On you next visit to DC, stay at the Wyndham City Center. If you join Wyndham ByRequest (free), you can use the (wired) in-room high speed access for free. Also, they will have a nice snack waiting for you, based on your preferences. I got wine, cheese, crackers. I also got a helium-filled mylar balloon that was still airborne after four nights/five days.
When my youngest son was two, we enrolled him in a small, excellent Montessori preschool two mornings a week. His older brother had gone there for three years and thrived. Alas, for the younger one, things did not go so well. The child was refusing to participate in any activities whatsoever and would sit, eyes closed and completely oblivious, outside the group during circle-type activities. On the playground, all he would do is pull a wagon around and around the perimeter, near the fences.
The staff did not know what to do with him, so they called in a psychologist (with our permission), to observe him. After a few other tests, this woman diagnosed him as autistic, and suggested we enroll him in the county-sponsored "early intervention" program, as he would never be able to survive in a regular classroom.
Now, at the time, I had only a superficial understanding of autism, but my bullshit meter was redlining. This little boy was (and is) a very affectionate child. I still remember one particular day, when he was still a toddler, he climbed into the lap of some sad-looking older woman in a doctor's waiting room and attempted to engage her in "conversation." Her whole epxression and mood seemed to change.
And this kid, although extremely stubborn and sometimes difficult to manage, was a joy to have around the house. I had real fears about involving him with "the system" before I did more checking around.
He has always been an unusual child in many ways. He could tell time perfectly at age 2, and do instant conversions in his head for time zones around the world. His brother found this amusing enough to display him to his friends, like a trained animal. At 3, the child could read maps accurately and navigate from the back seat of the car with a county road atlas. BY the time he was five, he knew all the presidents of the U.S., in order, with their vice presidents and cabinet members plus other obscure historical trivia.
At any rate, I went nuts doing the research thing...read about Asperger's and considered it briefly...but it still didn't ring true. One day, it occurred to me that my son was always asking, "What?" "What?" and we were so used to this that we'd repeat ourselves without thinking. I wondered if he might have a hearing problem, so I took him to a speech/hearing therapist for an evaluation. His hearing was perfect, but he turned out to have some kind of strange, cognitive speech disorder that was frustrating his attempts to process language.
Essentially, this kid had learned language like parrots learn -- by mimickry. (Back when I was doing Internet training in the early 90s, I used to joke to my classes that my son could make modem noises before he could talk.) Because we were older parents (40) when he was born, and because his brother was 9 years older, he actually had a very advanced vocabulary. Therefore, although he would regularly use words inappropriately, we thought it was "cute" and never suspected any sort of a language problem. The "What?" "What?" business was his attempt to get us to explain something to him in a different way, so that he could maybe understand it.
Our HMO at the time was perfectly happy to send this kid for unlimited CAT scans and MRIs, but balked at paying for speech therapy. We went to war with them, and they eventually caved. After six months of speech therapy three times a week -- the therapist essentially taught him how to relearn language -- he was absolutely a different child. We switched preschools, and he thrived in the new one...happily participating in activities, etc. By the time he got to "regular" school, there were no problems whatsoever. I am thankful every day that we caught this problem and made it go away before he got into elementary school.
The child is 10 now; he reads at an 11th grade level, writes beautifully and is a whiz at math (which he doesn't find real interesting, alas). He still absorbs facts upon facts about American history, but his true obsession these days is sports. He can name every major league baseball and football stadium, knows when they were built, what their names used to be before "naming rights" took over, knows the records and ages of most major league players as well as which teams they have played for, can tell you the history of every manager and coach... Has both the ESPN and Sports Illustrated almanacs and sucks up an alarming amount of information. Is regularly challenged by his brother, and is almost always right.
He also has friends -- a couple good ones; he's not the belle of the ball -- and he has the respect of his classmates, who regularly choose him for things like student council and reading the "news" on the school TV program. The teachers are all crazy about him. Even the school custodian, an eastern European emigre who speaks with a heavy accent, tells me, "That boy is special. Gonna be president someday, and I'll be a citizen and vote for him."
Yeah, yeah...I'm a proud mom. He is, of course, my youngest chick and I love him to pieces. But I still get the creeps when I think of what might have happened had I let "the system" get hold of him at such an early age. Please, please, please...get second and third opinions. Sounds like you're already doing a lot of research. Keep doing it. Talk to speech therapists, not just shrinks.
