Good Versus BADD

I missed "Blogging Against Disablism" Day last year, but here goes...

I kept going back and forth as to whether this would be a "sister" post or a "teacher" post, and it's kind of become both.  It's also something I've briefly ranted about before, so pardon that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was the first or second assembly of the year, during my second year of teaching.  I had a student who could be severely self-injurious (he would hit his head and chin until he bled), but he would be much less likely to injure himself if he had a string of beads to fidget with.

So, I take my motley crew to the assembly.  This particular student squeaked a few times and flicked his beads.  Scissor Girl probably vocalized some.  I wouldn't be surprised if Millionare Boy (the Who Wants to be a Millionaire fan) hadn't, at the least, laughed loudly at the wrong time once or twice.

Meanwhile, the two fourth grade classes (one of whom would become Sixth Grade Teacher JT's nightmare class of last year) were chattering with each other and needing redirections.  Ditto the fifth and sixth graders.

Who knows what the assembly was about?

That has been erased from my mind by what happened next:  Former Principal SW and Sixth Grade Teacher JT both approached me about the student and his beads, saying that they were disruptive and that maybe he shouldn't go to assemblies anymore.

His beads.  His string of costume jewelry beads.

The other kids were loud.

The other kids needed to be shushed.

The other kids were inattentive and difficult.

S did not hit himself.  S did not start crying/moaning as he would do during a panic attack.

S held a string of freaking beads and flicked them up by his right eye.

There's this ridiculous, horrible double standard when it comes to kids with disabilities.  If other kids misbehave at an assembly, they get a talking to -- perhaps even detention or something -- but no one says, "Well, no more assemblies for you."

And yet, if a child with autism, severe developmental disabilities, and an anxiety disorder WHO WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BEEN BUSY GIVING HIMSELF A CONCUSSION flicks some beads to calm himself, he shouldn't come to assemblies anymore.

It's ridiculous and it's unfair.

And it points to something even more fundamental: people with disabilities are still expected to earn the right to be with others.  S had to earn the right to be at an assembly, and the only way he could do that was to sit at the assembly without any support or accommodations.

The thing is, S had the right to attend the assemblies.  S had the right to sit there with his beads and flick them to his heart's content (to be fair, in the interests of full disclosure, if he'd have had a panic attack, I'd have escorted him outside because that would have been too loud -- and, more to the point, his anxiety would have just increased until he was somewhere with less stimulation).

Let me say that again:  S had the right to be there at that assembly, even if he needed a 99% inconspicuous comfort object to maintain his composure during the assembly.  Would I have let him take something truly loud?  No, but that's my job as a teacher -- to find ways to help him cope that are as quiet and inconspicuous as possible.

For the record, our new principal, Principal SDF, has commented on how much she likes the fidgets bag I bring to assemblies.  And, yes, sometimes someone will put one of our vibrating thingies on the floor and make a little noise (at that point, it's replaced with a different fidget), but no one says anything about it.

But this is an attitude that is still way too prevalent.  It's not expected that kids (or adults) with disabilities are entitled to experiences like that.  It's still something they have to earn -- something others are given as a matter of course.

Disability is often an "accident of birth" -- and as Americans, we should be beyond assigning social categories because of accidents of birth.

See y'all at the next assembly.

Remakes, Reboots, and Re-Imaginings, Oh My!

I wasn't going to watch Battlestar Galactica (the miniseries) when it first aired.  I had a nostalgic affection for the original (not the abysmal Galactica 1980, mind) and it seemed...wrong...to take it in a new direction.

I remember all the hullabaloo -- OMG!  Starbuck is a girl!  OMG!  Apollo isn't really his name!  OMG!  Tigh isn't black!  And so on and so forth.  Original series star Richard Hatch was adamantly opposed to it (likely due in large measure to him working on a continuation/sequel of his own).

Eventually, I decided to TiVo it and see what I thought.

And, of course, was riveted, from the very beginning when Six walks into the space station with the poor ol' Colonial guy and asks him if he's alive, with the red strobe lights of the Centurions looking on.

But, you know, whether it's because of Ron Moore at the helm (I don't think it's a coincidence that Deep Space Nine was my favorite Star Trek series and the one that he co-executive produced), the cast (Edward James Olmos is awesome, as is -- especially in the first season's "Act of Contrition" -- Katee Sackhoff), the writing, the camera work, the additional drama of the human-form Cylons hiding amidst the fleet (witness the early destruction of that ship)...I don't know.

For every BSG, though, there's a Bionic Woman, Knight Rider...I could go on.

I don't know if it's because BSG dared to veer so far from the original canon (though the only thing Bionic Woman shared with the original, from the one episode I saw, was a lead character named Jaime Summers who was hurt in an accident and whose boyfriend talked people into bionicifying her) -- which allowed it to tell its own story -- or that it retained enough of the original to be interesting, or just that the stories it tells are so human- and character-driven that they can be in a similar universe and exploring totally different territory.

I am very, very, very leery of the forthcoming Star Trek movie, for a variety of reasons.

1.  It'd be Star Trek 11.  An odd number.

2.  The people involved in Enterprise did not give me much faith in the current crop of Star Trek's folks to do a prequel well (I mean, bumpy-headed Klingons?  C'mon.), at least until the fourth season when the Reeves-Stevenses came on board to help out.

(Ironically, I've never much liked their Trek novels.)

3.  No one -- and I mean no one -- will ever, ever be able to play Spock like Leonard Nimoy.

4.  (Not to mention, the current crop of Trek writers don't write Vulcans well at all -- at least, not in the form of Tuvok or T'Pol.)

5.  Seeing Eomer (actually, I never got past "Caesar, Julius Caesar") on the Enterprise is just....weird.

I might see it in theaters; I might not. But I'm not at all convinced this will be the second coming of The Wrath of Khan.

So, now, I read that Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards are going to have cameos in the re-imagining (reboot?  remake?) of Escape to Witch Mountain (one of my favorite movies as a child).

Most people don't remember this, but they already tried this once, in 1995, with a TV movie called (get this) Escape to Witch Mountain.

Now, neither movie bears much resemblance to the eponymous book (gee, a Disney movie stretched the canon it was based on...I'm shocked....) but the latter was....  Hm....  Let's just say...it was weird.

(Seriously.  Purple glowing crystals weird.)

Disney has a history of cameos like this.  In Lindsay Lohan's The Parent Trap, the girls' dad's fiancee's mother is played by the fiance in the original (along with borrowing the simpering, "Hello, Pet" from the original soon-to-be-step-grandmother).

And it might suggest that the remake is...semi-decent -- but, of course, the actors haven't exactly worked a lot, and you wonder if it's just about a job.

After all, Leonard Nimoy is in Star Trek, and I'm still iffy about that.

I don't want to sound like a fandom snob -- really, I don't.  I don't want to be one of those people who gets it in their head that things should be a certain way ("I'll boycott Babylon 5 if they don't get Claudia Christian back!" or "I'll never watch Stargate if Daniel Shanks isn't in it!").

Really, I don't.

But, I do wonder this:  why remake stuff?  Why not, in Star Trek's case, introduce another ship, another bad guy, something?  If you want it to be more mainstream, isn't that a good way to do it?

