Oh yeah, another point of irritation: the Airport card in the MiniMac turned up its feet and died on Sunday.

On calling the supplier I was informed that the mac was still in warranty — good — and that there was a 7 day wait before the service dept could get to look at it — bad.

Means I’ve got do to Yet Another Fucking User Transfer onto the laptop. Thankfully I’ve got the big screen now and so can plug it into the laptop…

The bonus here is that I can find out if it’s the screen or the logic-board that’s busted on the laptop, which has left me with an odd pink vertical line about two thirds to the right of the screen.

This line will apparently cost me a fortnight’s pay to get fixed, which apparently is pointless as it’s the same cost as the mid-level MacBook.

So, I’m keeping the data backed-up and will run it into the ground… figuratively-speaking that is… until it finally turns up its toes and dies and I can justify a replacement.

I saw one of the OLPC machines riding home last week and thought they were pretty neat, especially since I only use a laptop for email and pushing out new stories (albeit infrequently these days) and a big honking great mac, while pretty and drool-worthy, is total overkill for that sort of job.

Oh yeah, two other things which might be getting on my goat are lack of sleep and some arsehole reversing every hour last night.

The reversing began at around 10.30. And it kept going… then stopped… and started again… and stopped… and started again…

BeeeBeeeBeeeBeeeBeeeBeeeBeee…Beee…BeeeBeeeBeee…Beee…

Silence…

Silence…

Nodding-off…

Beee…BeeeBEEEBEEEBEEEbeeeBeeeBeee…Beee…Beee…

Silence…

…etcetera

Sleep was affected by this. But it was also affected by my mindset and thrashing around internally over a bunch of stuff which won’t be discussed in this blog.

My sleep was also affected by next door neighbours having an argument this morning. Must have been about 6am when I heard a woman yelling on the street, an argument, a slam of a door, then as I began to drift off again, a heart-rending guttral screeching sound.

Very off-putting.

And since I was wide-frigging-awake, there wasn’t much else I could do but lie there wondering what to do next.

This question was answered by R who texted me asking if I’d like to ride to work with her.

Award for the biggest dipshit has to go to a mutual friends boyfriend who — after about 7 or 8 years with the friend K, an affair and a fucking obsession (read it twice, you’ll get it), has announced that he now wants to end the relationship in favour of taking lots of drugs and shagging anything with two legs and the right bodily orifices.

How old is he, was my first reaction.

R agreed.

He should have gotten that out of his system in his twenties for fucks sake.

Honestly, there’s no accounting for brain power, especially when we’re talking about the effects of hormones.

What a knucklehead.

Bleh.

It’s been an annoying and underwhelming week. I don’t know if I can lay it all at the feet of the new moon which is chucking all sorts of amusing energies around the place, a case of partial malnutrition due to a lack of money (and — obviously — food), a terrible spot to sit at work (right beside a major highway), the weird weather (last week, freaking freezing, this week, mid twenties), the constant chatter of geeks around me getting on my goat, Sysadmin buggering around with my computer or Microsoft products.

I’ll take the twin powdery lines of least resistance.

Last week we had the “new product launch” thing here at work, and my desktop image was hijacked by Sysadmin. Their reasoning was that Marketing should have checked it with everyone, but all I found was that it was irritating to have something changed on me without telling me, and — goddamn it — I don’t like being advertised at.

So I trolled the interweb for a hack, and managed to get into my own registry (as it had been disabled by the aforementioned twonks in Sysadmin) and dug through layer-upon-layer of MS contortionistic bollocks until I found the particular key; which I changed.

I had to keep changing it daily because those wacky Sysadmin guys had worked out that the easiest way to piss me off was to push updates through to the computer when no-one was looking.

Fortunately, they weren’t able to stick advertising on my desktop, as — thanks to the help of a co-worker — I’d disabled sysadmin access to the folder on the local computer which acted as suppository for said marketing crap.

But that, unfortunately, isn’t what’s annoying me.

Today I had to fight with a WindoZe 2003 Server. That was fun.

