Sleepypete's Pillow

Sometimes it's even things like you know what you want to say or talk about but you don't know how to say it. And someone else helps out with the words.

It's always helpful to share especially with people who understand , sometimes we don't even know we have to , sometimes we are frightened to open up or just cant and stay locked away and that's dangerous really we all need the compassion to be there to support others and also the wisdom to know when to let go and get the support we need too and not be so wrapped up in our own lives and problems that we can't take a little time out for ourselves and others I'm glad today was a better day and hopefully tomorrow will be too

I must watch those Star Wars films again, it’s been a while.

Mind you, there’s a bunch of blurays that I’ve bought and not had chance to watch yet (cricket season dominates the telly) so it’ll have to wait.

Today saw an Old Friend (actually two, one not so old) come back to work after far too long away. She’s been struggling, which is highly understandable because a huge chunk of the foundation for her world has been kicked away.

Things happen to people. Really bad things. And quite often, we need a little help to recognise that it’s not the end of the world. As long as we have some of that spark, there’s a bit of help. And if we can’t see that spark, someone we know will have a metaphorical match to help start it off again although it may not be obvious who that someone might be. There’s always hope. Even if it’s difficult to see it.

The closest I’ve come to losing hope is actually quite a few years ago (we won’t talk about that) but it’s been coming close again with the skin thing. It’s tough that it’s going one step forward, one step back, with the backward steps usually being my fault for losing discipline.

Relationships hit hard too, in the breaking of them. When my last major relationship broke up, I couldn’t see it (and didn’t want to show it) but I was utterly numb. I threw myself into the online gaming world and into work. I pursued two utterly doomed attempts at relationships and got incredibly frustrated when they didn’t work out.

I was of course kidding myself that there was any chance – but the certain mindset at the time utterly ignored the impossibilities, both in the recognising that it was wasted effort and in the accepting of the inevitable failure. It just led me into a self destructive path which had me descend further into depression. Not entirely sure how I escaped from that – I can’t remember.

Ok – that’s it for my woes, for now at least.

I wanted to talk about a very special little lady who needs all the reminders she can get right now of how great she is.

I’m talking about the person who was the heart of my last team. She knew her little corner of the project perfectly, we could all trust that everything we sent their way would get done accurately and very timely. (And this is coming from a person who gives few chances and will bypass people when disappointed). It wasn’t just the professional aspects though, it was the empathy, understanding and intelligence that kept people (everyone !) coming back for advice.

Yep. If there’s one person who we could have happily kidnapped and brought with us when we shifted teams, it’s this little lady.

Of course those awesome cakes help too.

So there we have it – we persuaded her to come visit my team today (I bribed her with jars !). She seemed a fragile 3 foot tall when she stepped on to our a floorplate and left an apparent 6 foot tall legend again.

One of the bad things about depression cycles is that it can lock away the ability to recognise the good things about yourself. That’s when we need a little help from outside to recognise the value that we have. I hope we helped our little lady with that today, just like the cricket team helped me with it in the last game. I’ll be back next year because of the lift they give me.

It helped me out as well today – my muscles have been complaining and it helps me to have a bit of mental fortitude to deal with that. Being able to talk through my issues properly is something I can’t do with many people (what I put here is the tip of the iceberg). But being able to share the burden of issues that are actually quite similar help us both deal with them.

I’ll leave it there 🙂

Today was one of the better days.

PS I just checked – I have 8 more of those jars begging for some paint :-).

I keep getting posts brewing in my head, being all distracting like at all the wrong times. But when it comes to when I have chance to tap them in here, are they still there ? Nope. Empty head.

Let’s see if I can remember a few of them …

Saturday saw me venture out of the house (didn’t want too, felt gross) to head off to the Lexus garage. I’d been invited to a sales event … So I went along, mostly to gain a bit of intelligence. We didn’t actually talk numbers in the end. I like Lexus. Not just for their cars (which are special) but you’re buying into exceptional customer service when you pay into the club.

It feels very strange to be actively considering changing the best car I’ve owned, only 2 years into owning it. I’m a big fan of my Lexus CT (I’ll say again why in another post some time) but I always knew that it wasn’t quite quick enough to keep me totally happy. It’s quick up to 20-30mph but then the rather anaemic engine takes over the main duty. I always knew something better was coming “soon”. That’s going to be the new Lexus IS. Bigger engine, bigger motor, more toys.

Toy count matters.

But yeah – at no time at the Lexus garage was I pressured into considering going into another Lexus CT. I’ll be back there in 6 or 12 months and the story might be different. The IS300h costs somewhat more though, which puts a dampener on the enthusiasm.

I’ve got a new signature habit at work 🙂

No – it’s not avoiding writing a signature due to my hands wanting to cramp up on me (that’s a serious issue), it’s the hat. I’m still in the Ashes hat I bought from Lords. I’ll wear the hat when I’m outside. It was essential for bus runs because it keeps the rain off. But at least I acknowledge one sensibility, I don’t wear it when I’m indoors.

