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Monday, September 29
weekend...
So here I am on a late early train. Meaning that, I showed up for my usual train and people were crowding the platform waiting for the EARLIER train, which was late. It showed up just as I was getting out of my car, so I think I'll get to the city earlier than usual.
The weekend was occupied with hardcore cleaning. Friday, the wife and I tackled the upstairs landing, which doesn't seem like it should take a whole day given that it isn't even exactly a ROOM, but it's a large area... more an L shaped hallway than a "landing" really.... that's just what we call it, and it tends to accumulate piles of stuff that are destined to make the trip downstairs or have been tossed up the stairs. Add to that the piles of crap ON the stairs, and you have a good 4 hours of cleaning for two people.
The kids had a half-day of school, so when they got home, we piled into the van and headed to Ikea. (We need a new reclinerish seating piece for the living room.) Didn't like any of their chairs, so we got off easy... just $104, which for us in Ikea is NOTHING. We got some funky panel curtains for the sliding glass doors, nothing else too exciting.
Saturday, we told the kids we would tackle their rooms. Spent the whole day... the wife in the girl's room and me in the boy's, and barely made a dent. Spent the whole day Sunday getting them CLEAN clean. Tossed out two lawn-sized trash bags full of trash and junk-toys, pulled out another full of stuffed animals (68!) to donate, and piled 3 boxes full of stuff in a pile to hand-down, craigslist, or pack away for posterity. The kids are both STUNNED at how BIG their rooms are. Amazing how seeing-the-floor creates that perception, huh?
The wife's parents are coming in a week and a half or so, so we are attempting to get the house visitor-ready by tackling the low-traffic areas first, given that a cleaned living room or kitchen only lasts 24-48 hours. I think the plan is to do our bedroom tonight while watching the mediocre-Monday-comedies, then maybe hit the basement tomorrow, since everyone is off for the Rosh Hashanah.
Other than this sort of activity, there isn't much to blog about. Oh, we did poison the dog... those of you who keep up with the Twittter have heard. (Those of you who don't.... it's really where all the minute-by-minute action takes place anymore.) I mean... the dog poisoned HERSELF, but it was kind of our fault that the boy's Albuterol for his nebulizer was sitting on the stairs, where the dog isn't supposed to go, but she DID, and she seems to have mostly eaten the contents of 2 vials of it. My wife called the vet who was closed and told her to call the emergency vet who told her to call the ASPCA poison hotline who told us to give them $65 before they would even talk to us. So we decided just to keep an eye on her. She seemed fine, although at one point I measured her pulse and it was 188. Not that I knew what her resting pulse rate is, but for a medium breed puppy, I think 120 is normal, MAYBE 150. So I'm reading up on side effects of Albuterol and tachycardia in dogs and whatnot, and decided she would probably be fine. Which she was.
So, one day of work, one day "off", and then October hits the fan. Committee meetings start, then the month of Art & Science events that I am to a large extent responsible for. The calendar is insanely full until the first week of November, when I have to go to a conference in Providence for 3 days. After that, things should let up. Until then, don't expect too much from me.
So here I am on a late early train. Meaning that, I showed up for my usual train and people were crowding the platform waiting for the EARLIER train, which was late. It showed up just as I was getting out of my car, so I think I'll get to the city earlier than usual.
The weekend was occupied with hardcore cleaning. Friday, the wife and I tackled the upstairs landing, which doesn't seem like it should take a whole day given that it isn't even exactly a ROOM, but it's a large area... more an L shaped hallway than a "landing" really.... that's just what we call it, and it tends to accumulate piles of stuff that are destined to make the trip downstairs or have been tossed up the stairs. Add to that the piles of crap ON the stairs, and you have a good 4 hours of cleaning for two people.
The kids had a half-day of school, so when they got home, we piled into the van and headed to Ikea. (We need a new reclinerish seating piece for the living room.) Didn't like any of their chairs, so we got off easy... just $104, which for us in Ikea is NOTHING. We got some funky panel curtains for the sliding glass doors, nothing else too exciting.
