in robots and empire, giskard emerges as an allegory of historical materialism, who guides the vanguard spacers into clearing a path for the proletariat humans to take over the galaxy.

it's pretty neat, and pretty heavy-handed.

unfortunately, i slept all day, again.

let's get some reading done, first.

i'm not rich - i'm dirt poor.

i can't just throw out a built-to-fuck machine that's run like a tank for years without at least understanding what's wrong with it, first.

if i can prove to myself that there's a short in the board, i can justify tossing it. but, every test i've done tells me there's not a short in the board.

remember: while i was archiving my scattered internet writing over 2017, and focusing on a journal-writing phase over 2018-2020, and i spent the end of 2020 building a diet, i have been trying to get back to recording since early 2021 and have been unable to because the recording computer is broken in a way that i do not understand.

i thought it was ram, but it's not.

i can't convince myself that there's a short in the board.

the machine exhibits unusual network behaviour (despite being air-gapped), and there are symptoms of a "bios virus" that seems like a government attack. it has frequently randomly installed netbios, using a process i don't understand. i've wondered if somebody is utilizing a hidden wifi chip, or hacking me using microwave technology.

until recently, ps/2 functionality repeatedly disappeared. i seem to have solved that with repeated bios flashes.

i think it's hardware. 

but, the bottom line is that i can't figure it out, and i need very careful testing, as a result of it. i have to organize my data in a specific way before i can get back to what i was doing, but i'm going overboard on organizing it and calling it "filing" in an attempt to test the machine by using it. 

i've stripped everything down and/or turned everything in the bios off, except 

- video card (nvidia card manufactured in the mid 00s. there is no card on this board, otherwise i'd just use it. i'm not very concerned about video quality.)

- external pc sound card (maudio delta 1414 that i bought at a discontinuation sale for the rca dacs)

- one dvd reader/writer

- floppy drive

- four sata hard drives

- usb functionality is the only thing running via the bios

it's running as a single core, for example. no firewire. nothing.

i can only hope that's stable.

i didn't change anything in my install scripts, so i don't know why it would be software....

just to clarify a point: historically, i've tended to purchase and smoke a small amount of marijuana (away from the house) on and after the solstice. i have often purchased a quarter around the 20th and smoked it every day until around the 5th, saving a small amount for my birthday on the 13th. i refer to this as a end-of-the-year "head cave".

i have taken a very different viewpoint on marijuana since diagnosed with near-osteoporosis. i can try to slow down the loss of bone mass, but i can't rebuild it. smoking anything at all in any sustained manner would be stupid.

that being said, i'm also not in the right mental space to do that. in past years, i've had productive recording periods. the ends of 2014, 2015 and 2016 were very productive, in terms of recording. the end of 2017 was sort of unique, as i moved. i did not "head cave" at the end of 2018 as i did not feel like it (i smoked no marijuana over the holidays that year at all), i found myself sick with a weird pneumonia at the end of 2019 (picked up in detroit) and avoided head caving for that reason and i bought an 1/8th last year on my birthday, after experimenting with edibles around saturnalia, and being disappointed by it.

i have been trying for months to get back on track and the length of the day changing isn't an exciting thing to me this year.

i will probably spend most of the next month reading, but i want to get done the filing, too, and take the next troubleshooting step in rebuilding the recording machine in a stable way.

the machine has been stable with the sound card, so i've re-allowed for usb. i have searched the large drives without it crashing. will it crash while searching usb drives?

if it's stable after a while, the next step will to be to turn the firewire back on. i'm going to avoid those video card drivers for a while, still.