Shrink rap

My psychiatrist gets a bad rap. Mostly from me. I'll get back to that.

In the last week or so, I've had a bout of unexpected energy and drive to get things done, as though I've woken up from a long slumber.

That's actually not far off from the truth; I've been feeling tired for quite some time, and it's been particularly bad since I got COVID-19 again over the Christmas 2024 holidays (that's right, over a year). I thought at the time it was due to a stressful work situation, but when that improved my fatigue did not.

I got bloodwork and an ECG done, with nothing standing out. And my shrink kept prescribing me with more and more stimulants to try to help me stay awake, with little success.

But actually, my history with fatigue goes back much farther.

---

Like many people in Ontario, I don't have a family doctor, but I used to. My interactions with Dr. Fuckit, as I'll call her, left much to be desired:

When I told her I thought I might have ADHD, she asked, "did you Google it?" (not in a "Tsk, tsk, don't believe everything you see on the internet" sort of way, but as in "So? Go figure it out yourself. What do you want me to do?") No, doctor, I didn't Google it; I came to, you, ostensibly a medical professional, to seek advice. When did that stop being what you're supposed to do? She prescribed me some medication and sent me on my way.

It was the same Dr. Fuckit who, when I asked years ago why I was so tired all the time, she replied "well, maybe it's just you", shutting down my hope of doing anything about it.

It's just as well that she left the practice. And that practice, being a Family Health Team, kept me on as a patient just as when my previous doctor left. However even though the corresondence from the time suggests I got a new doctor in her place, I would only see Nurse Practitioners at the practice for primary care instead.

These nurse practitioners were a fair bit more helpful. There was one I remember seeing for some other matter, and when at the end of the appoinment she asked if there was anything else, I just blurted out sarcastically, "well not unless you can do anything about my fatigue," thinking back to the doctor's suggestion that nothing could be done. The strangest thing happened: she took the matter seriously and gave me some advice on things I could try: more exercise, more fibre, and better sleep hygiene. I didn't expect the world to change overnight, but it was worth a shot.

The next day, the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fast forward a year, and my fatigue was joined by an utter lack of motivation, which was affecting both my work life and my home life. In a video call, my nurse practitioner told me that my bloodwork didn't show anything out of place, referred me to a psychiatrist on the family health team, and offered me some medication options. We chose a medication called "Abilify" (aripiprazole) to supplement the depression/ADHD meds I'd been on for years.

That was the first medical appointment where I started taking notes, which is helpful because everything I wrote about what happened earlier is... let's say "inspired by true events".

I don't have any notes from the follow up call because I was driving, but I remember it well. I was on Carling, turning left onto Bronson. She asked me how it was going with the new medication and I nearly broke down into tears. After so many years of living with "maybe it's just me", I told her that after starting this medication, I could be present for my work, friends, and most importantly, my family. I told her it was like night and day. This little miracle drug that does what it says on the tin: "Abilify"

---

I'd seen psychiatrists before. All through high school, I had regular hour-long psychotherapy (talk) appointments with one for depression. In university, I saw a different one, who eventually concluded that I had more or less figured things out and didn't really need the appointments anymore.

The new one, he's different. I'll call him Dr. Whatever. To start with, the appointments are only by phone, what with a pandemic and all, so I've never met him in person. He might have introduced himself on our first call, but subsequently, he'd just open the call with "hi, how's it going" as though my ADHD would ever let me to connect an incoming call from a private number with the fact that I had an appointment with a doctor that day (plus, like, who the fuck calls somebody and doesn't say who's calling?). His voice sounds exactly like my uncle's, which one time meant I got a few minutes into chatting with him before I realized he was asking doctor questions and not uncle questions.

Also making it harder to identify him as the caller is that he often calls anywhere from 30-90 minutes after the scheduled start time, by which time I've long forgotten that I had an appointment (I'm not exactly sitting by the phone waiting for his call). This means I have to block off my whole morning at work for my appointments to ensure I won't be in a meeting when he calls. The whole morning, for a call that sometimes goes as long as 10 minutes.

So anyway, the first appointment, we talk about fatigue, high-functioning, low motivation. He'll refer me to a sleep study at the Royal. I asked if increasing my Abilify might help, and he said I probably wouldn't get anything out of increasing it (but then he increased my dose anyway).

I remember asking him about getting a proper diagnosis. I know I'm neurodivergent: I was in the gifted programme in grade school, I certainly have a lot of the symptoms of ADHD, and I have strong opinions on punctuation. I felt it would help me understand my brain better if I were properly diagnosed (what I would later learn is called a "neuropsychological assessment"). And I also remember him shrugging off my request and saying something dismissive about "labels". He prescribed me some stimulants to help with the fatigue.

I had regular appointments with him every month or two. The sleep study came and went, nothing abnormal there. The fatigue remained. Here, have some more stimulants. Still not working? Try taking more per day. No? Try adding this other one. I tapered off my antidepressants for a while at one point to see if that did anything and concluded I should go back on them.

And even though he was the doctor and I was the one with ADHD, I had to be organized enough to remind him to renew my prescriptions for all of these meds. Oftentimes he would renew some, but not all of them. Or he'd remember one dose but not the other dose that I take at a different time of day.

I got pretty good at reminding him, because when my refills run out, it takes multiple faxes from my pharmacy and multiple follow-up calls from me (each time first calling the pharmacy to confirm it still hasn't come through) before he finally sends it in. By this point it's out of sync with my other refills that I had carefully coordinated so I don't have to make several trips per month to the pharmacy. But more than once I've had to ask the pharmacist (such a helpful, understanding person!) to give me a few days' worth to cover me off until my next appointment because Dr. Whatever hadn't responded to the refill requests.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that this is probably the worst doctor for people with ADHD, who are easily distracted, have difficulty remembering things, get easily distracted, and easily forget appointments? The cruelty of being in a situation where I have to overcome classic traits of ADHD and be hyper-organized to compensate not just for my own shortcomings, but for my doctor's too?

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. I had an appointment in early November, but on the day of my appointment I got a notification that my appointment had been rescheduled... to January! I promptly called the office to inform them that a couple of my medications wouldn't last that long and could he please send a refill to the pharmacy. Nothing happened. By December, he still hadn't called in the prescriptions, so I got the pharmacy to send another fax and I called the office again (or at least I tried. Most of the times I remembered to call it was while their receptionist was on lunch or outside their business hours). It was getting close to Christmas, and I could tell that one of my meds would definitely run out over the holidays, and with Abilify coming close. Finally, on Christmas Eve, after telling the receptionist that I would need to start rationing my pills so that I would have enough to be functional on my first week back at work before my appointment, I got a call from the pharmacy that my prescription was ready.

Relief.

Except, he only refilled the prescription for the stimulant. As my appointment got closer, I realized that my Abilify would run out a day or two before.

That's no big deal, I thought. I can last a day or two without it and then pick up my meds after he sends in a refill after my appointment.

And then my January appoinment was rescheduled to the end of the month.

Fuck!

---

After some prompt hounding on the day of my appointment, I managed to get the doctor's office to send in the refill to the pharmacy, who refilled it.

I didn't feel like picking it up on the Friday though. Then it snowed on the weekend and I didn't want to go out.

Then I felt too busy at work on Monday to go. I'd been busy on the weekend, too.

And not just busy, but productive. I had a sudden drive to spend my workday just keeping doing work. And energy.

The last week or so I've been actually working on personal projects instead of wasting away all of my free time on snacking, watching YouTube, playing mindless phone games, and napping!

Something was different. What the hell was going on?

Over the last few months, after watching many YouTube videos about ADHD, I came across a channel called "Auticate with Chriss ∧ Debby" who talked about something called "AuDHD", a combination of autism and ADHD, two diagnoses with seemingly contradictory symptom profiles, that is more than the sum of its parts. The description fit me to a T. I started watching their videos, and others on the topic, and kept learning more and more.

So maybe I had ADHD and autism? Has that been the case all along? Why did I have to learn about this through a fucking YouTube video? Oh, right, because my psychiatrist didn't want to help me pin down a diagnosis because doesn't care about "laaaaabels." THAT LABEL WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY HANDY FOUR YEARS AGO, BUDDY!

