stress

There is little in my world that is more stressful than a computer crash!

Yesterday afternoon I had such an event.

Today has been nothing short of hell. I have been trying to get my puter back to a working state. It is quite a process.
I checked with some IT places who quoted me several hundred dollars for something I can do, and they did not even promis a quick turnaround time of even success with data recovery!

Now my system tried to do two updates to Windows at the same time. They fell into one another and both failed.

Then I get a message that I have to restart the computer and it may not come up again.

God please help!

These are the heavy seven.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
CockSucker
MotherFucker
Tits

Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.
--George Carlin

I just can’t wait...

I received a rather frantic call today. I was at work and in between clients when my cell phone rang. In picking it up I noticed that there were three missed calls. Turns out they were all from my son, and all occurred in the last 90 minutes.
I picked up the phone and was going to launch into the typical Dad stuff [you know: How was School? What time did you get home? How was your day? Did you find something to snack on? What are your plans tonight?] when I was yelled at for not picking up my phone sooner.
When he had finished the ranting and raving, I asked him what was wrong. He replied, “I have been calling you for over 2 hours. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
I replied that I was with clients and can’t take phone calls during that time unless its an emergency. In which case he needs to call the front desk and talk to the AA.
Of course, he could not remember the number for the front desk, so I naturally asked him what the emergency was.
“I can’t find El Chupacobra and I wanted to go hang out. Do you know where he is?”
I happened to know that he was working this evening, but I was more puzzled by the idea that El Chupacobra’s whereabouts was an emergency. Calling him on this he again got angry.
This then started a b!tch session about payment for a chore he preformed.

You see, this child has not held a job for months and the job he had back in May he quit saying that he “didn’t have time to work during the summer.” Before that he was unemployed for over a year and quit that job because they wanted him to work in areas of the restaurant that he was sick of doing. Needless to say he has not had very much money over the past year and a half.

About the chore – About two days ago he asked out a young woman and she said “Yas”
This is great, but it presented my wonderful son with a few problems.
1) He does not have transportation, as he failed to maintain a car that was given to him and now sits disabled in my front lawn.
2) He has no cash, as he has spent all his birthday money [from a day ago] and has no job.
3) He fails to maintain even the most basic home requirements [clean room; put dishes in dishwasher; put coat in closet or room; don’t leave dirty socks or other belongings in common areas], and wants to be paid to do something.

He planned the date for Saturday, or two days from today. To solve the transportation problem he worked out a vehicle sharing arrangement with his mother, and was granted some degree of free gas (as well). To solve the money problem, he asked to do something around the house. I offered him the chance to mow the lawn (about 1.5 hours of work) and would pay him $12. Although he wanted $30, he still agreed to do the work. He completed the chore yesterday, but was told that he would be paid in time for his date. This made the assumption that he was going to spend the $s on the date (STUPID ME)!

In today’s phone call he explained (read yelled at me) that he wanted the money now. He further explained that he wanted the money to have in his pocket, and went on to say that he didn’t need any help saving his money and I was treating him like a little kid.

Well that was wonderful and such a precious family moment.

So who here is stupid enough to think that if he had that money right now there would be even two red pennies left over by Saturday? Any guesses why he wants the money right now?

At any rate, I enjoyed my family today!

Guesses:
1) Pot
2) Green Cigarettes
3) Marijuana
4) Shwag
5) Hemp
6) Snuff
7) Dope
8) Grass
9) Weed
10) Mary Jane
11) Ganja
12) THC
13) Cannabis
14) Skunk
15) Hash
16) Dagga
17) Chronic
18) Diggy
19) Ditch weed
20) Joint

Quotes from a Projectives Assessment Talk

There are no “always.”
From this photocopy you can almost see the two areas. They come together here.
In this one, the shape is given form with “maybe a half circle, no”
Islands have no shape.
These are the right answers…and remember this stuff is all very subjective.

Group work?

So what do you call it when everybody does the assignment and then gets together and compares answers?
Projective assessment is a course of nothing but shades of grey, but yet all of the students are scurrying about comparing answers. Admittedly this tends to foster discussion that increase the level of understanding and are generally good for the education process, but in a class where the material and the instructor is entirely subjective it seems a little foolish.

So I did not participate. I did have about 12 people (75% of the class) asking to see what my answers were.

Here is the true fly in the ointment – The assignments are graded on a curve, AND what a curve. The average score on assignments is in the low to mid 40%s. It is interesting to me that if the class (in a majority) gets together and submits the same answers AND the average class score is in the low 40% that gives a huge advantage to the student who options out of the group work. That’s Me!!!!

The endless rewards of working with troubled teens.

Reward #1 – I see that a major reward in working with troubled teens (boys and girls) is the rapid and ever-present exposure to useful, productive, stimulating, and very colorful language. This is a huge benefit to being a parent of a troubled teen. “How so?” you might ask. Well fist of all, I am able to stay on the cutting edge of all the relevant slang, thus I can tune into any group of teens and understand what they are talking about. This helps to avoid the otherwise inevitable questioning one must present to just begin to understand teen-speak. Living with teens I am spared the embarrassment of having to ask, “What are you talking about?” Another great benefit is that I am well versed in the new and creative use of language. The most valuable information I have learned is that the seven words you can’t say on television, as made famous by the late great George Carlin, were invented by my teenagers. Not a single English speaking human has ever used the word f*ck or sh!t or douche-bag mother*cking a$$hole to “enliven” or add accent to speech. Additionally, the magnitude of the idea to use these words has spread so rapidly that “everyone says that.” This speaks to the truly divine roots of their ideas. Finally, the concept of these words being offensive and impolite has also been “cured” in that their widespread and wondrous use has demonstrated that any pre-conceptions adults had about these words was dead wrong. These are common parts of speech and if you find them offensive, crude, brash, degrading, dirty, or morally objectionable you are a relic stuck in the days of yore. I sleep better knowing that I am current on my language use – and the next time you have a professional meeting make sure and greet everyone in the room with a huge smile and a big f*ck you!

My Head is a Cantaloupe!

I am quite sure that El Chupacobra and my wonderful son look at me and only see my head as a bulbous, semi-rotten, worthless cantaloupe, somehow attached to my neck. They think, even though I am in a doctoral program, that I have no ability to see, hear, smell, or THINK!

What the hell?

What is there in a class on the Projective Assessment?

I would expect to have the Rorschach covered in quite some detail. I would also expect to have the other common projective tests covered in a general sense. These may not be in significant detail, but perhaps in a high level overview. Based on my experience with other assessment courses I would expect one test to be stressed and the others to be mentions as peripheral. As you might guess, because it shows up here, is that this is not what walked through the door on this first class.

The class started off as normal as could be expected. There were very few new faces and the instructor had a syllabus to hand out, thus I was rather comfortable in the first few minutes of the class. That is when it all went to hell. For my first time in a doctoral level program I had an instructor read (verbatim) the syllabus. This took about two hours to read 19 pages because the narrative was intermixed with statements of how “you” will screw something up.

It was like being back in high school. I actually received instruction on how to study. “Find a quite comfortable place, where you have lots of space to place your materials.” I sh!t you not! There were about a dozen other equally essential study skills covered in the syllabus. As a graduate student I really needed this advice. I am SO angry that nobody gave me this helpful – no wait CRITICAL – piece of study skill/advice up to this point. Can you imagine how much more successful I would have been in my previous academic activates if I had had this information? Why the hell did I have to wait until I was working on my Psy.D. until I got this information? I think these are critical questions. Covering these elements took only about 30 minutes and is likely the most important take away message of the class.
I now know how to study, bring on the A+s.