Working from work

Well, not actually working, obviously.

It's going to be one of those days where there seems to be little to do and then all my insides will, metaphorically, fall out of my arse when the realisation dawns that I've forgotten to do something really important.  That sensation of  instant tension in some muscles and instant loss of control of others is one that I like to avoid at all costs.  Some people thrive on it.  Such people are the types who earn ridiculous amounts of money and/or die young.  They work in arenas of high tension and high stakes, I don't.  I just leave things too long sometimes and then get into a mad panic when I realise that something I thought had done has been relegated to row ten of the back burners.... mainly because I can't be bothered with the trivialities of certain aspects of my job and put such things to one side in favour of more exciting things, like spreadsheets and arranging Skype meetings.

Fuck.

I graduated top of my class, you know, with a first and everything.  I was a rising star of science in 1991.  And then I did a PhD in a lab surrounded by Christians who tried to make me love Jesus every day.  It wasn't conducive to good science or good mood.

It's all about the confidence

Still, being successful requires having oodles of confidence and mine rapidly dissipated between the age of 22 and 24.  So with this in mind, and the need to change jobs fast approaching, I figured it'd be useful to get some tips to help change my attitude towards myself: I attended a "Build your confidence" course.  Actually, I've only been to part 1 of 3 so far and I'm already a total wreck after seven hours spent with the super-self-assured course facilitator.

She was a little brusque for my liking and I spent a lot of the first session looking at her thinking, If that's confidence, you can keep it.

When does being confident tip over into being a complete twat?  I think a good indicator is when you hear yourself saying "I" or "me" or "my" more than twenty times per hour.  Surely truly confident people don't need to talk about themselves so much; it just shows?

But anyway, I was supposed to be spending the two weeks between parts 1 and 2 of the course engaging in a few daily exercises in visualisation and affirmation.  I don't really have anything that I want to visualise - other than going on the rampage in John Lewis - and the best time to do it (bed time) is always taken up having  a night time chat to my girlfriend and then falling asleep while still on the phone.

As far as affirmations go, I really can't see even saying any of the following once, let alone announcing them out loud 20 times a day:

• I deserve to be happy and successful


• I have the power to change myself


• I can forgive and understand others and their motives


• I can make my own choices and decisions


• I am free to choose to live as I wish and to give priority to my desires


• I can choose happiness whenever I wish no matter what my circumstances


• I am flexible and open to change in every aspect of my life


• I act with confidence having a general plan and accept plans are open to alteration


• It is enough to have done my best


• I deserve to be loved

Honestly, would you?

The only affirmations that I say many times each day are:

• I am in my happy place


• And then you saw me dead

And those will do for me.

Working from home

I'm actually supposed to be doing a bit of work this evening, but I'm waiting for Office to install before I can get started.  Installing software takes forever and it's hard to draw an analogy to the painstaking task of, firstly, identifying what programmes you used to have that allowed smooth computer usage, then sourcing the installation files so you can get them back on your PC.

This bloody dog of mine drives me to distraction.

Anyway, after flattening my machine last night and reinstalling Windows, I'm now faced with reinstalling everything that got wiped.  It's the little things that you don't realise you're really going to need again that make a lot of difference.  Display driver?  What do I need one of those for?? Canon RAW codec?  Surely that's for losers!  Perhaps this sort of ordeal is similar to what it must be like when you come out of a coma and try to recover from a brain injury: some bits are missing, but you don't quite know which ones until you find yourself running down the high street with your nightie over your head.

Or is that Susan Boyle?

So yes, working from home!  I feel energised and enthusiastic... and scared in case I fuck this up.  With a major deadline approaching, this "draft" will have to be a "final", but hey, it's only worth £200k... and my job for the next six months.

Microsoft Office 2007 has been successfully installed

Great.

That means that I have to get cracking... and now my energy levels are plummeting with every keystroke.  Of course, this sort of thing is ideally suited to my personality type (ISTJ, if you must know).  A few years ago, I blogged about doing a Myers-Briggs survey to determine whether I had Asperger's syndrome, or whether I was one of the unfortunate ones to be normal, but to have a personality type that makes them appear to have a personality disorder.  For some reason, I was surprised to find that I still have the same personality type today as I did five years ago.  You can read up all the shite about the sixteen Myers-Briggs types, but this is me in a nutshell:

• I deal in facts, figures and reality - don't ask me to imagine things, or believe in anything unless there is evidence for it


• I am a doer (yeah, right), but more of a finisher than a starter


• Don't expect me to write any strategies for anything, but I can implement whatever somebody else comes up with


• I can't do anything without a plan and real objectives


• DO NOT BE FUCKING LATE OR I WILL KILL YOU!

