Trains, trains, training, trains

I seem to spend half my life on the train these days. A couple of weeks ago I was told, "You're going to Bournemouth to work at LV=". "Great!" I thought, "Some real work at last!" - and it has been great, BUT - with the other work I was doing nobody minded if you took most of Monday morning getting there, where here I have to be there on the dot Monday morning at 9, which means I have to be there in Bournemouth the night before, which means that instead of taking a direct X-Country service from New St to Bournemouth which takes 3-3.5 hours, I have to get a train to Bristol, change at Bristol Parkway, get another train to Southampton Central & then another to Bournemouth, taking 5 hours instead. I set off around 2.30, get to Brum for the 3 o'clock train & wind up in Bournemouth by 8pm. So much for the weekend. Coming home, I take the 17:45 from Bournemouth X-Country, and that takes 3 hours, so it's about 9ish by the time the bus deposits me back in my neighbourhood.

I'm so tired. I'm so tempted to take a week off & get my bike fixed. I'm sitting here in a course in edgeConnect, a sort of GUI based abstraction layer for Java so you can get business people (theoretically) to build their own web apps. I'm unconvinced - it seems quite quick & dirty to me, like fag-packet stuff. Useful for prototyping but I'd be tempted to hand over a fag-packet prototype to some real developers to turn into a proper enterprise app. There's few enough people use it that it's more likely to be a hindrance on my CV than anything useful - something to make loony recruiters hassle me to do more edgeConnect stuff when Java is my main squeeze, my darling that I understand, want & adore. edgeConnect feels like a dizzy blonde Essex girl with a double-figure IQ compared to the admittedly not so glitzy but way brighter geek girl that is Java. First impressions, but tbh I've had plenty experience of these "tools" that use GUIs to try & do your programming for you, and they rarely do that well.

Elect The Dead

Just seen this: Serj Tankian's got a website calling for massive electoral reform in the US. I gotta say, I agree with him - take the electoral college out, strip the cruft out, get rid of the smoke & mirrors that keep US citizens from getting the president they want. What gives me the right to comment? Yeah, sure, I'm a Brit. That means I'm affected by who runs the US, yet get zero say in it. I might get called up, or in years to come, my son might get called up, to serve in the UK military to fight in a war you guys' president starts. I might lose everything I own because of mis-run economics in the US, yet I get no say. What was it you guys used to say? "No taxation without representation"? Well, I don't pay taxes directly, but I pay a lot of money to US corporations, who in turn pay taxes to the US treasury. So yeah. Time democracy came to the US. I don't particularly want to vote in US politics, but it'd ease my mind somewhat to know that what the American People decide is what the American People get done & you don't get hornswoggled into another GW Bush & 8 more years of war against a concept without actually wanting it. You have a reputation for fairness as a people, I know & like a bunch of you & I trust that if you had a proper say, you'd run things pretty well.
Go check it out: http://www.electthedead.com/

Apology

Alexander - sorry I didn't make it to your birthday bash. I was feeling homesick & didn't want to end up stuck in London of a Thursday night, plus I'm slightly phobic about Victoria Station - damned place is heaving with nasty, pissed off, sweaty hoi polloi at rush hour & I don't know the buses from there to Greenwich nor if there's a reasonably direct route to Euston from there. Anyway, I hope you had a good birthday.

I took the afternoon X-Country train from East Croydon to Birmingham New Street & was home by 7pm. Kids were pleased to see me as was Susan. Didn't go into SL till late. Didn't go for a run. Bad Matt. Must go running tonight if not tomorrow AM.

More fitness stuff

I went for my first run in ages last night. Just around the block, maybe 800m or so, but I made it all the way round.

Yoga diary (part deux)

Shoulders are aching a fair bit - not used to chaturanga dandasana any more. Gotta re-educate them. Good punching muscles for Krav Maga. Did another, longer session this morning, but could do with going jogging at some point.

Anyway - checking out of the hotel now, but I'll be along to the London goth thing in Camden tonight before sloping off home. Life is good. All it needed was a good SL, a bit of exercise, & the occasional company of good RL friends.

