Geeky Mom

I admit it. I did not write this morning. I spent some time catching up on blogs. I admit, too, that instead of reading blogs, I’ve been playing video games. Basically, my mind needs a break. So I took one.

I am still somewhat frustrated by my space issue. Every time I’m sitting here at my desk, I’m thinking of ways to improve the situation. A friend who reads my blog e-mailed me to say she thought I should build a sunporch. An excellent idea! We can’t exactly afford it right this minute, but it’s definitely a good idea and I spent some time contemplating how to reconfigure the front porch into an office closed off from the entry area. It could work.

Writing will resume tomorrow and hopefully, I will decrease that big ugly number of pages on the side. I’m taking tomorrow off and plan to incorporate some writing into the whole day. It will be a good test of the whole space thing. I think I also need to find another time to write. I thought it might be good to write in these one-hour increments in the morning and then on the weekend, try to revise those writings and add to them.

It was good to catch up on the blogs. You are all such wonderful people, really. I know that sounds mushy and corny and if you knew me in real life, you wouldn’t believe I just said that. I’m sooo not mushy. It’s just really nice to read such interesting and funny things every day.

Both Scrivener and jo(e) have beautiful posts about their brothers. They are full of love and compassion and longing and loss. I was planning to write this anyway, just not here, but jo(e) and David inspired me with their stories. This is the story of my sister.

I viewed my sister as a friend the minute she was born. I asked my mother if she could work puzzles with me when she got home from the hospital. There are pictures of me standing next to her bassinet or crib with a great big grin on my face as if I had something to do with creating this creature. When she got beyond the fragile stage, I remember climbing into the crib with her and making spit bubbles together.

My fondest memories of her come from our time on Inglewood Drive, a street that is the epitome of middle-class, suburban America in the late 60s and early 70s. The street was lined with ranch houses surrounded by spacious yards. Kids ran all around without a care. There were afternoon kickball games. We played HORSE at my house and caught roly-poly’s at the Ross’s. The Jennings’ always drummed up a game of kick the can just before dusk on summer nights. And afterwards, we chased lighting bugs in our bare feet, blades of grass sticking to our feet and ankles.

Though I had plenty of friends in the neighborhood, my sister became my closest friend. She was always available and for now, always willing, to play along. We set up a market in the back yard. We had “bananas” of long skinny leaves, green beans from a tree that produced pods of some kind, and we made elaborate mud pies in aluminum foil pans. We also made the chocolate milk factory at the end of the driveway. During or after a good rain, a nice deep puddle formed at the end of the driveway. We would push my bike out there and position it so that the training wheels straddled the puddle. Then I would get on the bike and pedal, which stirred the “milk.” My sister would gather more dirt and other ingredients to add to the puddle. By the time the milk was the perfect shade of brown, so were we.

Our adventures were not limited to the outdoors. We also turned the carpeted stairs to the basement into a slide by using the living room couch pillows to slide down them. I remember the feeling of bumping along the 15 or so stairs. We’d open our mouths and let out an “ahhh” the whole way down so we could hear and feel the rhythmic “ah-ah-ah” as we hit each bump. On Saturday mornings we padded down to the basement, turned on the little electric heater and watched Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo until lunch time. There’s a picture of us in this position, sitting cross-legged in front of the tv and I have my arm around my sister. I am about 8. She is 4.

Our relationship was not always perfect. I still got angry with her or tested her loyalty. Once, I convinced her to walk around the carport with a stocking cap pull down over her face. She did and proceed to ram right into one of the decorative iron posts. That landed her in the emergency room for stitches in her lip. That minor accident didn’t deter me and not too long afterwards, I talked her into hitting the dog while he was eating. Predictably, the dog bit her. I got in trouble for that one.

After we left Inglewood Drive, our relationship continued to be close, though it had many more ups and downs as we both grew up. For a brief time, we still had the adventures we had had on Inglewood, turning our back yard maple, for example, into a spaceship. But she made other friends and I made other friends and we grew up and became young women. There were fights over bathroom space and eventually over whether she could come with me when I went out with friends, a dilemma she solved by dating one of them. There were still nights when she slept in my bed and we still did many things together: working puzzles over Christmas break together, tackling the slopes on ski trips, surfing the waves on beach trips. I had to admit that she had grown into a beautiful young woman. She was tall, athletic, and had a knack for fashion and makeup–all qualities I did not have.

When I went off to college, we became even closer. She had her own phone line and many times I called her. She saw me through breakups, homework difficulties, homesickness, and feeling rejected by friends. When my parents split, these phone calls became ever more important as she shared the drama that was going on at home, being stronger than I thought possible for a 16-year-old. I was secretly glad I wasn’t there to watch my mother melt down. My sister was basically the only grown up in the house.