Or, in Witch Mountain's case, why not skip forward a few generations, or tell the story of the original exodus from their planet?  Something?

BSG proved it can be done well -- but BSG is a good show, whether or not it draws on the original's canon.

I dunno.

(This post was sparked by reading about the Witch Mountain thing, but I've been wanting to talk about the whole re-imagining thing for a while.)

In school news, I am so not popular again, for daring to suggest that maybe leaning on top of Bulldozer and moving his foot might have been why Aide J got hit.  ("But I was just moving The Boss's chair," she said.  Uh...yeah...from on top of Bulldozer.)

Also, New Boy started today.  And you thought The Boss was stubborn....

And So It Begins

So, I gave the first kids the CAPA today.

I started with Angel, 'cause oh-my-frelling-God is it hard, and she was my best shot at the "she got it right!" fuzzies.

Don't believe me?  Check out the level 3 and 4 sample tasks, and remember that this test is for kids on a functional skills curriculum.  Our language arts program would be happy if they learned to read fifteen words in a year...and that's the top level of participation -- others are considered successful if they can copy or match a word, or are exposed to it.

And you wonder why I have to supplement it (heavily) with News-2-You and adapted books?  They are being asked to listen to a story and answer, on their own (not even multiple choice) how and why questions.

How.  And.  Why.  Questions.

Now, I am completely, totally on board with providing access to grade level content.  We work out of the grade level social studies texts, for instance, but I supplement those with adapted texts and we do more functional things with the books like number matching (e.g. "open to page 14"), counting ("how many Native Americans are on this page?"), copying/handwriting ("copy the first red word on page 17") and so forth.

Plus, I try to supplement that with some of the books we read, like when we did Little House last year, and ended up talking a lot about westward movement, Native Americans, and so forth.

But...I am left spluttering in incoherent amazement.

Here's hoping with the introduction of the CMA for the kids who get advanced scores too much on the CAPA (Angel, Former 4th Grade Girl A who has moved on to another program, Mama's Boy R, Space Cadet J), they'll adjust CAPA back to what it was supposed to be.

However, the fun part?

I did do half of Bulldozer's test (the language arts portion), and that was an exercise in hilarity.  I spent half the time saying, "Bulldozer, hands down.  Bulldozer, wait.  Bulldozer, wait.  Bulldozer, for the love of all that's good and holy, PLEASE JUST WAIT!"  Okay, I didn't say the last, but I did think it.

(He actually scored very, very well -- but that's to be expected; his strength is by far reading and spelling...math will not go so well.)

But after the first six or seven questions, he was so done.  I kept going, "Bulldozer, hang on, just three more.  Bulldozer, come on...."

And, of course, it got to the point where it was, "Bulldozer, PLEASE hang on just for ONE MORE QUESTION!"

In honor of the post title, a quote (about midway through the page you will find a sound file) that sums up how I feel about the whole thing:  "The avalanche has already started.  It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

The Visit

So, New Boy B's dad is visiting tomorrow, and then I have to dash off to meet with Psychologist JW and Speech Person DFT (when did she invite herself?) to talk about Superhero, whose tri is coming up.

I could rant about Speech Person DFT writing another email behind my back and trying to stir up drama, but I won't.  Suffice it to say that I was...miffed.

In other news, while browsing Adobe's site to see if I could upgrade my old version of Photoshop CS to CS3 (I don't think so, because I bought an education version of it), I came upon Photoshop Express -- half web-based image editing, and half Flickr/Picasa.  Pretty nifty.

Further Proof

Of what, you might ask?

Why, that I'm a nerd, of course.

I have had this printed out and waiting for a few spare moments since Friday evening.

Marketing Gone Horribly Awry

I just got a catalog featuring clothes exclusively of sizes zero to three.

Because people who shop at Catherine's would really, really want those size two capris....

8-/

I Heart Adama

This is not so much of a spoiler as...well, okay, it's a tiny bit of a spoiler, but....

So, Adama has this book that he wants to read to Roslin.  (The how and why and all that are the spoilers, but never mind.)  She says she can't remember the ending.  He says he doesn't know the ending because he's never read it.

"But it's your favorite," she says.

He says something along the line of, "I like it so much, I don't want it to end, so I've never read the ending."

I seriously considered not watching the final episode of Deep Space Nine.  I never did watch the final episode of Babylon 5.  I did not watch the last episode of Voyager.

There's a whole slew of final episodes I've never watched -- for precisely that reason.

I'm rather surprised I actually read through to the end of Deathly Hallows, except that while I really enjoy Harry Potter, I was never all that emotionally invested in it besides enjoying the series and being curious as to whether I was right.

Anyway, I suddenly felt a sudden surge of affection for good ol' Bill.

(Also?  Can human-form Cylons age?  'Cause if they can, I have a very interesting theory about Ellen....)

D'oh!

I have the horrible feeling that Patrick will wheedle his way into a Disneyland trip this weekend as well.  I have a gazillion and five things to do (my grand plan of getting ahead was called off on Monday when I found out about New Boy B, and my semi-grand plan of getting at least caught up was called off on Tuesday when Lore refused to mount my Boardmaker CD for about half an hour and made me work until nearly 11:00 to finish up the stuff I needed to make for him) and really can't afford the time.

But...they're the monorails.  They're Patrick's thing.

Sigh.

If only it were winter when our passes were good on Fridays...we could go for dinner, hop on the monorail (who am I kidding; every Disney geek within 4 hours of the west coast will be doing the same thing...it'd be more like "wait in line until closing time for the monorail and then go have McDonalds because you missed dinner."  Oooh, or Sonic.  I love Sonic. I'd kill for a sour apple slush right now. I wish we had Sonic...all those commercials on Time Warner cable are so unfair.).

Remember the good ol' days when I was at least a week ahead of the game for homework and journals?  Or two weeks ahead on News-2-You?  Or -- get this -- a month ahead with Charlie?

Yeah, me too.

Bad News in a Good Way

Prince John:  I don't want to hear any bad news. So, what kind of news is it?

Sheriff of Rottingham: Well, to be perfectly frank, it's bad.

Prince John: [shouts] I knew it! I knew it would be bad news. Wait, I have an idea. Maybe if you tell me the *bad* news in a *good* way, it wouldn't sound so bad.

Sheriff of Rottingham: [thinking] The bad news in a good way. Yes, I can do that. The bad news in a good way. Well, here it goes.

[hysterically]
Sheriff of Rottingham: W-wait till you hear this! I just saw Robin of Locksley, he's back from the crusades. 

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: You know, he just beat the *crap* out of me and my men.

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: He hates you and he loves your brother, Richard!

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: And...

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: ... he wants to see you hanged!

[laughs] 

Sheriff of Rottingham: We, we're in a lot of trouble! 

[laughs and snorts loudly]

Prince John: [furious] What, are you crazy? Why are you laughing? This is terrible news!

So, let me give this a try....

Well, we're getting a temporary additional six hour aide!  Hooray!  How awesome for us!  Finally.

