Archive: Jul 16, 2026, 12:00 AM

(Photo: me in Montreal, May 2026)

Yeah, I know... In my last post I did say that I was going to post that Part 2 on SocDems and Part 3 on India ASAP, but, as they say: Shit happens!

That said, I’m now in a crappy situation of sorts, and can’t access those documents or hope to eventually access them ever again.

I never write my posts directly into my site’s HTML text editor; it’s an absolute pain to do so. I’ve been using MS Word and Office since 1988, and kept doing so out of convenience and habit even after they’d switched to a subscription model. However, this year, they upped the (Canadian) annual price by 47%; as long as it stayed below $100, well, fine, OK, but now... I’ve come to hate too much about MS and their system (viva Linux!) and productivity environments to let convenience and laziness dictate my choice any further, and I hate the fact that money alone was, finally, the motivating factor behind making that logical change. 
But there you have it.

Sadly, laziness made me switch to Google Docs and Sheets, as having everything on ‘the cloud’ is a huge plus given certain risks.

In between Montreal and Nicaragua—the latter included—two phones were destroyed and two were stolen (actually three, but the San Rafael Pie de la Cuesta Guatemalan police kindly and efficiently managed to recover my phone within half-a-day, which they then exploited as a PR opp, earning me some fame as “El gringo al que le robaron el teléfono” across the region).

Stealing those phones was pointless, as they were US phones that only accepted US sim cards. After my $1400 Samsung blew up in Indiana due to a battery issue, for which there’d been a recall I couldn’t do anything about, I’d bought a real nice Motorola in a Dollar General store in Illinois for the ridiculous price of USD28—Canadians are seriously getting ripped off on phones and services, but we all know that already. At that price, regretting not getting two, just in case, to have a back up so I don't find myself without a phone for a few weeks again, finally, two main factors converged—I had the money again, and I found a Texas DG store that had one in stock, for USD32.
That second phone only lasted one day; I was almost killed near Livingston, TX, on Christmas eve—crazy story—but the phone is the only thing that ended up being run over. So, after having acquired and smoked a much needed cigarette to calm my nerves, I was extremely lucky to find a third one in Livingston, as phone prices were set to double across all DG and similar stores on 1-Jan-2025. I was pissed to have to spend that much money again on anything other than bike parts—I relied entirely on direct donations from people I met, and $32 provided much peanut butter and bread—but the next day, after learning that the park pavilion I'd slept in was right next to a gator pond (only saw the warning signs in the morning), a family I met in Livingston ended up giving me a $34 donation, which perked my spirits right back up. My whole journey has been like that, making me believe that I truly am blessed, to some degree, as the kind of coincidences I've experienced can't possibly be coincidences. 

So, one phone was stolen in Mexico, then another in Guatemala—which I recovered—but then I was robbed in Nicaragua while sleeping on church grounds (lost much, including my cash and ID cards, which is why I had to return to Canada, as, without proper ID, I could no longer pick up my new passport in Costa Rica, as planned, and my old one, which I still had, was due to expire in May 2026). The guy also got my tire pump and I had two flats I was going to fix in the morning (rear bike wheel and one trailer wheel), but I then met a lady who gave me some money, which turned out to be the exact amount for a new pump I found in a store I stumbled upon just a few blocks down the road. Like I said...

Thanks to help from good friends back in Canada, after I was found again, having gone missing for several days and the Canadian Embassy had issued a search notice, I was able to get a new Chinese Redmi for USD88 in Nagarote, Nicaragua... So many details and adventures to fill in. I’ll offer a post to cover some of that, as well as important lessons I’ve learned throughout my journey, as these are directly linked to political aspects I normally post about here.

One thing I’m still heartbroken over: Because of the US sim issue, I was entirely reliant on free wi-fi, which was rare in some parts of Central America, and, combined with other issues, I hadn't been able to upload over 300 pics to one of my drives or USB keys before being robbed near Managua, so a big portion of my journey across Honduras and Nicaragua is forever lost, including many contacts I made while there.

Anyhow: Ironically, despite being constantly on the move as I biked southward, while in Mazatenango (on/off since June 2026), IP changes due to service-related and other issues have prompted Google, for “security reasons,” to force me out of my account on a few occasions over the course of 9 months, barring me access to everything from Gmail, YouTube, GoogleDocs, etc. 
Is Mazatenago Guatemala on Google’s shit list?!

