friday in the cafe...

It would be absolutely humanly impossible for me to feel LESS like grading and writing - the two tasks I've set aside for myself this afternoon. I'm sitting here in Borders just completely fucking fooling myself. I may as well just go home, take a nap, then work on the basement this afternoon. I could try the grading again this weekend. An the problem with the writing is... it isn't *quite* urgent just yet. It will be urgent NEXT Friday.

please don't talk to me...

I need to put my headphones on to discourage this guy sitting next to me... some kind of stoned-Giovanni-Ribisi-type guy... from talking to me any more. He's not getting the hint. He's asking me about my laptop. "You do like... WORK... on that, or what...?" No dude... it's just to keep guys like you from striking up inane conversations with me. You can see how well that works.

Right now I'm enjoying a wonderful story about how this guy and his friends would cut school when they were 14 and take the train into the city and get drunk and go to Yankee's games. And then drink all day. And then go to a bar and get drunk. Mm-hmm... and how did those life-choices work out for you, Mister "Ask Everybody on the Train if you Can Borrow Their Cellphone to Call Your Buddy to Pick you Up From the Train Station and Drive You to Court"? That good, huh?

At least I know he's getting off halfway through my trip.

Oh My God...

"And I used to take the taxi up there all the time cuz my license got suspended a few years back from a DUI (pronounces it "dewey") and I had to get up there to Newburgh... there's nothin' but criminals up there, it's like a mini South Bronx man... nothin but fuckin' drug dealers... they should put a cop on every corner and clean that place up... it's all crack too, you can't even get cocaine... well... I know a coupla places you can get cocaine, but it's almost all fuckin' crack dealers up there... and heroin costs $20 a bag man, I told my friends that... back when I was using I got into selling for a while and I told them heroin costs $20 a fucking bag up there and they were like, no WAY man..."

What could possibly make you think it's a good idea to be telling me this? Is my body language not "closed" enough? Are you interpreting my monosyllabic grunts and forward gaze and vague head-nods as encouragement? Jesus Christ on a Crackpipe! Please stop!

Anyway, he finally bummed 3 bucks off of me for a cab and got off. Thank god my cellphone battery died a couple of hours ago. I'd hate to be getting the callbacks from unsavory characters that the woman whose phone he borrowed is going to be getting tonight.

Hey lady... when the phone rings, tell them - "$20 a bag"!!

pop...!

Without getting into any of the details, I'm having an extremely existentially unsatisfying week. And for some reason I just feel like my brain (or some comparable organ) is going to 'splode if it doesn't all let up.

That is all.

minor technological feats...

My email inbox has been pared down from 60-70 "needs attention" messages earlier this week down to only THREE messages today. This makes me very happy.

I spent my only free time today editing the default templates in my word processor (Apple's "Pages") to make pretty custom documents for unspecified future use. Ooooh... look at all the white space...! Does anyone need a newsletter typeset?

responsible...

I really would like to sit and blog this morning, but I have absolutely no choice but to behave myself and grade these fucking papers instead. Dammit.

Last night I spent an hour reading applications for the schools joint BA/MA program. Each application included a personal essay and an academic writing sample. Reading a dozen humanities papers was enough to make me want to GOUGE MY EYES OUT. How is it we actually bestow degrees upon people who study these things?

Anyway... off to find some suitable grading music for the iPod.

operators are standing by...

Hey, Dr. Dave is on the Skype now. So if you want to talk some time, leave me a comment or drop me a message w/ your contact info. I have no idea how much I'll actually use it, but a friend from New Zealand made me install it so he could interview me for his podcast, so... I'm officially hooked up.

ding-ding-ding...

That's the sound of Dave's Stuff-To-Do-O-Meter maxing out. This week I have to...

* Grade my portion of the exams for the team-taught class
* Review applications for the school's joint-degree program (committee work)
* Attend committee meeting to discuss said applications
(So far this is all by tomorrow...)
* Grade my OWN class's term papers
* Figure out something about hearing and the brain to teach on Wednesday
* Finish the whole basement ceiling business
* Work on the revision of the book-chapter-thingy
* FInish an internal grant proposal to buy some skulls

There is more that I'm not remembering, I'm sure. Little stuff like... laundry... showering... remembering to EAT. This is the kind of week where I forget those things.

my weekend...

