Yes, I know how to use it... (pictures I like)

 

...How do you think all of those cat pictures get online?

How the System Failed My Son: Part Three -- Experts

Having already been to the administration in an attempt to have my son promoted when he was in 1st grade, I knew not to try that again; there was no way his 2nd grade teacher would recommend him to be skipped to 3rd grade. Not that that would have mattered, because he would have had the same teacher. I did go talk to them about having him switched to the other 2nd/3rd grade class. That the woman, his teacher, could tell me that my son was "slow" because he did things at his own pace showed a complete lack of perception on her part (see last post). And, to be honest, she had already demonstrated (and would go on to demonstrate repeatedly) her own lack of actual intelligence. I didn't want my son in her class.

What I found out was that there was no place to move him to. The other 2nd/3rd grade class was the lower level class; he was already in the advanced group. Sure, I could move him to that class if I wanted to, but it would have made the issue of him already knowing all of the material even worse.

And there was no way to advance his progress beyond where he was without support from the teacher. It always came down to teacher recommendation. From the school's perspective, that's what they had to go with, and I get that. I would have had the same kind of standard had I been in their place. Most people have unreasonable and irrational expectations.

I'm just not most people. And neither is my son.

It's like this:
When my wife was pregnant with him, we got up one morning, and her water broke. We were about two weeks away from his due date. We, of course, went to the hospital. The admitting nurse was, shall we say, skeptical that my wife was correct in her assessment of her condition, including asking my wife if possibly she had just peed on herself. My wife, having actually worked in health care for a while, was understandably insulted. The nurse was not at all contrite when it turned out that we were correct and that my wife's water had, indeed, broken.

The thing here is that the nurse was right to be skeptical. She wouldn't have asked my wife about urinating if there was not a proven need to ask women in the same condition about urinating.

So, you know, I understand that the school needed to be skeptical with parents proclaiming the brilliance of their kids. I'm sure it was something they had to deal with all the time. The problem here was the refusal to even really listen or to look at the evidence. They just dismissed me out of hand because, you know, the teacher was the "expert" and surely she would take the appropriate action if it was called for.

It's a good thing the hospital actually checked our claims and didn't resort to the same "the nurse is the expert" way of operating.

In retrospect, it probably would have been better for us, for him, if we'd put him in some other school, maybe even any other school, but he had an older brother and a younger sister in this school, and we liked the school. We figured we could tough it out. It was only 2nd grade, right?

Right?

At the beginning of his 3rd grade year, I put in another request for him to be promoted. I think that one didn't even get a response.

Things got worse, and my son started asking to not have to go to school.

After a few months, I put in another request. At some point, they actually did a review of my kid's performance, including his standardized test scores, and they wavered, but, in the end, the principal told me it was policy to go with the teacher's recommendation, and that is what they were going to have to do. He stayed in 3rd grade, and he stayed in that horrible woman's class. By the end of that year, he hated, really and truly hated, school.

[Many years later, the school would actually "invite that teacher to leave," which, while satisfying, was much, much too late to make any kind of difference for my kid.]

[I just want to add in here because I forgot to mention it earlier:
My son taught himself how to use a computer... at the age of two. In fact, we couldn't keep him off of it. His older brother, who is five years older, had a bunch of educational games, and Phillip wanted to play them, too, especially the Sesame Street one with Elmo. It's not that we had something against him using the computer; we just hadn't even considered the possibility that he could use the computer. So he figured it out on his own. At two.]

My Cat Caught a Lizard, and Other Things

Oh... I can't resist mentioning the grammar in the title...
Can't... resist...

It's just that it's such a good example of using a comma for clarification of meaning, not for telling someone where to pause or take a breath. See, these two sentences mean different things:
"My cat caught a lizard and other things."
"My cat caught a lizard, and other things."
The first sentence means my cat caught other things along with the lizard, which, with my cat, could be almost anything. Actually, I think he caught a spider this morning, too.
The second means that my cat caught only a lizard and there are other things I'm going to talk about.
Commas. They're important.
And not for telling me how to breathe.

I've made no secret, even though I haven't mentioned it in a while, of my antipathy for Windows 8. It's like a book, a horrible-bad book, that your English professor wrote and then made you read as an assignment. But, not just read it, read it over and over again. And it never gets any better, just... you get used to it. But, then, he tells you that he's made it better. You know, major re-writes and edits and all of that, but people start reading it and they tell you it's pretty much just the same. Maybe worse. Definitely not better. You don't bother with the new one.