It’s hosting the TWiki instance which I’m working with, madly converting existing and creating new user documents for the happy little proles in the call-centers. I don’t know if they’re happy, I’m making that part up. They could be mad as a dozen jihadists on a party line; they could be as nutty as a conkertree, what do I know?

Anyway, I was finding the computer was running morbidly slow.. the sort of slow that indicates something is about to go “ping” within the black svelte Dell — Hell — plastic box. So I wandered over to it…

…I haven’t said that I dont’ work ON the server physically. I link to it through a web connection and through a Run window if necessary to do Jiggery-Pokery…

… and found there was no keyboard or mouse.

Fucking thieves.

So I tromped downstairs, found the guy who has a box full of keyboards and mice and asked if I could get one of each, please.

These items of dross thus obtained, I returned and plugged them into the server machine, to be greeted with two messages asking if it was okay to restart the computer because new software had been installed.

I restarted.

Then, while the Dual processors churned away happily, with all the expertise of a cheesemaker in a particularly well lit barn, and the dulcet tones of another worker’s music trilled away happily in his absence (what’s wrong with bloody headphones? What IS it with people?!), I waited for the machine to restart.

So I got in, and the frigging change password message came on.

Now, there’s a lot of things which are irritating and boring, and one of them is this sodding message.

Your password will expire in 14 days. Do you want to change it now

Fourteen fucking days? Half a bleeding month? What the F*ck is that all about.

Oh, again, it’s the wacky fun-loving guys in Sysadmin having fun with everyone.

No, I said, and clicked the appropriate button; then waited for another few minutes while the rest of the system updates were finished off.

If I’d had any money, I’d have wandered off and had a crafty Chai. Not the stuff downstairs, which is like drinking hot water mixed with a quarter cup of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon; what’s THAT all about?! No, I’d have walked a couple of blocks to where i can get a decent cup of — albeit pre-brewed in a bottle – chai.

Perhaps that’s one of the things bugging me. No, not the bloody chai. The money. Probably. Comes from being constantly whacked over the head with “you need money” from my father for twenty fucking years… my brother believed him and got money obsessed, I took the other route which occasionally leaves me in the shit, but on the whole removes the whole fear-factor of financial ruin. I’ve been penniless in France and Australia; it’s hard but I’ve worked through things like that, as I’m working through them now.

So the computer started up again, and I tried out the wiki… except it took Freaking Ages To Load. Even got a warning message saying “a script is taking longer to load than expected, do you want to abort”.

No, I don’t. I want to get to the bottom of why this Server with not one but TWO processors is grinding to a halt like it’s been dipped in a bath of Golden Syrup.

There’s a funny memory – I used to eat Golden Syrup on bread as a kid.

No bloody wonder I can’t handle sugar now.

I started uninstalling things; Google Desktop was the first. That was an utter bag of powdered offal if ever I saw one. When I was running it on twin displays it crapped-out like it was the victim of a dozen cases of salmonella.

I progressed to windows components that weren’t useful; easy done and happy to remove them. I had to restrain myself with my desire to frag the whole OS; unfortunately I don’t know enough about Linux to install it, and would have had to spend a couple of days reinstalling TWiki.

And I restarted.

No, I Don’t Want To Fucking Change My Password.

Churn…churn…churn…

Right, up it comes again.

Silly me, let’s try it in Internet Exploder.

A message came up talking about PHishing and whether I’d like to enable or disable the filter, or be asked again next time until I caved-in and did what the heathen gods at Redmond want me to do. Never!

Only I couldn’t do anything. That’s because the damn thing had locked-up. IE, already low in the opinion scales, in the same way that chewing my own elbows off is, had disappointed again.

I killed the process and tried again.

And killed the process after chucking the mouse at the screen, while uttering “fucking Microsoft Crap”.

I tried again in Firefox, and got the same error (the one about the script).

I tried the defrag…but it conked-out at 3% and didn’t move again — even though there’s hardly anything on the bloody computer.

I think it’s going to kark it. I should get it changed-over.

