Plastic Electric 'Blog

11:57 PM

I have no Style

As you may have noticed, I have no style! Due to the need to stick my CV somewhere on the web, I've decided to reorganise things a bit. Or even a lot. So, my BTinternet webspace has been cleared. I'll have to sort out some new webspace for my personal stuff. My personal personal stuff, that is. Stuff like this. Perhaps I'll get even more personal.

8:58 PM

Looking for a Pimp

After doing job searching until midnight last night, I overslept terribly. Got up after one in the afternoon, with a headache that's lasted all day.

So, this afternoon, I quickly sorted through nearly 50 jobs from yesterday to consider further. Only nine were really worth acting on, as most were duff jobs that really do amount to scraping the barrel. Many I now have to fax my now finished resumé to, but I've never faxed anything before. My modem's s'posed to be able to send faxes, but I doubt that that'll really be an option (for technical reasons). I think the local library's got faxing facilities, though. Anyway, at least I know I can phone up places without suddenly getting lost for words and tongue-tied. Oh, and I typed, printed and posted my first letter of application, too!

Tonight, I think I'll search around for job agencies to register with. I fancy being a rent boy.

4:27 PM

Nervous Patient

I've just come back from the dentists. Well, I only saw one of them, but they have several there.

I was nervous, but not terrified, when I got there. More sort of apprehensive. The nurses in the reception area got me to fill out a medial history form, as it had been so long since I was last there (or at any dentist's, for that matter). This, fortunately, gave me a good opportunity to say, in writing, that I'd taken several years to overcome my irrational phobia of dentists.

After not too much waiting, it was my turn to go up. But this just meant going up to wait in the smaller, upper waiting area. It was just a few chairs at the end of the landing (their dental surgery is in what otherwise would've been a domestic house). But the nurse was already there, and it was my turn to go in!

I went in, and the quiet dentist (potentially in a scary way) greeted me. Very gently. I took the opportunity to mention that I'd taken a number of years to overcome an irrational phobia of dentists, and he stretched out his hand to greet me more, um, thoroughly, I suppose.

Then he invited me to take the chair. This was not scary in and of itself. I find dentist's chairs really quite comfortable and relaxing. But it meant that he'd soon be looking into my mouth. Instead, he sat by the door, and asked me what I was looking for in the way of dental stuff. I said I was there for a general assessment, mentioning that my teeth were in a terrible state. He clarified his question by asking what sort of results I had in mind. I hadn't really thought about it much. I said I'd like to be able to use my teeth pretty much normally, but that I wasn't that interested in all that cosmetic stuff (though I wouldn't mind having fetching teeth - as long as they don't look falsely 'perfect'). He summed it up as basically a matter of reconstruction work, saying that the cosmetic stuff tended to pretty much come with it anyway.

Then he lowered the back of the chair, switched on the light (which, for some reason, I kept looking at, until it occurred to me that I wasn't in an optician's), and I opened my mouth. He turned away, putting a mask on his face. Was he so repulsed by the horror he saw within? No, he was just getting himself some hygiene gloves, that's all.

The bit when he did look at my teeth was the bit I'd been dreading over the years. It's 'cause that's the time when the dentist can devastatingly say, 'Oh,' as if disapproving of abysmally low morals. He didn't. There were no signs or expressions of any kind of disapproval at all. He just carried on with the same, quiet, gentle voice.

The next thing I feared was the bit with the pokey thing. I just knew it would hurt, and hurt a hell of a lot, when he stuck it in two or three particularly delapidated teeth. There was one tooth in particular, the molar which inspired this trip to the dentist's, which I was particularly fearful of having probed. The moment came when he stuck that metal spike in it - and there was no pain. There was no pain! Perhaps that tooth's really dead. Actually, I did very slightly feel it, but nothing much. I think he must've been being really careful.

Anyway, I've basically got to have lots of crowns, fillings, and plenty of root canal work (that stuff that Woody Allen's always having trouble with in his films). Phew! My third fear was that my teeth would be a gonna, and that it would be glasses of water for my teeth to sit in each night from now on. Perhaps that fear was somewhat exagerated, but still, there have been moments when I have wondered.

Basically, at least from this preliminary examination, it seems that all my damaged teeth can be saved. No extractions! That was quite a bonus. But, I have to remember, this was a preliminary examination. There will also need to be X-rays, and that sort of thing, too. But still, it's really put my mind at rest. Well, nearly.

There are one or two remaining things for me to consider. Firstly, there's the issue of sedation. It sounds quite attractive, but there are reasons to be fearful. Secondly, there's the cost of all this work (though it'll be done in stages). Even with getting a bulk discount of something like forty to fifty percent, the estimate is £4411.60!

