No SHOUT-OUTS!
(with apologies to the classic movie "friday")
Super Happy "Where You Been?!!" Shout-out to the ever lovely Stacy H. of Washington, DC. the good friend from freshman year is still co'chillin' in the foreign service gig and thanks to super-frosh friend Nara W. of Los Angeles, CA, got her back in touch. couldn't be more thrilled. especially b/c i haven't had a good giggle from thinking about the PhiPsi formal where she was totally determined to snag my big brother (and frat president). who was gay. though maybe not out at the time. anyhow, they're both super excellent people in that story and as he was nominated for a Tony (how could Stacy not know?!!!) and she's still mingling with Mancunians, i'd say we all turned out allright.
Big Ups to My Ipod. No, really. I've been listening to Pandora.com for quite a while now (try it and you'll see the OCD come through) but nothing can compare to what was, until i switched over to Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, nearly 37 uninteruppted hours of Beatles. I had forgotten the love.
Special Peace and Love out to Jason V. of Los Angeles, CA. Senior roommate and someone who I can always remember from any Trojan Knight Party, gave me the shout-out to invite me to a little party he's having tonight. Too bad I'm not near Bridgeport, CT. But if you are, and wouldn't mind seeing him film some segments for Girls Gone Wild, let me know and i'll hook you up. Seriously. Though I didn't have it in my heart to tell him that the girls of Bridgeport might not make it off the cutting room floor. No, seriously.
DOUBLE-DOUBLE PROUD UPS! to my boy the good Dr. Carr of Guam and clan. passing the boards in st.louis was just the start of it! the girls are looking grander by the day and it seems the island life is passing muster. which i knew.
HAPPY PEACE OUT TO THE LOCAL JUSTICES OF THE PEACE! today i was supposed to do jury duty in connecticut. but in fortunates of fortunates, my notice arrived on the same day as my excused note. NICE!
happy weekend! beat the cougars! --goose
Friday, September 29, 2006
numerology, OCD, and the need for a second wal-mart
dearest all-
like the final box needing unpacking or the last book needing shelving, i can (almost) declare that i have moved in to my graduate life in toto. those dark early days in late august where i slept on a futon matress on the floor and had no place for anything except the pockets of floorspace around said futon are long gone. the unpacking should be done this weekend (i still have a box of books and my piano to get in place) amid the shouts and murmurs of the usc game, two big GIS projects, and one HUGE methodological paper that i have promised will be ready monday. and in the even greater scheme of displaying my permanence to college station, i've gone and gotten texas plates for my car, claus.
a quick backstory: my car is claus. he is a 2003 ocean blue bmw 325xi with nice leather interior and has been the sundance kid to my butch cassidy for my 2 big cross-country jaunts in 2003 and 2004. he is claus (rhymes with house) because he purrs like the little kitten claus i semi-adopted when i lived in the turks and caicos islands who would sleep on my chest every so often. here in the land of american-made and big trucks (and i mean BIG as in: the djork's truck is so big that it hangs over every boundary of their parking space; both lines and out into traffic - which of course leads to the corrolary known by several of my peers as "The Mickey Mouse Corollary". it might actually be more of a scientifically-tested Theory (as opposed to how nutjob "scientific creationists" belittle Darwin by using the other, less concrete definition of theory to try and push their child's education back into the 18th century) or it might even be a Law. But we call it a Corollary, mainly because a Corollary is defined to be "a natural consequence, or result." we dont' know if the large truck is the impetus of the MMC or if something in the owner's physiology predisposes them to purchase outlandishly large vehicles. we do know that the MMC is as true as the premise that you'll only spill red wine on fancy white clothes. and, before i pull back to the story as writ, i'd like to point out to the nay-noobers out there that claus was only discovered from a newspaper profile and i discovered the sticker price of a claus was the same (actually a tad less) than the two other cars i was considering - a chevy impala (yo yo yo! y'allz!) and a subaru wrx. yep, that's right. i almost bought an impala. and given that in the two years i drove claus exclusively, i managed to pile on 41,000 miles, i think that i have demostrated the appropriateness of the vehicle with the owner...
