![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfalling1. If you worked as a secretary at "the local grain company" in Kansas in the late 1980s, would your company be likely to have a computer? If so, what kind and what would its capabilities be? If not, what office technology would you have instead?
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
-----
2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
-----
3. Gacked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)
I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
-----
2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
-----
3. Gacked from
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
[Fic] "A Clean Getaway" (1/2) -- Harry Potter
Date: 2011-09-23 04:23 am (UTC)---------------
"Are you sure it was a good idea to set Ginny on Ron?" Harry asked yet again as he and Hermione stole quietly through the night-shadowed corridors and stairwells of Hogwarts, pressed close together so his Invisibility Cloak covered them both.
He felt Hermione laugh, her side and belly quaking where his arm was wrapped around her waist, though she muffled all the sound. "It'll be good for him," she murmured into Harry's ear. "You remember what he was like with Viktor, always sticking his nose in and wanting to know what I was doing. If we don't nip this in the bud, he'll never give us any time alone."
Harry didn't think Ron had been all that out of line over Krum, but he kept his mouth shut. Ron was his first friend, still his best friend -- and he and Hermione didn't want to shut him out at all -- but yeah, sometimes he wanted a chance to be alone with Hermione -- his other best friend, his... well, his girlfriend -- and just... yeah. He tugged Hermione a little closer and bit back a laugh of his own when she tickled her fingers along his side.
They reached the fifth floor without incident, passed the statue of Boris the Bewildered, and stopped at the door to the prefects' bathroom. Hermione leaned forward and muttered the password, which was apparently "Lysol" this month. The door opened and they slipped inside; Harry bolted it behind them while Hermione shook out the Invisibility Cloak and folded it into a tidy square.
The bathroom was just as splendid as he remembered from fourth year: tub as big as a swimming pool (complete with a diving board for the adventurous); a pile of soft, fluffy white towels laid on a low table in the corner; a hundred golden taps for different kinds of bubble bath; tall windows covered with white linen curtains to keep out the dark of night; and a gold-framed painting on the wall, though the mermaid who lived there had apparently gone visiting another painting for the night. Gentle golden light spilled down from a chandelier with nearly a hundred candles.
"I still want to know what kind of spell gets rid of any spilled wax," Hermione said mostly to herself, staring thoughtfully upward at the perfectly smooth candles. "It must be the same as the one in the Great Hall. I should ask Professor Flitwick about that..."
"Good idea," said Harry, turning a handful of taps to start filling the bath with warm, colored foam. "More importantly, are you sure the spell to keep Myrtle from spying on us is working?" He headed over to grab a pair of towels.
Hermione waved her hand absently. "Yes, yes, of course. I cast that first thing when I got my badge, and I check it every time I'm in here. I'm not an exhibitionist, honestly, what do you take me for?"
Harry handed her a towel with no comment, and pulled his shirt off over his head. Then he bent down to untie his trainers and pull off his socks, trying desperately not to laugh. His glasses went on top of the little pile of clothing, blurring the world around the edges and making the candlelight fracture into mosaic halos.
Hermione flushed. "Erm. Present company excepted, of course? And it's not as if we're going to swim naked, Harry. Stop grinning at me like that."
"Make me," said Harry, kicking off his trousers and jumping into the bath.