That's me and Windows 8.1. I haven't known a single person who has said to me, "Oh, yeah, you should definitely switch to 8.1. It's way better." No... Pretty much everyone has told me that it's pretty much the same. A few of said they liked it less. So my computer has been prompting me to "upgrade" to 8.1 for a while, now. Months. Every time it prompted me, I told it "no." Why bother for just more of the same. I am, at least, used to Win8.
I guess it got tired of asking.

The other night, it just up and told me, "Heya, I'm upgrading to Windows 8.1. I can do it right now, or I can do it tomorrow. When do you want that to happen?" What I wanted to tell it was "NO!" but it wouldn't let me. I tried... well, I tried all sorts of things and it wouldn't let me stop the "upgrade" even though my stuff in the "Should I upgrade?" section told me that I could opt out.

Then it told me I needed to backup all of my files, which was fine except that I couldn't. I backed up my document files, but I have all of my photos on the computer, and I didn't have anything to put them all on nor did I have time to do it by the time I realized there was no way to stop the 8.1 installation. Really, I wouldn't have had time to do it without at least a week of notice. I was pretty furious by that point. Sort of a walking rant.

When the computer finally prompted, "I'm going to install Win 8.1, right now," I thought I had beat it by simply turning the computer off... but I was wrong. An hour or so later, the prompt came up again. And I turned the computer off again. But, when I turned it back on, it said, "Screw you! I'm installing this sucker, right now!"

Have I mentioned that I hate computers? Yeah... Kind of like how I hate cars. They should just work. Period. And they should work in the way you want them to work.

Anyway...
I have Win8.1 now. Here's what's changed:

• Everything is slower now. The computer takes longer to boot and pages take longer to load. You know, it's the heightened security or whatever.
• I no longer have to sign out of Windows before I can turn my computer off. Seriously, why was that even a thing? So that's one positive thing, although I still have to go to the start screen to do that.
• All of my files are now backed up to the "cloud." Because, as we have seen with the recent cloud hacking of celebrities "special" pictures, the cloud is more secure than having things just on my computer.

All of that and my cat caught a lizard. In the house. It was a western fence lizard

which I think are pretty cool because they're immune to Lyme disease. He was playing with it under the kitchen table, but I didn't pay any attention to him, because that's where he likes to play with pieces of cardboard he pulls off his scratching box or with the little strips off the Netflix envelopes. But he just kept going and going. Usually, he's only good for entertaining himself in that way for 5-10 minutes, but, once he crossed the 20 minute mark, I began to wonder what he was doing. At some point, I checked. He had a lizard. Amazingly, it was intact. Apparently, all he was doing was batting it around and throwing it in the air. However, it was still dead.
It was sad-making.

There was another thing, too, but I can't remember what it was. That's what comes of being interrupted as many times as I have. Always am. Probably, it wasn't important, and this is long enough anyway.

Old Man's War (a book review post)

Disclaimer: Portions of this review are going to sound like I liked the book much less than I did. Just know from the beginning that I liked the book. I'm going to read the next one. But I'm still going to talk about the things that bothered me as I was reading. Mostly because they allow me to talk about some writing things within a context that gives an example of what I'm talking about.

Also: Although this is a traditionally published book, (if I have my facts straight) it started out as an indie book published serially on Scalzi's blog where it was "discovered," so I'm sort of looking at this from the aspect of covering an indie writer, albeit an indie writer that has made it big.

But let's get on with the review.

The first thing to note is that the book is in first person. Now, this is my own bias, but I'm beyond tired of first person stories. Unless there is some specific reason for first that can't be accomplished in third (like the tone of The Dresden Files and the fact that first person is part of the whole detective genre thing), I'd rather not see first person for a long, long time. Like I said, this is my own thing and may come from the fact that almost all I see is first person stories from the middle schoolers I work with despite how often I tell them to write in third. I only mention it at all because it does cause an internal groan from me at this point when I open a book and it's first person.

