Security and Freedom

There's an interesting discussion on the WD at the moment here, regarding what we think is more important: safety or freedom. I'll admit that my first thought (and what I voted for) was freedom, but now I'm not so sure. There are some very convincing arguments for the side of safety, or at least for a balance between safety and freedom. Admittedly, the poll was a strict blank and white: safety or freedom, with no room for a balance. But I think if I had to vote again, I'd come down more on the side of safety. Freedom is all well and good, but the fact that we can speak our minds about what we want without too much fear of a backlash goes to show just how much we take our safety for granted. There are countries in the world who would gladly give up some of their freedom in return for feeling safe to walk down the street.

I get that it's now the "cool" thing to do to rail against the government and corporations, and say that they're taking security measures too far and infringing our freedom, but now we're going too far. We pick up on the smallest thing and blow it way out of proportion.

Take this news article for example. An older woman was asked to remove her hat in a pub near Cambridge so that her face could be seen on the CCTV cameras. Why the big bruhaha? This is a very common thing that happens almost everywhere. Hats, motorcycle helmets, anything that can obscure a person's face are often used by criminals or troublemakers so that they can't be identified on CCTV. I don't think it's unreasonable for an establishment to ask people to remove them.

Another thing that gets me about this story is that a big deal is made about her being a "Women's Institute stalwart" and a "retired teacher", as if that should make a difference. It shouldn't. In fact, hats off (pun intended) to the pub for enforcing the policy, despite it being a "nice old lady". Making exceptions for people just because they don't "look" like they would do anything bad is a form of prejudice. A rule for one should be a rule for all.

One ring to rule them all....

Sorry. Wrong post!

I crack myself up sometimes

I have a study day today and I woke up at half past one. In my extremely stressed out state at the moment, I nearly had a fit.

"Oh my god! How could I have slept in so late? I set two alarms! How did I sleep through them both? Oh my god, I'm so going to fail my exams! How the hell did this happen?!"

After cursing that I couldn't get the huge mug of coffee I wanted to wake myself up (I've given it up for Lent) and getting dressed, I went into the spare room to start studying. It was at this point that I noticed things were quite dark. Darker than I would have expected for early afternoon. I tweaked the curtains and had a look outside. Absolutely dead.

It was 1.30AM!

Picture of the moment

This picture never fails to make me smile, which is why it's my screensaver. My boys have been bumped for a couple of dogs. Sorry guys! And it's spookily appropriate today.

Emailed to me by dad, who has never cursed in front of any of his daughters. Ever.

Bad day. Bad, bad day.

Once again though, it's one of those days that I can't really talk about. But by the time I left work I was extremely frustrated, and alternating between wanting to cry and wanting to scream obscenities at the top of my voice. Since then, Pottercast and an Indian takeaway has helped soothe me.

But still:

Test 2

Another test, using Helen's method. Let's see.

That's better! Thanks Helen!

Testing photo posting

My boys
Originally uploaded by eileenflaughlin.

How does this flickr work then?

Anybody know how to change the border around the photo so that it's a different colour?

OK, I've managed to figure out how to change the colour, but now my links have gone to pot and I don't know why!

Exam Blues

Wow. Exam Blues^TM have hit with full force. I'm completely fed up and have absolutely no motivation to study. I had a very bad weekend, study-wise, and now I just feel incredibly guilty. I actually felt guilty about it at the time, but nothing I could say or do to myself seemed to make me really focus. I've realised that part of it probably has something to do with what's going on at work, because I don't know if it's worth carrying on with the exams. In fact, I've pretty much decided that I don't want to be an actuary "when I grow up", but it seems really stupid to give up the exams now. I'd have nothing to show for the last three and half years. I have some exams under my belt, but they mean nothing, collectively. A few more exams would get me the Diploma in Actuarial Techniques, but the order that I have to do my exams in would make it awkward for me to get that within the next two years.

I'm feeling really withdrawn. I'm avoiding my friends in London, for some reason unknown to even me (actually it's probably because they're all trainee actuaries, so talking to them just stresses me out) and being really quiet at work. Even when I call home because I'm feeling a bit homesick (another symptom of the Exam Blues^TM), I find myself either not having anything to say, or not having the energy to say anything. Which makes a phone call, a bit dull.

Sorry if this sounds like a pity party. But that's because it is. It's my blog, and I'll cry if I want to!


Don't worry, I'm not crying. I just feel a bit flat is all.

D'oh!