I'll definitely have to see if I can get such work done on the NHS instead.

Anyway, one of the things that amused me during the course of the visit was the montage type picture of various bits of Monet paintings on the ceiling. It's conveniently and thoughtfully placed so that patients can admire some samples of his work while lying back in the chair. I suspect Monet was chosen for his relaxing qualities. Another was that they kept referring to patients like me as nervous patients.

After thanking them for their time, paying the fee for the check-up (£24.60, but I thought it was only going to be £20), and departing, I was happy. I was pleased with myself for triumphing over my irrational phobia, and particularly pleased that I hadn't really been that nervous after all. Most of all, though, I'm very relieved that my teeth can be saved. They have the technology; they can rebuild them.

9:34 AM

Dentist, Dentist, Dentist, EEEEEEEEE!

Finally, today, I am going to see the dentist. I'm scared! My appointment is at 2:50 this afternoon, and I just know that I'll be terrified by then. But I've got to go through with it.

I've also managed to mismanage my finances, again, this month, and am now a bit strapped for cash. I have just enough to pay for the basic checkup. Investing in a new printer and good quality printer paper had done it. But one cannot skimp when one's applying for jobs, yeah? And I got two reams of paper for the price of one, which was particularly good, as they cost £9.99 each. (A ream, by the way, is 500 sheets, 'cause that way it's 1000 sides. So, I literallly bought reams of paper yesterday.) I hope my jobseekers' allowance comes through soon!

Damn, I'm really not going to be able to concentrate on much today. I've still got some of my resumé to finish. It's now that final editing stuff, of trying to get it to fit on just two sides (two millireams? or four? (single sided)), of trying to avoid needless repetition, of trying to get the bad bits from seeming so bad without resorting to dishonesty, and so on.

I'm really scared about seeing the dentist.

I really must do some real jobsearching today, too. I'm s'posed to keep a record of what I've been doing, but so far it's mostly stuff about buying a printer and trying to sort it out, and writing the dreaded CV, of course. (Actually, it's a resumé. 'CV' literally means something along the lines of 'the course of one's life'. A resumé is just a sort of short summary of skills and stuff, and that's what I've been writing, as that's the kind of thing that the advice stuff I've been reading is saying. If I was to write a full CV, it would be several times the length, be much more chronological, and would be much more difficult to keep from looking dismal.)

I'm really not looking forward to going to the dentist's. I'm scared! I don't wanna go! Please, can somebody hold my hand? Help!

Perhaps my next entry will be made with no teeth.

11:01 AM

I Have Too Much Length?

Good news! I can write my own resumé without going mad with depression! It's not finished, yet, but it's well on the way. Should it really be taking a few days to write, though? It's only two pages (seems that resumés are s'posed to be short here in the UK), but I can be confident that I'm making a good job of it. And I've been continuing to pursue printer things, too, which takes a bit of time.

Back in the mid nineties, I noticed that there was a rather sad tendency for some blokes to boast about how 'long' their penes were. These boasts were made in some social discussion fora on the web (but those particular fora have ceased to be). They would try 'clever' strategies, like asking what the average size was, and if seven/eight/nine/thirty-four inches was too short. Then there were the 'sad' stories from blokes who claimed they couldn't have relationships because women were always frightened away by the sizes of their 'enormous' appendages. Why these sad pathetics thought the rest of us wouldn't see through their dismal ploys I just don't know. I liked to reply by saying that I don't have a fixed-length penis, but have a nice, modern, hydraulic one that changes its size according to circumstances, and that it also doubles as a crude thermometer the rest of the time.

Why do I mention this? I am reminded of it because of a phone conversation I had yesterday. Not with a bloke who was bragging about his exagerated penis, but a girl working at Lexmark's customer service thing.

I'd phoned up about my printer troubles (I'm still not entirely satisfied, and it's a real pain when the printer software springs a major haemorrage of a memory leak (I've hit my computer's reset button twice!)), so as to exhaust that particular avenue. During the course of the conversation, though, which had swiftly moved into areas she was not trained in, she told me that it was too long. It, that is, is my USB cable. It's three metres, but she told me that it should only be 1.8m. The areas she's not trained in are those of Linux.

The conversation went something like this (though I'm summarising here).

Hello, Lexmark customer services. How may I help you? asked the call centre girl. (I'm really tempted to write a perverted, as in pervy, version of this. 'Hello, how may I service you? asked the call girl.') She had quite an appealing Irish accent.

