None of the Above: rants Archives

[ family random thoughts rants ] 2002-11-07

Oy. Tired: Today, I went through the entire garage, moving around my bins and boxes full of stuff (well, crap) and generally improving the situation. I took one box of stuff to Goodwill, and have several more piles of the same sort of stuff to go as well.

It was grueling. I've been putting this off for a long time. I didn't just move stuff around, I sorted through it. Not all of it, mind you, just lots of it. And my back is killing me. Ugh.

I also set up my industrial shelves in the garage, the better to hold my oddly-shaped boxes and things. See, most of my belongings fit into my huge collection of Rubbermaid bins. I'm slowly moving everything over to bins from boxes, after a nasty episode a few years ago in which I lost a box of clothes to mold secondary to water damage in a Public Storage third-floor unit. And plus my boxes are showing wear and I just generally like the bins more. They come in all sorts of pretty colors, for one thing.

Which brings me to the point that I have a remarkable collection of bin colors, considering that I've been collecting the standard Rubbermaid Roughneck bins for many years now. I've got gray bins with orange lids, and in the category of "bins with the same color lid", I've got: hot pink, white, dark green, medium green, and four different shades of blue: bright blue, medium blue, medium-darkish blue, and dark blue infused with glittery stuff. And then there are two gray lids in there - I figure I must have been in an odd mood when I was bin shopping and picked contrasting gray lids. Oh yeah, and of the new Roughneck style of bin, I've got four of the blue ones with gray lids, but I don't like them - the lids don't stay on very tightly at all, so I'll be looking to pawn them off on a relative or friend one of these days when I can spare them.

More than you ever wanted to know about my Rubbermaid bins, but there's still more! Anyway, once I get everything under control, like items happily encased with their brethren, I plan to label, number, and inventory the lot of them. With the remarkable number of colors I have to work with, I will be able to tell at a glance which bin in which stack has got the item I need. Such as: the medium-sized medium blue bin with the hot pink lid holding office supplies, or some such thing.

Can you tell I've put an extraordinary amount of thought into this? This whole process has taken me years, mind you, so I've had a lot of time to ponder it.

My bin obsession, as it were, makes me horribly vulnerable every time I spy a new color of bin. I simply *must* have at least two of any new color I see. Occasionally I am able to exercise a tiny amount of restraint, but it's very difficult. These days I don't really have to worry, because I'm so broke I can't afford even one bin (the small ones run about $3.50). But the peril awaits should I wander down the wrong aisle at Wal-mart - the heartbreak of seeing a new bin color that I will never see again, and which I cannot afford to buy. This has already happened to me with the glorious ruby red and the silver with glitter, alas.

Yes, I'm a bin freak. So sue me.

Tomorrow I face a great deal more sorting, and I'll be taking a full carload to Goodwill. My fabric collection, which I typically refer to as my Fabric Problem, has grown yet again, and needs some serious culling and sorting. I find I keep running into the problem that the big bins are becoming unwieldy, because they hold too much stuff and it's hard to dig through when the thing you're looking for is way at the bottom. Someday I will be able to afford three medium bins to replace every pair of big bins, but I'm not sure how far off in the future that is.

I spent a lot of time today cleaning out bins, and in particular cleaning off the lids since most of them got horribly dusty during my stay over at David's. And one of my smaller clear Sterilite bins had been pissed in by one of David's cats, so I just threw it away. Attempting to clean cat piss out of the strangely-shaped nooks and crannies was just not something I wanted to go for, especially since I suspect it would still stink no matter how hard I scrubbed, and then the container would infect whatever contents I placed inside with that foul odor. No thanks, I think I can do without that bin.

Speaking of cat piss, since so many of my belongings were uh, "blessed" by David's cats, I have decided to get rid of anything that was so damaged. I really did try to get out the smell, even using his special enzymatic spray and so on, but it JUST DOESN'T FREAKING WORK!!!! And really I'm quite furious about it. If it were a one-time thing, fine, no problem, I understand animals can be like that, but here's the list of my items that have been destroyed due to David's cat(s) pissing on them:

My papasan cushion (I abandoned the whole chair)
My fancy travel backpack
My nice rolling suitcase duffel thingie
My sleeping bag
The bag I sewed velcro on to customize it to attach it to my outrigger canoe
The aforementioned Sterilite bin
A plate with a seashell design on it
And other stuff I already threw out that I can't think of right now...

It's just really disgusting, and I would be happy if I never have to smell cat piss on my belongings ever again, frankly. At least now the cat's pissing on HIS stuff, not mine. Harrumph!

I was actually stunned to realize that one of my duffel bags escaped being pissed on. I kept sniffing it and sniffing it, sure that it had also fallen victim, but miraculously, it survived intact. Hallelujah!

As long as I'm bitching about the yuck factor attached to my belongings after their stay at David's house, let me also bring up the huge amount of dog and cat hair that clings to EVERY COTTON PICKING THING. GAH!!! There. Okay. Got that out of my system.

So the overall point is, if it's not cat piss, it's dog and cat hair, and if it's not that, then it's dirt. Some items suffered a combination of perils. It's not pretty. I'm just glad it's freaking OVER.

Actually, my table got pissed on too, but I'm not ditching my table - it's very special to me, and is older than I am. And so did my elephant fountain. But that's also a one-of-a-kind item that's not replaceable. Can you tell I'm sort of bitter about all this? Trust me, you would be too. Oh, maybe not the first time, or the second, or even the third, but maybe by the fifth time your stuff got pissed on and you realized that nothing was safe, you might get oh, kind of annoyed. Ahem. Moving on...

So Richard has been laid up with this flu that's going around. His immune system is not as strong as your average person's, so he wasn't strong enough to escape the bed except for a couple hours this evening. I did manage to get a little bit of food into him, though, and I hope it does him some good. I sure hope he feels better soon - it sucks to see him so miserable and not be able to do much to help him.

So tomorrow is when I'm supposed to know whether or not I qualified for an IRS job or not... we'll see. I think the test was easy, but then again there were a couple hundred people there taking the test with me, and that was just *one* testing day. It's very competitive out there. People are getting desperate.

I didn't vote the other day. I decided they were all scummy and tainted with Enron (you should've seen all the negative ads they slung back and forth at each other), plus I just didn't feel like it. I'm so cynical about politics these days, bleagh. I think I'd rather have trained monkeys running things, to be perfectly honest. Odds are they'd do a better job.

I'm so sick of being totally broke. I really need a job. Sigh. It's not my fault no one's hiring. I keep trying, and keep not getting called. It's very frustrating. I'm just about at the point where I'll consider lying on my resume just so I can get *something*. Well, not really. I'm a horrible liar and I resent fiercely being put into any position where I have to lie. But I am starting to get really desperate. It shouldn't be this hard. Argh.

Oh. Back to the whole "bad smells" theme. Yesterday when I went to Spencer's house for my visit with Elena, a pungent and unearthly stench greeted me the moment I walked in the door. My best guess is that a raccoon has died underneath the house. It was positively *ghastly*. As in, I would sleep in my car rather than in the house, if that were where I lived.

Eventually Spencer's mom covered up the floor vents with blankets and towels, and that helped quite a bit, but holy freakin cow, it was still nasty. If it's still bad tomorrow, I might just raise a stink of my own about how I don't think it's the proper environment for my daughter to have to live with that kind of thing. I mean, really - if Spencer's not going to dive under the house and root out the problem, then he sure as heck better hire someone else to do so.

Elena is becoming more intelligent by the week. It's really pretty cool to see happening. She's already becoming a shrewd negotiator - I wanted to brush her hair after her bath, but she wanted to watch a movie, and I said no to the movie til after I brushed her hair. Then she brilliantly proposed that I brush her hair *while* we watched the movie. Clever girl. Okay, may not seem like rocket science to you, but the way she said it was just... masterful. The kid's going to be a great actress, I tell ya. And an Olympic athlete. And a Nobel Laureate. And then when she turns thirteen...

But seriously, her reasoning capacity is growing. She had me pretend to nurse one of her stuffed animals, and she asked me if there was any milk in my nanas anymore. And I told her no, that there hadn't been for a long time. She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, "Maybe if you drink some milk, then it will go to your nanas, and then you will have milk in your nanas again". I admired her logic, but told her that unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way.

She tells me about her dreams... apparently they're quite vivid. She dreamed she met Peter Pan and got to fight Captain Hook with him. She dreamed about a bunny and she put out her hand and the bunny licked it. Stuff like that. Okay, maybe it's small stuff, but I think it's amazing.

Elena's also getting more defiant lately. Oy, it's troubling to deal with, but I know it's a normal stage of development. She gets all unglued when she doesn't get her way, but she's learning.

She's got a friend at school, Emma, who was born on the same day as she was. When they both were old enough to pick a favorite color, they both picked blue, and there was peace and love in the world. Then Emma changed her mind and decided she liked red more. Elena responded by not wanting to be her friend anymore, and being very sore about the whole thing (and telling us all about it, with a very downcast tone: "Emma doesn't like blue anymore"). Elena took it as a huge betrayal. Time has passed, and dear Emma has learned the error of her ways and decided that yes, in fact, blue is the best color again. So now their friendship is restored and all is good and right in the world.

It's funny, but also kind of creepy. I'm wondering just how much of a cold shoulder Elena was giving her about this whole blue thing. I hope my child is not using emotional manipulation of her friends at such a tender age. Yeesh, that would be scary if she really knew what she was doing.

I'm not too worried though - Elena is a sweet kid and very sensitive whenever I'm sad. Some days I'm in a really sad and down mood, and if it shows to her and she knows about it, she'll say "It's okay mommy, I'll make you happy". The couple times that this has happened it just warms my heart and breaks it at the same time.

She's so happy... oh please, don't let her turn out like me. Don't let her suffer what I've gone through. Please, let it be easier for her. Please, let her only get my good genes, not the troublesome ones. Let her learn from my mistakes and do better. That is my mission.

I really miss her. She gets really sad when I have to explain that she can't spend the night with me. Last night, she asked if I could spend the night with her and I had to tell her that I couldn't.

It hurts a lot that I'm made out to be some kind of villain. I would never, ever hurt her. Yet I'm not trusted with my own child. And every day that I'm away from her, it eats me up inside, but I take it, because I have to.

Yes, I'm bitter and angry, *very* angry about the situation. But right now I'm powerless, so I just have to suck it up. But not forever. Not forever. I will be stronger someday. I will have money someday, so I can get a lawyer and go to court if need be and argue before a judge why I should get to spend more time with my daughter, and that I shouldn't be treated like a dangerous criminal with regard to her. Because I'm not, dammit.

I'm her mother, and I'm a damn good mother at that. From the beginning I have suffered for her sake, over and over again. I have given and given, and worked and strived to make sure she had what she needed, what she deserved, the best I could offer her. And I continue, even as my heart is ripped apart, as I'm sometimes sick and so often weary, and broke and unemployed and stuck in a situation I can't fix right now. And on and on it stretches in time, like a prison sentence. But I won't give up. Because I *can't*. I will not be pushed out of her life.

I do pretty well most of the time at keeping my feelings from bubbling to the surface, but it's hard work suppressing it. By "it" I mean the fury, the righteous anger that screams HOW DARE YOU neverending in my heart.

I miss my baby! I conceived her, I grew her, I bore her in extreme pain, my body ripped open. I nursed her as long as I could, and it hurt like pliers on my nipples for the first seven weeks. Just imagine that for a moment, if you can. I went back to work because he said I had to. I took her to day care, I pumped for her, I nursed her at lunch. I changed her diapers when he wouldn't be bothered, I made sure he wasn't disturbed at night when she awoke, and I bathed her and bought her clothes and did the walking up and down the floor while he watched tv. When it was over between us I let her stay in the house with him, because it would be easier on her (and yet he accused me of "abandoning" her).

And I get in return a restraining order, limited visits, restrictions, rules, nebulous references that where I live isn't good enough for her to visit (it's a nicer house than his - I still have NO CLUE why he objects, because he WON'T TELL ME). I'm just supposed to shut up and wait for him to feel "comfortable".

I want to scream. I'm so sick of it.

How dare he, mister three-DUIs, treat *me* like I can't be trusted. I had to drive myself to the hospital while I was in labor, because he had lost his driving privileges. When I was home, asleep, pregnant, he was out getting arrested. I want to talk about this in court, in front of a judge, someday. Nothing I have done is comparable to the sin of a single DUI, much less THREE.

There. I said it. I feel better now. I don't care what you might think of me, because I KNOW what I went through for that hateful, spiteful man. I tried and tried until I just couldn't take it anymore. I suffered through his rages, his vitriol, his self-pity about the consequences of his third DUI (I had quite limited patience for that crap, mind you). And now look at how he treats me.

I'm sick of living under his thumb. I'm going to save my pennies, and when the time is right, I'm taking his ass to court. And I am so much kinder than him, because I want only what is truly fair.

I'm sick of writing about this right now. I'm not sure what people will think, or if anyone will read it. I don't much care. This is how I feel, plain and simple. Deal with it.

[ rants ] 2002-10-08

Okay, they asked: Someone asked what happened with David, since he and I dated for quite awhile and I thought things were going so well and so on.

Well, at some point after the nagging to do housework increased dramatically and the affection decreased dramatically I got the hint that he was more looking for a housekeeper than a mate. Okay, so I'm stupid - it took me awhile to figure this out. Keep in mind he didn't bother *telling* me that he wanted me gone, it was all done non-verbally until the clue-bomb finally penetrated my skull.

There was a lot more to it, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Now he's all pissed at me because suddenly he wants all the rest of my stuff gone from his house, like yesterday. I'm doing what I can to get it out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't realize until yesterday that it was upsetting him so much, but now that I know I will take care of it.

Also there's some business about the cell phone he got for me and which he signed a two-year contract for (his idea), and now is annoyed with me that AT&T wants to charge an arm and a leg ($174 as I recall) to cancel the contract. I can understand being annoyed about that, but AT&T is the proper object of that annoyance, not me.

So now I'm getting nasty emails from multiple directions and nasty comments on my website from multiple directions as well. Oh, joy.

Plus, I don't feel real well lately. This morning was particularly rough. Not that any of the people who are out to pester me care or anything. I suppose they're salivating at my misery. Creeps.

Anyhoo, I hadn't been real specific about the breakup because I was trying to exercise my weak, spindly little tact muscle (it's certainly not strong). But since somebody asked, and since David himself is leaving unkind comments here, I thought I'd mention it directly.

I dunno how else to try to combat such things, except by facing them as directly as I can, trying not to be too horrid in return, and letting people's words speak for themselves. I try to inject a little humor into my responses sometimes, too.

But when it comes down to it, I'm leaving the comments there - when you're "differently sane" as I am, evidence that at least *some* people really *are* "out to get you" is a valuable thing.

Look, I'm not a perfect person, but I don't kick people when they're down, as these jerks are. This is my refuge, where I go to express my thoughts in a way that helps me cope. It's very personal, and most people don't have the courage to be as up front about private, painful stuff as I am.

Frankly, it's easy for me. It's hard to hold it in, in fact. But that's beside the point.

I make mistakes. Sometimes I do stupid things. But I don't go around someone's personal website where they bare their soul and put sniping cruel comments there. Because I think that's a wrong thing to do.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Sometimes my grip on reality is a bit tenuous, but I'm confident that my values are in the right place, when it really comes down to it.

They must feel good by doing it, that's the only thing I can figure. And if someone has to get their jollies that way, then I suppose I can only pity them, because I don't know how they'll ever learn compassion.

I don't expect everyone to like what I write here. I certainly don't expect them to care. But I really didn't expect the nastiness of a lot of the comments lately. And I just want to say, I won't let them get the best of me.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go out and get myself some yummy vanilla ice cream. Because I deserve it. :)

[ mental rants ] 2002-09-19

I thought it would be safe: to post about my life on my website, my very personal website. That I could reveal things about myself and my struggle against a crippling mental illness and that I would maybe get a little feedback here and there from people nice enough to offer a little alphabetical high-five to me once in awhile. I've gotten that, and I even have a very dedicated fan in Wes, whom I've never thanked properly and I want to take this opportunity to do so right now - thank you, Wes, for all your kind words through all my ups and downs. It really does help perk me up a bit when I'm feeling really low.

Anyway, I got a really nasty comment today that makes me wonder what I should do about it - should I turn off comments altogether, lest I get more like it?

Here's what they wrote:

Your illness is no excuse to sit around the house and do absolutely nothing. If you can sit around the house and write these long, drawn-out logs of your pathetic life then you can most certainly get a part time job and show up every day.
How exactly can you afford to live if you don't work? You need aggressive psychotherapy along with youre medication. The fact that you are so close to total poverty is a clear indication that you have severe problems. Also, you appear addicted to living your life on the net. This is again another indication that you are psycho and may need hospitalization.
I urge you to check yourself into a mental institution ASAP.

Hey, I may be crazy and lazy, but at least I'm not mean. I don't go around reading people's personal sites where they very bravely speak publicly about a struggle with mental illness and then castigate them and tell them what to do.

I tell you what, I'd rather have a mental illness than a moral ailment like the person who posted this comment. What a total jerk!

You know what? You have no idea what it's like inside my head, and how difficult it is for me to do certain things. When I could work, I did work. I continue to submit applications and resumes, and I continue to never get a single call back. This is my fault?

I'm still trying. I don't want to be a drain on society, okay? And no offense but you can stuff it with this "addicted to living [my] life on the net" crap - I log in for maybe an hour a day, tops. That hardly counts.

I can hardly believe I got such a shitty comment on a post that was even *positive*, talking about how I went and exercised and got my ass moving.

What is this supposed to teach me about human nature? That some people are just assholes and beyond redemption? Well, beyond redemption I dunno about, but an asshole is something I know about - and this person clearly is one.

I'm crazy, but what's their excuse?

Hey, at least I can get medication for being crazy. I dunno what they can do for assholes.

[ mental rants ] 2002-09-11

Just wanna say thanks: to all the very nice people who have been offering supportive comments to me here and stuff. I just want to say that I hear ya and appreciate it muchly and so forth.

I'm busy in meatspace lately, getting things done since I finally have the impetus to do them. I'll do more netstuff when things settle down a bit. Tomorrow I have a meeting with my lawyer, and the next day I have an appointment with my psych nurse and then I get to see my daughter in the evening.

I need to get a job, and I'm also in the process of figuring out the logistics of getting a dog, to help against the paranoia that still vexes me. It's bad at night when I'm alone and it's dark out - my mind has various irrational fears lurking at the corners and it feels quite unpleasant and makes it very difficult to sleep.