Yoged

Last night I started yoga again. Not a huge load, just a few reps of the first part of the sun salutation sequence, but done reasonably briskly. Shoulders are aching now - I had such fun doing it though that I had another crack at it this morning, and a quick 30 crunches, and then when I went to breakfast I used the stairs down from the 7th floor, and then decided, fuck it, I'd go back up the stairs after breakfast. So here I am in the office, all sweaty (hey, it's hot as hell in here anyway - I have to bow to our 1930's robot villain overlords to get any kind of cool, receiving a blessing of cold air from its wavy tentacle arms), but happy as larry. I have 2 apples for lunch & a bottle & a half of M&S fizzy water, and tonight I'm going to have a nice pasty. Total calories, just over 1000 for the day (I had 2 pains au chocolat & 2 croissants for breakfast), & tonight, Jeremy, I'm gonna be doing the same again. Gonna see if I can do the full sun salutation sequence. I used to do a LOT of yoga but stopped due to depression. Bad idea. Exercise is *GOOD* for depression, but then you don't tend to look after yourself when you feel like death wouldn't be a bad idea. Sign of recovery.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

My recovery's still on-going. I'm generally alright but occasionally I get something that buggers me up a bit, like Sunday when a certain someone spread some gossip I think he ought to have kept private, which frankly caused me a small panic attack, a little crisis of "What the fuck am I gonna do?" followed by swift decision & re-strengthening of resolve to Do the Right Thing, no matter what.

Seriously, I get very messed up at the mention of a certain person - In order to move on properly, you need to go through 7 stages - shock/denial, anger/bargaining, depression, the "upward turn", reconstruction, then acceptance & hope.

Now, when it's grief at a death, in some ways it's easier to move on. You know they're not coming back - they're dead. When it's grief at a lost friendship & a lost love, you *need* to get through the depression, and the important stage of despair, properly. Despair used to be looked on as a mortal sin, but in this case it's useful. You *need* to abandon all possible hope that you will ever get back to the way things were with them. If you cling to even the slightest thread of hope then you're almost right back at square 1 again. This is why it's crucial that people *not* feed you any bullshit that may give you such a glimmer of hope. Things will never be the same again. Get the fuck over it. The hope that comes at the end is nothing to do with the hope that things will be the same as when you were with them - it's just hope that you'll someday be as happy, and that you can be as happy as you were before the whole sorry thing began.

At that end stage you can maybe think about your lost one, and not feel like you're being stabbed repeatedly in the chest. You'll be sad, yes, wistful, maybe, but it won't feel like you're dying any more. Luckily the ill-advised chap who fed me the crap info now knows not to do that again, so yay. Win. I think he thought he was doing me a favour, but really, it's not at all useful.

Anyway, whatever. My lungs are currently shot - severe asthma due to infection, a secondary thing from having a cold last week. I really need to get some sleep, and I really need to lose weight. I think I won't be in that virtual world I keep mentioning, nearly so much tonight. Plans for the evening include:

1. Grab a sub from Subway (across road from hotel).
2. Go log onto that virtual thing
3. Around 9ish, go onto inbuilt mic & speakers so as to be able to work out a bit.
4. Go do some situps, press-ups & getting up & down safely drill from Krav Maga.
5. 10 minutes' shadow-boxing
6. 30 mins yoga
7. Shower
8. Bed.

Nothing too hard, but I really need to get back into a routine of exercise & proper sleep. I suspect recent events would not have hit me nearly so hard if I wasn't already halfway in the gutter anyway. Kick me while I'm down, eh? ;-P

Oh - and, not had any booze since Sunday either. Not going to drink till Thursday's pub meet, in Camden, which isn't too far from Euston so do-able this week. Would be good to see the goths again - I had loads of fun last week, even if I woke up the next day with such cramp I felt my legs were ripping themselves to pieces. Seriously - my left leg was fucked for two & a half days, couldn't walk or drive or anything.

Damn - so sleep-depped & so over-warm here I keep momentarily dozing off. Must have massive doses of caffeine, right now.