Hello! The other day, I bought a Z25, and the box said ≥ Linux RedHat 7.0, and I've got 7.2, but it's not recognising the printer properly, and your website says 7.0 and 7.1, but not 7.2.

She said something I didn't really hear clearly about not being familiar with something. I'd forgotten that I could increase the volume on my mobile. I'll just look it up. There was a pause while she looked it up. It is compatible, she said. It says here that it's compatible with 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2.

Oh, I said. Oh, that's good. But the system's still not recognising it properly. The printer configuration stuff doesn't show any printers. And it's not always managing to print.

She got me to perform a printer self-test thing, which the printer passed successfully. Then she asked, How long is your cable?

Three metres.

We don't support cables longer than 1.8 metres, I'm afraid. Your cable is too long for the printer.

No, it isn't. I enjoyed saying that.

The printer itself needs the cable to be no more than 1.8 metres. You'll need to use a shorter cable. A three metre cable would explain why it's not working properly, and not always printing.

No, the cable's fine. I've got my USB driver configured for verbose debugging, and there have been no error messages at all in the system logs for USB. The problem is at a higher level of the operating system. I particularly enjoyed saying that.

She repeated the stuff about how she wasn't trained on my kind of system (Linux), and that she'd never had a call of this nature before. So, as she was unable to offer further assistance, she took my details, and arranged for someone who did know about Linux to call me back (or email me, or something). And guess what she said then? Our system's just gone down, so I can't enter your details. But you can use your printer's serial number as a case reference instead. Amazing.

Well, I haven't had a call or email from them. Perhaps I'm s'posed to phone them back? Maybe that's why she told me about their system going down.

I also spent a few hours checking out the other printers in the Argos catalogue, hoping that I might be able to get a substitute that's at least equivalent to the printer I bought as advertised. There was only really one, and that was a Lexmark Z55se, priced at £69.99 - 2p over three times the price of the Z25 I bought! There were also HPs and Epsons, which are supported by the open source community, and some Canons, which seem quite unsupported for Linux at all.

I phoned up the Argos customer service people, and explained that I'd checked on the box before purchasing, and that it had turned out to be seemingly incorrect. The woman agreed that there were, indeed, grounds for me to take it back and get a full refund. She said she'd also have to contact the supplier (presumeably Lexmark) and tell them about the misinformation, as well as telling the catalogue people about it. She was also going to phone the shop I purchased it from, to let them know that I'd be bringing it back.

Rather than returning myself to the situation of having no printer, and an Argos voucher to use, I decided to decline for the time being. I mentioned that I was waiting for Lexmark to call me back, and that I hoped that that would lead to a resolution of my problems. I said that I'd called Argos just to check on the situation, to see how things stood. I thanked her for her assistance, and that was it.

Now, if, instead, I'd been offered a substitute product, I think I would've taken it. It would either have been an Epson or an HP, or that Lexmark Z55se, but either way it would probably have been better than the Z25 I currently have. But was I being greedy? Well, maybe there is a little bit of opportunistic greed lurking here. But let's be honest: I bought a printer sold as being compatible with my operating system when, in truth, it's not quite compatible. And anyway, a full refund does seem quite reasonable, so I think it would be greedy of me to go for a substitution. And it's not Argos' fault, anyway. I do have a concience :-)

Oh, it also seems to be printing out my (unfinished) resumé very nicely!

1:15 PM

Printing

Yesterday was another busy day, but rather more successfully. It was, again, a day spent trying to get my computer to talk to my printer.

In the morning, I was fearing that I would have to resort to flashing my BIOS, just to get the BIOS to set the guts of the computer itself up correctly. This is a scary thing! Fortunately, I wisely decided to pursue less drastic options first. The less drastic option I tried was to restore the BIOS settings to their defaults, and then make a few, necessary adjustments for my system. It worked! Linux recognised the USB stuff first time, and even recognised my printer! I was very relieved and pleased.

Then came actually installing the printer software, which had to be downloaded from Lexmark for Linux. It all went well, and the test page came out properly first time (I think it came out properly, but I don't remember there being a reference image to compare it with).

But did this good streak of fortune last? Nope. While Lexmark's own printer software worked, the operating system in general (RedHat) didn't seem to recognise it. I spent a few more hours trying to sort it out.

It was a little tiny bit depressing, and quite frustrating and annoying. As I investigated Lexmark's site, I found that the printer (a Z25) was deemed to work with RedHat 7.0 and RedHat 7.1, but the RedHat 7.2 column of the table didn't have a mark in it for the Z25. That made me a little angry, as I have 7.2 (and am bloody well not going to downgrade to an earlier version just for the sake of a cheap printer), and the box the printer came in says, and I quote, ≥ Linux RedHat 7.0. I even checked in the shop first, to make sure that I wasn't going to get stuck with a printer I couldn't use.

