doubtfulace

Ooh. It's Lash on Friday. I best make sure I've got a suitable outfit.

Just finished watching A Scanner Darkly. I was given a copy of the original novel when I was quite young, possibly as some confused attempt at drugs education. In a funny sort of way I think it's perfectly suited to this purpose, but in ways I can only imagine being recognisable to people who've lived with or around serious drug addiction (of the seriously fucked up a significant portion of one's waking time sort, rather than the casual but habitual use sort). It represents particularly well the way that a culture of normality can build around psychosis and paranoia. It makes sense of various stupid little things, and poignantly and knowingly pokes the holes where they belong, not just the usual dystopian "eek, crazy druggy freak" sensationalist bollocks. I needed this explanation back when I was young and it helped me survive this far probably better than any support material I've seen around for families of addicts. Some people might find its drug-agnosticism a bit problematic, but I, like Arctor in the early passages of the book, feel that demonisation probably creates as many addicts as glamorisation, and that the only sensible way forward culturally is to be sanguine about the pleasure seeking behaviour patterns we humans get into and their real positive and negative effects on us.

This is written through a foggy brain haze of sleepiness and not being very well. Sorry for incoherence.

• Why not filesharing is morally defective behaviour.

• Pure and commercially unsullied browser stats and OS stats from Wikimedia. We are mainstream enough and readers ridiculously outnumber editors enough that I think these could actually be really useful numbers.

• simont's first job geek horror story.

• NotN: Miss England sent off field due to injury.

I am sitting at the Pembury tavern with nyecamden, who is treating me to beer and food (I shall have to put out then), abigailb, fluffymormegil and others. Nye smells good. Martin has brought a geek game called Shadow Hunter which makes no sense whatsoever. Beer good.

• Russian cake win!

• Living in the future: machines now get bored for you.

• I'm not sure if this is Darwin or chutzpah. (courtesy arkady)

• NotN: Robbie Williams comes crawling back to Take That; Delusions of adequacy given same status as religion.

To a German pub in Vauxhall after work for lproven's 42nd birthday celebration! I was shocked to discover he's younger than me ... The beer was middling, though the pints of black lager were nice enough (any Australian who's had Tooheys Black will be happy).

Today I mostly made up for not spending all day every day this week with Freda by doing the Toddler Workout, which involves lifting her from the floor to the ceiling over and over and over. In between I was reading Makers by Cory Doctorow, which everyone should read. You can read the whole book online before you buy.

I have also spent today mulling over work-based problems and wishing I had VPN access sorted. This is not intrinsically upsetting me or annoying me. That's good, right?

• American Airlines are fatally incompetent. Spread this link.

• The death of the DSLR. Rather, its marginalisation: crappy convenience beats inconvenient quality every time.

• NotN: Google Maps shows nonexistent city "Perth".

Today I got (a) Notes 7 to work in Ubuntu (b) my boss to heartily approve me using Ubuntu officially and that he will back me up in telling IT that it's a business necessity for me to have a Unix main box, so they need to type in the office WPA key kthx and not bitch. The only thing I need now is remote access to work, and that can wait.

(The bees that power are apparently considering dumping Notes for ... Outlook. That said, Notes is actually more horrible than Outlook. Which is worse: Notes on Linux or Outlook on Windows? Outside candidate: Gmail for business. I have a visceral aversion to outsourcing such a core communications channel, but I must admit it'd suck way less than either.)

This evening we went to see the local fireworks. Freda was delighted. I got pretty good videos. And an LED butterfly with a sound chip that makes the most fucking grating "music" imaginable. I'd like to see early industrial noise enthusiasts put up with this shit. Living in the future: all this technology is for making cheap toys.

• Linux share on netbooks is 32%. Yes, Microsoft lied — surprised?

• NotN: Global "vaguely giving a shit" portal to launch; Device that “smells” snake oil could identify terrorists.

Today at work I was reminded of why proprietary software should never be bought in under any avoidable circumstances: because even if you've got a nice company who work hard on support, it's still an impenetrable black box with a tap into your wallet. Open source software is like backups, redundancy and support contracts — things people just don't understand the vital necessity of until they actually get bitten in the arse by not having them.

My commute is much shorter. I get home vaguely capable of speech! I write a NotN and play with Freda. It's before midnight and I'm actually relatively relaxed. I'm also no longer worried about money, even if we haven't got any. Life is good.

FUCK I could of been doing something productive tonight!

MY NAME IS JADE BUT EVERY1 IN PRISON CALLS ME BABY JADE N MOST RESENTLY QUEEN JADE.. I NO MOST Y'ALL PROLLY THINK I B FRONTIN CUZ DAT U THINK DAREZ NO POSSIBLTY DAT SOME1 DATS IN PRISON CULD B ON LIVEJURNAL.. N U NO WHAT I DUN BLAME NE OF U 4 IT..

BUT YEA I BEEN IN PRISON SINSE 1999 4 ARMED ROBBERY IN DA 1ST DEGREE WIT ATTEMPTED MANSLAUTER..MY ORIGINAL SENTANCE WUZ 30 YRS WIT A 10 YR MAX.. SO BASICLY I BEEN IN PRISON SINSE I WAS 18.. I WAS SMOKING ALOT OF CRACK WIT MY CUZZIN JENE BACK WHEN WE WAZ TIGHT N ROLLD 2GRTHER.. I GOT REAL HARD IN2 METH N HERION N DAT IS Y I ROBBED A BANK N TRYED 2 KILL DA MANAGER N 3 OF HIS WORKERS CUZ DEY WUZNT GIVIN ^ DA CHEDDA!!! NOW I LOOK < N REALESE HOW STOOPIDD I WAZ BUT NWO IVE ADAPTED 2 DA PRISON LIFESTYLE SO ITS GONE B HARD ONCWE I GET PAROLL DATS IF I GET PAROL..

