Karmic Konsumer

Crossposted to Trusera

Honestly, I haven’t found a whole lot of helpful information in books written for those with Asperger’s Syndrome. I prefer to learn by example - which is maybe why, reading a book written for a neurotypical works better for me. There is something to be said for not only gaining the information but figuring out what perspective a neurotypical must be taking on this information from the way the book is written, which then gives me a further foothold.

Communicating Effectively for Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) - An excellent book, written for up and coming corporate wanna-bes. It explains what to do when and why from a really basic place, including example interactions. This is a great book for an aspie in a professional environment as it includes jut about every professional scenario you are likely to run into. Not only does it cover the technical how-to’s like phrasing and approach but it also includes bits about how to make it nice-nice so that people like you when you are done saying it. Always a plus. :)

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion - WONDERFUL book for aspies and non-aspies alike, really. But for Asperger’s Syndrome specifically, it gives a really unique look at what pisses people off when we talk to them and how to not do that. :) It’s got great techniques for learning to listen to what the person is ‘actually’ saying beneath their words, which is invaluable where empathy or the ability to pick up on subtle references might be lacking. And then, once you realize that there is an emotional need in what someone is saying or not saying, often, a person with Asperger’s Syndrome might not know what to do with that knowledge. This book gives methods for responding to that emotional need with words. The style of communicating featured in this book is actually VERY compatible with a person with Asperger’s Syndrome because it really is about dissecting what is said into non-emotional speak and saying things plainly.

Giving The Love That Heals - This is a recent find, on my part. Although there is an undertone of self healing throught the book, I have found, just in my first skimming pass, SEVERAL really helpful tips on how I, as a parent with Asperger’s Syndrome can understand and communicate with my son, who also has Asperger’s Syndrome. The books is written for NTs with NT kids as opposed to being written for those who are on the spectrum. However, It is my personal opinion that with conscious parenting skills, even an aspie kid is cake. This book teaches you how to REALLY be a conscious parent, starting with looking at your self and your own complexes. I’ve already started using some of the techniques, with great results. Every parent can use some help and advice sometimes and this book teaches you how to become your own self help parenting tool.

This weekend, Mythic Entertainment starts to open it’s servers for Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning - first with open beta, then with head start and finally on the 18th with open play. I had the opportunity to participate in the closed beta of Warhammer Online. Aside from the understandable issues that are normal in a beta, I was really impressed with the overall game.

I play at being a gamer and I enjoy gaming but picking up a new game is usually not effortless for me - it takes some practice. With Warhammer Online, I was immediately comfortable with the menus and navigation. The learning curve was minimal. It comes out of the box with the ability to customize your screens and menus. And although not without a few kinks, that I’m sure will be worked out soon, the ability to customize is extensive.

To start with, during character creation, you chose between Destruction and Order. Once you’ve chosen a realm, you choose your race and finally, your profession. The races stepped just a wee bit outside the typical elf, dwarf, human selection, which was nice to see but not so far that there were no correlations. There was also notably, no stealth class in closed beta, which was a little different, so I had to resort to a caster. :)

Admittedly, I had some help in learning to play. There was a VERY puny player guide from Mythic - but I like Penns World Warhammer Leveling Guide and Ashling’s World Speed Leveling Guides. They are indispensable in learning the worlds quickly. Speed leveling aside, simply having a guide that walks through the quests and what to do where, in the beginning, with the first character, is a huge help. These two sites always present quality guides so it was nice to have a guide written by someone who participated in the closed beta much longer than I did. If it’s possible to be a seasoned Warhammer Online player, at this point, these two guides are definitely from seasoned WO gamers. :)

The game, although fairly open ended, is a little different than some others in that you move from town to town progressively as you finish missions in an area. You set your recall point in the newest place and it has it’s own vendors and such so you really have no reason to go back to the previous towns once you’re done with them. The method of recall was a little goofy though. You crack a book open. We shared a few jokes about slaughtering massive numbers of mobs and then sitting down to have a nice read.

I thought the Public Quests (PQs) in Warhammer Online were a pretty nifty advent. The quests gave faction and rewards that a player couldn’t get otherwise and an opportunity at grouping and killing big or multiple mobs without having to join a group. The public quest is triggered when a player interacts with mobs or objects in the area. Once the PQ triggered, public quest announcements go out to everyone in the area and you just pitch in and participate with whoever is there. For someone like me who likes to solo most games, it gave a chance to group without the commitment or the cuddling afterward.

