It’s the real life trolls that seem to be a problem. I don’t often write here, but when I do it’s usually just some silly diatribe about whatever was on my mind at the time. I write about Doctor Who a fair bit, and recently it’s been about not using shampoo and trying to find a day to change my sleep schedule. There’s a decent amount of writing about my crafting, from knitting to dyeing yarn. All in all it’s a pretty standard personal online weblog. No big deal.

Note: All of the screenshots can be clicked on for full image and they should open in a new window.

But then you get people like this:

My initial reaction was to question who the hell would say something like that about that post. I then realized that the poster was hiding. Hiding behind a fake website address and a fake email address. I was ready and willing to just shrug this off as some random commenter that thinks they know me. Apparently they’re my friend, so it had to be true, right? Wrong. At first I thought this was an old friend, who often stops by to read but rarely comments. There is the occasional comment, but it’s not normally something so negative. It’s okay, she could be pissed at me. It happens. The part that I take the most offense to is the fact that they claim this post is “so full of lies” as though they know intimate details about my life. How does one write a personal blog entry such as this one and it be something that is purely lies? I mean, I could fully understand if I were writing about someone else’s life and got all of the information incorrect. Except that I’m writing about my own high school experiences. I’m writing about what I went through. The post is told in a very quick, short sentence way because that’s how it was back then. Everything was in spurts. I didn’t realize that my experiences could be trivialized and turned into a fact or fiction type situation. I didn’t make any of this up. This is the way I felt when I was younger. No question. Unless there’s something I’m missing here and someone else lived that portion of my life for me. Could be, I suppose. You never know.

Then to turn around and claim that I’m “trolling up sympathy and made up drama.” Um, wow. I wasn’t trolling for sympathy. I was sharing my experience. Which, according to the other two commentors, seem to mirror their own experiences with themselves and family members.

“Get up off your ass and do something with your life. That is the entire problem.” You’re assuming I don’t do anything with my life. You’re assuming that I don’t have anything else to do with my time. I wasn’t speaking about current depression or problems, but it seems that basic reading comprehension levels aren’t needed before posting asshole-y comments on people’s blogs. No big deal. I’ll “get up off my ass” and figure out who the fuck this person is.

Oh, and this definitely gets better.

I have the IP addresses there in the comments. So I followed them back to the website that does my analytics for me. I then looked back and found the most recent comment and IP address from July 10th.

Wow. 6 actions. And you came from a direct link. Interesting. I then clicked on the IP address link you see there and this is what it gave me.

Excellent. I now know that the commenter is from Southern California. Their IP address shows Sherman Oaks, California. I also see they’re running a Mac, and google chrome at a pretty decent screen resolution. Must have a Macbook Pro. Nice. Oh look at all of that activity linked to this person! They seem to read a lot, even if they don’t always comment. Also looks like the other IP address matches the first comment. Funny how that works. Let’s click on that ARIN link up there towards the top and find out who this IP address belongs to.

Hmmm… interesting. Brandissimo Inc. I wonder what a google search would yield for “Brandissimo”. Let’s find out what shows up for me! I imagine if you did your own google search you’d find something similar.

Huh, lookit that! It’s a name I somewhat, if not vaguely recognize. Not who I thought it was at first, but alright. Let’s see what their site shows or says. Maybe there’s someone else who things I should “get off my ass and do something with my life.” Maybe I pissed someone off in the passed. Let’s look. Going to the Brandissimo! website gives you some weird flash thing embedded into the page. I click on the people link to see who all works here.

I cut all of the rest of the junk from the surrounding area and captured this bit. Now, there are 4 other faces you see there. And this company could very well have an army of employees underneath them, one of which is using company time to troll my website and be a complete dickhead. But I don’t know this, nor will I bother to get too far into it. For now I see that the only person who’s name is even remotely familiar is one David Gagne.

Apparently me and David were once really good friends (I hardly knew him at all). We apparently went to high school together (Um, nope) and ran with the same people. It seems we were so close that he knows without a doubt that all of my depression talk was fake (Again… nope) and made up to garner sympathy from the internet masses. All 5 of you who read… when I’ve posted a link to tell you to read.

