*THUD*

owie

(Or in other words, I didn't get the job. Beaten out by someone with a bit more hardware knowledge.)

Just had an interview for a possible position, for a damn near immediate start. I think it went well, but I can never tell with these things - my instincts are all over the place, it seems. As a result, I'm now second-guessing myself all over the place and panicking about whether I might have put the potential employer off - was I too dressed up, too dressed down, too friendly, not friendly enough, did I give off the right vibes, the wrong vibes... aargh.

I've just let go of the trapeze bar and performed my triple somersault backflip with the half twist... now to find out whether the other bar is where I think it should be. If not... this is gonna hurt.

This entry was originally posted at http://megpie71.dreamwidth.org/839.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

It's been a pretty good week so far. I've managed to complete a fortnight's worth of job search inside three days (okay, a fortnight's worth of job search equals ten jobs, but still...) and one of those was a contact from a temp firm regarding a possibility. I've also managed to take my meds for three days running, which is a plus given I've been skiving off on the whole job for the past few weeks.

So, before I head in to my appointment with CRS tomorrow morning at 9am, I have to come up with a list of ten occupations I'd be interested in, and a list of about ten companies I'm going to be cold canvassing for work over the next fortnight or so. Oh, and a template for a cold canvassing letter to run a bit of a mail merge on (why spend hours typing out each one individually if I can get the computer to do the hard stuff for me?). Oh, and fill in my fortnightly form for Centrelink, but that's not really a hardship - they're not even asking for details of where I looked for work this fortnight.

Then I'm back to playing KH2 (even though it's one of the few games I've finished out of the pile). I was playing FF8, but I've given up on that for a bit, mostly because I've found myself up to the final disc, and we're up against Adel, and it's just battle battle battle, and I'm bored. So KH2 is a bit of a relaxation exercise, even if Aerith and Queen Minnie do seem to be battling it out for the position of "Ms Valium" (or possibly "Ms Hash Brownies") in their early appearances. About the only thing I have to watch out for is to set the timer on the fridge (it's a small digital cooking timer with a magnet on the back - hence "on the fridge") so that I finish playing at a reasonable hour and get to bed early enough to get enough sleep for my appointment tomorrow. One of the joys of Squeenix games, I've found, is that they don't have a natural "stop" point, where you can say "okay, time to get up and do something different". I mean, yeah, I can fully understand why, but sometimes it's just a little annoying.

This entry was originally posted at http://megpie71.dreamwidth.org/706.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

A big thank you to stopthatgirl7 at IJ, who gave me the invite code.

I don't know whether I'll be using this account regularly, or whether I'm going to be sticking with the IJ account for default posting. We shall see.

Now to go looking for all the folks I know who might be on here and see whether I can find them.

This entry was originally posted at http://megpie71.dreamwidth.org/376.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Okay, I've been peripheral in all of this. I've seen the links to it here and there (mostly on stopthatgirl7's IJ, although the first one I saw was at Hoyden About Town) and I certainly haven't read all the items or all the links related to it. So I don't know huge amounts about this.

What I do know is this: as a fan, and a member of the larger fandom community (however peripheral) I know when I'm being respected and when I'm not being respected. I could tell these guys didn't respect us.

How? Well, there were little hints. Things like their responses (and lack thereof) to fans in various threads - most of the time they didn't reply, and when they did, it was either so completely off-base as to be ludicrous (such as the infamous analogy between heterosexual women liking slash fiction and men liking to view images of non-gender-reassigned male-to-female transsexual persons) or so full of jargon and technobabble as to be incomprehensible (such as any number of responses when people asked how the heck the data they were obtaining from what appeared to be a social science survey was going to be used to create a neurological model of a human brain anyway?). In each case, the way questions from fans about the nature and content of the survey were answered (or not answered) was a clear indication of precisely how little our responses were going to be valued.

We were Other. We were Not They. We were Deviant. Oh, and we were also apparently Stupid.

One of the things I like about fandom, to be honest, is the way fandom at large positively embraces deviance from the norms - and I say this as someone who is white, female, heterosexual, cisgender, and largely vanilla in personal preference. So fandom as an emergent entity stepped up to the plate, and faced with the charge of Deviance, proceeded to respond by saying "well, how Deviant would you like us to be?" and "You think that's Deviant? Oh sweetie, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" As a result, the two researchers are now the subject of Real Person slashfic, tentacle-porn art, various macros and similar.

