I read Jeanne’s post about the disappearing iBook display, and immediately searched my email for her number (it’s on my cell, too, as Jeanne is my "let the internet know I died" liaison, since she frequents the same spots as I do, she’s the one to call in an emergency. Also, she can receive pictures, so she is liable to get naked baby pictures in the near future as well) but gMail is easier to search, and I have it in there. ANYWAY. My G3 iBook has a wonky screen, that is remedied by a learned move of almost closing the lid but not quite, and then flipping it open. And you have to do it really fast.  But I couldn’t EMAIL her that info, so I called her and ran down the possibilities, but nay, they were not happening. So I gave her the instructions for booting in target mode to save data, if necessary, and told her to call if she had questions….  anyway, she called later and her logic board is fried, after some internet research, and man does that SUCK. For ME. Heh. No, really! Jeanne is my full-time student AIM buddy, who is married to Dave’s long lost twin, for real. (Our husbands are spoooookily similar, truly.) Dammit! Now I have to be all…. productive. Sigh.

(Or not!)

I presented my seminar last night, which is a major project taken off the table. (Of course, I still have to write the follow up paper, but I have my articles and resources and such already, now.)  My topic was hard to untangle into a single topic; I ended up calling my presentation "Local and Global community in the age of the internet."  It was interesting, because it just wasn’t a linear topic, and the components weren’t linear, which is exactly what the internet is, too, you know? Anyway.

I had posted one of my articles for my classmates to read and comment on before I presented, to just sort of tease the topic, and it was interesting responses — no one else participated in any online communities outside of emailing friends and family, and maybe IMing with them. I definitely felt like I was about to out myself as Total Freak heading into it, but inthe end, I think people were enlightened more than anything. 

I started by talking about what community is, exactly, and how social networks have evolved, using an article by Barry Wellman, who talks about social networks used to be place-to-place, you sent mail to someone’s house from your house, or you called a number and asked for a person, whereas now our networks are person-to-person, based laregely on technologies that make it so. We have individual email, phone numbers, etc. (Except my parents, who share an email address, which is really frustrating at this time of year when they both have birthdays, argh.) I can remember having a party line for telephone service until I was probably 7 or 8; our ring was long-short-long, but people ALWAYS listened in (especially 7-8 year old kids) and there was always the picking up the phone to check that it was free to make a call. We have a landline here, so if the phone rings, I might answer it and it’s for Dave, but I spend a few minutes talking to Tom anyway. Caller ID has even changed this, my mom calls ALL the time, so often the phone will ring, and dave will look at it, and hand it to me to answer… person-to-person.

I went from that discussion, to saying "for the last three months or so, the only mail we’ve received that’s not junk or bills, has been gifts for the baby….. from my internet friends." And oh, the jaws dropped. "INTERNET FRIENDS? What if THEY’RE PEDOPHILES?!" was the basic thought, I’m sure.  I highlighted a few other internet-friend experiences ("When you get to the city, my doorman has a key for you, let yourself in!" or "Sure, come stay with us and our 4 month old baby, even though we’ve never met in real life!") and then started to explain how my internet friendships have evolved.

That part was interesting, for ME, to try to map it out. I really tried to make a diagram of internet & IRL connections, and I couldn’t do it, because it’s so intertwined in many cases. And thinking of how I got there — I talked about starting (to finish) my undergrad, and being much older thanmy classmates, and then moving to grad school and being much YOUNGER than my classmates, and in both cases, not having many ongoing life experiences happening at the same time as anyone. (Which is just about right; I started at Digs and Dland in summer 2001, and started back at UM in fall 01, so…) Or, how my real life friends have finished having kids, years ago, and I’m just starting, etc. They (like I said, they are all much older than me, for the most part) started to ‘get it,’ at that point, I think.  I talked about how when my back was out, my IRL friends were the ones that brought me milkshakes in bed, and my online friends were there for me to ‘talk’ to when no one else was around.

That led into "glocalization," another Wellman word, and I used examples of that — when Muse sent my kids the box of books, and how my global community impacted my local community. Or, starting the bangorbaby blog after helping an internet acquaintance with bangor-specific advice, and realizing it could be a resource for others…. my global community is impacting my local one in that way.

