Warning: I just finished writing the following while finishing my 8th beer and starting on the 9th:

Meds not working as well as I thought they were, I just did not get a trigger in a while, until this week that is.
And I thought I might be able to go back on the job market this year. Fuck!

The trigger was simply a social worker leaving me a message that she was taking my case. I already have a social worker working with me so it's probably a mix up but apparently I cannot handle that kind of thing yet, I mean what if my social worker is fed up with me and gave my case to another one (i know that it's nor likely). And the day after that I received a letter from Canada Revenue, I know in my head it's just about the tax rebate they just deposited in my bank account but I can't stop making all kind of scenarios in my head that leave me on the street. And it's not like not opening the damn envelope would make a damn difference except to show that I'm wrong but I just can't.

I wish I could telnet into my brain to see what's wrong and fix it. But as CIV V always quote at me: " “If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.” , which according the internet is from a "Lyall Watson was a South African botanist, zoologist, biologist, anthropologist, ethologist, and author of many new age books" so what does he know. Are there any computer scientists trying to understand the human brain?

One of the many reason why I'm interested with time travel as a reality, I wish I could send messages to my teenage self and guide to poor aimless impressionable guy in a path that would revolutionize the world. We would either be cyborgs or have Skynet by now.

Also one of the reason I'm into A.I. except I prefer S.I. for Synthetic Intelligence. Synthetic material are as real and often better than the natural stuff.

And while I'm into divulging my fringe science interests, I'm also interested into anti-gravity. Fortunately I am not into free energy and Nazy UFO which is where most anti grav search seem to lead to. By that alone do I know I'm not fully insane.

BTW, I might have made similar posts here and elsewhere in the pasts, there are times when I need to vent.

Nope, every single one of those questions have been asked! With the porn question, I replied that since this was a library for everyone, there would be children present on every level. It was also against the library rules and I might have delicately suggested that maybe watching porn was a solitary activity to be done in the privacy of their own home? ;)
Ooops! I get confused with my left and rights! I actually meant to say on escalators, stationary on the right, walking people on the left! Going off to edit my post now!

I'm more selfish. I'd tell my teenage self to put all my money into Google and Amazon. Also, beat Apple to every patent they have in their portfolio.
Oh, and to be careful around that hairpin turn when I was 20. Spending a few days in the hospital and a month in a cast was a PITA.

I'd tell my younger self, "Hey, stupid - she's hitting on you. Go do something about it."

But in the end you look this badass, right? Totally worth it.

I'd tell my younger self to seek help instead of drinking and smoking my troubles away. All that alcohol and marihuarna has probably been a bad idea, as the alcohol probably did worsen my susceptibility for depression and the THC did probably worsen my susceptibility for psychotic-like symtpoms. Alas, the young are the unknowing.

Which is a privilege. Whenever I think "How would it like to be young with all the knowledge and experience I have now" in the end I think it would result in a stolen youth. There are people that grow up too fast, mostly because of hardships and dramatic events in their lives.

While it is impressive how well those kids can manage themselves and cope with life's stumbling blocks, it's still not healthy. Youth needs to have dreams and illusions and the freedom to make mistakes. If you could go back and "teach you younger self" this younger self would probably react like it would to a parent.

I'd tell my younger self the following:

"Hey man, there is something ybout your future i have to...hey are those chocolate chip cookies?"

"umm... yeah?"

"sweet, omg my old mega drive! LET'S PLAY WORLD OF ILLUSIONS!"

"ummm allright, but what about my future. you were about to tell me something about it?"

"aaaah, yeah, don't use drugs 'n stuff...blablabla... ok?...OMG AN UNDERWATER LEVEL!?"

Yeah. Why do I always have the impression that my younger self has more lessons to teach me than the other way round ?

I think there's a lot of truth in this.

I got a call this morning 7-11 at about 10:30. Woman with a foreign accent told me she was with Microsoft Maintenance department. She says to me "You do have a computer with Windows right?" I said yes I do have a computer but I do not run Windows. She got quiet.. I said I run Linux. Then she hung up on me. She didn't want to play anymore =)

(I do run Win on the computers and this was at my moms house. Now what would have happened if my mom was home and answered she is very naive and does not understand that people are out to get information. Even more now that she is not fully mentally there because of her thyroid. People make me sick and I would of loved to play on the phone with this woman for a while.)

Yeah, ever since the economy in this country turned to shit, I've noticed a lot of scam artists, calling me and my family, all the time. Most of the time, pretending to be from Microsoft, Google etc.

Ah, screwing with your younger self. Yeah, I'd have to do that as well.
I just hope they remain so incredibly easy to see through. Though, I am very suspicious of any door to door salesmen, phone calls, or emails. Any phone number I don't recognize I will not answer, I don't respond to emails from strangers, and I sure as hell don't let door to door salesmen in the house...not even the little girl scouts selling cookies.