*sigh*

What else is irritating me? Could be a conversation I had with a friend yesterday… could be emails from over the weekend…

Could be I need something to eat. I’m down to Very Fucking Little at home, but thankfully am being paid tomorrow. This means there will be much rejoicing and a big breakfast out to reward myself for my hard yards in the malnutrition department.

I might even do a Bikram class; I’ve been too shagged this week to do one… especially after the hardcore coding I did over the weekend.

But you’re a writer I hear you say… go on, you can do it.

Yes, comes the answer… but I’m branching out for the sake of my sanity into other areas: web design and pinching other people’s CSS and Javascript to name but three.

And seeing as the first time I actually used JavaScript was in the wiki at work about a week and a half ago, the things I’ve achieved in the site I’m putting together are nothing short of Bleeding Miraculous.

However, the site isn’t quite right yet, and lacking the years of experience in web design that most people who happily use that moniker share, I have catching up to do.

Doing my best is sometimes all I can do… but again, I am tripped up by the vampiric hordes of Redmond with their twin abominations, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Render a website one of you.

Why won’t you do it properly.

You are doing it properly?

How come your distant cousin Firefox, and the grrl down the street Safari can do this.

Oh, it’s because you’re the mutant offspring of your ex CEO and new CEO.

And you try, and I understand that you do… the issue I have is that your creators can actually fix you both up, and refuse to do so, that’s what I find so awful.

Really.

Can someone explain to me why IE6 and IE7 can’t be patched to render pages in Exactly the same way as every other damn browser on the market?

Is it some kind of perverted weird-arse Holier-than-thou, we’re-bigger-than-anyone, 90% market-share arrogance of their cross-eyed knucklehead management?

Someone? Anyone?

I find rhyming slang and alternative terms for things amusing.

Sometimes I hear wrong and there’s a term going around my head that’s not quite right, but makes me giggle nonetheless.

The latest is one from the king of sardonic wit, Yahtzee  Crosshaw of Zero Punctuation Reviews.

Lamp them one: the art of whacking someone in an irritated fashion, potentially over the head.

As stated, I could have heard it wrong; he’s got an accent you could use to butter toast (as opposed to one you can cut with a knife).

And as I sit here, listening to Barry Adamson‘s Stranger on The Sofa album, I wonder first if I’ll have enough money to get tickets to his Melbourne concert, and then exactly why I’m still awake. It’s after bloody midnight!

I announce to the universe that I will never, EVER put myself into a position where I can be betrayed again.

After the debacle with my last housemates, I am still feeling knock-on effects in my life; bills are now beginning to roll-in and my incoming cash isn’t quite levelling-out.

It is — unfortunately — a difficult lesson to learn, but on some level I have to thank my ex-housemates for being the conniving, arrogant, self-centered, passive-aggressive, small-minded, abusive, nasty people that they have revealed themselves to be. Without your behaviour and your ultimate betrayal — refusing to pay the rent on rent-day as agreed and thus dropping me over $1500  into the hole — I would not have learned a valuable lesson.

For the lesson, I thank you, and I return the favour:

May you both live in interesting times.

I just watched one of my favourite movies again: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I’m not ashamed to mention that I’m constantly touched by it, it’s sad, happy, lovely… a relationship that feels so real you can touch it, with the good bits and bad bits, the underlying longing to connect with another human being.

Now I’ve succeeded in not blowing myself up with the gas oven… which I couldn’t get to light even though there was the smell of gas permeating the kitchen… and I shall sit outside on my new old table and 1950s wicker chairs.

Finally worked-out one of the reasons I’ve been so fundamentally and astonishingly unable to concentrate at work.

And it’s a classic CLASSIC case of forgetting something.

Last year when I was working for Hellstra, I found that the environment I was in was not at all conducive to working. For one there were lots of people talking like they were deaf. For two there were not one, but THREE radios on people’s desks playing radio fairly audibly. And none of these radios were on the same station.

My solution at the time was simple: White Noise. No, not some bizarre def-metal rock band (from the gagralaca mind-zones, who are not only believed to be the loudest rock band, but the loudest noise of any kind in existence; sorry, channeling Hitch-Hikers Guide there).

