Work lately is kinda sucking. Not due to the work itself, but rather for the lack of it. I got my car fixed, from when the transmission died on me just before Christmas, and the bill was quite hefty so now with work availability being so lack luster it’s got me a bit nervous.

I picked up a few games for the DS in the last little while. I grabbed Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero and picked up Final Fantasy VI Advance off of eBay (okay so that’s not a DS game, but I’m playing it on my DS). I was playing them both back and forth, favoring Elebits at first and I’m currently near the end of the game (at least I think I am…) but I’ve kind of lost interest in it and am now playing FF6 instead. I never did beat this game back on the SNES. I once borrowed the cart off a friend but lost interest shortly after I hit the World of Ruin (about the halfway point of the game for those that don’t know [or care, heh]). That was over 10 years ago now though so as I’m playing through I’m not remembering much, just scattered things here and there. I also picked up Avalon Code because I played a demo for it and thought it was really interesting. I’m not playing it yet though, I’m fighting the urge to check it out because I know that if I get into it then FF6 is going to be left by the wayside and I’d really like to finish it this time.

My nephew is now eating baby food and drinking juice. I have a picture.

Fact: He is cute. That is all.

So here I am, laying in bed, 4:40 am. Nothing better to do than peruse the internet, like usual. I’m not really tired yet so sleep isn’t appealing to me, and I’ve pretty well exhausted my usual haunts (although I haven’t scoped out the AutoIt forums because the site’s not responding, otherwise I wouldn’t be here) so I figured why not write something to go on the blog. I’ve really been neglecting it lately and I’d like to say it’s because of work, which to be fair has interfered a bit, but I have had some time to write, and I just put it off. I always have good intentions of sitting down and writing about a few ideas or opinions that I want to share, or at least get recorded somewhere, but every time I get up the gumption to do it the enthusiasm kind of fizzles out once the site loads up, and then I start perusing the internet again. But this time is different, now I’ve loaded up the page and I’ve already started writing, and once I get started I can sometimes go on for a while… (more…)

Woot, I can do internets from work! LOLZ and etc.

Later.

When I was doing my patrols in the hospital, I walked through one of the staff lounges, and there, on a piece of paper, someone had doodled a picture of Trogdor and written “Trogdor the burninator” on it.

I thought this was quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen at work.

So, I’ve been checking the site over the last few days, and it seems that my loading times have shot up, er, down? … Whatever, it’s faster than it used to be, so I guess the guys over at Globat did something. The admin interface still loads a little slow, but then I think that might just be WordPress being… WordPress, heh. With the site running at a bearable speed now, I might actually do some more posting (yays?). Anyway, I think I’m gonna stick it out with Globat for a while, unless things go downhill again. I did a little bit of looking into other hosts, but didn’t find anything that leaped out at me.

So what’s been going on with me lately? I know all of the 2 people that check this site are just dying to know. I’ve fairly recently come into a full time position at work. The guy that had the full time position in town moved away, and since I was the next one on the seniority list (and also the most deserving, if I do say so myself) it was offered to me, and I took it. I now have guaranteed hours, 40 a week. I’m stuck in this one position though, they won’t allow me out of this site because “the patrol guard is the patrol guard, nothing else” and while I’m not totally happy knowing that I’m stuck in the one place FOREVARZ~!, at least I don’t have to worry about 2 weeks going by with NO work, or calls at 3am, asking me to drive out of town to sit on a patient… Though I still get calls at 3am telling me to go check out why the alarm at such and such a place is going off… So I’m happy, but still whiny. Although what else is new, eh?

Outside of work… I bought a car! Oh right.. old news. But I never did elaborate on that, did I? Even after I said I would. Well here goes. It has 4 doors. Ha!

I’m going to wrap this up now because Globat just took a big crap. Tried to check the blog for something and ended up with 30+ second load times? Talk about a big steamy pile of bullshit. Maybe I’ll keep looking after all. But I wanted to mention that I’ve recently joined that giant insanity fest called Facebook. I couldn’t believe how many people are on that thing, and I don’t mean schmucks that I don’t know, I mean people that I went to school with. As I said to one guy on there, “I’m seeing people I forgot existed.”

