Sunday of my Life

OK, so my 21st birthday occured 2 days ago now; strangely it was right on schedule. Whoda thunk?

Despite the fact that according to some people I didn’t do anything, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Caught up with old friends, spent my time with my family and was generally showered with love and/or gifts. I got:

• A gold and stainless steel watch with silver hands and a metallic blue face. Nice big numbers for those of us (me) who are slowly going blind
• Season 1 of the Simpsons on DVD (from Peta, see below comment)
• The Whitlams Years 1992 - 2004 DVD (Got this one from Erin, have I ever mentioned I love my sisters?)
• A Plush Blue Heeler from Dorothea which I’ve named Maguire in memory of a long-lost and much loved Blue Heeler that used to live with my grandparents.
• A LanBoy Case from Drewboy
• Various and sundry cards, cash and wellwishes from friends and family alike

All in all I really did enjoy myself, and that’s what really counts in the end, not the size of the party I throw (or don’t throw in this case) or how many people I have around for the event. I’ll be out with the family this saturday night at a very nice local italian resturant. Dorothea said it to me again today, and now I really do believe her: There are people around here who do love me.

Well, we’re drawing close to the end of another tuesday, and it strikes me that tomorrow, being wednesday, also happens to be my birthday. My 21st birthday in fact. About this time, for most people, it would be time to do one of those self-reflection posts looking back over the preceeding years and pointing out the highlights and the lowlights, the ups and downs. “That was the life that was”, if you will.

Yes, well… I’m not most people.

Yes, I’ve had my good times, and I’ve had my bad times. Significantly more bad than good as of late, but that’s beside the point. I know what I’ve done right, and I know what I’ve done wrong. I don’t need to bore you all shitless by recounting all of it. Rest assured I’ve learnt from past mistakes and hope to never make them again; but then, as I always say:

Time Will Tell Us All.

So, I write and sent off my first entry for the new Ars Magica PBeM (Play By Email) campaign I’m playing; Monrroyo. I’m proud of myself actually. When I say I wrote it, I mean that in the physical sense. Like with a pen. On paper. Writing, that magical activity that I haven’t done if I could avoid it in a number of years now. And I did it mostly without pain. Yay! I actually managed to get three-quarters of the way through the piece before my hand started to ache. So, the rest of the players have now met Cano (Canus Lupus being his full name, but he’s Cano to his friends), and soon their characters will too.

Also for most of last night and all of today I’ve been playing Progress Quest. Or rather, this being an essential part of how progress quest operates, I’ve been letting Progress Quest play itself. Bugger the SETI@Home analyser. This little gadget takes up a much lower bandwidth amount since it only transmits occasionally, and also a much lower processor footprint. it doesn’t even register as taking up a percentage of my processing power. I love ot sit there and watch it scroll away, killing various and sundry monsters (and the occasional underage Girl Scout for some inexplicable reason) go back ot market and sell my loot, purchase new equipment and do it all over again, fulfilling numerous quests and progressing through a series of game acts with no forseeable purpose at all.

Just like the SETI@Home analyser.

No, not that one of chewing on my knuckles… that one’s going to be a bit much to tackle for just now. My writing habits, I mean. They’re attrocious. I tend to hold a pent like it’s going to run away from me, I use either too little or too much pressure and I write more with my wrist than I do my fingers. I tend to lean right in close to whatever I’m writing and really stare at it. Suffice it to say that these habits really start to hurt after a while. I had to ice my wrist last night becuase it was swollen and sore from writing out page after page of CCNA Labs. I don’t write well, I tend to smear (becuase I’m left handed) and if I try not too - holding my wrist and hand away from the page - the sustained effort makes my wrist hurt even more.

Ow. Ow. Ow…

I’m damn sure there’s got to be better ways to do this, things that won’t hurt so much. I went pen-hunting tonight under advice from Dorothea, and I think I managed I managed to get a fairly comfortable pen, after much research in my breaks today into what causes cramps and so on from writing (found it can be from holding a slim, narrow object tightly between the fingertips for sustained periods… go figure) so this pen is thicker, and has a thick foam grip. Feels fairly comfy in the hand, so I’m giving it a trial run

Now I’ve just got to learn to write more with my fingers instead of my wrist and elbow and break myself of the habit of holding onto my pen as if it’s a snake attempting to get away from me.

