LBnuke

Do or do not. There is no Try.
–Yoda

I am not a Jedi, so I suppose those words were not meant for me, but from what I can tell, trying = effort and everything takes effort. Therefore, there is a try.

Went to another aspie meeting on Sunday. Not sure if I liked it or not. It was nice to see the people I knew from the other meetings and meet the new people. Other than that, it was just like hanging out with any other group of people. That was very disappointing. It started out okay. A go around introduction. Not the kind of thing I generally like, but in a group like this, it seemed appropriate.

I usually like hanging out with other autistic types because different rules apply to social interaction than with most other people. At the group on Sunday, this was not the case for most of the meeting. After the go around, things got very disorganized. People were having back and forth mini-conversations, changing the topic, and generally having a “normal” group interaction. I can not do that most of the time, especially with people I do not know very well. One of the main reasons I even went to the meeting was to get a break from that kind of thing.

I am not sure how I would make it better next time. About half the people in the group did not seem to have a problem with how things were going, and the other half did not speak very much, if at all. The group leader is a great guy and he did make an attempt at giving the quiet folks a chance to speak. I appreciated it, but could not think fast enough when the opportunity was given.

It makes me worry that I will never be able to have comfortable social interactions. I like people and can usually talk with someone about a topic that I know a lot about like computers. I can process information about computers quickly. It is a language I understand.

I can not keep up with a conversation that changes focus and has no order. I do not know the rules of speaking in a group. When do I say something? Usually I try to wait until someone is done speaking, but almost always, someone else says something before I can. I hear things delayed, so there is no way for me speak right when someone else stops speaking.

It is also hard for me to say what is in my head when it is my turn to speak. The words get stuck and my mind goes blank. It takes so much effort to even spit out a basic outline of what I was thinking. I can’t just do it, Yoda. I can try. Once in a while it works. Always, it is exhausting.

The words jumble and crash in my head. I have software that lets me create flowchart-like images of what is in my mind. At the click of a button, the software will immediately turn it into a formal outline. I wish I could install that software in my brain. Do other people have a natural ability to do this? Is it something they learn? Do they already think in straight lines and not even need this software?

I will probably try another meeting. I wish I could think of a way to make it easier. I think part of the purpose of the group is to practice social interaction in an environment where others will understand the pauses and silences.

I appreciate the fact that I do not have to speak if I don’t want to. I usually don’t want to. But it is not because I don’t have anything to say. It is because I lack the ability to make my voice speak for my brain. It frustrates me terribly and even causes me to question Yoda. If Yoda does not have the answer, who does?

My friend d has written an excellent article about living with asperger’s. I can relate to much of what she said in the post and I am guessing that a lot of people who visit LBnuke will too.

The article is called about asperger’s syndrome, in plain english. Definitely worth the click

Friday night I went out to dinner with the people from the asperger’s meetup group that I’ve been to a few times. It was lots of fun. Really nice people. I liked it way better than meeting at someone’s house. Less pressure somehow and I didn’t feel trapped like I sometimes do.

The dinner was to celebrate someone’s birthday. A lot of people came. We talked about random things, which is pretty fun with a group of people who each seem to have an unusually large number of random facts stored in their heads.

The best thing about it was that I felt normal. I know that going out to dinner with a bunch of people is normal, but usually it is very uncomfortable for me. I can hardly ever keep up with conversations and half the time do not understand what I am supposed to do. If I have something to say, when is the right time to say it? I don’t want to interrupt someone who is talking and I am usually not organized enough to talk right when the little gaps in conversation occur. There isn’t enough time to process the last thing that someone said in that small amount of time and by the time I do, the conversation has moved on.

It was different in this group. It is different every time I am with a group of autistic people. The rules are different, or at least they have more leeway. There is way less fluff (words with no real purpose being constantly chattered to avoid silence). There is more patience. It is easier to keep up. I don’t think it is because people were talking any slower than in any other conversation. Sometimes that is the case in groups of autistic people, but not on Friday night. I am not exactly sure why it is easier. Maybe because there is less fluff to filter out? Does anyone have any idea what makes it easier?

I think part of it is that there is no pressure to be “normal” about things like response times, and having trouble speaking is not such a big deal. It is such a nice change from feeling completely uncomfortable and wanting to leave! My head didn’t get loud like it often does in groups of people. Usually, all voices start blending into a mishsmash of sound like if you were changing radio stations very quickly. Being confused from the mishmash makes it hard to focus and then other distractions like light, colors, people, and a million other things get mixed in too.

I don’t know why none of that happened on Friday night. It almost always happens, especially when I am with people that I don’t know very well. I wonder if it is because I was less stressed because of not having to try so hard to keep up and fit in. Whatever it is, I liked it a whole lot. I feel like I got a taste of how the other half lives. The half that can just do things easily. I like my life a whole lot and wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I do get tired of so many things things that are supposed to be easy being so hard.

On the other hand, some things that are very hard for other people are easy for me. I guess it is a tradeoff. I hate when things are not logical. It drives me crazy. For real, not like the figure of speech. People are not always logical. On the flipside of that, I love to work inside of a logical framework. It brings me a kind of peace and gives me a break from all of the things that don’t make sense.

