I don't want sympathy, just help.

As most of you will know by now, I have some health issues. Well, a lot of health issues; at 33, my daily prescribed pill count (when things are going as they ought, which at the moment is not entirely the case) is 9 pills. Five to adjust my brain in various ways, and 4 to allow my body to avoid tearing itself apart.

And for all the pill-popping, sometimes I go out and have to deal with being visibly disabled. It's mild, but it's there; I sometimes have to use a cane to help me walk. Normally, I present as a relatively healthy youngish man, and so people see me using the cane and assume it's a transitory thing. I'm frequently asked if I've suffered a sports injury.

And that's where the trouble starts, because I'm now forced into discussing my medical history with strangers. I can be churlish and impolite, refusing to discuss why I need a cane; but this upsets people. I can fake it, pretending it's a sports injury; but I dislike lying. I can be honest, and say that I have arthritis; and that's the option I take most often, despite my distaste for the inevitable result.

Every single time, when someone finds out I have arthritis, the response is along the lines of "but you're so young!" Yes, I am aware that osteoarthritis at age 33 is uncommon, but that doesn't change the fact that I have it. All you're doing by saying that is making me feel ashamed of something I cannot control. I wouldn't have chosen arthritis; no sane person would choose a life of impaired mobility and constant pain.

I have similar issues if I have to go out while suffering effects of migraine, or side-effects of the medication I take to defuse them. I'm invariably looking unwell in those circumstances, and people will insist on trying to be sympathetic, usually by rattling off a huge list of helpful suggestions, of which I've invariably tried all the sensible ones and the nonsense ones are so incredibly off the wall that I can't imagine why people would bother.

I am, in fact, fed up to the back teeth with people offering sympathy. I have health issues; they suck; if you're willing, I'd accept your help in dealing with the consequences of said issues. Such as, if you're limber, fetching me up a jar of pickled jalapenos from the bottom shelf, because bending down is going to be excruciating for me. Or turning the music down so I'm not having to strain to hear while my brain is full of rotted wood. Words may cost nothing to you, but that means they're no fit substitute for deeds. If you must talk about my medical status in public, keep it to a "how can I help?"

What is Rogue like?

Recently, a friend gave me a gift copy of a Humble Bundle, described as "Roguelike games". Roguelike is a surprisingly widely-used adjective for games, and to listen to many people, often misused. I'll admit, I'm one of those who thinks it's often used incorrectly, but I really need to justify that. Let's get on with it.

I can speak with a certain amount of authority on what Rogue itself is like; it was, twenty-mumble years ago, the first computer game I ever played. I never did win it, but I played it a lot. It had a lot of things going into its makeup. I've also played a lot of games considered lineal descendants of Rogue: NetHack, with forays into SLASH'EM; ADOM; several variants of Angband; and many other roguelikes, most of which I can't even remember the titles of. Everything from a futuristic one set after the end to an educational one meant to teach the country top-level domains. Frankly, for as much as I love other games, roguelikes are the defining games of my life.

But which elements of Rogue make it distinctive? Here's where opinions diverge; the best I can do is give my opinion, and ask that you use your own judgement.

The lesser of evils

This morning, I was linked to an article (actually, a transcript; NPR is marvelous in providing transcripts of its radio pieces) regarding a campaign in California to increase the minimum wage. That article may be found here.

The campaigner is an unlikely one: a multimillionaire, generally held to be very right-wing (in America, remember; our "left-wing" candidates are, by European standards, a long way to the right of Michael Portillo), but he seems to have understood the fundamental issue at hand.

His point is that with the minimum wage not being a living wage, some means to support those relying on it is necessary. Minimum wage jobs are generally not exportable; that status only applies to middle tiers of jobs, leading to a large gap between minimum wage and executive-level jobs, but I digress. Minimum wage earners will be located in the US, and it is in the national interest for them not to starve, hence food stamps. However, what Mr. Unz has worked out is that food stamps are an unnecessary complication; the lesser evil, the lesser government intervention, is to require that employers pay a living wage. Regulations are cheaper than interventions.

Now, ideally, companies would be able to figure out what Henry Ford worked out over a century ago, and the CEO of Costco continues to espouse: that paying their employees enough to live well on results in more demand for their products, and thus more success for the company overall. Ideally, regulations to require a living wage wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately, America's particular outlook on economics doesn't seem to look beyond the next set of quarterly results, or the share price (which is almost entirely divorced from any actual metric of results).

Three months

It's been a busy quarter of a year. Started with a lot of stress, then I had to take an enforced vacation in a psychiatric ward, and since then I've been rebuilding myself (with help, this time; I've suffered breakdowns before, and I strongly discommend attempting to rebuild oneself solo) and trying to make sure I properly bond with my little girl.

I think I've managed to.

It's a start.

Today, I took some time to myself, and wrote a 3000 word article that I'm now planning to attempt to sell. If it doesn't sell in a reasonable time frame, I'll post it here, because it really deserves to be out there, but I'll try to get paid for it first.

Apparently, the future is a pluperfect hell.

As part of an email conversation recently, I was directed to a video on YouTube, titled "The Future of CX". CX is apparently shorthand for "Customer Experience", and while the video purports to show how wonderful things will be in the future, it is in fact a vision of uncounted ways to get things horribly wrong. It begins poorly, and only gets worse from then on. But, before I viciously deconstruct precisely WHY it's horrendous, you ought to watch the video. Here it is, and below the jump I will unsheathe the claws.

Progress!

I got one heck of a productive day made today, despite starting off with a serious whack to the noggin. My anti-anxiety medication had been getting slightly less effective, so my psychiatrist suggested I switch from taking it without food to taking it with food (active stomach means greater absorbed dose - this particular medication states in the accompanying material that you need to pick one and stick with it, and since it had been without food in the psych ward, that's how I'd been taking it) and the breakfast dose made me lightheaded and shaky for a couple hours. I wound up having to snap myself out of an anxiety attack (using a technique I figured out from talking with my therapist, who's very good at giving me ideas that I can work out the techniques from; she specialises in cognitive behavioural therapy, and I understand that part of that discipline is getting the patient to think they worked it out on their own) but then I got on with the day and was absurdly productive. Grocery shopping, mostly produce (when a 15lb bag of spuds is $5, compared to $4.50 for 10lb or $3.25 for 5lb, it doesn't make sense to buy anything but the 15lb bag), and then I got laundry done, got a couple meals made up, had to take over baby care for the LA for a decent chunk of the afternoon, and ran more errands to finish the day off. Somewhere amongst all this, I also found time to finish the book I'd been reading, despite not feeling like I'd had two minutes to myself.