The company of a doggy will be very helpful, I think (and yes, I am aware of the serious and deep commitment this entails, so please don't send me comments warning me that I might fail - I know already and reminding me just makes me feel even more like nobody believes in me, which hurts a lot since it's so difficult for me to believe in myself, especially lately. But dangit I do believe in myself, even if I'm a messed up broken person I still have my dignity and I know I still deserve another chance at happiness, and I will probably keep thinking that until I die (which I hope is a long way off and after a long happy rest-of-my-life)).

So I would like to get a female dog, probably. I might call her Kiva. I'm still mulling over names.

There's a song that I'm writing, that came to me spontaneously as I was driving a few weeks ago, and today I picked out some of the notes of it on my actual keyboard, and this pleased me much since I don't have all that much musical talent to speak of, or at least it hasn't been something I've worked to develop, though I did play the clarinet briefly and the trumpet for awhile in elementary school.

Yes, I'm having fun with the run-on sentence thing. Do it ridiculously muchly enough and it becomes an art form :).

Last night I watched cartoons when I couldn't sleep. Tonight I may do some of the same, and play solitaire on my laptop.

All ye who are not like me, be thankful. For mine is a twisted, difficult path and I would so much want to live like I did as a "normal" person for awhile, working in a job and making enough money to survive on.

Most of the people I know look at me and think that the jobless life must be one big long party or something, or that I'm just shiftless and lazy or something - I don't know what they think, I just know that they think it's my fault.

And no offense, but that's a load of crap. I had a genetic predisposition to mental illness, that was set off by unfortunate events when I was little, exacerbated by high intelligence and extreme innate emotional sensitivity. I have busted my ass to try to make my way in this messed-up world but guess what - I need help, I'm broken, it ain't working.

If I sound defensive, it's because I am. I feel like very few people really get where I'm coming from or can even imagine it, or even bother to try. I feel like maybe a handful of people are on my side, and even at that only partially.

But dammit, I am on my side, and if I get a dog, she will be on my side too. And that counts for a lot more than you might think.

[ my site rants ] 2002-08-29

I have no readers: At least that's what I'm forced to conclude lately.

Yes, this is a shameless request for feedback!

Post a comment to this thread or send me something in the box o doom there in the left column.

Please? Just so I know you care?

You can even say something snarky about how you hate the content lately, if you want.

Even better, tell me what you'd like to see here. Otherwise I won't know, see, and then you'll have absolutely no chance of seeing it. (My psychic powers are still pretty weak.)

[ body random thoughts rants ] 2002-08-17

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack! Yes, it was an exciting trip, and I had fun, but...

I'm *exhausted* from all the damn walking. My feet are absolutely fucking furious with me. Really. Had I planned this trip (and I didn't), there would not have been anywhere near so much walking.

I'll do a big trip report later, but as an overview: it was not as wonderful as I had hoped, for various difficult reasons mainly relating to personality clashes, which I managed to navigate somehow.

Still, I got to see some neat stuff. I did a quick unpacking and I seem to have lost one of my cheesy magnets (it's a whole saga that I will relate later), which is a tragedy but perhaps it can be remedied.

My feet hurt. I'm tired. I'm stinky. I got to LAX this morning two and a half hours before my flight left, and it was *barely* enough time. Good God. That's a saga unto itself.

Okay, I'll shut up now. I've got tons of reading to catch up on and stuff. But anyway, the point is, I'm back. Which you already know by now.

Sorry for the incoherence, I'll blame it on exhaustion and on feeling kinda sick (something nasty has taken up residence in my lungs during this trip).

I'll crop & feature several pix from the trip and so on... Okay, shutting up now.

[ rants the net weblogs ] 2002-07-25

I seem to have caused a bit of a stir: Goodness, gracious me.

There's a metatalk thread about the policies of allowing or not allowing new users to register at metafilter.

I posted that I thought that whatever the site's policy is, it should be explicit. Apparently some people disagree. Maybe. I dunno. I don't speak for them. I speak for me. :)

[ body rants ] 2002-07-08

Ow. Ow. Ow. It seems I have spontaneously developed a nasty case of TMD. This stands for Temporo-Mandibular Dysfunction. (or something. I feel cruddy this morning, don't feel like looking it up).

What this means is that the left side of my jaw hurts. A lot. It's been steadily getting worse for a couple weeks now.

Most of the time, I can only open my mouth widely enough for about one finger to fit between my teeth, to give you an idea. A little beyond that, and a sudden eruption of pain rushes forth.

To put it mildly, this really sucks. Occasionally, I can open wider, especially if I do it very gently and very slowly. Sometimes, I'll almost feel normal. But then I'll wake up, or eat something, and it'll be all wacked out again.

Argh!

At any rate, I'm losing some weight (which is a good thing - I could stand to lose about fifty pounds, imho). Something about severe pain when eating tends to dim one's appetite.

I hope this goes away. Really. Anyway, they say such things are often stress-related. Since we're about to declare bankruptcy, I think it could clearly be said that financial stress is certainly something that's on my mind a lot lately.

The pain, bad as it is, is only part of the problem. The other part is that my teeth on the left side don't feel like they match up properly (this is called malocclusion). Most of the time, anyway. And if I try to test it out, to chomp down gently to see how they fit, I get that searing pain at the left upper terminus of my jawbone. Damn.

Sigh. :(

[ body rants ] 2002-07-01

Feet *huuuuuuuurt*: Owie owie owie. Much walking today at work. Ugh. Long story.

Agency said: "We'll call you at 5am to confirm.", so I said "okie dokie". 5am comes. 5am goes. No call. I get in shower, come out of shower. I call them. The lady goes "uhhhhhh... can I call you back in a minute?"

Lady calls back. Says she "forgot" to call me. :/

They don't need me at the previously-agreed-upon assignment. This is fine with me, I just wish they had called at 5am, not after I'd gotten out of bed, showered, dressed, etc.

They tell me to call the office around ten, they might be able to line up another assignment for me, or I might get what's called a "late call" assignment which means you work the same day on short notice and get two free hours. That is, they pay you for two hours more than you work. Yippee.

I go back to bed. They call at 8, saying they need me. I leave the house around 8:40, and I sign in for the job at 9:50.

Many hours of hard work follow. I learned how to do "Accuchecks". This means poking people with a little spring-loaded jabby thingie, then squeezing out a drop of blood onto a strip that a little machine uses to tell what their blood sugar is. Yippee.

The guy showing me the Accucheck machine doesn't want to get poked for our training session. I don't care, so I wince and do it to myself. Not too bad. My blood sugar is 83, which is nice. Yippee.

I washed my hands a zillion times today, and put on and took off gloves a zillion times too. I also got to put on isolation gowns and a mask. Weeha.

I also got to deal with many of other people's bodily odors that I would just as soon not recall.

I think I did okay, but I am sure I let slip a few things. There is simply too much to do. And then there are complications...

I was supposed to weigh two people, but there's only one weighing chair in the whole hospital (!), and my mentor-guy and I wasted many minutes trying in vain to chase it down. We finally got it, and then we were sidetracked with more important things...

Finally, I'm about to weigh one of my patients, right after he gets out of the shower. I left the weighing chair right outside his door. I go to get it, and it's gone. I have no idea where. Other pressing matters come up...

One of my patients got moved out of isolation to another hallway, but I still had to take care of him. I didn't really mind, but this added lots of time walking back and forth. Sigh.

All the really chaotic paperwork is just insane. It's a wonder anyone makes it out of a hospital alive. Really. I was particularly struck at how in the two-person rooms, the clipboards for the patients were often switched around with regard to the chart books. I hope no mistakes were made. Yikes.

All in all, it's not quite as bad as the nursing home. But I'd still rather flip burgers for a living.

I think I'll try to find some lazy paper-pushing job that pays as much. My feet can't handle this (nor my back. Ugh!)

Too tired. Time to eat and then collapse for the night.

[ body rants ] 2002-06-24

Owie! Several minutes ago, I was letting Swiss (the larger of our two Great Pyrenees dogs) back into the house.

His rear foot collided with my right big toe in exactly the wrong fashion, somehow causing my toenail to partially be rudely ripped from the nailbed. (Perhaps one of his big claws acted as a wedge against it? I dunno).

After some very loud yelps of pain and not a little cursing, I finally looked at it and saw blood everywhere. Damn!

Now that the endorphins have rushed in, it really doesn't hurt at all (plus, I've got it soaking in some cold water). Of course, later on they'll wear off. I've taken a couple Advil in anticipation.

Sigh. Maybe I'll take pictures. Wouldn't that just be lurid. :)

Anyway, I'm okay, but damn, I'd rather not have had this happen. At least it's not broken, I suppose.

[ rants the net ] 2002-06-11

A nice piece on web accessibility: This one's also via the NYTimes, and like the previous entry, also via my better half, David (forgot to credit him on the last entry, sorry!).

The article on some common barriers to web access makes a lot of good points, quite cogently. It's a good one.

Screen-reader software reads sequentially, starting at the top of the page. This means that blind people must listen to the advertisements and navigation before reaching the main content, and they must do this on every page of the site.

Can you imagine how painful the web would be if you couldn't skip over ads? Good golly.

As it is, most visually impaired readers must deal with websites that are designed for the majority, that is, sighted people. So of course companies are letting them fall through the cracks, essentially ignoring them.

How utterly stupid. I mean, I understand the cost-benefit analyses involved - I'm not an idiot. But the point is, it should be *really* easy to come up with software that distills the content down to an easily-readable text-only version.

I mean, really. All these big news houses and such are using custom-designed content management systems, right? How many man-hours would it take to be able to render a copy of their articles such that people with screen readers could absorb their content non-painfully?

I'm guessing very few. Sigh.

Perhaps this is just yet another issue that will have to be addressed at the user's end, with better browsing tools. If not built into the browser, then built into a personal proxy or something, capable of (at least mostly) telling the difference between ads and navigation and article content.

This would be a cool project for me to work on, if I had the time. Damn, I wish I had a rich patron who would recognize my brilliance and just pay my living expenses while I worked on problems like this.

If you know of any, prod them and ask them to contact me. :)

[ consume rants ] 2002-04-29

I got a new digicam! It's a mini pencam, and it can supposedly take much better pictures than the one I've got. I say supposedly because we haven't gotten the thing to work yet.

The manufacturers, in their infinite wisdom, elected not to include a driver file with the thing. Gee. Hmm...

Oh yeah, and if you download the file from their website that claims to have drivers in it, you will find to your dismay (as I did) that there are not, in fact, any drivers located therein.

Sigh.

Anyway, David is a knight in shining armor when it comes to this kind of thing, and he's bravely fought the thing and managed to get it to work on one of his Win2K boxen. He'd rather that it worked on a different box, but we're not quite there yet - it's not working on the second box, not sure why. Somehow, we'll figure it out.

And if it sucks, meaning the picture quality is too lame, we'll take the damn thing back.

It's a bummer that in all this wrangling to try to get the thing to work, we managed to delete all the test pictures we had in it, which is a shame because I had snapped a couple pictures of this HUGE centipede that David unearthed in the yard when he tipped over one of the dog tubs. The thing was like eight inches long, and took many savage blows from a very large rock for David to kill it (I'm so glad I have him around for this kind of thing).

Ah well.

[ rants ] 2002-04-11

Confusion: Daniel has alerted me that I'm confusing residents with medical students. Okay, they're different. My point is still the same.

Let me clarify: it is unfair to use people as teaching objects without their INFORMED consent. As in, identify to the person that you've never, say, performed a spinal tap before, and give them the option of having someone more experienced do it.

Some may say that no one will ever consent. I have two rebuttals to that: A) bullshit, and B) so what if they do? That just means you have to be more creative... it doesn't justify practicing on unwilling people. And a person who doesn't know they're being used for practice by a person who isn't adequately skilled, CANNOT be willing if they do not know.

It doesn't matter if the practitioner involved is an experienced doctor, a resident, a medical student, a nurse, a nurse aide, or other allied health professional. The patient has a right to know the skill level of the practitioner. PERIOD.

And no, you don't have to be ridiculous about it - "Hello Mr. Patient, I'm about to take your blood pressure. I've only done this 7,348 times before. Are you comfortable with me doing this procedure on you?".

I'm talking about procedures that carry a significant risk of pain or having to be re-done by a more skilled person anyway. Like things involving puncturing, or vaginal exams, for instance.

My hands are tired and I'm cold. I'll stop there.

[ books rants ] 2002-04-09

Doctors aren't perfect: Obvious as this may be, sometimes people need to be reminded. The new book 'Complications': An Uncompromising Look at Medical Fallibility (link is to an NYTimes review thereof) covers this subject well, according to the review.

This looks like something I should read. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be just a collection of the author's pieces for the New Yorker, only longer. Feh. I don't think I'll buy it - I'll just read it in the bookstore...

And what's with the florid prose of the book reviewer? Yeesh. It's not so much the fancy words, it's that the same person used the word "milleniums". It's "millenia", dude. C'mon, get with the program. (I suppose the lesson is that writers are fallible too?)

Here's a quote that kind of gets to me:

Thus, in ''Fallibility,'' the reader confronts the sobering fact that physicians must learn, and that learning, even in the best organized, most expertly supervised environment, involves mistakes. Alas, some patients will be harmed. Worse yet, the poor, the uninsured, the most disadvantaged populations suffer the most, since it is for these that physicians in training bear the greatest amount of unsupervised responsibility. All this we may find revolting, but in the current system no viable alternative is in sight. ''We want perfection without practice,'' Gawande writes. ''Yet everyone is harmed if no one is trained for the future.''

I sense resignation that this is the way things are and such they shall ever be. This just doesn't strike me as acceptable.

If the current level of supervision for new physicians is inadequate, why do we not increase it?

Isn't this an obvious way to decrease the unnecessary suffering of patients?

For some reason, I can't see that anyone is thinking this way, besides me. It all comes down to money, I suppose. Essentially, some lives are worth more than others.

I've heard some horrible stories about really idiotic mistakes that are made with patients, and often the patients don't even know. Those that know many times don't bother to sue.

This is ridiculous. Is a standard of care so damn difficult to formulate? The stakes are pretty high - we're talking professionals who have people's lives in their hands on a daily basis.

And sometimes a "bad result" of death, it could be argued, is more merciful than a lifetime of debilitating pain and suffering.

I don't know what the answer is. But I'm wondering... could computers help?

Wouldn't it be spiffy if doctors were able to quickly look up the success rates for various treatments that they're considering? If they could quickly and unobtrusively consult with others in their field with more experience?

What if you had a set of weblogs, chatrooms, and such where questions could be (anonymously) posed, where other physicians could be listening and offering clueful feedback?

Oh, sorry, that would tend to dent the theory of doctor as God. Ok, yes, I'm getting a bit snarky here, but I don't think I'm out of line in suggesting that the profession suffers from an overdose of arrogance in too many cases.

You know what I want to do? I want to do *something* to help the average person get the kind of care that relatives of doctors get. (Guess how many mistakes are considered "acceptable" for one Inside the Circle in such a manner?)

I want to sit in waiting rooms of public hospitals and hand out flyers with the Patient's Bill of Rights on them, with the part about the right to refuse care by residents highlighted. If people knew they were being practiced on (as in "not fully skilled"), do you think they'd stand for it?

Hey look, this turned into a rant. The point is that the current system isn't working, but no one has a vested financial interest in making it work.

The people who are damaged unnecessarily by the system as it stands now deserve more than a shrug and a "Sucks to be you".

If saying that makes me a radical, then I guess I just hope that I have some company.

[ rants ] 2002-04-07

Humans were not meant to have litters: I feel sorry for this family. Geez. Another mega-litter of babies, six this time.

Just for the record, when I run the world, people who refuse to consider selective reduction will only be allowed to get tiny, tiny amounts of fertility medicine. This is crazy - they *had* to have been able to tell that she had six follicles ripening eggs (with ultrasound). There's a big difference between one ripening follicle and six...

If people are going to go headlong into such idiocy, I don't want *my* tax money to go to help cover their hospital bills (or my insurance premiums). There are too many people struggling along with the number of kids they can have naturally (sometimes _zero_), to justify subsidizing these aberrations.

It's like a freaking circus show.

[ rants ] 2002-03-27

Amazon is ok again: They sent me an email correcting everything. I'm happy again now.

Mostly. I'll still always have to double and triple-check my receipts from them, just to make sure the total didn't magically change between order confirmation and shipping. Sigh.

[ rants ] 2002-03-26

GRRRR!!! Amazon is a bunch of rotten stinking filth: I ordered a toy for Elena the other day, and it said "free shipping". My order confirmation email showed that the shipping was free.

So today I get an email telling me that they shipped my item. Oh goodie, thinks I.

Hmm, suddenly my free shipping turned into merely a shipping *discount*, and they're charging me $8.67 instead of $5.99.

Those punk-ass scum!

Okay, so I go to Amazon to look for an email address to send a complaint to, to get them to look into this.

And I spend like twenty minutes trying to find it - they hide it well. Jerks. Grr.

[ rants ] 2002-03-26

CRAAAAAAAAAP! Shit! I had this huge post with a whole bunch of links and stuff ready to go, but then I went and hit the bookmarklet link from another window, and my post disappeared into the ether.

Yes, that's right, apparently the brilliant folks at Movable Type have decided that it's a crime to have open more than one pending post. GAH!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I'm going to roll my own. I couldn't do it with a motivation of "gee this would be cool", but *anger*, now that's something that might motivate me.

Sigh.

It was all beautifully formatted, too. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. I hate technology when it sucks.

[ rants ] 2002-03-13

How annoying and stupid: I just want to state, for the record, that I think that the whole repeated mention in various blogs of the phrase "What is real?" followed by a (non-toll-free) phone number, is really, really stupid.

Even if I were magnificently interested in the 20x2 talk at the South by Southwest conference (which I'm not going to this year), it would still bug the shit out of me.

Is anyone bothering to call this number? Let me guess, is there some clever message left there that people are supposed to listen to? Somehow I doubt that it has anything cogent to say about the question of what's real.

Perhaps they should have said instead: "What is real annoying? Spend money and call this number but we're not going to give you any clues about what it's about, we're just going to tease you because we're so cool that we don't have to deign to do anything as banal as explain ourselves: (number)".

It's... just insulting to the intellect that they're going about advertising this event this way. Geez, why do I have such a bug up my ass about this?

[I managed somehow to resist the urge to list my phone number after that question. :)]

[ rants ] 2002-01-14

Why oh why do those who send messages to me via the box o doom have to be so snotty sometimes? I quote:

how about you post some stuff to your weblog before your Reading Public loses interest and goes away

Feh, I say, FEH! C'mon - I started this thing as a place for me to vent and just randomly spew out whatever was on my mind. Any resemblance to something entertaining or of quality is entirely coincidental. I made my mind up awhile back that I wasn't going to start getting all worried about my reader(s) - I was going to assume that there were only two of you, so I would never get all caught up in worrying about my stats and so on.

