The Cerebral Mum

And it will be in 8 minutes. In fact it will be over before I finish this post. I feel a long, long rant coming on about University IT. University bureaucracy? Well, it is what it’s always been and that is fine. I know how to work my way around that and find out what I need to know, when I need to know it. But now they’re all high tech, it’s a monster.

It was bad enough that the other day in the computer lab on campus I had to enter my password at least 8 times within the space of half an hour, all to do the most simple things. Could they not have a system that, you know, functions? Nooooo. You have to sign in for the computer, for the library, for the timetables, for the online studies units, for your enrolments, for your email… And so on and so on.

It. is. totally. fucked.

In better news, I am actually able to do a full time study load this semester. (Did I tell you that already?) I didn’t think that I would be able to, because of time considerations and Cas, but I can do a unit wholly online and I think that rocks. In fact, it’s a course requirement that I complete at least one unit online before I graduate. Just so they know I can use a computer.

So I’m signed up for a 2nd year history subject (I guess IT doesn’t care that I’m a freshman), Great Debates: Unfinished Business of The Past. Woo-hoo! Except…

The software they are using would have to be the most obstructive, inefficient, unintelligent software I have ever seen: Blackboard

It. is. totally. fucked.

It has modules and reading materials and links to other reading materials and it has discussion forums to take the place of tutorials.

Let’s just take a look at the wonderful user interface it has for the “forums”.

To read a post/thread you click. That’s fine. But it then opens up in a fucking popup window. Um, why? Now, I think the popup is senseless enough to call it bad design (and no, you cannot centre or right click to force it to open in a tab instead) but just to make it even more ridiculous, once you have closed the tiny box you have laboriously scrolled though (and no, it does not “remember” that you have adjusted the popup size), the page you are returning to refreshes!

WTF? If you’re going to use a popup or lightbox, isn’t the whole point so that you can view the detail without navigating away from or reloading the main page?

Now, I understand that they want to keep the unread/read up to date. They have, of course, gone about that in an entirely stupid way but perhaps they had good intentions. However, there is a little green star in my sidebar menu (which, incidentally, doesn’t resize or scroll well enough for me to see the full tree-directory) that is supposed to tell me when there is something new to see. And it does. All the time. Even when there is nothing new to see.

Oh, this post could go on and on and on… You get the picture. Just envisage the most basic functions taking a least 4 extra processes to achieve and you’ve got Blackboard.

I’m going to stop, because that is just one microscopic portion of what is wrong with this program and I could write a thesis. But before I do… My favourite fucked function?

There’s a button that says “accessibility”. I thought I’d give that a try, hoping they had something more functional for users with disabilities. Wanna know where that took me? To the Blackboard site and a page that says how considerate they’ve been about colour contrast. In a teeny weeny font.

It. is. totally. Blackboard.

(Btw, I’m going to be managing all my study notes etc on WordPress so my subdomain is now running a separate blog for that, Plato’s Sandbox. If you’re bored…)

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Yes, that dastardly ISP did it again. There I was, Caspar tucked in with his bottle for a morning nap and where was the internet, I ask you? Oh, it was there: Just long enough for me to start testing the coding on some elements of the new blog. And then it was gone.

What was saved and where I was at? Good question. Instead of having one more thing ticked off my list and an afternoon of fun, what did I do? I dug my heels in good and deep.

I spent three and a half (yes, that’s 3 ½ ) hours on hold listening to something that soundly vaguely reminiscent of muzak echoing through a mile of rusted pipe, interrupted only by a saccharine voice saying, “We are sorry for the delay. Your call will be answered as soon as possible”. And you know how much I love saccharine.

Of course, it might have been me digging my nose in to spite my face, rather than my heels. My call might have been lost in the ether. I’ve been told on good authority that can happen. (Big Sis. She worked in call centres until her spinal injury.) But, dammit, they’re a communications company! They should be better communicators.

I am stubborn.

(Unfortunately this story doesn’t have a dramatic ending and I can’t recount to you all the scathing things I said to them, the things I know everyone has wanted to say to “service” providers at some stage and gets vicarious enjoyment from hearing, because the connection returned all by itself and I hung up.)

But I have work to do. Just a little bit more tweaking over at Blogging Personal to get it ready for launching. In truth, I could have launched it by now. I have some things written and the site is functional. But I’m scared.

Writing a personal blog and writing a blog intended as a resource are two very different things. No matter how much you frame it as a conversation, because it’s your space it is in some ways a claim to authority. But I’m opinionated and I have convictions and if caring about something constitutes authority then I’m okay with that. I guess.

Another thing that makes it scary is that, even unlaunched, the site has already had a great response and I think that shows how many of us want someone to be talking seriously about personal blogging, not just calling it noise and moving on to how you can make the most money. That feels like a big responsibility and I really hope that I don’t disappoint anyone.

