Must Be the Feast Day of St. Murphy
So, as noted before, the computer worked just fine, including piggybacking on random people's wi-fi. So my plan went ahead. Yet when I got to the Indy airport the next day and was ready to send the explanation, I couldn't seem to find any connections. I just assumed that they didn't have wireless there. However, this seemed less convincing as I arrived in a larger airport in Charlotte, then even more so as I reached what had to be my final destination, SEATAC, where the PA reminded us every 15 minutes that we got free wi-fi throughout the entire building. So besides not having the explanation to Mother, I also had no access to the research and correspondence about finding a place to live. Of course, this meant that the only person to whom I could turn for help was arifyn. I'm sure he can explain the details more fluently than I, but basically, every idea we had either didn't work or continued to pretend to be working (freezing) without giving any results. It was as if it was trying to look up on the Internet why it couldn't connect to the Internet.
Anyway, after dodging five voice mail messages from Mother and her sister trying to find out what had hapenned to me, I shelled out the cash to use an Internet terminal beneath the voice constantly pointing out that we get free Internet. I was surprised to find from the email that Mother (having found out the gist of what was going on from my social worker) was apparently quite supportive, giving me permission to impose upon my aunt and uncle until I found a place. She even offered to give me access to the money that she had actively taken away from me. So until I can find a place, I'm indefinitely feeding off of relatives, which is a bit different from my imagination of financial independence and freedom to control my surroundings. But it's a hell of a lot easier, particularly now that I don't have to keep up all those deceptions. Maybe I'll even be able to talk to Mother in real time sometime soon.
Still, what was now to be my sole computer is a bit of a kick in the pants. I'd already started setting up the system for my surfing on it, and now I have to use my aunt's. I find it irritating to have to go about my business on a box with which I'll only have a short time to familiarize myself. They work for Microsoft, so naturally they have massive alien-looking machines, with two giant flat-screens per computer, and a huge mouse that doesn't even move because it has a trackball in it. I chose a full-sized keyboard so I wouldn't have difficulty typing on it, but this one is so vast that the two hands frequent separate continents, which makes it especially difficult for someone like me who never bothered to learn touch-typing, and thus finds some of each hand's favorite haunts suddenly gerrymandered (hmm, I'm mixing metaphors here) to across the gulf. At least that saboteur, "insert," has finally been rooted out of his hiding place among the "delete" and the large-scale travel controls.
So I'm probably going to have to go straight to Toshiba's tech support. Even for a $500 notebook, one day seems like a pointlessly short lifespan. Or was it that it's a laptop that can't stand being carried around?