My password alone wasn’t enough to log back in despite having turned off two-step authentication, but I was usually able to re-access my account; the whole recovery process is set at 15 days, but, after that first time, I usually got my account back after 8-10 days.

However, since flying into Montreal by way of Panama and coming back to Guatemala, the major IP changes, per the notifications I received, convinced Google that I must be up to nefarious activities; on my third day back in Mazatenango, Chrome suddenly forced me out of all my accounts, whether linked to Google or not. As I rely on the browser’s password manager so I can save brainspace to remember better things than a slew of passwords—despite using a fixed strategy when choosing my passwords—and since I’d linked the vast majority of my accounts to my gmail address, making that “Forgot my password” link useless...

It took a few hours to a few days to regain access to all my other, regular accounts, but not my main Google one, even with my dmsauy email address that’s set as my recovery address for that one. They’d send me a code to that address, and, combined with my password, rather than taking that as confirmation that I am the owner of that account, they’d then send me an auto notif telling me that they’d review my request and send me a recovery link in 30 days if all checks out. Yep, 30 days! Not the 15 that was previously imposed. Worse, this time, unlike the previous ones, I’d invariably receive an email telling me that they had cancelled the process as I was already logged into my account on one of my devices. The first came in after 20 days; 14 days for the second, and 8 days for the third and fourth. That route to recovery is no longer even offered to me anymore.

Whichever device they’re referring to, I no longer have. And, no, I’m not afraid that someone else is using my account.

And, yes, I had the Authenticator app installed, but on devices I no longer have. And why are they insisting on reverting back to my Montreal phone number to send a verification text??? I'd since changed it in their settings!
Arrrgh!!!

I tried it all, and good luck speaking to an actual person at Google. The only solutions I was offered:

- Make sure that, in the future, you don’t lose the devices linked to your account.
- Create a new Google account.

I had already done the last in the summer of 2025, after having that phone stolen in Mexico and having problems signing in my YouTube account, not being able to use my notebook to retrieve my password as the battery was dead.

I agree, there are options available which would have allowed me to bypass such crap, but they offer their own sets of problems, and since I was always able to eventually log back into my account, I only took minor and lazy steps to avoid further issues, never expecting to face the one I now have to deal with, especially since I’d registered my current notebook as a trusted device, which has been perpetually logged into my account since May 2024.

The whole is a hugely frustrating situation that makes me want to slap and punch Google execs (unlike most progressives, I still don't blame Israel or AIPAC for everything). 
The result: I have to accept that I can no longer access the Google account that I’ve been using since 2009, including my usual YouTube account and all the docs and files that were stored through G Drive and other services.

Despite having another Google account: Fuck Google Office! No way I’m ever relying on those services again. On the plus side, this has finally motivated me to make the switch to LibreOffice, which I should have done years ago, as well as to take other steps to avoid such a situation in the future, though some other account/file fuckupary is bound to happen, as is the nature of such things.

That said, I’m simply not in the mood to rewrite those two pieces, which were pretty much finished. Plus, all my research and links were in those docs.

This affair has put a huge damper on my DMSaUY writing mood, both due to the wasted efforts and because I've weirdly convinced myself that forgetting about those two posts and writing other posts wasn’t a possible path, as, after all, I did say that I was going to post them.

Keep in mind that I’ve lost close to 400 of my previous posts (from 2020 to Jan 2024) due to a screw up on behalf of my previous hosting service provider, and that, combined with a slew of other, deep frustrations, many of which prompted me to go on this journey, including—after getting nowhere with my attempts to find a support role in the new media world, running out of money, and deciding to return to the corporate world—being abruptly fired from my high-paying AI-dev job for, as I eventually learned, the anti-Zionist pieces I’d posted here, well, honestly, I often wonder why I still bother with this site (which now needs to be updated) or to post at all.

But I still do it simply because it’s something that brings me less pain to do so than if I weren’t doing it, I suppose. It’s just something I gotta do.

And, so far, since I started posting again on 22-Dec-2025, as of today, I’m at 3.3M page views for 2026 (compared to 142K for all of 2025, with zero new posts added since the summer of 2024, prior to that aforementioned date). So, there's external motivation, too, I guess, even if I'm always made to feel as if I'm operating in a void...

The take away: Despite advocating for change, in some areas, I, too, can be lazy and stubbornly set in my ways. And no good ever really comes from that.