Lars Wirzenius: Personal life, 2003
Contents
- December 29: Worn out, getting better
- December 8: Less tired
- December 6: A bit better
- December 5: Bad mood
- December 4: Bright light, day 2
- December 3: SAD self-diagnosis
- December 2: Hectic work, flu
- October 27: Bad day
- October 15: re-Buffy
- October 9: Uncle
- September 1: Birthday
- August 16: Too much stuff, Gnome Iagno bug
- August 15: Rambling
- August 14: Flu
- August 6: Tanda's birthday party
- August 1: Hot weather, cooking at work
- July 25: On neophilia
- July 21: Tired
- July 12: Diskurssi
- July 9: Overflowing bookshelf
- July 8: Setting up an ISP
- July 7: Hectic at work
- June 26: Dead remote controls
- June 20: Midsummer Eve
- June 18: Stress
- May 31: Joy's birthday present
Monday, December 29, 2003
Personal life: Worn out, getting better
I was rather worn out before Christmas. For the past almost two weeks, I haven't done anything except rested and relaxed. I had planned to hack on personal projects during last week, but it was not to be. Except for two small things I did on Christmas day to prevent boredom, I haven't done any hacking at all, work or hobby.
I'm now feeling much better, and have actually fixed a few small bugs in Lodju today, and will hopefully be able to get into hack mode on it tomorrow.
Monday, December 8, 2003
Personal life: Less tired
Still tired, but perhaps a bit less so. Moved the bright light closer, so that I can do with only one hour of basking each day.
Saturday, December 6, 2003
Personal life: A bit better
Feeling a bit better today, as far as the suspected flu is concerned. Not as tired as in the past few days. Even managed to sleep fairly well. No noticeable effects from the bright light yet. Of course, any changes are likely to be so gradual, I can't easily notice them. There is no good way to objectively measure, say, irritability or depression.
Friday, December 5, 2003
Personal life: Bad mood
Further bad mood and bad sleeping. Muscle aches. Blah. Slept most of the day. Went to have a shower, but there was no hot water: a pipe had broken outside the building. Almost missed going to the food store, and tomorrow's Finland's independence day and all stores are closed.
But feeling better now.
Thursday, December 4, 2003
Personal life: Bright light, day 2
Second day of using the bright light lamp. Still very tired, and having a headache and other aches. These symptoms probably not due to SAD, but yet another flu, or something. Also extremely pissed off at everything.
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
Personal life: SAD self-diagnosis
I suspect I suffer from a (probably mild) seasonal affective disorder ("kaamosmasennus"). The popular theory seems to be that light will help, so I bought a Philips Bright light device. I used it for two hours this morning and have spent much of today sleeping, so I guess it does something, even if it doesn't make me bouncy.
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Personal life: Hectic work, flu
Work has been hectic for the past couple of weeks, with visits to other cities and nights of little sleep. With a nice flu and a high fever thrown in, I've only barely been capable of operating at all, and inessential things such as updating this log have lagged.
Monday, October 27, 2003
Personal life: Bad day
Today was not the best day in my life. I forgot my gloves at home, and didn't have time to go back to get them. I fell on slippery ice and hurt my knee (though luckily not very badly). Tax people found yet another error in my data for last year: it is now official that every single piece of information they have of my finances for last year, except for the salaries paid by Oliotalo, were wrong. The deadline for complaining was last Friday (though luckily it was not a hard deadline, just the one for doing things the easy way). I've been boycotting CDs since I don't like the way record companies want to use copy protection, but today I bought an old (but unused) cheap one. It had read errors in the last track. The weather was windy, and my hat flew off my head, into a puddle, and in front of the wheels of a bus about to leave from a bus stop (but it waited and let me fetch my hat).
On the other hand, I met with some friends to celebrate Jiivonen's birthday, and that was fun and destressing. Also, the tax people graciously halved my tax percentage for the rest of the year, since it used to be quite high, due to having been calculated for a much higher income level than I really have (due, in turn, to the bad info they had on my last year's income). This means I will get some extra cash for the rest of this year.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Personal life: re-Buffy
I've decided to start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer again. I have DVD boxes with seasons 1, 2, and 5, and I ordered season 3 from Amazon UK yesterday. Between the time I added it to the shopping basket and today, it went from being readily available to being probably available within a week. Sigh.
Thursday, October 9, 2003
Personal life: Uncle
I'm an uncle.
Monday, September 1, 2003
Personal life: Birthday
So this is how it feels like to be thirty four. It's almost as fun as being thirty three, actually, though I have less hair, since I went to the barber today.
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Personal life: Too much stuff
I have too much stuff. This apartment was spacious when I moved in, and it now feels crowded. Partly it is because I now have more furniture, but partly it is just accumulation of useless junk, such as empty boxes, or piles of unsorted papers, some of which are important. I have more books than fit in my bookshelves. Something needs to be done. Cleaning, to begin with.
Cleaning will, however, only help for a while. I need to stop new junk from coming in and conquering the apartment again. I need to declare war on junk. A nice, happy, anti-Geneva convention war with no prisoners taken. Total, all-out annihilation of everything trying to infiltrate my home. Except books, of course.
