I sometimes say to people who sneer at taking medication to alleviate mental problems (like I take Adderall for my ADHD): "If you had a disease, and a drug would make it better, surely you'd take it; you wouldn't say, 'I'll just pull myself up by my bootstraps!'"Hey, you insulin-dependent diabetics, all you need is to stop being so sugary. Mind over matter! You have to decide to have normal blood glucose.
You paraplegics out there--stop being so lazy and get up and walk, for crying out loud!
...which is exactly the way many people treat those who have depression or anxiety disorders.
* * *
An open letter to Mitt Romney which I heartily second. Except for the conclusion.
* * *
Borepatch has a wonderful idea. Speech recognition is getting better and better, so why shouldn't our devices shut themselves off for an hour at a time whenever we curse those who built them?
Today I encountered a consumer device with speech recognition built in--a Garmin GPS--and when the client I was helping said, "What about voice commands?" the thing helpfully displayed a menu of voice commands. No setup, no preprogramming, no reading paragraphs; right out of the box the thing worked just fine and was able to understand me when I told it the store's address.
That is f-ing cool, right there.
* * *
Anyway, it's Monday, and I had a pretty nice day at work today. I was pretty tired because I was up late last night.
First task: sewing. I had to teach myself how to sew on a button, and then do it to two pairs of pants, because the button came off my one remaining pair of usable official Geek Squad pants. The button came off the other pair several months ago, and I decided that this occasion was the time for me to get out Mom's sewing kit and make with the sutures.
Sewing a button is not exactly rocket science, though, and it didn't take much for me to accomplish the task. The second pair of pants went faster; and then I turned my attention to the job market.
Tired of not having any money, tired of worrying, I located and applied for ten full-time jobs not including the two jobs I applied for at work this past week through the company's internal hiring portal. I don't know what fruit these apps will bear but it's a step in the right direction.
...but it meant not getting to bed before 4:30 AM, which meant getting less than four hours of sleep before I had to get up for work today.
Well, guess what? I got up, I went to work, I did my job, and I did it right, damn it. I ran errands on my way home, to boot.
Stick that in yer pipe and smoke it.