Year: 2013

Had a day out yesterday.

It was the latest in a series of PHO meet ups, this time in Birmingham at the Great Barr Hotel. It’s a chance for people suffering our particular condition to catch up with how we’ve all been doing. And it’s a good bunch to catch up with too.

I won’t mention too many of them (inspiration for codenames and all that !) but it was great to meet them. And our organiser is even more gorgeous in real life than the photo’s suggest. What photo’s don’t capture well is the vital spark a person possesses … let’s just say that if someone had managed to slip her the Red Bull (other energy drinks … may have similar effects) as threatened, the results could have been highly amusing ;-).

Oh – what was amusing … Oh myyyy.

As well as the meal (which scored high marks, I was genuinely sad to finish it), there was a tribute act called Forgery … This is kind of a double act, with a bloke and lady taking turns to do songs from Michael Buble, Beyonce, Robbie Williams and Rihanna. They don’t sing together so not a true double act, just one after the other. Really enjoyed that.

(Although, as happens way too often – way too loud, our poor Rihonce had her voice distorted horribly by the audio and it took some of the gloss off a great voice and performance).

Shall I say that our Rihonce was definitely into a bit of audience participation ? I have to admit, I put a little possibly cruel comment on FB which I need to mention – when she came out, I thought she was one of those girls who you throw cheeseburgers at to get them healthy. Think – tall, very thin, verrrrry long legs. And – as I was about to find out : a very healthy sized bum.

Yep. I was the audience participation.

And I enjoyed every second. Well – after figuring out what was going on. (I can be a bit slow). Oh and I milked it for all I could think of too 🙂

About the size thing – I don’t have a problem with people being overweight. Britain is a land of (relative) plenty, we should have enough to adequately feed ourselves. Although I don’t like it when people are so big that they’re causing themselves health problems. Where I do have a problem is where people seem half starved. Eating disorders are a serious problem, they cause so many issues all coming from a desire to conform with a body image which is unnatural.

Curves are awesome. Bony is not. And the jibes that push girls into starving themselves are the height of cruelty.

Anyway – the cheeseburger comment was a bit cruel on our Rihonce. Yep. Thin – but built on a tall frame which made her look thinner than she actually was. I’ll have that image in my mind for quite some time :-).

Actually – there’s another image I’d like to have retained, it’s from the end of project dinner that we had last year and it’s of the girls in that last project in their party gear. I’m usually good at remembering pictures but that dinner came 1 day after I got my marbles scrambled again by a bump on the head by a cricket ball, so those memories are damaged.

Thoroughly enjoyed it last night and I’ll be back for more at the next one. I didn’t join in with the dancing for a couple of reasons :

I’m hopeless at dancing – my power legs are a curse there. I can dodge and react but getting them to behave with timing ? LOL. It takes too much to get them moving to have any chance of being in sync or time.
And I was suffering on the inside too – My outsides have improved over the last couple of days since the latest doctor visit but my insides are still compromised by my levels being all askew. Basically, if I look too long off to the side or twist too much, there’s a big chance of something going bang and me going OW.
I also have a few too many inhibitions for my liking that I’ll need to dump at some point.

I’m hoping that sorts itself out. Can’t close without mentioning the raffle – I think my prize (the Pendennis Dwagon) was the Most Wanted and he’s gone to a good home. I won a tin of Roses which will keep me going for a little while :-).

Oh – I also have a new nickname that I like and am going to keep. In true Robert Downey Jr film style :

I am Dwagon Man.

I’m torn at the moment.

When I make a decision to do something, I like to dive in head first and execute it. Ok, I may procrastinate a little more and hunt out the best deal but I do like to make the change when it’s time to do so.

The latest is the laptop … (says he writing this post with 7.3lbs, 3.3kg of laptop between knees and tummy – it could be a short post).

I’ve decided what I want to do, it’s the execution that’s going to be frustrating now. I know what laptop I’ll get :

Macbook Air, 13.3″, 256GB drive, latest generation. That’s what I want, it meets the spec I’m interested in and the hard disc is big enough to hold my iTunes library with tonnes of space left over. Not convinced that a 128GB drive would have enough room left after the library (which is now 11169 tracks, 62GB).

