Jack Mullaly (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} medrawt) wrote,@ 2002-10-07 15:05:00 |
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Kerfuffle and feelings
So on Monday afternoon a week ago, I suddenly found my internet connection wouldn't route. I couldn't get mail or web. The next morning I half solved the problem by putting the mailservers in my hosts file, then called Tech Support at Speednet. I hate calling tech support but I've had to do it 2 or 3 times now for Speednet, which is more times than in all my years before on the net. They're a crap ISP.
Back to the point. Speednet told me it was a known problem with Windows 2000 and the only way to fix it was to reinstall DUN/RAS. So I tried, but there doesn't seem to be a way to uninstall it seperately. OK, so I went to reinstall win2k altogether. Did that, there were more problems such as NIC and modem not picked up properly or at all. Ok, so I stuck a spare hdd on, backed up my data and tried again, re-installing 'over the top'. Still didn't work. Ok, so I decided on a complete fresh reinstall, but had trouble formatting the hdd. Ok, so I installed Linux temporarily to format it (Linux and KDE look great on a big screen). BUT - I didn't think to unplug my backup hdd, it just did't occur to me and didn't seem necessary. To be frank it still doesn't. BUT when I reinstalled win2k on a blank drive, it couldn't read my backup drive, saw it as 'unallocated'. To cut an already long story short, I lost a lot of data, some dating back 6 or 7 years. Writing, uni work, web pages, contact details, all sorts of shit. I was not a happy camper.
I went to sleep at 4pm that day and slept for about 16 hours. The week before I read an article about some woman who'd lost all her email and contacts and how upset she was. I thought it was a bit silly, then it happened to me. It *is* upsetting. BUT when I woke up the next day, I thought to myself "There's two ways I can look at this. I can be upset I lost all that data, or I can be happy I got the machine working properly." I decided to be happy.
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I've always believed that feelings are decisions, not things that come upon you leaving you no choice but to go along with them. Feelings are not facts. I try to base my life and my decisions on facts. I value reason and rationality. I believe I can decide how to feel about any given situation or person. And yet I have a severe mood disorder - manic-depressive psychosis (MDP). This is an imbalance in my brain chemistry that afflicts me with severe and chronic mood swings from time to time. I get depressed or manic for no apparrent reason and there's nothing I can do about it. It goes against what I believe, but it still happens to me. So there's a paradox at the core of my being. (Sounds good doesn't it?) Under normal circumstances, when I'm not ill, I can generally control my feelings fairly well.
I think this works even with falling in love. There's always a point where you see what's happening and have the choice whether to be in love or not. Perhaps most people don't do it consciously, which is why they feel they have no choice. All it takes is the realisation that you DO have control.
So I never use the excuse "I can't help how I feel," and I'm reluctant to accept it from others.
So on Monday afternoon a week ago, I suddenly found my internet connection wouldn't route. I couldn't get mail or web. The next morning I half solved the problem by putting the mailservers in my hosts file, then called Tech Support at Speednet. I hate calling tech support but I've had to do it 2 or 3 times now for Speednet, which is more times than in all my years before on the net. They're a crap ISP.
Back to the point. Speednet told me it was a known problem with Windows 2000 and the only way to fix it was to reinstall DUN/RAS. So I tried, but there doesn't seem to be a way to uninstall it seperately. OK, so I went to reinstall win2k altogether. Did that, there were more problems such as NIC and modem not picked up properly or at all. Ok, so I stuck a spare hdd on, backed up my data and tried again, re-installing 'over the top'. Still didn't work. Ok, so I decided on a complete fresh reinstall, but had trouble formatting the hdd. Ok, so I installed Linux temporarily to format it (Linux and KDE look great on a big screen). BUT - I didn't think to unplug my backup hdd, it just did't occur to me and didn't seem necessary. To be frank it still doesn't. BUT when I reinstalled win2k on a blank drive, it couldn't read my backup drive, saw it as 'unallocated'. To cut an already long story short, I lost a lot of data, some dating back 6 or 7 years. Writing, uni work, web pages, contact details, all sorts of shit. I was not a happy camper.
I went to sleep at 4pm that day and slept for about 16 hours. The week before I read an article about some woman who'd lost all her email and contacts and how upset she was. I thought it was a bit silly, then it happened to me. It *is* upsetting. BUT when I woke up the next day, I thought to myself "There's two ways I can look at this. I can be upset I lost all that data, or I can be happy I got the machine working properly." I decided to be happy.
***********************************
I've always believed that feelings are decisions, not things that come upon you leaving you no choice but to go along with them. Feelings are not facts. I try to base my life and my decisions on facts. I value reason and rationality. I believe I can decide how to feel about any given situation or person. And yet I have a severe mood disorder - manic-depressive psychosis (MDP). This is an imbalance in my brain chemistry that afflicts me with severe and chronic mood swings from time to time. I get depressed or manic for no apparrent reason and there's nothing I can do about it. It goes against what I believe, but it still happens to me. So there's a paradox at the core of my being. (Sounds good doesn't it?) Under normal circumstances, when I'm not ill, I can generally control my feelings fairly well.
I think this works even with falling in love. There's always a point where you see what's happening and have the choice whether to be in love or not. Perhaps most people don't do it consciously, which is why they feel they have no choice. All it takes is the realisation that you DO have control.
So I never use the excuse "I can't help how I feel," and I'm reluctant to accept it from others.