Saturday, we told the kids we would tackle their rooms. Spent the whole day... the wife in the girl's room and me in the boy's, and barely made a dent. Spent the whole day Sunday getting them CLEAN clean. Tossed out two lawn-sized trash bags full of trash and junk-toys, pulled out another full of stuffed animals (68!) to donate, and piled 3 boxes full of stuff in a pile to hand-down, craigslist, or pack away for posterity. The kids are both STUNNED at how BIG their rooms are. Amazing how seeing-the-floor creates that perception, huh?
The wife's parents are coming in a week and a half or so, so we are attempting to get the house visitor-ready by tackling the low-traffic areas first, given that a cleaned living room or kitchen only lasts 24-48 hours. I think the plan is to do our bedroom tonight while watching the mediocre-Monday-comedies, then maybe hit the basement tomorrow, since everyone is off for the Rosh Hashanah.
Other than this sort of activity, there isn't much to blog about. Oh, we did poison the dog... those of you who keep up with the Twittter have heard. (Those of you who don't.... it's really where all the minute-by-minute action takes place anymore.) I mean... the dog poisoned HERSELF, but it was kind of our fault that the boy's Albuterol for his nebulizer was sitting on the stairs, where the dog isn't supposed to go, but she DID, and she seems to have mostly eaten the contents of 2 vials of it. My wife called the vet who was closed and told her to call the emergency vet who told her to call the ASPCA poison hotline who told us to give them $65 before they would even talk to us. So we decided just to keep an eye on her. She seemed fine, although at one point I measured her pulse and it was 188. Not that I knew what her resting pulse rate is, but for a medium breed puppy, I think 120 is normal, MAYBE 150. So I'm reading up on side effects of Albuterol and tachycardia in dogs and whatnot, and decided she would probably be fine. Which she was.
So, one day of work, one day "off", and then October hits the fan. Committee meetings start, then the month of Art & Science events that I am to a large extent responsible for. The calendar is insanely full until the first week of November, when I have to go to a conference in Providence for 3 days. After that, things should let up. Until then, don't expect too much from me.
Tuesday, September 23
time i do not have to waste...
My laptop wouldn't wake from sleep on the train (stupid spinning "beachball") so I had to restart, which means I lost whatever blog posts I had pre-loaded into my browser to read on the way to work, plus several Wikipedia pages I had pulled up so I could add some dates and names to a Keynote presentation. Safari's "Reopen all Windows from Last Session" is no fucking help at all, because it just tries to connect to the internet, rather than pull up some saved cache. Is it just me, or were browsers BETTER back in the day of Netscape 2.0? I seem to recall there was a cache folder where your recent websites were saved as ACTUAL HTML files, and that it was easy to go back and open them if you needed to. This no longer seems to be the case.
So, since I can't work, I guess I'll just blog.
Yesterday I (and some students) went to a debate/forum sponsored by the Templeton Foundation called "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?" with Christopher Hitchens and some old Monsignor. The discussion never really went anywhere interesting and was kind of a waste of time, but the lunch was good, and there was free booze. Given the swank hotel and the amount of money that was clearly being thrown around yesterday, I'm thinking I need to finish writing up that Templeton grant and double the amount I was asking for.
Today I'm teaching a sort of "hybrid" guest lecture for one of my colleagues. She teaches a course based on the text of "Mutiny on the Bounty" and ties together a bunch of literary and historical themes in a way that I don't 100% understand, but last year she asked me to come in and talk about navigation and "the longitude problem". Well this year, her class meets at the same time as my Relativity class, so I have tried to assemble a lecture that ranges from naval timekeeping in the 17th century to the global positioning system to the problem of synchronizing clocks in Einstein's conception of spacetime, with the goal of bringing both of our classes together in a single classroom for a discussion that will be valuable for both of them. More likely what will happen is that my class will be bored for the first half and her class will be perplexed by the second half, but... oh well... what good is complete intellectual freedom if you don't take the opportunity to make a complete mess of a lecture every now and then?
