Have been neglecting my work e-mail inbox while working on all this stuff this
month. Results = insanity.
2:08 PM 4/26/2007
Meeting with Management happened. I'm plotting a series of classes with the women's
center about computers and the internet; I just need to draft those up in some spare
time and get working on them. The first one I want to do is about basic internet
safety and security, like things to do and things not to do, and how to actually
make sense of some of the things that show up in the media as OMG BIG SCARE.
Included: IP addresses, and what information can and cannot be gathered from
them.
MySpace.
E-mail, and especially spam and phishing, and an overview of spam filters and
address books. Oh, and forwarding hygiene.
Firewalls. Virus scanners and adware scanners.
Not Downloading Crap. (Like, know who it is and what they are.)
Reliability of information on the internet, and how a dot com or a dot edu means
exactly jack in some cases. Web design and the serious website. Snopes.
Being taken seriously on the internet. (Think about what you want to say for at
least an hour before posting it to the internet, if not overnight if you're feeling
particularly emotional. Use spell-check and run it by a grammar checker.)
Just Fucking Google It.
Culture.
Bulletin boards, chatrooms, private chat, and why some people are trustworthy like a
pen pal you've known for years, some people are the random stranger your dodgy
friend met in the bar last night, and some people wind up on
fake_lj_deaths. The troll personality and the internet as a huge game of RP, and people trying to
conduct their real lives on the internet as they would in any other place. (Always
consider the possibility that the person you are interacting with may be a put-on
persona, like the guy who's chatting you up in the bar may not actually be a doctor.
Some people play out who they'd like to be on the whole internet rather than leaving
it for some game like Second Life.)
What is an MMORPG and why is this one threatening my marriage? Especially for the
non-gamergeek woman and a complete geex0r man. (The best way to keep together when
their life has been eaten by an MMORPG: get a second computer and join the guild and
have at least weekly MMORPG dates; you can totally cuddle up over an MMORPG the same
way you got used to doing over a sports program, and encourage him to babble about
his character in there while doing the dishes together. MMORPGs are addictive, but
not physically harmful unless you take it to extremes; think of it as a really odd
hobby and get to know some of the friends they've made there like you might get to
know sports buddies of theirs.)
OK, I think I can live with that level of thingy in the data; looking at the changes
before I put it live and change everything.
3:06 PM 4/26/2007
Doing a safety analysis for Management. Data safety analysis. Results: look bad at
first, but then you look at the amount that these things changed.
4:14 PM 4/26/2007
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/missing/penny.asp has been added to my list of Snopes
articles that I've had to forward to co-workers. The "two weeks" tipped me off.
It'll be "two weeks as of 4/13" or *something*, or "missing since ___". I'm guessing
that this one got started as revenge on the poor person whose e-mail and voicemail
are being bombed.
I'm hoping to raise the general level of internet literacy in those around me, you
know?
