I’m very cranky this morning. It’s not too hot, so I thought I’d work outside for a little while. As soon as I got my laptop out there and got a cup of tea, someone zooms by on a ridiculously loud lawnmower. So I went back inside, and now the lawnmower is gone, but it’s too warm to work outside now.
I’ve been waiting almost two weeks for my incompetent apartment management people to replace the light bulb in my kitchen. The only light I have in there now is the tiny light over the stove. A new management company took over not too long ago, and they’re really big on raking in as much money as they can without doing much to earn it. The whole place has gotten trashier (literally, people leave big piles of trash around the mostly empty dumpster and it doesn’t get cleaned up for days). I don’t have the patience to deal with this on top of everything else that sucks right now. I just want some light so I don’t have to cook in the dark.
Neighbor next door, who had the police called on him thurs for yelling and banging, played loud music from 12-3 last night. Office says they cant do anything so we just have to call the police. The guy on the other side of him hears it too. Its been going on a while.
[quote=“digs, post:22, topic:970706”]
You could always splurge and buy your own lightbulb…
[/quote]I would do that if I could. But it’s a big fluorescent light, and I can’t even take the cover off.
I have been really depressed lately. I have been struggling with doing basically anything. I just try to make sure my kids are alive and fed and everything else will sort itself, I hope. But, over the weekend, I was overcome with motivation. I could do things! So I did. I cleaned the heck out of my kitchen while also spending compulsive money on a new mop. I also looked into getting a new tattoo. Everything felt great.
And then I remembered what I talked to my new psychiatrist about. And how I have significant family history of bipolar disorder and how my sister was also recently diagnosed. So, now, even though I should be happy, I am worried that it was mental illness, not actual happiness and that I might be bipolar. My brain is stupid.
It’s an illness, just remember that. If you have it, medicine can make it better. It doesn’t mean you are defective or bad, no more than catching the flu or having astigmatism.
And maybe you don’t have it. Being sad and lacking motivation before you get the urge to do something is something lots of people go through who don’t have a disorder. Those things can be internal, but they can also be caused by external factors.
Whenever/however you can, you should have a professional evaluate you. It’s better to know than to not know. I also come from a family with mental illness, severe mental illness (in particular schizophrenia). My brother has it (along with many other problems), and it seems like my oldest daughter does as well (we are trying to get her evaluated). But I don’t. You’re not doomed because of your family, but it is worth having it checked out. And if you do have it, the sooner you get treatment, the sooner your life can improve. And if you don’t have it, then you’ll know you don’t have it.
You aren’t wrong. I just have a huge internal stigma about it. I’m already in the process of getting evaluated. My next visit is the end of this month. Two of my aunts are bipolar and both were unable to raise their kids because of problems stemming from it. I don’t want to be like that.
One more minirant - I had weird ass dreams last night and I can’t stop thinking about them. It wasn’t scary. The gist is that rabbit got into my grandma’s house and I caught it and set it free outside before learning it was the neighbor’s pet. I’m feeling some weird dream guilt about the neighbor maybe not having their rabbit anymore.
It’s been a while since I’ve bought concert tickets, but one of the things that used to piss me off about Ticketmaster is that I’d get my tickets all picked out, be ready to pay… then they want me to log into my account to complete the transaction. WTF? Either let me purchase as a guest without signing in, or make me sign in first before starting the ticket selection process.
I’d buy tickets once or twice a year and would always get burned by this. I don’t remember my TM account name and password, so I’d have to go find my notebook with all my passwords in it. And then there would be some kind of problem with the password. Meanwhile a clock is counting down, and if I don’t hurry up and finish they’re going to throw my tickets back in the pool.
Thank goodness I’m too old to go to concerts anymore.
Several posters responded that this was likely related to telecommunications. They were right. I didn’t follow up with my fellow Dopers because I had no idea until today what it was about. But today I opened my front door and a little brochure fell out, and all became clear.