Meddle not in the affairs of fandom, for we are certainly swift to anger, never particularly subtle, and you look good on the bottom. Or with tentacles invading various orifices. Or as the meat in a sandwich. Or riding the train. Or however else you're pictured in the inevitable cascade of "point and laugh" which will accompany the swift dissection of your actions. Fandom is like the abyss - you can't look too deeply into it without it looking back - and neither you nor fandom may like what's found as a result.

There have since been any number of straightforward responses to the actions of these nitwits, which included things like contacting the university they were supposedly affiliated to (they aren't); finding out whether their research methodology had been reviewed by an Independent Review Board (it hadn't); explaining whether or not their research would qualify as Decent Neuroscience (it doesn't); and even contacting their publishers and agents to find out whether any of them knew what the hey-hold-on-a-second has been going on here (as far as can be figured out, they're not saying). Fandom as a whole is composed of people, and while some of them may well be stupid, others are far from it; still others have extreme google-fu, and most can find the answers to various questions online. Others can screencap, and are excellent at recognising when things are heading into "likely to show up on fandom_wank" territory. On the internet, your stupidity is preserved for posterity, whether you like it or not.

To any future nitwits who want to attempt to "research fanfiction" - some hints.

1) Check whether someone else has asked the questions you want to ask (and whether they're willing to talk about the answers they've received to those questions).

2) Be respectful of the fan community. People in the fan community are not just fans. They are also (variously) scientists, computer programmers, doctors (both medical and academic), researchers, students, teachers, bureaucrats, office workers,writers, labourers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, men, women, children, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents - look, you name it, there's someone in the wider fan community who does it. This includes your discipline.

3) Be respectful of your research subjects. Now, really this one shouldn't even need to be mentioned - any sane scientist working with research subjects more complicated than amoebae should generally be learning this one from the word "go". But obviously it needs to be stated bluntly.

4) If you're asking for advice, be willing to take it when you get it. Even if the advice is along the lines of "go away and try again once you've done some preliminary study on the subject". Actually, particularly when you get that advice, because if you're getting it, you're being told "you aren't respecting us" in fairly clear terms.

5) If you don't do all (or worse still, any) of that, don't whinge about being socially, personally and professionally pilloried; personally and professionally reprimanded; slashed; put into images showing you being molested by giant squid; or whatever else fandom as a whole does to you in order to demonstrate an equal lack of respect in reaction to the amount you've shown us.

Now, back to the performing seals...[/Veronica Glenhuntly]

This has been going on for about three weeks now, but I've just been triggered to post by this post of ladynero's. See, ever since patch 3.2 came out, I've had a few problems in WoW.

It looks like this:


It's affecting people who play WoW on laptops (like I do), particularly laptops running Windows XP which use the Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express chipset for graphics work. Effectively, the ground textures just aren't being rendered. It's only happening since patch 3.2, and the latest update, patch 3.2.0a , hasn't changed the situation. As you can see below:




So, what are Blizzard doing about it? Well, as far as we can tell from this thread on the forums, they're ignoring it, and hoping the people with the problem will go away and stop bothering them. According to their system information, the Intel 965 card is still supported. Shyeah, right. So far the only assistance we've been given is an endorsement of a couple of user-created fixes (either set your computer to run the .exe with the -openGL flag running, or set "console fixedfunction1") both of which have the extreme disadvantage of causing the framerate in the game to drop like a lead balloon. Or alternatively (as I discovered yesterday, much to my annoyance) crash. Or both.

Low framerate has its own consequences, particularly for people who do a lot of PvP or raiding. I don't, but I've already had moments where I've been caught off-guard by something running toward me and not realised until it got the first hit in. Not fun.

The problem is, compared to Blizzard's main userbase, we're a small group. So it's possibly not cost-effective for them to fix the issue, or offer an option for people who are affected by the problem to bypass whichever new and improved ground graphics were present in the new patch, so we can keep playing. A lot of people have already cancelled their accounts. I'm paid up until November, but I have a reminder on my schedule that if this problem hasn't been fixed by the first of November, I'm cancelling then.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like WoW. It's fun. It's a nice straightforward game, and up until this last patch, I didn't have any problems at all with it. But I'm not so attached to playing WoW that I'm going to try and upgrade my graphics capabilities in a laptop which handles everything else Just Fine Thanks; even had I the money to do so. Given I'm currently out of work, and it doesn't look like I'll be getting back into work any time soon, I can't afford to upgrade either the laptop or the PC, and quite frankly, I don't fancy doing either just for one game.