I also like the way Realm vs Realm (RvR) works in WO. Certain areas are open to both realms - Destruction and Order. Unlike a typical PvP area, these RvR areas aren’t really separate from the rest of the play area. Players enter RvR at will and a running tally of occupied areas, deaths and occupiers keeps players on top of ‘who’s winning’ at any given moment. Siege weapons, which you are taught to use at very early levels, line the borders of RvR areas giving another option for RvR attack. I think this slightly different approach to PvP capitalizes on what a ‘good v/s evil’ fantasy MMORPG can be - a better model of natural world allies and enemies in war.

Leveling was surprisingly normal. In every game I kind of expect for leveling to be way slower or faster than I expected or to find some unbalance in how equipped (or not) I am for a level. Although I wasn’t speed leveling, by any stretch, gaining levels and appropriate skills for each level wasn’t a pain either.

If you’re gearing up to start playing this weekend or next, definitely check out these guides. Excellent guides. :)

I should also add the disclaimer that this review is from my own personal experience of the Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning MMORPG as a player.

Aspergers in Love: Couple Relationships and Family Affairs by Maxine Aston

To make a really ridiculously obvious correction to the TITLE of the freakin’ book before I even begin, the syndrome is correctly spelled Asperger’s Syndrome, with an apostrophe. Not ‘Aspergers’. It just goes downhill from there. I would link to the book but really - don’t buy it. Borrow it and then don’t even ‘forget’ to give it back. No really… return it to the owner when you’re done.

I am an adult female with Asperger’s Syndrome. When my relationship started demonstrating obvious issues with communication, I wanted to get a good idea of how the Asperger’s Syndrome might be affecting it. This book was recommended, so I picked it up. On the positive, the book is packed with information and ideas on where a relationship might break down. As other reviews have said, it IS thought provoking and insightful.

However, that said, I was actually quite disappointed with the book. The book is not critical of the AS individual but the tone of the writing stops just shy of that and most of all, this book doesn’t seem applicable at all to a relationship between an AS female and anyone NT or otherwise.

There is a tone that NT people sometimes take when referring to the behavior of a person with AS. It’s a mixture of the condescending ‘poor AS person, they don’t know how to feel properly’ and a bit of clinical detachment. I was dismayed to find the author writing with that tone. So while the NT reading it might feel like they’ve found a source that gives voice to what they are experiencing, it (ironically) does little to foster actual empathy with the AS person and their actions. As a woman with AS, who was looking for valuable input, I was really put off by it.

I made it through most of the book with a really puzzled look on my face looking for that one paragraph that would make me able to relate - REALLY relate to the AS traits she describes. And then I got to the ONE chapter about AS Women in the back of the book - and EUREKA! I was able to relate to this chapter! At the beginning of this chapter about AS Women, there is a tiny explanation about how writing the book using the words ‘AS Male’ simply made the book more comprehensible. But really? Because I could relate to so much of that one chapter and so little of the rest of the book, I wonder, truly, how much of the rest of the book even applies to a majority of women with AS. And while, perhaps AS women just wasn’t the focus of the book, it’s billed as a book about being in a relationship with AS individuals in general - and it’s not. It’s actually a book about relationships between an AS Male and an NT Female with a footnote about AS Women.

I took Ethan to Ulta to shop for me for mother’s day. He was SO excited that he decided to give me my stuff tonight. And hey, who am I to argue? One of the things he got me was the Silk-épil SoftPerfection which I had pointed out to him on the first pass through the store.

I figured it this way … my poor legs itch like hell every time I shave so I wind up not shaving as often as I’d like. This isn’t a shaver so there are no blades to scrape my poor skin. It’s literally plucking the hair out so hopefully, that means longer between de-hairing. And also, the more you pluck, the lighter and less dense the hair in that area becomes. Supposedly. So.. I pointed it out and he got it and I squealed when i opened it and told him what an awesome kid he is.

Then I tried it. Could I just say OHMYFUCKINGGAWDOUCH. Who’s goddamned idea IS this torturous device anyways? It HED to have been a man. Notice, Braun sure the FUCK doesn’t make an epilation devise for men! Some man somewhere had the brilliant idea of a a turbo-plucker, wrapped in in really pretty pink dainty, harmless looking plastic. I had the purest of intentions all wide eyed and girlish hoping for nothing more than silky smooth legs and WHAMO! I ran smack into his horrible contraption. You literally run it up your leg like a shaver except it PLUCKS every single goddamned hair out as you run it up your leg. FAST. Like all at once, leaving a trail of fucking FIRE behind it.

