: The great LAN-divide.

Haven't had a lot to write about lately, at least not when it comes to stuff that have happened in my life. I mean, sure, there has been stuff going on, but nothing I really feel like its interesting to write about. I do have two different posts in progress, though, with some rather serious themes, but I'm not quite satisfied with either of them yet.

There's one thing I want to write about right now, though, one thing that I feel have sort of separated the group of friends I belong to. I visited a friend this week who is on the same side of things as I am, we started talking a bit about it, and we both would really see that it would change somehow.

I am, of course, talking about LANs, and LANers. For years I have considered myself a part of rather close group of LANers, that used to meet almost every weekend to play computer games and just have a good time. Unfortunately, as time goes by and people get older, start having relationships, have other more important things happening in their lives, and friends drift apart for one reason or other, it gets harder to find the time and opportunities to do this.

All of this is understandable, and can't really be helped. What I think is very sad, however, is how what's left of the LAN-community that I consider myself to be a part of seems to have been divided during the last couple of years. We used to get together everyone of us, as often as possible, but now it seems a few of us have been more or less left out.

On one side we have the social LANers, which I consider myself to be. We are the kind of LANers that go to LANs not only to play games, but to get together with friends and just have a good time, whether in a game or not. We're a rather small group, I can only think of three, maybe four, of us in the area at the moment, that I also consider part of the "good old" group of LANers.

On the other side we have the gamer-LANers. The ones that want to do more or less nothing but play games when on a LAN, and that seems to only want other gamer-LANers on a LAN. While I can understand that in a way, it ruins it for the rest of us who consistently gets left out.

If only someone had a place for everyone to gather this wouldn't have been a problem, but as the situation is at the moment, none of us social LANers have a place where we can arrange LANs. I would have loved to arrange LANs at my place again, it is certainly big enough, but... I lack proper furniture, plain and simple. And the other social LANers don't have places where it is possible to arrange anything either. The only ones who have places to arrange LANs atm are the gamer-LANers, which means that those of us who wants more out of a LAN than just playing games 24/7 have been left out for quite a while now.

I'm not out to force anyone to invite people they don't want to invite. People are free to do with their own LANs as they please, and if they really don't want to invite me, that's their choice. But being left out time after time after time, that really doesn't feel good...

I miss the old LAN-days... I really do.

: Sleepless.

This week will be interesting. I've managed to leave my dosette, the box where I keep my medicine for the week, at home. Yes, I use one of those things. I'm currently on three different kinds of medicine, all in pill or capsule form which I have to take at three different times of the day, and it's easier to keep track of it with one. Anyway... I almost never bring the actual medicine boxes when I go to Wenche's place, I usually fill the dosette to fit with the amount of days I expect I'll be staying. I usually only bring them when I might stay for a very long time, and it would be very unpractical to fill the dosette any further. And since I'm not even staying for a week this time, I have to go back to Dokka on Monday because of a doctor's appointment, I filled the dosette as usual... But forgot to put it in my backpack.

Now, two of the three pill-types I have to take wont affect me too much, at least not immediately, if I stop taking them. Those two are for my diabetes and cholesterol. The third type, however, will have a huge effect on me if I can't take it, and that is the one that helps me sleep.

This particular medicine is essential for my sleep pattern. I have something called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS), which means that my sleep pattern is locked to a certain time of day. In my case, I will usually fall asleep sometime between 5 and 7 in the morning, and wake up sometime between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. There's nothing I can do to fix this myself (go ahead, suggest stuff that you think might help, I have most likely already tried it several times without any success whatsoever), it's locked like this most likely for the rest of my life. I could try to move the "correct" time-zone. But I'm not gonna do that.

So I get these pills that sort of jump-starts the process that makes people sleepy and actually rest while sleeping, unlike regular sleeping pills, which will knock you out, but not actually make you rest. I've used them, and the result was that I slept for 18-20 hours every day. These pills, however, make me fall asleep normally and feel rested when I wake up. At least if I don't expose myself to too much light after I've taken them, as the active ingredient, melatonin, is affected by light. Without these pills, I can't function.

And right now, I don't have them.

