F seasonal depressurization or what you call it...

 An ad made me cry today... that's how you know you have to be careful what you do and say for a couple days...

Normally I wouldn't watch anything like this once ... but today I kept watching it over and over again...

Just ignore it

2 years have passed since my GF left me and today I got an E-mail from her, well, sort of... 

It was a Linkedin invitation. I kinda' hoped it was for real, for whatever reason, BUT when I cliked on it LinkedIN displayed an error. So she most likely pressed something she shouldn't have then corrected it.

Either way, it's not a good idea to jump to comclusions with women. Sometimes they intentionally do something and instantly regret it and say it was an error/mistake.

If an X wants to contact you, (s)he has all your contact information and will contact you properly, otherwise it's not worth your time ... not even to write about it on your blog. Oooops!

Life is short - maybe just midlife crisis thoughts at 39

This will make sense only to people who know me, so ... strangers don't have to continue reading.

I don't want a diagnosis, BUT today I feel "past life", I mean with all the shit that is going on in the world and in my personal life, I really don't care anymore ... about anything really. I have tried to keep many things under control most of my life, and I mostly failed, I think. I tried to not do bad if I can't do good ... but yeah ... in reality I have messed up a lot.

I appreciate the joy some people brought into my life.

1. My sort of first girlfriend brought me out of a deep depression at age 27. She didn't stick around, but made me realize that I want a woman of my own. It only took me like one month after that to get a young woman, with whom I spent almost 10 years of my life.

2. I'm glad she tolerated me for as long as she did. We both had serious deficiencies when it comes to relationships and social stuff, but we lived together for about 5 years, then dated for another 4 years before she threw me out. Then mentally I was still with her for at least another year. 

3. My family ... I appreciate that they exist, BUT now I have to admit that I would have been better off without them after the age of ... let's say 22. They never understood me, kept giving me bad advice and guilted me into eating really unhealthy food every weekend with them ... long story, turns out that I have crippling IBS. My brain stops working when I eat bad food ... so ... it was kindof a nightmare for years. I would eat at the family dinner and 2-3 days later I would get very high fever and abdominal pain ... almost every week. 

I saw my doctor a couple times, she said it's probably a virus, gave me some medicine and sent me away. She had me do some blood and urine test, which came back inconclusive or however you say it... and then I stopped going to doctors. From age ~19 to 39 I only went to the dentist, because that's kinda unavoidable, but that's it. Doctors can go to hell, if my doctor and nobody at the lab nor the specialist that saw my results said anything useful. Gave me some BS placebo over the counter meds and sent me away.

I don't think I'll ever go see a doctor until I end up in an ambulance/emergency room.

4. My sister I love and respect very much (now), but wasn't always like that. We lived together in the same room until I moved out at the age of 24 ... so ... yeah ... I blamed her for stuff that she wasn't really responsible for... always woke me up at 6AM when I had classes only in the afternoon.... and other stuff like that ... roommate stuff. I corrected my thinking shortly after I moved out. Our relationship got a lot better after I left, I think.

So ... it's not nice to keep grudges, BUT the person I really hate (still) is my 5th grade gym teacher, who was our head techer (or form master?) up to 12th grade. She was a woman, and did't know a lot about parenting nor teaching ... she made all the fundamental mistakes she could. Just a few examples:

1. she hit my best friend. Once she was lecturing him on something and said something like "do you know I stay late at work for you?!" then he replied in kindof an insensive way "I know, my parents work late too". Then she slapped him like the bitch she was.
2. she once threatened the class "if you don't bring in the donations, you can't come into school!". These donations were standard, meant to cover janitor's pay and heating bills and things like that ... BUT it wasn't like they could force us to pay, so she threatened us like the bitch she was. Turns out that one of the new students took it seriously, she didn't know the teacher was a bitch, so she didn't come to school for like 3 months. We all thought she was sick or transfered out, but after 3 months she came back and I remember the head techer asking her where she was and if she has a doctor's note or something ... and ... the new student said she's sorry, but her family is poor and couldn't bring a donation... (until then, i presume, that's why she finally came to school, because she got some money to donate. )

I'm not even going to bring up more examples. For these two things she should have gone to jail. Hitting a student for no good reason and threatening us to pay the donation, which is also profoundly illegal. Long story short, I can never forgive her for this... even if I ignore all the stuff she did to ME.

I also have to mention our romanian teacher from 5th grade. She was a very knowledgeable person at least, but she behaved like a POS in our school, which was a hungarian school in Romania ... and she was romanian, also a racist.