The first pass brought tears to my eyes and that was with the ‘massaging’, gentle attachment. They meant gentle like a thousand fingers massaging you all over.. BEFORE YANKING OUT ONE LEG HAIR EACH. Go pluck just ONE of your leg hairs. Try one on your inner thigh just for good measure. They recommend using the ‘more direct’ attachment for your underarms and “bikini line”… bwahahahaha..

hahahahahahah… they said hahahah… bikini line….. hahahahaha

This fucker isn’t coming anywhere NEAR my “bikini line” in this lifetime.

I needed a backup solution that was easy and trustworthy and preferably one that I don’t have to manage constantly. I also wanted one (again, preferably) off site in case something happened to my computer like theft or fire. I decided to use Carbonite based upon a Lifehacker story comparing Carbonite to other services. I got 15 days to try it out for free so I figured, what the heck. I tried it.

From moment one, Carbonite was really simple to use. I set up an account and was backing up within minutes. It installs a small client to your computer and that client is smart enough to either pick out the most commonly backed up files - or to allow you to choose what to back up and what not to. There were lots of warnings that the initial back up could date over a week. It only backs up during idle time and it can only go as fast as the slowest of your network connection, internet connection and upload speed. Mine took three days to back up about 9G with a hard line to my high speed cable modem.

Once everything is initially backed up, it starts backing up only files that have been modified since they were backed up. You have the option of putting a tiny dot on the file icons in Windows explorer. Green dots mean they are backed up - orange means it’s in queue to be backed up. You don’t have to manually tell it to re-back something up. It just does it all automatically in the background. There is an option to make it a low priority internet connection too… so it won’t hog up bandwidth.

Shortly after I started using it, I decided to reload my computer. It was comforting to realize that I wasn’t going to have to go through the huge ordeal of finding an easy way to back up (now) 11G of data and files. I wasn’t going to have to make sacrifices to get it onto cds of go through the process of buying an external drive, hooking it up and moving stuff over. It was already done.

And so it was that within a month of using Carbonite, I also got to do a full restore with it. There were a few breathless moments when I realized I had just completely reimaged my machine and all of my files were gone. But the restore was, almost unbelievably, just as easy as the backup was. I went to their site, logged into my account, downloaded the software again and had a restore running within minutes. My download speed is way quicker than my upload speed so I told it what to restore and walked away and did other stuff. I came back to my computer and it was done. I was back up and running effortlessly.

It really is THAT easy to use. And if you don’t believe me, they let you try it out for 15 days for free, which for me, was enough time to figure out whether I wanted it or not.

Remember the Milk is an online task management system.
I used to use MS Outlook tasks. I would sync it with my Treo once a morning so I had my list to take with me. The fact is, Outlook Tasks is crusty, bulky and cumbersome compared to Remember The Milk. There is tons of info out there on why Remember the Milk is a great getting things done tool. This is Why *I* think it’s awesome and how *I* use it.

