Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

and then turns right around when it realized it was being shipped to my house.

Princess’s reign of terror is over. As of 5:30 MST today, she has been replaced. The shiny new toy will be here by the weekend.

Now, to think of an appropriate name for it…

Still here, haven’t been dragged off for shooting Princess the PMSing Laptop in a momentary lapse of judgment (note: not only do I not have access to a firearm, I’ve never fired one). She’s still not working worth crap, and I made the executive decision this morning that I’m giving her up for Lent. Yes, I’m fully aware that today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent and already I’ve fallen off the Lent Wagon, but since she’s moving so slow I suppose I will too. Bitch ain’t gonna see Easter, that’s for sure.

It is all kinds of February around here, and it’s not just me. Tom made a comment at lunch about “back in February,” and I had the sad task of reminding him that it is still that horrid month, and we have 13 days to go before we see any relief. The days rush by so fast I can’t catch my breath; I climb into bed every night wondering where the day went. AND YET the month is dragging on. Sad state of affairs, that. This morning someone greeted me with the standard, “How ya doing?” and all I could do was look at him and reply, “It’s February.” When you start the day off by convincing your test-phobic twice-exceptional 3rd grader that state testing isn’t going to kill him (yes, CSAPs started today whheeeeee), it’s pretty much just downhill from there.

February is my “always darkest before dawn” month, where things get worse and darker before things suddenly improve and it’s all fairies and unicorns farting glitter and working computers. Yes, I put a functioning computer in the same category as glitter-farting unicorns–do you blame me? I made an offhand remark on Facebook about wanting to run away and I think there were no fewer than a dozen women who were ready to toss everything and head out with me. I don’t think that’s so much a statement of my coolness as it is the recognition that this month sucks and a little warmth, sun, and unlimited drinks by scantily clad pool boys is precisely the cure for such a predicament. I’m actually considering assembling a little vacay for Suckage Month 2011, women only. I think four days on a cruise ship with no way of being contacted, food and drinks a’flowing, nothing to do but what we wanted to do, would do wonders for our combined mental states. I can dream.

So yet again, a bleh post because February is in cahoots with Princess and sucking my will to live. But soon March will be here, with a functioning computer and unicorns, and life will be good again.

My mojo has gone missing. I’ve been searching all over the house for it, but it’s well hidden. I did find the 2 extremely overdue library books, but no mojo. I’m doing ok without it, I’m just floundering a bit. Things are taking considerably longer to accomplish, I feel a bit out of sorts–like things aren’t getting done, and I find myself cursing uncontrollably lately. Loudly. Repeatedly. Sailors are blushing on my behalf.

And then I figured out why my mojo escaped. Because of this:

That is Princess the PMSing Laptop. Don’t know if I’ve ever posted a picture of Her Highness the Bitch (thank you iPhone, with your reliability and grace). I can’t really explain how her slow demise is making my life miserable, but lemme see if I can try.

• Something inside the machine, under the left hand, has been making a wet (!) gurgling sound. I smacked it last night, rather hard, and it stopped. I can say with a great deal of confidence that the sound will return today.
• Click…1,2,3,4…28,29,30…window opens. And lest you think I’m counting quickly, allow me to remind you that I’m a professionally trained musician and can keep a damned (see, there’s the swearing again) steady beat at 60 bpm. The shortest count is about 4 seconds, the longest well over 30 and then she crashes.
• I’ve been working on updating my resume. Four hours on Tuesday, two and a half of which were just waiting for her to catch up. I tried to continue last night, but got so frustrated I went and started working on our taxes at 9:30 at night. I need to have Le Resume in tomorrow for a volunteer position I dearly want.
• Working on the taxes is taking forever because half of what I need is on this machine and getting it out is like pulling teeth from a rhino…difficult and painful. See the irony? As soon as taxes are in and we have a refund (pleasepleaseohGodplease), she can be replaced. Wait a second…methinks she knows this…hmmm…
• Supposedly I have wicked fast internet now. I have not seen any indication of this, simply because the computer is too slow. Swear to GOD once she is replaced I’m getting fiber-optic internet, just so I can dance like a wood sprite with the joy of it all.
• It’s a good thing I have mad touch-typing skillz. The letters are wearing off the keys one by one. Eh, who needs an “n?” I only have two in my name!
• Have I mentioned the constant crashing?
• I got my inbox down to zero a week ago; right now I have roughly 80 emails to process and/or answer. Same with posts in my reader, except there the number is well into the hundreds. I don’t like the feeling of my large intestine trying to throttle my brain because of the length of time it takes to accomplish a single email, so I’ve been avoiding it.

So, all in all, I’d rather brush my teeth with a rabid porcupine than sit and work in front of this machine. And on top of it all? We have our “Come to Jesus” meeting this afternoon with the school about accommodations for A.

Applying keyboard to forehead in 3…2…1…

Technology was supposed to make our lives easier, right? I never really believed the flying cars or robot maids part of The Future, but technology working for us? Yup,  hook/line/sinker. I look back to what we had when I was A’s age and go slack-jawed at the progress (when I was eight, we didn’t have a computer, but we did have old punch cards from room-sized computers that my dad had from a previous job). Now I have sons who Skype each other between rooms. In the same house. On the same floor.

The downside to all this is that it can’t run itself, so we have to stay on top of the freaking machines so they freaking WORK have the opportunity to interact with the various technologies. And when the computer has issues (really, I’d link, but damn, it’d just be one underlined word after another for a couple of paragraphs) and things are s-l-o-w, it just takes forever.