The frustration now is how I want to buy it. I.e. spending the minimum possible to get what I want. I have a number of options :

Buy refurbished – this depends on stock and would cost £959.
Yes – that’s a lot of money ! But I target having this puppy for 5 years at least.
Buy different – a Macbook Pro costs more for less capability. Not an option.
Buy from a reseller – they’re cheaper but they’re last generation. Meh.
Use the work discount – cost £1060.
(Refurb wins there)
Go by the Apple Store price – £1129.

You can probably tell that I’d like to go by the refurbished price and guess what – there was one on sale until … Monday night. Why did I hold off before making the decision ? Because I was booked in for a tyre change appointment on Tuesday evening and didn’t want the deliveries to clash.

Ho hum. Procrastination sometimes doesn’t pay.

A Windows laptop is still a possible alternative. However … none of the ones at PC World meet an acceptable spec (either they’re Windows 8 or the screens/keyboard don’t measure up). A potential gamble would be PCSpecialist.com, although that’s a gamble because I’ve never used them before so I have no idea as to their quality. But :

A spec equivalent to the Macbook Air would be a 13.3″ Optimus V :
Intel i5-4200, 8GB RAM (more but Windows needs it), 240GB SSD – £833

What I would buy – 15″ Cosmos II :
IPS* 1080p screen, Intel i5-4200, 8GB, 500B hybrid HD – £761

*If you’re buying a monitor and have a choice, go for an IPS screen. I dunno what the acronym stands for (I’m techie but I read stuff, pick up the key points and forget the acronyms) but IPS screens are the best on the market. And considering that the screen is how you interact with the laptop, it’s the most vital thing out there.

Both of those are with Windows 7. However, you’re still stuck with Microsoft software there and an uncertain keyboard, trackpad and screen. I tried out the Macbook keyboard and my fingers definitely appreciated the feel.

So – I’m torn.

I WANT SHINIES !!!!! NOW !!!! (lol)

But – I don’t actually have to buy it now. I can wait. Which is what I will do. The thing that makes things cost more is rushing into things and being hasty.

Although if you don’t act with enough speed, you can miss out on a good thing. I’ve done that a few times in the past … and I’m not talking about computers 😉 Mind you, I’ve also rushed in and scared people off.

Let’s see … WoW is queueing, this Body of Proof episode is almost done … time to close !

The credit card is going to hate me by the end of the week.

I have two expensive things (technically 3) on the extraordinary shopping list … The first is actually quite mundane. The car needs new front tyres. One disadvantage to having a relatively high performance car is that the bits cost a lot and for the tyres, it’s £100 a corner.

It could be more but I’m avoiding the big name people in favour of Hankook, who score well on the economy, wet driving and noise thingys. Do I believe the economy, wet driving and noise thingys ? Nope – but in the absence of better info, they’re all I have to go on. I’ve never used Hankook before, I’m curious as to how they work out. Hopefully better than Continental, which have been universally useless in all the cars that I’ve owned which have had those inflicted upon them.

Before the next bit – how about me ?

My legs are in far better shape now. They’re actually normalising … I know … that’s taken a lot of time. My arms on the other hand (oops – didn’t mean that pun but it was inevitable) need me to leave them alone more so they can heal. It’s just so easy to damage bits. And I’m not mentioning the two places that I really want to have healing happen on them.

I’ve been warcrafting again. A little too much to be honest. I have a feeling that the swelling in my legs was actually protecting the joints – lol. Warcraft hits me in the wrist and shoulder because I tunnel into it a little too much. That’s not to say I wouldn’t get safe (easier now that you can fly) and have a good natter to someone if messages popped up but if left to my own devices, I’ll easily sink 3-4 hours into it straight. That’s not really healthy and I’ve been using iTunes and dinner times as a marker for breaks. Plus I’m getting better at recognizing the signs of being in the game too long and take breaks.

I think after the initial rush wears off, I’ll get back to normal again but I have sunk an obscene amount of my spare home time into it over the past week. And I’ve a) enjoyed it, b) been glad to be back in the guild (they’re a good bunch) and c) the tunneling has given my fingers something to do which does not involve self damage.

So what’s this thing that’s going to break the credit card if it’s more than the tyres ?

