New phone

Picked up a new phone yesterday. Obtained the Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket and I've been very happy with it so far. Although i have to discover some way to convert my itunes media to the new phone if i wish to keep using that software to organize my music. The other option is to keep using my iphone as merely an ipod touch or dig out my old small ipod and start using it again. Although i haven't used the new phone for actually making any kind of phone calls yet, i'm still extremely impressed with its smartphone functionality.

If i remember to post other entries, I'll detail the various apps I've installed and what i think about them.

Fotamecus triumphant

My wife was telling me a tale Monday (10/11/2010) about her experience when she went in to work. She described how when she got there, her watch was over 20 minutes fast compared to the clock in the car (which is always known to be fast anyway). It was good because it meant she got to work early. I asked her how often she took her watch into the office in our home where I have done the majority of my magick (at least, the magick I do at home). She reported that the Sunday before was the first time she'd ever taken it in there. I couldn't help but just start laughing.

My wife asked me why I was laughing, and more importantly, what had I done. I reported to her that time, at least in the office, was very... and then I struggled to find the word. She suggested fluid, and I agreed that was as good a word to use as any. She asked i that was why her computers in there could never manage to keep time, and the other clocks in the house were starting to have problems as well. I agreed it was quite possible. Then informed her that I had decided to join in the war against Chronos.

Once we got home from wherever it was we had been (I think watching the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus), I showed her the article that describes the birth of Fotamecus. I also explained to her, that the last time I had been out with Chaoyote, I publicly denied Chronos and issued him a challenge and joined the war as a soldier against him. I'm not sure if the wife will begin to call upon Fotamecus now that she has been introduced to him or not. But, she now knows why clocks inside the house can't be relied upon at least.

I've already decided to start looking into running my magickal workings on a more lunar cycle. I'm also going to start looking to get myself a nice time piece that I can destroy as a sacrifice to Fotamecus. As I've said before, Chronos' time has come and gone.

Paranoia Mindset: Be careful what you drink

I noticed something I've done for the longest time (almost as long as I've been in the public work force) this evening. When I take a drinking cup while in a public place, I try to take a random cup from the once available. I grab a random number from the stack, and then sometimes take the last cup from those I grabbed, or the top of the new stack created. Sometimes I'll grab let the ones I pulled off the stack drop and then stop them after 3 or 4 have fallen and either take the last one to fall, or the next one that would have fallen. I do this just about anywhere I go that I have the ability to take more than a single cup at (convenience stores that have their fountain cups overfilled for example).

The big question is, why do I do this. The psychotic and sad answer is because I have this feeling of dread that something has been done to those top cups. There are various theories I can come up with, but they all lead to an overall idea. That being the idea that some form of poison is present and I'm surviving and living that much longer by not drinking from them. This is one of those "habits" that paranoid people eventually develop that cause them to start standing out in society after a while if they are observed doing it often enough. I'm lucky that there's never any one present when it happens for the most part. If there are people present, I can easily pass it off as having just grabbed the stack to hard and it happened to lift too many. No one thinks anything of that if they see it only once or twice.

Unlike most paranoid behavior, this isn't something I may ever get over or stop doing. This is one of those things that's ingrained. Even knowing what I'm doing I can't stop. If I try to do so, then I begin feeling ill. My pulse begins racing, my temperature feels like it skyrockets (and I can feel heat pouring out of the openings in my clothing). I get all shakey, and have to stop doing anything for a brief moment.

Paranoia Mindset: Locked door?

Went out to visit the in-laws and do the christmas thing with them today. After pulling out of the driveway, I noticed a couple standing at a red light half a block away from my house. As I pulled up to a red light, I was struck with a sudden urge to turn around and go back to the house. Just to make sure that the doors were locked properly, and to ensure that the couple continued walking along the sidewalk and didn't stray towards my home.

I continued on to my in-laws instead though. One, I didn't want to alarm my wife that I was thinking such thoughts. Two, I knew that it was a symptom of my own paranoid delusions. The couple couldn't even know where my specific house was, even though my mind insisted that they were headed straight there. I wasn't even as concerned that they'd rob the place. It was more a fear that they'd enter into my safe haven. The place I feel most secure and at peace.

