August, 2008:

I was rather surprised to find out after lunch today that my position has been terminated at my now former employer.

I’m so surprised that I can’t even comment. Though I suppose I should be grateful that I finally get some time off.

Someone sent me this link about cats with wings in China. If one really cared, and had some amount of drawing and storytelling talent, here’s a new Marvel Comics hero idea: ordinary, fluffy cat in Sechuan province gets overheated from warm summer temperatures and is subjected to toxic factory fumes, sprouts wings and flies around, saving the day. Not sure what it’s saving the day from, but if the comic’s written in the US we could just say Communism. Or from underage gymnasts, if we want to keep it current.

Between the wings and the extra toes cats seem to be growing these days, it’s just a matter of time before world domination, really. For some of the polydactyl cats the extra toe combines with the one beside it to act like an opposable thumb, so eventually there’ll be this feline army reminiscent of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, and you remember how they treated Toto.

A workmate turned me on to the Meow Mix Think Like a Cat Game Show (warning: flash site that shows you why flash sites are wrong), which seems utterly horrid and pointless, but no more than anything else I suppose. Since I am still somewhat embarrassed by how much I like cats and adore mine, there’s no way in hell I’d ever allow myself to be filmed admitting to any of that, let alone competing on my ability to understand what my cat’s thinking. I wouldn’t presume to have a clue about that, anyways.

I stopped saving up cat links for these Friday posts, so I’ll just mention rahen z‘s Nyanko set of cats in Japan. I wonder if cats really are that common on the streets as these photos suggest.

In case you were wondering: the reason I haven’t been blogging is because I’ve become a boring person. A more boring person than before, that is. When you’re boring, it’s really hard to fake being interesting, especially on the internet where plagiarism can be verified.

I’ve also become an annoying person, so I’m doing you a double favour here by staying away from the “Publish” button. Boring and annoying is a bad combination. You could add smelly for a trifecta of suck, but I did just have a shower, not that you’d know this.

I’m boring and annoying because all I’ve been doing lately is either working or worrying about work or worrying that I’m working too much or worrying that I’m worrying about work too much. And not sleeping. And worrying about how I’m not getting enough sleep. The realization that this is a recursive pattern of FAIL isn’t enough to break me from it.

I’m supposed to give a review about the Zune mp3 player I got free from Matchstick.ca a few weeks back, but the only way I could make it run was to put wheels on it and push it down a hill. The damn thing insists on Windows XP/Vista as its home base OS of choice, which hardly makes it an “iPod killer” since Mac users are shit outta luck and iTunes runs on both Macs and PCs. Oh, and the iPod has been reverse-engineered by Linux geeks, but the Zune 1. has fewer interested hackers, and 2. has proven to be a bloody nuisance and so far impossible to hack due to DRM and authentication protocols (from what I read).

I took the Zune to my dad’s to install the software on his PC. I waited over half an hour for the software to install (Dad’s computer is S-L-O-W) and then at the end I got the error message above. Grr. But since Dad was more interesting than me being mad at Microsoft I gave up trying to fix it after another ten minutes and spent the rest of the day with him.

I then decided to put a virtual version of Windows XP on my Ubuntu machine at work, using Virtualbox, to run the Zune software. Installed Virtualbox. Installed Windows XP in Virtualbox. Spent hours downloading and installing all the fucking service packs for XP. Installed the Zune software. Was installing drivers to allow XP to detect the USB ports (the last step) when somehow I broke Ubuntu. I rebooted and it wouldn’t get past the login screen. I rebooted again and it wouldn’t even get there. The sysadmin at work couldn’t help me so I spent most of last Monday reinstalling Ubuntu; and I had to work into the evening once it was up again. I am now avoiding putting XP on my work computer again as I feel the gods are telling me to stay away from the System Idle Process.

So far this Zune review is a FAIL, potentially EPIC should I try again and not manage to get the thing running. The device (which is so light it even sucks as a paperweight) is taunting me with a list of features on its screen, but if I try to click on anything it tells me to go to www.zune.net. Which is sad since it’s supposedly got a built-in FM radio and it shouldn’t need the internet for that, what with radio waves being in the air and all. Maybe it just doesn’t like me.

Sue and Jen have been blogging about trying out the Getting Things Done self-organizing system, which reminded me I should really get around to reading that book sometime, since I’ve had it for four years.

I’d amuse myself in that I’ve put off reading books on how to not put off doing things if I weren’t already drowning in irony.

I’ve become rather inattentive and impatient lately, to the point I can’t even watch half an hour of TV in one sitting (probably Tivo’s fault); so I’ve had difficulties reading the book since it has so many words. I need, perhaps, the Coles Notes version that tells me what I am to do in point form and pretty diagrams without bothering to tell me why, which is kind of obvious really. I think if I weren’t so busy with work I probably would find it easier to sit down and pay attention to large groups of words on paper, which doesn’t have Youtube.

I’m not sure what it’s like for software developers, as it’s been a few years since I was one (officially), but as a database administrator I have so many fucking things to do all the time OMGWTFLOLZ. I’m afraid to even think about how many projects I have going right now, so instead I just worry in general. And I’ve turned into one of those systems people who you contact to do something but they won’t do it unless you nag them repeatedly and/or threaten them with a meeting (hate!). And when you do get through to them they’ll email you in half an hour and ask you what it was you needed, because they don’t remember. So you have to resend them an email from a week or two ago that they already have but can’t find amidst all the other requests from you that they’re also ignoring. Yes, one of those.

I’d be pissed at me if I weren’t already me (since I get preferential treatment).

Hopefully the GTD ideas will help me, but I haven’t managed to get past the first chapter yet. I do, as well, have more important things to do in the meantime, like relaxation and sleep. I’ve been taking lessons from this expert:

When nobody was looking last Friday afternoon I used my cameraphone to snap this photo of my root canal x-ray. The root canal tooth is the second from the left, where you can see 3 white roots. The fact that you can see them shows that the nerves got removed and some gunk that shows up on x-rays got put in their places.

Friday was the second root canal procedure: the first was to get the nerves out and to shove some temporary antibiotic gunk in there, and that was the previous Saturday. Friday had the dentist remove that gunk and put in this other gunk.

I was a bit worried this weekend because the tooth was bothering me, and I was going to make a whiny call to the dentist’s office this morning but then I woke up and there was no pain and inflammation. The tooth, methinks, is taunting me. This will be the first time in weeks where I haven’t called the dentist on a Monday or Tuesday complaining of pain. I wonder if he’ll miss me.

As it is, I won’t miss him, even if he is cute. He was so busy on Friday trying to do 50 things at once (he’s the junior guy, and the senior partners were all on vacation) that I spent at least 20 minutes sitting around in an empty room with a dental dam in my mouth and the novocaine wearing off, waiting for him to come back and finish the procedure. And when he did, he burned my face a couple times with whatever instrument he was using to seal the gunk. Seriously, it left marks.

I really just wrote this post to show you the x-ray, although I guess it’s not that interesting. Don’t worry, I really do plan on shutting up about this soon, potentially right now.