Sunday, April 30, 2006

Three weeks today not smoking and 540 cigarettes not smoked.

It takes about ten minutes to relocate to somewhere where you can smoke, roll up and smoke the thing. That's 90 hours or 3.75 days that I would have spent purely on smoking.
The maths is a bit dodgy of course...a large number of those cigarettes would have been smoked when doing something else. But the increasing number of social prohibitions mean that those 'smoking whilst doing something else' moments are becoming rarer.

What have I done with all those spare moments? If today is anything to go by I have spent an extra 3.75 days asleep. If yesterday was the example then I have spent an additional 90 hours acquiring and consuming sugar products. I was convinced the sugar was giving me a headache I had had so much of it. The two Krispy Kreme's for breakfast was overdoing it I admit.
Has it got easier? I'm too stressed out at the moment to make a judgement on that. Not being allowed to have a pint on the last day of the season wasn't fun. Luckily there are two, possibly three, other games where I can make up for it. That said going without alcohol has been easy in the wake of giving up smoking.

Microsoft have also been stressing me out with their anti-piracy measures. Not that I disapprove of them in principal but suddenly being forced into making decisions about it at this time has been a pain. Do I switch to Apple? Do I finally give Linux a try? Or do I just put up with the 'nagulator' that appears at login ((a solution to this has already appeared) until Windows bring out their new OS 'Vista'... I ended up paying into Mr Gates' tea-fund.

I am unlikely to be doing the same when the anti-piracy campaign is extended to MS Office. Has anyone ever bought one of these (retail not a cut down pre-installed version)? It costs a bomb.
This is my first blog written with
OpenOffice's Writer which costs nothing. If it hadn't been for R I might have gone fully open source. I think I'll have a look at Ubuntu anyway.
More happily I also got myself a nice mouse after the meal on Friday, though not a squeaky one as one of my fellow diners thought. A Logitech Pilot Optical – a bit pricey(cheaper here though) but it makes everything a lot more comfortable.
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3w 11:05 smoke-free, 541 cigs not smoked, £62.76 saved, 1d 21:05 life saved
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heh, after giving up smoking, switching to Linux will seem relatively pain-free! I'm using Ubuntu at the moment, it seems to do everything I need straight "out of the box", which is always nice! And there are 100s of free programs only a few clicks away.

Grab the LiveCD version if you want to give it a whirl without committing, and give me a shout if you need any help. It also might be worth finding your local Linux User Group. They're probably not the coolest people to be seen hanging out with of an evening, although they can be useful for re-affirming your non-geek status! And for helping you with any difficulties you might have.

11:07 pm
Erik Fuller said...

Thanks orangejon. I'll send off for my discs later this afternoon and check out the Groups. Its things like getting basics, such as my new mouse to work that bugs me. (No pun intended)

12:08 pm
Erik Fuller said...

silverwanderer- I wish this enhanced smell thing would happen but it hasn't.
I think I will avoid annuities. I don't really know what they are anyway but thanks for the warning.
As for demos that's simply a matter of what the weather's like- I could have fitted a couple in today easily provided they were going in the right direction.

8:19 pm

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