Simon just sent me a fascinating article about a boot-camp started in South Korea to wean youth of their "pathelogical computer use".

For the record if anyone is thinking of starting something like this here in Canada please please please consider me for the position as " ARTS and CRAFTS counsellor" I rock arts and crafts, and I *heart* young internet addicts.

Actually come to think of it.

Who's in for a week-ends worth of bad art and beer somewhere up north when I get back from latest pan-continental travesty? I can boot camp alls y'alls away from your 'pooters in less time then it takes to say macaroni picture frames and marshmallow s'mores.

I just re-installed my entire operating system and installed a virtual machine and moved my music collection onto a separate hard-drive and installed new ram. All while watching and reading about poker tournaments on the www.

Not necessarily in that order.

In the parlance of geekdom, I am presently blowing on my knuckles while staring at my opponent (poor performance) who is lying on the floor with gray matter coming out of it's ears.

However,

I did not purchase a new hard-drive, ha ha ha sigh.

So my apparently puny 80gb drive will have to be replaced in September and I'll be damned if you'll find me doing this twice over, next time I am paying someone to do it.

Those who valued the eager obedience and camaraderie of the dog considered the cat a strikingly inferior domestic, "refined and voluptuous... so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail in winning the sympathies of noble and generous-hearted men." This explained why distinguished artists seldom used cats as subjects, they only appealed to "artists of a very low grade indeed." Derogated by the men responsible for maintaining household order and public discipline, cats might be favored by those who sneakingly sympathized with [the cat's] desire for independence: they were sometimes considered"the chosen allies of womankind."

So this is a treat;

Usability specialist, tech writer and "female", Kathy Sierra had to withdraw from being a workshop chair at ETech when people started trolling her blog, uttering death threats and in fact started a whole new set of "meanblogs" just dedicated to posting hateful, humiliating or offensive material about notable people in the blogosphere.

Kathy was one of their targets and subject not just to rude material, but shockingly vulgar and violent material. What surprises me is the sophomoric hatred leveled at this woman, who is clearly only threatening to people because she is intelligent, successful and powerful.