Yes, that sounds megalomaniacal. I’m not saying the worries are justified. I’m just saying that I feel them.

So to get over that, I’ve set the launch date in stone. The first post is being published on Tuesday, January 15, come hell or high water, so I’m off to spend the evening tending to my new baby, making sure everything is perfect for its arrival.

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It died some time yesterday in the afternoon.

Which was fine.

Who has that much time for internet things when your son scatters the entire contents of every cupboard in the house to the four corners of the universe faster than you can put it back again? A tin of baked beans by the toilet door? I can live with that. Plastic containers jammed under the sofa? I can live with that. I can even live with being unable to find a matching pair of shoes. But when Caspar goes to bed…

I want my internet!

No internet.

Big Sis’ and my computers are networked. There is a hub and a cable modem in her room. I have nothing to do with them. I turn the computer on in the morning and the whole world is there waiting for me, probably as bleary eyed as I am. Sometimes Big Sis turns her computer on after mine and has to reset things to get the connection working properly at her end. It involves pulling out a plug and then putting it back in. No drama. She just waits until whatever page I’m opening is loaded and it is done in a flash.

Last night, I unplugged and replugged and shut down, and rebooted - her computer, my computer - in a variety of orders for about an hour and still the world was silent.

I. Was. Not. Happy.

Big Sis was out for dinner but I called her anyway and that’s when I discovered the awful truth. There was nothing I could do to fix it: The phone was dead too.

I turned the television on. I turned it off. I sat down at the computer to do disconnected things. I got up again. I paced. I did 3 Sudokus. I sat down at the computer again. After calling from the neighbours line to see what was going on, I knew there was a serviceman somewhere fixing something. It’s possible that some of the intervals between me checking the line were as long as fifteen minutes, but not likely.

Is it done yet? Is it done yet?

It was all to no avail.

Now this would seem like the perfect opportunity to tidy up all the files cluttering my desktop - both the electronic one and the physical one - and to sort through all the folders called “To Be Sorted” without distractions. I did a little of that. I even read through some of my feeds (I’d just installed a new desktop feedreader that day) and wrote half a post in my text editor. But I wanted my distractions!

At 12:30am, I gave up and went to bed.

With my Sudoku.

Note: Because I’ve migrated all my feeds to a new reader I’m way behind in my reading so if any of you are missing me, I’m slowly catching up. I’m hoping the new program will make everything a bit more manageable anyway. Soon, you might be sick of seeing my name on your blogs. xx cm

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That’s right. I am out of the netherworld and the monitor is on!

After my old one blew a gasket, I spent days in purgatory. The official definition of purgatory is no access to your hard drive and the punishments are thus…

• No music - My CDs are packed but I have them all on iTunes
• No feedreader - I don’t like the online ones and use the Brief extension for Firefox.
• No email - Not entirely true, but I hate reading web-based email.
• No address book - A fairly heinous punishment when you only have a couple of weeks to organise a 1st Birthday Party
• No passwords - Not even for my blog and blog stats. I had to reset them all.
• No bookmarks - Again, I hate online services. Are you noticing a theme?
• No photos - Printing a years worth of baby photos will happen when I sell the house.
• Limited computer time - Big Sis doesn’t like me using her computer until 3am. It’s in her bedroom.
• No personal space - It’s my desk and my desktop. My room of my own. I like it there.

This is not an exhaustive list, but thanks to the kindness of strangers… Okay, not strangers. Big Sis’ BF, B, collected a monitor for me today from a friend who never uses it. There was some worry, given the great age of my computer, that it would not be compatible with my video card but it was needless worry. Like I said… Plug ‘n’ play mama! Oh, the sheer joy of seeing that screen which said Windows Loading. Who would have thought that Microsoft could ever give me joy?

It was my intention to do some major work, catching up and backing up but I was invaded this morning by other people’s children. They happily sat on stools in the kitchen while I scrubbed the oven and the cupboard doors and mopped the floor.

Yes, I am totally THAT cool.

They even stayed despite my refusal to let them watch the Grand Final on television. Australian Rules football, like Microsoft, is the spawn of Satan. Instead, I taught them how to knit and bankrupted them both playing Monopoly.

One would imagine that when I sent them home for dinner and put Cas to bed, I would be free to indulge my internet addiction. But no.

Their dinnertime marked the return of Big Sis and B from the pub. B is one of the most wonderful men on the planet. He works hard and he is a phenomenal father. He is completely down to earth, completely an Aussie bloke, yet he is as sappy as a school boy when it comes to Big Sis. He works in construction and his favourite book is the dictionary.

