Revision, Assassins and Miscellaneous

You know, it's on days like this, when I'm sitting at my computer, sunlight streaming into my room, casting intricate shadows on the floor, that I realised just how dirty my windows are.

Seriously. They're filthy.


Well then... that whole revision thing... yeah...

I didn't do any. I moved some folders around and slightly cleared up a desk so that with a little more shifting of stuff I can use it as a work surface but other than that, I did nothing.

I'm determined to start properly tomorrow. I figure the best thing to do would be to try out some of the prelims to see what I need to learn and then focus on Maths and Computing, since those are my first two exams. I'll probably have to look more at Maths but I'm determined to do more than I strictly need to for Computing.

I've managed to get a prize every year for about nine years in a row now and I'm not failing my last chance. I figure Computing's my best bet since I won it for Higher last year, beating out the rest of the class in the prelim, and... well, I don't reckon I can do it in either of my other classes to be honest. I'm not bad but I know there are people better than me who deserve it more.


Anyway, let's forget about revision for now (because if I think about it any more it's just going to depress and annoy me).

I played Assassin's Creed some more today. Assassin's Creed is apparently one of those games that you either love or hate. Most reviews indicated that it's pretty repetitive so if you like the kind of stuff it does, you'll get plenty of it, but if even one section annoys you, it's all going to go downhill very fast. I hadn't liked it very much when I played it at school but I figured I might like it a bit more when I could hear the dialogue and take my time with the game.

Turns out I was wrong.


You know what? More on Assassin's Creed tomorrow, or maybe some other time. Turns out I have an awful lot of ranting to do. I may even turn it into a proper review. For now, here's Zero Punctuation's look at it.


I figure I'll try to divide up tomorrow between sessions of study and sessions of Mass Effect for balance. No idea if that'll work out well or not. I might also try to get a bit more writing done – I've taken some time today to type out some of my thoughts for The Grey Line, the first time I've done so in a long while. I think I've mostly resolved, in my head at least, some of the problems of the sci-fi and fantasy elements residing in the same universe.

Which may have just given away some of the plot. Or maybe not. We shall see.


For now, I'm off to bed. I was told today, after yesterday's more optimistic view, that my wound may still take a few weeks to heal, which means it almost certainly won't be done before the end of the prelims. Calling it “incredibly annoying” would be a gross understatement.

Still, nothing I can do right now, unfortunately. Well, nothing except get some more sleep and get up early tomorrow morning again.

Have a nice day.

Insert Title Joke Here

I hate short holidays. I take a day to relax and I feel like I've wasted time that could have been much better spent on something else. And that feeling basically defeats the whole point of taking a day to relax in the first place.

Other than the odd late-night feeling of despair and hopelessness, today's actually been a pretty good day. Went into hospital in the morning and got some good news – I should be done in about a week. Nothing definite but a lot closer and a lot more specific than anything I've got in the past. At the very least, I should be done before my prelims start, albeit cutting it a bit close.

Sam came round in the afternoon and I gave him those revision sheets I was keeping for him – fat chance he'll use most of them but at least it's one task done for me. We spent most of the time either playing Link's Crossbow Training or watching Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged and Homestar Runner on my Eee. That thing really is becoming ridiculously useful.

We also dug out and watched a Simpsons episode which came up in conversation for some reason. It was that brilliant one with Hank Scorpio. I'm trying hard now to remember why we were all thinking about it but I honestly can't – I just keep reminding myself of scenes from it and laughing.

Other than that I've mostly just been browsing the web and watching Life on Mars. Still, that counts as a good day in my book.


I've also had a few good ideas regarding some of my creative endeavours. Sam agreed to do a woodle more-or-less weekly so I'll get him a precise script (I already gave him a rough description this morning) and the first one should go up next Saturday.

I've solved a few problems and come up with some more background information for The Grey Line. One of these days, I may actually write some of it down. On an even more unusual day, I might just show it to someone.


Anyway, I think that's about it. Haven't really got through much of the list I set out yesterday but... ah, well. Time to go to bed.

Have a nice day.

First Day of a Short Holiday

So it turns out that the Eee's version of Open Office does have languages other than UK English. The spell check still seems a little off though - it wouldn't let me select any other languages last night (I found another way this morning) and now it doesn't find anything wrong with the phrase "Englash is awexome". Maybe it'll catch on to it later.


Ah, the first day of the holidays. Remember, even if the clock says 11:48, it still counts as getting out of bed in the morning.

I finally got around to playing Mass Effect last night. I played for a couple of hours and got a pretty good feel for it. The conversation system is very interesting but I've yet to be completely convinced by the combat and "talent" systems.


Okay, so it's a lot later now. I haven't really done much all day. As I said, I woke up late so that there wasn't much point in starting anything much before my hospital appointment at two o'clock. I hate going into the ward (rather than the normal treatment room) but I have to at weekends. The afternoon appointments do give me a lie in but it's usually a longer wait and the nurses up there don't see it so often and usually seem to put in a bit too much packing.

Today's appointment was pretty quick but I got the whole "it's looking much better than last time" speech again and I'm really starting to get sick of it. If it's getting so much better each and every bloody time, why isn't it bloody well healed yet?

Bah. All I can really hope for now is that it'll be done before the prelims start. I'm determined not to become complacent about it. I tend to ask every couple of days and as soon as I get told that I could probably just put the dressing on at home, I'm done.


Enough of that. It's getting very late in the day now and I tend to get more complainy around then. Doesn't help that the alarm just went off downstairs for no particular reason. It seems to just be a fault with the phone line but Mum's still being paranoid about it and insisting on checking everything. She just called me through to ask if the lights on the wireless range extender were all right, as she'd never seen them like that before. I had to patiently explain that one was the power light, one showed the network cable was plugged in an one showed that the Wi-Fi was active – and that all were perfectly normal and always on.

Other than the things I feel like complaining about, I've not done much else all day. Haven't really played any games – did a bit more of Advance Wars in the waiting room but I haven't touched Mass Effect, Link's Crossbow Training or any other of the half dozen or so games I keep meaning to play more.

My Life on Mars DVDs arrived this morning so I've been watching them a lot. I quite like it but I'm not entirely convinced that it's as great as everyone says. Maybe it's just backlash from the hype. Oh, well. I'll keep watching all the same.

And that's about it. I'm basically just resting up now because I know that I'll have to start doing revision and so on at some point soon. Probably on Tuesday, since I want to spend tomorrow playing some of the games on my list and I was thinking of having Sam round on Monday, if only to give him some revision sheets that he missed getting on Friday.