The next thing springs out of the first thing. There's this thing that frequently happens with sci-fi writers (sometimes fantasy, too, with magic systems). They come up with these brilliant sci-fi ideas, and they want to share them with you. Like, for instance, if I want to have a teleporter in my story, but I can't just have the teleporter because that's been done a lot, right, so I have to have some cool idea about how a teleporter works; that's what makes it mine. And, if I have the idea, I want to share it with you. In a third person story, this isn't such a big deal, because you can include a description in the narrative and it doesn't necessarily seem out of place. However, in a first person story, it's usually like inviting someone into your house then explaining how the TV works and the computer works and the cell phone works. The thing is, most of us don't have more than just a vague idea of how those things really work, so when a character in a book who is just a normalish guy starts explaining how high tech gadgets work, then it feels out of place.

Fortunately, Scalzi doesn't quite fall prey to that trap. Rather than have John Perry explain all that stuff to us, he has it explained to him, which makes Scalzi's desire to share his clever ideas mostly acceptable. Actually, the first clever idea is more than acceptable, because there's a political reason for the tech, and that was interesting. The second clever idea is also acceptable because it's something that's happening to Perry, but they start becoming gratuitous after that because they're things that most people wouldn't have an interest in knowing and are actually frequently accompanied by "you don't have the math" to explain why Perry doesn't and can't understand the things being explained to him, yet he persists in having the people give the explanations while maintaining that he doesn't know what they're talking about.

The other thing I had an issue with was that Perry was the cleverest guy around. Which isn't of itself an issue except that he would point something obvious that no one else had ever thought of. This is actually a major plot point in the book, that Perry notices something that decades worth of people, many who should have been much smarter than him, have completely dismissed as irrelevant or trivial. It was a thing I couldn't buy into. There wasn't even a "yeah, we noticed that, but we don't know what it means," which could have worked. Instead it was, "yeah, that's nothing. It doesn't mean anything." Which, of course, was wrong.

Beyond that, I had a difficult time having any emotional investment in the book. I was never worried about Perry or, even, really cared about him. I think it was the first person and the style he used within the first person. It had that feel of someone sitting right in front of you telling a story, but, you know, the guy is right there in front of you, so you know everything comes out okay in the end, so to speak. It made it hard for me to engage beyond a surface level.

That said, it was a great surface level book. The world (multiverse) that Scalzi has created is interesting, and I want to see where he's going with the meta-story. Perry's voice as the narrator was engaging so, even though I wasn't worried about him, I did want to know what was happening. It was engaging right from the beginning, too, so there was never any point where I thought I might not be able to get into the book. The parallel opening and ending was a nice touch.

In short, it's a quick, light read. If you like space opera, you ought to read this book.

ALSO!
The new issue of Indie Writers Monthly is out!

You should pick up a copy today! I know I will!

Process Or Chop?

Last week, I was making meatloaf. Look, you can just shut it. I hear you all out there about the meatloaf, but I make great meatloaf. There's a secret to it. A secret which I'm not going to tell you, because then I would have to share the "King of Meatloaf" title (which goes with my "King of Hamburgers" and "King of Fish" titles (there are probably more titles (like "King of Mashed Potatoes," according to my son but, really, how hard are mashed potatoes?), but those are the ones that come to mind right off hand (oh, and "King of Eggs," probably, too))), and I'm just not willing to do that.
Anyway...

So I was working from this recipe that my wife wanted me to look at (don't worry; I modified that recipe and made it my own), and it called for a "food processor." No, not in the meatloaf! What are you, crazy? It called for me to use a food processor with which to cut things up. Like the bread. Why in the world would I need a food processor to make little pieces of bread? That is kind of crazy.

See, I used to have a food processor. I kind of hated it. Okay, I did hate it, which is why I don't have it anymore. Unless you're making salsa or, like, a smoothie, the things are basically worthless. Recipes don't usually call for vegetable juice, and that's about the only good they're for. I used to use mine for meat (and that's about the closest you're getting to my cooking secrets), and it was great for that until it was time to clean the thing, and that was... well, to put it mildly, cleaning meat out of a food processor is a bitch. Sorry, I have no other way of putting that.

At any rate, eventually, I got rid of the food processor. I'm not much for making my own salsa.

It annoys me when recipes call for a food processor. I mean, what does it matter how I go about cutting up whatever it is I'm going to put into whatever I'm making. What if I don't want vegetable paste but actual discernible pieces of vegetables? I mean, we don't all have a phobia against plant matter like Briane Pagel and my younger son (except my son's bias is mostly against green things, and he fully supports potatoes (see "King of Mashed Potatoes")). And what if, you know, I don't own a food processor. Especially if that's not by choice. And, then, let's just pretend I don't have a lot of cooking experience, yet, and I see that the recipe calls for the food processor, and I don't actually know that I can just cut the stuff up myself. Instead, I see that in the recipe and I think, "Well, crap, I can't actually make this."

