The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Yesterday I finally made the 2,000 day streak milestone on Duolingo.
I was supposed to do a quick Dreamwidth squiggle to mark the occasion but ended up crashing and hitting the sack instead. Just as well I had the morning off. Because I had churned out the day's quota of Nanowrimo words then, I did not have to feel guilty for an early bed time nor did I have to worry about making up quota next day because deficits have a habit of ballooning very very quickly in Nanoland. Unless you are a dedicated last minute sprinter, slacking off for even a couple of days can mean the difference between purple laurels and a sad blue unfinished line.


2,000 days ago back in early 2017 when I signed up for Duolingo, Petunia was still alive and quite a few of my leaf babies had not been born yet.

I had never heard of Duolingo until I came across a couple of people posting their New Year's resolutions.
Years ago I had the 100 items in 1,000 days bucket list but I no longer have the dedication for that.

So this woman said that her 2017 New Year's resolution was to learn French from scratch using Duolingo.
I googled this strange name and aside from the cute green owls and stuff, I was drawn in by the F word.

( Of Owls and Drama Llamas )

So I recommend Duo even with the army of annoying drama llamas. Not so much for what's one the box -a fun free way to learn a new language - but more its lessons in the dark art of learning good habits.

I'm not been my usual devilish serpent self. Just simply marking a significant milestone. For the first time I have got as far as a 666 day streak on Duolingo which in normal Muggle numbers is the equivalent of 1 year and 10 months in a row. Slow and steady

It is just such a pity that a site so devoted to gamification decided to remove the greatest motivation to continue daily practice. The rules used to be or maybe they still are for some of the customers that a 10 day streak earns you 1 lingot, 20 gets you 2, 100 gets you 10 lingots etc etc
Obviously by the time you are in the 500 zone the cash register goes ka-ching with a big fat 50 something coins every ten days just for showing up.
But they stopped doing that way back when I had clocked up 400 days straight.

( Plodding and pottering in the Garden of Eden )

The serpent’s record in seeking out new knowledge has been abysmal of late. I ended up abandoning a fascinating course about terrorism and counterterrorism due to that detour to Amsterdam in December. I figured I learned my lesson and should stay away from online courses until the old grey cells were back in working order.

They seemed to have turned to total mush during that overseas adventure from the very first days. Balancing the books at the end of a day’s spending proved far too taxing for this old grey serpent brain as did adding up the scores for our regular games of Scrabble. It was like the numbers kept slipping through a sieve. I just could not hold them in my head.
Such a contrast from the games at the day centre where I would keep a running total of the score and be in agreement with the official calculator version more than 90% of the time.

I had decided to start with baby steps with the online courses and chose a computer programming course based on Scratch which is designed for kindergarten kids as well as another on Crypto more for nostalgia sake than anything.
It seems most courses these days are big on video lectures. I must say I prefer good old fashioned slides since they don’t nuke my meagre 4gb monthly ration and they are so much quicker to get through.
Downloading a video is a bit like buying a book. When you get in from a library the 3 week deadline increases the likelihood of actually reading it. Buying gives the sense of having all the time in the world.
So it did not take long to rapidly fall behind. No point in downloading a whole pile of videos if you don’t get around to actually watching them.

( Too many tasty temptations )

It is now three weeks since the serpent started a certain taxation course. This is supposed to be a not so free pass out of house elf servitude and a feeble attempt to start a new life on The Dark Side

A true sign of the utter evilness was the requirement to be in possession of a Windoze laptop as the goblin software was incompatible with any other operating system. Most peeved indeed was the Izzie. Any cold hard cash to be spent on tech gadgets would have been better devoted to an upgrade of the ancient 2002 little red Nokia or preferably some cute bright shiny new tablet thingie.