It then diverged into the ‘revenge effects’ of technology, and internet addiction, the signs and solutions, etc… and the best irony ever… we want to switch from Verizon to MidMaine for a cheaper DSL/Landline package, BUT, to do that we have to shut off Verizon DSL before calling MidMaine, and then MM has to get us to sign a paper authorizing that they can provide us DSL. ANYWAY, it apparently means that we’re out of internet for 7-10 days, and I literally was like "SHIT, i can’t do that now, I’m working on my internet community/ internet addiction presentation!" And even after that, trying to figure out 7-10 days that I could live without internet is um, really challenging my psyche. Take my phone, take my tv, but damn! I use the internet for everything! Not just ADL and blogs, but like, BANKING! How will we transfer money in that time, or know if checks have cleared?! It’s really intimidating to think about. Too bad we weren’t going on vacation soon. Or ever.

Throughout the whole presentation there waslots of discussion,and afterwards my prof confided that she had her own online friendships, so she found it really interesting to hear them analyzed in such a way.  It was a really good topic for me to do, I think, just based on my own experiences and interests in the way the internet connects people of like minds.

Then, I came home to find my first issue of People Magazine waiting for me, which was part of an unbelievable gift from one of my oldest internet/IRL friends (A six month sub, the perfect nursing magazine, no doubt — when I told Amy, she even freaked out — People is just the best ever, and I have NO SHAME, man) and this morning UPS dropped off a box with a boppy from yet ANOTHER old internet/IRL friend, and man, I am just so blessed to have stumbled across these people, in whatever way that I did. I know that, every day, but to see the widget being welcomed so warmly, too, oh, it just makes me all mushy. Who knew that the cold, hard internet would make me so soft?

Remember how I mentioned that I got a gawker media commenting account because of the email I sent about the stupid Orbitz thing? ANYWAY. I made my first comment this week, and DUDE! I got quoted! I DARE YOU to guess which one is me without clicking on the links, Hee.

Also, I am SO PISSED that Timber Tina got voted off last night in Survivor. I had HUGE hopes for her. She spends summers running the Great Maine Lumberjack show just up the road a piece in Trenton, and always does stuff on local tv (ie, Dave’s station) each summer, and she is not only a really tough chick, but she has personality and is good with cameras/crowds. OBVIOUSLY, since she brought on some of the best snark early in the show. "Uh, you’re afraid of LEAVES?" Coming from a PROFESSIONAL LOGROLLER, etc, that was pretty funny.  ANyway. That was stupid, regardless of my rooting for her, because you don’t vote off the strongest when you need the strongest to help your TEAM. Because a team of weaklings "I should have stayed on the couch" can use all the help they can get. Fucking old women.

See? REALLY GEEKY.

Four jobs I’ve had:
Middle school teacher
Airline ticketing travel agent
Barista
Town dump ‘go out and collect the trash the bears spread about’

Four movies I can watch over and over:
A Christmas Story
Grand Canyon
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
The Chase (the one with Henry Rollins.)

Four places I’ve lived:
Phoenix, AZ
Downtown
The Lake
The Best Street in Town

Four TV shows I love:
Grey’s Anatomy
The Amazing Race
Reno 911
The Daily Show
(last 2 are vacation and/or Netflix luxuries. Sigh.)

Four places I’ve vacationed:
USA road trip, several times
Ft Myers Beach, FL
Australia
Austin-ish, TX

Four of my favorite dishes:
Lobster
Crab sandwiches, cakes or melts
Waffles, egg over easy, & sausage with real syrup
Salmon

Four sites I visit daily:
For Better or For Worse
Daily Jumble
BDN

In addition to gMail, bloglines, Digs, etc.

Four places I would rather be right now:
Lover’s Key State Park, FL
Finished with my degree
Floating in a warm pool
Under a different administration

Four bloggers I am tagging:
I won’t tag you, but feel free to answer if you want!

Hey! I added a frappr map, over there under the People typelist. Go ahead and add yourself!  If you have privacy concerns, make up name/email if you’d like — I just have a love of maps and geography and love reading in my stats where folks are coming from…. and I like this map better than the other one that made its way around the blogosphere a while ago.  So, if you want to be Jane Doe, jd@gmail.com, go ahead! I won’t be offended, since other people can see when you pin the map.

Also in the news, my fair city has been listed as one of the "50 most fabulous places to raise a family." I TOLD YOU SO! And since I live in probably the most fabulous neighborhood in the city (not by wealth or anything, but by location/amenities/neighbors/etc, I feel extra special. 🙂

And finally, I’m going to be in a book! 🙂  She hasn’t mentioned it yet, but since it IS listed on Amazon now, I’m going to go ahead and brag her up, but the amazing editor at Digs is having her first book published in May.  Called "First Digs: the quasi-adult’s guide to decorating with style, without blowing your budget," it’s available for pre-order now.  4.5 years ago, I did an article for the website about using spraypaint, and a year ago, she contacted me to get written permission to use the article in the book she was working on.  I think it’s cool to be included, but more than that, I’m really proud of yee-fan for getting a real live book to come to fruition as a result of all of her hard work on Digs. She’s a fab person, and we should all support her! (Makes a great graduation gift for that person just heading out into the world, people!)