So, white noise; it helped me focus, it helped me drown out the background crap, and aided my concentration astonishingly.

Why I forgot it is part II of this problem; the ADD I was diagnosed with late last year. I dispute the name (It’s not Attention Defecit, it’s Attention overload; we pick-up everything), but the diagnosis explained a whole lot of stuff, and I got some good tools and information to deal with the issues of an over-sensitive mind.

Which I promptly forgot. Just like with sugar (I eat some, I eat some more, then get all depressed and wonder why).

So, now I’m back on the White Noise bandwagon, and suddenly all the external influences, noises, music playing at A’s computer, people’s phones on speaker-phone because they can’t be arsed holding the handset up to their ears while on-hold, tennis balls bouncing, people walking past, people chatting nearby, conversations across the office, the nice guy who’s in the call-center actross from my desk talking to his callers… well, all of that is pretty much drowned-out.

Why not then listen to music, you might ask.

Well, because I listen to music.

Read that again, you might get it.

If you don’t, I’ll explain. Music: I enjoy it. Basically it’s another distraction. The tracks click over and I am distracted by the lyrics, the beat, the good guitar licks (why are they called licks btw; there’s no tongue involved is there?), the point of the music… and it dislodges the creative part of my brain and I get all sorts of story ideas.

Do I get any work done listening to music?

Not really.

White noise on the other hand isn’t a beat, isn’t rhythmic or anything else. It’s just constant sound. It’s not squeaky or changing, it’s not water pouring down a river, it’s not waves on a beach; both of these create an image to my mind you see, which leads to the aforementioned creative outpourings.

Not that creative outpourings are a bad thing mind you; especially when halfway through a second book and one third into the third in a series which one hopes will make me almost embarassingly rich and leave me with no option than to demand they wheel Parkie out of cryogenic freeze because he’s the only interviewer who I’ll speak with. It’s just that when I’m at work, I’m being paid to do shit, and that shit isn’t being done at present.

Not anymore however; now I’ve found a 20 second MP3 of white noise on Freesound. A quick download later and I had it in iTunes playing on an endless loop.

And thus I can concentrate again.

The only other way I’ve found to concentrate is to stay late at work when there’s no-one else around. Don’t want to do that anymore; it eats into my Being At Home time.

An auspicious moment: 1000 hits on the blog.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzuNu2UpsUk&rel=1]

Ah, me public.

I’d like to thank my producer, my publicist, friends and family…

I feel so lurrrrved.

A funny thing happened to me this morning after the 6am Bikram class.

When I walked out, I conversed with M, the owner. Can’t remember exactly how we got onto the subject but he said that he felt really relaxed after the class.

Relaxed.  It’s not a word I’ve ever considered for the aftermath of a class. Sometimes (less and less these days; I’m on the 30 day challenge) I feel energised, mostly I feel totally exhausted.

Or do I?

The word kept rattling around my skull as I cycled home (so I could eat something proper, not just take-out from one of the plethora of cafes around Fitzroy and Carlton; and besides, I have no money); Relaxed… Relaxed…

M mentioned the rewriting of internal tape-loops (this is another M btw), and how I keep putting myself down. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘You should try thinking of another word?’

So here goes…

After an hour and a half of Bikram Yoga this morning I was relaxed.

After eating breakfast, I was content

I’m now at work and I’ve got some interesting things to do.

I am not wondering how long it will be before Ms.Cynicism rears her head and bags this entire exercise as being daft.

It takes a while to wipe tape; it’s not like deleting files on a file-system, where the first letter of a filename is replaced with something else. Unless it’s a mac running OS9:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg7Xh0m_Oco&rel=1]

A conversation with a friend included the issue of my carrying around a lot of repressed anger. It’s true unfortunately… but thankfully, I am not an island, I’m just like everyone else.

In honour of this auspicious declaration, I give you a clip from one of my favourite shows, which includes some great dialogue referring to repressed anger.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t97sy2ryqSQ&rel=1]