The summer after my parents split, some friends from my hometown came by to visit on their trip across the country. They would be back through town on their way back in early August. They wanted to know if I wanted to come back with them to our hometown and celebrate my sister’s birthday. I had a job I couldn’t get away from, so I declined, sending a large bouquet of flowers instead.

That fall, I was waked in the early morning hours in my boyfriend’s dorm room. It was my father calling to tell me there’d been an accident. My sister’s neck had broken; she had not survived.

My sister would have been 35 this summer. I can’t even imagine what she might have been. She was interested in drama, but not particularly ambitious. She had wanted to come to the same school I attended just to escape the drama at home and to be near family. She might have married, had kids. She might. She might.

We’ve all heard about the Profgrrrrl effect. Now, there’s the Bitch, Ph.D. effect–check it out:

So this morning was my first attempt at using my desk, creating a bubble around me. Partly successful I’d say. I made coffee, put in a load of clothes, grabbed the iPod and padded upstairs to the desk.

Last night, I cleaned off the desk and afterwards, rewarded myself with some blogging. Mr. Geeky was sitting on the bed with his laptop and while I was in the middle of writing a comment, asked me what I was doing. I was a bit snippier than I should have been, but it was completely ironic that I was constructing a comment to the previous post about ways to create my own space.

So, anyway. This morning. I was going to blog for fifteen minutes before writing, but the internets were down. That turned out to be a good thing. I wrote for an hour–only two paragraphs, mind you, so I can’t even change the page numbers on my goal. Again, though, I was interrupted by Mr. Geeky, who asked whether the internet was still down. Ugh! I was more polite this time, but I think I have proved my point. I do not have my own space.

I think I am also sensitive to the issue at home because I also don’t have my own space at work. I share an office with 3 other people. I’m a social person, so it is sometimes nice to have others around. But. But if you need to do concentrated work, there’s still a good chance you’ll be interrupted. I do it to others; they do it to me. It’s just the way it is. I’m not thrilled about it, but I try to see the advantages.

So while Mr. Geeky has his own quite spacious office at work and his own space at home, I have none. Constantly, all day long, I must contend with others. Granted, Mr. Geeky is being a stay at home dad this summer, which has its own feeling of not having your own space. But I’d trade places with him in a heartbeat.

I’m going to continue to try to create the bubble in my existing space, but I think something’s going to give.

I’m honestly not sure it’s possible. So a long, long time ago, I wrote about the need for my own space. Mr. Geeky somewhat obliged me by helping me pick out a new, larger desk. Which allows for more stuff to cover that desk. I was talking to my mom tonight and she was talking about how she just installed a koi pond and how much it feels like her own space and how good it is not to hear the phone or be bothered.

And this is the problem with my “space.” It’s still in a “common” area. It’s in the bedroom. So–and this is going to sound really weird–I don’t like working when the “presence” of others is around. I know–sounds very weird. But here’s a couple of scenerios that might make some sense. First, I’ve been trying to write in the mornings (this isn’t working very well and maybe you’ll see why in a moment). I get up at 6:00-ish, have some coffee and then get started by 6:30, giving me an hour to work. However, all my work is on my computer, which, as I said, is in the bedroom, where Mr. Geeky is still asleep. Now, I’m not at all worried about waking him up. He can sleep through anything–but he’s there! And sometimes, if he’s awake, he’ll interrupt me. Because he doesn’t know if I’m working or just surfing/blogging. And then my concentration is blown. And I think I’m thinking about this when he’s snoozing away.

And then there’s Mr. Geeky’s office, where I am now. The office is pretty uninviting and so doesn’t attract the wee ones the way my bedroom does and if Mr. Geeky is in here working on something important, he can close the door. Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Geeky does most of his work after everyone goes to bed. No chance of interruption. I just don’t have the stamina for that. I can stay up and read for pleasure pretty late, but writing . . . I shut down by 10:00 (and when your kids go to bed at 9:30, that means not a lot of time).

I’m truly frustrated by all of this, because frankly, I feel like I’m getting the shaft. If I really want to do any kind of real work (whether it’s writing a memoir or writing papers related to my job) I need a better space, a space I can close myself off from the rest of the world. This wasn’t as important when it was just Mr. Geeky, but now that there’s the kids and household management is a project, I need some space.

It’s bugging me, because I partly think I’m making excuses. But then I know that there have been enough times when I’ve sat down to write and been interrupted or been unable to concentrate because of the environment that I know that’s not entirely true.

