they told me she went to live on a farm! REALLY!!
We went to the humane society today, and they told us that earlier in the day Jaki was picked up by someone from the New England Border Collie Rescue. :(
I know I was prevented from making a really BAD and impractical decision, but... fuck.
Wednesday, July 30
Adopt a Border Collie: Jaki: Petfinder
CUTE!!!
There are no words to describe how much I want this dog!!!.
Not even the fact that she was returned to the pound for peeing all over her last family's house is a deterrent!
There are no words to describe how much I want this dog!!!.
Not even the fact that she was returned to the pound for peeing all over her last family's house is a deterrent!
Tuesday, July 29
"Yes, it's spelled Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throat-Warbler-Mangrove'... "
I swear to god, I need to write an essay about the Day We Ran Out of Words. It started when companies picked names that made no sense and gave no indication of what their company did just because the word was memorable and nobody owned the name yet ("Monster" "FogDog"...). Then we just started randomly chucking vowels out the window, or sticking periods inside things so we could use domains in digitally-empty countries ("flickr", "d.e.li.cio.us"...) and now we are just randomly stringing letters together into unpronouncable sequences. "CUIL"??? Is that fucking WELSH? Was J.R.R Tolkein involved??? WHAT THE FUCK?
Seriously... Which do you prefer? 1) "Hey, maybe I'll Google it" or... 2) "I know! I'll KOO-HOO-WHEEL it!" Umm... no thanks, Sinéad... I'll stick with the search engine that doesn't make me gag on my tongue when I look at the URL.
And the internet-savvy may say - No! It's pronounced "COOL". Well, no... it isn't. You write the word "c-u-i-l" on a piece of paper and show it to 100 non-tech industry, English speaking people and ask them to read it aloud. if ONE OF THEM says "cool", I will personally suck the CEO of cuil.com's dick.
I don't care if this search engine reads your freaking MIND through the monitor... I predict this new venture will fail for no other reason than its STUPID STUPID AWFUL AWFUL NAME!!!
--- -- --- -- ---
UPDATE/POSTSCRIPT: Hey, Google... "KNOL" sucks just as bad. Don't make me come over there next!
I swear to god, I need to write an essay about the Day We Ran Out of Words. It started when companies picked names that made no sense and gave no indication of what their company did just because the word was memorable and nobody owned the name yet ("Monster" "FogDog"...). Then we just started randomly chucking vowels out the window, or sticking periods inside things so we could use domains in digitally-empty countries ("flickr", "d.e.li.cio.us"...) and now we are just randomly stringing letters together into unpronouncable sequences. "CUIL"??? Is that fucking WELSH? Was J.R.R Tolkein involved??? WHAT THE FUCK?
Seriously... Which do you prefer? 1) "Hey, maybe I'll Google it" or... 2) "I know! I'll KOO-HOO-WHEEL it!" Umm... no thanks, Sinéad... I'll stick with the search engine that doesn't make me gag on my tongue when I look at the URL.
And the internet-savvy may say - No! It's pronounced "COOL". Well, no... it isn't. You write the word "c-u-i-l" on a piece of paper and show it to 100 non-tech industry, English speaking people and ask them to read it aloud. if ONE OF THEM says "cool", I will personally suck the CEO of cuil.com's dick.
I don't care if this search engine reads your freaking MIND through the monitor... I predict this new venture will fail for no other reason than its STUPID STUPID AWFUL AWFUL NAME!!!
--- -- --- -- ---
UPDATE/POSTSCRIPT: Hey, Google... "KNOL" sucks just as bad. Don't make me come over there next!
Monday, July 28
last week's gig...
Awesome. I deserve very little credit... Annie is always rock solid... I played my noodly background parts... rocked some solos... worked some harmonies on "Future's So Bright..." by Timbuk 3... but it's always been Annie's show. The most impressive thing about it is that, without practicing, we managed to END all of the songs together. We also did an encore of Spoonman by Soundgarden, which we hadn't even talked about and she didn't even know that I knew.
Anyway. We had fun. And it really makes me want to get something going musically again.
UPDATE: Here is a video on YouTube of us performing part of "Smells LIke Teen Spirit". Crappy audio and video quality, but... oh well.
