Meh.

[denny]

Various things worth of a 'meh' this weekend. Firstly (in order of disappointment levels), the shiny shoes referred to in a previous post, turned out to have a nasty manufacturing defect when they were unwrapped on Saturday, so I'm going to have to send those back. There's no mention of refunding my postage on the company's website, and also it says that all returns must be received within seven days of delivery, so we'll see what happens there. Turns out they were a size too large too (I was advised to get a size up in that style), so I'm asking them to replace with a different size pair. Hopefully this won't all lead to arguments. If it does, hopefully the fact that I run a fetish reviews website will give me a little bit of leverage.

Also firstly (in terms of expense and inconvenience) my iRiver died, completely, horribly, and suddenly, as I was coming up the escalator in Euston on the way out on Saturday. I'd been listening to it for half an hour or so, it reached the end of one track just fine, then instead of the next track it gave me about five seconds of garbled shite (sounding like a CD player on very fast skip), and then it shut up. By the time I'd got it out of my pocket, it had turned itself off, and it's refused to turn back on ever since. So I've got to send that back too - once I can figure out how / where to, their website is really quite crap.

Thirdly, my mood crashed quite badly, and irrecoverably, on Sunday. I'm not really sure why, it just seemed like I couldn't find my usual ability to ignore all the trivial shit that hangs over my head from day to day... the usual financial and health worries (plus I have some great ulcers right now, which does always tend to grind my mood down), plus being narked about the two shiny breakages above, just seemed to make me a really miserable fuck for the day. Which was unfortunate, as I was spending it with lunernia who I hadn't seen for two weeks, and might not see for another two. In the end we watched one and a third DVDs (I have now seen the first three episodes of The Office. I can't remember who recommended this to me, which is probably good fortune on their part. It's the most cringeworthy depressing crap I've watched in a fair while, and I'm sure that wasn't just my mood of the day.) and then I came back to London, feeling very alone. And also feeling very uprooted... I had a moment of panic as I realised I was on a train to London when I should be going home, then remembered that London is home, and found this a pretty unconvincing line of reasoning. I also couldn't figure out anywhere else that felt like home, so that was a bit crap. I slunk from train to tube to front door feeling pretty fed up with everything, really.

Eventually, I got to my bed and then immediately stopped being tired for a few hours, as you do. In the end I finished reading a long book and managed to get to sleep on that 'sense of completion' this sometimes gives. This morning arrived, and Monday 24th January failed to live up to its hype as 'most depressing day', as the weekend had pre-empted it somewhat. Nothing went spectacularly wrong at work, although I didn't get much useful stuff done either. I seem to be doing a lot of firefighting sysadmin stuff at the minute, which is tedious and doesn't give me any sense of achievement at the end of a day (although quite often it makes clients and bosses/colleagues happy, as the results are usually dramatic and instantly visible, unlike a bit of well though out software design and implementation).

Comments

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

I think the best response to your and my recent moods has to be:
*hug*

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll be coming to spitz tomorrow, at least. I tend to find that some good spinning gets out many of the problems. Hopefully it won't all be downs though, in your life.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

This morning arrived, and Monday 24th January failed to live up to its hype as 'most depressing day', as the weekend had pre-empted it somewhat.

With you on that one. *hugs* *love* I hope you feel more cheerful soon.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you may have me just slightly beat on the shitty weekend front. I didn't want to 'me too' your post, so in the end I posted nothing, but I was hoping to catch you on IM at some point. Hope you've got good company and stuff this week.

[topbit.livejournal.com]

my iRiver died, completely, horribly, and suddenly

Is there not a hard reset? My POS player has one (and my Palm Pilot). After hearing Adam Curry love his to bits, I'm thinking of getting one myself, though it has to be able to be mounted onto to my Linux system, I'm not going to boot XP in VMware just to load it up.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

There is a hard reset, it has no effect. I suspect a major and fatal solid-state hardware failure.

Re: Linux

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

denny@blacksun ~ $ cat /etc/fstab | grep iriver
/dev/sda1 /mnt/iriver vfat noauto,user 0 0

:)

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

~hugs you tight~ 'm sorry you're all down and stuff. Don't know what to suggest really, just wanted to give sympathy and hugs, but if there's owt I can do, you know where I am. Love you, sweetheart.

