Cav's Place

I’m not talking about the figurative sense, about being that terrified, as that has certainly happened plenty of times before, but about basically shitting water. (Yes, this post will be quite graphic.) I haven’t had significant stomach problems in several years and actually don’t think I ever had any that were this bad. The fact that I think it was some sort of virus and not something caused by food makes it even more peculiar.
I’m thinking it was a virus because the symptoms were pretty much identical but dad started on Friday, me on Monday and the creature on Tuesday. We also couldn’t come up with any one thing that all three of us ate shortly before the onset, so it doesn’t seem like it could be explained like that. Dad was blaming it on some bacon he had at work and I was initially blaming it on some grapes that I saw Saturday in the kitchen and only decided to eat on Monday because something about them seemed suspicious to me. After initially being told that the creature ate some of those grapes too and she had no problems but then hearing that she started having the same problems the following day, I thought I had it quite well figured out, but then it started seeming quite unlikely for two different food items to produce identical symptoms to different people around the same time. So, after also considering the possibility of some sort of bacteria making a home for itself in the fridge, on the kitchen table or on the dishwashing sponge, I came to the conclusion that the most likely explanation is that dad contacted some sort of virus from work or somewhere else and then passed it on to the rest of us, probably affecting the creature later than me, despite the fact that I didn’t exactly have any contact with him and she did, due to the other pills she’s taking or perhaps simply due to a slower metabolism on her part.

My stomach didn’t give me any reason for concern when I woke up on Monday. A little later, after going to the bathroom, I passed through the kitchen, washed those grapes a little, took them to my room and ate them. That made me have to rush to the bathroom right away, but nothing peculiar happened there so it didn’t draw my attention. However, shortly afterwards I started feeling a little sick. Initially assumed I was just tired, since I had slept only about five hours, so I went back to bed. But that didn’t help at all.
As soon as I woke up again, I had to struggle not to throw up. Thought it’d pass, but it just seemed to be getting worse and I felt like I had to go to the bathroom again too. So I did that and it didn’t look good anymore, but I still thought my body’d find a way to solve it in no more than a few hours.
Obviously, it didn’t, as I was feeling worse and worse. I had that general feeling that you usually get when you have a fever, as if your flesh means to come off you, hurting all over and getting quite dizzy. And felt like throwing up more and more, so after having to go to the bathroom a third time and more or less shitting water, I forced myself to throw up. The result was a pile of completely undigested grapes, so I was certain that I knew what caused it, since they were like that after being in my stomach for over ten hours at the time. Still, I only threw up a little at that time, then went back to my room and just tried to rest, hoping it was enough.
It obviously wasn’t… So, about 30 minutes later, I went back to try again and didn’t stop until I thought I had pretty much everything out. There sure seemed to be many more of them coming out than they were when they went in, but I couldn’t see anything other than the grapes in there. Anyway, dad eventually heard me, came to ask what’s going on and then started asking whether I wanted him to make me a tea and suggesting pills I could take, starting with what he was taking at the time. I refused everything, said I’ll handle it and went back to my room for a few minutes.
Came out at 2 AM, he offered me some of the tea he made for himself, I refused and said again that I’ll handle it myself, then went back to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and meant to let everything out, occasionally pressing on my stomach and guts in an attempt to push everything down and out faster. That was a lot of water, but little else, so I eventually got up and went back to the kitchen. By that time my body was more or less in shock and I felt so cold I was almost paralyzed, which I took to mean that I did indeed manage to let everything out and my body no longer had any reserves left to generate the energy required to maintain its temperature. That meant I required some food, so I made myself a little toast and that just allowed me to make some tea as well, shivering vigorously. Then went back to my room and tried to wait it out, trying once again to let everything out just before I eventually went to bed at my regular hour, which resulted once again in quite a lot of water and not much else.

