<fills count="2">
  <fill>
    <patternFill patternType="none"/>
  </fill>
  <fill>
    <patternFill patternType="gray125"/>
  </fill>
</fills>

If you create three custom fills, and do not include the “none” and “gray125″ as the first two fills, Excel 2007 will ignore the first two fills and treat them as “none” and “gray125″.

It only took me about two and a half hours and playing with why my two custom styles were either coming out with a no background or a gray125 background before I added a third style and that one worked. I should have been clued in when documents saved by Excel 2007 always inserted the “none” and “gray125″ fills.

I don’t know if it’s bad reporting, or miscommunication from those involved, or weird thinking by those involved, but this story leaves be a bit confused.

The stated problems are 1) third graders are not at the proper reading level, and 2) students are not scoring well on tests (with the implication being that kindergarten students are the ones scoring poorly).

The solution: an iPad for each of the school’s 250 kindergarten students. Clearly this will not help those third graders, but maybe those third graders have been deemed a lost cause? I’m not suggesting the kindgarten students shouldn’t received potentially better schooling methods. Whether the iPad will improve things, however, the school won’t know until they get test results.

One teacher says the iPads “give her 19 students more immediate feedback and individual attention than she ever could.” I’m guessing this is because if they do assignments on the iPad, the iPad can let them know what answers they got correct and incorrect. I do believe there is a place for software in the classroom for this reason, if the software is done right. I’d also like to see free, open source software, but I’m expecting they’ll be using expensive learning software.

I wonder, do the iPads follow the kindergarteners to first grade?

With computers, the Internet and the Web, people on the spectrum are able to start telling their experiences in life. I find it interesting to read the experiences of others on the spectrum and see just how similar their experiences are to my own. Within the past few years, I’ve gone from seeing myself as someone abnormal in a world of normal people, to seeing that there are plenty of people out there just like me.

Today at work was a good example of where my mindset operates differently from the neurotypical mindset.

Background

To give a bit of background, I had to call a company to have some electronic files be recreated on their server, so I can download them. Downloads have to be done over modem, and the hosting server will delete a file after it has been downloaded. However, we get random disconnects, with the server sometimes deleting a file we haven’t finished downloading.

I’ve had to call in about having a file regenerated before. Sometimes I need two or more files regenerated, with each file being for one of our four hospitals. When you call, you have to provide information related to your hospital. This means after giving the information on getting one file regenerated, I have to say, “By the way, we have another hospital that needs a file regenerated.” I’ve tried different methods, such as mentioning early in the call that I need files for multiple hospitals, but it’s never easy for me.

Due to an error with the company testing an upgrade, we didn’t get files for a week. This meant I needed to call and request they regenerate a week’s worth of files. For each of the four hospitals. We needed seven days worth for one hospital, and five days for the other three. That alone can make things confusing. It’s hard enough sometimes getting the right day’s file regenerated, so what if the different dates cause even more confusion? That would mean having to call again!

I knew the background would be longer and more wordy than I’d like…

Placing the call

Placing a call isn’t a simple matter of picking up the phone and dialing the number. It requires mental preparation. It can take as long as 45 minutes of mental preparation before picking up the phone. (This time is spent working on other things.) The less certain I am of how the phone call will go, the longer it takes to prepare. And each call to this company seems to require I give different information, or I always need the one thing I forgot to include during preparation of writing down all the information I’ll be asked for.

I decided that since one hospital needed seven days of files regenerated, and the others needed five, I’d split it up into two calls. (How fun!)

I placed the first call, knowing that because it’s afternoon, there would be a wait before someone answered the phone. Waiting at this point is always difficult for me. I’ll put the phone on speaker so I can hear when someone picks up, but I can’t work very well in the meantime, because I’m expecting at any moment to have to pick up the receiver. And whenever the automated message thanking me for waiting comes on, I think someone has answered the phone. It plays once every minute or two.

There was actually no wait time, which caught me off guard. That was a strike right there. I didn’t expect someone to answer right away in the afternoon. Thankfully she asked for information I had right in front of me.

The call went well enough. The seven files for the one hospital were queued to be regenerated, and I ended that call. Then the horror struck: What if I get the same person when I call back later? Panic. What if she asks why I didn’t just ask for the other hospitals’ files to be queued while on the phone the first time around? Panic. I don’t think I’ve ever talked with the same person twice when calling there, but I’ve probably never called twice in one day before. There might be a very good chance I’ll get the same person. Panic!

