The continuing saga of It’s Not Fun Being Your Own IT Department

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!