I’m going to make the jump to Macbooks …

Every time I do a blog post on this laptop, I’m reminded about how bad the keyboard has got. I’m continually going back over to retype where random key didn’t get recognied. See what I mean ? That’s acually light for what it tends to miss ;-). But it’s not just the keyboard, it’s been suffering for power too although that could be the Firefox web browser and Flash being horribly inefficient. So it’s time for the laptop to be traded in for something different.

It’ll be a Macbook because I’ve had enough of Microsoft software (it’s been steadily getting more and more hostile) and Windows laptops don’t offer a spec I like at a price I’m prepared to pay. So I’m jumping ship to something that will be very shiny indeed. It’ll be a bit of an effort migrating though :

Screen size – the resolution is similar but I’ll be going from 17″ down to 13.3″. However … it’ll also be about a quarter of the weight. And with me occasionally tapping out a blog post with the laptop on my knees, that’ll be appreciated.
Itunes – I might be able to copy over my library and keep the data but to be honest, I’m quite tempted to reset it all anyway. Of course it’ll take me literally 6 months to re-rate all the music again but there we go :-). I wonder how long it would be before I’d start seeing repeat tracks.
Digiguide – is the one piece of Windows software that I use that I would miss from the laptop. But to be honest, it’s a tv guide application and there are ways around it being gone.
Interface – my fingers dance on the keyboard. Tis nice.

But the rest of it – Skype (which I rarely use now since Microsoft forced us off the perfectly good Messenger), web browsing, email is done equally good or better on the Mac. And for the stuff that doesn’t play nicely with Mac, I have my desktop. I’m not likely to put many games on the Macbook, gaming on a laptop is somewhat cruel for the laptop.

The one I’ll get will be a 13.3″ Macbook Air with a 256 GB hard disc. I’ll be going for a refurb model for £££ off the price. It’s still a lot of money but I’m hoping that it’ll last long enough to wear out in … a longer time than this laptop at least (almost 4 years)

We shall see !

I’m almost done with catchup on the Youtube videos so it’s time to join that Draenor Warcraft queue again …

I’ve reactivated the Warcraft …

I dunno. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t going to go back in and the only thing that’s really changed that is the price of the expansion going down. It is still one of the best games out there though, from a pure gameplay point of view. There’s an immense amount of content in there.

One sad thing is that they’ve dumbed it down so much and sped up the progression so much that individual characters are almost forced to skip parts of the content because they race past its relevance so quickly. When that happens, the character gets minimal experience and there’s no challenge. You can have multiple characters, so that’s not as big an issue as it could be.

Yep. Back in Warcraft. It’s partly medicinal, for my skin problem (honest – it just happens to work out that way). A lot of the cause for my skin issues is self inflicted. Idle hands can’t resist scratching and making it worse. Warcraft gets me in a tightly focused mode where I can zone out and zone in to the game. So instead of my fingers attacking my arms and leg, they’re tapping the keys.

There’s a couple of other changes I’ve made too to manage the condition and it’s having a good positive effect. It’s a hell of a lot better than it was a few weeks ago.

It’s still a long way from healed but it’s getting there. My legs are definitely less angry with me although it’s not all done yet. It’s something I’m going to need to continually work on. I’m also hoping it doesn’t come back now that I’ve finished the latest round of drugs.

It has had an impact though. I think it’s fairly well trashed this laptop. The keyboard is getting less and less responsive. The next machine is going to be a Macbook Air for a number of reasons :

Windows laptops come with Windows 8 (ok, I could get one from Novatech or PCSpecialist with Windows 7 but that’s hassle) and Windows 8 is an abomination
All Microsoft software lately seems to be an abomination actually, it’s only through mass protest that the Xbox One had all its u-turns on spec. I think someone told Microsoft that if they’d followed through on the original plan, the market share would have been something like 10 to 1 in favour of the Playstation 4.
Windows laptops don’t have acceptable specs. They’re either last generation processors (or older!) and it cost £600 to get a 17″ with a decent screen. The prices of Windows laptops have steadily gone up, making them less economic to acquire.

