Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sappho]

I live in a major city and I don't know of any farming supply stores here. Maybe a hardware store?

[DJ]

I doubt it. And you should find a farming supplies store somewhere on the outskirts, probably within public transport range. Try googling around for it. If Czech is like Croatian, the exact name will be more like Agricultural Apothecary.

[Sappho]

Hmmm... It seems I can get muslin cloth at baby supply stores, and apparently that might be even better than cheesecloth. I will try that first.

I suppose there's also always the option of buying these things online, if I can't find them in meatspace.

I also need to find some large mason jars for brewing. Right now I'm using a large glass pitcher, but I can't secure the cloth over the top because of the shape, and it's not really big enough. I know where to find small mason jars, but not large ones. Not sure where to look for that in Prague. Also I want to get some of these swing-top bottles for storing the drink when it's ready. I thought I could find them at IKEA but they didn't have them. I suppose I will go to the shopping center today and check out the Tesco Hypermarket - it can be surprising the things you find in there. And if they don't have what I need, I can check out the other stores there, never know, might get lucky.

[DJ]

I've seen some expensive beer sold in bottles like those around here. I bought one for the bottle (beer didn't really justify the price), for storing rakija. You can check liquor stores for beers in such bottles.

[Sappho]

That's true, I can do it that way. Might even be cheaper than just buying the bottles, depending on the beer. That's another reason to try Tesco first, then - they have a big selection of beers at the hypermarket and good prices.

In fact, I can probably find some big glass jars with cabbage or utopenec or something in them and just use the jars from that. The lids are not usually re-usable because the smell of the food gets permanently bound to the rubber or plastic lining, but for brewing kombucha I don't need a lid.

Oh my goodness, am I actually getting excited about going to the supermarket?

It's not going to be easy to transport the big jar of stuff home though. That's probably the only time I ever miss having a car: when I have to transport bulky heavy groceries home!

[DJ]

Meh, who needs a car? Just work a bit on that guy you mentioned, and in no time at all you should have someone to carry heavy stuff for you

[Sappho]

Well the trip to Tesco was mostly a disappointment. No really big jars, no flip top bottles despite about 50 types of beer. The biggest jar I was able to find was a pickle jar, doesn't look much bigger than 1 liter, maybe 1.5 (I'll measure it once it's empty). I bought it anyway, because I like pickles and it's a better jar than the one I'm currently using. And I have spacial perception issues, so it may turn out to be bigger than it looks. Still not as big as I was hoping for though. There's nothing quite like the gallon jars of... well, everything, really, that can be found in the big American supermarkets (and that Europeans love to make fun of).

I won't need the flip top bottles until it's ready, so I've got some time to keep looking around. I know at least one pub that sells many types of foreign beer by the bottle, including several with flip tops, but it's a bit pricey so I'll look at other places before I go there.

They also didn't have any muslin cloth even in the maternity/baby section, but that was a long shot anyway. I'll check maternity supply stores soon. There may have been one at that shopping center, but my bag was so heavy when I left Tesco that I just came home for now. In any case, the handkerchief I'm using seems to be okay for now. It's very breathable: I double-checked by folding it over a few times and holding it over my face, and I was able to breathe just fine. If I can breathe through it, I'm sure the scoby can too.

One cool thing I did find is they have a small home brewing section. I grabbed a couple of packets of "general purpose" brewer's yeast. I've been wanting to try making ginger beer for ages. It's supposed to be extremely easy and quick to make, and also you can't really buy it around here and I miss it.

[Sappho]

Hooray! Success! Went to Tesco today (a different one) and found not only a french press for only 250 kc (about $12.50), so I can finally have real coffee instead of instant, but also four swing-top bottles of beer! The brand is nothing I'm particularly fond of, but I'll choke it down for the bottles, no problem.



It's an unfiltered beer with 5% alcohol content. Better be careful with this one. It was cheap though. Like... Suspiciously cheap. 25 kc per bottle. The funny thing is, they were also selling empty bottles for 250 mutha-fucken crowns each.

They also had a 5 liter mason jar for quite a good price, but I decided not to get it for now. It would have been a nightmare to get it home, and 5 L might be a bit too much. I'm not even sure where I'd put it. Right now I'm munching on one of my pickles and resisting the temptation to test my in-progress kombucha.

