Ein²

[German Giant. Not!]

I studied four semesters of German at university and then I lived in Switzerland for three years. I almost didn't learn any German at all while living in Switzerland, because I was too shy to speak German with people I'd see more than once and people always wanted to practice their English on me. I never really lost my intention to improve my grasp of the language, though. To facilitate being successful at improving and retaining my German, I purchased the CD versions of beginning/intermediate German using the Rosetta Stone. This software presents everything in the target language, using audio, video, and text. It's supposed to simulate the way people learned their first language. I actually quite like it, even though it's a little on the expensive side.

I've had "improving my German" on my list of goals in LifeBalance for over a year. My goal was to do at least an hour a week. Since purchasing Rosetta Stone in November of 2003, I've completed two entire units at level one, comprising 22 total lessons, and I'm a quarter of the way through a third unit. Given that each lesson takes about an hour and I've had at least 54 weeks, I obviously haven't been very successful at doing the hour a week. I'd like to improve my consistency at working on my German and then expand my skills to being able to read things at a Reader's Digest level.

See more progress on: improve my German

[Powerbook Power!]

I love my PowerBook. I have a 17" 1-GHz G4 AlBook. This isn't my first PowerBook either. I have an old 333-MHz G3 "Lombard" in a bookshelf acting as a file server and remote connection box. There's an even older PowerBook 1400 also floating around. As you might guess, I've been laptop-empowered for a number of years now (it's almost ten!) where I don't have a desktop computer. It's very convenient being able to take your life with you on the go, especially when your life involves multiple areas: web development, university-level teaching, and Ph.D. research.

My only complaint about PowerBooks is the chips in them are usually well behind the desktop in terms of power. Apple's just released a speedbumped PowerBook, but it's still only a G4 chip and 1.6 GHz at that (OK, it's faster than mine, but still!). Compare that with the desktop G5 offerings or even the dual G4 towers. My two-year-old PowerBook is only a little above the minimum specification for playing World of Warcraft. (-: So, as you might gather, this isn't much of a complaint. My Lombard stood me in good stead for all three of my spheres in life for just over three years. This one will probably go that long too. I'm not sorry about the investment in the least, even though laptops are more expensive. Go for it!

Do strongly consider buying AppleCare for your laptop. The only things you can cheaply replace in them are memory and hard drives. Everything else costs big bucks if it has a problem. AppleCare is expensive, but it's worldwide coverage and good peace of mind. I've never been sorry about AppleCare on a portable product.

[Fifty Fabulous Book Binges]

I've seen many people profess a goal this year to read at least 50 books. Given that I read incessantly, I don't think I should have any trouble reading 50 books in 2005. Even discounting juvenile literature, which tends to be shorter and easier to digest, I still believe I'll be able to make 50 books in the first six months.

"How do I do it?", you ask. I usually read an hour or so before going to sleep. Combining this with a high reading speed, you can knock through books at a good clip. I also like to read in the bathtub. I often take a book with me there and read for an hour, at least once a week. Finally, I have many books in electronic form, courtesy of Project Gutenberg and Baen's WebScriptions project. This means I can carry many books easily with me on my handheld to read on planes, trains, and buses, and while waiting in line.

Oh yes, I also listen to unabridged audio books. I belong to Audible and I download two unabridged books a month to listen to on my iPod. I find it very soothing to have someone read me to sleep (remember that from when you were very young?). I set the iPod to "sleep" in 30 minutes and pick up in an audio book at the point I last remember hearing. This is usually a very slow way to get through a book as I often fall asleep within five or ten minutes of starting.

I plough through more of an audiobook while working on my 10 000 steps goal. I do 4- and 6-kilometre walks along the Brighton seaside. To do the 6-kilometre walk and return home gives me about 8500 steps and takes just over an hour. Many unabridged audio books I choose will fit into 8-12 hours. If I'm walking every day, like I should, in theory I can listen to one audiobook in under two weeks.

Step up to the plate. See if you can make 50 books this year or match my list.

[Whoah! Water! Migraine Madness Mopped!]

There's a book called Running On Empty: Meditations for Indispensable Women. I know all about "running on empty." At one point in my life, I was working fulltime plus for a small, struggling web development agency, teaching part-time to supplement the poor income from the first job, and trying to work part-time on a Ph.D. That's a lot of time. I was running so far below empty on the gauge that, not only was I on the verge of total burnout, I had stressed and over-worked myself into frequent migraines. Migraines and I were no strangers, as I first met them in my early 20s. This, however, was on a mammoth scale. I was regularly enduring migraines resistant to painkillers up to fifteen days a month. While the magnitude of the pain and frequency fit in well my personal philosophy of, "If you're going to do it, do it 250%", I was in a constant spiral of trying to catch up and then working myself into a migraine. Add stress and repeat, as required.