Ok – that’s the anti-Microsoft … I’ve also eliminated Linux as a choice because it doesn’t allow support (it can be done but I’d expect problems) for iTunes and the hardware support would be patchy at best. I’d get a Macbook Air 13.3″ with a 256GB hard disc and it has a number of advantages :

The keyboard and trackpad felt lush when I tried tapping out a sentence on one. I suffer from wrist problems too, so when it’s harder to type, it literally hurts.
The Macbook Air has the latest generation Intel cpu, which is a serious amount of power.
It has a solid state device drive – it’s tough to say why these are good but you would notice the difference
Proper hardware support – ok it may be locked down but it has a development team looking out for the bugs, the alternative is Linux which can only be described as anarchic with its development
Unix based so (allegedly – I don’t believe the claim here) no virus or malware trouble
Proper legacy operating system support – Microsoft don’t want you to have this, Apple make it easy

Am I going to buy one now ? I have to admit, since I noticed an evening delivery option it’s got a lot more tempting. That means I could abuse the flexi a little, get home from work early and in time for the delivery. Daytime deliveries are far more awkward to manage.

However. The golden rule of buying anything is – don’t rush into it. I could get a refurb Macbook for 15% off but I get the feeling there may be more offers around the corner …

We shall see ! It’ll definitely feel weird transferring over from Windows to Mac but to be honest, Microsoft only have themselves to blame for an inevitable loss in market share as people like me migrate to other platforms (Mac, PS4, Linux) due to the Microsoft offerings being hostile to the people who are forced to buy them through a lack of competition.

Just spotted on the Facebook feed :

Firefly was always an incredible series, well worth watching if you missed out. It’s very sad that it only got 14 episodes plus a movie.

Very shiny.

I’m getting my attention drawn to new shinies. I think I’ll forget about changing the car, although the new IS300h is Very Shiny. It’s just not something I need. My Lexus CT already does everything very well with a sense of style there too. The IS is faster but that’s probably the only major advantage that would see me change. It’s bigger (not necessarily a good thing) and costs more.

So I think I’ll be resisting the temptation to change what is the best car I’ve owned and aim for a few years of payment holiday.

What shinies am I looking at then ? I’m seriously considering buying a Macbook.

I’m getting much closer to requiring a laptop change. The keyboard on this one is the major bugbear. It’s suffered greatly due to my skin condition. But at least it’s still chugging along, the HP I had before ate something which killed the fan and the design of the HP means that it would have needed a full strip and rebuild to change a £10 part.

The current laptop is an Acer and they are pretty solid on the build and design. That’s despite what one reviewer I spotted said, he described Acer as “cheap”. Yes, you can combine “cheap” with “solid” if you’re smart about the design. I’d have another Acer laptop if they supplied them with an adequate resolution. (720p doesn’t cut it for me – I want closer to HD)

The laptop target has steadily gone up and up in terms of the price I’d need to look at. Originally, I’d thought that £500 was too much, seems like inflation (and perhaps fashion) has affected the cheap value laptop market. Anyway, the prices have shifted that much that it puts the likely price in Macbook range … And I’m tempted. I could get a refurb Macbook Air 13.3inch with a 256GB SSD for just under £1000.

That’s still a lot of cash but – Oooooo shiny. And it’s not Windows 8.

We shall see on the laptop. But – closing out with more Shininess :

First day back at work today and it was a hectic one. I had barely enough time to catch my breath and check for super urgent emails before disappearing into a meeting from 10am to almost 2pm. But. I did get the chance to check in with someone very special before that.

And I got cake. And a grin as I was walking back to my desk. And, even though I had to neglect my cake to disappear off to that meeting, a little taste of awesome when I escaped for lunch.

And I now have that memory of the taste coming back – absolutely lush. The cakes were made for a birthday – I passed a message over on Facebook but those cakes earn another : “HAPPY BIRTHDAY !” for someone who turned 21 again last Monday.

Good day today. I think it was productive, hopefully we’ll get a chance to buy what we were talking about. Combined with a chance to have a little catch up with someone special and polish it off with truly awesome cake.

Yep – good day, if only all the leaky bits of me would stop being leaky !

Back home again now after a sojourn away in Cornwall.

Decent week 🙂 Lots of chilling out with a couple of special friends. To be honest, I’m still not back to what I should be but it’s either getting closer or I’m getting a false picture because of the antibiotics. I was still leaking for the first few days, had trouble sleeping for all of it (I don’t sleep well in unfamiliar conditions) but on the whole, I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a fortnight ago.

So what did we get up to ? Firstly :

Yep. There was an escapee who came back with me. He’ll be my avatar for the next little while, although he’ll be escaping again to be a raffle prize in a couple of weeks.

