Even more so since she left, but I always have and probably always will…
When I was little, Christmas meant an entire mess. I was living with my grandparents and they’d get up early in the morning to prepare, cook things and so on, had me help as well, woke me up early to go to church and so on… Then you had the big family gathering, a big table set and everyone sitting around it, stuffing themselves, talking about generally annoying things and having the record player play things I really didn’t want to listen to. There were the relatives I really didn’t want around me and relatives that I might have wanted to spend some time with but only if I could get them away from the rest, and of course that wasn’t possible since everybody was supposed to sit nicely together around the table… As for presents, they weren’t too interesting…
Then I moved in with my parents after the Revolution, but Christmas still usually meant visiting my grandparents. I was partly getting rid of the turmoil and getting up early in the morning, but still ended up sitting around a table with family and not knowing how to get out of there faster. The record player was getting replaced by the TV, but the fact that it was left on things I didn’t want remained. As for presents, still uninteresting, though as of ’92 I was getting quite specific in what I wanted. That’s when I got my first computer and I mainly wanted games or, later, upgrades. Obviously, those were the things I got the least often…
I only managed to break that “family” pattern around the year 2000, at least as far as grandparents are concerned. There were still gatherings here at my parents’ place, they were still annoying, but at least there were fewer people. There was also still the tree to decorate and the whole “Christmas spirit” idea that pisses me off…
But things were starting to look good and for those of 2003 and 2004 I was living with Andra. It still was a problem because she was really getting into this “Christmas spirit” thing, though without giving it any religious significance, and that was rather annoying. Plus that her family was gathering at her grandparents for lunch that day, I was invited insistently, was refusing equally insistently, and ended up spending the day alone. Spending a day alone was a good thing when the other alternative would have been spending it with my parents, but it became a very bad thing when the other alternative was spending it with her. But at least I was getting the best present possible, simply being with her…
Then, after she left… It became a day like any other, sitting here in my room and feeling like shit. And just like any other holiday, be it legal, personal or religious, it can only get worse the more I’m being reminded that it should be a cause for joy and celebration. I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten what that is…
But there is one more thing that annoys me about any such gift-giving occasion… Why should you give gifts with certain occasions? Why “must” it be done then?
Well, I neither want to give nor receive presents on such occasions. If you want to give somebody a gift, give it without it being a special occasion. And please ask what they want before getting anything, to avoid getting something they’ll throw in a corner the next second and never look at again.
As for all the marketing schemes around this time of year and the “bombardment” everyone has to withstand, that’s a topic for another post. At least it’s, thankfully, much less intense here in Romania than I hear it is elsewhere…
Parents were gone this afternoon and I took the opportunity to get back the things I had saved on dad’s computer so I can finally get back on track. Also, thinking it will hopefully be the last time I’ll have a reason to get inside this computer before it’ll get replaced, I tried cleaning it up a bit and think I even got dust up my ass… Then my room had to be cleaned too, of course, but that gave me something to do while waiting for Windows to install on the new drive. Since then I’m working on updates, other programs and settings and it’s slowly starting to look normal again…
What I hate is that for a moment I simply forgot the computer name I’ve been using ever since she chose it when we had to reinstall Windows on her computer before mine was brought there after I moved in with her and when it asked me for it during install I just used my usual nick instead, which meant that afterwards it wouldn’t let me choose that as my user name. Of course I immediately changed both the computer name and my user name to what they should be, but the account name is still different and I was too rushed to think to just delete it and make another before I started installing things and now it’d be too much trouble. Happens, I guess, reminder for next time, though I hope there won’t be a next time.