So that's about it.  The little dog has curled up in his bed, so I'll take this brief mither-free window to start what I was supposed to be doing.

And then you saw me... get distracted with something else.

Sundays are rubbish

Sundays are rubbish for so many reasons, but mainly because they mean that:

Tomorrow

= Monday

= Oh dear Lord please how much more of this torture?

= if you feel like that, you need a new job

= but there are fewer and fewer jobs in your field

= but you hate your field anyway

= you'll have to re-train

= you'll have to take a MASSIVE pay cut for a number of years

= you'll have to see if somebody wonderful doesn't mind supporting you for a while

= you have somebody wonderful, but she's had to go home and you won't see her until Friday because today

= Sunday
Still, at least I no longer have to endure Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday evening.  Not like when I was a child and there was only one TV in the house and we HAD to watch BBC1 and this meant torture from crap like Last of the Summer Wine, Howard's Way, Bergerac, Mastermind and, not forgetting, That's life! (!).  Oh how the sombre tones of the Mastermind theme were perfectly in tuned with my mood as I sat in front of the fire, trying to get my hair dry without suffering third degree burns.

Back in the 1970s, nothing was open on a Sunday, there was nothing to do in terms of today's options of going to the shops, the choice of cinemas, places to eat.  The only things that opened were bookies and churches and the odd corner shop (as in strange, rather than infrequent).  This meant that, in the afternoon, we were dragged out to visit old people, or they came to us and we had to be quiet unless spoken to.  You might think that a child would find this torture, but it was OK; old people are nice and funny and there was usually cake and biscuits.  I can't remember what they used to talk about, but it was far more interesting than anything I could ever interject with, so it was worth listening.  We'd get taken for walks in the local woods and hear stories of the old mine workings down there as well as learn a little about the natural environment.  These days, such activities are the luxury of kids from middle class backgrounds, but for us, this was free and there was bugger all else to do.

Back then, Sundays were always bright and sunny or pissing it down with rain.

So back to now and Sunday evenings still fill me with utter dread.  The feeling starts at waking when I realise that the weekend is over, that there's not much point making plans for the day because my girlfriend has to leave at teatime.  And then she goes, and the depression closes in.  Today's departure was worse than usual for some reason.

Five more sleeps.

The thing about Facebook

While unable to contribute to my blog for a while, and particularly since this coincided with a period in my life when I didn't really fancy writing a great deal, I sought refuge in the simpler and less creative world of Facebook.  This allowed regular updates and discourse with friends, many of whom are far afield, but often in a more censored "real life" sense than my blog permits.

But the thing about Facebook is, well, there are many things about Facebook, particularly in terms of privacy - users have to be careful to set their options carefully, or all their information could become available to everyone else (but why put all that information on the internet in the first place if you don't want others to see it?) - but the best thing about Facbook is the disposability of users' so-called friends.

• Add me as a friend


• I don't like you - click "ignore"


• I don't like you - click "delete as friend"

And that's it - somebody could be gone from your life in an instant and you wouldn't care.  Brilliant.  It's like the woolly monkey scenario*... and then you saw them... well, you just don't see them anymore.

During a turbulent two months in the summer I encountered the strangest of women, who declared me her soulmate within 36 hours of her becoming aware of my existence, weeks before we met.  She used Facebook to torture me.

• Day 1: "You're my soulmate, add me as a friend"


• Day 1 (a bit later on): "You are not emotionally mature enough for me, goodbye x"


• Day 1 (even later): "?"

• Day 2: "I love you baby"


• Day 2 (later): "You are friends with bullies, goodbye x"


• Day 2 (even later): "?"

Repeat days 1 & 2 for about six to eight weeks.

Anyway, over the course of six weeks or so, during which time we'd met on three occasions and spoken even less on the phone (her demands, not mine), she decided that I was her soulmate and her life partner, that I was a murderer because I wasn't a vegan, that all my friends were abusive bullies, that I had crippling low self-esteem, that I was Satan's representative on earth.  Try as I might, it's difficult to describe the insanity of that crazy, fucked up time, but what better way to illustrate than by telling it from the horse's mouth... a short (honestly) excerpt from a heated exchange that occurred while I was on holiday in Las Vegas....