That night wasn’t nice at all due to the high fever. Considering how tired I felt, I assumed I’d fall asleep immediately, but instead I didn’t sleep at all. I think I blacked out a few times, but I don’t think you can consider that to be sleep.
At first I just got myself completely under the blanket, closed my eyes and enjoyed the colorful images I was seeing. Then I had to get my head back out because that air was making me feel like throwing up again. The nausea passed, but now I was freezing, so I tried to get my blood flowing again. Rubbing my arms and legs didn’t seem to help, so I thought jerking off would. Didn’t go all the way of course, haven’t in a very long time, and getting a decent erection was quite impossible, but it did make me feel much warmer. Trying to sleep was still hopeless, however.
Eventually I guess I started to hallucinate even worse, because I was convinced that I was covered by an immense blanket and that various parts of it were representing different parts of the problem that I had to solve before I could feel better, so I started to work on them. Some time later I realized that wasn’t real, but I thought it was a decent way to get my body to work on solving the problem, so I sort of wrapped myself in that idea, meaning to obtain a sense of being able to get to all parts of the problem and solve it.
I did end up feeling a little better after a while and eventually got up, realizing it’d be pointless to keep trying to sleep.

Tuesday meant more or less drinking the tea I had made for myself the previous night and trying to wait it out, while also realizing that I had no digestion at all since the tea I was drinking was basically coming out the other end unaltered. It can’t hurt to clean up a little on the inside, though. I didn’t need to go to the bathroom if I didn’t want to, however, which I took as a good sign. The annoying part was that, despite having a lot of gas, I couldn’t allow myself to fart because the fart wouldn’t have come out alone, something I learned for sure when I decided to try while taking a shower and then had to clean the bathtub…
I guess the fever was still there when I woke up since I was feeling quite high and laughing to myself for no reason. That was much better than how it made me feel the previous evening and night, at least. But, after another unsuccessful attempt at sleeping, in the afternoon, the fever did seem to go away once I actually did manage to sleep a little, in the evening. Other symptoms followed suit at about the same time, leaving me just with the lack of digestion, which resulted in gas and shitting water (or tea, actually), and the general weakness and tiredness caused by the lack of food and sleep.
Dad kept trying to make me take pills and I kept telling him I won’t do that unless it’s an emergency, and this doesn’t appear to be one so I still have confidence in my body’s ability to sort it out. He bought some for the creature as well, which were different from what he was taking because a different doctor prescribed them, though they had the same purpose, so now he had even more things to suggest. He was quite annoying, both with this and with the fact that he kept asking how I was feeling when I kept telling him that I can handle it well enough on my own. Interesting how, if something does actually scare me or I just need to see a doctor or do some other such thing, he just tells me to tell him if I want to see a doctor and he’ll make the appointment, and when the time comes he just knocks on my door and expects me to come out by myself after I’ve been pacing around the room for at least the past hour, trying not to shit myself out of fear, but now if I kept telling him I could handle it well enough on my own he was pestering me all the time!
Anyway, there was a moment that struck me as a little funny, when the creature called me over to talk as I was coming out of the bathroom and, among other things, mentioned that she couldn’t hold anything down despite trying to eat just the kind of things you should eat when your stomach is upset. Excuse me, but since there’s no digestion at all, what did you expect would happen after eating solid food, no matter what it was? What’s your stomach supposed to do with it? Can it for later?
Later, at my usual time, I went to make some more tea and try eating what was left of that vegetable “soup” (with all vegetables taken out) that was made for my dad when he started having these problems. It was obvious that trying anything solid would have been a bad idea, despite apparently getting lucky with those few pieces of toast I had eaten the night before, so I had to make do with that. Also changed my strategy regarding the tea, putting no less than eight different things in it and trying to focus on stimulating digestion, since I was pretty certain that everything that needed to be taken out of my body was already out.
That seemed to work surprisingly well, since I actually had to piss before going to bed that night, for the first time in a day and a half. I had pissed a little during that time too, but I never actually had to and it was obvious that my body was using reserves and none of the tea I was drinking was being absorbed.