Awesome. I deserve very little credit... Annie is always rock solid... I played my noodly background parts... rocked some solos... worked some harmonies on "Future's So Bright..." by Timbuk 3... but it's always been Annie's show. The most impressive thing about it is that, without practicing, we managed to END all of the songs together. We also did an encore of Spoonman by Soundgarden, which we hadn't even talked about and she didn't even know that I knew.
Anyway. We had fun. And it really makes me want to get something going musically again.
UPDATE: Here is a video on YouTube of us performing part of "Smells LIke Teen Spirit". Crappy audio and video quality, but... oh well.
Saturday, July 26
Friday, July 25
Friday, July 18
dykerockapalooza, part one...
The Melissa Etheridge concert was good, if not great. She is so rock-solid as a performer... I've never seen her put on a "bad" show. Her voice is still as good as ever. But I payed little attention to her last album, and the one before it only gave a dozen or so listens, so there was a lot of material I didn't know very well. It happens, I guess.
The one problem with the show was... her lead guitarist is a complete fucking TOOL. Never mind the man-cleavage-bearing International Male shirt... his playing was consistently 20% "too much". Which is not to say he was a BAD guitarist... just a TASTELESS guitarist. Two things...
1) When you are backing up a solo artist, you have to have the mindset of a session player - not the lead guitarist of a rock band. Nobody here paid money to see YOUR ass. Take your solo, have your moment, and then disappear.
2) Guitar solos have to go somewhere. In order to make that happen... if you want to wind up at say, 10... you have to start at 5 or 6. This guy always started at 8 or 9 (In terms of volume, number of notes, and height on the fretboard) leaving him no place to go but 11, even in songs that did not justify an 11 solo. I got DAMNED tired of him by the end of the night, when ideally... I should have barely noticed him at all.
So... that was that. Not much else noteworthy happened other than the typical takeover of the men's room. This time the venue eventually made it official... usually it's just a revolt. It never fails to amuse me. I fully expect to see more ladies in the men's room tomorrow at Indigo Girls, where there are usually even FEWER men than at a Melissa Etheridge concert! Stay tuned for a further review.
(Oh, I will add that the attendance was BLEAK. The concert was at a small-town civic center and barely any seats off the floor sold except for right in the center. I guess her "appeal is becoming more...selective")
The Melissa Etheridge concert was good, if not great. She is so rock-solid as a performer... I've never seen her put on a "bad" show. Her voice is still as good as ever. But I payed little attention to her last album, and the one before it only gave a dozen or so listens, so there was a lot of material I didn't know very well. It happens, I guess.
The one problem with the show was... her lead guitarist is a complete fucking TOOL. Never mind the man-cleavage-bearing International Male shirt... his playing was consistently 20% "too much". Which is not to say he was a BAD guitarist... just a TASTELESS guitarist. Two things...
1) When you are backing up a solo artist, you have to have the mindset of a session player - not the lead guitarist of a rock band. Nobody here paid money to see YOUR ass. Take your solo, have your moment, and then disappear.
2) Guitar solos have to go somewhere. In order to make that happen... if you want to wind up at say, 10... you have to start at 5 or 6. This guy always started at 8 or 9 (In terms of volume, number of notes, and height on the fretboard) leaving him no place to go but 11, even in songs that did not justify an 11 solo. I got DAMNED tired of him by the end of the night, when ideally... I should have barely noticed him at all.
So... that was that. Not much else noteworthy happened other than the typical takeover of the men's room. This time the venue eventually made it official... usually it's just a revolt. It never fails to amuse me. I fully expect to see more ladies in the men's room tomorrow at Indigo Girls, where there are usually even FEWER men than at a Melissa Etheridge concert! Stay tuned for a further review.
(Oh, I will add that the attendance was BLEAK. The concert was at a small-town civic center and barely any seats off the floor sold except for right in the center. I guess her "appeal is becoming more...selective")
Tuesday, July 15
accidental summer fiction...
I took the kids to swim lessons yesterday because the wife is on a deadline. And because the kids have lessons at different times, and there is a 40 minute break between, it basically amounts to sitting for 2 hours in a classroom at the local high school with nothing to do. I brought my iTouchPod, but I could only get internet access in the hallway. I wanted to try out my new eBook reader app, but since I didn't have reliable access, the only book I had available was the copy of "Tarzan of the Apes" that came installed free with the software.