Seriously, I have totally crossed to the Apple side. I mean, I love my ibooks, I have the apple sticker on my car, I fit the demographic, etc. But after a few days spent with PCs, I just. don’t. get. it.  Every now and then people ask me for help with their PCs, because I do know more than the average bear about them. Not an expert, by any means, but people like to have help setting them up, or setting up a new service, or cleaning stuff out.

Last week, I helped a woman get her DSL installed. She also had this weird thing happening with AOL and her firewall disagreeing, and I found a patch online, downloaded it to my USB drive and fixed that.  The DSL install got hung up at one point, so I called the tech line, got a really fabulous tech, who was like "Oh, let me guess, the install hangs at the account server? yeah, it’s a known issue."  He gave me the username and password for the account (the woman didn’t have it) and we set it up manually, and all was fine, for almost a week. Then, shit went bad.

So, last night, I stopped in after class, around 7:40, to try to fix it. It’s all fucked up. Don’t know what happened there in two days, but I could get a connection, but not login to even the modem itself to check settings. EFFED. UP. I tried a bunch of different things, because I hate leaving things unfixed, but no go. I called tech support, and described the situation, and they need to send someone to the house to fix it. Yay.

But then, I hate taking money to do this stuff. The woman paid me 70 bucks for the first two visits, and I refused payment for last night, and when I got home, it was 9:45. !!! the PC clock was slow, because I kept checking it, but hot damn, getting hom 15minutes before bedtime, with an unresolved client, and NO DINNER, I almost cried. I saw dave for 15 minutes before we went to bed, basically. So not cool. And then I dreamt about WIndows PCs all night. Seriously. I don’t. get. PCs.

Today I had another job, down the street. THis one was a teen computer, on a highspeed wireless network (incidentally, once we can reach from our house, hee! And i told them so, so I’m not evil) with no virus software, and usign IE as the primary browser. Holy trifecta of PC hell.  I ran some malware detection stuff, and came up with 227 problems, most in the registry. I don’t do registry.  I updated the malware stuff and it had 60 more when I left.

I finally left with a recommendation to call aroiund and find someone to reformat/reinstall XP, to use firefox, and to use some antivirus like AVG or whatever. I refused payment, but she insisted, so another 25 bucks.

I think, from now on, that I will just go to these homes with a macmall catalog and say "pick one, and I will do all of your future tech needs for free." If anything, the people that just don’t KNOW computers need to be using macs. Seriously. (Or linux, but that would make their heads explode, I think.)

I love Apple. No spyware, adware, malware, viruses, giant security flaws, or preloaded IE. I love Apple, forever and always. Yes, they cost more than the Walmart deal on the Compaq desktop, but when you factor in the price of all the crap windows people have to deal with, is it that much of a difference? HATE Windows.

On the flip side, I’ve been working with an adjunct to teach him more about computers in general. He was really hesitant about taking lessons from me, because "everyone’s tried, and I just can’t get it through my old head." WHen I first met him, he was still unsure, so i said "look, I got my start teaching computers to mostly senior citizens  [as he is] and give me a try. If it isn’t a fit, no hard feelings, but let’sjust see what I can do for you."

Now, he comes down once a week, and he LOVES me. He sent a gushing letter to the dean about me, and yesterday at the end of our lesson, he went on for 15 minutes about how I really have a gift for teaching technology that he’s never seen before, and that I needed to be teaching teachers how to do this stuff, because I knew how to TEACH most of all. THAT was kind of cool. It’s what I want to DO, you know? ANdi t was cool to hear that I was good at doing it froma student who was very reluctant that he could be taught.

Anyway.

Hey, I am a registered commenter with gawker media now! My complaint to consumerist garnered me an invite, yeehaw! I feel so special. 

OH, one more geeky thing — in one of my classes, we have to use Palm pilots.  I had a Visor years ago, during Americorps, that was basically replaced by my first iBook, but playing with the Palm last night made me feel all gadget-hungry for one again. DId you know they come in color now? And with rechargeable batteries? hee. Anyway, any recommendations for a returning-to-palm customer? I’m thinking bluetooth would be great, and wi-fi not necessary, and smaller would be better. A palm the same size as my iBook would be moot, really.

