it's copying....it'll take a while....but i have lots of space on that machine....

yeah, it's just hung.

so, i'm going to log into xp (with the laptop hard drive as a secondary drive), copy every piece of data off of it, wipe the partition table, reinstall and then copy it all back folder by folder.

it should probably be bootable by the morning. we'll see.

so, again - if it's the partition table, what is this?

it's a virus. this has happened before.

and, the primary suspect is the police.

it's actually not hard to fix, but it's very annoying and takes time to get through. 

naw. it's going straight to a black screen - not even a cursor, can't even get a list of boot options. 

the chkdsk indicated that the partition table was corrupted.

so, i'm going to do a startup repair. but the fact is that i know that these things don't actually work. scanning the boot database, whatever it is called, doesn't work. you have to rebuild it, and the only way to rebuild it is to reinstall it.

so, that's that next step - to copy the data off, reinstall to the drive (to fix the partition table) and then copy everything back.

there may end up being lingering registry issues if i do that (that's my experience in the past), but if i can at least get it to tell me where it's hanging, i should be able to go in and find it and fix it.

with a blank screen like that, my options are really minimal.

facebook is really substantively faster on the chromebook.

the scandisk has successfully completed, so let's try to reboot right into it....

so, i've got my tickets purchased. i'm going to be a little coy about when i'm leaving and coming back, other than to point out what needs to be done that day in toronto.

i need to serve the cops before i go, and i know how to do that, now, although i'll drop a hard copy off while i'm at it. when i get to toronto, i'll need to serve both the attorney general and the board. and, then i'll need to file.

i'll also need to go to the special library in toronto to get a corporate report to give me the identity of the person that arrested me. this is all quite absurd, but so be it - because i'm going to be there anyways.

this will push two of the cases forward. i may decide at the last minute to appeal the access to information, but i'm putting the human rights case aside.

i will need to serve both the board and the respondent with the appeal, as well - and the judge may very well put thing on hold, afterwards.

i was able to mitigate the lost funds by choosing a cheaper concert option and a very cheap greyhound option. it's less that november is a weak month, and more that there's not anything happening there that isn't also happening here, or at least as far as i can tell, anyways. obviously, the best option would be to pick a toronto-only show, but nothing jumped out at me right away. so, i instead picked the cheapest ticket i could find, and paired it to a show at a dive bar (that is also happening in detroit the next night). the bus ticket was $45 (both ways. $20 to get to toronto is really not bad.), the lowest option possible, and the show will be around $10, just for tickets. so, that's $95 of the $100 card - it's gone. kaput. see, i was expected bus tickets to be pushing $60 (they were $70 last time, and i *did* buy early), the search to be around $10 and the show tickets to be $20-30, and at a respectable venue. it just didn't line up that way. so, what i lost with the business search (which i was willing to pay for when i thought it was evidence that the company isn't registered) i made up with the $15 less that i spent on the greyhound and the $10-$20 i made up on the show ticket. i still want the money back, dammit. but, if i wanted to get these three things accomplished with the $100 card then i'm pretty close, actually. i didn't spend more than intended, in the end - i'm just not able to enjoy the cheap tickets.

there are a few shows here that look interesting, but the long range here is terrible, and i could very well be in for the month. i'm hoping that the temperature swings back a little for the end of the month, and especially for the first week of december (i don't want to miss plaid in a blizzard). i'm comfortable launching facebook on this machine. so, i've got the scandisk running again, and i can focus on scratching out concert listings for the rest of the month. no reviews from this machine, though...

i will need to run through everything very carefully and do a big printing run before i leave. i want the day to be very carefully planned out so that i don't forget anything. but, given the weather, and given the laptop co-operates, if this is actually my only venture outside at all this month then i should get the boost of productivity i'm craving for.

let's hope tonight is a good night. and everything works itself out well.

i've got the fax out for the refund request. hey, that's $40.

so, what did i learn here?

1) that a corporation and a company and a business are three different things, in ontario. i would essentially use those words interchangeably as virtual synonyms, and wouldn't have a lot of patience for somebody trying to correct me. even as i'm typing this, i don't actually know what the difference in these words actually is, and i'm not going to stop using them interchangeably as synonyms.

2) that you consequently can't search for a corporation in the "enhanced business search" because it's not actually a business, it's only a corporation. ?. this is despite the corporation coming up in the federal business registry....indicating that the feds think it's a business, but the province thinks it's merely a corporation. the language is not just confusing, but it's not consistent.