Well okay, I haven't kept *absolutely* entirely to that. But I still haven't wasted much worry over my readership. It does in fact make me happy that occasionally people might think my stuff worth linking to (but it still boggles my mind).

The point is, please just gimme a break. Life intruded, okay? A lot of stuff was going on, I was busy. Big Things were happening. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to write. Things are already improving, even. That is, I'm doing more entries lately. Plus I've got lots of ideas for stuff to do with my website (I know, I know, it's the kiss of death to announce that one is going to update one's website Real Soon Now).

But anyway, I can't let rude comments from the peanut gallery bug me. I just have to keep on keepin' on.

So this isn't even really a rant, I suppose.

[ rants ] 2001-11-28

I'm stuck in the land of computer frustration! My mother's iMac is pissing me off more and more. Sure, it's cute, and how can you hate something so cute, right? Well, I do.

The keyboard sucks the life out of my fingers, and the mouse is a crime against ergonomics. It freezes up (but not the mouse - oh no, I can still point my little impotent arrow anywhere I want on the screen) every once in awhile, usually right while I'm in the middle of reading something interesting. I've been avoiding posting much, partly because I just *know* the damn thing will choose the worst possible moment to freeze - right before I save something big.

I tried to install my mom's new scanner, but of course the floppy with the drivers is gone somewhere. Maybe my brother knows where it is. Sigh.

And my fabulous laptop that an incredibly nice person sent to me, has a modem that can't seem to find a dial tone on the phone line. Otherwise, I'd be using it instead to do my net stuff while I'm here. I have no idea what's wrong with it or how to fix it. :(

Is that enough whining yet? I'd better save this before this iMac gives me yet another reason to drop-kick it along the frozen driveway.

p.s. I have decided that I want to get some pet rats. (This is unrelated to this rant, btw).

[ rants ] 2001-11-13

Microsoft may not be evil... but they sure are conducting themselves like assholes. They're now blocking access to msn.com from non-IE browsers. What a bunch of losers!

Note to self: add to todo list: "Defeat Microsoft".

----later

[ rants ] 2001-11-07

Yikes. Looks like our government is clamping down on information available via the web at government web sites. Lovely. :/

[ rants ] 2001-11-02

Very sad. I just received a really cold, cruel email from a former friend, telling me that he doesn't want to ever talk to me or hear from me anymore.

It just hurts a lot right now. :(

I'm not a total idiot. I can take a hint, I will listen if someone asks me politely to back off or take a hike. I just wish he hadn't put things in such harsh terms. I keep thinking, "What did I ever do to *him* to deserve such rudeness and harsh treatment?"

I don't think I did anything to merit this. Really.

And even through it all, as annoyed and just plain hurt I am at this, somehow I forgive him. For being a young arrogant cad, for forgetting his manners, for being just the kind of person that I'd really like to be friends with yet so clearly and bluntly rejecting any contact with me.

I kind of pity him, because I feel that the kind of person who would treat a friend this way has a long journey of hard lessons to be learned ahead of him. And what goes around comes around, so he'll probably get hurt. And no, I don't take any pleasure in knowing that.

And I really thought that he was kinder than this. I thought he had a clue about how people should be treated. But then again, hindsight being 20/20, I realize there were early signs that he was somewhat insensitive, a certain lack of empathy.

Oh well, everyone has at least one fatal flaw, right? I know I've got several. If I started making a list of them, I'd go on for hours I'm sure.

One thing he told me really echoes for me right now: he said his greatest fear was that he'd turn into a really arrogant person. I think he's shown that that's exactly what has happened.

Sigh. Tomorrow, next week, next month, this will hurt less. Right now it feels like being kicked in the teeth. I feel stupid for having trusted him.

But it's time to focus on the new friends I'm making, and the good times I'm having with the ones I've already got...

I think I'm going to go read and think of other things for awhile. I don't want to dwell on this.

[ rants ] 2001-10-20

Argh. I'm too flippin' busy. I wish I didn't have to go to work tonight. I am sort of half sick from the stress of working at night and not having enough time to do a decent job - they have only two people working at night to handle 46 residents (well, a few of the beds are empty, granted). They really need three. I am not sure how I'm going to handle it tonight.

So anyway, I started having diarrhea towards the end of my last work week, which got immediately better once I got to my weekend and sort of adopted a daytime schedule again. The trouble is that now I have to go back to a nighttime schedule as of tonight.

I got out of working yesterday because I was still feeling sick, and I talked to my boss saying that I think they need three people at night and that I'm not doing well handling the night shift. I'm going to give written notice that two weeks from now I want to start working prn, which means "as needed". Basically, you state which days you're available, and they figure out which of those days that they need you, and put you on the schedule.

It just irks me - I'm only making $9.25 an hour. For an 8 hour shift, it would cost them only $74 to add an extra person, but I'll bet you that they won't do it. Because it's a corporation, and thus all they care about is profit, squeezing every possible dime they can out of the whole situation. This makes me sad...

One of the nights when I was training, there were three of us, so I had time to sit with a lady who was feeling really awful and seemed very scared. I think she thought she was about to die. I held her hand and sat with her and just talked to her and tried to comfort her, and listen to her. You know, the kind of treatment that any human being deserves at their death. Well, it turned out that it wasn't her time to go yet, but I think I was really able to make a difference in helping her feel a bit better so that she could sleep, at least. That's what I got into this line of work for - to help people.

There's no way that I can have time to do that for someone who needs it if I'm one of only two people working the night shift. It just doesn't work that way. Of course, I'm certainly not the quickest at doing rounds or anything, but I'm learning.

Yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, I'm starting to doubt that I'm cut out for this particular job. I think I'd be better suited for one-on-one care or something. Or maybe I should go back to the idea of getting a job at UT if I can somehow... I'm not yet decided. I just hope that tonight I'm not sick with diarrhea again from all the stress. :/

Plus, tomorrow is Sunday which means I have a bunch of churchgoing to do in the morning, so I won't be able to sleep until that's done. Oy. Oh well, I guess the best I can do is give it my best, or as close to it as I can physically and mentally handle.

I just really don't want to have to go there. I don't want to let people down, but I really feel I have to watch it when it comes to stress. I don't want to have a relapse of my "condition", to put it delicately. I want to talk to my psych nurse and see what she thinks. I'm wondering if a night job is just a Bad Idea for me right now. Perhaps so.

Enough for now...

[ rants ] 2001-10-04

They stole my friggin' bible. That's right. Whoever was scumbag enough to break my passenger-side front window and grab my purse and two other bags while I was out hiking the other day, ended up with a strange variety of stuff which I will miss to varying degrees, including:

my mini leatherman tool
a bible I had just bought
a Terry Pratchett book I had just bought
my daytimer with my social security card inside
my coach purse which is the nicest purse I've ever owned and now I have to go spend a wad to replace it at the outlet mall
my best tweezers
the banana I had hoped to eat after my hike (I was *starving*)
my canvas bag from the south by southwest interactive conference (you know, the one where I flipped out and went totally bonkers in public) [but it's okay, I've got another one just like it. Ha!]

That's all I feel like writing about for now. What kind of loser steals a bible?!?!? Or a banana, for that matter?

Anyway, luckily I had my wallet with me. What a bunch of stinkers. It took me three cycles of the vacuum at the car wash to eradicate enough of the broken glass that was *all over* the inside of the car. I say "enough of" not "all of" because there's no way to remove all of it. There will be microscopic shards hiding in there forever more.

Anyway, it's time for me to head to canoeing practice, so let me just state really quickly that I have a new job at the Marriott-owned nursing home :). I went and filled out paperwork today. Then I took a nap, because I couldn't freakin' get to sleep last night! Like, til three or something. Yikes.

I have much more to write, which I will get around to one of these eons or something. My first day of work will be Saturday. I'll go in during the day for training for the first few days, then start my night shift thing and become nocturnal. Like a possum or something.

[ rants ] 2001-09-04

BS lazy poster self: That is, I'm rather disappointed in myself for not posting more lately. I've had a bazillion ideas of things to log, yet after my spurt last week of seven in one day or something, I've done zilch. Nada. Anyway, so what else is new?

I don't have long to post - gotta get back to Anthony's so we can go catch a movie. But briefly: I now have a job plan, I've been feeling better, I have *lots* of ideas (including a cool way to structure my website), and things are moving right along. Argh, once I get started, I want to just blab on and on. But right now, I gotta get ready. I'm always late, and it's really starting to bug me.

More later, whenever that ends up to be...

[ rants ] 2001-08-28

Note to self: Do *NOT* go swimming in a chlorinated pool with your silver sun pendant on.

The darn thing is all tarnished now. Sigh. I'd scan it now so you could see what I'm referring to, but my scanner doesn't work anymore. Argh! I might work on it later this week...

[ mental rants ] 2001-08-21

Denied. Not Eligible. This is what the mental health division of my HMO said to the hospital when presented with my claim. Uh, fuck. This I found out yesterday.

So today I have to call the mental health division and ask them why the heck they denied it after pre-approving it before I was admitted. Jerkfaces! Argh! There oughtta be a law!

I'm just afraid I'm going to get royally screwed on this, and have to eat the bill, which is over $5,000.00.

Sigh. Oh well, maybe I'll just be in debt forever or something.

And what did five grand buy me, anyway? Six days of:

a dorm-like room with a bed and bathroom, and use of a collective shower
psychiatric medications (zyprexa and risperdal)
getting my vital signs checked a couple times a day
watching tv, doing puzzles, and reading
three meals a day
a couple group sessions per day where we went around in a circle with everyone stating how they were doing and their current goals
a few minutes (10-15) with a psychiatrist about every two days

It hardly seems worth it. I would rather have gone to Hawaii or something instead.

[ rants ] 2001-07-21

What if they held a job fair... and nobody showed up? Grrr, that's what happened today. I showed up at the Frank Erwin Center (a huge arena-type place) for the UT job fair, all dressed up and with copies of my resume in tow, and...

all the freaking doors were *locked*.

There was nobody inside that I could see, except for two guys mopping the floor.

I went around the building twice, just to make sure that all the doors really were locked. I was not confused about the time or date or location - quite the contrary, there were a few other folks there wandering around like I was.

I walked around a bit with a guy who had been laid off from Dell. He had a flier about the job fair, with a number to call for details. I called and it was just a machine at the employment office.

Stupid, stupid job fair.

I can't believe they mismanaged it so horribly. I mean... what the heck? There was no sign, no nothing. After I finally gave up (I was starting to get really hot), I saw other people, nicely dressed, making their way to the building with folders in their hands. I wondered whether I should warn them that the darn thing wasn't happening.

But then, as I left, I wondered if I had given up too easily. Maybe there was some secret way to get in that other people would find. Nah, that's ridiculous. But I thought it anyway.

I'm so peeved. I was really looking forward to this, as a big concrete step on the way towards my getting a job. Pfft. Total waste of time.

And since I'm ranting... those chicken salad pita things at Wendy's are totally yummy, but they make a HUGE mess when you eat them. But I'll still eat 'em. :)

[ rants ] 2001-06-29

Since when do those bastards: stick advertisements in my fucking *checks*?!?!?!? Argh! I almost couldn't believe it when I saw it, but there it was, an advertisement from my credit union sitting smack in the middle of my checkbook. The nerve! Some bs about "Ask us about our low mortgage rates" or something. Grr. I tore it out of there with resentment, foam streaming from my mouth.

I want to take it and stuff it up the *nose* of the smug person who came up with this invasive scheme. Okay, I'm not violent, I just liked the image of that. :)

Watch out, the next time you order checks...

Unrelated rant:

When I put in a refill of my Mentadent toothpaste, it always, without fail, subsequently spews forth from only *one* side of the two-chambered vessel. I think it's always the white side, too. I have to push out several brushfuls of white-only toothpaste before I can achieve the perfect yin/yang balance of white and blue (or white and green) that I've come to expect from Mentadent.

What's up with that?

So, having gone through this experience repeatedly, I've come to dread it. This means I will draw out the last of the previous cartridge of toothpaste as long as humanly possible. Thus was born: Mentadentercise! I've found that even when I think there can't possibly be any more toothpaste left, I can get a good week or even *two* out of there by pushing as hard as I can on that plunger. It's truly amazing...

Anything to avoid big wads of unmatched white paste to get rid of!

[ mental rants ] 2001-06-18

My mind is a very strange place to be: and I'm not even sure quite how to describe it. It's still a struggle to balance my medications and stuff. Thoughts race around as though in a superconductor. Analogies flow all over the place, to the point of annoyance. It's almost as though everything I see and do and hear and think adds up to a great noise, a ringing in my ears, which never stops. These are all just weak metaphors that don't really touch what it's like. Oh well.

I'm very philosophical, to a fault I suppose. It's hard to keep myself grounded in the real world. I feel kind of weary. I'm doing okay, though - I don't actively dread each day, I am just hoping that it gets easier soon, that's all.

My car broke down on Friday, when white smoke began appearing from under the hood. Apparently there was an oil leak that spilled oil all over the engine. I managed to get it to the shop the next day, and they say they'll be able to take a look at it today.

Very frustrating to say the least, but hey, these things happen. :( I just hope it can be fixed soon and for a small amount of money.

I was looking forward to going to my group therapy today, but I can't because of the lack of a car. I was proud of myself for getting a dentist appointment set up for Wednesday, but I might have to cancel that if they won't have my car ready in time (they probably won't). Damn. Argh. As soon as I get things a little settled, they get messed up again.

I haven't been exercising, but I might make it out for a walk today. We'll see.

I got this book called "The Elegant Universe" that has all kinds of really neat stuff about physics and superstring theory and so on, so I am going to do some reading in that today. Plus there might be some tv worth watching, I don't know.

I finally made a dermatologist appointment for the rash I've had for two and a half months - they won't be able to see me for another three months. Sigh. I'd be all fired up and pissed off if I had the energy. Instead, I just see too much of the big picture, that it's not anyone's fault, so I'm impassive. I'll deal with it somehow. Maybe I'll try an elimination diet to see if that affects it at all.

Heh, who am I kidding? I don't think I could stick with an elimination diet. Eliminating what, anyway? Wheat? O yikes, I have no idea what I'd survive on.

Argh, it's hard to think of being able to drive anywhere until my car is fixed. It's as though the brokenness of my car extends forever into the future in my mind. I really, really hope that isn't the case.

The texture of my thoughts is so *weird*. I feel sane, but... odd. I feel as though I'm walking a tightrope or something, straddling two worlds - that of the fundamentally okay and that of the lost. My personal philosophy of the world, theories of life, the universe, and everything, have undergone *huge* changes lately. And they keep changing... kind of. It's as though they've reached a stable oscillation point, I guess. Stable for now, anyway.

It's as though I can see the pattern of the universe, and it's not quite as interesting as I thought. When it comes down to it, it's just entropy, and waves, and stuff moves through us but we have this illusion that we are intelligent beings with free will and such. In reality, we're like characters in a play that writes itself as it goes along. Or something like that.

This is probably incomprehensible. The incomprehensibility is probably a good thing. I don't think that I'd willingly bestow this type of mindset on someone - it certainly hasn't made my life happier, but perhaps I'm just stuck in a low mood cycle. It's all so complicated. Argh.

Have I gotten to the stage of "raving lunatic" yet? I don't think so. My faculties for detecting such are still well in hand.

Speaking of my hands, there's an annoying side effect of the medications that I'm on - my hands shake. Sort of similar to Parkinson's, I guess, but it's less severe (don't worry *too* much about me). It's aggravating, but I'm learning how to deal with it. Basically I have to be either using the muscles or letting them relax - holding them in position just causes them to jiggle a bit.

Of course, in trying to figure everything out, I consider this a wave function thing. For some reason, waves (especially probability waves) and wave functions are big in my mind lately. Sigh. I sound like a lunatic. Oh well. Sometimes I feel like one.

I cried a bit on the phone with my mother yesterday... still grieving the idea of myself as Fundamentally Mostly Kinda Normal. I used to have such high aspirations, I used to be so good at things. In reality, there was a huge imbalance in my head that I was struggling with, without even knowing it. Now I just hope that I can find a decent job, making enough money to scrape by, live independently, have Elena for standard non-custodial parent visits (and dreams of pseudo-joint-custody someday), and express myself through writing, art, whatever. My priorities have totally changed.

It's hard. I have to get used to myself as being totally different from the person I thought I was. I have to get used to myself as being a person whose internal balance changes constantly, and that the rules will keep changing on me. It's very sad, in a way. Okay, in lots of ways. I still haven't reached a thorough state of acceptance. Somehow I'll muddle through. There will be happy times, and I'll do my best to enjoy them...

Success will be difficult, and will be measured with a much smaller yardstick than I had previously been using. I face constant distortion, like wearing a different pair of glasses every day.

I'm sick of writing about this right now. Enough.

[ rants ] 2001-05-14

What's the best tuna? Well, it most certainly *ain't* Chicken of the Sea, that's for sure...

See, I made some a week or two ago, after having strayed from my usual brand due to the more competitive price (hey, I'm trying to learn how to be a tightwad, okay?).

I opened the can of solid white albacore (once you go albacore, you never go back to "chunk light"), and tried to squeeze out the water over the sink, and it didn't work. That is, the liquid stayed inside the can. I don't know what they did, but they broke some rule and I couldn't squish out the water from the meat. The harder I pressed, the higher the velocity of the tiny amounts of tuna-water slurry that *did* ooze out, making a nasty mess.

I finally gave up and decided to just add the mayo anyway. The texture was all *weird*, and it tasted funny, to boot. But I ate it.

So this put me in a mood to wonder about who these Chicken of the Sea people are anyway, these losers who can't create a decent can of tuna that follows the rules.

And what's that name about, anyway, Chicken of the Sea? What the hell? Who came up with *that* one, I wonder? I mean, what is it about tuna that supposedly makes it more like chicken, than, say, sea bass?

And this begs the question - if tuna *is* the chicken of the sea, what does this even *mean*? Does it mean that other things supposedly taste like tuna? What kind of a comparison were they going for?

And okay, let's assume that tuna *is* the "chicken of the sea", whatever the hell that means.... does that make chicken the "tuna of the barnyard"??

If I hadn't been so personally annoyed by the misbehavior of that can of tuna, I would never have questioned that goofy product name...

And since Starkist has consistently served my tuna needs well, I will cut them some slack and not care too much that their name doesn't make much sense either. (Kissed by stars? Like, sea stars? Is this some interspecies love thing or something? I don't get it...)

[ rants ] 2001-05-12

There's nothing like a Myst game... to make you feel stupid. Well, okay, I don't feel like a *total* idiot, but still...

I found (DEAD LINK) this lovely site with a bunch of stuff all about Exile, (including the fact that disc 1 is sorta messed up and you can order a replacement from the vendor) and I see that someone's already got (DEAD LINK) a walk-through going. Gah!