I am not going to say that by simply drinking 8 glasses (2 litres) of water a day I miraculously cured my migraines and other ills of my life. That would not be the honest truth. However, I had read many articles on migraines and more than one suggested that, for many people, migraines were often induced by a combination of co-occurring factors. Stress, implicated in so many things, was obviously one factor. Another one was dehydration. Most people simply do not drink enough or drink things, like coffee, which are actually diuretics, causing a loss of water.

I probably needed a complete lifestyle change, but that was more difficult to do than simply eliminating dehydration as a contributing factor to my migraines. I took a brief leave of absence from everything I could talk my way out of on short notice and started trying to increase the amount I was drinking. I already did not drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages, so it was more a matter of training myself to drink more than replacing what I already drank. This proved to be quite tricky. Since I was young, I have despised room temperature (or warmer!) water unless it was flavoured. I always took Kool-Aid and drink crystal-flavoured water with me on my bicycle or while hiking. I didn't want all that extra sugar. Instead, I developed a system of keeping a set of three plastic one-litre water bottles in rotation from the refrigerator and invested heavily in Brita. As I finished one bottle, I would refill it from the Brita, put it back in the refrigerator, and take another cold bottle out. It was slow going for awhile, but eventually I managed to accustom myself to drinking both chilled and warm water. I keep a bottle by me at all times, which encourages me to drink without thinking about it. Most days it is very easy to drink 2 litres with little effort.

So now you know how I did it, you're probably wondering why it was worth it to do. Did I eliminate my migraines? No. I still have migraines, but at least now they're usually related to my hormonal cycles. They're less frequent and less painful. Is water responsible? I can't positively say, but I'm pretty confident it did and I'm convinced that it did no harm. I feel better and my kidneys have an easier time flushing my body of various toxins, which is also a plus.

What I can say is that I drink almost nothing else except for water (and herbal teas). I'm saving a small fortune on processed drinks while grocery shopping and even more when going out for a meal, as tap water usually isn't that expensive. It's true that the Brita's getting a good workout and the Brita filters cost money, but that cost is a drop in the bucket compared to how much people pay for coffee, Coke, and alcohol. As a side-benefit, the Brita removes all kinds of other impurities in the water.

So, in the end, I have fewer (and less painful) migraines, save a fortune on processed drinks, feel better, and help my kidneys flush toxins out more easily. And... It's easy to do now, without thinking. Start your water habit today!

See more progress on: Drink eight glasses of water each day

[Feynman Is Fine]

¹ Although I'm terrible at mathematics and physics, after I read books about the physicist Richard P. Feynman, I wished I could be more like him if I didn't exactly aspire to be Richard Feynman. Feynman came to public light for many people as he was very much involved in the investigation of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, eventually solving the riddle of what went wrong. Unfortunately, NASA will have to solve their own mysteries in future as Feynman died of abdominal cancer in 1988.

What I found most intriguing about Feynman was how he looked at the world and problems in it. Somehow he had a completely different approach from most people, which enabled him to solve problems. Once you understood how he looked at a particular problem, often the solution was also very evident to you, or so recollections seemed to say in the various books and articles I've read previously about Feynman. I, too, fervently wish to "Think Different" and I am envious of his highly superior problem solving abilities.

In addition to being able to solve problems, Feynman was also quite well known for his ability to teach. I'm not sure if he truly loved teaching or if it was just something he felt strongly compelled to do. He did do a fair bit of it, which is something I share in common with him. The following quotation, on a web page with excerpts of Feynman's thoughts on teaching, illustrates his dedication:

"I don't believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I'm living; at least I'm doing something; I am making some contribution” -- it's just psychological."

-- Richard Feynman (as quoted in Druzdel 1995).²

As I later discovered, this is classic Feynman in rhythm and philosophy. Nowhere is his down-to-earth manner of thinking and communicating more apparent than in his various collections of anecdotes, such as Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!, What Do You Care What Other People Think?, and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. The first two I read years ago and are very approachable recollections mostly in his own words of events and people in Feynman's life. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is my latest Audible audio book (unabridged) and it is very much like Feynman sitting across the table from me, recounting his adventures in science and teaching.

He thought different, he was a curious character, and he thought he should teach: Feynman's my hero!

References/Credits

1. Photo is of Apple's Think Different Feynman poster. Original poster is copyrighted by Apple Computers, Inc.

2. Druzdel, Marek (1995) "Richard Feynman on Teaching" [online]. Available from: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html [Accessed 2 October 2004].

Further Information

• "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman, Edward Hutchings, and Ralph Leighton: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
• What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Disclosure: Amazon links have a referrrer program link in them that generates revenue for an international discussion-based virtual community to which I belong. Your cost is not affected.