Thoughts went through my head of storming back into Argos, glowering with disgruntlement, to require at least a refund. Or telephoning Lexmark to have a go at them. An even more delicious idea, though, was the one about getting a replacement, alternative product that would be at least equivalent to what I was sold, and that would work with RedHat 7.0 and above as advertised. That could, for all I knew, easily mean a much better printer! I was even quite looking forward to that, though I hadn't got as far as checking whether or not that would be an option.

In the hope of finding a less greedy (but lazier) solution, I visited the Linux printing site. There seemed to be quite a lot of displeasure there about Lexmark. Both Lexmark and Canon get singled out on one of the pages for special mention for lack of support for Linux. (The inclusion of Canon surprised me, as I'd always understood that they were decent, quality people, who wouldn't want to be lumbered with a bad reputation among system administrators.) Things did not look entirely good, though there were a few mentions of Z35s (almost identical printers, but I think they come with a black ink cartridge, as well as a colour one), and it seemed that some people were having success with similarish operating systems.

The warranty stuff that came with the printer said something about how users had to make use of customer support stuff before returning duff products. The phone number given on that leaflet type thing apparently came with a charge of something like £7! That seemed unreasonable, but I remembered that there had been a number, possibly different, in the software's help stuff. I decided to reinstall (for the umpteenth time) that printer software, just so that I could get at that number. Calling their support staff seemed like one good way of getting the opportunity to have a go at them for supplying a misleadingly advertised printer that I would not have bought otherwise.

Just as a final check, I decided to try printing something out. It worked! Wow! I tested again, and it still worked. My printer did work with RedHat 7.2 after all! I was very pleased and very relieved, but not entirely happy that I'd had to spend a few hours working at it. I'm still not terribly pleased that it's still not fully recognised by my system, but that seems like it might be due to RedHat (who seem to prefer new, seemingly unfinished configuration software to older, much more complete tools).

So, now I've used up something like a quarter of the ink just trying it out. Something did, at one point, spring a memory leak, and it was so bad I had to press the reset button on my computer (not good at all!), but otherwise things have gone fairly okayish. I made some sort of blunder printing out a thirty-something page manual for my motherboard, though, so it just turned into a waste of paper and ink, but at least I know it prints nicely. Images are a bit cheap, but that's okay, as I bought it as a cheap printer anyway. I will mostly use it for text.

Of course, with it being a new toy, I now want to have lots of fun playing with it. What can I print out? What can I justifiably print out? Well, a CV and letters of application for jobs would be a good start. I'd better get writing!

8:43 AM

I've been busy. Well, relatively busy.

It's felt like a busy week. It was supposed to be spent doing lots of job searching stuff, not lots of computer configuration problem stuff, though. But I need to be able to print out my CV, when I've written it.

Looks like I'll be having a similarly busy weekend. My brother, in contrast, is in Brussels.

1:27 AM

What Shall We Do with the Open Spaces ... ?

Still a bit anxious, still a bit nervous, still a slight mixture of slight excitement and slight fear. Perhaps I'm still a little bit agoraphobic? Just a little tiny bit?

I thought my agoraphobia was long gone. Now I'm wondering if, perhaps, it's just a lot, lot milder than it was. It was always on the mild side anyway, but I'm wondering now if it's still just lingering on a little bit, so mild that it's barely recognisable as agoraphobia. Or maybe it's just something else. I still don't really know.

Anyway, yesterday, I finally got around to going to the job centre. It's changed a bit since I was last there. They're having some building work done, so they're temporarily seeing people in their upstairs, open-plan office area. It's all rather temporary, and seems rather too quiet. Hopefully that means there are very few people looking for work round here, and therefore there are plenty of vacancies? I hope so.

One thing I don't like is trying to explain what I've been doing. It just sounds so crap. What have I been doing? This is where depression sees its opportunity to strike back, to leap out from the darkness and take me down. It's why I find it so hard to write a CV.

It's the lack of evidence to show that I can do good, useful stuff. It's the lack of references, the lack of referees. It's the lack of jobs on my CV, the lack of 'proper', paid work. It's the lack of qualifications, the lack of a degree, the lack of recognised training within the last decade. How do I explain it all?

But I mustn't do what I did last time I made a real, serious attempt at finding 'proper', paid work. I must not fall head-first into another pit of depression. That's what happened last time I decided to really, determinedly seek a 'proper' job. It was bad, it was grim, and it set me back quite some way. Not good.