Tomorrow I teach yet another guest lecture for a different colleague... this time the topic is energy conservation. I've done this guest lecture many times, and it never seems to go quite right. I always say I'm going to give the students a preparatory reading, and I always remember that I forgot to do that the day before the class. This time is no exception.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I seem to be making extra work for myself this semester. October is going to be a nightmare of film festivals, play readings, committee meetings, conference preparation... I've been keeping my shit together pretty well so far this semester, but... I can see it all falling apart around 10/15. Turning 39 that week is likely not going to help my fucking mood either.
Speaking of which, I'm going blind. My glasses don't work anymore and most of the time when I look at text of any sort, there is a ghosty double-image that only goes away if i squint. My "reading glasses" seem to work quite a bit better, which suggests to me that I really need to go to the optometrist and get a new pair of glasses, most likely motherfucking bifocals. Which really, really pisses me off in what I recognize to be a disproportionate way. But still. Fuck.
On a completely different note, these new PC commercials... what the fuck? Not the Seinfeld ones, which were just unfunny attempts at absurdism, I'm talking about the "I'm a PC" commercial. I read an article that nailed the reason the commercial is so bad. It seems to be misreading the POINT of Apple's "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" commercials. The Windows commercial has a bunch of people doing great things and saying "I'm a PC". But the Apple commercials are not saying that YOU should identify YOURSELF as "A MAC" or "A PC". The characters in those commercials are not supposed to be Mac and Windows USERS! They are personifications of the (supposed) features of the OPERATING SYSTEMS THEMSELVES. Is it possible that the ad agency that made these new "I'm a PC" commercials actually did not get that point? The more I watch them, the more I worry that they did. We aren't saying that everyone who USES a PC is a pudgy guy with glasses. We are saying that the whole mentality of the OS is that of a pudgy guy with glasses. That doesn't mean you can't make a music video on it... just that you will be doing so DESPITE the OS rather than because of any particular features. A fact borne out by the awesome revelation by some internet meta-data-snooper that the commercial itself (or at least the final cut posted to the Microsoft website) was created on Adobe CS3 on a Mac.
Anyway. Confused satire is one of my pet peeves.
Parting oberservation... The woman sitting across from me looks like a very young Barbara Streisand. Most women probably wouldn't consider that a compliment, huh? Good thing I don't talk to people.
My laptop wouldn't wake from sleep on the train (stupid spinning "beachball") so I had to restart, which means I lost whatever blog posts I had pre-loaded into my browser to read on the way to work, plus several Wikipedia pages I had pulled up so I could add some dates and names to a Keynote presentation. Safari's "Reopen all Windows from Last Session" is no fucking help at all, because it just tries to connect to the internet, rather than pull up some saved cache. Is it just me, or were browsers BETTER back in the day of Netscape 2.0? I seem to recall there was a cache folder where your recent websites were saved as ACTUAL HTML files, and that it was easy to go back and open them if you needed to. This no longer seems to be the case.
So, since I can't work, I guess I'll just blog.
Yesterday I (and some students) went to a debate/forum sponsored by the Templeton Foundation called "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?" with Christopher Hitchens and some old Monsignor. The discussion never really went anywhere interesting and was kind of a waste of time, but the lunch was good, and there was free booze. Given the swank hotel and the amount of money that was clearly being thrown around yesterday, I'm thinking I need to finish writing up that Templeton grant and double the amount I was asking for.
