jo1967

I have a baby computer, a netbook, which is pretty good for all the stuff I want to do on it.  Lately, it has been running at speeds that would frustrate a dial-up user in 1989 so I decided to do some dusting...

Turns out, the preinstalled Microsoft Works doesn't play nicely with Microsoft Office, but if you get rid of Works, suddenly I'm back into the 21st century, speed-wise.  Who knew?  Huh?

Now I'm going through my list of installed and start-up programmes with a jealous eye, considering which one will be next for the chop, a bit like Darth Vader...or a human resources manager!!!!

Fandom: The Next Generation

It all started for us when our six-year-old daughter Raeli announced that Star Wars was for boys.  It terrifies me how that school playground of hers seems to be a hive of binary gender policing, as the kids develop an overly elaborate, crowd-sourced set of rules for boys and girls.  I’m not just talking about pink for girls and dump trucks for boys - every colour, shape, activity and interest seems to be pinned down, analysed and tagged with ‘girl thing’ or ‘boy thing.’
Naturally, I spend much of my time in a frustrated huff, deprogramming whatever the latest weird gender theory is.

This time, it was my honey’s turn.  Determined to prove to Raeli that Star Wars was awesome for everyone, he got hold of the original movie and sat down to watch it with her.  I’ll admit I was skeptical as to whether she’d yawn through it, but she quietly took it in and the next day after school asked if she could watch it again.  It was a success!
 For weeks afterwards she asked questions about Obi Wan, and Luke, and Leia.

On a roll, my honey tried her on Empire Strikes Back - he is thoroughly invested in the idea that this is the best film of the trilogy, and in particular wanted to not spoil her for the ending.  He had spoiled himself as a child by reading the novelisation first, and was really keen that Raeli get to experience what he had missed out on...

Yep.  He wanted it too much, and Raeli didn’t come to the party.
Empire scored a resounding ‘meh.’

And yet, and yet... yesterday, she built a lightsaber out of Mega Bloks.

I’ve had rather more luck with her on the matter of Doctor Who, to the point where she identifies any good-sized cardboard box as a possible Pandorica, draws chalk cracks on the pavement, and plays K9 (and his feline equivalent, K-ten) games in the playground with her friends - boys and girls alike.  She has also played Astro Boy games in the playground, sometimes with girls who have never seen the show!  I also take great pleasure in her Wonder Woman obsession.  There’s something utterly delicious about passing one’s geekitude on to our children - and seeing them form their own games and reactions to the show through role playing, fan art and (my personal favourite) mashups!

I knew, when my daughter earnestly explained to me that she was pretty sure that Obi-Wan Kenobi regenerated just like the Doctor, that the future of fandom was in safe hands.

Tansy Rayner Roberts is the author of Power and Majesty (Creature Court Book One) and The Shattered City (Creature Court Book Two, April 2011) with Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three, coming in November 2011) hot on its tail. Her short story collection Love and Romanpunk will be published as part of the Twelfth Planet Press “Twelve Planets” series in May.

This post comes to you as part of Tansy’s Mighty Slapdash Blog Tour, and comes with a cookie fragment of new release The Shattered City:

You know how they say you shouldn't tell people you're pregnant until past the three month mark???  Well, you should never tell people you are studying until past the census date for the semester, either *groan*.

Turns out, I'm NOT studying this semester.  Because I heard about this course late, I could only enrol in a single subject as part of what they call 'professional development'.  Didn't find out until yesterday that professional development courses are not eligible for the government assistance on paying tuition fees and I would have to pay the full $1770 up front. 

Never...gonna...happen...!!! 

If I were enrolled as part of the Graduate Certificate programme, I would have been eligible for government loans that would enable me to defer my tuition almost indefinately.  Don't let anybody tell you that higher education is only for the wealthy in Australia, yes you still have to pay for books, course materials, etc, and it all has to be paid for eventually, but the government does provide a great deal of assistance to those who want to study.  And the paying for it bit doesn't start until you have qualified and are actually working, makes sense really...

So anyway, because this course doesn't have a semester two intake, my options are to either leave it until next year, or enrol in the Masters programme which DOES have a semester two intake.  Haven't looked at the coursework for that yet, but have to admit it would be nice!