Let’s see what the truth really is. David Gagne came across as an arrogant computer guy way back in the day when I still worked for Healthcare Recoveries Inc. I truly cannot remember a single personal conversation we ever had, and well, I don’t even remember the professional conversations we may or may not have had. This isn’t really a story about why I stopped working there, but I was let go. I think officially on the paperwork it said “Improper employee conduct” but really they found I was writing on Opendiary, printed out a handful of my entries and fired me for them. Whatever. I hated that job and only stayed for the money. They did me a favor. I haven’t looked back. I had some rough patches in life and still do, but there is something very important that I learned from working there and getting let go… I never EVER wanted to work in the computer industry as a professional. Ever.

Now mind you, this isn’t about starting a shitstorm, although I imagine the link backs might do that. Also putting up all of the screen captures and what not. This isn’t about Brandissimo, which I know absolutely nothing about. Let’s face it, I don’t even know anything about David himself. I hardly knew anything about him back then, so why would I care to know anything about him now. Here’s the thing, between the various social networks, there’s a whole lot of stuff I really don’t give a shit about. I don’t care about the dumb games people play on Facebook, so when I see someone post something on their wall, I block the app. I don’t care about the quizzes, so I block those too. I don’t, however, go to the people’s FB pages and tell them that they’re lying and saying stuff (taking quizzes, playing games) to garner sympathy. I just ignore it.

So here’s my plea to you, David. Go away. Leave me alone. Follow the golden rule we were all taught when we were little kids and just keep your comments to yourself. We were never friends. You knew me some 9 years ago back when I was interested in doing database administration work and the employer we both shared was willing to give me a shot. I got in trouble for blogging stuff on the internet and lost my job. Who cares. Is your only measure of success to have a lucrative career in the IT world? Cause it’s not for me. I’m not interested and I don’t care. My life took a huge turn in a different direction the day I walked out of those doors. I never looked back, and maybe you should do the same. I can’t even fathom what your interest in my life is, and why you feel the need to comment so harshly about things you know nothing about. You have no idea who I am today or in the past. We were never friends. Do you understand this? I don’t know what planet you’ve been living on or why you believe we were ever friends, but outside of your blog I know nothing about you, and truthfully, don’t care.

So stop reading. It’ll spare you the need to write nasty little snide remarks about the validity of my personal experiences, and it will keep me from having to spend a couple hours of my life sharing how I figured out who it was with the world.

I remember back in high school, the earlier years and possibly even starting in Junior High, having many terrible, suicidal thoughts. This wasn’t just the run-of-the-mill a-boy-doesn’t-like-me type of upset. I was saddened by who I was and the idea that I would never be better than I was at that moment. I had few friends and even fewer with whom I held close enough to know any different. My mother spent many years telling me that I was fat and made ugly devil faces when I was angry, high school only compounded on this horrible self-image that she helped create.

I had a best friend whom I spent most of my time with. I had people I was close-ish too. I had others I hung out with. I was social. But I always felt as though no one really understood me. No one “got me” in the way my best friend did. So when we’d fight, I’d hide. I didn’t want to answer the questions about why we, normally inseparable, weren’t eating lunch together. Why we weren’t running around spouting off lines from Shakespeare at each other as though we were somehow transported in time. Coupled with the lack of boy attentions, the fact that I didn’t like my boobs and a discomfort in my body, and the voice of my mother telling me how fat I was all the time, depression quickly set in.

I spent some time self-mutilating. I wrote initials on my ankles and wrists. I used needles and razor blades. I covered it up. I hid the scars. Today, almost all of it is gone and insignificant. I’m definitely grateful for small favors, including the one where I had no idea how far down I needed to go to make things permanent. I also had thoughts of suicide. Many of them. That I was tired of the laughing and the pointing, and the snickering behind my back. The way people talked about me, or the way I perceived them talking about me. The rumors that were spread. The general cattiness amongst the girls. The genuine need to destroy any and all things good in each other’s lives. It was far too much for this girl to handle most days.