• It’s free. Outlook is hundreds of dollars.
• It’s online so it’s available everywhere. You can browse it with your cell phone. And when you don’t have an internet connection? If you use google gears, you can still access your Remember the Milk content.
• You can have as many task lists as you want. This makes it easy to divide tasks into ‘projects’. For instance, I have a list for ‘home’, which is home related tasks like making doctors appointments, cleaning the fridge out etc. I also have a list for each of my businesses - return calls for that business or work on someone’s website. I even have a list for ’spare time projects’ (hahahah) that I can refer to when I’m bored (again, hahahahaha) or I’m looking for something crafty to do but have no ideas.
• When you create or edit a task, you can use real words for the due date - like you can type ‘next tuesday’ or ‘tomorrow’ and it figures out what date you meant. No need to go rifling through a calendar to find the date.
• You can share tasks with other people. My only problem with that right now is that no one I know uses Remember the Milk - which is why I’m plugging it. :) Ideally though, I would be able to share tasks with Ryan or with other Co-op board members (hint hint, yall) rather than putting those tasks in lists in emails.
• You can get task reminders sent to your cell phone or IM client
• if you add a location to your tasks, you can see your tasks on a map and figure out the best way to get them done
• Personally, I like the landing page which gives three tabs, one for today’s tasks, one for tomorrow’s and one for overdue tasks - with the option of printing a weekly agenda. One of the first things I do every morning is go through those three tabs and re prioritize, reassign and get my agenda for the day in order. When I’m done, I print it out (I print my google calendar for the day on the other side of the paper) and I have my portable list for the day without having to refer back to the site constantly. If you don’t like the landing page though, you can set up your account to bypass it entirely.
• It allows you to create recurring tasks - so things like ‘grocery shopping’ that happen every two weeks, will automatically show up on my task list without me having to enter it twice a month.
• If you get too organized for yourself and forget where you put a task, you can search!
• It integrates with google. You can use it inside your google calendar - or you can add the widget to your igoogle home page. I stopped using the google calendar feature just because I have SO MUCH on my calendar already.. but the igoogle feature is really nice because I use igoogle as my home page.
• You can create tasks by emailing them from your regular email client into remember the milk. These tasks show up in your remember the milk ‘inbox’ list - so you dont have to log in to create tasks. That means you could text them from your cell phone too.
• I USED to have to host a ‘control panel-esque page on my site to organize all my stuff because no body really did it online yet. If you’re still one of those types, you can get rss feeds of particular task lists or search criteria and display them wherever you want - even add them to your feed reader. I suppose you could use this to display tasks on a project website for a group of people too.

And THAT’s why I dig Remember the Milk And really, there are so many other features that I don’t even use yet.. like smart lists which are lists that you build upon criteria - like ‘all overdue tasks in such and such list’ or ‘all tasks with high priority due tomorrow’… and more.. and more… It’s the epitome of flexible and it’s a great getting things done tool.

I love autumn. The cool windy days, the changing leaves, the dry, crisp grass, the warm, thick undercoats on the cats, turtle hibernation. I love Halloween and Samhain what with the dip into darkness and death. I love Thanksgiving - mostly because of candied sweet potatoes and hot spicy pumpkin pie.

And I love coffee. And so… pumpkin latte? HELLO?! Wouldnt that just be heavenly to have a coffee that has pumpkiny goodness flavor?

And so, I bought a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. I bought a tall without any of my usual soy or non fat modifications. Just gimme all that pumpkiny goodness in one spicy cup!

Have you ever scooped out a pumpkin to make a jack o lantern? You know all that really bland pumpkin pulp? Or have you ever tasted the pumpkin pie filling BEFORE the spices are added thinking it would be pumpkin bliss only to find out how bland it really is? Have you noticed this entire paragraph is crafted entirely from questions?

Well… the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte tastes just like that. Only with less flavor. It didn’t even have a good COFFEE flavor! Oh, ” Spicy, sweet flavors of nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and pumpkin” where for art thou? I was so disappointed that I thought I would be burned on pumpkin spice forever. There was NO spicy flavor at all in their Pumpkin SPICE Latte. It was like drinking liquefied pumpkin pulp with milk. Yummy, no?

Today, I dropped by 7-Eleven to partake in their cheap gas. They had a sign up that any coffee and breakfast sandwich combo was 2.99. So I decided to have breakfast at 7-Eleven (that’s SO another dieting post). Low and behold, their coffee bar included a pumpkin spice latte! Now this isn’t professionally brewed and blended coffee or anything. This is coffee from a mix, probably. The stuff in their coffee machines. And although dubious of the quality, I gave it a go anyways. I filled my cup, snapped the lid on and lifted it very cautiously to my lips ever so slowly.

AN EXPLOSION OF PUMPKIN SPICE FLAVOR OCCURRED! It is magnificently spicy with a dash of the pumpkin flavor I remember actually wanting to drink in a cup. It’s hot - AND? There is even a flavor of coffee.

In this comparison, 7-Eleven won HANDS DOWN for having THE BEST Pumpkin Spice Latte.

This review of Weir Canyon Honda is comprised of my own personal experience with Weir Canyon Honda in Anaheim, CA. I can’t attest to anyone else’s experience but I can say that this is exactly what happened to us. As you know, buying a car is a pretty big investment. If you’re going to give someone over 10 grand of your money, be sure you’re giving it to the right people. If you’re in the market for a Honda, I wouldn’t give that money to Weir Canyon Honda.