The second call

It wasn’t going to be a simple 45 minute preparation for the second call. Not with this in mind. It would be at least an hour, with heavy breathing, and an empty feeling in my chest. Thankfully, in that hour, I managed to think of a story I could tell in case it’s the same person. Essentially, “It turns out we have three more hospitals that need files queued.” And that much is true enough. Regardless of whether I knew about them when I placed the first call, there were three more. I was about ready to make that second call.

Okay, just a few more breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. And out. Reach for that phone, and—

In the next cubicle over, a co-worker’s cell phone rang. I froze up as she answered the phone. It was a past co-worker calling, so the conversation went on a little.

One of the difficulties I have is in picking out one person speaking when two are speaking. With that co-worker talking on the phone, I would be unable to distinguish the words of the person I would be talking with. In a flash, I had reverted back to heavy breath, empty chest, unable to make a call. The co-worker’s conversation went on for a while, and when it finally ended, I was back to needing to relax my mind before I could even consider placing that call.

Eventually, I was ready to make that call (or as ready as I would be). I placed the call, and there was no wait time. The person who answered the phone was–who else?–the same person as earlier! That was enough to get my mental capabilities going haywire for a moment.

Somehow I made it through the call. I felt I fell flat on my face a couple of times, but I seemed to manage. I was “ma’am” at one point, but I get that all the time on the phone. Even when I give my name as “Christopher” rather than “Chris”, I’ll still be “ma’am”. (I went with “Chris” on these two calls.)

This whole phone thing: does it ever get any easier?

The problem with the latter is that it renders files such as robots.txt as a wiki page at http://example.com/Robots.txt. This can be avoided by using MediaWiki’s extensions capability.

To get around this issue, I wrote an extension.

Note: This license is released under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

<?php

if( !defined( 'MEDIAWIKI' ) ){
    die( "This is not a valid entry point.\n" );
}

#################################
## ADD FILES TO PASS THRU HERE ##
#################################

// A list of files MediaWiki should load from file.  These must be in the same
// folder as MediaWiki executes from.
$passThroughFiles = array(
    'robots.txt',
    'favicon.ico'
);

#################################
## DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BELOW  ##
#################################

$wgExtensionCredits['parserhook'][] = array(
    'path' => __FILE__,
    'name' => "Pass File Through",
    'description' => "Passes specified files through, rather than trying to render an article.",
    'version' => 1.1,
    'author' => "Christopher Fritz",
    'url' => "http://kurifuri.com/mediawiki-passthroughfile-extention",
);

$wgHooks['BeforeInitialize'][] = 'passFileThrough';

function passFileThrough( &$title, &$article, &$output, &$user, $request, $mediaWiki ) {

    global $passThroughFiles;
    define( 'NonPassReturnValue', false ); // should this be true or false?

    $file = $title->mUserCaseDBKey;

    // Skip this page if we didn't specify to load a file for it.
    if ( !in_array($file, $passThroughFiles) ) {
        return NonPassReturnValue;
    }

    // Don't try loading this file if it doesn't exist.
    if ( !file_exists($file) ) {
        return NonPassReturnValue;
    }

    include($file);
    exit;
}

?>

Copy this text and save it in the extensions folder as pass_file_through.php.

Add the following to the bottom of LocalSettings.php:

require_once( “$IP/extensions/pass_file_through.php” );

By default, the extension only supports robots.txt and favicon.ico, but others can be added.

My PHP is rusty, and I’m not read up on MediaWiki’s programming guidelines for whitespace and layout. If you see anywhere that this extension can improve, feel free to leave a comment and let me know!

The e-mail was still on in my ~/Mail folder, but not in KMail. I was able to find it again by going into “Settings” > “Configure KMail”, and to the “Accounts” section.

Here, under “Receiving”, I had “Gmail” with all three “Retrieval Options” checked, but “Local Folders” had only “Include in Manual Mail Check” and “KMail Folders” had nothing checked. I checked “Include in Manual Mail Check” on the latter, and “Check Mail on Startup” on both, then closed and re-opened KMail. All my missing e-mails are back!

I’m sure I could have just clicked on “Check Mail” rather than restarting KMail, and I might want to uncheck some of those options I checked (for better performance), but for now I’m glad to just have my missing e-mails accessible again.

Besides the obvious reason (my Boox cannot view DRM-encumbered files), notice this passage from a scene involving Marie, Clara (Clärchen), and Nutcracker. Fritz is asleep in bed, and does not appear in this scene. I’ve added red and blue colors to highlight what I’m referring to.

Thankfully I can unzip the file, correct this error, re-zip it, and continue. Some people might say to just pretend it says “Nutcracker”, and move on, but I’m weird in that I couldn’t continue reading these past two weeks until I took the time to fix it.