I suppose my biggest issue with all of this is the lack of communication from Blizzard about the matter. There have been approximately four posts from the Blizzard rep on the entire thread in the forums, two of which were requests for information, and one of which was saying "well, we haven't noticed a huge drop in framerate when we tested this, so use the console fixedfunction fix." As far as I'm concerned, that isn't good customer service.

So, while the announcement of the Next Big Thing on WoW is all very well and good, I don't know that I'm going to get all that enthused about it. After all, if things carry on the way they are, I'll either be falling off a cliff, or running on such a slow framerate as to telegraph my punches.

I'd like to take a moment to whinge about the quality (or lack thereof) of science reporting in the media. I've always had a rather keen interest in scientific discovery, and the processes involved. However, these days I tend to find myself rather disappointed by the way these things are reported. There's an uncritical emphasis on the flashy stuff, the stuff which causes controversey, and the stuff which reinforces the status quo, rather than an active, questioning style of discussion.

For example, this report is an interesting one, covering a possible link between human behaviour and physical structure creation within the human brain. However, the report about it raises more questions than it answers. So here's my list of questions:

• What size sample group was tested?


• How many races, ethnicities, cultural groupings, and similar were represented within the sample group?


• How many age groupings were represented within the sample group?


• Did any of the members of the sample group need to wear spectacles for visual correction?


• Did any of the sample group identify as being transgender and/or intersex, and if so, were their results more appropriate for their physical/genetic gender presentation, or their culturally dictated gender presentation?


• Where are the scientists obtaining their theory about varied gender roles in food collection within prehistoric human society from?


• Can they prove the influence is from ancient cultural behaviours rather than modern cultural behaviours?


• Is there any evidence to support their theory which isn't culturally and anthropologically biased?


• Has this study been repeated on a different sample group?


• Has the study been repeated by a different team?


• Did the researchers state the result they were expecting beforehand? Did the data they received match up to the result?


• If the study has been duplicated, by whom, and were they expecting a similar result or a different one?


• Is anything in this media report an even vaguely accurate statement about the study, or is it just a regurgitated press release?

Basically, from the information in the ABC report, I can't find the information to be able to assess this study on its own merits. I'd love to have a link to the actual paper, or even an abstract of it, so that I could do the reading myself. This is the one area where online news could really leap ahead of print, audio and visual media - the ability to link to the actual results of the study, so folks could read it with their own eyes, and process it with their own brains. As it stands, though, I'm stuck with a sketchy report, without even details of which volume and issue of the British Journal of Psychology the study was published in.

So, in the meantime, I'll dismiss the whole thing as so much evo-psych bullshit making too much soup out of the one onion, and carry on with my reading on everything else. After all, the whole topic is one which has pretty much been pulled out of the "oh, this'll cause the feminists to grumble" bag.

So, it's been a crap week so far. Sunday I felt suicidal, Monday was murderous, Tuesday was tired, Wednesday I was wobbly, and today I have an appointment with my Job Network Prov - whoops, sorry, they had their name changed by bureaucratic fiat recently, they're now Job Services Australia - people (same ones as before, why waste a perfectly good bunch of private enterprise bureaucrats) in another ten minutes for which I am almost certainly going to be late. This is because Himself didn't actually get out of bed until I yelled upstairs that I was heading off, and then called down "wait a sec while I have a quick shower". So I've now called them and told them I'll be late.

I'm supposed to be applying for ten jobs per fortnight, and so far this fortnight I've only found nine I'm qualified for. This means I'm one job down and not meeting the target for my jobsearch efforts, which means my payments and my efforts get scrutinised even further. Crap.

I hate missing appointments, I hate being late, and I hate not meeting targets and deadlines. So far today I'm three for three and I'm not happy about any of it.

