Jump to content
gdf

Life

Recommended Posts

This has been… a week. Someone in a community I help run had an extremely severe manic episode, during which he became dogmatic and persistently antagonistic. A bunch of us understand his illness and had dealt with less severe episodes before. Another bunch of people don't understand it at all, and effectively started bullying him (without meaning to, but it was the effect of their actions). By that time, pretty much every other person who takes any kind of leadership there had become exhausted, and me and a couple of others were the only ones left standing.

Between us, we managed to shut down the bullying, look after the manic guy's welfare, look after each other, and get his family involved. There were times we thought he'd committed suicide, and times where each of us couldn't think straight and had to step away from it all for an hour or two. The manic guy has been sectioned and is now in a psychiatric ward, which in his case is not a desirable outcome, but under the circumstances is probably the best possible.

At one point, the manic guy recognised he needed help and phoned the NHS crisis line. He was told: "Sorry, our funding's been cut and we can't help you with this sort of thing out of hours". Fucking austerity policies.

I am really, really looking forward to getting some sleep.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Sorry, our funding's been cut and we can't help you with this sort of thing out of hours".

Are you fucking kidding me?? That's just.. UGH!! xzdm,fnvaljdsesdpo

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Holy crap, man. That's pretty out there. The NHS comment is just mind-blowing. Glad he's at least in a place he can take some time to recover now.

I just finished putting in my application to the Board of Education, and they say that if I have an interview I'll hear from them before the 19th. I'm damn terrified, both of the possibility of failure and the enormous responsibility I'll be taking on if I succeed. This is being an adult, huh? Dang. I also met with my partner teacher for my third and final practicum (which starts in a little under two weeks) yesterday at lunch. He was a very friendly and nice, if a little aloof, guy. Very professional and very smart, I can tell he's going to have high expectations for me and I'll have to be on point the whole time, but that's probably for the best anyway. It's a grade 5/6 split room, which means that by Alberta standards they're on their second/third year of learning French as a second language. When I told the teacher that I spoke French he lit up a bit and offered me the chance to take it over right away when I get started. I don't think he likes teaching French much. Should be pretty fun for me though, as French was always one of my favourite subjects in school and teaching it is something I've been wanting to practice anyway. He seems kind of leery of me, but I'll be taking over his class for 8 weeks (the last three teaching 100% of every day), so I understand him being worried I may screw it all up for him. I probably wouldn't be the first if I did. I've been talking to my partner teacher from last term a bunch (stayed in contact because we got along great and I've been going back to volunteer with her class) and she's been venting her worries about the same to me. Hopefully I can earn his trust in the first week or so.

Exciting, terrifying times for me. I have a giant binder of 5th grade curricula I need to plan for staring at me from my bed, but I also have to be up in 6 hours for class, so I should probably call it a night.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As a quick aside, there's a really good article from the NYT aaages ago:

So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-agenda.html?_r=3&hp&

Sounds about right eh?

Any road up. America is fun!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So... One my clients is worried that users of their website won't be aware that they can scroll down. So much so, in fact, that they want a message to appear at the bottom of the browser window saying "Scroll down for more" if the mouse is near the bottom of the screen. Because, you know, most people aren't aware that websites tend to scroll downwards. #helpme

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Even before I read that, the austerity thing seemed a bit unusual to someone of modest macro-economic understanding (i.e. me). Surely when no-one has cash, spend more on building roads, infrastructure etc - this will create employment, meaning people have more disposable income who will then have more disposable income. When private firms are going bust, the only one with the power to create employment is the state itself.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Nothing special about that Thunderpeel, nothing special at all.

Sadly technology has advanced so much that certain grades of retards have reached levels in society where they can do proper damage.