Here’s the town where we stayed :

It’s a place called Looe. Our cottage was on the hill up above. Good place – clean air, lots of quiet. Having sporadic internet access was a downer, although to be honest I probably spend too much time on the interwebs anyway. Oh – the Tom Sawyer pub was in easily walking distance and I think all 3 of us would happily recommend it, although the bright and breezy Kianna from the hotel next door wins the waitress of the week prize.

Sunday saw chill out and a walk into Looe, Monday was supposed to be a bit of an indulgence for me seeing a ship but I wasn’t feeling too great. I joined the others for a walk around Polperro instead. I was soooo close to buying a few trinkets to bring back with me but that not feeling great caught up with me. Meh.

Crash time … I can go into a kind of survival mode, where my energy ends up at its lowest level. I guess the lack of sleep catches up. I’m still capable of doing stuff in survival mode but I clamp down and shuffle my resources into keeping going. I go quiet and desensitize. But I’m still able to concentrate on what I’m doing, even if the ability to make decisions like “Shiny !!! Buy now” is fuzzy.

Ok – Polperro Monday, chillout at Looe on Tuesday. We had a look at more of the town on Tuesday and came away with more loot.

Wednesday, Wednesday, what was Wednesday … (Quick peek on Facebook !) Ah ha ! Plymouth.

We got away with it on the weather fronts for most of the week but Wednesday in Plymouth was a tad different. Very wet. We hid in the National Aquarium for a while before paying a visit to the Hoe Memorial. While we were there, HMS Somerset swept by while doing a boat transfer :

(Ship name brought to you by the magic of the AIS device!)

Thursday was more chill out. I’m not the only one of us who’s suffering at the moment. I appreciate the chill out days. Friday saw us heading to the tip of Falmouth for a look at Pendennis Castle. When you go to see castles in the UK, it’s rare to see them in as good condition as Pendennis. It started as a fort in the 1600s to protect the coastal approaches from foes like the Spanish Armada and saw life in World War 2 as a coastal battery.

It’s well worth a look if you find yourself nearby.

So – that’s my week. I’m sure I’m leaving lots out. Like the books I read through and how the car handled the roads (lots of hills).

I’m in a lot better condition now than I was, a lot of the damage has repaired and some of my skin is now ridiculously smooth, despite me not using the recommended moisturiser. I’m still needing to be very careful though because I have a bad habit of damaging it myself. I urgently need to ditch that habit. I’m also hoping that it’s not yet another false dawn, where the antibiotics hold the infection at bay until they run out.

Back to work tomorrow – which means banter with the canteen staff over teacakes and cookies. Catch up with the work people. And hopefully a chance to catch up with some very special friends.

You know how the rest of that one goes don’t you ?

It’s just for a week and it’s in a place that’s far more hospital than the place where that famous (infamous?) saying was coined.

I’ve got a good little support group down in Bristol and the core people in it like to get away from things every so often. That time’s come again, with 3 of us heading down to Devon for a week. No work*, no laptops, just getting away from the stress of modern life (us and our First World problems ? lol) and chilling out for a bit.

*I say no work but I’m highly likely (95%) to make the hop across to one of our offices on Monday. It’s one I’ve never visited before and they have Very Shiny Kit there. And people I’ve been needing to talk to. I’m not seeing that as work though, I really enjoy the visits where we get to see kit and that’s coming from a “what’s there now, who’s new, what do we need next ?” point of view. They’re really useful visits from a learning and connecting point of view.

I’m hoping I can recharge the batteries. They’re sorely depleted at the moment from :

a) Skin problem
b) Breathing problem

The skin problem is one that readers here will know far too much about. I’m pleased to say that since the doctor visit, I’m back to mostly Pasty White Petey Goodness again. The condition under the surface has improved immeasurably. I just need to give my arms a chance to catch up.

However – I’ve seen this kind of improvement before, it comes with the antibiotics. I’m just hoping that it stays cleared up after the antibiotics run out.

Breathing problem is something new – I find it very hard to sleep with even the slightest wheeziness. And I appear to have run out of Benedryl antihistamines (oops). I think it’s from a cold, which I always seem to run into at the start of a leave period. Plus someone at work had bugs … It’ll come right.

The breathing is ok for me to be singing along to Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside album coming from the laptop.