Unlike another person at work who walks through the floorplate with a cowboy hat on. I think it’s surgically attached …

Ashes ! Good day today in the cricket. This game’s been one of the better games. The pitch has kept things interesting by allowing help for the bowlers while also giving the batsmen a chance. We’ve seen a couple of centuries by the batsmen and a few 5 wicket hauls by the bowlers. I wouldn’t have bowled well there, it needed a faster, bouncier bowler – I was more of a kiss the pitch swing bowler.

Today summed it up well – we had the Tail End Fun Club come out to play for England. You’ll often see cases in cricket where the proper batsmen struggle to do anything while playing defensively. Then the bowlers (the tail end) will come out and smash the ball to all parts. They don’t last long … but they can get enough runs to make a difference.

That’s how it happened today, England’s Tail End Fun Club pushed a difficult target out into “haha you lose” territory. And then the Aussie batsmen come out and start making it look easy … Was getting pretty nervous at work. It was a different story when I got home with the shopping, wickets started falling and England won with a little bit to spare.

Yippee !

I have the highlights on at the moment. Nope. I’m not being sad. I just left the telly on the same sports channel and I’m listening to music while tapping this out.

Oh – that’s an indication of how gross I was feeling on Saturday. Plan A was to go shopping after Lexus and fill the car up with fuel (400 miles on 34 litres). Plan B was to hide and hope my skin would settle down. I have a critical need to avoid stress right now, as stress leads to me attacking the bad bits. But that said, I’ll not hesitate to help out a friend if they need it.

It’s what I do.

I’ve been collecting the music again … Adverts have a tendency of selling the wrong thing when it comes to me. I’ll ignore the subject of the advert and listen to the music. This time it’s Nouvelle Vague with Dancing With Myself. I dunno what the advert was for but a little Youtube surfing later … Hannah Peel was the same, she’s the one who sung Tainted Love on the Corsodryl advert.

And … the highlights just got to the good bit of the cricket, when England started turning over the Aussies. Post time !

That’s a hell of a dark title isn’t it ?

I’ve been rummaging inside PCs again … A mate from work and the gaming world is having issues with his main desktop. It’s keeping him out of Eve, which is a game he adores. So instead of it going to a PC repair man who’d rip him off, I’m taking a peek.

Symptoms :

Give it power, nothing happens (except for case LEDs coming on). This is after a period where it was rebooting and shutting down. If a PC reboots without warning, there’s 3 main reasons :

It’s a work machine and some offensive scumbag has instigated an update that forces a without-warning reboot, losing you the work you’ve been doing. Or
It’s overheating
The power supply can’t supply enough Smoke

Our gadgets don’t work on electricity. This is a myth propagated by the energy companies to make you buy what they’re selling. No. They run on Smoke. Because as everybody knows, if the Smoke escapes from electronics, it will never work again.

It’s tough to work on unresponsive PCs. You need clues to be able to fix the problem and no clue = no ideas. The biggest idea that I have on Luth’s PC is that a case fan is jammed almost solid, so it will be asking for more from the power supply than it should.

Techie note – when playing with the insides of PCs, remember :

Never, ever take an old telly or monitor apart. The new LCD ones, fine. But not a Cathode Ray Tube display. They work by using massive voltages and have energy storage to help out there. Those two together lead to potentially lethal voltages. Don’t mess with that. It can kill you.

Always have the kit earthed. For me, this means disobeying one common rule by having the kit plugged in. (But switched off). 3 pin plugs come with an Earth and using that lead is the most efficient way of earthing equipment. This lets that stored energy drain away safely.

Don’t open power supplies unless you really know what you’re doing … They also have high capacity energy storage to make the output cleaner. This is why I can’t use the power supply in my 2nd newest machine, as I’ve modified that unit … (fan broke)

It’s ok to try and turn fans but don’t get carried away and spin them hard. The same physics that mean magnets in energised coils become motors also means that turning magnets in coils will generate energy in those coils. Without power, there’s nothing keeping the generated charge in check and things can get damaged.

Ok – enough things to remember (am running out of fingers)

I’ve got something for Luth. Instead of trying to isolate the exact problem (it’s going to need a case transplant and a spare power supply to check it out properly), I’ve put his hard disc in my last PC. It’s close to the same power : slightly less cpu, slightly more graphics. And after the usual issues, it seemed happy when I closed it down last night.

Fingers crossed.

Hey ! Where’s this blood sacrifice thing come from ?

It seems like every time I play with the inside of PCs, blood is spilled. The insides tend to have unfriendly sharp edges which get sharper over time. It’s usually a slice to a finger.

This time ? I’m picking up the box to put in the car this morning and OUCH ! Cut the middle finger on my left hand at the tip. You know – the place that goes on a keyboard. It’s ok, the bleeding stopped by the time I got to work. It pretty much stopped before I started driving. It doesn’t arf sting though.

However – it did satisfy one of the tenets of PC maintenance. It can truly be a Black Art.

PS The Skylon spaceplane is touching the news again … Must try one of those in Kerbal Space Programme. Hopefully it will go better than the XK-Wing / ZK-95 Headhunter prototype … that was truly too horrible to post here.

