Slashdot

I got bored the last couple of days, and redesigned my website, as well as shifting it from Blosxom to Movable Type, because I was annoyed by the lack of support for XML-RPC.

Jon

[Update: You probably want to use a real browser to view it... the CSS layout is a little (understatement!) crappy under IE.]

Yes, it was a little longer than it should have been maybe :P

Anyways... things that have happened over the last how ever long.

About a month ago now, I was laid off from my job, because we lost just over £400,000 of funding due to the new government system, which meant losing our online centre, and about a third of our staff, including me.

Which has led to a very much up and down period for me - a lot of my purpose in life comes from doing a job I feel worthwhile doing, which isn't happening at the moment, so my sleep cycle is screwed beyond regognition, and I'm not really doing much. Thankfully though, there's been a fair bit of up in the mix this time round (last time I was unemployed was... unpleasant).

A couple of days after losing my job, I was told about an ad for someone to do the supporting people side of the job I was doing, instead of the supporting the computers people use side I had been doing and moving away from, which I applied for, and have an interview for on Friday.

I have to say, I think it was probably a good thing to move on - I'd just about decided that while I love it as a hobby, I can't really maintain computers as a job - I just lost my passion for it in either place (which thankfully is back now :D). What I do love as a job is making a difference to people, which I hope I'll be able to do in the job I'm interviewing for, since it sounds similar to what I was doing before.

I'm also going to go stay with my best friend in Manchester for a few days next week, getting to sample the student life, and more importantly spend time with the person I feel most comfortable talking to about me, instead of the bullshit I talk about with most people - last night, at about 5am, I was lying awake, feeling lonely, so I sent her a text message (SMS to the USians?) asking for a hug, expecting to get a reply in the morning, and really just needing to feel like somebody cared. A few seconds later, she rang me, and we talked about nothing much for the next hour or so :)

As you may have guessed, I'm looking forward to spending time with her, since despite the fact it's been less than a month since I last saw her, it still sucks :P

Church stuff is going nicely, I'm sorting out the visuals for an event we're running in the main church building in April (we usually run the main youth event in the dingy little hall, this time round we're in the main building, and taking over the usual evening service) - so I'm gonna have a couple of 8x12 screens to play with on either side, and a third standard size screen if it's needed. I also love the building... it's an old style church, complete with bell tower, and is just a really comfortable atmosphere.

I am kinda apprehensive about the home group I help lead though, since we've got someone joining tomorrow, and I'm not too good with new people :S

And I think that is where I end my ramblings for today.

Jon

Update on me... sometime soon... plenty to say, just havn't got round to journalling it yet.

Anyway - I just saw the "She thinks Tux is cute, click here to meet her now!" ad for /. personals.

Why is thinking Tux is cute so special? Every woman I've ever met thinks Tux is cute. It's built into the brain of women to find cuteness in him!

What I want (and incidently have right now :P) is a woman who not only think Tux is cute, but has an idea of what he represents, and preferably thinks of it as more than "that other operating system".

And since I'm on a rant anyway... I've given up on article comments most of the time now, because they seem to have been *completely* overrun by trolls.

And why does PyCon feel the need to define the maximum width, height, and *area* for their sponser's logos to be displayed... I don't think I've ever seen an image size defined first as a maximum of 10800 pixels in area, and then given maximum width and height.

Rant over. You can all go home now :P

Jon

Well, I've spent a large chunk of this afternoon on the phone to our ISP's tech support department, and finally managed to get pushed up to first level support, after only a day of trying.

A month or so ago, our ISP (Redstone Communications... avoid them like the plague, we're on a 1 year contract) decided to install DSBL based blacklisting without telling any of their customers about it. Since then, we've had e-mails bouncing from people, the biggest set being our satellite offices around the city, who use Yahoo's SMTP servers to send their e-mails. We've also had reports of bounced e-mails from funders, which is a major problem to us.

So I rang tech support, and asked for anything sent to safe.org.uk to be whitelisted. The first two levels didn't understand what a whitelist is, or why we'd need one. Third level then went on to claim that whitelisting e-mails to our domain alone, would cause all their customers to receive more spam, and anyway, the software they use doesn't allow you to change the DSBL list.

Why whitelisting involves changing DSBL's listing is beyond me, or how they picked commercial spam filtering software which doesn't allow whitelisting (God forbid I ever need to e-mail their postmaster address).

I've now finally hit first level, who after I convinced them that the fact it hasn't been a problem in the month they've been running it for people, doesn't make it not a problem now that they have a paying customer on the phone telling them it's a problem. I think when I mentioned that we were paying for a service which wasn't doing what we needed it to in a "so we might stop" voice, they figured they should do something.

So now first level are looking into whether their software really doesn't support whitelisting, or if they just couldn't be bothered to read the manual earlier.

Update, 16:27 - I received a reply from their tech support via. e-mail, which effectively said "this incident shouldn't happen now, just put up with the fact we're deleting e-mails that may or may not matter". I also checked the feature list for Mailshield, the software they said they use - included in the feature list is... whitelisting. It actually looks like nice software if it's being used by people who know what it can do.

This is going to be an all over the place journal, since I don't think I quite have things in a tidy line, but I wanted to get this out into words before I go to bed.

While talking with a friend on MSN this evening, I was suddenly hit with this:

Jon... I know I shouldn't say this, but... *Pauses.* I love you.

Which was... to say the least... quite a surprise.

However I'm now stuck in a bit of situation... I know that I feel a strong caring for her, a closeness, but at the same time, I can't say that what I feel is love - because I don't know what love actually is.

Strangely... or more likely not so strangely, something (I believe his name may be God), it's a subject I've been talking about recently.

Everything seems to be going so quickly though... a week ago, I was on the edge of talking enough painkillers to ensure I wouldn't wake up in the morning, and now... it's like someone beat me round the head with a stick, which has rearranged my brain cells. I feel... happy... really happy - I was walking through the park near my house tonight, looking at the stars, and just being amazed at the fact that they were put there by a God that loves me, so that I could look up at them and be amazed.

I really believe that this is meant to be happening how it is, and that I'm meant to be with [plays the random names game, and chooses Jaedyn, the name of her D&D character], but I also know that it was God who put this in an e-mail sent to me the other night, for this very moment:

don't make any decisions without waiting a day or two to see how you feel

so in a huge break from character for me, I'm going to actually take some advice, and do just that... I can tell you right now, it's one of the hardest things I've done in my life (and I've done some hard things psychlogically), but I also know, deep inside, that it's what I need to do.

Jon