Today I'm teaching a sort of "hybrid" guest lecture for one of my colleagues. She teaches a course based on the text of "Mutiny on the Bounty" and ties together a bunch of literary and historical themes in a way that I don't 100% understand, but last year she asked me to come in and talk about navigation and "the longitude problem". Well this year, her class meets at the same time as my Relativity class, so I have tried to assemble a lecture that ranges from naval timekeeping in the 17th century to the global positioning system to the problem of synchronizing clocks in Einstein's conception of spacetime, with the goal of bringing both of our classes together in a single classroom for a discussion that will be valuable for both of them. More likely what will happen is that my class will be bored for the first half and her class will be perplexed by the second half, but... oh well... what good is complete intellectual freedom if you don't take the opportunity to make a complete mess of a lecture every now and then?
Tomorrow I teach yet another guest lecture for a different colleague... this time the topic is energy conservation. I've done this guest lecture many times, and it never seems to go quite right. I always say I'm going to give the students a preparatory reading, and I always remember that I forgot to do that the day before the class. This time is no exception.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I seem to be making extra work for myself this semester. October is going to be a nightmare of film festivals, play readings, committee meetings, conference preparation... I've been keeping my shit together pretty well so far this semester, but... I can see it all falling apart around 10/15. Turning 39 that week is likely not going to help my fucking mood either.
Speaking of which, I'm going blind. My glasses don't work anymore and most of the time when I look at text of any sort, there is a ghosty double-image that only goes away if i squint. My "reading glasses" seem to work quite a bit better, which suggests to me that I really need to go to the optometrist and get a new pair of glasses, most likely motherfucking bifocals. Which really, really pisses me off in what I recognize to be a disproportionate way. But still. Fuck.
On a completely different note, these new PC commercials... what the fuck? Not the Seinfeld ones, which were just unfunny attempts at absurdism, I'm talking about the "I'm a PC" commercial. I read an article that nailed the reason the commercial is so bad. It seems to be misreading the POINT of Apple's "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" commercials. The Windows commercial has a bunch of people doing great things and saying "I'm a PC". But the Apple commercials are not saying that YOU should identify YOURSELF as "A MAC" or "A PC". The characters in those commercials are not supposed to be Mac and Windows USERS! They are personifications of the (supposed) features of the OPERATING SYSTEMS THEMSELVES. Is it possible that the ad agency that made these new "I'm a PC" commercials actually did not get that point? The more I watch them, the more I worry that they did. We aren't saying that everyone who USES a PC is a pudgy guy with glasses. We are saying that the whole mentality of the OS is that of a pudgy guy with glasses. That doesn't mean you can't make a music video on it... just that you will be doing so DESPITE the OS rather than because of any particular features. A fact borne out by the awesome revelation by some internet meta-data-snooper that the commercial itself (or at least the final cut posted to the Microsoft website) was created on Adobe CS3 on a Mac.
Anyway. Confused satire is one of my pet peeves.
Parting oberservation... The woman sitting across from me looks like a very young Barbara Streisand. Most women probably wouldn't consider that a compliment, huh? Good thing I don't talk to people.
Tuesday, September 16
"looming in his headlights..."
you know, i've recently posted about how awesome work is going, and honestly... every day for the past few weeks, I get off the train feeling like i've had a really amazing day. then not 10 minutes from the time i get home i have a splitting fucking headache, because invariably i'm faced with utter HYSTERIA, which is my least favorite thing in the whole fucking world. this child is flipping out because she forgot her workbook from school and that child is flipping out because the other child is screaming and he can't hear the tv and the wife is flipping out at the second child because she's trying to deal with the first child and the dog is running around stealing pizza from the kitchen table...
i really don't want to turn into one of Those Guys... the type who looks for reasons to stay late at work because going home is the thing that ruins his day, but... fuck...
you know, i've recently posted about how awesome work is going, and honestly... every day for the past few weeks, I get off the train feeling like i've had a really amazing day. then not 10 minutes from the time i get home i have a splitting fucking headache, because invariably i'm faced with utter HYSTERIA, which is my least favorite thing in the whole fucking world. this child is flipping out because she forgot her workbook from school and that child is flipping out because the other child is screaming and he can't hear the tv and the wife is flipping out at the second child because she's trying to deal with the first child and the dog is running around stealing pizza from the kitchen table...
i really don't want to turn into one of Those Guys... the type who looks for reasons to stay late at work because going home is the thing that ruins his day, but... fuck...
six feet and counting...
