Bork Slowly Borking

 Well, tonights New Years Eve festivities have been derailed by Covid. Not me. But the host. Not a huge surprise to be honest given how rife Omicron is at the moment. And "All Going To Plan", which is to say let Omicron run wild and build a herd immunity to it as its farrrrr less onerous than the Covids That Have Come Before. The UK is I feel very well positioned for Omicron. So instead of festivities this evening I am chilling. Which. Honestly. I kinda prefer this evening given how "hectic" the rest of my week has been. Time to chill alone. Today has been positive. I know. Fuck me right. I am feeling upbeat and positive about the future. I am feeling.. not ill. *gasp*. Tired. But I am napping and resting. And. It's. Tickety boo at the moment. Or, at least, very copeable with. My creative juices are really beginning to bubble in the background. I want to do a bunch of stuff. My skills are not up to some of my ideas, but, it's good. I am eager to noodle, but,...

 Back at home after a longer stay down at my brothers. Not a huge amount to report over the Christmas break. Did a whole bunch of not a lot. Noodled with some proto game company art. But didn't break a sweat. I saw my Mom on Christmas day, which, was pretty traumatic. She was terrible. Mostly lucid. But sometimes questions would get repeated. Sentences would go round and around. A line between talking to her like a child and an adult, varying from moment to moment. But that wasn't the trauma. The trauma was for my whole 35 minutes there, she couldn't sit up straight, hunched over to the side - but she didn't want help. Eyes mostly closed. A look of pained struggling on her face. And her lungs. I've had asthma to one extent all my life. Almost carked it as a kid. I know what bad lungs sound like. These sounded 10/10 panic mode horror. Her breath bubbled. Like coffee in a coffee machine. She did not have the strength to clear her lungs. It sounded like someone drowni...

 It's too early to determine what today will be like. I feel not too bad at the moment. But. Eh. Like British weather, it changes in a moment. Rudely awoken by the ( dustman ) postman this morning ( park life reference for bonus points ). He was dropping off some hardfoam I ordered quite some time ago. I have a plan to make some custom inserts for game pieces ( my 6mm custom pieces ). As I tripped around the house afterwards I was left with a lingering sensation that I had been doing something "good". Eh ? What ? And then memories of the dream I had been having came back. Oh. Yes. That. I was in an alternate England. Kind of the same. Kind of not. Not threatening or weird or anything kooky. Just. Different. I was in London. With an old friend I haven't seen in 25 years. Shadowing them in their job. He was some high up government worker. I don't know. But part of it we traipsed through the trappings of government - it wasn't the houses of parliament, but some a...

 Ill for a lot of today. Sick. Green around the gills. Just bleh. I am beginning to suspect I have a returned ulcer. Nothing like the shit show that came before. But still. I am getting a lot of nausea, and it .. seems to be around either not eating.. or eating. And gets better if I eat. But not somethings. But I do then get a ... pain... and my general stomach area feels... sensitive. Meh. I guess I need to be real careful with what I eat and probably head off to the GP in Jan. Perhaps they will finally get someone to check it out. Rather than just throw meds at me. I probably need to go back to "ulcer diet". Eat small amounts. Often. Don't leave longer than a few hours. And don't eat more than a handful. Nibble diet. Noodled with work today. Been a bit of a bitch, didn't make great progress. The varying tools had suffered "bit rot". After a few hours of workarounds and playing with configs to make tools do what they should... I gave up. I think time an...

 So, had to pay a few bills today. Checked the accounts. Checked if Andy had paid me. Of course my money was short this month because I took some time off for surgery. Heh. I wondered which way he would jump. He's been getting a lot more shitty of late about sick days. Not that I have them per se ( despite being sick ). So what's that all about ? Techically there is zero written contract between me and Andy. None. Nada. Zip. There have been all sorts of agreements, understandings, partnerships, promises et al, but at the end of the day, they are worth the paper they are written on. Which is to say. None. So technically, Andy could just stop paying me, period. For no reason at all. His latest wheeze this year is to stop paying me if I have time off sick. This started when I was really ill at the start of the year. He fretted a lot about me not working. And when I say a lot. I mean. Pathological mental levels of fretting. And I think he just ended up doing this as a stick to bea...

 Work work, busy busy, ill ill. Nausea has been sliding in and out regularly through the days. Meh. It really makes me feel entirely ill - it's not just nausea, its nausea +. And my eyes are blacking up nicely again. 1 step forward, 1 step back. I am convinced I am just slow circling the drain. Something will pop. Then the docs will at last say, oh, you have X. Too late now. Or some shit. You can see it coming. Put in a couple of pretty full days last couple of days at work. Got stuff done. S'all good. But any work interactions are now just an annoyance. And just blatant examples of some kind of dysfuction or other. How do you do this. How does that work. Whats your login. Stand on your own two feet. Or not. As time passes. I am not so sure the biz will stand without me. It will have to drastically alter I think. Or slowly sink. I can't see people adapting that fast, that well. Who knows. Fear and panic is a great motivator. Poor Athena has been cooped up for several days. ...