It's one of the things that bothers me a lot. Computers (hardware and software) helped us to accelerate various tasks, so we could do various tedious things more efficiently (or not at all). But it appears that this move also affected other processes for which there is no optimization/automation yet. People spend less and less time thinking about stuff. Complex calculations can be done in seconds, so process definitions should also be done within a single meeting. Waiting 30 seconds for an operation to complete? Fuck that, I'll just F5 the shit out of it so that it will be done faster. Because performing the same operation on the same data 20 times will go faster than waiting for the first operation to finish... right...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So... One my clients is worried that users of their website won't be aware that they can scroll down. So much so, in fact, that they want a message to appear at the bottom of the browser window saying "Scroll down for more" if the mouse is near the bottom of the screen. Because, you know, most people aren't aware that websites tend to scroll downwards. #helpme

Agh! I've run into that on a client project before. I sent them this: http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/

It didn't help much :(

Even before I read that, the austerity thing seemed a bit unusual to someone of modest macro-economic understanding (i.e. me). Surely when no-one has cash, spend more on building roads, infrastructure etc - this will create employment, meaning people have more disposable income who will then have more disposable income. When private firms are going bust, the only one with the power to create employment is the state itself.

Especially during the Reagan/Thatcher era in the 80's, it was preached that wealth trickles down (which means I can understand "Greed is good" etc. as more than just savagery or lies; people sincerely believed it, and still do, and to a yuppie that's a great way to get rid of any societal guilt you might carry. You're taking now, but you tell yourself it's for everyone's good in the long run). I think we're now finding definitively that it's untrue, especially when even the IMF are telling the Tories austerity is a failure. When they then carry on like this and we're entering a third downturn in this recession, I think it's pretty obvious that's it's ideological rather than sound economic policy.

Oh no Luftmensch is going to start posting things he doen't quite believe to poke at my brain now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh christ. I've just re-read that post - 'meaning people who have more disposable income who then have more disposable income'.

WELL DUH!

:spiraldy:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh no Luftmensch is going to start posting things he doen't quite believe to poke at my brain now.

Oh I think austerity is just another political superstition. Maybe it has some merits, but I abhor politics too much to do my own research. Maybe if you sacrifice wealth and public good to the god of austerity you'll be better off long-term. I like to think it's a bit more complicated. On the one hand, right-wingers hold up Estonia as a shining example of Austerity at Work (GDP $22.18 Billion). Now, if you can show me a proven example of a policy working, I'll give it a thought. On the other hand, whenever I bring up Sweden (GDP $538.13 Billion) right-wingers always say, "oh, that's a liberal European country, the rules don't apply the same there." Helluva double standard guys.

Funny, I wouldn't have posted in this thread if you didn't make that comment, since my life hasn't been nearly as exciting as anyone else's. I'm almost done with my damned boat; I literally just need to paint it and it'll be seaworthy. It'll take a couple hours to tie up the sail and rigging but I can do that in a morning with some help. I'm really excited about this, I've been working on it for over a year and a half now, on-and-off, and it's incredible to me to look up and realize it's almost all over.

Since that's coming to a close, I've started an ill-fated project to try and make a little mod with the Source SDK. I have no clue what I'm doing, so it's probably more fair to call this a tinkering project than a proper mod. I was going to wait until I'm a week in to post this, but since I'm posting anyway here's a link to my blog I'm working on. I've also gone and registered my name, judejackson.net, and redirect it to that blog for now until I find something useful to do with it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just look at Iceland's economy now. They ignored the austerity stuff, and arrested & prosecuted the bankers. They seem to be doing quite well thank you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just look at Iceland's economy now. They ignored the austerity stuff, and arrested & prosecuted the bankers. They seem to be doing quite well thank you.

Again, people who aren't interested in listening will say that's just the sort of socioeconomic wizardry only available to Scandinavian folk.