[2 hours later]

And now I've been and gone and seen the people in Fremantle, and had a Job Search Capacity Index performed (basically, "is there any reason why we shouldn't just leave you to drown" - fortunately, I could provide at least two, namely the depression and the thyroid problems) and I'm now booked in for another interview with the nice people at Centrelink on Wednesday. So, once I'd spoken to the nice lass at PVS (at length, and in the middle of a major fit of spleen) I wandered on down to Centrelink to hand in my dole form and get my eating and walking around money for the next fortnight organised. They have a new batch of trainees in on the counters, but I got the one who's apparently picked up the basics and knows his job is just to process the form and leave the saving of my soul to the missionary types, so the form got processed, the money should be in the bank tomorrow, and I've now fulfilled that bit of my participation obligations for the Australian Federal Government.

Now all I have to do is find another bloody job to go into the diary, and then I'm set for the day. Hoo-freakin'-ray.

I'm currently feeling ripe for murder. A suitable candidate is the nitwit driver who damn near ran me over on the zebra crossing in Freo.

Yesterday was my appointment with the psychiatrist, which went pretty much as expected - me giving her a potted history of my life, and she asked a few questions and let me ramble. Then things turned to the serious business of what to be doing about the depression, and the decision was to supplement the meds I'm on with another one, rather than changing them completely.

So, I'm now taking half a 4mg tab of Edronax each morning, for the next couple of days, then I get to take half in the morning and half at night. One of the side-effects of this medication is that it can cause dizziness for some people, and it appears I'm one of them. I'm currently feeling a bit distanced from the world, like I'm having a low blood pressure day, and moving my head too fast makes me feel all wheee. Sort of weird. Of course, I've been sitting upright all morning in front of the computer, so that's probably why. I was thinking of getting back to the job search today, but I think I'll pass until I know whether this is going to be a constant thing or whether it'll wear off. If it's going to be a constant thing, I'll probably need to learn how to brain again before I can actually start thinking about working.

[Keanu Reeves]Whoa.[/Keanu Reeves]

I think I shall go have a bit of a lie down.

Because I haven't been posting lately, just a few quick lines to let folks know I aten't dead (although I am re-reading Discworld) and what's vaguely happening over here.

First up, we're trying to sell the house again. The bank insists on it, because they're wanting their money back, thanks. This means we have the standard aaargh of "home open" inspections, and people coming through at various times, which necessitates us pretty much removing any trace of individuality from the place, along with all small electronic equipment. This, for me, includes disconnecting the lapdog from the monitor, packing it and its power source (and the USB hub and the good mouse) into my backpack, and re-tidying the various cords remaining to make it look as though the PC box I have sitting on my desk actually does something. Over the months of trying to sell this place, I've gotten pretty good at this, but it's still annoying and I'll tend to put off things like re-connecting stuff if I'm feeling cranky.

Which (Second item) I have been, lately. According to my doctor, my last round of blood tests showed everything to be fine except my cholesterol level - apparently my LDL level ("bad" cholesterol) has gone up since my last test, so I have to work to reduce that. Which would be fine if I just knew how - so I have to be doing some research to find out how to lower LDL levels, and probably change a few things about my diet. Both of which I'm cranky about, along with just about everything else in the known universe.

Anyways, between the two of those, I haven't been doing much other than playing games. I've picked up Crisis Core again on the PSP (because that's portable and I can take it with me when I leave the house) and on the PS2 I'm playing my way through FFX2 (which is clearly the Final Fantasy Game Designed By Marketing To Attract Girls). So far in CC I have Zack up to level 50, and I'm putting off visiting Nibelheim for as long as possible (I'd like to finish a few more missions if I could, really bump up the level - I want to find out what happens if I'm strong enough to beat up Sephiroth in the reactor fight scenes. It'd be cool if that broke the game!). I've so far re-started FFX2 about three times, and I'm now working my way through it to try and figure out how to complete all the side quests (if only because it's more fun that way). Oh, and collect all the Al Behd primers, because while I currently have about eight letters of the language, I really need at least one more vowel to make sense of things.

Both the PSP and the PS2 are getting a lot more attention than the PC at present mainly because with both of them, I can take 'em into the warmest room in the house (the PS2 lives there, so it's even easier) instead of sitting in my little office and freezing. While it may well be Midsummer on WoW and in the northern hemisphere, down under it's winter, and for the past few days it's been blowing a gale, with patches of horizontal rainfall. Best time of the year to be curled up on the lounge with the PS2 controller, a blankie over my knees, and a nice hot cup of tea.