anyhow, not much of a quick backstory, but i got in a tad deeper than i thought i would. it's friday. what can you do? so... today i was determined to get claus registered as a bonafide vehicle in the state of texas. this requires 2 things: getting an emissions testing, and turning over your connecticut registration for a texas one. the third item (drivers' license) was ultimately a monumental failure, and i won't bore you with the details save the delicious note that i couldn't get a texas license because i had no proof of my social security number. my dog, rowan, ate the card way back in like january of 2005. seriously. was my passport a viable alternative? nope. how about my student id? nope. how about my virgin islands' health card (for bartending) that actually has my SSN on it? nope. stupid republicans are disenfranchising the masses, i swear.
so at 8am, i headed over to school to print out my texas insurance cards. return trip home was about an hour. i call the emissions people and, using maps.com or maybe the ridiculously bad excite.maps page (and you know this people!) i wrote out directions. which were wrong. long story short: it took 1.5 hours and 48 miles to get to the emissions test. to diagram a tale of lostness that really can't be described with the local landmarks (since noone knows them), instead, here's a mental image. draw a rectangle. we'll call each side by compass names: north, east, south, west. place a star on the northwest corner (the emissions testing center). place a circle midway up the east side. that's home. how does one get there quickly? well, that should be obvious.
here's what i did. drove down the east line towards the southeast nexus. made another square below square 1 (you may want to number your squares), and drove down that east line too. at that southeast corner, turn and drive along the south line towards the west line of square 2. turn up and drive the west line ALMOST all the way to where the west line of square 2 meets the southwest corner of square 1. turn around after calling the guy and he says his place is near the walmart (let's place a W on square 3 somewhere near the northeast corner, which lies adjacent and in line with the eastern edge of square 2.) drive back West-2 and turn left and drive along the South-2 towards East-2 (where square 2 meets Square 3). continue driving along South into square 3. get to the W where the walmart is represented. you should now be in square 3 at the northeast corner. look for a Napa Auto Parts while driving on North-3 towards W3/E2. don't find a Napa. Give up. Head back to home. Now draw a Square 4, which lies above and to the right of the northeast corner of square 1 (think of how squares line up along diagonals if you're a bishop in chess). pretend there's a short-cut through that empty space between Sq1 and Sq4. drive through it. You're now on the south line of Sq4. drive towards East4. Realize that you're in the wrong direction. Turn around at GREAT PERIL since texas likes highways that aren't really highways, but have streetlights and stuff and merging lanes that disappear and suddenly on-coming traffic lanes when you take an exit ramp. how i was in the wrong lane of traffic, i'll never figure out. it was amazing. take exit. go up offramp. come to stop at light. while waiting to turn left (and go over neo-highway and get back on and head the other direction), discover a trucker is honking at you to get back on the right side of the road...
anyhow, accident avoided, get back on Sq4 and head towards W4 along S4. When you get there, realize that you're RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED (well, like 3 blocks from home). Draw Square 5, which sits ontop of Sq.1 and to the west of Sq.4. You'll now notice that, if you continue driving west along Sq5, that the SW corner of Sq5 just happens to match the little star in the NW corner of Sq.1.
congratulations! you've made it. now pay the man $13.50 for the test that took 1 minute. and notice on your way out that there's a second wal-mart in town.
the rest of the day was pretty unspectacular. apart from the wrong turn after i got my car registered that took me through Da'Hood and by the local penitentary (sorry, claus!), i'm now a texas driver. which brings me to the point:
my license plate sucks. MLPSUX.
i can't be any more clear in this: texas plate 436-PFF needs to go. and that is where you come in.
there's an ability to "post comment" on my ramblings. i'm looking for voters.
now, i've done this in the past, specifically when i first got claus, but now i need to do it. i can't drive around with a car that reads "puff" or "piff". how can i establish MMC on other drivers? i have no authority in 436-PFF.
for those who know my inner workings in slightly more detail than i'd like to divulge, you know my nearly OCD with numbers. i'm the boy that counted the 1840 steps from my house to fred's shanty. i'm the one who would only walk on gray tiles at school on test days. i don't step on cracks but know that, when i'm late for class (this was at USC) that it was exactly 4 steps on each concrete slab down trousdale, and then 4 alternating with 3 when i got close to mudd chemistry building. my phone numbers are memorized in the most bizzare manner ever (take, for example, my brother's: the year before dad graduated highschool-how many more years it took to graduate - the class of submarine that the hg rickover is - the year shamus graduated highschool, the year before my dad's graduation again. and my ct license plate was similarly understood by this framework: 757-RXU. a 757 is a big plane that goes fast. RX is medicine. U is You. so claus could be read as "going far and fast is good for you." 436-PFF is???
so here are the potentials for a plate. the winning plate will be chosen (at only $30!!!) and will replace the hideousness that is 436-PFF. its a 6-letter max her ein texass. explanations follow:
PLOTOR - "P. lotor"- the original and still a fave. it's the genus/species of my favorite animal: the raccoon.
