Bork Slowly Borking

 Oxford.. end of day 3 I guess. Or 2 if you're counting full days. Super busy again. No stopping for lunch. Doing my thing and pushing on with code. It's apparent they are dying for IT support. A range of minor issues and breaks that they have no idea how to fix that I put right within minutes. These are sideline quests. A question on the side. Explaining this. Or that. Today I properly met another couple of the charity workers who had been out on Monday. One of them was super duper enthused with the tech. The software. How does it work. She genuinely had the spark. She's a good IT person in the making, a good programmer in the making. Smart. Interested. Excited. But that's not her job. To be a programmer. She's the office manager. But still. She lit up. I talked to my friend about it and ended up showing her the gubbins underneath. The server. The database. The code. We even went through making a small change to the app itself - adding a new field. She did most of ...

 Oxford. The weekend running up to Oxford was busy. Time started to run out badly for me as the weekend loomed and I ended up working my socks off getting my software and hardware ducks in a row. My "emergency last day" of fiddling time on Saturday ended up being less emergency and more compulsory with my head stuck in code from early morning for all day. About mid afternoon I got a message for Hazel who was due to babysit for me for the next few days. Upset. Argument with the police dispatcher. Neighbour on her doorstep threatening her. Dispatcher wouldn't send police. Could I come pick her up. Which was fine. I just confirmed she meant now now, and that I was stressed and unwashed and you'd have to take me as you found me, but otherwise, that's no problem. So I ended up picking Hazel up early, carried on working before realising 20 minutes in I should probably check Hazel was ok so went and sat with her for a lot of the rest of the day. Tired. Saturday was not t...

 Struggled the last few days. Tired. Ill. Out of breath. Spikes of pain. A few spears of chest pain. At it's worst getting out of bed, walking downstairs then upstairs wipes me out. Perhaps the CFS is biting. Doing too much on my "rest" month. Perhaps. I think this is just my wax and wane of feeling like shit edging towards death warmed up. I think it's slowly getting worse. Which figures. Sometimes my thoughts spiral down dark paths. And if I reach for it. If I think of something I know is dark, like what the day after Athena going will be like. All I see is death. Which. I know. Is really super not good. But it is what it is. And the larger part of me is ok with it. Ok is a complicated word there. Accepting might be better. But even that. Is complicated. Resigned would be another good word. Anywho. Progress on getting shit ready for next week has slowed to a crawl. I've bought a bunch of bits and pieces that I suddenly realise they may need if I turn up and they...

 Taking it slow. Mostly resting. Today the weather has been warm and horrendously humid, a ridiculous 84%. You can feel it in the air, an odd damp sensation. And somethings you touch feel a little... clammy. Whilst May was some record lows, June has been record highs. Officially the temperatures have been around 25C, but according to my car, and the local car servicing place that shows the time and temperature, that's bullshit. It has been 30C. In fact as I drove past the car place it showed a spike of 30.9C. The car roughly agreed. I don't know where the official weather gets its temperatures, but they don't tally with what my thermometers are telling me. And it certainly felt more like 30C than 25. Anywho. Today I booked up the accomodation for Oxford. I didn't bother paying the extra so I could cancel until the last minute. The ability to cancel given my flakiness is probably wise. But. I didn't bother. Because. I will force myself to do it. No escape plans. Do i...

 Spent the weekend not doing a lot. Resting. Given I have pushed my trip to Oxford back a week, I didn't need to squeeze in tasks anymore. Which is a good thing. Pretty sure I had burned a bit too hard last week. Today I decided to tackle sorting the server out. Get my server working post router change. And then slowly disassemble it. Pull it out. Clean it up. And put it back together again bare bones before moving onto installs. I managed to do all of that. But it killed me. I just can't do shit anymore. My lack of capability and stamina is shockingly bad. Once upon a time I used to crawl all around PCs, servers, bits and bobs. Leaning over. Under desks. Now I can't do it. Leaning over a PC for a minute makes everything screamingly hurt. Just tinkering for 30 minutes starts to make me feel tired. Ill. It's like hitting a wall. I took several breaks during the process and at various points I was gasping for breath, back screaming in pain, feeling nauseous. Ill. Ok. Nice...

