Absurd Computer Woes - Part 2

I said there would be a part 2 of this, and as I am a man of my word, here it is. If you missed part 1, here's a link for ya: 

Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/totally-absurd-56840938

My previous post on this topic, which i remind you wasn't even the entire story, was erroneously and foolishly deemed too long in the ol' word count for some readers to handle. Seeing as how that post was literally just a list of things that actually happened and therefore could not be omitted, i take that as validation of the fact that even half of the computational crap i put up with is enough to send an average mind hurtling backwards through the ages to a state of frustrated, ape-like illiteracy. 

You've heard about my spastic speakers, and my wise-ass wi-fi, but i've saved the most truly terrible and tragic tale of technological turd-assery for today. Prepare your feeble minds for the brain breaking, bone-chilling, and skin-pissing-on story of the miserable motherfucking macbook microphone mishap. 

I have two main microphones. The first is an old busted-ass basic bitch yeti mic that i started with over a decade ago. The second is a much better, much more expensive Scarlett mic that I hooked up and installed on my desktop back when i thought i could be a serious youtuber without wanting to kill myself within 2 years. Ah, the naïveté of youth. 

You should also know that i have 3 main computers. The first is an old busted-ass basic bitch hp laptop from 2008, which as you might imagine was a perfect fit for the aforementioned busted-ass yeti mic. The second computer is a macbook laptop that someone gave me in 2013, which at the time was a huge improvement over my old laptop, and has since been what i use for writing, email checking, and other horrible online errands like social media before i jettisoned that cancer from my life forever. The third computer is my desktop which i payed some nerd to build for me in 2014, which has been my editing station / steam machine. 

There are two things I should point out about the desktop. The first is that it's the only computer on which i can record with the good mic, because the good mic came with some stupid code to install it which i have long since lost. The second vital piece of information about the desktop is that it's the only computer i can edit on, because Johnny Oldschool helped me pirate Sony Vegas on it years ago, and i am both far too tech-stupid to ever repeat the cyber-mancy he used to get it working, and far too cheap to ever, ever purchase a piece of editing software with my real money. 

This is why my desktop being mysteriously unable to connect to the wi-fi that every other device in the house could find without an issue was such a big fucking deal. Because without being able to access the internet on my one editing computer, that means every time i need an image, soundbite, piece of music, video clip, or to upload anything once i'm done with it, i would need to take a usb to another device that has the internet, and manually transport it across the room. I know that doesn't sound too bad, but when you have to do it 500 times in a row, you get to a point where you'd rather stick your head in the toilet and flush yourself to hell than sit down, edit for 1 minute, and stand up again to repeat the goddamn usb relay. 

All of these details, however small, and seemingly inconsequential, are in fact vital threads in an intricately chaotic tapestry of pain that i am about to reveal to you.

I've been doing a lot of lets plays lately, because they're fun to do. All i have to do is record myself playing video games and babbling like a crazy person, which i do anyways. While my editing computer was still stored away i decided to stockpile a good number of recordings. Plugging my old yeti mic into the macbook, i sat in the blue glow of many a hotel room all across this gay nation and got my gaming on. Among these adventures were complete blind play throughs of both The Last of Us 2, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which were as hilarious as they sound. 

But wait, why haven't you seen these? Ha ha. He he. It's all gone. Lost forever because for some fucking reason the shit-ass busted-ass yeti mic decided, unbeknownst to me at the time, to record all audio as an incomprehensible, stuttering, Max headroom cyber-demon inside a glitched out tin-can tunnel of totally unlistenable, dog-shit dial-up modem sounds that scrape the ear drums and loosen the bowels after only hearing it for 5 seconds. 

When i say it was unlistenable, i mean it, i tried. A devastating loss of what i know was some good shit. There were hours upon hours upon hours of me absolutely losing my shit with righteous hatred and maniacal laughter at what Naughty Dog and Square Enix consider storytelling.

Only some of the FF7 Remake audio survived un-ruined, and as for The Last of Us 2, all i have, which i still have yet to post, is the first 2 hours or so, which because i was high on acid at the time, i forgot to plug in the microphone for, meaning it recorded on the laptop speakers, which while crappy sounding, ironically saved it from the same fate that befell the rest of the recordings done on the evil microphone. 

So i know what you're thinking, that's clearly a problem with the microphone. Sucks that I lost all that audio, but at least I know I can just get a new microphone, right? Oh child, if only this were a world of reason. 

