Strange Day...

Actually, my day was mostly fairly normal. I spent thirteen hours at work, which sucked, although I spent probably the better part of two hours reading, so that's not so bad... I'm currently reading the fourth book in the Dark Tower series, by Stephen King. It's been an excellent series so far - this volume had an interesting cross-over with The Stand, which is my favourite Stephen King book. There are three more books in the Dark Tower series, but I may have to wait a while to get them. So far I have only seen them around in hard cover, and the best price I've seen was around $46. Even though this is an excellent series, $46 for a book is too much. I'd rather wait for the paperback edition. And given that I mostly read at work, the paperbacks would be easier to carry around.

I found out something... kinda weird, and kinda sad today. Hunter S Thompson is dead. Apparently he shot himself on the 20th of last month. He was 67, and suffering from a variety of physical problems. It's funny, I had wondered just how old he was when I read his writings from different periods, and I wasn't even sure if he was still alive. I'd be happier to have found out these things in a better way, really... There was a little article in the TV Times, part of the local newspaper. It was about the memorial service held for him, which was attended by Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, both of whom have apparently played Hunter S Thompson in films. Johnny Depp is obvious, with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but I don't know what film Bill Murray played him in... I'm trying to think what my favourite book of his is, but it's hard to say. I found everything he wrote cool. I think The Rum Diaries was a very good read, and Better Than Sex was one of my favourites, probably because it's about a time that I can clearly remember - the late eighties (or was it early ninties?), when Clinton was running for President in the US.

But now it's very late, and I feel that I should probably get some sleep. I have the day off tomorrow, but will most likely be getting up around 7 o' the clock anyways, when Manny come and starts poking me in the face. Having a cat is great....

Reminders

Well, it's been a funny few days recently... on Thursday morning, someone I know phoned me and told me they'd had a mental breakdown. They sounded perfectly happy, chatting about other things first, then just sort of "Oh, by the way, I had a mental breakdown last week." It seems kinda odd... I got the impression that basically they were very stressed, and the type of person who goes to the doctor quite frequently, whenever they have any sort of problem. And the doctor told them it was a breakdown, and to take a week off work. Which is all well and good, but I find it hard to sympathise with people who can't cope. Well, I feel for genuinely crazy people, and for people who have real tragedies occur in their lives and can't deal properly, but not so much for someone who takes on too much at once, then burns out... I hope that doesn't sound too mean, or harsh...
I've also had a couple of moments that brought back very strong memories of my Grandfather. One was fairly straight forward - his old car was at a local garage undergoing repairs for the last month or so, and was finished on Thursday, so I went down to pick it up. When I first got in, having not driven it for a while, the smell was so familiar, and still quite "Grandad," despite the mixture of other odours that have been added in the 12 or so years since he last drove it.
The other thing was watching someone soldering a circuit board at work. The thing that I had fixed, then broken is now repaired - the tech guy who does that sort of work for us is in town at the moment. He fixed it on Saturday morning, having to solder a small part of the replacement board that had burnt out. The Grandad moment in this was the overwhelming sense that he wasn't doing it quite right, because he wasn't smoking a pipe. It's one of those enduring memories I have from back when my gradparents lived in Rotorua - my Grandfather standing at his bench in the garage, pipe stem gripped in his teeth, sticking out the corner of his mouth, soldering things... I can't even remember what he was soldering, but the idea of soldering without a pipe in your teeth just doesn't seem right. Even when I was soldering case lights on my old computer a while ago, I had the sense that something was missing, and that I wasn't quite doing the job properly. But then, I'm pretty crap at soldering, so it's possible I wasn't doing it properly anyway, pipe or no...

Where the Hell have you been?

Well, well, wellie... So it's been fooking ages since I did this. Blogging, that is...I pretty much gave up on it because, day to day, week to week, my life is basically the same old boring shite. I hope my sister doesn't read this... Speaking of whom, I saw her last weekend. She was up here from Christchurch for a couple of days. And of course, what with me being a disorganised idiot and all, I was working both days. But I had breakfast with her and my folks on Sunday, so that was cool... It was probably the best thing I've done in the last week or so.
My job is still poos. But I can't just quit, and I always find the idea of changing jobs very daunting. It's like, squidging around in the poo that is my current job isn't great, but it seems preferable to jumping into a new tank of uncertain contents. Bollocks, I have no idea if that makes any sense, but whatever...So, with bugger all else to talk about, what did I do today? Well, let me see... I got to work far earlier than I needed to, did some technical bollocks to fix a projector, Then confirmed what I suspected a week ago - I have fucked a projector part that I installed. Basically, a part wore out, a circuit board, and needed to be replaced about three months ago. The technician guy who does that kinda crap for us came through about six weeks ago, and should have fixed the problem, but he ordered the wrong part, so couldn't do it. Damn, I need to go wees.... Ahhh, that's better. (No, I didn't go in my pants, Several minutes just passed as I went to the bathroom. It's funny the way you can't read passage of time in a blog... Not funny ha ha, more funny hmmm...)
So where was I? Oh yeah, the broken bollocks. Well, the broken projector, but you know what I mean. Anyways, the correct part was eventually delivered, and management decided that I could replace the damn thing. So I did. After a very long time. Well, I don't know exactly how long, but it seems like ages... But I fixed the bastard thing, then found that other related shit was knackered, so I disconnected the bit I fixed, and then it's taken like a week for the manager to get the tools I needed to effect the next stage of repairs, and then this morning I did fix the secondary crap, then found that I had fucked the thing I fixed last week, and This is all shit...Pretty much, I seem to be in The Hell Of Endless Projector Repairs - no matter what I do, there will always be something more to fix. Poos! Poos, I say!