 Tired. Tired. Tired. And everything hurts. I mean super hurts. Old school hurts. Like when I couldn't step down a step hurts. Perhaps it's the swimming and all my muscles are screaming. Perhaps it's my on and off again random pain and sensitivity malarkey. I'm reasonably sure it's not the swimming - it kicks in super hard after sleep, but also flares at random points in the day and is sharp take your breath away pain. Not dull achey muscle type pain. Painkillers take the edge off for a little while. I think it's just one of my cycles. Also got big black eyes on waking. And red bloodshot irritated eyeballs. And tingling arms. Lack of oxygen my dude. Not enough oxygen going around the body. Makes me wonder if the sharp silvery pains are also this - basically lactic acid build up from anaerobic activity.  Anywho. This week has been a bit of a burn, one that I can't sustain at this point. I need to stop. I did a little work on a "new" shelf that has b...

 I'm up early this morning. Buzzing slightly. My still not come down self yet has a new target to burn towards. Gearing up to go to Oxford next week. The burn has started. Ordering bits and pieces I think I will need. USB sticks for backups ( they wont have a clue until I tell them how they should schedule backups ). Keyboard. Mouse. Network cable. Assume they have nothing. Gotta switch a router into my home network. Take the old server offline. Clean it. Wipe it. Set it up fresh. Install their software on it ready for next week. Check out the accomodation. The accomodation. Ugh. So I was naive about this. £50 a night I thought. A week. £250 I thought. Yeah. No. The first price came in at something like £800. Are you absolutely fucking kidding me. No. The prices ramped up during the week way, wayyy over £100 a night. Gah. I dunno whether it's Oxford being an absolute ball ache - everything is pricey there. Or it's greedflation. Or it's me not having had to stay in such ...

 Sketchy mental stability. Talking to myself a bit too much. A bit too manic. And my perceptions are shifting around a bit in a not cool losing touch with reality kind of way. I had the strongest sense today that everything was alien. Every person was a collection of dysfunctions. Our habits and tropes were just some crazy ingrained alien animal behaviour. It was like glimpsing the objective in a subjective world. Realising how alien everything is. And. The worst bit. I was trapped on this alien planet, with this alien lifeform and their weirdnesses and it was difficult to assimiliate into it. Uncomfortable. Sanity scratching. Very hardcore stranger in a strange land. I lapsed between exhausted and listless and vaguely ill. I just wanted to sleep. I briefly considered trying to do something computer wise to keep myself occupied. But thought better of it. I think I am burned out hardcore. Trying to do something would be a mistake I think. I just need to let this settle at its own pa...

 I'm having trouble. I can't seem to rest, I can't seem to have enough energy to do anything either, and the days are passing in a bit of a blur. I guess. Intellectually speaking. I am perhaps unwinding all the stored up kinks that have accrued over the last few months. And. It's very early days for me to stop and take a breath. Perhaps that's it. Whatever it is. It's not easy. To be sure I've had far worse situations. This is not putting me in danger of imminent demise. I am not about to jump off a bridge. But at the same time. It's not pleasant. I am unable to settle. Unable to enjoy. Unable to get enough energy. I think I just need to unhook the brain. And go with it. My thoughts are still pretty hyper. I crunched my way through a conversation with myself today explaining to an imaginary person the concept of abstract thought, intelligence and language. And how, language is just an abstraction of reality, a quick way to describe complicated things, an...

 Finally, I've stopped working. Whether it sticks remains to be seen. I can feel Andy's anxiety already. Late afternoon Thursday I finally stopped working. Told Andy. Wait wait. He said. Before you go. Let me check this is working. It was. Also. Can we just put this in. Sigh. There's always just, one more thing. It never ends. On the one hand it seems he has acknowledged his bad patterns. On the other. He is helpless to stop himself. Like an addict reaching for another hit. Ho well. I stopped. Went for a walk. Invited Hazel who I hadn't seen for more than a week. She asked if I had eaten. Soup. In 48 hours. Not good. Eh. I'm ok. In fact. Demonstrably it doesn't seem to be shitty eating or lack of it that fucks me up. It's other things. Anyway. Took a long walk around. Felt ok. Weird thing. I often feel better if I don't eat. I don't mean eat little. I mean don't eat. I was spacey by the end of the walk. To be expected I suppose. Long walk. Warm d...