So had been on the prowl since mid January for something cheap and cheerful with a deadline of two days before start of class on Thursday 21st February. The cute little silver touch screen ASUS 11 inch model that seemed the best compromise between portability, price and performance got a big F due to the absence of a DVD drive. Oh it was so easy to be tempted to upgrade from the under $500 budget to some bright shiny sparkly blingish thing but this serpent resisted. After all anything with Windoze would only ever be a Portkey of last resort due to the inherent awfulness

Had eyed up a couple of Acers but the geeks at Whirlpool said that anything from Acer is a pile of shit and they have appalling after sales service. They also like to indulge in dodgy cash back gimmicks. Been there and done that already with Apple back in 2005 and it left a most sour taste indeed

In the end had to settle for a Toshiba with an AMD processor even slower than the infamous Celery. After all this was supposed to be some basic workhorse model. Being windoze it would most definitely be not advisable to do much online due to the risk of all sorts of nasty viral infections. But Murphy’s Law declares that no matter how long and how hard you look the minute you buy some gadget it will be on sale a week later. Yesss. The very same computer was $50 cheaper the very next week in Dick Smith. But even worse they had a new ASUS model with a DVD drive with a proper Pentium Intel chip and 4GB ram for the same price the serpent paid for the pissy little AMD device. Was most peeved indeed

At this stage the class had already started and the teacher had gotten through three pages of putting stuff in the database while Izzie was still waiting for the infernal thing to load. Was ever so peeved. At this rate would need to turn the infernal thing on some 30 minutes before start of class. So along with the frustrating efforts at learning the ins and outs of Windoze 8 there was nothing but disdain for this infernal machine. The fact that another student also had problems getting the thing to start counted for nothing

Then finding the junk mail leaflets will all those Dick Smith specials two days later just added insult to injury. It was only the second visit to do the assigned homework that changed things a teeny weeny bit. This time it took less than a minute for the thing to load. Maybe the first time is different. So this nasty little black Goblin box turns out to be suitable for its intended purpose after all. But the one or two attempts at doing stuff online were an exercise in frustration. Could not install Google Chrome quick enough to avoid the awfulness that is Evilnet explorer and quick on this snailish goblin box turned out to be a good 40 minutes. But that could also be due to the wonderful internet connection courtesy of Vodafail

This Windoze 8 trail of trashy tiles was so obviously an attempt to catch up on the whole Smartphone apps thing. Even turning the infernal thing off is a bit of a ritual. It seems designed to be used as a touch screen and using the more basic laptop track pad is rather an exercise in frustration. Finding the path to invoke the off button is a right little ritual in itself. Its appearance seems to be rather random

Figured it might be possible to use this black goblin box for next month’s Camp Nano squiggling but then thinks that there is most likely no already installed word processing program. Not even some basic text edit gadget.
A bit more poking about revealed a pretty basic program that uses RTF so at least it is compatible with the Big Mac. There seems to be no autosave so that sucks. Must test transferring a few files with a USB stick before spending too much time with the thing
Anyway after becoming addicted to Scrivener, everything else is not worth the bother. Will stick to the tried and true rituals of plotting, planning. outlining and old fashioned emerald ink squiggling away from the desktop and then typing up the day’s inspiration some time at night.

The course itself is quite interesting. Was ever so amused at the special categories of tax deductions including the list of things that sex workers can claim against tax which include condoms, frilly knickers, make up, laundry and wages to pay bodyguards

It sure helps to be doing DIY tax returns for the last 19 plus years. Loving that the software that does all the hard work. Figured it might be a good idea to add a certain serpent to the database along with all the hypothetical homework clients. So adding bits as they come along meaning that for once there will be no last minute rush to have the infernal thing completed by the witching hour on 31st October. This week we were doing employment termination payments so that will be most relevant indeed

There are a handful of nuts in this class but will save that sad saga for another day. It is such a pity the text book and tax legislation that we are supposed to bring every week along with the laptop weigh half a ton. It means having to return straight to the Lair after the class to dump the infernal things
There’s a big barn garden store just across the road so it sucks the logistics of lugging all that stuff about makes a visit very impractical

Izzie must be a most mad and masochistic creature. Not sufficient to be engaged in a battle with a toxic toad, the serpent refused to abandon her Camp Nano plans to devote resources to the war of words at work. On the one hand it was rather draining but on the other the determination to continue was a way to stop her meddling in sacred territory. To chicken out would have been to let her win. She had to make do with second best by taking over half of the 54,000 word count.