Then, as of Wednesday, things were going really well. Went to shit again after waking up, but I haven’t since then. That could potentially be a problem, but right now I don’t think there’s much that should be coming out, seeing as I certainly seem to have a functional digestive system again and I bet it’s trying to make the most out of everything I happen to eat, discarding as little as possible. That means the tea is working well, so I kept making and drinking the same one. Went back to a little solid food Wednesday night as well, and then again last night, so I plan to start getting back to normal now. If all goes well, I should really be back to normal on Monday.
Even went out yesterday and wandered around for some two and a half hours. I’m feeling it today since I’m completely drained, but I’ll recover. Even thinking of going out again tomorrow since I think it could be interesting to have a look at something that’s taking place nearby.

The good part about this, other than the fact that it cleaned me up a little on the inside, is that it seems to have made dad think about eating healthier, “at least for a little while”. Sad that it took something like this, but let’s see what will happen, since he’s the one doing the shopping…
The very bad part is that it made him throw away pretty much everything that was in the fridge when he woke up on Tuesday and realized we were all having stomach problems when he knew quite well that there wasn’t any single thing that all of us had eaten just at that time. That’s completely unacceptable, seeing as that food comes from somewhere and throwing it away means wasting resources that are already depleting, not to mention that other people or stray animals could have used it well enough, especially since I’m quite certain that the food itself had nothing to do with this! Wondering what he’ll do next…
“That does seem to be the rule, doesn’t it? Analyze the problem, choose whichever strategy makes least sense and then do it.”

Today is OneWebDay and, while having such days doesn’t exactly help anyone, I think the cause itself is a worthy one. If you think the same, you may at least want to sign the pledge. Computers and the Internet are here to stay and the future of our society relies on them, so everyone should have access to and know how to use them.

Public libraries are a great start when they organize courses and allow people to access the Internet from public computers. After all, public libraries are meant to facilitate access to information, not only to books. For a long time, books were the main method of spreading information, but as of some 15 years ago that’s no longer the case and libraries really should start reflecting that everywhere.
Sure, having access from such a place is not the same as having it from home, but it’s far better than nothing. Also, the courses that such institutions could offer would be a great help to those who don’t have much of a chance to learn otherwise, and perhaps even more so for the elderly. Just having access to this great wealth of information and these tools won’t help you if you don’t know what to do with them.

Old computers shouldn’t be thrown away. Whenever possible, they shouldn’t be sold either. Instead, they should be given away, even when certain components have already failed. This is especially true in the case of desktops, because it’s quite easy to take them apart and reuse whatever components are still functional in order to build others. Laptops are a poor choice when it comes to this anyway, since they tend to be more expensive, less powerful and less reliable.
If you do decide to give your old computer away, keep in mind that donating it to a public library or other project that would use it in order to give multiple people the chance to access computers and the Internet is more effective than donating it to a single individual or family. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t donate it directly to another person if that’s what you want to do, it’ll be of great help either way. We should strive to help each other and if your trash could bring someone else joy why not make sure that it happens?

Then there’s the issue of providing Internet access to the people who could barely afford to buy a weak computer for themselves, or just received an old one from someone else, or even to public libraries and other similar institutions. In this race for higher connection speeds, companies tend to forget about those who just want a cheap option, even if it’d be pretty slow. Granted that there usually are decent options for reasonable prices in large cities, but when you can barely make ends meet you are looking for something that’s as cheap as possible.
But people who don’t live in large cities, or live in large cities from poor countries, may not even have those options open to them. They’re often stuck with poor services or even none at all, so that’s where governments should intervene. Some incentives for companies who spread their coverage to such areas could help quite a lot, though more direct interventions, such as supplying the connections to the institutions that offer public computers or even setting up a basic infrastructure and offering services more or less at cost to home users, could help even more.