Baby,

I hope you arrived at your holiday destination safely and that this email finds you safe and well.

I am neither safe nor well and due to you being thousands of miles away and having left without making any arrangement with me about how I can contact you while you are away if the need arises I am consequently left to deal with the shit your friends are causing me without any support from you whatseover.I'm guessing that your hotel has internet access so you could have at least arranged that we would email each other once a day and check each others emails once a day just incase anything cropped up where we required each other's support but you didn't so here I am without your support and having to deal with this...

...

Piggy: Are you there yet? Are you? Are you?
Has April rubbed her muff all over your chops yet?

Ruth: Piggy your blatant attempt to bait me is pathetically transparent and contemptably unsupportive of Sniffy.Grow up man! *yawns*

Then:

And their abuse of me and more importantly their abuse of our relationship itself just goes from bad to worse, the following quote from Tazzy being just one of many examples of that...

Tazzy commented on your wall post:

"You've only ever met Sniffy ONCE!
Was it YOU that said you were 'in a relationship' with Sniffy? I'm sorry but you don't start a relationship with ANYONE after meeting them ONCE!
I ONCE met Elton John... I don't go around saying I'm 'in a relationship' with him!
Glenn Close springs to mind!"

Bearing in mind that this was already kicking off while I was in transit and hadn't even made to Vegas... much more was to come...

Ruth sent you a message.

Subject: Judas

"Oi!Judas!Do you have you ANY idea how it feels for me to watch you engaging in banter with people who have, by their own admission, abused me?!DO YOU???!!!"

Nice! But still, I was 40,000 in the air, 8 hours behind, with no internet connection, so it was obvious that there was not a lot I could do about it.

And more, much, much more...

"I gave you a whole calendar month of my life and you gave me a whole calendar month of hurt and stress but no more.I am walking away from your arms and I am walking straight back into the arms of sweet sanity..."

"I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!"

"I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!"

"Oi!Judas!Do you have you ANY idea how it feels for me to watch you engaging in banter with people who have, by their own admission, abused me?!DO YOU???!!!"

"Or better still and oh SO apt, "There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends" by Morrissey!"

"Sniffy's current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, "The Scientist" by Coldplay but hey baby you  neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt  because...you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there's really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

"Sniffy's current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, "The Scientist" by Coldplay but hey baby you neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt because...you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there's really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

"Or better still and oh SO apt, "There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends" by Morrissey!"

"Sniffy's current personal karaoke fav at the moment would have to be, "The Scientist" by Coldplay but hey baby you neglected to take enough care to ensure that I was wearing my seat belt because...you were too busy taking care of your other passengers so there's really no going back to the start which was actually one calendar month ago today, que sera sera!

"I would bet my life on it that those bullying bastards are feeling as smug as fuck that they were able to abuse and bully me AND still get to keep you as a friend.
Loyalty my fucking arse!"

"One of my closest friends who I regarded as a beloved brother killed himself recently by hanging himself and nobody who knew and loved him, including me, had any clue that such a horrific thing was about to happen.He was 29 years young.I attended his funeral and watched his coffin being lowered into the ground only a week ago which was deeply disturbing for me because a few weeks before that he had visited me at my home and had been his usual vivacious self.I lost both of my parents to suicide so the way my friend died is even more painful because of that.
Add to all that the additional stress being caused by Piggy's cheap joke about another person performing oral sex with my life partner and Piggy and Tazzy's bullying attacks on me after I made it clear to John that I didn't appreciate aforementioned cheap joke, do the maths and you might be able to imagine where I am currently at..."

"I truely love Sniffy.What I feel for Sniffy is not infatuation or lust alone but authentic love but love alone, no matter how sincere and how deep, is not enough to sustain a relationship which needs other things beside love such as respect and loyalty to survive.

All of us always has room for personal growth and personal improvement is an on going, life long project for us all and therefore I do not excpect perfection in a partner.What I do expect from them however is that they not be detrimental to my emotional health and sadly Sniffy is currently in a headspace where the mistakes she makes are big enough to be detrimental to me, thus the reason I have withdrawn from her so many, many times during the past month.Each time I withdraw from her Sniffy has asked me to give her another chance, which I do, but the result of that has always led us back to square one where I feel the need to withdraw again to protect my emotional health from the negative impact her mistakes have on it..."