I slept in this morning. I have two alarms (because I know what I'm like!). So when my alarm went off at 8.15am, I rolled back over for a doze because I knew that my second alarm would wake me up at 8.30am. Next thing I knew, it was 10.20am! Crap.

I get up, do my day stuff (not very well I might add, but that's another story), then go to have a bath before I settle down for the night. I'm lying in the bath, and I hear my alarm go off in my room. At 8.30pm.

D'oh! I hate digital alarms.

Barenaked Obsession

It turns out that Lewis has german measles, which is better than measles but still pretty crap. Poor baby.

My current consumption (to steal a phrase from Amanda) is the BNL Podcast. For someone that didn't really understand the concept of podcasts in November, I now subscribe to a hell of a lot of them! But this one is good because, if you've ever been to a BNL concert, you'll know how funny these guys are! Plus, they're recording a new album just now and keep playing clips of new songs, which is a great bonus.

I'm making my way through the House boxset just now. I'm really enjoying it. I have a few niggles about the show, but I still love it. Quite strange because the niggles are quite major ones that would normally put me off a show, so I can't quite put my finger on why I like it so much. But I do. I just watched the episode Detox, which is easily my favourite episode so far.

Hmm, what else? I promise I will get some photos of my flat up soon. I've been promising them since I moved in, I know. I just haven't had the time. But my sofabed is being delivered tomorrow, so once I get the spare room sorted, I'll try to get some pics up. Promise. Really.

Oy!

Now another of my babies is poorly. Lewis has either measles or german measles (we'll know if it's measles if he spikes a feaver tonight). Apparently it's not bothering him too much though. He has a bit of a rash above his nappy, but he seems fairly happy. Let's hope he stays that way. Poor wee pup.

In other news. I had my hair cut tonight. Not as dramatic as Sharon's transformation, but I still like it. I think.

Before

After

My Poor Baby - Part 2

Clarence is home. He's all better now, but still not feeling quite himself. All his bits and pieces are here and working, but he's missing all the extras that make him him. It'll take a while until he's back to normal, but I'm just happy to have him home!

Someone up there must read this

After I made the last entry, I decided that stressing out about calling the estate agent was pointless. I was worried at the prospect of calling him, so why not just do it and get it over with. I called him and he was as annoying and slimy as ever, but since I'm not going to be able to get an engineer out till April, he's going to get one of the landlord's guys to come and check it out again. But it's done. One less thing to worry about.

Then I got home and not only had the recycling bin been emptied of the cardboard, the nice binmen had picked up the rest of the cardboard that was sitting by it in black bags. even though the woman on the phone insisted they couldn't possibly do that because it was against their policy. Yay!

Then I had a very productive study session. Very focused and I was actually learning and taking stuff in. Which did a lot to ease my exam panic. Now if I can just keep this up.

Then, while eating dinner, I watched the first couple of episodes of my brand new House boxset! Eeee!

So after a stressful day, I actually went to bed feeling pretty good.

Things stressing me out:

• My Exams - They're four weeks away and I'm so far from prepared that it's not even funny. When I sit down to study I just can't concentrate. I have a million other things on my mind that I need to stop distracting me, on top of the general stuff people do to distract themselves from studying (you have to make yourself a cup of tea, the living room needs to be tidied right now, the filing that you've put off for months suddenly becomes of the utmost importance!).



• My Work - My work is pissing me off so much right now. I'm not happy and I don't know what to do.



• My Cardboard Boxes - this is such a stupid little thing that it barely warrants being commented on, but even the little things are stressing me out. When I moved in, I had loads of cardboard boxes that needed to be put in the rubbish. I've been having discussions with the council about getting them to come pick it up, but they'll charge me £50 to do it! No way! We have a recycling bin, but it only gets emptied every few weeks and it only fits one third of the boxes. It was supposed to get picked up yesterday, but was left because it was "contaminated" ie had a bit of sellotape left on it. I've arranged for them to come back, but it still leaves two thirds of the boxes. They've already been sitting there for a month and they're likely to be sitting there for longer and I'm worried about annoying my neighbours. I need a car to move them myself, which I obviously don't have, so I'm left to the mercy of the council recycling people, who are totally annoying.
  
  See? Really trivial.



• Other flat stuff - My TV is still not working and the thought of having to deal with my estate agent again makes me anxious. So I keep putting it off, which just makes me more stressed I need to get an engineer out because I think it may be a problem with the TV, but I've decided to leave it till after my exams. But I feel like I should call the landlord now to let him know what I'm going to do because if it turns out it was something the landlord could have fixed, I plan to bill him for it (they've already had his people out twice, so it's not like I didn't give them a chance to fix it).