Regarding emotional state today, when I woke up I immediately decided not to go to training. I felt like a puddle of sludge. The cat napped lovingly on my chest for nearly an hour with me watching him before I could finally drag myself up enough to feed him. I played video games for a short time, then made breakfast, then did my push-ups, then painted for a while. I started a new painting last night which is clearly going to take a while to finish, but I'm happy with the idea of it so it'll be worth it. I'm trying to push myself to do a little at a time, not to burn myself out on it. Slowly I started to feel depressed, so I decided I'd better get up and do something. I did one more set of push-ups (I'm up to sets of 10 today!), got dressed, and headed out shopping.

First stop was the secondhand bookstore. They always have a bin of 10-kc books outside (that's about $0.50). They put it outside because they don't even care if people steal these books, they're so useless. I dug through until I found a couple with interesting old illustrations I can butcher and use for various art projects. Then I got some falafel (chatting with my Slovak friend who works at the pizza/gyros place and doesn't speak any English while the falafel cooked) and walked to the supermarket.

It was a longer shopping trip than I expected, and I was really exhausted by the time I got home, but I definitely feel better than I did before.

So, analysis. I think I might be trying to push myself too hard with the Taiji training thing. I want to make use of the time, so I want to go to every training, but when it comes down to it, I don't particularly care for most of what we do at these trainings. When we have normal 1.5-hour classes, we use the time to learn and refine the form and do a few other exercises. But during these 3.5-hour sessions, my teacher uses the time to play with partner exercises and "practical applications" which are not actually very practical, and I don't actually enjoy that stuff very much. The parts I like the most are standing (which is better done at the end of the day when the body is loosened up, rather than at 8:30 in the morning), going through the details of the form (which we don't do until about 10:45) and learning a new form, the Master Huang Refined Simplified form, which we don't do until after 11. Those three parts together add up to be about an hour and a half, but I'm trying to go for more than twice that amount of time and I'm not enjoying most of it. For sure it's better than sitting around doing nothing, but after 3 weeks of going almost every single day, I think I'm burnt out.

My teacher will happily teach me the new form whenever we have spare time. And we'll go through the details of the form plenty of other times. It's not really the end of the world if I miss one or two days here and there during this month. So it might be better for me not to go every day now... BUT I have to find productive ways to spend that time. And I still have to practice. AND I can also go to training late. I'll only miss the parts I don't like, since my favorite parts are right at the end. Better, even, to get there late and not be completely exhausted by the time we get to my favorite parts.

I suppose it would be prudent to make a list of activities which are acceptable uses of my time, particularly when I'm skipping training. Even during regular down time, it's actually kind of surprising I haven't thought to make a list like this yet, to push myself a bit more away from video games and movies.

-Drawing/Painting
-Writing
-Reading
-Practicing taiji
-Playing with the cat
-Exercising (push-ups, jumping rope, etc.)
-Going for a walk/hike
-Cleaning
-Cooking
-Practicing cajon
-Meeting friends for just about anything
-Listening to music and singing/dancing
-Reading up on the books I'll need for the next school year

Activities which must be limited:
-Video games
-Watching TV/films
-Napping

I'm very open to other suggestions for things that should be added to these lists. I feel like they look awfully short, yet I can't think of other things to put on there... When did my life get so boring?

[DJ]

I'd push meeting friends to the top of that list. Small talk over a cup of coffee can be surprisingly effective against mild depression. Even better than going out for coffee would be inviting them over. You'd have a reason to get up and clean the place and maybe even bake some cookies, ie it'd keep you busy in a purposeful way. And then you can play cards or some board game to burn the rest of the day.

[Sappho]

True, with limitations of course, since social interaction takes a pretty big toll on me. The list is in no particular order anyway. The biggest problem with that is that my friends simply aren't around much right now. Everyone's off on their summer holidays, and the ones who are still here are working all the time. I've been trying to invite people over for ages (for precisely the reasons you list) but it never seems to work out. I'll keep trying though.

For now, most of my social contact comes from the taiji training. Some of that is great, but some is not. I really strongly dislike several of the people in our group, but I have to interact with everyone equally.

I had the first cup of real coffee and it was amazing. Now I'm drinking the first beer. It's actually much better than I expected, though it's nothing special. Average beer. I'm very surprised it has such a high alcohol content - it doesn't taste like it. And it doesn't look unfiltered, either. Very clear.