Of course, Greece is choking to death on austerity but, to echo Luftmensch, that somehow doesn't count either. I guess austerity is up there with with laissez-faire capitalism for being "theoretically workable and possibly the best system if you'd just shut up with your counterexamples" to some.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh I think austerity is just another political superstition. Maybe it has some merits, but I abhor politics too much to do my own research. Maybe if you sacrifice wealth and public good to the god of austerity you'll be better off long-term. I like to think it's a bit more complicated. On the one hand, right-wingers hold up Estonia as a shining example of Austerity at Work (GDP $22.18 Billion). Now, if you can show me a proven example of a policy working, I'll give it a thought. On the other hand, whenever I bring up Sweden (GDP $538.13 Billion) right-wingers always say, "oh, that's a liberal European country, the rules don't apply the same there." Helluva double standard guys.

And this is why, frankly, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried."

You're not qualified to have an informed opinion government fiscal policy, and yet you and others like you are responsible for selecting the people who will be in charge of government fiscal policy. It's like asking a business to hire people, via interviewing and selecting them through people who have no idea what the job entails. And yet, because it's a job, the interviewee will then do their best to convince the interviewer (the voter) that the interviewee (the politician) knows what they're doing.

And since you're uncomfortable with selecting someone for something you don't know, they then convince you that you DO know it. Obviously you don't. Politics, the way government is run, has for the most party absolutely nothing to do with personal opinions. There is, in fact, a right way and a wrong way to do almost everything to do with government. There's a correct policy for abortion, for taxes, for gun control, for wars, for ect. There is a way to do all of this, objectively honing in on one correct way, such as to maximize an average citizens welfare in a country.

And it's nigh impossible to get there with democracy. Because it's a politicians motivation to convince you, that you are somehow qualified to have an opinion on the macro economic fiscal situation of an entire country. Of course you're not, no one is an expert on all the things a government should, or even shouldn't do! Take all those strong opinions you and everyone else has on political talking points, and then take the world "politics" out. What if someone asked you, "how should we balance spending for this multinational, multi trillion dollar corporation? Yes you, right now. Here are several candidate for CFO, choose one. And remember, there's a lot of jobs at stake. Should we raise prices, and on what? Should we lower prices, borrow more or less? Well c'mon!"

Obviously, you'd have no idea. You'd think it was madness, why on earth is this giant corporation, responsible for so much, suddenly asking you to decide its entire fate? Dear god, don't they have experts in these things, accountants and business majors and the like? I don't know anything about it!

And yet that's how countries are run. And you have "Strong Opinions" about policies and matters you know you don't understand a whit, but are perfectly willing to get angry about them, because politicians have convinced you that you should.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with you on the majority, there, but I don't think it's fair to compare complicated matters of corporate finance with complicated matters of social government. Yes, both are complicated, but the latter is comprised of things that dig deep into our lives. We get angry not because we are told we should get angry (well, a little bit), but because they concern morals and the way we live and what happens with tax money that we pay.

Of course there's anger- and fearmongering going on, and a lot of 'false' anger, directed towards topics like immigration. But when it comes to stuff like abortion and bailing countries out - yes, that's complicated, but it's also something of genuine concern to a lot of people.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Funny, I wouldn't have posted in this thread if you didn't make that comment

Sorry, I couldn't resist teasing you a little, and didn't mean anything by it :)

What sort of size is your boat? Regardless, it sounds like an amazing project to get to the end of.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's a wooden dory, built from a kit sold by Chesapeake Light Craft. You can see photos and details here.

NortheasterDory.jpg

Unlike the boat in the photo, mine isn't going to be varnished but painted instead, off-white with navy blue hightlights. The overall length is 17' and only weighs 100lbs, so two people can easily carry it into the water (although we do have a trailer so that isn't really necessary). It's made of mahogany plywood glued together with epoxy. It doesn't sound romantic but it's strong and it looks great. Since its maximum payload is 800lbs it can easily hold four passengers at once (up to three could potentially row at once). Unlike in this photo, where the sail is tied directly to the mast, my mast has a stainless steel track with slides so I can just raise or lower the sail one-handed.

I'll start posting pictures of my actual boat later.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My god, I keep everything else the same and people are still confused. Why can't I win x_x

Yes, SpeedyDesiato.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×