WHen I used mine, it was to schedule my Americorps students, at 4 different libraries, as well as to keep track of their names and numbers. I also used it to keep track of my classes, grades, and to play chess while waiting for class to start, and to keep lists of things like "Books I want to read."  My schedule isn’t as busy, and I’ve been getting by using my firstclass calendar, but gadgets are FUN, dontchaknow?  If you are a palm user, what do you use for additional software?

I’ve been logged out of LJ for I don’t know how long. Glad to know my favorite friends-only posters have not all given up LJ at once. Heh.

For the mama/mama-to-be types, I added myself to The Baby Registry, which is a fan-fucking-tastic idea.  Index of pregnancy/baby blogs by due/birth date.  It was only created in the last few months, but you might want to add yourself, or look for a due-date twin, both of which I’ve done.  It can be hit or miss, as with all blogs, but my nearest due-date is lizspeaks, which conveniently enough is a fab blog that I actually WANT to read. Woot!

I really like gawker’s new consumerist blog, however, a post today reallllly pissed me off. You have to be an invited commenter, which I’m not, but it pissed me off enough to actually email my thoughts. Basically, Orbitz and AmericaWest are called out as sucking because some guy lost his paper tickets, didn’t have the brains to realize that a ticket counter was 10 minutes away, so he drove to Ohio or something to get new tickets, and AW (I so want to type HP because that’s their official airline code — /end ticketing geekiness) refunded the money anyway. Um, what?

Personally, Orbitz is my online ticketer of choice. Because of my past experience and knowledge of airline ticketing, I may have a better grasp on the minutiae of how to get the best deal, but Orbitz makes it totally easy for the regular folk to get the best deal, too. I don’t fly much, granted, but we used Orbitz for our trip to Florida, and I used it for my NYC flight, and both times got a good deal with no hassle. So there’s my counter-post — Orbitz is cool.

America West isn’t that bad either. Granted, the last time I flew them was in 2000, because I lived in Phoenix, but man, they had ticket counters at the Fred Meyer across the Parkway from me. Nothing easier than picking up a ticket  while picking up groceries.

ETA: Ha! I go to lunch, come back, and Bloglines tells me consumerist updated the story with a disclaiming oops! message. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to think that was offbase.

Oooh, Bluetooth. My first Bluetooth device. Well, the G4 has Bluetooth, but this is the first thing I can take advantage of that feature with. So cool, since I’ve heard that it can be a bitch to transfer from camera to computer, and that is just not the case here. Sweet.

Also, video! I think it does sound too, but I didn’t consider it when I grabbed this few seconds of Fat Kitty:

The v330 is not food

(It opened in Quicktime here, not sure if it will work in other formats, it’s .3gp  ETA: The first load only played the sound — there’s sound! I should have said something! — but hitting play after the automatic loop brought up the video, too.  g4/Tiger/Firefox)

Also, because I don’t have a baby (yet), here’s a still I snapped of FK and bluetoothed to the iBook as well.  God help you all when I give birth.

Our contract with USCell winds up this month, so I was free to choose a different carrier and, gasp! Get a new phone!  I’ve had a Nokia 5165 for two years, and it now basically only works when plugged in, so it just stays in the car.  At my appointment today, I tried to see if they could use email to contact me because I really don’t have a phone to be reached at in the lab . . .  and they won’t.  Fuck. (Seriously, man, if I just got all my little confirmation calls as email instead, life would be somuch easier.)  I left the OB with a system of "call before you come in, in case the doc is delievering," and a backup of "we’ll call your husband and he can email you."  He at least has an extension and voice mail, but he’s at his desk maybe only 40 percent of the time, and in the building only 60 percent, so it was a big pain in the ass, and I decided to just sign up with T-Mobile and be done with it.

I ended up with a Motoral V330, which had the two main features I wanted — it folds, and has a camera. I’ve been lusting after camera phones since they were invented, and can think of all kinds of times I wish I’d had one.  Like, for instance, the time we were moving in here and there were two 10 year old-ish boys standing on the side of the road in inflated sumo costumes looking bored. Or the time the people down the street were throwing out mannequin legs, and they were sticking out of the trash can like an inverted Rockette move. Or when I was trying on wedding dresses, and calling my mom from Portland and having her look up different models online to see what they were like. I could go on and on, but I’m really stoked to have a folding cameraphone now. Yay!

ETA:  I’m sure someone’s going to have some sort of t-mobile horror story, but you have to understand that up here,  we can’t get Verizon (which seems like the most revered) and I’m just stoked that I had a third option after USCell and Unicel.  Plus, t-mobile has the perfect plan for me, 30 bucks a month, 300 minutes and unlimited weekends.  The coverage I need is basically here, and I-95, and they have that covered, so woo-hoo, no more way too expenisve USCell bill for services we don’t even USE.