Working my way through the pile of bit-torrented cable-TV series that are piling up on the hard drive... I enjoyed the first season or so of Six Feet Under, but now it's turned into one of those shows that seems to take great pleasure in torturing and literally beating the shit out of its protagonists. Give him a brain tumor!! Kill his wife!! Rob him at gunpoint and pistol whip him!! It's a DRAMA! We need more SUFFERING!!
I'm getting a little tired of it.
Working my way through the pile of bit-torrented cable-TV series that are piling up on the hard drive... I enjoyed the first season or so of Six Feet Under, but now it's turned into one of those shows that seems to take great pleasure in torturing and literally beating the shit out of its protagonists. Give him a brain tumor!! Kill his wife!! Rob him at gunpoint and pistol whip him!! It's a DRAMA! We need more SUFFERING!!
I'm getting a little tired of it.
Thursday, September 11
mile-stone...
Last night I dragged myself out of the house for a run despite being woozy and full of Chinese food. Much to my surprise, I was able to run a mile, then found myself running another half mile... all without a break... and when I got back to my house I felt like I could keep on going. I read somewhere about reaching that point where... instead of your head saying "keep going" while your body says "let's stop", it's the other way around. So, that was a first.
Today was a pretty awesome day of classes, too. Things "flowed"... jokes got laughs...
I'm afraid I have nothing to bitch about.
Last night I dragged myself out of the house for a run despite being woozy and full of Chinese food. Much to my surprise, I was able to run a mile, then found myself running another half mile... all without a break... and when I got back to my house I felt like I could keep on going. I read somewhere about reaching that point where... instead of your head saying "keep going" while your body says "let's stop", it's the other way around. So, that was a first.
Today was a pretty awesome day of classes, too. Things "flowed"... jokes got laughs...
I'm afraid I have nothing to bitch about.
Monday, September 8
quick updates from the first week...
Seems I'm not as bloggy with the blogging on the blog this semester... dunno why... general busy-ness plus lots of good TV shows to watch on the laptop, I guess. Things are going well. Not a whole lot to talk about in detail. Perhaps some bullet-points are in order...
* One class is super-full, but my other two are really low enrollment, for me anyway. Especially after I scared away about a third of the students from the Relativity class. (Oops!) Really, though... if they are afraid of the math, I kinda want them out. This is not the place to get over your math-phobia... an upper-level course on Einstein. I have other courses for that.
* My schedule this year is set up in a way such that I feel I have enough time to think. Which feels odd.
* I got a nice new terabyte drive. It's shiny and black and matches the new black MacBook. It also looks not unlike the monolith from 2001. I find myself semi-consciously humming the overture to "Also Spracht Zarathustra" when I look at it sometimes.
* My new office is becoming kind of a perfect "space". Really happy about that.
* Finally met my new office-mate after two weeks. She has a very old-fashioned name, so I had been expecting someone older than me to show up. Turns out she's actually young and gorgeous. Honestly... this is something I do NOT need.
Seems I'm not as bloggy with the blogging on the blog this semester... dunno why... general busy-ness plus lots of good TV shows to watch on the laptop, I guess. Things are going well. Not a whole lot to talk about in detail. Perhaps some bullet-points are in order...
* One class is super-full, but my other two are really low enrollment, for me anyway. Especially after I scared away about a third of the students from the Relativity class. (Oops!) Really, though... if they are afraid of the math, I kinda want them out. This is not the place to get over your math-phobia... an upper-level course on Einstein. I have other courses for that.
* My schedule this year is set up in a way such that I feel I have enough time to think. Which feels odd.