Having just finished being mesmerised by this for about the 50th time today, I felt I must share it. This must be one of the best pieces of:

1. Flash
2. Surrealistic Art; and
3. Time wasting

I have ever seen in my life. I highly recommend watching it through and through and through if you’ve nothing better to do. Had it constantly going in the background on my computer at school today. Gave me something to watch in the short breaks. Top stuff

“…but you can’t make it enjoy the view.”

Look, I have but one thing to say tonight. To everyone who has ever tried to help me, especially Dorothea, and all the rest of you, you know who you are:

Thankyou

Simply that. I know I may look like I don’t appreciate it sometimes. Sometimes I keep right on going the way I was in my mullish, pig-headed, subborn way. Sometimes I listen to you, but I don’t understand. Sometimes I manage to turn some aspect of another of my life around. But no matter what, no matter how things may seem, I do appreciate it. You people are proof to me that there is purpose to my being, that there are people who care enough to try and help me, no matter how bad things may seem. With your help, I don’t know, maybe I will be able to boot myself back into a semblance of a functional personality.

So I offer macho manly back-slapping hugs to the guys, holding-on-tight-and-not-wanting-to-let-go hugs and a kiss on the cheek to the girls, and my sincere thanks for everything all of you have done for me. It’s more than I ever could ask, and more than I feel I deserve.

Slowly, slowly does the year creep onwards.

Exams arrive again soon, in a few weeks in fact. The presure on us starts to build again, and after last night’s spectacular breakdown of the rickety framework I built for myself to try and hold onto myself, I question if I’m actually going to be able to take it. The Cisco exam is going to be the single biggest and most time intensive exam I have ever done in my life. I have my doubts about whether or not I’ll get through it or if I’ll crumble under the pressure. Time will reveal all, but unfortunately for me time will only reveal it after the fact.

*shrug*

We’ll see. I can always do it all over again if I have to. I’d prefer not to but it is an available option.

OK, so this post is a little on a friend, a little bit on music and alot of a rant. At least, I think it will be. It’s very late right now, but I want to get these thoughts down out of my head before I close these world-weary eyes and try to forget my life in sleep’s sweet oblivion.

Had Filmmaker Extraordinaire’s 21st Party tonight. Me there for moral support, Agent FareEvader providing music. Good music, in my opinion. The Agent knows what he’s about, knows what appeals to different crowds and how to mix it up very well. Best spinner I’ve heard in sometime. ‘Twas not to be for this crowd though. Agent pulled every trick out of his bag, but no one was buying. Such a diverse crowd, with such diverse tastes in music. It’s a daunting prospect to any seasoned vinyl-spinner to face a crowd such as this. Normally at least something can be accomplished, but not so this time.

Yes, I’m well aware that you can’t make an audience enjoy themselves. But really, this gig was hellish. At any given moment of the night we were told these things, usually in this order:

“The music is too loud.”

“The music is too quiet.”

“We want you to play [Insert Random Song Not on Advertised Playlist Here]”

“This music isn’t the right sort, we want something we can dance to.”

Aha! That is what we had been trying to get to all night long. Very well, what kind of music would you like to dance to?

“Heavy Metal.”

Errrrr…. riiiiiight. Well, we don’t have any heavy metal in the mix tonight (don’t have it in the mix ever. Full stop. Underline. Circle in red ink. Go over with a fluro-yellow high-lighter. Underline several more time. Reproduce on… well… you get the picture). We do however have this large selection of other styles, is there something there that interests you?

“Sure, play ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica”

*sigh*

We’ll see what we can do.

Over and over and over. Again and again and again. Meanwhile one increasingly drunken guest continually comes up and tells us to turn it up with an upward-spiraling motion of his hand (one of the basics of becoming a DJ is, of course, learning to read drunken sign-langauge, didn’t you know?). Meanwhile the party’s organisers are telling us to turn it down. Then we’re told to turn it up again, and are assured that this has been confirmed with the party’s organisers. Then the party’s organisers want to know why we turned it back up after they asked us to turn it down.

About this time I began to have one of those oh-so-lovely manic moments my anti-depressants give me.