I've finally added another game to my "finished" pile. Yup, over the weekend I managed to finish playing all the way through Final Fantasy VII. All three disks.

I achieved this mainly by giving up on being a completeist - I didn't have all the materia, much less have them all mastered, and I'd left the Ruby and Emerald weapons alive. None of the characters had reached level 99 (although I'd reached the point where I'd run out of clock slots - it was stuck on 99:59:59).

So, in the interests of reviewing, here are my collected notes from the various times I've played FFVII, collated and assembled.
( Massive list under fold )

Obama seeks 'new beginning' with Muslim world
Khamenei slams US as Obama reaches out
Bin Laden wants long war against infidels

I read these two headlines, and their accompanying stories, and I could almost see the retorting headlines in the US media, and hear the statements of right-wing zealots in non-Muslim countries throughout the world. Statements about lack of gratitude; statements about lack of respect; statements about being slapped in the face as the US president holds out the hand of friendship. I can just about hear the rising tide of demands from US Christian right-wingers now, insisting this is just typical, and that you can't trust "those folks".

So, before the tirades start, I'd ask the folks on my f-list, particularly those from the US, to think a bit about the wider contexts of these statements. I don't just mean the immediate "this week in politics" context, or the "USA vs the rest of the world" context. I mean in the context of the history of the USA's involvement with predominantly Muslim nations across the past twenty to forty years, or even the past century or so. I mean in the context of the wider Western involvement with these nations over the previous centuries all the way back to the first crusades over a thousand years ago.

From the perspective of people in Iran, the USA not only supported the repressive regime of the last Shah, but also effectively propped this regime up. From the perspective of people in many other Islamic nations (and particularly those on the Arabic peninsula, such as Saudi Arabia) the governments of the USA have been spending most of the past century propping up one repressive regime after another. The actions of the government of the USA in Iraq over the past twenty years have been extremely contradictory - on the one hand, the USA's "School of the Americas" trained up Saddam Hussein, and supplied him with money and armaments in order to engage in a drawn-out war against the Iranians purely on ideological grounds; on the other the US army was instrumental in firstly defeating, then deposing, and then finally executing the man. In Afghanistan, the USA first supported the Taliban against the Russian invaders, then invaded to depose the Taliban, and then let the Taliban take control once again. The Pakistani government has been dealing with a steady flow of refugees from Afghanistan for decades, ever since the USA and Russia decided to make the country into a battleground. The repressive regime of Suharto in Indonesia has been backed by the USA (and was put in place through tacit US approval of a coup against a democratically elected leader). The record of the USA in the Middle East, particularly as the primary international supporter of the Israeli governments (no matter what various Israeli governments might be doing to their neighbours, including outright invasion) due primarily to a sense of repressed anti-Semitism, has soured their reputation throughout that area as well - particularly when various US governments have declared a number of Middle Eastern and North African countries (Syria, Libya, Iran) international persona non grata, and effectively banned their participation in the modern world via restricting trade in various technologies, such as computer software.

Given this history, which stretches back well over thirty years (I can remember the early stages of a lot of the current arguments happening when I was in primary school) I'd argue the various leaders of the Muslim world are well justified in any scepticism they hold regarding the motivations of the USA overall. Barack Obama is working against the combined economic, military and social policies of the past century of the United States of America, in countries where their cultural memory for past events and root causes is much more highly developed. In countries where intra-faith warfare over who should have been the second Caliph of Islam is still a regular thing; where the defeats of the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquistada (and resultant Inquisition) are still regarded as open wounds; where the majority of people are used to thinking of government policy as being something which is only alterable with the death of a particular leader; in countries like this, the past carries far more weight than in a nation where it sometimes appears the cultural memory stops a week ago last Thursday. If the leaders of the primarily Muslim nations reach out and take the hand of friendship offered by Obama, who is to say his successor will not turn around and slap them with it in four years time? How can they rely on the willingness of the USA to keep promises of friendship and assistance, when their past record says those promises will be ignored as soon as it suits the purposes of the USA?

From the perspective of the Islamic nations, they have good reason to distrust the USA. After all, it isn't paranoia when the other side is out to get you.