It's even worse when that is something that's actually true. Which does not happen with cooking, but it does happen with my kids' school assignments upon occasion. So many of my kids' assignments center around the computer, and it bothers me to no end when teachers give computer-centric assignments because not everyone owns a computer. In fact, there is still a significant percentage of American households that don't have computers. And I'm not just talking about the need to get something typed up and printed out (although we don't own a printer, so that always bugs me, and we have to go out of our way to get things printed for the kids when they need something printed).

The other day when I was making the meatloaf, my daughter was also working on an assignment for school, an assignment for her English class. In theory, the assignment should have been to write a report but, instead, the teacher had assigned them to make a slide show. This was disturbing to me on so many levels. For one, the assignment specifically required a computer (not just the ability to print something out (although I would guess that at least some of the students who do work on the computers at school do not have access to that work when they are at home; what are they supposed to do?)). For another, it required her to do things I know nothing about.

There should not be any kind of assignment from an English class that I know nothing about. Of course, I knew nothing about it because it was not really an English assignment. There was virtually no research involved as she only needed captions to go with the pictures. There was virtually no writing involved as she only needed to write the captions to go with the pictures. The actual work was finding the pictures she needed for her topic and putting them into the slide show thing. That's not the kind of thing that goes in an English class.

But, see, the thing that nailed it for me is that while I was chopping stuff up for the meatloaf (and I have to say that the clean up from chopping things is so much easier than cleaning up a food processor), she couldn't get something to work with her slide show, and I was completely unable to help her with that. Which is when I began wondering how the assignment was helping her to develop and kind of English skills.

All of that to say:
It's not always important to listen to the "how" of doing things. People will continually want to tell you the "how" of it, whatever the "it" is. Here is "how" to write a novel. Here is "how" to be an author. Here is "how" you should write. Here is "how" to pick your nose. What's more important, though, is to look at the result you want and figure out your own "how" on how to get there.

Which, I suppose, is where I have the issue with my daughter's assignment. I don't know what it is they were supposed to learn. It was classified as a "research project," but the "how" of presenting said (almost non-existent) research seemed to be the actual goal of the whole thing. Then, I have to ask: Why was that the goal of an English assignment? But I digress. Again.

So, anyway, if you need to have vegetables be in small pieces, what's the best way for you to do that? If you want to write a book, what's the best way for you to do that? You don't need to go out and buy a food processor just because a recipe says you should use one (especially if you don't like them to begin with (I mean, heck, some people still write on actual paper instead of using a keyboard)), and you don't need to have an office and office hours to write a book. Sure, there are some things where you need to follow a specific "how," like putting pictures into whatever slideshow thingy my daughter was using, but, sometimes, we come up with new ways to do things because someone doesn't know the "how" of it comes up with something new. Personally, I'd rather be that guy.

My Science (Fiction) Life (an Indie Writers Monthly post)

I had just left my computer to go sit on the couch with the dog. Actually, I was going to do a bit of reading, but I have to give the dog her time, first, because she jumps on me as soon as I sit down. It had only been a few moments--I know because my computer was still "on" (the monitor hadn't yet gone to sleep)--when my computer shut off. Completely. So did my wife's and the old computer that barely works that my son was using. In fact, there was a sound of the house powering down. A kind of whirring noise that then shut off. Yes, the power had gone off.

To find out what happened next and to read my science fiction love story in honor of Valentine's Day, hope over to Indie Writers Monthly!

"This is no time to panic."

"This is the perfect time to panic!"

Okay, so no one is really panicking, but that's one of those lines that pops into my head anytime anything is going wrong. Sometimes, it's joined by the corollary to the first part of that exchange: "Don't Panic!"
It always makes me want to grab a towel.
Speaking of which, it was Douglas Adams' birthday this week.
And all the loose computer cables we have running everywhere right now makes me think of him, because he had things to say about loose computer wiring and cables.
Which brings me back to what all of this is about. Or one of the things this is about.