I wrote letters. I hid them in the wall. I doubt my dad ever knew that I made that little hole in the closet to hide those things. I wrote many letters explaining why I was willing to do what I thought I wanted to do. I thought about it all the time. Planned different ways. There was even this particularly bad curve off of one of the major highways, and along the curve was this huge billboard in the middle of lots of underbrush. I often considered how fast I would have to crash into that billboard in order to make sure that it “worked.” No sticking around for the hurt and pain and endless sympathy and stares later. I knew that if I was going to do it, it was going to be for real.

I obviously didn’t do it. I’m here today writing this. The thoughts are there super rarely and often following something catastrophic like people at work treating me shittily and me being threatened to kiss some ass or I’ll be fired. But y’know, no job is worth that much stress. Pretty much ever. And if I were let go, it might be better for everyone at that point. I digress.

Last week’s Doctor Who, er, actually, two Saturday’s ago, was Vincent and the Doctor (this is the British airing date, as I’m fairly certain the U.S. is about 2 weeks behind, though I don’t know because I see them as they come out and am thus on U.K. airing time with the Doctor Who episodes). The episode itself is about Vincent van Gogh and the imaginary things he sees, but the deeper bit of the episode was the personal demons that Vincent was struggling with.

I’ll spare the details, for those in the U.S. who have yet to see the episode, but I cried. A lot. I watched the episode again last night, and again, I cried. There is something so touching and real about the end of the episode. The fact that depression often takes hold and doesn’t let go. That Vincent suffered deeply and still gave to the world so much beauty and art that there are few words to express this. Even as the authors of the episode try, the truth is, he can’t have known. Vincent that is. I can’t imagine what his life was like. I can’t imagine the pain, or the torment… or the suffering. But I can empathize. And wish for a Doctor like my Doctor to go and show him.

If there is ever a moment in your life when you’re faced with someone who suffers from depression, watch this episode. On it’s own compared to the rest of the season (or past seasons) it wasn’t the best. But stand-alone, it was touching and real. There are many of us who can related to any of the three of them (Vincent, the Doctor or Amy).

Now let’s move forward a little bit more. Sunday’s Postsecret was a particularly good one. I’ve reached the point where I don’t often read Postsecret anymore. It’s blown up and it’s no longer about secrets, at least not in the same way it used to be. But there was a Golden Gate Bridge secret. Then photos of people asking the poster not to jump. Then an email about someone who, upon taking their first walk across the bridge, saw “ribbons and messages along the way”. It was touching and to someone the person who sat on the bridge, it was very real. All of it was. It happens all the time. Someone, somewhere, has taken their own life, and it’s devastating and sad.

I could have been one of them.

For those in the U.K. needing help, not just for people who have depression but for family members and friends, check out BBC’s Headroom to learn more about depression and resources available to you.

For those in the U.S. check out Hopeline or  Call 1(800)SUICIDE [1-800-784-2433] for help, day or night.

The other day, while on Facebook, a friend of mine linked an article about how to clean your hair without shampoo. I read through the article, and then decided to read through a handful of other articles (there are 5 different links in there, if you’re curious about what I’ve been reading) before making a decision about this process. When I turned around and shared the link with my own friends… I won’t lie, I was surprised by the amount of interest from so many others. At least 3 other people relinked the same article and there were TONS of comments on everyone else’s posts as well as my own (and by ton I meant more than 4).

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m internally a hippy, even if on the outside I refuse to wear patchouli or burn incense ALL the time. I don’t smell like sage, and I don’t own a single skirt that goes to my ankles. But I am interested in decreasing my own personal carbon footprint (to be PC about it) as well as decreasing the quantity of junk I put in my body as well as what I put on my body. There are a hundred different reasons for a thousand different people, but mostly it’s because I’m tired of having weird unexplainable crap happen to my body. It’s time to make my body a place of zen… again… like when I was a little kid. It’s my own little personal biosphere, really, when you think about it. Why not make it a happy place instead of an always conspiring against you place. And yes, my body is constantly conspiring against me.

