At the moment, I’ve no idea what to do with it, but am thinking something along the lines as the entry to all my websites and social network accounts- here, VacantEngaged, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. Maybe a v-card, maybe not. I’m still thinking it over.

Anyway, I’ve thrown together a splash page and you should check it out. If you have 200k bandwidth to spare.

Now Mountain Lion has more iOS features which are of no use to me. Reminders? I tried it to see if it reminded me to buy milk after I departed work. I got home before it buzzed. Pass.

Notes? Here and there I use it, but that’s because it’s on my phone. It’s portable, so I can take it shopping and use it to remember to buy a can of Milo before I hit the checkout. So it’s good for small things, but not much more. If I want to remember something while I’m computing, I’ll put a Post-It note somewhere I can see. But on the Mac? Err, no. Can’t go to Woolworths with a laptop without looking like a douchebag. Pass.

Game Centre? I don’t use it on iPhone, I won’t use it on Mountain Lion. Messages to replace iChat? Maybe. But my $59 cap says I can send $500-odd of SMS, and I don’t go anywhere close to that. Pass.

Twitter-integration? I use Twitter, but the current app is too small. I’d prefer if it were full screen. I use Tweetbot on my phone, and the Twitter website anyway. I don’t think I need to right-click on a photo or document and select Tweet This! Pass.

Notifications? I have Growl and that works fine. Sure, it doesn’t tell me that a friend commented on my Facebook photo, but I’m on Facebook all day anyway, so it will just get in the way. Pass.

Airplay Mirroring? You do this via Apple TV. I sold my Apple TV as I got tired of spending 45 minutes converting videos to a format it supports. Instead, I have an LG media player which plays in Full HD, plays a variety of formats – MOV, MP4, AVI, MKV… just by plugging my external drive into it. Pass.

iCloud? I use it at the moment, because it’s there. I don’t need to, though. Sometimes I’ll clear out some unwanted bookmarks, but after my phone syncs during the night, they’re back. I should probably stop using iCloud. Might pass.

Gatekeeper? No idea what it is or what it does. And it has Windows Defender’s logo. Pass.

Features for China? Pass. I’m not in China and I can’t read or speak Mandarin or Cantonese. Pass.

So with that, I don’t think  I’ll be upgrading to Mountain Lion. There’s supposedly another 90-odd features not yet announced, probably Stocks and Newsstand, which you won’t be able to remove, just like iOS.

I’m kinda feeling normal today. But on Tuesday morning it was a whole different story. It started again at 1:30am with the usual toilet break, and ended in hell. Calm down, relax, think happy thoughts, they all did nothing. All I could think of was the panic attack I was having, trying to get rid of it, and panicking more. By 4am I’d had enough. My heart was racing, I was shaking, my mind cloudy… time for hospital.

I don’t like hospitals. But this time I was okay with it. Sort of. Words like “I really need to do a wee” came with a response of “Soon, we have to do an ECG” and then a bit later “Okay, you can go now, and please fill this cup.”

I had another blood test, this time with that funky thing they put on my hand, see image:

The doctors @ Nambour were very calm, very reassuring and somewhat relaxing. I almost fell asleep, except for the contant beeping of the heart monitor and other people talking.

Ended up coming home about 10:30 and headed straight for my GP to plead for medication to calm me down. I was a wreck. Four hours of sleep over 3 days does that to you, and it’s worse when you brain plays funny buggers on you the moment you put your head on the pillow. I walked out with some Valium, popped two and fell asleep for a few hours.

Yesterday wasn’t too bad, still a bit weird, but also comforting with the knowledge I had some meds to help me through. I used them sparingly all yesterday, felt somewhat good, then last night about 8pm had two. I woke at 1am and couldn’t sleep again, but not because of feeling panicky, just, I dunno. I went for a walk, come home about 2am, stuck on a Simpsons DVD and before the first episode finished I was out.

I woke again maybe 5am, the Simpsons DVD was back at the menu, so I started it up again. I think I was out of it before the couch gag, and woke about 8:30am.

At the moment, I feel 99.99999% normal, really good. I still have to see the specialist to rule out epilepsy, and also have to visit a psychologist, but other than that, fingers crossed, I’m all good.

PS – I’ve been caffeine-free for 4 days now.

Arrive at the doctor and they let me straight in. And it’s the usual – had it before? Personal and family medical history? Do you use illicit drugs? It looks like a panic attack, have you had a panic attack before? Anxiety problems? Ok, I’ll call my colleague… I didn’t get much of the conversation except for “I thought it was a panic attack, but they last only 10 minutes, this has been going for 45…”

Meanwhile, I was in tears. It was that bad.