[Sappho]

I seem to be having a problem of taiji motivation. Having given myself permission to show up late or not at all, I no longer feel any drive to get there. Instead of pulling myself out of bed, I just hit snooze until it's very late. Right now they've been training for an hour and 15 minutes already, and I'm still sitting here eating breakfast.

If I could get there on time (or close to on time), I could do the beginning parts I like (standing, form) and then just sit to the side with a book while they do all the partner work, until we get back to the form. (I'm thinking that maybe one of the reasons I'm getting so burnt out is because the partner work requires so much more energy from me than the individual exercises, and I just can't keep it up.) But if I can't get up early enough for these first few parts, I don't want to get there when they're doing the partner work, because then I'll have to do it.

Today I've decided to stay home until 9:30, then walk over there slowly. If I get there shortly before 10, I will probably still have to do practical applications with a partner, but I'll miss the other partner work, and I won't have to do it for very long before we get to the form details.

It's tempting to just not go at all, but I already missed one day of the new form and I don't want to fall behind on it. That new form is the main reason I want to go every day and I want to take advantage of the chance to learn it.

Regarding tracking myself, I think I'm not going to try to use a paper chart until I start work again, but I will try to keep loose track of how I feel during and after various activities. Trying to hack my responses to things: which activities should I turn to when feeling depressed, to cheer me up? Which should I limit? Which should I do before bed? Etc. Some of these might seem obvious, but they aren't all.

So, today. Woke up feeling sluggish, fatigued. (Had one beer last night - a while before bed and I was not intoxicated when I went to bed, but it still might have an effect.)
Realize how late I am, how much training I keep missing: depressed. Angry with myself for being unable to handle it, when everyone else is going to both mornings *and* afternoons and no one is complaining of being tired or burnt out.
Decide to go later and have some breakfast: motivated to use this time productively. Washed dishes, tidied kitchen a bit, ate something healthy instead of the Tesco pastry I was planning to get. Feeling still sluggish and drowsy, a bit dreading training, but relieved I'm at least getting something done.
Writing this: much easier to focus when I'm writing! More and more dreading going to training. Trying to push away thoughts of just not going at all.

EDIT:
Before leaving for training I burst into tears for no apparent reason, surprising and confusing myself. At this moment it occurred to me that this is right about the time I should be getting HORMONAL.
On the way to training, every step of the way I had to fight the desire to just go back home. Intense fight-or-flight instinct (leaning hard towards flight, obviously).
During training, quite foggy, not exactly in high spirits, but better than I felt beforehand. Avoided most of the partner work, did well during the form training.
After training, everyone was going to lunch at a nice Indian restaurant but I decided to come home instead, save some money, take a rest. Cook. Very tired on the walk home, but overall feeling better than before I went. Not sure if feeling better than I would have at this time, had I just stayed home instead.

Important piece of information: we are not going to learn any new pieces of the refined simplified form after today. We're through 3 of the 4 sections but the teacher has decided there isn't enough time to learn the last section. Instead, we're going to go through what we know already and polish it up a bit. This will likely damage my motivation to keep going to class, but at least if I really just can't go, I won't be missing anything critical.

An issue I'd like to try to resolve: I'm noticing that I stink a lot lately. I used to wear antiperspirant, but when I realized it wasn't working and I was sweaty and smelly anyway, I decided to skip the harsh carcinogens and switch to deodorant instead. The problem is, the deodorant doesn't seem to be working either. I sweat a lot (thanks for the genetics, mom) and it seems I just sweat the stuff right off, especially during 3 hours of training out in the sun. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is there anything I can do, other than just hiding in a cave and never coming out until the weather gets cold?

EDIT:
Took a shower - freaked out about how stinky my armpits were. I scrubbed them with soap then sniffed and discovered, to my dismay, that they STILL smelled a bit. Scrubbed 3 more times and finally got the smell out. So overall feeling was stressed and worried.
After shower - dried armpits and applied antiperspirant, and kept my arms up over my head so it could dry completely. Anxious.
Cooking lunch - feeling pretty good. made a really nice soup with noodles (and with no salt). no stink so far.
Eating lunch / watching classic Doctor Who - feeling pretty happy.
Finished lunch - constantly inspecting my armpits for smell, horrified to discover a bit of stink. I haven't gotten any exercise and as far as I know I haven't sweated at all. WHY on earth do I smell?
Started laundry, thinking about working on my painting. feeling pretty happy but still a bit anxious about the stink.