Here I am stuck at a puzzle that I should theoretically be able to figure out, yet I can't. Argh! I see that someone else on the message board stuck there was able to get through with a mere hint of: "In these sheets, you find instructions to operate the elevator!!! But you need to interpret them the right way now".

Wtf? I've got the guy's notebook, and I see funky diagrams, but I have no idea how they're supposed to be interpreted - they look like they might be dates or something. Ah, well. I can always use a bit o the walk-through...

I hope the game doesn't go *poof* on me again like it did yesterday - I figured out something clever, then it dumped me out of the game with no errors, nothing. Go figure. Anyway, I'm off to play some more. :)

[ rants ] 2001-04-26

From the Damning With Faint Praise Department: comes this box o doom entry:

Haven't been here for a while but it sure is refreshing to read optimistic entries instead of the whiny, bitchy entries from before (one of the reasons why I stopped reading, too much of a downer). Sounds like your life is going well and in the right direction. That's really great! Keep at it!

Okay, my first reaction is to yell at high volume epithets at anyone who has the incredible lack of taste to spew such nonsense into my box o doom. If you're going to be nice to someone, characterizing something they've written as whiny and bitchy is not the way to get your point across.

So what if my reaction to my life was whiny and bitchy? Geez, it's *my fucking life*, thankyouverymuch, and I can write whatever the hell I want to about it. I'm not here to entertain people, I'm here to be myself. I don't care how many people read here, I use this as a mental health exercise, to update my family & friends about what I'm doing, and just as a journal to record what I've done and what I'm feeling/thinking.

Why am I letting this bug me so much? Perhaps because it's such a thinly veiled slam...

Whiny and bitchy, my ass. Trust me, there are depths unplumbed as of yet. I have hardly written of how I feel about my daughter being forcibly removed from my life (except for 6 hours per week of supervised visits). Or the pain of the particular form of weaning we underwent (unnecessary thousand-mile separation, confinement in a mental health unit, restraining order).

Argh! Certain foolish respondents should just wake up and realize that this is my venting board, and any entertainment or enjoyment they may sometimes experience is a fluke.

I guess this touches on an interesting aspect of weblogs: who is it written *for*? It depends on the author... there are those, I am certain, who are acutely aware of and seek to maximize the enjoyment (and size) of their audience. I am not among them. I am one of those who just spews bits into the void for my own benefit, because I happen to feel like writing about a given thing at a given moment - beautiful or disgusting, interesting or banal.

I'm actually *shocked* at the fact that I have any readers at all. I used to joke that I had two readers - "me" and "myself" ("I" of course, being the author). For me, I get a little weirded out thinking about this as a performance piece - I start to seize up and question myself (even more than I usually do (which is a huge amount, eh)) and feel awkward and stuff. I never look at my referrer logs or hit rates or anything for this reason. If I looked, it might start to matter to me, and that would change things in a way that I know I don't want. I choose to remain willingly blind to things that would only distract me.

The whole tone of that note just has this obnoxious head-patting feel to it, that "there's a nice girl, don't show us your *negative* side, now". Yeah, okay, it pisses me off. On the web, everyone gets a stage to perform on. Instead of throwing tomatoes at me, why not go find a different stage? Go find someone who's fluffy and happy all the time, who never shows their displeasure at anything, even when life rains 300-pound cement lemons on their head.

[ mammalog mental my site rants ] 2001-04-05

Really nasty doom-o-gram: Someone has a bug in their hind end about me, and decided to take it out on me via the box o doom. If this continues, I may discontinue the thing. I mean, how incredibly rude. But whatever, sometimes I'm rude too. Here's what they wrote, with my responses:

Just tuned into your site. At first you really pissed me off. As a North Reading employee I was offended that you would complain about having to work during our snow storm.
Actually, I was complaining about *other people* having to work *on the phones* during the snowstorm. For me, it didn't change much. But it was one of those gripes about what has to happen, not a gripe saying that it shouldn't ever have to happen.
Maybe we could go back and count how many days Austin was closed for ice storms the past 10 years and how many times North Reading was closed due to snow.
By all means, let us count. The Austin site hasn't been open for 10 years yet, though, I don't think.
I think Austin was closed 2-3 times more often.
I disagree. Ice storms don't even happen every year in Austin, more like once every several years. Snowstorms tend to happen at least once a year up there.
And then you complain about the number of sick days the company allows -
They asked me for my opinion, explicitly, in the work/life survey, and then repeatedly prodded me via email to fill the thing out - they were *begging* for my opinion. I just suggested it would be cool to be able to pool them if both parents work at IBM, even as I recognized that HR rules would probably preclude this. Yeesh. Part of my problem was that it wasn't my fault I had to take so many sick days - Spencer couldn't take many because he was A) unable to drive and B) too stressed and overworked to miss even one day. Only one of those is IBM's fault (and even then, only partially).
but weren't YOU the one taking advantage of the company while you were avoiding your job responsibilities?
Yes, I am the most horrible person in the world because I slacked off at work and then decided to leave. Listen, I didn't feel very good about it, but even my guilty feelings couldn't compel me to actually do much work. Call it a personal failing, if you like. At least I finally had the guts to quit when I felt I couldn't honestly work anymore. It would have been easy to do the bare minimum and keep pulling in big paychecks, trust me. Is it really my fault that it took so long for them to notice that I wasn't doing much? Doesn't an employer have a duty to keep at least cursory track of its employees?
Hey, wait a minute... were you in my group? I'm starting to wonder...
I guess you don't have to worry about any more boring meetings do you?
You're right! I've never felt better. The corporate world just wasn't for me - it was sucking the life out of me. Of course, now I've got different types of challenges, but that's okay too. It's just part of life. I am happy with the trade-off. And I'll still be happy, even if I have to take a job washing dishes for awhile to make ends meet. No big deal - it sure beats the mental slavery of tech support!
Like, I said at first I was pissed. Now I realize you are just a very sick person. You need professional psychiatric help and I suggest you get it - it would be nice if your little girl had a real mother to take care of her.
Oh, my. Oh, dearie, me. Have you been officially appointed by the Powers That Be to rain hellfire down upon me? Anyway, I actually *do* need psychiatric help, but they can't get me an appointment until May 3rd, so go figure. I'm trying to be cooperative, take my medication, and be a patient patient, but there is some worry that my medication might run out before I get seen.
And I am a real mother to my daughter, not a card-board cutout. Sometimes the hardest part of mothering is letting go a little bit, when it's necessary. I know my daughter is safe and well cared for, and I see her as much as I can. This is tough for me - I miss her terribly, but I'm coping to the best of my ability right now.
Having strangers judge my mothering ability, not to mention mental stability, certainly doesn't make it any easier. I guess you should be proud of yourself - the hurt you intended to cause has hit its mark. Congratulations. Are you happy?
And are you going to send me a link to your website so I can judge you the same way you judged me? I doubt it.

They later added this:

My apologies. My last comment really should have been something more like: - it would be nice if your little girl had you around to take care of her in the future. If you don't get yourself put together this might be a problem.
For what it's worth, I *AM* put together. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life - more in control, more whole, more confident, more able to get things done, more empathetic, less afraid, less bogged down in depressive emotions. Why do you feel that you are in any position to judge my mental state? Geez...
I guess it's one of those things - spend any time in a mental ward and have the guts to admit it and not be ashamed, and the world thinks you're nutso forever more. I'm not nuts, Mr. Or Ms. Anonymous Judger. I'm saner than I've ever been.

Time will tell if this is typical of what I get in the box o doom. Maybe I will remove it, and require those who wish to insult me to at least go to the trouble of faking a return address.

What's with people these days? Why must they be so unkind? Why must they kick other people when they're down?

You know what? If this person were down, I wouldn't kick 'em the way they kicked me. If they had a mental health "episode" and had to get help, I wouldn't assume that they were always unstable afterwards. I'd have compassion for the difficulty they went through, and I'd do my best to be understanding, or at least non-judging.

If this person lost custody of their child, I wouldn't belittle their parenting ability - I'd feel bad for them and their family having to go through such a difficulty.

There are just some topics that you really, *really* shouldn't attack someone on. It's called "tact".

I used to lack it quite a bit myself, but I'm getting better. I hope the Anonymous Judger eventually gets better too, but first they have to want to...

[ my site rants ] 2001-04-04

I removed hydrant.jpg: from my cow orker humor page, because the guy who took the picture was hassling me. Apparently, he doesn't want to share.

I am amazed that he has so much free time to go around chasing down people who have copied his picture. I mean, really. Is this causing him lost income? No.

Apparently, this picture is so important to the advancement of humanity that it must be protected at all costs. Whatever.

I took it down. I hope he's happy. You'll just have to make a picture in your own mind of a bmw with the windows knocked out and a firehose going through the car, attached to the hydrant that the car is illegally parked in front of. I know, it's causing you great distress, isn't it?

Dang, I'm in a snotty mood. I even responded flammably to an imminent flamefest on a list I'm on. Some *ahem* poorly informed woman claimed that nipple confusion doesn't exist because she hasn't seen it, then disingenuously claimed not to be wanting to start a flame war. Uh huh. So I was moved to post that I didn't believe in Tibet or gall bladder disease either, since I'd never seen them.

Yeah, I changed my list options to "read on the web" so my mailbox won't get flooded.

What's with people? They can be such idiots at times.

Myself included.

[ mental rants ] 2001-03-27

YOU HAVE BEEN SUED. This is what the document I'm looking at tells me. It also tells me various other unsavory things...

It says I have to pay child support. Hmm, talking with Spencer yesterday, he said his lawyer suggested this but that he knows my financial situation isn't great right now, so he wouldn't ask for that. Uh-huh. Hmm.
It says I have to enter drug rehab (?!) and to submit to periodic drug testing. Wtf?!?! I am definitely gonna fight that. What a fricking crock!
It says Elena will suffer "irreperable harm" if the restraining order isn't granted (it was). Yeah, right.
Then there's this affadavit thingie... which goes on for a sentence or two before attempting to paint a friend of mine in a bad light. Wtf?!??

Okay, I've entered a land stranger than any I was in during my psychotic delusion. This place is known as Lawsuit Land. I can't even begin to count the number of lies here... Sigh. All right, enough of this. I've got to take a shower and try to write out some of the TRUE chronology of events before I have to leave to meet with my lawyer.

[ mammalog mental rants ] 2001-03-26

I'm finally home: and I was met at the train station not by my daughter, but with a restraining order. By law, I am not permitted to be alone with her, and I am forbidden to breastfeed her.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty upset. I'm also tired. Tomorrow I will look into getting a lawyer.

I feel pretty stupid and naive for thinking that Spencer would be willing to work things out amicably with me. Instead, he's filing for sole custody of Elena.

I still haven't seen her, and it's been almost two weeks now. My milk has essentially dried up, and I wouldn't nurse her anyway since Zyprexa might get into the milk and cause nastiness (I checked the world-reknowned expert's website about it, and unfortunately not much is known). But it still hurts to have a *court order* saying I can't do it.

I miss her, and I just want to see her. She's my baby, and I would never, ever hurt her. Even in my psychotic delusional state, there was no chance of me harming her. But that didn't matter - I wasn't allowed to say goodbye, and now... now all this legal crap has been shoveled onto my head. As if I didn't have enough stuff to deal with, what with being away and having all kinds of things stack up (car insurance, etc).

I'm still in shock - it hasn't sunk in yet, really. On one level, I can't really believe that he would do this to me, but he has. I think of all that I put up with from him, and I feel like a total fool. For three years I tried to make it work with him, at great expense to myself. I'm not talking money, I'm talking about denying parts of who I was in a misguided effort to make him happy. It didn't work, of course, and eventually I just couldn't take it anymore. Life has been a lot better once I finally made my decision and moved out. Well, until now it has been better. Had been better.

I'm very tired, so I'll try to sleep some. I'm back for good, now, I hope.

[ mammalog mental rants ] 2001-03-22

I miss my daughter, dammit! And I must wait until Sunday to see her. Argh.

It would be slightly less frustrating if I had been allowed to say goodbye to her.

And if I had consented to the separation.

And it would hurt a bit less right now if I didn't have this milk to get rid of every day. Because of course I couldn't possibly be allowed to nurse my daughter.

You know, I knew ahead of time that weaning would suck. But I didn't realize just how much. Here I am, a thousand miles away, feeling very alone, trying to distract myself so I don't have to just sit here expressing milk...

Milk that I wish I could give to Elena. :(

I've been avoiding this, trying to focus on what I'm doing to get home, that kind of thing... but tonight it has surfaced, and I just want to whine a bit, because I'm sad. I miss my little baby. I know I fucked up, and I know I put substances in my body that made my milk probably not exactly safe for her... but this feels like punishment beyond the severity of the crime. The nasty stuff is out of me by now, but the antipsychotic I'm on may not be safe either. Feh blah okay this part is just whining - the price I have to pay for mental stability I suppose.

I feel like I've lost Elena, over and over again, every day since this happened.

Tonight I heard her crying in the background on the phone, and I wasn't allowed to speak to her. Wasn't fucking ALLOWED.

I don't know if you, dear reader, can imagine what that feels like. I wouldn't wish it on you, that's for sure.

Part of me worries that she won't remember me. Irrational, I know, but we're talking emotion, here. I feel like I've disappeared from her life, and the fact that she's gone on just fine without me (so Spencer tells me) is proof that I don't matter in her life.

Proof, in other words, that my identity as her mother is... nothing but piffle.

I know that's not what it really means... I just... feel so worthless in this regard right now. I just want to be with her, to hold her, to hear the words she's learned in the past week since I've been away. I want to hear her call me "Mommy" again.

And even that thought gives me pain, because I fear that she will ask to nurse. (I also fear that she *won't* ask to nurse, which would hurt too. Nice double-edged sword, eh?)

And I will have to deny her. And she will protest, probably horribly, with those heartbreaking sobs that cut right through me.

Damn.

Guess I'll have to deal with it, one way or another.

On a brighter note, I *am* glad to be able to wear non-nursing bras for the first time in two years. Yippy dippy do. :/

P.S. I notice Daniel added a new category for me, "mental". Snicker, snicker. How utterly appropriate.

[ mental rants ] 2001-03-20

I'll be back on... Monday, I think. I've just been real busy, y'know, being in the looney bin for a little while.

(*pause for dramatic effect*)

I'm not kidding.

(*pause for the reader to consider that I must somehow be kidding*)

No really, I was flown up to Colorado to be with my family because I had a big huge psychotic maniacal episode thingie.

Really.

I was taken by my family (& Spencer) to the emergency room, and put on a mental health hold. That was Wednesday morning. I was transferred to another hospital, where I was ... taken care of until yesterday evening.

I am on my medication now, and everything is better. In fact, I am even *better* than normal.

As you can imagine, I will go on at length about this once I get back home to Texas. I will probably take the train (yes the same one that derailed, only in the other direction), stop off in Chicago for a day to spend a bit o time with my dad, then go back to Austin. I hope to get there on Sunday night. Trust me, I'll write a *LOT* about all of this.

Anyone who saw me at the end of the SXSW interactive conference can attest to my looniness. It is pretty funny in retrospect, actually - but it's only funny because no one got seriously hurt or anything. It could easily have been uglier.

I don't have much online time here at my mom's house, so there will be few if any updates til I get back.

Be assured, I am very much OK, and will remain that way.

Oh yeah, the whole thing was triggered by a combination of the following: (admit it, you were just *waiting* for the bullet list, right?)

I took ecstasy, aka MDMA, X, e, etc.
I hardly ate or slept for three days.
I took DXM (dextromethorphan hydrobromide, the active ingredient in cough syrup) three days later

So I would say, if you are a person who considers messing about with such a mix of chemicals, please, PLEASE learn from my mistake and just don't do it. My lid was thoroughly flipped. At several points I was firmly convinced I was going to die. It was terrifying and I hurt my family very badly - they were extremely worried about me. And of course my friends as well.

I am profoundly embarrassed, but I feel I have to be open about what happened, the better to deal with it. Plus, this is just *such* ideal weblog fodder, how could I possibly resist? :)

So remember, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. YOU COULD DIE. I AM NOT KIDDING!!!

I'll post more later... there are some interesting intellectual and other realizations that have endured through this bizarre mindflipping. Including, for one, that I now believe in God. Heh. No kidding on that either, eh.

[ rants ] 2001-03-08

What can I say to this? There are no words to really address this. I, for once, am at a loss.

Today is International Women's Day. Supposedly. But crap like this still goes on, every day. Including today, of course.

Widespread deprivation in Moldova and other parts of post-Soviet Eastern European has created golden opportunities for organized criminal gangs involved in the illegal sexual trafficking of women and children. "Traffickers turn up in a rural community during a drought or before a harvest, when food is scarce, and persuade poor couples [to] sell their daughters for small amounts of money,"...

Grrrr. Stop this planet, I want to get off... :(

[ rants ] 2001-03-06

I'm not saying it: I'm just pointing it out... At work someone just sent out a link to this Microsoft bashing of Lotus, which had some interesting links to other stories...

Including this one, which had some interesting bits in it (the bolding is mine):

Cambridge-based IT Factory Inc., Lotus' largest value-added reseller, said the internal structure at Lotus doesn't lend itself to supporting partners because there is no system in place to coordinate software development and support. According to IT Factory CEO Lars Johansen, resellers and other partner vendors essentially are left to solve software compatibility problems themselves, even if they have committed much of their company resources to building on top of Lotus products.
What Johansen said publicly was echoed privately by other business partners who said the lack of support is frustrating and added that they are looking for more support.

Wow. Well I uh work in Lotus Support, and I've been here almost four years, and I will just say that I found that article quite fascinating indeed.

Personally I am of the opinion that it is ludicrous to expect the Support division to make money, yet that is exactly what IBM and Lotus think it should be - Profitable with a capital "P". What they don't realize is that Support lends a huge amount of value to the product itself, far and above the monetary value of the support contracts that are sold.

Support is what keeps customers from dumping the product in droves, in other words. If Support shut its doors tomorrow, Sales would crumble. They don't seem to appreciate this.

Personally, I think they should make Support a fun, cushy place to work. They should give the analysts a huge raise, more time to do their jobs (increase headcount), and offices with doors that close so that they can concentrate and feel like real human beings, instead of peons.

I think they will get back much more in quality and customer and employee loyalty than they will spend in money. *Much* more.

As it is, Lotus tech support analysts have an extremely difficult job, and they are by and large very brilliant and hardworking. But they are treated like the lowest of the low, slaves to the phone shift, unworthy of anything more than a cube. And don't even get me started on the *ahem* communication between Support and Development *cough ivory tower cough*.

Oh well.

In one respect I feel like they're just gonna reap what they're sowing, and I have no pity for those at the top.