Last year, I bought a new 06 Honda Civic (I did NOT buy it at Weir Canyon Honda). I had such an amazing experience and my car is so awesome, of course, that Ryan recently decided to follow suit and buy an 07 Honda Civic Si. BECAUSE we had such an amazing experience with our last sales person (I don’t want to marr her name, so I will call her Mrs Wonderful Sales Gal in this post) (er… foreshadowing of doom, anyone?) she was the first person we called. Unfortunately she was no longer at the dealership… SO WE TRACKED HER DOWN. Because WE, the CARRIE FAMILY, do NOT take no for an answer and we will STALK YOU… erm… anyhoo. So we found her.
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Originally Posted in March 06 - see below for update

I was reading a post on someone else’s blog about what he has installed on his Treo (which is a great list). One of the items was a wiki-like notes program - Note Studio. I am a total notes taker. I go on tangents and do research on a topic and then all my notes go into a notepad file and it gets stashed away on my computer. I may or may not be able to find it later. So I went to take a look at it and it looked pretty cool… but it was 30 bucks. I just don’t have 30 bucks per piece of software that I want. So I went looking for an alternative and I ran across AcroWiki.

It’s built for PalmOS. You take notes in the notes thing in Outlook and synch it with your Treo. In each note, you can put wiki-like formatting or links to your other notes. It’s wiki formatting which isnt as ‘complex’ as html… it uses simple english-like coding… like surrounding a word with asterisks makes it bold. Anyways, so it’s a no brainer to use. When you synch it, you can go into the program on your palm and navigate through your notes.

I set up sortof a category system just by creating ‘category’ wikis that are linked to from the main wiki page and then further to articals or sub categories… but it doesnt have to be that complex at all… or you could make your navigation more complex. You can modify the files on your desktop from Outlook or from your Treo inside the app. I can synch it with both my home and work pc without any complications… it just synchs the Outlook notes just like usual. What REALLY made this program work for me though were the forward, back and home buttons inside the app. It made navigation effortless. I didn’t have to add links back to my category pages to my notes.

You get a 10 day full-featured trial. I didn’t need 10 days though. I’ve transferred most of my notes in - and I’ve paid the 15 dollar registration fee. Great price and WELL worth it. I would definitely recommend this software for anyone looking to better organize their notes on their Treo.

Update
When I paid that $15 dollar reg price, I thought it was a great deal. The reg code they sent me didn’t work with my devise. It took several emails back and forth with them and the company who sold the product to finally obtain a working reg code. A year later, I changed the user name on my devise and the product didn’t work any more. So I emailed them via their support system to get a new code - but they wanted me to purchase the software again in order to get one!

All of the software features never completely worked. The index and search functions were THERE but the company explained that they don’t actually do anything because that functionality hasnt been built yet. AFTER I bought it. The long and short was that I found myself using the regular notes application that came with my Treo again and was happier for it.

It was the general wiki features that I was so stoked about in the beginning, not Acrowiki, specifically - so I’m off to find a wiki for my PDA that actually works.

A few months ago, I decided to go a brighter, darker shade of red than my natural color. Red is a hard color to dye your hair. It’s difficult to keep it from getting brassy if you have ANY blond in your hair, and I do. It usually fades quickly and it’s hard to keep it looking great.

I chose Feria. I was REALLY happy with the color. It looked really natural and I kept getting compliments on it. When I went to get a hair cut, a customer complimented my hair dresser on my color! :) The color lasted and stayed bright and beautiful for the full expected 6 weeks.

Last month, I was broke though. I found Garnier 100% color on sale for like $3 at Ulta so I bought two boxes. Boy, was I disappointed! It was 100% color, alright… and it fully colored my hair. But it colored it 100% the same color. It wasn’t multi tonal AT ALL and my hair LOOKED fake and colored. Aside from that, It really damaged my hair. After having had really healthy hair for quite some time now, it was obvious that it had lost some of it’s flexibility and life. And the conditioner they give you with the color is really not all that great. It makes my hair limp and does nothing to brighten the color. I went back to using the Feria conditioner that I had left over and I’m doing my best to eek through till my next color without wanting to wear a hat all day every day. :/

And lest you think it was from some sort of error on my part, I followed their instructions and I’ve been dying my hair for… gawd, 16 years, now. As much as it makes me wince to waste money, the damage is done. The $3 is wasted. I’m throwing the second box away. Don’t waste your time, money OR hair with Garnier 100% color. I’m going back to Feria.