Why not go here to see Howie Mandel, Clara Hughes, Michael Landsberg, and Mary Walsh talk about their experiences coping with their mental illnesses, as well as 3 of the TV commercials and an explanation as to why sharing is an important part of removing the stigma.

I visit a few threads here, on reasonable topics - like Barrett Brown case, etc.

The level of discourse has really troughed. It's like "conversation" between the Dufflepuds..

It's not worth even trolling these people. There isn't enough signal-to-noise for this to even register.

Ususally someone screams "Godwin" within minutes ... strange. Must be the topic bringing out the worst in people.

Every time I tried to access a subdomain by clicking on a story (yro.slashdot.org, science.slashdot.org, etc), I would be logged out. Returning to the main page, I'm logged in again. Surprise, surprise, it doesn't happen in Chrome. So I guess that's it for me. Google has just managed to make me switch.

This year is not even 2 days old, and things are happening.

On December 15th, I wrote my Year in Review, in which I detailed the good, bad, and ugly things that had happened over the last year. I found out yesterday that I was wrong about failing to stop the Co-op developer.

One of my neighbours gave a lift to two people, one who is a former worker there, and the other who still works there. Seems I'm notorious around their offices. It turns out that by my delaying part of their work for more than 6 months, they couldn't get the progress payments from the bank that was lending them the money as a bridge loan. No money, contractor stops work, the monthly fixed costs still have to be paid ... so they're basically broke, and looking for a way out.

Turns out that I didn't need the cooperation of the people on the other side of the street to continue the resistance. So, one person can make a difference! Woot!

On another note, I don't like facebook. I've created accounts there several times, and abandoned them. The interface is clunky, there's not much in the way of serious (or even non-serious) debate - heck, even a good troll once in a while would be comic relief!

But I made another new account a while back (lost the old accounts' password), and after fooling around with it, ignored it.

Until New Years Eve. I had friended a few people, and facebook had suggested a few others, and I friended a few of them. My half-sister, who I've only seen once for maybe 15 seconds, is one of them. I really didn't know just how to approach her, but I wished her a Happy New Year, she returned the greeting, and we got to chatting. So now I have 6 sisters, not 5. Wow. Just ... wow!

I still think the design of facebook sucks, but for me, this kind of makes up for a lot of the suckage.

I hope your year is starting off as good as mine!

It's that time of year again. Look at the past year, and figure out what we're going to do in the new year ... also called "New Years Resolutions" ... also called "Lying To Yourself" :-)

1) Lose that weight I put on since going on antidepressants.

2) Get back to my writing once the effects of the last depression are gone.

3) Not be so much of a stickler for details / pedantic.

That's enough for one year. It might not sound like much, but these last few years, and especially this last one, took a lot out of me. I'm hoping that 2015 will be a time of healing and optimism.

And for everyone else ...

Whether this has been a bad year or a good year, I hope that this time next year you'll be able to say 2015 was a good year, a better year, a kinder year. Happy New Year, gang!

Feel free to use a REAL instead of a FLOAT.

Another reason not to trust H.R. consultants - as if anyone needs one.

Is this a targeted hate crime?

A catfisher must have come upon one of my email addresses, and wants to get friendly. Obviously, I don't!

The options are (a) ignore or (b) do some "Social Justice Trolling".

Anyone have any experience with a catfisher?

Two interesting submissions from the firehose:

Woman game developer may have never "fled her home"

and

FBI confirms open investigation into Gamergate

Analysis of photos on reddit (scroll partway down) call her claim to be in hiding as extremely doubtful.

The interesting stuff [reddit.com]

I had always maintained that Wu was misleading people into believing that she was "forced from her home", that the "internet death threats" were not to be taken seriously, and that the police did NOT tell her to go into hiding. There's also the pics that show she was back home when she did the interview claiming to be on the run and not knowing when she'd be returning. So obviously she didn't take the threats seriously either - it was all hype. It will be interesting to see just what the FBI turns up about the source of those threats. Whether she didn't take them seriously because she was the source of them is now a fair question.

Why? My guess is she wanted to get into the public speaking gig scene, since she wasn't exactly making a hit as a game developer. Of course, after the HuffPost interview where she claimed to have both studied law and to have a background as a journalist, but got so many things wrong, it became painfully obvious that wasn't going to happen.

Normally, people do this just before New Years, but I'm avoiding the Christmas rush.

