Area Nation Just Wants This Election To Be Over Already

Just another 16 days. Just days away. This election has broken me, and I spent 2000 on the Ops night shift at Oxford Brookes following the Bush v. Gore shenanigans. And you’ll remember that I got so freaked out at Obama’s abysmal first debate performance in 2012 that I sent a long angry message to Obama For America at 2am that night.

This time, I am sleeping. However, I’m managing that simply through Ambien, which I didn’t have access to four years ago. Otherwise, I have succumbed to Deep US Election Psychosis. Every minute from getting up to going to bed is overwhelmed by the need to check Twitter or elsewhere to see if there’s a new poll, something being said at a rally, or what the guy occupying the Ecuadorian Embassy’s women’s toilets is coming out with today (spoilers: likely to be tinged with anti-Semitism!). Then, once in bed, there’s a thirty minute period whereupon I continue to check my phone until I feel the pull of the Ambien.

This is not healthy. The only real respite for the past month has been sleep and the periods when I’ve been flying (and that leads to me wandering through an airport trying to check 400 tweets whilst attempting to catch a taxi). Just another 16 days to go.

This is all a lead up to me pointing out that I’m giving a talk at All Things Open this Thursday. Come and watch me talk about Apache Spark and see if you can spot the points where I’m thinking “But wait! WHAT IF 538 HAS UPDATED THEIR FORECAST WHILST I’M EXPLAINING HOW TO CONFIGURE THE G1GC GARBAGE COLLECTOR?"1 There will also be a take-home mini-zine for 30 people! And a PDF of it for everybody else afterwards.

Right, back to Twitter. On November 9th…I may be more sane. A little, anyhow.


  1. This will happen, almost certainly. ↩︎