As a result, I am now about halfway through "Tarzan of the Apes".
It's pretty enjoyable actually... and weirdly Victorian for something written in 1912. The whole "man vs. brute" language is particularly entertaining, not to mention the gender roles...
How horribly bad and awesome is that, right?
I took the kids to swim lessons yesterday because the wife is on a deadline. And because the kids have lessons at different times, and there is a 40 minute break between, it basically amounts to sitting for 2 hours in a classroom at the local high school with nothing to do. I brought my iTouchPod, but I could only get internet access in the hallway. I wanted to try out my new eBook reader app, but since I didn't have reliable access, the only book I had available was the copy of "Tarzan of the Apes" that came installed free with the software.
As a result, I am now about halfway through "Tarzan of the Apes".
It's pretty enjoyable actually... and weirdly Victorian for something written in 1912. The whole "man vs. brute" language is particularly entertaining, not to mention the gender roles...
"What they did may we not do? And even better, for are we not armed with ages of superior knowledge, and have we not the means of protection, defense, and sustenance which science has given us, but of which they were totally ignorant? What they accomplished, Alice, with instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we accomplish also."
"Ah, John, I wish that I might be a man with a man's philosophy, but I am but a woman, seeing with my heart rather than my head, and all that I can see is too horrible, too unthinkable to put into words.
"I only hope you are right, John. I will do my best to be a brave primeval woman, a fit mate for the primeval man."
How horribly bad and awesome is that, right?
work to do...
Rolling into the city on the 7:30 train. The idea was that I'll be working on paperwork for my Review in August, but that has been somewhat supplanted by a last-minute meeting that will take up a sizable chunk of the afternoon. (Actually, a meeting and a pre-meeting to prepare for the meeting.) Which I suppose is fine, because in the past 3 weeks of dealing with summer camp, I've completely lost focus on what I'm doing... I haven't written anything, I haven't done any work of any sort. So today will basically be devoted to getting my head back into things... just in time to embark on a week-long family vacation next week and forget about it all again.
Meanwhile, I've been roped into organizing a Big Event sponsored by the science department. It's the kind of thing that involves scheduling and coordinating and organizing and phone calls and basically all the things I am WORST at. But I get to put it in the nearly-empty "Service to the University" section of my portfolio, so... that's a bonus.
My syllabi have basically faded into the background, which is particularly bad for the new Science and Religion class. But I left the ball in my co-teacher's court on that one, so I can deny having any responsibility for our current lack of preparation. We also have a half-written grant proposal that needs to go ahead. Oh well.
After the family vacation next week, I get home and the next day I jump on a plane for Chicago. The new consulting gig I lined up last semester is finally starting to bear some fruit. They want me to come to a workshop and help lead physics teachers through some curriculum-development thing... I'm not even completely clear on the task myself... I just know it involves a lot of ed-speak buzzwords like "outcomes" and "rubrics" and "enduring understandings" and that I'm getting paid $800/day to do it. Plus three free nights in a mediocre business hotel adjacent to O'Hare. Paradise!!
Anyway. I should probably get to work.
Rolling into the city on the 7:30 train. The idea was that I'll be working on paperwork for my Review in August, but that has been somewhat supplanted by a last-minute meeting that will take up a sizable chunk of the afternoon. (Actually, a meeting and a pre-meeting to prepare for the meeting.) Which I suppose is fine, because in the past 3 weeks of dealing with summer camp, I've completely lost focus on what I'm doing... I haven't written anything, I haven't done any work of any sort. So today will basically be devoted to getting my head back into things... just in time to embark on a week-long family vacation next week and forget about it all again.
Meanwhile, I've been roped into organizing a Big Event sponsored by the science department. It's the kind of thing that involves scheduling and coordinating and organizing and phone calls and basically all the things I am WORST at. But I get to put it in the nearly-empty "Service to the University" section of my portfolio, so... that's a bonus.
My syllabi have basically faded into the background, which is particularly bad for the new Science and Religion class. But I left the ball in my co-teacher's court on that one, so I can deny having any responsibility for our current lack of preparation. We also have a half-written grant proposal that needs to go ahead. Oh well.