This got me thinking about how my life might have been different if I had known this a lot earlier. Was it just a coincidence that my parents had so many friends with kids on the spectrum? (I mean, likely yes; there was no thing as a "spectrum" and all of their friends' kids had much more prominent signs that if anything worked against identifying anything in me) Was my "gifted" status a misdiagnosis? Or does it still apply, piled on top of the other neurodivergences? What about the depression diagnosis? WHY COULDN'T DR. FUCKIT HAVE REFERRED ME TO A HUMAN DOCTOR FOR A DIAGNOSIS INSTEAD OF TO FUCKING GOOGLE?!?

So how could I tell if not stopping the Abilify triggered this energy? I took my doctor's advice: I googled it.

Specifically, I reviewed reputable websites' information about drug interactions and side effects for each of my brain medications. "No known interactions" for Abilify. Nor for any of the others. Strange.

And as if "did you Google it" wasn't bad enough advice a decade ago, the answer this past week came from an AI summary: Abilify (used to treat ADHD) and stimulants, "have opposing mechanisms of action (one is an antipsychotic, the other a stimulant) that can produce combined side effects". Sigh. (Oh, also while editing this I also found an AI search summary that said combining Abilify with my antidepressant can worsen side effects like fatigue and insomnia, but that "doctors monitor [their patients] closely due to these significant interactions." Oh, sweet, innocent, society-destroying AI summary...)

The best I can conclude is that Dr. Whatever prescribing me more and more stimulants was like adding more wind to a sailboat with no sail. As soon as the Abilify stopped, the sail went back up, and whoosh! Off went my brain at a mile a minute. Despite helping with my motivation when I started it, by now felt was more like it should be called "Disabilify" or "Fatiguify".

Why did Dr. Whatever never think of Abilify as the cause of my fatigue? Maybe because I'd gone off Abilify before, and each time concluded that I was better off on it? But we'd never tried dropping it since we added all the stimulants. My nurse practitioner didn't notice it when I went to discuss my lab test results with her, but maybe she would have if Dr. Whatever had bothered to let her know that he'd ordered the tests and why, so she could have come to the appointment prepared. I didn't think of it because I associated it with the seemingly miraculous effect it had when I first started taking it.

So maybe I'm too hard on Dr. Whatever. Maybe he gets a bad rap and he's actually thinking four steps ahead—

NO! HE'S NOT! This was entirely an accident due to his incompetence! His only answer was to keep pumping more stimulants! Starting or stopping medication (willingly or otherwise) without discussing it with your doctor is a terrible idea! (As is doing so based on reading some random blog, in case you're getting any ideas) Four steps ahead? If he deliberately postponed my appointments to force me off Abilify without discussing it with him first, that would be even worse! I'd report him for malpractice if it weren't for the power dynamic whereby I need him for continued access to my meds! Or if there weren't a severe shortage of doctors in this province! Exclamation points for emphasis!!!

Oh, and to top it all off, when I reviewed my old notes to write this up, there in the margin of my notes from my very appointment with the nurse practitioner who introduced me to Abilify, is a note in my own handwriting: "can be sedating".

Facepalm. It was there all along.

---

If Dr. Whatever hadn't postponed my early January appointment, I would have been off Abilify for a day or two already by the time I picked up the prescription, which might have been long enough to start feeling different and come to the same conclusion. I don't know where I'd be if he hadn't cancelled the November appointment. I mean, he was trying, by ordering blood work and a sleep study, but the solution he hadn't tried was sitting right there on his prescription pad.

I'm not taking it for granted that going off Abilify is an all-around good thing. It's unleashed the full power of my ADHD, which for now feels like a superpower but I was taking it to address a problem and maybe that problem will come back. Will the energy fade? Will other symptoms crop up? Will hyperfocus compromise my personal life? I guess only time will tell, since at this point I don't expect Dr. Whatever to.

Maybe Dr. Whatever keeps postponing my appointments because he now realizes I'm going to read him the fucking riot act (or maybe this blog post) the next time I talk to him.

I'm bitter about a year or more of lost productivity, of lost time spent doing things I enjoy, of looking for a new job in hopes the change would make me feel better, of wondering if something was fundamentally and incurably wrong with me.

I'm bitter about four years of not learning I (probably) have AuDHD, and not understanding the implications, because of Dr. Whatever's apathy toward "labels". I remember being asked on medical forms about whether I've been diagnosed with anything, and I genuinely don't know because Dr. Fuckit and Dr. Whatever have just given me medication after I've speculated that I'm depressed, or have ADHD, or whatever, but no doctor has actually told me, "you have these conditions."

I'm bitter that I have to become an expert, and an advocate on my own behalf, and that I have to remind my own doctor to do his job, all so I can try to manage a condition whose major symptoms include difficulty in doing these very things. I have a whole "family health team" yet I feel alone in my medical journey. (I've inquired about getting a new psychiatrist and was told that was not possible)

And I'm bitter that I don't have a proper psychotherapist to help me talk through these issues. Maybe if I did I wouldn't feel compelled to rant about it on my blog.

Okay... let me take a breath.

At least I'm not out of pocket (beyond transit fare) for any of my medical appointments, and my job's benefits plan brings the cost of my meds down to a reasonable price. I also have a job where I can usually step away for a bit when my brain decides to turn off.

I'm cautiously optimistic about my recent bout of energy after dropping Abilify (which, I must remind myself, really helped me when I started taking it), but because I'm terrified that this energy will not last, I've been setting aside other things (like keeping my work area tidy or going outside) to finish some projects while I can. At the same time, maybe I don't need so many stimulants now that their effects aren't being nullified.

I feel like my brain is moving faster and probably burning more calories, while the hyperfocus is helping me avoid snacking reflextively, and the energy is helping me go out and get more exercise: maybe I'll be able to work off the significant weight I've gained over the last couple of years. But I've also noticed that I've felt an obsessive urge to work on both my work and personal projects (like writing this blog post, which ironically is longer than my attention span would let me finish reading). While this is better than having no motivation at all, it risks keeping me from going out and enjoying life just as much as constant fatigue used to.

I'm hopeful that my productivity persists, and that I'm able to take advantage of it where I can and keep it under control when I need to.

With any luck, this new energy will last and I'll be able to get on with my life.

And maybe I'll even go out and get a new shrink.

How convoluted can a tech support system be?

I was recently tasked with upgrading the software licenses on one of the products we use at the office—I won't use the real name, but let's call it "Vim"—to a version that works with the latest version of OSX. While a less detail-oriented person might buy one key outright and slap it onto as many computers as one could get away with, I prefer the high road where my employer isn't exposed to liability, and instead chose to upgrade (less cost) existing licenses that would become redundant.

The process should be reasonably simple. Vim's website has a portal that tracks all of the licenses I've purchased in the past, and when I go to their store website to purchase upgrade licenses, it requires me to log in and select which previous-version licenses I want to upgrade to.

Assuming all of my previous licenses were properly registered (which by today they were after a bit of work a couple of months ago), this upgrade purchase is straightforward enough. In and of itself, this worked fine for me.

After making the purchase, I am taken to a receipt page that makes reference to the fact that I've used a credit card, though it only says the total and nowhere does it actually say "paid". I printed it out anyway and hope it's sufficient to serve as a 'receipt' for our accounting department.

The important part, though, is the confirmation e-mail I then received. This looks like a typical invoice, with a listing of what I've purchased, subtotal, etc. There's a column for the product name, a column for the download button, a column for the license key, and price, and quantity.

The only thing is, there was only one line, with one license key and a quantity of 4.


This is where things started to break down. Some frustration:

For a normal software product, this would be fine. You'd use the license key they sent you and install it on up to four computers.

But I knew something was up. I had learned in a previous encounter with "Vim" that they do not have volume licensing or bulk licenses. So why did they just send me a license key with a quantity of 4?

My curiosity got the better of me, and I logged back in to the Vim portal and saw that the license key from the confirmation e-mail wasn't listed among my keys.

The customer support person I was talking with on the phone during much of this process was never able to tell me what the deal is with that code, other than telling me that it isn't a valid license key when I forwarded it.

Luckily, I don't rely solely on Vim's license key portal to track my licenses; I also use a custom-built license key database, which enables me to quickly notice that some of the licenses now in my portal weren't there before.


More frustration:

Meanwhile, there was an "alert" in the Vim license key portal which I would never have seen unless I went back in to the portal (which, seeing the license key in the e-mail, why would I?). The alert told me that three license keys had been generated for my recent order, and it listed the license keys. None of these were the same as the one in my e-mail.