[Ein Enquiries]

In a relatively short span of time, I had several people ask me for solutions to various technical problems they were having. Reflecting on it, I realized that this has been happening for years, particularly in some of the online communities where I hang my hat. While it's great for the person asking the question to get an immediate personal response, it's not so good for me as it takes me time to research or doublecheck the answer and then write it up for them. Also, all of the answers are, in this way, "read once." It occurred to me that I'd be better served by documenting some of the questions and answers, for my own benefit and the benfit of others. Thus, I'm proud to announce the birth of Ask Ein, a new repository for Q & A. Topics will likely cover Macintosh and Palm applications, UNIX server administration, and web application development.

At the moment, I don't have a way for people to submit questions. I've been creating the entries based on questions people have asked me elsewhere. I think I'll stick to that format for a bit and then experiment with specialized forms or specialized stories where people can submit their questions in the form of a story comment. As with everything I am doing, there is much scope for improvement, but feel free to explore.

[Hoary Hardware]

I ran across this Joy of Tech comic the other day and it started me reminiscing about old hardware sweeties in my life.

Someone mentioned to me, while discussing this comic, that they had a paper white monitor on their old DOS box. I had a few of those paper white monitors. They were so crisp compared to the green screens. I picked them up dirt cheap one day (in the 90s) back at a computer flea market. Siufai and I used to go down to these things on the weekends and then build cheap PCs out of components we'd pay next to nothing for. Do people still do that or are cheap pre-built systems integrators so ubiquitous that it's unnecessary?

While hardly ancient, my old Apple "Lombard" G3 PowerBook from 1999 has been turned into a roving iTunes server for the house, hooked up to our swoopy stereo system in the living room--a poor man's AirPort + AirTunes. We can control it via a web-based interface or use a VNC to pretend that we're right in front of the machine. It's a little awkward (have you noticed how awkward this word is itself?), but it gives us access to a lot of music and to playlists without leaving our chairs.

Our other slightly faster "Lombard" we traded to EinSweetie's mother for her old stationwagon so we have a car when we're in Canada. She's using it to do e-mail and to surf the web, enhancing her guerilla gardening activities.

Someone else commented that their Commodore 64 had the beautiful "blue screen of life". Ah, the blue screen of life, so bright, so vivid! Ah, those were the days. I have a working Commodore 128 packed away in Canada with a working 1571 drive. When nostalgia really hits me hard, I fire up one of my Macintosh C-64 emulators and play games. "Kill him, my robots", anyone?

The most useful piece of kit from my C-128 set-up, though, is the RCA monitor that Commodore branded and shipped with it. That monitor was an excellent RCA television and mine has travelled from Edmonton, to Vancouver, to Regina, back to Edmonton, and is now with me here in England. It had standard RCA inputs, so it makes a good video monitor when hooked up to a DVD player or a VCR! We used it here in England, when we first moved here, to play my North American PlayStation games! It's still going strong!

While newer stuff may be (currently) dearer to our hearts, what are we doing with our former equipment sweeties which is cool/interesting and makes them still useful? Tell us your Hardware Sweetie Stories!

[Swoopy Stepometers]

In here goes: Bad times made better by Happy Meals, it's pointed out that the McDonald's pedometer isn't in fact a pedometer at all, because it only counts steps and not distance. I suspect the Special K one is similar and I've heard rumours that it can count steps by itself just sitting on a counter.

Has 10,000 steps really captured the public's imagination? I think many people feel like they don't get enough exercise. Earlier, I wondered if free pedometers at McDonald's would be enough to draw people in and get them out. Since I wrote that, I've learned that the promotion is also available in Canada and one of my stablest friends has already whipped out to his local McDonald's and picked up one. He's talking about getting one in each of the seven colours. He's not alone in at least getting one. Someone else I know discovered that it's possible to buy the pedometers from McDonald's in the States simply by asking for it alone and paying out $2.20. So, what are you waiting for? Run, don't walk to your nearest McDonald's, and work off those Big Macs with your feet. Even if you don't go anywhere, you'll at least know for sure how little you've done.

[Pedometer Panic 2]

I did some intensive investigation on the Omrons, including phoning back to North America. Apparently, they produce different versions of the same model for different markets. Canada, for example, has a metric version. Europe, too, has a metric version. The Omron HJ-112 (or see this description) I so lusted after is not available yet in Canada and won't be available for an additional two months.

When I was in Canada earlier this year, Kellogg's, the makers of Special K cereal, had just started a promotion whereby you could collect tokens and send away for a Special K pedometer and start your own personal 10,000 steps campaign. It was accompanied by all manner of media promotion with television ads and newspaper articles about the 10,000 steps campaign. The same promotion has now hit the United Kingdom and even McDonald's (USA) is getting into the act. Is a free pedometer enough to get fitness afficiandos into McDonald's? Apparently so, at least for some people.

