I didn’t re-read everything I migrated over from the old Live Journal blog tonight, other than glancing at a few paragraphs here and there…
The last year was an uncommon year. An unusual year. And it is a year I hope not to have to repeat ever again.
A lot of “spam” out to the social networks today. Looks like Facebook and Twitter quit taking the Hootsuite posts. Maybe I should have scheduled them. That would have been more work than it was worth, though.
Now, as I go back through the remaining nine years worth of posts, I am not going to post them at the top of the blog, I am going to back date them. But I knew this was a lightly posted though eventful year, so I thought it would be interesting (okay, maybe a few years from now) to have the details sorted out in order like this. Of course, since they are out of sequence now, I may never be able to find them later!
Blah. A couple chores and then bed. Long day tomorrow.
The main reason I wanted to jam through all of that, though, was to test out the new posting system, and I would call it a success. Also, I was able to populate delicious.com with a lot of posts from all four blogs to help get the new “Related Posts” app up, running, and functional.
Been working on tweaking and changing some of the tools I use to post, and the new method makes it very easy to migrate posts from one blog to another. Eventually, I would like to move everything over here from the old LJ blog, but that is not a huge priority right now.
However, working on the system for doing that, I did want to move a few over tonight. I posted a couple on their original publication date and posted a few for tonight.
In the future, I will probably just sneak most of them in behind the current posts on their original date.
I will also be working on a couple years worth of posts that were pulled down off of Rubble when it was repurposed and never put up anywhere else, the new SE2 or the old.
If you had "the look," you wouldn't need to say much of anything at all. But this nonverbal cue needs to be introduced early and reinforced diligently with consequences for transgressions, just like potty training. And whenever a kid throws a temper tantrum in the middle of the shopping mall it's just as bad as his soiling his pants to spite his parents, and it stinks just as much.
I have seen a small child slap her mother in the face with an open hand, only to be met with "Honey, don't hit Mommy." I have seen kids tell their parents "Shut up" and "Leave me alone" at the top of their lungs -- and they are not put in check. I shake my head knowing it's only going to get worse from here.
I've seen what worse from there looks like. It is not pretty and not good for the child, let alone anyone else. And how to get there, this is a great article... This is essentially the system I am using at home with my metaphorical pants soiler.
Setting up a behavior modification program takes hard work, dedication, commitment and cooperation between parents, teachers and caregivers. The following seven steps will help you to create your own system, catered to the individual needs of your children.
ADHD is more of a problem with the big one, not the little one who was recently having some serious behavioral crises, but these approaches have been working really well with him. I just read this article for the first time today, but it pretty much sums up what I am doing at home to get the little one back on track.
I also read the behavior modification article you posted. I realize that every parent has to do what works for them, but I cringe at the idea that rewards and consequences are some sort of magic bullet. Of course I'm from the Alfie Kohn school of thought on rewards, so it's not my thing to begin with, but I think raising well-adjusted children is so much deeper than just behavior.
Behavior is a symptom, not a cause, imo. One thing the article does get right, I think, is the idea that the parent needs to really look at their own behavior. Any time I have ever felt that my kids were not behaving appropriately, I try to look at myself first to find the problem. It's always there - my attitude, my expectations, my language, the behaviors I'm modeling, my choices. When I modify my own behavior, the kids' behavior follows.
I'm not suggesting that you change your approach - your family is in crisis mode,and you are not starting from a baseline of happy connectedness. You have do what you can. What I am suggesting is that behavior modification might get you to a place of order, but if you want to get to a place of happy connectedness, it takes going much deeper. I wish you all the best.
This is pretty good... I've been doing this since the early days. I remember the sudden transformation from "weblog" or "links log" to "blog" very well. I thought it was annoying then. Now, I suppose, I am just used to it. The majority of these, yeah... I've been one at one point or another.
Blogging has roots all the way back to the early 1990s, when forum members would keep accounts of their day-to-day activities and in 1994 the first real blog, Justin’s Links, hit the web. Blogging has come a long way since the ‘90s, with over 156 million public blogs in existence as of February 2011. Everyone is blogging, from moms to techies to artists and politicians, and a fun infographic from Flowtown examines the blogging ecosystem. ...
We begin with the early categories of bloggers—the Emo Blogger (that favored LiveJournal), the Angry Blogger (that used the web as an outlet), and the obsessive blogger (that wrote about a single area or topic). These blogger types paved the way for a variety of other bloggers—political bloggers, travel, tech and food bloggers and more which, in turn, paved the way for Apple fan boy bloggers, gaming bloggers, activists, DIY, fashion, art & design and other topics. Today we’ve got bloggers blogging about virtually everything.