[lol] No thanks. I have far too much to do in WoW!

Think Battlefield with massive guns and no annoying bunnyhoppers bouncing around.

You get idiots and trollers but exploiters seem to be more under control.

Want that newcomer code ? 🙂

Sounds like far too much fun!

I’ve discovered a new game …

I should really finish off one of these games sometime shouldn’t I ? Maybe. Some games I play to death, some games I’ll get to a certain point and stop playing because I hit some kind of wall. Sometimes that wall is a step in the story, a natural break point where you stop and take a breath but don’t go back.

I should finish off the Shadowrun game some time, it was well worth picking up and I enjoyed it up to the point where that natural break happened.

The new one is World of Tanks and it’s one of those dangerous grind-reward games … You know, the type where if you just have One More Turn, you’ll get closer to unlocking the next shiny. World of Tanks is one of those.

It’s an online tank simulator. Think first person shooter like Call of Duty or the other famous name games (which I avoid) but instead of being in an unrealistic body with unrealistic ability to run, jump, twist and otherwise perform spine defying movements, you’re in a tank with a very definite rule set for what it can do :

The gun turret can only turn at a certain rate
It takes a while to focus in the aim
There’s only so much power in the engine so you may not be able to go up the hill you just came down
You only have limited view

And all sorts of other rules like that. It’s 15 a side, with battles lasting a maximum of 15 minutes. Many of the maps offer lots of cover to lurk in and you’ll need to hide there to survive to shoot. It’s compelling gameplay and I’ve been enjoying it a lot, even though it can turn into a bit of a grind to get the First Victory Of the Day for all your tanks.

In fact, I’ve enjoyed it enough to pay a bit of cash on it … It’s a free to play game but you can give real cash for gold which can give you in game advantages or a bigger garage that holds more tanks.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s the video that sold me on the game. It’s by Duncan of the Yogscast. He’s not the best game commentator but it showed how much he enjoyed this one and I wanted to check it out.

If you want to check it out too, I have a newcomers invite code I’m willing to pass on … (if you’re reading this in a month, that code will have surely gone!)

Now … I need to grind a bit more to get closer to the Panzer IV and legendary T-34.

First day back on the job today.

I’m not healed yet (not by a long way to be honest) but I’m in better condition than I was early last week. I’m managing to leave some of the really bad bits alone (but still harassing others) and they’re responding by being a little bit tougher. It’s still really easy to break the discipline and set the healing back, although the bad bits are recovering better too when I do attack them.

But work’s not all about me wondering whether or not I need to hide bits of me away.

I was hoping I’d get a chance to give a Big Grin ™ to someone special today but she’s still not feeling well. Not back yet. Grinning at the canteen girls just isn’t the same as the challenge of trying to invent something suitably daft to make someone smart smile.

Today was actually pretty good, the first day back is always a catch up day and I think I’ve caught up fairly quick. Tomorrow’s job will be to start to analyse one of our key documents to see how we need to update and refine it. But today was more pain free than I’ve had for a while. I still have pain issues but the hip seemed ok.

Happy days.

I was feeling good enough to do a Mall run as well tonight, although I did have ulterior motives :

Replacing worn out trousers,
Grabbing more cash

And I happened to walk out of there with 5 more blu-ray movies (Willow, ET, John Carter, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Real Steel) and puzzlement about one of the Russians who work at the KFC asking how I was.

Oh – games … There’s a youtuber out there called Totalbiscuit. He’s dangerous. I blame him for me buying the new Shadowrun Returns game. It’s actually pretty good, it’s an isometric* role playing game that concentrates on story over complication. I’ve been impressed with it so far, although it’s starting to outlive the boredom factor.

*(isometric – flat 2d world but projected on screen as fake 3d. Like if you put a picture on a coffee table and then looked at the picture from the side and above)

The look of the game works pretty well and harkens back to the old days of computer role playing games. Modern games make the mistake of making everything 3d and rendered on the fly. That’s good from a feature point of view but doesn’t work so well from a game point of view.

Baldur’s Gate – was an isometric 2d like Shadowrun Returns. Sold like hot cakes. Predrawn backgrounds made it look sharp.
Neverwinter Nights – was fully 3d but in the isometric style. Just didn’t look as good as Baldur’s Gate, it wasn’t as popular.
Neverwinter Nights 2 – fully 3d set up like a shooter. Ugh. Nasty. I didn’t like this one at all.

Compare that opinion of 3d to the telly and movie world and … They’re moving away from 3d as well. Audiences see it as a gimmick which just doesn’t add anything of value. And when we look at Shadowrun Returns, it’s gone back to old style 2d on predrawn backgrounds and … it looks good plus you can concentrate on enjoying the story instead of fighting the game.

What else have I been playing ?

I discovered World of Tanks over the weekend … I’ve known about this one for a while but hadn’t tried it. Opinion ? I’m really impressed. I’m hooked already. But I want to save talking about this one for another post.

And as a close :

That was the latest Kerbal Space Programme attempt. Yes. It’s an abomination. And the first attempt at a launch saw it blow over in the wind and snap in the middle … Oops.