Jealousy Test

A bit weird this one, bear with me and don't claim that I never told
you about how odd some of my thought processes are.

So, have you ever wondered if you really do love that person? Do you
think it may just be a passing fancy? Carry out this thought
experiment to see just how much you enthralled.

Imagine that the object of your desire has just walked into the room
hanging off of the arm of another. Or for the ultimate test, imagine
that you have just been invited to their wedding. Really think about
it and try and convince yourself that it actually happened. How are
you feeling right now on a scale of one to ten?

1. Wahoo, a wedding to go to and a chance to snog the
bridesmaids/best man.
2. Hm, how vexing, maybe I won't bother to buy new shoes for the big
day.
3. Grr, turn up looking scruffy and scowling at the back, biting
peoples' heads off.
4. Weep uncontrollably and plot far fetched plans of revenge.
5. Congratulate your usurper and warn them to look after your loved
one.
6. Trip your victorious opponent up as they walk down the aisle.
7. Send the lads around the night before the wedding to apply some
makeup.
8. Accidentally cut the brake cables of the wedding car before it
drives off into the sunset.
9. Turn up at the wedding with chainsaw in one hand and flaming
brand in the other.
10. Dust off the nuclear missile you keep in the loft.

Getting better

I have conceived (another) plan in my eternal quest to pull my socks
up. I shall concentrate on doing small things regularly and
hopefully this will improve my chances of being able to tackle big
things further down the line. So, each will I shall attempt to:

i. Do some work on my website.
ii. Upload at least six photos onto Flickr.
iii. Write at least one letter or piece of comment or article.

So far this week I have done i (reactivated comments on my blog and
started adding stat collection) and ii (from the NASMA conference).
Ideas for iii welcome.

School stabbings

For those of you in Britain (which, if I count the number of readers
of this blog amounts to all three of you), you may have recently
heard in the news of a spate of stabbings and attacks in schools.

This article about one of the recent ones caught my eye:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/pupilbehaviour/story/0,16806,1642728,00.html

From the article: "[the victim's] mother... is worried that her
daughter will have to face her attacker. "I don't want Danielle to
miss lessons but the girl should be off for longer," she said.
"Otherwise it is telling the child if you beat someone up you can
have a week off school. She's back there now like she's done nothing
at all."

It struck me how obvious that statement was. In a lot of cases of
severe disciplinary problems you have children who are disaffected
with school. So you punish them by telling them to stay at home for
a week.

Now I am not saying that suspensions and exclusions encourage bad
behaviour from children who don't want to be there, but it hardly
seems a particularly disincentive to misbehave does it?

Further to that, I don't think that it is entirely productive to deal
with misbehaving pupils by isolating them from the school
environment. I think the aim should be less punitive and more
reforming and it seems better to me to be doing that in a school or
school-like environment. Another article in the Guardian highlighted
the work of some special units for disruptive children which had
great benefits for all. But surprise surprise they are drastically
underfunded and anyway, who can be bothered to go to that effort when
it is so much easier to sign a piece of paper and kick the kid off
school property for week.

First Count

I have now typed up my first writings (still no network at work) and
they come to a grand 1,159. I shall stick the mon t'internet when
the network is back.

It has begun

NaNo has begun. I think I wrote around a thousand words yesterday,
which is a start. I don't know for sure as I have typed none of them
up. So nothing for you all to read yet. Not that you are missing
much.

Most of the computer systems at work are dead at the moment, so not
much is going on. I may resort to writing in paid time soon.