He loves words and when he’s had a few beers, he likes to use them. All of them. Especially the big ones. He mashes up the English language in a phenomenal way, but with such enthusiasm, you can’t help but listen to him. Listening to him is like reading Jabberwocky.

So my night up until 11:30 was not the night I’d planned. While Big Sis watched TV, B wanted to read my poetry, then he wanted me to show him a million other things on the world wide web, like his father’s artwork, which as you can see is beautiful. He also wanted me to introduce him to the wild and wonderful world of YouTube.

This particular video caught both our attention. Watch it. It’s a cack.

So this is all you guys will get tonight. I’ll be catching up tomorrow. Unless I am inundated by children again.

The Pied Piper can’t compete with my cool factor.

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My computer is at least 1000 years old and was cobbled together lovingly by my friends PC and Shaun using discarded parts and ingenuity. My monitor is the size of mouse poo and I had been rapidly shrinking the display on it as the edges became blurrier and blurrier. Last night it fizzed. This morning it popped.

I am now going to do something which goes against the grain with me and talk about money. I say goes against the grain partly because I think I have read too many English novels and partly because I have a very specific notion of “class” which is worthy of a post in itself. But this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to…

Money is just money. You can do fun things with it but beyond covering the bare necessities, it’s really not that interesting. This morning when I heard that ominous sound, it really did seem like being able to access my computer was a bare necessity. It was a disaster of untold proportions.

What was I to do while I drank my morning coffee if I couldn’t look at all my site statistics to see who had been reading my blog? How was I to transfer the loan payment for the house I can’t afford to live in, already a day late? How was I to download the forms I need to fill out so I could go back to university next year? They are due in 3 days and I can’t afford the late fees. And tomorrow is Big Sis’ birthday: I need to make a lemon meringue pie. All my cookbooks are packed. If life without books is hard, life without books or my computer is untenable.

So panic. I need a monitor. I need a monitor now.

And I needed to buy laundry detergent. And toilet paper. And baby formula. And a present for Big Sis’ birthday. And I’m scraping the bottle of the change barrel. Last month we were down to our last few cents to keep us in milk; this month… Money is sometimes depressing. So off I go, with $35 in my pocket for the next three weeks, hoping against hope that somehow I will find a way. If only formula wasn’t so bloody expensive. It’s not like I would have ever started feeding Cas the stuff if I had had a choice. (Cleft palate children can’t breastfeed.)

Fortunately, or so I think, I live at the end of the earth in an outer suburb that used to be a separate town, where dead-end drug users shoot up behind the op shops and pawnshops which breed here like flies. I try one. I try another. The only monitor I find even close to my price range is $25. That’s too much.

And that’s depressing.

So my mind starts adding up all the things I wanted to do, that I cannot. Like the present I was hoping to buy for Caspar’s first birthday, that present I’ve had my heart set on for ages.

And I cannot buy it. My little drummer boy’s first birthday and I cannot buy him that special gift I know he will love.

Now that’s depressing.

So I move on. I find good laundry detergent I can afford, $2 a box. I find a pink leather iPod cover for $3.50 to give to Big Sis. That’s a nice present. I realise that Caspar doesn’t need the most expensive baby formula any more. He eats 3 meals a day and his digestive system has matured enough so that it won’t make him constipated and gassy like the last time I tried an alternative. I find some on sale for less than half the price of my usual formula. I have $10 left. And my mind, so hooked on the percussion desk for his birthday, lets it go.

Maybe for Christmas.

I start to calm down.

I leave a message for Shaun. He always has computer junk lying around. So what if he’s on holiday. I won’t die. Big Sis has a computer and it doesn’t matter if I have to reset every password I’ve ever had because I rely on my computer to remember them for me.

And two days ago, Caspar took my pen from me and did real scribbles in my notebook. I can afford crayons. He will love crayons. And I will love sitting and drawing with him and pinning his artwork on my fridge.

That’s right.

Money doesn’t matter.

I don’t like getting down to my last penny, or having to pay my bills a little late. I don’t like not being able to fix the things that break or go out for coffee every other day. Sometimes it’s stressful. Today, I had a bad hour. Verging on tears, it was still just a bad hour.

In a few months, when the house is sold and I have no more debt and I have a five figure bank balance (hopefully), Cas and I can live a slightly easier life. Perhaps I still won’t be able to buy whatever I want. Perhaps I’ll only go out for coffee once a week, but what can money buy that compares to the delight in my son’s eyes when I blow raspberries on his feet, or his giggling pride when he toddles back and forth across the room?

What can compare to his slimy kisses in the morning or the way he hands me my glasses when he thinks it’s time for us to get out of bed?

The death of my monitor was a bad hour. Not the first, and not the last.

But it’s only bloody money.

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