Anyway, gonna go now, hopefully I’ll actually be able to publish this post without Globat having an aneurysm (just checked the site again, 74 second load time!?! Holy Jesus H. Christ on a stick Batman). Guh-bye.

So here we are again with another quick post. It’s currently 8:30am (jeeze, I just hit Alt+Tab to try and look at my clock behind my laptop) and I’m still awake from last nigh-er, yesterday I guess. Whatever.

I guess the site has been down the last couple days, I was just about to email Globat (my webhost) and ask them WTF was going on, but now it’s back. Obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this. It seems to be running slower than usual though, so I think I might still give them a shout.

I’ve been working a lot lately, 12 hour shifts, which I’m not totally used to, and it’s been leaving me rather exhausted (for some strange reason, I mean it’s not like I’m doing anything physically demanding), so I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping and/or just laying in bed. Today my plan was to get up at 2pm, but I wasn’t able to sleep and now, like I said, it’s 8:30 so I’ll probably end up sleeping til like 4-5pm.

My last post said that in my next post I was going to provide more detail on the car I bought, so here it is: It’s gray. That’s about all I’m going to say for now (not like anyone really cares anyway, I’m sure) but next post, hopefully I’ll have something better to say, and more time to say it. Not that this hasn’t been long enough anyway, but it’s kind of stream of consciousness, so I haven’t had to think ahead about what I’m typing.

I also have to work again tonight from 20:00-04:00, then again tomorrow, then I’ll be at the port and I’m not sure what my shift will be like exactly, but it should be about 8 hours as well. Probably like 20:30-04:30.

Well that’s about it for this update.

Haven’t posted in a while, eh? Well get used to it. That’s kind of my routine. :P

I was quite busy with work for a while there. First, guarding patients and whatnot (talked about in my last post), I was doing shifts from 12 noon to midnight there, then I went straight out to the port for several shifts, which were 8pm to 4am (which I don’t mind, ‘cus I like the port, I can actually work on the computer there), then a day off, then back into the hospital for a patient from 8pm to 4am, and then things got a little fucked up.

I was supposed to go back to the hospital, for the same patient, at 8pm, so at 7:00pm I started getting ready and, on a whim, decided to call my supervisor to ask him about something (completely unrelated to the patient). Then I get informed that he needs me to do a 12 hour shift at 4am (when I would’ve been finishing the shift I was expecting to do, and going home to bed) because there’s been an outbreak of some kind of flu at the hospital. They want security to keep visitors out to try and contain the virus as best as possible. So, now, instead of doing my usual routine, where I get to sleep by 4am, I have to try and get as much sleep as possible, because eight hours later I’m going to need to stay up for 12 hours. And before anybody says anything, I’m not knocking my supervisor, he’s a good guy, so I’m sure if he had someone else he’d send them in for the shift, but I was pretty much the only person available.

So, I get some sleep, though not nearly enough, get in there at 4am, get informed by the guy I’m relieving that the virus is suspected to be a Norwalk-type virus, not necessarily deadly or anything, but really nasty. I’m told to basically refrain from touching things as much as possible or, if I do, to wash my hands after. This didn’t work really well seeing as the nearest washroom was like 50 feet away, and I have to sit in front of the door all day, so I was just using the alcoholic cleanser stuff that they have posted all over the place (although I found out later that the stuff doesn’t really help very much). The next day the shift changed, instead of having security on the door 24 hours, they switched to an 8am to 11pm schedule, which we split into a 7 and an 8 hour shift. So that day I worked the 8am to 3pm shift (another time change for me). Then that night at 12:30, just after midnight (so technically the next day) I was back at the port, for 12 hour shifts.

12:30am (or 00:30 hours), to 12:30pm, basically midnight to lunch. Very screwey, had my internal clock all messed up, but it was really the only way we could make things work, we’re a little *ahem* short staffed at the moment. Ah well, it didn’t last, only 3 days, and now I’ve got some time off. Though not necessarily because they don’t need me, but because as near as I can tell I’ve actually got that stupid bug that was going around the hospital and now I’m not allowed in there until 48 hours after the last time I exhibit symptoms (stomache pain, diarrhea and/or vomiting) of which I’ve only experienced two (yay no pukies!) and currently only experiencing one (… not the stomach pain). I almost enjoy it though, I put up with a bit of the “Hershey Squirts” as my friend would put it, and I get some time off work. If it goes on too long though it could be a problem, both financially and medically.

