Please contact an intelligent life form with your error code.

Hight ranking on my list of things which annoy me are programs and people who assume, somehow, there is some godlike figure silhouetted in a mysterious server room who knows everything known about computers along with a few things we have yet to discover. He's never had a compilation error, he's memorized the error codes. He quotes man pages. He's credited in the fortune file. He wrote the memory management utility for Microsoft Windows during work experience. He can even program using a Mac. He's ready and (secretly) willing to solve all my petty end-user issues.

Somehow, despite having administrative privileges and being the only existing user on my Windows computer, if anything goes wrong, I have no alternative but to brace myself, knock tentatively on his door and ask if he could trouble himself to assist me at workstation 13. His deep booming voice assures me he will be along in second.

This is primarily a Microsoft phenomenon, but it crops up all over the place. Why do they do that? "Please contact your system administrator". Microsoft prides itself on being user-friendly, aimed at the masses. WHY does their help and error console not even briefly consider the possibility that you are not a feckless office drone with no computer skillz? I think it's fairly safe to say that, out of the office, there is no such thing as a system administrator, or if there is, he's also known as Dad. So what is with the system administrator bull? it's not even a realistic "Install program, or ask your system administrator to"; it converses absolute conviction you are not your own Sysadmin. As my own Sysadmin, this really, really, really gets on my pex. (Oh, btw I've started leering like Cat, speaking like Rimmer with Lister's idioms and Kryten's facial expressions. It's really annoying).

The most annoying thing I've encountered so far in Vista (I bare use it) apart from it's slowness and surreally egotistical tenancy to do whatever the fuck it thinks is best (rather than, more traditionally, what I tell it to do) is the screen it shows when installing updates. Whenever I log on to windows, there are updates (They might be the same updates, in fact, they probably are...). The screen appears when it is installing updates prior to shutting down. Adorably, it reads "Please do not turn off or unplug your computer. Doing so may permanently damage the Windows system.". The poor dear who wrote this probably got transfered to user interface typography after a swift dismissal from catering incited by putting a sign on the vending machines saying "Please do not enter the code 789654, or you might get free candy".

Work.

It can't be avoided. You can choose either to work your ass of for years at school, get a good job, which, while it is summatively easier, is dependent on the work you did in education. Or, you can doss around in school, and get a job which is harder, pays less and so makes the rest of your life more work. You could make a break for it, build a house out in the woods, filter your own rainwater, subsistence farm and so on. If you work hard and make a lot of money you can retire early, if you work to invest the money wisely, you can retire early and well.

There are, of course, two major ways to get out of work. There's the fame way. Do a little work, make a sex video or marry someone rich and you can coast through your monotonous life with almost no effort. Except, of course for the constant effort to stay sane. People look at the world of celerity and see people like Britney Spears, who I hear is doing quite badly, and the assume that everything with all the other celebrities is all hunky dory. Well, it fucking well isn't. I mean, you can look at people like Heath Leger, who just so happened to be my favorite actor before he died, and think "See! He's doing alright!" Everyone would believe you, but next week, he could die because it casually turns out he has a wife and kid he never sees and abuses prescription medicine. You could be watching Red Dwarf and think "See, these guys are cool. I bet not one of these guys is crazy and fucked up." But Danny John-Jules almost stabbed a bin man . Would you stab a bin man? Would you even briefly consider threatening a 50 year old bin man with a knife? Exactly. What in hell would posses someone to do that? A general dissatisfaction at the extent at which your rubbish magically disappears? Not, it's possible that that's just a really nasty sounding headline. Hell, the bin-man might have started it, but that was the final clincher. I never, ever ever want to be even a little bit famous. I may sit here and think "Hell, I could hack being famous, I'd be fine." But last week I was sat thinking "Danny could hack being famous."

The other way is of course to be a council house mum. This one is comparatively simple. Even I, with my awful singing voice, intelligent hair and mediocre good looks can do this. Throughout you high-school education, the only lessons you need to attend are PSHE lessons. Find a council house dad, have some chav babies and live off benefits. Okay, you will have to raise your children badly, clean your own house, scrape the mold of the walls, budget diligently and... hey, this is sounding like work!

Now, have you considered, the reason these people fall apart is they do nothing? People I consider intelligent are people who work hard in school/work, then go home and do hobbies which are practically work! My main hobby, should anyone ask, is the running of my website. The drawing, the rendering, the coding and the uploading. So much fun! I also love to learn (learning is work, end of). Some people claim they are happy to drop a ball knowing it will fall. Knowing why doesn't interest them in the slightest. I'll never understand these people. My greatest joys are knowing things, and producing things. I like to relax by watching anime and listening to music. I work hard for my spiritual mastery. The most passive thing I do is read. I am a social television watcher. You know social drinkers look down on people who drink alone? That's how I feel about television. Okay, I watch anime but if you had any idea how HARD it is to watch Excel Saga... Anyway, I much prefer to do that with people. And at least I CHOSE what to watch. That is also a tiny portion of my existence. Okay, for the last two weeks I've been watching Red Dwarf like nothing else existed but I've been really, really ill. I've just finished my cough syrup! This is cough syrup I got after finishing the last third of an identical bottle left over after my last chesty cough! I still feel only worse. It sucks.