But on the other hand, I feel bad for the people I see here who bust their butts every day trying to keep their heads above water with a crushing workload of a nigh-impossible job, and they get ground down with too much work and too little respect. And I watch people leave, in droves, as soon as it sinks in that they're worth so much more than a job like this - in terms of dignity as well as cash.

I'm so glad I'm going to be out of here. I've been on the sidelines for two years or so, as an editor, so I haven't been under the thumbscrews myself for a while, really. But I see it all around me every day, and I see what it does to Spencer.

I hope he wakes up and gets a job more in tune with what he truly deserves before he has a heart attack from the constant stress here. He's got a *Master's Degree* in computer science, ferchrissake. And he's doing tech support among college dropouts like me. And holding out for a promotion that I firmly believe they will never, ever give him.

Argh.

[ rants ] 2001-03-01

Bleakness: is what I feel when I think of my job, in every aspect. The commute makes me feel like an animal being led to slaughter. Looking for parking presses all my aggravation buttons, and I cannot imagine the hideousness of the new location they plan to move us to in April, with *even less parking*. Coming in the door and seeing all the Tivoli "branding" in the lobby makes me want to puke.

And what's this word, "branding", anyway? Don't people realize it originally meant to hold an animal down and burn your proprietary symbol into its skin, while it thrashes and screams in pain? I hate hearing this word used by marketing types all the time.

The lighting here makes me want to hide under my desk. Fluorescent light destroys quality of life, mark my words. I unscrewed one of my fluorescent bulbs in the lighting fixture immediately above my desk a few weeks ago, which turned off two of three of the tubes. It was a very, very small improvement.

Why I am not worth fucking *INCANDESCENT* lighting? They pay me a shitload of money a year, but they aren't willing to give me humane-quality lightbulbs? *AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH*

I'm sick of watching all that is good in life being screwed over for the sake of the almighty sacred Profit. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that any business (or other organization) must be able to support itself financially in order to continue operating. Duh. So I'm not against the idea of a company making a bit extra so that they can invest it in the business, pay their employees more, and let the owner buy another boat now and then.

But this great sucking sound I hear every day - the siphoning of every ounce of what is perceived (wrongly) as mere "excess" so that it can be turned over to the precious Stockholders, it's HURTING MY EARS and I just want it to STOP.

I drove by a bunch of brand-spanking-new housing developments today on the way to work, all of which were spewing forth their occupants onto the roadway in front of me. As I looked I saw how the houses were nearly identical and completely lacking in character, having been thrown up (literally) with the least amount of design work possible, the cheapest labor possible, and the cheapest materials possible. So that Profit could be fed, mind you.

And I realized, they charge tons and tons and tons of money for these things, putting people into debt for 20-30 years or so, all for a glorified box which isn't half as well-made as those in, say, the 1970s.

Okay, I'm not an expert, but I know that of the few people close to me who've had new (expensive) houses built these days, there have been numerous major problems, clearly visible mistakes that should have been noticed and fixed by the builder, in *every* house. There's no commitment to quality anymore - you can't even BUY a house with smooth interior walls anymore. All the major builders require you to have a texture on the walls. Why? So they can better hide some of their mistakes, poorly fitted drywall panels, etc.

Fuck that. I'm not buying into this system anymore. It's making me nauseous. I feel like my soul is being sucked out through my wallet.

Yesterday, here at the office, the air conditioning went out for a couple minutes. The blissful silence was a striking reminder of just how incredibly *loud* (and unpleasant) the everyday background noise is. We get used to it, so we take it for granted - it seems as though it's always been there and always will be there.

Bullshit.

I have heard the silence, and it is beautiful, and I will not forget. I will not put up with being treated like a sub-human slave for the sake of someone else's Profit. Not anymore, anyway.

In other words... I'm going to tender my resignation today. Two weeks. It's all I can stand, barely.

[ rants ] 2001-02-28

So I replied: to the obnoxious person who sent me the e-card. Here's what I wrote:

You wrote:
> Shut Up.
Um, no. I like to write, and it makes me feel better to do so. Occasionally, people actually like what I write, which is a bonus, but it's not why I do it.
> What drugs are you taking?
Caffeine is the only one I take on a regular basis. There are others that I take more infrequently and in moderation, but they're legal and they help me to feel better.
> You profuse with incoherency.
You make it sound like that's a problem.
> Did you ever get an education?
Define "get an education". I've had three years of college, but never graduated. Does that make me some kind of idiot not allowed to write a weblog?
> Were you a child brought up with religious beliefs that you have learned to disdain?
No. I was brought up as a Unitarian Universalist, which tended to lack concrete beliefs beyond "every person has dignity and worth". A bit too wishy-washy for me, after awhile. I'm thinking of starting my own religion eventually, though. I'm sure you're thrilled!
> I sense confusion, bitterness and misdirection in your life.
I'm confused about certain things, yes indeed. And I'm certainly bitter sometimes, about various topics. And yes, I've been misdirected in my life, sometimes by myself. I think these things are common to a great many people, actually.
> I sense no inner peace within you.
I have more than I usually hint at, but I am working on making it grow. Why are *you* worried about *my* inner peace?
> You need to reach out.
I do. To my friends. And my family. And sometimes to strangers whose ideas I like.
> Get some guidance and counseling.
Guidance? Of what sort? I scarcely think that there's anyone who knows more about what I'm going through and where I'm headed than I do. I almost went to counseling last night - couples counseling. Does that count? My uh, partner failed to realize we were supposed to go early this week, so we missed the appointment.
> I am sure there are many local agencies that can help you.
Like what, Planned Parenthood? Hahahhahahah. Actually I was thinking of the incredible help that Goodwill would offer me, serving as a useful place to drop off a lot of my unneeded material possessions, which tend to clutter up my life these days.
I am not sure what your deal is that you feel the need to go around insulting someone like me. I hope that someday you learn how inappropriate and hurtful it is, and that you stop.
-Beth

[ rants ] 2001-02-26

Typical bullshit: I totally missed this when it was going on, but while going through the archives at NowThis, I see that apparently Hillary Clinton caught a lot of flack for not having as polished of an appearance lately.

She's been faulted for not dressing as nicely as she used to, having a more utilitarian hairdo, and not wearing much makeup.

What a crock of shit! This is straight out of the book The Beauty Myth - if a woman is in a position of power, she will inevitably be harshly judged about her appearance - "she's too ugly and unfeminine to be doing the things a woman *should* do". And of course she can't win, because if she looks *too* good, she will be considered incompetent because she "obviously got there just based on her looks, not her abilities".

When, oh when will we get past this crap? ARGH!!!

I want to send Hillary a note telling her that I think she's great for focusing on her job more than her looks these days...

[ body rants ] 2001-02-19

Things I will never do again: Well, I have a long list of these things, and as of Saturday evening, I have a new one to add:

I will never again have my upper lip waxed.

Sigh. It all started out so innocently - I went in to get a haircut for me & Elena, and while Spencer kept Elena busy outside, my hairdresser, Gina, suggested the waxing. She had mentioned it before, but I had always been too chicken.

She cajoled, told me it would only take a minute, etc. "Oh, alright", I agreed, having become extremely sick of my stupid moustache's bushiness (and having tired of bleaching it repeatedly, only to have it darken once more).

In other words, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

How many huge mistakes in human history have fallen under that description? Too darn many. Anyway, the waxing itself was uneventful, over in a minute or two. It hurt, but it wasn't a big deal.

I gleefully awaited the calming of my reddened skin, to be followed by a several-weeks-long enjoyment of my bare, feminine-looking area-above-my-upper-lip. So I thought...

Well, the first sign of trouble was that it was still red when I got home, and still red several hours later. By the time I went to bed, I realized the extent of the destruction I had wrought.

Yes, dear readers, I had several tiny little zits, where my oh-so-sensitive skin had decided to close up over the ripped-out hair follicles. Oh, crap. Soon they were joined by at least a dozen of their brethren. Every time I look in the mirror, there are at least half a dozen more. Eeeeuuuugh!

Okay, I'd like to trade in my way-too-hairy and prone-to-ingrownitude genes for some new ones, please. I'd prefer wispy, blonde body hair, or actually none at all, if that option is available. Pretty please?

So, I am greatly embarrassed to even leave the house, but I have a sense of humor about it. What, after all, am I afraid of? Will crowds of people circle around me and point and laugh at my upper lip? No. So I am forcing myself to sort of get over it. Or at least, not dwell on it too much.

Each day that passes is a day closer to full healing of this monstrousness. And when I finally return to my normal, moustachioed self, I will have learned something.

Namely: stick to the bleach, and count myself lucky.

Then again, I have been considering laser treatment (I know, it could be even worse - I could end up with ingrown-hair-zits AND permanent skin discoloration, not to mention an empty bank account). Maybe it'll be a few more years before I seriously consider messing with it...

If I hold out long enough, maybe someone will invent nanotech-enabled hair transplantation, and I could donate it all to some bare-pated person who would be happy to have the Hair Follicles That Cannot Be Conquered.

Until then, I guess I'll have to hope that society suddenly embraces the aesthetic of Aunt Bunny (from Eddie Murphy's comedy routine, y'know, the one he was terrified of kissing, to the point of tears?). It could happen.

It'll happen right around the same time that scars, stretch marks, saggy boobs, varicose veins, and cellulite come into fashion, that is.

[ rants ] 2001-02-16

Why? Why do I feel I have to try to understand how cognition works, why people think the way they do, and how this can be affected in positive ways?

Because of crap like this Trokosi ritual slavery in Ghana:

Trokosi is an eternal penance. When one woman dies, her family has to bring a new girl to the priest, who is then initiated with the Trokosi ritual. Some are younger than 10-years-old.
The girl kneels in the shrine in front of him and the village elders, all men. Then, while chanting, they strip her of her bracelets, her earrings and all her clothes until she is bowed and humiliated in front of them.
From then on, she is a slave. She is raped frequently.
If she escapes and is caught, she is beaten. If she gets away to her superstitious family, they just send her back.

What is it that can cause people to do this to their own children? Why is a human mind capable of destroying that which it holds most dear? How can this be prevented?

I've got my work cut out for me, that's for sure... I don't know if I'll ever achieve a good answer, but I have to try. From my privileged position, there is a lot I can do...

[ rants the net ] 2001-02-16

Jerks. NSI sells domain registrants' info.. But, I would be an idiot if I expected anything different.

I've already gotten some spam like this, asking me if I wanted to switch hosting providers. Fuck that. Grrrrrr. Guess I'll be having to come up with some good email filtering, soon.

[ design rants ] 2001-02-15

This is just plain stupid: A cell phone that purports to "predict your ovulation cycle". What a total crock - not only do such things vary tremendously from woman to woman, but also from time to time for the same woman (especially if she's lactating, under stress, or experiencing varied hormonal shifts for other reasons).

If you check your basal temperature and cervical mucous regularly you can get an idea of what's currently *happening* with your ovaries and related parts, but no stupid phone is going to predict it for you. Really.

Now, if you could enter your individual data into the phone and have it graph it for you or something, that would be cool, but I seriously doubt that's what they're getting at.

I'm assuming that they probably programmed into it that ALL women have exactly 28-day cycles and ovulate on day 14. Which is total bullshit. That assumption, and the assumption that every woman will have a 280-day pregnancy, are both totally wrong. Yet the doctors and other clueless folks trot out the charts or wheels and proclaim loudly that this is how a woman's body functions, and people thus believe it.

Sigh.

[ rants ] 2001-02-14

Lotus gets ready to cut jobs: So sayeth (DEAD LINK) Techweb. And of course, in true corporate spirit, the cuts are planned to finish by the end of the month... that is, two weeks before bonuses are scheduled to be paid out. Isn't that clever of them?

Jerks. Sigh.

If I get laid off (and I don't think it's very likely), the severance package sure as hell better make up for not getting a bonus, that's for sure.

[ rants ] 2001-02-13

Frickin' post office: was closed at lunch. CLOSED! I've never heard of such a thing. So I waited for a little while, then went to Poke-Jo's for some bar-b-que. I got half a pound of turkey and some sauce, to go. I went back to my car and waited some more.

As the line of people waiting grew, I realized there was no way I could wait. It'd be another ten minutes (at least) for the Post Office Personnel to show up, then who knows how long waiting in line. Grrrr.

So this piece of mail that I wanted to send Priority to get there on time, I will have to send tomorrow, as Express. I just couldn't wait any longer - my bowling and errand-filled lunch hour had already stretched too far.

But anyway, the Post Office is always freakin busy. What's up with that? It's so damned aggravating. A person should be able to send a package without having to make a special trip in the middle of the work day and waiting in a huge line. Total blasted inefficiency.

There oughtta be a law.

[ rants ] 2001-02-12

IBM helped Hitler: I heard about this on the radio the other day. Truly disturbing. At this point, I definitely want to read the book to find out more. Here's a quote from the story above:

"IBM did not invent Germany's anti-Semitism, but when Germany wanted to identify Jews by name, IBM showed it how. When the Reich wanted to use that information to launch programmes of social expulsion and expropriation, IBM provided the means. When the trains had to run on time between concentration camps, IBM offered the solution."

You can argue that the maker of a tool is not liable for the nefarious uses to which it might unknowingly be put, but it sounds so far that IBM was far from naive about what was going on. And as Mars Saxman wrote (in a comment at metafilter about the electronic recording of faces of everyone entering the Superbowl this year):

If you keep making a process more efficient, eventually it becomes capable of doing things that were uneconomical before, and is thus a de facto new process. There is, after all, nothing a computer can do that a human with a pencil and paper can't - but the fact that the computer can do it so much faster makes it a new situation capable of doing new things.
So the effectiveness and efficiency with which this is done is exactly the point and exactly what makes the system new and therefore suspect. Things can (and will) be done with it that could not be done before, simply because it is automated and fast. It's perfectly legitimate to suggest that these might not be things we WANT being done.

Without IBM's help, surely, Jews would have still been killed in vast numbers. But at least Hitler's forces would have been a bit slower about it - having to work with pencil and paper to do their dirty work.

Overall, I'm repulsed and saddened. And I guess it gives me yet another reason to quit working here. I really don't want to be associated with such a company. I am curious to see what the Official Corporate Reaction will be - I'm worried it'll be the typical denial of responsibility that one would expect. And that would truly, deeply, disappoint me.

Of course, I worry on the one hand that the value of my IBM stock will go down. And then I worry that it *won't*, that no one will care, or think that this would make IBM a stock less worth holding. I don't know which is worse.

[ design rants ] 2001-02-12

I broke my monitor: Yesterday, I committed the stupid naive sin of assuming that my computer monitor could withstand horrific treatment. Yes, that's right, I cruelly turned it off, then came back several hours later and turned it on.

In response to my obvious negligence, it promptely broke internally, such that the screen looks mostly white, totally warped, and it's completely destroyed.

Just like the first one I had.

You see, I did this months ago, with another specimen of the same monitor, which is a no-name brand that came with my CompUSA pc. Anyway, I had taken that one back after it fried (from the same cause), and gotten the new one. I also managed to aggravate an old back injury in the process, triggering weeks of pain, but that's beside the point.

So now I have to go digging (again) for the receipt, and take the damn thing back (again), and try to get them to give me a new one (again). AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

I just want my stinkin' monitor to work, is that too much to ask? I'm not on the bleeding edge of uncharted technology here. This should be simple stuff. Instead I end up with crap that's completely defective, for no good reason, and I harbor fantasies of drop-kicking the damn thing right through CompUSA's front window.

Combined with the problems I've had with my cd-writable drive, it's just about enough to put me over the edge.

Well, not really, I just like to vent about it, because it helps me calm down.

This is going to be a royal pain in the ass. Sigh.

[ rants ] 2001-02-07

I need a "disgusted horror" category: I just decided to look up sex offenders in my neighborhood. Bad idea.

First, in my zip code, there are 26. Um, that's a lot. I don't like that number. I'd prefer it to be zero, please.

And then, I couldn't help looking at the nearest one, a mere four blocks away from us. Four *short* blocks, mind you.

He assaulted a six-year-old girl.

Six.

Okay, so I click on the link to view his picture, for some stupid reason.

All I can think of is hate.

All I can think of is "not *my* kid".

All I can do is imagine the fury I would feel at anyone who ever even thought of harming my daughter, much less attempting it, much less actually succeeding.

They would die the most horrible death imaginable. At my hands.

This is what I'm thinking right now. Just the thought of harm coming to her brings this out in me. And I'm not a violent person.

And then I think about how on earth I will cope with not being able to protect her, her whole life, from everything. And how fragmented our society is, how anonymous, how insane. And what the hell am I going to do?

What can I do?

I'll think of something...

But in the meantime, I stupidly wander to see what some of the other sex offenders in my neighborhood have done to get themselves on this registry.

The next one assaulted a three year old.

Whatever it takes to protect her, I'll do it. I'd kill for her, I'd make such a person wish they were never born.

But will I be able to be creative for her? To be afraid of looking and feeling like a doofus but still stick with my proposed solution(s) for making life better?

Well, she deserves it.

All of them do. All of us do.

Hmm. Thinking, plotting, planning...

[ mammalog rants ] 2001-02-07

Scummy, scummy people: really piss me off. On Lactnet, someone just mentioned (DEAD LINK) this lovely PR campaign by a company in Chicago. It was done on behalf of infant formula manufacturers, who worried about their image after publicity about infant-killing marketing tactics was making the rounds.

PCI organized a series of editorial board briefings with major metropolitan newspapers across the country for a team of company officials. Editorial background briefings were held in the 18 top markets to correct misconceptions and misinformation among editorial policy directors, editorial writers, and medical and consumer affairs writers. PCI initiated the contact with media, prepared top company officials for these sessions, prepared leave-behind materials and accompanied company spokespersons on the sessions.
...
The goal was to provide accurate, documented information so that future coverage on the editorial pages would present the facts fairly. The editorial board briefings were successfully conducted over a period of several months. No negative editorial appeared in any newspaper subsequent to a visit by the company team. Ultimately, the issue subsided.

Okay, this is really, really making me angry. Being able to buy a falsified happy-face public image like this makes me want to vomit. Those bastards - both the ones who market baby formula in a way that they know attacks breastfeeding, and those who help them to cover that fact up.

Grrrr... I agree with Bill Hicks about sales & marketing types - they should do us all a favor and just kill themselves.

Okay, no, I am not really advocating violence. Take it metaphorically, then - they should "kill off" their sales & marketing personas, and take jobs doing something useful, such as cleaning toilets.

[ rants ] 2001-02-07

B U S T E D!!! Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. They finally realized I'm not doing as much at work as I *ahem* should be. I won't go into detail about how long my little lack-o-motivation thing has been going on, but suffice to say I have to turn it around. Now.

My manager was as nice as he could be, and I must say I'm grateful that our little meeting that we just concluded was over the phone and not in person.

