I should have done this a long time ago

I look like Francine IRL. New userpic.

Computers being shitballs

So when Votania tried to set up internet connection sharing with Enki, evidently she did the exact same things as I did -- but it worked for me and not for her. WTF is up with that?

Votania's absolutely not a geek. Never. But she now knows more about Linux than I do...

Evil plots and plans

Darkside expressed to me that he wanted to get drunk after graduation, just so he'd have the experience.

Dawn and I must make plans. Dawn is an excellent friend, and will make sure that nothing untoward happens.

Balance

I've really changed, evidently.

I'm not so much the rebel without clue or cause anymore; I've slipped into some form of near middle-aged calmness. Placidity. Self-content amidst a struggle against self-destruction. Complacency? Perhaps. It's all over and I'm standing pretty / In this dust that was a city.

Was the city me?

blink

I did not see that one coming. ralmathon and I used to refer to Darkside as War, and Adam as Peace, and me as the city; the city would either be possessed by peace, or invaded by war... have I destroyed myself, was I destroying myself in those weeks that this song refused to leave my head?

Something to think about.

who, me?

I look around me and see the people who define themselves by their political parties, their football teams, their college, their religious group (myself included), their fandom, their ...

very little on who they actually are.

child behavior; truth

There's a definite distinction between "I know for certain that you are lying" and "Based on what I know, it is very unlikely that you are telling the truth".

I had to send Nephew to the corner for saying he'd already eaten his lunch today when it's unlikely in the ultimate extreme that he was telling the truth. But, since my absence earlier in the morning today made it impossible for me to know for sure that he was without a doubt lying, I did not say "You are lying", when he claimed to have eaten peanut butter and jelly for lunch today, because I don't want him to get a mistaken impression of what lying is, on the off chance that he had been telling the truth. I said instead, "I do not believe that you are telling the truth", and sent him to the corner. Then I fixed him peanut butter and jelly for lunch, since he was obviously hungry.

The reason for his veracity to be suspect? A gummy worm. There shall be dessert after lunch, of course, but it will not be said gummy worm; lying in order to get something should delay the gratification, not have the same consequences as the truth.

Another thing that has wound up in my child-rearing to-do queue: the explanation of the distinction between, and the similarity of, taking something that wasn't yours to start with, and taking something that used to be yours but isn't yours anymore. I think it's the concept of "used to be mine but isn't mine anymore" is the one that needs swift clarification.

The issue? He's been told, many times, that he's to leave all his toys at home when going to preschool; if he takes a toy to preschool and leaves it there, it becomes the property of the preschool (mostly because it's so damn hard to keep track of kid toys unless there are names, etc. on it, which his little cars don't have on them). He's been told this, but he took a car to school the other day, left it there, then tried to take it home the next day. The school didn't know that it had originally been his, so he got busted for stealing. Mommy explained the situation, and told him that he knew what the rules were, and he'd taken it to school when he'd been told to leave it at home, and forgot it at school, and now it belonged to the school... Fuss and feathers ensued; he was sleeping off the tantrum when I got home last night.

I was always such a quiet, well-behaved child. Seriously. Except when I was making mud-pies or fighting with my sister. But I tried to be a model child in public, except when I fell in the lake, or got mud all over...