LUTJNS - "Lutjanus" - the genus for snapper fish, supposedly something i'm studying. hard to get the "janus" sound though, and definitely can't have ANUS anywhere...
SRRNID - "Serranid" - the family name for groupers.
GO2USC - "Go To USC" - clear enough.
USC4ME - "USC For Me" - clear enough.
SCYALE - "SC - Yale" - if it was 7 letters, it'd be SC2Yale, but there you go. disenfranchisement, man. disenfranchisement.
CRUXAN - "Crucian" - from St. Croix. like it, but cops might not? or people'd go "CRUX?" i never said texans were smart.
STX4ME - "St.Croix for me". doubt anyone beyond T3 and other pilots would get the airport code. and as it turns out, i don't want people thinking i like sticks. or their equivalents.
CLAUS - "Claus". like it, but would people pronounce it "clause"? poor poor claus.
ROWAN - "Rowan". like it, but my dog is already named. and my car is named after a cat...
DEALER'SCHOICE - "you make one up". i think that those are best.
ok: it's friday night, nearly 8pm here, we get paid in a few days, so HURRAY! HURRAY FOR BEER!
--goose
Bonus Thought: the best i got for 436-PFF is that a size 36 is 4 sizes bigger than i would ever want to be (though the 33 is okay since it seems to be holding steady these days), and that, should i gain 4 size to a 36, i'd make a nice PFF noise when i sat.
like the final box needing unpacking or the last book needing shelving, i can (almost) declare that i have moved in to my graduate life in toto. those dark early days in late august where i slept on a futon matress on the floor and had no place for anything except the pockets of floorspace around said futon are long gone. the unpacking should be done this weekend (i still have a box of books and my piano to get in place) amid the shouts and murmurs of the usc game, two big GIS projects, and one HUGE methodological paper that i have promised will be ready monday. and in the even greater scheme of displaying my permanence to college station, i've gone and gotten texas plates for my car, claus.
a quick backstory: my car is claus. he is a 2003 ocean blue bmw 325xi with nice leather interior and has been the sundance kid to my butch cassidy for my 2 big cross-country jaunts in 2003 and 2004. he is claus (rhymes with house) because he purrs like the little kitten claus i semi-adopted when i lived in the turks and caicos islands who would sleep on my chest every so often. here in the land of american-made and big trucks (and i mean BIG as in: the djork's truck is so big that it hangs over every boundary of their parking space; both lines and out into traffic - which of course leads to the corrolary known by several of my peers as "The Mickey Mouse Corollary". it might actually be more of a scientifically-tested Theory (as opposed to how nutjob "scientific creationists" belittle Darwin by using the other, less concrete definition of theory to try and push their child's education back into the 18th century) or it might even be a Law. But we call it a Corollary, mainly because a Corollary is defined to be "a natural consequence, or result." we dont' know if the large truck is the impetus of the MMC or if something in the owner's physiology predisposes them to purchase outlandishly large vehicles. we do know that the MMC is as true as the premise that you'll only spill red wine on fancy white clothes. and, before i pull back to the story as writ, i'd like to point out to the nay-noobers out there that claus was only discovered from a newspaper profile and i discovered the sticker price of a claus was the same (actually a tad less) than the two other cars i was considering - a chevy impala (yo yo yo! y'allz!) and a subaru wrx. yep, that's right. i almost bought an impala. and given that in the two years i drove claus exclusively, i managed to pile on 41,000 miles, i think that i have demostrated the appropriateness of the vehicle with the owner...
anyhow, not much of a quick backstory, but i got in a tad deeper than i thought i would. it's friday. what can you do? so... today i was determined to get claus registered as a bonafide vehicle in the state of texas. this requires 2 things: getting an emissions testing, and turning over your connecticut registration for a texas one. the third item (drivers' license) was ultimately a monumental failure, and i won't bore you with the details save the delicious note that i couldn't get a texas license because i had no proof of my social security number. my dog, rowan, ate the card way back in like january of 2005. seriously. was my passport a viable alternative? nope. how about my student id? nope. how about my virgin islands' health card (for bartending) that actually has my SSN on it? nope. stupid republicans are disenfranchising the masses, i swear.
