this is a little bit embarrassing

Embarrassing for a couple of reasons:

1. My internet connection stuffed itself up this afternoon. No, really, it did stuff itself up. I came home from work and it was slow as slow as stopped. I confess I may have added to the problem when I started fixing it. And then I forgot how to reset my modem and I flapped around in a state of near panic, because how on earth was I going to NaBloPoMo?!
2. In my state of panic I phoned my computer-nerd brother and got my gracious, kind sister-in-law. I shared my NaBloPoMo fears. She offered soothing, sympathetic noises and (she is so nice and understanding) offered to post for me if it came to that. I cornered my Dad on the phone, but he didn't know how my modem worked. And my brother turned out to be uncontactable.
3. I realised I was skipping a step in the modem resetting process. As soon as I followed the instructions to the letter my connection was restored. I then phoned everyone back to assure them everything would be alright.

My sister-in-law said something very thoughtful though: 'It's a tradition now'. So it's not that I'm crazy or obsessed or anal about NaBloPoMo. Oh no. Not that at all! NaBloPoMo has become a meaningful blogging tradition. No, seriously!

you can run, but you can't hide

Life is very, very busy this week. But mostly it's good, life-at-the-coal-face busy (as opposed to busy for the sake of busy)... my life is intersecting with others in what is hopefully a meaningful and helpful way. However good it might be, there still isn't much space for blogging. In the interim, here are a few things I have noticed:

It's so long since I've posted here Blogger forgot who I was and demanded I log in from scratch.

Even just one afternoon of rain will have green grass shooting up in an otherwise barren, drought stricken back yard.

I like teaching student nurses. It's a pity I don't like nursing much any more. I do however LOVE my new job as school chaplain in a poor area of town, and one day I promise I will write about it.

Italian farms don't like replying to emails written in English even if their website features an (oft times hilarious) English translation.

The world has gone a little texting crazy. At first, when the car service centre sent an SMS to remind us of our up coming service and followed it up with a 'how was our service? reply 1 ok or 2 not good and we will call you' message I thought it was great. Unfortunately today I received a text advising me my one year dental check up is due from June 1. Hello?! After a ten year dental break I think I can go more than a year without a check up. Leave me alone!

And that's all I have time for. I hope you are all well and I will get back in touch soon. Hopefully on the weekend!

is this ridiculous? i think it's ridiculous

I've started a new job and with it comes a new email address. Or I should say 'another' email address, since it brings my total to six.

1. yahoo
2. nurse blog email
3. shared yahoo email with frank
4. uni email
5. department of health email
6. department of education email

There may yet be another one or two I haven't thought of.

Yes. That is ridiculous.

How many do you have?!

new year, new computer, new cecily

I did it!

I deleted every last skerrick of information off my hard drive and rebuilt my computer... well I inserted multiple CDs in the CD drive and imported all the information onto my hard drive, which hardly seems like rebuilding it, but there you go, apparently it is.

This job has been on my to-do list for over a year. My little-bit-of-a-computer-geek brother was going to visit last March and I anticipated enlisting his services for the building work. Alas, no visit eventuated and the task remained undone. In the end I got my pound of flesh from him though, with his most excellent instructions passed down the phone line over the course of an hour this afternoon.

And so my computer is transformed. Woohoo. (I still have a few more programs to download, but we're nearly there)

This builds on top of a host of other tasks I put off throughout 2007 but have already achieved in 2008:

• practice the violin most days
• reflect and journal most days (I've journalled more this month than the whole second half of last year!)
• visit a friend and mend a relationship
• write letters to multiple friends in numerous places
• finish a few half read books
  

As I said, new year, new Cecily. Now I just need to keep it up.

I would also like to achieve a number of other things:

• complete a needlework project or two (let's not discuss how many half stitched canvases litter my home)
• sort photos and choose the best from each country I have visited to enlarge and hang along our hall
• start making a few scrap books (Cecily's own version, not the scrap booking type that are really popular at present) of all the gathered tickets, programs, maps and other general paraphernalia I religiously collected in my travels
• finish a few more half read books
  

That should keep me going for the next twelve eleven months!

Thanks Luke for all your help... you are a champion geek. I'm proud to know you!... Hey I'm proud to be your sister!

(Shameless plug because one good turn deserves another) Luke is trying to build a photography business, so if you're on the lookout for a wedding photographer (or any other kind of portrait photographer) and you live near Newcastle, check out his website... he might be able to tell your story!

