Today I hate everything (long and totally pointless)

You know those times when the universe conspires against you, putting many tiny obstacles and annoyances in your path until they combine to make you realize how much you hate your life, yourself, the world, and every living and dead being in it? That’s today.

My printer stopped working when I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10. Much of the point of running Ubuntu is that things like that just don’t happen. And they haven’t until now. My local neighbourhood Linux guru was clueless. I ask on an Ubuntu forum. Nothing helpful. I go to an Ubuntu irc channel. I read all the FAQs, stay silent for half an hour to get a feel for the place, and then post a carefully crafted question containing printer model, error message and all other information that might be helpful. No response to three tries over a 24-hour period, while people who join the channel and one nanosecond later post “z0mg it dosnt print dis sux help!!!111” get immediate, polite and comprehensive help.

I need the printer to print out material for my roleplaying session tonight, which I’ve been looking forward to for ages. We’ve been playing this campaign for six months, and tonight is the big showdown between the two surviving players and the mad scientist villain guy. So what do I do? Start handwriting all the stuff I need? I could postpone the meeting, but it’s hard enough to get these guys together; it’ll probably be weeks.

I really should stop playing Magic Online. I get so pissed when I lose. I sometimes get angry when I lose in real life, but on Magic Online it’s magnified by a hundred. Possibly because I feel powerless or something, I don’t know, but two losses (bringing my losing streak to something like six or seven) had me screaming and throwing things across the room today.

I was told by my little brother that my big brother is bringing a Nintendo Wii to Christmas. Yeah, that’s just dripping with tradition and Christmas spirit, isn’t it? Christmas is the one holiday I actually enjoy, the one time in the year when I’ll voluntarily spend time with my relatives and not wish I were somewhere else doing something different. And apparently their idea of Christmas is playing video games. I tried to drop some hints to my little brother that maybe it wasn’t that hot an idea, but he was all “but its funneeeeeee!” and now there’s no way in heaven or on Earth to salvage this. If I try to do anything about it he won’t bring the Wii and then they’ll sulk about it all Christmas, and if they do bring it it won’t be Christmas to me. I’m seriously considering faking illness or something. Well, maybe Christmas next year will be fun.

I’m short on money. How the hell did that happen? I’ve been shitting money for two years straight, being paid more than I need and not doing much with it. Suddenly, last month, with no particular change in habits I can think of (I did start eating more when I started working out more, but not that much more) I ran out of money mid-month. This month I had to take back my monthly deposit to my savings account, and I’ve still been short for a couple of weeks. How the fuck did that happen?

I should be cleaning my apartment. I should go down to the gym. I doubt I’ll do either. Don’t feel like doing any of it, don’t feel like doing much of anything. I don’t want to be in this mood when gamesmastering tonight, so I probably should postpone, but that will mean juggling people’s times and bothering someone who’s already too stressed out for words. But I wanted to do it when I looked forward to it, not like this!

And all this adds up to me hating everything right now. All I want to do is open up those seven beers from various countries I got for my birthday and slip into a hole of self-pity. I feel so fucking tired of my life and everything in it.

And that’s the official “Priceguy being pathetic” post for this financial twelvemonth.

One of my favorite Peanuts strips has Linus and Sally. Linus comes up to Sally, who is sitting on the front step, glowering.

“What’s wrong?”

“I hate everything.”

Linus pauses. “You hate everything? You mean, you hate rainbows and Santa Claus and kittens and stickers and everything?”

“Yes!”

Sally waits a moment and then adds, “You didn’t say jump ropes.”

Linus: “Do you hate jump ropes?”

Sally looks down at the mangled jump rope on the ground beside her. “ESPECIALLY jump ropes!”

So, yeah. I’ve had those kinds of days.

I feel your pain.

I’m running Linux on my compy, because it’s what my geek boyfriend put in here for me, but every time he uses the update stuff, something bugs up and I have to wait a week for him to fix it. And when I need something to be working, and it’s not, it’s so damn frustrating.