It was not the best of times, it was not the worst of times ...

The good

Help with PTSD.The problems with my eyes, the battle with the developers, and everything else became too much a year ago. I saw that I was going down the same emotional rat-hole I had a couple of years before, and after one particularly bad nightmare of being assaulted in bed at knife-point, I was scared me enough to try one more time to get help dealing with my PTSD. I got lucky. Got a good psychiatrist who helped with medications, a psychological evaluation, and a therapist to help deal with the murder and the sexual assault.

Improvements in my eyes. The surgeons did a vitrectomy and retinal peel to restore vision in my left eye, which had gone completely blind from proliferative diabetic retinopathy. I can see out of it, but not read with it (too much distortion). The right eye no longer bleeds. This summer, I was able to start using a computer again once I learned how to ignore my left eye. Not enough to program but enough to surf on slashdot :-)

Standing up for trans rights

The building developers (see below) had publicly outed me as a transsexual at a public meeting hosted by the city, attended by many of my neighbors as well as others - between 100 and 200 people. Juicy gossip travels fast. Rather than give in to their attempt to get me to stop opposing them, I forced the guy in charge to publish this display ad in the main news section of the two largest newspapers with a combined daily circulation of something like 3/4 of a million.

I believe very strongly in "pay it forward." This ad is part of that.

The bad

My battle to help my former neighbors fight the developer. I must have spent about 1,000 hours encouraging them, instructing them on their legal rights, monthly public and private meetings with the city council and mayor. Interviews on TV and the radio. Stories in the newspapers.

I went to court three times and used the courts to get the necessary documents. Anyone could successfully challenge the illegal evictions by just sitting on their butts and waiting for the new owner to try to give them the boot, then say "Show me da MONEY!"

This spring one tenant who took my advice got 6x times the money they had offered him and a delay, which kept him from ending up in the street in the middle of winter. Another won 5x the offered funds, plus the right to return to court if it's not sufficient. I did okay. I walked away with just under 7x the amount offered, after delaying work on my building by more than half a year.

So, with these initial successes, the 50 families facing the same situation this fall were almost unanimous in their declarations about how they would stand and fight. And then folded almost immediately, taking the lowball offers that didn't even meet the legal minimum. That was a tremendous disappointment.

Sickness in the family. This spring, while all this was going on, one of my sisters ended up in the hospital with a stroke, was released a month later, and half a week later was back in with another stroke and two fractured hips, and paralysis on one side.

I spent a lot of time at the hospital, doing a lot for her. Transferring her from the bed to the wheelchair and back because they way they were doing it with a porta-lift or two orderlies was time-consuming and hurt like hell, whereas I could do the transfer in less than 15 seconds with minimal pain. Encouraging her not to give up. Washing her down. Telling her the truth when everyone else was lying because they didn't want to hurt her. And getting hell from everyone in the family for telling her the truth. Escorting her to and from hospital appointments because, to put it simply, nobody else was available. Being there when she'd get the latest bad news from the doctors.

This continued into rehab for several months. She had worked in a "home", and knew how bad it could be. She feared it, and I told her I would do everything possible to help her avoid it. I left the development. Rented a larger place with enough room for her and her wheelchair. Of course, everyone else in the family opposed it, but nobody else could take her. In the end, without any help it was just not possible, so another failure.

The ugly

I had been warned that the depressions I had suffered would quite possibly come back, and it did. These back-to-back failures hit me harder than I thought they would. I described what it's like to be mentally ill here. And at the end of November, after almost 8 months without a panic attack, I had the worst one ever.

Last month I told my psychiatrist that I was determined to beat this, but I now realize that beating it is impossible - I'll have to learn to live with it, same as diabetes. Remind myself of my promise not to do anything stupid or take major decisions when I'm down in the dumps, and to reach out for help at the first signs. But at least I'm still around, and I expect to be so to write the 2015 review.

So, how was your year?

In the discussion thread under Doom 3DO Source Released, slashdot user ArmoredDragon attacks the submitter by referring to her as an "it" here

Well, I (among others) couldn't let that pass ...

He tries to weasel out of it here

but another user calls him out on his excuse

There's a lot more of that, but it gets stranger ...

