the stop error suggests a kernel conflict.

i don't want to fix this. i'm going to reformat it.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/13/rush-nme-interview-1978-rocks-backpages

my dad didn't have the attention span to read a rand novel. thankfully.

i'd read more rand by the time i was 15 than he did in his entire 55 odd years, and i couldn't get through any of it, i thought it was boring. 

i don't suspect he would have liked objectivism much, if he had bothered to learn much about it. he was a profoundly unselfish person.

but, peart really did warp his mind in pretty shitty ways.

"She's just a very brilliant woman, an excellent writer, but a brilliant thinker as well. She has a great clarity of thought." - neal peart on ayn rand

i will not be mourning the passing of neil peart at all

my father loved rush, but i could never stand them. we used to argue about this, actually. 

neil peart was known as the drummer for rush, and i would argue he was overrated as a drummer, but he was also the band's lyricist and thematic director, and i would argue he was even more overrated in that category. i also believe that his lyrics had a profoundly backwards influence on my father's broader outlook on life. they really corrupted his critical thinking abilities in a dramatic way.

and, so the question i would ask neil's memory in his passing due to a brain cancer that nobody survives, in fact the same cancer that got my dad, is - where's your free will now? huh?

does he not realize that by not making a choice to avoid all causes of brain tumours, he's still made a choice to die of cancer, and it's consequently his own stupid fault?

there are some bands that are overrated, and it ultimately doesn't matter. nobody cares what gord downey thought, in the end - his views were harmless enough. but, rush were worse than overrated, they were dangerous because they were ignorant, and yet seen as enlightened by a fanbase that bought into the pretension.

and, on some level, i would actually state "good riddance".

yeah.

so, that was merely the record of proceedings, which really didn't have anything i haven't already seen. i was maybe hoping for some deeper disclosure around the actual investigation, which i'll need to eventually approach via access requests. i still need to wait for the factum, which is what i really want.

the deadline is the 31st.

i'm going to send them a response, but i'm going to get my laptop working, first.

they seem to want to argue that the scope of the investigation is limited to the initial complaint. but, they're actually wrong. i sent all kinds of emails out before the investigation started, and they should have been worked into the investigation, by statutory provision.

this is s. 154 of the new "comprehensive" police services act.

Public complaints

154 (1) Any person may make a complaint to the Complaints Director about the conduct of a person referred to in section 152, subject to subsection (2).

Restriction

(2) A complaint may not be made under subsection (1) by,

(a) the Minister;

(b) the Inspector General, a deputy Inspector General or an inspector appointed under section 111;

(c) a deputy Complaints Director, an employee in the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency or an investigator;

(d) the SIU Director or an employee or investigator in the Special Investigations Unit;

(e) a member of a police service, in respect of another member of that police service;

(f) a special constable employed by the Niagara Parks Commission, in respect of another special constable employed by the Niagara Parks Commission;

(g) the Niagara Parks Commission, in respect of a special constable employed by the Niagara Parks Commission;

(h) a member or employee of a police service board, in respect of a member of a police service maintained by the board;

(i) a person selected by the council of a municipality to advise another municipality's police service board under subsection 26 (2), in respect of a police officer who is a member of a police service maintained by that board; or

(j) any other person who may be prescribed.

Complainant on behalf of minor, incapable person

(3) A complaint may be made under subsection (1) on behalf of,

(a) a person who is a minor, by the person's parent or guardian; and

(b) a person who is incapable as defined in the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992 and who is not a minor, by his or her substitute decision-maker under that Act.

Complaint through agent

(4) A complainant may act through an agent in respect of a complaint made under this Part.

Same

(5) If a complainant acts through an agent, a requirement under this Part to give notice to the complainant may be met by giving notice to the complainant's agent.

Same, restricted persons

(6) For greater certainty, a person referred to in subsection (2) may not make a complaint by acting through an agent under subsection (4).