Anyway, I digress slightly. With some more phoning around, I discovered that the Omron HJ-112 model is available in the UK and is more Ein-compatible in appearance, with its translucent aqua case (see story image). I managed to track down a distributor here in the UK. While they predominantly supply medical professionals, they will take personal orders as well. All of the recently flurry of media attention has meant that people have been going out and snapping up pedometers left, right, and centre and they didn't actually have any cheaper pedometers left, but still had a few of the HJ 112. So, for only £27.03 (incl VAT), I will shortly be the proud owner of my very own Omron HJ-112.

Note to self: secure this one to self more firmly!

[Pedometer Panic]

I had a great walk yesterday from Brighton's West Pier to the Hove Lagoon and back. Actually, it was longer than I expected. About halfway back, I stopped to check my pedometer to see how I was doing for time but the pedometer was gone. I had last consulted it at the Hove Lagoon, two kilometers back. I doubled back, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I'm not surprised I lost my Sportline 360 pedometer, because I'd almost lost it several times earlier and I'd managed to knock it off my body onto the ground on several occasions too. I think the clip it's supplied with is a little lacking. Barring that, though, I rather liked the unit.

Pros:

• It could remember distances over the last seven days.
• You could use it for walking or jogging/running by programming in a stride length for each activity and then it would auto-detect what you were doing.
• It had a rough calorie counter based on your distance travelled and your weight.
• It also gave a rough estimate of number of steps per minute and timed your accumulated activity since the last reset of the counters.
• Very small and looked rather like a pager so was rather discrete looking.
• Cover protected the buttons neatly and kept moisture out of the buttons.
• No need to manually start/stop activities. It auto-detected movement and was reasonably (but not completely quiet) quiet and accurate.
• Really nice multi-line display.

Cons:

• The supplied clip doesn't work well on thin fabric. It's just plastic and doesn't have jaws. It's more of a slide on and pray it stays mechanism.
• There is no way to adjust the sensitivity. If it's not accurate where you placed it, you needed to try placing it somewhere else on your body -- trial and error.
• While it kept distance totals over 7 days, since I was counting steps more than distance, I would have liked to have seen the step total for each day. Granted, I could calculate it by taking the distance and dividing by my stride length, so this isn't a huge issue.
• The pedometer can work in either miles/pounds or in kilometers/kgs, but you can't switch on the fly between them. So if you leave it in km for yourself and then want to tell someone else the distance travelled, there's no way to get that. Changing units requires resetting the entire unit. Not that big of a deal.

So now I'm wondering what I should do. I did rather like it. Should I replace it and look for some way to attach a better clip to it? Or should I look for a different kind of device? I wouldn't mind something like a SportBrain but I'd like one that connected to *my* computer rather than requiring a yearly (or quarterly/monthly) telephone subscription to a service based in the US.

Another possibility is the Omron HJ-105. This sounds very similar to my former SportLine 360, but it has an actual spring clip with metal which might work better. This other Omron, the Omron HJ-112 (or see this description), sounds pretty good too. It apparently doesn't necessarily need to be attached to your pants but can go in a pocket or on a purse and it has a clip and a strap. I couldn't see any way for the two Omron units to use them in Metric though. I've dropped a note to their customer support team and their Canadian contact.

Any other suggestions, ideas or comments?

[ADHD Adolescent and Adult]

Hello, my name is Michelle and I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The Beginning

Diagnosed, labelled, and forever branded. In 1978, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the psychiatrists and doctors pronounced that I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That was long before ADHD/ADD was fashionable even in North America. My diagnosis involved my being hospitalized for several months in the childrens' ward of the University of Alberta hospital while doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists tried to figure out what was "wrong" with me. They arrived at a diagnosis of ADHD only after eliminating everything else they could think of, including schizophrenia. At the time, ADHD, while known in Canada, was not often diagnosed, and it was very uncommon for it to be diagnosed in females.

What was I like before being diagnosed? Let me take you on a flashback vignette tour.

Vivid memory #1: Home, 1973
My parents have banished me to my bedroom. My mother, exhausted at trying to keep up with me, has left me alone for a bit without anything interesting around. I decide it is time to fingerpaint on the walls—with faeces.

Vivid memory #2: Back wall of classroom, 1977
I am against the back classroom wall, banging my head rhythmically, hard against the wall, and repeating "banana" ad infinitum. There is no time but the now. There is no thought but the one. I am calm. I am one.

Vivid memory #3: Classroom, 1978
The other students are learning how to print, tracing over letters in a workbook. Somehow I cannot do this. I cannot hold the pencil correctly. It hurts my hands. My straight lines look as if they suffer from Parkinson's. I feel immsensely frustrated because I cannot get a grip. The teacher tries to help. I lose it. The workbook goes flying across the room, pages torn and ripped. The contents of the desk are unceremoniously dumped on the floor. They return everything to its place. I start the destructive cycle over. This is repeated until finally nobody bothers to put the things back. They banish me to the hall. The hall wall and I are friends. I am one with my head-banging banana mantra.