In almost all of the pictures I’ve seen about what people’s hair looks like, the styles all seem to be of a short nature. I have absolutely nothing against short hairstyles, but I do not have one of those. My hair, at the longest point, goes to the middle of my back. I believe this poses an entirely different set of rules and processes while going No ‘Poo. Like my hair did not feel “de-greased” when I used the baking soda mixture. I used it, rinsed, used it, rinsed, then finally broke down and used a teeny bit of shampoo to actually degrease my hair, used the baking soda again.

Now here’s where my crazed yarn love and small stint in dying comes into play. When you dye natural fibers (like wool and silk), you need to make sure the dye is acidic. It is also suggested that you use similar ingredients as the ones mentioned for the “conditioner” portion of all of this. To balance the pH of your hair and bring it back to normal. So instead of using apple cider vinegar or lemon juice (which is hard to find sans sugar and other junk in it), I have citric acid crystals (or powder). You need a lot less of this in your conditioner mixture, but it accomplishes the same thing as the vinegar and lemon juice. It also has no scent or color what-so-ever.

I noticed a definite difference in the texture of my hair when I put the “conditioner” in my hair and let it sit for about 15 seconds or so. After rinsing it out I finished my shower like any other. The real interesting stuff seemed to be things I noticed after I was dressed and dealing with my hair outside of the shower setting.

Even with shampoo and conditioner, when brushing my hair (yes while wet… yeah yeah, I know the warnings and I don’t care) I often had tangles. With the baking soda/citric acid combo, I had not even one tangle. This may have been a fluke since it really is only the first day and I have nothing else to compare it to, but if this is a trend that will continue, my hair and head will be happy for the change.

On a typical shampoo day, it takes somewhere between a half hour and an hour to deal with my tresses. That includes putting some sort of shiny-fier if I’m going out and want extra shiny hair, blow drying and flat ironing for lack of fly-aways and style. Half hour is pretty generous for short timing, as it’s usually much longer. My hair always seemed to hold gallons of water even after I had towel-dried and even somewhat air-dried my hair. However, with the No ‘Poo process I had none of this. My hair started to have the dry-flippy bits within minutes of towel-drying. Also, blow drying AND flat ironing took half the amount of time it normally does. Half. This is mind blowing. I decided on a hair style that requires me to actually DO something with it all the time. It was a poor choice, but a cute hairstyle. What’s a girl to do?! Apparently, ditch the shampoo and you are blessed with you time being yours again.

Another thing to note is that I have dry scalp. It flakes like dandruff, but isn’t dandruff. But I have super oily hair. It’s really quite the conundrum. It doesn’t even make sense!! Until I read through so many things regarding the detergents in shampoo. I understand the biosciences of the body and know that my scalp is working overtime to adjust, but I’m stripping everything with shampoo. Got it. While my scalp is still noticeably dry along the hairline, there was no flaking. No flaking while blow drying my hair. No flaking when brushing AFTER it was dry. No flaking the next morning (aka this morning).

Again I point out that this is all stuff that stuck out for me. Things I definitely noticed without realizing that there might be a difference. I know there’s a detox period of about 2 weeks in which my scalp still produces the same quantity of oil as it was when using shampoo. So I might find that I’m “shampooing” every other day for the first couple of weeks while I try to keep my hair from turning into a fire hazard.

I will keep you posted on the progress and changes. I figure there will be complaints at some point about the process, and I will gladly document those too.

Life has decided to dish out the dirties to me this year. New Year’s weekend I got stuck with that cold/flu thing that basically sucks. Anyone notice that all of the cold/flu things going around lately pretty much suck? That it seems there’s no end in sight and your friends and family members decide that sharing is caring? Yeah, well, I’ve about had it with getting that gunk.

