Working from home yesterday had its downsides. The biggest of course is one you wouldn't expect -- noise.

For those that have known me for a while you probably know that my hearing is particularly sensitive. In high school I could tell which room had a television on not by the sound coming out of their speakers, but the high pitched electronic hum from the high voltage capacitors powering the CRT. This could be up to 20 meters away from the set around walls and hallways. In college, sound was an issue I negotiated with my roommates. Today I often wear sound-isolating headphones to block out conversation noise when on airplanes. 

When I'm relaxed, noise doesn't bother me so much. I can let it wash over me and ignore it entirely. When I'm stressed, however, noise can almost be debilitating.

The apartment I share with Pazi is small. Our desks are only a meter or so apart, and the air conditioner hangs from the wall nearest my desk. During the winter I never notice the thing, but the sumer is a different story altogether. It's constant hum can be grating and interferes with my concentration. It makes sharing conversation difficult as the white noise obscures voices easily from my ears. 

After work, we had a guest over, whom I shall call 'M'. M is a delightfully geeky woman whom I've had the pleasure to share many a movie the last few weeks. This evening we were discussing what sort of entertainment we should have this evening. As no one had a preference, Pazi rebooted her system into Windows (it tickles me to no end how much she uses Linux these days) to play Touhou games.

And this is where things went a bad direction. She had the volume for the game especially high, and even after turning it down, it was nearly painful for me to listen to. The combination of it, the A/C, and the intermittent griding of our failing refrigerator fan pushed me to the limit in less than a minute. Not wanting to break her concentration -- Touhou games are not the kind to play when easily distracted -- I picked up my things and went back to the bedroom.

I had hoped to spend only a quarter of an hour there before returning to the main room to be social. I started an entry in my paper journal. I managed precisely one paragraph before I fell asleep. For the most part, I remained that way for nearly 6 hours. 

I guess I needed a nap...

For the past three years and the last year particularly, the activity at deninet and my creative output has dwindled. I've whined about it, justified it, unjustified it, and reasoned with it to no avail.

So what in the hell is going on?

Ever since I was a little kid, I understood I had a rather uncommon medical problem. Treatment was available, but at the time impossible. My Mother did not trust doctors and I went untreated for most of my life. Coverage was possible, but difficult. Even so, at the age of nine I set my mind toward what I hoped to be a better life through modern medicine.

In the last three years I've been under enormous personal and professional pressure. While building a career in the IT field, I saved whatever money I could in order fulfill my ambition. I began exercising regularly, then damn near excessively. I dieted. I lost weight. I jumped through all the other hoops placed in front of me -- all to reach the final goal.

Surgery.

Surgery is a stressor in it's own right. First it's an abstract appointment consisting of doctors, locations, and costs. Then all to quickly it becomes frighteningly real. Flights need to be booked. Calls exchanged. Schedules drawn up to the hour. Money changes hands. Doctors are seen to assure your safety.

When it's not a flurry of activity, it's a grinding, intolerable wait. I found myself wanting it to be fucking over already. You hear stories about how many brain cells die for each minute of anaesthesia. And then, I'm in a hospital gown, fitted with sensors and tubes, splayed on a stainless steel table in a sterile room. I stare upward at the OR lights...

...and find them replaced with the low florescence of your hospital room. I struggled for consciousness, clarity. I ran through a quick list of cognitive and acuity tests. After a few minutes I was sure I was fine, if exhausted and drowsy with pain medication.

That was six days ago.

I was discharged on Monday after a very long weekend. Since then I've been recovering at a local guest house, watching far more television, and engaging in more hours of unproductivity than I otherwise would prefer. Being away from home, it's a bit like sick leave and a bit like vacation. The physical scares aren't then only ones healing.

It's been hard to say why I haven't written all that often lately. There doesn't seem to be a single reason.

I have been traveling internationally as of late. The demands of the assignment and the timezone change made my free time in the evening a rare occasion. Energy was equally difficult to come by. After a long day of trying to parse bits and snatches of a language that I can't quite understand, and composing a complex middleware solution, I barely could manage to hit the hotel gym each night.

Furthermore, the little company I worked for has recently been merged with a larger company. While I don't want to get into details on a public forum, you can imagine the effect.

Sunday afternoon I decided to purchase a new system, after more or less living out of other people's systems for almost a year. Like always, I had done extensive research into the matter. I wanted a laptop that was light, smaller, had visual style and a proper amount of power.

Of course, it also had to run Linux.

Laptops and Linux are often a hit-or-miss experience today. Compromises made by the manufacturer during the design process often result in "soft hardware" that requires special drivers to function. Some critical pieces of hardware fail to run at all under the open source OS. Thankfully, there are some vendors that know better and are willing to make at least one Linux compatible model.

While I could have gone to speciality vendor such as System76, I decided to go with the ubiquitous (and more cost-effective) Dell. Specifically, a Dell Studio XPS M1340.

Dell is a bit of a surprising choice for me. In the past I've considered their hardware generic and boring from a design perspective. Recently, however, they've put significant effort into changing that perception. The original XPS 1330 was a favorite of mine. The Adamo targets the "prosumer" with exceptional design.

The Studio XPS I purchased originally shipped with Windows Vista. My lack of experience with it resulted in a number of BSODs and eventually a factory reinstall once I had resized the partitions. After about 24 hours, however, I had a nicely dual-booted system running Vista and Kubuntu 9.04.