I was a child with no sense of boundaries. I said whatever came into my head and did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. My parents were forever lamenting that I lacked common sense or did not think before I did anything. It was not that I did not think before talking or doing, it was that I had no cognitive processes to assess the effect of my actions and judge them as appropriate or inappropriate. The world was an endless changing kaleidoscope of sensations, leaving me bewildered about what was important or relevant, and what was not.

My parents, poorly informed and confused about me, did not know how to cope. I was bouncy, too energetic, talkative, assertive, and rapid. My mother had a nervous breakdown shortly after my initial diganosis, and she was hospitalized for several months; she blamed me.

Most of my childhood I spent shunned, alone and friendless. Confusion, fear, and intolerance surrounded me. The children in the schools I went to shunned me because I was so different, so weird. My parents did not adequately understand my problems and had some problems of their own, so I probably did not get the support I needed there. It was a very lonely and sad life, and I feel that I did not have a proper childhood.

Life on Ritalin

What was life like after diagnosis and Ritalin? I find it difficult to describe the differences as I failed to recognize them. To me, I was the same—me. However, the outside world told me there were changes. I managed to spend more time in the classroom, although I still spent probably up to almost 75% of my time outside the classroom until 1983. My academics picked up, and I could learn things in the school. By 1982, I was an honours student, and I stayed that way until I graduated from high school. Throughout the entire period, I was not a spaced-out walking automaton; I was bright, energetic, ambitious, and bouncy—known for singing during classes and other odd, endured behaviours.

Throughout my school years, other students ostracised me for being "different," for being weird. My parents tried changing school systems but the overgrown hamlet I lived in just was not that large. The kids in the Catholic school system knew the kids in the public school system. I was always an outsider and a loner and that, combined with other oddities in my home life, left me profoundly marked for life.

Life after Ritalin

I stopped taking Ritalin in 1985/86, some seven or eight years after I first started. The doctors believed that children outgrew ADHD in adolescence and there were concerns that the Ritalin was interfering with the onset of puberty. I believe the latter to be true in my case as I went from having no secondary sexual characteristics to bursting out with them in relatively short order after that.

Not too long after I stopped taking Ritalin, I moved out of home and continued my studies via distance education, night classes, and summer courses. It took me three years to finish off my last year of high school after I left home, and then I returned to traditional "class-based" education by entering university.

Life at university was very difficult for me. I spent hours and hours trying to do the assignments. I could not pay attention at lectures, often falling asleep. It was an endless, unrewarding struggle to read. I would find myself reading the same paragraph over and over again and realize that nothing had sunk in. I immersed myself in my courses all the time. I did not have any free time. My common-law husband spent hours trying to help me. I taped material. I wrote up my own summaries of material. I typed up all my notes after writing them. Studying for exams was my own personal Hell. Despite all my efforts, I was just barely passing most of my courses. It was incredibly frustrating to put all that effort in and not seem to reap any benefits.

After two and a half years like this, I was on the verge of academic probation because my grades were so low. Something had to change, and several things did: I changed my major from pre-med to computer science, and I started a part-time job as the editorial assistant for an international peer-reviewed journal. I had been actively using computers since 1981, including doing BASIC programming and helping to teach courses. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon or a psychiatrist, not a computer scientist. However, my math, chemistry and physics courses were so unrewarding and stressful for me, I thought a change to something I liked better would help.

After a semester of that, my boss (and my job) moved from one university to another university. I elected to follow my boss and my job and continued my education elsewhere. The first benefit of that was that I was now at a university more flexible in their requirements for your degree. The second was I happened to stumble across a book in the bookstore on attention deficit disorder in children, adolescents, and adults. This revelation astounded me. The doctors previously told me, and I believed them, that children grew out of their attention deficit disorder. I bought the book and devoured it. It was immediately obvious to me that my own attention deficit disorder had not just "gone away" at 16, but it had been there still all along! My unorthodox last year of high school—lasting three years— had helped to mask it so that obvious problems did not appear until many years later when I started university.

Life Again on Ritalin

I made an informed choice to start taking Ritalin again. At this point, I was doing adequately well in my computer science courses, and it was substantially less effort for me than all my hard science courses, but I was still only doing about a C+ and, if I had stayed at my previous university, my cumulative average would have still been closer to a C-. I was a lot wiser than I was as a child. I realized that I had picked up some coping strategies over the years, and it was unnecessary to take drugs continually. Instead, I stopped attending most lectures since I did not learn from the anyway. I continued making my own notes, reading the textbook, and chatting with the instructors on points that were unclear, and I took my Ritalin when I needed to prepare for exams, complete assignments, or knew I would be stressed. This combination proved remarkably effective. I went from the verge of academic probation in fall of 1992 to graduating with high honours in an honours degree in 1995, and I was awarded a prestigious federal NSERC (National Science & Engineering Research Council) post-graduate scholarship.