* I got a nice new terabyte drive. It's shiny and black and matches the new black MacBook. It also looks not unlike the monolith from 2001. I find myself semi-consciously humming the overture to "Also Spracht Zarathustra" when I look at it sometimes.
* My new office is becoming kind of a perfect "space". Really happy about that.
* Finally met my new office-mate after two weeks. She has a very old-fashioned name, so I had been expecting someone older than me to show up. Turns out she's actually young and gorgeous. Honestly... this is something I do NOT need.
Friday, September 5
economics...
How the fuck is it that I can buy a METAL LAMP from Ikea that has electrical parts that actually DO SOMETHING for $14.99, but a metal BRACKET for my car that does NOTHING but hold up my tailpipe costs $40??
If Ikea made a car, I'd buy it in a minute. Even if I had to mostly assemble it with an allen wrench.
How the fuck is it that I can buy a METAL LAMP from Ikea that has electrical parts that actually DO SOMETHING for $14.99, but a metal BRACKET for my car that does NOTHING but hold up my tailpipe costs $40??
If Ikea made a car, I'd buy it in a minute. Even if I had to mostly assemble it with an allen wrench.
Tuesday, September 2
whoooooooosssshhhh....
The air vent above me on this train is blowing so hard... it's whipping my hair around like I'm riding in a fucking convertible. I'm not even exaggerating.
So, today is the first day of school. When you're 8, the first day of school means a new outfit, a new backpack, and a neat new haircut. When you're 38, it means a new outfit, a new laptop, and a neat first-day-of-school beard trimming. Some things never change.
My morning class is basically under control, I think. My stuff is printed out... I know what I'm going to say for the most part. The afternoon class is another story. Luckily, my co-teacher and I have from noon until 2:00 to get our shit together.
Tomorrow's class is kinda iffy. There are still some decisions I'm waffling over. Require them to read a Galileo/Newton biography? Require them to buy the 200 page course-reader from the copy shop for $20, or give them the option to download? I can't really print the syllabus until I DECIDE on these things.
Anyway, the point of all this is... once again the semester is starting and I'm not *quite* ready for it. Like I said... some things never change.
The air vent above me on this train is blowing so hard... it's whipping my hair around like I'm riding in a fucking convertible. I'm not even exaggerating.
So, today is the first day of school. When you're 8, the first day of school means a new outfit, a new backpack, and a neat new haircut. When you're 38, it means a new outfit, a new laptop, and a neat first-day-of-school beard trimming. Some things never change.
My morning class is basically under control, I think. My stuff is printed out... I know what I'm going to say for the most part. The afternoon class is another story. Luckily, my co-teacher and I have from noon until 2:00 to get our shit together.
Tomorrow's class is kinda iffy. There are still some decisions I'm waffling over. Require them to read a Galileo/Newton biography? Require them to buy the 200 page course-reader from the copy shop for $20, or give them the option to download? I can't really print the syllabus until I DECIDE on these things.
Anyway, the point of all this is... once again the semester is starting and I'm not *quite* ready for it. Like I said... some things never change.
Monday, September 1
whooooossshhhhhh....
I noticed all day that the CNN reporters are out in the storm with their mic WITH NO WINDSCREEN ON. I'm sorry, but you use a windscreen on your mic whenever you're outside, even on a relatively nice day. Why would you take it OFF in a hurricane? Unless it's to make the hurricane sound worse than it is? But why would a news organization do that? Unless maybe they had hyped up the storm of the century for 3 days and it had just been downgraded to a Category 2?
Nah.
I noticed all day that the CNN reporters are out in the storm with their mic WITH NO WINDSCREEN ON. I'm sorry, but you use a windscreen on your mic whenever you're outside, even on a relatively nice day. Why would you take it OFF in a hurricane? Unless it's to make the hurricane sound worse than it is? But why would a news organization do that? Unless maybe they had hyped up the storm of the century for 3 days and it had just been downgraded to a Category 2?
Nah.
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