Thursday, November 2nd

I spent the day at home of not doing much, except working on the arduino wifi light switches I've been developing for a few weeks, using the cheap ESP8266 modules I discovered recently, along with having set up an MQTT broker (I may resurrect my techblog to go into more detail about this stuff, since anyone reading this probably has no interest..).

I decided to finally get over to the hospital to visit my friend who had been in there for 5 weeks at this point, which I had been telling myself each day I would go and visit, and not getting there. We sat and chatted for an hour and a half or so. She tossed me a stress ball when I got there, which had a smiley face on it. Had a smiley face, since during the time we spent chatting I was playing with it, and managed to almost completely rub the face off just through squashing and rolling it in my hands while we talked.

We had some interesting conversation, sarcastic and cynical at times, but almost entirely humorous. It helped me be distracted and feel a bit better, hopefully it had the same effect for her. The topic of medications came up, perhaps since I think she's been prescribed almost all of them at some point, and we talked about the trazaodone I had been prescribed, and how it wasn't working. She mentioned that she had had that issue before, and it was caused by a vitamin D deficiency.

I later "did some research" (ie googled) about trazodone and vitamin D, and found some interesting articles about how it depletes your vitamin D, so I can see how it may not work very well if you don't have any vitamin D for it to deplete.. I also found articles about vitamin D deficiency being related to depression, so perhaps if I am vitamin D deficient (which apparently most people are), this could have contributed to the depression I have been suffering from recently, more than usual.

I'm very cynical, and believe almost nothing I read on the internet without being able to find multiple sources, and proper citation of medical studies and theories etc, but I found sufficient sources to back this up that I felt it was worth more follow up, ie asking the doctor about it when I went to see them next week.

My housemate had bought 2 tickets for us to go and see Carol Burnett at the NAC, so when I realised the time, I made my way home to get them. He had been sick all week and decided not to go. I advertised the spare ticket on Facebook, but no-one saw it in time, so I ended up going on my own. It was a very funny show, and I had a good time.

Afterwards, I realised to do the laptop repair I had offered my friend, I needed an external hard drive case, which was on my desk at work. I drove to the office, and went in to get it. Opening the door caused the alarm to immediately go off for some reason, which I was able to stop and disable by putting my code in. I messaged the president and let him know I had made the alarm go off, as the alarm company would be contacting him about it. Apparently the "glass break" sensor on the door had erroneously triggered, at least this is what the alarm company reported had caused the alarm to go off when I opened the door.

I collected the external drive case I needed, and left the office. I hadn't had dinner, between the time I had spent at the hospital, and then at the show, and now realised I was pretty hungry. Being lazy, I decided to go to Burger King on the way home.

I drove there, parked, and when I tried to go inside, thinking it would be nice to sit at a table and eat, I discovered the door was locked, and then noticed a sign on the door telling me that the "dinning room" was closed.

I got back in my car, went through the drive through, which was a very confusing and frustrating experience, as due to my ordering a "whopper with cheese meal" they decided I had somehow asked for "no mayo". I wasn't bothered since I don't really like it, and usually order it that way, but wasn't wanting to be difficult or cause a delay by doing that at this time, so I just went with it, but then thye clarified what I had ordered at the window, so we went through the process of correcting it.

While I was waiting at the window for my food, a vehicle which must have contained people the staff knew entered the drive through, and placed and order, which resulted in the staff whooping and hollering and behaving in an unprofessional manner.

I eventually got my food, pulled over and parked in the parking lot and sat in the car to eat it, and then went home. I don't recall the rest of the evening's events.