Life Today on Ritalin

I hate taking pills. I abhor taking medication. Hence, while I should still be taking Ritalin to help me with my graduate work, I do not take it when I know I probably should. My supervisor is aware of my problems; he trusts me to manage things on my own and puts up with my missed deadlines. I would like to be better about managing the medication effectively in my life but that possibly requires more structure than I currently have.

Following up on the above paragraph, which I wrote in December of last year (2000), I have again started trying to take my Ritalin, as needed. I have recognized that I cannot, through sheer stubborness, manage the tasks that I cannot hyperfocus on without resorting to drugs. That includes: writing up my research papers, marking essays for the courses I teach, and working on statistics and doing large amounts of heavy, structured reading. I probably rather should say that I cannot do these things in a timely fashion. It is not acceptable to take three weeks to mark ten 1500-word essays if you are not doing anything else during those three weeks. It is not acceptable to spend two years working on your thesis proposal, even if it is fifty words. I have to compromise between my hatred of medication and my need to do things—to do things well and to do them in the allotted time.

Continuing to follow up, it is now January 2003. I am still experiencing difficulties in working well on my Ph.D. Last year, before I took a three-month leave of absence from all of my responsibilities I could inveigle my way out of and retroactively intermitted for the entire year, I visited an office on campus mandated to help students with various disabilities that can impact their ability to complete their programs successfully. They apparently knew of a few ADHD people on campus, but I was the most articulate person about the disorder they had met, in that I am much more aware of the impact it has on me, which is often hard to assess when you are the one being impacted. When I go back this term to start working on my Ph.D. again, they are going to try to offer me support in the form of mentoring (someone non-critical and not directly associated with my Ph.D.) and general group support. Doing a Ph.D. is isolating at my university in England. Doing a part-time Ph.D. is even more isolating. Doing a part-time Ph.D. with ADHD makes you an island, even in a country famed for its tolerance and encouragement of eccentrics, so group support might be beneficial to help combat that.

In addition to making arrangements for support, I also took it upon myself to take a time management course (twice) and a project management course, so that I could learn about setting goals and how to better plan and allocate resources. I am hopeful that, in combination with the mentor, I will be able to make realistic goals and then be supported in meeting them, without the need to get any negative feedback from my supervisor about my lack of progress. It will also give me another, non-critical sounding board for discussions about the state of my progress; one which is wise in the ways in the university and of doing degrees, but is completely in my court and has more time to devote to supporting me than a supervisor might. I forsee that I will be forced back onto Ritalin at least on a daily basis. A set schedule will definitely help.

There are a few great ironies associated with my attention deficit disorder. The first is that I do can concentrate intently on some things. Luckily, one of those things is programming and almost any type of technical-related problem. I can concentrate on those for hours on end, often concentrating myself into a migraine, because I am focussed so intently that I do not realize that a migraine is imminent. I can focus so intently that I am oblivious to the world around me, which means I am startled easily by sounds or movement. I spend a lot of time being startled.

The other great irony is that I need to take medication but, between the intent concentration and instant distractability, it is difficult for me to remember to take the medication I need in order to remember to take the medication. If you cannot quite follow that, it means that with such a poor sense of time and an ability to be distracted easily, it is difficult to adhere to a set medication schedule, particularly with the way my life is currently structured. As I do not have to work at set hours or go to anywhere at a set time, I sleep when I get tired and then get up and start over. Taking the drugs means remembering to take them either at the same time every day or at set intervals. I remember that I used to set my watch to beep at the set intervals. I was often so intent on what I was doing, though, that I would hear the alarm go, promise myself I would take care of it immediately after I finished my current involved task, and then it would be three hours later.

Last year, I recognized that I am still experiencing difficulties in working well on my Ph.D. Last year, before I took a three-month leave of absence from all of my responsibilities I could inveigle my way out of and retroactively intermitted for the entire year, I visited an office on campus mandated to help students with various disabilities that can impact their ability to complete their programs successfully. They apparently knew of a few ADHD people on campus, but I was the most articulate person about the disorder they had met, in that I am much more aware of the impact it has on me, which is often hard to assess when you are the one being impacted. When I go back this term to start working on my Ph.D. again, they are going to try to offer me support in the form of mentoring (someone non-critical and not directly associated with my Ph.D.) and general group support. Doing a Ph.D. is isolating at my university in England. Doing a part-time Ph.D. is even more isolating. Doing a part-time Ph.D. with ADHD makes you an island, even in a country famed for its tolerance and encouragement of eccentrics, so group support might be beneficial to help combat that.