so at 8am, i headed over to school to print out my texas insurance cards. return trip home was about an hour. i call the emissions people and, using maps.com or maybe the ridiculously bad excite.maps page (and you know this people!) i wrote out directions. which were wrong. long story short: it took 1.5 hours and 48 miles to get to the emissions test. to diagram a tale of lostness that really can't be described with the local landmarks (since noone knows them), instead, here's a mental image. draw a rectangle. we'll call each side by compass names: north, east, south, west. place a star on the northwest corner (the emissions testing center). place a circle midway up the east side. that's home. how does one get there quickly? well, that should be obvious.
here's what i did. drove down the east line towards the southeast nexus. made another square below square 1 (you may want to number your squares), and drove down that east line too. at that southeast corner, turn and drive along the south line towards the west line of square 2. turn up and drive the west line ALMOST all the way to where the west line of square 2 meets the southwest corner of square 1. turn around after calling the guy and he says his place is near the walmart (let's place a W on square 3 somewhere near the northeast corner, which lies adjacent and in line with the eastern edge of square 2.) drive back West-2 and turn left and drive along the South-2 towards East-2 (where square 2 meets Square 3). continue driving along South into square 3. get to the W where the walmart is represented. you should now be in square 3 at the northeast corner. look for a Napa Auto Parts while driving on North-3 towards W3/E2. don't find a Napa. Give up. Head back to home. Now draw a Square 4, which lies above and to the right of the northeast corner of square 1 (think of how squares line up along diagonals if you're a bishop in chess). pretend there's a short-cut through that empty space between Sq1 and Sq4. drive through it. You're now on the south line of Sq4. drive towards East4. Realize that you're in the wrong direction. Turn around at GREAT PERIL since texas likes highways that aren't really highways, but have streetlights and stuff and merging lanes that disappear and suddenly on-coming traffic lanes when you take an exit ramp. how i was in the wrong lane of traffic, i'll never figure out. it was amazing. take exit. go up offramp. come to stop at light. while waiting to turn left (and go over neo-highway and get back on and head the other direction), discover a trucker is honking at you to get back on the right side of the road...
anyhow, accident avoided, get back on Sq4 and head towards W4 along S4. When you get there, realize that you're RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED (well, like 3 blocks from home). Draw Square 5, which sits ontop of Sq.1 and to the west of Sq.4. You'll now notice that, if you continue driving west along Sq5, that the SW corner of Sq5 just happens to match the little star in the NW corner of Sq.1.
congratulations! you've made it. now pay the man $13.50 for the test that took 1 minute. and notice on your way out that there's a second wal-mart in town.
the rest of the day was pretty unspectacular. apart from the wrong turn after i got my car registered that took me through Da'Hood and by the local penitentary (sorry, claus!), i'm now a texas driver. which brings me to the point:
my license plate sucks. MLPSUX.
i can't be any more clear in this: texas plate 436-PFF needs to go. and that is where you come in.
there's an ability to "post comment" on my ramblings. i'm looking for voters.
now, i've done this in the past, specifically when i first got claus, but now i need to do it. i can't drive around with a car that reads "puff" or "piff". how can i establish MMC on other drivers? i have no authority in 436-PFF.
for those who know my inner workings in slightly more detail than i'd like to divulge, you know my nearly OCD with numbers. i'm the boy that counted the 1840 steps from my house to fred's shanty. i'm the one who would only walk on gray tiles at school on test days. i don't step on cracks but know that, when i'm late for class (this was at USC) that it was exactly 4 steps on each concrete slab down trousdale, and then 4 alternating with 3 when i got close to mudd chemistry building. my phone numbers are memorized in the most bizzare manner ever (take, for example, my brother's: the year before dad graduated highschool-how many more years it took to graduate - the class of submarine that the hg rickover is - the year shamus graduated highschool, the year before my dad's graduation again. and my ct license plate was similarly understood by this framework: 757-RXU. a 757 is a big plane that goes fast. RX is medicine. U is You. so claus could be read as "going far and fast is good for you." 436-PFF is???
so here are the potentials for a plate. the winning plate will be chosen (at only $30!!!) and will replace the hideousness that is 436-PFF. its a 6-letter max her ein texass. explanations follow:
PLOTOR - "P. lotor"- the original and still a fave. it's the genus/species of my favorite animal: the raccoon.
