Two Wheels To Hell: Part 1

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Perspective

Google Maps allows one to zoom out so far that you can see your relationship to the sun and the Milky Way. We're not alone in the universe, but for practical purposes we are indeed alone. Developed from pure random and inexplicable circumstances.

Wolf Quest Part XII

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Key Problems

I don't know what it is with me and broken computer keyboards but this is the second one that has failed me and required emergency repair so I can continue to expose my emotionally traumatic past.

I really suspected it was the power wire.

I don't abuse this keyboard at all although if it had eyes I'm sure it would be in therapy. Maybe it's trying to kill itself so it doesn't have to watch me torture myself anymore. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But it was connecting and disconnecting randomly and I dreaded a BIOS update and all the keyboards in Latin America are not the same so I would have trouble I don't want. Spanish keyboards have bizarre symbols and if I told you want I have to do to make the @ symbol on a Spanish Keyboard you would laugh in my face. It requires two people. And simply making " quotation marks involves three different key shortcuts, and then the quotation marks do not appear until you type a letter. There are upside down question marks that begin a question. Ctrl+A doesn't do shit to select all the text. No. And Ctrl+T (todos) also doesn't do shit.  a comma is where the period normally is. In short, I had to fix this fucking keyboard that I bought in a pawn store in Maine many moons ago. I manipulated the cable and it seemed that either the software was dropping the keyboard exactly when I twisted the cable or else the cable had broken inside the housing, which has never happened to my keyboard before. This was a trip down memory lane into shielded cable, ground wires, data, power, neutral, strain relief, dsub pins, engineer drawing, sweating vodka while I fucked up a semi-conductor cable harness. God, the awful things I've done to survive. Bunch of bullshit but it helped me avoid buying a new keyboard and learning the Latin American layout.

That plastic block is called a strain relief and you can see how well it worked because only one wire broke.

Well, I took the keyboard to an internet shop where I print out my Flintstones Theme Jazz charts and plugged it in and it didn't work there either. Then I tug on the wires and the red one pulls right out. So that's a clue. And it broke right next to the strain relief and for a week or two it was hanging on by a thread and if I held the keyboard perfectly it would power up, but that thread broke finally and would only reconnect when I twisted the wires. Even though it's like .7mA of current the red power wire does succumb to heat over time and also the strain of repeatedly typing "Cheerleader Porn" could have been too much to tolerate. I feel bad for the keyboard, but the world is full of grief these days and we all have to deal with bullshit.

Don't cut the shield or the ground wire that surround the main wires. Split the shield in half and then pull the metallic-wrapped 4 wires out. Take the wrapping off and check for continuity. Cutting the ground wires won't kill the power but it will allow a short to ground to kill your computer.

The lesson is that things can be fixed but at this point it doesn't matter if you buy another brand new keyboard.

Brown Recluse

Larry had a small cot inside the woodshed. Electricity came from an extension cord from the main house. It froze in the winter like a meat locker but when the fog and rain came in the evening he would lay awake because of the back spasms and prostate throbbing like the bass drum of Blonde Destiny’s first hit “Rock My Rocket” The agony Larry described was comical because every day was a struggle with death. One night he woke up and there was a mattress spring poking into his side. He said he rode his bike to the hospital for more pain medication on account of the bleeding but he was denied. “What does it matter if an old carpenter like me suffers and dies in their waiting room?” Larry had asked.

Oggy stayed in the tool shed a few night, but there was almost no room on the floor and Larry had to urinate into a plastic milk jug “every hour on the hour” and Oggy had trouble staying asleep on account of the troubling holocaust visions. So it had been safe from patrol drones but mostly a miserable experience. Larry told bedtime stories in his coastal Maine accent, laughing and groaning, as he waited for the pain killers to numb his throbbing neck. The stories were similar to this one: