Joining the little dots and dashes

I'm diving headlong into the technosphere....("God knows where the Hell I'm going!", I think with ignorance...). The metaphor reminds me of my mother: who started to learn 'computing' in her sixties, and ended up on a C++ programming course with eighteen-year-old males, one of whom became her 'best mate'- they used to exchange weblogs about tecnical problems on microsoft patches - or something like that. (Forerunners to our blogs? group of anoraks posting about how Bill Gates is the Devil?). Actually, I shouldn't compare myself: my mother is VERY much more technical than I am. She was always top at maths as a child (and tried to hide it - in her day if you were clever they called you a 'blue stocking', rolled you in a carpet and beat you - at least, they did her. As a result, she always hid her school prizes, which she won year after year...you see, I did mention that unfulfilled potential runs in my family...my mother, in a different era, in a different mindset, could have run a Multinational with her left hand. Mind you, she does a nice sideline in her village fixing people's computer problems. For which she gets a lot of goodwill and cups of tea).

Well, I'm "Pinging on Technorati" - whatever, dude. I REALLY DO feel 40 now, with a statement like that. The verbal equivalent of me going out in a mini ra-ra skirt with fishnet tights, a bustier, and goth make-up. Anyway, from words to action: Here goes, I have to embed a code for this to work so the little white men can verify it:
Technorati Profile
Heh heh! I feel like James Bond. Or Jane Bond. Or perhaps just Jane. I got to see lots of interesting tecky looking words in a secret code line. You guys just get the shrink-wrapped version.

Anyway, the aim of the game is: I'm claiming my blog. As mine. Bloody hell. What a possessive society - or blogosphere - we have. As if anyone else'd like my life ramblings?! Get real!!! Unless of course, someone's gonna offer me a six-figure book deal, like 'Petite Anglaise'. I write just as well, I just don't have the love life. Sorry.

About the teckie bit. Actually, I lied. I did do a bit of computing once. Programming, as part of a University exchange Course I did in Turin, Italy at the Technical Institute they use to train the Fiat production managers (didn't last long - read on). I was the ONLY one of 30 students to pass the programming exam. My classmates -many of whom where much brighter and MUCH more "technical" than me - mutinied, and accused me of having slept with the (middle aged, male) teacher to get the Pass. Fact is, I'd gone to borrow a revision book with some other students and left my bottle of mineral water by accident in his study. He kindly brought it back - "You've left this at mine!" (translation). Well, it was all used to fuel their conspiracy theories when I'd got the honours, and they not. I never slept with the guy, by the way. God, you'd have to have more taste and integrity.

I was blacklisted for the rest of the week (last of the year) and ganged up against. So-called friends, with whom I'd shared books, dormitories, the experience of studying and living in a foreign culture, different teaching methods, home-sickness, etc., cold shouldered me. When I staggered down the stairs with my cases at the end of summer term to trudge to the station, not one head in the common room or dorm turned or nodded a goodbye. The wall of silence was unbroken. I don't need to describe how you feel. "Fuck them! Fuck the course!" I thought, once out of there (sorry - but true). I changed courses soon after. And countries. And Friends.

But I never forgot the fact that, during the exam, sitting there and trying to twist my brain cells into knots, by realising the matter was perhaps more simple than I'd assumed, I lifted myself above the haze of obscurity and treated the 'code problem' (like maths problem!) as a child's puzzle. And it worked and I wrote the code for that silly little command, and the next four or five, and it flowed. Because I'd removed the mental detritus and the crap, removed the painful brain-bending, cleared away the psychological complications I'd initially read into it all. Looked outside the box, as it were, to a simpler outcome.

Now, I often use the same technique in life. Sometimes, you get a solution when you look at things in the most basic manner. Sometimes, simple is best.

So, I shouldn't get freaked out by joining Technorati, should I???