LUTJNS - "Lutjanus" - the genus for snapper fish, supposedly something i'm studying. hard to get the "janus" sound though, and definitely can't have ANUS anywhere...
SRRNID - "Serranid" - the family name for groupers.
GO2USC - "Go To USC" - clear enough.
USC4ME - "USC For Me" - clear enough.
SCYALE - "SC - Yale" - if it was 7 letters, it'd be SC2Yale, but there you go. disenfranchisement, man. disenfranchisement.
CRUXAN - "Crucian" - from St. Croix. like it, but cops might not? or people'd go "CRUX?" i never said texans were smart.
STX4ME - "St.Croix for me". doubt anyone beyond T3 and other pilots would get the airport code. and as it turns out, i don't want people thinking i like sticks. or their equivalents.
CLAUS - "Claus". like it, but would people pronounce it "clause"? poor poor claus.
ROWAN - "Rowan". like it, but my dog is already named. and my car is named after a cat...
DEALER'SCHOICE - "you make one up". i think that those are best.
ok: it's friday night, nearly 8pm here, we get paid in a few days, so HURRAY! HURRAY FOR BEER!
--goose
Bonus Thought: the best i got for 436-PFF is that a size 36 is 4 sizes bigger than i would ever want to be (though the 33 is okay since it seems to be holding steady these days), and that, should i gain 4 size to a 36, i'd make a nice PFF noise when i sat.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
the quick bonus of a bad morning gone good
dearest all-
happy equinox!
today is hump day. the technical term is "wednesday" but everyone knows it as the day they, should they manage to get through it, can pop it in neutral (more or less) and enjoy the scenery as friday and the weekend approaches. but getting through the day? tough!
which is why i'm glad i have some good friends. let's recount the last few days.
so on saturday night, me and euge went over to the fox&hound to watch the usc/nebraska game and eat a burger. good idea. then we played pool for free. good idea. until 2am. not good idea. i hiccupped until nearly 5am. not good idea. then on sunday, i managed to rouse myself and pour through some work. good idea. i did a literature review for a project that just got funded and they want me to describe the methodology to employ there. good idea. the project is in belize and venezuela. good idea, good idea. and then i tried to catch up with clayt online. bad idea (esp. to the two people who know the time commitment entailed). and i didn't find him. bad idea. but i didn't give up until 4am. bad bad bad bad idea.
so monday arrives, and i'm, methaphorically speaking, dead. i get to my awesomely intellectually stimulating geographical history (and philosophy) class completely unable to be intellectually stimulated. bad idea. but class was still good and i got a slight uptic in energy as the coffee and Kant hit (i told you it was philosophical). and then i sidled over to the office and prepared for my TA session. we had a fun outdoor lab mapping the grassy knoll (there's apparently lots of them in texas). and my energy seemed to wobble upwards. which, in reality, was nothing more than a passing sugar rush. somehow, i managed to finish up work and headed home with the express desire to "stay up until 8pm". and i did! 8:35 was observed before passing out for 12 hours. great idea!
tuesday was beautiful here. low 80s, maybe high 70s, with a nice crispness that led, owing partly to the 12 hours of rest and partly to the break from the unbearable heaviness that is texas heat and humidity, to euphoric reverie. tuesday was, in all manners of the word, not monday. i sat in on geography 203 (where i will guest lecture tomorrow on the coriolis force!) and then powered through my two other classes. then i received my first great packaage from mayor mccheese of st. croix, vi. the data i was looking for for my wetlands talk tomorrow (for my wetlands class). hurray and huzzah! except: i had already told myself i was done with it.
but done i would not be, as i let myself tweak and update the presentation with several new photos of the ravaged mangrove forest post-hurricane hugo, and several bold new graphs and tables highlighting my premise that, when done on the cheap, restoration projects rarely succeed. and so i worked, nose to the grindstone, on said "completed" talk until 10pm last night. not a great idea, especially when you consider that 1) the professor of said class is out of class tomorrow and will not see the bold new graphs and tables, 2) i put off prepping for the coriolis lecture and other things (like reading papers, grading labs, etc.), and 3) i did this all without eating all day long.
