Posting from my Dell Inspiron mini 10

Well, I’ve had this for 24 hours now.  It’s probably going to be returned when I head to Best Buy next week.  Not because of any flaws in the netbook – I’m pretty addicted to it already.  But although the earnest Best Buy guy promised it was upgradable and sold us 2 gig of RAM, this mini is definitely NOT upgradable.  I woke up this morning to pieces of the Dell all over the table as husband made that discovery.  I’ve had my XO for several years now and never took it apart like that – and the XO is designed for that. 

Still, the netbook is proof positive that I’m sorta giving up on the XO for now.  It is a wonderful piece of technology for what it is designed for.  However, if I may state the obvious, it was not designed for my situation.  I badly would like to get a stack of XOs for my classroom, but I would eventually come up against something I couldn’t solve – how to print, how to mesh, how to make abiword work.  And although I LIKE the fact that I have to rely on the community and learn how to make it work, I’m also realistic about what I have time to do and not do.  I’m already struggling at my job because I don’t turn in the TPS reports – I mean the curriculum based measurements – on time, which is whenever they ask for it, which is usually by yesterday.  Part of me wants to construct knowledge, but part of me knows that dammit, we don’t have time to construct.  My school and my job depend on prepping kids for a test that doesn’t care how they feel about knowledge, or school, or themselves.  It just knows 4 things about them, whether it considers them  Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, or Advanced.  And all my kids are working against disabilities that the test doesn’t care about.  Will a bunch of XOs raise test scores?  Will the tech people support a bunch of XOs? 

It’s too much, I think, for a first year special ed teacher with her job in jeopardy to try.  At least this year. 

I haven’t given up on XOs.  But really, I just need something that works easily all the time.  Next year, if I’m still around, I’ll apply for a stack of XOs.  But until then, I have to go for ease and what works for my situation. 

Netbooks and XOs

So, after a few years flirtation with my beautiful green XO laptop, I've given in and bought a Dell Inspirion 10 Mini with a purple bike pattern on the top. It runs Windows 7.

So, I'm sitting here, typing in bed, with my Dell when I usually am messing with my XO or, lately, my Palm Pre. But man, life is so much easier with this Dell so far. I'm not fighting the XOs clunky's operating system. I love the XO for what it is. It launched the netbook trend. I still feel fine handing it over to the kids and letting it be experimented with, dropped, drooled on. I'll still be able to throw it in my backpack without worrying about it. I don't think I'll let the kids use my netbook at all.

I'm amazed though, at how easy it is to use, so no fuss, like my XO. But it's so much more functional. I can type on it. It does not make me fight the internet every time I want to get on.

Still, in deference to my XO, I installed Open Office instead of shelling out for yet another copy of Micro$oft Office.

I'm going to see how the Open Office works out with interfacing with school software.

"Are you Asperger's?"

So, my job as a special education teacher just got more stupid than is even possible.
I don't even care to explain it.

In the middle of this, in the middle of all of it, as I'm explaining how I'm going to be proactive, my boss looks at me and says, "Are you Asperger's?" Just like that.

Am I a condition? I am not Hans Asperger. But she used the possessive, so I guess that would be asking if I belonged to Mr. Asperger. I am taken aback. "Did you have problems in high school?"

I suddenly flashback to the Comfortably Numb years, the Queensryche years, the wearing black and scribbling poetry and feeling like I got dropped into this world from another planet years. "Well, didn't everyone?" I think. Elementary school: I was a geeky unorganized space obsessed kid that always talked too loud and cried too much and was dramatic in that way that makes teachers just want to smack someone.

I found it mildly insulting and then was disturbed that I found it insulting. What's wrong with having Asperger Syndrome? I know and love lots of people with Asperger Syndrome.

Am I Asperger's? If you'd known me as a 5th grader, you might have put me as strange. I still get that. I've never been a joiner even though I love to join.


Here's what gets me about it: I was a strange kid. I'm still a slightly odd adult. But to diagnose every strange kid is to reduce Asperger Syndrome to just being weird. If that's all it is, then we all have it. It's nothing.

We're all a little aspy. But to say that my social challenges are anywhere near the challenges faced by my kids minimizes their very real social-cognitive struggles. They are in a world where people seem to act randomly, where intentions are veiled, where learning the hidden rules is an complex task. I'm in a world where I get desperately tired, rattle on incoherently, trying trying trying to pretend that I am
able to teach and be a functioning adult when all I want to do is sleep. I'm a sleepy achy oddball. I probably have some sub-clinical ADHD or even Asperger traits. But I'm not faced with near the challenges that my kids are faced with. For me to claim Asperger would be to claim I understand their world. I'm not that tough. I couldn't have survived this world as a kid with Aspergers.

I should have been flattered, not insulted.

Doesn't it show a lack of social-cognition to ask someone that, though? It's like asking an overweight person if they have type II diabetes. Just, well, rude.

Still thinking about it all...

I have two more weeks left of Enbrel.

I don't know about my other meds. I don't know if I can function without them.
It's sort of a sad state of affairs to be in this situation, but I've taken multiple - multiple pills every day since I was 15. I get annoyed at people who see medication as a weakness -- for some of us, medication gives us our lives back.

I've found a great site, OTIS, about drugs and pregnancy. Here are the fact sheets for the medicines I'm on or have been on:

Enbrel
Verdict: probably safe, don't really know. Will probably stop 30 days before.
sertraline
Verdict: probably safe, don't really know. If taken during 3rd trimester, baby will have withdrawal. The good news is that it means I don't need to stop in January when I stop everything else. Untreated depression seems to be more risky to a fetus than anti-depressants, but I'm not sure what that means in someone like me, who got the anti-depressants thrown at her in an attempt to regulate the crazy lows of dealing with rheumatoid and narcolepsy. So is it untreated depression if I don't take sertaline or just playing it safe with my baby? I wish I knew.
caffeine Damn. 1-3 Dr. Peppers a day. I'd probably better limit the caffeine so I don't end up with a strung out little fetus.

Strangely, no link for methotrexate, the big bad pregnancy no-no. None for plaquenil, provigil, or simvastatin. Yes, I just told you my drug history.

It just scares me to think that if I do get pregnant, that's now my baby's drug history.

Here's a summary of pregnancy and drugs in RA.

And an article about higher disease activity related to birth weight.

Line

Line to get H1N1 shot yesterday