On a cleaner, less yucky topic, in my off hours I’ve been busy with the other family computer, or perhaps more appropriately the original family computer. It’s been set up in the livingroom for the past week or two but it still had a tonne of crap on it that we’d already migrated to the new computer and/or didn’t want anymore. A few days ago I finally got around to reformatting and reinstalling the OS on it and it’s now nice and clean, with only what Dad wants on there, which currently is Diablo II. It’s going to be interesting watching him get into this game, as it’s pretty well the first real computer game he’s played. It’s going to take him some getting used to.

On the topic of this site, while working the port shifts I have lots of time between patrols and visitors and whatnot to actually do stuff, so I’ve been doing some work on the whole wallpaper thing. If you keep an eye out for a “Wallpapers” link in the right sidebar, under the Home link (it’s not there yet), I should soon get a sort of beta version of the page working… Hopefully. I’ve also got a new page up there already that just acts as a full listing of all the registered users, and all the posts on this blog, and whatever else that ends up on the blog. Maybe the links…

Anyway, that’s enough for now, I’ve been working on this post for like 3 days off and on already, I think it’s about time I hit that Publish button.

…Or at least, that’s what I’m told.

So… this patient I had to guard today, interesting. They (not plural, just gender neutral, must keep it as confidential as possible) were gone off their rocker (to put it politically incorrectly), and, after attacking another guard on duty, rambled on and on to me about how I was this evil devil, and they were “number 2 and God is number 1″, and at one point even claimed they were God. I can’t say I wasn’t egging them on though, we had a fairly long argument about how I couldn’t be a snake. Something like…

Patient: You’re just a snake in the grass, just a snake.
Me: I’m a snake, huh?
Pt: Yes, that’s right.
Me: Hmm.. snakes, don’t have arms, right?
Pt: No they don’t.
Me: And… they don’t have legs, right?
Pt: No, because God took them away, so they’d have to slither along on their belly. That’s all a snake can-
Me: Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, snakes don’t have arms or legs… *Hold up my arm and look at it* Well, this is an arm, right?
Pt: Yes it is.
Me: *Look at my legs* And those look like legs.
Pt: Yes, they are.
Me: And those are mine, my arms, my legs. So, if I have arms and legs, I can’t be a snake, correct?
Pt: No you are, you’re a snake.
Me: But a snake doesn’t have arms.
Pt: No they don’t.
Me: But I have arms.
Pt: Yes you do.
Me: So I can’t be a snake.
Pt: No you can’t.
Me: But you said I was a snake.
Pt: Yes, cus you are.
Me: You just said I wasn’t.
Pt: Oh but you are.
Me: So… I’m a snake with arms?
Pt: No, just a regular snake. Like a garter snake, or a boa constrictor.
Me: So, I’m just a regular snake.
Pt: Yep.
Me: A snake that doesn’t have arms or legs, right?
Pt: Yes that’s right.
Me: So, I don’t have arms?
Pt: No you don’t.
Me: *Hold up arm* So.. what’s this?
Pt: That’s an arm.
Me: But it doesn’t belong to me?
Pt: Oh yes it does.
Me: So I have arms?
Pt: Yes, you do.
Me: So I’m a snake with arms?

That’s enough of that, it pretty well degenerated into repetition at that point anyway, a lot of the arguments, or “conversations”, were like that. I mean obviously this person was not in their right mind, that’s the whole reason we had to guard them (that and the violence, which is probably a result of the loss of mental capacity), but they seem so coherent most of the time that it’s hard to kind of step back in the middle of the argument and think, “Right, they’re a head case, of course they’re so illogical.”

A couple other gems from our “conversations”…

(more…)

Bleh, working 12 hour shifts guarding someone that sleeps all day and night is easy work, but very boring.
And it definitely doesn’t help matters any when I get off at 8am but stay up til 10:30 doing nothing important on TEH INTARWEBZ…

So I’m going to sleep now.