Painting, Doctor Who, cup of real coffee from my new french press - Mostly pretty happy/content. Slightly frustrated with some of the painting, but I'm sort of learning a new technique so problems are bound to arise.
Video game time! - tried to play Sword & Swourcery EP but the damn thing won't work. After 5 minutes of fiddling around it suddenly started jerking and skipping and then froze up entirely with the music skipping in the background and the screen blank white. Realized that my computer was overheating (HOW after FIVE minutes?), managed to get the thing closed in another 5 minutes, probably won't be playing that game again. Mood - annoyed but not overly upset. I have too many games to play already. Maybe I'll go read for a while and let the computer cool down.

Went to the market for veggies and herbs and a few other things - felt a bit foggy but nothing terrible. Felt pretty happy when I got home with all the ingredients for taboule and an ambition to make homemade bagels sometime in the next couple days.
Made dinner (taboule!) - Quite happy.
Ate dinner while watching Doctor Who - Still quite happy. I love that episode (the Unicorn and the Wasp)
Read some off my current book (Anansi Boys) - uncomfortable in the chair but enjoying the book. Quite pleased at how quickly I'm getting through it despite its length.

[Sappho]

Hm... The age poll thread has brought it to my attention that most of the forumgoers here are far younger than I am. Somehow I always imagined I was one of the younger members. I did join when I was but a fresh-faced young 21-year-old, but that was 7 years ago...

Today I don't think I'm going to training. But I don't actually feel bad about that. I'm not missing anything new, not really, and I actually have all kinds of plans for today. I don't know if I'll get everything done, but here's the list:

-make homemade bagels
-boil the batch of dried soy beans I've had soaking overnight
-do the same for the batch of black beans (maybe make some refried beans?)
-do a thorough deep-cleaning - haven't done this in too long. this includes tidying & vacuuming living room, kitchen, and bathroom
-clean out the fridge (long overdue)
-maybe organize the cabinets in the kitchen and the storage in the living room
-get some serious reading done (I got nearly halfway through Anansi Boys last night)
-get some serious work done on this painting
-do some WRITING for that BOOK which I haven't worked on in a week

I think I better cut myself off there. I probably won't get it all done today, but I shouldn't have much trouble staying productive.

The biggest finding of this morning is that I'm actually feeling motivated and positive (despite cloudy weather). I did not consume any sedatives before bed last night, and I think that's related. No alcohol, no smoking, no sedative tea. Just read the book until my eyes got droopy and went to bed. I still woke up feeling groggy as always, but it wore off more quickly than usual and now I'm feeling just fine. I don't even stink! (I keep checking just in case.) I spent about half an hour looking through my Tumblr dashboard (full of artists and funny animal pictures mostly) and got some good inspiration. Also watched that video of Bill Nye talking about asteroids. Can't believe this guy is still doing his thing. I remember watching him as a kid. He has just gotten better with age.

So I'm going to put the first batch of beans on to boil now (or maybe I'll just do both at once) and get some painting done.

[Sappho]

Well I'd say that it's been a reasonably productive day. I am a little disappointed that I spent too much time playing DF (trying to get used to Masterwork for a future turn in a succession game) and watching TV shows, but I accomplished enough that I shouldn't feel too upset.

-Made the beans. The black beans cooked up far quicker than I expected and were delicious with some eggs. I still have some left over to make refried beans with. The soybeans took fucking forever, just like last time, and still didn't seem to get as soft as they should have. I wonder if maybe I have a bad/old batch of beans. Anyway, I decided that I'm going to get a blender at long last, and start making soya milk, since it seems so easy and buying it is just so damned expensive. I mashed up some of the cooked beans and strained out the liquid to test a cloth handkerchief I have to see if it can be used like cheesecloth, and it worked pretty well. Not nearly enough beans to make actual soya milk from, but I did mix the dry bean paste with some sugar and shove it in the fridge molded into a little tupperware container and am looking forward to it as a snack tomorrow.
-Made the bagels and they were an enormous disappointment. Felt pretty intense frustration when I realized they sucked, though thankfully it went away quickly. I think I've finally figured out why: I'm so used to American recipes using "all-purpose flour" that I didn't realize this recipe called for bread flour (VERY easy to get in this country). I'll try again soon with better flour and hopefully they will turn out nice, since you can't easily buy bagels in Prague.
-Tidied and vacuumed the living room. Spent loads of time cleaning in the kitchen, but it was mostly trying to keep up with the cooking mess and it looks just as messy now as it did this morning. Didn't do anything with the bathroom, or any of the detailed organizing.
-Did loads of reading. Am more than halfway through Anansi Boys (after 2 days!) and also more than halfway through Equal Rites (Discworld), which I'm reading on the computer since I don't have an e-reading device.
-Did a little bit of painting. Not as much as I meant to because the light was low (cloudy day) and I couldn't see what I was doing well enough. Might try to do a bit more before it gets dark.