This was pretty much it...



There was much swearing, a lot of dropped tools, innumerable missed-studs, one or two thumb-hammerings, a burn or two on the hot water pipes, and a couple of instances where the whole grid threatened to come crashing down on my head, but... it's all done now but for a couple of tiles that need to be cut to size. (And that old basement-bulb light fixture in the middle, which we're leaving up until the electrician puts in the real lights.)

Anyway, the guest bedroom has a ceiling now. Next step... the Ikea laminate fake-hardwood floor, then the ceiling in the two OTHER rooms. Ugh. And the bathroom. Fuck. I forgot all about the bathroom. I didn't even measure it when I bought supplies! Time to start the Lowe's/Home Depot trip-count. When we built the playhouse last summer, it reached 14. We already have to go back anyway, cuz we cleared the first Lowe's out of ceiling tiles. Luckily there is one an equal distance away in the other direction.

Projects like this really serve to underscore what crappy shape I'm in. After a day of working on the ceiling, my shoulders hurt from holding crap up over my head all day, and my calves hurt from climbing up and down the ladder a million goddamn times, and my back hurt from... well, just from being OLD, pretty much. It's pretty fucking sad.

The picture does an awful job of capturing what the colors are going to be like down there. The ceiling is WHITE, which you can't tell from the camera-phone pic, and the walls are a light beigey-brown kinda color. We're putting a floor in that is just a little lighter than the walls, and furniture that is dark-almost-black-brown. All of the decor is going to be vaguely Asian flavored, or at least Asian-by-way-of-Target-and-Ikea flavored. I'm going to hang my koto and my Vietnamese lute in there, as well as my Tibetan carved wooden plaque thingy and my Emperor Xin terra-cotta soldier statue. There will be a bed for guests, and a chair for reading, and a tiny desk where I can sit and grade in peace. There will also be space for my yoga mat and meditation floor-cushions and such. I've kinda mentally taken over this room as my personal "retreat". The wife doesn't entirely know about this plan.

So... room number one is starting to take shape. Two more ceilings (Shit... THREE more ceilings) and the contractor can come back and finish up the doors and trim. Then it's time for carpet, which we have no idea how we're going to afford. (Keeping an eye out for the no-interest-for-12-months deals) Then I have to shelve all the closets (four) and build a built-in bookshelf-entertainment-center, AND a reading-nook-toybox-bench under the stairs. Ambitious plans? Us?

I have this fantasy that when the house is 50% larger, that the rest of it won't look so crappy all the time. All the toys will be DOWNSTAIRS in the playroom instead of the living room, and I won't have to look at my wife's shithole of an office anymore. We'll have room to expand the kitchen stuff into where my wife's office is now, and add a freestanding pantry unit or something in there to contain general kitchen cabinet overflow. Plus I'll be able to set aside a little office area for myself to contain the stack of books, CDs, and random computer gadgetry that otherwise tends to accumulate on the living room windowsill next to where I do most of my laptopping.

In reality, I know that somehow, we will just magically wind up having 50% more shit all over the place, filling all the new space as haphazardly as the rest of the house. Which makes me kinda wonder... what exactly is the point??

dammit...

it's after midnite and I can't sleep and so I got out of bed and came downstairs and nobody is online to chat with.

suck.

in lieu of a post...

I was too busy writing a paper assignment for my physics class this morning to write anything, so instead of posting an entry, I present to you the final paper for Modern Physics...
--- --- ---
Quantum Weirdness and Mysticism

Much has been said about the apparent parallels between some of the stranger phenomena of quantum mechanics and various Eastern or New-Age belief systems. Rather than just continue to dismiss these ideas out of hand (which is my knee-jerk tendency) I thought I’d actually let you all poke around a bit and see what you can learn about these interpretations, and maybe decide for yourselves if and how they go astray.

I have provided you with two readings - one from a book called “The Tao of Physics”, and a study guide for the movie “What the *Bleep* Do We Know” published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. (A visit to their website will give you some idea what their angle is!) But these should just be the starting point. You might actually sit down and watch a movie like “What the Bleep...” or an older film called “Mindwalk”. You might flip through some books like “Quantum Healing” by Deepak Chopra. And who knows what you’ll find on the web.

