I appear to have spent most of my weekend sitting on my skinny butt and watching television¹. The stress and anxiety of this project at work is constantly there in my chest, which makes relaxing very difficult. Even after a good half-hour's Tae Bo workout, I could still feel that crunched-up ball of angst clutching to the inside of my sternum, digging its putrid claws into me and refusing to let go.
The good news is that my new job role starts in exactly one week: I just have to make it to the first day of August and I'm free. Obviously, walking away from a project that could potentially still have minor problems is not something I like doing, but in this case I'll make an exception. Normally, I retain a feeling of responsibility, as if the project were a little child I had released into adulthood... despite the fact that it's capable of doing what it needs to, I'm always there if someone should have a problem with it. Heck, I'm still supporting an application that's seven years old and few other people remember!
In this case, though, I'm going to turn my back on the damned thing. I will, of course, document it fully and be available to whoever gets the job of maintaining the reporting part, but I'm not going to be responsible for it. That project has devoured my life. It's taken my days, my nights, my weekends, my sleep, my calm and my happiness, so sod it.
That's why I spent my weekend watching TV: it's one of the few things that relaxes me, that gets me out of the constant pondering of work and makes me laugh or keeps me interested. Of course, one is also dependant upon what's available. I ended up watching the double episode of Stargate SG-1, two episodes of Charmed (*shudder*), one of Andromeda, one of Star Trek: Voyager, two of Star Trek: Enterprise, two of Knights of God, one of Tripping the Rift and a few other bits and pieces.
I'm such a couch potato.
¹ Officially, watching a PC monitor, since I don't own an actual television. Big difference.
I finally got to see the opening double-episode of season 8 of Stargate SG-1 yesterday. It's my guilty pleasure, that series. I know that it's not very cerebral and that it's not high art or anything, but I just love it. The stories aren't overly contrived, the characters are well-rounded and the humour is excellent. Gotta hand it to those Canadians, eh?
I'm pleased to say that the O'Neill jokes are still around in season 8: I'd been afraid Mr. MacGyver was getting bored with his role and turning into cardboard at the end of the last season, but he's back with a vengeance in the new one. The scene on the Asgard ship Daniel Jackson is a classic.
I'm also pleased to see the Asgard are back: they're my favourite aliens.
The weekend is finally here, but the stress isn't going away for the moment. Given the long days and pressure, that's no surprise. The rats moved in last night and are currently hiding in their cage from a very curious Pie: he's never lived with other animals before.
Today, I'm just watching films or TV series. I need to relax. First on the list this morning is Trekkies, a documentary about Star Trek fans. Boy, there are some weird ones, but of course for the most part they're just normal folks who enjoy something enough to become a little obsessive about it. As one person says: "Wearing a football shirt or a basketball uniform all year isn't odd. Why should wearing a Star Trek uniform be any different?"
There's some neat stories from the stars, too - Whoopi Goldberg being influenced by Uhura, Scotty recounting a suicidal fan saved by convention attendance, Bones receiving a rather fruity fan letter and - my favourite - Spock at a party back in the early days. A hand lands on his shoulder and a voice says "You had your ears fixed..." - it was John Wayne.
Did you know that Trekkies (or Trekkers for those who prefer it) are the only people who have the term for their fandom in the Oxford English Dictionary?
Yes, I know I have been quiet for a while. It's this darned project, you see. Work keeps taking up all my time. Still, it should be finished by the end of the week, I hope, and the next stage of release won't be my problem as I'm moving on to other things. I just need to document what I've done for the person who takes over, to make it as simple as possible for them.
I need to buy a cage tomorrow for the rats. Psycho and I sexed them this week and there are three males. Only one female baby and her rear left leg is paralysed, poor thing. She copes well, all things considered, and still manages to play with her brothers and the adults, so that's good news.
By the end of the week, Groucho, Chico and Harpo will be moved into my place and totally freaking Pie out!
Why don't people leave messages? What is it about the simple "Leave a message after the beep" that is so difficult to understand? And why do they get so angry when they "finally" get hold of me?
If it's that important, leave a frigging message: then I know who phoned instead of Mr(s). Anonymous-I-Hung-Up-Sound.
Arseholes.
Life here has suddenly become very busy. Life's like that, it seems: for a few weeks, things tinkle along quite nicely and without too much stress, then suddenly everything changes and there's no time to think, let alone sleep or relax. This has happened and has been going on since I moved to the new apartment, with but a few lapses.