In addition to making arrangements for support, I also took it upon myself to take a time management course (twice) and a project management course, so that I could learn about setting goals and how to better plan and allocate resources. I am hopeful that, in combination with the mentor, I will be able to make realistic goals and then be supported in meeting them, without the need to get any negative feedback from my supervisor about my lack of progress. It will also give me another, non-critical sounding board for discussions about the state of my progress; one which is wise in the ways in the university and of doing degrees, but is completely in my court and has more time to devote to supporting me than a supervisor might. I forsee that I will be forced back onto Ritalin at least on a daily basis. A set schedule will definitely help.

That was last year's theory. It is now 2004 and I still feel remarkably unfocused, especially in the duller winter months. I have acquired some additional tools, like Life Balance, to help me better balance, but there is still much left to explore.

My Thoughts on ADD/ADHD

• I fervently believe I never would have gone from the verge of academic probation to graduating with high honours in an honours bachelor of science degree without controlled usage of Ritalin.

• ADHD/ADD is over-diagnosed in North America. I would have to agree with others that parents/schools are far too eager to put children on Ritalin (or other drugs) without accurately and adequately assessing these children for other disorders/problems first.

• Everybody, even me, wants a "magic bullet" to solve their problems. The truth is that most things in life are too complicated for that. For some problems behavioural interventions seem to be sufficient. For others, dietary (I have never bought into this one, but...) changes can make a difference. Other people may require a change of lifestyle. Some might need drugs. In all cases, though, design the treatment specifically for the individual so that it contains all the components the individual needs to improve their quality of life. Their quality of life should be the prime consideration, not necessarily the "ease" or "comfort" of the people around them. If we are drugging our children to make the life of teachers in school or parents at home easier, there is something fundamentally wrong in our society. We should address those underlying issues, not dope out the symptoms.

• I could have used some additional help in terms of counselling and knowledge when I was a child, as could have my parents. There was not such a vast wealth of accessible information at the time, and I have suffered because of that. Now I need EinRepair and there is a shortage of accredited EinTherapists. Better-informed teachers, doctors, psychologists, and parents are better individuals.

Hello, my name is Michelle. I am the Ein, a unique experience in the world.

[Cognomen Command]

“To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual.”
-- Erica Jong from How To Save Your Own Life, epigraph to “My posthumous life ...” (1977).

“Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.”
-- George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Dominations and Powers, bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 1 (1951).

Like most people, I had very little choice about my first name. On the day I made my grand "eingang" into the world, my parents burdened and blessed me with my first identity: Michelle A. Hoyle. Michelle—pronounced by them as mih-shell—Annette Hoyle. That is who I am. That is who I will be. That is who I was. Or is it? In my family, it was not a name that inspired—or I was not a person to inspire—nicknames. The closest thing to a nickname ever used among my relatives for me was Shell and that infrequently. Life continued this way until I was fourteen. Christmas of that year marked a turning point in my life. That is when everything hit the fan. That is when I discovered myself. That is when I became me. All these things hinged upon a single Christmas gift, possibly the best present I ever received from my parents: a 300 baud modem for my computer.

How did a humble piece of technology, no bigger than a paperback book, come to revolutionize my life so much? Communication equals empowerment. A modem opened the way for me to communicate with people who couldn't see me, but had to accept me based on what I said and how I said it. It didn't matter that I was fourteen. It didn't matter that my parents were trolls from an uranium mine shaft. It didn't matter that I didn't fit into my local social milieu in any way, shape or form. Edmonton had a very active discussion-based electronic bulletin board community. Although I didn't belong to any of the cliques there (of which there were three major ones), I had a passport that enabled me to travel seamlessly between groups. They never directly invited me to events, but I was always welcomed. I had found a much better, more accepting home than my parents had ever provided me with. This was heady stuff. I made friends, close friends, during this time. Most of the closest I'm still in contact with and still doing things with almost twenty years later. Without the affirmation and acceptance I found in this community, I probably would have just given into despair over the course of my life, most of which I felt powerless to control.

With my communication empowerment and a new electronic world vista came the realization that I needed a way to identify myself. Sure, I could use my original identity. However, in a community where the male to female ratio was 20:1, this was not such a good idea. I wasn't the only person who didn't "fit" well into society, and some other people didn't fit in dangerous ways. It was much safer and funner to take on a pseudonym, which I did for several years, choosing among several, depending on my mood that day and what/who I was trying to portray. Most of these haven't stuck much with me. As I became more well-known and better able to protect myself, I resorted back to using variants of my own name. Most people, however, are lazy. They don't want to type "Michelle" if they can type something shorter. I soon found my perfectly beautiful name shortened to "Mickey" or "Mitch." Yuck! I definitely was not a Mickey or a Mitch type of a person. No way! I needed a shorter, more acceptable name for myself, so I renamed myself Micha, pronounced mee-sha. Micha caught on like wildfire. It caught on so well that there are people I met during that period who still call me Micha, although we've been meeting regularly for the last eighteen years. Every once in awhile, I even catch EinSweetie referring to me as Micha to other people.