But still. Crap. Sigh. To tell the truth, I *do* owe it to my (very nice) team to at least clear away the bulk of this leftover crap before I go...

I feel a bit like a heel. But not too much. The progress of modern civilization has not been halted due to my negligence.

Or has it?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to my new career as a freelance whatchamacallit or whatever. As long as it's not as mind-numbingly boring as this job...

[ body food rants ] 2001-01-31

I feel like crap today. And I just thought that you should know. Eeeeuuuugh. I brought my ibuprofen, though, so that should help. And I brought some comfort food, including the Roberts family special Cream Cheese N Chive Dip. And I get to have as many Pepsis as I want today. I sure I hope I feel better tomorrow, when I start the first day of my two-day doula training.

I'm pretty sure I'll be better, since this sort of thing usually has one bad day and then gets better. Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, as Tammy Wynette said, and it has nothing to do with giving all your love to just one man.

But of course this is only one component of how bad I feel. Oh well. I think I need a "whine" category - rants just doesn't cover it when I'm feeling self-pity instead of anger. Of course, I can no longer add new categories at my whim, but that'll change when I switch everything over to thirdhand. Muahahahha!!!

So here's the dip. Warning: ADDICTIVE. Once when we were just little bitty kids, my mom made a recipe of this stuff because company was coming over, and before they arrived, my brother and I got to it first. My brother ate all the chips and I ate all the dip. Smeared all over my face, even.

Roberts Family Cream Cheese & Chive Dip
One standard-size block o cream cheese (regular Philly recommended)
A little bit of milk (a few tablespoons or so)
Chives - fresh if at all possible. You can add some freeze dried ones if you must, but it's just not the same flavor.
Potato Chips - Ruffles recommended, but Lay's work well too.
Let the cream cheese sit out on the counter for awhile - this is the preferred, "lazy" method. Or if you're in a hurry, stick it in the microwave on half power for about 20 seconds, and check it with a fork to see if it's slightly mushy. If not, nuke it a little bit more, but don't overdo it.
Put the slightly softened cream cheese in a bowl. Add a little milk, a tablespoon or two or so. Mix up the milk and cream cheese with a fork until it's smooth. Add extra milk if needed to create the desired consistency (softer if you don't want to use dip knives, and you have thin potato chips, for instance).
Wash your chives, then chop them very finely. Add them to the cream cheese, and stir until uniformly chivey. Test the flavor with a chip and the dip that's remaining on the fork. Hide the dip before your company comes over so you won't be tempted.
It is contrary to the spirit of the dip to use low-calorie or low-fat ingredients - this is a once-in-a-while kind of treat, so you might as well go all out. But of course it's up to you. Some recent heretics have suggested that adding seasoned salt to the dip adds flavor, but my brother and I know that it merely adulterates the purity of the cream cheese & chive dip experience.
Enjoy!

So now I get to dig in to my dip. Aren't you jealous? You can watch on the webcam as my troubles melt away with each bite...

[ rants ] 2001-01-30

Today was a lot better than yesterday: But it was still really, really annoying. To wit:

I go to return the videos this morning, and some stupid pedestrians stand in the road right in front of my car as I'm pulling in to park, causing me to block traffic from various directions. Pedestrian #1 gets a clue and steps back to the curb, but Pedestrian #2 stands there staring at me like a deer caught in headlights, unable to move, apparently. I in turn raise my hands in disbelief and give her a look that says: "Go across the street or get back on the curb - make a fucking decision, lady!". Eventually, she did, but it took her *far* too long.
It took me twenty minutes to find a fricking bowling ball today, and still the one I got sucked royally. Why do all the smaller balls have tiny weensy little holes? It's a conspiracy to annoy me, it is. Plus I bowled horribly. At least there was one bright spot - Spencer did incredibly well on his second game, something like 90 points over his average!
It has hurt to walk all day, due to certain (*ahem*) topological disturbances I've been having. So I've had to do far more walking today than normal, due largely to horrific parking karma. And when I had to put something in a mailbox, of course it had to be a mailbox across the street - I couldn't find one that I could reach from the car window. Oh no, that would involve less pain, you see.
In the bank drive-thru lane, I got behind the slowest dumbest woman on the planet, except perhaps for the pedestrian mentioned above. I had to wait forever for the little tube to come to her. Oh goodie, I think, she's done, she'll leave. No. It was not to be. She had to fill out some forms, laboriously, then put the thing back in. Then she *CHANGED HER MIND* after she hit the "Send" button, and tried to get it to stop and give the thing back to her. It jammed, and sat there useless for several minutes until it reset itself. She finally got her stuff and started to pull forward. "It's about fricking time", I thought. She pulls forward two feet. And stops. I wait. She's messing with her papers. She pulls forward another foot. And stops. I just about *SCREAM*. Finally she gets far enough ahead of me so I can reach the tube and do my simple transaction involving depositing ONE simple check and getting nothing back except a receipt, which takes me all of thirty seconds.
It still hurts to walk. This sucks. I feel like an *old* person. I'm not even thirty!

Boy, I sure can whine. Listen, if I don't whine here, then it all bottles up inside of me and I feel even worse. So this is therapeutic for me. I'm sure you're pleased to know that.

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

Please don't make a black hole, guys: Am I the only one who worries about these fellows smashing atoms & stuff into each other repeatedly, looking for denser and denser matter?

"The hope is that by smashing such nuclei together, we can create pressures, densities and temperatures very similar to those in the first microseconds after the Big Bang, and thereby -- on a tiny, tiny microscopic scale -- recreate a smidgen of quark-gluon plasma as it existed in the early universe," said Columbia University physicist William Zajc, spokesperson for one of the four experimental teams matched to the four detectors.

Okay, so, um, what possible benefit could we get from a breakthrough like this? Really. Is there even an answer to this question? Does it have any potential to make life better for people?

I don't think so. Maybe I'm just stupid, though. Why don't we work on eradicating polio or TB or something instead? Or, dare I say, overpopulation, hunger, pollution, something like that?

I just worry one of these days they're going to get matter so dense that it'll make a black hole and really, really screw things up. It makes me very, very nervous. I mean, they don't really know quite what they're dealing with, right? This is why they're doing experiments, is my understanding - because they *don't* comprehend fully what this type of matter can do.

I like science. I just don't see why this is so important - if we're going to spend this money on science, how about funding ways to get renewable energy gently (i.e., not by building dams), efficiently, and cost-effectively?

Argh. I wish I ran the world. I'm thinking this on a more frequent basis lately.

[ consume design rants ] 2001-01-29

Take my George Foreman grill, please!: I finally tried the thing out this weekend, and well, it sucked. (It looks like Sarah Bruner likes hers a lot, though).

For me, this was what was involved:

The raised metal ridges that produce the grill-lines cause the meat to be overcooked (burned) and dried out wherever they touch. Not good.
It doesn't actually drain much grease. I cooked about 1.25 lbs of 85% lean ground beef, and only about three drops of grease dripped out. There was plenty of grease left in the burgers, which got all over the plate I set them on afterwards.
The meat was undercooked in the middle. Really. With all the heat directed at the parts of the burger contacting the ridges, the middle loses out, much more so than when cooked on a traditional flat surface griddle. I'm sure if I knew more about heat transfer, I would be able to explain exactly why this happens.
It splattered grease all over the counter, via the open sides.

So... I'm going to look for a new home for the thing. Used once, and that was one time too many. Good thing I only spent twenty bucks on it.

And to replace it, I'm going to get a standard covered electric skillet. It can cook four burgers at once (instead of only two), has a lid so it won't splatter all over, and it will cook them more evenly (plus, you can make onion soup in it). And I'll do my usual maneuver of soaking up the grease with paper towels - this is far more effective than the George Foreman grill's techniques.

Feh! It's going out, out, out of my house!

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

Oh, *crap*: Please, please, let this polling data (from Salon) be wrong. Please?

There are some signs that foes of abortion have quietly gained ground in recent years. In September 1995, a Gallup poll found that 56 percent of Americans described themselves as "pro-choice," compared with 33 percent who identified themselves as "pro-life." Responding to the same question in October 2000, 47 percent identified themselves as "pro-choice," while 45 percent identified themselves as "pro-life."

Having W in the White House is scary and awful enough, but if there really is enough support in this country to materially restrict abortion rights, then it's... I'm at a loss for words at how awful it is. Ugh.

[ rants ] 2001-01-29

I'm stuck in a dial-in meeting: and my brain is melting. Really. I can't stay awake, I can't listen to what's going on, and it hurts.

What's worse is that I'm supposed to be taking meeting minutes.

I just can't escape the fact that everything that everyone is saying in this meeting is utterly meaningless to me. And, I suspect, the rest of the world...

Bzzzzz, I'm nodding off. I'm so bored, I can't even think of a good way to describe how bored I am.

None of this stuff matters. Really. It's just mumbo-jumbo.

Why is every damn thing annoying the piss out of me lately? I have no idea. One could blame hormones and cite PMS, but I don't think that covers it. I think the world is getting more annoying. And it's aimed directly at *me*. Or maybe it's a sign that I need to change my way of life drastically.

I think so. But of course I have to wait until I get my bonus. About six weeks. We'll see if I can stand it that long...

[ mammalog rants ] 2001-01-27

Enough already! Okay, I think I've been puked on enough in the past 16 hours. I would gladly change places and be the puker instead of the puked-upon (and I really, really despise puking, so that is really saying something).

My wee little lass started spewing forth last night, after she fell asleep, and as I was laying in bed next to her reading. With no warning, mind you.

She was sleeping blissfully, cutely, soundly one moment, and the next moment she was sputtering, then she immediately woke up, and was throwing up another burst as I scrambled to get her to a sitting position. This terrifies the crap out of me every time it happens - aspirating vomit is one of the things that can kill a person in an extremely nasty way (just ask Jimi Hendrix, or was it Jim Morrison (or both? I can't remember)).

So after a few more volleys, she was empty and we had a messy bed, a messy little girl, and a very messy mommy. I took it all in good spirit, overall. I rushed the crying small one to the tub and tried to comfort her without having to hug her *too* closely. I rallied Spencer to deal with the now-unsavory bed.

In a little while, we had new sheets on the bed, and a clean Elena and a clean Beth. We were tired, but we were okay.

We were merely being set up for Round 2.

I hoped she could just nurse to sleep, but apparently the nasties in her gastrointestinal tract had other ideas. So, in the middle of nursing, the poor child threw up yet again. And again.

So we repeated the drill - into the tub, change the sheets, comfort the child, start the laundry, etc. She finally fell asleep on the couch while Spencer watched some international soccer match. I had had enough, so I went to sleep in the front room (my side of the bed needed to air out with Febreeze to get rid of the lovely odor).

In the morning, Spencer brought her to me and told me she sipped water through the night periodically, but always brought it up afterwards. Poor, poor thing :(.

This morning she nursed and managed to keep it down, though, so I thought we were out of the woods. I gave her a little banana, some apple juice, and we watched Homeward Bound II and A Bug's Life. Then, as I was taking a mommy break in the bathroom and tending to my own business, she came in with a videotape.

"Doggies!" she said. "Yep, that tape has doggies on it - we just watched it a little while ago--" "Uuuurrrrrrppp!". At least she was on tile this time, instead of a bed. Of course she started crying, she was covered with vomit again, I was distraught, and I realized yet again that there are few things in this world as pitiful as a small child plagued by repeated vomiting.

So... into the tub (short trip - 12 inches this time), roll up the rug, spray & wipe the floor, set aside the tub toys for washing & disinfecting later (as well as the videotape - glad it was still in the plastic cover!), clean off mommy, take a deep breath, and be glad that I'm not puking too. Yet, anyway - I think I've got something similar, but it's not affecting me as strongly as it is her.

Spencer came back from working out, we called the doctor, and she nursed to sleep. And no puking at the moment. I'm crossing my fingers. She had a good 3-4 hours to absorb her morning nursing session before throwing up, so I think that helped her quite a bit. I'm hoping this one stays down too, at least for awhile.

Poor kid. I wish I could trade places with her and do the puking for her, to spare her the pain. And also because I know I make less mess when I do it. :) Heh.

What a cruddy way to start the weekend. Really. But of course I'd rather she be sick at home where she can't transmit it to other kids, and where Spencer and I can take turns taking care of her. I hope she feels better soon.

This is one of those times that I'm unquantifiably grateful that I live in the modern era, where we have machines to wash the pukey clothes, as many warm baths as we need, and powerful medical assistance should we need it. I cannot imagine how awful it would have been to have a sick child way back before antibiotics were around, much less indoor plumbing...

According to the doctor, we have to see what kind of traditional output (wet diapers) she has in the next eight hours to determine whether or not she's dangerously dehydrated. I'm hoping she'll turn the corner and be right back on track. But if not, we might have to take her in and get her an IV or something. Really quite an unpleasant idea, but if that's what she needs to stay reasonably hydrated, I'll have to buck up and try not to cry when they give it to her.

[ rants ] 2001-01-25

IBM = I'm Being Moved: Well, actually, I was told the joke was that it stood for I've Been Moved, but you get the idea.

Yesterday, they told us in a brief, hastily-called meeting that we're being moved across the street, to the older part of the IBM campus here.

To a building with very few windows. Which are narrow. Ugh. But they tell us that the ~~veal pens~~ cubicles are bigger and taller, and that it will be better because we'll have more space, and so on.

I'm the eternal cynic, so I see the whole thing as fraught with peril. Parking is going to suck horribly, and this building is hemmed in on all sides by other buildings (that's why there are so few windows).

Of course, they briefly considered relocating us to one of the other nice new buildings on this side of the street, but that wasn't suitable. Oh, no. Not at all. Because, you see, these buildings are set up with offices instead of cubicles. And that doesn't "meet our needs". See, we have to have an open cube format, so that the employees don't get uppity from having a door that they can shut for privacy. And so they can concentrate on their work.

Okay, I'm pissy about it. I've read Peopleware, and learned how important the quiet and privacy provided by walls and a door are to technical workers being able to get their jobs done. But I also see how offices are used as a status perk here, and such things piss me off. If offices are so bad, then how come managers get them? So they can bitch people out in private? C'mon, they can reserve a conference room or guest office for that if it's required.

HINT TO IBM: Microsoft gives everyone offices. So I've heard. It doesn't seem to hurt their profitability. Get a clue.

I hate feeling like a second-class citizen because I don't merit anything more than a glorified open carboard box. Screw that! Oh yeah, and they *do* give offices to some technical support analysts - the ones who reach Principal level. Does this diminish their effectiveness? I think not. Does it diminish the ability of colleagues to contact them? I think not (hell, we have Sametime, email, and so on...).

All I can say is that if we're stuck in cubes and can't even have windows anymore, then we at least deserve good-quality indirect non-fluorescent lighting.

Who am I kidding? They'd never give us that. That might actually give us a little bit of comfort and dignity, and any penny spent on such things is a penny stolen from shareholder profits.

So the move is slated for April, they say. I may not even be here by then. I hope not...

[ rants ] 2001-01-19

Driven to distraction: Why do all these things happen on the same day?

They test the fire alarm system here at work - this involves two separate, loud p.a. system announcements preceding the test, plus the actual test (now going on), which is also very LOUD and impossible to ignore
I get three Sametime chat requests, which cause a pop-up window to get in my face while I'm trying to do something else. And when I leave the chat, the other person has to say "bye" afterwards, causing it to pop up again, just so I can see that they said "bye".
Someone comes up behind me to ask me something, startling the crap out of me (not literally).

Okay, it doesn't seem like much, but this is more distraction than I have had in the past several weeks combined. And the day's not over yet.

Of course, this is probably annoying me more than usual due to the lack-of-caffeine thing. I'll be glad when this withdrawal is over with.

Until then, I'd like to work in a cave or something, with no connection to the outside world (not even a net connection) so that I can actually concentrate...

[ my site rants the net ] 2001-01-19

I sent her a reply: As follows:

I didn't read your site [again], but I did get some really uncool email from people who think you're wonderful. I dunno if you asked them to do this, or suggested it, or what, but the hypocrisy level is pretty high, as is the personal insult level. Including some very pointed attacks on my mother's housekeeping skills - my mother who was incredibly weak from battling breast cancer. Gee, how nice of them. Are you glad to know that some of your supporters behave in this way?
Of course it sucks having your stuff ripped off, especially without credit. I totally agree with that, as I wrote in my email to you. I just think it's a bit absurd to try to have an impossible level of control on the web, where data duplication is the rule, rather than the exception. To me, it's a lot easier and less hassle to just share in the first place. If I write or create something that someone finds useful/good/pretty, then I'm happy to let them use it (as long as they don't make a profit on it). I recognize the right of others to differ on their views, of course. It just seems a bit harsh and cold to me, especially the extreme degree to which you take it, forbidding "imitation". That's the most strict copyright notice I've ever seen, anywhere on the net - that's why I felt moved to say something about it.
I have to confess I laughed out loud at the irony of your copyright site getting ripped off. But then again I am a big fan of certain kinds of irony. I believe there are other sites with copyright info that *are* freely distributable, so people probably just assumed (incorrectly) that yours was as well. You might consider making the whole thing a bit shorter, or putting the "do not copy this" text at the top rather than buried further down, so that people will at least be sure to be aware of your policies.
Just out of curiosity, do you forbid Google from indexing (and caching) your sites? You might want to look into it if you are really totally against all forms of unauthorized copying. I'm not sure exactly how preventing it is done, but I believe it's possible. I read somewhere that the Google cache has actually saved several sites from destruction, because their host or internet provider lost all their data. They were able to get everything back from the Google cache - it functioned as a very good unofficial backup. So copying isn't *always* all bad. (in my opinion, anyway)
When it comes down to it, attempting to keep everything you create on the web from being copied at all or even imitated is just a losing battle. You're bound to be frustrated repeatedly by people who don't bother to ask for permission (and who may genuinely be ignorant, not malicious). They may even do it for good causes, to promulgate beliefs which you share (such as the sanctity of copyright, for example). Being unfriendly towards them is just shooting yourself in the foot, really.
And literally speaking, when someone accesses one of your webpages, all of the data is "copied" to their machine instantly, before they have a chance to even read your copyright statement (and before they even decide whether they want to read the whole page). Copying in this fashion is how the web functions...
I wrote *about* your email on my weblog, but I didn't quote anything. You definitely succeed in having quite a chilling effect - not sure if this is your goal, or what. Is having people terrified of you and what you might do to them (like sue them) worth the price of not having your stuff scarfed? Or maybe you consider it a bonus.
-Beth
p.s. you can freely reprint or quote this email, provided context is not lost or abused in order to change my meaning.

[ my site rants weblogs ] 2001-01-19

Gee, I seem to have started a flamewar: Well, the lovely lady I sent my nastygram to yesterday sent me a reply. I dare not quote even one word of it, of course, because she might sue me. She even said something about how she *could* sue me, because her law firm has an office in Texas, in the email, and then below claimed to be joking. I don't really feel like taking the risk, though.