So yeah, this week will be interesting. I usually retain some effect of the pills for a few days after I stop taking them, and it slowly goes back to my locked pattern by an hour or two every day, but I guess the "shock" of realizing I have to go the entire week without them has cancelled that out.

And yes, I know I could just go back to Dokka and get it. But I really don't want to use the extra money on it. And, the bus-ride is so fucking boring.

: Ugh.

I woke up this morning feeling really, really... I don't even know. Just completely indifferent about everything. I woke up first at 9am, when my alarm went off. I've started to have an alarm every day now, to try to regulate my sleep pattern, but so far I haven't been too good at obeying it, so to speak. But today I just didn't care. So I went back to sleep instantly. During the next four hours I woke up and fell asleep several times, and finally, at about 1pm, I decided to get out of bed.

I was starving, but didn't have any food in the house. I really, really didn't feel like going to the store either, I didn't want to leave the house at all to be honest, but I eventually pushed myself out the door. And that's probably the best thing I could've done. After walking down to Dokka, having a 333g burger, and walking back up after buying some groceries, I feel a lot better. I still don't feel great, but it's definitely an improvement.

During the weekend I've been playing some more Star Wars: The Old Republic. I got invited to the last beta test weekend, after playing in the previous beta test weekend. I might go write a follow-up to my last post over on Eqagames about it, but I don't feel like doing that now. I will say this, though; I'm surprised by how poor it runs on my computer when I get to the bigger areas. Skyrim runs better on my computer than SW:TOR... I don't know, maybe it's just not optimized for laptop graphics, or something.

: Hazy days...

As I wrote in my last post, I got sick several days ago. And I still am. So the last few days have been pretty uneventful. I've pretty much been completely drained of energy, so I've done next to nothing, except sleep and sit on the couch in front of my computer. I haven't even really felt like playing any games. Still, I had the opportunity to participate in the SW:TOR beta, so I played it a little. You can read about that over at my gaming blog.

I think I've been a bit too passive the past few days, though, and I think Wenche might be a bit annoyed at me about that. Not that I've been completely passive, I've done the dishes a few times and helped a bit with the laundry, but it's less than I usually do. I guess I should remedy this tomorrow. I'm feeling better than I have been, and I really hope it's even better tomorrow. Knowing my luck, though, I'll probably wake up tomorrow feeling worse than ever. Heh.

To be honest, the last few days is more or less a blur to me. I guess that's what happens when you're barely doing anything for several days. What I do remember, though, is that Wenche went out to a job interview on Monday. And she got the job. It's not much, just something through NAV again, but it still means more money, and it's on a farm that she describes as her dream place. So she seems happy about it. If the issue of transportation gets sorted out, that is. But she says NAV is going to figure something out, so hopefully that wont be a problem this time.

: Sick, again.

Ugh. I feel like crap. Again. It started yesterday, kinda. I had a sort of faint soreness in my throat all day, but didn't really think too much about it. But when I went to bed last night, I knew that it would get worse. And it did. My throat is sore, my head feels heavy, I feel weak and semi-feverish. I don't think I actually have a fever, though. Not yet, anyway.

The last few days I've been working on a post about legalizing drugs, and today in the paper I read about that Christer Falck guy talking about wanting to make alcohol illegal. Normally that's something that would've made me want to finish my post, but I just don't feel it today. And I have a feeling I probably wont feel it the next couple of days either. I just really want to go back to bed, even though I know I shouldn't.

: Ayumi

Woke up to some bad news today. 

Gina, the owner of the house, knocked on my door, and told me someone had called her about a cat that might've been hit by a car. The caller thought the cat belonged to her, as it ran down to "our" house after the car hit it. They didn't know how hard it had been hit, but I figured it couldn't have been too bad if it ran away. 

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Gina hadn't actually looked for it yet, and I wasn't really awake yet, so she said she'd walk around the house to see if she could find it anywhere. A couple of minutes later she came back and told me one of my cats was lying behind the house, not moving. She hadn't approached it, though. So I threw on some clothes and walked around the house myself, and found Ayumi... Dead.

One of very few pictures I have of Ayumi... RIP.

I don't really know what else to write...