Forwarding complaints to the Complaints Director

155 (1) If a person who may make a complaint under subsection 154 (1) to the Complaints Director instead makes the complaint to any of the following persons, that person shall forward the complaint to the Complaints Director, inform the person who made the complaint that the complaint has been forwarded, and provide the person with information about the role of the Complaints Director:

1. The Minister.

2. The Inspector General, a deputy Inspector General or an inspector appointed under section 111.

3. The SIU Director or an employee or investigator in the Special Investigations Unit.

4. A chief of police.

5. A police service board or a member of a police service board.

6. An O.P.P. detachment board or a member of an O.P.P. detachment board.

7. A First Nation O.P.P. board or a member of a First Nation O.P.P. Board.

8. The Advisory Council or a member of the Advisory Council.

9. A special constable employer.

10. A prescribed entity.

11. A prescribed policing provider.

12. Any other person or entity prescribed by the Minister.

Same

(2) If a person who may make a complaint to the Complaints Director under subsection 154 (1) instead makes the complaint to a member of a police service other than a chief of police or to a special constable who is not a member of a police service, the member of a police service or special constable shall notify his or her chief of police or special constable employer of the complaint, and subsection (1) of this section applies, with necessary modifications, as if the complaint had been made to the chief of police or special constable employer.

Same

(3) The complaint of a person that is forwarded to the Complaints Director under this section is deemed for the purposes of this Part to have been made by the person directly to the Complaints Director

what that means is that they had to act on the emails i sent. and they didn't....

i'm going to draw their attention to that, as they might not realize it.

so, i thought i had 500 pages of reports to sort through.

rather, it seems like 400+ of these pages are documents i wrote myself.

it's a little levity. 

i really do write a lot, don't i?

i actually had some kind of attack this afternoon, the first one in quite a while, and forced myself to sleep. i woke up in the desert and am going to drink a gallon of water....

every other time i've had an attack like this, it's preceded a migraine, so i was expecting one, but none came, which is kind of worrying. i've had periodic symptoms of early onset multiple sclerosis for a long time. it's a part of the reason i quit smoking, and want to stay away from second hand smoke. yes: ms is one of the long list of diseases that appears to be at least triggered, if not outright caused, by exposure to smoke and pollution.

so, my best guess is it's the pollution, whatever that means - second hand smoke, building exhaust, just bad urban air quality. yes, it still seems like he's smoking. now, it's giving me seizures....again...

the seizures are a predictable consequence of exposure to secondhand smoke, actually.

it started as a tingle in my left arm, and went up my arm before manifesting in my face, as a kind of palsy. it eventually passed, as it always does. but, i wasn't left with a crippling migraine like i always am, i was just left feeling tired.

i dunno.

i know i'm extremely dehydrated and need to drink a huge amount of water.

guess i slept all day.

it's the weekend. 

but, i want to prioritize getting through this reading first, so i'm going to stay on the chromebook for a bit. if i can stay awake, i should hopefully get back to fixing the laptop by sunrise.

as mentioned previously, it is very unlikely that i'll do any partying until the spring. i just don't like going out in the cold.

yeah, i'm not convinced that i've thrown them off, yet.

the audio was very thin sounding. this is actually the return of an older problem, which i thought i had gotten rid of, and that is some kind of loopback on the audio. as a recording artist, this is particularly egregious to me. it's almost torture, really.

so, i reinstalled the audio drivers, and while it did help, it also required a reboot, which came up as a blue screen. i can actually probably fix that without reimaging, but we'll have to see whether i think it's actually worth it or not.

i don't have the interest in it, right now.

the files were sent to me in pdf, so i can read them on the chromebook. and, i'll get back to that later tonight.

so, let's get to doing some reading, then.

aaacctually.

....i'm still on the laptop, and i think i may have hit a bit of a breakthrough with those update files. i think i actually managed to completely get rid of them. finally....

i decided that if i was going to reimage a little later anyways then i'd might as well finish updating the group policy settings. so, i spent some time finalizing a lockdown that i had put on hold the other day when i got the lock screen on the reboot halfway through.

i decided to try a reboot, and it actually came up. surprisingly...

to recall - what was happening was that something was being pushed down from somewhere, leaving a trail in the firefox temp directories, and then leading to a windows update process trying to install a list of packages that i strangely had sitting in several directories and couldn't figure out how to get rid of, which updated the cryptographic files in the catroot directory and left some errors in the dberr.txt file. there were random reboots. it seemed to be trying to install an unsigned driver, which brought up a lock screen on a known issue - because i have that disabled. if i were to disable it, it would install a bunch of sketchy looking servers...

something else is happening, now. instead of a failed install and a lock screen on an unsigned driver, the status of the catroot files is suggesting to me that these packages are actually uninstalled. the log files have updated, but they've updated to tell me that the files are gone.

to be clear: it still looks like this process was triggered remotely. but, deleting the files out of the winsxs directory seems to have been what i needed to do to get the subsystem to fuck off. they might keep trying to deploy, but i might have succeeded in getting rid of the packages they're trying to deploy, and the files might just error out.

the group policy is that much stricter now, too.

as stated previously, i'm resigned to needing to reimage regularly. but, i'm going to hold off for now and see where this goes....