"LISA - One of my closest friends who I regarded as a beloved brother killed himself recently by hanging himself and nobody who knew and loved him, including me, had any clue that such a horrific thing was about to happen.He was 29 years young.I attended his funeral and watched his coffin being lowered into the ground only a week ago which was deeply disturbing for me because a few weeks before that he had visited me at my home and had been his usual vivacious self.I lost both of my parents to suicide so the way my friend died is even more painful because of that.

Add to all that the additional stress being caused by Piggy's cheap joke about another person performing oral sex with my life partner and Piggy and Tazzy's bullying attacks on me after I made it clear to John that I didn't appreciate aforementioned cheap joke, do the maths and you might be able to imagine where I am currently at..."

"This said, I hope you can better understand me and why Sniffy and I break up with bewildering frequencey.

Our current break up has occured due to Sniffy continuing to regard Piggy and Tazzy as her friends which to me, in view of their bullying of me, stinks of disloyalty.How do you suppose you might feel if you found yourself on the recieving end of Piggy and Tazzy's brutal bullying but your own life partner, if you had one, insisted that they continued to love the people who had abused you?I will leave you with that thought.

I wish you well.

Ruthie."

No, the repeated statements aren't down to me being over enthusiastic with my ctrl+v, they're down to Ruthie being mental and pasting the same thing over and over and over again.... on my Facebook page, that colleagues from work have access too, while I'm 8 hours behind and forced to pay $10 per day for wi-fi access to delete them.

Ruthie has an internet  footprint of insanity all over the internet, and probably in many, many places in real life too.  Just do a search for Vegan Heart, Donaldsdevotee, Moonbeamzzz, and the name and her rants against well-meaning people, come up time and time again.  She's been banned from more forums than it might be possible to be banned from, and here's one where she changed her ID, just so she could go back and cause more trouble:

http://www.veganfitness.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6437&start=0

Of course, I can look back at that crazy, crazy episode now and laugh, laugh a LOT, but the whole thing has left me very wary of who I give my Facebook access to.  And from now on, I will always Google somebody by each of their strange names whenever I encounter them.

One other thing about Facebook is that many people don't update their privacy settings and so it enables others to see what they're up to.  You'll be glad to know that Ruth recently had an interview for a job as a social worker.  Fuck-a-doodle-do!

iTampon

I was going to write a post about Apple's new gadget that's coming onto the market in March and April this year.  The iPad will transform the way we view media, it will change our lives - according to the Antichrist, Steve Jobs.

There have been many observations about the iPad, mainly concurring that it's a huge disappointment and is basically going to be a waste of space, but in one discussion, an observer came out with the following, which I found most astute and which sums up exactly what the evil empire that is Apple is all about:

The language here (and in other iPad propaganda) is interesting. They don't talk about technology, or specifications, or even value or use cases. They talk about "magic". Or "desire".

These are loaded terms - who could be against "desire" or "magic"? But these are not terms we can define easily, or that have a meaning outside of personal experience.

And if you are resorting to vagaries like that to sell a device... then there is something wrong with your product.

There's endless lists of concrete things that the iPad hasn't got... multitasking support, flash support, an open software ecosystem, a camera, GPS, standard 3g in all models. There's endless lists of things it can't do... act as your only device (really you need a proper computer, a phone and this), replace netbooks, laptops or smart-phones, again multitask (seriously... what the hell? My Amiga could multitask in the 80s!).

But where are the lists of what it can do differently... what it can do better? There's nothing. Nothing but magic and desire. And that's what I want from art, not a productivity tool.

And this was posted as a comment in this fawning article in the Grauniad by "British treasure",  famous nob and Apple evangelist, Stephen Fry.  Cock.

Anyway, many years ago, I wrote a post about Apple's diversification into other markets and postulated that they'd soon be getting them while they're young by introducing a whole range of babycare products.  Of particular interest would be the iPood, their range of nappies and baby bottomcare products.  The iPood range would of course have its own docking station, the iPot, known to you and me as a potty.

But I won't be getting an iPad.  I have an iPhone - why would I want something that was just the same, only more cumbersome, with less functionality?  iPood indeed.

In search of salvation

Next up, Sniffy brings you: "The great search for spiritual salvation".  Apparently, although, according to the good Christians around us, Jesus is everywhere, he's not quite the same wherever you go.  I love my girlfriend dearly, absolutely and without condition.  I love that she's a Christian - a proper, nice one.  But apparently, proper Christians are quite discerning when it comes to finding places of worship... and the music has to be good too.

I'm off to look at slate PCs.

Until next time.