A couple of times she picked on me because I didn't do my homework, it was fine... but after a while I didn't do any homework and she would have me standing up, sometimes asked me if I was a retard, if I had a handicap. That was a breaking point for me, just like when the gym teacher hit my friend... I could never forgive that racist bitch, who also broke the law when she talked like that to me.

One little sidenote here ... kinda' funny... that romanian teacher later ended up giving me a passing grade after I failed romanian in 12th grade ... so it was a summer exam and our teacher got sick... so she filled in for her... and as luck would have it I pulled two titles out of the hat that I read the previous night, I learned nothing else. So when I pulled those out of the hat she said, hey, you know these two (she asked me what I learned/prepared for this exam when we went in and I told her exactly what). She was kinda surprised that i pulled those two out of ~50... maybe she felt it was fate, or felt bad about giving me shit in 5th grade, for whatever reason when I started talking, explaining how the novel starts by presenting the road to a town ...bla bla bla ... she interupted me and basically told/explained the whole novel ... then got back to me asking "and in the end?" I said "the author presents the road out of the town." ... and I got an 8 (something like a B- or C) passing grade. 

How I survived mathematics

Up until the 9th grade I had awesome teachers ... understood everything during class and did most of the homework really easily. Then came the bad teacher ... OMG ... I didn't get a passing grade in 3 of the 4 years of college? high school? whatever you call grades 9 through 12.

Psyhically I was already done with people. By the end of 8th grade I think ... it was enough for me, I wanted out... but continued for some reason... probably because of my parents.

I was always good in math, BUT in high school I only focused on programming, as the IT teacher was awesome and the math teacher was shit. I always got maximum grades in IT classes and even the bad math teacher saw that I was really good... so that's probably why she let me through the summer exam.

In 2003, my year of graduation, after the official graduation I passed math in the weirdest way. This wasn't just weird, but profoundly illegal.

I failed the written test and the oral exam, the bad techer gave me the hardest problems to solve, much harder than we used to solve in class. That was a garbage move on her part, BUT I failed ... went home, and hoped for the best.

Later I found out that I passed and the story behind it is that the techer already closed my case, BIG FAIL, "repeat the year, you loser!", BUT when she went down the stairs, she changed her mind, went back up, and corrected my grades to 6 (out of 10) ... which is the minimum passing grade on such exams.

Our Romanian teacher was kinda' awesome

I don't even remember her name ... I just realized that now ... I only remember the names of the bad Romanian teachers ... OMG Isaac Claudia used to ask me if I'm retarded, whenever I didn't have my homework. She kinda' had a point there, I had zero interest in learning that stupid language, never did any of the homework, BUT you don't say that to a kid, repeatedly.

In reality I was kinda OK, all my grades were fine up until 9th grade, when half of the class didn't get a passing grade, due to a garbage teacher we got. She was still young and didn't know how to teach.

Long story short my grades were mostly fine up until then, BUT I have the deceased Romanian techer to thank for finishing 12th grade. She introduced group exercises, which meant that I didn't do sheet. Arguably I was in a worse situation, as now the group was stressing me out that I couldn't do my part and then the teacher was also stressing me out...so ... it was mostly bad, BUT the way the techer ran things, some groups never got to present their work and that's how I managed to slip through the cracks.

In 12th grade I didn't get a passing grade, so I had to go take additional exams in the summer. That was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. My regular teacher was busy, so my old teacher from 5-8th grades came to do the exams. She hated me, but was happy that day for some reason. There were like 30-40 literary works that I should have studied for the exam, BUT I picked the exact two that I studied in a panic early in the morning before the exam.

I mean, that was really just... very unlikely... how things happened... I was starting with a few sentences and the teacher would continue ... then she'd ask me something, I responded correctly in a few words and she would continue... I mean... that was just a complete 180 my world did that day.

HOW THE TEACHER DIED?

Her memory will always be tied to 9/11 in my mind, as I explained in a previous post. She had bad pneumonia, went to the hospital, she got some medicine and they sent her home. She felt A LOT worse in a few days, she went to the hospital and later died. She got blood poisoning somehow and went unnoticed.

Where were you on 9/11/2001?

I was 16 years old in 11th grade, visiting a girl from my class whom I had a crush on and was obsessed with.

It was kinda' weird, I think I went there unannounced (as I did many times). Their babysitter let me in, I took off my shoes and weint into the living room, where she was watching the TV.

She greeted me and asked if I heard the news, I interrupted her and asked if she's referring to our Romanian literature teacher. That wasn't really appropriate, she was kinda' shook, BUT I was there and talked about it ... I think in the end it was fine.

