I’ve Survived 29 Brain Operations, But a Password Reset May Finish Me Off

I have survived 29 brain operations. I have recovered from things that would cause most people to lie flat on the floor and refuse to participate in life ever again. Yet this week, I was nearly defeated by a password box.

Apparently, the password I have used successfully for months is suddenly wrong. It isn’t wrong. I know it isn’t wrong because I wrote it down after being told repeatedly that writing passwords down is dangerous. What is apparently less dangerous is allowing a website to lock me out of something I own while insisting that I prove I am not a robot by identifying seventeen microscopic traffic lights.

I requested a password reset. The website told me it had sent an email. It had not. I requested another. Still nothing. Five minutes later, both arrived together, but the first link had expired and the second apparently belonged to a different moment in the space-time continuum.

Then came the security code.

“Enter the six-digit code we sent to your phone.”

Fine. I left the website to check my messages. When I returned, the website had refreshed and wanted me to log in again. I logged in again. It sent another code. I left to find that one. When I came back, it refreshed again. This is not security. This is psychological warfare.

Modern life is full of tiny inconveniences that are supposedly making everything easier. Restaurants make us scan a QR code to read a menu, then the menu wants our email address, mobile number and date of birth before it will reveal the price of a chicken schnitzel. Car parks no longer accept coins. Banks no longer have branches. Businesses no longer have telephone numbers. If you do find one, a recorded voice says your call is important while leaving you on hold long enough to reconsider whether the matter—or indeed life itself—is worth pursuing.

Nothing simply works anymore. Everything needs an account, an app, an update, a verification code and permission to track your location. I recently attempted to perform one small task online and ended up with twelve browser tabs open, three confirmation emails and no memory of what I had originally intended to do.

And heaven help you if you click “Forgot password.” The website will demand a new password containing a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number, a symbol, an ancient rune and the blood type of your first pet. You carefully create one, only to be told that your new password cannot be the same as an old password.

Which means it knew the old password all along.

I suspect we are no longer angry because life is particularly terrible. We are angry because we spend every day being pecked to death by digital ducks. One minor annoyance would be manageable. Fifty of them before lunch turns a reasonable adult into someone screaming, “I AM NOT A ROBOT!” at a photograph of a pedestrian crossing.

Technology was supposed to give us more leisure time. Instead, we now spend that leisure time updating technology, charging technology, searching for technology and asking technology why it can’t connect to the other technology sitting three centimetres away.

I’m not against progress. I would just like progress to remember the original arrangement: it was meant to work for us.

Because after everything I have survived, I refuse to be taken out by a little red message saying, “Something went wrong. Please try again later.”

Something did go wrong.

We invented the internet.

I Now Require All Purchases to Pass an Intelligence Test

I have finally found a practical use for artificial intelligence. I don’t need it to compose a symphony, diagnose the economy or create a lifelike video of Donald Trump riding a dolphin. I need it to stop me buying rubbish from Facebook.

This has become necessary because the internet has apparently identified me as a woman with skin, joints, teeth, hair and several functioning insecurities. Every time I open Facebook, I am offered something miraculous. A cream that removes age spots in fourteen days. A strip that whitens teeth without damaging them. An oil that repairs joints, erases wrinkles, improves circulation and possibly fixes the transmission in the car. There is always a distinguished-looking doctor involved, although he may actually be a dentist from Belgium whose photograph was stolen in 2017.

In the old days, I would look at the before-and-after photographs, read three glowing reviews from women called Susan and Janet, and begin to wonder. Perhaps this really was the discovery dermatologists had been trying to suppress. Perhaps a small company operating from an undisclosed warehouse had finally cracked the secrets of human ageing. Perhaps all I needed was two bottles for $79.95, plus another bottle mysteriously added at checkout.

Now I ask ChatGPT.

I send it the link and say, “Does this work?” Then it goes rummaging through the ingredients, the evidence, the company’s claims and whatever independent information can actually be found. 

Usually, the answer is a beautifully diplomatic version of: No, Carol. Put your credit card away.

It has become my official Department of 'Suspicious Purchases'. Most of which I cleaned out the other week...

The pattern is remarkably consistent. The product often contains one perfectly reasonable ingredient, surrounded by moisturiser and magnificent advertising. There may be a tiny amount of something that has shown promise in a clinical study, but nobody tells you how much is actually in the jar. The advertisement then leaps from “this ingredient may modestly improve the appearance of pigmentation over several months” to “YOUR HANDS WILL LOOK 25 AGAIN BY THURSDAY.”

They all have thousands of delighted customers. They all sell out regularly. They have all been discovered by a woman who had tried absolutely everything and was about to give up. Sometimes her dermatologist is “amazed.” There is usually a countdown clock informing me that the special price will disappear in eleven minutes, although I can return three days later and find that the clock has made a miraculous recovery.

Since I began checking before buying, I have discovered that most miracle products fall into one of three categories: they might help slightly, they probably do nothing, or they will moisturise the area beautifully while leaving the original problem exactly where it was.