I went to best buy and purchased a newer, better Yeti. A Yeti Pro this time, which is black and lights up, so it must be better than the old one. I plugged it into the macbook, and voila. All the fancy lights lit up, audacity said it was a go, so i hit the ground running and recorded even more hilarious lets plays. 

I spent weeks sitting in the blue glow every night, playing the best games, having the best of times. I was recording gold, baby. I was on a roll. I was on fire. I was takin care of business and workin overtime. Cowboy shit. 

....and then i finally went to edit all the stuff i had spent weeks recording and found that it too, was totally corrupted and completely fucked, in the same ear-raping way as the previous microphone's audio. All of it gone. All of it for nothing. 

Now of course i'm telling you this story with my classic unflappable sense of humor, but let me tell ya, there ain't nothin funny about losing all that funny. It's devastating, because it's all improvised and can never be duplicated. When i'm really in the zone and i feel like i just recorded some good shit, and then i find out it got fucked up somehow, it's like raising a child and then watching him grow up to become a fucking cop. What a goddamn waste. 

I must have lost at least 35 hours of me playing all kinds of rad games. Joking, coming up with bits, rambling like an idiot, doing stupid voices, and reacting to shit, all the stuff people love to hear. Some of these games were really cool too, I'm talking games i've never played before, some of them very big and popular games, some of them really obscure indy titles nobody's ever heard of. I could have shared all of this with you, but all those glorious gaming goofs and gaffs are lost now like tears in rain. 

So what the hell gives? What's the issue here? How can the new mic also be doing this weird shit? Well it turns out i bought that new mic for nothing because the problem was the goddamn mac all along. Specifically, the usb port. Which i discovered shortly after when i noticed it no longer read any usb stick i stuck in the stupid fucker's stinking suck-hole. 

Yes that's right, i said shortly after. Because even though the USB port was apparently broken all that time, resulting in the messed up microphone recordings, it STILL could read usb drives just fine for months. I know because i used it many times to do my aforementioned stupid fucking pain in the ass transferring of data across the room. I am convinced it only did this to trick me. Because if the USB's had stopped working at the same time as the microphone i would have known it was the port that was the problem. Somehow it knew to only stop working with the mic at first, just to fool me into wasting money on a new mic and thinking it was safe to record again, all so it could have the sick satisfaction of ruining me the same way a second time.

So that was the worst thing that ever happened. But there's no use crying over lost audio, so i simply got back to work, like i always do when shit goes bad (which is often, so i've had a lot of practice). The only problem is that with each of these new disasters, doing my job becomes that much more of a pain in the ass. Lets recap all the trials and tribulations now presented by my trilogy of techno-crap. 

1. Main computer and editing station has no internet connection

2. Macbook no longer recognizes anything that goes in the usb port

3. HP laptop is old as hell and slow as fuck. 

What all this means is that in order to say, edit a video and upload it. I would need to first use a USB on the HP laptop to collect whatever downloads i need, which takes an eternity because that laptop is from the stone age and can barely boot up with coughing up a lung. The macbook could of course gather these assets much faster but can no longer transfer them to a usb stick. So instead of collecting these assets on the HP which can barely handle it, i collect them on the macbook, put them in a folder, and upload the folder to google drive. 

Then, since the editing desktop doesn't have an internet connection, i have to download the files from google drive onto a stick with the HP. Then i take the stick to the desktop and edit, hoping to God i didn't forget something, or i'll have to start the whole process over again, downloading more shit on the macbook and sending it to google drive to re-download it on the HP to put on a stick to relocate to the desktop, and every time i realize during the editing process that i need another image clip from the internet, the cycle repeats. It repeats, and repeats, and continues repeating until finally the project is done, having taken 3 times as long as it should have, and i make the final usb trip to the laptop to upload it. 

Too many words? Too tedious? Yeah, i know. Try living it. I'm not even close to done. 

Basically in order to do anything, i have to spend the entire day bouncing between all 3 computers because each one has decided to be ass in its own very specific way. Each computer is missing some vital function, and these missing functions seem to perfectly compliment each other in such a way as to be as much of a pain in the ass as technologically possible. 

It didn't take long for me to realize i would rather eat glass and shit fire than continue to work this way for even one more second. So i resolved not to attempt any videos until i at least got the internet working on the desktop, putting an end to the insipid runaround once and for all. 

