Rising Above Mediocrity
by Benjamin Geiger

Yeah, I know, I haven’t updated in months. That’s entirely my fault.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post. One important interview, where I came in a “very close second” according to one of the interviewers. (I know the person who got the job, so I can’t be too sore. Sore enough to break my phone, though.) I’ve had a couple of other interviews, too, as far away as St. Petersburg. I used to like St. Pete. This particular interview was held about a block away from where Bonnie works… I couldn’t help but give the Double Deuce as I drove by. Call me bitter, I don’t care.

I’ve also joined Toastmasters. There’s a club in Winter Haven that is open to the public, and I signed up, finally, after months of being a perpetual guest. If anything, it’s forcing me to socialize. It’s not exactly where I’d go to meet people—most people there are grandparents—but it’s practice. I’m planning on posting my speeches here once I give them.

I was first exposed to this poem in school, and I hated it back then. But now, it just says everything that needs to be said.

There’s more! (click here to read)

After my rather disappointing experience at Peace River last time, I didn’t have much hope for the next visit. In a sense, that lack of hope was somewhat warranted, though this visit was much better than the first visit. After a relatively short wait (compared to last time), I got to speak to a counselor who actually listened and appeared to respect my atheism. I wasn’t able to speak to a psychiatrist, though. They’re going to call me back. Eventually.

I did, however, get a chance to see a psychiatrist, very briefly, through Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine. I had to fill out about four pages of paperwork for LVIM, then a further seven or eight for the doctor himself; the forms requested by the doctor delved into some rather personal areas of life, but I’m not really a private person (as evidenced by the very blog you’re reading).

The actual visit with the doctor lasted about two minutes, long enough for him to scan over the note sheet one of the counselors had prepared and write out the prescription. Basically, since he’s there for four hours per week (on a volunteer basis), he has to see as many people as possible in that time, and the others do most of the prep work.

But anyway, I have a renewed prescription for Lexapro (though I’ve been taking the leftovers from last time for almost a month now). I actually began noticing an effect yesterday… interesting how a drug can take weeks to build up, but once it’s built up, the effect goes from nothing to full in a matter of hours…

[Originally posted here, on the UserFriendly.org web forum.]

(In Which The Author Laments The Dichotomy Of Virtual And Physical Life.)

It’s obvious that I don’t get along well in the Real World. If all you know of me is what you see here, it may be hard to understand why.

There’s more! (click here to read)

… I came into this world, kicking and screaming.

Actually, I think my mother was doing more of the screaming. (I was a big baby. 9 pounds, 6 ounces.)

I finally went to the local mental health institution for what I thought would be an appointment with a psychiatrist.

First of all, the place is damn near impossible to find. I had to call and ask for directions.

The entire building is decorated in that ever-so-wonderful ‘government chic’ style; cinderblock walls, plain white everything, nasty plastic chairs… think of the worst DMV you’ve ever had to visit, and you’ll know what this place was like. (It’s odd, since this is a private clinic.) And the noise was unbearable. Some part of their climate control was rumbling, with the rumble pulsating every few seconds, just enough to make sure you can’t tune it out.

My appointment was at 2PM. I arrived at 2:05 or so, because I got lost on the way there. After waiting in line for ten minutes, I was given a checklist of symptoms and had to give them my ‘insurance’ card and ID. There were approximately 50 symptoms listed, and I have about half. (I could even recognize which problems they were looking for: one group was for depression, one was for mania, one was for anxiety, one was for addiction, etc.)

They finally called my name at 2:45 or so. I was taken into a back room and the ‘counselor’ asked me a few questions. At some point, I happened to mention that I was an atheist. This led to a fifteen minute long religious browbeating. I just did what I always do and zoned out; it’s not worth arguing, because nobody listens to reason.

Anyway, what really pissed me off was when I told that not only would I not be seeing a psychiatrist today, I wouldn’t even get to see one on my next visit. Apparently, they can’t just listen to the other counselors (and psychiatrists) I’ve dealt with; they have to do their own ‘diagnosis’. (You know, when they hear “I’ve tried to commit suicide”, how the fuck do they come up with a ‘diagnosis’ other than depression?)

My next appointment is in two weeks, at 10:30 AM (when my work doesn’t start until 5:30 PM). So, it’ll be at least a month before I actually get to talk to somebody who can actually help me. Until then I have to deal with the idiots and the religious freaks.

Not like “time to recharge” dead, either. More like “lead plates melted together” dead.

As I was on my way home from work tonight (I wasn’t even on the clock; I just needed to use the Internet connection to set my Powerbook back up) I stopped at a Subway. When I went to leave, my car gave the clickclickclickclickclick sound characteristic of a discharged battery.

Over the next two minutes, though, the entire car went dead. No lights (exterior, interior, or idiot). No power locks. No trunk release. No alarm. Not even enough juice to activate the solenoid that releases the key from the ignition switch when the car is in park. That made things interesting for a while, while I tried to figure out how to get into the trunk when the key wouldn’t come out of the ignition.

[A side note: For some time now, my car has sometimes refused to let me take my key out of the ignition. Apparently, it doesn’t believe that the transmission is actually in Park; usually, rapidly pressing the shift release button forces it to let the key go, but sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes a well-placed blow to the bottom of the steering column would release the key. I found out today why this is so: there is, apparently, a manual release inside the steering column, and an impact could press it. There’s an access hole for that purpose, with cover, but I find it easier to slide my hand into the steering column and press the button manually.]

Here’s the weirdest part, though: I was completely unable to jumpstart the car. Even with the two batteries directly connected, it was as though the jumper cables weren’t there.

