Why? Because my Internet don’t work no more.

And that’s an improvement. Earlier the whole computer did not work. I had to reboot half a dozen times before I saw my desktop again.

And let me just comment, for the record, that I am really sick and fucking tired of being thrown into situations where I have to work like hell just to get back to neutral.

There’s something extremely disheartening about going through a lot of stress and thinking and ingenuity and just plain sweat equity into solving a problem only to realize that all you got out of all that work was exactly what you had before this clusterfuck even happened.

I spent a lot of the last hour and a half thinking Windows bricked my computer.

See, here’s the thing : earlier today, I noticed that the Internet had stopped working on my tablet. No big deal, I mostly use the thing to play games anyhow.

Then I go to use my computer and note that, unsurprisingly, the Internet is dead here too. It would have been nice if it had been a problem with my tablet and not our local WiFi, but that was hardly probable.

So I do what anyone might do in the situation : I rebooted. Or, in the language of the IT Crowd, I turned it off then on again.

And when I did so, the options were “update and shut down” or “update and reboot”. Normally, the bit about updating isn’t there.

And I didn’t think twice about that. I knew what it meant : that Windows had downloaded an update to itself and was poised to apply it the next time I rebooted, whether I liked it or not.

Operating systems can be so bossy.

So I go ahead and reboot, but when Windows comes back it comes back wrong.

Dunno why, but my guess is that it was not happy about trying to update itself without the Internet there for last moment file updates or whatever.

Of course, the only reason I rebooted in the first place was because my Internet wasn’t working. If our ‘Net hadn’t shit the bed and died, none of this would have happened.

In a word : grr.

So at first, it rebooted into a (very pretty) picture of colourful hot air balloons floating in an azure sky over verdant green meadows made all the more lovely by bright yellow sunshine.

I am telling you…blue sky, green grass, yellow sun…. these things are encoded into our DNA in order to lead us to our proper habitat. That’s why they make us so happy.

Anyhoo. At first I got the pretty picture and that was it. Not exactly the OS I am used to.

Then I rebooted again, and this time I got to the balloons AND the screen where it normally asks me to put in my password.

I keep meaning to download the thingy that lets me bypass the password, but I never get around to it because it only comes up when I reboot and that happens like… once a month, maybe?

That’s not nearly enough annoyance to motivate me.

So I get to the screen where it asks me for my password but… it doesn’t ask.

Next reboot, it asks, I input it, and then it just sits there on the balloon picture, as if to say, “Well, my job is done here. Good job all! “

Reboot again, this time after having removed everything superfluous from the boot sequence.

And there was a lot of it. Damn programs think they have a right to put part of themselves in your boot sequence without even telling you.

That reboot got me as far as…. a totally black screen!

Wow…… such progress.

And I got that black screen for several more reboots. Depressed, I decided I would try to tackle the Internet problem. Easy enough… just power cycle the router, right?

Except I can’t because we have so much bullshit piled everywhere in the living room that I haven’t the slightest clue as to where the router is in the first place.

And I am so sick of this shit. We have huge stacks of stuff we don’t need, never use, and honestly have no reason to own, especially in an apartment this small.

Basically, my roomie Joe is a hoarder. Sort of. I don’t consider him to be a full on hoarder because for the most part, the hoard is organized. He knows where stuff is. Nothing is rotting or dead in it.

But most of the syndrome is there. He “rescues” things. Things that would have ended up in the landfill were it not for his thoughtful intervention. Useful things it would be a waste to throw out. Right.

I am all for reducing the amount of senseless waste in the world. That’s the whole reason I founded and ran the Vancouver Freecycle.

It’s the next part I have a big issue with.

See, after he “rescues” something, it gets added to the hoard and for the most part disappears, subjectively speaking. It is exactly like the classic hoarder “clutter blindness”. Whatever it was becomes part of the hoard and thus a fixed part of the environment, like the furniture.

And there it shall stay. The “rescue” was pointless because the stuff never goes to someone who will use it. It stays here with us, completely ignored, every bit as “wasted” as if it had gone to the landfill.

The clincher for the case for hoarding is that when I try to talk to Joe about this, he has no arguments to support his “collecting” habit.

I say to him, “I am glad you rescue these things but that doesn’t mean we have to own them forever. They should be going to Value Village!” and he can’t argue with that.

And yet, nothing changes. The place is still as full of crap as ever. Small things do end up at Value Village but for the most part, the hoard grows unchecked.

And the thing is, I get the urge to acquire. I really, really do. Joe is a Taurus, just like me, and our karmic mission is to accumulate value.

But I also have an antipathy towards things taking up space for no reason. And I don’t particularly like living in a jam packed packrat environment. I would rather live someplace with more free space and better airflow and some fricking room to manoeuvre.

It’s ironic that I went from living with Angela, a full blown food/pet/tchotchke hoarder, to living with an admittedly much better class of hoarder in Joe.

But I dream of living a pared down minimalist life. The kind where you only keep things around if they make you happy. Everything else goes to others who will give it a good home.

As is, I won’t be able to try to fix our Internet until…. wait a sec.

Why I’ll be darned. The Internet fixed itself while I was bitchin’.

I guess that’s it from me for tonight, then.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow!