DaveTheAnalyzer

My third mentor barely lasted a couple weeks before he got a job opportunity and had to leave. He did help a lot with driving lessons but it was frustrating he couldn’t stay either. The person who oversaw my mentors has taken a demotion to be my mentor personally but last week I learned she was leaving too. She understandably doesn’t want to talk about the potential troubles at work and hints at a NDA so though curious I won’t press her. She has been pretty helpful with driving yesterday. She even me earlier to ask if we can practice driving tomorrow which despite being a Saturday I accepted. For now, I’ll take things a day at a time. I’m thankful my learner’s permit is good for 2 years, so I can take my time.

Earlier in the month, I drove a couple more time with my third mentor in parking lots before suggested I could try residential neighborhoods next. When we found he wouldn’t be returning, Mom decided to accompany me for an hour of neighborhood driving. I was surprised to find it not that difficult. I went down roads I was curious about, though got myself lost a few times. She was nervous but we came back fine. On another day, Dad had me drive to teach me to keep the vehicle steady and not be close to the curb. After driving through a few neighborhoods, he had go on a forested main road with lots of turns at faster speeds. I admittedly found it stressful. He kept it at half an hour because he was also stressed, though assured I was making progress. I think I was pushed too soon into going on the main roads. I have an article bookmarked that lays out the areas to start driving as you get more comfortable and we skipped the neighborhood main roads with traffic lights. Maybe I’ll focus on those for a bit instead.

That’s it for this month. Down with the Trump government and may all their harmful policies be reversed. May Palestinians inside Israel’s torture prisons be freed and apartheid fall. Until the end of August, see you!

I got my driving learner’s permit. After doing the DMV app practice tests at least once a day, my new mentor helped get me to the nearest DMV and the wait was a bit long until I got inside. I went through various checks for my papers, my vision which made it clear I needed glasses to drive, and at last the 25 Question test. I was surprised some questions weren’t on the practice tests. I did my best guesses and through chance passed by the skin of my teeth. My mentor helped a bit with familiarizing myself with the car. Unfortunately, then he had car and health issues that kept him away the rest of May, though he said he could return in the second week of June. In the meantime, I’ve been reading my state’s driver manual 3 times over the last few weeks, even reading the parts that don’t apply to me. I managed to drive the family vehicle a few Sundays back at a nearby school parking lot for an hour with Dad as the instructor. I did find it nerve-wracking, since the pedals were very sensitive and feeling like I was handling a giant weapon. He told me to slow down and not turn the wheel so hard when it seemed like I needed to turn the wheel hard in order to do a full turn. I’m getting assurances it’ll get easier with more practice but with the family car needing to be used often and my parents being tired or busy, I’ll probably have to wait for more on-hands driving when my mentor hopefully returns.

That’s all for now. Free Palestine and all prisoners in Israel’s torture camps. No war with Iran or anyone. May Trump and his ilk fail utterly and be held accountable. Until next time, see you!

After 2 months, I’ve finally recovered from my persistent cough. It seems I needed 2 or 3 rounds of prednisone with a cough suppressant in between before it abated. The antibiotics had no effect whatsoever. Judging from meetings with my lung doctor, it appears this prednisone regiment was how my last couple coughing episodes were resolved. At least I restarted my writing routine and got more or less back on schedule. I believe I’ll keep going to bed an hour early though, since I feel much less sleep deprived that way, especially sharing a room with a snoring brother who’s a literal dead weight for a couple hours and shows not much interest in addressing the problem. I’ll start catching up on the missed writing days tomorrow, every Wednesday and every other Tuesday. If and when I catch up, I might consider extending my weekday writing to 4 hours a day, since I desire to be published and if I can, I should be writing more to get to my goal sooner. 

In the meantime, my job search and mentor program are on hold. Unfortunately, my current mentor won’t be returning and during my half year meeting earlier this month, I consented to finding a backup. I wish she was honest she wouldn’t come back when I called her but oh well. Hopefully she has a good life. I got chided for contacting her and won’t do that again. I delayed my DMV appointment again and also my transcribing tests. Like I said before, I’m thinking of working 2 hours with transcribing per day, so I can have some income while concentrating on my writing. Mom has offered to help me learn to drive but I wonder when my new mentor arrives if I could learn to drive with them as well. I’ll see how that shakes up.

That’s all for now. Free Palestine. Stop the war on Iran. May Trump and his ilk fail and all those who enabled him face justice. Until the end of April, see you!

That’s all for now. Free Palestine and all prisoners. May Trump fail utterly in his policies, especially with attacking Venezuela. Until the eve of New Years Eve, see you!