'fess up you computer geeks

Who writes this stuff?

Roger Federer has no sooner been knocked out of the Australian Open (I know... outrageous) than the result is included on his wikipedia record right down to the scoreboard! Heath Ledger was barely dead and all the sketchy details were written into his wikipedia entry.

I know... I'm googling them, so I have no right to point the finger at such computer geekiness (I only wanted to know who Federer's pretty girlfriend is), but really... have these people no lives but they must take on the responsibility of editing wikipedia pages the moment anything noteworthy (or not) happens?

To rescue myself from computer geek status I must inform you that I spent the last three days (at various times) burning all my files onto CD (twice) in order to ensure a sturdy system of backups. Only after I had completed all this did my truly nerdy brother (seriously, he, like, works with computers all day, every day) start telling me about external hard drives... you mean I could have saved those hours of endless wrangling with a broken burner and dud CDs by just plugging in a hard drive and copying everything over in an instant? You didn't think it was worth telling me about this before all that wasted time? Time is a resource of great value - it would have been worth the investment.

Grrrr

So now I'm ready to delete my entire hard drive and rebuild my computer. Technically ready. Mentally the thought of this scares me silly, so I may well fill my hard drive with another year of useless information before I do the deed. Except my computer is getting slower and slower and slower so something must be done.

Anyway, I've decided to stop moaning about nursing since I've discovered that being an IT consultant would be the most tedious occupation in the world. With my geeky brother's most excellent tutelage I will rebuild my computer myself, but once I've proven I can do it... next time it will be off to the nearest computer shop. Why put myself through this? I'm no computer geek and it just might be worth paying someone else to do this stuff.

But I'll probably keep googling anyone who dies or otherwise piques my interest.

facebook

The trouble with Nablopomo is narrowing down the field of topics - with something to write every day it's not long before every thought, facial expression, conversation or event becomes potential grist for the mill.

So what will I write about today?

The asparagus spears peaking through in my seedling box?
(Exciting, exciting but I'll save this one for later)

Recent Tasmanian nurse's industrial action called in response to the government's appalling lack of respect for us? (I'm furious with the government but I couldn't be bothered giving them the respect of a slot on my blog right now)

Church Camp and all the fabulous fun we had? (I haven't downloaded the movies yet so this will have to wait)

The reason I chose a vegetarian option at the Bombay Cafe tonight? (This is definitely going to feature soon, but I need to think about it more)

Like I said, so much to write, so little time. But I can tell you about one very exciting thing that happened to me. (apart from waking up beside Frank, having enough food to eat, the sun warming my chilled bones, and a favourite friend dropping in that is)

I finally saw the benefits of Facebook!

I personally dislike Facebook. Almost every day a work colleague or two list me as an online friend while doing nothing to cultivate the friendship in real life. It seems an empty exercise in bagging friends in the interests of gathering the biggest collection. And what's with the online drinks, aquariums, gardens and pets? Please - I have more important things to do with my time. So I ignore most of the requests and gifts I'm sent.

And then, today, it happened. A long lost friend left a message in my Facebook inbox!

I was a bridesmaid for this girl when we were both 19, but over the years we gradually lost contact. When I was living in London we briefly exchanged letters before descending once more into silence. A few months ago I found some photos of the wedding and I set to hunting her down once more. Using my highly refined online investigative skills (white pages) I discovered a listing I thought was probably my friend living in country NSW, but didn't have the courage to phone up out of the blue. The grey fog of friendship lost fell again.

Until today, there in facebook she was, asking to be my friend! And now I'm a Facebook convert. I wrote back right away and am delighted we've been able to link up again!

Nablopomo and Facebook - arghhhh. The virtual world is sucking me in.

nablopomo 07 in context

I read on a now lost link, that 43% of Australians value their online friends as much as their real, embodied friends.

That's nice. I hear where they're coming from.

I've certainly enjoyed meeting people around the world in the blogosphere, but I've been pondering this long and hard. Do I value my online friends as much as my real, embodied friends who I can meet for coffee?

I'm not sure actually. I value my local friends. That's a given. I value my online friends and I feel somewhat bereft when they don't blog or comment for a few days. (this extends beyond my endless quest for as many comments as Fussy) At times I'm even fearful something might have happened to them if they haven't been around their usual haunts for a while. But that's different from valuing them more than my real life, ridgy didge friends.