Yep. I’ve already packed up enough that the LittleWhiteBox that links laptop to hifi is already in a bag somewhere.

Aye – you read that right. I actually did some packing last night instead of leaving it all to this morning. I must be feeling ill ;-). There’s still a little to do but that’s the stuff that has to go in bags at the last minute (medicines) that you always forget.

What’s the plan other than an immense amount of chilling out ? Cos being cooped up for too long gives you cabin fever :

Hunt for music
Hunt for books
Hunt for more t-shirts

Basically wanders around the local tourist trap areas and hunt for shinies.

I’ll put in a few updates through the week because we have a couple of methods of getting mobile access open to us. But I’ll close up with two things :

Happy Birthday to a very dear friend ! This message is for Monday …
And a hearty see you next week. Or in about an hour if you’re coming too (2 of my regular readers are coming)

Lol – the rest of the laptop market sadly appears to be catching up to Macbooks.

The cheapest 17" laptop in PC World is £600 (it's a Lenovo which I don't have any quality info on) and the 15" laptops have inadequate screens.

Don't buy a Mac… Don't give into the overpriced hype!!!!!

I went to the doc’s again yesterday.

I know, I know, it was much overdue. But I am terrible at doing things that benefit my own health.

The result (and without going into too many details !) was :
More diet* pills
More goop
Even more goop
Less messiness on my legs
And more pasty-white goodness coming back

Yep. As is usual for going on the diet* pills, I’ve seen instant improvement in my condition. Trouble is though, every other time I’ve been on them, the condition worsens again after I run out. We shall see this time around, I’m looking more into tracking the allergies this time around. I have a blood test coming there too, will be curious to see what the result is.

It’s just in time too, the weather here has turned colder …

* They’re not actually diet pills. They’re antibiotics. However … with a 4 times a day, 3 hours no food each time pattern, they may as well be diet pills. Hey, it’s a good discipline to have, it works out to 3 meals a day (with the 4th being while you’re asleep) and a cutting down on the all hours grazing on junk.

So that’s me improving, hopefully it’ll stick this time.

Next up – work. Oh dear. We’ve been “tech refreshed”. Note they don’t say “upgrade”. The base units seem ok at the moment but when they change our systems to Windows 7, as is threatened, they will struggle for memory. This laptop has 3GB of memory and is sitting at 930MB free with Firefox, Outlook, Skype, iTunes and Steam running. If that hits 500MB, Windows complains bitterly and I have to close applications. That shouldn’t happen, there’s a technique called “Virtual memory”, where the memory available to Windows is expanded virtually with applications getting put on the hard disc instead of in actual memory. The new machines have just 2GB.

The big awful though is the screen. We’ve been inflicted with HP Elitemonitor 201s, which have a multitude of flaws :

Widescreen – this is an entertainment setup, not a business setup. Widescreen means less height to work with. For business, a 17″ 4:3 is more useful than a 20″ widescreen, it has more useful area.
Resolution – if it’s a 20″ screen, it should be able to do 1080p. That’s 1080 vertical lines. These can only do 900.
Pixel bleed – this is the really crippling thing. It’s where coloured, lit pixels bleed into the ones next door. We’re usually working with black text on white, so those white pixels bleed onto the black and make the text unreadable.
Update rate – this is where you move things around on the screen and have disorienting effects from the after images.

I’ll see how it goes before seeing if I need a replacement screen. My eyes were misbehaving today, probably due to it being hayfever season still.

I ended up at the Mall yesterday after a day working at home (around the doctor visit). Firstly, if you liked the first 2 Riddick films, the third is worth watching. It starts slow but accelerates into something very, very good. Almost as if they needed to dump baggage from Chronicles (good film, bad endgame). I’d already arranged to see Riddick and wanted to put a couple of fingers up to my condition by getting out of the house (I wasn’t great yesterday, much improved today).

I am sooo close to getting a Macbook. It’ll be a Macbook Air, 13″ refurbished last generation Macbook Air. It just ticks all the boxes :
Enough resolution on the screen
iTunes compatibility
SSD hard disc as a massive bonus
Avoidance of the abomination that is Windows 8

Just one problem – £869. I’d prefer not to spend half that on a laptop.

But … with laptop prices going up in general, it may happen. Especially as the keyboard on this one is getting so much worse.