We are in the midst of restructuring our computer set up, because I was gifted a computer by my good friend that works over at Lucasfilm, which is very timely, because I'm sure my wife's (old) computer is going to drop dead any day now. It's just like the one I had drop dead back in the fall, and we got them at the same time, and it's sounding really bad, lately. Like a guy with lung cancer or something. I'm halfway expecting it to explode or some such. But I digress...

So we have this new computer, which is currently set up across the room from the place where it will eventually be, so there are cords stretched all over the place. The worst one is the one running from our phone socket on the wall in the kitchen over to the modem. Earlier this week, my oldest son stepped on it and jerked it forcefully from the jack, breaking the clip that holds it in. Of course, that was accompanied by a loss of Internet connection, which was accompanied by me losing what I was working on, because I couldn't save it.

Why couldn't I save it? Well, because... That's the best answer I have. Once I got everything set back up again, my computer wouldn't recognize the connection. The other computers did, but my computer kept saying, "Hey, Buddy, what do you think you're doing? We got no connection here."
No, I do not know why my computer talks like that, but it does. And I said, "Why, yes, we do have a connection," and I held it up and showed it and said, "The other computer recognize it; why not you?"
And it replied, "I'm tellin' ya's, we got no connection."
And we went on like that until I shut it off. When I turned it back on, it said, "Oh, hey, you plugged us back in."
But I didn't get to save anything, because I had to re-boot to get the computer to recognize that I had re-connected everything.

Then, Wednesday morning, the dog jumped on the phone line.

It wasn't exactly her fault; she thought she was getting a treat and got all excited. Well, actually, she was getting a treat, so she had a reason to get all excited; my younger son just didn't think about where he was standing when he was offering it to her.

Whatever she did, she did it good. I spent around 30 minutes trying to get the connection working again and hadn't managed it by the time I had to get the kids to school. Once I got home, I spent another hour working on it before I got everything working. It's like the sudden disruption just fired everything, and I had to go over every piece of equipment and every connection. I don't know what was actually knocked loose or what, but, eventually, I did something that got it all working again.

And, while I was doing all of that, I had Bill Murray screaming in my head, "And if I can't work, THEN I CAN'T WORK!"

Which just makes me glad I'm not more plugged in than I am, because I hear too many stories about people that don't know what to do with themselves when they lose or break their phones. No, sir, I don't want one of those.

Then there's the cat...

As I've mentioned before, the cat, my cat, Jack, has some kind of weird abusive relationship with this orange tabby from down the street. I call him The Orange. The Orange will come down to my house and pin my cat down and make a horrible mewling noise. This noise greatly disturbs my dog, and she goes crazy barking, but I can still hear the horrible sounds The Orange makes even over her barking.

It started up yesterday, and I opened the front door to find Jack huddled at the bottom of the steps with The Orange standing over him going "merow" "merow" merow." However, The Orange knows enough not to hang around when I come out, so he turned tail and ran. But, see, my cat can't just let him go. Jack always follows him anytime anything like this happens. And they go through bushes and crap that I can't go through, but I have to follow them so that I can get in between them, which gives The Orange a chance to run all the way off, and, then, Jack will come home.

But, yesterday, I didn't get around the hedge in time, because The Orange was really running much more quickly than normal, and Jack was chasing him, so I got around just in time to see The Orange turn on Jack and attack him.

You know how in cartoons when animals fight they always show these dust clouds with the occasional paw or whatever popping out of it. Now, I know why. This looked exactly like that. It was, like, three seconds of a squalling blur. And you know how they say "the fur was flying"? Well, I know where that comes from, too, because a great cloud of fur flew out in every direction, which only heightened the sense of them fighting in a dust cloud. I just stood there and blinked and wondered if I'd stepped into a cartoon. Then it was over, and The Orange was running for home.

I don't know if that means Jack won or not. He watched The Orange run off and, then, walked away. Actually, he came home with me and lounged around in the house for a couple of hours which isn't something he generally does at  that time of day unless it's raining. I couldn't find any wounds on him, although he can be kind of difficult with being examined.

The thing that disturbs me is that the owners of The Orange acknowledge that their cat is a bully (and I've heard complaints about him from other people in the neighborhood -- on the other hand, everyone in  the neighborhood loves Jack (heck, people come to my house just to see Jack if he's hanging out in the driveway)) and, yet, do nothing about his behavior or his comings and goings or anything. It would be one thing if Jack was going down to their house and these problems were happening, but, no, The Orange comes here, and I have to run him off (at least) a couple of times a day.