So, in the interest of saving money during this time of OMFG OUR HEALTH INSURANCE IS GOING TO BE WHAT?, we are consolidating various technologies around the house and dropping others. As much as we love DirecTv, we’ve scaled our plan way back rather than just dropping it. This means there’s no tv in the basement (sorry boys, suck it up), and the channels we get have been greatly reduced. Including music channels…including XM Kids. This is not going over well with the young creatures in the house.

I’m also bundling internet and phone, getting a better plan for a heck of a lot less coin. This means I get unlimited long-distance free and super zippy internet. So fast I expect to hear wheeeee when I send an email and whooooosh when I open a new web page. Unfortunately, I have to drop my current ISP, and as many times as customer service tells me I’ll be able to keep the old email addresses, I don’t believe them because technology tends to turn on me when I least expect it. During the changeover, I’ll be without the internets for a few days. It is physically painful to write that sentence. Unless I can find the setting on the iPhone to go straight to 3G and not search for wifi, I’m going to be rocking with my thumb in my mouth until I’m back online. And we all know it won’t go smoothly. Not a pessimist, a realist. Nothing with this computer/modem/router has ever gone smoothly.

So, I’m now off to cancel my ISP and pray it only takes a day to get back online. If you don’t hear from me by the end of the week, it may not be because the internets is still down…it may be because I took a sledgehammer to the whole damned thing and moved into a cave.

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If you parent/teach/know a gifted kid, there is a gifted chat on Twitter this Friday!!! The hashtag is #gtchat (NOT NOT NOT the previously announced #nomoremyths). Please join if you can! Deborah has all the details on her blog, Ingeniosus. And please pass the word to other teachers and parents. Hey, I invited our GT coordinator and essentially outed this blog to the school by doing so; you can invite people you know. That is how strongly I feel about this, and gifted advocacy in general. Join!

For those of you following along at home, yes, I am slathering myself in sunscreen after the OHMYFREAKINGGOD aging photos I saw at the museum on Saturday. SPF 100, as a matter of fact. Face, neck, and upper chest. I may go broke buying sunscreen year-round, but I won’t be mistaken for a cow’s ass when I’m 70. Oh, hello there, Bessie, I wanted to ask you….AGH! Jen! It’s you! I thought…I think I’d better leave now…

In addition to the OHMYFREAKINGGOD aging photos at the exhibit, there was a cool brain waves thingamabob, similar to this Star Wars one, but for two people. Each person puts on a headband-like thing, and the object is to get the ball in the middle of the lane to the other person’s side using brain waves (look, dude, I don’t get it. There’s obviously science going on there somewhere, it’s in a science museum, but don’t ask me to explain the damned thing). I sat down with A, we got our headbands on, and he frakking smoked me. Three times. The docent came over, laughing, and said she had never seen one person whip another like that before.

And that, my friends, is what I deal with every.single.day. A has a force about him that defies description. Some people call it “strong-willed,” but it’s more nuanced than that. It’s not stubborn for the sake of being stubborn, and it’s not defiant, it’s just…his will is so determined. Again, defies description. We started that brain waves thing, and I didn’t stand a chance. The ball didn’t even hesitate, it just whipped to my side. I was stunned. C’mon, the docent couldn’t believe it, and she stands there and watches people do it! When it’s something he wants, get out of his way. When you’re making him do something he doesn’t want to do, duck. I get nauseous when I think about his upcoming teen years, when I can’t just pick him up and haul him off when he’s out of control.

This is what is worries me about homeschooling. While I know it would probably be best for him, I don’t know if it’s best for me or the family as a whole. I may have found a wonderful private school, but my money tree is dormant right now, and jobs are scarce.  The charter school we want is in the process of appealing the school board’s denial to the state, so we’re in a holding pattern.

The Force is strong in this one. It’ll serve him well as an adult. It’s the remainder of childhood that I’m worried about.

It never ceases to amaze me how dependent on technology society is. I’m convinced that if all the technological advances of the last 150 years simultaneously failed we’d be at a loss as to how to create fire. Screwed is what I’m saying here.

My laptop is still off partying with Computer Guru, and now the house phone line is kaput. Dead. Simply static. Tom is on a rapid-fire business trip to Chicago and back today and got a busy signal when he tried calling. No voice mail, just nada. Yay! I get to call phone-tree hellQwest! Hopefully Guru has my cell number, ’cause if Princess is done today and I don’t find out because of another technological SNAFU, the irony may just kill me.

Relying on my iPhone (oh, let me whisper sweet, obscene nothings to you, my love) and a commandeered borrowed computer has impressed upon me the wisdom of moving more of my life to the cloud. I can access my calendar through the iPhone (whisper, whisper) and MobileMe; my to-do list through the iPhone (call me…) and  ToodleDo; and Facebook through the iPhone (why don’t you call?) and any commandeered borrowed computer. Email is killing me. I’ve been happy with my Earthlink account for years, but with more of my life being lived online, I need an email account that changes as I read on the iPhone (you’re pretty…). So I’m starting the painful and arduous task of changing my email address to gmail accounts. If I understand it correctly, I can set it up so that changes made on the iPhone (I love you…) show up on a commandeered borrowed computer, and vice versa. Right now it ain’t so, and deleting messages twice and relying on spotty memory for replies is losing its charm. Just doing this at the holidays has about as much appeal as learning to create fire.\

I must go enter phone-tree hell call Qwest now. And then follow that up with a trip to the post office to mail the remaining Christmas gifts. And, just to make the day absolutely complete with a trifecta of fun, I plan to break something so that I can spend several hours being ignored at the ER.