Basically I’m looking for a short (4-5 page) paper exploring the following kinds of ideas...

* What specific quantum mechanical ideas do some people interpret has having “mystical” or “spiritual” significance?

* Conversely...what kinds mental or spiritual or “parapsychological” phenomena do some people seek a “quantum” explanation for. (It’s not all just the crazies... some of these people are reputable physicists.)

* Based on what we’ve learned in class about QM and the behavior of matter on the quantum level, do you think there is any justification for these connections?

* Are you swayed by any of these mystical or spiritual arguments? Do any of them seem to be “onto something”? (As opposed to on something!) Do you catch anyone making any incorrect or misleading statements about QM? Do you catch anyone making some more subtle errors.

* Do you think these kinds of discussions are scientific, or are they something else? If they aren’t scientific... where and why does the discussion STOP being scientific?

* Can you find any quotes from “real” scientists that either support or refute these sorts of interpretations of quantum physics?

Keep in mind, that you’re allowed to agree with some of these ideas if you’re so inclined. Nobody is going to fail this paper for being a Buddhist or believing in ESP. The issue is specifically - are there real parallels and connections between quantum physics and notions of spiritualism and consciousness, and what are the arguments either way.

It should be pointed out that besides exploring an interesting and fun topic, this paper is also serving the role of an assessment of your understanding of quantum mechanics. So, in part this is an “opinion” paper, but whenever you talk about wave-particle duality or non-locality or probability - you’d better make sure to explain these ideas in such a way that it’s clear to me you know what you’re talking about!

(4+ pages, single spaced, >2500 words, with supporting quotes and multiple cited sources)

Sounds fun... right? I love bizarre assignments.

aaaahhhh...

I'm sitting here during office hours, killing time, and I just slid my chair back towards the corner behind my desk and put my feet on the desk, and leaned back and discovered that when I do so, my head rests perfectly nicely on top of the laser printer.

I wonder if Hewlett-Packard makes a pillow attachment for the paper tray?

or maybe it was a capybara...

There are power lines that run over the front of our yard... a few feet in from the property line. There are also power lines across the street. This morning I was sitting in the living room checking my email, when I saw something moving... "scurrying" if you will... out of the corner of my eye. There was a tiny gap through the open-backed bookcase where I could see out the window, out to where the power lines are. And because of the angle, I thought I was looking at the powerlines way across the street rather than the ones in my own yard. As a result, I perceived the animal scurrying across the power lines as being far away, when in reality he was quite close. The upshot of this perceptual misalignment was a very convincing optical illusion that had me convinced, for a brief moment, that I had just seen a beaver run across a power line.

Turns out it was just a squirrel, so... no need to be alarmed, kids... there is no highly-evolved commando-beaver uprising going on.

Not YET anyway...

the un-post...

I wrote something on the train to blog this morning, but it was just a big whiny pile of crap so I never posted it. Then the day got crazy and I never wrote anything else. I took a nap from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM... then took a shower. It's almost 11, and I'm probably going back to bed.

Today? Total loss. That's all I'm sayin'...

it's because they don't mind the swearing...



Whenever I see this poster on the train, it never ceases to inspire a little giggle.

in brief...

Yet another Keynote presentation polished into a perfect shining pedagogical gem.

The weather is almost too warm today. Outside that is. My classroom, however, which has been stifling all winter was positively chilly today. Hello! We're a radical leftist liberal elitist college! Come discuss global policy with us in our hyper-climate controlled classrooms!

Lastly, I was required to meet the family after work at Chuck E. Cheeze's. I'm still unlear on the reason why, but who am I to argue when faced with the prospect of loud children, bad pizza, and an animatronic rodent?

blah, blah, blah...

There are too many people who know each other on this fucking train. Commuters are supposed to sleep, read, compute, or stare quietly straight ahead. Shut the hell up, the rest of you. Especially the group-crossworders. It's not even the same ones as before!

(Even the sleepers are pitching in. The guy behind me is snoring so loud I can hear him over the Beethoven in my headphones. BEETHOVEN!)

investing in the future...