Back in the license key portal, I was able to track down these three, as well as a fourth license key that was new (which also wasn't the one I received in the e-mail). I went back to my e-mail to see if there was something I missed.

"Sure enough, there was fine print in the confirmation e-mail that indicated that this was a temporary license key and four new keys would be generated in my license portal" is what you'd expect to read next, but alas this was not the case. Not only did the confirmation message give no indication that this was not the license key associated with my purchase, but there was also no separate e-mail to inform me that these new keys were created.

Having found my license keys, I decided to stop digging and quit while I was ahead. After verifying that my license portal did indeed show four (not three) new license keys that were purchased today which didn't show up in my own database, I concluded my call with the customer support person.


I had already wasted enough time by this point, but being the altruistic guy that I am, not wishing this situation on anyone else (especially one who might unwittingly try to install the license on multiple computers), I found the website feedback form on Vim's website and sent in my feedback and suggestions on how they can improve their messaging. (Imagine finding that you've installed this license key on various computers and after a while they stop working because it was the wrong license key and you have to track all those installations down!)


As is usual with such customer support encounters, I received an e-mail from my Indian correspondent advising me that the ticket was now closed and I could forward the ticket-closed e-mail to the licensing e-mail address for the company.

Which I did.

I copied and pasted my website feedback and sent it to the e-mail address cited in the e-mail from the customer support person.


More frustration:

Then I got an e-mail saying that that account didn't exist. I triple checked that I spelled the address exactly the way as it was given to me.

I decided then to reply to the customer support person and advise that the licensing e-mail address did not work.


More frustration:

After replying to the customer support person, I received an automated response indicating that I was replying to a closed support ticket, and therefore my e-mail would not be accepted. I could log in to a support portal (which may or may not be the same as the licensing portal) to find my support ticket and reopen it. Or I could contact them by phone.


At this point, I'd done as much as I had the patience for to try to give Vim some feedback on improving their customer communications. After all, by this point, I was trying to submit feedback to someone about a broken feedback mechanism to which they had directed me in order for me to give feedback on another feedback mechanism.

With this amount of Catch-22s, the only thing my feedback could possibly do is give more ideas to the evil twin of Douglas Adams—who must have designed these systems—to adjust any part of the process that wasn't sufficiently frustrating.

My initial feedback did, as far as I know, make it through their website feedback form, and I can only hope that it isn't used against me.

- RG>

The summer blahs

I'm morally opposed to the common advice that you shouldn't shop for groceries on an empty stomach. When I'm at the grocery store, if I'm hungry I'll buy all the things I will want when I'm back at home and crave something. It's a win-win system.

But lately, I've been in a bit of a dip. There have been many things pressing for my attention, both at home and at work, including a number of distractions that seem to be the easiest to attend to. Given all the things that are vying for my time, eating is one of the ones that has fallen far down the list.

I've written before about forgetting to eat, but that's primarily about when I'm engrossed in a task and lose track of time. This is a bit different. Eating has fallen from a reward to a chore (in which I rarely find myself engrossed). In other words, it's gone from "ooh, I can't wait until the next time I eat at..." to "what, I have to eat again? But I just did that yesterday!"

I know that if I don't floss often enough, I'll get cavities, but that doesn't mean I'm keen on flossing. It takes a conscious effort to remember to do it. That's how I feel about eating right now. "Sigh, I guess I'll go out for lunch before I pass out or get a headache." Or, "I'm meeting someone for dinner in three hours, I should grab some lunch soon."

And then, once I've decided to go eat something, I can't decide what (well, not yogourt). I work in downtown Ottawa and there are plenty of great places to grab lunch, but nothing really sticks out in my mind as "hey, I like going there! How about I just go there!" particularly not among healthier options. It doesn't help that I'm a picky eater who doesn't like most things that make food "interesting" (spices, curry, tomatoes, mushrooms and more...), and that food I do like doesn't like me (the many many things derived from dairy, because they put cheese in everything).

My nocturnal lifestyle doesn't help. My workday is time-shifted so I can avoid morning and afternoon rush hours, as well as the lunch rush. Before the Mayflower closed I enjoyed eating lunch there, where I could take an entire booth to myself in the early afternoon instead of cramming into a tiny seat at noon with everyone else. (Side note: I miss the Mayflower! A photo I took from there was the main image on the Wikipedia entry for OC Transpo for over three years) Similarly for fast-food places: when you only have a limited time for lunch, why take it at a time where you'll have to spend much of it waiting in line?

The downside to this is that lots of lunch options dry up after a certain time in the afternoon, and similar problems exist for late night dining. Maybe if I had a lunch buddy I'd be more adventurous.

I avoid cooking mainly because when I do cook it's hard for me to start early enough to be done eating at a reasonable hour. The time I spend cooking can be spent catching up on other errands that I can't outsource to any of zillions of local establishments.

Also, I'm very fickle about what I eat. I am fortunate that I can afford to eat out for most meals, and that's important because I never know in advance what I want to eat. If I were to put a frozen item in the fridge in the morning to defrost it for dinner that night, I wouldn't see it again until days or weeks later, when its colonists make first contact with me declaring their shelf of the fridge to be an independent republic.

This indecision has been worsened with my recent lack of interest in food, since I don't even have last-minute cravings to pounce on. I remember incredulously seeing "lack of interest in food" in a list of symptoms for something at some point, and now I know what it means (hm, come to think of it I wonder if it's a side effect of my pills...). In his 2006 Ted Talk, Sir Ken Robinson talked derisively about how intellectuals consider their bodies as mere vessels to carry around their heads, and I have to admit that's a paradigm that fits me. My body will only cooperate with me if I give it food, and my brain wants to spend as little time and energy as possible doing so unless it's fun so let's just get it out of the way and read a newspaper or watch the latest Daily Show episode so I don't have to pay attention to the fact that I'm eating.

Which takes me back to grocery shopping.

I was at the supermarket the other day, and I did have few items on my shopping list so I wouldn't forget them. But when it came to picking out food to eat for the coming week (mostly prepared meals, since I try to buy produce from smaller shops instead of the big stores), I wasn't interested in any of it. I had a vague sense that I had bought certain items before and enjoyed them, but couldn't at all gauge whether I'd be likely to want to eat any particular one in the coming week.

You think shopping for groceries on an empty stomach is bad? Try doing it when you're not interested in food at all!

(And yes, I do give generously to the food bank. Hunger is a terrible thing.)

- RG>

Picasa wasn't meant for people.

I got a new computer a couple weeks ago, taking the plunge from Windows XP to Windows 8 (which is another story in itself). One of the big things that worried me was my Picasa albums.

The last time I tried transferring to a Windows 7 (sic) computer, Picasa's albums would only restore on the new computer if the filename (including folder structure) was exactly the same, and Windows 7/8 doesn't let you name folders the same way as in XP. In other words, when it opened the album listing, it looked for the photo in the given directory, and promptly removed the photo from the album when it couldn't find it in the non-existent folder.

Luckily, since that time, Picasa for Windows has changed the way it handles albums so that it stores album data in the photo, or in a hidden file in the photo's folder (sic). This meant that my albums were restored. Not only that, but they managed to somehow list many of my photos twice. Which is better than not at all.

But the People albums photos are a different matter. I guess Picasa is meant for people who primarily take photos of other people, whereas mine, for the most part, aren't. I don't want to connect my photos with my Gmail account contacts or my (non-existent) Google plus account. Nevertheless, a while back (before Google plus even existed) I had spent a considerable amount of time putting nametags on people in many of my photos, diligently looking up the names of people I recognized but whose names I didn't remember, etc. As I added more photos, I'd occasionally add nametags to those photos also. This way, I could at least remember these people's names long after I forget who they are. (I also hate inheriting albums full of unannotated photos of people I don't know.)

After using Picasa for a while on this new computer, somehow the people albums caught my eye, and a lot of "person" albums came up that were called "". Each of these contained a handful of photos of people I do know, who had their own "people" album already. Some contain four or five photos of the person I know and a couple of other headshots of people I don't. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why these photos are like this; most of them aren't in albums or folders I've uploaded (and I haven't yet logged in on Picasa with the new computer), so it's not a permissions thing with my Google account...