Why Micha? I have no idea. I mean, it's obviously related to my given name, but it's not a common diminutive form in western Alberta. I came up with the pronunciation on my own, too, and I was quite serious about that. Nothing worse than having your name mispronounced. Not too long after adopting the name, I eventually had to resort to signing my messages "Micha (mee-sha)," because people were calling me 'mish-ah' continually, which didn't have the same feel to it. Micha. I just wanted to be called Micha. No middle name. No last name. Just Micha. This was the first and the longest lasting of my name incarnations.

This business of just having one name, like Cher or Madonna, has been with me a long time. I've never liked having to refer to myself by my full name. I frequently introduce myself to people using just one name and only give them my full name if they insist. I didn't have any initial choice in my last name. I didn't pick it myself. It's hard to change on the spur of the moment, especially if you don't want one at all. Our modern culture is not set up to handle people who don't have first and last names. When I was teaching at the University of Alberta, I had a student whose name was Suliman Suliman. It turned out he had only one name, but the registrar's computers needed a first and a last name, so they just doubled up. Micha Micha sounds strange to my ears, though—vaguely reminiscent of a bad pizza chain advertisement. Later, when I attended university myself, I just introduced myself as Michelle, but the sound of the name had changed from my parents' original dubbing, taking on a distinctly Micha flavour. I was now Mee-shehl (or Mieschäl).

Probably my most successful self-invented identity is that of Eingang or Ein. I wrote a story earlier about the origins of Eingang, so I'll just briefly recap here. After many years of electronic bulletin boarding across North America, I graduated to the Internet and started chatting in real-time with people throughout the world in 1991 or 1992. Again, much like my local bulletin board community, it was wise to choose a name that might help avoid unwanted attentions from the mostly (hormone-laden) geeky world I was inhabiting. So I wanted to choose something vaguely male sounding or non-gender specific. At the time, I was travelling quite often between Canada and German-speaking areas of Switzerland. The word "Eingang" appeared all over the place: on the entrance to the highways, above doors into malls or buildings, everywhere! This word appealed to me a lot, so "Eingang"—entrance—I became. German speakers know Eingang is a masculine word, and English speakers generally don't know, so I didn't ever suffer from those unwanted attentions. Later, I decided, in retrospect, that my nickname should really fully be "Eingang des Chaos"—the entrance to Chaos—which, for those of you who know me well, is very appropriate. This is who I am now and, probably, who I will continue to be for a long time.

This is definitely an Eindentity I have constructed for myself. I am "Eingang" or "Ein" to many people, and I'm very comfortable with all my Ein Things. There are EinColours, EinFoods, and EinWords and EinPeople. It's a self-made cult. It's odd that a name I chose based mostly on sound turns out to be so right. "Ein" itself means "one," which serves to reinforce my notions of being einzigartig (literally, one of a kind) or unique. Mee-sha, Mee-shehl, Ein. I am One. I am Ein. My names, which I have altered to suit my personality, affirm who I am and what I want to be each and every day. That is the power of a name.

[Evolution of Eingang]

One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently by people is "How did you come up with Eingang as your nickname?" Here explained are the mysterious origins of "Eingang" or "Ein."

Once upon a time, in a cold, beautiful land, there lived a quirky blonde sysop named Michelle. Michelle had a long history of using electronic bulletin boards in the early 1980s, long before the days of Internet popularity. Among her many first pseudonyms or nicknames were things like The Admiral, Irish Coffee, or Desiderata, although most of those were for specific clandestine purposes. She often just used her own first name and a fine name it was. However, she had quickly discovered that using her own rather feminine name was prone to bring unwanted attentions upon her. She flitted electronically amongst a mostly (hormone-laden) geeky male world like a ghostly angel of the aether.

When the day came to join the ranks of the Internet Relay Chatters (IRC) in 1992, she didn't feel comfortable in using a feminine name. She wanted something vaguely male sounding or non-gender specific. At the time, she was travelling quite often between her beautiful, cold land and Switzerland. The areas of Switzerland she was in were German-speaking, and the word "Eingang" appeared all over the place: on the entrance to the highways, above doors into malls or buildings, everywhere!

This word appealed to her. It appealed to her a lot. So "Eingang"--entrance--she became. German speakers know "Eingang" is a masculine word, and English speakers generally don't know, so she didn't ever suffer from those unwanted attentions. Later, she decided, in retrospect, that her nickname should really fully be "Eingang des Chaos"--the entrance to chaos--which, for those of you who know her well, is very appropriate.

Now, many many years later, far away from her beautiful, cold land, she's still the Eingang or the Ein, and there are many EinThings. You might say that she has her own Eindentity!