After the family vacation next week, I get home and the next day I jump on a plane for Chicago. The new consulting gig I lined up last semester is finally starting to bear some fruit. They want me to come to a workshop and help lead physics teachers through some curriculum-development thing... I'm not even completely clear on the task myself... I just know it involves a lot of ed-speak buzzwords like "outcomes" and "rubrics" and "enduring understandings" and that I'm getting paid $800/day to do it. Plus three free nights in a mediocre business hotel adjacent to O'Hare. Paradise!!
Anyway. I should probably get to work.
Monday, July 14
Thursday, July 10
quick running update...
Yesterday I ran on the treadmill, because it was too fucking humid to even THINK about going outside. I had an ok run, but the treadmill is just not the same. The fact that you are right there in your bedroom and there is a big red STOP button right in front of you makes it hard to stay focused and keep going.
Anyway. Then today I twisted my ankle running for a rocket.
Fuck.
Yesterday I ran on the treadmill, because it was too fucking humid to even THINK about going outside. I had an ok run, but the treadmill is just not the same. The fact that you are right there in your bedroom and there is a big red STOP button right in front of you makes it hard to stay focused and keep going.
Anyway. Then today I twisted my ankle running for a rocket.
Fuck.
Tuesday, July 8
Saturday, July 5
back on the program...
I'm pretty pissed about ruining 3 months of progress with 3 weeks of neglect, but I can't just QUIT running... the $100 shoes would haunt me forever. So, after my last failed attempt at running a mile, I decided I needed to fall back on my podcasts. I cued up week four, which is a program of 3/5/3/5 minute intervals with walking breaks between. So basically I ran one mile with 90 seconds of walking in the middle... had a 2.5 min walk break, then ran another mile with a 90 sec walk break in the middle. At least, that's the way I like to think of it.
I held up pretty well. My legs got tired, but not unreasonably so. I'll try to do the podcast 2 more times this week, and then get back to running the mile w/ no breaks.
It was 67º this morning, so the run felt really nice. It's only going to get harder as we get into July and mild weather becomes more rare. I had been thinking I could run at Nerd Camp between my classes, but given how damp I was when I got done with today's run... probably not a good idea.
I'm pretty pissed about ruining 3 months of progress with 3 weeks of neglect, but I can't just QUIT running... the $100 shoes would haunt me forever. So, after my last failed attempt at running a mile, I decided I needed to fall back on my podcasts. I cued up week four, which is a program of 3/5/3/5 minute intervals with walking breaks between. So basically I ran one mile with 90 seconds of walking in the middle... had a 2.5 min walk break, then ran another mile with a 90 sec walk break in the middle. At least, that's the way I like to think of it.
I held up pretty well. My legs got tired, but not unreasonably so. I'll try to do the podcast 2 more times this week, and then get back to running the mile w/ no breaks.
It was 67º this morning, so the run felt really nice. It's only going to get harder as we get into July and mild weather becomes more rare. I had been thinking I could run at Nerd Camp between my classes, but given how damp I was when I got done with today's run... probably not a good idea.
Wednesday, July 2
Tuesday, July 1
pathetic aging rocker reunion concert...
So, we are visiting Williamsburg VA this summer, where my wife and I both went to grad school. We'll take the kids to Busch Gardens, do the Colonial history crap, and visit with some old friends while we're there. It should be a nice vacation.
As a bonus, my old acoustic-duo-band-mate Annie is still living down there and playing with a new band. And when I half jokingly suggested we could do an open-mic while I was in town, she actually got really excited about it.
So... now we're stuck with the question... what do two people who haven't played together in almost 10 years PLAY at an open mic night?
It could get ugly.
So, we are visiting Williamsburg VA this summer, where my wife and I both went to grad school. We'll take the kids to Busch Gardens, do the Colonial history crap, and visit with some old friends while we're there. It should be a nice vacation.
As a bonus, my old acoustic-duo-band-mate Annie is still living down there and playing with a new band. And when I half jokingly suggested we could do an open-mic while I was in town, she actually got really excited about it.
So... now we're stuck with the question... what do two people who haven't played together in almost 10 years PLAY at an open mic night?
It could get ugly.
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