I really have to wrap this up now. I've no idea how it got so late but I have to get this post up within about fifteen minutes or... well, or nothing really. But I've got nothing else to say and I want to get to bed so I may as well stick to my self-imposed, arbitrary deadline.


Oh, and one final side note. Today, my mother dismantled Citizen Cane. He shall be sorely missed by all who knew him and who had used him to remove objects from high up areas.

Which reminds me... isn't there still a flying disc thing stuck on the roof from a while back? Did we ever get that down?

On seventeen and surgery

My mum just said that 17 years ago tonight, she was in hospital, giving birth to me.

Tomorrow I will wake up 17 years old. And I just realised that now.

I mean, I've obviously known the fact of it for a long time. I could easily have worked out precisely when I would be 17 at any time since I learned simple arithmetic but, due to one thing and another, it's still kind of crept up on me.

Other than the whole learning to drive thing, there's nothing particularly special about turning 17. And I'm not hugely enthusiastic about driving so I'm at a loss to explain why it seems significant. Maybe it's the realisation that, over the course of my seventeenth year, I will leave behind my school and my home, the two greatest forces in my life so far. I'll probably lose touch with all but close friends, I'll have to adapt to an entirely new walk of life, I'll have to meet new people and do new things...

That's a lot to think about. And I suppose I've been putting off thinking about that because I also have a lot to think about now. I have to choose that new walk of life as well as deal with my current one.


Bah. It's too late at night for me to get philosophical about all this. Maybe I will tomorrow.

In other news... It looks like I'm going to be going into hospital every day for a couple of weeks yet. On the bright side, my brother's done with his treatment, so that's good for him and it means I don't have to hang around to wait for him to be done. It only makes a small difference but I'll take whatever I can get at this point.

If the nurse's estimate was right, it'll definitely cut into the half term holiday and maybe even the start of my prelims. I'm hoping that it'll heal sufficiently that it won't need packing and they can just give me a supply of dressings to put on myself before too long but I'm not really expecting that to happen.

I'm not sure quite what I'm going to do at the weekend, since I might be staying at a friend's house for most of it. And when the holiday arrives there was apparently some plan to go up and stay in Edinburgh, which my medical problems may have scuppered* or, at the very least, complicated.

All in all, I'm not really sure what's going on now or will be at any point in the future.

I can figure it out as I go, I suppose, and wait for the pressure to ease up a bit. It has to eventually.





*Why is “scupper” fine but not in the past tense? Answer me, spell check!

Too Little Time to Title

You know you're procrastinating when, instead of creating the next slide in your presentation, you spend ten minutes fiddling with the toolbars so that the “New Slide” option is visible when you shrink the window to fit in a DVD player.


Nuts. I started early, too. And now it's a quarter to midnight.

Still not got much of that Computing presentation done. I intend to read over all the notes tonight, save some images and then put it all together on my laptop tomorrow. It'll be close but I reckon I can pull it off.

Other than that, I've no idea what I've spent the evening doing. I had an interesting conversation with a girl who was putting off doing her Geography (if I remember correctly) as much as I was putting off my Computing. I agreed with a friend that another friend was Dodongo, the Zelda boss, specifically the one from Ocarina of Time.

I accidently saw through the rather flimsy GAME bag on the kitchen table to see what games I was getting for my birthday. So far, so good. Still no word on my laptop though but I wasn't exactly expecting it to be on time.

The Maths test that I was going to have tomorrow got delayed, which is very useful. I was thinking about asking my teacher to delay it and spend some more time on revision but I was worried that it would get put off to Friday and I'd have to spend my birthday studying. As it is, it looks like I won't have any homework that night.

I was talking to one of the nurses at the hospital this morning and they said my wound may take another 2 to 3 weeks to heal. Which is odd, since another nurse said, somewhere between last week and two weeks ago, that it would take 1 to 2 weeks to heal. I'm truly getting sick of this now – not just the not knowing when it'll end but the actual necessity of the appointments themselves.

My friends are doing various things at the weekend which I would've liked to take part in. Nothing hugely special or anything but it's the first time I've really felt like I'm missing out on something because of this crap. That and I'm not doing anything for my birthday. I may yet, particularly since I tend to invite round a couple of old friends that I rarely see at any other time, but I've really got no idea.

Wow. When I let myself just rattle off thoughts and complaints, I can really write an awful lot.

Shame I can't turn that into something more productive... Maybe I will over the half term holiday and my study leave. I still want to make a fresh start on The Grey Line and I've been developing this old idea for a sitcom which may or may not amount to anything.

Anyway, I really need to wrap this up or I'll miss my deadline.

Have a nice day. I think I might have, but I'm not entirely sure.


Oh, one last thing. Better deal for iPhone users. Awesome.

Very little to say, thus very little said

Once again, time is not on my side. Once again, that's entirely my fault.

I really don't have much to say... It seems like all my posts lately have been fairly lacklustre and concerned with my general activities and the various misfortunes that have befallen me, primarily my hospital trips. At least those are getting closer to an end. Possibly not before by birthday on Thursday but I'm hoping that I won't have to make any more trips on the weekend.

Speaking of my birthday, I have no idea what I'll be getting. I've given some suggestions to my parents and I know I'm getting an Eee PC but I've left it all so late that I have no idea what I'll actually be getting on the day. Strange thought that, and kind of depressing.

And now I'm basically out of ideas. I could go on about homework and revision I've not done but, if I'm not interested in it, I expect that no one else will be. Not that I'm sure if anyone would read it anyway. I really need to remember to ask Skippy about those visitor numbers this time.

In the immortal words of Porky Pig, “th-th-th-that's all, folks”.

More whining but now with mildly amusing videos to follow

Another day, another hour and forty five minutes after I get out of bed before I can properly start it.

Actually, that's not technically true. It's been longer.

The nurse today, who had never seen my wound until yesterday, decided to put a smaller dressing on over it, in addition to about five times as much packing as the regular nurses do. As soon as I left the room and sat down, I realised that it was a lot less flexible than the usual one, resulting in pain when I sat down or walked.

It wasn't exactly agony but, since I like tend to spend most of my time either moving or not moving, I could tell that it was going to be a problem. I didn't say anything because I figured it would just loosen up a bit over a while, like the tape they sometimes have to put on does.

