Technology - Terrible or Terrific?

Isn't technology great? I can come into my office, sit down at my computer and within seconds be in a meeting with co-workers elsewhere in the world. Recently however it's been more of a problem than an asset! 

It started last week. One of the publications I write for has a monthly meeting of the editorial board in the chat room of our mailing list at Yahoo. Whilst we were in the meeting I received a number of private messages inviting me to check out some woman or some photos - you can guess the content of those sites! I ignored the first couple, but when it happened for a third time I thought, this is a restricted mailing list and it is possible that little ones are reading what's happening (work-at-home-parents know that work is often undertaken with your arms around the child sitting on your lap right?) and so it isn't acceptable to have these messages popping up. After the meeting I sent a message to the correct section of Yahoo about abuse of the system and received a terse reply telling ME to read the rules! This is an on-going saga and I'll let you know how it progresses. It really isn't good enough that this abuse of the system isn't policed in some way. I rarely use ICQ anymore because my ICQ number is only given to family and friends, and anyone who wants to ICQ me must get my acceptance first of all. Even my husband had to do it. But somehow people offering me pornographic material can by-pass the system completely and get the message straight onto my screen. I have no objection to people looking at adult material if that's what they want to do - that's their business - but when it comes onto my computer, it becomes mine!

Then on Wednesday this week, I had other chatting problems. I hold a twice-weekly chat session for my pregnant-tips site and this week it wouldn't allow me into the room! In fact, it wouldn't allow me into the site so I wasn't even able to post a message canceling the chat due to technical problems. Grrrr! I thought my luck was really out on Friday when I tried to access a training session for another site I work for and it took about six minutes for the chat room open its doors for me. This technology stuff is great, except when it goes wrong!

Jake is already showing signs of being interested in the keyboard. At the moment he just wants to bang on the bits his arms can reach when he's sitting on my lap but I'm sure it wont be long before he's wanting to do more than that. I've heard that there are special keyboards you can buy for little ones so I'll be on the look out for one of those in a couple of years or my keyboard will be contacting the "Laptop Union" about abusive users! LOL

Katie-Anne, 2001