Well, let's see. First up, I have an appointment with a trick cyclist (psychiatrist) on the 30th of this month - which is wonderful since I was expecting to have to wait until about November. Secondly, I have a medical certificate for Centrelink until the 14th of July, which means I get to have a bit of time to deal with things there too. I've also been on a slightly higher dose of Zoloft, which has resulted in me being as tired as all get-out lately and spending a few days seeing the world through a dose of cotton wool. So I've skipped my meds for the past couple of days and I'm now feeling vaguely human again. I'm also back on a vaguely normal circadian, rather than heading off into the wonderful land of nocturnal living.

Tomorrow Himself is going to take a few minutes out and arrange for us to put the house on the market again. We're looking at hopefully being able to get as much money as we paid for the place three years ago, thus merely putting us in hock to the bank for the interest. Hooray.

Oh, and we do appear to be having a winter this year in Perth. It's been raining on and off all day today, and I've responded to the whole business by beginning a pot of soup. I've had a few lamb shanks and some mutton chops simmering for a few hours, and the whole mess is now cooling to the point where I'll be able to skim off the fat tomorrow morning. Then it's just chopping up the meat from the bones, chopping up some veges and dropping in a few handfuls of pearl barley, and we have lambshank broth to eat and put in the freezer. I may also get carried away and look up details of various creamy soups, just to see whether I can figure out how to make cream of celery soup from scratch (I bought an entire celery, and I'd rather turn it all into soup than have most of it go to waste in the crisper). If I can't figure that out, I'll try Minestrone (to use up some of the dried beans as well as the rest of the veges) and Mulligatawny (to use up one rather ancient whole chook and a whole heap of red lentils) after getting some more veg from the supermarket. I'll also pick up some more gravy beef, and some beef bones to make up stock with, and see about making up some of my favourite beef, barley and vegetable soup. Yes, I do happen to like soups which can just about hold a wooden spoon upright, however did you guess?

Okay, things are... interesting at the moment.

First up, until the end of May, I'm not likely to be posting too much, because our internet connection has been throttled between the hours of noon and 2am - as in, cut back to dial-up speed. The reason for this is very simple: Himself has been bored. Bored enough to be watching entire seasons (as in every single one of them) of both Daria and Kim Possible on YouTube. He then acted surprised when I pointed out the amount of bandwidth such things would swallow, and when I pointed out I hadn't really been going overboard on WoW at all in the past three weeks. So, we're on trickle internet until the end of the month unless I get up early enough in the morning to beat the rush.

Second on my list: we're putting the house on the market. Again. Maybe this time it will sell (although I have to confess I hope not - I like this place, and the main option Himself is considering for the aftermath is moving in with Himself's parents). We had a nice man from the real estate people visiting today and taking snaps of the place (I managed to persuade Himself that while putting things away is all very well, if he packed anything he would be In Serious Trouble) and promising to call us back tomorrow. Yay.

Thirdly, I visited my GP today. Part of it was about the annual service (ie blood pressure, check everything is still functioning, make sure I'm not dead, rotate the tyres, etc and so on), which means tomorrow I get to go in again and visit the friendly vampires at the pathology collection station in the same building. Another part was about getting a repeat on one of my psych meds (this whole business of being on two different strengths of the stuff is irritating). The next part was getting an official Centrelink medical certificate regarding the depression, as accepted by our very persnickety agency of the Department of Human Services - I can't just send in a standard med cert, since they don't go into the appropriate level of detail, and Centrelink won't accept them. I'll be dropping that in at Centrelink tomorrow as well, plus calling in to speak with my Job Network folks. I also have the names of a half-dozen psychiatrists, and I have to find one who will firstly have an opening some time before November (no, I'm not exaggerating... or if I am, it probably isn't by much - I know the specialists in this town, and most of them do tend to be booked about six months in advance), and will secondly accept a Health Care Card as a legitimate reason to reduce the size of their bill (preferably by bulk billing).

The good news from the GP is my blood pressure is still at the low end of normal. I blame this on my mother's side of the family, who have genetically low blood pressure, to the point where Mum faints if she tries to hang out washing on the wrong days. In order for stress to register on my veins, I have to apparently be under enough of it to kill an elephant outright. Yay again.

