After 1+ years sleeping on the streets, I moved in with a friend to try to help take care of him while he waited for a knee replacement surgery. After he was doing better, I moved in with a friend who was battling cancer, COPD, and an opiate addiction.
During that time I was able to finally get my hands on a laptop. It was an 8 year old HP DV7. It never really worked great, but I managed to fix it enough that I could start getting Gentoo on it. Two nights ago the CPU died. It's had a hufe effect on my well being. Tinkering on the computer is the one thing that helps keep my depression at bay.
I am passionate about free software and Gentoo. I want to get to where I can can contribute and eventually hopefully get to where I can freelance program (I'm already pretty decent with multiple languages). I thought that maybe at some point I could find a freelancer that would subcontract out to me, having some small jobs would help me build confidence.
I'm just hoping that given that I've been repairing computers for sick/low-income people for years pro-bono and have devoted every ounce of energy and every penny taking care of two sick friends that I might have enough good karma banked up that someone would be willing to hook me up with an old laptop they've got sitting in the closet collecting dust. (A desktop wouldn't be practical because I may very well be back to living on the sidewalks in a few months.)
Honestly, if this indigent life continues to get worse every day I doubt I'll even live to see my SSDI process complete (lawyer says it may be least 1.5 years until I can get a hearing.)
Any help/advice is appreciated more than you could possibly know. (I don't have constant internet access so I won't be able to reply to anyone until tonight). Thanks for reading, and double plus thanks to anyone who can render any form of assistance.