Which makes me want to sign Jack up for martial arts training. Or something.

I think I need to just get a towel that I always carry with me...

The Transition

As I've been mentioning recently, my computer died. It was an old computer, and, by all rights, past its time. I knew it was going, and, especially, I knew the video card was going. I kind of hate video cards. I had a huge drama with Dell many years ago over a video card and my first laptop. The only laptop I've ever owned because of the drama over the first one and the fact that it spent most of its life as an over-sized paperweight. That's exactly what I need, right? I a $1500 paperweight that was too big to be anywhere useful while it held that designation.

The problem I have with getting a new computer is that they have always changed so much since the last  time I got a computer. What I want is not a new computer but my old computer back again but faster and more intense (any Star Wars person out there worth his salt should get that). I sort of have the same attitude about shoes. I hate new shoes. I hate looking for shoes. I hate trying shoes on. New shoes never feel right on your foot. Old shoes feel right other than the fact that they are falling apart and causing you to trip as the sole flaps around at ground level like a dog snuffling for food. And, you know, tape just doesn't work to hold the shoe together because it wears out too quickly as you walk around on  it. It doesn't matter, though. What you want is a pair of shoes that feels like that part but without the floppy bits.

Or maybe that's just me.

So I really didn't want a new computer; I really just wanted my old computer back the way it was when I first got it but still able to do all the new things that it wasn't really capable of doing. That's why I put off for so long doing anything about the fact that I new I needed to do something about the video card. Well, that and the fact that I really didn't want to spend the money on
1. a new video card in an old machine that wouldn't be able to keep up with the new card.
2. a new computer.
Money is always tight, and new computers aren't in our budget. But, as I said recently, I have to have the computer, so, when the old finally went off to wherever old computers go when they die (which, right now, is actually behind my chair but which will soon be the garage), I went and got a new one. Actually, the reason for the new one is that it was going to cost as much to get the old one going again as it is to buy a new computer.
[That's actually something I hate, the disposableness of technology due to repair costs making it more cost efficient to buy new stuff. It wasteful, and our society needs to do something about this issue, not that I know what  that should be, but we need new attitudes around this stuff.]

Another note: I've always owned Dell computers. This is not so much because I love Dell or anything, but it's always just sort of worked out that way. In fact, there have been distinct periods of my history when I have absolutely abhorred Dell (see the incident with the laptop (okay, so I haven't actually told that story, but I'm not sure you really want to hear it, because it involves something like 80 hours on the phone with Dell (and that's not hyperbole -- I actually spent 80-100 hours on the phone with Dell over issues with the laptop))), but we always ended up with Dell anyway.

I needed a new computer. I needed to not spend too terribly much money on it. I needed it now.

Of course, the first thing I did was look at Dells, and I liked the prices, but I needed more information (because looking at the specs is like trying to read a foreign language, and I'd actually do better with some of those). One thing that's different with Dell since the last time I got a new computer is that you can actually go to a physical store and buy one (and, if you don't remember/know of a time when you couldn't go to a store and buy one, that should tell you how long it's been since I had a new computer), so I started calling around trying to figure out what I should I get, and, then, going in to places to look at stuff (and get all of my documents pulled off of my old computer (which is anxiety inducing)).

In the end, I didn't get a Dell (but I did get my documents). What I got from pretty much everyone I talked to is that Dell has crappy video cards. In other respects, they make the better machines, but you better just plan to get a new video card right off the bat. And that was the decision maker, really, because, at the price point I was looking at, I was told by a Dell fan that I should go with the HP (which was also on sale) because, if I bought the Dell, I'd need to get a new video card for it, which was going to up the price $120, which put it out of the price I wanted to spend (which was actually $0, but, you know, those don't exist).

I own an HP, now, and I don't know how I feel about that. But it's less of an issue that I now also have Windows 8, and I do know how I feel about that.
I hate it.

Oh my gosh! What were they thinking?

I get that we're heading into a tablet world and that's why, in effect, I could even replace my desktop, right now, because tablets are driving down the prices on desktops and laptops, and that's cool, but I did not want Windows 8! I don't own a tablet or anything like it. I haven't even used the Kindle I gave my wife for her birthday, which is the first and only mobile tech we have, so this whole touchy/feely thing we have going with our new technology is bothersome to me. I don't like it, and I don't want to have it.

