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…to quote Placebo.

Although, actually, of the above only Bitch came into the repertoire of names I got called today. Other names on the list were fucker, cunt, bastard, witch and, oh yes, evil. We currently have a confused patient who’s made mode of speech is to swear, almost continuously. He also attempts to get out of bed, a process which I must admit I do my best to prevent proceeding. That lead to him swiping at me with clenched fists, which to be fair is probably an understandable reaction. Fortunately I was quick today. Actually I tried to get him a special bed. You can get beds which lower to pretty much floor level; thus meaning that people who are prone to hurling themselves on the floor due to an inability to walk, they – well – don’t fall very far. Unfortunately the trust only owns one, and it’s broken. Which put a crimp in my plan, really.
But it’s all good, because the relatives of the patient in the next bay, well, they were nice to me yesterday, saying how they didn’t really realise what nurses actually had to work through – I guess they still think of nurses as mopping fevered brows, which is kinda true – as long as the fevered brow is attached to someone who’s prone to taking the odd swipe at you and calling you unpleasant names… But anyway, today I got the best compliment ever – they said it was nice to have “a proper nurse who cares about her patients”; and lots of other remarks about how I always seem to have time for all my patients. And how I’m very patient with the chap who’s hurling abuse at me all the time.

And that made me feel pretty good. Then I got home and spoke to Kathryn and that made me feel damn near fantastic :-)

The other comment that popped through my head was about music. I appear to now have a more-or-less-working nipod, although I have to say it’s ability to move through the file system appears to be limited by extreme slowness. Anyhow, because I’ve slightly randomly selected albums based on what I think I might want to listen to in the car – and what I’ve already got in the car on CD – I’ve ended up listening to stuff I’d not heard for ages – which had me singing Terrorist Angel today as I flew down the motorway (Sultans of Ping F.C.) (I also got to sing about Zombie Teenage Punks from the planet Sexy Love). Anyway, it’s been weird to re-hear music that I’ve not heard for a long time (Suede, for example) and to relisten to stuff that I’ve not played. So yeah. Nipod, definitely a good choice there.

Uh, Alanis, you rock.

XKCD, you are inside my brain…

And everyone wish Kathryn a happy birthday, because it’s her birthday :-)

So, I did my shift today, and despite it being a completely exhausting day (oh look, short of staff again) I headed into London for a variety of odds and sods.

I managed to pick up a Jeanette Winterson book – (Kathryn – have you read  The PowerBook?) – I ended up buying this mostly because the nice bloke at Gay’s the Word kept the store open for me so I could look around (I had been planning to get Jeanette Winterson at the library, but there I was feeling guilty). Despite it being after closing time. This was largely because it took me ages to find a space – and in the end involved me ignoring a permit-zone sign (It’s Good Friday ffs!) (and spending the day paranoid about a parking ticket).

Anyway, so then in the conversations with James on IM it became apparent that CCK – who I was intending to visit, they’re closed because it’s a bank holiday. But I made it in my hunt to get prezzie-components, which is goodness.

Finally me and Brick headed to Ikea – with me thinking – how bad can the north circular be? Apart from a brief hiatus – I think that the carb isn’t set up right – the idle is too low and I suspect it’s running just a teensy bit lean (basically, it needs the choke out to not stall, and to restart, when really hot). Thanks to the bank holiday the traffic wasn’t too bad, and impressively I pulled into Ikea with an entire 10 minutes to spare. For the first time in my life, Ikea was sprinted through – grabbing only the picture frame I’ve been after (well, actually, a rather more expensive one because it turns out they don’t do RAM in the size I wanted).

The journey back was unremarkable, apart from Brick demonstrating that he has a witty humourous sense of timing. The light switch, which has been a bit ‘crunchy’ well, it decided that it would need a lot of wiggling to work at all. So headlamps were – well – a bit iffy tonight. Of course, they did *actually* work while the police were around, but the junction prior to encountering the police they decided to flicker out requiring a wiggle of the switch. I’m waiting on a new switch….

The only bad thing about today was that I didn’t drink nearly enough, or indeed eat anything much. The cold that appeared is on it’s way out – quite quickly really – but the cough which follows seems a little more persistent. I’ve got home and the not-drinking’s left be a bit of a headache. Still, I got the furniture for my mum, prezzies that I wanted and a book that I really had no excuse for buying :-)

So, I freely admit to being a Mac junkie these days. But; despite that, there’s still a part of me that wants to love Linux.

And so I bring forth to share with you all this: Get a Mac Spoof and Get a Mac spoof 2.

And in the kind of news that actually disturbs; I had a good day today; nobody died…

This was going to be a bit of a review of the nipod, but at the moment it’s a bit of a damning indictment of the poor thing. I don’t know if it’s a dodgy cable, or a dodgy nipod, but it’s not working.

Well, that’s not strictly true. It *is* working, however it isn’t connecting to the PC. Annoyingly it’s now got 4 gigs of music on it, more or less, which – if it goes back – I won’t be able to delete first.

I’m hoping bloke from e-bay will send me a reply today. Currently my opinion of it is shaped around the fact that it’s phenominally slow at dealing with a directory simply filled with the equivalent of 4 gigs in folders of albums. I can’t *actually* use the menu to select an album at the moment, because it flips out having listed them. So I can only listen to the tracks in order. Which is annoying. I also, because I was having a fiddle, disconnected it, and wandered about with it before going through and making the folder names all make sense (so some are album names, and some are artist names).

