Photos of me

Hmmm, well I guess it had to happen sooner or later but hadn't really expected it.

A friend of mine posted pictures of the old me on Facebook. Some of these I've already starred at and felt uncomfortable about, in fact I think I mentioned this a few months back in a blog post about moving a load of all stuff from the house into the garage here.

I've never really thought I looked good in pictures and always looked, for want of a better expression, like a bit of a idiot (some would argue that this is a very accurate portrayal and they may be right). The old uni photos are particularly bad because I strongly suspect I was at the very least acting like a complete idiot most of the time and this is only magnified by the terrible photos.

Anyway, I thought for a while about how I should handle this (someone who shall remain nameless suggested telling my friend to "f***ing remove them" or words to that affect - I actually think she has a point and should probably handle all my PR in future, it would be quicker and much more effective).

Anyway, I decided to just message my friend and ask him to not tag the pics as me. Yes, that was the real problem, he was tagging this old pics with my new name/identity and this is why they showed up on Facebook!

So, here's the rules girls and boys:

1. If you have pics of a TS person from before they transitioned that's fine, you can't be expected to destroy your photo album/memories. I don't like old photos of me but I'm realistic enough to realise that I can't destroy them just as I can't change reality to make me always have been how I am now.
   
2. It's probably best you not shove these pics in someone's face though. Accepting the existance of such snaps is one thing but I don't want to see them!
3. Under no circumstance should old pics be associated with someone's new identity. For a start in a very real physical and mental sense, they are NOT the same person. You don't go changing your body and mind with powerful chemicals and therapy to be the same person!
4. Also a TS person is, in alot of cases, starting their life all over again and trying, as best as possible, to have everyone view them as their new, correct, gender and persona. It makes life hard (to say the least) if people are going to question this new gender based on some pics they saw. Okay, I'm trying to transition in the same job, location, and with the same set of friends but I've heard of alot of cases there someone just completely dumps their old life to start completely from scratch since that is easier.

Okay, sorry if this was a little patronising but I thought it was worth making the 'rules' clear since it can be a little confusing.

Linux is better than Windows

Time for a geeky post I think! I remember commenting once that the transgendered aspect of my life was the thing that made me slightly more interesting that the rather geeky behaviour might infer. Now in some ways the trans thing is 'normal' and it's maybe time to let some of the extreme nerdiness out :)

There has been some talk at work over the last few days about setup of a server to host Subversion as a source code repository for the project that we are working on. Using Subversion was my idea and I pestered about it constantly last year for good technical reasons (it's alot quicker/easier to deal with that ClearCase which we'd used before) as well as the fact that I just like stuff like that!

And, when it came down to it the best platform to run Subversion on is Linux - I did try and be fair and install/run on Windows but when this was tested it was found that there were glitches under load which would have made the system to unreliable for what we needed.

Another thing I'm going to be looking at as well is running WebSphere without admin rights (found this article about allowing non-root users to create profiles). Why am I obsessed with admin rights - no-one at work seems to get this as the default setup of new laptops is to allow the user full admin rights which makes installing software easy.

This is just SOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo wrong if, like me you come from a UNIX/Linux background where running as root is a cardinal sin unless it's a single command prompt used for admin tasks that is closed immediately after finishing said tasks!

You see, even on Windows there is absolutely NO reason to have admin rights, there are no well-written programs that actually need such rights to work correctly. Okay, some services/servers need admin rights to run but they can either be started automatically or kicked off from a command prompt.

The problem is that with admin rights you can, quite easily move wreck your entire setup or at the very least move things around so that you've no real idea whether a program is installed properly or not. UNIX/Linux has been designed with this idea built in: important OS/program files can only be moved around by root and no-one but root can do this!

UNIX was designed to be multi-user from the start so the very idea that normal users would be able to muck around with important files would have been a huge issue since any one person could completely wreck everyone elses work! This level of security/protection is obviously essential for multi-user systems but has the side-benefit that if it's just you using the computer you know that nothing you do is going to affect anything important, all the libraries and other system components are going to behaving in a very perdictable and repeatable way.