• And the perennial favourite, homesickness. Again. This time triggered by the Scotland vs England six nations game that my friends went to together and had a blast at, texting me and sending me pictures. I just really wished I was there.

I know that most of these things are really trivial and logically, I can't understand why I'm getting so worked up. But together, it's a bit overwhelming and I just feel a bit stuck. I'm sorry about this. I just needed to vent a bit, I guess. Although I'm not sure I feel any better for it.

Scotland 18 - England 12

Backdated because this is my first chance online since the game.



WE WON!!

My Poor Baby

Clarence the Super-Machine is very ill (yes, that's really what I called my computer). My poor baby. I was quickly checking the WD yesterday morning before I got stuck into studying and it was running really slowly. Then it switched itself off, and when I switched it back on, I got an error message saying some file or other was corrupt.

I have a Collect & Return policy with Dell, so I thought it'd just be a case of calling up and arranging for them to come get it to fix it. Noooooooo! I spent the next four hours on and off the phone, running this test and that diagnostic. It was 12.30pm before the technician decided that, yes, it was irreparably damaged and they'd have to replace the hard drive. Finally! So after wasting a precious four hours of my study day, I arranged for them to come pick up Clarence on Monday. So I had to call up my boss and book a last minute holiday, which has the added advantage of giving me a chance to catch up on the studying I missed yesterday. Although I hate using my holidays for study.

I'm trying to remember if I had anything important saved on my hard drive that I'd be gutted to lose. I think most, if not all, of my photos are saved on yahoo, so that's ok. My music could be a pain. It's all on my iPod, but I don't know if you can transfer music from iPod to iTunes, or if it's just the other way round. I don't relish the thought of copying my CD collection again, and I'd lose all of my downloads. I think my CV and covering letter are saved on disk somewhere. It's just a case of finding them. Other than that, it's just little bits and pieces that I'm sad to lose, but I can live without.

Feel better Clarence. :(

A New Era Begins

OK, I've caved. I'm going to give blogger a whirl. I'm not guaranteeing that I'll stick with it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've spent the last couple of days fiddling around with the template and trying to work it out.

Sorry, what's that you say? Work? Pfft!

Anyway. It's not finished. I'm not convinced with the colour, or the title, or whatever, so expect it to be a work in progress as I'm posting to it. Don't be surprised if it looks different from the way it did yesterday. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Please! I'm a blogger novice!

I also want to transfer my back entries over at some point so that my archive doesn't look so pathetic. But that will be for another time when I'm not so busy. Or when I'm skiving off work/study. Unless anyone knows some really handy, quick, super duper way to do it? [hopeful]

I'm keeping my Blurty account, if only to keep track of my dear Blurty buddies. I may use it occasionally for private entries, but I'll really try not to because that's just a pain in the backside for my stalkers! I'm also keeping it in case I decide to give up on Blogger (which isn't beyond the realms of possibility).

So welcome! Take a look around, make yourself at home. Tea? Coffee? Vodka?!

falling down is also a gift

Three and half years after being introduced to the world of fodding/blurtying/blogging/etc, I've only just started reading the blogs of people I don't know.* I suppose I could count people like Min and Selange under this category since I got to know them through their blogs and then on the WD, but I don't. I'm talking about people completely separate from the WD (expect that I was probably directed to their site by a WD friend).

One of the blogs under this category that I've recently discovered is falling down is also a gift. It belongs to the mother of a child who was born with Biliary Atresia, a liver disease that affects newborns. The child, Annika, who is five years old now, has undergone several serious operations, including two liver transplants, and while recovering from a shunt operation before Christmas, has just been put on the donor list for a third transplant.

I've known about this blog for some time thanks to Annika (bettie-Annika), but I've never really taken the time to read it. But an entry caught my attention at the end of last week, and since then I've been reading through the archives from November to catch up on the most recent bout of surgery. The writing is very good. Informative, funny, thoughtful and very often, extremely moving. I've only been reading for a couple of days, but already I feel like I know the family and I care about what happens to them. Not only that, but I've been reading the blogs of people Moreena (the mum) has linked to, parents of other critically ill children. I would encourage everyone to at least go and check it out. I've spent a lot of the weekend crying over some of the things I've read, but I feel better for it. I feel good knowing that I know Annika and her family, even if it is anonymously through the internet.

* I count people I know through the WD but have never met as people I know.

Testing

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