Well, it didn't. After an uncomfortable car journey, I got home to find that I couldn't sit at my desk and type, exactly as I'm doing now, without being in pain. When I went to have a look at this new bandage, I discovered that it had more or less fallen off already. Fortunately, I had a spare proper dressing that I managed to put on, losing a significant chunk of the overabundant wound packing in the process.


I probably shouldn't be complaining so much. The end is in sight but it's still infuriating when I'm in pain not because of my surgery but because someone screwed up.

I've spent most of the day, once I managed to get it started, poking around with my Computing project, trying to get it to work. I've made some progress but so far I've just been working around the fundamental problem, trying to build something that will at least work in theory. Sort of a proof of concept thing.

With any luck, I've made enough progress to satisfy my teacher until I can get some more work on this done.

Of course, with my birthday and another big Maths test coming up this week, plus my usual laziness, that may take some time.

It's not so much a lack of free time thing. I'm not really planning on doing anything on my birthday, it's just that I happen to include “work” under the heading of anything. The Maths test, however, I will have to revise for. I managed to do fairly well on the lower difficulty test for this unit (the pass or fail one) but those always come in a fairly standard form – one question of this type, then one of this, then one on these, etc. – so they're never too hard if you just practice.

Where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah. Busy week ahead. Nothing much else going on.

In lieu of having anything interesting to say, I'll link you to a couple of videos.

First, here's EXPENDABLE, a short film by David Malki! (yes, the exclamation point is part of his name; he's just that awesome) and Todd Croak-Falen, who I'd never heard of before. I know of Malki! from references to his comic and from his previous short film, where he battled Comicon for some reason. Anyway, EXPENDABLE is about a day in the life of a temp working for the world's fifth largest evil organisation, A.R.A.C.H.N.I.D. That should be all you need to know.

The second video is just a silly little song by the guy who played Biff in the Back to the Future films. He's a funny guy, apparently. I'll have to see what else he does.

Anyway, that's it for today. I actually ended up linking to three movies, so you should be extra grateful and thus willing to sit through tomorrow's post, which will no doubt be more whining.

Have a nice day.

No Time to Title

You know what really annoys me sometimes? Copyright warnings on DVDs. Back in ye olde days of analogue cassettes, it was a simple matter to skip past them but that's now rendered impossible. What makes the whole thing worse is that I'm seeing them for countries I've never been to and in languages I'll likely never understand.

These are Region 2 DVDs in PAL format with English speech. Why am I seeing copyright laws for Australia in Swiss? For all I know, those Swiss ones aren't even actual copyright law. It's just some really bored guy who happens to know Swiss saying “Ha ha! You silly person who doesn't speak Swiss, I am wasting your time and there's nothing you can do about it! I crack me up sometimes, you know.”


Moving on. I promised yesterday that I would have a well thought out post that I would take my time with over the course of today. That's not worked out.

I have my excuses though. I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with some solution to my Computing project problems. I have a couple that I plan to test tomorrow and, if they don't work, I can always resort to just cutting the feature altogether and carrying on.

Actually, now that I write that down, I'm basically exactly where I was yesterday, give or take a few scribbled notes and a diagram or two.

What's really wasting my time these days is these stupid hospital appointments. I was thinking about it this morning and I realised that the whole thing takes over an hour on average. While I can handle getting up early, I then have to have a shower as well as deal with removing the bandages, etc. That second bit may not take long but it's hardly pleasant. That takes up to half an hour.

Then, after a rushed breakfast, it's about a twenty minute drive to the hospital, another ten minutes (again, on average) sitting around waiting and then a twenty minute drive back home.

By the end of all of this, I've basically been awake for an hour and a half before I can start my day.

It's more tolerable during the weekdays. I'm not making the trip just to go there – it's more of a detour on my way to school, a detour that at least lets me miss Life Skills occasionally. The staff on weekdays also know me and what to do by now, so everything there goes smoothly.

What makes it worse is that, as each day goes by, it becomes more and more apparent that I don't really need all this. That's overall a good sign but the wound packing today fell out before lunch and the only discomfort I've felt is from the now largely useless dressing. It just makes me wonder why I'm still going in there every morning.


Enough of that. I dislike complaining so much but the whole point of this blog is to give me somewhere to solidify and write down my thoughts and this whole situation has been weighing on my thoughts pretty heavily. The end is in sight but every time I seem to be getting closer, it moves a vague distance forwards.

Anyway, I really have to post this now. No time left. More tomorrow. Actually, here's some development about that Mass Effect debacle. The vapid “psychologist” actually apologised. Still waiting on Fox though.

Sleeping on the Weekend

I'm leaving this very late again (thirty minutes to randomly self-imposed midnight deadline) but I'm not really bothered because I'm in such a good mood. Why am I in such a good mood, you ask?

Simple. Tomorrow, for the first time in pretty much eight solid weeks, I will get to lie in bed past eight o'clock.

Other than that, the weekend doesn't hold huge amounts to look forward to – I have an awful lot of homework and nothing much else to do. I still need to finish my Computing project, preferably quickly, and I have some Maths that I need to practice. And five Physics topics to revise.

On the bright side (well, the other bright side, since the sleeping late thing probably counts as a bright side of its own), I have managed to make some progress with my Physics project. I was having some trouble determining what parts I would need for the experiments that I haven't actually devised yet.

All I'd been able to discern from my research on the internet was that large amounts of wire were necessary. I told one of my Physics teachers this and he agreed – in fact, he said I wouldn't really need much else, other than some wood and sticky tape to hold it all together. Thus, the problem was solved.


I'm not sure if this is good news or bad but I was told this morning, after a ten second appointment with a consultant for which I waited forty minutes, that I may only need to have my dressing changed for another week, possibly two. If viewed optimistically, this could mean I'll be done with this crap before my birthday, which would be good. Even if I'm not, at least I know the end is in sight.

I've not really got much else to write about and I want to get to bed so I'll stop writing and... go to bed. Obviously.

Well, once I post this. Which may take a few minutes since Firefox has decided to freeze. Again.

...

Have a nice – wait, it's working again, huzzah! – day.

Written with surprising speed

Working... That was the plan. Didn't quite work out, as I should have guessed. I've got most of the Physics done and I'm confident that I can finish it tomorrow morning. Well, I say “most of the Physics” but what I actually mean is “most of the one paper my classmates and I agreed to do instead of the two that we were supposed to do”.

I've done nothing, nothing, about my Computing project. I'm now hoping that school will kick me out of my holiday slump and I can spend the next few days finishing up the code, rewriting the early and now-irrelevant design (linear time is for suckers) and doing the various bits of paperwork that I need to prove that my program is working.