Phil Agre, who edits the Red Rock Eater News Service, has put together a wonderful essayon helping people use computers without oppressing them that should be read by anyone teaching any sort of computer skills to another person or group, regardless of the ages involved.
Ditto. Unbelievable what the filtering software on the district's proxy server did to kids in a high school advanced placement biology class trying to use the Net for research. Would you believe the word "zygote" was on the blacklist?
Having been involved with municipal government I.T., I am not at all surprised at the sloppy recordkeeping. First of all, the pay scale at local government agencies is too low to attract and keep top quality personnel. Also, due to Veteran's preference, they get a lot of retired military types who, because they are already collecting a pension from Uncle Sam, tend not to be all that vested in their jobs (or, in some cases, are overinvested to the point where they act like martinets). As a result, there is a lot of turnover at all levels.
Also, elected officials -- particularly at the local level -- tend not to be all that tech savvy, and there is an attitude that I.T.=voodoo. Spending money on police, fire and rec centers will get you reelected. Spending money on I.T. (infrastructure) is money down the proverbial rat hole. The knee jerk reaction is to push for outsourcing until they find out what it costs. Then they insist on doing everything in-house, and so the I.T. department is perpetually overworked and under-resourced.
OK, so maybe I can be accused of overgeneralizing. But I've done enough contract work for a variety of agencies, public and private, and that's how it looks from here. The more local the government agency, the worse the I.T. situation.
As a parent and a 10-year Internet veteran, I found myself nodding vigorously at the following paragraph from It's a Machine, It's Only a Machine, by Linda Ellerbee, in the October issue of Family PC:
We all want to protect children, but they do live in the real world. Bad things happen in that world - and kids know it. They can't avoid knowing it. The computer's not the real world, and still, bad things happen there, too. Yes, you can find pages devoted to hate or pornography. You can learn how to make a bomb on the Internet.
But if your kid is into porno, hatred, and bomb-making, you already have problems - and they didn't start with a computer. (Italics mine.)
Some right-thinking soul has constructed a nice plain vanilla interface to Deja Power Search for those whose priority is actually searching Usenet rather than shopping. Do yourself a favor and bookmark:
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/deja.html
Those eight little words that mean Southern hospitality...You ain't from around here, are ya, boy?
Well, I've cleaned spilled coffee off keyboards. I've cleaned spilled Diet Coke off keyboards. I've even cleaned spilled Pinot Grigio off keyboards (and picked out wine glass shards from between the keys with a tweezer). Now I gotta figure out how to clean HURL off a keyboard.
Slashdot Mirror
On you next visit to DC, stay at the Wyndham City Center. If you join Wyndham ByRequest (free), you can use the (wired) in-room high speed access for free. Also, they will have a nice snack waiting for you, based on your preferences. I got wine, cheese, crackers. I also got a helium-filled mylar balloon that was still airborne after four nights/five days.
...flying out of Carlsbad Caverns at dusk. This is one of the coolest things I've seen...ever.
Carlsbad Caverns
Bat Flight Program
The staff did not know what to do with him, so they called in a psychologist (with our permission), to observe him. After a few other tests, this woman diagnosed him as autistic, and suggested we enroll him in the county-sponsored "early intervention" program, as he would never be able to survive in a regular classroom.
Now, at the time, I had only a superficial understanding of autism, but my bullshit meter was redlining. This little boy was (and is) a very affectionate child. I still remember one particular day, when he was still a toddler, he climbed into the lap of some sad-looking older woman in a doctor's waiting room and attempted to engage her in "conversation." Her whole epxression and mood seemed to change.
And this kid, although extremely stubborn and sometimes difficult to manage, was a joy to have around the house. I had real fears about involving him with "the system" before I did more checking around.
He has always been an unusual child in many ways. He could tell time perfectly at age 2, and do instant conversions in his head for time zones around the world. His brother found this amusing enough to display him to his friends, like a trained animal. At 3, the child could read maps accurately and navigate from the back seat of the car with a county road atlas. BY the time he was five, he knew all the presidents of the U.S., in order, with their vice presidents and cabinet members plus other obscure historical trivia.
