Category: General

19 Aug 2000; 17:26.38

Well, Mmmm. Not good….The idea of going back to work as “male” has actually been making me feel sick, to the point where I might have to take some time off work sick because I feel so awful all the time. Although I’ve been suspecting that it was happening for a while (the last few days) – I wasn’t really sure until yesterday…and that caused a bit of a problem.

You see, around the time of my GCSE’s, when I suppose I was really gender crashing for the first time (I really struggled with day to day life and spent almost all my free time when I could as female)….I went to see the doctor because I appeared to be lactose intolerant. However having removed all the milk from my diet we decided that that was not the cause…so we moved on to various other things – and various treatments, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was a stress related disorder. Now; I suffered from it continuously until I started dealing with TS issues. After I started to deal with them then there was no problem whatsoever. Interviews – which had previously been hell on earth, I could cope with. Infact nothing bothered me to the extent of making me ill….

But now, after 6 months it’s back, and I feel sh*t. And for some reason it brought all the old neurosies to the surface. To the extent that I spent a good 2 hours crying last night, solidly. And lots more time crying on and off during the day….calling myself useless, unable to think of a single achievement in my life, and not believing in my friends (i.e. feeling that I wasn’t actually cared about by anyone)….

Martin tried to talk to me, but I just ended up crying and hanging up – I simply wasn’t capable of it….then I lay in bed for hours….I got virtually no sleep (about 2 hours I think) and crawled out of bed at 5am to watch a rainstorm.

Then crawled back to bed…then got up. And all day I’ve been trying to make myself feel better about myself but I simply can’t. I started to cheer up, when I managed to do a bit of Java – but even that started to go distinctly pear shaped (i.e. I can get half of the program to work the way I think it should, the other half has to be done the way in the book….)

I’m feeling stupid, unloved, miserable. And I’m depressing myself about work to the point that I feel I might have to quit just to survive. Otherwise I’m going to end up (ultimately) being very, very ill. But with no other skills and no competence in Java (I’m just not that good at teaching myself) I’d be without a job, and with a lot of expenses going out…

Well. We’ll see…

—

Kate

18 Aug 2000, 18:50:08

Well, today’s been a whole barrel of fun. About the time I first really started realising that I had “issues” with my gender I gained a stress related disorder. And since I was stressed a lot of the time I was ill a lot of the time. It stayed with me from my GCSE’s through university….and dissapeared when I started dealing with the gender issues.

Even the job interviews didn’t make me feel ill – unlike they used to. Unfortunately (and I’ve been noticing this for the past few days) it’s come back. With avengence. I’m not sure what to do – I think it’s the fact that I have to be ‘male’ for work which is causing it, but the only way I can do anything about that is to quit. But if I did then I could transition.

But I’d be broke. On the other hand I could devote all my time to learning Java which’d get me into the job I want to do.

Right now I’m sitting here with a really, really nasty stomach ache, and knowing that I’m not going to be able to eat properly for ages (well, I can eat…..) which would be handy for loosing weight, if I needed to, but for once in my life my weight is pretty much okay.

So, I’ll probably be waif like….

Anyway, I’m off to consider my options….

Kate

15 Aug 2000, 20:59.28.

Windows Media Player 7 – Bringing yet more instability to your world.

I wonder if that’s the undisplayed tagline? Why? Becuase my Windows system is now less stable than a dog on wet lino, and…..I must say I’m impressed with WMP7. Not only does it look crap, and crash if I get disconnected from a stream, but…..wait for it, it’s also broken my Winamp install, and all the sound system stuff so that it’s the /only/ player I’ve got that works atm.

Now, if Win98 hadn’t been such an abject failure in every way then I miight have given it another chance. But that’s it. No more. When I get time this becomes a linux box…

Anyway, what’ve I been up to then? Well….On saturdat morning I wandered into London to change my camera and show James the shops in which you get to drool over carious bits of computer/electronic equipment. We also had a little wander into a computer show show where I nearly bought some dubious memory at a dubious price….I also feel that I have to show of the recipt for the ticket since the bloke at the Underground Station seemed at pains to point it out to me….so here it is….just check out the bottom line – cool innit :-)

Afterwards we wandered out to [CENSORED] to meet up with some of my university friends (Hope, Paul, and Cassie (James arrived with me))…..It was nice to relax and chat to people….

Although a little odd being as I last saw some of these people ages and ages ago….

Afterwards I dropped in on Kira to hand over the bottle of wine which was promised, a mere month and a half ago…..Efficency at it’s best ;-)

She foolishly invited me (and James who was being given a lift back) in….and, um, well, we stayed….until 8o’clock….which was cool, although James was outteched….and sat down saying “I must learn stuff”….which I found rather too amusing….

Anyway, I’m meant to be learning Java, but I’m far too much of a people person and am thus suffering from lack of people….hence I’m off to Kira’s tomorrow…. :)

Right, time for me to do something….

—

Kate

11 Aug 2000, 20:24.38.

Right, well, the award for complete idiocy goes to Ms Kate Elliott, who having written a complete copy of “in my brain” for today sent it to herself, deleted the original at work, came home said “save” didn’t check it had, and deleted that version too….