In our current living space, there’s not really a solution to this problem. When I think about it, I feel like a little kid, who’s trying to tie her shoe but can’t. She knows it’s possible, but it seems so hard. And I get that angry, frustrated feeling little kids get (and then sometimes they throw tantrums). And this is oh, so conducive to writing. I’ve thought about the front porch, but there are so many kids running in and out of the house that that would be silly. I could close the bedroom door, but this only works during times when the kids are awake and usually doesn’t prevent them from wandering in or Mr. Geeky from wander in; it’s considered a common area. And relocating to Mr. Geeky’s office won’t work because he’s there; it’s his space. I’ve tried a number of different things–going other places (but I have to borrow a laptop), writing after the kids are in bed (sometimes works briefly–if I’m not overly tired from work), writing in the morning (works at Mr. Geeky’s computer, but that feels weird. I don’t want him to see my work, yet. And what if he deletes it).

In my earlier post, I said I felt selfish about this and I do. I know lots of people who’ve managed under worse conditions. But for some reason, this has become a real problem for me. And it’s blocking my ability to write. Which would be horrendous if I had to make a living writing. I’m going to make an attempt to clear the desk space and move all the bills and stuff to to old desk. That’s the other problem. Everything lands on my desk–bills, school forms, letters to be mailed, random scraps of paper no one knows what to do with. Some of this is my fault. I bring it there, but a lot of times a kid or Mr. Geeky just hands me something. Here’s that thing. Not sure what to do with it. Ugh! Enough! I could have built my own space in the amount of time I took to write this post!

Yesterday was the day of sloth. Friday night, both the kids spent the night out, so I spent the night lounging around, playing The Sims 2, and reading until after midnight. I woke early yesterday to sound of tiny alarm clocks beep-beeping away. So I was up and felt too tired to accomplish much. I managed to feed the kids, weed the garden and take around some trash. It was incredibly hot outside, so being outside made the slothfulness worse.

Today will be productive. I have vowed to myself no computer time until after dinner (unless I do some writing, which I might). The kids have already cleaned their rooms and I’m planning to do some work in the kitchen and living room. I really was laundry goddess last week, leaving myself with very little laundry to do this weekend! Hooray! There will also be a trip to Target for a new toaster and a trip to the grocery store. My life is very exciting.

One of the issues that often comes up for college IT departments, especially ones as small as ours, is whether to buy a solution or to build something yourself. On the one hand, buying a solution (a course management system, an image management system, other tools) often means stability and often available support. But often solutions are too expensive for us; the targets of these solutions are often huge universities who have tech fees and big budgets. On the other hand, building a solution ourselves might cost less, but costs more in people time. We only have one web developer, one instructional technologist, two system administrators.

The web developer’s main job is maintaining the main college web site, focusing primarily on the top-level sites (admissions, public affairs, visitor site, etc.). So, for example, he’s rebuilding the web forms that students use to request information to make sure they’re secure and that admissions gets the kind of information they need to see if their publicity is working. He also develops new sites for departments as he has time (and he has students who assist him). In other words, he has little time to develop something for an individual faculty member.

I, unfortunately, don’t have the kind of web development skills he has. I can’t program. I can design a static site. But I don’t have the ability to do php scripting (our preferred scripting language) in order to more sophisticated sites.

The system administrators simply give us the space and permissions to do our work, but again their primary focus is on key functionality, like email. Asking them to configure something just for a few professors is problematic.

An in-between solution to buying something but not building it yourself is to use someone else’s product. For example, I could suggest someone use Flickr to keep track of their images and create sets there for presentation purposes. They can tag the images so they’re searchable. It’s a very nice interface–easy to use. However, then the objection comes that it’s not attached to the college. It looks unprofessional to have to use a commercial product offsite. Same thing goes for blogging. If I can’t get blog software installed and running on our servers, I might suggest that someone use Blogger or Typepad, but again, same objection.

It’s frustrating for faculty to have to wait for either a buying decision or for something to be built. My philosophy is to give them the tools they need to build it themselves or allow them (maybe even encourage them) to use whatever is available out there that’s already built. There are objections to allow them to build things themselves. What if they mess up? And then there’s the almost corporate “we all have to be the same” problem. We all have to use Blackboard, for example. It stretches us too thin to provide other solutions.

It’s a struggle and it’s a struggle we go through almost every time a faculty member asks us for something fairly involved. I think each situation is going to be different. Some solutions are cost-effective enough to buy. Some are things that we have already built. Some are available as open source projects that we can modify. And sometimes, we just have to point them to ones out there, with our blessing.

I think I’m officially obsessed. Every spare moment I’m googling and technorati searching, hoping to find the perfect (or near-perfect) solution.

I was contacted by a couple of people connected to PIM, one guy from tasktoy and a guy from AirSet, an PIM that I hadn’t run into yet. AirSet looks pretty cool, like it has potential. I also think tasktoy has potential. I haven’t used either one of them enough to have a definitive review.

I should say that I’m actually willing to pay money for something that works. The fact that a lot of these are free is great. But I think I’d pay 4.95/month to keep myself organized via the web.

I thought I’d share my list so far. I’ll be adding to this. So far I’ve gathered calendars, to-lists and information managers (i.e. brain mapping stuff). Check the sidebar of this post for the furl list.