Now that I have no outside-of-school projects, I had a little time to focus on my classes this week. The result... two new Keynote presentations... one on The Interstellar Medium and one on Room Acoustics. (How's that for diversity!) It may seem like a small accomplishment, but putting each one together involved learning something new, and each one saves a whole day of class prep time in the future. Every new one I put together brings me closer to my eventual goal of having a slide presentation for every conceivable topic in physics and astronomy I might ever have reason to teach. The latest count... 105 such presentations.

(One problem with the current state of my Keynotes is... some of them overlap, and some of them contain redundant material. One of my goals for the summer is to edit and recombine a number of presentations to eliminate redundancies. How's that for a pointless-but-satisfying project? My favorite kind!!)

I think I've decided... no "new" courses for a while. I'm doing a new philosophy of science class in the Fall, and that's it. I need a few semesters of complacency to get the courses I have down... really DOWN. I was thinking of running a new lab class called "Great Experiments in Science" in spring of 2007, but I'm thinking I should push that back a year. Yeah, it would be nice for the program, but shit... I need a break from thinking.

blowing off...

It's tough to take a Mental Health Day when you teach... it never seems worth canceling class for, so you take it wherever you can. So today I'm taking a Half Mental Health Day and going in a little late. We have a guest speaker in the team-taught class, so missing it shouldn't be a big deal. It felt good to sleep "in" until 6:15 today.

The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely getting brighter. I really only have 7 or 8 classes left in each of my courses. I need to do one more big grading blitz before the final, and then... well that's pretty much it. And the last part of two of my classes is the best part... particle physics and the big bang and stuff, so the teaching will be pretty good from here on out. (The music class is another story... who the fuck knows what's going to be happening in there for the next few weeks.) Anyway... the feeling of it all winding down has put me in a good mood.

The weather doesn't hurt either. Yesterday was the first really good sunroof/Indigo Girls day of the season. It's still that weird part of the year when it's 33º in the morning, though. So you have to wear a coat in the morning, but then it's 65º on the way home, so you have to CARRY your coat. When it comes right down to it, there are only 3 or 4 weeks of the entire year when the weather doesn't suck.

But enough about the weather...

Since I had a little extra time to catch the late train this morning, I dropped by the Middle of Nowhere Café to grab some tea, and my eye was caught by the muffins. I'm not usually a big muffin-fan in general, but these looked good, and they were normal-sized... not those freaky muffins the size of your head. So I got a lemon-poppy seed muffin, and... oh my GOD! Best. Muffin. Ever.

Thing is... I'm sure it had 1200 calories... it tasted like the cake my Mom used to make that has a whole pound of butter in it. And I really do not need to get hooked on 1200 calorie muffins right now, given the fact that my waist-area is developing into this kind of autonomous entity. I'm beginning to feel a bit Jabba-esque. My gut is actually starting to interfere with my laptop use. I should do something about that. Like what? That's always the dilemma, innit? I could start with small things like... oh... NOT eating fistfulls of Lucky Charms out of the box every time I walk through the kitchen.

The other thing is (going back 2 thoughts now) I always get tea at this cafe... and its a GOOD brand of tea, but it always sucks. I'm beginning to wonder if it's not their water. Should I say something? It could be that the tea is just stale, too... I don't imagine anyone orders the loose-leaf tea but me at this place. Oh, the indignities of being in the beverage minority.

That's about it. Not sure what to do now. Think abut my class a little, maybe. Maybe I'll watch some pirate-TV. I downloaded the whole first season of Weeds... it's a very peculiar show, but I have a thing for Mary-Louise Parker, so...

Anyways. That's that.

you didn't miss much...

No post today. Wife had a friend in from out of town, so we were up late last night... this morning I had some departmental paperwork to finish on the train... then classes and a science "open house" event... slept on the train. Now it's time to fold laundry read a little and go to bed.

I'm feeling a little less weighed-down today than I have for the past couple of weeks. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll try to be interesting.

i'm sleeping with a lifevest...