Yes, too much. I am feeling overwhelmed with life issues, internet issues, hardware issues, etc. There is a lot going on right now. Yesterday, I was busy here and there and even ran out of time to post my Photo of the Day.
So, what all is going on?
Well, first of all, a whole lot of life with the boys. The little one is doing great. He is down to one real issue at school (and at home), and it is one he has progressed tremendously on since April, though it was the one he had the most distance to travel on. Overall, he is happier and healthier than I have ever seen him. No exaggeration.
The big one, not so much. At home he is happy and healthy, but this school year has been a real challenge for him so far. It's required a lot of work with his case manager and teachers down at the middle school. I think we have a good system and routine put in place for him now, but it will still take a lot of work to get him up to speed with middle school and the seventh grade. In some ways, I fear we may have done him a dis-service in letting him continue on to seventh grade after, essentially, skipping the sixth, but it is too late, for now, for that. We do have a meeting coming up later this week to review where he is and where he is going at school...
And that is the main thing right now, and it is a lot of work. But of course, I can't stop and I still have a couple hours here and there everyday to work on some personal stuff.
So, what else?
There have been the computer and home network issues. I've got that mostly taken care of, though it was real fun (sarcasm) having to rebuild my frankenPC twice in a month. But it is worth it and it is humming along very well right now, as is the home network. Unfortunately I still have to spend a lot of time this week copying files from the laptop to the frankenPC, which is repeated work, which I hate. I just finished that project when one hard drive died and I accidentally formatted one of the other, good drives, erasing all the files that I'd just finished spending hours moving. No permanent data losses, fortunately, just a lot of wasted work
Of course, in the process of setting up a "new" computer (twice in a month) and network, there was an opportunity to take a fresh look at a lot of my software solutions... primarily my email and my calendar.
So I've bounced from my stupid, evil crash happy Microsoft Calendar program to Yahoo. Since I am back and forth between two computers (and hopefully getting back to work in the next couple months, as soon as the issues with the boys get a little more stable), an on-line solution seemed to be the best replacement. So I spent some time getting everything transferred and updated and set up as I like it.
The only real downside I have right now is that I have to be online to access my calendar. Not a problem with the network issues sorted out, but it can be a problem later, and if I start wandering out and about with my laptop more... Plus there are the longer term goals of having a calendar that both Jenna and I can access to keep each other up to date on boy appointments, especially when she moves...
But then, of course, while updating everything on the frankenPC, I found that the best solution for me might be using Microsoft Live... and then I need to move back, essentially, to where I started while keeping all of the flexibility I have now while still being able to access everything while off-line. Or I could move to Google, which Jenna just started using and also seems to offer an off-line solution.
And then email. Found a new email program that really works well for my computing needs right now, but that, also, is making me look at moving the calender to integrate it with my email program. Blah. Also, I decided that after using the same email address for over a decade that it is time to start with a fresh one. That old address has been around for so long and used as a mask on so many spam emails over the years that it triggers way too many spam filters. It is time to start over. Nothing dramatic.
I will still receive email at the old address, but from now on I'll be sending from a new one and, when I give it out, I'll be giving out the new one. Not too worried about having people update their existing contact information for me, though. I plan a slow transition here. If you want to know the new one, it is the same as the old one, just at Hotmail instead of at Yahoo.
So there is all of that. No brain surgery, but a lot of little nit picking stuff.
Moving on... Still buried in pictures I need to edit, still trying to populate my Panoramio account and to get a big presence on Google Earth and Google Maps... Still trying to find some time to get the tags set up on my current blogs and to repopulate this blog with old entries taken from Rubble when it was re-purposed. Now, having moved, I'd also like to move the old entries from Live Journal, but that will take some time and it is not a huge priority for me right now.
My main project, in general at this time, is to be setting up my web presence for the upcoming job hunt. To get everything well streamlined and portfolio ready. Eventually, this means creating a portal style home page for all these little blogs and photo collections and everything else everywhere. A portal site, yes, but also a home for an actual portfolio, housing photos, clips, work samples, etc. This is something that I feel I really need to get done before I seriously start job hunting.
However, before I start building that site, I want to make sure all these little corners of the internet are stable, well put together, look nice, are well copyeditied (yeah, right) and so forth. So that means making a couple changes, and is why this is being posted on a new blogger blog instead of my old LiveJournal.