(in tiny, quiet voice)

We also get the kid who has several fall-to-the-floor seizures a day, who can't be outside if it's over 90 degrees (which royally screws up APE, which he gets), and who requires injections to stop some seizures that Nurse P won't train us to do, so we get to call an ambulance if he's seizing for more than 5 or 8 minutes (different documents say different things) and we can't get ahold of dad.

Yay us?

Delayed Reactions

Superhero is known for having delayed reactions to things.  Some big things take a couple of days.  Small stuff can take a few minutes to an hour.

Despite Aide J being out (again) and having no sub (again), Superhero handled the day fairly well, until after recess when Bulldozer hit him for no (apparent) reason.

It took 10 minutes for Superhero to realize what happened, so he turned and hit me.

Sigh.

I think I have everything done for New Boy B, though I still have lingering concerns over our ability to keep him safe and adequately supervised.  I doubt anything will be done about it, though I did mention to Principal S that if he does come, it'll be imperative that, if at all possible, someone covers any openings I have.  None of this "Oh, J is out and there's no sub" stuff.

Incidentally, she has missed 15 days of this past school year.  If she were a kid, she'd have gotten an excessive absences letter.

Know what's scary?

That's three weeks.

She has missed three weeks of work.

That's half of what Aide T missed after having surgery.

I have missed two days this year.

Pictures and Suspicions

This is my favorite of the bunch (darn the hazy sky, though).

At Seasons of the Vine, in CA Adventure.  Right now, I'm enamored of playing with the aperture in order to blur backgrounds and such.  It's also very much hit and miss right now, but using the zoom lens seems to be a quick shortcut.

Yes, Patrick, putting your hand up will stop the giant wave of water about to crash on your head.

The full album can be found here.

In other news, Aide T was out today.  We (or at least I) knew that.

So when Male Aide J walks in (the space cadet one) and says, "I'm here for Aide J," I stared at him for a minute.

"You're here for...who, now?"

"Aide J."

"No way.  Are you sure?"

"Uhh...."

So I call the office and they confirm that, yes, he's there for Aide J.

A few minutes later, who walks up to the door but Sub Aide C, who has the unfortunate tendency to annoy many students just by her very existence.

"I'm here for Aide T," she said.

Good, I thought, because if you said you were here for Aide S, I was gonna go home.

We actually...survived okay.  I plopped myself down with Elastigirl on one side and M on the other.  Aide S sat with M on one side and Superhero on the other.  Essentially, I had Elastigirl, she had Superhero, and we shared M.

Mr. Voice had a happy morning because he got breaks unless one of the two of us (who have been DT trained) was available to work with him.

Space Cadet I sat with Princess and Sleeping Beauty, because C tends to set off both of them, and after the Sleeping Beauty Incident on Friday, that was the last thing I wanted.

So I put C with Angel, PH, and Bulldozer.  It was...interesting.

But, we did make it, with some reshuffling of lunches (the last thing I could do was News-2-You, which tends to be a troublesome time anyway, without ANYbody who knew either the kids or how to do News-2-You).  Funnily enough, we began with the familiar refrain from last year:  "Aide S, do you want Elastigirl or everybody else?"

Today, she took Elastigirl.

Anyway, that's the fourth or fifth time that Aide J has managed to be absent on a day when someone else was going to be out too.  Hmph.

And yet, that's not even the...best part...of the day.  I'm getting another new boy -- this one has multiple disabilities (no worries), hemiplegia (also no worries), and seizures (some worries).

Why some worries?  Apparently, noise level can be a trigger for them.

Err...y'all who made this decision (namely, Program Specialist SBS)...have y'all heard Mr. Voice lately?

Then, I spent 20 minutes arguing with my printer for printing blank pages, when it was a teeeny, tiny Boardmaker margin error where it really thought there was another page that happened to be blank.

Happy Monday!

Busy Busy Busy

Eesh, that's what I get for sleeping away most of last week in a double-dose-of-Zyrtec-induced fog.  I just now finished the stuff that needed doing for the coming week.

Of course, this was the weekend that Patrick decided he wanted to go to Disneyland to ride his birthday rides by himself.  I should have protested more, except that after a very, very warm week, the temperature was pretty decent.

Plus...Food and Wine Festival.  :-)

I had a lobster lollipop -- and, coming from someone with huge texture issues with most seafood, I must say: yum!  (It could be that I will eat anything that's been fried and covered in panko, but who knows?)

But, knowing that I'd be stressed as the time ticked slowly by, I did something I haven't done in a really long time -- I rode absolutely no rides and just wandered around with my SLR, with 75-300 lens attached, and took lots and lots of pictures (which are very SLOOOOLY being transferred over to poor Data, because my old card reader does not fit with my new computer -- a situation I must remedy forthwith, because it already drained one battery...which is what I get for shooting about half the pictures in RAW because the stupid camera kept popping up the totally unnecessary flash).

Ahem.

Anyway, took lots and lots of pictures, some of which I will upload three months from now when the camera is done importing them.  I had so much fun, I'll probably go back in a few weeks with the kit lens (35 - 70ish, I think) attached to get some of the wider shots.

Sleeping Beauty

Primary teacher M has a staff member in her class, Aide A, that has the unfortunate tendency to cause people to get in trouble.  M has a system similar to mine (which, for the record, I stole from 4th Grade Teacher KC) where the kids are on color-coded sections of a chart and earn things for staying at the top.  Many kids, when they work with Aide A, end up having to change their card.

In my class, Sleeping Beauty and Angel are the only kids who have never had to change their card.  Or, rather, until today.

When she first started at our school last year, I commented that Sleeping Beauty could dig her heels in deeper than her little body would reach (she is of quite short stature; if it weren't that her facial features have matured to make her look like a very small sixth-grader, she'd look like a 2nd grader).

She's a bright, very happy, generally willing student, though she requires a lot of prompting to work -- especially in the mornings (she is not a morning person, hence the nickname).

So, we're doing News-2-You today.  I have a very small group due to Superhero having a mostly good day but being five seconds away from losing it, Mr. Voice having a difficult day, and PH  being about three seconds away from losing it.

Aide T put a few kids on the computer, and rotated with the rest.  M, Angel, and Sleeping Beauty were with Aide J.

Oops.

"Find 'baseball.'"

I heard that phrase probably a hundred and fifty times.  No encouragement, no 'let me show you the first one' no checking for understanding (which, to be fair, should not have been necessary), no nothing.

Brick wall, meet immovable force.

(Sleeping Beauty is, in fact, partly responsible for this because she was, of course, the immovable force.)

Eventually, Aide J took Sleeping Beauty's green card.

Except that Sleeping Beauty used to be known for planting herself in one spot and not budging.

Aide Mrs. B and Aide S had both come at that point.  Aide S stayed out of it (I think because she knew if she said anything, Sleeping Beauty would go right to it).  Aide Mrs. B tried to get Sleeping Beauty to walk over to her green cards, but when Sleeping Beauty plants her feet, she is going nowhere until she wants to.

Given that it's almost lunch time, I ask somebody to keep an eye on Superhero, who has simmered down quite nicely, and take Sleeping Beauty aside, telling everybody that I am going to explain to her in Spanish.

"What happened?" I asked (in Spanish).