The wi-fi problem, which i will not reiterate here as i already described it in the previous post, was not only impenetrably perplexing to me but to all the so-called experts as well. Even the fabled Geek Squad, who i hereby dub the Gump Squad, could only respond to my tale with the slack-jawed befuddlement of a village idiot, as the angry townsfolk try their damndest to explain the concept of consent to the poor rapey bastard, before hanging him in the town square for what he did to the millkeeper's daughter. 

Well, you probably noticed that i did in fact manage to get some videos posted this month, so surely that means i must have fixed it, yes? Well, if by "fixed it" you mean "found a temporary solution that sucks but works just well enough to not have to worry about it for now, and will probably end up being the permanent solution anyways even though it really shouldn't be.", then yes. We used to have a term for that kind of thing, we just don't use it anymore because everything funny is problematic now. Let's just say it rhymes with "rigger-nigging". God, i miss the 90s. 

Here's what i had to do. First, i had to give up. You know you're dealing with a doozy of a problem when giving up is only step one. I had to let go of all hope that the wi-fi mystery could ever be solved by any man or machine in this or any era. Then i had to accept my terrible fate of using... ugh... an ethernet cord. 

I do not like wires and cords. In fact, you could even say i hate them. My entire life has been dealing with one tangled fucking mess of wires and cords after another. I'd take the agricultural utopia of the past or the wireless dystopia of the future any day over this wired dark age we still live in. The closest i ever come to actually wishing for death is anytime i have to go behind something and fuck with all the wires and cords back there. 

So i was none too psyched about having to add yet another stupid fucking wire and/or cord to the already too many stupid fucking wires and cords slithering their way out of my computer like one of those wriggling piles of horny snakes you see in the forest (only not as cool, obviously). 

Nevertheless by this point it had been two months without a video upload and i could hold out for a miracle no longer. I swore an oath to myself long ago that i would do my job sometimes, and i consider it my solemn duty to feed you little piggies your content until you finally get sick of me, which should have happened years ago but God help me i just can't stop being funny and cool. 

Even after resolving to try the ethernet cable i still put it off for days. I was dreading having to do it because i dread anything that involves going behind the computer tower. If anxiety had physical form it would be the tangled fucking holocaust of wires and cords behind every desktop computer in history. 

Just the thought of having to get on my hands and knees and trying to find the right wack fucking jack in the back, while bumping my goddamn head on the desk 50 times, accidentally knocking some plug loose, getting something caught in the cords, shit falling off the desk, stuff falling between something and getting fucking lost and you cant goddamn reach it and its dark back there and you cant see what your fucking doing and its hot god fucking damn it why is so fucking hot all of a sudden and pulling the tower away from the wall but of course thats gonna pull on the cords and somethings gonna get yanked out or get tangled with something else which causes a domino effect of cords yanking other cords and shit getting pulled out of the wall or knocked off the desk and now im bumping my fucking head again and my back hurts and my knees hurt im too old to be on the fucking floor and i cant find the fucking hole for this MOTHERFUCKING plug back here WHERE THE FUCK DOES IT GO I CANT FUCKING SEE ANYTHING GODDAMNIT MOTHERFUCKER PIECE OF SHIT COCKSUCKING ASSHOLE FUCK. 

I'm sure you understand what i'm talking about. 

So after steeling my resolve to crawl through that hell, i took the retarded fucking router, and moved it closer to the cocksucking crap-ass computer, and i mean i basically had to put it on top of the fucking thing because the goddamn ethernet cord is like a foot long at most. I'm talking a jimmy johns footlong, not even a Subway one. 

In order for the incredibly short ethernet cord to reach, i had to pull the tower away from the wall, which in addition to being a miserable fucking eyesore, happens to place it directly in front of the sliding door of the closet, which i guess means i just don't have a closet anymore cause fuck having to move it back and forth every time. 

Miraculously, the ethernet cable worked, which i know is the bare minimum i could have hoped for, but i'll take it. I now have the basic ability to do my job again, and all it cost me was my closet, floorspace, dignity, sanity, and two months of my time spent banging my head against the wall. 

But after all that, at last, the desktop has an internet connection. Just as long as it remains eternally connected to this short-ass ethernet cord sitting in the middle of the fucking floor in front of my damn closet. Looking like shit and being a piece of shit for all fucking time. It's not the solution i wanted, in fact it can barely even be called a solution at all. But whatever, at least i got some videos uploaded. I'm going to bed.