Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Trivial Synchronicities...

...sounds like the name of a song by Jose Gonzalez. But it's really a pretty good descriptor of what goes on in my head a lot of the time-- essentially, I've noticed that things around me seem to connect in weird little ways depending on what I'm doing or thinking about. This is probably a pretty common psychological and I'm most likely making too much of it. Molehills to mountains, people. That's my thing. But on to the story!

Bought a new laptop for the trip this weekend. My thanks to Carlos at Best Buy for being way more helpful than Best Buy's reputation suggested he would be. But while using that very laptop to research educational equality in Uruguay for a paper, I came across an article about laptops for Uruguyan schoolchildren. How meta! By the way, can someone explain to me exactly what does and does not qualify as meta? Anyway, THAT got me thinking about the laptop pilot program that my hometown undertook well past the time when I could benefit from it. My little brother, of course took immediate advantage of this new academic technology and promptly set his home page to Homestar Runner. Much like I gathered in the Maine school case, laptops in Montevideo have been a mixed blessing since they came about in 2009. They break a lot, (judging by the picture, they just rolled off the assembly line at the Playskool plant, so figure that out) and networks often couldn't handle the extra usage. It'd be interesting to see if anything's changed/improved over the last two or three years. Anyone out there with school-aged kids in Maine know how this program has evolved there? Last I heard, iPads were gonna be the next thing but there were severe budget issues. Or maybe just severe budget fights. I could go ahead and search for news about it, but the chances I'll run across a picture or quote of Gov. LePage are just unacceptably high. My lunch of fair-to-middling Chimerican food needs to stay down this afternoon.

Oh, and yesterday evening I rescued my Tales from the Sharrows buttons from the clutches of their creator/vendor Brian, so.....styliiiiiiiin'! Here's one gracing the wall of some place that is most definitely not my cubicle:

And one hooked to Winona the Kona's saddlebag:

You're welcome, Washington Area Bicyclists' Association.

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