"No se...trabajar," she said.  (I don't know work -- either 'I don't know how to work' or 'I don't know what happened with my work.')

Her lower lip is trembling.

"Are you sad?"

"Si, triste, trabajar," she says.  (Yes, sad, work.)

"You have to take off your green card, but you can earn it back if you listen at lunch."  (Like she wouldn't....)  "Should we walk together to take it off?"

She nods, but balks when I try to take her hand.  "Juntas?" I remind her ("together?").  She walks over and takes it off, and goes to put her jacket in her backpack.  She walks over to get in line and buries herself in Aide S's side.

So here's the problem, and it's come up with Teach M and her Aide A as well.  I couldn't just say, "Never mind, Sleeping Beauty can keep her green card."  And, in fact, Sleeping Beauty was partly at fault.

But here's the other thing.  A freaking adult -- with three teenaged and pre-teen daughters -- started it.  Poor Sleeping Beauty.  :-(

Meanwhile, both Bulldozer and The Boss (girl J) were way into everybody's business today.  Sooner or later, they're going to get in the face of the wrong kid, and they're gonna get smacked.

And -- speaking, of course, not at the teacher who would have to discipline both parties to this -- they would so freaking deserve it.  Le sigh.

Watch Your Language

I've talked about the R-word before, but read this anyway.

(Also?  The practice scripting in the car?  I totally do that.)

Pet Peeves

Language evolves; I know that.  So I know that what I am about to be grumpy about may be completely wrong five or ten years from now, but please indulge me.

Everyone is all of a sudden up in arms about Microsoft forcing computer manufacturers to stop selling computers with Windows XP pre-installed.  Vista has been out since...what...last Novemberish?

Believe it or not, I'm with Microsoft on this one -- and that from the person that just bought a fresh copy of Windows XP for Lore.

However.

Computer companies have limited resources.   Yes, even Microsoft.  There are only so many geeks who can write operating system code.  So when you work to develop a new OS, sooner or later, you have to shift your resources away from the old OS.

Anyway.

When you have lots of people chatting about computer things, you hear some interesting stuff, and it reminded me of a few pet peeves of mine.

1.  Downloading is taking something "down" (from a network) TO your computer.  The image is that the Internet is in the wires and the air floating above you and you are taking it out of the sky and putting it down onto your computer.

So, you download movies from iTunes to your computer.

You do NOT -- NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT -- download a program from a CD.  You install (see #3) a program from a CD.

2.  Uploading is when you take something from your computer and put it UP into that imaginary network in the sky.

So, you upload your video to blogger.

You do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT upload a program to your computer from a CD (or ever, that I can think of).

3.  The following are all acceptable variants for putting software on your computer to use: install, load, putting XYZ on my computer.

Downloading software is NOT making it usable.  Downloading software is simply taking the file from the Internet and putting it on your computer.  Installing software is when you make it usable on your computer.

4.  You do not have "an iTunes."  It is a playlist or a library.  "Hallelujah" is in three or four playlists and is in my iTunes library.  It is NOT "in my iTunes."

5.  Windows XP is the operating system.  It is the stuff that is running on your computer ALL THE TIME.  Office XP/2004/etc. is an office suite.  It's a group of programs you use.  THE TWO ARE NOT THE SAME.

And finally...

6.  It drives me absolutely frelling bat**it insane when people say "I used my Word" or "I used my Works" or "I used my Outlook."  Yeah, you bought it...but you just don't say it that way. 

Testosterone and Pollen

Mix the two above, add in a dose of constipation, and possibly dad issues (the quote is "Dad go away" which either means "Dad, go away!" (I'm mad at Dad) or "Dad went away" (I miss dad)), and you have a not-very-happy Superhero.

Add in a double-dose of Zyrtec (one at 11:00 last night and another after waiting for the buses proved too much) for me, and you have one exhausted teacher.

Oh, yeah, and the middle school teachers from SMS came to observe Angel and Sleeping Beauty today....

Hmmm

Okay, I admit it -- I used to be a big fan of Mariah Carey, until her third album...so I sold out and watched all of American Idol tonight to see what would happen, and -- quality of singing aside -- something struck me.

I knew every single song, which means that everybody sang songs from her first albums -- including (yay me) one of my absolute favorites of hers (from her first album), "Vanishing."

But what does it say about her career that everybody chose her early songs?  I know she's released albums since Music Box.

(Googling has revealed that one of the songs was from the album that succeeded Music Box, Daydream.  My bad.)

But still...Daydream was 1995.  13 years ago.

No one could think of a Mariah Carey song they wanted to sing that was less than 13 years old?  Yikes.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

When I was about twelve, I rode my bike to our local Hughes Market for something.

(Hughes, sadly, is no more, but the same people founded How's, which was the only place other than Gelsons where you could buy Patrick's mandarin orange yogurt -- until they stopped making it, but I digress.)

As I was locking my bike up, a...voter registration guy (surely, there's a name for that, and I'm just having a retrieval problem, right?) stopped me and asked me if I was registered to vote.

Being 12, and not so much with the social skills, I have no idea what I said, but I remember being a bit flummoxed.

I only mention that because it provides a lovely contrast for what happened today.

Aide S is six months or so younger than Patrick, and has been working at our school since Novemberish of the year after she graduated high school.  Despite some rough patches here and there (like the beginning of the year, when she forgot what "attention-seeking  behavior" was) she has matured nicely and is someone I can really count on.

I mention this to put what I am going to say next into context.

Aide S used to go to the school where I teach.  Her name is on a mural painted on the side of the building where 4th Grade Teacher KC's room is.  Her sister's name is painted on the mural on the side of our wall.

So imagine my surprise when I was examining the school's all-students portrait thingie.  This is a picture that shows, from preschool to sixth grade, all of the students.  I was, of course, looking for my kiddos.  Somehow, I found the sixth graders first (Superhero and Sleeping Beauty were right next to each other because their names just fit that way alphabetically but it made it easier to find them for someone who can't see the trees for the forest -- there is a word for that, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is) and was working my way backwards.

Elastigirl...check.  Mr. Voice wasn't here yet.  Check.  Ms. Walking Exposed Nerve, check and check.

I'm working my way back into the fourth graders, when I stop.

There, amidst the other fourth graders, was Aide S's face.

I haven't stopped chuckling since.

Good Ol' Science

Apparently, Southern California will have a big earthquake someday!

Gee, thanks, scientists.  I live maybe 20 miles from the interchange they keep rebuilding in exactly the same way after the every-20-years-or-so earthquakes knock it down.

And I bet the people who did this study got a huge grant for it.

Eesh.

What a Difference Some Levels Make

Soooo, just like the other day, when I made my histogram discovery, I've been going through old photos and re-rating them in iPhoto '08.

And I've been correcting some of the ones I'd deemed uncorrectable in iPhoto '06.  While iPhoto '06 did have some rudimentary levels correction and some hack and slash brightness/contrast (I know better than to use those), so any images that needed real work needed the work to be done in Photoshop.

I do have Photoshop (CS), which means I can't fix some of the lens distortion in buildings (that came in CS2), but obviously its color correction abilities far surpassed iPhoto '06.