Did you know Linux (as far as I can tell) has no program to create MPO files, storing JPEGs in as MPF? After a weekend of learning about JPEG and Exif and such, I put together a C++ program to take two JPEG images from my Nikon D40 and combine them into an MPO. Below is the result.

These photos appear in 2D on a computer screen, but save them to an SD card in the folder “DCIM/100NIN03/” (the “100NIN03″ may potentially us different numbers from one Nintendo 3DS to the next; I haven’t looked into this), and you’ll be able to view them in 3D on the 3DS.

You can also view and download these photos in various formats on my 3D Porch page.

Just right-click a photo and save it. (Make certain it’s saved with an MPO extension, such as “346_0001.MPO”.)

How did I go so long without watching a Tinker Bell movie? I figured they would be dumbed-down movies for little kids.

I bought Mulan on DVD (at least, I think this is the one I was watching at the time), and saw their little segment about “pirating” (why do they put those anti-pirating messages on the DVD that I bought and paid for?) I really liked the animation, but figured they just went all out making an anti-pirating commercial for people who buy Disney’s expensive DVDs.

At one point, I decided to check out the trailers, and saw one for the second Tinker Bell movie. Seeing Tink suit up (in the outfit shown above) and head toward a broken down pirate ship made me think, “Wow. Maybe I should give this movie a try…”

About a month prior to this, I had seen a co-worker’s desktop wallpaper on her work computer with Tinker Bell and other fairies. I had wondered where those fairies were from, and now I know.

I picked up the first Tinker Bell movie, and enjoyed it. I’ve now seen the second, and enjoyed it even more. I have the third waiting to be watched, and will definitely be picking up the fourth when it comes out.

Screen capture © Disney. Screen capture is used for illustrative purposes.

First Contact

The person who contacted me likely knew of me though my Pokémon web site I ran back then. He provided a link to Wikipedia’s article on Asperger’s syndrome. Considering that article was started February 3rd, 2002, and I moved back to California at the end of 2005 or start of 2006, it was within that range, likely sooner rather than later. I figure it was around 2003 or 2004 when the person contacted me. The date doesn’t matter, though. Trying to piece together dates is one of my oddities, but I’ll spare this post any of that.

I wish I knew this person was who had contacted me. I had never heard of Asperger’s syndrome before, and reading that page on Wikipedia was a miniature revelation, to see how many things listed there lined up with “me”. However, I had a personal stigma with the label of “autism” due to autism and mental retardation being used interchangeably in some contexts at high school. I wasn’t ready to label myself as an “Aspie”. I thought, “Yeah, this sounds similar to me, but that’s all.”

It was at the end of 2005 when I had to reevaluate my life. I hadn’t had a serious job yet. Beyond that, I had this mindset that I couldn’t get a job until I finished college. But I couldn’t go to college until I could afford it. I know, that’s a super-limited outlook on life, but Aspies are known to have such limited views at that time in their life. It’s not an excuse for not having a proper job until I was 26, but when I would later learn that this was part of “my mindset” at the time, it would stand as an explanation for “the way I was”. Looking back, I can say, “I can’t believe my view of the world was so limited then, but I can understand it now.”

Need for a Change

I was living with my older brother in Arizona at the time of my life reevaluation. He inquired on my progress toward looking to learn to drive or to getting a job (I forget which). At the time, I hadn’t really gone back to reading up on Asperger’s, so I hadn’t learned about just how limited my mind was compared to “normal” people, known as “neurotypical” or “NT”. Various things had recently happened in my life, and my brother’s inquiry was what made me tell myself, “I have to change.”

I knew my limitations. I knew things like driving would remain impossible. I had to focus on where I knew I could make progress. My father had told me some months before that he could get me a job interview where he worked, at Sharp HealthCare. Since job openings are posted there, he knew whenever there was an opening for a low-level position. Even though talking on the phone was nearly impossible for me, I picked up that phone, called my father, and asked if he could still get me an interview.

I lucked out that there were two jobs to interview for. One would have me doing simple things like filling papers in printers, which would be an easy “get your foot in the door” job, which a person should move up and out of after six months. I knew if I were in that position, I would have trouble moving beyond it. But it would still be a start. However, it would also be the type of job where I’d be answering phone calls, such as when someone called in to say a printer wasn’t working. I don’t recall how much of this I knew before the interview.

