… or 2. I’ve lost count.

By “in” I mean 2011. The new year, another decade (though in fairness last year was the new decade. It’s so hard to work these things out isn’t it? does the new decade start on a “0″ or a “1″?)

Anyway.

I’m here in my bedroom in Melbourne (not the entire city, just a general location for my dwelling that won’t have me stalked by people I don’t want to know. And besides, I already have a rather good stalker who I’m quite attached to) and typing on the laptop with a cup of Rooibos next to me.

What’s Rooibos you ask?

Herbal-ish tea. Not black tea. It’s red. That’s about all I know. Look it up on Google if you want to know — I just like the taste in the morning. My stalker introduced me to the morning cuppa, and I haven’t looked back.

What was I saying?

Random thoughts in the morning are even more random without the first sip of tea. Hang 3 and we’ll see if these processes coalesce into anything meaningful.

…and sip… ahhhh…

So this morning I received an email from the woman who shall henceforth be referred to as “The Nutter”. I thought our email conversations had been curtailed last month when she said “Never contact me again”, a statement which was both relieving and a no-brainer. Here was a woman who had screamed down a phone at me, not once, but four times in 48 hours, pleading, wheedling, passive-aggressing and out-and-out blackmailing. Halfway up this matterhorn of abuse she even had the audacity to threaten suicide if I didn’t do what she wanted me to do.

It was only a friendship that I thought we had that extended these verbal blitzkriegs — anyone else who has done this to me has been left with that chirpy little “beep-beep-beep” sound of a disconnected phone call.

The phone calls got so bad that I was left shaking, mouth dry and in fear — I had to email her to say that I wouldn’t be talking to her over the phone after the way she’d treated me.

The penultimate conversation, in this case an email, involved a death threat.

In my final response to her I explained that her treatment of me was reprehensible and was the single cause (well, quadruple) of the breakdown of the friendship. I had been there for her, I’d been there for mutual friends in need. And all of them had turned on me in varying shades of verbal violence.

Oh, and the icing on the cake was that she regarded the incidents over the phone as “cultural differences” — she being of middle-eastern (ish) descent and highly strung. I called it bad behaviour and left it at that.

So it was quite surprising to receive an email today from her. I began reading it and dragged my way out two paragraphs in when she started going on about the “transient” nature of Australian relationships. I felt my ire rising, hackles on the back of my metaphorical neck, then turned away. Yes, there’s wisdom in addressing concerns and facing your fears, and then there’s wisdom in just walking away. I pick the battles I have a chance of winning (not that I’m at all combative), and to engage again with her would at best be unwise.

You see, you can’t reason with people with an axe to grind. You can’t reason with someone who is so utterly disconnected from their own actions that they cannot see the damage that they are causing. You can’t reason with someone who has Right On Their Side.

And you can’t reason with someone who attacks you at every turn, someone who criticises and belittles you without giving you even the respect of taking responsibility for their part in the train-wreck.

I’ve had so many people like this in my life. They come in, they treat me nice for a while, and then they start subtly undermining.

And it’s as much my fault as it is theirs. I participated in this by believing they were right and I was wrong. An over-extended responsibility gland means that I took responsibility for things that weren’t my fault, and was ready to be criticised and told I had fucked up. Low self-esteem and a feeling that I wasn’t ever seen (or had a right to existence) led me down this garden path of pain.

Slowly though, the worm turned. It became apparent (over some years) that there were friends who were friendly, who were there for me and I for them. And then there were friends who I was there for, and they for me with strings attached, and when they felt unhappy they would dump the blame onto me in the Nicest Possible Way. Then they would tell me how I was a failure for a few hours and move on.

This transfer of energy was like dead weights being loaded onto the back of a camel; oppressive, negative energy that made me more susceptible to manipulation. But once I realised that, and refused to participate, the transfer of energy became much more direct.

Simply put, I had offended them and now they were going to let me have it.

Here the exchange of energy was more active but no less negative.

A leading statement twists an event which becomes an attack which has to be answered, turns into an exchange of unpleasantness…

Soon I was dragged into the mire and spat out at the other end, exhausted, drained and damaged.

One simple thing stops this in its tracks, it’s simple and empowering.

Just say “No”.

That’s where the nutter came unstuck. I said “no”. I stood my ground and she threw everything she could at me. She cried. She blackmailed. She brought up her religion and how she could not withdraw from the situation we were arguing about (another person in this case). She brought up how it was affecting her. She brought up her health issues. She brought up the possibility she would suicide if she didn’t get her own way. She yelled and screamed. She talked over the top of me at high speed. She hammered at me for hours.

And I said “No.”