Can't win them all.  At least this way I can psych myself up to the study more...I was a little bit falling in the deep end doing it this way.

ETA:  JUST BEEN LOOKING AT THE MASTERS PROGRAMME - ALL SEMESTER TWO SUBJECTS REQUIRE SEMESTER ONE SUBJECTS AS PREREQUISITES.  LOOKS LIKE IT WILL BE NEXT YEAR FOR ME!!!!

Signed up to do a Graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing.  Part-time, externally via University of Southern Queensland.  Why am I doing this to myself????  My brain doesn't work anymore, why would I ask it to do something like this???

Okay, got that out of my system *grin*.  I think I'm going to like this course, that is if I can work my way around the paperwork issues I've already encountered and I've only been enrolled for a week.  This is why I have had dramas studying in the past - the coursework is fine, it's dealing with universities that drive me demented.

I'm going...  Booked my hotel room.  Will buy membership next pay.  Gotta keep an eye on the specials with Virgin Blue to get a good price on airfares.  Will be flying direct though, last time I went to Sydney and caught a bus to Canberra, but I don't think I want to do that again.  Particularly not with Charlotte *shudder*.

Check it out, the website is up and running now.

Late last year I went on a bit of a book buying splurge.  I went to WorldCon - bought books!  Visited Pulp Fiction in the City - bought books!  Happened to walk past my local A&R with nothing better to do for 10 minutes - bought books!

When you have a house as messy as mine, and you don't have book cases (I know...just wrong *shudder*), when you buy a pile of new books, sometimes they get overlooked.  The kids use them to support lego train track creations, the husband picks them up and piles them away "for neatness"...

I JUST FOUND A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES BY CHARLES DE LINT THAT I BOUGHT LAST YEAR AND HAVEN'T READ YET!!!!!!!!!!!!

The spine is smooooooth and unblemished, the pages crisp and only slightly cobwebbed from sitting under a desk for three months!  Best of all?  Troy is taking the kids out for the day while I "do some sorting out" in the house *cackles with glee*.

Honest, I WILL finish finding the loungeroom!  Really I will.......

*blissful sigh*
 

Discovered that there is a lego workshop five minutes away from our house.  It's only new, so it's not like I haven't been paying attention or anything.  They have a shop at the front - slightly overpriced - where you can get lots of bits not generally available at the department stores, and a fantastic display and workroom at the back.  $15 for two and a half hours of lego play and you can leave the kids there and go away for a coffee!  BEST.  MORNING.  EVER.......  The kids thought it was the best thing they've done all holidays (not that they've had much to compare it to) and I got to go have coffee with my friend Megan.  Of course, now they can't stop talking about which kits they want to buy and how, for the low, low price of (insert exhorbitant price here) we can buy this truly awesome kit....

It was worth every penny!

School starts in 90 hours, 30 minutes...

If any of you were wondering, yes Brisbane is flooding, but no we here in Chez Jo are not!  We live on the other side of town and reasonably elevated (smart water engineer husband, clever man who checks out these things when buying houses).  Thank you to those of you who have checked in to see if we were okay, but our biggest problem has been how to keep the mould levels down from all the damp.

There are a lot of people who are really doing it tough, and will be for quite a while to come, so if you should feel so inclined, Tehani is raising money by selling an e-book of her latest Fablecroft publication, eerily named "After the Rain", with proceeds going to the flood appeal.  Or you could just donate directly to the Queensland Government appeal.

Hope everyone else is having a safe and non-eventful start to their new year *grin*.

I took my kids to see Megamind the other day.  Not a bad movie - the kids enjoyed it and it was definately funny most of the time and even in the right places *grin*.

Had a moment of dissonance part way through though...  There's a scene where the bad guy is rampaging through the city and one of the views is through the city buildings to show a tall tower with smoke billowing from the side.  It was just a little too familiar, and not in a good way.

Maybe we need to see these types of images more often so that they don't  have such power, or is it just me being sensitive to such things?  I am a bit of a sook when it comes to emotional triggers like that.