alias_sqbr

Still working from home as a software engineer, but for an Aussie company this time.

Vis the Women with Disabilities WA mailing list I came across Enabled Employment, a job site for Australian disabled people working from home.

I signed up and was very quickly contacted by the woman who runs it, we had a text based chat interview a week or so ago and she was really nice. And then today someone offered me a job as a technical blog writer! I still have to discuss the specifics jobwise but as far as the recruitment process goes I definitely reccomend the site to any other Australians with disabilities looking for accessible work.

So...I am now on six months Leave Without Pay from my job. Which will quite possibly be extended to a year, but the way the public service hiring works it actually doesn't do any harm to give me the option of coming back earlier.

When I first considered leaving again it was really depressing, but the more I thought about it and discussed it with distantcam the more it became obvious it was the right thing to do. And right now I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders, worrying about trying to work and the physical strain of when I was able to go in was this huge stress (yes, even at only 8 hours a week. I am not well :( )

Anyway! I've been rather avoiding doing anything thinky like answering emails etc for a few days to get myself in top condition to tidy everything up today(*) but now that's done I may crash and rest for a bit then will hopefully be up to being chattier and maybe even going out. (which is good, since there's a wedding next week I definitely want to be at)

Oh! And I sat there being drizzled on through the holes in the train station roof thinking happy thoughts about going home, making a nice cup of hot chocolate (no more worrying about caffeine withdrawal at work!), checking my email and watching Foxtel..and the power was out for THREE HOURS. I had to read a book!

(*)If there's one thing I got really good at during the experimental portions of my BSc it was writing a nice clear summary of how I collected my data, what the results are, and why they're impossible (like 120% of a certain group of people having a particular property) Eventually I gave up trying to figure out what went wrong, highlighted the impossible results in a nice arresting pink and wished the workmate taking on the data the best of luck :)

So, you know how I'm doing work footy tipping and really suck at it?

Well I changed my strategy to always pick the ugliest team flag (rather than the prettiest) and did so much better that I actually won the tipping for a particular week. It must admit was a lot of fun telling people how I chose the teams when they asked how I'd guessed such unlikely winners correctly :D I went from being the worst tipper by a huge margin to second from the bottom! The ignomy! Look how much less worse I'm doing overall!:



Still, at least I've sunk back down to bottom of the work ladder again now. I'm much more comfortable there.

This is my life :)

It'll change once I have more than one job on the go (I'm still on my training wheels), but so far have done the storyboard and half the pencils for the next page of ACOS all during forced breaks while data is processing.

I'd finish it off tonight but I've been busy with my NEW IMAC. I thought Cam was just being sweet when he smsed me to ask why I was so late and if I'd be home before he left for gaming, and then hung about while I made dinner, but really he was just waiting to see the look on my face when I finally got around to going into the study :) (Which is also sweet, but in a different way)

It's very shiny. I have no idea how to transfer my files accross etc, and am pretty sleepy, so will wait till later. I look forward to doing art on a nice big screen and a computer that doesn't chug.

The "Yay sophie is unemployed" party tommorrow has been replaced by another party at the same time called..the "OMG SOPHIE HAS A GROWNUP JOB Party"!!

Yay! *dances*

Will be doing databasey stuff(*), which matches all the requirements I had for my next job, ie

• Utilises at least some of the skills I learned during my degree(s)
  
• Sitting down
  
• No public speaking
  
• No public interactions
  
• NO CHILDREN
  
• Pays actual money rather than free entry and cake
  

I had signed up for maths tutoring as a stopgap in case I didn't get it, part of me's a little sad I won't get a chance to do any tutorials (this is the first time the department has run them since I was in year 12) but overall...yay!

(*)I'm not comfortable going into details in a public post on principle, if you want to know more you'll have to come to the party and ask :P(**)
(**)Yeah, ok, unless you're nico_wolfwood or anyone else who can't come. It's the one I applied for before I left for Singapore, may ramble about in a locked post once I've actually started and know what it's like.

New Hapless, on the dangers of packing without thought. Wow, I haven't updated it since July. This is why I don't want fans, they'd just get narky at me.

I like the new house. It's not perfect, and has some odd problems, for example the washing machine taps are inside the cupboard under the laundry sink, and I can't figure out the reticulation. I think the main good thing is that it's bigger, so everything fits and then some. Though currently most of everything is still in boxes.

Last night we had vocal training for work which was fun. I found myself slipping back into the diaphragm breathing routine from choir in primary school, part of my life which I'd somewhat forgotten. Also since noone else wanted it I got to take home pretty much full packets of hummous and Trident Sweet Chilli rice crackers, now both in my tummy. Mmm. I went to dinner tonight at the local Indian place, which was ok and had chick pea based sweets (which tasted mainly of SUGAR). *ponders supplementing my diet with more hummous and indian sweets. Chick peas are good for you, you know*

Taking the day off work because, well, I'm quite sick. But they're so busy I still feel bad, if it was just today I might ponder dragging myself in but I'm rostered on 3 more days this week and know from past experience that forcing myself to be energetic when I'm this buggered leads to Badness, especially a 7 hour shift. Ew.

