I Aten't Dead

Hello to those who can still be bothered checking this blog for updates. Four months is a fairly long time not to update so I'll just add things as I recall them and no promises of chronological order. I have not been checking other peoples blogs either as they make me miss everyone too much.

Ernie the ogre upstairs is gone. He gave his notice to the real estate and then changed his mind a week later. Seizing thier chance they refused to accept his retraction despite his whining about having nowhere to go. Just about everything concerning him I have gotten second hand since he would actually flee at the sight of me (probably a guilty conscience and expectation of my justifiable wrath {or he actually thinks I am evil and is terrified of me}). Just before he handed in notice I did go upstairs and yell at him through his door (Entirely justified and if you want to know what he does, ask the Simonster as I complained to him quite a lot when he was up here). It came back to me from the neighbors that I had been threatening him and had run off with my tail between my legs when he produced his baseball bat. When he was flat hunting he would apparently show the people in the other flats the card an estate agent had given him - which had her picture on it - and tell them she was his girlfriend. There was some debate over whether or not to inform her of what he was doing but it was decided to wait until she had found him somewhere to live. Otherwise we might have been stuck with him even longer. It took a team of profesional cleaners a whole day to render the flat inhabitable after he left. He also left three trailer loads of crap in the backyard and the carports. The worst being a rotting urine soaked matress which almost made me sick to chuck into the trailer. Happily I have not seen him since he moved out. So ends that saga.

Mental health issues. I have finally gotten back into the system. Firstly there came a case manager. A nice enough guy, but inexperienced and unfortunately a bit too christian for my tastes (and with a tendency to give out photocopies of inspirational messages). He was good for philosophical debates though and I usually felt better after seeing him. He has since been transferred kicking and screaming to another section. I have briefly been introduced to his replacement though there has yet to be a propper session. This will occurr after my third meeting with the Witch Doctor (psychiatrist).
The WD. A is a friendly fellow but when he gets going he's pretty intense and I left the first session with him a shaking wreck. Kept asking things like whether I had dabbled in the occult (really ) and was verry interested to learn that I used to play roleplaying games. When he learned about voices etc. he fixated on it and kept on about them controling me despite my saying that they weren't a problem and what really bothered me was the crippling anxiety and depression. Eventually he gave me some samples of a drug called Seroquel (quetiapine) and told me to come back in a few weeks. I have deliberately tried to remain as ignorant as possible about this drug in order not to anticipate it's affects (both positive and negative). According to my GP it is only schedualed for Schizophrenics and on the waiting list for Bipolars for all others it is about $85 per month or thereabouts. No problem now as in the next (verry brief) session he called up the relevant authorities and I am now oficially classified as Psychotic [MAD GRIN] which means only $4.75. See him again in a couple of weeks.
The Drugs. I'm still on all the other things I was taking but now am on 400mg of the new stuff before I go to bed. It definitely helps with sleep and if I'm up and about I can feel it kick in, generally 20 mins to half an hour after taking it (hits like a sack full of sand. After that I have to go to bed or fall over. During the day I tend to be a bit zombieriffic. Voices etc. now rarely there, I find myself missing them and often feel guilty about locking them away or killing them or whatever this drug is doing. My mood has improved drastically though what little motivation I had before has been somewhat blunted. Nothing seems to matter so much any more (I an not using that as an excuse for not having blogged though). Still get anxious and depressed but not so much now.

Family. My mum went for a tandem skydive for her 60'th birthday. All went well and she loved it.
A week or so ago my dad wend for a shorter dive through the roof of the extension he was building onto his shed (the next day I had been schedualed to help him put everything together but he couldn't wait). Landing on a concrete slab from about 2 1/2 metres is not as much fun as landing on sand from a couple of thousand metres (admittedly with a parachute {not that a parachute would have been of much use if dad had had one too}). He has a broken leg, cracked rib and multiple contusions and scrapes. The project is how on standby until he heals up.

Mon. Because of the posibility of saying the wrong thing or leaving something important out I will say nothing except. I love you Mon. Also she now has two chooks and a duck as well as her Shitzu and Maltese doggies.