After a brief search online, it looks like there's no fixing this, except the hard way: re-naming the people, which I started to do. Tangent:

(It is very difficult to bulk-rename people who are tagged in a Picasa album. You can select them and right-click and select "Move to People Album..." and then a list pops out of the context menu of people, but you can't search this list and the scrolling arrow is horrendously slow. Another way is to go into each photo, find the person in the photo, click on their head and type in their name. The least difficult way is to scroll the left bar to the people album for the desired person and drag the selected photos onto it. But there is no way to simply right click, or click somewhere, and type the name of the person you want to reassign these headshots to.)

Once you're done reassigning these people, you have to individually delete the empty people albums for "". In my case, a few dozen of these. You can't bulk-select them, and it doesn't prompt you to delete them when they are empty. Meanwhile, they clutter up the People album listing (at least they're at the bottom).

Then there's the whole part about "long after I forget who they are". The official Picasa solution of "you'll have to re-tag all these people" breaks down. I tag the people to remind me who they are. If I'm going to re-tag them, I need the nametag to tell me who they are. For example, there is a Citizen photographer in one of my photos whom I had apparently tagged. This is handy, because I can never remember which of them is which. This is why I tagged him. I presume I cross-referenced the Ottawa Citizen's photos of the event at the time and added his name. I can't re-tag him because I don't remember which of the Citizen's three or four regular photographers he is.

Luckily, I still have my old laptop and I haven't deleted my data off of it yet. (In fact, I still have all but my first computer, each of which in various states of preservation)

But of all the stupid things, holy gee! It's things like this that make me paranoid of changing computers, and when changing computers, of changing operating systems. The Windows XP to Windows 8 transition is manageable enough, but damned if I'm going to try switching over to Google Chrome!

I've still got a Windows XP install disc. Maybe I'll try installing that on the new machine and seeing if it doesn't blow up.

- RG>

The Cursive Conspiracy

There was a small media blip about cursive writing recently. Namely, that cursive writing might go the way of the Canadian penny, in that schoolteachers won't be required to teach it in Ontario. And like the penny, good riddance. Even better, educators are finding that proper typing is a more useful skill, and I wholeheartedly agree.

When I went through school, we were told a number of things about handwriting. We were not told that it was important because it was part of the curriculum (the word 'curriculum' had likely not entered my vocabulary yet, not to mention the bureaucratic environment from which it originates) but because it was a skill we children would need later in life. We were told the same thing a few years further in about the importance of writing in pen instead of pencil.

For example, I distinctly remember being told in elementary school that we'd have to get used to writing in pen, in cursive, because we'd be required to use it in middle school. Which was true enough--it was--except that middle school required us to follow the same convention only insofar as the same warning applied, this time one tier up looking on to high school.

Then the cracks started to show in the plan. Here's a sample of my notes from a high school English class:

This one was in pen, but it sure isn't cursive. In fact, it doesn't look much like print, either. The illegibility suggests that our high school teachers didn't really give a fuck how we wrote (which, sadly, seems to still be the case). None of my other surviving papers from high school were in cursive, either (though admittedly, most of the samples were from math and science classes, where print--and pencil--prevailed). Nevertheless, I seem to recall (and this might be apocryphal) a teacher telling us that we could print if we wanted to, but warned us that we'd be required in university/college/life to write in cursive.

In university, they really didn't give a fuck (the feeling was mutual). In fact, they distinctly discouraged us from writing in cursive on our written exams because it was so difficult for them to read the writing of these young adults who had been habituated into writing in cursive for school assignments but never properly disciplined in its use. (As for spelling and grammar, I agonized through the mandatory courses therein at university because they were teaching what was obvious to me. These basic lessons had long been ingrained in those of us who had endured the classes of our high school's old-school crone, who--bless her heart--would berate the hell out of you if you didn't heed her lessons on the nuances of English grammar.)


I recently discovered some old notebooks from early elementary school. My second grade teacher required us to write a diary and hand it in. She would then write some comment in it. And, as my friend observed reading through them, I wrote responses to her comments, often rather deadpan.

It's actually quite neat to find this, because it's a record with specific dates of where I've been. When going through the cache of school notebooks that contained this Grade 2 diary, I discarded a few which had no dates. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the date was in this case, but now in the information age we like our precision, which is included tacitly with each electronic snippet we produce. With e-mails and electronic agendas and date-stamped photos, etc., if for some odd reason I wanted to know what I was doing on a specific day in the last handful of years, I have ways of finding out. On handwritten notes, I now write the date obsessively, even writing the date of an annotation of an earlier, dated, note (sometimes I'll even write on an undated note a date wherein I speculate the date of the original note). I refer to older documents often enough that it annoys the hell out of me when I find something undated, because usually when I'm doing so it's to establish a chronology. The dates in this old diary were likely a teacher requirement rather than a habit of my own, but it is nice to have them nevertheless.

One particular entry, dated February 24 (no relation), ninteen-mumble-mumble, is illustrative of both. I had written it in cursive, which I suspect was at the encouragement of the teacher. It was in pencil, not pen, but we did a lot of erasing and correcting in those early days. It tells the story of a grand fort my friend and I had built at his place.

To this day, I remember quite a few details about this event: one of my parents drove me over to his house, which was in the Glebe (the significance of which was unapparent to me at the time). I went up to the door, and his mother answered. My friend wasn't in yet, she said, but I could wait for him. In fact, I think he was building a fort and I was to wait for him inside while he finished up. Perhaps we did work on the fort, since I don't remember much of what happened between arriving, looking at some toys and discussing them but not playing with them, and being picked up to leave. Okay, so maybe I don't remember so much, but the event as a whole I certainly remember, and it is nice to have this contemporary documentation of it.

Discovering the journal entry, decades later, it reads out succinctly as "On such-and-such date, I went to so-and-so's house and we dug out a fort [stet]." The teacher commented on how it was a good idea to visit a friend, and I replied coldly beneath her comment, "it was his [idea]." That's at least consistent with my recollection that he had started the fort long before I arrived. Perhaps I should have elaborated further, but it's too late now.

I also illustrated the diary entry with diagrams of the fort, once in plan view from above, and again in close up (I made a lot of blank pages which I called "drawings" of snow in elementary school).

But aside from the precise date and the minimalist banter, the big surprise was one that had eluded me for years. It was a clue staring me, staring all of my young colleagues, in the face: the cursive thing was a sham. For all the propaganda telling us we needed to write in cursive, my teacher's notes to me were in print!
If only I had looked between the lines to see my teacher's misstep, paid attention not to what she said but what she did. All of that stress, all of that browbeating, all of those threats that we'd never make it in the real world if we didn't write in cursive. It was all a lie. The writing on the cake was in cursive but the invoice for it was in print!

Sigh.

My handwriting still resembles the spaghetti in the high school example. I guess by high school I had determined the precise balance of just how messily I could write and still make out what it said. That way I can get down as much of a thought as possible before the rest escapes my mind. I can write clearly when I need to, by the way, although straight lines of text still elude me.

Rather, I can print clearly, when I need to.Which isn't often. Cursive--I literally can't think of when I last used it, but probably not since before high school.

So kids, if you're reading this at home, and teachers tell you you'll need to learn cursive, don't listen. Learn to print legibly and learn to type. And for god's sake, learn to spell: all the good jobs these days require good communication skills and no one like to hire people who can't spell.

- RG>

The dentist spells "guilt" with a tea

I had my biannual dental checkup today, or as I commented this afternoon, via Twitter:

Just had my biannual interrogation and lecture--er, dentist appointment.
— RealGrouchy (@RealGrouchy) November 22, 2012

The lengthy explanation, common to all my medical rants, is summarized in the subsequent tweet:

Best part of a dentist appointment is when they pummel you with guilt right after you tell them you're on antidepressants.

— RealGrouchy (@RealGrouchy) November 22, 2012

The hygienist and I had established which medications I was on--a depressing enumeration in itself. These include the eyedrops I take due to a reaction to the antidepressants I take. Also, the antidepressants. She asked me whether my asthma inhaler was Ventolin or salbutamol. Do I know the dosage? Hell no! That's for the doctor and the pharmacist to figure out, I just take them.

Anyway, throughout the visit, the hygienist kept harping on about how every little thing I do in my life causes dental problems. She didn't dwell on her observation that I've been keeping better care of my teeth than at any previous visit, it was just constant questions and nagging 'tips'.

As an example, she asked if I drink either coffee or tea:

Yes, I drink tea.

"What kind? Black, green, herbal..." Black.

"With sugar?" Yes.