In other news, I have found myself in the possession of a nook. I only received it today, but already I’ve plowed through half of a book. Alright, it doesn’t really count as a book since it’s a tiny little thing. I imagine the physical copy is a quick read and that I could have just sat down in a bookstore and read through it, but I’m sure I’ll find the information invaluable as time goes on. I have yet to put any of my own content on there (PDFs or otherwise) so we’ll see how that turns out after I get to that point. I need to find my other microSD card… one is in the camera and the other is… well, I’ll find it eventually.

The nook was quite sluggish at first, which I expected from all of the reviews. I also knew that there was an update that helped with this little problem. It has and it did. I’ve never played with a Kindle, so I have no point of comparison, but I love it already. I’m enjoying how easy it is to read on. I like that I was able to take it to the gym, prop it up on the little shelf in front of me, set the font to the biggest it goes and read while running/walking on the treadmill. This in and of itself satisfies my multi-tasking ADD self. Okay, I don’t really have ADD, but it really does help. Makes me feel like I’m getting to do something WHILE at the gym. And reading books are on the agenda of “Things to do More Often”.

I’m happy with the purchase, even if my car decided to take a digger and cost me $700 to repair. I don’t regret the nook. I do, however, need to set myself a budget so I don’t over spend on books. Like $20/pay period or something. Or only buy a book after I’ve read one. Who knows what I’m going to do. I do have a ton of them on my computer to upload, so we’ll see how that goes.

In other news, I’ve decided to take my ever growing ass to the gym. I keep gaining weight, which makes me more depressed about being overweight, which causes me to stop at Chipotle, In & Out, and McDonald’s far too often. I need to limit this to once a week or less. I need to make hitting the grocery store a bigger deal.

Spring is starting to make it’s way here, and losing my car yesterday and being stranded meant that I walked to the gym and walked back. I also walked the mile or two to pick up my car. It was good for me and I needed it. I didn’t, however, need the honks and catcalls. I mean really people, grow the hell up already.

In other crafty news, I’ve started working on a pair of socks from Wendy‘s older book, Socks from the Toe-up. I have been wanting to make socks from this book for a very long time, but I’m such a self-striping/hand-painted yarn whore that I never picked up any skeins of sock yarn that were less… variegated. I have picked up some wool yarn from KnitPicks as well, so that I may start on some new amigurumi projects.

I’ve had bad luck with patterns, and I think I’m going to start working on my own patterns before I invest the time in another ami doll. There’s just too many variables that don’t seem to fit. Numbers that are off, stitch counts that don’t match when having to put pieces together. Ah well. Photos of the new doll are after the cut. They’re kind of fuzzy.

Let’s see what 2009 had in store for me.

Good:
I graduated college.
Visited Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, and Vancouver, BC, Canada with my best friend.
I got an Xbox 360 from someone who must really love me.
I got to visit England.
My kitty is healthy and continues to be spoiled.
Continued to be a non-smoker.
The generosity of strangers, friends and family is astounding!

Bads:
My car kept breaking, and my windshield needed to be replaced.
I needed to talk to a counselor to make it through a semester of school.
I had a friend lose her husband.
I spent 8 months looking for a job with no luck.
I got a $0.27 raise for my 4th year of employment.
I spent too much of my time being pissed, angry, and altogether face-stabby.
Spent too much of the year  taking birth control pills that threatened to give me major heart problems before it was detected.
Student loans started to go into repayment when there is no additional money (nor jobs).
California has really poor management skills and pissed all of the tax payer money away. *sigh*

So needless to say, I’m one on board for the Eff Off 2009!! boat.

Everyone has resolutions of some type, even if they don’t call them resolutions. Here is my semi-predictable, and hopefully possible list.

Goals for 2010
Read more books.
Go to the gym regularly.
Eat better, but never deprive myself of my personal food joys (just in moderation).
Eliminate all of my credit card debt (this one I’ve been working on, but I want the only debt I have to be the student loans before the end of the year).
Work on projects that I’ve been thinking about but keep putting them off.
Dye more yarn.

That’s about it. What about you guys? What are your hopes for the new year??