Still feel bad though. The problem with me when I'm sick is I often don't feel that unwell...until I try to speak or move etc at which point I feel terrible. Actually, I geuss thats better than feeling terrible all the time.

Decided to google for which foods are acidic and was stymied by popular alternative health theory based on how acidic foods are once they're digested which for example classifies lemons as alkaline. After much searching eventually found this FDA page. Mental note: avoid cranberries.

The plus side of being fevered and slightly delirious (which I was last night, not so much now) is that things like that "Planet Earth" nature documentary become really absorbing. I want a pet snow leopard now.

Currently rewatching season 4+ Buffy, missing the episodes I remember being crap. Missed much of the end of season 4, pondering if I can be bothered with season 5.

Oh god so utterly buggered. Seven shifts more to go. Somebody kill me now. Wasn't actually unpleasant (children all happy, activities fairly seamless) but soooo tired.

Anyway, given it's going to be quite a while until I'm 100% awake you get a somewhat incoherent post. Sorry.

Just watched the video I taped of stuff on ABC on Saturday Night. First, "the last detective": terrible. Good natured but meandering and dull. Second Jonathan Creek: ok, but I figured out the twist early (pretty much) Amusing seeing Adrian Edmonsen, Julia Swahala and Tamsin Grieg all at once in the same show (in a semi love square with the title character, no less. Afaict)

Last was Rage. Now as it happens on Saturday I watched my Smashing Pumpkins dvd¹ for the first time in years only to discover it was broken, so I ended up watching the few working ones twice, including "Today" (the one with an icecream truck)
Lo and behold, the first video is..."Today". "Oh God", I thought, "Its a smashing pumpkins rertrospective"

But it wasn't. The next video was "Sex and Candy", followed by a bunch of other mid-to-late 90s music I kind of like but don't consider that exciting². I started to wonder who had programmed it, since then there was a few songs I don't know and then a bunch of stuff I really like, such as "milk" by Garbage and "Cookies" by Jackknife Lee.

"What could the connection be?" I asked myself.

Then some bizzare rap about pies. And "Sandwiches". And finally, after an hour of videos, my brain clicked.

Still, at least I geussed the Jonathon Creek twist :)

EDIT: noticed next week is programmed by "Youth Group", sounds interesting.

1. Bought largely because it actually has a decent amount of decent videos on it, unlike most music dvds
2. It was actually amusing to realise (from my memories of the time) that the mixed feelings I had towards pop/rock³ in my early teens as I started listening to it after a lifetime of classic FM was rather similar to how I felt in my early twenties as the infatuation of my late teens wore off.
3. The stuff played on triple J, not Brittany Spears etc

Everyone was sick at work today.

There are six floor staff in on weekends. The puppeteer stayed home. The person running parties had a tummy bug. The demonstrator (me) lost their voice. They're having so much trouble covering shifts that a conversation that started with me suggesting the Duty Manager find someone to cover my Tuesday shift ended with him persuading me to do another one on Wednesday (with the proviso that if I'm still sick his screwedness is on his own head) I do not envy that guy :)

Still, it ended up ok. The three generic floor staff (all healthy) had enough experience in the three jobs that we got by (with me and the party person doing half-hearted floor), though I had to do one of the shows at the very end which happily went ok even though the audience was tired and full of sugar.

Currently reading "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner, part of my Hugo trawl. It's quite good, suprisingly modern (like much of the really good older sf) The narrative splits into three interleaved parts: Continuity, about the two main characters, Tracking With Closeups, each chapter of which follows a small part of the life of some person whose story reflects what's going on in the plot or the world at large, and The Happening World, which is snippets of things like tv, ads, real and imagined quotes etc (you can tell the real ones since they're all from 1967 :)) It's a moderately prescient extension of the 60's into a less conservative (though oddly just as sexist), more commercial future where the populace is more concerned about keeping up with Mr and Mrs Everywhere and circumventing the eugenics legislation than paying much attention to what's really going on.

The style of the narrative means that there's basically no plot until halfway through the book, just lots of texture, but this texture is sufficiently engrossing that I didn't notice the lack of plot until it was rectified :)

Oh! And we just saw "Enron: The smartest guys in the room". Very interesting. Stuff like that makes me want to throw in the towel and join the rest of my family in thinking all capitalism is evil. Causing blackouts to make money off the increased price of electricity! Guh! And just..grr!

Well! I'm feeling all awake and verbose aren't I? Stupid body making me feel crap all day then waking up when it doesn't do me any good.