E.
x

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

" It's the most cringeworthy depressing crap I've watched in a fair while, "

Thank God, I thought it was me...One episode made me laugh, mainly because I could say " That's just like so and so ", and that was it..the rest...I don't even wanna get started on the rest...

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I guess it's supposed to be "it's funny because it's true", but really, life is shitty enough without dwelling on the petty mundane shite that constitutes most people's working day, and I just couldn't find it in myself to be amused by any of it.

If you've ever had to deal with that kind of thing for 8+ hours a day, day after day, week after week, I can't see how you can find it funny rather than just seeing it as a reminder of how soul-destroying it can be having to go to work each day in a job you loathe. Working environments like that just perpetuate the horrible feeling you got every day when you had to get up and go to school with a load of fuckwits.

IMHO. :)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yes I hate 'comedy' that is based on people being shit to each other that we all too regularly see every day.

Displacement not good. I know where you're coming from. Want to some how give you 'belonging'.

Hullo.

[snoof.livejournal.com]

I doubt this is any help, but I know what you mean about the home thing. It's been going on for about 7 years, but after moving > 10 times in the past year and a half, I don't really know where I am, on a daily basis, to begin with. Let alone where or what home is.

I think maybe "home" is one of those things you get for a limited time, and then things shift and you jump or drown. But if you keep jumping, then maybe after x number of leaps you find another one for a bit.

Maybe "meaning" is always perishable (that's not quite the word I need, but my head's not working right and I don't suppose the Dutch word is going to be much help). Maybe doors are meant to close and open randomly all the time, and it's up to us to run through the wacky, zany doorfilled ... uhh ... environment, waiting to find a new door that looks attractive - or, if not, acceptable.

But in the running, you bump into interesting people. And I think they make the running, and the waking up not knowing where you are, and the longing for places that've been but are no more, worth it.

Not that you said they weren't... Just wanted to remind you that you're not doing it all for nothing. Good times are always ahead. They have to be. It's statistically highly improbably for bad times, or even mediocre times, to go on forever. Or even just for a lifetime. Sure, life is usually an uphill battle. But it's interesting hill, and there are many excellent restaurants/bordellos/cinemas along its ridge.

I suspect this is all useless drivel. My language skills are hideously lacking today. I'm sorry. If it makes no sense, erm, assume it was all very deep and intelligent and rife with *hugs*.

Basically, it's a crappy feeling, I know it pretty well. But things do get better. They have to. I said so, and I'm a pretty decent authority on the subject.

Re: Hullo.

[snoof.livejournal.com]

Oh for fuck's sake. Pretend I have any right to claim English as a language I speak, would you?

Improbable.

[nullstr.livejournal.com]

I seem to be doing a lot of firefighting sysadmin stuff at the minute, which is tedious and doesn't give me any sense of achievement at the end of a day (although quite often it makes clients and bosses/colleagues happy, as the results are usually dramatic and instantly visible, unlike a bit of well though out software design and implementation).

Have you ever had the fortune to be able to write well-thought-out software which was appreciated, at work?

Am seriously considering the prospect that, for geeks like you and I with a creative (rather than pure code-monkey) disposition, the commercial field just don't cut it.

Btw, I always find reading a bit (or ALL) of Transmet to be fantastic catharsis ;o)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

That was appreciated, no. I have had a chance (once) to write a well throught out system though, and I enjoyed it immensely. Bit annoying that they subsequently claimed it didn't meet the requirements spec (it did), but at least I had a pleasant working experience for the fortnight I was building it...

[nullstr.livejournal.com]

Trouble is, we have to deal with dipshits whose concept of software complexity is limited purely to what they see on the screen - if it looks funky, it must be complex, and vice versa.

There are arseholes^H^H... individuals in my company who seriously believe that all bugs are equal, and that fixing 5 is five times as productive as fixing 1.

This is where OSS can win, at least in terms of programmer satisfaction, I s'pose.

I suspect that the commercial environment will always be one long hack. Having resigned myself to that idea at the beginning of this year, I am finding work far more bearable ;o)