More therapy comes my way.

I was first promised CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) from the NHS in August 2005, but as we know they love their waiting lists.  It took until last week for them to get back to me and give an appointment.  The first of which I had yesterday and is looking kinda promising.  The pay as you go counselling I had been having I stopped a while ago because it was too much just like a cosy chat, I need someone a bit more aggressive.  I’ve gotten another woman, but this NHS specimen is a total battle-axe, she remind s me of a school head-mistress.  Scary!  Don’t get me wrong, she’s considerate and understanding.  It’s a good mix so i’m positive she might have more luck encouraging me to face my fears.  CBT’s all about exposure and shitz, that you have to force yourself to do the stuff you can’t stomach to condition your brain not to become anxious.

I don’t like it!   But I have to

My iMac’s Superdrive is no longer very super. Last week it started making some worrying scraping sounds whilst both spinning up, and spinning down. Also, around the same period the eject mechanism became clunky, in fact one time it ejected with such force that the disk fell out and plopped onto my desk making me jump with fright. Then, it started rejecting some disks, for example I tried to re-rip “blue lines” by massive attack, but when inserting the disk it made just a quick mechanical moan and ejected it, and no amount of persistence would get it to keep it inside.

The last straw came today when, after burning a dvd the eject mechanism failed to dismiss the disk. Each time I held eject it would make the obligatory clink-clunk.. pause and then clunk-a-junk it back in again. Well that ain’t much good now is it?

I hate speaking on the phone, I sweat and pant and panic and go dizzy. But I really wanted to know if I could wait for the meadowhall store to get a replacement drive in before I made a trip up there, and plus if I did so I wouldn’t be without the iMac for too long. So I hunted out the branches number but upon the automated menu I made the mistake of choosing tech support rather than waiting for an operator and was redirected to some call centre to be greeted by some woman with a peculiar accent who also spokeveryquickly, I think I said “pardon” about 50 times, really really embarrassing and it doesn’t do my phone anxiety much good at all. In the end it turned out that the tech support line can’t actually access the stock info of branches, so I hung up and tried again. This time I learned from my mistake and got to speak to someone at meadowhall. Unfortunately they told me that they haven’t my particular optical drive in stock and even still they can’t order one until checking mine out

So I’ve taken it in and now i’m minus iMac Tell yer what though, having an Apple Store in town is soooo useful, the 20″ iMac’s box is freaking huge so it would be an absolute nightmare having to ship it off to some far away repair centre.

I did want to open the iMac myself to see if I could just get the disk out and somehow whack the drive back into life but apart from the memory’s cover the iMac has those odd looking astrisk shaped screws, a sure sign that you’re not meant to open it up.

I’d like to add that Apple are in an unfortunate position with the optical drives on the iMac, if you hold a normal PC’s internal optical drive against the current iMac it’s immediately obvious that Apple would need some of the doctor’s Tardis technology to fit it inside because not only would there be no room left but it wouldn’t actually be possible even if the iMac was empty inside. So they have to use the slim-line drives, like the ones in laptops, which are slow(ish) noisy and very unreliable. But that doesn’t tend to matter so much with a laptop because you don’t use the drive all that often. But I use the drive on my iMac all the time and slim-line drives just don’t last well. It’s a problem.

I’ve been feeling so peculiar recently. A few days ago I woke up with my allergies racing; sneezing every 5 seconds, eyes red raw, skin feeling terribly terribly dry. But it’s a bit early for hey fever, and no amount of anti-histamines both drowsy and non-drowsy did anything to dampen the symptoms. The damn thing lasted all damn day! You wouldn’t believe how many boxes of tissues I got through. It was horrible, I just wanted to curl up in bed and die, cept I couldn’t ‘cos i kept being interrupted by more sneezing fits.

The next morning I was awoken early by a nagging feeling deep in my throat. The hey-fever type sensations had gone but had been replaced by a swollen throat. Not sore at all, just felt swollen, you know the sort, when you swallow its like there’s a tennis ball lodged down there. Again, this lasted most of the day, but was a heck of a lot preferable than the previous days offerings. Somehow, these strangities must have been related. So I’m wondering if it was some kind of allergic reaction to something I had eaten? I have no idea what though. I hate not knowing.

Another thing I’m suffering from is intermittent anxiety attacks. I’m thinking this might be the change of season, its a lot brighter around here and its been quite sudden, sunlight is pouring into my room almost all hours, it’s lovely actually, but my mood always taken a little while to adjust. I’m getting that “10 minutes to curtain rises Mark, it’s a packed audience today.” feeling. Laced with a bit of hyper. It’s pretty off-putting. Feeling a tad emotional as well. There really is no reason for it.

Eddie was sick this morning. He’s trying to sleep it off, he’s still got morning hair and its midday. Scruff.

The blog entry entitled Wild Horses is getting about 99% of the comment span for my site. It’s funny, I really don’t know why that is and I’ve kept the spam because it’s becoming a nice little collection.

I’ve been using PHPEclipse, a plugin for the Eclipse IDE. But I recently discovered that it has been conflicting with the Web Tools plugin, which serves to syntax highlight HTML and all that. Whilst seeking a solution I chanced upon Zend’s own PHP plugin for eclipse and it rocks! Much much better then PHPEclipse. I couldn’t recommend it enough for you PHP types. It’s a bit hidden away, a little treasure and it isn’t very documented. I think it must still be in the early stages. Get it anyway.

This here is a blog, well mostly a blog, its a blog with extra bits tacked on the side, thrills and spills for all the family. That’s right, you can think of this as Disney World, but without the suspect burgers, sweaty costumes and lame rides. Itch & Be Merry hmm? Firstly I know its a dreadful use of English but I don’t particularly care, how many of you verbalise an itch, you all have without giving it much thought. English is messy mongrel language that has always bulged and progressed through misuse. So lets not get too anal about it now. And the meaning, well the itch is my nasty eczema and the merry be my prozac. 2 Things which have shaped my behaviour and by extension can most likely be found between the lines of anything I write on here.

I suppose now is as good a time as any for the biog stuff. I was born in Warrington, England moving to Sheffield 6 years into being. Here i have laid ever since only shifting slightly to study in Leeds and occasionally vacate. I suffered from eczema early on, at around about 3 years and spent a significant time in hospital, this probably didn’t help my social skills and I have also suffered from social anxiety since childhood and have yet to shake it off. Making matters even more complicated is being gay, which is difficult enough without shyness adding to the veil of darkly spun secrets. It’s not the act I have a problem with, its the whole effort involved with meeting like minded folk; I can count my number of relationships on one hand. I work a lot with these new fang-led computers, both developing software and also dynamic websites. I also hate writing about myself, and despite the numerous time’s i’m forced to do it for counselling i do not get any better at it.

Writing a blog is therapeutic, and I’d recommend it to most people. It really doesn’t matter if no one reads it, just the act of writing one is a good thing. Unfortunately I tend to go blank from time to time, so this blog will no doubt suffer from some gaps in writing.

N.B, this entry may change from time to time.