Simon just sent me a fascinating article about a boot-camp started in South Korea to wean youth of their "pathelogical computer use".

For the record if anyone is thinking of starting something like this here in Canada please please please consider me for the position as " ARTS and CRAFTS counsellor" I rock arts and crafts, and I *heart* young internet addicts.

Actually come to think of it.

Who's in for a week-ends worth of bad art and beer somewhere up north when I get back from latest pan-continental travesty? I can boot camp alls y'alls away from your 'pooters in less time then it takes to say macaroni picture frames and marshmallow s'mores.

I just re-installed my entire operating system and installed a virtual machine and moved my music collection onto a separate hard-drive and installed new ram. All while watching and reading about poker tournaments on the www.

Not necessarily in that order.

In the parlance of geekdom, I am presently blowing on my knuckles while staring at my opponent (poor performance) who is lying on the floor with gray matter coming out of it's ears.

However,

I did not purchase a new hard-drive, ha ha ha sigh.

So my apparently puny 80gb drive will have to be replaced in September and I'll be damned if you'll find me doing this twice over, next time I am paying someone to do it.

Those who valued the eager obedience and camaraderie of the dog considered the cat a strikingly inferior domestic, "refined and voluptuous... so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail in winning the sympathies of noble and generous-hearted men." This explained why distinguished artists seldom used cats as subjects, they only appealed to "artists of a very low grade indeed." Derogated by the men responsible for maintaining household order and public discipline, cats might be favored by those who sneakingly sympathized with [the cat's] desire for independence: they were sometimes considered"the chosen allies of womankind."

So this is a treat;

Usability specialist, tech writer and "female", Kathy Sierra had to withdraw from being a workshop chair at ETech when people started trolling her blog, uttering death threats and in fact started a whole new set of "meanblogs" just dedicated to posting hateful, humiliating or offensive material about notable people in the blogosphere.

Kathy was one of their targets and subject not just to rude material, but shockingly vulgar and violent material. What surprises me is the sophomoric hatred leveled at this woman, who is clearly only threatening to people because she is intelligent, successful and powerful.

Lets' see.. how to begin this entry. I got very emotional this week-end. So I went to the gym and worked out a bunch. (Okay well I jogged for 12 minutes and pretended I was in a time-stretching machine and it had really been an hour).

So the new gym, which looks amazing and totally unlike my absolutely favorite old gym has this curvy staircase, which is how you get to and from your change room to the machines. It's all fine when you're on the way down looking like Miss. America in sweats and a neat little ponytails.. On the way back up though? When you're dragging your left leg and an asthma inhaler is hanging off your parched lower lip like a hermit crab full of steroids. Not such a good idea folks, no sirree.

I should really check my stats more often.

I lent my copy of Jane Eyre to my next door neighbour, and he came over last night sat down on the sofa and explained that he couldn't give me my book back yet. Because as soon as he had finished it he started all over again.

I confessed I had done the same thing when I read the book and he asked me. "Are you obsessed with Jane Eyre too???"

I said yes, and that my new moral system involved approaching each complex life situation by asking "What Would Jane Eyre Do?" and then conducting myself accordingly.

Why is Jane Eyre so cool? and dudes she is, totally awesome. So awesome in fact that the spirit of Jane Eyre just prompted me to edit out an exclamatory cussword, I know she wouldn't like her good name associated with my filthy language.

C5 Over at Brain Dregs thinks I was painting with too broad strokes in my possibly over-amped screed about Take back the Tech..

It's true I was probably getting a little hot under the collar about the project and it didn't help anyone, but it sure felt good. ;)

And it started a debate, which I have been missing from my technofeminism lately, I hope this continues.

Here's a ringing endorsement for why the web has turned out to be a fairly apolitical space governed primarily by libertarian cash-hounds who do things like sell pretend crap on second-life.

Take Back the Tech - "reclaiming ICT's to end Violence Against Women."

Well you could start by explaining what an ICT is...

Then you could try to work your way past such questions as;

"Are video games gendered?" to real questions like, "Who made my ipod?" (thanks LRS)