Wikipedia [via]:

Burnout is a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest (depersonalisation or cynicism), usually in the work context. It is also used as an English slang term to mean exhaustion. Burnout is often construed as the result of a period of expending too much effort at work while having too little recovery, but it is sometimes argued that workers with particular personality traits (especially neuroticism) are more prone to experiencing burnout.

Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It can be defined as an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression (Matthews & Deary, 1998). They respond more poorly to environmental stress, and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.

Burnout is a common syndrome in volunteer organisations, for example open-source software development teams, and suggests that the cause of burnout is long-term economic instability rather than stress. Some reports indicate that burnout is project specific, so an individual may be unable to work in one context, but fully functional in another. Anecdotal evidence suggests a treatment for burnout, based on changing the economic model governing the work in question. For example, the switch from volunteer to paid work can apparently cure burnout.

Money money money.

I can’t believe it almost took me a whole day to write the scripts to manage my photolog — which I’ll obviously hardly ever use, even though I have a decent camera phone and iPhoto’06, the combination of which makes it as easy as drag-and-dropping thumbnails and clicking “Ok.”

I’d stil need stuff to photograph.

While I was closing my minifridge with my foot after I took the ham and pickles from it, getting ready to spend a good loser’s Saturday night in front of the TV, wearing a pajama top and socks, I realized that if I visualized the same scene enacted by Brenda in Six Feet Under it was sexy and classy rather than pathetic. (Well, it would ideally be a giant ice cream bucket in that scene, but I can’t bring myself to throw up my food after a binge.) But I’m not shot in 35mm. Devil in the details.

In other news, some articles in French will now appear on the English blog and vice versa, because sometimes I’m bored with translating everything. And, who knows, maybe I’ll post more this way. I vaguely kinda somehow feel like reviving this blog a little bit these days.

If you’ve been to my place in the last couple of months (or maybe more, I’m not good with dates, plus you get used to everything in time) and you thought there was a weird smell in my bathroom, you’ll be glad to find out that my toilet’s disposal pipe was leaking.

Uh, no, actually, I guess you won’t be particularly happy to find that out. And neither am I, for that matter. When the plumber told his apprentice “Oh, no, don’t screw that one too tight” I just assumed he was talking about the pipe that led out of the macerator — the one that blew off two hours after they left, making a fountain out of my pee (because those things are designed to pump waste all the way from your basement to the septic tank, so you better screw the exit collars tight) — but it clearly also applied to the pipe between the toilet and macerator. So, of course, it moves a bit with time, first because the whole device’s purpose in life is to vibrate everytime it’s used, and second because they installed the damn thing as well as they could in limited space, and pipes are pulling on it in all directions.

Anyway, do you know what’s the healthiest thing to do with a screwdriver once you’ve used it to tighten your macerator’s joints? Why, cut yourself with the pointy end, of course.

Garoo, planning to sanitize the Earth one plumber at a time.

• Could there be a correlation between my hardly blogging here anymore and my hardly reading any personal blogs anymore? Of course I’m not inspired to write long-winded personal stuff here — I’m completely uninterested in everyone else’s long-winded personal posts, too!

• It’s so weird watching TV episodes at the same time as everyone else in the US — or, at least, everyone who Tivos their shows. I love that the whole blogosphere and IMDb don’t know anything more than I do about Dexter (or about Heroes, but Dexter is more of a suspense thing). It’s kind of intoxicating.

• And I find it oddly soothing to find out with my new phone that the 9-minute ‘snooze’ seems to be a universal constant.

— Hi, I’m looking for spare bed splats…

— Yeah, I’ve only got one model, but I don’t think it’ll be wide enough for what you’re looking for.

I followed him through the aisles out of sheer curiosity, curious to see what he could have misunderstood, but he did bring me to the bed slats (which were hidden between locks and hinges).

So now I’m left wondering — what do I look like I might be planning to do with bed slats?

Courtesy of L. R., a questionnaire that I’ll leave below the cut because I can’t be bothered to translate it into English.

• My supermarket got the vanilla Special K, and I’m disappointed.

• Would I really have the balls to move out of the country if Sarkozy was elected?

• En aparté “doesn’t take off and has trouble interesting more than 200,000 people; 2.5% of the viewers” (TVnews). I’m so surprised.

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Some days I hate being a geek.

For sale, because the hard drives are dead (kids, don’t let your hard drives stay near a UPS).

And I wouldn’t mind replacing my Mac mini with an Intel one, too, to serve as an iTunes jukebox and Internet Explorer testbed.

• I’d forgotten was winter was like.

• I’d forgotten I don’t understand how those damn heaters work, too. And I’m an engineer. Why does this freaking switch have symbols for a clock and night and day, even though that thing doesn’t know what time is it or how long it’s on?

• Funny how the Dépôt’s clientele (that’s one of the biggest sex clubs here) has aged just as I have.

• Of course, just when the laundromat doesn’t accept bank notes because of All Saints Day and nobody emptied the machine since last Friday, and I have three bags of laundry because it’s been piling up for a month while I waitede for money to come in, it so happens that all the neighborhood’s shops conspire to close because of All Saints Day.