Can you maybe get to a library to print what you need? Or get it on a disk/USB key/something and get it to a print shop?

Why does someone bringing a Wii mean your Christmas is ruined? I don’t get it.

Because it means that instead of us sitting and eating and talking and enjoying ourselves, there’ll be videogaming. That’s not my idea of Christmas. If my brothers want to play Wii with me, they can ask. Any time. Just not Christmas Eve.

If you’re going to say anything the central idea of which is opting out, you don’t know my brothers, and besides I’d like them to participate in Christmas too, instead of hanging out in front of the TV.

Never happened to me before, which is why I loved Ubuntu so much. Waiting a week doesn’t even seem to be an option; if my personal guru, the irc channel and the forums combined have no clue, I don’t know what to do.

Huh. Linux. Linus.

Some days, it all just comes together and it all makes sense.

What make/model printer?

HP DeskJet 710C.

I like the newest Ubuntu (Gutsy, well technically I was using Kubuntu). In the previous release, I had to go through some inexplicable rigmarole to get my wireless laptop drivers to work, just because “they aren’t free drivers.” It entailed running a command line only program to extract the drivers. The newest version of Kubuntu just automatically recognizes and gives you the option to enable the drivers and firmware. Do have that non-open source driver enable program, if it isn’t KDE only?

That’s not the problem. Ubuntu detects the printer and installs the drivers, no problem. It just won’t print; the job becomes Stopped after a few moments and if I try to cancel the job I get the error message “There was an error during the CUPS operation: ‘client-error-not-possible’”.

You probably don’t want to hear it, but you should lighten up on this one.

A Wii with a big group of people (especially people you have never tried one before) is ridiculously fun. Sure you may not be sitting around talking, but you’ll be having a lot of fun with your family. And I’m really confused about how that could be a bad thing on Christmas.

Because we can do that any time. Really. Whenever. But Christmas is only once a year, it’s the one holiday I actually like, and my image of it does not include Nintendo Wii.

Burn it to a disk, take it to Kinkos and let them print it.

Christmas, for me at least, is about having fun. Traditions are not set in stone and evolve as we get older. Start new traditions - playing Wii with your brothers coud be one. You could set a time limit of how long you’ll play, then get back to chatting with the rest of your relatives. You have to realize that while you might enjoy hanging out with the rest of your relatives, your brothers may not quite be in that same place.

You regularly play video games with all of your relatives? Because I’m seriously considering bringing my Wii to Thanksgiving just to see my Mom jump around the room playing tennis on Wii Sports.

Even if I knew what Kinkos is, the session is starting in two hours. Handwriting it is.

If my big brother wants to play Wii with me, all he has to do is call me up and say “Hey, bro, come over and play some Wii”.

I want my Christmas, damnit. And, and I realize this sounds strange, I think I’d rather stay at home on Christmas Eve than go to a Wii party and wish we were celebrating Christmas instead.

Since I’m the antisocial hermit of the trio, I sincerely doubt this part.

No, and I have no particular desire to do so. But if my brother arranged an extended-family Wii-playing session, I’d come. We can do this on his birthday, his girlfriend’s birthday, either parent’s birthday, Easter, Midsummer, New Year’s, St Patrick’s Day, whenever he freaking wants for all I care, except Christmas.

Well, for starters it interferes with the Airing of Grievances.

But boxing in Wii Sports is perfect for the Feats of Strength.

You can’t enjoy Christmas unless it is exactly the way you want it, even if you’re doing something that you might think was fun if it weren’t Christmas?

I feel sorry for you.

As long as you’re not physically punching the wall, you’re still doing better than some people I know. My secret balm is, whenever I lose to mana flood/screw (and, of course, any time I lose it is to mana flood/screw, cough cough) is to loudly and sarcastically thank Mark Rosewater for his genius.