So after all that, it’s blood test time and a referral to get my head X-Ray’d. I hate blood. Giving it, anyway. Today, nup, it didn’t bother me. JUST POKE ME DAMMIT! I didn’t say that, but it was something I thought about. Middle of the blood test, it’s “We do have strict doctor-patient confidentiality, and won’t pass details to the police. Do you use ilicit drugs? NO!

And then it’s time to get the head check. Do I drive? Hell no! Taxi? I ain’t spending $15 on a 3 minute trip. So walk I did. Detoured to another chemist along the way, bought and popped two Nurofens and continued along, all dizzy, confused, going insane.

The X-Ray machine was pretty interesting; whirring and all these funky sounds for what seemed to be forever, but it was probably only 2 minutes. Anyway, with that done, home time.

Get home, feeling a little normal, head for the shower, lie down, close my eyes and relax. Just lying there worked a treat, but it got boring after a while so I got out and put on Futurama. Feeling even more normal, with just a hint of lunacy knocking at the door, I decide it was best to return to the shower for another horizontal soaking… with bonus spew. Which kinda tasted like the iced tea I’d had earlier. Yeah, you know you came here to read about spew.

So once again, time to get out. I crash on my bed, but I can’t sleep. Feeling a treat, but still two hours to kill before I see the doctor again for results. I can’t really remember how I passed the time, but it flew, and I returned for my results, which all come back sweet. That’s heaps reassuring, but still, it doesn’t explain the cause of this weird sensation I’ve now experienced three times. While I don’t get a prescription for Mersyndol Forte, or anything hardcore, I am told regular Mersyndol should be fine. It’ll help me sleep too, and with chronic insomnia, that’s a bonus.

So now I have Nurofen and generic-brand Mersyndol to keep me, fingers crossed, feeling normal. Thinking back to last time, I don’t know why I let it persist for 4 days before being checked out. Today, it hung around for 3 hours. That’s more than enough to last me a lifetime. Oh, and I scored tonight off work too.

Anyway, see PIDV on Tumblr here.

Get to Sydney and it’s straight to my hotel who kindly gave me a map of the City. It came in handy as every second tourist asked me for directions, even though I was a tourist. Maybe it’s because I was white? Anyway, I walked down to Hyde Park for a quick rest.

From there is was time to do the usual thing a tourist does in Sydney – go see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

I got bored pretty quick and needed to find the john, much like the last time I visited Sydney, so I quickly left and went to search for The State Theatre, the venue for Mondo Cane. The maze of Sydney’s streets was crazy, but I eventually made it.

From there it was beer time. A quick look on Facebook showed me my pal Luis was hanging at the bar around the corner. And that’s where I spend the next 2 hours. Agatha, an old ‘friend’ who I’d seen many times in Melbourne at Mike Patton and related band concerts, she showed up. The last time I saw her was probably at the Fantomas/Tomahawk/Melvins show where I was super-drunk. Again. For some reason I’m always drunk when she’s around. Gah!

Then we went to The State Theatre for some Mike Patton goodness. Feel free to click ANY photo for higher res.

When the show ended, we went to another bar. After that, about 1am, I had to make the trek back to the hotel where I made it in about 2am. About to go to bed, turn on the TV and the cricket is on. I had to watch it. The next thing I know it’s 3:30am, I’ve had 4 hours sleep in almost two days and have to be up in another few to check out. In the end I only managed about two hours sleep, before checking out and making my way back to Sydney Airport. SIX HOURS EARLY.

It ended up being alright though as I got talking with a girl who also got to the airport way too early. It was great having someone to talk to, to kill the time and have lunch with, and to add as a friend on Facebook. See, things happen for a reason. If I got to the airport, say, five hours early, I’d have done it all differently and sat on my own for five hours.

Anyway, after a huge day in the departure lounge I finally boarded, got home, did my thing, then slept for 12 hours. It was sooo needed.

Anyway, $37 later, the theme got installed, tweaked and, well, here you go… another version of VacantEngaged [ with a cute, err "kawaii" emoticon on the title bar ].

Basically it’s a full screen gallery of all the things that make me want to go to Japan. As you can’t really rip off people and claim their photos as your own, I’ve decided to credit/link to the original owner, as you can see above. All the photos I’ve gathered so far have been very artistic, way better than happy snaps taken on a phone, but yeah, all in all it gives me a reason to save. The more I save, the more I see, the better time I have.

Now all I need is somebody to teach me to read and speak Japanese.

Flip through to Page 124 and both of my “chops” were published. I’m glad all that hard work wasn’t for nothing.