My conclusion so far is that I value my online friends, but not as much as my here-with-me-now friends. I'd be crazy to prefer the company of a virtually unknown voice coming to me through the computer over the company of a warm, soft, lovely body that speaks melodically to my heart.

Thinking about this has reminded me of an interesting reading from my counselling studies. Among other things, it made some powerful statements about the use of computers in our society:

Technology is not merely augmenting but replacing real human contact. Already Americans [sic] are alarmingly comfortable with this idea.

Kanner and Gomes 1995 in Pierce 2003:226

The content of what we use computers for may be far less significant than the fact that we use them. Simply spending time engaged in computer activity drives the wedge deeper between humans, and between humans and nature. The instantaneous quality of electronic technology and the computerized world has so conditioned us to the accelerated speed of modern life that we are impatient and uncomfortable with the slower rhythms and cycles of the natural world, including our own biological, emotional and mental healing processes.

Pierce 2003:226

Computers compete for our attention with socially based satisfactions and communion with the natural world.

Pierce 2003:226

These statements were all made in the context of ecotherapy, a fascinating branch of psychology that links poor mental health with the loss of our connection to the earth. Computers are used as one example of the way we are cut off from the natural way of being.

It's unlikely that I will stop using the computer. I probably won't even stop blogging (I am participating in NaBloPoMo 07 after all), but it does temper some of my devotion to my online friends. Yes, I care about you. Yes, I am interested in what is going on in your lives! But if my interest in you causes me to spend too little time with my real and present friends that is a problem.

Good food for thought I think as I take these early steps into the all consumingness of NaBloPoMo. Blog daily, but participate with reverence and respect for the real world.

Pierce, G. 2003, 'Ecotherapy' in Health Counseling: Application and Therapy, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Belmont, CA, pp 219-237.

on inventing the wheel

They say the wheel is the greatest invention known to humankind.

It must have been incredible for the people who dreamed it up - the sudden speed and ease with which objects moved.

The stuff of dreams.

I wonder if, in their wildest dreams, they could have imagined where that simple wheel would take us?

Did they envisage the transformation of transport? Were metallic cars with four wheels pictured in their mind's eye? Or giant caterpillars skimming along ribbons of steel? Did they think of the endless possibilities?

I wonder too if they contemplated the carnage to be wrought at the hands of a wheel. Crushing forces breaking bones. Grinding metal tearing flesh. Skidding tyres snuffing out life.

Another motor vehicle accident in Tasmania. (blast those winding roads!)
Another fatality.
Another statistic.

What price a wheel? Would they have invented it if they'd known all this?

progress?

Yesterday I found out about a new development that left me feeling quite disturbed.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against change and development. In fact I see them as essential to being human. To exist is to develop, whether it be personally or as a society. So while I might not be the biggest fan of contemporary classical music, and I have mixed feelings on modern art, I'm philosophical enough to believe that both make important contributions to our culture and development. We would cease to exist if we weren't progressing, or changing, or growing.

So what's so disturbing about the new development I heard of yesterday? Its crassness and invasiveness. In-your-face advertising is taken to a whole new level with this little piece of technology.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the sheer weight of advertisements that beam in my direction. A steady stream of junk mail, never ending breaks on television, billboards, buses, taxi boots, rolling digital posters in the shopping mall... everywhere I look I am bombarded by images enticing me to live in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. The last time Frank and I flew to Melbourne, Virgin Blue assailed us with nonstop advertisements - the back of the seat in front had been converted into a TV screen. If you chose not to pay for cable, you were regaled with ads. If you turned them off... they reappeared thirty seconds later. I found it quite affronting.

So when I read yesterday about TABANAR (Targeted Advertising Based on Audience Natural Response) I was concerned. This new advertising concept involves the placement of a small LCD screen and camera on supermarket shelves. As you approach, an advertisement begins to role. If you look away, the system 'senses' that you are not interested and immediately switches to an advertisement from a different brand. The cycle continues until you indicate your interest in a product by looking at the screen for an extended period of time. The system then assumes you are interested and keeps playing the same ad.

I'm sure it's ingenious, I'm sure it utilises incredible technology, it might even be a boon for the advertiser... but please! Allow me some peace. Allow me the dignity of making my own choices. Have some respect!