3) that if you want to search for a corporation, you have to either pay some lawyers an unnecessary, exorbitant fee or go to toronto and do it yourself.

as we know, i intend to go to toronto soon.

so, that's the resolution on this - i'll need to get to toronto to figure this out and send the forms off when i get home. i have 30 days from the 29th, so i'd better get there by the end of the month.

and, i'll need to send an update to the tribunal.

so, i actually called them back and asked for a refund, and they're telling me to fax them something.

so be it.

ok, so they're telling me that the search shouldn't work because i would need the name of the company, and i'll need to send a check to toronto for $12 or hire a private company to do it.

i am ideologically opposed to hiring a private company to do something that government can do. so, it may make more sense to pick it up when i'm in toronto.

but, they told me to add two zeroes to the front of it so i'm going to do some extra searching.

i mean...

if i go to one site and it tells me that the company exists, and i go to another one and fork our $40 for a bunch of different searches, and they all tell me it doesn't, and it turns out it does, i have grounds to ask for that money back, right?

ok.

so...

when i go to the ontario website, it tells me there's nothing under the name.

when i go to the canada website, it tells me that the corporation is registered, and i need to go to the ontario site to find details - indicating that i'm either doing something wrong, or the corporation was recently deregistered.

that's not going to work. the judge was clear that the cops will need to fork it over.

but, i'm going to call the service ontario office and see what they say.

ok. 

in order for me to get the form typed back up again, i'll need to get into the virtual machine on the laptop.

i have to get this up and running. but, at least it's clear that the business name doesn't exist.

and, yes, i do think that i'm owed the $32 because it's an expense i wouldn't have had to incur had they just given me the information like i asked for in the first place.

there's no business registered under either the names provided to me. and, it cost me $32 to prove it.

the plot thickens...

i'm going to have to go back to the cops.

and, i want them to give me my $32 back, too.

and, for the record.

i don't have a phone. well, i do now, but i don't use it. actually, could i load instagram onto a chromebook?

the point i'm making in this post is that, because i don't use a phone, i have never used apps like snapchat or instagram, either.

everything that i actually use is on the side. really. and, if i don't link to it from this blog, be very skeptical of it.

but, regarding that kid in new york.

is it annoying? frustrating? yes, it's all of those things. i don't seem to have much in common with this person, and i don't know why they can't come up with their own handle. he doesn't seem like he wants to be associated with a communist from canada, so i'm not sure what his angle on it actually is.

but, i'm ultimately not invested enough in the issue to really be overly concerned about it.

if you think that searching for somebody on google and finding a twitter account with a name that matches - however exotic the name - constitutes doing substantive research, then you're a sucker and you're going to fall for all kinds of nonsense, aren't you? i really can't be bothered to get myself worked up over the analysis of people with such a deficit of critical thinking skills. if that's the best you can do, i don't care what you think.

rather, i'd take the position that it is obvious that that account does not belong to me. as mentioned, i make it fairly clear that i'm from canada, so i'm obviously not from brooklyn. i identify pretty aggressively as gen x, so i'm obviously not in my late teens or early twenties. and, i've even run a vlog where i'm stumbling through the detroit/windsor area. if you think that twitter account belongs to me, you obviously haven't really read anything i've written, have you? so, why would i be concerned about your opinion of me?

again: it is annoying. there doesn't seem to be a point to it. and, i wish he'd just change his handle to something he can call his own.

but, i can't actually do anything about it.

and, nobody with basic critical thinking skills - or an opinion that matters - is going to get confused by it; it's obviously not me.

also - i can't edit posts from here, so i apologize for typos and misstatements.

obviously, the numbered company got me arrested. it didn't sue me. i'll have to wait until i'm able to log in to the laptop before i can fix that.

the whole point of using this machine is to avoid exposing my passwords, so i won't be logging into anything from here except for the dummy accounts i've set up to log into.

i guess that if i absolutely have to log in somewhere to send emails, i can use the 90s laptop.

so, the chkdsk froze twice last night. i turned it off this morning, and won't be back to it until tonight after 19:00, for reasons of electrical cost.

so, i wanted to update some liner notes last night, but my computer won't boot. what can i say? 

as mentioned, this chromebook is simply not useful as an actual office tool because the software is too primitive. it's use it's strictly as a "personal computer" for simple media-based internet applications. nor do i think the processor in it can handle splicing through documents of this size. it's really just a glorified phone. i'll have to wait.

