Forever… redux

Ahh, the land of smokers, in my head at least.    Admitted, this is a rather cruel way of describing it, as I did meet some non smokers. However, seeing cigarette commercials in the street along with the impression that most everyone were smoking, did leave an impression on me.

However, that isn’t the reason I’m wiring this, neither is it the reason I went there, So, lets get to things!

I went to Germany a couple of weeks ago on vacation, between my old and new job.  It wasn’t a long stay, just a couple of days. The main reason was to be sociable and meet up with Kanuberon and Mathair and to celebrate Kanuberon’s birthday.

Well, we topped that up with a couple of days of various sight-seeing, old castles, churches, towns and natural phenomena in the countryside, along with cow-snuggling and cat-sneezing.  And of course being assaulted by the incredibly aggressive mosquitos.

We went to the town of (pizza!)Worms, some time Kayaking (and toppling the kayaks over, of course)  walking the somewhat idyllic countryside and generally harassing things with the camera.

Still, I had fun, and it was nice.

(there, posted nonsensical blag-post!)

Woke up today with a headache, which might not be strange for you, but for me is a thing of wonder that seldom hits.   Unfortunately I hadn’t been drinking the night before, so I couldn’t blame that, nor dehydration or lack of caffeine.   Over all,  odd.   It turned worse when my head started to spin and I was toppling over against the wall, seeing pretty little white and red dots in front of my eyes, when I started to actually see the beams of light, shading across,  being able to touch it and comb it with my fingers into sparkling rainbows, I was seriously starting to doubt my eyes, and the step from there to the small bubbles and the sight of neon tetras swimming to hide in the shadows was simply disturbing.  Hooray for hallucinations.

Still, it was an odd while of synaesthesia as my head started to unhinge and the dreams and sights blended with the sound of traffic and people. I wish I knew what caused it, but I really have no clue. But I’m still waiting for my headache to pass.

Okay,  I’m still postponing my germany trip blogpost, but now to update on something I’ve been nagging some people about. I’ve got a new job.  A while ago Take called me up and asked me if I had time to help out, and since the situation was so bizarre with the old place, I decided to give it a try, so I’m on a trial period for five weeks again.  I’ll be the monk in the building, aka, Sysadmin, some development and some other duties.    First job to fix the backup server and figure out why it wasn’t doing it’s job, that sort of thing.

But,  Amongst the other things, I’ll be dealing with the cash registers at two (to be opened) places, De Klomp, and Aanstoot.

I guess I know where I’ll be to calm down after work … ;)  Well, We’re in temporary offices in an office-hotel right now, so I’ll have to set up the whole infrastructure in the new office in a couple of weeks. How terrible.

And meanwhile, a person from the old place has been sending me obscure sms on the phone. First asking for login/pass for the server I set up. Then asking for how to log in (via ssh),   how to use root (It’s a network facing server, of course root login is disabled)  and now lastly, how to edit a file. No, not kidding.    I responded “vi”

This is taken from my (new) notebook, more or less as I wrote it on the flight from Sweden to Germany. The handwriting at its best is a shaky Arabic, and at its worst a confused form of Sanskrit as interpreted by pigeons.

So, why did I quit from a practice/job where they really did need me, and where I could shine, do interesting stuff and learn new things?

Let’s first talk some about the place. The driving force and my ‘boss’ is in marketing. He’s good at it, getting and driving ideas, and then selling them to people with money. That is what happened here. I was supposed to be one of the (software-) designer/architects on the Linux side of this. Where the other people were, I do not know. The organization is loosely built around MSN and phones, as well as the internal net. Which, I still had no access to. Where my co-workers were and what they were doing, I do not know, as I never got them to respond on MSN, nor acknowledge my existance. What my actual work was, other than general research, I wasn’t told.

Who to talk to and work with…. well, they weren’t there.  So, in the end I was alone in a branch office, without a real job to do or someone to report to.

And thats where my ‘boss’ went on vacation for a couple of weeks, without letting me know.

And after this, he gets upset when I do not want to continue after the initial 5 week trial/practice.

Packed, tired, About to shut down the computer for a bit as I’m going to Germany to visit Kanuberon and Mathair (Nicknames, yesh ;)  yesterday was the culmen of a week of anxiety that basically meant I quit my job. I’ll write more about it later.

First day for another job thingie is on Thursday,  a week now. Good good.

Well,  call me lazy…

But still, Thank you Reinout, you made my morning brighter!

> Hi, I’ve implemented a feature I wanted to have in nautilus, that is
> double-clicking on the Desktop background will show desktop (minimise all
> opened windows).

* hears a thousand helpdesk phones ringing… *

Okay, I’m setting myself up for disappointment here, but I can’t help it.

Fallout 3 trailer was released at E3, and.. It’s not fallout. It’s Oblivion in a bleak future. But it isn’t fallout.  Nowhere is the quirky humour, nowhere are the cynism.  There’s an third person shooter blaster that might be fun.

But it heck isn’t Fallout.

My bet? They have removed the roleplaying and just cloned the pseudo-linear story from Oblivion.

And,  Then there is the Watchmen trailer. CGI CGI CGI uncanny valley. Bad water effects off the submarine, Gloss Gloss Gloss shine shine.  And nowhere in sight is actual acting.

Oh holy feck,  I knew they were going to rape the /(comic)/book, but this badly? Please.

I guess I’m forced to see and try them anyhow, but seriously, I want to hurt something now.

Okay, time for some personal chatter and a day.  As some may know, my family isn’t in the best of shapes. My mother is very ill, and I don’t see them very often due to how I’m off myself. However.

I needed to get in touch with my father the other day, and couldn’t reach him on the phone. No message back, no answer, no nothing.   Pity, I wait and see. Got a call this morning from him, apologizing that he hadn’t been answering the phone or calling back, but he’d been in hospital for observation after some heart issues.

Turns out that on top of his double leg amputation and diabetes, his oldtime chronic overweight and high bloodfat values, he’s now got heart issues.    Right, such a pleasant reminder that I’m about to lose him as well.

Now, He’s not gone. Neither is my mother.  Neither am I.   But it’s still a shakeup.

And here I was planning on being dead three years ago, and the only reason I’m still here, is guilt and stubbornness.  Maybe one day I’ll actually feel enthausiasm about something again.

Until then I’m going hard on sugar and distraction.

Well,  that was the title of the original column by Spider Jerusalem in  “Transmetropolitan” and I figured it would be a good fit for this post too.

Work,  no, lets not talk about it please.

ISP and ISP customer service. “Oh, Sorry that you had no net for a couple of days and that our previous representative unhooked you instantly,  and oups we seem to have forgotten to transfer the modem to you when we transferred the service agreement”

So, basically they forgot that modem is needed for broadband, and… didn’t transfer that.

Yey.

I now have a bad headache,  I’ve been in phone queues for days, (there are now 53 callers ahead of you. Your call is important to us, please wait while we ignore it) and I want to gut someone.

Okay, So I don’t usually link to stuff and do excerpts, but I just stumbled on an article about Depression, and the theory that it’s not a seratonin-related thing at all, but an atrophy of braincells,  and the “down” thing is simply a sideffect of the detoriation of the brain.

It is jarring to think of depression in terms of atrophied brain cells, rather than an altered emotional state. It is called “depression,” after all. Yet these scientists argue that the name conceals the fundamental nature of the illness, in which the building blocks of the brain - neurons - start to crumble. This leads, over time, to the shrinking of certain brain structures, like the hippocampus, which the brain needs to function normally.