Finally, tomorrow we're having dinner with Himself's parents. It's one of their regular "hello, how are you, haven't seen you in about a month, are you both still alive?" things (they live about five minutes walk away - gods know why they don't bother just dropping in to say hi). So we'll get to hear a lot about their friends and Himself's two brothers. Oh, and their grandchild. They've only told us the stories about their last visit to Canbrrra to see the kid about twice, so we're due a few repeats.

( Other news: game rambling )

BREATH

breath · n.
1 air taken into or expelled from the lungs. Ø an inhalation or exhalation of air from the lungs.
2 a slight movement of air.
– PHRASES breath of fresh air a refreshing change. catch one’s breath 1 cease breathing momentarily in surprise or fear. 2 rest after exercise to restore normal breathing. draw breath breathe in. hold one’s breath cease breathing temporarily. out of breath gasping for air, typically after exercise. take breath pause to recover normal breathing. take someone’s breath away astonish or inspire someone with awed respect or delight. under (or below) one’s breath in a very quiet voice. waste one’s breath talk or give advice without effect.
– ORIGIN OE br&th ‘smell, scent’, of Gmc origin; rel. to brood.

This is the noun. The verb is

breathe

.

breathe · v.
1 take air into the lungs and then expel it as a regular physiological process. Ø (of a plant or invertebrate animal) respire or exchange gases.
2 (of wine) be exposed to fresh air.
3 (of material or soil) admit or emit air or moisture.
4 allow (a horse) to rest after exertion.
5 give an impression of: the room breathed an air of hygienic efficiency.
6 (breathe upon) archaic or poetic/literary tarnish or taint.
– PHRASES breathe (freely) again relax after being frightened or tense. breathe down someone’s neck follow closely behind. Ø constantly check up on someone. breathe one’s last die. breathe (new) life into reinvigorate. not breathe a word remain silent about something secret.
– ORIGIN ME (in the sense ‘exhale, steam’): from breath.

The verb tenses are: has/have breathed, am/is breathing, can/will breathe.

This is one where people tend to muddle up the noun and the verb. The verb has the "e" at the end. This is a fairly common distinction within English, but there appear to be growing numbers of people who either don't know what the difference between the noun and verb forms is, or don't know the difference between a noun and a verb. For those who missed this in primary school: a noun is a naming word - it names an object, concept, idea or person; a verb is a doing word - it speaks of an action. In the classic sentence, "The cat sat on the mat", cat and mat are nouns; sat is the verb which tells what the cat was doing.

Okay, after spending most of the past week feeling like something the cat threw up then dragged in, I've taken the first steps toward getting my mental illness recognised by the Australian system.

I have an appointment booked with my GP for Monday morning, 10.30 am, where I'll be asking firstly for a repeat on one of the medications I'm on, and secondly for a specialist medical certificate explaining what I am and am not capable of with regards to looking for work. With any luck, I'll be able to submit that to the nice people at Centrelink, and get them to at least cut back on the job search requirements for me (if not actually drop them altogether). I've also seen the nice lady at PVS and explained how much job search I haven't been capable of this week (it's getting bad when just reading through Seek is almost more than I can push myself to do) and she's effectively given me next week off.

Yays.

Meanwhile, Hexy over at Hexpletive has been blogging about the joys of taking psych meds. I'm on two different strengths each of two different medications, one of which needs to be purchased on a monthly basis (so even on the dole, I'm looking at about $10 per month minimum). My biggest problem isn't so much paying for the medications (although that was a problem back before I got the health care card to go with the dole... $37 per prescription per month tends to add up over time) as taking the little bastards - for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with a combination of the depression and the money-scrimp-and-save impulses I get when I'm low on income, I tend to have at least one day per week when I forget to take my meds. Which isn't good for me either physically or psychologically.

I am so fucked up.

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post one sentence/paragraph/whatever from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else--this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

These are all in my FF7 "Works in Progress" folder (or rather, the folder I store everything I don't think is ready for publication yet - for whatever reason). Some of them are completed but don't quite ring true, some of them are incomplete and have remained stalled for ages, some of them are being actively worked on in between bouts of depression, and others are just scraps and snippets so far. You have been warned.

Oh, and if anyone wants to prod me about things, or start me talking about them, it will be cheerfully welcomed.