The forced leap from Windows XP to Windows 8 is not a fun one is what I'm saying here. I don't like the interface. I don't really like anything about it. Sure, I know I'll get used to it, just like breaking in that new pair of shoes, but, right now, I don't like it. And I certainly don't like having to adapt to a whole new system when I'm feeling stressed about losing a week of work and two deadlines. All of this while knowing, in my head, that one day Windows 8 will be the old pair of floppy sneakers that I don't want to get rid of.

Still, for the moment, can't I just have my old shoes back?

And this, women, is why guys never throw out their old shoes.
Just sayin'.

Why Skynet Isn't Necessary

Okay, so that may not be exactly what I mean.
What I mean is if Skynet became real and took over everything, it wouldn't need to bother with terminators. There would be no point.

At least not for the "civilized" world.

Seriously, we're all already slaves to the non-existent Skynet. Slaves, I tell you, so why would it want to kill us all?

As far as it goes, I'm non-dependent on technology. I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a tablet. I don't have an i-anything. I'm not really all that "plugged in." I don't want to be. We don't even have TV. No cable, no satellite anything, no DVR. We have a TV set and a Blu-ray player (which we only have because someone gave it to us). We barely have a console gaming system for the kids. We even live as independently from our cars as much as practically possible.

I mean, when I go somewhere, I want to be there, at that place, doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if it's standing around reading a book while I'm waiting for my kids to get out of school. I don't want technology bothering me.

And, although I love video games, I love actual board and tabletop games more. Video games have always been a substitute for when I can't get the actual personal interaction of people for the games I really love. Granted, I haven't really had that since I left my gaming group behind in Shreveport something more than 15 years ago.

All of that said, when my computer died a week ago, I was reminded of just how dependent upon technology I still am even with the lengths I go to to avoid that dependence. I mean, I couldn't work. I couldn't work! I actually do quite a bit of writing on paper, but it just so happened that I had all of my recent stuff already transferred into the computer the week before and had carried forth from there on  the computer, so all of my most recent stuff was IN THE COMPUTER! And it was dead. I mean, sure, I could have sat down and written something else, but I had stuff I needed to be working on, and I couldn't get to it.

I felt like the cat when he wants to go out and there's no one there to open the door for him. It was horrible.

Not to mention the fact that I had to go buy a new computer, but we'll get to that later.

Anyway, the point is that even I am dependent on Skynet. My technology. I don't know what to do with myself without it other than go to bed early, which I actually did a couple of nights, because I had NOTHING that I could work on! Did I mention how horrible that was?

So, yeah, Skynet will have no need to send terminators after us. Skynet will have us all working for it in exchange for technology. In fact, once we have real virtual reality, it might actually be more like The Matrix, except we'll be going in willingly, like I talked about in this post.

I do actually find it distressing that so many people are losing the ability to disentangle themselves from technology. People my age that didn't grow up tied to it even, and it's so much worse for the kids of today that have never been without it. Except for my kids, of course, because they, also, don't have any of this stuff (well, except my oldest, because his grandfather gave him a cell phone a few years ago (which I hate and which causes me to call my son Texty-Boy or Texty-Lad, which he hates, but that's what he gets when he's busy texting his girlfriend during family time or dinner, which is family time)), much to my daughter's chagrin, because at least half of her friends have their own cell phones, and she wants to know why she can't have one, and none of these girls are even 10, and, for the life of me, I can not figure out why anyone would give a $400 device that's smaller than a book to a child. I have no sympathy for any of them (the parents) when they are complaining that their kid lost and/or broke their phone.

This post, today, was originally meant to be the next post in my death series, but this is all kind of a different kind of death, because the loss of a piece of technology can have that same kind of effect upon people. I watched women at my kids' school cry over a lost or broken piece of tech as if their mother just died, which is also why I have no sympathy for them when they give that tech to their kids even just to use for a few minutes and that whatever-it-is get dashed across the playground by a different kid running past and, then, some other kid steps on or kicks it. So it's all just another kind of loss. Hopefully, one we recover from more easily than the death of a loved one, although I'm not sure with some people. There is this one mom that's been going on for weeks now about her broken cell phone. Or, maybe, it's lost. I can't remember, because, honestly, I just turn off my brain when she starts in about it.

It's just a thing!

And that is why I don't want to be so attached to technology. I don't want to feel like I've suffered a death because something breaks.

