Am all packed today and ready to fly out tomorrow morning at 6am to Perth “for the day” and then I will finally get to a hotel on Tuesday night, 10:30. Followed by a days work in
Seems ridiculous that I couldn’t get a flight to
The weekend was a good one mostly, but I have done something to my back in a big way and am dosed up on Celebrex, Voltaren and Nurafen. Sound like 3 Demons of the Apocalypse! I have had horrendous nights as I have been waking up in pain during the night and have had to sit up in fits and starts. Saturday night was the worst as I had perhaps only 90mins sleep in 3 different sessions.
The drugs work though and I was still able to do things on the weekend including we finally fixed Dad’s PC problem of connecting to the internet. He decided to use the tactical nuclear strike approach and buy a whole new system. A Toshiba Laptop bought over the counter in the city, and he’s away. The good news is that he has given me the old PC to tinker with. I am tempted to scrap it and add a lot of components to mine and then install WinXP, but I think I will go the easy route and reformat it, install Win98SE on it and give it to the kids.
Speaking of computers and kids, Kate was sent home a notice from school asking for permission to give her access to the school computers and the Dept of Education’s “e-Learning” system which gives all kids an email address and limited access to the web. Kids will be able to surf sites approved by the Dept and even participate in “chat sessions”. All of it bar the last bit sounds ok to me… but chat sessions? IRC is unfiltered and raw content and to expose kids to that, even amongst just themselves seems odd. The sessions are moderated by a qualified teacher… Sounds not real bright to me to give this kind of technology to kids so early… given Kate has just learnt to read!
Still it is amazing to compare the use of computers in the class room compared to when I was a kid. I remember in 5th grade the school acquired 2 or 3 Apple Microbee II computers and we played “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego” on a green screen. We thought it was amazing that a girl call Carmen Sandiego could hide from us for so many hours… all in living “green” colour.
When Kate enrolled in Kindergarten last year, I was surprised that there was one PC for every two kids and they were all kitted out with MS Office and printers and neat colour monitors…
So, we will give Kate permission I think. No reason to hold her back from this stuff, but I am wary on how they will use the technology given she’s only going on 7.
2 comments:
Sounds like it won't be too long until we see her on FUMBBL! : )
So whaddaya reckon? Whats the over/under on how many years before the govt has to subsidise laser surgery for all the kiddies (like me) whose eyes have gone bad from looking at a computer too much?
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