And I think that is why, in my opinion, Linux is better than Windows; it's designed to be modular and consistent and essentially understandable, at least in part, at quite a deep level. UNIX/Linux doesn't generally suffer, in my experience, from bizarre interactions of libraries since everything is nicely protected and seperated. That's not to say things can't go wrong but when they do it's easier to isolate the problem and even work around it.

Also I prefer Linux because of the understandability (not sure that is a real word); I guess most people don't even bother trying to figure out how Windows works (I do but can't say I've got anywhere), but with Linux/UNIX there are some simple rules/concepts that, if you grasp them, then scale up for everything else within the system, e.g. command line tools for UNIX may seem complicated and harder to grasp than Windows DOS equivalent but the complexity is consistent in a way and once you get the idea of how everything can fit together it's simple.

Anyway, that is enough geekiness for now, I await the ridicule :)

Chill Factor!

I did think I could twist the title into something about being treated in a cold way or some other metaphor for having a bad time of things but frankly that would be totally pointless and a blatant lie as really there is nothing like that happening at the moment! So instead of the usual doom, gloom, and whinging from me, here is something that was just fun!

So, I didn't know what to do with my son this weekend, quite often we seem to just spend lots of time playing on the Wii and staying in (I could come up with pathetic excuses for this but ultimately I find it uncomfortable going out as the old me so I'm happier to stay in).

Anyway, I just thought it might be different and fun to go here: Chill Factor which is right next to the Trafford Centre (handy location from my point of view).

First two VERY important things that I learnt from our visit:

1. Book in advance! We turned up at around 12 and the earliest we could get in was 4:30pm
2. There are a few shops/restaurants there but really nothing much to do apart from the activities you pay for. So, if you didn't book in advance or just turn up really early you're likely to be bored pretty quickly!

Yes, I didn't really plan ahead so when we turned up we had a 4.5hr wait before we could get in to actually play in the snow and my son was absolutely distraught because we spent a good 10mins actually watching everyone have fun before we even went to get tickets! I'll definitely remember to book in advance for next time!

We spent, what must have seemed like an eternity at the time, wandering around trying to pass the time - really should have gone over to the Trafford Centre instead - until we eventually got our chance to go into the snowplay area! I had asked my son if he wanted to play on the tube slide but he said he didn't, just interested in mucking around in the snow!

The price of the ticket includes hire of snow boots (just lined wellies bascially). On such a busy day they were a bit limited when it came to my size so the pair I got were a bit old and battered (and too big). You don't have to use their boots for the SnowPlay area, I should have just worn the walking boots I'd brought along. No problem with kids boots but wellies would have been fine again.

The tickets let you through the barrier to get to the snow (bar-code scanner) and they seem to be used to let you up the ski-lift as well (saw people going through a barrier using theirs) which could be fun if you end up falling over lots and getting a soggy ticket.

The SnowPlay area is quite big with big plastic penguins and polar bears (no-one really seems to appreciate the geographical seperation of these two species) to slide around on, as well as some of the tubes which are fab! I spent quite alot of time dragging my son around behind me are great speed (tiring) and he thought it was fantastic!

The snow is very fine and powdery so no chance of making snowmen (maybe I should be saying "snowpeople" or "snowwomen"?) or snowballs but still good fun to run around in and it's VERY slippy and slidey. Not really that cold in there either, claims -1.46 on the display over the ski slope, but after running around a bit you do get quite warm.

It cost £11 for 1hr of playing in the snow - it's £1/30mins for adult and £4.90 for kids - so I guess you could save a little by having one adult mind a few kids. 30mins isn't really enough and my son would have carried on a little after 1hr but I think that is the right amount of time.

Anyway, it was a really fun day out and, yes, we did quickly pop into the Trafford Centre to have a look around and buy some socks for my son 'cos he got his feet soaked playing in the snow (yes, wellies would probably have been better).

Hormones ... the story so far

Just a quick update because I had promised to keep everyone up-to-date on how the hormones and other treatments (well not on anything else yet) are going.

I've been on the patches now for just over a month and I can't say I've noticed anything at all, good or bad. My skin might be a tiny bit softer but that could just be because I'm using more hand/face cream due to the cold weather.

There is no obvious development in the chest area, though that is to be expected as it takes a while for anything to happen there.