"How many teaspoonfuls?" I don't know, I pour the sugar from a thing; a fair amount, but you'll be pleased to know that I leave my tea weak so I don't have to sweeten it as much as a full dose.

"Fairly quickly or drawn out over a long period?" Usually over a 2-3 hour visit to the coffeeshop.

"Well you should try to drink it in a shorter period because the sugar breaks down in your mouth for as much as a half hour after every sip." And if I intersperse it with sips of water? "If you swish with the water after each sip, that will help slightly to balance the pH."

Curiously, she didn't bother to ask about the donut, icing-heavy carrot cake, or mostly-sugar cookie that I often eat (also slowly) with my tea, but I'm sure if I had told her about these should would have suggested which fork I should use for the carrot cake to minimize damage to my teeth.

"By the way," she added afterwards, "you should use a teaspoon to measure how much sugar you put in your tea." Yeah, thanks.

She also assumed that, like morning coffee addicts, I drink tea as an end in itself--hence the suggestion to drink it quickly. I don't. I do, however, enjoy (or at least prefer) going to the coffeeshop for a couple of hours where I can read the paper and get some work done in a quasi-social setting instead of alone at home where there are plenty of chores begging for my attention. My coffeeshop routine is a predictable, reliable way for me to unwind after a long day at the dentist.

And since I don't drink a coffeeshop's namesake drink, I order tea--which I only tolerate in would-you-like-some-tea-with-your-sugar dilutions. Again, I'm fairly particular about what I expect in a visit: if they don't have the right kind of tea, or if the newspapers are gone, or if there are no seats left, it interrupts the predictable rhythm and can throw my mood right out of whack.

In essence, I don't go to the coffeeshop to drink tea, I drink tea to go to the coffeeshop. Because it is something I know makes me a happy Grouch.


As for the medications, it shouldn't be a very big leap of logic to infer that a person who is taking antidepressants does so due to some sort of behaviour disorder; in particular, one which might count low self-esteem as one of its symptoms.

In my case, I don't necessarily suffer from low self-esteem per se, but as described above I do sometimes require things to be just so in order to avoid my fragile mood circuits from tripping a breaker (or worse, blowing a fuse).

The tea interrogation was just one example of many similar lines of questioning about my tooth-brushing habits. Each little quiz was accompanied by a consortium of 'helpful' suggestions of how to restructure my life to put dental hygiene as the top priority (thankfully she didn't describe it this way). For example, she demonstrated in great detail a flossing technique suspiciously similar to the one I already use. (Ironically, she didn't ask me first about that.)

Dental hygiene as my top priority? Fuck you, my mood is my top priority, and you're souring it. If there's one health thing that I remember to do each day, it's taking my meds so I don't get withdrawal symptoms. And waking up on time. And remembering to eat.

The 'helpful suggestions' (which also, thankfully, was not a phrase she used), and various patronizing, loaded, questions reiterated throughout the visit, are each presumably intended to encourage a particular behavioural change. Floss more, floss better, brush before bedtime, use these stick things between your teeth, put less sugar in your tea, drink your tea faster, use this special toothpaste which has a high pH, and so on... I'm sure I missed some; perhaps I should have asked for an itemized receipt.


You've already told me that my teeth and gums are in better shape than they were before, but all these suggestions, and the condescending way you make them, do *wonders*, lady, for my self-esteem and mood. The easiest behavioural change to fix that? Well, that would be to convince myself that you're wrong and to start taking worse care of my teeth just to spite you. Or, more simply, I could stop going to the dentist.

You want behaviour change? Be careful what you wish for.

- RG>

RG's workshop: Stereo system switchboard

It's been a while since I wrote anything on here, and even longer since I blogged about anything interesting. (Oh crap, I hate it when people start off their blog posts talking about how long it's been since they last blogged. You know what? Strike that first sentence. Let's try at this again.)

I have a relatively small apartment, though it is big enough for me and my stuff. It has enough rooms, including one I use as my workshop.

In the living room of my apartment, I have a stereo system. That is to say, there's a stereo device I found on the curb somewhere, through which I route the audio that accompanies the projector screen (among other uses).

The stereo has two sources of external input, not including the radio/CD/cassette stuff built into it. These inputs consist of one end of an audio cable being plugged into the stereo unit's "AUX INPUT" jack, and the other end of the cable split, one path plugged into the turntable in the bedroom, the other connected to a long cable with a standard mini jack. I can plug the mini jack into my laptop or my Blackberry, and the cable is long enough--and my apartment small enough--that I can bring either device into any room of the house to 'remotely' control the audio.

So for example, I can watch online TV in the kitchen with my laptop on the kitchen table and the audio going through the soundsystem back out to the speakers in the kitchen. I can also use my new Blackberry's FM tuner to listen to the radio (I only started listening to the radio again when I got the new Blackberry last week, and I've thus far tended to listen to the station that has all the ads for hearing aids and funeral service providers). The Blackberry (as with the iPod I briefly owned) needs you to plug in the headphones to listen to the radio, because they act like the antenna, but the stereo jack works just as well.


Anyhow, the stereo sits under this desk which I did not find on the curb. I built it with my own two hands, and a screwdriver and hammer, according to the assembly instructions from the non-Swedish office supply store where I had bought it.

The stereo sits under the desk as does one pair of speakers.

Another pair of speakers goes into the kitchen (which can extend into the bathroom if and when I see fit to have them do so), and as of very recently, a third pair is wired through the wall into the bedroom (which I can extend into the workshop, should I see fit to do that also).

The thing is, I do not want all of the speakers to always be on. I only need the sound in the room(s) which I am occupying. So I need a switch system.

I bought a basic audio switchbox from Radio Shack ("the Source" in modern parlance), which didn't really work. Even after I fixed some bad soldering inside it, there were issues with bleeding between the left and right channels. I also couldn't separately activate the left and right units of a pair of speakers.

So I stuck with my previous scheme of a pair of Y adapters on the stereo output cables and plugged or unplugged the Y ends into the ends of the cables for the desired speakers, all of which I have patched into RCA jacks. I had had the jacks stuffed into the grooves of the CD holder under the desk top (circled in the above photo).


But this did not satisfy me. Functionally, it was not an elegant solution to have cables sticking through a grille. So I decided to build a switchboard (you digital-age kids might not know what a manual switchboard is, but they work very nicely).

The first step was to build a panel that would fit into the space where the grille is. The grille is wedged between two columns that have holes corresponding to bumps on the edge of the plastic grille.

I first bent some paperclips into latches that I inserted into the edge of the thin plywood board at the same intervals as the bumps on the grille. There is a recess underneath them, which allows them to dip out of the way and spring back up to latch the board into place (like on a door). They are tapered so that when you push the board up, they are pushed by the edge of the hole in the cylinder into the recess in the board, releasing the board.

I'd seen this trick done online somewhere months or years ago, but don't remember where. It was probably from a project documented by Rob Cockerham or Matthias Wandel.

Anyhow, it works, and I can put the board into the space, and remove it when I need to by pushing up to release the latches.

The next step was to cut holes for the RCA jacks on the ends of the speaker wires. I needed to get the jack through the board, but I also wanted it to be snug so I could push the Y connector into it without the plug just falling through the board.

To accomplish this, I settled on a keyhole-type shape, with two round holes connected by a channel. One hole was larger than the RCA jack, allowing me to stick it through, and the other was slightly smaller, allowing it to be held snug. The holes were connected by a channel that is wide enough for the cable to pass through. (on the right below is my first attempt, which used a hole that was too small)

After cutting the holes for the four stets of speakers (kitchen, living room, bedroom, and a spare set of holes for future expansion), I painted it black to match the piece of the desk it was replacing. The only black paint I had were a couple of cans of spray paint I found one bountiful day of treasure hunting (a.k.a. curb shopping, dumpster diving, etc.):

My only previous experience using spray paint was indoors, and resulted in everything in the room, including plenty of electronics, being covered with a yellow dust. Thankfully, this room was in somebody else's house, and the electronics were theirs, as was the bright idea of spray painting indoors.

To alleviate this problem, I taped together some newspaper pages into a cube, put the board inside, reached in with the can of spray paint and sprayed it as best as I could with the cube closed. I let the dust settle a bit and reapplied the parts that I missed (the cube filled with spray dust, completely obscuring the workpiece so you couldn't see if you had gotten it all).

The paint job worked well enough for me, for something that would most of the time be in the shadows under the desk top anyway.