As usual when fear and paranoid delusions grip me, I use my own cognitive reasoning to reaffirm reality. Reminding myself that I am nobody important and that the strangers I see and pass on the street are just that, complete strangers who have want nothing more to do with me, than I do with them.

Paranoia Mindset

A few years back I was sent to a shrink by my job because of some stuff I wrote in my myspace blog. One of the few things to come out of that was that the doc told me I officially had the paranoid personality disorder. Of course I've known for some time that I was subject to this condition. I'm starting a new series of posts here on my blog for two reasons. One, so people can get an idea what it's like to suffer from a constant irrational fear of life smallest day to day experiences. Two, so I can hopefully get a better grip on my own sanity.

I'll place all new entries under the lable 'paranoia mindset' and will possibly have something like that in the title of the entries as well. Things that will most likely fall under this label will be entries that show how my paranoid beliefs have impacted my day to day life. Not sure if it'll be useful information for others, but at least it'll be useful for myself.

Fossil Creek

As I've mentioned on my twitter, the wife and I took the twins' to visit fossil creek. The entrance into the region is through one of the many state forests (can't remember exactly which one, possibly tonto state park), which is located roughly 90 miles north of Phoenix. Once you reach the entrance, there's is a 26 mile long un-paved road that is officially 25mph, our car had problems with anything above 10 though. On the way in, we were driving right along a very steep ridge. Essentially, there was a few inches of road, then a steep drop down a sheer mountain cliff face that led to an easy 200-300 foot drop. As someone with some issues with heights, I'm very glad my wife was driving instead of me.

Once we made it to the bottom of the road, we found a place to park at one of the many trailheads. Then we hiked the 50 feet or so to the creek proper. The twins had a blast swimming in the icy clear water. They even fought the current a bit and got a decent workout. The place where we reached the waters edge was a popular place it appeared. Someone had at some point tied a couple of ropes in the trees for people to swing out over the creek and drop into the water. I was going to include some pictures we took, but unfortunately, that's not as easy with blogger as it might seem. If I ever get around to putting the pictures online, I'll just link back to them via twitter.

Is it paranoia?

So, I've been posting a lot of mundane information onto twitter lately. It's such a simple little thing. In fact, I started using twitter because the little status segment wasn't capable of a historical tracking, that and I didn't have the ability to update myspace as often as I can twitter. So as I started using twitter more, I found myself posting more and more mundane updates occasionally. Little things like "I'm headed out to the store" or "I'm leaving for work" or even "We're all going to a movie" ("we" including everyone in the house at the time).

As I finished posting the blurb about going to the movies, I immediately wondered if I should find some way to take it back. I began wondering, "If someone wanted to rob my house, I've just told them the exact time to arrive, and exactly how long I'll be gone." I know most people would just say I was being paranoid. But, I have to be. You see, my mind doesn't work like a "normal" person's mind. I have a security mindset. The link will take you to a wired article written by a security expert who explains in detail how the security mindset works. The security mindset described in that article is essentially the same thing as a criminal mindset. In fact, the only thing that sometimes differentiates between a very intelligent successful criminal and an extremely intelligent and successful law enforcement agent is morals and quite possibly, the law enforcement agent has a slight touch of paranoia that prevented them from taking the path of a criminal.

Does this mean that I'll stop posting such updates? Most likely not. I understand that most people wouldn't even consider that they could use that information for such. In fact, most of the people who would consider using twitter as yet another means of stalking and casing a place to rob would be targeting people with much more financial viability from their house (such as northern Scottsdale area houses).

Of course, there is still that paranoid part of me that makes me want to post updates on twitter that are slightly more vagu as to exactly how long or exactly when I may leave. I am helped in this by the fact that I can go long periods of time without updating and no one really knows if it's because I'm away from the house, or just because I have been focused on something else and haven't gotten around to updating in a while, which happens much more often than some may thinl.

One thing I do hope this information is helpful with, is to make others take just a brief moment before they post updates on twitter, facebook, myspace, or wherever that would make it so easy for people to stalk them, or to make a victim out of them.