...but i want to make a point clear. it should already be clear...

...but if i don't go to your shows, or review your records, or otherwise acknowledge your existence, chances are pretty high that the reason is that i think you suck. and, there's a lot of bad music in detroit, controlled by a lot of filters with very bad taste.

so, i mean, if i'm not "supporting your scene", it's not some kind of accident. it's because i don't like it. and, i don't care how cool you think you are, either.

broadly speaking, art should not and cannot be thought of as a transactional process. this idea of "supporting the scene" is exactly why there's so much garbage out there - people get shows because they did somebody a favour, and are consequently expected to buy into a system before they can get something out of it. it's pay to play. and, it's bullshit, and i won't have anything to do with it.

i understand that i need to meet people and network, that i can't just create the greatest thing ever and expect it to magically sell, that i have to find some way to market it. i understand that i live in a capitalist reality, whether i like it or not.

but, i'm not remotely interested in any sort of "scene" that rewards loyalty over talent. that scene is going to suck, and it won't take long before it's full of dumbass macho bros sitting around by themselves wondering why nobody shows up.

i need you to evaluate my art on it's merit and i want to be a part of a scene that values my talent, not one  that rewards me for seniority and for showing up.

there's reasons i'm at the age i'm at and have kept an arms-length distance from every scene i've ever been near. after a while, i basically hate virtually everybody, and the feeling is often fairly mutual.

but, i need it to be about the value of the art, or i don't want to show up at all.

500 pages...

you know, i can do this on the chromebook, instead.

yeah.

it's 400 pages to sort through, that should take the day.

this is shutting down, and i'll reimage tonight.

i had to go out for a few hours this afternoon. would i come back to another infiltrated machine?

well, it came out of hibernation ok. but, i started poking around and found a bunch more weird deployment files that i don't recognize, which got deleted. but, there were no obvious problems, yet.

i lost the week, which means it's time to do another lookahead for shows for next week...

i made some tweaks, first in the gpedit and then in the firewall.

then, i decided to check my email before i got started and found the notice from the oiprd at a dropbox link.

activists beware: dropbox is a spook site. you can look this up. never click a dropbox link or install software from dropbox, it will install police surveillance software on your machine.

and, i then got my dberr updates, as expected. so, i suspect i'm running on borrowed time, and i'll need to reinstall by the next reboot. 

i'm not certain if the trigger was the email from the cops or updating one of the mmc plugins.

so, i'm torn between forcing the reinstall and waiting, but i think that so long as i don't open any documents, what they can do is limited. it's all backed up. repeatedly...

i actually kind of want to see what happens by letting it sit.

but, i expect to need to reimage after the next reboot, and that's ok.

for the day, i need to look ahead another week and then read through these documents. and, i'll reimage tonight.

the plane thing is...it's not as tricky as you want it to be.

the missile attack was clearly an act of war, and the act of war was directed at nato, which canada is a part of, so i do think we should be at war with iran right now. but, the plane itself was a passenger jet transiting from iran to ukraine that just happened, coincidentally, to get in the way and just happened, coincidentally, to get shot down.

it also happened, coincidentally, to be full of canadians.

if we were at war with iran, it might be an emotional subplot. maybe you could put a few bombs aside for the families, if that's what they'd want - which is entirely dubious. i'm imagining wwII propaganda, which came out of centuries of ethnic tensions; in reality, most of the victims have family in iran. revenge probably isn't the most relevant feeling. the most relevant feeling is grief, and exasperation, and a longing to hold on to what's left. these people don't want their remaining families bombed.....

as it is, we're clearly not at war with iran, and the alliance clearly doesn't want to be.

i think the canadian government should be pushing iran for financial compensation for the victims, on both continents. it's not sufficient, but it's all there is.

and, it is an opportunity for iran to prove they can be grown-ups.

hey, i'll bet you a beer that that ugly ass beard trudeau is dragging around is as fake as his jive-ass makeup.

he actually got busted a while back with fake eyebrows.

whether it's real or not, he's an actor. and, this is wardrobe. but it's a wardrobe malfunction...

he looks like a goof and it will cost him if he doesn't address it almost immediately.