Andraste

Half of Friday and all day Saturday I had one of those irritating tension headaches that just would not go away whatever I did, and then as soon as Antony Green said that there was no way for the coalition to form majority government, it just ... melted. I guess I'm not surprised that I was tense, but I've never felt such profound physical relief at an election result.

I oppose the LNP for what might politely be termed a metric fuckton of reasons, but on a purely personal level I've spent the last few years worried that everyone on a dole payment is going to be shoved onto the cashless welfare card. In addition to being a terrible policy that only serves to line the pockets of the Liberals' pals over at Indue, this would have been extremely bad for me personally. My landlord doesn't even know I'm on social security (because it's none of his damn business) and private renters are under no obligation to take the card. I have no idea if the ALP will do a review of JobSeeker payments, but I'll settle for still being able to pay my rent and shop wherever I want instead of where Indue thinks poor people should be allowed to shop.

Now if the ALP can just implement the Uluru statement, wrangle together some sensible climate change policies, repair relations with our neighbours in the Pacific, reset the conversation with China, fix the NDIS, cancel those nuclear submarines we don't need, set up a federal ICAC, fund Medicare properly, do something about childcare costs, make sure aged care is safe and fit for purpose and build a real NBN they'll be making a very good start. (Look, after nine years of coalition rule, there is a lot to fix.)

So, as you may already know (especially if you are Australian) my city is not having a good pandemic right now. We're under Stage 4 lockdown, which means Melbourne has a curfew for the first time ever. There are severe restrictions on why we can leave the house and how long for and how far from home we can go, and also compulsory face coverings.

I am personally doing OK - much as I need to go bra shopping and want to get back in the swimming pool and eat out at my favourite cafe, I can wait. It turns out being an unemployable shut-in is great training for enduring lockdown! OK, I am not really a shut-in, but honestly my day-to-day life has changed very little, except the government has been forced to give me an adequate amount of money to live on, I don't have to do any Centrelink nonsense and my parents have learned how to use their webcam.

I am a bit more concerned about friends and family. I have local friends who are a lot more extroverted than I am, who are finding being stuck inside most of the time without face-to-face contact very tough, and my brother and sister-in-law are trying to work from home with a two-year-old in the house. (Fortunately she is not the only toddler who keeps interrupting daddy's very important Zoom meeting with clients because she wants juice, so I guess everyone just has to deal.) And while I am very glad my parents live in a rural area in a town where there are no cases, I know it's increasingly hard on them as the months drag by and their can't see me and my brother and their granddaughter and my aunts in person.

But! The people I am actually most worried about are my fellow citizens who cannot follow a simple set of rules so we can all get through this and get back to a less severe level of lockdown. A couple of weeks ago my unexpected exercise of the day was dodging out of the way of sweet potatoes thrown by a man who was apparently very angry about being told to wear a mask in the greengrocer, and had decided to express his feelings by screaming racial abuse at the tiny old ladies who run the place and flinging their vegetables at passing cars and pedestrians. I am not often happy to see the cops arrive and literally sit on someone, but if they want to arrest screaming racist white dudes who won't practice basic public hygiene during a plague, that seems like a good use of their time, tbh. I've also witnessed a distinct up-tick in people being rude to service workers because they apparently cannot read the fucking signs about appropriate queuing behaviour and/or paying with EFTPOS or credit instead of cash.

I know it's difficult! But that doesn't mean I don't facepalm every time I read about another person who got arrested because they went out at three in the morning to get cigarettes (which they could not get because all shops shut at eight when curfew starts) or because they were driving around playing Pokemon Go or because they went 140km to go surfing. Or the people who are driving across the city because they are bored with walking around their own suburb.

I know you're bored! WE'RE ALL BORED! It sucks! But please, Melbourne, stay in your house unless you need supplies, or you're on a one-hour walk/run/bike ride, or you're an essential worker, or you need to seek or provide medical care. Then maybe we'll all survive.

Today, I made plum jam:

( Jam and thoughts about jam continued below cut. )

Note to self: just because someone on the internet brings up ace stuff and asserts there are no people who are aromantic but not asexual doesn't mean you have to correct them by pointing out that you exist. Nothing good ever comes of it. But people who acknowledge that people can feel romantic attraction without feeling sexual attraction exist but cannot get their heads around the reverse continue to confuse me.

(Look, I am not saying that the split attraction model is perfect, just that explains the experience of a whole lot of people, including me, so I am going to keep on using it to model my own experience. Other people can do whatever.)

We just got to my least favourite Aromantic Bingo square: aren't aro people just sociopaths? And I can never leave that one alone. Because obviously romantic love is the only way to tell you're capable of empathy, donchaknow. Love for family and friends and cats doesn't count!

Other bingo squares include:

( Look, I am just in a ranting mood this afternoon, feel free to skip. )

After months of saving up for parts, I am typing this from my rebuilt desktop instead of my laptop!