I've not noticed any extreme emotional changes at all, nor any bad side-affects.

In fact nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero, etc.

There could be many reasons for all of this:
1) It does take a while for the hormone levels to adjust so I might not be there yet
2) I might be there but am lucky to have no bad affects and the good ones are just taking their time
3) My levels might have not shifted at all in which case I'll need more hormones and/or anti-androgens

I'm not really going to find out until my check-up which I've booked for the 20th February. Just before then I need to get my bloods done to find out what my levels are so that Dr Curtis can adjust my medication appropriately.

Back from ... the abyss?

Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything and quite a few people have remarked that they've missed my regular installments of garbage. So to them I can only say that I am really touched and suspect that you must also be if you miss all this gibberish!

So first, an explanation of the title since this is the 'bad' bit of the post: I don't like holidays, I get bored, I get introspective and obessed, depressed, and reclusive if I don't have things to do to keep my mind occupied and not worrying about stuff. And I don't like feeling like that and it can take a bit to get me out of that hole (abyss may be an exaggeration).

Anyway, thankfully, I have some fab friends and had some great times over Christmas and New Year and these helped keep me relatively sane and pulled me through a bit of a low point. Enough of that now, onto the fun stuff:

Well first off Christmas and Boxing day were spent with Lucy and her family which was just fantastic! Her folks were fabulous and I had a great time!Boxing Day included shopping in the sales which was good fun and resulted in a few bargains (which my credit card really couldn't cope with but, well, it was Christmas!)

I saw my son on Boxing Day also which was FAB! He had had a good Christmas Day, Santa had been very nice to him, and we had a nice relaxing day just chilling out and playing with Christmas presents.

The days between my son leaving and New Years I think we'll skip for the reasons already mentioned.

So, New Years Eve. I have to say I had been looking forward to this for a very long time and I was not disappointed in the slightest it was one of the best nights I have ever had ... in fact I guess in some ways I was quite sad when it was over and desperately want to repeat the experience ASAP!

We started by meeting up the the Ibis on Charles Street, affectionately known as Tranny Towers. I'd booked a room ages ago having decided that I should make an effort with New Year and not just moan after the fact that I didn't do anything fun! Anyway, things snow-balled a little and first Lucy said she would come along and then Selena ... "Three in the bed and the little one said ... 'the room is still spinning!' " or something like that.

Started on the Red Wine when we got to the room (my fault!) and then wandered over to meet up with Kate, Jilly and friends who had booked a meal at the Villagio on Canal Street. The food was great, the company was FAB, and there was plenty of drink!
This was me and Kate in Taurus which is where we all staggered to after the meal ... think I was still relatively sober at this point but it went rapidly downhill in terms of sobriety after that! There is a good picture that someone took of me and the others pointing drunkenly at the sky, I think at the little tea-light-powered hot air balloon, which illustrates the state I'd got into towards the end of the night!

Lucy and Selana looked fab and they had a good night and were a great help in getting me into McTuckys for some much needed alcohol-soaking-up food and also then back to the hotel without me falling over!

The morning-after-the-night-before was, as expected somewhat difficult given the excessive drinking but was helped greatly by Lucy cooking tea for the three of us! Sadly Selena and Lucy had to travel back down south after that so I took refuge in the Trafford Centre to have a look for a present for Kim, wander aimlessly around the sales, and also meet up with my friend Rob for a meal and a chat.

Which brings me to the 2nd party in so many days: Kim's birthday party on the Saturday night. Another FAB time! Kim had invited some of her friends out for a quick drink followed by a nice meal in a Thai restaurant just above the pub in which we all met up - very handy staggering distance!

This was me with another, and much better looking, Fiona, one of Kim's friends and then, below, the birthday girl herself with Sarah.

A good night was had by all and copious quantities of alcohol were consumed!

So, that was my Christmas and New Year, there it was gone! I have to say that I did spend the time before going back to work desperately missing my time in Manchester and my friends - really must make an effort to get out as much as is humanly possible! Think I've decided I like city life afterall!

Anyway, to all my friends: Thanks for making Christmas and New Year such a fun time, you are all amazing and a love you to bits!