No writing. Hardly thought about taiji, which I think is good. Give myself a proper break from it. I'll try to go tomorrow.

Overall, felt pretty good today. I have a terrible feeling that I can probably find a direct link between alcohol/sedatives and mood the next day. I love drinking. I love beer. I love the taste of it, the feel of it. I'm even starting to enjoy wine. It's not that I want to get drunk all the time, but I really love these drinks and I will be frustrated if I can't drink anymore because it messes up my whole next day.

I did my push-ups today. Sticking with sets of 10 for a while, since it still feels like a lot. Haven't done any taiji. Might try to do some standing before bed. I always intend to and I always forget.

[Sappho]

Day Start: 26. July (Friday)

No Taiji. Will go for weekend (last 2 days of training).
Woke up feeling good. (No sedatives last night)
Doing the dishes - content
Catching up on internet (mostly tumblr) - calm, relaxed, slightly drowsy
Playing with cat - very happy, if a bit scratched up
Catching up on the B12 forums - calm, neutral
Making/Eating breakfast (shitty bagel) and starting a new game of DF - calm, neutral
Playing DF - up and down. Getting occasional frustration but mostly slightly happy, quite focused. Trying to keep an eye on the time so I don't lose the whole day to games.
After DF - slight feeling of fatigue and disappointment that I have accomplished so little so far today.
Reading - quickly felt better. Thoughts constantly drifting to DF though. want to go back and play.
Trip to the market for ingredients - Quite happy. For some reason, imagined meeting up with an old friend I haven't seen or spoken to in many years and had a nice imaginary chat while I shopped and walked home, showing off my awesome life.
Cooking - focused, neutral. Ups and downs of feeling but nothing significant.
Eating, watching classic Doctor Who, cup of coffee - very happy. Delicious from-scratch food (homemade fajitas with homemade refried beans, totally sodium-free except for the tortillas) and an absolutely hilarious episode.
Got a message from taiji teacher checking that I'm okay and inviting me to whiskey tasting tonight - slight discomfort at the thought of going out and socializing, slight happiness knowing that he thinks of me, confusion about whether I want to go or not - knowing I'll probably have fun if I do, but alcohol will probably mean a bad day tomorrow and the socializing will be difficult after 2 days of quiet calm.
Second round of fajitas and doctor who - still quite happy. this episode was just as excellently terrible as the last and i was laughing loud enough to annoy the cat.
After food/tv - suddenly very sleepy, laid down to take a nap. In bed maybe half an hour, slept maybe 2 minutes but seemed to be enough. When I woke up my first thought was "oh my god I'm so FULL"
DF for a while - happy but slightly distracted by social anxiety about whiskey tasting
Reading - finished Anansi Boys! Such a great book. also had me laughing loud enough to annoy the cat.
Short session of Dungeons of Dredmor - just about 20 minutes, hadn't played in a while. felt satisfying cleaning out a monster zoo.
After DoD - suddenly very sleepy again. Sent teacher a message that I won't be coming to the whiskey tasting. would take a nap but seems silly to do so this late (about 19.15).
Short period of painting, last 20 minutes of sunlight - calm and focused. Had an episode of Burn Notice playing in the background, ended up just watching that when the light got too dim.
Cleaning up food from lunch - was very happy to see all my stuff side by side in my little "leftover fajitas" tupperware box.
DF for a while - for too long really. didn't want to stop, but can feel myself getting sleepy. disappointed that I didn't get more done today but not feeling terrible. Would REALLY like to have a drink but will not allow myself to, have decided to go to taiji tomorrow morning even if i don't feel great.

