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		<title>I wish I could take a break and go to Portland with Alyssa &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2015/12-December/17.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>I wish I could take a break and go to Portland with Alyssa</h1>
			<p>Day 00285: Thursday, 2015 December 17</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Today was far too rainy to go over to the school.
	I could stand the rain myself, but if I arrived wet, it might not be in my favor.
</p>
<p>
	Instead, I listened to Alyssa talk about the work she is doing to help end poverty.
	It seems that she is a volunteer for an organization called &quot;Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers&quot;.
	This group helps people that want to make changes to the way things are done by giving them what they need to keep themselves and their families alive so they can focus their time and energy on improving their working conditions.
	This organization has chosen not to be classified as a non-profit group, because apparently, non-profit groups are prohibited from fighting the government.
</p>
<p>
	Alyssa&apos;s laptop battery has been dead a while, but she waited to replace it until she had a chance to speak with me in person.
	She thought that I would have a better chance of finding the correct replacement battery than her.
	Honestly though, her MacBook does not seem to have an distinguishing text printed on it that tells what model it is.
	How does anyone find the right battery without knowing what laptop it is? Her <abbr title="multicast Domain Name System">mDNS</abbr> domain, set by the refurbishers, indicates that it might be a MacBook 6, but we are not even really sure of that.
	Once we had what might have been the model, I searched for a MacBook 6 battery.
	While I found many MacBook batteries, none of them told which model of MacBook they belong with.
	Are batteries interchangable between MacBook models? I have no idea.
	Hopefully the battery I ordered will work.
</p>
<p>
	Being unable to go to the school due to the weather, I decided to spend my time filling out those change of address forms that I have been meaning to as well as begin registration for health insurance for the coming year.
	I found that the change of address forms were not as they had been described to me.
	Specifically, each form could only take a single name, not a list of names, and if desired, any mail sent to someone with a matching surname would be forwarded too.
	It took two forms to forward all our mail because our mother has a different surname than us.
	Additionally, Alyssa and I were unsure of if we could have her mail sent to her home with a third form because she shares a surname with us.
	She opted to not even try, and instead just have her mail forwarded with ours.
	She says that nothing important ever comes for her at the old address.
</p>
<p>
	Due to idiotic legislation by the current president of the country, we all have to register for health insurance or pay fines, even if we never go into the hospital.
	So today, I sat down to work on registering for gratis health care at the main country-wide health care website.
	However, this website maliciously discriminates against <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> users.
	So, I searched for the state&apos;s health care option instead.
	This website does not discriminate against <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> users, but uses a <abbr title="Portable Document Format">PDF</abbr> form instead of a basic <abbr title="Extensible Hypertext Markup Language">XHTML</abbr> or <abbr title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</abbr> form.
	First, on Debian, this means downloading the form to fill it out instead of filling it out in-browser.
	Second, some of the fields were disabled.
	My guess is that they were intended to enable themselves based on which other options one selects, but that does not work so well in my <abbr title="Portable Document Format">PDF</abbr> reader.
	According to my research, <abbr title="Portable Document Format">PDF</abbr> form-filling in Linux systems is not currently an easy thing to accomplish, so it is not just me.
	Lastly, the <abbr title="Portable Document Format">PDF</abbr> form contained a &quot;submit&quot; button, meaning that if one were to somehow fill out this for in-browser, they could submit it online, but if one is using standards-abiding and free software as I do, one must mail or fax the form in.
	Of course, I am against the telephone number system, so even if I had access to a fax machine, I would avoid using it if at all possible.
</p>
<p>
	After filling the form out on my computer the best that I could, printing it, then completing the broken fields by hand, I set out with Alyssa to the post office to mail both the change of address forms and the health care application form.
	Unfortunately, the rain soaked through my bag and ruined the health insurance paperwork long before we arrived.
	The change of address forms were fine, but we had to abort our mission.
	I purchased some huge plastic zipper bags though, so tomorrow should go better.
	It has been raining for about a month, so it will no doubt rain tomorrow too.
</p>
<p>
	I asked some people online about Alyssa&apos;s MacBook and the fact that it does not reveal itself to machine&apos;s performing service discovery.
	The person that responded said that this is due to the default firewall settings, and even explained how to set them to enable service discover.
	In the name of learning, I checked out her firewall, but the whole firewall was already disabled.
	I tried changing those settings, but it did not do any good, as the firewall was not even in use.
	As a last resort, I tried turning the firewall on, but this still did not make her machine respond.
	I changed her settings back to the way she had them, but when I went to ask about it again on <abbr title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</abbr>, I found that the network had cut me off again.
	It would be another several hours before I could manage to get back onto the network, so I gave up.
	OS X does not really interest me enough to pursue this long; the anomaly in how it handles <abbr title="multicast Domain Name System">mDNS</abbr> queries just caught my attention.
</p>
<p>
	Alyssa discussed the possibility of taking me to Portland with her for a week or two to see what she is involved in, though neither of us could think of a way to tell our mother without her going off the deep end again.
	Unless we think of something, I will have to stay here in Coos Bay.
	This would be much easier if our mother was not so over-controlling.
</p>
<p>
	I did not see theunknownman today, so I was unable to give him/her the music files.
	Likewise, the local community collage still has not written back.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
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