At any rate, I went nuts doing the research thing...read about Asperger's and considered it briefly...but it still didn't ring true. One day, it occurred to me that my son was always asking, "What?" "What?" and we were so used to this that we'd repeat ourselves without thinking. I wondered if he might have a hearing problem, so I took him to a speech/hearing therapist for an evaluation. His hearing was perfect, but he turned out to have some kind of strange, cognitive speech disorder that was frustrating his attempts to process language.
Essentially, this kid had learned language like parrots learn -- by mimickry. (Back when I was doing Internet training in the early 90s, I used to joke to my classes that my son could make modem noises before he could talk.) Because we were older parents (40) when he was born, and because his brother was 9 years older, he actually had a very advanced vocabulary. Therefore, although he would regularly use words inappropriately, we thought it was "cute" and never suspected any sort of a language problem. The "What?" "What?" business was his attempt to get us to explain something to him in a different way, so that he could maybe understand it.
Our HMO at the time was perfectly happy to send this kid for unlimited CAT scans and MRIs, but balked at paying for speech therapy. We went to war with them, and they eventually caved. After six months of speech therapy three times a week -- the therapist essentially taught him how to relearn language -- he was absolutely a different child. We switched preschools, and he thrived in the new one...happily participating in activities, etc. By the time he got to "regular" school, there were no problems whatsoever. I am thankful every day that we caught this problem and made it go away before he got into elementary school.
The child is 10 now; he reads at an 11th grade level, writes beautifully and is a whiz at math (which he doesn't find real interesting, alas). He still absorbs facts upon facts about American history, but his true obsession these days is sports. He can name every major league baseball and football stadium, knows when they were built, what their names used to be before "naming rights" took over, knows the records and ages of most major league players as well as which teams they have played for, can tell you the history of every manager and coach... Has both the ESPN and Sports Illustrated almanacs and sucks up an alarming amount of information. Is regularly challenged by his brother, and is almost always right.
He also has friends -- a couple good ones; he's not the belle of the ball -- and he has the respect of his classmates, who regularly choose him for things like student council and reading the "news" on the school TV program. The teachers are all crazy about him. Even the school custodian, an eastern European emigre who speaks with a heavy accent, tells me, "That boy is special. Gonna be president someday, and I'll be a citizen and vote for him."
Yeah, yeah...I'm a proud mom. He is, of course, my youngest chick and I love him to pieces. But I still get the creeps when I think of what might have happened had I let "the system" get hold of him at such an early age. Please, please, please...get second and third opinions. Sounds like you're already doing a lot of research. Keep doing it. Talk to speech therapists, not just shrinks.
FWIW...there's an extensive collection of pointers to resources on Computer Forensics available via eCompany's Web Guide.
Phil Agre, who edits the Red Rock Eater News Service, has put together a wonderful essay on helping people use computers without oppressing them that should be read by anyone teaching any sort of computer skills to another person or group, regardless of the ages involved.
Company behind it -- MaxBot.com -- also offer SearchMil.com ("Over 1 million military pages indexed and ranked in order of popularity."), SearchGov.com and Search eBooks.com.
May I oh-so-modestly direct your attention to eCompany Now's Web Guide, which is my day job. It contains an extensive section of cataloged resources on Technology History, including a large subtopic pertaining to Computing History.
Ditto. Unbelievable what the filtering software on the district's proxy server did to kids in a high school advanced placement biology class trying to use the Net for research. Would you believe the word "zygote" was on the blacklist?
Also, elected officials -- particularly at the local level -- tend not to be all that tech savvy, and there is an attitude that I.T.=voodoo. Spending money on police, fire and rec centers will get you reelected. Spending money on I.T. (infrastructure) is money down the proverbial rat hole. The knee jerk reaction is to push for outsourcing until they find out what it costs. Then they insist on doing everything in-house, and so the I.T. department is perpetually overworked and under-resourced.
OK, so maybe I can be accused of overgeneralizing. But I've done enough contract work for a variety of agencies, public and private, and that's how it looks from here. The more local the government agency, the worse the I.T. situation.
Those eight little words that mean Southern hospitality...You ain't from around here, are ya, boy?
Well, I've cleaned spilled coffee off keyboards. I've cleaned spilled Diet Coke off keyboards. I've even cleaned spilled Pinot Grigio off keyboards (and picked out wine glass shards from between the keys with a tweezer). Now I gotta figure out how to clean HURL off a keyboard.