So, she also tracked down my site and my weblog, and apparently wrote about it in her weblog too. Now I'm getting nastygrams from her readers, too!

Lovely.

So.... #1 is from a fellow who uses the following epithets towards me and my rant (directly and obliquely):

loser
"look like a real idiot"
lacking credibility
obnoxious
lacking class
not intelligible
"a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum"
pathetic

Gee, nice tone! Makes what I wrote to her look darn mild. This writer also tells me that it was not appropriate for me to bring her kid into my little rant. Heh. Ooooookay. I thought it was pretty benign, and I didn't say anything except "cute kid" in the email that I sent directly to her. She had to sleuth and find my weblog to read the other comments, which she presumably did willingly (I didn't give her the address).

But anyway, we'll return to this topic later, since evidently it's okay to bring in *my mother* and the status of the cleanliness of her house into this whole thing, at least according to another of this illustrious lady's readers.

#2 comes from someone who thinks that it's not the lack of Pepsi that caused me to write my rant, but rather lack of Prozac. Oh, dearie me. I hate Prozac, haven't touched the stuff in years. Zoloft is another story, but I am also weaning myself off of that at the same time as I'm reducing my caffeine level to something more reasonable.

But I surmise that this person was attempting to insult me by suggesting that my mental state was not normal. Sorry, didn't work - I *know* my mental state isn't quite normal, and I'm not stigmatized by the idea of taking an SSRI.

This person goes on to explain what a wonderful person the copyright lady is, and how she's done so much for people who don't want their artwork & stuff stolen from their sites. Okay, that's great! Good for all of ya. Nothing wrong with that.

I don't really see how that has anything to do with me being annoyed with the attitude expressed in her forbidding even "imitation" of anything at her site(s), though. I saw something that annoyed me, and I told the source why I felt it seemed unreasonable and unfriendly to me, and why I wouldn't visit her sites in the future. But apparently this makes me some kind of demon worthy of any kind of insult that people care to sling at me.

Let us continue with more of #2. I am accused of jealousy (uh, in yer dreams), of attacking her "out of the blue" (um, isn't any feedback on any website, positive or negative, from "out of the blue" by definition unless you already know the person?) (and isn't this author's email attacking *ME* "out of the blue"?), and a suggestion is made that I may be in for "tons" of email defending the copyright lady. I'm sure my employer will be happy with the stress on the email system if it really amounts to "tons" (since bits don't weigh anything, how many messages is that, anyway?). I would just like to suggest that sending me "tons" of mail at my work address is something that is likely to make IBM upset. At you. So I would suggest using one of my other addresses.

I'm also told that I'm missing out on her lovely websites (okay, whatever, somehow I'll get over it by reading the other billion or so pages on the web), that I'm a sad individual (this is true sometimes - I do suffer from blue moods at times, don't we all?), I should be ashamed of myself, and I have "no heart, no shame and certainly no conscience".

The icing on the cake is that this person then chastises me for even *mentioning* her son. This is quite ironic, given the "p.s." to the message, wherein the author proceeds to deride me for the appearance of the room in one of the pictures on my site.

It is suggested that I clean up the house before taking pictures, that there's "crap" all over the place, and other comments including apparent incredulous horror that there are liquor bottles on the mantle, and so on.

That's my mother's house. It was messy because she's been dealing with breast cancer for the past couple of years - chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, the works. She didn't have the strength to tidy things up to someone else's arbitrary specifications, especially when they're just looking for something to insult.

You talk about stooping low, about inappropriate attacks? I call this *way* out of line. I'd like to see the status of the house of the person who wrote me this after *she* had a horrible, debilitating, years-long fight against cancer, and ended up so weak for a time that she couldn't even retrieve her own mail. No, that's not true. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, even someone who was rude to me. I would just hope that she would realize how out of line those comments were. And how they didn't succeed - you didn't make me feel bad, you just made me realize how uncool people can be when they're looking for *anything* to insult someone about.

Personally, I think this is worse than my nastygram, but I figure each person can decide for themselves.

Oh yeah, and those *are* liquor bottles on the mantle. It's wine, given as a gift to my mother. I fail to see how it's worthy of derision for any reason. Maybe I'm just stupid?

I never thought the choice of where I stood when I asked my mother to take that pic of me would have such ramifications... heh, what a crazy world we live in.

Let's move on to message #3... in which I am called "moronic", and offered this highly ironic advice:

Didn't anyone ever tell you that sometimes it is best to just hit the back button if you see something on a website that you don't like?

Advice which apparently does not apply to the author of this missive.

I am also called "a very unhappy person" (which is true sometimes), and this person seems to think I put the nastygram up on my weblog "proudly...like a badge", and that this is "mentally sick". Uh, I put up all kinds of stuff here, whatever's going on in my life, what I think, see, etc. Some of it I'm genuinely proud of, but other stuff is just stuff, and I don't typically make a clear distinction between the two. Interpretation is left up to the reader.

And further on:

Also, you wrote that you hope that her baby learns how to share. That is the one that really made me want to hurl.

That's right, *how dare I* hope that someone's child learn how to share - what a horrible monstrous person I am to even *think* such a thing, and write it down no less, where people can actually *read* it! If I were truly possessing a black heart, I might also state that it would be nice for any given child to grow up to be generous, or kind-hearted, or loving, or healthy, or smart. But I dare not, for fear of the Hell that would be unleashed by such clear violations of What Is Right.

The next bit of the letter is:

Listen, smartass, you should worry about how your own little girl is going to turn out, especially with a person like you for a mother.

Oh my. For the record, I worry each and every day how she's going to turn out. That's part of my job as her mother - to continually worry and consider and make choices and watch carefully to see how she's doing, adjusting what I do as appropriate to keep her on the right course. Apparently this person thinks I am likely not to be a very good mother - this is my interpretation of these words. Well, history will tell, won't it? Personally, I think I do a rather good job, overall, though I certainly have my bad days, my days of little patience, and times when I am just not sure what to do. It's a tough job.

The letter concludes with a request for me to "get a life". No thanks, already got one!

That's it for now. Anyway, you get the idea of how people will react to such a thing. I confess I am surprised, though not very.

What I find almost amusing is the level of hypocrisy - I am decried for daring to have a difference of opinion and expressing it in a snide, snotty way (I freely admit to this attitude), and the decriers proceed to level bitter personal attacks against me for my crime, far worse than anything *I* did when I suggested that I hoped the copyright lady's son would learn to share when he grew up (unlike his mommy).

But so it is. Make up your mind yourself - am I a cretinous lunatic bitch? Or am I a person who expresses her opinion and who is sometimes snotty, especially when I'm withdrawing from caffeine?

And please, please, pretty please - don't email this lady. Cause it will all come down on *my* head, probably, and I've already got enough email to deal with as it is.

Unless of course you think that she's wonderful and I'm a mentally defective loser, in which case I think she'd probably be glad to get your message, so go for it.

[ good my site rants ] 2001-01-18

Aha! I fixed the caching problem: I asked y'all to help me, but ya didn't, so I had to actually look for my own lazy-ass self. A search at Google for "webcam refresh problem" yielded this handy site which tells me that I needed a meta tag of the "Expires" variety in order to get around IE's idiotic caching even in the face of a Pragma no-cache. Jerks!

What's humorous is Microsoft's recommendation to get around the bug in IE 4.x where it ignores the Pragma no-cache tag - they suggest you add an extra "head" section to your html, below the body and before the closing html tag. I am not making this up.

And for IE 5, they decided not to bother even attempting to support it at all, so you *must* use the meta-expires tag to force it not to cache. Idiots!!!!! Why can't I set this in my user preferences? I *thought* I did, when I told it to check every time I visit the page for any changes. Argh.

[ rants ] 2001-01-18

I wrote her a nastygram: Let's see if she sues me! Okay, I'm being really harsh today, maybe it's the lack of caffeine. I had only one Pepsi yesterday (I usually have at least 2-3 every day), and today I have had none so far. Anyway, here's what I wrote:

Hi,
I wandered to your weblog today, and liked it, but then I saw your copyright stuff. "Nothing is available to take or imitate". Geez, that's pretty harsh.
Oh crap, I just quoted you! Are you going to sue me now?
Sigh. I read your whatiscopyright.org site, too, by the way. No, I'm not some cretin who goes around scarfing other people's writing or design elements or anything like that.
But your attitude seems to imply that if I were so brash as to have a column in a table the same width as one of yours, that it would be construed as ILLEGAL INFRINGEMENT.
Or maybe the line is not really drawn that far, but then again, I'm not sure where it is - you've drawn the line further than anything else I've ever seen, with the simple word "imitate", so I'm scared to step anywhere near it.
Frankly, I have decided to avoid your sites in the future, since I prefer more friendly areas of the web. That is, those that don't go out of their way to inform me how important it is that I don't *dare* even think about imitating anything about them.
Plus, you're a lawyer, so I know you are likely very able to make my life miserable should I accidentally ever be inspired by anything on any of your sites. It's too dangerous for me to view them, given that possibility.
I think that clear overt plagiarism is obviously wrong, and certainly nobody should be making a profit off of someone else's carefully created words or designs. But forbidding imitation? (what kind? You don't specify, so one must assume *any* imitation at all, no matter how abstract...) Asking for special images to be shown when someone so much as *links* to your whatiscopyright.org site? C'mon!
There's what is reasonable, and what is feasible to expect others to do, and then there are your sites...
Don't worry, I'm not under any delusions that you'll care about my opinion, or the fact that I'm not going to visit your sites anymore. I just felt like venting, since your clear unfriendliness really got my hackles up today. I'm withdrawing from caffeine these days, so this may have something to do with it, I dunno.
By the way, cute kid.
-Beth

I was tempted to make some extra-snotty crack about how I hope her cute little baby son learns to share someday, unlike his mommy. But I realized that would be over the top.

See, I *do* have tact! A little tiny bit, at least...

[ rants ] 2001-01-18

An extra freezer answer: Which I am afraid to quote here, because of the nastily-worded copyright notice on the site. It says: "Nothing is available for you to take or imitate."

Geez, how unfriendly. Thanks!

I guess I did "take" something, though - that copyright notice. Heh. Ah well, call it Fair Use, since I'm commenting on it.

Anyway, this is the page with the reference to something stored in a freezer for a long time (second paragraph from the bottom, not including the date line). Oops, I just took that thing-inna-freezer idea from there. And the URL. Doh! Sue me! How abstract do I have to get before the author would deem it fair to come after me?

I dunno, I just find such a copyright notice rather obnoxious. Or rather, it's a snotty little copyright *addition* - she already has a copyright notice, above it.

I wonder if maybe somebody seriously plagiarized her or something, to make her so defensive. Who knows?

Does she ever "take or imitate" something from someone else, without explicit permission?

It's not the "take" I object to so much, it's the "imitate". I mean... it's such a nebulous concept. Obviously I am against clear plagiarism, but c'mon. Imitation is verboten? Geez.

If your ideas/writing/design are so great that you can't bear someone daring to imitate at all, then fine, keep 'em to yourself!

Hmph.

Oh, good lord, I just looked at her site, What Is Copyright?, and it's worse than I thought. And she's a *lawyer*. Okay, now this makes sense.

Sigh. Some people just don't know how to share, at all. I'd prefer to avoid such. So her blog isn't making it to my list o blogs, and I'll likely never bother visiting her site again. I mean, there are so many more worthy sites out there that *don't* go out of their way to snap at you about how you absolutely mustn't imitate anything about their site, ever, at all.

For the record, I freely share my site design stuff here, the little stone sun & background (which I carved & scanned myself) are free to use, I just think it would be nifty if people would let me see what they've done with it, that's all (oh, and don't *sell* it, or I'll get snotty on yer ass).

[ rants ] 2001-01-10

Okay, this is making me nauseous: It almost seems too horrific to be true. Some stupid woman has started a so-called "Surrendered Wife Movement", convincing women to give themselves over to their husbands without question. I think I'm going to vomit. From (DEAD LINK) this article:

Sex was another big change. "Most men are not interested in having sex with their mothers, and that is who we remind them of when we try to control them. A surrendered wife always says yes, and is always available for sex," she said.

Ewwwww. It's like the Stepford Wives without all the bother of actually having to take obedience-inducing drugs.

[ rants ] 2001-01-08

Good nutshell summary: of why and how health insurance companies are screwing people over, in this article:

This episode clearly illustrates how the business of medical insurance in America works today. The theory behind group health insurance is that it is supposed to spread risks and costs so that the healthy subsidize the sick. That is a fair trade-off since most of us at one time or another will need some sort of expensive medical treatment. The use of these forms, however, makes clear that insurance companies are doing their best not to sell insurance, but to sell prepaid services to people who are unlikely to need much medical treatment or, at worst, who will only need fairly predictable and inexpensive services. As a result, these companies are no longer in the business of spreading risk, but of avoiding risk.

Nicely puts into a few sentences what I've been thinking for a long time. The overall article is about the invasive privacy-breaching questions that health insurance providers ask before they even deign to give coverage (which of course they can drop as soon as the customers actually need significant care). Highway robbery!

[ design rants ] 2000-12-24

This got me thinking: How, in a database system, do you handle someone who has been known by more than one name? In Amazon's system, Mr. Mellencamp is known as John Cougar Mellencamp. I don't know if they have "John Mellencamp" as an artist name at all.

But, interestingly, if you search for John Mellencamp, you'll easily find one of his albums, which is titled: "John Mellencamp". So it's handled neatly, in a way.

Heh. That's kind of elegant, actually... By the way, that album came out in 1998, and that's the one with the I'm Not Running Anymore song on it. And Amazon has it listed as being by: John Cougar Mellencamp. I think he'll be trapped in databases that way until and beyond his death.

This brings me to something else, namely, the Credit Hell Saga. I recently got one of my credit reports, even though the credit agencies protested that they couldn't believe I really lived where I say that I do.

To my surprise, I'm listed on there with my old, married name. First of all: Ewwwwww. I dislike that name. Strongly. Sigh. So that's the first thing I'm going to correct.

But that's not even the interesting part. The current address and two previous addresses aren't even mine. They must be my ex-husband's. Lovely. Not that I cared, but now I know where he lives. I guess if I wanted to send him a card or something, I could (I don't). But in a way, it's nice to know that he's living in a state that I have no plans on visiting, so I will hopefully not run into him. Yippee.

But since I'm talking about the credit report, I might as well say that there are three (3) separate items that I've paid off that show up on my credit report as still being debts. Grrrrr!!!

I hate this, I hate this, I HATE THIS!!!!

One is for $23. One is for $485. And the last one, the most infuriating one, is for $1971. This is the one that I settled with Discover, and have already had to fend of TWO (2) separate collection agencies RIGHT AFTER I paid the settlement with Discover. I had to hit them over the head with the settlement letter that says: "Beth, you paid us half, it's considered all taken care of now". I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Those bastards, HOW DARE THEY. I can't believe that they not only get me to pay the settlement (with extreme financial duress when I paid it - it took all the money I had for two months), but that they then try to get me to pay the settled half AGAIN with TWO separate collection agencies, and then STILL keep it on my credit report.

I'm so mad I could throw bricks at them! But of course I won't. Instead, I'll just rant in my log, and make all my poor readers scroll down to get to the point where I actually say something (relatively) interesting, instead of just figuratively raising my impotent fist at the Financial Powers That Be Shafting Me.

Don't get me wrong - I do not object to having stuff on my credit rating that is TRUE. I'm not trying to weasel out of anything. I just really, really, really want to inflict some serious wedgies on the responsible parties who have continued to screw me over for the things I paid off. I want to make them feel at least one one-hundredth of the discomfort I am feeling.

Okay, I feel a little better getting that off my chest.

[ rants ] 2000-12-24

I hate it when that happens: So yesterday we head off to the Westlake Farmer's Market, and what do you think we find?

A little sign that says "CLOSED - TODAY ONLY. See you next week!"

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

This is inexcusable. I mean, really. They have a website that says "open year round", not "open year round except for when Beth decides to show up". Well okay, "open year round but not right before Xmas".

It would have taken one stinkin' little sentence to warn me. How obnoxious. Sigh. So we drove all the way out there into Egregiously Rich Neighborhoods for nothing. Grrr.

I guess this illustrates a peril o the web - just because someone has a website doesn't mean you can trust what they say, or assume they'll actually include pertinent information (such as closures, *ahem*).

What really gets me is I had even consulted a calender [sic] of one of the vendors that was supposed to be there, and they list their presence at said farmer's market yesterday on their calendar. Specifically.

You'd think that if anyone knew ahead of time that it was going to be closed, it would be a vendor who had to travel a fair distance to get there. But of course, expecting them to share that knowledge with *me* is obviously too much to ask.

...

I'm starting to worry if the rant entries / total entries ratio is getting too high. Perhaps I should keep a running total of what it is, and also show what it's been in the past week and month, so that people can get an idea of what sort of part of the trend I'm in.

But then it can't follow trends, because if it did, then I'd know when to expect more aggravating things (or a relative respite from them), and the universe doesn't work that way. Because if it did, I could actually cope better and not be so surprised and disappointed so much.

Okay, I'm whiny today. Need more caffeine and chocolate.

[ rants ] 2000-12-22

May I sign up for a different world, please? It just never ends... I find this interesting article about a study that purports to show that personality traits may correlate with soup preferences, and where, oh where does this lead, dear readers?

Come now, you already know.

This is the world we live in.

The study author concluded:

"Now that we can show differences (between soup and personalities), we can show how people who eat (foods like) soy are different from people who don't eat soy," Wansink said. "From here, we can determine how to target these people and encourage them to eat soy."

It's all about targeting a market, of course. About making people who don't want something want it, so that someone specific can make a profit.

This shouldn't be what the world is about, but it is. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yeah, I wanna do something about it - I've got a lot of work to do, please give me time.

[ rants ] 2000-12-22

Item #3985 on the list of things that make me sad for my country: Coke gives "gift" of commercials to Library of Congress at an elitist bash.

I'm sickened, really. The Library of the nation should be too sacred to defile in such a way.

The reporters of this story actually had the cojones to say, loudly: "Why are you using a public institution to promote a junk food product?"

And for this they were tackled by cops and evicted from the proceedings. I'm glad they stood up for the honor of the Library, though. At least *someone* did.

P.S. Coke sucks; Pepsi is the Elixir Of Life.

[ consume rants ] 2000-12-21

You think *you* got it bad? Well, at least you're not an Indonesian woman working in a factory for Nike, facing humiliation and inhumane treatment when you ask for your legally protected unpaid "menstrual leave" of two days per month. Not to mention being denied a bathroom break (or the horribly inadequate numbers of bathrooms). What total scumbags. It sickens me that people can treat others this way.