Easter. Went to the anual Burdiken river camp. Over the years this has grown into a small villiage of family and friends of the family. These days the spot is claimed a couple of weeks before easter to prevent anyone else getting it and as many tents etc as possible set up well before thier owners arrive by those who get there first to discourage intruders. The area gets mowed and this year there was even a hot water system powered by the fireplace. Before the majority of people arrived there was only about a dozen people (including my father who had been there a couple of weeks already). It was at this time that some fuckwit (who was camped with some other group a few hundred metres away) decided it would be fun to use our campsite as a motorcycle obstacle course endangering (and annoying) all therein. During one of his passes my (65 YO) father steppd out to remonstrate with him causing the biker to swerve and hit a small tree. Infuriated he (the biker) took off his helmet and hurled it at the ground (causing it to split) and started menacing dad. Sensibly my father removed a steel pole from an awning and wacked him in the head with it. Surprised and intimidated (though aparrently not badly hurt) he retreated rapidly. He returned with some friends (the bad guys)and threatened dad with the police. In response one if the good guys called the Charters Towers police and asked them to come to the campsite cos trouble was a'brewin. Having had thier bluff called the bikers retreated. After a while when the police hadn't turned up they were called again. It seems that they couldn't find the turn off. It was later found that the bad guys had gone straight to the turn off and removed all signage. The main agressor cleared out as it eventuated that he was on a good behavior bond and any trouble would probably have landed him back in jail.
The rest of the camp was great, although the burdiken was too flooded to swim in it was a nice spot to spend a week. There was a wedding and as many yabbies as you could possibly want to eat. Mon bought a trailer and a palatial tent so we lived exceptionally well during our stay.

The Zoo. Only turned up a couple of times in the second term but am planning to go a lot more in the coming term, though I should probably ease back into it slowly.

Auctions [Probably Boring so skip this bit if you want]. My lovely 19" monitor died so I decided to go to an auction that had computer gear and see if there was a suitable replacement. Most of the computer gear was ex army stuff stacked on pallets and I found a couple with suitable looking monitors on them and decided to go for one pallet and if I didn't get it then try for the other. Somehow things didn't go as planned. As most of the pallets just contained crap, nobody was bidding on them. When it came to one of the ones I had my eye on I bid once and ended up with a total of five pallets of monitors, printers, servers and UPS's. Fortunately Mon had recently moved house and the new place had a huge shed.
After several weeks of testing I have reduced the 50+ monitors to about 30 that actoually work well. These are mostly 17" but there were also 2X19" and 2X21" (the best of which, a Dell Trinitron, became my replacement monitor). There was also a huge (huuuge, really I'm not kidding, it just about needed two people to carry it) NEC multisync which failed to work, so Mr Logic down the road offered to check it out. It was discovered to have a blown fuse. Not finding anything else obviously wrong the fuse was replaced. When it was plugged in I hit the on switch, there was a loud bang and I instantly turned it off. Mr Logic peered inside and said "I don't remember all of those bits of plastic being on the bottom". Apon closer examination a large component on the mains part of the board had been blown to pieces. The remaining 21" and two 19"s (and a few17"s if he can be persuaded) are destined for Major Waa's new house ( which has bundles of network cables coming out in just about every room) for use in LAN games saving some people from having to bring thier own on game nights.
The servers (two Sun 3000 spark servers with no hard drives and a spark storage array) may have been functional but nobody had any use for them so they are becoming art projects because the cases (on wheels and with lockable doors) and many of the components look prety cool (the mainboards look like a jetsons cityscape). A web search revealed they may have cost anywhere between US$45,00 & US$90,000 new.
The UPS's are as yet untested but if they work I might use as back up power for my house in case of blackout. Two of them have 25 12v lead acid batteries (altogether about 100kg/UPS) and one has 15 of the same batteries and a sticker saying it is capable of 3KVA output (also very heavy).
The six dot matrix printers were junked without checking. Of the nine laser printers one small HP could be persuaded to print.
There was sundry other stuff like old 10 base (slow) ethernet switches (mainly optical), a couple of old computers (1Ghz P3 ipexes minus hard drives otherwise functional), three neolithic palm pilots, a bunch of computer speakers, about 30 CD drives (just readers not burners), lots of power and network cables, mice, etc & etc.
There have been several trips to the dump so far and probably more in the future. I have been barred from bringing any more stuff to Mon's shed and even the attending of auctions is now frowned apon [though since then my auction mania has gained me two mountain bikes (which have been stripped to make one that is actually rideable), a large quantity of plastic tent pegs (for next year's easter camp), a couple of medium sized pressurizable storage boxes (they even came with a bike pump), some unidentifiable test equipment (whim, no other bidders and they looked interesting {anyone know what a DC Null volt meter is, or a radio set simulator? - OK so they are identified, I just don't know what they do}) and a lawn locker (just a lawn locker, nothing worthy of comment about it)].

I'm pretty sure that there has been lots of other stuff happening but I can't recall at the moment what it is. So this is it for the time being. Hopefully I won't be so long next time.