The only remaining issue was that the jacks sometimes pulled out of the board when disconnecting the switch cables. This was fixed with that quintessential desktop accessory, the trusty binder clip.

Normally at this point in the blog post I'd go back and review it to make sure it makes sense and doesn't drone on too long, but I'm too tired and I might forget to come back to it if I leave it to another day.

I've built (and photographed the construction of) other things since I last blogged, and I'll maybe hopefully eventually probably get around to blogging those also.

- RG>

My optometrist says I can't lift heavy weights

Yesterday I had my biennial eye exam. I've been wearing glasses since gradeschool so this was a fairly routine procedure: first the technician sticks your face into a machine and tells you to keep your eye open for so long it would tear up even if you didn't know she was about to blow a puff of air into your eye (which you do know because she tells you it will). Then she shoves your face into another machine that takes a picture of the inside of your eye. Then she sits you in a chair where you cover one eye and asks you to read the same lines of characters over and over again, and you wrestle with the question of whether you can actually see the characters or you just remember them from the last eye exam two years ago and the six times in a row you just read it with various combinations of eye coverings. The doctor then takes over, asks you if you prefer #1 or #2 a lot while you look through a device that you hope nobody will photograph you at, tells you whether there has been any change in your prescription, and the rest is paperwork.

Of course, the doctor also asks you if there was anything you wanted to raise. Generally a formality, in my case, whatever type of doctor I'm visiting, I usually have a couple of things to mention. I'm sensitive. And obsessive. I notice things. And I have no clue whether this is simply something that "normal" people are expected to experience.

For example, two days prior I noticed some crazy floater action in my eyes. I was in a relatively dark room with windows looking out to the bright sunset, and as I shifted my eyes, it looked as though someone was twitching a snowglobe full of wet rice noodles in front of my eyes, the mass of noodles slowly following the direction of movement. I figured this was probably normal and just due to the odd angle of the sunlight traveling through my eye fluid.


I've had other issues with my eyes also. In addition to the counterproductive productivity side-effect of the antidepressant I've been on for the last year and a half is that it makes my eyes itchy. The itchiness makes me blink a lot and rub my eyes, which leads to more problems. It hasn't been to bad lately, which suggests that maybe just being aware of my eyes is what starts the cycle, and I've been too busy and distracted to be aware of them.

Between my G.P. and my optometrist, the best guess was that the itchiness was an allergic reaction to the antidepressants. So they put me on some prescription antihistamine eyedrops (which only work if you take them twice a day regularly because they're preventative). The allergy eye drops, however, made my eyes too dry, and I was advised to use some over-the-counter moisturizing eye drops.

To recap: the moisturizing drops are to counter the effects of the allergy eyedrops, which in turn counter the effects of the antidepressants, which in turn helps with my various aforementioned ambiguous psychological issues.

Given the ambiguity and interconnection of the problems, symptoms and treatments, none of which have a black-and-white diagnosis, I've taken to ascribing any issue with my eyes that comes up to: taking one of these drugs, forgetting to take one, stress, lack of sleep, sweat dripping into my eyes in the heat, rubbing my eyes after making contact with a furry animal, or some benign cause of another nature that could happen to anybody. Whatever the cause, I figure that any given symptoms I encounter would probably not happen if I were simply more diligent in with the eyedrop regimen. All to deal with mood issues.


With this in mind, I mentioned the floaters to the doctor anyway, and patiently went along for the ride as he made a more thorough inspection of my eyes, waiting for him to reassure me that it was nothing to be worried about. Such is how these things go when I bring this type of thing up at the end of a doctor visit.

"The good news," he said, "is that the reason you only noticed it two days ago is because the symptoms only started two days ago."

What do you mean good news? What's the bad news?


He showed me on the computer the photo of the inside of my eye (projected onto a 3D wireframe model of an eyeball no less!), and pointed to a blotch in an obscure corner of it (I assume he already planned to look into this but asked me if I had issues before launching into the investigation to avoid prompting me). Even without the image from the previous appointment as a comparison, it was obvious to the casual observer that this was not a normal thing. The other eye didn't have one.

I was informed that this blotch was where a section of my retina has detached from its supporting layers, causing a pocket where fluid had worked its way in behind the retina. Left unchecked, it could cause the rest of the retina to rip away from the back of my eye, causing potentially-irreversible blindness.

So the symptoms were not due to emotional detachment but retinal detachment. Go figure.

This type of issue, the doctor told me, needs to be addressed ASAP. As in, call the doctor the same day you see it, and get it checked within 48 hours and fixed within the week.

It was a spectacular coincidence that the symptoms had appeared just two days before my eye exam, because I probably wouldn't have done anything about it otherwise. It's entirely possible that the problem wouldn't get any worse if I didn't do anything, but treatment is pretty straightforward at this stage, and very intrusive if it gets a lot worse.


The fix involves going to a specialist to confirm the diagnosis and, assuming the specialist does so, getting lasers fired into your eye to burn off the fluid and/or reattach the retina.

So after my appointment Thursday, I get a call on Friday morning to come in to see the specialist Saturday afternoon. You know something's serious when you get an appointment with a specialist for a Saturday afternoon less than two days away.

In the meantime, I'm to contact my doctor immediately if one of a few symptoms occur, and I'm to avoid heavy lifting. Forty pounds was about the limit.

Damn, I thought. My left pannier is 15 pounds and my right pannier is 25 pounds. Exactly 40 pounds. I'm going to have to carry them back to my bike. And that's before I add tonight's groceries!

Seeing me doing this mental arithmetic, the doctor helpfully clarified that it's not like there would be a night-and-day difference between 39 lbs and 40. Somehow that helped.


At least, I thought, it won't be as bad as when I had to bike to the General Hospital--twice--for a series of asthma tests initiated by this visit to the doctor (all to confirm that, yes, I did in fact still have asthma like I told them), because those tests came with an extra hour or so of waiting before the test to allow me to cool down from the bike ride to the hospital, lest it skew the results.

"Actually..." said the doctor when I quipped about this to him. Actually what?

Because my eyes would be dilated, it wouldn't be a good idea to bike home, especially since we won't know the degree of treatment required until the specialist has a look.


Thankfully, when I whined about this on Twitter this morning, fellow cyclist Kate came to my rescue.

We'll see how it goes...

- RG>

Bless this mess

I woke up this morningafternoon to discover someone has been in my apartment. I discovered this as I got up to go to the living room. While I had already started this blog post in my head (save for this intro) during that time between waking up and getting up, as I walked into my living room I was instantly shocked by something wrong with my furniture.

I wasn't worried about any furniture having been moved; none was. Nor was any damaged or removed or replaced.

The shocking thing about my furniture was that I could see it.

You see, for the longest time my living room has been covered in stacks of papers from various meetings or newspaper clippings that I'd been meaning to file. The default filing method was simply to stack it up. After a while, I started using a motley of cheap plastic stacking trays (one stack shown here beneath Three Hole Punch), though many unsorted stacks remained.

Also for the longest time, it had been on my list to tidy/file/archive these documents, but the sheer volume made it too daunting to even know where to start. As is usually the case with these large projects, once you break off a piece of it into a small project, you get a better understanding of the rest of the problem and the attack plan is easier to see. It's like getting your foot in the door. But getting that first bit started is very hard.

A couple weeks ago, I'd gotten through a few stack-inches of newspapers, clipping out the articles I had kept them for and discarding the rest. The newspapers, while mixed in with the other documents, were a distinct project. I already had files for various categories of newspaper clippings, so this wasn't so bad. The plastic trays, however, were closest I had for a filing system for my other documents, and those trays are the very things I'm trying to get rid of.

I knew the solution would involve hanging files (I'd even bought a nice wooden file cabinet to facilitate this), because if I didn't file things in a way I could find them, I'd be no better off than throwing them all out. I also knew that once I started filing, whatever system I used to organize the documents couldn't be changed mid-stream; I wasn't going to be going through the files on a lazy afternoon weeks from now looking for files that could be sorted further. The whole point of putting things away is to put them away. But that was pretty high-level. I still had no starting point.

But last night.

Oh, last night...

Last night I'd sat down early in the evening intending to hack away at the pile by filing some more newspaper clippings. A couple of days ago, I'd cleaned up enough to get my place to the point that I wouldn't be embarrassed to have company over, and this evening I wanted to build on that. Instead, I diddled the rest of the night away with a heavy dose of Internet. It is the holidays after all; I wouldn't want to get too much stuff done.