So, retreating to the bathroom after a while of uncontrollable hand motions and face-rubbing, as well as some fierce biting of my knuckles (I think I told you all about this already. It’s a nervous habit I have whenever something has me frustrated in some way. It does serve to calm me somewhat. The pain brings me back a little closer to focus). Well, after managing to bite deep enough into one of them to break the skin and draw some blood I thought maybe I’d better go away from everyone before I made a scene. Spent a while running my hands under cold water to relieve their ache. Brought out some truly spectacular bruises. Lucky me. It was a great spisode, I can tell you. Eyes darting all over the place, hands doing what they pleased, never ceasing thier movements. Body trembling with energy, and my mind totally incapable of rational thought. Almost like having a panic-attack, without the panic.

I just had an attack
Really though, the party itself wasn’t too bad. I did enjoy myself, to a certain degree, probably as much as I can in a large group of people I don’t know. Got to see GalaxyStar again, that was cool, I missed her like crazy. Must visit the Ponds of the Moonee more often. Endured Filmmaker’s friends making snide remarks behind my back, didn’t even thump any of them once, much as I wanted to. Realised that this post is increasingly sounding like one of those flat, emotionless list-of-thought posts, and really doesn’t care.

The Agent is one of my oldest friends, and I really do think he does wonderful work on his deck, it’s just a shame we didn’t have a more responsive audience tonight. I don’t think I can accurately portray exactly how frustrating that is in this simple medium of text on a screen, and it is 4:45 AM, so I think I’ll break this off there for now. Might write more on it later. We’ll see.

My hands hurt. Well, that’s my own fucking fault. Suck it up and live with it.

We may never know, truly. However, this timeless (and frankly potentially not funny) joke aside slightly, there is a Lord of the Rings take on the whole thing:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/pegkerr/313215.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/shirebound/207702.html

I don’t really have much to say on these, except that I love them and will be watching both of these livejournal streams from now on.

Tomorrow in the Dragonhunt: Reante is going off on a little side-quest after the shocking events of the last few days. Rien’s ‘cover’ as to the identity of his father has been well and truly blown and he’s currently hiding in a cave in the Black Forest playing ‘Fortress of Solitude’, and Aryk… well… I have no idea what Aryk is doing. Looks to be a good session tomorrow though. I’m looking forward to it.

OK… one of my deep distates just grew deeper.

Spammers. Now, we’ve all heard of them and their activities. We all get emails from them (some of us have Beyesian spam filters, but that’s beside the point, we’re still getting the emails, we’re just not seeing them). How many times have you seen things like this floating around in your inbox?

Sex! Sex! Sex!
Get free viagra today!
Meet Christian singles today!

I know I see more of them than I probably should (blame Hotmail, they have a crap spam filtering system), but I just saw spam in a place that I really didn’t expect to see it, although I probably should have. In my comments for this blog. Some little bastard has been using me to try and advertise his online poker site. Well… *click*click*click*…that’s those comments deleted. I’ve had to introduce comment moderation on SOML now, so if you comment on one of my posts from hereon in they won’t show up straight away. I’ll have to approve them first. Blame the spammers if you want, I certainly know I do.

To all the spammers of the world, I have this to say:

Listen up and listen up good you link-whoring little pieces of trash. I do not want to know about your porn sites. I do not want to know about your viagra or other assorted drugs. I do not want to know about your Christian singles. I do not want to know about you. For all of me you could go and swallow large portions of your own anatomy. No one on the net is interested in what you’re trying to cram down our throats. We do not appreciate your efforts (not that any of you actually go to any effort, we all know you sit back playing with yourself looking at porn while in the background your robots are spidering pages looking for email addresses, spoofing anti-abuse tracers, IPs and origin addresses so you can avoid being caught). We all know why you do it. You lack the ambition to do anything worthwhile with your time. You would rather sit around letting your computer do your work for you, defiling innocent inboxes with your offers of cheap porn and free viagra. If you actually had any ambition you would be out there in the world actually doing something worthwhile with your life, something which is of benefit to yourself and those around you. You would not be sitting in the dark in front of your computer day after day, wasting your time, hoping for one hit out of a million spams. Some advice for all of you spammers. Grow up. Stop being a script kiddy. Get out there and do something worthwhile. And stop trying to spam my comments. Your posts will not get through anymore, so stop bothering.

OK… that was nice and cathartic. I feel better now. Thanks for listening.