Love at a Distance

Back when Dawn and I were first married, we saw the movie The Shadow. There was one scene where Lamont Cranston (The Shadow, Alec Baldwin) went to investigate this big enclosed metal dome while Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) was doing some research at the library (or something like that). Lamont ended up encountering some trouble with I believe it was Farley Claymore (the one and only Tim Curry). Lamont found himself trapped in what turned out to be a big water tank as it was filling with water. As he realizes he cannot escape he concentrates on Margo, and this telepathic message travels across town, knocking Margo off her chair when it hits her. She then rushes to Lamont's rescue, just in the nick of time.

I remember this scene because Dawn, my new wife of just a few months, turned to me and whispered to me "Some day we will have a connection like that," then she kissed me. A kiss generally makes things memorable, especially one from Dawn, but this time it was her comment that made it so memorable. When I saw the scene I thought it was kind of weird and wondered if this was part of The Shadow's super powers, but the thought of developing this kind of telepathic link with my wife was beyond my comprehension.

While the idea was appealing, to communicate telepathically, I found it unrealistic. I chalked it up to some silly idea, that would be nice, but would never happen. I thought of it from time to time in the years since (maybe it was the kiss. . . .) but never thought to peruse it.

That was over 10 years ago (hard to believe it has been that long) and Dawn and I have a whole new relationship now (that is another story). The other day I was at work while Dawn was at home. I work about 30 miles from home. Were were chatting via instant messenger and it was obvious Dawn was having a rough time at home with the 4 kids.

Here is the really interesting part: she typed "I miss you, hold me," and when she did I could feel her leaning against me. As I type this now I can vividly recall the feeling of her head against my chest. This sensation surprised me and without thinking I typed "I am," and then I sat there, at my desk, with my eyes closed. I could literally feel my wife in my arms, smell and feel her hair as I stroked it and hear her breathing. I didn't actually see her, but I knew she was there.

After a couple of minutes she typed "Thank-you," to which I responded letter her know that I could actually feel her in my arms. It was like she was there. She said she could feel me holding her too, and she felt much better now.

This experience has been rolling around with me for a while now. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I know now that we were actually connected, heart to heart, over that 30 mile distance. What an incredible experience it was. Thanks Dawn!

Study Guide for the Geek Test

A while back a friend of mine wanted to impress her husband by scoring really high on the Geek Test. In response I created the Study Guide for the Geek Test. I don't know if she actually took the test. It is fairly long, but creating the study guide actually increased my score. I knew most of the stuff already, but creating the guide was a reason to research things I already knew, and also find out things I didn't know.

Even if you don't want to increase your test score, it is a great collection of geeky information!

Controlling the Relationship

In response to my sweetheart's post about controlling the Relationship I have a comment:

When you are in the "co-dependent" relationship mode you are actually putting the other person in charge of your feelings. You are giving them power over you. If you say "I need you to do X so I can have Y," then you are loosing part of yourself to the relationship. When you move to the co-creation level of your relationship then you are responsible for your own feelings. You are not loosing part of yourself to the relationship anymore. It is all about a win-win relationship. Moving to the level where everyone is responsible for their own feelings is a big step. The tape we were listing to was a presentation by Paul and Layne Cutright. This was my first exposure to them, but I have had them recommended to me before.

Wikipedia vs. Critical Thinking

NPR Weekend Edition's Laura Sydell had an interesting story about Wikipedia. Tim Lauer of eSchoolNews provides a summary and analysis.

The story opens with Jacquie Henry, a high school librarian at Ruben A Cirillo High School. She represents the opinion of some teachers who are under the impression that their students are not sophisticated enough to evaluate what they are reading, especially online, so they are banning it as a reference source.

Any information should have its validity considered. This should include the source of the information. There are two types of information sources: primary sources - where information originates, and 3rd party sources - that reports on a primary source.

No 3rd party source of information should be considered to be an absolute authority. This includes any encyclopedia, most books, newspaper, magazine, etc. Any source of information that reports information from another source is biased - either with opinion or understanding. The bias includes what was reported, how it was reported and what was not reported.

A primary source of information is the person who did something. Not necessarily an expert on something, but the originator. For example someone's autobiography - a person talking about themselves. No one else can disagree with them on this subject, they are the absolute expert. They can still be wrong though. If you read Christopher Columbus' autobiography he thought he found a trade route to India and sailed clear around the world. The fact is he discovered a new continent and only sailed half way around the world.

To me, Wikipedia seems like an ideal source to teach critical thinking to students or anyone. They can actually observe the editorial process and see how facts can be expanded on, edited and distorted. Teachers should have students actively creating, editing and monitoring articles through a watch list.

Students should read a source and then compare that to the body of knowledge they already know to see if it makes sense, especially taking what they know about the source into account. They should get multiple sources and compare what they have to say on a subject. Just because Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica disagree, that doesn't make Wikipedia wrong. For starters, it is edited more frequently and the facts may have changed.

Banning Wikipedia as a reference source only teaches students to not think critically, and to limit their sources based on the biased opinions of others.

Firefox

I just finished my Defense Against Pornography presentation last night. I decided to mention Firefox as a solution for pop-ups and a more secure browser. I didn't want to push it, but just provide it as an option. I know I really like Firefox over Internet Explorer, so I didn't want my bias to influence others.

As soon as I started talking about it a few people in the audience piped in that they recently switched to it over Internet Explorer and now their computer is usable again. They said they couldn't believe the difference it made for them. After the presentation they were still telling people that they should switch to Firefox right away!

Blogger Jam

Friday I tried to make a post to Blogger, and I think I may have had some funky HTML code because now when I try to view / edit my existing posts I just get an error telling me that the Blogger engineers have been notified. I am curious if I can make a new post or not.

Looks like I may be migrating sooner then I thought. Blogger is nice, but it has a lot of quirks, and I am not in control when issues like these arise.

Choice Firefox Extensions

One of the best things about Firefox is all the extensions. I thought I would compile my list of the best / most useful extensions. A lot of them I think should be included in Firefox by default, but I understand the logic of not including them. Some people might want just the lightest weight browser possible. For those looking for lightest weight possible, I recommend K-Meleon, it uses the same Gecko engine Firefox does, but is even lighter weight.

• Tabbrowser Preferences - Makes the tabs work the way you expect them too.
• SessionSaver - Saves your open tabs when you close Firefox. Be warned that if you have another Firefox window open, then close your main window first, then it will loose those tabs. They recently added a confirm dialog for that scenario. Much nicer.
• All-in-One Gestures - I really only use the gestures for the Right-Left click to go backwards and the Left-Right click to go forward. But this is the best gesture extension I have found so far.
• Download Manager Tweak - Just recently found this one. Really makes the download manager nice. Lets you put it in a tab instead of a popup window. I used to use the Download Bar, which is a nice one too.
• Adblock - I don't advocate the wholesale blocking of all ads, those are a great source of revenue for web sites. But I cannot stand some of the annoying ads that some web masters allow to put placed on their sites. The worst are the flashy ones. Anyway I use Adblock to block the worst ads.

There are a lot of other really good extensions too. I have many more then these loaded, but these are the ones I find indispensable.

FYI: Most of these links will probably break when a new version of Firefox comes out. For some reason they require you to have the version number in the URL.