I spend a good part of every day coding; looking at hundreds of lines of words and symbols that make complete sense. There is no ‘reading between the lines’. It is what it is. When somethings goes wrong, it is usually because of an error in logic (or syntax) that can be found and fixed. In the words of the wordpress site, ‘Code is Poetry’. I think that is true.

Autiblogger is a free blogging community for people on the autistic spectrum. Since its initial beta release last August, many new features, themes, and plugins have been added. We have moved from a very unreliable shared server to an excellent dedicated server thanks to donations from the community and lots of help from my family. Thanks everybody

A couple of new measures have been taken to fight the continuous annoyance of splogs (spam blogs). Splogs are fake blogs that are created for the purpose of either displaying ads or creating search engine traffic and search engine ranking for another website to which the splog points. At one point, Autiblogger was getting about 30 new splogs per day!

I installed an anti-splog script to block users from signing-up if thier IP address is blacklisted at spamhaus.org. That helped quite a bit, dropping the number of splogs per day to around three. Finally, I gave in and added an image captcha (challenge response test to verify that a user is human) to the sign-up page. I was really trying to avoid that due to accessibility issues, but it was hard to keep up with even a few splogs per day. I added a link to the sign-up page for users to contact me if they could not view the captcha image. At this time, splogs are down to just one every few days.

With the splog problem under control, I was finally able to add some new features and update some old ones. Today I added a flickr post bar plugin which adds thumbnails of the most recent photos from a user’s flickr account to the post-writing page, making it very easy to insert a flickr image into a blog post. I also added a LiveJournal cross-posting plugin which automatically copies new posts to a specified LiveJournal. Editing and deleting cross-posted entries causes the same changes to be made on the LiveJournal.

Other changes include an update to the Friends List feature which fixes a few bugs and an update to the admin bar that appears at the top of a user’s site when they are logged in, providing easy access to their blog administration. Unlogged users will see a link to Autiblogger and a ‘Get a Blog’ link. A Random Blog link was also added. Click on it and guess what…

If anyone would like a blog, click here to sign up. If you are interested in helping to support Autiblogger and other Autistic Planet sites, please visit the Support Autiblogger page.

Why Autiblogger 1.2.1? I was almost going to call it Autiblogger 2.0, but the changes didn’t seem large enough to warrant a whole new version number. 1.2.1 is also the current stable version of WordPress MU, which is the excellent open source application that powers Autiblogger.

I have not been able to do anything today. No work. No play. Couldn’t go out. I worked a bunch of long days and nights on the server move and the site upgrade for my client and now I am totally useless. I am pretty sure I have a bunch of work to do, but I can’t figure out what it is. I tried to make a list, but it just confused me more. K is going to help me figure it out this weekend.

My mom helped me brainstorm about ways to make money to pay for the new server and I realized (after doing tons of math yesterday) that I can actually offer people more disk space and bandwidth than I could before. I need to find at least 13 more people paying $100/year to be breaking even. Not sure how I will do that. I am considering doing a promotion of including a free blog with new hosting accounts. If I ever have time again, I will figure it all out. I also need to update my business site because it is 3 years old and WAY out of date. My demos are especially out of date and the content does not accurately describe my services anymore.

I am booked up until June, so can not take on any more website clients until then. I have 5 projects in the works, but am waiting on content for three of them. It is very frustrating to have so much to do and not be able to do anything! I wish I could at least go outside or play a video game. I can play with the kitten. That is a good thing.

I wish I could hire someone to run my brain. They would keep it organized and running smoothly, and I would do all the things that would be able to get done once it was working right. I suppose that is what a business manager does.

I am glad it is Friday. This morning I was convinced that it was Thursday and argued with K about it. I even made her check the calendar. Somehow, I missed a day this week. Not sure which one, only that it wasn’t Tuesday or Thursday.

Yesterday, me and K went to the dentist. It is hard to get me to the dentist even though we have a great dentist. He is right around the corner from my old house in Berkeley. Ever since the first time I went there, over 10 years ago, I have been asking him to pull out my top left wisdom tooth. Every time, he has some reason why it doesn’t need to come out.

After having my teeth painfully cleaned and being reprimanded for not flossing every day, the lady who looked at my x-rays said that I needed to come back and have both top wisdom teeth pulled. There is no room in my mouth for them and one of them (the one I have been trying to get pulled) is pointing sideways and doesn’t do anything except hurt when I eat carrots. I made an appointment for sometime in May. I am not looking forward to it at all, but am glad to finally get my tooth pulled. K will come with me because she rules

How come I can write this, but can’t do anything else? Except twitch. I am very twitchy today. I don’t understand how thinking works. Is it really as easy for other people as it seems? Why aren’t other people stuck in their house not even able to watch tv? I am not stupid, but somehow end up being totally useless sometimes. I did help my brother get some info about an imac earlier. I guess I’m not totally useless. I wonder why I can talk about computer stuff almost any time, even when my brain won’t do anything else. It is all very strange. Oh well, what can you do? Back to doing nothing now…