Lured into this by his reputation, by the glowing references provided by Henry Miller, others, reading the French on the left (badly, out loud in my head) and then the English on the right (better), but I'm not smitten and my French is lousy so it's a slender book taking much longer than what it should take me to read; it's a palate cleanser of all the things I was enjoying reading. I get or understand his genius, but it's not at the moment to my taste, and the few pages remaining are proving an obstacle to my moving on and finding something else to enjoy...

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Category: Books

And Car Shopping, this is ridiculous, finding a decent used vehicle for under $40,000, forget Crypto people, buy a fraction of a used car, wait a year for it to appreciate and then sell it...what happened to the reasonably priced beater? I'm looking at $5,000, $6,000 dollars and more for a beat-up jeep from the late 80's with over 300,000 KM! "Only needs brakes and a transmission...." "My loss is your gain..." This is preposterous!!!

Anyways, surely it will happen and it will be the best jeep ever but - I got to say, it's not happening soon enough...

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Category: Blog

So, something to look forward later in the week, Wednesday night, a date. 

And the best of intentions - as too often is the case, are derailed by Jr. popping into town on Tuesday night and wanting to tie one on. Which we do, hitting half a dozen bars and ordering doubles at every one becoming in gradual and quick increments every shade of possible annoying. This doesn't particularly matter as few of these bars are worth hanging out in, and I'm not a "bar" guy, but by the last one we're barred from having drinks (reasonably enough). Eventually I pack him into a taxi and send him off. 

Phew. 

I did not need that. 

Wednesday day is devoted to recovery; and so finding myself a nice park bench across from  Oso to enjoy the sun and lie down for a long nap to recover. A long nap. A few hours, the sun is perfect, hot, I even manage a sunburn. Slowly I'm recombobulating.

Wednesday night, 8:00 PM, date shows, she's a beautiful elegant European, we drink sparkling water and chat and I'm impressed, and she's laughing a charming laugh and pulls out her phone and she happened to be out for a walk today and took this picture and isn't it funny and .... there I am, on the bench, out like a light.

And I realize that I've taken this celibacy thing a little bit far, doubled down on it, made my bed as it were and I should have left myself an opening, allowed for the possibility that I might change my mind....

Drink your sparkling water, chat (as well as I am able, which is not so...), and that's that and it has become painfully apparent that it's time I do some serious reforming of my lifestyle...

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Category: People

Now this laptop, it's due dire death, overdue, nigh-on-useless, so - unfolding it at the café I'm not surprised to get the black screen of death. Not the blue screen, merely a black screen that doesn't tell me if it's on or off or what the fuck is up...

I'm ok with the computer dying, only I have a lot of documents on it. Text files. Writing. Projects. And so I need to find someway get it to work, if only to back it up...

So, troubleshooting possible problems with the internet on my phone (an infinitely more useful computer, if only it had a proper keypad...), googling "Black Screen HP Stream" and I get a few troubleshooting guides - hard reboot, (tried 5 times, no luck), unplug (tried), various other methods, all to no avail. And then the methods become preposterous - "Control-Alt-Delete", and you try it, but the screen is still blank and so I can't resort to the task-manager which would supposedly help me to cure the black screen if only I could see the task manager.

These articles, they're mostly written by tech-shamans, just propose anything and eventually if it works they can take the credit...like "hold it under running water" or "take it to an expert"...the same tech-support strategies practiced by Shaw Cable, absolute bullshit. The situation is growing desperate...

I undertake the tap, bang, nudge and shake philosophy, to no effect. The screen is still black. Increase the violence. Turn off and on again. No luck. I'm beginning to suspect a hardware failure.

Eventually I find the solution - hold down on the Windows+B key and perform a hard reboot. 

This solves it. An actual tech article written by somebody who's solved the issue. This is about as rare as finding a fact on Facebook. Now to back-up my computer...

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Category: Blog
  1. The Restaurant, Now Open
  2. The Trier Gold Hoard
  3. The Members Gallery Show
  4. The Balfour Bus