Network neutrality is another key issue, of course, as large corporations desire more and more control over their customers and society as a whole. On a competitive market, a company that discriminates against a certain kind of content wouldn’t last, because its customers would quickly move on to their competitors, but some companies tend to come to agreements in order to discriminate against the same types of content or, as I said before, people from certain places have few or no options to choose from. So governments need to once again step in, pass and enforce laws that wouldn’t allow operators to discriminate against any kind of content, making sure that people enjoy the same quality of service regardless of what they use their connection for.
I could have started with this issue, but it’s not OneWebDay’s focus. Still, it has the potential to affect everyone, whether they are just starting to use the Internet or they have been using it for a long time, so it is very important. While the other problems I mentioned above tend, for the most part, to be things that grassroots efforts could noticeably alleviate, this is a matter of large corporations and governments, so it could be a tough battle…

Since the previous post doesn’t exactly count, I didn’t write anything this week. And that won’t change, since this won’t exactly count either. Next week I’ll be forced to write about more serious matters, but this will have to do until then because my mind’s really not into it at the moment. Not that it ever is, but if I don’t really have to write a serious post I’d rather not struggle to just create one and have it invariably turn out bad.

I’m trying to play Two Worlds more than usual and actually get somewhere. Not that I couldn’t finish it rather quickly if I wanted to, but I don’t want to finish it right away, I want to explore the whole game world before I do. I’ve been playing it for two and a half months and I still have a long way to go at this rate, especially considering that it says I’ve only been playing for 94 hours. That barely averages 1.25 hours per day, not counting time lost when I had to reload, which is awfully little. Six hours per day used to come relatively easy to me when I was interested in a game, and if I really meant to push I could make it to ten on some days without much of a problem, so something weird is going on, because it’s really not a bad game… Sure, it’s not one of those games that got me really excited, but it’s good enough overall, so it shouldn’t be a problem, yet it is.
Otherwise, my muscles are still trying to make sure I remember that I cleaned my room far more thoroughly than usual on Wednesday… Pain is never nice, but at least I don’t mind this one. I do mind the one caused by that tooth which I supposedly fixed recently, however. Granted that it no longer hurts when touched with something cold, but now I’m starting to feel a dull pain coming from it out of the blue now and then. I do hope the dentist did her job properly and that this will go away shortly instead of getting worse…
Finally, I still didn’t start reading A Feast for Crows. Doubt I’ll do it next week either, but probably the week after that. It could depend on how much I’ll be playing Two Worlds perhaps, since I don’t think anything else is going to take up a significant amount of time this month, unlike last month when I was just starting A Storm of Swords 2 when dad asked for those news I’m helping him with. He said he decided to take a break from writing for that magazine because they haven’t been paying him for some time, so he won’t be asking me for those this month either.

I’m trying to have this posted Saturday for once because my ISP seems to be having issues lately. Especially at night, so it could actually be scheduled downtime that they don’t bother telling us about, but I don’t know that and am not particularly keen on testing their response time for a problem that would arise on a Sunday…

At least my mind seems to have a nice series of scenarios to go through when I wake up and before I go to bed…

Was thinking about something once again last night, and once again decided against it. Maybe I avoided another regret, maybe I’m heading straight towards it, I don’t know. Quite confused here, but I doubt it’s relevant right now, so delaying further isn’t likely to be an issue.
Right now, nothing changed. And if something will change at some point, I doubt this will make much of a difference anyway. I guess I’m worrying too much over too little, but that’d be nothing new.
Yes, I know this makes no sense. No, this time I won’t say what I’m talking about. Move along now…