After a delay due to her getting sick, my older brother and I anticipated meeting our new person to help us find a new job last week, only for her to cancel because she was still sick or sick again. Fortunately, we’ll meet her this Friday. Hopefully there won’t be any other delays. I missed a few more days of writing but I believe I’ll make them up soon enough. Starting tomorrow, I’ll only make-up for mssed writing days by doubling every Wednesday, with writing double for Tuesdays being only once a month.

That’s it for now. Free Palestine and the hostages on all sides. May Trump and his ilk fail utterly. Until the end of Halloween month, see you!

Finally got a new agency to help me find a job. Last Wednesday, a woman came around and with another person on a virtual call, explained she will find a job coach near us to help us with our job skills and build experience. Unfortunately to get any jobs, I’ll have to do unpaid volunteer work. I’ll also have to work 5 hours a week, divided between job training and then working somewhere. That might mean I’ll have less time to watch or read certain things. For catching up with missed writing days, that might be awkward but I’ll deal with it as it comes. Who knows, I might still be sitting at home doing my hobbies for much of the day but at any rate, it’s some progress. I’ll remain in contact with the woman who dissolved her previous agency, just in case.  

That’s all for now. My tooth fillings have been redone and with a numbing regiment less extensive and less long lasting. I’m glad for their work, though I’m also glad I won’t have to come back to the dentists until December.  Free Palestine and may Trump and his ilk fail within their lifetimes. Until the end of next month, see you!

The new screen works. After practicing taking the old screen off and on to mitigate its issues, I was able to put on the new 1 with the only problem being almost losing 3 screws. I had to really crawl on the carpet and use my phone light to track each of them down. I needed to shut off and restart my laptop but after turning off the touch-screen which I never use and some resizing since the screen was wider, I don’t have to deal with freezing or discoloration again. Other than text and icons being a bit bigger, the experience is not that different from my previous screen. I won’t move the screen if I can help it and if I do, I’ll move it with hands on both sides so I don’t get those issues again. I’ve had this laptop for over a decade and I hope I can make it last as long as I’m able to.

Speaking of new things, I got a new chair from a relative who passed away. I was comfortable with the old chair but it had holes and stains, so I was persuaded to switch it out. So far the new chair is comfortable and the only downside is the armrests being too wide to put my headphones on. This happened a few days after I was suddenly asked with helping bring and reorganize said relative’s items and furniture into a storage container. Dad seemed to indicate it would be quick but if I knew it was going to last a couple of hours, I would have been more hesitant. I also brought my coat because the weather was on the borderline between cool and warm but all the hard work made me sweat a lot by the time it was done. I did wonder if I’d have to skip writing that day but I managed to squeeze it in. On the bright side, I had my exercise. Dad had me help him with a few other things following that and fortunately they weren’t quite as long. If they interrupted my writing, I extended my writing block by the amount of time I was occupied by the other task. 

That’s all for now. I had a dentist cleaning and will need to go back again at the end of next month to have some of my fillings redone. I’ve done additional vacuuming yesterday to finish it today because Mom and I are going to a film someone she knows voiced a role in Sunday and I didn’t want to juggle too much tomorrow. Free Palestine and release hostages on all sides. May Trump fall and conservatism be seen as the threat to democracy it is and might have always been. Until the end of the June, see you!

That’s all for now. May Trump be stopped and fail utterly and Palestine and all hostages be free. Until the end of April, see you!

Dad and I got the replacement parts for my laptop. But the catch was, despite his efforts, they weren’t the super exact parts that fit my laptop. We couldn’t replace anything in the end. Fortunately, my dad was able to put my laptop back together but it’s frustrating its issues couldn’t be resolved. The screen wire is still touch and go and I have to touch the exposed insolation around it and bend the screen up and down to make it in workable. Mom already threw out the packaging, so we can’t return the items. I surmise I’ll just work with this laptop for as long as it could function.

The headphone jack adapter I ordered took so long to arrive I ordered another 1 from the same group but a different deliverer. I got the second 1 very swiftly and so far it’s reliable. I was thinking of contacting the Post Office again this week when on Monday I checked the package tracking app and found a few updates had at last appeared saying that it traveled to Massachusetts and then to my state! More updates followed and by the time Mom and I got home from shopping later that morning, it already arrived. I’m glad to finally have that missing item accounted for and it will be nice to have a backup if and when the current 1 breaks. I called for updates earlier in the month and got some response but otherwise I got mostly silence. Oh well, what’s done is done. I hope this doesn’t portend to how the postal service would operate under the Trump administration but I know there were weather issues on the route for my package, so hopefully that was the extenuating circumstance that delayed it.

That’s all for now. May Trump fail horrendously and here's a source to donate to for his attack on undocumented and other immigrants. May hostages on all sides of Israel’s attempted genocide of Gaza and current 1 in the West Bank be freed. Until the end of February, see you!