Personal life: Gnome Iagno bug
Feeling a bit better, but still not well. Been playing Gnome Iagno, which is a beautiful implementation of Othello (or Reversi, to some people). It has a bug that makes it stop playing in some situations at higher levels of difficulty, so I've been playing it on the lowest level. This is pretty boring since I win every time. On the other hand, it is about perfect for the current functionality level of my brain.
It's not whether I win, it's how much I win.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Personal life: Rambling
I'm still feeling ill, so still at home. Bored out of my mind, whenever I'm not feeling sorry for myself. This tends to cause my brain to invent all sorts of stupid ideas.
Idea #1: I should start a regular (weekly?) radio show of sorts: a half hour show with talks and interviews and stuff, no music, published under a free license as an Ogg Vorbis file, covering all sorts of topics that interest me, such as computers, photography, and RPGs.
Idea #2: A movie about high school nerds who decide to get laid once and for all, and decide to do this by arranging a power failure. They arrange for themselves and some babes to be in an elevator, and for fake radio broadcasts that indicate the world is ending. This should set the babes in the right mood...
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Personal life: Flu
Stayed at home today, feeling ill, probably a slight flu.
Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Personal life: Tanda's birthday party
Went to Tanda's birtyday party. Not very many people, but very nice anyway. Meeting people socially needs to happen to me more.
Friday, August 1, 2003
Personal life: Hot weather, cooking at work
The weather continues hot. I don't remember any such summer in Finland during my life: several continuous weeks of sunshine and high temperatures. Mostly, I'm enjoying it, though it is sometimes difficult to sleep during the nights.
The hot weather has this week been combined with a quickly rising stress level: my summer vacation has ended and works is demanding. On the other hand, even with only two weeks of vacation, I did manage to get my stress level to a reasonable level, and have now been able to be mostly relaxed at work, even when under pressure. This is very good and will hopefully continue.
One thing that has helped is that we've started making lunch at the office. Oliotalo moved to a new office at the beginning of July and they're great. There's air conditioning and a real kitchen. There are a few lunch restaurants in the area, and one downstairs in the same building, but they tend to be a bit expensive, and some of them are closed during the summer. So far, we've made lunch ourselves three times. It is great fun, and cheap.
Friday, July 25, 2003
Personal life: On neophilia
At the beginnig of June, I noticed I'm a neophobe. I've since tried to actively try out new things, such as foods. Pretty much everything has been a pleasant surprise, so I suspect I'll continue this. Deep down, I know it is wrong to try new things, and evil to like them, but hey, I'm perverse.
Monday, July 21, 2003
Personal life: Tired
Well, a few days of not updating the log again. Too much activity and tiredness at DebConf3 in Oslo, Norway. I'm back home again.
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Personal life: Diskurssi
A group of us meets bi-monthly to listen to a presentation on some topic and eat well. The topics vary wildly, from training dogs to the history computers; basically, anything that one of us knows well, and since we're fairly varied in our interests, there are plenty of topics. After yesterday's miserable work day (see below), it was extremely pleasant to be with friends. I feel much happier now.
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
Personal life: Overflowing bookshelf
My bookshelf is full. In fact, it is overflowing. I have more books than I have shelf space, and I have little room for more shelves. This could become a major catastrophe. I need to either get completely new bookshelves that are higher than my current ones or a bigger apartment, and neither option is affordable. I could stop buying books, but that would be ridiculous. I guess I'll have to move my bed to the balcony and start stacking books on the bedroom floor.
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
Personal life: Setting up an ISP
I have tentatively decided to set up a small Internet service provider with a couple of friends. Nothing fancy. It seems that a number of friends and acquintances would be interested in paying a small amount of money per month to have a reliable place to read mail and have web pages. Schools and employers are not always nice enough: they have restrictions on personal use, and possibly very small quotas. Thus, since we happen to have the equipment and bandwidth available anyway, we thought a miniature business venture would be in order. Like I said, nothing fancy, and almost certainly not particularly profitable, but it could help offset the costs of having a nice ADSL connection.
Of course, it might happen that we learn that it will be too much tedious effort to run such a thing. Since we won't be investing any real money in this, we'll be able to back off if we find that it isn't worth our while to do it. But it'll be interesting to try, at least.
Monday, July 7, 2003
Personal life: Hectic at work
A long time has passed since my previous update. Things have been a bit more hectic than usual, in part due to a work trip to the Netherlands.
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Personal life: Dead remote controls
Did not watch a movie tonight. The remote controls for both the DVD player and the amplifier broke, or possibly their batteries, and the DVD player doesn't allow use of menus from the front panel. Blah.
Friday, June 20, 2003
Personal life: Midsummer Eve
It was Midsummer Eve today. I was home, alone, hacking, since I was too lazy to go to any party. Not an entirely bad solution: I've had a very relaxing day, cleaning up my apartment and hacking and watching movies. No stress.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Personal life: Stress
Work continues to be extremely stressful, leaving little energy for free time. That's why I bought no less than four dvds and two books today.
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Personal life: Joy's birthday present
I bought a bike in 1999, but haven't really used it, partly because of back problems. Today, Krabak bought it to give to joy as an early birthday present. He brought her to look at it, ostensibly to help me oil it, and when he told her what was happening, she was quite pleasingly happy and bewildered for a while.