So, we booked a cruise for this summer. Four nights... Key West and Cozumel. The ship we're travelling on has been recently "refurbished". Which means they sawed the fucking thing in half a few years ago and added a couple hundred feet of hull in the middle.

The thought of this process makes me uneasy. Our room is going to be located right on the fucking weld, I know it.

"THANK YOU MISTER DAAAVE..."

In addition to finishing my book project yesterday (**) I spent a significant portion of the morning teaching second grade. Yeah... I know... I volunteer for these things without giving them a whole lot of thought. But my daughter's class was learning about the Moon, so I told her teacher that I'd be happy to come in talk to the kids about space-stuff. And of course, you know me.... it wasn't a matter of just coming in and talking... there were handouts and activities and visual aids and demonstrations...

Actually. Now that I look back on it, it was probably the best lecture I've given this year.

Anyway, the kids were good and asked really good questions, but... Jesus... I can't imagine expending that much energy for longer than an hour at a time. What kind of crazy people become elementary school teachers??

--------------------------

(**) A reader asked when Chapter Two is due. It's due on June 16th, which means I have a month between the end of my semester and the end of my kids' school to work on it. And I'm sure I'll do a fair amount of roughing out and outlining of the chapter before then. So, hopefully there won't be QUITE as much stress.

crimes against nature...

All my favorite Mac blogs have been abuzz for the past few days about one thing and one thing only. Ok! We get it already!! YOU CAN BOOT WINDOWS ON THE INTEL MACS!!

Yippi-dee-doo, kids... why the fuck did we all buy a Mac in the first place? Becuase we hate Windows. Now you all just shut up, put down the XP install disks, and give me some news I can fucking USE.

the essay...

... is FINISHED.

Final word count - 7163, which is like... almost 1000 extra words. Think they will pay me a bonus?

urgh...

Slept all the way in on the train.

I really feel no better.

The day is not starting well, and I have a fucking faculty meeting today, so it's gonna be a late one.

Have I mentioned the essay still isn't finished?

bleah...

the analogies get out of hand...

I'm introducing the theory of quantum mechanics this week in my physics class. We did the Bohr atom on Monday... that's no problem. Next week we'll probably do Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle. Also easy. But today I'm stuck teaching about Planck and the radiation law, which I always found really obtuse when I was a student, and still find really difficult to get across to these non-mathematical "physics for poets" type classes.

So today I'm pulling out the ultimate ridiculous physics analogy... it's called "An Infinite Number of Trombonists". I'm pretty sure it's a Dr. Dave original. We'll see if it works. Look out for the blank stares!



the verdict...

Today's lecture? Remarkably lucid, if I do say so myself. Which I just did.

Also gave a talk in my music class on digital audio and digital compression. It was less lucid, but not a bad lecture for the first time. Also there were in-class exercises with graph paper and pictures of ducks. Honestly, who could ask for more?

not quite...

Remind me never again to take on a project based this rigidly on "word count". I think I'm developing OCD over it.

Anyway, the target length is pretty much reached, but it's still not "finished". I printed out a hard copy and brought it on the train tonight and marked it all the hell up. I figured I was about done writing, but I approached the thing so haphazardly that there are a bunch of missing transitions and whole sections that I completely left out. So... more writing tonight.

I sent the publishers a breezy little note saying - "Hey, here's a draft... plenty long as you can see... still want to go over a couple of things... tidy up a few transitions... I'll have that to you in a couple days... sorry it's a little late... hope that's not a problem". We'll see if my casual attitude fools them at all.

I really do want this thing DONE so I can think about something else and... oh, I dunno... PLAN A CLASS or something!! I should never have agreed to write one of these during the semester. It's interesting to imagine writing a whole book... I see now why sabbaticals were invented. I think I could do it if I had nothing but time to sit and think and write. But for now... urgh.

nuggets...

I need a fucking mental break from this thing... this writing project. I want to finish it this morning, but thinking about it just makes my head hurt.

I want to listen to some music, but I seem to have misplaced my iPod headphones. Dammit. They were getting frayed anyway. A trip to the Apple store may be in order.

38 degrees feels way colder when it's been 65 for a week. Fuck. It may snow this afternoon. It's April. That is just wrong.