I was left after these calls shaking and with a dry mouth, my stomach churning. But I knew it was the right thing to do.

I won’t negotiate with people who abuse me. It is — as stated earlier — a no-brainer.

So with this in mind, my first step was to spam the message so it went away.

But then I remembered the oft-forgotten Bounce function in Mac mail. It’s in the Message menu. What it does is Return-To-Sender with a “mailbox not available” message. Just for luck I also blacklisted her email so anything coming in would be deleted.

So it was with a great sense of relief that I selected the message, then clicked Message and Bounce. The message was gone in a puff of smoke.

Just received an instant message on Facebook from someone I followed only because I liked her recipes. She’s in Texas and runs a food blog. I’ve also never met her, nor spoken with her except for a brief exchange when she asked who the hell I was following her. Here is the exchange with [my comments indicated like this]:

FB friend – hey Lisa, got a second??
Me – Yeah.
FB friend - I want you to try something real quick
Me – k  [I was looking down my nose with a frown at this stage]
FB friend - ok Lisa, try this test and tell me what you get.. i can’t get over like a 110, its rediculous http://www.puzzleiqchallenge.com/invite/cp4
Me – Seriously? [Polite form for "What The Fuck? Who are you really?"]
FB friend - lemme know what ya get plz, so far everyone beat me, George got a 112, think you can beat that? lol be carfeful some of the questions are tricky

Ten seconds of online searching netted the following information:

Me – Interesting facts about puzzleiqchallenge: http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/facebook-c107067.htmlAnd that it’s linked with scams.
FB friend has gone.

I also have no idea who George is.

Riding up St. George’s road with a headwind is never a pleasant experience. Even less-so when you’re on the way to a Centrelink appointment.

I think they count on people being unwilling to deal with the complexity and the kafkaesque as shit bureaucracy (see also http://xkcd.com/798/). I have, until now been among these people and would much rather chain myself to a bike railing for a week than deal with the multitude of paperwork and bizarre half-truths that spout from the mouths of the staff.

I am, of course, exaggerating. But only just.

Silly me.

Centrelink, like Telstra and other unimaginative big corporations, has a new “voice recognition” system. And it asks you in English to tell it what you need.

The designers clearly hadn’t counted on anyone asking such questions to be outside with a wind blowing. Because every time I tried to say something, it read the wind blowing past the iPhone microphone and expressed in an apparently kind and relaxed voice that it couldn’t work out what I was saying and to please try again.

‘I–”

“I can’t work out what you’re saying. Please try again. To speak to an operator say ‘operator’…”

“Oper–”

“I can’t work out what you’re saying. Please try again. To speak to an operator say ‘operator’…”

“Op–”

“I can’t work out what you’re saying. Please try again. To speak to an operator say ‘operator’…”

Screaming bloody profanities while riding a bike one-handed in a headwind holding an iPhone to your ear possibly looks a bit odd. And if you were driving down St. George’s road this morning at the times I mentioned, I’ll say a cheery “Hello”.

I finally got through to the machine that I couldn’t remember by Centrelink code-number,  and that I was calling about Newstart appointments, and it then put me on hold. I was within 100 meters of the Centrelink office when I finally got through to an operator.

The operator was quite nice. She asked for my centrelink code number and I explained the situation. I was chaining my bike up outside the office when we got to the 3 points of ID: Name, Address, Phone number, and was walking into the office by the time she found my account. I asked if she could advise the office I was now standing in of my lateness and she tried to call them but couldn’t get through either. The call was marked on my account and I sighed relief.

Then I heard my name called and found out they usually give 10 minutes leeway anyway.

20 minutes later I was out of there. The weather had changed and there was a feeling not so much of relief but an obstacle overcome.

I need a slab of cash. Anyone want to donate to the fund?

Arrived at the Job Seeker office today at about 5 past 9 — slightly late. They retaliated with badly photocopied identity paperwork for me to write-up, an apparently E-addicted reception boy who was Just Having A Great Time, and a 20 minute wait; with commerical radio on a nearby boom-box. It just doesn’t get any better than this!

I didn’t really have much else to do though.

When I was seen by a very earnest young man – not sure what the job title is, but the description appears to be data-entry, handing over paperwork, asking the odd question and explaining a couple of things — the first question out of his mouth was “so what happened?”

You see, he’d found an earlier Centrelink account on-file, and discovered I’d done Technical Writing for a number of years (he didn’t know how many and had to ask me that because it apparently wasn’t clear enough on the resume on-file to have each job over 12 years marked with the years and/or months “from” and “to”) and made an assumption.