There will be more about personal organization later today–so much to tell you all. At any rate, I have been husbandless this week and trying to maintain general order without going insane. So far, I’m succeeding. But a few glitches have reared their ugly heads (do glitches have heads; I imagine they do). First the dryer hose detached itself from the back of the dryer–at a time when I was trying to be the laundry goddess. I made several attempts at reconnecting it, including a desperate attempt to use screen rubber to tie it down. Finally, I made it to the hardware store to get a new little clampy thing (very technical terminology, no?) to fix it more permanently. I am now able to be laundry goddess again.

Second, the car’s oil light came on. Now, we don’t treat our cars very well. We tend to give them the bare minimum support and drive them into the ground. Also, the coolant light kept coming on again, after Mr. Geeky just remedied the situation. So I left work early, dropped the car off at the corner garage, walked home and got Mr. Geeky’s car (which I used to drive to the hardware store). Hopefully, everything will be okay with the car by today.

Third, Geeky Boy discovered yesterday morning that the toaster would not toast. He had to hold down the lever to get it to toast. I thought, well, it just needs to be cleaned. So I inspect it and lo, and behold, but there’s a plastic little happy meal toy melted to the side near the bottom. We ditched the (10-year-old) toaster and have vowed to get a new one. I might get a blender at the same time since I could use a fru-fru drink after all this.

That’s what I’m looking for. It’s been an interesting hunt so far, which has yielded all kinds of promising-looking possibilities, but nothing that seems perfect or even close.

So here’s the journey I’ve been on and what I’ve found so far.

General observations: lots of the software/webware out there assumes that you are a business maven with clients and projects and you’re on your cell 24/7 and you just want to be the best damn project manager on the planet. If you’re not in this category, you get one thing–either a calendar or a to-do list, but not both (at least not of the web-based variety).

Starting points: 43 Folders and Lifehacker are fabulous resources. I found lots of interesting things to check out through them.

Calendar stuff: RSS Calendar has potential. It’s got a nice, clean look. You can include the calendar in your web site easily. You can even import your calendar–and others–into your iCal. However, it doesn’t go the other way. I can’t import anything into–not iCal, not Palm.

Trumba is another nice-looking calendar, but it costs money eventually (not too much, mind you, but still). It does, however, allow you to import your iCal data, which is cool. You can publish it to a website or simply make your calendar public. I wish it had the javscript thingy just to include it in a website.

And you can always publish iCal to your .Mac or Webdav enabled site. But–you can’t enter new events via the web. I also tried Sunbird, but it’s very similar to iCal, not quite web-based.

The problem with all these (including the web-based version of iCal) is that you can’t include a task list. What would be nice is a dynamically generated task list based on the date. So let’s say you have tasks that are due next Monday. You have set a reminder for 3 days before the task is due, estimating that you need to spend a portion of the prior 3 days working on it. 3 days before the task is due, the task shows up at the top of the list–either to the side of the calendar or on the calendar itself.

There are some server-side calendar programs, but I don’t want to go there yet. And there may be other web-based calendars that I’m not yet aware of. I looked at several more, but many were kind of creepy looking.

Tasks/To-dos, etc.: I have tried Backpackit and Ta-Da, both made by the same company, 37signals, llc. Backpackit is basically and extension of ta-da, adding the ability to add files, images (if you pay) and create kind of a web site. You can upgrade to Basecamp which is more of a full-blown project management application and not what I needed at all.

(just so you know, I have like 20 tabs open right now with all the various software I’m considering)

I also looked at Burnout Menu 2.0. Although you can export your tasks as html, it doesn’t really have a web-based option.

Tasktoy was a simple task list app I found. Maybe too simple.

We use TasksPro at work–which is okay as far as it goes. I’m trying out the personal version. It looks pretty cool so far. It has a calendar though it’s kind of separate from the task list. The tasks show up on the calendar and next to the calendar, but it’s not seamless and it’s hard to get back to the task list list from the calendar.

While I am perfectly willing to piece together what I need, pulling in a calendar from one place, a to-do list from another, and shopping lists from still another, I’m surprised there isn’t a better-integrated, free or cheap task/event management system. If you’re a web programmer, this could be big–big I tell you.

So, obviously, I’m still undecided. Some sticking points for me are the fact that I’m either mac or linux-based. I have a group calendar where all my appointments/meetings are scheduled that I sync with my palm. I can then sync my palm with my home ical and I don’t mind importing that into a web-based program. However, I also need to be able to go the other way. If I’m in the library and suddenly need to enter a task or an event/appointment and I don’t have my palm (this does actually happen to me) and I enter it on my web calendar, I need for that event to be synced–with my palm and then to my other calendars. I want everything in one place and everything in all places if that makes sense.

I’ll keep you updated–and suggestions are always welcome.