 Noodled. I am not sure why. I even paused a long while and groaned before heading into Hobbycraft. But yes. I made christmas cards. And busted out my paints. Don't ask me. I'm just along for the ride. Have some pictures of my handiwork. Of course they are from scratch. Hand painted. Who do you take me for ?? Before I got funky with "mixed media" The final product. Felt. And pixie dust. I know. I suck. It would appear that despite not having touched a paintbrush to paper since school, my painting skills have come on some. Pushed ahead no doubt by a grasp of colour theory, plenty of computer art, and not a little miniature painting and the like. Also. If you're into that kind of thing. A progression of steps on the third one... Basic blocking of "colour". Using inverse space. Woo.   Trees. Some highlights. Some shadows. Putting off the beak as I'm not confident. Beak, moon, writing, stars ! Ahhhh. Ooooh. Some shading, felt and pixie dust, finished ...

 Meh. After saying I didn't feel too bad yesterday, I promptly went downhill, felt shit for most of the day, and ended up having one of those blank goddamn days. A blank day. Where I spend a large chunk of it sleeping. Against my will. And unable to do shit when I am not sleeping. Without feeling ill, super tired, sick, etc. Sigh. So I didn't do shit yesterday. Which is very frustrating. Work, work. Here's a day off. Oh, but unlucky you, you get to entirely waste it by sleeping and feeling shit. Meh. Seems like a raw deal. Ho well. I am. Feeling a bit better today. Ha ha ha. We shall see if it sticks. I really must start writing shit down, about what I am doing, what I am eating. The CFS people on 10th December said I should probably do that. I always kick myself when I have particularly bad days that arse, is there a pattern. I don't think there is a pattern tbh. But. Arse. Moving on. I'm in a fuzzy place this year. Which had been developing for a few years now. A...

 Saturday. A couple of interesting... judgements... laid on me in the last couple of days. I'm always somewhat interested and slightly amused when people offer their assessment of me. Typically it's from a position of you only see one tiny facet of who I am. I'm not saying that from a position of oooh, I am so deep and complex you can never hope to know me, *dabs*. I'm saying that from .. more of a social chameleon perspective, and people typically pasting on whatever they think or want me to be, onto me. I *suspect* it's part of the easy going social chameleon thing. I'll give you a concrete - stupid - example. Back in the day, tech wise, Microsoft people, that is to say those professionals heavily invested in Microsoft technologies, used to turn around to me and say that I was a Java person. An open source kind of person. An Anti Microsoftee basically. Somewhat tongue in cheek, but, The Enemy. At the very same time the open source and Java types I knew used t...

 Burnout. Some days this year I reach burnout really quick. Yesterday was such a day. After pointing out the server disk was full, and that might be the fucking reason its all stopped working, I decided to do just a little fact checking. The techies noted the logs were enormous, and one of them had grown 5x the size. The implication being it was the dbs fault. There's a recurring theme at work atm. Blame everything else except the person responsible. So I fact checked the statements. Databases were 76gb all in. Perhaps that sounds a lot to you. Until I tell you the server has 3tb of space, IE, 3,000 gb of space. Some of the logs were very big. The biggest was 300gb. or 0.3tb. Once some basic cleaning had been done some 2tb of space remained on the server. 1tb was in use. As for the logs. They themelves are supposed to be maintained and wiped once in a while. All in all these tasks form part of your "housekeeping". Like doing the hoovering. Or dusting. And if you're su...

 Funny turn. Take two. Worked my ass off yesterday. By end of day I was buzzing with how tired I was. So at that point I pretty much had a non consensual nap. Two hours. Some point in there I am gasping for air. This time I came up to dozing level. Conscious of what's going on. I am struggling to breathe. But it's weird. I am not struggling to get breath in. Not a clogged up set of lungs. Not asthma tying me down. I am breathing just fine. But my body reckons it's not getting oxygen. Weird sensations. Dizzy. Chest constrictions. A pain radiates, same place as ever, front, low rib cage, over to the left a little. It radiates out and up left side. Feels bad. Really, really bad. Eventually I get up. Two black eyes. Yikes. I feel like shit for the rest of the evening. No bueno. Ho hum. Perhaps it was just like a really bad panic attack or somesuch. And my New Shitty This Year Stomach acting up. Whilst asleep. Ha ha. Not sure panic attacks cause black eyes. It's not good is...

 Decidely ill yesterday. Nausea. Unwell. Oh well. Same old bullshit then. I gritted my teeth and took Athena out for a nice walk anyway. The contrast between us is comedic. She's happy and bouncy and ready for an explore. I feel like shit, half thinking about throwing up, green around the gills, definitely not up for it. But I keep a happy positive vibe for my girl. No need to drag her down or take it out on her. She's lovely. Work has been... sigh... Let's just say more of the same shall we ? Andys apparent lack of focus and concentration is reaching epic levels. Not sure what's up with him. Perhaps he is struggling with work. Hard to say. I've actually blown through frustration, anger, stress, and am now out on the other side feeling sorry for him it's that bad. Eh well. Last night I had to wrestle with myself not to quit early. I really, really, really wanted to. Why not. I asked myself. It's not like I absolutely need to work through December. The idea s...