But there’s more. This serpent is a glutton for punishment. A certain cat introduced Izzie to a feast of freebies in what can only be described as Hogwarts for wannabee geek and freaks. No magical ability whatsoever is required just the desire to learn stuff for the sake of it.
Still not quite worked out the business model of this most marvelous Magical Academy

This is no fluffy bunny new age stuff but seems to be proper courses with real homework and very well structured lesson and course materials.

Managed not to be too greedy and signed up for only four courses. But one just happened to start during the last week of Camp Nano

Lazy Izzie figures that it should be no problem at all to slack off until Monday 3rd September and then do a big catch up. Skimmed through the slides and pdf files and was surprised to discover how much of it seemed to be indecipherable gibberish that made sense only to geeks or geniuses. Turned out that the lecturer’s spoken comments on the course videos were the key to decoding all those creepy mathematical magical formulae.

( The Dinosaur Code )

In the meantime, there’s lectures to watch and puzzles to solve. Still waiting for the Eureka moment where all the pieces of the jigsaw finally fall into place
It is so so true what a certain Cat has observed. The very fact that some new stuff to be learned is ‘insanely challenging’ is precisely what makes the end reward so great if one can persevere and finally put two and two together.

And it's not like Izzie will ever use this stuff. It is maybe a harmless way of harnessing the hunting and hoarding instinct.

*slinks off to sign up for more hairy scary courses^

One of the joys of having a sort of serpent sabbatical was the opportunity to visit the university open days. While still in zombie mode was simply too exhausted to attend the local one. For the very first time in about seven years had not indulged in this annual ritual. Had gotten our serpent snout in the Chemical Centre not once but on two separate occasions last year. This had been the major incentive last time. Had been eying up the place for years and years and waiting for the one annual chance to sneak a peek

But having ditched the toad only in the last week or so, the old serpent spark had returned. The zombie form became reanimated. So instead of the usual staying at Petunia’s place on Saturday night and staying curled up in the serpent sack until at least 11am, remained at the Lair that night instead and was out and about by 7am in the morning. Most unusual indeed and a very good sign. Such an early start would be necessary due to last year’s experience of missing not one but three buses going to the university as they were all packed like sardines from the very first stop.
It was so good to feel awake and alive again. Even the miserable drizzling rain was insufficient to put a dampener on the big day of adventure

It turned out that there was no need after all to go to the first stop at this early bird hour as no more than a dozen prospective students boarded at that stage but it was best not to take chances. So no regrets. It also meant having more time to plot and plan the grand adventures before the official opening at 10am

Last year turned up around midday and picked up a program only to discover that I had just missed the intriguingly titled talk in the arts faculty “Expelliarmus - active Latin from medieval to modern times and beyond”

So that was most definitely not going to happen this time. The there was the obligatory ‘Magic of Chemistry’ show which is so good that it is worth seeing twice in the one day. Decided that once a year would be sufficient since there are so many temptations and so little time to indulge in them all

So found the arts building and watched two peacocks strutting about in a small sort of quadrangle. There were a few geeks showing off their collection of medieval replica swords and some strange sword like objects that did not look particularly lethal at all. Asked what they were for since they would not be much use for lopping off heads or hands. It turned out that they were training swords and were modeled from illustrations in medieval manuscripts.
By then it was time to look for those wand waving Latin mavens. Was so looking forward to this lecture in spite of holding a deep detestation and loathing of Latin. It is clunky and ugly and is best left for Gregorian chant where at least it does sound beautiful and you don’t have to see the ugliness on the page.

( Accio, Lumos and other useful magical charms )