First - welcome to Endeavour!
Secondly - this will help us help you. That was all a great boat load of information. Some is helpful, most of which is not.
Please check this out - A friendly intro about our community rules and tips for the forum
and it’s unlikely it has much to do with being in CA that distrowatch doesn’t work for you. It seems to work fine for me, and I’m also here in Commiefornia. It’s probably a blessing though, that website is right awful trash. You’re probably better off that you can’t reach it.