So back to 9/11 ... as it turns out she was watching CNN in the living room, before I interrupted her with different bad news. I thought it was some sort of action movie, but she explained what has happened.

I was in a strange place mentally back then ... I just quickly replied that "yeah, criminals can do whatever in society ... and maybe will get punished afterwards". I wasn't really interested to watch it, instead we talked about something else ... I kept staring at her boobs when she wasn't looking ...etc... typical 16 year old guy stuff.

AFTER I WENT HOME

My parents were also watching the news, then I started realizing the true scale of what was happening. It didn't shock me, but kept up with the news every day to see the most important stuff ... about 1 year later? a few months later? I remember watching the war on TV, as the US tanks charge into cities and destroy other tanks, vehicles, buildings ...etc... fun times right before becomming an adult.

Don't be a customer!

Louis Rossmann just sold his soul to FUTO, a non-profit that aims to disrupt large tech companies, which may or may not be a good idea, you decide...

Anyways, this Rossmann guy used to run a macbook repair store and had excellent customer support... or customer handling procedures... and he told stories about his experiences with bad customers.

I always thought that customers have most of the rights, and it is like 99% true in my country, BUT Rossmann made me realize that kind of attitude causes more harm to you than to the business.

Financially I have always been in a weird place, let's just leave it at that, and I have done some questionable things to have retail stores replace my electronics under warranty, even though most of the time I broke the stuff, completely my fault.

That also means that mentally I was always in a bad place, that's why I let myself be so irresponsible and immoral with my actions.

There is this one second hand PC store (that I'm not going to name) that sells refurbished, used and very used computers and parts on-line, and also in their physical store... at ~90% retail prices, which is a major ripoff. So this is how I justified my actions, when I took advantage of an error on their website and ordered a Core 2 Duo processor for 10 bucks, even though I knew the price should have been 50 bucks... but they made an error.

So I placed the order, it got processed the next morning and I chose in-person pickup at the store, to avoid paying for shipping. I went there nice and early and the guy simply told me that it will be 50 bucks. I told him it says 10 bucks on the website, then he called his boss and the price was quickly corrected ... they also cancelled my order and said that I could leave. I was furious and on my way out I intended curse quietly, but it was got loud and everybody in the store heard "suck my dick!". This was my worst reaction in a public place EVER, the guy was coming towards me telling me that "this is not how we do things here", I quickly turned around, apologized and left ... BUT that wasn't the end of the story.

I wrote a nice long letter to the customer protection agency with screenshots and everything, explaining my position that I just wanted to order a product and they cancelled my order ... screenshots of the receipts ...etc... and I thought this was the end of it, my anger was completely gone after sending the letter.

Then one day (maybe 2 weeks later) I get a phone call from the consumer protection agency that they started an investigation, got in touch with the company and said they'll give me the processor BUT I have to apologize (again?). I didn't mind, because I was sorry for swearing at them, so I went to the store and ... yeah ... I apologized, then they made me wait ... then they said the item is not in stock, but they'll call me when they'll get some more. They played me, but I played along ... and visited the store 3 more times ... and got the same reaction, they even wrote down my phone number on a post-it ... yeah ... I knew they weren't gonna call me.

Back then (about 10 years ago) I though they were manipulative and evil, so I left a bad review on google maps and I thought it was the end of the story... and I behaved questionably a few more times at other stores, so they'd replace my stuff ... time went on, but one day I watched one of Louises' videos where he explained that these are standard procedures at stores to handle bad clients.

It struck me kinda' hard, so I decided that I'm not going to be a shitty customer anymore, EVER, because these acts caused me mental harm, even when I managed to achieve my goal... it's not worth it.

LONG STORY SHORT nowadays whenever I have a warranty problem I think twice about even sending back the product. If I really need it repaired or replaced, then I choose the least stressful method and patiently wait for my turn to get my product repaired/replaced. No more phone calls or emails asking when it's ready.

As a side note, this behaving nicely crap had some unintended consequences too. Once I ordered a very cheap Gigabit switch from a local store and didn't contact them for two months, just to be nice, because I knew they were professionals. As it turned out they forgot to (or couldn't) contact me AND many others who ordered the same product cancelled ... so when I visited 2 months later and asked about it, they had like 20 of these switches on the shelf and said that people weren't picking them up. They are good switches and I could have sold them all with a profit, no problem, if I actually called them in time and bought them all. SO in this case the store lost some shelf space and maybe a hundred bucks because of my patience and niceness ... go figure 🤷‍♂️