IMPORTANT: The following journal is intended for the use and viewing of approved persons only and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. Any dissemination, distribution or copying of this work is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word ‘absquatulation’ has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the creation of this journal and a minimum of Microsoft software was used. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards.
Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Saturday 9 August 2003 (Day View)
Tue 5 Aug | Wed 6 Aug | Thu 7 Aug | Fri 8 Aug | Sat 9 Aug Sun 10 Aug | Mon 11 Aug | Tue 12 Aug | Wed 13 Aug |
09.08.2003 – Saturday 9 August
- 10am
- • The phone rang and I jumped out of bed – not that surprising in itself, but considering that yesterday I could barely walk, let alone jump, I surprised myself. I was all sweaty and cold so I went and showered and got myself a weetbix. I don’t remember very well, but I’m fairly sure that I’ve only eaten half a banana in the past two days, so eating a weetbix is an achievement in itself. It wasn’t easy though, it took me an hour to eat it.
- 2:38pm
- • I’ve decided to make lunch! I hope I can eat it. I can nearly walk normally again. I still bump into the walls a bit but not too much, although chopping vegetables is scary. It feels as though I’m weightless and floating. It’s almost nice in some ways. It doesn’t seem as though my feet move when I walk either, although I guess they must. I shall make a point to see if they do next time I go to stir my lunch. One funny side effect of being sick and not eating is that I can smell food really well. I can smell my lunch all the way from here. It smells nice too; I just hope it doesn’t make me sick. I have a feeling that if I can eat it normally then I will be all but cured, or at least drastically speed up the curing process. My brain works a bit strangely at the moment, I can think lots of multiple detached thoughts at once – I wish I could think like this normally. I’m quite sure that if I had another two arms and computer I’d be able to type two entirely different documents at the same time. One problem with the whole detached and floating thing is that I don’t trust my sense of time at the moment. I have a sneaking suspicion that something five minutes ago could have actually been five hours ago. I’ll go stir my lunch now.
- 2:47pm
- • Yeah, my feet do move when I walk, obviously, and when I look down and concentrate on them it gets rid of the floating feeling. I’m now slowly eating my lunch, seeing if it makes me sick or not. Mmmm – so far it is beautiful.
- 3:49pm
- • Well there we go. I’ve managed to eat an entire bowl of sour cheese and chives pasta, and it only took me a little over an hour. I feel full and a bit sick, but at least I don’t feel like I’m about to spew. I’ve also just realised that I haven’t been outside since returning from uni on Thursday. I haven’t even opened the blinds on my windows.
- 4:17pm
- • A friend of mine just implemented a print style sheet, or at least I just read that he’d implemented it. I posted a comment saying I couldn’t find the “Print Preview” link anywhere, and realised immediately afterwards that he means the “Print Preview” feature of browsers... I guess I can blame being sick for not thinking straight for a day or two yet... Speaking of “Print Preview”, this gives me a perfect opportunity to point out yet another of Mozilla’s pathetic bugs – it’s “Print Preview” of my site has the hover affect on my links showing – duh. Perhaps Mozilla developers use dynamic paper, or perhaps they’re all underpaid weirdos who can’t code? It amuses me how one of the main complaints about Internet Explorer is how it’s bloated and been integrated into the operating system, yet no one seems to mind that Mozilla now comes with everything from an auto-nose-picker to an IRC client, not to mention the pleasant way they’ve bundled it with the default option of deleting all your IMAP email for you. I’m using MyIE2 now, a shell for Internet Explorer, and I can safely say that it blows Opera and Mozilla (at least for Windows) right out of the water. Of course, it would be nice if Internet Explorer supported CSS a bit better – but let’s face it, there’s no point implementing features that aren’t supported by browsers, and due to Internet Explorer’s overwhelming dominance of the browser market, that can be interpreted as there’s no point implementing features that aren’t supported by Internet Explorer. We may not like it, but that’s how it is. No one is going to make a webpage using totally unsupported features, so why do people whinge about features that are only supported by a miniscule percentage of browsers? Then again, people eat oysters and mouldy cheese...
- 4:39pm
- • Something that’s annoying me right now is people who think they know everything, or more specifically think that I know nothing. I have a friend who has a younger sister who comes on MSN every so often. I think she’s fifteen. She’s lived a very secluded life, studying from home and having never attended a regular school. She has very little contact with the outside world apart from what she sees on MSN, which I sincerely hope is not what the outside world has become, but still thinks she knows more about almost anything than I do. Now, I don’t mean to sound egotistical, but I can practically guarantee I will know more about almost any subject than she does, and definitely more about any computer based subject. Of course, I’m being hypocritical here, as Mum has been accusing me of precisely this ever since I first decided I knew more than she did about something, but it is very annoying.
- Evening
- • I left the stove on! Sometime around seven o’clock I went outside and fed the cat. I think that’s the first time I’ve been outside since Thursday; in fact, I think that’s the first time I’ve been downstairs since Thursday. I also grabbed a cup-o-soup satchel, boiled up some water, and made a cup of disgusting “Cream of Mushroom” soup. I don’t like mushrooms, but it was either that or “Beef”. I then had another lovely warm shower, went online, messed around making a print style sheet for my journal site (which was much harder than it first sounded because Internet Explorer doesn’t support CSS things properly), and then, sometime after midnight, I walked to the kitchen to refill my cordial bottle. The pot that I’d left half full of water on the stove was empty and strangely brown. The heat was turned to lowest. Oh, I also discovered that the CSS validator is poxy, it warns me about redefining styles across different media, which is quite illogical considering those different media cannot be used at the same time. I’ve sent them a bug report; hopefully someone reads it and agrees with me enough to change it. Anyway, back to the pot drama. I carefully cooled the pot, which seemed to be still round and normal, wiped the brown stuff from the bottom, and I think it’s as good as it was before. At least the house didn’t burn down, but I’m scared to leave my room until I’m better now, my brain just isn’t up to the complex reality that lives outside my room.
- 2:21am
- • I’m sleepy, exhausted, and feeling sick. I’m off to bed.