'08 still does not have curves, but it has a highlight/shadows correction, much more responsive levels sliders (that could be the much more powerful CPU, too, to be honest) and better color correction.

The result is that some images that I thought were beyond fixing are actually looking...okay.  Many of the skies are still blown-out messes (to correct them enough with the highlight/shadows command would make the rest of the image look ridiculous) but a lot of the dusk and early evening shots are looking much better, and, obviously, tweaking the black levels of the pictures shot with the point and shoot (versus the Rebel) makes them look much better.

At some point, when I'm done, I'll take down the Picasa Album as it exists now and re-upload the newly-minted 5 star images.  (There are so many 4 star ones now, it'd break the account if I uploaded them.)

Ow

I'm lucky (if you tilt your head and squint really hard and remind yourself that there is something about a tendency to migraines that is "lucky") in that I usually get an aura before a migraine -- I nearly always get photosensitivity, I frequently get sparklies in my field of vision, and once in a while, I get this weird echoy feeling to my hearing.

I'm also lucky in that if I catch a migraine early enough and either medicate it or sleep it off, it usually goes away without getting too excruciating, which makes the auras a useful thing indeed.

So having one come on full blast without an aura as I was getting agenda books ready for next week?

I am not amused.

After a nap, I feel good enough to be bored (hence this post), but I've got the laptop screen (Data's big beautiful bright screen, even dimmed to its lowest setting, would be torture) dimmed to one notch above "off" and it's still too bright, so g'night all.

So, It's NOT the Simple Things

So, apparently, I don't fail at measuring.  I fail at mind reading.

I went to exchange my capris today, and sheepishly told them that I'd like to try on a pair before I exchanged them.

I went and tried on the next size smaller.

Yeah, too big.

So I got the next size smaller yet.

A bit loose, but I like my clothes loose.  If I were the form-fitting type, I probably could have gone one more size smaller.

So I went to pay, and they asked what size I'd ended up with.  I told them, and they asked where I'd gotten measured -- at their Reseda store (which I didn't know existed) or at the Northridge store (which I hadn't known existed until I asked google for a closer place than Burbank to exchange them in the first place).

"I measured myself," I said.

"Oooh," the saleslady (who was...petite, shall we say, and not someone you generally see working at a plus-size clothing store -- which, of course, made discussing my larger size fun).  "See, when we measure people in the store, we tell them to buy two sizes smaller than what the measurements say."

Um.

** spoowriter raises hand **

If you consistently tell people to buy two sizes smaller...why not change your sizing chart?  Just sayin'.  I mean, what if I'd ordered them online?

Still -- very comfy, now that they fit.  They also look like capris, instead of just-a-bit-too-short pants, now that they fit.

ETA:  D'oh.  Apparently, I also fail at not-losing-Matilda.  So much for making homework tonight.  However, the kids are absolutely loving the book.

Not Bad for a Tuesday

Wow...it's a Tuesday and everything is taken care of for next week except agenda book stuff and homework.  Nifty.

Meanwhile, I'm going through my photos from the trip Patrick and I took to Disney World in January.  The goal for that trip was PACK LIGHT.  We shared one suitcase, one laptop case, and one camera (my point and shoot -- more on that later).

And I've discovered something interesting: nearly all of the uncorrected photos have no real blacks.  Observe:

Namely, the left side of the histogram; I've had to drag the black level over 5% or so on nearly all of the photos (it actually makes a huge difference in the overall appearance of the photo).

Now, what I think -- correct me if I'm wrong, someone -- this means is that the camera tends to overexpose, as I don't generally have the same drop-off on the white side of the histogram.

I have no idea if that's common with this camera or not -- it got decent reviews when I bought it, though the SD 900 had been released at that point.  In point of fact, the SD 900 was not much more expensive, but the 800 had a nice selling feature for me -- a slightly wider-angle lens.

Real wide-angle lenses for SLRs cost a bundle.  My dad had some, but of course not for Canon digital SLRs (digital photography was in its infancy in early 2000), so even if I could find an adapter, they wouldn't manually focus -- and with my eyesight, manual focus is difficult.

(Not impossible, mind you, but difficult.)

Anyhow, real wide-angle lenses cost an arm and a leg, but the point and shoot covered a bit more of the spectrum than either the kit lens that came with my Rebel (18 - 55 mm, I think) and, of course, the zoom lens (60ish - 200ish, I think).  So I figured that if I was ever in a "oh, I just need a bit more screen real estate" pinch, the P&S would help.

Anyway, I really don't want to have to manually correct every single image that comes out of the camera -- right now, I'm just correcting potential 4 and 5 star images. But I'm wondering if there isn't an exposure compensation trick I can figure out with the point and shoot.

(All of which is moot if I'm interpreting the histogram wrong, but it was a fun thought experiment.)

Oh Dear

Communicate: Symwriter rocks.

I mean, it ROCKS.

Importing pictures is painless.  You can also place pictures free on a page (useful for simple symbol-supported books).  It recognizes parts of speech, and symbolizes things like, "Can I have a drink?  Yes, you can drink a can of soda" with the "can as a question" for the first one and a picture of a drink for the first "drink," and then the second can is "can as a verb" and "drink is a verb," and...

...and it's all great.

Except that it says it can't run under VMWare.  So I booted into Windows directly, and then Windows wanted me to activate it...again...which VMWare said wouldn't happen if I installed VMTools as they asked during installation.

Plus, nearly $300.

But, oh, would it make life easy.....

I Can NOT Afford This

Long time readers will know that Writing With Symbols has been giving me fits of late, though it seems to be working well on Lore so far.

But a few months ago, I was browsing some of the sites that have nifty products for people with special needs and discovered that there is a successor to Writing With Symbols: Communicate: SymWriter.  At the time, there was a trial available, but only for people in the UK.

However, the lovely folks at Mayer Johnson now have a trial available for folks in the US.  I think the nicest feature, if it works, will be the intelligent symbol use (i.e., it can tell the difference between "drink" the noun and "drink" the verb, and uses the appropriate symbol in the appropriate place).

I cannot afford this.  I know the district can't.

Someday....

It's the Simple Things

I'm a math nerd.  I love math.  I think it's fun to sit down with a difficult problem and puzzle it through until I find the solution.

Of course, I'm also very likely to finish a whole calculus problem and divide wrong in the last step.  I've been doing that since junior high, when math first got interesting.

So it should come as no surprise that I fail at simple things like measuring my own waist and hips.

Y'see, I have a very difficult time finding pants that fit for reasons not really related to overall size.  I have a long waist and short legs (inherited from my dad) and my hips are wider than my waist.

Every once in a while, I find a brand that fits well.  For a while, it was K-Mart's Route 66 line, but the material in those tended to irritate the skin on my stomach.  Then, WalMart had a line of Smart something or other that had an extra layer of soft material inside the waistband, which was nice.  Of course, to get the waist and hips to fit, those pants were too long by several inches.

Then I discovered Catherine's, and their main store brand, which fit very well.  Except, of course, that to fit my hips, the waist was rather big.