Fortunately the picture of Habib made it, which is important for reasons which will become apparent later….

Anyway, today’s not been too bad (apart from that incident with the deleting e-mails)….I actually did a couple of odd jobs at work today, and spent an inordinately long time on the phone to RM about various minor problems…

But that’s not why I’m in a good mood. I’m in a good mood because I yet again have a social life this weekend….and I have a week off to learn Java….so no “male mode” or at least no “listen to sexist remarks and pretend that they don’t bug me mode”….

So I’m chilling….despite being dragged out of bed at 7:30 by the postie for a registered delivery (it was a Herbie DVD :) and despite being called sir today (okay; I’m meant to look male at work but I don’t need it rubbed in)….

Anyway, yes, what’s with the Habib picture? Well, Kira and Rachie keep claiming I’m sweet, and cute….and sexy! Ha! Anyway, after a variety of these comments Kira said that I look like Constable Habib from the Thin Blue Line…..now for your edification (if you’re not knowledgeable on the characters from said TV series here is a page with a (rather grotty) picture of Habib and Myself…..as you can see, they’re not similar at all….

However, I’m not complaining, if people find me sexy….cute I also quite like (although I reserve the right to defend my lack of cuteness)….but I refuse to accept “sweet”.

However I may have to think Kira, Maria, Jenny and Rachie for their help getting PPP to work on the Linux box…. I’ll be testing it later tonight…. so we’ll see….

Yes…anyway, I thought I’d say what happened on monday….yes…

Well, after my RR appointment I went out for a cup of coffee and a Danish while I waited for Lisa and Jamie, now, perhaps this is a good point to mention my new cool top which proclaims “Rude When Nude” (and it’s purple, how cool is that???). Anyway this van pulls up to the traffic lights, and aparently I pass more than I believe in that they, um, suggested that I should prove the comment on my teeshirt. And,,,,,um, yeah.

The thing about it is at one level I was thinking “humph, no respect for women” – and at another I was thinking “Cooool :)”.

So…um. yeah.

anyway, I think it’s time I went for a shower….and changed my sheets….and sorted out what I’m taking tomorrow….

Byeee

Kate….

[Ed]: this is essentially a rant after a really, really bad day….my appologies to SuSE, but not to RHA….

09 Aug 2000, 18:10.22

Excuse me, Arrrrrgggggghhhhh!

I hate “Red Hot Ant” and I hate “SuSE Linux” at the moment. Why? Well, Red Hot Ant have continued to “maintain” their level of service; this amounts to me having to retry connections about 40 or more times most days. This, as you can guess is quite irritating. Infact it’s bloody infuriating; especially when I’m in the middle of a conversation, I get cut off by a 3 hour disconnect, and then have to wait upwards of half an hour for another connection
.

Why do I hate linux atm? Becase it’s fated (like many things in my life) to be a disaster. We’ll have the summary of disasters: Having got my P75 server I required a case etc, so I ordered one. It went to the wrong address; 2 times (incidentally it was the same wrong address). Having got them I trundled off to purchase a hard disk, not being able to afford a new one I bought a second hand IDE one online which was descibed as having “no faults”.

This was a highly innacurate description, for although I payed for a 4 gig drive I got a 6 gig drive which sounds like a lawnmower and has 2 gig in bad sectors.

Finally, I got the machine together. Installed linux. The modem didn’t work. I get a replacement modem, which does work…..

And so we’re here. With a partially configured machine, which, and I’ll be honest is completly useless. I can’t persuade it (when it does connect) to add the alledged gateway from Red Hot Ant to the routing table, mostly initally because their “default gateway” doesn’t actually (excuse me) f*cking exist. Hours I spent cursing linux, my modem, my inneptitude. Wondering where on earth I was going wrong – and infact it was that the IP address they give is incorrect.

So, having logged on using my windows machine I managed to get the gateway info (or at least I thought I did), however, when I try to add this gateway on the Linux machine it simply stops. It doesn’t crash as such – in that the infamous [Ctrl]+[c] kills the program “route” command but it doesn’t add it.

That added to the fact that there’s about a million other things to setup (like getting it to redial automatically, because the chances of getting a first time connect to Red Hot Ant are smaller than the chances of a meteor falling on your head), and the fact my modem has a “Blacklist” function which currently requires it to be reset (as in switched off and back on) after 20 attempts makes me want to scream.

I would love to switch over to Linux, but since every piece of documentation I have contradicts something else, or contradicts cold hard fact (such as “the file is located at /etc/…” when it blatantly isn’t, and “the file will look like the example below”; no it won’t). At the moment it seems Linux does not want me – despite the fact that whatever I say I love linux.

Anyway. next up, what has been going on in my life (now I’ve got that out of the way!)…well, I had my second appointment with Russell Reid, which went okay, I changed my hormone regime rather drastically, but hopefully it should be slightly healthier and more effective….

I also spent an inordinately large amount of time shopping :)

Lots of fun…then I fell apart on Monday night at the idea of going back to work…and seriously considered quitting – just because I find presenting as male for work really, really hard. Especially when my boss starts commenting on other women….

Anyway….

/me dissapears.

/me uses IRC to much ;-)

Kate….