The other job interview was for something computer-based. It involved essentially taking batches of insurance payments posted to patient accounts, checking for errors in the automated posting, and correcting them. With me in that position, the hope would be that I wouldn’t simply do the job, but would use my self-taught computer programming (having learned PHP programming for my web site I’d manned for five years, although C++ and VB6 are what I’d find myself using at work) to streamline and improve the process. I wouldn’t be among the computer programmers at work. Instead, I would be in a data-entry unit, but I would have some of the tools necessary to do programming work available to me.

Try telling someone they can either interview for a job where they’d have to do something impossible for them (for me, communicating with others and answering a phone) versus interviewing for a job where they can do their hobby. Which will be picked?

I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t get either job. I don’t know where I’d be today if I got that entry-level job. Thankfully for me and for my desire to improve myself, I got the data-entry job which would involve software programming.

First Steps

Starting at Sharp wasn’t easy. I was surrounded by a lot of people, which can be overwhelming for the Aspie, or “AS”. Of course, I had pretty much forgotten about Asperger’s by then. All that mattered was that I knew my limitations, and would be facing them. I would have to communicate with my co-workers, especially the person who did this position’s data correction before me. I would also find myself having to use the phone (until I found a method to get the information I needed without having to make a call).

That co-worker played a big part in helping ease things for me. When it was found we both played Final Fantasy video games, that gave us a common interest to talk about. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, which made him comfortable to talk with, even though I still had difficulty communicating with others.

Over time I would slowly push myself to talk more to co-workers, and to joke about things. There would be difficulties, such as our once-a-year All-Staff Assembly, or having to stand in front of a hundred people to accept an employee-of-the-month award, but those events are spread out far.

Not Alone

It was in October of 2008 when I met someone online who, like me, had learned about Asperger’s syndrome, and had a revelation that the description fit her. If I remember right, she wasn’t willing to label herself as AS at the time, either. I wouldn’t know this about her until later on, though. Maybe it was halfway through 2009?

Somehow she knew I was an AS without knowing it. She just knew I wasn’t like “normal” people. I also found her easy to communicate with. This familiarity and ease of conversation kept us in communication for the rest of 2008 and through 2009, before Asperger syndrome finally came up as a topic.

I’m reminded of that person who had instant messaged me on AIM some years before. Did he read my postings on my Pokémon site, and realize that I was “like him”? I wish I knew who that was, as maybe he and I could be friends. If at the time of his contacting me I was ready to truly realize my difference from NT people, maybe he and I would have become close friends at that time.

Acceptance

It was after this new friend mentioned Asperger’s to me that I started to reevaluated it. With a bit of prompting on my part, she admitted to having various traits which I then pointed out I also had. The more similarities we had, the more easy it was to accept we were not “normal”, or more specifically, not NT. Add later to this a bit of reading articles on Asperger syndrome in the Asperger’s Diary articles, and similar writings, and I was finally able to say, “I’m am Asperger’s. Asperger’s is me.”

In the past, it was easy to look at a bullet list of “Asperger traits” and say, “these ones don’t match me,” but meeting another AS makes it clear that the similarities far outweight the differences. It may sound wishywashy to say, “autisum is a spectrum, and not all Asperger’s will have the same symptoms,” but it’s really no different than ten people who love pizza all prefering different toppings. There also tends to be marked differnces between males and females, but that’s true for the NT as well.

(Some of) My Asperger’s Bullet Points

So which bullet points are me? I won’t list all my oddities here, but rather just some of the major ones that I face. I’ll work off of a list from Michael John Carley’s book, “Asperger’s from the Inside Out”.

1) Intense absorption in a topic or field of interest.

This certainly doesn’t excluse the NT crowd, so I often wonder about this one being included in these lists. Sure, I can do computer software programming all day at work, all night at home, and be ready to talk about it with others who’ll just be confused about my rambling on and on, but isn’t this true about everyone with a hobby of theirs? Doesn’t a photographer enjoy photography intensely? Doesn’t a piano player practice every day, and have his face light up when talking about his latest composition?

I’ll skip over point one.

2) Inability to read nonverbal communications such as facial expressions, body gestures, and shifting vocal tones.

I’ve always been more comfortable communicating via text, such as e-mail and instant messenger. I didn’t realize it until I read about it, but I really don’t get body language at all.

When I started working at Sharp, I was talking with one co-worker, and she commenting on another co-worker I worked near being a nice person, and was winking an eye repeatedly upon saying this. I probably had a dumbfounded look on my face at that time. This was long before I’d start to see improvements, as I had barely started down that path, so it was impossible for me to ask why she was winking her eye. Four years later, I can’t go and inquire about it, of course. This will simply be one of the many mysteries of nonverbal communication in my life.