Since a Pirate Party is being born in Romania as well and I’m trying to work up to posting my ideas about a future copyright law in detail, I might as well start by briefly explaining another idea that has been running through my mind for some time, which has to do with something that I tend to call the Content Creators’ Association. I wrote a little about it in an e-mail I sent some time ago, but not much else…
I know that creating and maintaining such an organization would be a truly massive undertaking and it would require a lot of cooperation between content creators all over the world. It’d also require quite a bit of courage on their part, especially from those who currently have lucrative contracts with distributors, because they’d truly reap the benefits of their work from that point forward, which means that nobody else would take the money that their work has earned, but also that nobody else would provide a safety net in case their work fails to generate the expected income. This sounds far better for those who aren’t yet famous, those who create just because they want to or those who are just trying to climb through the ranks, than for the big names, but I certainly have no problem with that. Actually, that’s exactly how it should be and you can even say it’s designed to level the playing field a little.
I started by saying those things because anyone reading this is likely to wonder if I’m aware of how difficult and unlikely it is for something like this to happen. Some people could be inclined to stop reading before reaching the end, so it can be better to have such explanations out of the way early on. But now they are out of the way and I can actually get to explaining exactly what I mean.

The Content Creators’ Association should be an international organization created in order to act as the intermediary between the content creators and those who enjoy their work, therefore eliminating distributors, or at least relegating them to a niche. The main function would be to make it easy for people to send some money to the software developers, writers, musicians, painters or other artists whose works they obtain for free through file-sharing, especially once this will be completely legal. It would also make it much easier for content developers to work together, improving the quality of their work, and to promote each other, ensuring that their work reaches more people. It would emphasize quality over marketing and would also ensure that the money end up where they should be, namely in the content creators’ accounts and not in those of their distributors.
It’s important not to allow the Content Creators’ Association to become yet another distributor, which is what would likely happen if it would have its own management and be an independent entity. In order to avoid that, it should be managed by the content creators themselves, with people hired only for the less important positions which they themselves wouldn’t be able to fill. It would also have to be a strictly non-profit entity. This would ensure that the content creators would fully benefit from their work and that no other interests would take precedence.

In order to make it easy for everyone to send money to the content creators of their choice, this organization would work a little like a bank. People would be able to create accounts and put money in them through any means, such as credit or debit cards, bank transfers, SMS, prepaid cards or making cash deposits in certain locations. It’s very important to have all these different methods available because everyone should be able to easily charge their account. Then, each account owner would decide who they want to send their money to, and they’d obviously decide how much to send to each content creator as well. As I said, this applies to the content which is obtained for free through file-sharing and is a means of allowing content creators to make money while also eliminating distributors and distribution costs. The organization could also be used to sell hard copies, making those accessible to people regardless of their geographical location as well, but this system obviously couldn’t apply to those as well.
Because content creators would be spread all over the world, it’d be very easy for this organization to have representatives everywhere. Its representatives would be the content creators themselves! There could be a little booth where people could make cash deposits, buy prepaid cards or pick up the products they have ordered on-line set up in the headquarters of every software company, every concert venue, every movie set or theater… The content creators would no longer depend on anyone else and the consumers would no longer be restricted to what their local distributors offer. Not to mention the opportunity for free self-promotion whenever a customer would automatically notice the work of a certain content creator whenever they’d come to charge their account or pick up a hard copy of a product, even if they had previously been completely unaware of their existence and only picked the location because it was nearby.

But, even with distributors out of the way, there would still be costs to cover. These could be much lower than expected if the content creators would do as much of the additional work, such as manning those booths, maintaining the servers and providing assistance, themselves, but they would still exist. The fact that the organization would work a little like a bank could help somewhat, as some profit could be made by investing the money people have put in their accounts but didn’t yet send to content creators, but that couldn’t possibly cover it all. Still, it shouldn’t be a problem to express the operating expenses as a percentage of the total income and take that percentage out of the money meant for each content creator, therefore ensuring fairness.
That way, the content creators would receive as much as possible for their work, with those who benefit the most from this system also supporting most of its operating expenses, and the consumers would know that as much as possible of their money would actually reach those who create the content they enjoy. Restrictions and conflicting interests would be reduced as much as possible and the direct connection thus created between the content creators and their audience would also be a great help, certainly. Everyone wins except the distributors, which is exactly the point.