Sad to say, this kind of thing doesn't surprise me so much anymore. When all that matters is Profit, what's a little human dignity?

This is the environment of fear and injustice that is created by multinational corporations concerned solely with maximizing profits. An environment where tens of thousands of women bleed through their clothes every month because they associate greater pain with asking permission to go to the bathroom than with sitting in clothes saturated with blood.

[ beauty design rants ] 2000-12-20

I hate it when cool people die: and there's been a lot of it going around, dammit! Today's newly-found-out death involves Dr. David Huffman, the guy who invented Huffman codes (a way to compress data, used in a wide variety of applications) when he was a grad student at MIT.

I was looking around hoping to find a web page of his, since I had recently looked back at the webzine Grafica Obscura, which has all sorts of nifty stuff, including a page featuring Dr. Huffman and some of the neat things he created by folding paper. I was looking for his web page, hoping to find instructions for making some of those nifty things, and I find that he died last year. Dagnabbit! I found a slashdot thread that includes comments from some of his former students, and more background on how he developed Huffman codes.

Anyway, also at Grafica Obscura they show how a laser cutting machine can be used to cut paper precisely. I wish I had a laser cutter so that I could make my cut paper cards (like the ones pictured here) more easily - it gets darn tedious with the xacto blade.

This particular laser cutter goes for only $353,550.00, so c'mon, don't be a cheapskate, buy me a nice xmas present!

[Yes, I'm trying to be a little whimsical to hide how bummed out I am that such a clever, brilliant guy is dead. From cancer, no less - too many people are getting cancer these days...]

[ rants ] 2000-12-15

I watch Discovery Health a lot: these days, and they have some really good shows (such as Birth Day - I've got fourteen episodes taped already, and I'll post a review here soon sometime).

There's a really annoying ad I see over and over again, though. It's for a Time-LIFE collection of children's songs - 100 songs on 4 cd's.

It drives me nuts, because instead of singing "the itsy bitsy spider", they sing some misbegotten monstrous imitation called "the incy wincy spider". What the hell? "Wincy"!??!? This word evokes in me the image of a spider grimacing in pain, or perhaps the Sisyphean struggle of repeatedly ascending the water spout.

So, I turn to the arbiter of all that is correct (in the English language, anyway), Google:

itsy bitsy spider - 6,890 hits
eensy weensy spider - 838 hits
eency weency spider - 489 hits
itty bitty spider - 478 hits
eentsy weentsy spider - 238 hits
incy wincy spider - 233 hits

So there you have it. They chose the *most hugely incorrect form* of the song - even "eentsy weentsy" scored higher.

What were they thinking? Probably some doofus in a position of high power enforced his or her impudent will upon the hapless children forced to sing the song this way.

Imagine the discussion and debate that went on during the recording of the song - whoever insisted on "incy wincy" must have been vastly outnumbered by those knowing the True Correct Form, "itsy bitsy". It makes ya wonder, it does. Well, me anyway.

Makes me want to write Time-LIFE and tell them that I would have bought this collection, but for the incorrect version of "itsy bitsy spider". But really, I have better things to do with my time, like sleep.

[ rants ] 2000-12-14

As if it weren't bad enough: To have to do tech support here (like I used to do but don't do anymore), apparently (DEAD LINK) working in tech support at Pacific Bell Internet is orders of magnitude worse. Yikes. Big Brother and all that. Yeesh!

[ design good quotes rants ] 2000-12-14

Mars rants eloquently: in this comment at metafilter. In part:

<<The more control designers have over the look of their application, the better!>>
NO NO NO! My computer exists for ME TO DO THINGS WITH, not as a canvas for designers to express their overweight egos on. If I want my windows to look different, I'll install a different GUI theme/window manager/skin/whatever, and thank you very much for respecting my decision. It's my computer, not yours, and the fact that I accidentally misstepped onto your misbegotten website does not give you permission to fuck my screen up any more than the fact that you gleaned my email address off some newsgroup gives you permission to mail me MAKE_MONEY_FAST advertisements.

And further on in another comment, he adds:

Even in the optimal case that your custom window widgets can do all of those things in as convenient a manner as the native GUI widgets did, you still experience a net loss, because the user has to learn your system. They can't apply their existing knowledge of How Windows Work to your window; they have to spend time learning your design, decoding your icons, shifting their expectations about where to click. Maybe it's a small amount of time, but you, the designer, still lose - unless you think your design is more important than the user's convenience, in which case you need to have your designer's license taken away.

Preach on, Brother Mars!

[ good quotes rants ] 2000-12-13

Good SCOTUS quotes: That is, the Supreme Court of the United States. I just read all 65 pages of yesterday's decision (well okay, I skipped and scanned a little). Here are my favorite bits.

Justice Breyer, dissenting:

The Court was wrong to take this case. It was wrong to grant a stay. It should now vacate that stay and permit the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether the recount should resume.

Justice Ginsburg, dissenting:

I might join the Chief Justice were it my commission to interpret Florida law. But disagreement with the Florida court's interpretation of its own State's law does not warrant the conclusion that the justices of the court have legislated.
...
In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.
I dissent

I noted well the absence of the word "respectfully" from Justice Ginsburg's "I dissent" statement. All the other dissenters included "respectfully". I get the feeling she's highly peeved, as am I. You go, girl!

Anyway, it'll be a mess, who cares, Dubya's moving out of Austin! At least if he has to be President, it's going to be really lame for him. He's the Fraudulent Monkey Puppet President. This will be a loooong four years, but it'll end eventually, and his little smirking butt will be outtathere...

[ rants ] 2000-12-12

This means WAR: My cd-r drive is driving me absolutely batty. I bought some new burning software yesterday at CompUSA, because I thought maybe it was Adaptec EZ CD Creator's fault.

It wasn't. The damn thing still will not burn mp3's to the cd.

It would be one thing if it simply didn't work altogether, then it would be some kind of straightforward failure. But oh no, it's not anywhere near that simple. The basic facts:

The pc is only a few months old and hasn't had any major problems, except for the first cd-r drive going kaput. I replaced it with a brand new HP CD-Writer Plus 9100.
The new HP drive worked great when I first got it. I installed it and happily burned one (1) cd full of mp3's (well, automagically translated to the cd format as it burned).
A while later I tried to burn another one, and it simply would not work. Adaptec EZ CD Creator 4 told me that I didn't have a cd-r drive selected when I tried to hit the "record" button. This behavior continues to this day.
Adaptec EZ CD Creator 4 will happily tell me all the pertinent information about my HP cd-r drive when I look at "Drive Information". It pretends that everything is fine.
The drive works fine whenever tested by any program as part of a "System Test" procedure. I can read from it, and test writes to it work fabulously.
I can *copy existing cd's* using this drive. I've done this twice since the mp3 failure, and it works fine.

Stuff I've tried already:

Downloading and installing the firmware patch for my drive from HP's website. No improvement.
Uninstalling and reinstalling Adaptec EZ CD Creator 4. Repeatedly. No improvement.
Removing and re-adding (& reinstalling) the drive, at the software level. No improvement.
Buying different cd-burning software (Hot Burn, aka Burn & Go). No improvement (I got some weird I/O error when I try to write to the drive, and this software will NOT copy cd's as EZ CD Creator 4 will do - I get some error about unexpected table of contents.)
Scanning for viruses with the Norton Antivirus that came with the PC (it does not have Live Update included). Never had a single virus or suspicious file, from day one.

Please, someone help me! I am about ready to kick the damn thing down the stairs for all the aggravation it has caused me.

I might dump it off at a computer repair place in town or something, and scream "FIX IT!!!" at them, but I feel I first must avail myself of all other opportunities to fix it myself.

I am still researching, still trying to figure out what I must be missing. Please, give me any clues that you can! I'm desperate! And I'll be eternally grateful to anyone who can help me fix the damn thing.

I know the drive works because it'll burn copies of cd's - so something else is going on, but I don't know what. I just wanna burn & convert mp3's, is that so much to ask?

[ rants ] 2000-12-08

Sometimes I can be such a freaking idiot! I missed my skip-level meeting today with my manager's manager. Argh! I remembered that it was today, but not what time. I had meant to look it up yesterday, but it slipped my mind.

So this morning, as I'm getting ready and Elena is sleeping, I log in from home to check my schedule, and sure enough - I had already missed it. Argh!

So I sent a big "mea culpa" email to her and explained that with Spencer gone this week it's taking me a long time to get everything ready for Elena in the mornings all by myself, but that next week I'll be staying late each day to make up for it, yadda yadda yadda. I worried that I sounded whiny and desperate or something. Oh well. I figure it's better that she understand why I was such an idiot.

Anyway, she sent me email, we'll reschedule sometime, it's not that big of a problem I guess. I just feel like such a bonehead. I hate when this stuff happens. I am such a cretin sometimes.

[ rants ] 2000-12-07

Credit monstrosity update: So it turns out that both Equifax and Trans Union don't believe I live at my current address.

Bastards!

So my next step is to explicitly *prove* to them that I do. I will also throw in whatever documentation I can dig up of all the other addresses I have used in the past five years.

What a royal fucking pain in the ass. I mean, they certainly have no problem *denying me credit* while believing I live here, why should they be such jerks about *not showing me my own credit report* because I might be some malicious impostor merely *pretending* to live in my house (which I've been at for over a year, btw)?!?!?!?!?

Credit is hell.

And, for the record, I am a person who slavingly *PAID OFF* all of my debts. I could have declared bankruptcy, but NooOOOoooOOOooo, I called each and every one of my creditors, and I paid off each one, bit by bit, once I was making enough money that I could do so.

So this is my reward for paying them back - I am not even allowed to see my own credit report.

It's a wonder they don't get bombed more often, really. (No, I'm not advocating anything of the sort; I am quite non-violent). I'm just saying, if this is how they treat someone like *ME*, imagine how badly they are shafting other people out there, on a regular basis. People who have fewer scruples and less self-control, that is.

Oh well. Time to jump through more hoops. They hold all the cards. They could require me to amputate a finger in order to prove I am who I say I am before they'd show me my own fucking credit report, and I'd have to comply, because I'd have no choice.

Yeah, I'm bitter. Can you tell?

[ rants xmas ] 2000-12-01

I missed my chance! Oh, I am so regretful right now. GRRR!!!

As soon as I heard that pets.com was going out of business, I went to their website and tried to order one of those sock puppets before the whole thing shut down. Well, my browser crashed (thanks Microsoft) and I couldn't complete the purchase. I was going to try to remember to re-do it at home.

Well, I forgot, and now it's too late. :(. I really wanted a pets.com sock puppet. I'm so, so disappointed. Really. Honestly. If I could get *one thing* for Xmas, that's what I'd want.

But there's probably no hope. Argh!

[ rants ] 2000-11-29

Definition of a man: someone who, when you ask them to buy you some Little Debbie [tm] Swiss Cake Rolls [tm], comes home with the special *holiday* version with cherry creme instead of the traditional, white, sugar-flavored creme.

This, when they know that you don't like foreign flavors adulterating your holy chocolate experience.

And so, you stare into the cabinet, with no satisfying chocolate to be found, and you see these misbegotten monstrosities, these Cherry-fied sacrileges, occupying space where the real thing should be. In your chocolate-begrudged state, still addled from recovering from a major nasty bacteriological nightmare, you stare at the cabinet and think "If only.... if only he had *listened to me*. Then I could enjoy my Swiss Cake Rolls [tm] as they were meant to be."

But you realize that you can't have them, that the faux-rolls would not only clog your throat with their impure chocolation, but possibly even induce vomiting by their very presence in your digestive tract.

And so, you resign yourself to the only solace to which you have access: you raid the surplus Halloween candy.

(okay, this is the definition of *one* man. But those others of you out there, take heed and don't make this mistake. For goodness sake, take a cellphone to the store with you rather than buy an inappropriate chocolate product for your lady!)

[ rants ] 2000-11-24

Greenspun's off the mark on this one: I found this article about managing software engineers via Joel on Software, and I find I disagree with it quite a bit in certain places. I mean, I understand Greenspun's concept here - he sees programmers as merely machines for turning money into code:

If you see one of your best people walking out the door at 6:00 pm, try to think why you haven't challenged that person with an interesting project. If you see one of your average programmers walking out the door at 6:00 pm, recognize that this person is not developing into a good programmer. An average programmer's productivity will never be significant in a group of good programmers. If you care about profits, you must either come up with a new training program for the person or figure out the best way to terminate his or her employment with your organization.

Geez, what a recipe for burnout! He seems not to consider that the programmer leaving at 6pm might be leaving to participate in the rest of their life - y'know, being a mother, father, son, daughter, friend, husband, wife, athlete, reader, musician, artist, etc. What kind of life is it to do nothing but code, all the damn time?

What a crock, really. It might do nice things for the pocketbook of the person running the programmer into the ground, but does it really do any favors for the programmer? They're never ever going to get those hours (weeks, months, years) of their life back. Is *everything* open to be sacrificed for the almighty Profit?

Not to me. Ugh. This sounds like indentured servitude, even if it does come with an aeron chair and a pinball machine.

[ rants ] 2000-11-22

I realized why it bugs me so much: that is, the story I ranted about earlier about the girl who was killed in the "rebirthing" therapy (sorry I don't have permalinks, that's something I'll include in my new site design though).

The thing is, it's one thing to do evil when you know you're doing evil - to hurt someone intentionally, to be violent by choice, to steal, to lie, to place your needs above someone else's, etc.

And it's another, far different and more hideous thing, to intend to do good and have the result nevertheless be evil. I mean, these idiotic misguided people thought they were doing the girl a favor, even as they were killing her. Really. That's part of what makes it so repugnant.

To me, part of why it's so repugnant is that... it's a type of mistake almost anyone can make. I mean, who in this world, has ever avoided hurting someone when they intended to help them? In a small way, even a little bitty tiny bit? We are all vulnerable to such miscalculations.

Not anywhere near as vast as the ones involved in Candace's death, but still. It's frightening. And terribly, terribly sad. And part of what makes us human, I guess.

Just bein' melancholy today.

[ rants ] 2000-11-22

I called Equifax: and I told them to just send me the damn thing in the mail. "It'll take *5 to 7 days*!", the operator warned. Oh, gee, how will I ever cope with the delay. :P

Apparently everyone's having the timeout problem. The operator has evidently been told that it's not a problem with Equifax's system, and they don't know whose system is causing it, but they're looking into it. Well, that's what she told me, but I think she's being fed pure caca. Which I ain't eatin'.

Damn, this whole thing is making me uncharacteristically sassy. Probably a defense mechanism so that I can cope with the humiliation of having bad credit, and the aggravation of trying to get it fixed.

[ rants ] 2000-11-22

Equifax's website officially has its head up its ass: And it seems to be wedged rather firmly, I might add. I believe recent events warrant my strong language. To wit:

Yesterday I got the standard bs message about "we were unable to process your payment, we'll send you email when you can come get your credit report online once we get it all figured out." Okay, no biggie. So today I have a message that says "All right, it's all fine, we've got your money, so come look at your credit report."

Fine & dandy, thinks I. So I go, I enter my login and password, it recognizes me, I think, oh goodie, I'm almost there. I click on the link to view my credit report, and I get a message in HUGE letters:

"Sorry, you have been logged out automatically due to inactivity."

Excuse me? After approximately twelve seconds since I logged in? Isn't that a little... excessive?

So I try again, same result. What a bunch of idiots. Okay, okay, there may be decent, clueful, hard-working people at Equifax, but the people in charge of implementing the website are not among them.

This is JFR (just fucking ridiculous). It doesn't even work, and it's a simple operation. One would think. But then, one is clearly, massively wrong.

I'm going to have to call them and straighten this out. I should have done the whole damn thing by snailmail in the first place. AAAAARGH!!!!

[ rants ] 2000-11-22

Absolutely, Hauntingly Horrifying: I came across this story at Follow Me Here, and I had to read the whole thing, and it's still haunting me with its horrific-ness.

It's about a 10-year old girl who was killed during a "rebirthing" therapy. She had been adopted, having been taken from her birth mother at around age 5 because her birth mother was deemed unfit.

Apparently all was not well between her and her new mom, who felt as though she couldn't "attach" to her (the girl to the mom). Other people who knew the girl say she seemed normal, though. Who knows, outward appearances can be deceiving sometimes.

Anyway, they went to Colorado so that they could give $7,000 to unlicensed therapists and spend a week doing the "rebirthing" therapy. They adjusted the girl's medications (she was on stuff for ADHD, *of course*) drastically.

Then, while they videotaped it (so the therapists could show their "successes" to other potential clients - this was routine), they wrapped Candace up in a sheet on the floor, wrapping all four corners together and twisting them. Then, 673 pounds worth of adults, cushioned by pillows, pressed in on the 70-pound girl, and urged her to try to be "reborn" to her new mom.

This went on for a *long* time - I believe over an hour (read the story for details).

She couldn't do it. She struggled as hard as she could, she said she couldn't breathe, she vomited, she even defecated in her pants. They told her fine, do it. They assumed she was just being manipulative, as "unattached" children are wont to do. She told them she was going to die. And she did.

They didn't even realize it at first, because they left the room, after they felt she wasn't trying to be "reborn" any more (well, being dead would tend to preclude that type of activity). Only when they came back did they bother to check on her, and found her lifeless, blue, and murdered.

This is just one of the most sickening things I've ever read in my whole life. I don't even know what to say, really. I am facing an overwhelming urge to kick the people who did this in the head, repeatedly.

It's going to take me a while to process this, to get it out of my head. I feel... dirty, sullied somehow, for knowing about this. But I also feel that it honors the poor girl who died, Candace, to bear witness to what happened to her, to imagine what she went through, to pity her, and to despise the people who did it to her. And somehow, maybe in some small way, to understand *why* it happened in order to ensure that it never, ever happens again.

Candace died because of bullshit. Severely wrong ideas in the heads of the adults charged with helping her did her in. Her mom thought she was "unattached" and needed this rebirthing thing to be able to have a healthy relationship with her, the therapists thought they had a clue, and they thought this whole scheme was somehow safe.

And worst of all, they believed strongly enough that this girl was an object, a thing, not a person. That she would manipulate them to any ends, that she would lie about her suffering, that her suffering didn't *mean* anything compared to what *they* were trying to achieve.

How dare they.

How dare they treat another human being that way! I hope they suffer the rest of their lives, remembering her cries, her pleas for help, her falling limp, that they left the room, that they ignored her. I hope it roils and burns in their hearts and minds every single day that they have remaining in their long, useless lives.

So I'm a little angry about this. But I think it deserves anger. Lots of it.

I'm waiting for my daughter Elena to wake up so I can take her to school. I'm going to go kiss her and snuggle with her now.

None of the Above

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