I'm not going to go through the whole war, in 3 separate sub-threads ... just provide quotes from the sub-thread that gets into him defending bestiality

My reply:

He defends it because of he saw a BBC documentary

My reply:

I had already been thinking about writing this for the last couple of weeks when The Schizophrenic Programmer Who Built An OS To Talk To God made the front page. There appears to be a sizable contingent who still believe that mental illness == crazy. 4% of the population will have a serious mental illness in the next 12 months. So let me share what it's like to be mentally ill.

Am I mentally ill? Sure. I'm being treated for both PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and MDD (Major Depressive Disorder).

Am I "crazy"? No. No "voices in my head", no "visions", no "loss of contact with reality"; in short, no psychosis.

About 3 years ago I went into a deeper and longer depression than ever before. I had reason to be depressed - my retinas were deteriorating, using a computer for 8 hours a day was out so I figured (rightly) that my career as a programmer was probably over, and I didn't have a clue as to what to do next. I wasn't able to stay awake more than a few hours at a time, and when I wasn't sleeping I found my thoughts turning more and more to suicide.

I dropped out. From slashdot. From the net. From friends. From family. My life boiled down to trying to think of any excuse, any reason, to have hope, and walking my dogs in the winter snow.

As the weeks turned into months, I had failed to convince myself that the pros of life outweighed the cons, so I picked a date - the month of May. And yes, I had a plan.

Spring came, and I think it was in April that my mood started to reverse itself. By May, my depression had mostly passed, and I resigned myself to slogging on and hoping for better times.

I was an idiot - I freely admit it. It never even occurred to me to go to an E.R. and ask to see a psychiatrist. I had managed to make it through all these years without professional help, that when I needed it most, it was off my radar.

Last December things started to fall apart again. My eyesight had temporarily deteriorated to the point that I was letting my dog mostly lead me around outdoors. I was having nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks, and I dared not show it because a couple of hundred people were depending on me to lead the fight against a property developer who had taken over our apartment buildings. They were trying to illegally kick half of us out by February 1st, do some renovations, jack up the rent, then repeat with the other buildings. So I'd go and encourage yet another family that I wouldn't let them down, then go home and cry.

One particular nightmare convinced me that it was imperative that I get to an E.R. sooner rather than later, or I'd end up down the same rabbit hole I had fallen into 2 years prior.

I got lucky. At first, I befuddled the psychiatrist with my story. I explained that yes, I was a transsexual, but that had nothing to do with the problem at hand, which was PTSD, which had been diagnosed at another hospital after a sexual assault, but it had started when I was in high school when another classmate killed his father.

I was talking so fast, and my story was so incredible, that (he later confided) he thought I was having a manic episode. Or on drugs. Or both. I gave him permission to check the other hospital's records to confirm the assault, and to call one of my sisters to confirm the murder. My urine sample came back negative, so we talked about what was happening in my life, and what I wanted from him.

That last bit was simple - "I don't want what happened before to happen again. I don't want to go into that black hole with no way out."

I left with a prescription for an antidepressant, and a follow-up two months hence - but if things got bad, "don't wait - call me."

We had to change antidepressants twice - the first one ... well, I've never done drugs, but waking up and being able to control my dvd player / tuner with my mind was a bit too much. The second one removed by ability to sense that I was going hypoglycemic - I went to rise from my kitchen chair and immediately passed out. Woke up just over an hour later on the tile floor with a solid concussion and bruises on both sides of my body.

The third time was a charm. The new prescription ended the anxiety, didn't interfere with me realizing that I had screwed up my insulin dosage, and the only side effect was that I often had to take a nap around lunch. I was now in a good place again.

It was about this time that I started therapy to help me how to deal with PTSD. Here too I was lucky. My therapist had previous experience dealing with transsexuals, as well as people with PTSD and rape victims, so when she had a chance to work with someone who combined all three she immediately volunteered.

By this point I was symptom-free, so I was able to focus on applying what she was teaching me - distorted thinking aka cognitive distortion, as well as helping me to finally understand that not only was there nothing I could have done to prevent the murder and that most people would have been killed, that crazy events don't have rational explanations and trying to find one will just drive you crazy, that trying to help someone else but failing doesn't make me a failure, and that those in my family who won't accept me by now, there's not much to do except accept them the way they are.

I also underwent a few sessions with a psychologist, giving him background info, answering his questions, taking different tests. The Rorschach was the most interesting. I told him how strange it was - I remembered the answers I had given as a kid, but I didn't see the same things at all (my previous answers were "dark").