A productive thought for today: I have a very strong tendency to start projects and then get bored and walk away from them before they're finished. I tend to try to push myself to go back to them but once I've crossed that line, I just don't want to look at it. But when I look at old projects that I never finished, I get a whole new rush of inspiration. Maybe I should try implementing a "rotating project" system. Instead of burning myself out on my current passion, I should limit how much I do it, and not do it every day. I'll make a list of creative endeavors and rotate through them when I have spare time, so I won't spend too much time on any one thing and no longer want to do it. I'll have to think of enough things to fill out the list, but that shouldn't be difficult.

Off the top of my head, tentative list of megaprojects:
-Current watercolor painting
-Old acrylic painting I haven't touched in a while
-Writing for my book
-Drawing comics (haven't done in Too Long)
-Practicing taiji
-Standing
-Baking / other time-consuming cooking activities
-Organizing storage/cabinets at home
-Oil painting (can only do during hot weather - allergic to the fumes, need to leave windows wide open for hours after)
-Number crunching my data charts (still a lot of work to do with those)

[Sappho]

Hope someone is still reading and I'm not just flooding the forums with my boring daily routines. : )

Went to Taiji this morning and found myself strangely energetic and generally pretty happy. It's really hot outside though. In fact, I didn't sleep much last night because it was too hot. If I pushed the blanket off me and laid naked in the bed, the temperature was right, but thanks to my hypersensitivity, the feeling of air on my skin makes me itch, so I couldn't sleep from that. Then I put the blanket or a shirt on and I was too hot. Today should be even hotter.

My internet has been on and off for the past week or so. Today it went down for over an hour. I finally decided to call customer service (they have 24/7 tech support and an English help line) to ask them what the deal is and if I can at least get a discount for all these outages (I'm paying for the most expensive package they have), and wheeee, there's apparently no English tech support on weekends. Fortunately it's back up now, but I won't count on it staying up. This has made me pretty frustrated. I have friends who use the same company and they never have any problems. If there's an issue with my connection, they need to either fix it or at least give me a discount for the shitty service, or else I might just finally cancel my plan and switch to another company.

I've been thinking more about this "rotating project" idea. I think I need to add more things to the list. I've basically listed the things I'm actively working on now, but I'm already starting to lose interest in some of them. I think I should have more than one project of each type, and set limits for how much time I can spend on each one per day, forcing me to not burn myself out even when I have a rush of inspiration. (If this proves counter-productive I will obviously cancel the idea.) To fill out the list, I'll combine current projects, past projects that I'm once again interested in, and new ideas that I can start working on. I'll fill in the specifics later (have a terrible headache today). For sure there are several comics I can work on, several paintings, and my motivation to write about autism has been pushed down by my motivation to write a book about "hacking your brain" to achieve maximum happiness, so I might as well start writing that too.

Also, I can't believe I haven't thought to write this down: a week or so ago a guy in my taiji group made an offhand comment that caused me to start a new experiment. He pointed out that morning coffee/tea is actually a bad idea because you'll crash from the caffeine in the middle of the day. It's far better to have your coffee or tea in the afternoon, so the crash happens around when you're going to bed. This was too logical not to try, so for the past week, I've had no caffeine in the mornings, and one or two cups of coffee (so much fun with my new french press) around lunchtime. I have noticed that:
1. I'm almost never falling asleep during the afternoon.
2. I'm having a somewhat easier time getting to sleep at night (other factors notwithstanding).

The next step is obviously to test how big a role the caffeine is playing. So today I'm not having any caffeine at all. None whatsoever. I suspect this is the reason for my headache, which is actually a pretty good sign that I should be cutting back on the caffeine anyway. The questions are:
1. Do I get sleepy in the afternoon? (I'm already sleepy but I did only get a few hours of sleep last night, so it's tough to tell.)
2. Will I be able to sleep at night without the "crash"?

Oh, and one more idea: I have my old computer sitting in the cupboard, unused. It still works, although the battery no longer holds a charge and it must stay plugged in. It's slow and sluggish, but I never had any major problems with it. If I'm trying to work on this computer, I tend to get distracted by the internet and games. I'm thinking that maybe I can clean out that old machine, delete all entertainment software, and just use it for writing and work. I don't know how effective it'll be, since it's easy enough to just turn on this computer when I want to play games, but it's worth a try. (As an added bonus, the old one runs very cool. This one is always in danger of overheating because DELL MAKES SHITTY COMPUTERS. Never buy a Dell, guys. NEVER.)