Still don't know quite what went wrong with it - it's a bit Ship of Theseus in there now, with a new hard drive, power stupply, motherboard and CPU. (Plus new RAM, because the old RAM would of course not fit in the shiny new motherboard. I feel vaguely guilty about wasting good RAM, but what can you do?)

Sadly, it looks like whatever happened has killed the E: drive, which his where I keep vids in progress :(. Lost my in-progress remakes of Brothers in Arms and Bicycle Race and will probably have to start over, although I do plan to try a few things and maybe consult an actual professional. Also, I have yet to figure out how to plug in the optical drive, as the motherboard says it has six SATA ports but ... doesn't? So the floor is still covered in cables and screwdrivers and the computer case is still open, but basically everything works.

Mostly I am happy that I will once again be able to vid and play games made during the last decade. Moreover, the new parts are a considerable upgrade over the old ones. (Which is part of why I waited instead of buying straight replacements.) Also, there is something uniquely satisfying about using a computer that you put together and/or fixed yourself.

... in the sense of 'will be officiating at Patrick Stewart's wedding', that is. Not that various headline writers and Ian McKellen himself have been able to resist putting it exactly like that *g*.

Clearly this is the most adorable thing ever.

Every now and then, Cracked has an article that makes me want to point and say 'yes! this!' and this one is at the top of the list: Five Idiotic Misconceptions About Calling Customer Service.

I especially agree with the parts about demanding to speak to a supervisor without telling the operator what your freaking problem is, and the part about yelling. Especially the part about yelling.

If you are polite, a decent customer service rep will try to help you. A good one will go out of their way to do so. As soon as you start shouting at or insulting them, though, you have stopped being someone they want to help and turned into someone they want to go away. Preferably as fast as possible, whether your problem is fixed or not. Then they can go back to drinking their coffee and posting on their social networking site in peace, without somebody screaming in their ear. This goes double for yelling about things that are not their fault, or even their employer's fault. Tripple if you are yelling about something that is your own fault.

I would also add: do not threaten your customer service rep. Threatening to report them or get them fired is bad enough, but threatening them with physical violence is worse than useless. Apart from being, y'know, a crime, it ensures that nobody at the other end of that phone line will help you ever again. While you're threatening to firebomb their office or shoot them, they are writing 'RAGING ARSEHOLE WHO MAKES VIOLENT THREATS, DO NOT ENGAGE!!!' on your account and planning to have your service cancelled.

And, yes, people really threaten things like that. (Along with sexually harassing female reps like me, and calling people disgustingly racist things. Because people suck.) The funniest conversation of this kind I have ever had went like this:

Me: Look, I'm sorry sir, but I cannot help you with :problem that has nothing whatsoever to do with our service:.

Arsehole Customer: Would you be able to help me if I came down there and put a gun in your mouth?

Me: No, sir, because then I wouldn't be able to talk to you any more.

At which point he became even more enraged by my lack of concern about his threats of violent assault and murder. Dude, I have been answering phones in call centers for more than three years! There is nothing you can say that will impress me!

Does anyone out there in internet land know any good vegetarian recipes that freeze well? I have a ton of good veggie recipes in my repertoire, but not many I can make a big lot of and store for later. I'm trying to fill up my freezer before Dragon Age Day arrives next Thursday. (Yes, I actually have a list of stuff I have to get done before I get this game. So far it's going well - I've got my hair cut and my wardrobe cleaned out, among other things. I should work on organizing my life so I can spend more time playing video games more often.)

I don't eat tofu - or most other soy variations, for that matter - or mushrooms. (There's at least two reasons I'd make a terrible full-time vegetarian. Well, two reasons apart from my love of bacon.) I'm open to pretty much any other vegetable or legume, however.

So, I acquired a shiny new iRiver mp3 player which is black and silver. I have named it Frenzy, because it looks like the kind of sleek, dangerous thing that movie Frenzy might turn into.

A few days later I got a new mobile phone. Since it is going to live in the same pocket of my bag as Frenzy, it was natural to name it Rumble. Who is, coincidentally a red phone *g*.

(This is only amusing if you're a hardcore Transfan, so don't look too hard for the joke if you're not.)

He's probably cranky about spending so much time on silent, and all the ring tones he comes with suck. (Where do people go on the internet to get ring tones, anyway?) He does have a picture Robot Heroes Soundwave for his wallpaper, though.

Apologies for the recent radio silence - have been busy IRL this week.However, I hope I will become rather better at keeping up with comments now that I have my new Asus eee PC.

If you've never heard of this glorious device, it's the world's most adorable notebook computer. For just AUS $499 I have a fully functional computer that fits in my handbag! Which means it will be coming to work with me on a daily basis. After senior management are gone for the day, internets for me! I actually bought it for classes, but I thought I'd give myself time to play with it before uni starts up at the end of February.

Also got a new 8GB iRiver mp3 player while I was at it - I decided to replace several electronic devices ahead of my imminent two years of relative poverty while I do my graduate diploma, which means I get shiny new toys.