Identifying my shortcomings has lead to being able to work around them, but this is one that I can’t seem to grasp. Even after researching body gestures and the like, I still can’t get a handle on them.

3) Discomfort or inability at small talk. Sees no logic in it.

This is a big one for me. The rules of social interaction state that when you see a co-worker, you engage in small talk. I don’t “get” small talk. I couldn’t participate in small talk to save my life. I don’t even know what small talk is.

If you greet me at work, and you start up a bit of small talk, and all I can do is look away and not reply, it is not an intention to be impolite. It’s me being unable to comprehend the situation and not knowing how to respond, trying and failing to think of what to say, finding it impossible to give a reply.

4a) Difficulty in recognizing faces.
4b) Poor ability at eye contact.

I haven’t yet seen these two associated regarding AS, but I’m putting them together for a specific reason.

I was telling a co-worker the other day, actually, about how I cannot recognize faces easily, but voices I’m good with. While going over this list from the book with my AS friend, and her saying about how it’s the same with her where she cannot easily recognize faces, but is better with voices, I had a thought. It’s something I haven’t seen suggested anywhere yet, though I imagine it has been somewhere.

Eye contact is impossible for me. I can manage it sometimes, but I get nervous, and am unable to keep it up. I simply cannot look a person in the face. If I need to, I’ll focus on something other than the eyes, but I’m sure I more often than not have my head turned, my eyes on something off to the side. It’s wonderful when the topic is something on the computer screen so I can focus on that instead. But that’s starting to be a tangent there.

My thought is this: The reason I cannot recognize faces very well is probably because I am never looking at them. If I’m always looking away from someone’s face, then how can I not suffer from “face-blindness”? And since I’m looking away, more focus goes into what the person is saying. I might have difficulty understanding the words, but the voice becomes stronger as my hearing is more active than my seeing regarding this person.

5) Motor skill issues such as illegible handwriting and poor coordination, balance, and bodily rhythm.

My teachers back in school must have felt I was uncaring in the effort I put into my work due to how messy my writing is. Thankfully typing on a computer doesn’t have that issue.

As for coordination and balance, I am terribly clumsy. Always have been and likely always will be. I don’t mind it.

6) Says whatever comes into their head, unaware of the potential damage the statement might cause.

I’ll just say this has caused problems for me, and move along without citing any examples. Being unable to say anything is an advantage here.

7) Sensory issues: difficulty processing certain types of lighting, certain smells, tastes, fabrics, or noises.

The All-Staff Assembly for work gets worse every year. I enjoy the event itself, but it has its negatives. After getting off the bus, the entrance to the San Diego Convention Center is surrounded by Sharp employees shaking plastic clappers so there are many loud hums of plastic clapping together while everyone there is screaming out as loud as they can.

Last year, I had just watched the Karate Kid movies, so as I went past the loudness, tried to shut off my senses, and just focus on the repeated phrase, “The sun is warm. The grass is green.” I managed to get through the noise.

This year, I don’t think I thought of anything. I just visually mapped out my path to walk, then closed my senses, save for seeing the path to walk to reach that entrance. Everything else faded away. When I “came to”, I was halfway across the large convention center hall inside, with my ears ringing, my heart pounding, my breathing heavy, and my whole body shaking. I was now surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds, if not over a thousand people in that large, dark hall, with lights of various colors beaming at me from the dark. My only thought was to find a wide, open space, away from the flashy lights, and with as few people as possible there, where I could read a book to calm myself.

Next year, if I think about it, and I’m sure I will, I may walk around the Gaslamp Quarter area a bit after arriving. I will be on the clock and getting paid, so I would have to check in with my supervisor on it first, but since we have an hour to partake in coffee and fruit and muffins in the hall before getting seated for the start of the show, it isn’t like I’d be missing the assembly if I stayed away for an hour until (hopefully) the noisy greeters at the entrance have gone inside.
Repeating of favorite topics or songs; watching favored movies repeatedly.

What, you mean everybody doesn’t play the same song looping for two days?

9) Is fooled easily.

I’m trusting to a fault. I’m loyal to a fault. And I’ve been duped by tricks and pranks many times in my life. High school was not nice to me when it comes to fellow students. I think I preferred all the teasing and bullying during elementary and middle school over the pranks and tricks in high school.

Improving Into the Future

After the first two years at Sharp, there had been slight improvements. After a third, my improvements were noticeable to me. After the fourth, I’m really starting to get confidence in it.

I still have issues with socializing, though. I try to be a bit more social at work, but sometimes I just get too worn out, and I need to “give it a break” for a week or two.

I do wish I had some way to find that person who first introduced “Asperger’s” to me, way back when.