Its power on time is a bit long too, but, well, until I’ve actually got a 100% working one I’m a little unwilling to go any further on the whole, what’s it like. It looks a lot like an ipod though, which is fun :-)

How come you never visit? I mean, all you’ve got to do is swim the atlantic…

Appologies for the spamming today, but I’m at home and doing some odds and sods, and keep proding the computer. I’m gonna go bath and watch BSG in a bit though, so you should be safe for a while.

So I booked my holiday, at long last. A week in July in the Lake District, staying on Helvellyn. With Kathryn. Probably going up mountains in a Viva. Wish me luck. The minor’s a bit lighter than the Viva, otoh, the Viva’s more…uh… new? By a whole 2 years… um, yeah. Although, while Kathryn’s away I might see if can get a week off and commence the engine work on Rebecca.

Hrm.

Need to check Kathryn’s away dates.

Uh, I’ve also applied to join NHS Professionals; hopefully I can get some extrashifts in in my copious free time.

And Iappear to have filled up my nipod. Heh. James was making sarky remarks about the size of my music collection compared to my 4 gig nipod, but hey. After a few attempts, I started cutting down the quantity of albums by the same artist (max = 3 (radiohead), max norm = 2 (elastica, garbage and a few others)). I also probably ought to reencode some stuff at lower bitrates, ‘cos 256kbps VBR mp3s are probably a bit high quality. And probably make it work rather hard.

Now I need to source an appropriate USB cable and build a convenient approx 12-14 volts DC -> 5 volt supply. Since that seems to be what the charger outputs (it just charges straight off the USB port). That way I can have it charging in the car. Anyone got any neat suggestions?

So I got my mp3 player, and let me say, interface wise apple have nothing to worry about. The knock off looks pretty darn good. It’s got four clicky buttons instead of the ipod turnywheelbuttonthingie, but the clickyness is pretty positive and it’s done quite neatly.

However, the interface is, well, somewhat painful. It’s not so much the layout of it, though that doesn’t wildly help. No, it’s more the fact it’s clunky. And it’s quite astonishingly crayon+child style design ugly. Thankfully the ugly is reduceable by the use of the alternative style, which is merely not beautiful.

Sound quality is fine though, at least through the supplied (white, ipod style) headphones, the display quality is surprisingly good – and it appears to play video, which it says it does – I’m tempted to see if I can squish down my music video so I can put that on there to show some people at work who were asking. Unfortunately, the built in supplied radio – not good; attrocious, perhaps, but not good. And it does buzz a bit when displaying menu items, with the radio on. Which is, uh, not really a huge problem, but faintly annoying.

I have singularly failed to actually move yet this morning, from the sofa. It wasn’t aided by the nipod’s failure to connect to the computer, after much fiddling James suggested that maybe it was just a shonky cable. Squishing the USB connector to make it tighter revealed an astonishing improvement.

I was faintly considering going into London to get my mom’s birthday present, but, uh, it’s already midday and I’ve not done the things I needed to do this morning. So, uh, that’s not going to happen, really. On the plus side I’ve found a new bookshop that I’d like to visit. On the minus side it’s possibly going to close. I had no idea GLBT bookshops were such an endagered species. I used to love browsing and buying at the Green Leaf book shop in Bristol, right across from where I used to work. On a long break I’d nip over, buy a book and head back for my coffee.

But if it’s still open I intend to head in when I get to London next week. Apparently, CC&K is also threatened with closure too, which is a bugger. I want some art from there, so I may have to see if I can get that next week. Of course, that does mean me working out what day I’ve got off? I fear…. bugger. Poor scheduling on my part. I shall have to head in after a late. Should just about be do-able. Assuming I can find somewhere to park.

So, working on a ward specialising in care of the older person (and secondary stroke unit), it isn’t exactly surprising that, well, people die now and then. But coincidence can be a bitch, sometimes.

Yesterday I had two deaths; neither of which were expected at that time. One of which was only half expected at all, really. Sadly, in one case the woman died with no one there; in a place so full of people it’s sad to think you can still die alone. It’s odd, it’s happened so much, but a few days ago I was chatting to her, helping her out of bed, and yeah; now she’s no more. Came as a bit of a shock, somehow.

Anyhow, today 3 people died. One of whom we’d only just recieved (I wasn’t looking after 2 of them, thankfully; otherwise I’d really be feeing attrocious). But I’ve now had 3 deaths of patients I’ve been looking after in 2 days; and one for whom I witnessed the administration of medication 10 minutes before they died. And there’s no question at all, the medication administered didn’t contribute to his death, but still; after the days I’d been having I’m starting to feel paranoid. And it’s not shaken me, but certainly, I’m feeling a little less positive than usual.

On the plus side I had a great chat with the student nurse who’s last day is tomorrow; she said I’d been a great help and she really enjoyed her shifts with me. That and she’s picked up some of my good habits (probably loads of my bad ones too, but the good ones are the ones I’m proud of :-).

Anyway, at least tomorrow is a day off which I intend to spend in a moderately relaxed way.