Well, here I am, at my favorite White Spot, at my favorite table, blogging into a text file because I can’t figure out how to make Linux Mint connect to the local WiFi.

In fact, I can’t figure out how to make to connect to anything.

When I double click on the connection thingy, I can see what network it thinks it is using, and I can ring up this lovely list of known connections, and White Pot Wifi is right there on the list.

And from there, I can add a network, edit the settings for a known network, or delete a network.

What it doesn’t let you do is CONNECT TO THE FUCKING THING.

How hard would it have been to add a “connect” button? But that is not the Linux way!

That’s the Network Connection window.,which displays settings. Out of desperation, I tried theNetwork Setting menu.

Of course, it has the connections on it.

And a nice big area where the usual list of local connects should be. But there’s nothing there and no way to make it poll the environment like a normal device.

But look…. a button that says Known Networks. I will click it. Wow! There’s White Spot! Surely salvation must be at hand!

I click the White Spot WiFi entry. A little X appears next to the network. And that’s it.

There’s STILL NO FUCKING CONNECT BUTTON.

Oh, but I can access the fucking settings.

So I give up. Linux has defeated me. I really should format the HD on this thing and install Windows, because compared to Linux, IT JUST FUCKING WORKS.

Back home and with only an hour to write the other 730 words of this thing. Oy.

Update : when I got home, it wouldn’t connect to the home network either. So I rebooted my laptap and it worked fine after that. That probably would have worked at White Spot.

Still, I stand by my rant.

Tech rage aside, it’s been a busy day. In the morning, I worked on theses tests I have to do for the penny a word job. I’m doing a lot of work for this job I am not all that keen on.

But what the hell. It will be good to have someplace to get work when I need it, or when I am bored, or whatever. The pay is lousy but my needs are modest, so the money goes directly to little things that might improve my lot.

Like paying for my paid membership in Upwork, for example. Granted, I haven’t been using it much lately because my plate is already pretty full, what with writing five episodes a week for the Uno gig, doing my part to contribute to SI and Paragon, and blogging.

I will be going to an SI meeting tomorrow. A few of us are getting together to talk about business plans. I will be there in my capacity as the fellow who is going to write the dang thing. They will give me the data but I will be the one to turn it into solid, serious, forthright business language that is persuasive and impressive without being overbearing.

Quite frankly, it sounds like a lot of fun.

I don’t have occasion to use that kind of manfully pragmatic tone in my own writing. Where would it come up? But for this, I get to reach deep into the businessman part of my mind, access the alternative timeline version of me where I did get a business degree and start my own business, and write from a very Taurus place.

What’s not to love?

In the afternoon I had therapy. I told him all about my recent breakdown. That took half of the session. And yet I still feel like I didn’t really convey it. Or he didn’t pick it up, I suppose. I was trying to get across just how broken and lost and depressed I was that night, but all I ended up doing was stating the bare facts of it. Then it felt like we skipped the actual emotion part and started talking about meaning of it.

And that was useful. But I think I need to change my emotional display rules in order to get the sort of empathic and sympathetic response I crave. When I am talking with someone about some very negative emotional event, I tend to do it in a cold, affectless tone, like Linda Hamiliton in the opening sequence of Terminator 2.

You know, like this :

I am not sure why it comes out like that. Part of it is for effect. As you can see, the dead-inside voice really magnifies the effect of  the horrors you are recounting.

And were I excessively glib, I would leave it at that. But I hate that kind of glibness. It violates my preference for thoroughness and depth of perspective.

So it also has something to do with what I need to do in order to get the story out. Like I have to go to this dead quiet place in order to be able to handle the emotional power of the things I am trying to convey and not “lose control”.

And we can never, ever, ever lose control. That would be Bad.

It’s part of the emotionally constipated spoiled-ego Western viewpoint that declares emotions to be the enemy that must be conquered so that you are always in control of yourself and never let go on them or you will experience great shame.

Yup. That’s pretty anal. We Western males are emotion-retentive.

And I am very much in that camp, despite knowing its flaws. I am always struggling to stay in control – defined as acting only from reason and will – and not “lose it”.

I have even convinced myself that this is necessary because if I was to lose control, I would become a horrible threat to myself and others.

And that might be true for a little while.

But eventually the flood would abate, I would be empty – truly empty – and feel ever so much better for it.

I would just hope not to be in jail at that point.

That would be a bummer.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.