The Autumn of discontent. Etc.

Monday April 23rd 2012, 8:45

I’ve not really been doing much (see date on previous post!) because the house is such a huge mess right now that I’m finding it incredibly easy to find excuses to do anything else but my work. I’m going through the slow~ish process of chasing up consent forms, a lot of potential candidates have dropped out already, & I’m still feeling quite distanced & removed from it all.

Plus I’ve been working on some writing about the volunteering I did in New Zealand & have some difficult self~realisations to cope with there. The fact that this echoes some other personal work in a different arena is nifty, but not ultimately helpful just now. I suspect it’s one of those times where everything hits at once & it’s slow motion/non motion for a little while, then everything moves rapidly because a lot of internal & external housekeeping has been done. But, I am supposed to send off writing to Fabulous Supervisors today, & I don’t have much at all to send, so it will have to wait a few days.

Then, last night  around five thirty, we discovered that the dishwasher has given up the ghost. Big time. Half the horrible lino in the kitchen/dining area was cut away in order to put down sheets & towels to dry the floor. My sister came over with a hairdryer to get the crannies of the dishwasher cavity itself as it’s raining again & very humid. So today I need to clean the floor, dry the floor & rearrange the kitchen benchtops. Instead of writing. Ironically, I am now geared up to write (after not sleeping for three nights about it ~ & with the wonderful new mattress I bought us last week, that’s a feat! I’ve been sleeping really well now that my lower back isn’t cranky all the time, which was something else stopping me from writing. Hard to do it when it hurts to sit…), but will not get to anything until maybe late afternoon. Oh, & the tiler is coming to quote for that area plus laundry ~ which is great ~ but also means another huge launch into renovations. The house will be completed sooner than anticipated. Good. The house will be in continuing work/noise/dust for another few months. Aargh. If water is emotion, why is the room I relax most in subject to an overload just now? At the risk of channelling an excessive amount of Woody just now, what am I missing here?! What aren’t I doing right?? Why is this all just becoming unbearably hard to deal with, leaving me unbearably whiny??

Ok ~ so a small lake in the kitchen is not the end of the world. As such. But with the rest of the house in pretty much a shambles as the new office goes through final touches, it’s a Very Big Deal. Virtually all rooms in the house are now doing double & sometimes triple duty, it’s visual chaos & I’m completely overwhelmed with all the clutter. The floor sander comes back tomorrow to finish the final coat on the office floor. A week from that we can put furniture in, so it’s sort of the place where complete disorganisation is the norm for a brief fugue period before it all falls into order & ‘place’. The new bookcase needs a quick sand off & another varnish coat & it’s ready to go. Thank you Gumtree! Benchtops are cut & ready to be mounted. Thank you Gary! New storage in the old office will make the new guest room popular with the living room, laundry, linen press, & back deck, as everything will have someplace to go. Including business record files, huzzah! But that is still 3~4 weeks away.

Today I’m still figuring out how to juggle all the stuff I’m tired of juggling. I had wanted the office finished by the beginning of February so that I would have space & peace to write. Cramming in the odd few moments at a keyboard is not conducive to my writing process, nor my idea of taking the pressure off. Today I shall have to clean the floor again & rearrange the kitchen some more to accommodate a lack of dishwasher. I’ve got the biggest lurking headache due to lack of sleep, & feel as though I’m letting everyone, including my supervisors & myself, down in a very big way. I wish I could pull another month out of a rabbitted hat & get some order in place to write in. I’m ashamed to admit this ~ I’m not ill, disabled physically by this (really), & have a house that is sound & solid around all the clutter. I get very tired of having to deal with the personal life stuff. Everyone’s feels huge to them at the time I suppose, but I have a nagging voice at the back of my head telling me that I’m supposed to be better than all this now…

Head hurting more now, time to clean. Over & out for now. Aargh.

And then, just for complete contrast

Thursday March 22, 2012 13:00

So ~ after my not so teeny meltdown yesterday I called a senior IT staff member on her mobile & left a message. I had had a conversation with this person well over a year ago, & she had been courteous, well~informed, & very helpful. She returned my call at half past six last night because she was in meetings all day.

We talked for perhaps 15~20 minutes, & she recommended I speak with someone in particular, who was today incredibly helpful & walked me through the process of acquiring MS Office (full~strength) for a positive pittance. It is on it’s way via courier as I type.

What a difference some empathy, courtesy, kindness & generosity can make! I am grateful to both of these women who listened to my problems & questions, then helped me out, & where they couldn’t, explained why without blaming me (or my precious laptop!).