The money I have saved must be considerable. I can’t give you an exact figure because that would require admitting how many times I have been tempted by a bottle of hope with a gold lid. But between the whitening strips, memory supplements, age-spot creams, joint oils, circulation devices and mysterious magnetic objects, I may have saved enough to purchase an entirely new body. Admittedly, it would probably arrive flat-packed and require a subscription.

This doesn’t mean I never buy anything. It means the product now has to survive questioning. Are the ingredients proven? Are they present in useful amounts? Are the reviews independent? Is the dramatic photograph merely the result of different lighting, makeup and someone turning down the contrast? Is there an actual business address? And my personal favourite: if this cream genuinely removed every age spot in two weeks, why wouldn’t every dermatologist on Earth already be using it?

Occasionally, the answer is that a product may be worth trying. More often, I am told that the active ingredient is sensible but the claims are inflated, the evidence is weak and a cheaper product from the chemist will probably do the same thing. It isn’t nearly as exciting as discovering a forbidden anti-ageing breakthrough, but it is considerably better for my bank account.

So I now have a rule: before buying anything advertised as revolutionary, miraculous, clinically proven, ancient, secret, doctor-approved or “not available in shops,” I send it for interrogation.

Artificial intelligence may eventually take over the world. Until then, mine is standing between me and a $69 jar of moisturiser claiming to reverse thirty years of sun damage.

Frankly, it has already paid for itself. :')

Every Good Idea Already Exists - So Why Do We Keep Inventing Things?

Yesterday, I was an "inventor". Thinking to myself "this Shift Match would be a fabulous idea!" So I made it, working studiously all day only to discover that larger organisations already have their own systems!

But the funny truth is that almost nothing is completely new. There were search engines before Google, social networks before Facebook, and plenty of vacuum cleaners before Dyson.

The point isn’t always to invent something nobody has imagined. Sometimes it’s to make an existing thing simpler, kinder, cheaper—or merely less infuriating.

It would be timely, funny, personal, and relatable.

Oh well, back to "get rich quick" scheme number 329!

From Being Cared For, To Being A Carer...

I may be going to work as a carer for people with disabilities.

Which feels a little like the poacher turning gamekeeper — except with fewer pheasants and considerably more paperwork.

Having lived with a disability myself, I know what it’s like to need help. I also know what it’s like when people speak to the person beside you instead of speaking to you, assume that a wonky walk means a wonky brain, or become so determined to “help” that they forget to ask whether you actually want any.

I’ve had 29 brain operations, acquired a brain injury along the way and spent more time navigating hospitals, specialists and support systems than any sane person would willingly choose. So, while I may be new to caring as a job, I’m certainly not new to disability.

I know that sometimes people need practical help. Sometimes they need encouragement. Sometimes they need someone to listen without trying to fix everything. And sometimes they simply need to be treated like an ordinary adult who happens to require a hand with a few things.

I think my own experience could make me rather good at it. I mean I would wait for their brain to finish formalising a reply, before moving onto something else. I understand how fiercely important independence is, even when your body has other ideas. I understand the frustration, the embarrassment, the exhaustion and the peculiar humour required to get through it all.

Most importantly, I wouldn’t be frightened by disability. I wouldn’t pity anyone or treat them as though their life were a tragedy. Mine certainly isn’t. It’s been inconvenient, ridiculous and occasionally bloody difficult — but never meaningless. In fact, I can say after my brain injury that life has got alot better!

Perhaps everything I’ve been through has been preparing me for something after all.

Who knew? I may finally have found a job where being a bit broken is actually part of my résumé.

My Fridge Is Cleaner Than Most Operating Theatres

I opened my fridge this morning and realised something rather disturbing.

It is cleaner than most people’s houses.

There are no mysterious containers lurking at the back. No vegetable quietly turning into soup in the crisper. No jar of something exotic that I bought in 2019 because one recipe required half a teaspoon of it.

Everything is clean, organised and facing the correct direction.

Because I’m OCD - and before anyone writes to tell me that isn’t funny, I know. But neither is lying awake at night wondering whether the butter container is sitting crooked.

My fridge doesn’t need cleaning. It needs a curator.

People could buy tickets to see it. They could shuffle through the kitchen in respectful silence while I point out the perfectly arranged dairy section and the condiments standing in height order. There would be a velvet rope across the vegetable crisper.

“No touching, please. That capsicum was polished this morning.”

The trouble with having a spotless fridge is that other people insist on using it.

They put things back wherever they like.

Wherever. They. Like.

My partner can take the milk from its clearly designated position and return it to another shelf as though we are living through the collapse of civilisation and rules no longer apply. He’ll put an uncovered plate inside. Sideways. Occasionally containing half a sausage.

Then he closes the door and casually walks away.

How?

How does he sleep at night?

I have considered installing security cameras. Not because I suspect anyone of stealing food, but because somebody moved the mustard last Tuesday and I want names.

I’d also like my fridge fitted with fingerprint recognition. If you haven’t completed the compulsory food-storage induction, the door remains locked. There will be a short examination covering shelf allocation, lid requirements and the correct orientation of yoghurt labels.

A score below 90 percent and you’re banned from the kitchen.

People say home is where the heart is. Nonsense.

Home is where everything has a proper place—and some lunatic keeps moving the bloody milk.