of ''Gen-X's'' severely restrictive posting limits, and the depth of detail that went into producing my response video, I decided to post to ''DayMo'' and try to figure out an effective way to announce the response back in ''Gen-X.'' In retrospect, I simply could've made an ''announcement'' promo video (as I do at ''GoogleTube'') and submitted it as a ''video response''... but seeing how bitterly hateful she responded to my ''personal attack'' against her (as she accused me of doing), I know now that it very likely would've made absolutely no difference had I done it that way or as I did: which was to include mention of my response to her questions and to express some of my concerns about the nature of those questions in an exclusive ''Gen-X'' video where I'd focused on the theme: ''things I've been noticing lately.'' Because of the title of the video (''You're On Notice'' -- which was a ''play on words'' of Stephen Colbert's ''on notice'' board), she (and several of her cheerleaders) used the title and the fact that I'd included her screen-name in the ''search tags'' as a convenient excuse to launch nasty attacks (much of it in kneejerk defense of ''booful black goddissis'') without so much as listening to what was actually being said in the commentary or ''separating'' the three separate topics from one another.
So after all these verbal (mainly in-text) assaults, particularly those spewing their whole hateful ''white man dissing black women'' pretentious filth, I decided to give them a taste of reality to see how they'd react to another ''black woman'' who had seen everything many of us have been discussing about the shameful state black people-- and especially black women --have gotten entangled in, and I'd hoped that they'd appreciate this coming from someone who came through the ''Segregation Era'' and who also faced the challenges of 'single motherhood.' My hope was that they would respect not only my claim to black heritage & black identity, but also lend credence to a black woman who had valuable information to impart to the young black women & girls of today who are in a state of crisis. I'm extremely ashamed to say that all my efforts did was simply to add more fuel to the stoking blaze -- the personal assaults came bigger and louder and nastier! (Nowhere was there even a speck of a mention about the substance of the video lead-in or any portion at all of the interview... and that's genuinely what pains me more than anything related to all this bitter drama, because it only serves to reaffirm the state of loss the African-American community is ever deeper sinking into.)
''Weekend in Review''
August 31, 2010 (Tuesday)
Finally got myself out of the house beginning yesterday morning, mainly to retrieve my mail which had been gathering in my P.O. Box for the best part of a month -- I had also taken my camera with me to take a few snapshots of myself near ''Aloha Tower Marketplace'' (heavily influenced by some of older photographs I'd taken of myself when I'd lived in ''Galveston'' (when I still looked young & fresh and relatively handsome... Dear God, how times have changed for the worst).
Upon returning to the apartment I'd cleared out my entire backlog of dirty laundry, nearly all of which had been sitting (or in the case of my bedding items, still being utilized) since before I'd given up my job last year! It was a good feeling on so many levels to finally have all of it out of the way and clean & fresh smelling/feeling!
Continued the trend today by taking the battery from my motorcycle to get it charged, only to be told later when I'd returned a little after 17:00 that it was completely shot from having sat too long, not being utilized... so I'm on the hook for another ''new'' battery, so I'm looking at another $140 out of my account balance.
After that bad news, I'd again gone back to ''Aloha Tower'' to snap some more general pictures of the area (for ''mementos'' to have as keepsakes, in preparation of my intended relocation), then peddled over to ''Kaka'ako Waterfront Park'' for some more snapshot taking & mini-movie shoots of the surrounding scenery.
In between the two preceding events, I'd gone to ''KMart'' to replenish my last-gasp supplies of hygiene products (mostly for the inside of my face, but I'd also been washing the outside without proper soap since it seems like forever). They did not (yet again) have the type of dishwashing sponge I've become accustomed to, so I'll be more-or-less forced to purchase what I'm looking for at that disgusting ''Wal-Mart'' place... unless ''Long's Drugs'' have them.
23:30, Hawaii Standard Time.
Winter 2006 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2007 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2007 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2007 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2007 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2008 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2008 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2008 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2008 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2009 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2009 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2009 (Sep-Nov) /
Summer 2010 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2010 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2010 (Dec-Feb) /
Spring 2011 (Mar-May) /
Summer 2011 (Jun-Aug) /
Autumn 2011 (Sep-Nov) /
Winter 2011 (Dec-Feb)