Knackered at 3 a.m., I glanced at the stacks of papers on my desk next to my laptop and decided they could wait for some other day. I went to bed, tapped out the last remaining bit of energy by reading and doing some puzzles, and finally put my head down to sleep. As I laid there, without anything to distract me, my mind was free to wander. Unfortunately, the very act of putting my book away and turning off the light woke me up just enough to give my mind some fuel for wandering.

It wandered over to those stacks of paper and started to file them. I was following my mind as it did this, and I realized that what it was doing made a lot of sense. It had found the keystone--the one weak spot in the pile that, once felled, would cause the rest of it to follow.

Despite my attempts to ignore this clever little suggestion and go to sleep, it kept bugging me.

I wasn't going to remember this in the morning, was I?

Damn.

So I got back up and started on it. I filed, and filed, and filed some more. When I got through the stacks that were already sorted, I went through the stacks that were not, and sorted those too. I even ran out of file folders.

I got about five inches of papers put away, and I'd sorted much of the rest into broad categories, resulting in the collection in the trays shown above. I still had five assorted inches of what I suspect are mostly related files, three inches of small newspapers, and two inches of "miscellaneous" (in the technical sense of "that which does not fit into any other category"), the last of which was left over from the previous round of sorting.

Five in the morning and I felt I'd accomplished enough for one night-morning.

Can I go to bed now?

No. No, you can't.

Damn again.

Having made sense of the piles of paper, the little things scattered around the living room now stood out. Now they were nagging at me. I'd done so much tidying, yet the living room didn't look tidy like I'd always imagined it would after this much work. I wanted the satisfaction of seeing the results of my efforts. If I left it like this, what I'd take away from it is that it's futile to try to clean because no matter how much you do it will still look like a mess.

Since I'd already brought my place to a certain stage of tidiness, it was only a few things here and there that needed putting away (or at least consolidation into yet another pile) keeping me from this goal. I put some things away. At this point, I was so tired I was starting to feel sick.

No. It still doesn't look right.

You can't sleep yet.

Well, by this point, it was getting downright weird. I wanted to go to sleep, but something inside of me wouldn't let me. It was past putting things away, now I was at the point that the stuff that is meant to be left out had to be arranged right. The pillows had to be arranged symmetrically on the sofa, the square coasters had to be aligned with the edge of the table, that sort of thing. I did this.

I sat on the sofa for a couple of minutes and finally concluded there wasn't anything else I could do without it becoming another project. I scribbled those projects onto my to-do list, and finally was able to sleep.



So when I got up today and walked into the living room, even though I was thinking about the previous night and composing this blog post in my head, it was a foreign sight to see surfaces of things that usually had piles of paper on them. I wasn't used to seeing the furniture. And thus, I was shocked.

It was as though my living room was cleaned by someone else during the night.



I'd had this late-night organizing impulse before, back in February, when I completely rearranged my cutlery drawer at 2am.

The thing is, it's not illogical. The reason it takes me so long to tidy things is that I want to do it right. I remember in the first episode of M*A*S*H that featured Charles Emerson Winchester III, he said during surgery, "I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on."

For me, tackling this kind of project is a real commitment. I know that when I start I'll want to keep going until it's finished, no matter how long it takes (heck, this blog post has taken me three hours to write and I haven't even had breakfast yet!). If I do something halfway, like putting my papers into piles to "tidy" my living room, the problem just comes back because the root of the problem--no proper resting place for the papers--hasn't been dealt with. And I also know that I might not have the time, energy, patience, or motivation to finish it if I stop partway through, at least not before it reverts to its original scale.

If instead a project is done right, done methodically, and done completely, the system used in so doing can be easily maintained and it will stay "done".

This is how I rationalize it, at least. In the end, I probably spend more time worrying about projects--and worrying that I might have to do them over if I don't do them right the first time--than it would probably take to just do them. I have a similar pattern at work.

But here's the thing: I'm right. I just now pulled open my cutlery drawer and took a picture.

It's still sorted, nine months later.

And that's my light at the end of the tunnel.

The only other worry is whether I'll still be able to occupy my time once everything is clean. Or, as expressed in another saying of which I'm fond (source unknown):

"A neat house has an uninteresting person in it."

- RG>

A very strange taxi ride

I don't take taxis a lot. Partly because I'm cheap, partly because I don't often need to go very far, and partly because a lot of them are jerks.

Last night, I had occasion to take one, and it was a rather surreal experience.

As I got in and told him the landmark nearest where I wanted to go (not very far, actually), his reaction reflected a quantum superposition of knowing and not knowing where this was. I'd quote him, but I was a bit distracted from hearing his exact response because I was having difficulty buckling my seatbelt.

I told him I'd be paying cash, but I wanted a receipt. He replied, "we don't take cash... ... ... only jewellery." I didn't know what the hell that meant either. I mean, I could tell the jewellery part was a joke, but the pause was too long for me to tell whether the whole thing was a joke, or just the part about the jewellery. I put away my cash and readied my credit card to be on the safe side.

Throughout this peculiar exchange, an annoying beeping was coming from the dashboard. I leaned forward and saw over the driver's shoulder what looked like the "fasten safety belt" indicator flashing in time with the warning. I looked over next to the driver's seat, and the seatbelt was snugly holstered. He was probably keeping it in its original packaging so he could later trade it to a collector, still in mint condition, for some jewellery. After getting more frequent and annoying, the beeping eventually stopped and the light just flashed silently for the rest of the otherwise brief ride.

This was good, I thought: This guy must drive so safely that he knows he doesn't need his seatbelt. My faith in this hypothesis waned, however, as he crept the nose of the car past both lines of the crosswalk while the crossing traffic still had a green light. At least *I* was buckled up. I ignored the traffic signals and just looked both ways as we crossed for indications I should brace myself for a collision.

Finally, we got to our destination (double-parked, of course), and I handed the driver my credit card. He stared at me. He looked down at the credit card machine in the front seat. "I'm sorry. Were you kidding about the cash thing earlier?" I asked. He explained, vaguely, that the credit card machines were new and he wasn't yet very familiar with their operation.

I put my credit card away and pulled out a US $20 bill that I'd been trying to get rid of since I returned from a trip a few months ago. "Is US cash alright?" I asked. "It's not alright, but I'll take it" he said, again, cryptically. Go ahead and quit your taxi job, guy, but please don't think you'll make it a comedian.

As I unloaded my bags onto the sidewalk (made more awkward by the line of parked cars separating the sidewalk from the car door), the driver prepared a receipt for me. By the amount of time it took him, I figured he was trying to get the machine to prepare it for me, but it turns out he was just taking an unusually long time writing a couple of numbers onto a small card.

After taking my chances riding in a taxi, I was relieved to be at my destination, in one piece. I hope his other passengers will be able to enjoy that relief, too.

- RG>

RG hears a what?

Superhuman hearing can be a curse at times.

So I'm sitting in my living room, watching a TV show about explosions on the internet, when I become aware of a beeping sound. It sounded a bit like a busy signal; a low noise with a constant, slow rhythm. After sitting through two commercial breaks with the sound still going, I figured I should check it out more closely.

At first I thought it was my stereo speakers (through which I wired my laptop's sound), since they can often pick up sounds from the radio. Nope, wasn't that.

Then I thought it was the relatively new (to me) and relatively expensive printer, which prefers sleep mode to being turned off. Maybe it was throwing an error. Nope.

It was louder in my living room than in the room to the left, and it was louder than in the room to the right. But I could hear it out of the window at the front of the house. It still sounded louder from my living room window. It must be outside.

I could hear it outside, not much louder than I did before; the sound would be obscured if a car went by or a squirrel farted. My living room window is just above the hydro meters on the side of the house, but it wasn't those, and it wasn't an alarm (or a phone off the hook) from the unit downstairs.

I followed the sound across the street and down two or three houses, and narrowed it down to one of two middle units in a rowhouse. The volume subtly adjusted with the subtle variations in the wind. Maybe it was a smoke or CO₂ detector going off, or maybe old lady Fletcher has fallen and can't get up again.

It didn't look like either one had been broken into, and there were no signs of fire. I narrowed it down to one unit, but couldn't tell if it was the basement, (raised) ground floor or upper floor.