On another note, I really hate finding out about things that shouldn’t have happened in the first place and then being the messenger of bad news… Ok, maybe sometimes I don’t, but then there are these moments… I’m too confused to even think about it right now…
The title is only about the first part of this post, by the way, just so there will be no confusion…
Got the new hard disk today, they replaced the failed one with no questions asked and even gave me a better one instead, a 7200.10 instead of that 7200.8, which was a rather nice surprise. Then again, I think it would have been harder to find a similar one since they’re probably no longer being manufactured…
So now I moved and decompressed everything I had saved on this 20 Gb drive and am waiting for a chance to get back what I saved on dad’s computer as well. Then I’ll just need to install Windows on the new drive and get back to “normal”, whatever that means…
All’s well that ends well, I guess.
Since my last post was also filed under Health, I remembered I had this rant planned for a long time…
The study that first made me want to write it is also quite pointless if you look at the general idea, of course patients will be happier with doctors that suit their expectations, but there were a couple of things that really bothered me.
One is the supposed finding that patient-centered patients treated by doctor-centered doctors were less dissatisfied than doctor-centered patients treated by patient-centered doctors. That is a potentially dangerous idea since it makes it seem safer for a doctor to take a doctor-centered approach when not exactly knowing the patient’s expectations, or at the very least gives those who already believe that approach to be the correct one an excuse for it, saying there’s less risk involved in it.
But the other thing, the idea that some people want their doctors to take the reins and basically order them around, is what bothered me the most and what I meant to talk about here in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but I find myself rather attached to my own body, literally… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of it and wouldn’t be using it if I’d have had any say in it in the beginning, but since I find myself quite stuck with it I’d much rather be the one deciding what’ll be done to it, thank you very much.
That said, I have to wonder what the people who would rather have their doctor decide for them are thinking, since the first thing that comes to mind is that they’re not thinking at all… Even if you take into account the fact that your doctor (hopefully) knows more about the strictly medical aspects of your problem than you do, they don’t know exactly what you consider as “feeling well”, what side effects you’d find tolerable and for how long, what substances and procedures you’d find acceptable and in what conditions and many other such things. They couldn’t know these things as well as you do even if you’d spell it out for them, not to mention that such a talk would take quite a long time and likely cover areas that would be completely irrelevant to your current problem.
From my point of view, a doctor’s first job is to provide an accurate diagnosis, then, regardless of the seriousness of the condition, to give the patient a few different options for treatment, even when their chances of success and perhaps even the definition of said “success” vary greatly. They should also take into account any treatment options the patient suggests and discuss them openly, since they could simply be things they didn’t think of. Then they could perhaps state which treatment option they think is best for the current situation, but leave the final decision entirely up to the patient since it’s their body that’ll be affected by it!
Basically, I think a doctor should advise and perform the tasks the patient can’t perform alone, but never make decisions for the patient as long as said patient is able to process information and express their wishes.
Besides, I think even those doctor-centered patients that I can’t wrap my mind around would make this work the way they want it to work. They could just ignore everything else and only take the advice the doctor offers about what they consider to be the best solution, therefore still refuse to make up their own minds. But having been told all that information might prove useful later even for them, even if only a small part of it will linger in some corner of their minds…
I hate it when studies suggest levelling the playing field to the least common denominator of cognitive ability… It encourages people to think less and to encourage others to think even less than they do themselves, which is a certain way to drag humankind even further down… Then again, it’s also a good way to ensure certain few individuals continue their ascension through this rotten society we built for ourselves, since the less people think, the more they’ll let others get away with…
Remembered another pointless study I saw a while back… What do you know, negative life events, especially when more of them are grouped together within a relatively short period of time, trigger mental disorders… No shit, Sherlock?
Honestly, who the fuck is even wondering about that, considering what things fall under “mental disorders” these days in this desperate attempt of the medical industry to squeeze out all the money they can out of everybody by convincing them they need their help?
I guess it’s possible that some of them are starting to even believe themselves and considering that people get sad and even crack for no reason, that effects have no causes… Quite funny if you think about it for a moment, it’s bad when you start to believe the lies you’re feeding everybody else and need such a study to show you some truth again…
I could comment more about it, but my mood’s too rotten for that and I guess everybody knows why, so I’ll settle for just this short rant…