Maths... Well, I'm not even sure what Maths I had. I expect I'll panic about it some time tomorrow but, right now, all I want is some sleep.

One day, when I have a load of free time on my hands, I'm going to force myself to get up early in the morning and then go back to bed. Seriously, every time I get up these days, I'm wishing I could just crawl back under the covers and I really want to know how it feels.

I'm having to get up particularly early tomorrow morning because of the way things are going with getting to school and James and I both needing hospital appointments. James says he's getting so sick of them that he's planning to give up on them, requesting that he get no more treatment unless it recurs badly. He came to this conclusion after being asked a few days ago “when”, not “if”, he wanted surgery and being told today that his treatment may take another month.

I can certainly sympathise with him. We were talking today and started listing back-and-forth the various woes and problems we've encountered with our pilonidal sinuses. The whole thing ended up reminding us both of a scene from House so the conversation had a punchline of “I got shot!” for reasons that most readers probably won't understand.

Assuming I have any readers.

I need to ask Skippy for some visitor numbers again – it's been months since I last checked.

But, like I was saying, I need to get up early tomorrow so that everything works out time-wise, hopefully leaving me with a couple of minutes to stuff some consoles and so on into a bag to take to school.

Speaking of which, I need to go and pack my actual schoolbag with my actual school books and folders and so on. So I'll call it quits for the night, upload this, close all my Firefox tabs and just leave the computer running for a little while longer to charge up my iPhone via the USB connection.

You can leave now.

The Futher Rantings of Alasdair Corbett

It always surprises me just how much of a difference cleaning my glasses once in a while can make. No, really, it's like seeing the world in an entirely new light. Well, it's the same light but somewhat brighter.


Anyway, left things late again tonight. Annoyingly, I've settled into a routine now where I do nothing all day but play Half Life and worry about not doing my homework and then when it reaches around eleven, I'll pull up a NeoOffice document and start trying to hammer something out before it reaches half past. Then I browse the web for a while, realise that it's past midnight and climb into bed. I wake up just before eight in the morning, have a shower while still nine tenths asleep and go to the hospital. Repeat.

The pressure of the homework is really starting to get to me now – reports (or more accurately, instant messages) are coming in that say that even some of the laziest among my friends are well on their way to completing it. This isn't really helped by the lack of sleep.

The hospital appointments aren't likely to stop in the next while. They've been telling me for several weeks that it's healing very quickly and that it all looks well but no one seems to be able to give me even a rough estimate of when it might be good enough to stop needing packing. Not that the packing is staying in for more than a few hours anyway.

I also remember being told that the re-dressing would need to be done daily at first and then less frequently. I should probably have learned by now that everything they told me before cutting into my ass was a lie. It wasn't much of a problem before but now that my brother has developed the same thing, each appointment is taking twice as long. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass when I go back to school.

And I swear, if I'm not done with this by my birthday at the end of the month, there will be hell to pay.

Speaking of hell, I'm apparently going to my aunt and uncle's in Glasgow for lunch sometime this month. It's for my grandmother's 80th birthday and, while I'm very happy for her and everything, I see no reason why we're going up to Glasgow to celebrate her birthday when she lives a mile down the road. But no, my aunt has decided that everyone down here should pack into two cars and go up there and this has been decreed a wonderful idea by my grandma.

I could try using my wound as an excuse to stay out of a cramped car journey and the no doubt uncomfortable seats they'll have there but chances are it'll be healed sufficiently that that won't seem plausible. So I'm seemingly stuck with going up there, being bored and awkward for hours, having my mum get annoyed at me for not eating anything and then coming home to listen to complaints about why we should never have gone in the first place.

No use complaining I suppose. Not here anyway. I shall be doing a lot of complaining where and when it counts for something. I'll also be ripping all the audio dramas that came with my Davros boxset and putting them on my iPhone, just in case.


Well, it's slightly after half past so I missed my random average deadline but who cares? I certainly don't.

Have a nice day.

All these long posts can't be a coincidence

Coincidences are strange things. On the one hand, we cannot be too quick to assume that something is a coincidence or else we may miss some vital clue that links events and results. But we must accept that sometime they exist for otherwise we would waste time trying to solve mysteries that simply don't exist.

A couple of coincidences occurred recently, both of which, unfortunately, have to do with my pilonidal sinus and the operation I had to remove it. I'll start with the one that occurred today – my brother's diagnosis with the exact same problem. A couple of days ago, he began to feel a great deal of pain in the appropriate area but we dismissed this as “coincidence” and assumed he must have something else, largely because he was in immediate and near constant pain, as opposed to my (relatively) mild pain and irritation, caused by a single spot.

He started taking antibiotics and some painkillers but today, after more consultation with doctors and the same specialist that I saw, it was found to indeed be an unusual presentation of a pilonidal sinus.*

In some ways, this is a coincidence, in others it isn't. While it's not infectious, related individuals have a greater chance of both experiencing it. This isn't due to a genetic disposition towards it directly but factors such as hair colour and type, which are decided genetically and are likely to be close in siblings, do contribute to the likelihood. So do the facts that we are both male, in the right age bracket and lead, let's say, “sedentary” lifestyles.

The timing, however, is entirely random. While the appearance of each of our ailments can perhaps be tied into our own pasts (mine came on during a long, rainy holiday which I spent much of sitting indoors and one nurse suggested that my brother's new gym regime may have contributed to his), nothing medically relevant links the two.

Thus, we are forced to accept this as a coincidence, though not a hugely unlikely one.


The second coincidence is more unlikely and pretty much entirely timing based. I've no doubt mentioned over the past few weeks that I've been having to sit on a cushion in most environments. These include all but the comfy chairs in the common room, the chairs in classrooms, car seats and even the chair I'm sitting on now. As such, my binary covered pillow has been my constant companion for about a month now.

But why do I even have a binary covered cushion? More than a few people at school have asked me that and I've wondered it myself. The truth is that I just wanted a pillow that said “pillow” in 0s and 1s. It was an impulse buy when ordering various other items from ThinkGeek in early November.

Note that early November is before I knew that I would need a pillow after the surgery. In fact, I'm not even sure that I knew about the surgery then – I may still have been hoping that antibiotics were the answer when I placed the order. And I've mentioned before that, even as I went in for the surgery, I had no idea that I was going to need quite so much care and appropriate seating afterwards.