But, you know, I still need Skynet.
>sigh<

[Note:
Today was supposed to be the release of Part 9 of Shadow Spinner, but, because of the computer problems, it didn't get finished. Well, let me re-phrase that, it's written, but I wasn't able to get it all set up with Amazon and all of that jazz, so it's suffering a slight delay. Maybe Friday. Yeah, I'm hoping to have it for Black Friday, because that seems kind of appropriate for Tib. Black Friday, that it, taken as just a name.
However, to go along with what was supposed to be the release, J. R. Pearse Nelson interviewed me about serials and Tib and Shadow Spinner, and I told her to go ahead and run it today, anyway, even without Part 9. You should all hop over there and check it out!]

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Artificial Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence," as a term, was not invented until 1956, but, as a concept, it goes back much further. As a term, it means the science and engineering of making intelligent machines; as a concept, it means man, through science, creating intelligence where there was none.

Generally speaking, when we think of artificial intelligence, which I will just call AI, we think of computers. Past that, we think of robots. Computers, games in particular, have gotten sophisticated enough that the term AI is already being applied to them even if it's not precisely correct. The thing is is that computers are capable of learning. Adapting. The only real issue is that we're not quite sure, yet, how to determine at what point something becomes capable of thought. Independent thought. Pondering. And how does something become self-aware, which is a component we seem to believe is necessary for intelligence.

At any rate, the idea that computers will achieve the ability to think and become self-aware has been a huge focus of science fiction since before computers were actually a thing. Let's just pretend that that part where humans are trying to build machines that have legitimate intelligence isn't really happening. Or has happened?

Anyway...

Although, Isaac Asimov was not the first person to write about robots, he was the first person to write about them extensively, and his robot stories and novels laid the foundation for all future robot literature. His work is so fundamental, in fact, that people sometimes refer to his Three Laws of Robotics as if they were an actual, real thing, not something from a short story.

I remember the first time I heard of the three laws. It was an episode of Buck Rogers. I was 10 or so. The robot Twiki had had some sort of problem and was being re-booted. He quoted the laws, and the doctor/scientist guy got all excited and commented in awe about how they were hearing (for what sounded like the first time ever) Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

All of that to say, that Asimov has been instrumental in our cultural understanding of what artificial intelligence is even though he was first writing his robots stories at least 70 years before artificial intelligence would exist. His ability to see the possibilities of what could be were extraordinary.

Why has Asimov become such a central figure in the foundation of literature involving artificial intelligence? Well, I think I have an explanation for this. Robots, machine men, were commonly being used as the symbol for how technology and the pursuit of knowledge would destroy mankind. Yes, this is in the 1930s. But, then, if you look at what was going on in Germany and what would happen in World War II, this is somewhat understandable. Basically, robots were only used as an example of the Frankenstein complex: the creation rising up and destroying the creator. Asimov wanted to change this. He felt it was a tired cliche and supported the view that knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge is bad or wrong. First and foremost a scientist, Asimov believed in  the pursuit of knowledge, so he sought to make robots into something more realistic in his writing, not just a symbol of technology leading to our downfall. Not that that is not still a common symbol and fear, but he broadened our horizons on the subject and set the foundation for modern artificial intelligence in fiction.

Just as an aside, the character Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz is probably the first significant use of a robot with its own intelligence in fiction. The term "robot" hadn't even been invented yet. There are a couple of other earlier mechanical men in fiction, but those works have mostly faded with time, while Baum's Oz books are still read and enjoyed today. That makes Tik-Tok the first (significant) artificially intelligent machine in literature.

But speaking of the Frankenstein complex...

I'm going to make a leap here and say that Frankenstein is really the first source of artificial intelligence in literature and fiction. There are often earlier sources cited, but they involve the use of magic, and I want to confine this to intelligence created through scientific means. Of course, the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein was a human machine, but the intelligence created, the mind created, was new and unique. Shelley's novel may be the first example of technology, of man's creation, rising up against him. As mentioned, it is the name that has come to be applied to those types of stories.

I'm not going to say that we, as a race, are striving toward the creation of artificial intelligence because of fiction, but fiction writers certainly saw it coming long before science did. Because our cultural awareness is so influenced by what has gone before, I would find it difficult to believe that whatever is coming in the realms of artificial intelligence will not have fantasy and science fiction at its roots. It will not surprise me at all to find one day that Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have, indeed, become reality.