I hated the way LJ looked. Plus, I want to make this site consistent visually with my other ones. While I could have tweaked and prodded and poked LJ into looking better, it just seemed easier to re-start it here where I can knock everything but the header/logo design out in under an hour. Since I also, right now, have several years worth of old entries sitting on my laptop, in limbo between Rubble and SE2, this seemed like a good time to make this move, before I started moving them onto LiveJournal, only to have to move them again later.
When I start that project, I will start from the oldest to the newest, going all the way back to some pre-Blogger material I have from 1999 and grokSoup.
Beyond that, I decided to make a new blog to support my music. Sure, it will sit there empty for quite some time until I have the time, energy, funds, space, and other resources to start working on my music again, but since I am in the process of setting up my interweb network of sites and blogs right now, I wanted to put that part of the puzzle into place now.
But of course, that means more work on formatting a blog site, header/logo design and all of that fun stuff. Not to mention some further time spent trying to hack back into some old web pages with forgotten passwords and tied to dead email accounts, and then getting around to posting up some old songs...
All of this design work also means more work transferring more files from the laptop to the frankenPC, where I have better design applications to work with.
Finally, I have a lot of repair work to do on everyone else's hardware. Once I've got my two computers' issues resolved, then I need to get the big one's netbook back up and running for him (it recently went nipples up), and Jenna just bought two, cheap ancient laptops for the boys that she'll need me to spend time on, discovering if they are functional and then, of course, getting them functional and set up for the kids.
Of course, I still want to be throwing new content up online through all of this so I can keep driving my hit counts higher, which is important to my short and long term career goals.
Blah. It is a lot. It is hard to remember to take care of my own health and sanity through all of this. It feels like a lot of pressure, because this is all stuff I feel like I need to get through ASAP so I am ready to hit the job market as soon as the boys are ready for me to be away a bit more. It is hard remembering to take care of my own needs right now. However, I just have to take things one step at a time, keep is all broken down into bite sized chunks, and to not sweat the small stuff or to smell the sweaty stuff.
Yes, I have been struggling with feeling overwhelmed right now. But I also look at everything going on, and everything accomplished since April on all fronts, and it all seems very worth it. Life is good right now, and it is only getting better.
Especially after I post this and take a nap. Then it will be freakin' awesome!
Well, my blog, that is. This will be the fourth move for this blog since 1999, and the second time it has lived on Blogger.
Now, that is not entirely true. This blog started as Rubble, which is still alive and well, but it is no longer my personal blog, and all of those sorts of entries were moved (or were in the process of being moved, several years worth are still sitting un-published on my laptop) to Live Journal.
However, after some thought, I feel that it will make life easier for me to consolidate all of my blogs on Blogger.
Plus, it has better toys and doesn't want me to give them money.
Finally, one of the main reasons I wandered over to LJ was for the social networking functions on the site in the pre-Facebook era. None of those people hang out there much any more. Also, there were some privacy controls that I seemed to want at the time but, these days, I don't really give a crap about. My life is too boring to be scandalous (at least in those gossipy ways).
So. I'll pretty this place up some in the next day or two. I will probably, eventually, move the old entries over here, but I'll be leaving them up over there, as well. Not totally wiping the slate clean like I did when I re-purposed Rubble.
Okay, I think the phrase "No-Fail Zone" just got added to my lexicon. This is not a good zone for a kid to be in. Sometimes life comes with disappointments, and the time to learn how to deal with them is when you are young, not when you are out in the world on your own. Kids need to fail sometimes just so they can build some coping skills, and they need to succeed, hopefully much more often, to build confidence.
More so, they also need to learn that things like grades are rewards for work well done. If they don't do the work, failure must be an option.
Blah.
Here's the post from DinD and some article excerpts from Cracked.com:
Recess, p.e. class, textbooks, summer breaks, Valedictorians and other honors, and failing grades. Some of these, for parents with kids in school these days, well... We've seen the writing on the wall. Others, like the end of summer breaks, I've been hearing about since I was in school twenty years ago and it doesn't seem any closer than it did twenty years ago.
Using tablets and e-readers seems inevitable, but most of the other changes predicted by this writer do not, to me, feel like improvements.
The thing that is really killing us in our district is the budget cuts. Already, the boys have nearly as many weeks with four school days as they do with five, and the district is having to cut five more days because of budget short falls. We'll these dates will be announced when the district finished negotiating the timing with the teacher's union.