So my need for a cushion so soon after I had randomly decided to buy one was a coincidence. I think it odd when really it's just a quirk of timing. And of course, I had no need for this specific cushion, beyond my addiction to geek paraphernalia. If I hadn't had it, I would just have grabbed one from a cupboard somewhere and likely not have had quite such a hard time from people who don't understand binary. And those who do.

Therefore, my purchase of the cushion is just another coincidence, though without any of the contributing factors of the first. I saw what I thought was a curious pattern but I knew straight away that there was no connection of any sort.


That's enough rambling about coincidence and happenstance for now, I think. I'm going to head off to bed because I need to get up even earlier tomorrow morning. My brother now requires the same early morning wound-disinfecting salt bath as I do and there's only one bath in the house. With any luck, there'll only be about a week's overlap, given the way mine's healing up.

Probably won't be better for Christmas though, which is a shame, but it could be worse.


Oh, and also, that one bath in the house? It leaks.






*I've been told that mine was a “textbook case”. Go me, I guess.

Too Late for Coherency

Another late night post. A brief update on my day, first, I think.

[insert random news program intro theme here – preferably somewhere between the two versions presented here]

In the headlines today...

No, I can't keep this up. It was really just an excuse to link to that Bill Bailey video. That man is incredibly hilarious, as Never Mind the Buzzcocks will not let me forget. Also, watch that show.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Things I did today. The rest of my deliveries arrived and I worked out who was getting what and wrapped most of it up. Since it was basically just two things to wrap around (one big thing and one little for each of my two little cousins) this should not have been a difficult task.

And yet, somehow, it was. There seems to be some kind of knack to wrapping up presents that always escapes me. I suppose it's one of those things that people thing everyone knows how to do and is just common sense but I don't think I've ever actually paid attention to anyone else wrapping presents so I have no idea.

The rest of the human race seems to have formed some sort of present wrapping hive mind to which they won't allow me access. As such, I have never been able to satisfactorily perform this basic task to the same level as... well, whoever's wrapped all the other presents I see everywhere. I suspect that the conspiracy also extends to tying balloons and clicking my fingers.


But enough of that. I must have something else to say. Hmmm...

I've been thinking about the future of this blog lately, trying to plan ahead a bit and get some solid topics ready. I think that towards the end of the year, I'm going to just relax a bit and look back at the year behind me, seeing what's happened and what's changed. One of the original purposes of TWToday was just to give me somewhere to muse on the happenings of my life... I can't decide whether that's changed or stayed the same.

I might also come up with some New Years Resolutions. And Christmas should give me something to talk about for a while. Sort of already has, come to think of it.

I'll try to think of something better for tomorrow. I've instructed my sister not to stop bugging me until I write some kind of fiction or comedy or anything that isn't this, really. And I'll try to write this earlier in the day.


Bah. I can't be bothered proof-reading it but I worry that this has come across a bit complainy. It's too late to change it now, I suppose. Got to take my painkillers (yup, still on them) and get to bed. On the bright side, I'm seeing a hospital consultant tomorrow instead of just the regular dressing change, so the appointment's a bit later, meaning I can lie in in the morning.

Well, when I say “a bit”, I mean “half an hour” but I still don't have to get up until eight instead of half seven.

Except I'll probably get up earlier anyway, since the traffic's always a pain around that time and we were almost late this morning.


Hey, if I add this paragraph here, then this post goes on to a second page in size 12 font on NeoOffice. Awesome. These things are getting longer again. Shame about the lack of actual content.

A Good Day

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you finally rip apart someone's testimony in Phoenix Wright. And there's nothing more infuriating than knowing where the contradiction is but not knowing what exact combination of evidence the game thinks will prove it.


Today's been a damned good day, actually. I'm hugely enjoying playing Phoenix Wright (we'll go with that title now, for the sake of simplicity) and I'd recommend it to any fool who hasn't tried the series yet. I'll undoubtedly play more tomorrow and I'll have to try to pick up another game with which to pass the time.

Most of the gifts I ordered for Christmas were delivered today. I'm still waiting on a book and some action figures for my little cousin but among the things that did arrive were the Master's laser screwdriver and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. I was planning to give the laser screwdriver to the elder of my two little cousins and the sonic one to the younger, but it occurred to me that, since this model of sonic screwdriver doubles as a UV pen, it might make more sense to give it to the one that can write.

Doesn't matter much in the long run – I'm sure they'll share whatever they get anyway. Assuming I don't give in to temptation and keep the toys for myself... I've been trying my hardest not to rip open the packages and run around shoving the psychic paper wallet in people's faces before ageing them until they look like a house elf.

...What?


Further brightening my day was the fact that I received another confirmation of an unconditional university place. This time, it was Computer Science at St Andrews, the course I was really hoping for. That's me got all my offers back save for the Comp. Sci. and Physics joint course at St Andrews, which will presumably take longer as it has to pass through two departments.

And that's more or less been my day, apart from the usual humdrum existence and the daily morning trip to the hospital. That's become ridiculously routine now, so much so that I can be halfway to the hospital before I properly wake up. As inconvenient as the whole thing has been, it does get me up a lot earlier in the holidays, which makes me feel better, given my usual tendency to sleep in annoyingly late.

That said, once it's all over, the first thing I'm going to do the next morning is lie in until it's the afternoon.


Oh, a couple of other things. It looks like Duke Nukem is still alive, as are his “unique” brand of humour and his liberal interpretation of the word “deadline”. This isn't the first time a trailer for the game has been released so it's not worth anyone getting their hopes up. To be brutally honest, I'm hoping it's never released, just so I can keep making jokes about it.

And while we're on the subject, here's The Duke Nukem Forever List again. Always worth a look and a laugh.

This, as with all such stories about politicians not doing their research before jumping on the video game hatred bandwagon, both depresses and amuses me.

I bought some USB rechargeable batteries in the same order as all my Christmas presents and they just finished charging, so I'll give them a go tomorrow and then report on that.

Yes, reviewing batteries. I really can stoop so low.

Things to do

Some day, I'm going to make a computer with an inbuilt cup holder, just to see if people try putting CDs in it.


Well, that'll teach me to spend all day looking at Computer Stupidities instead of... well, anything more productive really. On the bright side, I did manage to figure out what's being done about various Christmas presents and I should be able to order them tomorrow.

Of course, I told myself I'd have them ordered by last Friday at the latest. Ho-hum.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I might be a bit more useful tomorrow. I've been really tired all day today, most likely because, despite my best intentions and average effort, I still went to bed after midnight... yesterday? This morning? Let's go with last night.