I was reading the Circuit City ad a couple of weeks ago and realized... hey, I don't need to read this... we have one of everything now. Less than a week later, our digital camera broke. The new one is sweet.

The new Flaming Lips album comes out today. I've already pre-ordered it on iTunes, so I can download it this morning, probably. Too bad I don't have any headphones.

I've read some excerpts from Douglas Coupland's upcoming book "jPod". It sounds basically like an updated version of "Microserfs"... quirky computer geeks working for some kind of tech startup. "Microserfs" is without a doubt my favorite Coupland book. (MY copy is signed!) I'm very excited about the new one. The May release is perfect timing too, I can read it when I'm supposed to be grading finals!

Advising and registration week are about to start. Which of course means setting aside a couple of days to sit in my office for 8 hours and sign people's forms. Yay. It's like for two weeks a year we get to experience the excitement of working at the DMV.

It'll be interesting to see what my class enrollments look like, number-wise. I'm teaching 3 classes again next semester. (I decided to switch my teaching schedule from 2+3 to 3+2... easier to have the heavy semester after summer break.) I have way too many students this semester. I'm thinking I may need to make my course descriptions sound less appealing.

And now we shall nap.

3905... 4486... 4801... 4938...

There is an outside chance I could actually finish this thing tonight if I write until I fall asleep...

counting...

2769... 3078... 3522... 3559... 3852... 3905...

That's the slow crawl of the word count over the weekend. Today is the supposed deadline. I'm thinking I'll just let it slide for a day or so and then apologize after the fact for "taking a couple of days to get the final document put together". It kinda sucks that I'm going to miss the deadline, though. It makes me pretty fucking mad at myself.

There is still a miniscule chance of putting 2000-some odd words on paper today, so I'm gonna keep writing. I'm tired, though.

Life outside the dreaded textbook project continues. The wife has been painting the basement like crazy for days... only emerging occasionally to eat and sleep... covered in paint, I might add. I've never seen someone paint with such disregard for where the paint winds up. Jackson Pollack, perhaps. The high point was when she bent over and dropped her entire iPod Nano into a bucket of purple paint. I caught her just before she started running the thing under the faucet. (That will only get it WETTER, honey.) After 10 minutes of wiping down the outside, 20 minutes of probing the dock connector to get the paint out of the INSIDE, and 24 hours to dry out completely... it seems to work fine.

All this painting has left me on kid duty, so I spent much of the weekend dealing with scraped elbows, snotty noses, and temper tantrums. O! The tantrums! I know he has a cold, but that's really no excuse for The Boy being such a little asshole lately. I am seriously OUT of parenting ideas other than "Smack the crap out of him".

Did I mention how tired I was? I really need to write, but... fuck... I also really need to close my eyes for a while.

padding your CV with (ctrl)-C and (ctrl)-V...

So the big textbook chapter deadline is looming, and I have only barely half of what I need to have written.

I'm beginning to understand now how some researchers resort to plagiarism!

(I did manage to boost my word count last night by pasting 400 words straight from the mouth of Galileo. But that's not plagiarism... it's a "primary source sidebar". Besides, he's totally public domain by now.)

every day is curmudgeon day...

Everyone knows that all the big websites and blogs post little cutesy-ha-ha joke posts on April 1st. It may have been funny in 1996 guys, but today, I'd really like it if there were some news in my news feeds. Cut it out already... it's not funny anymore.

bmilf(*)...

I took the kids for a walk through the neighborhood this morning and met, for the first time, the mom of our babysitter. This girl has only babysitted for us a few times, so I had never crossed paths with her mom. My wife had met her, and I knew her name was "Dottie".

Really? Who the hell is named "Dottie" anymore? I don't know about you, but when I hear the name "Dottie", I picture either someone very old or very fat. Or both.

The thing is....? Really not.

Like.... really, REALLY not.

Jesus.


----------------
(*) I hesitate to make any sort of reference to this term, because I feel its meaning has become distorted through frequent careless use. I hold that it should only be used in reference to the mom of someone you KNOW, when you are 16-25, whom you would "L" to "F". If you are 30, and you see someone hot who just happens to have a 4 year old... it just doesn't count. So those people need to stop abusing the term. In fact, I hereby retract my title.