And these sorts of cuts are not recent. At the end of the 2004-2005 school year, the Portland School District elementary school sent a survey around asking which staff member to lay off, the librarian, the p.p. teacher or the music teacher. The school was already without a counselor.
At the end of the 2009-2010 school year, Gresham-Barlow S. D. was where Portland was five years earlier.
I don't think summer vacations are going away any time soon. If anything, they are getting longer. But it might be time to look at how all this down time is organized, though having all those long breaks would be murder on working, single parents.
Anyway, this article is not too deep, but it does have some entertaining food for thought...
"You remember recess, right? It was that one time when you could ditch the desks and run around in a frenzied scramble like an extra-caffeinated Bosstone. Whether you spent your 20 minutes hurling dodge balls at dorks or cowering under the slides (to hide from the dodge balls), recess has been an institution for generations. And thank goodness for recess. At a time when kids are tripping over their guts and trailing their asses on the sidewalk behind them, a few minutes of physical activity can be just what the doctor ordered. Literally.
Going Away Because ...
Four little letters: NCLB.
For those of you who have been out of the school loop for the past decade, those letters stand for "No Child Left Behind," which has, for better or worse, done a serious number on American education. Here's why: In 2001, President Bush and Congress passed a law saying we had to get better at school, specifically reading, language arts, math and science. Fair enough."
And failing grades? I agree and disagree with the concept, much like the writer. As long as we are rewarding our kids for real work, not just being overprotective of their feelings or, even worse, creating a situation where it is possible to keep moving through the system without actually learning anything, which I've heard of happening too, because it is just too difficult to fail a kid or to hold them back for a year.
More from Cracked...
"Failure makes students feel bad. And nobody wants that, do they?
Which is why programs like Zeros Aren't Permitted (ZAP!) are getting implemented everywhere from California to Michigan. In a no-fail zone, students can get an A, B, C, D or H, which presumably stands for "Ha ha ha! You didn't think we would give you an F, did you??? Give us a hug, apple dumpling!"
Getty
"You kids write whatever the hell you want on these essays. Mr. Scotch and I don't judge."
Upon getting their H's, students have multiple opportunities to complete their work to the teacher's satisfaction; during study hall, after school or, in extreme cases, during Saturday school. We can mock the idea, but in some ways, it makes sense. After all, in the real world, you work until you get the task done. Quitting every time you failed at something would just get you fired.
Getty
"I totally messed up that appendectomy. Next time I'll make sure they don't want a sex change."
Plus, the goal of school isn't to sort the stupid from the smart, but to teach everybody as much as possible. For struggling students, zero after zero builds up into one great house of fail, and with no hope of recovery in sight. It should be about getting them caught up, not continuously reminding them of how stupid they are.
But as soon as we defend it, it gets ridiculous again: There are places where red ink has been banned when writing grades because it's too "confrontational" and "threatening." We don't want to embarrass anyone, so let's just say that the country in question rhymes with "England."
Back in 2009, I moved all of this blog's posts, up to the start of 2005, over to Suburban Eschatology Pt. 2 on LiveJournal. Today, I mostly finished the process. I finished the process of killing this blog.
Originally, I intended to move everything. I wanted, in essence, to gut this thing and to start over from scratch here. However, a couple things happened to change that. I wanted to empty out this blog so I could re-purpose it. Today, I think I stumbled on that purpose.
On Facebook, I've been posting a "Photo of the Day" for a little over a month now and, recently, I started using Picasa to edit my photography. It is the best editor I have available right now (sorry, no Photoshop at home, nor any Adobe tools). Picasa is a Google product, and Blogger was acquired by Google a few years ago, so they link up nicely and the editor has a one-click posting tool. So, it just makes sense, because it is easy, to click that button every morning and to start shooting my Facebook photo onto Rubble as well. This morning I was able to work some kinks out of my system and I was able to do that for the first time today.
This event is actually what inspired me to put the final bullet into the old blog today. If I was going to start using it again, I thought it was damn well time to finish the job I started in 2009. Besides, as I start the search for my next writing contract, I am looking at cleaning up and streamlining my web presence, so finishing this job was on my to-do list anyway.
So, as I was copying and deleting five plus years worth of posts today, I stumbled on the poetry from 2005 that I posted on here. That year I was taking a couple of Desktop Publishing/In Design classes at Portland State University and my project for the second term was to put together a book of my poetry and photography. While working on that, I wrote quite a few new poems. It was really the only productive time I've had when it comes to creative writing since 2000. But, re-reading these poems today for the first time in a long time, I liked them. I decided to leave them here.
