Kirrily "Skud" Robert is not her real name. Kirrily Robert is her real name and Skud is her nickname.

There, I corrected that for you.

Lifelines

It's console based, but it's fairly powerful for that. Once you learn the navigation keys (and there's a help window at the bottom of the screen), then you can walk up and down your family tree with ease. It reads in GEDCOM, allows you to edit those records as GEDCOM (so you have a lot -- perhaps too much -- freedom in record structure and normalisation), and it exports in GEDCOM as well, as well as a scripting language which allows for all sorts of reports and outputs. You can even tell it to keep records in UTF8.

It is a record/database manipulation program: you will need to gather your data yourself, and enter it by hand. While the actual entry process is tedious (which, to be frank, will always be the case, flashy GUI or not), it is a good opportunity to go over the data and discover incongruities and patterns.)

I happen to be on secondment.

From EngIT. :-)

That counts. If Unimelb EngIT does your desktop support, trust me; it counts.

Depends. There's some confusion, now. There's a big IBM system being commissioned below me in Queensberry st, but I've just been told that it's for different things, and that this announcement might be for another, different, new IBM installation.

I used to be in CSSE, but I'm seconded to ITS right now. (That should be enough to identify me uniquely to those in the right circles...)

As for CSSE moving... that's been on-again-off-again for years, but last I heard it's definitely on-again. With deadlines and everything.

OK, hands up all you Unimelb peons...

I wouldn't be surprised if the AC and I are within twenty meters of each other.

Who would have thought that sysads might read /.

Careful, there, mate. I think you may have put the shiny side of the tinfoil the wrong way round this morning.

You are correct, it's in the University of Melbourne.

In fact, it is about two floors directly underneath me as I type this.

"Face blindness".

It is not a blindness of the eyes, it is a blindness of the brain. I cannot visualise faces. None. I cannot describe to you my own wife's face, nor those of my children. I can recognise them, but that is handled in a different part of the brain.

It is just as real, just as organic, as colour blindness.

"Auditory Processing Deficit".

I cannot filter multiple sound sources properly. The Cocktail Party Effect does not exist for me. It is not a deafness of the ears, it is a deafness of the brain.

And it is just as real, just as organic, as tinnitus.

Every man and every woman is a star... but stars are yet of the universe, and each star is in orbit around other stars.

While I am the master who makes the grass green, my head is not so big as to carry rocks inside it.

I am not my body, or my brain. But I am of them. And this is not a mere function of ‘personality’. My brain works differently from yours. You can perceive things which I cannot. It is that simple. You may as well tell me to see in gamma rays as to be able to notice subtle emotions on another's face.

Change is easy -- when you are physically capable of doing so. I can not think like you, but I can learn to look like I do. Which I have done, but it is not a matter of ‘changing’ my personality, but of hiding those things I cannot do.

So you are an Ásatrúar. In what manifestation then, do you see Óðinn? Is He the Blood God, harsh and demanding of sacrifice, or is He the One-eyed, questing for knowledge and wisdom? Because from your exchange here, Huginn and Muninn would blunt their beaks trying to penetrate your skull.

You do not understand Asperger's, or people with it. You think you do, but you are wrong.

An explanation is not an excuse. A reason is not a license.

Some people are just arseholes. And, shock, most of those are NTs. You're doing a pretty good impersonation right now, yourself.

I assume, then, that the face blindness is also a choice. Or the Social Anxiety (I know full well that there is nothing to worry about intellectually, but that doesn't stop my body having a panic reaction.) Or the Auditory Processing issues. Or, or, or...

Asperger's is a real condition, with real consequences. Those consequences can sometimes be mitigated, with practice and training, but those are workarounds: we really do not think in the same way that you do, we do not react in the same way that you do, even if we have learned to pass as NT.

It is a constraint on our behaviour, just as being male (I presume) is a constraint on yours. Unless you are a practising Thelemite, in which case you might have the first vaguest foggy glimmer of how hard it is to willingly change an innate trait.

Go ahead, tell a gay man that it's just a matter of willpower, and he can be straight if he really really tries.

And I hope that your obvious ignorance never comes back to bite you. Who am I kidding: you're NT, and have the privilege of being able to demand that I act like you, and feel like you're simply being reasonable. You have the privilege of being normal... so shut the fuck up about what it's like to not be normal, 'k?

No, it's not. It's really really not.

Please shut up before your ignorance embarrasses yourself further.

Words of someone who got lucky.

So it worked for you. Huzzah.

How many other kids do you think tried that sort of thing, and got seven kinds of shit beaten out of them? And then got it worse afterwards for daring to stand up?

What happens when you get someone who is willing to risk an elbow to the throat? And/or is simply better than you at head-kicking?

How about you try to think of a way of addressing this problem which doesn't hold the victim responsible for their own victimisation?

PS: and fuck whoever thought this was 'insightful'.