So, after a pair that I had bought at an outlet store tore (likely due to a flaw in the fabric or from being a display pair and having the fabric wear out in the sun) when I got an email with a coupon, I decided to try their Right Fit line, which supposedly tailors their pants, so to speak, to fit three different body types.

Plus, they come in petite lengths, which you wouldn't think someone who's pushing 5'7" would need, but...yeah.

Anyway, not having an actual sewing type tape measure, I used a piece of string and then measured it against a non-flexible construction-type tape measure.  I did hips and waist (I do, indeed, wear a "blue") and inseam (yup, petite it is).  I took care to pull the string relatively tight, but as I prefer my clothes loose, I didn't pull it...tight-tight.

Yeah.

What could go wrong, right?  I measured every possible measurement.

Well, apparently, I fail at measuring.  I was at least a size too big, and probably 2 sizes too big.  So, I'll take them back and downsize.

On the plus side, I got a very pretty t-shirt (Patrick wanted me to get this one but I'd have had to try it on -- it could either look really good or really bad) and a pretty white blouse with pink pin stripes.  Both have reasonable sleeves.

(Sleeves are a sore point with me, especially right now, as the current trend seems to be miniscule length sleeves.  

I have pretty serious sensory issues -- in that area, and sleeves have to reach a certain point on my upper arm before I am comfortable...too short, and I am pulling at them and adjusting them constantly all day.

For the record, my ideal sleeve length would be more or less what you'd get wearing a traditional polo shirt.

I must add, however, that one of the suggestions in the article linked to above about tactile defensiveness -- namely, that the first step in a desensitization campaign should be to give your child massages with lotion -- illustrates without meaning to an important point on the subject.

Kids (and adults) with sensory issues are not all the same.  I find lotion -- all lotion -- absolutely disgusting.  It's all I can do to tolerate hand sanitizer -- and that only because it evaporates quickly -- and aloe -- 'cause my skin is naturally dry.  Now, desensitization campaigns can be good, but don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  If that had been step one with me, I'd have run screaming for the hills.

Well, no, I wouldn't....  You just didn't do that kind of thing in my family.  But I'd have been deeply, abjectly, horribly miserable and probably worse off than when my biggest clothes issues were that my socks were too tight and my sleeves too short.)

Ahem.  That was a long parenthetical.  Sorry 'bout that, but I figure that since I'm an adult who can actually explain what some aspects of sensory integration problems feel like, those who are interested in such things might benefit from the description.

By the way, in the second article, I just discovered this absolutely profound thought (I am absolutely not being sarcastic here):  "in the case of the person who just clipped their nails, the discomfort comes because the nerves that have been sheltered are now exposed making the person acutely aware of sensations he does not ordinarily feel."

Oh.  My.  God.  That's me -- I keep my nails short now (years of piano playing and typing) so I'm probably desensitized to it some, but even now after I clip my fingernails, things just feel...wrong...for a while.  The same was true of losing teeth, hair cuts...anything that changed the sensations I'd managed to become accustomed to.

How's about that?  Learn something new every day.

A Dream Deferred

Note:  I have been composing this in my head all day.  Whether that will translate to a good blog post or not, I have no idea.

When I was seven, we went to Walt Disney World for the first time and, though I was too young to really enjoy World Showcase, we (of course) visited every one, and every attraction.

We also bought the "soundtrack," which I listened to often after that, as a way -- I think -- to remember the trip itself (I often visually 'flash' to where I first heard a song when I hear it again).

On that song was "Golden Dreams," from the American Pavilion.  Amidst the lyrics, there are audio clips of important moments in American history.

(Interestingly enough, there are no recreations -- anything that happened before video is shown with Ken Burns-ified photos and dramatic readings are used before audio clips.)

In any event, among them are the usual suspects, including "the Eagle has landed" and JFK's "ask not" speech.

And, of course, this:  "I have a dream this afternoon . . . that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day . . . [a]nd with this faith."

I was seven.  I had no idea who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, nor did I have any real understanding of racism, the Civil Rights movement, nor even, really, what he was saying, except that something about the conviction in his voice told me he wanted a Good Thing.

I am in many ways a stereotypical white Valley Girl...so why would those words resonate so deeply with me?

Well...I'm a stereotypical white girl except...

...except that I'm semi-fluent in Spanish (and reactions to that are always funny)

and

...except that out of all the American poetry I've ever read, it was Langston Hughes that I ended up going out and buying (I much prefer English poetry) -- it's Langston Hughes that I borrowed from for the title of this post.

I'm sure other people have posted reflections on King's life and his dream, but I thought I'd share a slightly different perspective.

In his famous I Have a Dream speech, King referred to wishing for a future of equality of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles -- but the primary focus of his work was Civil Rights.  That is, removing the systematic barriers placed in front of African Americans throughout society.

Or, as Angel, my sixth grade angel, said, "He wanted...the kids...to have the same school."

Being the stereotypical white girl, there are no people of color in my family (that we know about, at any rate).

But there are people with disabilities (cognitive and, more recently, physical), people of Jewish heritage, people who have converted to Judaism (one of these days, when go for Hanukkah, I will remember more than the first two lines of the candle lighting prayer), and people that are gay.

And I would suggest that for the majority of the groups listed above, King's dream of equality is a long way off.

How often do you hear people casually tossing about the word r*tard?  How often do you hear people using the f word (not the verb)?  Think of the 2000 presidential campaign, and how much hand-writing there was about the fact that Mr. Lieberman was Jewish.  How much incredulity there was that he -- gasp -- walked to Temple on Saturdays.

How often do you see someone using a wheelchair and immediately assume they are less capable than someone who does not?  I've seen that myself with Patrick at Disney World -- where he is treated with near universal respect at Disneyland (people speaking directly to him, etc.), that was very much not the case at Disney World when he was using his wheelchair.

This is not the place for a political rant, really, so I'm not going to get into my rant about gay marriage (other than to say that allowing the civil contract aspect of marriage as far as the government is concerned should absolutely be legal and denying two people a marriage license because they are both the same gender is sexual discrimination).

But the fact of the matter is that there is still a lot of discrimination and institutionalized inequality in America.  And while it's fine -- and necessary -- to take time on anniversaries like today to ponder race relations in America, it's just as necessary to, at some point, examine other areas of inequality as well.

King talked about his children going to school with other children.

I'm fortunate to teach at a school in a district where mainstreaming, if not inclusion, is the norm, and inclusion is not all that rare either -- but that's far from the case elsewhere.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations, as Spock would say.

Anniversaries like today prompt us to consider one kind of diversity, but I'd like to argue that we consider, that we reflect on, all diversity.

It's trite, but people often say that life would be boring if we were all the same.  But, you know, trite sayings become trite and cliched because they're true.  Of course, trite sayings become trite because we stop actually thinking about what they mean and just accept them as truisms.

Today's a day to remember Dr. King's dream, and to reflect on what we can do to make it come true.

In college, I took a class called the Holocaust in Literature and Film.  The class itself was fascinating, but one of the assignments was to write a paper on any aspect of the Holocaust.

I chose to write about the killing (euphemistically called the euthanasia) of people with disabilities in Germany.  Something like 98% of Germans with disabilities were killed.