I've been meaning to make an informal little to do list for some time now so I may as well do it now. I'm unsure as to how I could make an official to do list but that's beside the point. Here's what I reckon I need to get done over the coming days and weeks, in no particular order. Unless there's some kind of sub-conscious thing going on, determining the order in which they enter my mind.


Write some of The Grey Line

Write some comedy stuff

Get the VersusCOM podcast going again

Sell any retrogaming stuff that I have duplicates of (ie, the 7 NESi)

Tidy my room so that I've got more space and some breathable air

Finish up my Computing project to a respectable standard (should try to do this fairly soon, so I don't forget how everything works)

Complete other schoolwork such as Maths questions and Physics research

Order those Christmas presents

Work on my Linux box, as well as the family computer

Complete various games, inc. HL2: Ep 2, Portal, Phantom Hourglass and about half a dozen others


That's more or less it for now. Surprisingly/depressingly it's not unlike the lists I made at the start of the summer holidays, almost six months ago. And the Easter holidays before them.

Oh, well. I'm going to head off to bed. And I've just realised that I didn't bring up my usual dose of painkillers to have before bed and everyone else is already asleep, so it looks like I'll be going without tonight. I've been cutting back anyway, I guess. Only problem is, it's been slightly worse than normal today since the dressing's been loose and packing's fallen out.

I know, I know. It's disgusting and unpleasant to read about. Trust me, it's worse if you're sitting on it and writing about it.

Another untitled post

I'd like to get a sombre point out of the way first, if I may. Terry Pratchett, a great man and one of my favourite authors, has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, which was apparently responsible for an earlier mysterious stroke. He remains optimistic about his situation and doesn't expect it to impact his work in the foreseeable future.

The whole thing is a big shock but the fact that he's taking it so well is presumably a good sign, for both him and his fans. I like Pratchett for many reasons – his sense of humour, his brilliant writing style, his ability to craft tales and characters so believable that you can forget the whole thing is set on the back of a giant turtle...

If I had to summarise what I liked about Terry Pratchett, it would be that he's the kind of man who describes being diagnosed with Alzheimer's as “An Embuggerance”.


I realised something this morning – I really love lying in in the mornings. On the first day of a normal holiday, I'd normally not be awake before noon but today I had to be up before eight to get ready and go to hospital to have my dressing changed.

Now, I know there are far worse things in life than being forced out of bed earlier than normal but, thankfully, I don't have to really deal with them. In fact, I'm actually fairly lucky, since I'll likely be healed by the New Year at the latest whereas it apparently takes some people several months to fully recover. Though I'm told that the end of the dressing isn't the end of the problem entirely but I won't go into that now.


It's getting kind of late and I want to go to bed early (i.e. before midnight) to compensate for my inability to sleep in so I think I'll try to wrap up this oddly medical and depressing post now. I'll point you in the direction of The Grand List of Console RPG Cliches, a favourite text of mine. Worth browsing through, especially if you're into RPGs and more than a bit cynical.

Also, I'll write this as a reminder to myself. Remember to watch that Segway polo match with Woz in it tomorrow. That is all.

Have a nice day.

I did it!

Success! I have finally completed my life's goal!

I have completed the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES, a game I've owned since... well, since as far back as I can remember, anyway. That game practically defined my childhood. Kind of nice when you think about it – I got it in nursery school and completed it in Sixth Year.

That single little achievement has been enough to cancel out almost all the day's other woes, from failed Maths tests to general boredom and annoyance at the rest of the world.

Speaking of boring and annoying things, it looks like I'm still going to need my wound dressings changed every day past (and including) Christmas. And then I'm probably going to need further treatment to keep hairs away from the area for a long time (years were mentioned) afterward.


I've left this post really late for some reason and I've been distracted by trying to find a copy of Twinworld for the Amstrad CPC. So it's now quarter to midnight and I've got no time to write anything else.

Sorry for the short post. But I don't really care. I've completed Super Mario Bros. I'm on top of the world.

That's it from me. I'm off to... well, not to bed actually. I'm in the middle of an MSN conversation. But once that finishes and I do a couple of other things, I'll go to bed. And then tomorrow I'll wake up and try to get some comedy writing done (had a few more ideas for a CSI parody tonight) then do my Computing project and my Maths homework.

Have a nice day.

Neutral Overall

It's funny how a couple of bad experiences towards the end can turn a good day into a crap one so remarkably rapidly.


I don't really want to go into details since it would probably be boring and that would annoy me further. Suffice it to say that I stuffed up some stuff, mostly schoolwork, which isn't so bad in itself but which has combined with getting a lot of crap from various people and the general inconvenience and annoyance brought on by my surgery to really get on my nerves.

I could make a pun about the surgery and the difficulty of taking (a) crap afterwards, but that would be beneath me. Still annoying though.


On the bright side, I got to talk to my old Physics teacher, Mr Cook, at school today. He's a great guy and always fun to talk with. He had been in school handing around some Christmas cards to former colleagues because he'd be going away on holiday for a while and didn't want to miss some members of staff who were leaving after the end of term.

He was apparently going to Portugal to play golf for a week, having been asked by a friend who had had someone drop out of their group at the last moment. Such is the life of a retired old man, apparently. Sounds pretty cool, to be honest. If you like golf.

So it was nice to see him and chat for a while about school and life in general.


I think I'm in a better mood now. Seems like it was a smart thing to do to focus on the positive aspects of the day rather than the negative. It might all be ruined by the nightly shouting match in a few minutes but I'm hoping to avoid that by going to bed early.

I also get to get up late tomorrow morning – I have an appointment to see a consultant at the hospital just after ten o'clock, so there's no point in going in for just one lesson before leaving again. It means I miss Computing, which is annoying, but not that I miss Maths, which is equally annoying. Because I haven't done a large chunk of Maths homework and there's no way I'll be able to get it done tomorrow.

Oh, well. I'll figure something out and do it over the weekend, along with my Computing project and Physics research... I thought the end of term was a time for winding down schoolwork? Meh. I'm off to bed.

Badly Bandaged Boy

Worst superhero ever.



CSI: NY just declared that since someone passed a lie detector test, they're not lying. Don't even get me started on the idiocy of that statement.


There are certain games that never lose their appeal, no matter how many times I play them. Either because of great design and plenty of options in the single player mode or because of a brilliant and balanced multiplayer mode, these are games that I will gladly take out and play at any time.

