Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Vent away dude, better here than in your head is my general policy.

My postings indicate how little goes on in mine.

 

Cigars, various rums and my beautiful goddaughter blowing me kisses

 

Today I learned that there is such a thing as a "caramel tree". The Japanese Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) actually smells of caramel. There's one in the park in Nantes. When you stand under it, you can smell caramel everywhere.

It's straight out of Willy Wonka's chocolate garden. Somehow the world seems a slightly better place for having such a tree in it.

 

I just finished a hard and slightly painful workout. Now I'll have a relaxing hot bath. Gods, I needed that.

 

A friend popped over earlier and reseated the ribbon cables on my daughter's iphone 6+ screen that had been playing up. A screw was missing on the metal cover plate, which we found on a scrap phone and it all works 100%, no new screen needed.
My son's Polo that ran out of oil on the M3 last week, seems to be fine with a top up of oil and a replacement set of injector o rings.
The oil is staying where it should so far.

 

I can rest safe in the knowledge that I'll be ringing in sick on Monday, and hopefully getting signed off from my current employers for an indefinite period of time, and get much better antidepressants to allow me to cope with my situation at work/give me a clearer head for my new employers if I get a job.

 

Ouch... when I hit that level I never recovered - wishing you better luck than I had.

 

The universe told me to buy a lottery ticket, and I did, and I won.

I was in a shop saw a sign "must be won tonight" or something like that (I guess it's rolled over too many times?), and for the first time in a looooong time, I thought, hey, maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket.
I then overheard a conversation at the till at what seemed like an unusually high volume talking about picking their numbers or something.
I left the shop without buying a ticket, got home and thought "oh yeah, I forgot to buy a ticket"
Seconds later, my phone popped up with an alert, having never seen it before, notifying me of the draw tonight (last night)
So I went online and bought a ticket.

And I won.

A lucky dip.

But even so.

 

A win's a win...

 

I've been here before, a little over a year ago - the more things change the more they stay the same... I'm just hoping I get help to level out my moods so I'm not so quixotic and changeable. Some time away from my boss would do nicely too...

 

CPU and mobo due tomorrow.

Though i'd be held up waiting for the cooler that was due to come this wednesday but apparently it's turning up today.

 

Not being in withdrawal like a junkie. I would have moaned about it, only I was too busy sweating, puking, peeing out of my bottom and feeling more suicidal than I have ever felt. I really thought I was dying.

So, let this be a lesson to every one. Those pills the docs are handing out like sweets (Pregabalin, don't take anything before you do your research*) are hellishly addictive. I could only really liken it to heroin withdrawal, only I never took that crap for a reason. What I do know is that there needs to be an enormous shake up with regards to Pregabalin. They gave it to my cousin after a sit down mower removed three of his fingers supposedly for "the pain" though I can vouch, it does nothing to relieve pain at all. Now my cousin is very hard headed, so when I poked him to see if he had stopped taking them he muttered "No, my fiancee doesn't like it when I try and stop". What he means is they are terribly addictive. Like, horribly so. And they hand them out as a cure all for anxiety, depression, social disorders, pain, back pain etc etc.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. So here comes the *. When I went on them I was told nothing, and no evidence existed on what they even really do. However, since being on them for the past 7 years or so I have seen all kinds of bad videos about them and a lot of negative press. IE - heroin addicts now take them so they don't feel like crap on come down. FFS. Then there was a video I watched (BBC, IIRC) where they were talking about the epidemic of them in Ireland, and some guy was literally opening them up and shoving them up his nose.

And I can vouch, the withdrawal is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever had to endure. Worse than being run over by a car and spending 3 months in hospital. I literally thought I was dying, and was very close on two evenings to committing suicide because of the utter pain I was in.

Thankfully it's starting to subside now (after an entire month) but yes, I will never go through that again. I think my heart would give out. Also, if you have Bipolar treat the depression and to hell with the mania. For god's sake, don't take any of the crap they give you for that. They either make you fat and rocket your blood sugar, or they destroy your liver or give you skin necrosis. I'd rather be round the bend that go through any more of that.

So yeah, here is to being alive.

 

All work and no play G, at least put any axes out of reach.

 

I'll be gainfully employed again come October. Which will be nice.

 

Stage one of the upgrade complete.

Current rig dismantled and my old gtx 570 popped in and back up and running.

Was chuffed that i had semi-organised the 4 ssd connections so i, by some miracle, reconnected correctly in my old case.

Plus i found a shuriken rev b laying around that fits in the old case and is idling the 3770 in the low 30s.

Only downside is the old lian-li case, i forgot it liked to shred my hands

Stage 2 tomorrow when i can finally put the Zen 2 rig together. Windows key will work or it'll stay watermarked, it's only for gaming anyway and i want to see if the gsync/freesync works on my monitor.