He seemed a little flustered when I replied that I’d decided to step away from corporate IT for a while to run a web design and copywriting business, and was only here ultimately because of the sheer boredom of chasing recalcitrant clients for money.

Which was true. Also I was getting a little socially isolated working from home.

I said I’d worked in a shop for a while to “press the mental Reset button” and just needed a little bit of a hand while looking for work. And that I’d applied for several jobs this week and had a potential interview next.

This basically removed the need for any other questions. I’d even printed out my resumes (IT and Other) for him. At the point where he started showing me the photocopies he had for me, I think he might have been a bit embarassed about the pages showing “how to write a resume” and “how to write a cover letter”. Presumably he needed to show them because he had nothing else to do.

All part of the service really.

Here’s to the Centrelink interview Monday. Looking forward to it.

I am constantly gobsmacked at how hard some “professional” applications make things.

Take for example something as obvious as a shape with a dotted line.

I want to make some buttons for a website. Ordinarily I’d just create a shape in something like Keynote or Powerpoint with the appropriate line, cut and paste into something like Seashore and cut the bits I need. No it’s not the “ideal” way to do this, but it consistently works and takes me ten minutes, tops.

But I’ve recently become a Photoshop person. I like the layers, which PS will do. But try getting a dotted line on a shape. Really.

Finally after hours and hours of searching, I found how to do it here.

Surely they can make something like this simpler? Or is this the now standard “exclusive” approach rather than “inclusive”? After all, we can’t have just *anyone* doing graphic design can we? There’s lines of demarcation to worry about.

What goes around, comes around.

Proposed intellectual property agreement

It occurs to me that this is the modern equivalent of the restriction of information and free-thought that existed during the Dark Ages.

Remember that fun time, where the church was all powerful, they could do what they liked and anyone they didn’t like was harassed and if you spoke up, you were tied to a tree and burned to death.

Perhaps they won’t do the burning this time around. But they can — if this monstrosity gets up — do these:

- ex-officio authority to take action against infringers  (i.e. authority to act without complaint by right holders)(my note: anywhere, any time, they can grab you and start searching. Nice one)

- authority to order ex parte searches and other preliminary measures (my note: right to be notified of a search, presumption of innocence, etc, etc?)

- remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficing of circumvention devices (my note: well, there goes the ENTIRE computer industry, and the Medical industries in one fell swoop)

And perhaps the scariest of all:

- Special measures for developing countries in the initial stages (my note: what exactly does this mean? Whitey cracks the whip and says you can’t do this anymore?)

What’s scary about all this? Well, suspension of the presumption of innocence for starters. And, of course, the ultimate issue that if a whole country — say an african country which is breaking copyright by producing its own anti-retroviral drugs in an attempt to stem the spread of AIDS — is breaking this “law”, then what happens then? Do the armed forces of another country fly in and bomb them all to smithereens because they’re breaking copyright.

And how exactly are they going to stop China?

In my opinion, and this is my blog, so I can say stuff like this, the proposal is a massive can of worms which could be used to justify anything from the suspension of the presumption of innocence to all out war.

And again, it’s another attempt to stifle the creativity and information exchange afforded by the net and other technological advances.

Long live freedom of thought.

Well, it’s official: iiNet Sucks.

I’m sick of being on hold to these guys. It’s like being with bloody Hellstra or Opt-Arse for frig’s sake! What IS it with companies.

No amount of “Your call is important to us” and “Our staff are experiencing higher than average call volume.” cuts it anymore in this world.

Neither do constantly being told “it’s time to go naked with iiNet…” and “…are you experiencing slow download rates with your dial-up connection..?”

I don’t care. I don’t want to be advertised at. I don’t want to be constantly told how hard it is for you to receive calls because the three people that are left in your call-center after your last hatchet-job on staff that actually do the freaking work can’t handle the volume of calls!

It reminds me of an ex-employer who, during one of the regular 6-monthly retrenchment cycles, fired the guy responsible for building the one application that the CEO of the company had declared was the best thing since sliced bread and would make the company bigger than Ben whatsisname.

Stupid!

So is being on hold for 15 minutes!

iiNet used to be a good company, easy to deal with, quick turnaround on service calls, connections and anything you needed really. Now they’re just like every other damn company out there: happy to take your money, happy to provide a bit of contractually obligated service (ie. phone/net connection) and CRAP at everything else that’s actually necessary for running a business.

Bottom line: if your staff can’t handle the number of calls coming in, then HIRE SOME MORE!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-lJpL2oVg]

Pure freaking gold…

Zero Punctuation Reviews – Uncharted

And you get to meet the author. How snazz!

And I’d embed the code if it actually worked in WordPress. Damn.