I am such a Lake of Tranquility about all this that when I needed to contact the Service Desk today, I was polite & made the guy on the other end of the phone laugh. Mind you, he was soooooooooo polite & meek that I think thunder has rained down from above… Lovely IT person #1 mentioned that I was the second person in a week to have been told that “we don’t support Mac”, which made an eloquent, calmly~spoken person of excellent breeding very hot under her collar. I suspect things have been spread with a large shovel, & more power to the shovellers, say I.

I’m glad today is a better IT day. Happiness.

Banging head against wall stuff

Wednesday March 21st 2012 11:00

OK ~ so I posted a rantette on FB because I have truly, truly had it up to my ears with the rudeness & stupidity of the University IT ‘support’ staff & the breathtaking, Ben Hur~ish~in~it’s~scope fuckwittage of some Uni higher~ups in charge of deciding what kind of access hoops are the most irritating, pointless, & time~wasting to engage with. Then I thought, bugger that! rant here, too!

I have been given leave to use the 300xxxxxx number I was told would be the one to use to get information about my scholarship (nothing else, just the scholarship!) in order to use Access Sharepoint to get hold of basic forms that aren’t actually required. What’s wrong with a PDF? What’s wrong with requesting projected funds information on an ad hoc basis in the first frickin’ place? This form, FYI, is not THE form that will actually be processed for actual funding for actual trips, OK?! This is the form that is the fact~finding aspect, so they have a rough idea in admin how much each candidate each year will roughly be asking for.

It seems that we at UWS have our own, personal Andrew Wilkie clone… but instead of a swiss~cheese approach to policy in the arena of gambling, this gem of ours loves to insert ‘permissions’ wherever she can, insists on Microsoft Access Sharepoint, & is high enough up that the rest of the Uni is forced to ride her hobby horse all the way to the therapy centre for anger management issues.

As for the IT people, I know that they cannot have all the answers I need, that would be unrealistic to expect. But, truly, truly, is it too much to expect some courtesy from them in the first place. Mention that you are a Mac user & they try to rip your throat out over the phone. I’ve given up & contacted one of the IT directors in the hope of gaining the information I need… This is ridiculous. I was using the Microsoft for Mac Office ~ it’s a student/home product & does the job of collecting & sorting my University emails without any fuss or holdup. Without warning, last Friday, the University evidently decided to change the IMAP access to Exchange access. This requires a professional version which (for two computers) will cost almost $400 dollars.

To do the same thing I already had set up.

With one slight product difference (Outlook vs Entourage).

So ~ I want to know (but am almost resigned to never finding out!)

A) if the University will sell me the upgrade Microsoft licence for a better price since I am a PhD candidate.

B) why UWS is a Microsoft subsidiary, but IT staff move swiftly to angry defensiveness when this is pointed out. (Because I am being discriminated against as a Mac user, perhaps?) Official downloads state that Mac users will have very limited use of Sharepoint & other programmes, & also have difficulty using the email (Microsoft Live) system. Staff members I have spoken with estimate that 20~25% at a minimum of University staff & departments use Macs, so this discriminatory approach to policy & implementation is puzzling as well as aggravating.

C) why UWS refuses point blank to provide support to Mac users unless it’s ‘a UWS Mac’. I was told snidely when I called up on Friday that my computer must be corrupt since it’s a private laptop, not UWS issued. Nope, you snivelling toerag, it’s not my machine, it’s your switch to a new gateway system without notice. I checked. When I attempted to create an Exchange account (as per official UWS single page email setup instructions for Mac users I found & downloaded myself stated), I was informed that I need the full version of the Office Suite & would I like to buy it now? Surely the IT department would have known about the cutoff date for Entourage IMAP access to email, but perhaps this is kept deliberately from Mac users as some kind of joke by IT idiots who are probably unemployable in the world at large… One can but speculate whilst committing murder in one’s heart…

D) will UWS be compensating me for my time & energy since I will now have to back~catch information regarding participant contact & levels of involvement. This was all sorted. I had a nice project centre going in Entourage which is now, thank you UWS IT department!, completely fucking useless. I now have to double, possibly triple, up on work to re~establish myself.

I am not doing anything more for University stuff today ~ I’ve had it. I understand why people quit the PhD process, because this is bullshit. I spend 4~5 times more on admin issues & paperwork than I currently do on actual reading & research. I will be spending 3~4 times more on taking care of emails than I did before & this state of play will maintain until I’ve gotten the Microsoft Office upgrade question settled with the IT department.

I truly, truly do not see the point of this anymore just now. I hate this waste of time & energy. I hate how I’m feeling. I hate the IT department in it’s entirety. And I really hate the bitch with the itch for Sharepoint.