Yesterday, though, I felt quite positive. I can explain what I've been doing all these years. I can apply for jobs. I can ask the job seekers' advisors what I can do about my lack of referees. There are things I can do. It's still depressing, though, explaining that things went pear-shaped in the mid-nineties, and that following that I've been afflicted by agoraphobia and stuff.

Now I've got an appointment for today, to have an interview thingy with one of the people at the job centre. It will be a positive thing. I'm even managing to look forward to it more than I'm not looking forward to trying to explain my apparent, chronic crapness. This is good. I'll ask about what I can do about my lack of referees. I'll not be ashamed of myself. I'll instead take some pride in my independent-mindedness. I'll even make a point of how I need 'proper' work in order to improve my CV!

Yesterday, on the way back from the job centre, I passed a recruitment agency type place. I decided to pop in and ask about registering. A noticeably pretty girl (but not in a terribly interesting way) came, and asked if I had a CV with me. I didn't. She gave me their email address, and said I should email one to them. Hmmm, I wonder what they'll make of it?

So, that's another thing I've got to do today. I've got to bring my CV up to date. I think I'll just write it again from scratch, and see how positive I can make it all sound. Hmmm, I'll need to put it up on the web, too. I'll have to do some rearrangement of web stuff, I think.

Anyway, it's a good thing. I'm setting about making getting a 'proper' job my number one, full-time priority for the time being. Things are looking better. I can say, when asked what my hobbies are, that I'm learning Welsh. I can say, when it comes to what I've been doing work-wise, that I've been working on computer related projects, and the like (and that I still am). I can avoid sounding like a dismal failure of a human being. I am not a failure, I'm just different! :-)

So, let's see what's out there...

6:42 AM

Oh, Yesterday

Yesterday,

• Tigger the cat fell off a table (actually the night before),
• my tortoise woke up,
• I deprived myself of sleep, and
• I helped my computer illiterate client to get to very basic grips with transferring photos from his new, digital camera to his computer (and stuff).

These four things are mostly unrelated, except for the last two. My body clock's crap, so I had to deprive myself of sleep in order to go and help my client.

When Tigger fell off a table, she hit the floor with quite a thump. The thump was soon followed by a plaintive yowly cry. My mother and brother both got up to see if Tigger was okay (my brother, I think, had been sleeping in the room next door to my mother and Tigger), and I made my way upstairs (from watching telly) for much the same reason. Tigger was fine, and was happily purring while being made a reassuring fuss of.

There's not much to say about Henrietta the tortoise waking up. It's barely March (which depresses me for other reasons, as it seems this year is passing too fast and I'm not doing nearly enough stuff), so it seems a bit early. Perhaps it's just global warming. But it's nice to see Henri again.

The sleep deprivation was because I had to go and help my computer illiterate client yesterday afternoon. He's still spectacularly acompetent. Faced with a computer, his brain shuts down. I kept mentally sighing - and my heavy heart joined in. I privately lamented to myself when he'd misplaced a cable, which he thought he must've thrown it away. I secretly wilted in despair when he needed to be told how to close the window with the full size photo image in it (how the fuckety fucking fuck can he still not know that (almost) all windows are closed by clicking on that red 'X' button in the top-right-hand corner?). I was truly appalled when it turned out that his problem with his printer not printing any colour was because his colour cartridge had run out, and he hadn't bothered trying a new one until I was there. Sometimes I think he's just lazy.

Perhaps because I'd been awake since the evening before, I felt rather heavy inside. Lack of sleep does that to me. I start thinking about things I'd rather not think about, things that I'd rather were not the case, things that personally bother me for personal reasons. I just couldn't really manage to be enthusiastic in what I was doing yesterday afternoon. I just got on with it, and sailed through, as it was all easy enough. Still, it took a few hours, but only because we kept having to go back to the start so that he wouldn't get confused.

Blah. But it was nice to be paid £35 for my time.

I'm still feeling the effects of yesterday's sleep deprivation this morning. I feel sort of melancholic. Phlah.

12:32 AM

Double 'D's

Ach! I did make an error - a silly one - with the Welsh alphabet and its pronounciation. 'DD' is voiced. But I knew that. Why, then, do I keep conciously thinking it's unvoiced? I don't know. When I say 'Pontypridd', I voice that 'dd', don't I? If I try saying it without voicing the 'dd', I say it differently to how I normally say it. Hmmm. Anyway, voicing it certainly makes pronounciation generally easier. Welsh seems to be a language with ease of pronounciation in mind - even if things like 'hwyl fawr' appear to suggest otherwise.