WELL GOT2 GO CUZ WERE SAPPOSED 2 B IN BED BUT WEN I GET OUT I WANA GO 2 ALOTTA MEETINGS.  SRY 4 MY BAD GRAMMER I JUST NOT VRERY SMART..

O N WE HAVE R OWN MEATINGS HERE N DEY HELP US BC PPL FROM DA OUTSIDEV COME HERE 2 SHARE BOUT DEMSELVES N WHUT DEY WENT THRU SO ITS NICE 2 NO DAT DARE AINT 1 PERSON IN DA WORLD DAT AINT GOIN THRU EXACTLY WHAT IM GOIN THRU RITE NOW..

GOODNITE IL WRITE MORE 2MOROW.. PLEASE AD ME 2 UR FRENDZ CUZ I 1T SUM 4 WHEN I GET PAROL..

• NotN: Hitler apologises for MP analogy e-mail.

Today was my first day at work and it went well. It's a small publisher which is about half moved to the web from print. They have a single Unix sysadmin who is now desperately in need of a hot-swappable spare, that being me in due course. There's a bloody lot to get done and lots of useful things for me to be getting on with right away. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

I must admit my new work laptop was an exciting prospect. It's one of these. Apparently they're rather more fragile (particularly the screens) than something that shiny should be, but that's why employers buy such things and IT departments maintain them. It also weighs just a kilo. And has 3GB memory, being upgraded to 5GB shortly. And also runs Ubuntu 9.10 flawlessly. All I need now is Lotus Notes 7.04 for Linux.

Woke at 7am on saturday morning and got back to bed at 5am Sunday - 22 hours!
In betwen i drove over350miles, visited family, saw a football match, went to tg (as a zombie soldier with gouged out eye).
Sunday did nt happen though to be fair - out of bed at 1pm and no need for make up to look like a zombie at all.

Work again today (booooo!) but feeling reasonably recovered.

Hows things in the clean world?
Why am i asking here?

• NotN: Watford Council saves children from parents; BAN THIS SICK FACEFILTH.

Yesterday, nyecamden took me to Brighton for a night to celebrate a year together. (A circumstance which certainly shocked him.) I skimmed over the Sun on the way down, leading to a deeply unclean feeling in the brain and the NotN linked above. We meandered through town and to the hotel room, something deep in the more rabbit-warren-like bits of the Best Western. Not a bad room, but definitely an odd one. Popped out just before sunset to see the seabirds roosting on the burnt-out west pier. (I got a short video of it, actually using for the first time the Pound Shop tripod I bought ages ago and keep in my jacket pocket at all times.) Wandered back into town, had a couple of pints, then to the pier for fish'n'chips. Then back to the hotel.

Nye had warned me that stag and hen nights were a perennial hazard of Brighton on a Saturday night. There was also a zombie walk as we were arriving. I now understand that the difference between zombie walks and groups of hens is that the zombies pay more attention to their apearance.

The younger teen had suffered an unfortunate whack to the head on Saturday night (she's fine, a bit concussed, will be off school for much of the week) and so we left Brighton sooner than we'd hoped. I showed up with four litres of ice cream for the patient and it was much appreciated.

arkady pulled out Finding Nemo for Freda's appreciation and she loves it ridiculously. "Nemo! Fishies!" I've ripped it to the main laptop she uses to avoid DVD Marmiting.

Tomorrow I have my first day at work. Did I mention that? \o/

• You know, I almost want to see Bob's wrath.

• I don't see how anyone could accuse the Catholic Church of continuing to try to play down priestly child sexual abuse.

• NotN: Julie Bindel: Trannies nicked my paper on the Tube.

Today was the older teen's birthday. The younger teen took her ice skating and we just had steak pie followed by cake. (Younger teen had mush, face still being in pain.)

On the thirtieth day of the month, we got hit by the download cap. The ignominy! No YouTube or Runescape or net telly. Freda suddenly has ridiculous amounts of energy. Oh dear.

Tomorrow evening: Brighton with nyecamden!

FREDA HAS WORKED OUT HOW TO SET THE MICROWAVE GOING. (dives for cover)

• "Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches." (It's true!)

• Women! Put out or you're a witch. As well as a bitch. (I need to pick up more fundies.)

• NotN: Drugs chairman controversially states the bleeding obvious (title courtesy ciphergoth.

We has finished cleaning the lounge. (The collection of Freda discards under the couch was much smaller than last time. Though it did include the cute little Pound Shop radio, which Freda loves and we don't.) We got some paperwork and shopping done today. Now we are kicking back with glasses of Mummy Juice (white) and Daddy Juice (red; Banrock Station for four quid, not bad at all). Freda is actually asleep not on Mummy.

The younger teen got up and came in this morning showing off her home snakebite labret piercings, done herself at 3:30 last night. AGH KIDS. She used a sewing needle. Straight through her own face. Thankfully she has looked up aftercare etc so is at least doing stupid things smartly. We got plastic backs for them from Claire's (she has school next week). It was only today that she worked out that eating might require some thought in the next week ...

My work laptop is delayed. O noez! This means I'm still using ye venerable N410c at home longer than I hoped. The keyboard has now completely died, so I have the old Microsoft Natural Keyboard — my second favourite model of keyboard ever, only beaten by the Model M; my ideal keyboard will be a Microsoft Natural with Model M keys — which is larger than the laptop. I'm tempted to have another go at reviving Celery's display.

However, sound is working on the N410c again. I have music again. It's wonderful. And the older teen doesn't try to get her mother to stop me playing horrible fucking noise on her Mac on the grounds that it will break if she doesn't stop me.

is pants.

Even though I'm going to the zoo tomorrow, which means things must be very bad.