So, everything was now under control, and I felt better than I had in ages. I was moving to a larger apartment in a better neighborhood, having fixed things up so that none of my former neighbors had to do ANYTHING except (1) refuse every offer, (2) wait for a summons, (3) go to court, and (4) PROFIT. We had the judgments, we had the law on our side, and I had delayed work on my side of the building by 6 months by the simple expedient of refusing to move out. Any further delay and the project was dead.

My therapist had warned me that because I have a history of depression, it would likely happen again. She was right. Late August and early September were denoted by three back-to-back negative events. The worst was that despite my best efforts, and moving into a larger place that had enough room for someone confined to a wheelchair, there was no way that I would be able to keep a close relative from having to go into palliative care instead.

I then set up the two laptops (one Windows 8.1, the other Fedora 19) and two 26" screens, and set about trying to get back into coding, since I have one eye that I can still read with. I was hoping against hope, but it turns out there's no way I can get "back into the zone" again. At least not while taking anti-depressants, and that's just too risky.

And in the end, almost every person who had agreed not to accept any offer from the developers folded without a fight. Sheeple really are sheeple. I feel sorry for them.

Three failures, back-to-back-to-back. I took the first one particularly hard. I started to get "down in the dumps". When it didn't clear up in a couple of weeks, I promised myself that if there was no change I would call my psychiatrist. Things started to improve, but it was like the calm before a storm. Within another week I was not able to stay awake more than 2-3 hours at a time, despite 10 or more hours of sleep. My mood darkened, thoughts of suicide came to seem more and more "reasonable". "Why should I continue if I'm always going to end up back here?" "There's no future." "The only person who benefited from all my hard volunteer work this past year was me. Couldn't even do that right." "My life sucks." "Being me sucks. What a waste."

A month in, I was counting the days to my next appointment with my psychiatrist, which was still a month away ... It was draining. My days had devolved into sleep, get up, walk the dogs, have breakfast, surf slashdot for a while, take a 3-4-hour "nap", walk the dogs, surf slashdot for a while, take another "nap", have supper, walk the dogs, go to bed, all while thoughts of killing myself were chasing me.

The last week of October things started getting better. I was still unable to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, but by the first week of November, I was in a better place emotionally. No more thoughts of pulling the plug, and that's all that counted. I described it to my psychiatrist when I went for my appointment and he told me that I should have called when I first noticed things going downhill. I told him that I hadn't wanted to intrude, seeing as we had a scheduled visit coming up, but he assured me it wouldn't be an intrusion - he's there to help me, it's his job. I understand that, but I still feel a bit like I'm imposing on him.

The upshot is that my evening antidepressant dose is now doubled, and I now have a different one for the morning, which will hopefully get rid of the need to sleep during the day. So far, it's not working, but it's only been a week, and I see him in another 4 weeks to re-evaluate.

So, as promised, a look into what being mentally ill is like. It must seem strange, alien, to most of you, but probably not so much to the "walking wounded" out there who are suffering in silence because of all the stigma and prejudice. Not to mention sheer ignorance - I don't know how many times people (especially family members) have told me that I should "just pull myself out of it". Now THAT'S depressing :-)

So who would you trust - Bitcoin or eCoins from the country with the soundest banking system in the world

Now that I've got 10 or 15 chapters written (sorry, can't be bothered counting) I'm going to follow up on Tuesday's JE, "50 words or less?"

AS you may recall, my premise is as follows:

• 1. Get the reader's attention in 50 words or less (your opening paragraph) with one of your main points. It should pose enough questions that the reader wants to read the rest of the page;
• 2. Make sure there's enough meat on the rest of the page to get them to want to finish off the first chapter;
• 3. If they finish the first chapter, you've got a chance to get them to read the rest.

So here's the first couple of pages of the first chapter. Rather than setting up the scene, I throw the reader into it and only introduce the background facts where they need them. This means that the reader doesn't have to wade through (potentially) tons of stuff that has no immediate relevance before getting to the story proper.

NOTES: The reader now knows, without having to first wade through any boring chapters about high school or family, the approximate age of the characters, as well as some of their issues and some of the dynamics between them. The reader also knows, or at least strongly suspects, that someone's going to be killed any second.

Sure, I could have taken 50 pages to set it up, but why bother when there's so much more to tell (this is, after all, only the beginning).

Criticism, as always, welcome. I have my asbestos undies on :-) And no, I'm not saying this is the only way to tell a story - just that it's the way that I think this story can best be told.