i'm going to need to get the drive through a chkdsk at some point before i move forwards, but if it doesn't get through it tonight then that's all the time i'm giving it - i'll have to clone it, wipe it and copy it back.

i don't yet know what the exact problem is. the last time this happened, the registry was set to load a driver on startup that didn't exist, so i had to go in and turn that off.

is this a coincidence? i don't know. it could be microsoft shutting me down, it could be the cops thinking that they're going to slow me down (they're not. the document is already typed and stopping one laptop from booting isn't going to set me back much.) or it could just be legitimate corruption. we'll see what the actual problem turns out to be, and what it makes the most sense to assign it to.

for today, my laptop is inoperable; i'm on the chromebook, and i can't do any actual work on it. if this lingers on, i'll have to load up the music pc so i can launch word. but, i don't see any reason to think that is going to happen.

i need to put it aside for a few days anyway; i wanted to finish the liner notes last night, but i'd have had to stop for a few days if i only got half done, anyways. i need to prioritize the trip to toronto.

the first thing i need to do this morning is figure out how to run a corporate search on the numbered company that arrested me, to determine who owns it and what their address is.

ok, but let's think this through for a minute.

the difference is i*h-bar. h-bar is h/2*pi.

h is considered to be the smallest possible unit of measurement, and then you're dividing the smallest possible unit of measurement by 2*pi to make it that much smaller. you're then pulling this out in the direction of i.

so, the difference is

1) in the direction of the imaginary plane.

2) a factor of 2*pi smaller than the smallest thing that can be measured.

i'm not arguing with the  math as it exists, it's just that this is so small as to be indiscernible from error, which is what the physics really says - you're disturbing the system by measuring it.

and, i will hear an army of math-physics nerds yell at me "no. it's a proof. can't you see?"

a proof by a factor of h/2*pi in the imaginary plane. right. and, you call that "observable". what a farce! it would be a talented lab technician indeed that could reduce error to hbar in the imaginary direction. you'd give that technician a nobel prize....

rather, i need to ask the question - how fast is space expanding, anyways? surely fast enough that you could never get it right, to a plank length. and, what is the proper correction for the curvature of space, given that we're modeling everything in euclidean vector spaces and we know that is totally wrong?

that's something we can calculate, right?

we know that px - xp, if calculated in a euclidean vector space, should have a correction term, because the space that the particle is moving in is actually curved. that euclidean calculation should be wrong. so, what is the error term, there?

and, without bringing in string theory, what is this modulation in the i direction anyways? if space is expanding constantly in every direction, just how close can we get those measurements without having the rug pulled out from underneath us, as we're doing it? a plank length? probably not much more than it, anyways.

i know that somebody will tell me i'm grasping at straws, but we should at least have the good sense not to be building modern physics on euclidean space. we know that's a bad model. we know that's going to created warped results.

as far as i know and can tell, that kid in new york just stole my name because he thought i was cool. i'm probably his biggest hero. i have confronted him about it, but he's refused to change his handle.

i supported bernie sanders in the 2016 primary and very tentatively endorsed hillary clinton in the general, although i'm not sure, in hindsight, if that was the right choice.

i don't know anything about the imposter at all.

while i guess he's probably not in high school anymore, if he was in grade 11 in 2016 then he'd have been in grade 2 when i created the account. 

all social media accounts are on the side

ok, there are a few things that aren't there.

i have a reddit account, for example. but, i don't post there very often...

i'm not banksy. i want you to know who i am, i want you to buy my music, dammit.

specifically, i have this sneaking suspicion that people think i'm a gamer in high school from new york, despite being crystal clear that i'm a 40 year-old musician from canada.

1) i don't play video games. ever.

2) i've actually never been to new york.

3) i have only ever opened one twitter account, and it's the parody on the side panel. 

i have a reputation for typing long, rambling emails; it is easy enough to understand why i don't like twitter, and why i'd even consider the premise of it to be comical. it's something i have no use for and want nothing to do with. 

but, that doesn't stop people from getting confused.

i cannot actually vote in the united states - i do not live there, i do not have citizenship status there and i only ever go to detroit to party.

i'm from ottawa, which is where i lived from 1981-2013. death.to.koalas@gmail.com was initially created as a joke when i was working for microsoft in 2007 as a way to transfer dump files back and forth from work.