A job that slowly kills you

This isn't good.
I've finally moved desk and I can't say I'm enjoying my new surroundings. Here are some of the problems I'm having.

1. I'd sat at my last desk for over 6 years and had become used to pretty much everything about it. I'd developed the ability to sense when people were approaching me from behind. I've only been sat at my new desk for a couple of hours and I've already been surprised twice. Luckily, I've only been rumbled as I've been staring into space, but I'm bound to be discovered wasting time.
2. Mutes. I'm surrounded by people who don't seem to be able to speak. Wherever I look, all I see is faces concentrating on their work. This disturbs me. The guy opposite (Terry) has glanced over a few times this morning, probably wondering why I'm staring into the middle-distance and why my screen saver keeps activating. The reason Terry is that I find this job horrendously fucking dull and unchallenging. I can quite easily keep myself ahead of schedule by putting in brief spurts of effort every now and then, but I'm sorry that I can't keep my mind sedated long enough to happily sit here for eight hours a day fucking around with config utilities, answering queries from fucktwats, or writing laborious test harnesses that make me want to drink shit flavoured caustic soda. That is the fucking reason Terry why I am staring into space. What do you want from me Terry? I tried to write some tests this morning Terry, but my mind wandered after about twenty seconds. Look at me again Terry. Can you see the faint hint of tears in my eyes? That's fucking boredom. That's knowing that I have to spend 37 hours of my life this week sat here, wondering how everyone else seems to find what they do so stimulating. And one day Terry we'll all be on our death-beds and as our bowels collapse and hearts falter, we'll think about the time we wasted raising change documents for the NIMROD software. But I can see that now Terry; I have seen that future. And that is why I'm staring into space and not concentrating on some unimportant shitty document.
3. They were supposed to move my old computer with me, but they've left it behind. They say I've got a faster one, but they don't understand that I have important programs (games) and documents (games hi-score tables) on that old computer.
4. I'd become used to sitting on my own in a pen. It's odd having to share a phone again.
5. Even though the boss hasn't made it in today, I'm sat near to the big-boss lady. She's already moaned at me once today when I went to retrieve my old mouse (this one is gunged up). I have to sneak past her (or the big baldy twatty big-boss) to get out of here.

Much to my surprise, I had a nice time in Colchester. The wedding was sweet, and it's cool to meet up with people.
I've always got on well with my 3rd cousin Daniel due to a shared desire for idiocy. On Saturday he learnt about what job I did for a living and mistook it for something exciting. He decided he'd help me "jazz it up a bit" by coming up with some radical new ideas. He's come up with a spacecraft that is made entirely from cheese and in the shape of a tie-fighter. Originally he wanted to cover the cheese ship with crustaceans to protect it when re-entering earth's atmosphere, but abandoned this idea when he thought that forcing the cheese to go mouldy with the use of copper wire would have the same sort of effect. That he broadcast this idea to a group of about a dozen relatives, and that he ended the night inhaling balloon after balloon filled with helium for the entertainment of others says a lot about him. I like Daniel, he's exuberant and energetic so we don't have to be. His wife Clare is the same; both of them are a good laugh.
Anyway, even grumpy old curmudgeons can enjoy things sometimes.

Like Civ. Oooh, Civ.
Civ is currently giving me the stimulus that my job fails to deliver. My current game is a great one, it's only just turned 1600 and I have developed the railway and electricity. My army is very small so I'm getting the usual threats from the Germans, but I excitedly await the arrival of tanks and my chance for revenge.
I started the game slowly, not developing any city improvements at first, but filling the world with new cities and workers to ensure that they developed properly. Then, when I'd filled more than my fair-share of space, I started to develop. It's my usual policy, but sometimes other factors limit how successful this can be (size and shape of map, restrictions of environment).
So I've ended up huge and advanced, my wealth increasing through time as I limit the effects of corruption from the outposts of my empire, as well as filling in the gaps where another city can fit.
The Russians look ripe for a crushing; they're backward yet rich in resources. Then I'm after the Germans, though the French seem to be in the way so I might have to go over the top of them. There are always casualties in war. The French are also close to encircling the city of Fleetwood, the remotest part of my empire. They already keep walking through it, as if it's their own. The cheeky fucks.
It's such a beautifully involving and rewarding game.