( waaay too much under here )

I'm starting to realise I'd be better off applying for DSP (Disability Support Pension). It may be a reduced rate of income, but it would mean I'd be able to look for the type of work which would suit me, rather than the type of work which would suit Centrelink's statisticians and PVS' (my Job Network Provider) placement rates. I'm realising this because last week was a rather busy one for me, with five days out of seven involving public contact (Monday was visiting PVS, Tuesday was a job interview, Wednesday was PVS again, Friday was PVS and stopping by at the markets to pick up some stuff, and Saturday was the writer's meetup I organise). I then spent the past two days feeling like hammered crap, and today was the third day running. I'm supposed to head in to PVS again today and provide evidence of job search, but the problem is I really haven't felt like doing much more than crawling out of bed and sitting upright. So I look at the job search opportunities before me (shyeah, right) and my brain is currently set to "maximum pessimism", which means I'm looking at them and going "nope, they wouldn't want me in a pink fit" the whole time.

All I really want to do today is crawl right back to bed and hide. Instead, I'm going to have to phone my doctor and make an appointment, then start researching what's required to claim DSP through Centrelink. Then maybe I'll just crawl right back to bed, pull the covers over my head, and hide for a bit.

Well, Western Australia's just had its fourth referendum on Daylight Saving since 1975, and the voters have replied to this one the same as we did to all the others. We said "No".

I've lived through each of the trials of Daylight Saving in WA, and each time there's been a referendum about it, the answer has been "no". It's been "no" for a combination of reasons - one of which is that at least half of the land in the state lies north of the Tropic of Capricorn (and therefore gets absolutely no benefit out of daylight saving anyway), another of which is we're on the wrong side of the meridian our time zone is based on (so we don't actually need it in the first place), a third of which is that our summers are long enough and hot enough that we really don't need to save the daylight in the first place (we're too far north to get extended twilights). Each time we've said "no", however, there's been a break of about five to ten years, and we get it imposed again.

The people who generally want Daylight Saving over here are bankers, business types and such (most of whom work in air-conditioned offices on St George's Terrace, commuting to these offices from their air-conditioned homes in air-conditioned cars). They ask for it because Daylight Saving in the Eastern States (or rather, New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania) changes the gap between timezones from two hours (in winter) to three (in summer), and it makes it harder for them to connect with their counterparts on the Eastern Seaboard. To which the answer is, "well, you guys can always get up an hour earlier and finish an hour earlier - why should the rest of us have to do so?" Sadly, they appear to consider the response of the majority of the Western Australian population to be the wrong one - so about once a decade, we get another load of bitching about imposing daylight savings, and another trial, and another referendum.

Now, I'm waiting to see how long it takes before the business community starts telling the government that the voters got it wrong again, and that we're going to keep on repeating this process until we give them the right answer. Fortunately the current premier says it isn't going to be on his watch.

TAUT

taut · adj.
1 stretched or pulled tight. Ø (of muscles or nerves) tense.
2 (of writing, music, etc.) concise and controlled.
3 (of a ship) having a disciplined crew.
– DERIVATIVES tauten v. tautly adv. tautness n.
– ORIGIN ME tought ‘distended’, perh. from tough.

As distinct to

taunt

taunt
· n. a jeering or mocking remark made in order to wound or provoke.
· v. provoke or wound with taunts.
– DERIVATIVES taunter n. taunting adj. tauntingly adv.
– ORIGIN C16: from Fr. tant pour tant ‘like for like, tit for tat’, from tant ‘so much’, from L. tantus.

or

taught

taught past and past participle of teach.

One of the more common "mucking furds wuddled" mistakes I see online is the mistaken use of "taunt" for "taut". I'm never sure whether this is a mistake made by the original writer, or whether it's a "correction" forced on people by spellcheck programs (which will tend to be loaded with the more commonly used words). In any case, it helps to have a dictionary handy when using the spellcheck to ensure the words it suggests as an alternative are the ones with the correct meaning.

Please note, folks, that most spellcheck programs are able to be altered to take note of words you use frequently which may not be in their dictionary. There's usually a little button marked "add" on the list of options, and once you've double-checked your spelling, it might be worthwhile using it. Mine certainly gets a workout, because I have to add all the Commonwealth English spellings of words which are spelled differently in US English.