Among these games is Advance Wars, in all its shapes and forms. Thus it is that I am held up from writing this post by a desperate need to carry out a carefully planned strategy involving about eight transport copters and the same numbers of mech units before I go to bed.

Gimme a couple of minutes.


Okay, that's that done. Now, about tonight's post... I've really left it too late again, though I have a slightly better excuse than usual. I think I've complained before about the inconsistencies in how my wound is dressed by the various different nurses at the hospital and how some methods seem to work better than others.

Today's method didn't work out so well. It had practically fallen apart by the time I got home from school. This necessitated a trip back to the hospital where we think we've finally discovered a bandage that stays in place well enough.

We also had the foresight to find out what it's called for future reference and the nurse made a note to say I was to have this kind from now on, so that's hopefully that minor problem sorted.


Other than that, today has been pretty uneventful. My Maths test and homework, both originally set for Wednesday, have been put back to Thursday and Friday, respectively, which is very lucky, considering I'd done no revision and I wouldn't have had time tonight.

My Computing project continues to progress, though it looks like it may run past the deadline into the Christmas holidays. I'll have to do more of it at home, since I don't want that looming over me, especially since I'll likely have finished the interesting part, the problem solving and the programming, by then and it'll just be documentation and testing, the boring parts.


And that's about all I've got today. Somewhat diary like but I've not had any fascinating thoughts occur to me lately. I think I've been spending too much time watching, and subsequently complaining about, CSI: NY. Really, some of the plot holes and twists in that show... I don't know if all this is a result of bad writing, natural cynicism or too much time spent over at the TV Tropes wiki.

Probably some combination of all three.

Afternoon and night are becoming very similar

It's half past six and it's pitch dark outside. Has been for the last two hours or so. That's December for you, I guess.

It's certainly starting to feel more and more like Christmas. My normal way of judging when the season begins is the first time I come across a Coca-Cola Christmas advert and I heard one on the radio a couple of days ago.

I know it's an unusual way to judge the start of such a well-defined period but it's proven remarkably accurate over the years – particularly as most other companies seem to kick off their Christmas marketing in late January these days.

There is, of course, also the ever reliable advent calendar* for keeping you up to date with the countdown to Christmas but they don't seem to carry enough significance for some reason. Unless they have chocolate in them


Anyway, it's a fair bit later in the night now and I still have some stuff to clear away and pack for school tomorrow, so I'll try to wrap this up pretty quickly, if you don't mind. Well, I'd do it if you did mind anyway, since I don't know who you are (mostly) and thus I don't care about your opinion. Which reminds me, need to get those visitor numbers from Skippy.


While the days are getting shorter and lights that were hung across streets in early November have had their lighting up ceremonies, I haven't quite got into the Christmas spirit entirely yet, despite that distinct sense that it's there around me. I guess I'll relax a little once the holidays arrive and I can stop worrying about various deadlines (several upcoming tests plus my Computing and Physics projects needing to be finished and started respectively before the end of term on the 14th) and start worrying about what presents I'm not going to get.

And that reminds me of something else; I need to check that my mum has ordered that copy of OS X Leopard. She's something of a technophobe who barely understands what it even is let alone trying to order it off the Apple website, so I doubt it.

But you never know. My brother may have helped her or something.


One final point. As much as I dislike writing about (and hearing about and being asked about and, especially, having) this pilonidal sinus thing, I feel I have to mention a couple of things about it. The first is good news and the second is a minor annoyance. The good news is that it seems to be healing nicely, despite the fact that I'll apparently still be needing fresh dressings every other day until the new year. I've at least been able to go through today without taking painkillers. I suspect I'll need them for bed though.

The annoying thing is a sub-annoyance of the whole “having to go into hospital every morning” thing. While it never came up last week, when I went in both today and yesterday, the nurses were under the impression that I was to have a bath before the dressings were changed. I told the one yesterday that I had one at home and I figured that'd be the end of it but no, it happened again this morning. Twice, with two different nurses.

The second part of this is that I've never had the same kind of dressing twice, and half of them have been useless. Either they don't cover enough area or they simply don't stick on and require some emergency use of some old surgical tape that my mum had in a cupboard somewhere.

What I can gather from all this is that, filed somewhere in my local hospital, is a little note that says I need a bath at the hospital, which I don't, but not what kind of dressing I should have on the wound. Not exactly inspiring stuff.


Enough about that now. I still need to do those things I mentioned needing to do a few paragraphs of complaining ago, so I'm gonna go do them and then I'm going to take some painkillers and get to bed.

Have a nice day.






*My current one is a semi-3D sled thing with a cut-out of Santa in the middle. Don't look at me like that.

Complaining and etcetera...

Another rushed post I'm afraid, due to further arguments.

I think I had a topic for tonight but it'll have to be brushed aside as if I stay awake much longer I suspect that my mother will burst my eardrums and then give herself an aneurysm. She's doing that thing that mothers (or is it just mine?) do where she continues to point out the obvious and, whenever you agree with her, she just reiterates and narrows down her argument.

She starts out telling you that turning left is better than turning right at a particular corner and then, ten minutes later, she's giving a detailed explanation of why, if you end up in Saudi Arabia with a beaver punched through your torso by a rampaging hot air balloonist, you shouldn't expect any help from her. And then, when you get home and out of hospital after a six hour beaverectomy, why she'll put you on the bus to school.

I've taken to just not responding because it takes less effort than trying to argue and has the same effect on the conversation as a whole anyway.


But enough about that. I'll just link you to a few things then be on my way to bed. I don't even get to have a lie in tomorrow morning since I have to go into hospital again. Apparently, I may have to be doing that for several bloody weeks. Just great. I said I wouldn't go on about that. I'm stopping now. Here are the links.

As one of the five Pokemon Snap fans in the northern hemisphere, I find this immensely interesting.

While the topic is quite funny in and of itself, the comments over at this Joystiq post are hilarious. It's either idiot Americans essentially just yelling “FOOTBALL!!!!” at the top of their lungs before complaining about the rest of the world or it's people from elsewhere (and, let's be fair, a good number of smart Americans) ripping the hell out of the former group.

Wonderful.

I'm going to bed before I worry much more about the whininess quotient of this post being too high.

Slightly rushed due to pain and yelling

So I actually did end up going back to school for that Christmas trade fair thing, having spent most of last lesson dashing around (likely to the detriment of my health) setting up consoles in the Maths room.