The ground floor window was open, and I was able to close it from the outside, but this had no effect on the volume of the sound. Looking in the front door yielded no further clues, though it did look like the place was unoccupied. I didn't want to knock on the door yet, since I wouldn't exactly want to startle a burglar who might have broken in the back door.

I also didn't want to yell out if someone was in need of help. I seemed to be the only one who could hear this noise, and I'd rather not draw attention to the drunk guy on the second floor patio two doors down, yelling out slurred approximations of partial '70s song lyrics. I also wouldn't want to challenge his title of craziest guy on the block. I could imagine people reacting to my calls: "Drunk? Sure, but that guy who hears noises? He takes the cake!"

So instead I went around back to see if it could yield more clues. As I approached the rear of the row, I saw it was fenced off and could block my vantage point, but to my fortune, there were a couple people on the rear patio of the unit in question. I called out and asked if they could check on the beeping that I heard.

Then I waited as he went in.

And waited.

Awkward!

Finally, he came out and confirmed that someone had left an alarm clock on. Presumably the higher frequencies were muffled by the windows and/or doors, leaving only this quiet, low beep that only I was obsessive enough to notice or care about.

I promptly thanked him and walked back home, trying my best to ignore whatever else he was trying to say about why the alarm had gone off (probably trying to ensure the blame would not fall on him).

I was reassured once again that I am not crazy.

Now to get someone to turn off the attempted singer!

- RG>

Taxes: check

After catching up on my finances last night, I completed the first draft of my taxes tonight (ending around the same time... one of these days I'll get sleep).

I was pissed off to find out a rather significant RSP contribution wasn't processed by my bank prior to the deadline (and I don't know if they ever even received it!).

Claiming Ontario tax credit for renting is a lot more convoluted this year than it was previously. On top of the Ontario Credits form, you have to fill out the ON-BEN form at the back of the book (which isn't colour-coded pink like the other Ontario forms) whose goal is essentially to write the same numbers, without any arithmetic manipulation, that you then write again in the Ontario Credits form. (there's no addition of the numbers). On the Ontario Credits form, you then have to complete the "occupancy cost", "energy component" (for "long term care home and home energy costs on a reserve"), and "property tax component", even if, for example, you didn't pay property tax or live on a reserve.

It was sort of similar last year, but much more straightforward. Instead of being on two sheets at opposite ends of the forms book, it was all included in the Ontario Credits form, and in the "property tax credit" section it clearly asked you to enter "Rent paid in Ontario in 2009", so you wouldn't have to wonder, as I did, I didn't pay property tax; do I still have to fill out the "property tax component"?. And even though the ON-BEN form is now on a separate page, it still only gives you two lines to fill out residence information. (Not that I've had to use more than one for many years, but I've bounced around in the past).

I guess it's the bottom line that matters. I'm getting a refund, and it's not too much smaller than what I got last year, despite making more money and having fewer credits to claim. It'd have been even bigger if I tended to donate money to groups with charitable tax status, instead of contributing time and money mostly to groups that are too small (efficient; less red tape) or advocacy-oriented to qualify for status.

And with my finances and taxes done, and their respective piles of paper cleared from atop my desk, I can move on to the next pile of things to file.

- RG>

Le fin

I did it! I finally got caught up on my finances!

I'd been months behind for the last year or so. When I did my taxes in April 2009, I remember I only did my finances as far as December 31, 2008, and I didn't really do much to get caught up since then.

In the last month or so, I've been whittling away at it, taking bigger and bigger bites out of the pile, and now I've finished!

I made a couple of interesting observations:

- Over the last year and a half, I've had three mysterious withdrawals for which I don't have the bank machine slip. I always take the slip, so this is strange. Also strange is that these are only at the Somerset and Bronson bank machine. There's no conclusive evidence to conclusively say that I did or didn't make these withdrawals. I checked my e-mails, my photos, my Blackberry calendar (including backups of my tasks, notes, and appointments), and my known cash expenditures between the previous and next withdrawals, but nothing conclusive.

- Adjusted for contributions, my RRSP fluctuates each month as much as the equivalent of a plus or minus 20% APR (and as much as +47% in one month, if my math is right).

- I have not yet made any credit card purchases on a Saturday this year.

Of course, things are never always done. I have yet to do my taxes, and seeing as it's 2am and I have a couple other things to do, that can wait until closer to the April 30 deadline.

- RG>

I'm on a new drug (which hopefully does what it should)

So after I wrote the previous post in which I 'came out' as depressed, I learned why most people hide depression.

The Oatmeal summed it up nicely in his explanation of the worst thing about Valentine's Day: people say they don't celebrate/recognize Valentine's Day, yet they won't shut up about how they don't celebrate/recognize Valentine's Day.

The analogy doesn't translate perfectly, but essentially many people hide depression in order to carry on somewhat with social activities. When you make it known that you're depressed but that you're working to get over it, people feel all sorry for you and shit. "Oh, yes, RG! I've suffered from depression, too! Was your form of misery similar to mine? Let's talk about how miserable you are some more and focus on that." So you end up engaging in fewer social activities because everyone treats you like you have a terminal disease instead of partaking in the social activity that you're trying to do in order to feel better.

I'll have to edit the list of advice from the previous post:

If you are also depressed, what you choose to do with this knowledge is up to you:

- buck up and stop acting depressed

- take solace in knowing that you're not as alone as things might look

- realize that maybe your depression isn't prominent in others' eyes

- for god's sake keep it to yourself (and your doctor)

As for the meds my doctor put me on, at the 4-week checkup we decided to change drugs. I was on a fairly low dose and my doctor hadn't encountered itching as a side effect.

I also raised the prospect of ADHD, fearing my doctor would instead diagnose me with hypochondria, and to my surprise my doctor didn't dismiss the idea. They're all to do with something wrong in your brain, and the names we give them aren't black-and-white.

So we split the difference: she put me on something else that isn't as strong on depression, but has an off-label use for ADHD. Without the side effects, I could at least bullshit myself into a psychosomatic recovery. Being a mechanically-oriented person, I have a hard time grasping how a drug can affect your mood (or the concept of "mood" to begin with), so I was hoping that at least my subconscious would fall for the placebo effect.

I think the new drug (or the placebo effect) is working. Or maybe I feel better because the absence of the first drug's side effects makes me feel better.

I do notice that I've been more productive at work and at home, and I've had a natural urge to get many things done, instead of simply feeling guilt for not getting it done. When I would previously put something off to the next day, I've found there are more instances when I just do it and get it out of the way. That's been coupled with a few good days where I thought or feared that it would be a pain in the arse, but things went smoothly or something I didn't want to do was cancelled.

I actually woke up in the morning last weekend, instead of staying in bed.

As for the ADHD thing, I don't know too much about it, and haven't even read up on it on the web (which my doctor suggested. Fancy that.). It's hard to know if I'm feeling "worse than normal" because my lifestyle is too all-over-the-map to have a sense of what "normal" is supposed to feel like.

But what I do know is that I have a tendency to start big, ambitious projects and leave them very shortly thereafter. shorter projects are more likely to get done. It's a miracle I still blog instead of Twittering.

Also, I might be confusing ADHD with OCD. When I do get onto something, I often can't stop in the middle of it. That's why there are so many gigantically long posts on my blog posted in the wee hours of the morning (which, in my book, is anything before 9am). Like the first post in the Ken Gray series. I woke up at 6am and couldn't get back to sleep until three hours later after writing out the blog post. By 11am that day I was very tired. Or how a quick impulse purchase of a digital projector turned into a month-long bout of depression.

A couple of nights after switching to the new pill, I reorganized my cutlery drawer. See?

I was up until 2am doing it and two of the other kitchen drawers. I'd have vacuumed, too, if I knew it wouldn't disrupt the neighbours. My latest theory (which I propose tongue-in-cheek) is that I must have had underlying OCD, but the depression was keeping it at bay because I could never motivate myself to bother.

More rationally, the new drug isn't supposed to have an effect until 4-6 weeks in, so I assume the different behaviour is either from withdrawal from the first one, or from the placebo effect, or possibly from the first drug no longer making me feel worse.

What's the point in all this? I dunno. Maybe you find it interesting. Maybe it's just to spite Ken Gray by pointing out I don't give a flying fuck if my blog posts are so long that nobody in their right mind would read it (helps that most of my friends are crazy). Or maybe it's to say that there's a very real possibility that RealGrouchy's back.

- RG>