Monday, May 14, 2012

This is a technical document

Well, of course, it isn't, but I could put words like Cisco and network and voice over internet protocol all over it, and then it would look a bit like a technical document. It wouldn't make any sense, but I can't imagine who'd notice.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, there have been complaints. A particular reader is being a Bad Example To The Younger Generation by reading my blog at work, and apparently I must post more often. It's okay, English is unlikely to be the first language of anyone peeking over his shoulder. Yes, hello you. :)

There now follows a diagram. This proves the technical nature of this document which is entirely work related.

graph showing number of passwords you have against times you use the wrong one

Look, I'm sorry. I mean to write more. I also mean to not just write about disability. I want to write more about my life and what I'm doing, but things divide into two groups:
  • Things which are too boring and inconsequential to write about.
  • Things which are quite interesting and I want to write about, but after doing the things, I'm too tired to write about the things until later.
Perhaps I should try doing shorter posts?

Today, I did some grocery shopping online. The best bit of doing online shopping when your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, is that when the shopping arrives, you've forgotten what you ordered. It's as if some kind of benevolent pixie sent you £70 of delicious food, and there isn't a single item you don't like!

I also had my laundry done. Yes, that's right - don't tell any of the women in my family, but I use a laundry service for my towels and bedlinen. I am a slattern who does not do her own housework. Or possibly a person who prefers not to injure herself wrestling large, wet, heavy pieces of cloth. Either way, in the morning the nice man picks up a sports bag of smelly linen from my house and in the evening he brings it back, fresh, clean, dry, and neatly folded.

I'm struggling with the paperwork for my assistants at the moment - making sure they get paid, and the monitoring that Social Services conduct to be sure I am using the money properly. I set up my systems really well, and my more lucid self has written out clear instructions for how to do each stage so that when I am not very well, I can still get things done. The problem at the moment is I quite literally don't know what day it is. I have "today" and "yesterday". All other days are confused together in a big tangle. So the timesheets and invoices got in a muddle and weren't submitted at the proper times... I think I've unpicked it, though.

Steve and I have been married for nearly a year and we are wondering what we should do for our anniversary. He's been able to book a little bit of time off work and we're looking at options. We have all these ideas - we'd love to go back to the Eden Project, or alternatively there are a few places in London we'd like to visit, for instance the Science Museum - but Steve is so tired out from work, I think he could sleep for a fortnight. We could just stay home and try to put together our wedding photo album. Right now we have thousands of photographs backed up to multiple storage devices, but unless you count shoving a USB stick into a digital photo frame, no album. There are also several guests who we have no pictures of, which is a bit sad.

The book I'm reading at the moment is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have read it many times - I first picked it up in high school. It's a bit of escapism, I suppose. I have the DVD as well, but I think the DVD won't make much sense to people who haven't read the book because it misses out an awful lot of backstory and historical detail. Some of the "historical" detail is inaccurate but then it is a fiction novel.

I don't know. What else? What do you want to know?

Following technical complaint about the diagram above: (written by evilstevie)
This diagram clearly only holds true for a relatively small number of passwords - above a certain point you are either some kind of memory-whizz or use a password-manager program to ensure the right password goes in the right box. This has to be the case as most applications of passwords also have something in place to prevent brute-force guessing of passwords, either a counter or timer (or in some cool applications, both) to make it difficult or impossible for you to try more than a few passwords. At a certain point on the graph you simply get a flat-line as you can't enter any more wrong passwords and you stop making new ones or come up with a new way of dealing with passwords. Also, I'd like to add that Batsgirl's clearly been around me too much when she considers VOIP usable in everyday conversation or blogging...

4 comments:

Lynn said...

Almost everyone is boring, taken in the aggregate, and yet almost all of us are interesting when looked at in detail. In other (less tendentious) words, I read blogs because the person writing them is interesting. So, pardon me, I don't read your blog because you're disabled and I want to read about that, I read your blog because the way you lead your life is interesting. For example, can I (a basically able person) say I'm jealous that you have a laundry service? And you're quite right about passwords and forgetfulness; as a confirmed Luddite, I don't care to complicate my life with things that need passwords any more than absolutely necessary, because, gah, my brain is full and leaking already. Also, there is knitting to do. And so on.

Keep writing; you're interesting.

Mary said...

Thanks! You know, you can use a laundry service too, if you want to. I was amazed when I found out how cheap it was. Even with the pick-up and delivery, it only costs about £10 for the whole sports-bag-full and saves me from a house draped with damp sheets (we don't have a drier at home). I think even if I was 100% fit, healthy and able tomorrow, I'd stick with that service.

Anonymous said...

Mary, I read your blog beccause you write well. The subject matter is immaterial if the style is good - and you make any subject worth reading. Good writing is a joy (and increasingly becoming a rarity) in itself. So I always enjoy your stuff, whatever it's about. Den

Jana said...

Hello,

I have just stumbled across your blog, so,this comment of mine, will be less relevant, as it gas been more than a year since you have first published it.

I would still like to congratulate you on your marriage!

I hope that you and Steve are doing well.