This post seems pretty darn random. It;s because I was reading these book on cosmic ordering and people were whining about how they didn't want to have to go to work. Work has never been optional. It annoyed me.

Spiders

Really odd thing, I don't think anyone could accuse me of being arachnophobic (Agoraphobic's a maybe). I regularly pick up spiders with my bare hands. I think tarantulas are quite cute, but if there was one in my house I'd probably put it under a glass and find out what you do when a creature not native to this country who may stand a slim chance of surviving and additionally has the ability to make two-thirds of the population crap their pants. I've been in a similar situation before, when I found a spider which wasn't brown. It looked like it had the capacity to bite.... well, it looked like a red, tiny tachikoma. Anyway, Spiders don't freak me out at all.

Except in dreams. (a couple of dreams now) I go absolutely mental at spiders, backing away and trying to kill them at any given opportunity. I mean, in real life, at my age, in order for me to justify killing something, it has to be armed. If I don't /know/ something is poisonous, man-eating or an ant (I hate ants) I won't kill it. End of. Not just big spiders freak me out, immediately before the huge spider smash out, I saw a small spider and couldn't even look at it. (In general, if I'm scared of something, but it's not close or coming my way, looking away decimates the fear) I had to leave the room quickly. As I was leaving the room, something fell into my hair, I pulled it out of my hair, and threw it into the sink for closer inspection. Oh, good it's not a spider. Oh, well now it is, but only because this is a dream and that's how it works. Brief frenzied attempt to kill the spider before I either had a panic attack that woke me up or did some processing along the lines of Hey, it was in my hair, and I pulled it out. In real life it would take a week to get a spider out of my hair. Must be a dream.

addicted...

If you've been wondering why I've suddenly become reclusive, cheerful and courteous, it's because I'm addicted to Red Dwarf. I love, love, love it. I've just finished watching series 6.

You won't see me until I finish series 8, so bye.

I love the Cat...

your excuse to live like a slob

In theory, if you eat healthily and exercise more, you'll live longer, right? Let's think about it.

I'm a slightly overweight, generally unfit 20 year-old. Were I to exercise for an additional hour a day, stop eating happy hippos and prepare all my meals from scratch utilizing lots of pleasant vegetable ingredients, I'd live longer. (none of that is true, mind-I'm a terminally unfit size American 2.)

So, if I do the healthy thing, and live to 80 instead of 70, I win, EXCEPT: 18262.5. That's the number of hours I've spent in the gym. (50x365.25). I'd need to gain just over 2 years to make that up. Fair enough. What about the cooking? Probably twice as long, two meals a day (Few people crack open a pot noodle for breakfast anyway.) That makes it 6 years. Now, take into account the amount by which the quality of your life was decreased by never eating a happy hippo. If someone told me right now that every happy hippo I ate made my life half an hour shorter I'd consider it a fair trade. It only takes me three minutes to eat a happy hippo, but those three minutes are worth more to me than ten times as long without a happy hippo. So, the time you spent exercising will have made your life less fun. The time you spent making food, less fun. The times you got home and felt like you could achieve less because of how tired you were. Now, think about how you will feel being old. Worn out, lots of arthritis from the exercise, poor because you spent all your money on gym memberships and healthy food and likely alone because you got home too tired/late to have sex/go out on the pull, let alone raise children. These years are not worth as much as the 6 years you spent getting them, are they? Gotta be worth half as much, perhaps? Perhaps less. I could go on with finances, and how wasting that much time would impact your academic well-being and thus the job you do. I'm not saying you shouldn't live healthily. I'm just saying you should do it because you want to make your life NOW better, not because you want to live longer. I'm also saying: dont listen to the shit people tell you. Scientists say eating bran flakes will make you live longer? Even if it does, does that mean anything to you?

And, Galaxy. That shit about the shape of a piece of chocolate affecting it's taste. Nonsense. So far the closest I've got to "Man, this new shape makes the chocolate taste noticeably better!" is "Man, this new shape feels really awkward in my mouth. I fucking hate galaxy." It's annoying enough to make me stop eating galaxy. I love everything made by kinder except the kinder surprise. Happy hippos are like my cosmic weakness. Maxi are sooo lovely... This is not in affiliation with the kinder company. While I'm on the road... Thornton's chocolates taste dissssssssgusting. They take ancient recepies for the most lovely chocolates invented and fuck them up. Their coffee house is shit too. They managed to make COFFEE taste bad. The chocolate that came free with the coffee was alright though.

I have CFS.

Or I'm dying slowly, I'm not sure.

I'm also stupidly depressed. I used to be the kind of depressed where I;d get home from school and cry for about 4-12 hours before going to bed. Then I spent about two weeks learning lots of happying techniques from books written by crazy people. Now I've moved on to the sort of depression where I bunk off school, sit and do nothing for 14-24 hours and then go to bed for 10-14 hours and wake up so exhausted my eyes won;t open for more of than 2 seconds without twitching closed again.