The closing paragraph opened with a variation of the following: "The Holocaust was, to be certain, a Jewish tragedy, but it was not only a Jewish tragedy.  It is important to make sure that all victims of the Nazis are remembered and honored."

The professor took great exception to that notion.  She was fine with the paper, but she wanted the euthanasia aspect separated from the Shoah (I'm nitpicking linguistically here, but the idea was that the Holocaust itself, as an idea, encompassed only the killing of Jews, which is why I used the Hebrew term for the latter).

It was the only time in my school career that I refused to make a change in a paper requested by a professor, and I was graded down for it.

So it should come as no surprise that even on the anniversary of Dr. King's death, I choose to focus on broader areas of tolerance and equality.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations.

Some Progress

Okay, so, I still can't get Lore to connect to my network attached storage, but I managed to get both Boardmaker working well enough to get homework done for next week.  Writing with Symbols is still iffy, as it's making me re-import a bunch of graphics, so the "This Day in History" part of journals is just not going to get done (I'm squinting at a 24" monitor...this means it's time to stop) until the weekend, nor are the questions for the next two chapters of Matilda (the text itself is done, but the questions aren't).

But, really, it's not bad, given that I had to start from scratch over the weekend and re-install Windows.

Also, 4th Grade Teacher VS talked to Other 4th Grade Teacher KC, and found out KC is struggling with having a 2-year-old and a newborn, so good thoughts sent her way would be useful.

4th Grade Teacher KC is a very, very nice person, who is responsible for both 4th Grade Teacher VS and 5th Grade Teacher EW actually liking me.  She insisted (rather, dragged me by the hair, more or less) that I come along with them on their weekly Starbuck's run (I drink neither coffee nor tea).  Before that, VS and EW were...polite but a bit disinterested and incredulous.

Yesterday, I ran into VS in the parking lot after school, and she thanked me again for translating one of her conferences, and mentioned that it must be very hard.  I mentioned (without thinking that it probably sounded like fishing -- but you know me and social skills) that the ladies in the office had once talked about me getting a stipend for it.

And she said she'd plead my case during the leadership meetings.

Which, you know, probably won't happen, 'cause she'll have forgotten by then -- but that she volunteered was very nice indeed.

Meanwhile, Bulldozer slugged Aide J today, but according to Aide S, she had...ahem..."earned it."

Superhero has been edging closer and closer to meltdown-land as the week has gone on.  I anticipate drama tomorrow.  Which, of course, is when Psychologist JW is coming to observe Mr. Voice to begin working on his tri.

And, I learned something today.  We had an assembly this morning during morning journal time, which is when 3rd Grader P has been visiting, so he came with us to the assembly.  Nothing terrible happened, but note to myself: Keep PH and Bart (just came up with the nickname...he has a Simpsons backpack and, now that I think about it, reminds me of Bart) away from each other at assemblies...or, you know, most of the day.

Yeah.

Oh, and, 3rd Grade Teacher RE said she's considering sending her son to me for his sixth grade year.  He's a cool kid, but she strikes me as a Scary Parent.  We shall see...she talked about it for fourth grade this year and ended up changing her mind -- which is good, 'cause his drama would have been too much for us.

More On Lore

Great...I kept thinking that Lore used to sing a song, and when I googled it, I remembered right away that he did sing (it starts at 1:30) as he entered the room in "Brothers"...but now I have it stuck in my head.

(I'd much rather have Miles singing "The Minstrel Boy" stuck in my head, but, alas, it does not work that way.)

Anyway.

(I now own two vocal and one instrumental version of "The Minstrel Boy," by the way, but the phrase "warrior bard" always makes me think of Gabrielle.)

VMWare Fusion has a 30 day trial.  I am already in love with not rebooting.  I still can't figure out how to get access to the network attached storage, though -- which is crucial, because the word processor is on the Data side, and you can't access the Lore side while Windows is running without doing lots of dragging and copying, which is redundant and ridiculous.

However, barring anything else, it'll work.

There's something surreal about a Windows shut down screen with my Leopard wallpaper in the background.

Not bad.  Just...surreal.

Now, having violated my rule by nearly 2 hours, and getting nothing out of it except the agenda book stuff...I'm giving up for the night.

(Also...the result of all that googling was getting Data's darned life forms song stuck even more in my head than the other one.)

I just...love scanning for life forms.

(Be afraid.  Be very afraid.)

Life forms...

(C'mon blogger, upload the screenshot.)

You tiny little life forms...

(I had to try to say "fluency" and "stamina" today, in Spanish, in regards to reading.  During the first conference, when my vocabulary is always rusty.)

You precious little life forms...

(I need to borrow someone else's Boardmaker disk...mine has a hairline crack that was never a problem before, but it's not letting me use these nifty (free!) tools that let me virtually mount Writing With Symbols and still have a free CD drive.)

Where are you...?

(Am I the only one who thought it was sexist that the saucer didn't plow into a planet until Deanna took the helm?)

It's official.  My brain has imploded.  I am now wondering if the emotion chip made it so Data could whistle too, and for the life of me, I can't remember.  Googling has not 

helped, and I now have Data's poem stuck in my head instead.

Felix catus, your taxonomic nomenclature

Connotes an endothermic quadruped,

Carnivorous by nature

Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses

Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations

A singular development of cat communications

That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection

For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents

You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance

(Something something) a true and valued friend.

Trust me...I am as disturbed as anyone else that I remembered that much, as accurately as I did.

Living Up to His Name

For the life of me, I cannot get Lore to connect to my network attached storage...which is where I moved the school stuff so that the Windows programs (Boardmaker, Writing With Symbols) could do their thing, while the Mac programs (NeoOffice, Pages) could also do their thing.

Le sigh.

Good Karma

Please send good karma Amie's way.  That is all.

Actually, it's not.  For those of you who aren't Amie, just so you know, she's not a "cyberfriend."  I've known her since the first grade (err...I was in first grade with her brother before they skipped him and she was in kindergarten but whatever), and though we've drifted in and out of contact over the years...

...well...we've been friends since the first grade.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

The Old and the New

Who needs an external hard drive enclosure when you remember that your account is two arrows down and can log in without a monitor?

Add to that being able to browse your own network well enough to get an internal IP address for the old desktop without a monitor to ask it what its IP address is.

Add to that remembering that to log into a shared windows drive you have to use smb://ipaddress.

Et voila.

Now to write the scary IEP, while pretending I don't have a migraine.

(And while pretending that Program Specialist and Former Teacher RR didn't outright say CAPA would be harder again this year, because apparently "correlating with standards" no longer means teaching age appropriate topics at skill appropriate levels, and I should be teaching kids to sort leaves by type.  As in...toothed, compound, and something else.  Because we couldn't take the general, "Oh, fifth graders learn about plants" and go for, "What do plants need to live?"  Oh, no, we have to go straight to types of leaves.

Also...I've had kids go to fifth grade science.  They do not learn this anyway.  Eesh.)

I am a Nerd

But we knew that, right?

May I present the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide of the computer world:

Some Progress

So, Windows XP is now installed on the iMac.  I haven't installed Boardmaker or Writing With Symbols yet because I'm still waffling on whether to stick with Boot Camp and deal with rebooting when necessary or to spring for Parallels or VMWare.