This week, for example, I need to fix a bunch of bugs in my reports (the horror!), pick up my new passport, organise delivery of a wardrobe to Psycho's place, sort out a cage for the rat-babies I will soon be adopting, fill the nail-holes in the walls at the old apartment so that it's perfect for the examination by the agency, get through the second part of my annual performance review, release a new set of reports for a different project, buy and hang some curtains, buy a couple of frames and hang some pictures, clear some space on the PC at home, write to Psycho's ADSL provider to claim back the payment for June (she still has no connection and it's on my account), buy a new telephone and check for what exactly the syndicate for the building I live in is trying to charge me money!
All that and breathe, too. Blimey.
Reply to a friend during an MSN conversation when he said "I don't want to argue":
"Arguing is trying to enforce your opinion. Discussion is an exchange of opinions without trying to change the other person's position. I don't care whether you agree or not: I respect your viewpoint even if it *is* completely wrong."
Mwuhahahahahaha!
Sometimes I don't understand humans at all. It's even worse when I don't understand geeks at all. So what don't I understand? Why Gmail is so popular.
Gmail is, of course, Google's email setup. It's still in a sort of preview-cum-beta stage at the moment, with signup by invitation only: my guess is that this "insider" feeling is the base cause of its popularity. Looking at the so-called features of the system, I can see no other reason to want an account there.
Firstly, all incoming email is stored and scanned. This is, of course, so that the proprietary Google search engine (which is, let's be honest, astounding) can index and allow users to find anything they want. With a generous 1,000Mb (approximately 0.98Gb) of storage per account, that's an awful lot of history and searching.
On the other hand, I don't really want someone scanning and cataloguing my email. There's quite enough invasion of privacy going on these days without an email service doing the vast majority of the work for whatever agency decides it wants access to their database. Just imagine how much of a mess all those Gmail users would be in if the FBI decided to exercise some of their new rights in the style of the Patriot Act, confiscated the entire Google Gmail database and all its indices, then went and plugged that information into Carnivore, Echelon, BigBadMailEater or whatever their latest surveillance doodad is called. Paranoid? Perhaps. Then again, look at George W. Bush and I think you'll understand.
Secondly, Gmail is paid for by advertising: "Gmail users only see relevant text ads, similar to those on Google search results pages ." Ah, yes. Those relevant links that appear on searches, such as when I ask for information on my DVD burner failing and get half a dozen online shopping links back? Wonderful.
This is the bit I cannot understand. Everyone who's smarter than your average rhinoceros knows that the biggest annoyance in any email system is the amount of crap that ends up in your inbox. Here's a whole bunch of people who should know better and they're inviting Google to scan their email and spam them. That's just masochistic. Some are even buying Gmail accounts on eBay.
"Hey, over here! Beat me senseless again would you? I've got another hundred bucks for you if you do!"
I find it most amusing that the racist scumbag Jean-Marie Le Pen (who runs the National Front here in France) has his own official website. Well, not that... but more the fact that his official website gives errors. And so does the one it redirects to. And the one THAT site redirects to.
Vote FN. Support people who aren't smart enough to use computers: they'll run the country right. D'oh.
Back in February, I splurged. No, not like that: what I mean is that I spent some money on something for myself for once. Something that wasn't essential. Twice a year, the company hands out performance bonuses that, despite heavy taxes, are always a nice extra. Since the one in February would be the last before I'd have to start paying my mortgage, I thought I should spend a part of it on something frivolous, so I ordered a Plextor DVD writer.
Unfortunately, Plextor (who, I should add, make very good burners) decided that their latest DVD writer should have a really cheap tracking mechanism. Presumably this was in the great corporate plan to piss off all their customers by building a device that would be utterly crap and fail to do what it is supposed to. I hope someone at the company is calculating the return on investment for that decision.
So, after several (expensive) failed attempts to write a DVD, I eventually spent a few hours on Google, searching for forum entries. Et voila, the model I have suffers from said tracking problem. Time to return it.
Plextor's RMA service is, to be honest, remarkable. An online form produces an RMA number and an email of instructions. They pay for DHL pickup at your domicile. Three days later (yes, THREE), the new drive is sitting on your desk.
Now that is excellent service. Shame they couldn't apply the same principles to the manufacturing department.