It was as I suspected. This neighbourhood is serviced exclusively by a cable monopoly. It’s called Rogers, and for my American friends, you can consider it the equivalent of Comcast in terms of incompetence and price-gouging. I figured the monopoly has got to be broken at some point and now it has. All these little orange flags are all over the neighbourhood and are because Bell Canada is installing fiber all over.
I have no problem with the speed of Rogers internet – gigabit service is available here, and my own modest service is about 75% of gigabit anyway, and higher speeds are available. I just hate the bastards. So when I read the brochure and it described what Bell was doing, and then stated that consent was required to bring fiber from the street right up to the house, I called them immediately.
I was so excited that I’d forgotten it was around 7 AM on a Saturday morning, but I got someone on the line anyway, and gave my consent. There is no cost and no obligation to actually subscribe; the consent relates to them digging a small trench in your lawn and fastening some cable to the side of the house. I’m happy to let them do it to have a competitive option and be able to tell Rogers to take a hike to the moon.
As to Comcast, I switched to what was then CenturyLink for a while, now called Lumen. First, it took them 6 months to connect me from the time I ordered. Then the speed was never very good, but the worst thing is that the internet connection kept going out. Once they sent a technician who discovered the first technician forgot to finish plugging in all the wires. Then a third technician had to be sent and they found the second technician hadn’t done it correctly either.
After that, I was still having problems that required me to unplug my router a couple of times a day to restore my service. I couldn’t get through to customer service. So I dropped them and went back to Comcast.
More expensive but so much faster and I’ve had no problems in the years since.
I’d say “you get what you pay for” but CenturyLink didn’t even give me what I paid for.
I have had long experience with both Rogers and Bell in many other places I’ve lived. I may well have disappointments with Bell fiber but there are two things that make me optimistic:
Having direct fiber to the home is a first for me and is really cool
Bell Canada is indeed an unwieldy bureaucracy, but their lengthy experience in providing critical telephone service has imbued them with a sort of military discipline about reliability. Rogers is like some kids wiring together some gadgets in their parents’ garage; Bell is like Northrup Grumman manufacturing equipment to MIL-spec standards.
Choices are good, and breaking up a monopoly is even better.
Part of why I had switched to CenturyLink back then was because they had put a new fiber connection through my neighborhood and they were offering lower rates than I was paying for Comcast. But that ended up being a total disaster for the reasons I’d stated.
Why the fuck am I suddenly getting all these right-wing links on FB to websites I wouldn’t visit if they were giving away stacks of $50s. And they all have teasers of real hur-de-hur “humor”. I keep clicking on “never see anything from these fuckwads again”, and they keep coming.
My gf’s mother’s sister turned 94 this weekend, so we had a party. My gf’s mother did most of the prep work (ordering a nice cake, decorations, etc). Ten days ago she ordered the cake and decided on a theme, namely “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A QUEEN”. The cake, decorations, balloons, plate/cups were all queen based. There was even a chintzy crown for auntie to wear.
It would have been cute were it not for the UK thing.
I ended things with my ex 18 days ago. Today I saw his dad and brother come over, taking something out. I called his dad, and he said his son fell, they took him in ambulance ( they usually just put him back in his chair) and took him to the hospital, and hes in a rehab place. He said hes hoping they get him a bed, but hes not returning here.
I feel weird, like I guess I’ll never see him again and I’m trying to shake the connection we had, good and bad.
Its a crappy feeling.
I’m going to South Africa on a long trip in couple of weeks, and trying to contact my credit card companies and banks to tell them. Half of them now say something like:
“Good news, you no longer have to give us travel advisories when going abroad! Just check that your contact details are up to date in case we need to verify a transaction.”
The whole fucking point of giving a travel advisory is that it may be difficult to contact me (local SIM card, no text messages), and I don’t want my cards declined when you see a transaction pop up from South Africa.