I have played with the poor bastards enough for both of us. I received a spate of calls from them some months ago. They ask you to open a windows system directory via a command in the start menu. Then they claim that the .inf file endings in said directory are short for infected. Then they try to get you to go to their website and install garbage and pay something like $120 to restore your computer.

Sometimes, they'd call while I was drawing or playing a game that didn't need constant attention, like King's Bounty. So I'd see how long I could keep them on the line. (~45 minutes) After a couple of calls, I learned a better game. See how many levels of management I could get through. Basically, I'd flip and claim to be really worried about the infected files, and start vocally deleting them. Then I'd claim to really need their help, I have important banking files on this machine, and I'll pay whatever if they can just please, please fix it. Every time they'd direct me to a solution (their website), I'd invent some windows firewall error. The poor caller would get confused and hand me off to someone else. After 4 of these elevations, the last man decided I wasn't worth it, and hung up.

Another fella took me through the process, and after 30 minutes I apologized and admitted that I'd been messing with him the whole time. The guy shouted at me, "NO, I'VE BEEN MESSING YOU!" He got really agitated and I explained that he was wrecking peoples' computers for a living. I got the impression that he didn't know he was doing this. We parted courteously.

Interestingly enough, an early step in every call is asking you to explain what you see on your desktop. I always described something pornographic. Still, they wouldn't miss a beat, and would proceed with their pitch.

OK, it's official.
My job is gone. They informed me by email this afternoon.

TLDR: I am now unemployed. Yay! Bad working environment.
Aargh! Really bad job market out there - will I be able to find a new job?

I've been off sick for a few months with quite a severe problem.
During that time off, the powers that be decided that since we would be moving to a smaller building in a year's time, they would cut the staffing levels now.
4 years or so ago, the library system was put up for tender for a private company to come and run it for the council. Another library authority won the tender and one of the first things they did was a restructure in which they got rid of librarians because they cost too much and made the posts "Enquiry Officers". That way they could get away with paying people for exactly the same job 2/3 of the money.
A lot of our librarians left because they couldn't afford to stay.
They forced out all the good managers and that left only the ones that would push people off cliffs as long as their own jobs were safe.
They got rid of the Children's team which consisted of librarians that liked children and doing story and music times with them, and told the customer services team that from now on they would perform all the children's story and music times, with very inadequate training.
Needless to say, a lot of us balked at this.
They introduced an assessment programme in which you had to continually justify yourself and your job in order to be given a pay raise, despite the fact that inflation and cost of living rose dramatically.
(My assessment included "Give 5 examples of how you promoted the use of the library and got people to borrow more books. Cite dates and specific events." "Give 3 examples of people you induced to volunteer at the library. Cite specific examples and dates." S@!t like that going on for 30+ pages.
The staff that had carried over from when the libraries were run by the council rather than this private limited company that the other library authority created to run the service only had our pay protected for 5 years. After which it was expected that our pay would drop to new private limited company levels that were really quite a bit lower than ours.
Then, as I said they decided to "restructure" again, which meant they used a computer programme into which they fed variables such as issue statistics and visitor numbers so that this programme would tell them the "optimum" number of staff. Read that as redundancies for quite a few people as they fed in variables for the *smaller* building (that would only happen in a year's time and which isn't even built yet!).
Also everyone would have to be re-interviewed for their job with no guarantee that they would still have one at the end of the restructure.
Now, if as people anticipated that they would also "restructure" in another few years time, everyone would then be at limited company pay scales and terms and conditions.
This meant, if they left now they would get a higher wage redundancy package for a longer time. E.g. Someone working for over 10 years would get 6 months redundancy pay, whilst a limited company employee working for the same amount of time would only get 3.5 months pay.
So, a lot of the old-timers left whilst the going was good. The working atmosphere had also gone from one in which I woke up happy and eager to go to work into one in which I was almost ready to kill myself if it meant I never had to go into work again. Poisonous higher level managers and politics in which the lowly peons were used like medieval serfs and the managers got all the credit for our work. Another case in point, even if our assessments came out as "Exceeded all targets, and then some", only managers got bonuses.
But, I've been in this job for over ten years, and I was *very* good at my job. I have a huge problem with depression, which was at least partially triggered by the years of constant stress of working at the library.
I am both really scared that I won't be able to find another job (and my brain keeps on running down all the negative scenarios of what will happen if I don't) and quite elated that I won't have to work there again.
Part of me wants to just curl up in a ball and hide. But, I know if I do that, I'll never come out of this depression and I'll never be able to get on with my life... :( So confusing right now.

[Edit: typos.]