It was quite a lot of fun and I would have liked to stay for longer but I don't think I could have actually handled much more walking and standing around. There were a few of us in charge of the video games room, minus the people who just came in there to skive off from doing actual work. We had three 360s running, two system-linked for Halo 3 competitions and one for Guitar Hero, a Gamecube connected to the smartboard's projector (when it wasn't overheating) and a Wii with various titles going as well.

I was mostly responsible for getting money from people (50p for whatever constituted one “go” on the game of their choice) but I ended up being the one who dealt with a lot of the younger kids as well. They all seemed to be having great fun.

There was one kid in particular, probably wasn't more than about 5, that wanted to have a shot on the Halo multiplayer setup. I sat next to him, coaching him through the controls and occasionally giving him a hand while a friends sat at the other Xbox, taking note of when I was talking and when the kid was trying to aim, letting him do some damage, even a few kills, while making a show of taking some potshots at me.

I'd go into more detail, and I might do so tomorrow, but I'm getting into deeper and deeper shit every night trying to stay up beyond my recommended bedtime. I get it bad enough normally but this wound has just made getting to bed early that much more sacred.

The funniest part is all the reminders about how serious this is, how bad it will be if I don't ge it fixed, etc., etc. I have no idea why my parents feel the need to tell me this when I'm the one who can't bend down or take a seat without a cushion thanks %£@*&^$! giant incision in my ass.

Anyway, I'm going to take my painkillers and go to bed before this turns into another whiny post and I get yelled at some more. Have a nice day.

Trade Fairs and Toothbrushes

I've seen CSI get a lot of stuff wrong but I don't quite know how the visual effects guys managed to screw up how contrast works.


My wound is definitely healing a bit now. I'm finding it easier to walk and the new bandage isn't nearly as complex or as large as the previous one. I'm still in bad enough shape to get out of doing any kind of heavy lifting in preparation for the school's Christmas trade fair. Actually, I don't think I even have to help out at all; I'm certainly not hanging around after school until it starts like the rest of my class.

My mum and my sister are heading along anyway so I figure I'll go along (in my own clothes rather than school uniform, so that I can just blend into the crowd if I see any teachers looking like they want helpers) and give a hand to my friends who are running the video games room. They've apparently had a lot of “volunteers” for that section but since they are trying to make money, they're going to have to turn most of them away. Still, they actually asked me to help out so I figure I should do what I can.

I'm also kind of screwed in that I haven't done a rather large chunk of Physics homework. In my defence, I didn't actually have the necessary sheet but I feel like I probably should have noticed that before tonight.

Not much I can do now.


I've got something I'd like to show you tonight. What do you reckon this is?


That's right, it's a toothbrush. Above it is the Apple Remote that I couldn't be bothered moving off my desk, but that isn't really important for the matter at hand.

Now, what do you reckon this is?


It, too, is a toothbrush. My new electric toothbrush, to be precise.

As you can see, it comes with a wide assortment of gadgets and gizmos, some of which wouldn't look out of place on the Starship Enterprise. In the centre are the various heads that can be attached – the ones on the right look semi-sensible, aside from the one in the top left-hand corner, which seems to be for people with... I have no idea. Probably useful for the Enterprise's dental hygienist to have all the same, given the number of different species onboard.

The heads to the left seem to be required for either flossing, scraping or detecting the tachyon signatures of cloaked Romulan ships. Then to the right, past the first set of heads, is some kind of strange and tiny comb that looks a bit like a stylised Blooper from the Mario games.

My personal favourite part is the “number pad” on the far left. Each of those numbers is a sticker which, as the diagram shows, you are meant to affix to the front of the holder. You should pick the number that represents the month three months from now, which is the time after which you're supposed to choose a new head. Never mind that those things last way longer than that and that such a system couldn't possibly work for more than a year with the stickers provided. You get free stickers!

Woo!


Anyway, I need to get up early tomorrow to pack some gaming gear as well as do my usual morning wound washing routine, so I'm off to bed.

Have a nice day.

Lots of boring ranting

You know, for weeks, maybe months, I thought that this sore bit on my butt was a result of sitting down too much. I figured it'd go away once the school term started (this was back in the summer holidays) and I moved around a bit more. Then, not only did it not go away, it burst and started... well, doing what such things do when they burst. I thought that maybe that was the end of it – the spot or boil or whatever was burst, it would go away now.

But it didn't. It go steadily worse until I eventually talked to my parents about it and got a doctor's appointment. I thought the first round of antibiotics would get rid of it. The fact that that was the “first” round should make it clear that this was not to be. The second, stronger bunch of pills didn't help either.

So then I went into hospital and I was told that I could have it cut out in a minor surgical procedure, that could probably be done under a local anaesthetic and meant at most a one night stay in hospital. I'm not sure if I was being lied to, being dismissed as a fool or if it really was that easy and something went horrifically astray as I lay on the operating table, but none of this “ease” was to ever come about.


I'm not sure where I'm going with this exactly but my point is that a few months back, I had a sore bottom. Now, I'm sitting here being told to take my painkillers and go to bed early so that I can have a salt bath in the morning before having my dressings changed in hospital and showing up an hour late to school.

And I've just had to delete another chunk of text that was just me ranting and raging about people telling me what to do and not accepting yes for an answer.

Fortunately, that was a few minutes ago and I think I've since calmed down. Unfortunately, those few minutes have led me up to the arbitrary half-past ten deadline, meaning that I may well have another infuriating visit in just a few moments.


So anyway, I went into school today for the full day, complete with my little pillow (though I managed to get away with not using it) and a quickly worn down willingness to put up with jokes about my ass and the grey joggers I had to wear for comfort. All the teachers knew about it and most of my classmates quickly got bored and carried on as usual. I got a couple of funny looks as I walked from class to class as well as the odd smart-ass (no pun intended) comment from pupils in the years below.

Of course, unanimous opinion and, more importantly, my personal opinion, is that most of that lot are idiots anyway, so I didn't really pay much attention to them.

The whole thing may get worse tomorrow as I have more classes and thus more walking around, which is bad for both my wound and my patience with getting funny looks but I suppose I'll just have to put up with it.


Skimming back over it, this post has been fairly incoherent and disjointed. That's probably due to constant interruptions as well as tiredness. I do need to get some sleep, I just don't need to have that fact yelled at me for five minutes or more. Thus, I'm going to head off to bed. I'll end by linking you to this story from Worse Than Failure, which is still providing me with much amusement as I trawl through the archives.