Aaargh. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Movement at my station!

Wednesday 14th March 09:20

Whoo~hoo! I put out emails (manually!) to all ANZATA directory members between 7~8pm last night. I already have 7 potential participants! After months of go~slow, it’s now blasting ahead. Wow.

I also had someone tell me to contact Dr. Andrea Gilroy about her project of 25 years ago. The frustrating part is that I already have & gotten pretty much nowhere. I offered to pay for the photocopying of her thesis & postage from London to my place. I never heard back, so I’m assuming that the thesis would have to have been unbound, copied & rebound ~ which she did say she wasn’t prepared to do.

I can’t afford to go to the UK to look at a thesis that concerns ATs & art practice. But it would have been great to have… Due dilligence is a bitch, no?

Nice…

Couldn’t have put it better myself…

Farewell Betty

Wednesday February 7th, 17:35

R.I.P. Betty Myles.

You passed away yesterday. No more pain… not ever. You will be missed ~ your smiles, your optimism, & your sly sense of humour will be some of the best remembrances of anyone I have known. The world was  happier place for having had you in it, & I am privileged to have known you.

Slainte dear one.

In the beginning…

Friday February 3rd, 12:15pm

So ~ blank pages are always, always incredibly daunting for me. Beginning a project is often the most difficult part in many respects. And, yes, I do understand that I am not alone in this ~  but the knowing does not in any way, shape, or form, make this any less difficult.

Enter Sir Terry Pratchett. Everything in life, I find, becomes easier when you can relate it to Sir Terry. I whipped out the book with the relevant quote to help me out here (Lords and Ladies, in this case) and began to write.

Yup, I’m doing some procrastination, because with me that’s a built~in aspect of the writing process. I’ve learned to live with it. Yes, much of it is still in my head & yet to be expanded on the page, but I’ve begun. And some of it is worthwhile…

Exploring my moments of pivotal illumination has been interesting ~ I’m remembering more than I expected to, & I’m able to be gentle with myself about it, too. I’m clarifying some of my philosophical stances, which is interesting for other reasons. Some will work, others won’t, & that’s OK.

And I’m having interesting email discussions with a photography specialist in the USA regarding Copyright of some of his work ~ permission may or may not be granted, but I’ve worked out a solution to my writing either way.

Not perfect, but underway.

 

Sobering thoughts & procrastination

Sunday January 15th, 11:47

We have some elderly neighbours, they used to live in this street in a large townhouse, then they moved to a comfortable villa with no steps a few streets away. The wife has struggled with health issues for several years, iatrogenic in the main ~ arachnoid spine thankyousoverymuch!, followed by a car accident, & a large mass on her already vulnerable lower back. This has failed to close & heal post~removal, never a good sign. This week, her birthday & 65th wedding anniversary week mind you, she has been told that she has 3~6 months left to live. This is a wonderful, gentle woman whom, to my personal certain knowledge, never lets a negative or derogatory word cross her lips. Not even about her own bungled health issues, or the idiot young female driver who was on her mobile when she rear~ended our friend in her car.

Her patience is a lesson to me, as is her compassion. But most of all, it’s a huge wake~up call to get back to my keyboard in earnest with this first chapter of my thesis. I’ve played the dilettante for over a week now, to my shame. I have such a remarkably good life, for all that I can find it easy to complain about my (very rich when considered dispassionately) lot in life. I have health, family, love, creative projects, truly wonderful friends, & the capacity to actually realise my ideas into finished tangibles.

My urge to delay has collided with an iceberg of understanding that I take far, far too much for granted. & yes, this does count as one of my personal reflections about myself that will be examined along the lines of how this makes myself as sand grain or snowflake, textured into shadow, & how this impacts my work.

Happy Birthday Betty…

N.B.

Monday January 9th 2012, 12:13

NEVER attempt a serious return to writing on the same day that the floor polishers come in to begin on the New Office floor… there are some inherent conflicts with this pairing.

Strive to recall this scenario for future reference!

Interesting to note

Friday November 25th, 8:55

At the ANZATA conference I talked a fair bit about my PhD ~ & had some interesting conversations with two other women who are engaged in their PhD research as well. One is at MIECAT, the other is doing hers through Southern Cross. Very interesting projects, it was galvanising & heartening to meet with like~minded people who are writing in the same overall arena (meeting with others at Uni is all very well, but nobody actually knows my area & I’m usually bumping along around the edges so I don’t bother anymore), but the really nice bit was the methodology. We’re all using Merleau~Ponty as the core thinker.

Funny ole world, innit?