After that attempt to jumpstart the car, I called around to various tow truck companies. They wanted $100+ to take the car the ten miles back to the house, and that doesn’t even cover the actual cost of repairs. This is when I learned that my insurance policy, despite what I had been led to believe, does not have roadside assistance. They reimburse up to $50 for towing. Note again that the cost would be >$100, with the remainder coming out of pocket. And that assumes that they actually reimburse.

At that point, I had no idea what to do, so I called Dad.

He was able to leave work early and show up. On the way, we came up with a plan that would (potentially) save the repair cost. When he got there, we traveled to Wal-Mart and bought a new battery for the car. The rationale was this: if it’s the battery, yay, problem solved. If it’s anything else, at least it should get the car back to the house, where the problem can be dealt with.

We also bought an adjustable wrench. This piece of shit bent when trying to remove the first bolt holding a crossbar on. We ended up going back to the house to retrieve Dad’s tools, including a ratchet and the appropriate size wrench and socket.

It is most definitely not an easy task to take the battery out of a 2000 Grand Prix. Even after taking off the crossbar and moving or detaching all of the cables, hoses, clamps, and doohickeys (now that’s a technical term for you) in the vicinity, the battery still needs to be turned on its side in order to be removed. Installing the new one is not much easier, though in this case the new battery had a handle, which helped.

At long last, the new battery was installed and the car was running. At some point, we realized that the battery was not a no-maintenance, sealed battery, as I had thought, but rather a standard battery that requires filling.

Guess what neither of us had done since we bought the car? [In my defense, I honestly thought it was a sealed battery.]

With much trepidation we opened the access panels on the battery. The lead plates were exposed and partially melted, and there was practically no liquid inside. In retrospect, I’m surprised it didn’t explode or melt earlier.

Now, with the new battery, the car is running like a champ again. I’m still going to take it to the dealer ASAP to make sure it’s not something more serious (like an alternator problem or faulty wiring) but I think the problem is solved.

Some time ago, one of the myriad antidepressants advertised on television—I don’t remember which—had an ad that stuck in my head. The part that stuck was an actress saying, “I used to be happy. I remember being happy.”

It struck me that I didn’t. I knew I was depressed, but I honestly didn’t remember ever being truly happy. Every depression questionnaire I’ve ever read asked if the symptoms had lasted at least a month: “Does since the day I was born count?”

Since, I’ve had a few times when I thought I was happy. I doubt I really was, but I had fooled myself into thinking I was. I’m not even sure what it feels like.

I’ve seen ‘counselors’ about this, who referred me to psychiatrists, who put me on drugs. They didn’t help much. About the only real effect of the antidepressant I was most recently prescribed (Lexapro) was a side effect that I shouldn’t discuss in polite company. (Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? The side effect was that I was practically unable to orgasm. It sounds like a good thing, but believe you me, going for three hours without a happy ending is a recipe for eternal frustration.)

Thursday I see yet another psychiatrist. (I could have gone back to the USF psychiatrist I had been seeing, but I really don’t like her; she basically didn’t listen to me at all.) I’m going to ask to be put on a different antidepressant. I need a massive dose of Lexapro to see any effect—while side effects set in at much lower doses—and Wellbutrin didn’t do much at all. Maybe this time I’ll find something that works.

Instead of going through the trouble of finding ludwig’s cause of death, I found a suitable replacement.

The local Computer Renaissance had a pallet of used machines: Dell Optiplex GX110 models, with 500MHz CPUs and 128MB RAM each. The quoted price was $50, but the sales guy on duty sold me one for $25. (I didn’t even ask. Honest.)

Continuing with my theme of lesser-known Disney characters, I named the new server “Archimedes” after the owl in “The Sword in the Stone”.

I had a few surprises while configuring the server. Most notably, the IDE controller uses Cable Select and will not function without it. I had the system drive configured as master, and the controller wouldn’t detect it. I had to turn on Cable Select before it would work. There is no AGP expansion slot, but the integrated video uses AGP. I don’t even use X11 on the system, so a lack of decent video is hardly a detriment. And the case is either an engineering marvel or a overcomplicated piece of junk, depending on how irritated I am at it.

The system came with a PCI Sound Blaster Live! card. I removed the card, as a server doesn’t need a sound card, and intend to put it into my Wintendo.

Debian installation went off without a hitch. Even installing and configuring the additional servers I use was easy, primarily because I managed to save the /etc directory from ludwig. I’ve installed samba, dnsmasq, and cups so far without any hassle whatsoever.

All I can say is that I’m pleased with the results.

I just have no luck with fileservers.

Until a bit over two years ago, I had a machine named “sleight-of-mind”. Then one of the hard drives died. When I replaced the hard drive, the machine rose from the… er… disassembled. I took that opportunity to change naming schemes; that machine became “ludwig” (as in “von Drake”, Donald’s uncle).

A few hours ago, ludwig began giving memory paging errors and became unresponsive to input. When I shut it down hard (being unable to shut it down from the console), it refused to restart, giving no response whatsoever. After I cycled the power supply cutoff switch, the lights and fans came on for approximately two seconds before shutting themselves off.

I took the PSU from my Wintendo, baloo, and put it into ludwig. No response, so I know it’s not the PSU that failed.

I don’t know what the failure is, at this point. It could be the motherboard or it could be the CPU. I do know that the machine is ancient (it had a 350MHz K6-2), and any replacement could be equally ancient; I don’t need a quad Xeon to serve up files and run pppd. Now to find a replacement that I can actually afford…