The advantage to Boot Camp is that it's free.  Parallels got mostly good reviews everywhere I looked, but VMWare's reviews were almost uniformly a variation of "So much better/faster than Parallels."

So we'll see.

Now I'm trying to get some of my programs off my PowerBook and onto the iMac.  Some of them (like Final Cut Express) will have to run under Rosetta (emulation)...which will be slower than universal binary or Intel native versions...but considering that video rendering went from .14 frames per second to 29ish frames per second...I'd imagine that even "slower than native" Final Cut will be...at least equivalent, if not faster, to how it was running on my laptop.

(Plus, big beautiful screen.)

The only remaining task is to get the files off my old PC (I've got several years of adapted books on there, for one thing) and to get an external CD/DVD drive for the iMac to run Writing with Symbols and Boardmaker concurrently.

(Unless I can find a way to trick the computer into thinking they're in the drive.  I tried that once years ago with a program used by gamers for the same essential reasons but it didn't work.  Basically, the program was supposed to make a copy of the disk and then mount it as a virtual drive, but I never could get it to work.  It may be worth exploring, now that I think about it.)

Incidentally, I like Cat's idea of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde name scheme for the iMac.  Unfortunately, I can't think of any fandom names for this except for Angel and Angelus (Angel) and John and Harvey (Farscape).

I'll keep thinking....

Something About That Song

Picture this.

(Sicily...19...dang, Patrick's been watching too much Golden Girls again.)

Ahem.

Picture this.  It's 2001, and I've walked with Patrick's class to the movie theater to see Shrek.  It's their last field trip of the year, and his last in middle school, half community based instruction and half his teacher just wanting to let the kids have a good time.

Of course, at the time, Patrick was deathly terrified of movies.  So I went along, mp3 player in tow (yep, this was in the pre-iPod days) in case he had a panic attack.

The movie had lots of music -- in fact, that's what sets the first Shrek apart in my mind -- the music seemed to be much more carefully selected in the first one.  And Patrick did okay.

And "Hallelujah" came on.

There's just...something about that song.

The montage was great, but the quiet, sublimated anger in Rufus Wainwright's version was enthralling.  I had no idea that so many versions of the song existed, until a couple of years later, when I searched it on a whim in iTunes.

See, I'd recently searched the song "Yerushalahim Shel Zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold").  One night when inputting lyrics, I'd googled the song to see what I could find, and I found out that the tune is actually a basque lullaby.  Well, I couldn't imagine the defiant chant in Schindler's List (which is how I had the song in the first place) as a lullaby, so I searched for other versions of it.

Thus began my interest in different versions of songs -- I love how different artists can put such a different spin on things.  What is a defiant statement in one version (Schindler's List) is a quiet, introspective song in another version.

Anyway, I was searching for different versions of Hallelujah and came across k.d. lang's version from Hymns of the 39th Parallel.

Wow.

Just...wow.  There's a quiet...almost desperation to the song.  I was absolutely enthralled.  (I now have 4 versions of her singing the song.)

So, now, I have a total of...I think 8 versions of the song.

And then, a few nights ago, I was reading through writer Elizabeth Bear's blog, and discovered, to my amusement, that she had posted on the subject a little while back.

She has 14.

The funny thing is, now that I have a computer that doesn't stutter and die on youtube videos, I can easily see myself finding that many and more.

There's just something about the song.

Easter, Writing, and TMI

So, as has been the case for a few years now, the only folks in my family nearby that celebrate Easter had other plans.  Which, to Patrick, means one thing: Disneyland.

But we did depart from our usual routine, and even had dinner at the Wine Country Trattoria -- which is a very nice table service restaurant with (get this!) reasonable prices.  Not just Disneyland-reasonable-prices, but semi-good-Italian-restaurant reasonable prices.  Wow.  Of particular interest is the orange sorbet dessert, served on a frozen navel orange.  Yummy.

Anyhow, it being a holiday, Patrick...ahem...permitted me to use (my) point and shoot camera to take a few shots, on the condition that I also shared the next in his self-portrait series.

(See if you can guess which shot is his.)

In other news, I have been writing up a storm.  I'm just not sure if it's any good -- it probably isn't yet, and probably won't be without a significant re-write, but it's nice to shut up my inner critic and just get the ideas out.

Meanwhile, I find myself watching the beginning of season 9 of Stargate to determine the extent of Cam's injuries...and 'cause that's when the whole Ori thing started.

(Did I mention I liked the Ori storyline?  Yeah....)

Now, as far as the TMI stuff....

Men are babies.

My grandfather has developed a touchy stomach in the last year or so, and often when he goes on dates with his girlfriend, he ends up throwing up the next day.

He threw up today a couple of times, and called my mom this afternoon to say he's going to go to the emergency room 'cause he just can't keep getting sick like that.

Now, far be it from me to be unsympathetic, but....

When I was in 8th grade, I had a rare form of mono that manifested itself with months of excruciating stomach aches that kept me up for hours at a time because the pain got worse when I laid down.  It was literally unbearable laying down; I'd have to walk in circles until it died down enough to sit, where I'd gingerly curl up with a pillow (because if I got too horizontal, it'd all start over again) and try to sleep.  A few hours later, I'd be able to lay somewhat flat.  A few hours after that, I'd go back to bed, only to get up an hour or two later and try to make it through a day of school.

Then, one Friday morning in...it must have been early February (the stomach aches had been going on since August or so), I was getting ready for a half-day of school.  My parents were picking me up afterwards, and we were going down to Anaheim to stay at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time in several years (my dad had started his own company four years or so before).

I woke up and threw up.

(I warn you -- I said TMI was coming.)

I threw up.  To the point that there was only stomach acid, and I kept throwing up.  I threw up until I was literally screaming from the stomach cramps as my stomach tried to keep throwing up when even the stomach acid was gone.

I didn't keep solid food down for a month.

But after that, the other stomach aches tapered off.  For years, I'd get one or two a year, always accompanied by other TMI symptoms that I associate with what was going on when I was in the worst of it.  Over the years, I figured out what I could and couldn't eat -- for instance, I can only eat kosher hot dogs because something in regular hot dogs will trigger a stomach ache.

I know it's no fun to be sick.  And I remember being in the middle of two or three of the worst stomach aches, wanting to go to the hospital -- if for no other reason than that they could sedate me and I wouldn't be aware of the pain -- but literally terrified of the pain that sitting in the car would provoke.

I remember that -- and I remember sitting on the steps outside of my Spanish class during lunch because the smell of the cafeteria was just too much, hoping the yard supervisors or whatever we called them, wouldn't catch me until the library opened for lunch and I could hide in there.

I remember when the fatalism caught up with me on Patrick's birthday and I figured, "What the heck.  I'll throw it up anyway; might as well have a hamburger."

It was the first solid food I kept down in 30 days.

And I know it's awful and uncharitable, but part of me says, "Give me a frelling break.  So you threw up a couple of times.  Come talk to me when you're throwing up stomach acid and not food."

Thank you.  I just had to get that off my chest.  This way, I can be the nice, sympathetic, dutiful granddaughter.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.