but i made it home, weary champion of a job well done and slightly charred along the edges. i passed out about 11:45pm, after realizing that an incredibly easy sudoku puzzle i was doing was entirely wrong upon completion (never a satisfactory feeling). and given the change in the weather (i should have known from my studies of shakespeare and the use of change to represent unrest and conflict approaching), i left my A/C off. yea!
or so i thought.
apparently, given the high numbers (at least 1 each year) of students who try to jump on to moving trains as they pass through college station and fail in the most mortal way, all the engineers give plenty of warning of their approach. and even though i'm about 1/3-mile from the tracks, their horns sound like they're just outside the door. 3 times last night, i was awakened by the heavy pull of the whistle by the train engineers. not yea.
and then, it being wednesday, it was off early in the morning to the philosophy/geography/history class. excellent class, esp. the part when discussion the hidden motives of "mass education" in the late 19th century in america (i especially enjoyed the precept of "mass education normalized individuals leading them to be 'entrusted' with a vote" i.e. education was shaped to ensure people voted a certain way. my! how things have changed! but just prior to heading off to class, i got yet another email regarding some side work that i've been completing over the past six months. the kind of email, given the tone and the insinuations, that make a champion of a job well done stew whilst discussing orwellian underpinings of elementary school curricula. scary idea?
not to say that i'm entirely not at fault or that these emails have not been unnecessary. somewhere about 5 months into the project, the analysis scope was re-described and i was asked to start the analyses over again from scratch according to these new (to me) standards. which i said i'd do. long story short: with 200 data points each month, and (now) 7 months of data, we're talking about re-calculating 1400 data points. and each data point takes about 20 seconds to do. so we're talking about 3 weeks of new work. discovering that there were essentially clerical mistakes on about 11 (0.7%) is both not particularly surprising and not that big a deal because 1) the project is on-going and the data is only now being re-analyzed and being incorporated into the reports, and 2) the mistakes would surely be caught if not by me then by someone in charge of the report. and the fact that they have been caught proves my points 1 and 2.
what got my goat, though, was the sheer lack of the email writer that 1) they were unfamiliar with the methodology originally and suggested that i was making things up. and how they are unaware of the methodology makes me wonder what part of the coral reef science niche they occupy since the methodology is used by EVERY governmental agency, and 2) that they suggested i was personally wasting their time because i was submitting incomplete data sets. it's only partially true that 2) is correct. the whole story is that the coral died and at some point me writing those zeroes got dropped so that i could tackle one of the other 20 discrete data sets. it doesn't take brain surgeons to grab a hand and write zeroes if need be, which gives me the distinct feeling that the data, though read, isn't being absorbed.
of course, i'd have a much bigger leg to stand on if i didn't have 2 completely whacked out data sets that did indeed need to be redone. to that, in the words of benedict XVI, "my bad." now get over it.
anyhow, the reason you're reading this is that, whilst shaping my "go die in a fire" email response (attached were the corrected data sets), i got item number two from the mayor. a catalog of 7 or 8 photos of the local christiansted celebrity nightlife. we're talking "dollar bill", "mrs. dollar bill", "fast hands richard", "army guy", "drunk at 8am guy", "stick man", and "pink doo rag guy" (not his nom d'plume, but i know him as that or, alternately, the guy who stands always at the southwest corner of king and strand streets, making me always cross along the north side. as if the mayor knew my plight and down-trodden spirits, he came through, as he always does. best idea!
so of course, if you're interested (and i don't know who to credit the photographs to or their tremendous ganas), i can email you "faces of crucian homelessness and drug dependency: a humorous take on life in tropical bliss". though you might have to be from st.croix to really catch that unique smell that is dollar bill as he shuffles up to you, jaw a-gape, hands outward, begging for change. if he asked for soap, he'd do much better. but i hear even he knows how to pixellate coral images for percent live cover and such.
but thank you, mccheese. i owe you some pale ale. best idea II!
--goose
happy equinox!
today is hump day. the technical term is "wednesday" but everyone knows it as the day they, should they manage to get through it, can pop it in neutral (more or less) and enjoy the scenery as friday and the weekend approaches. but getting through the day? tough!
which is why i'm glad i have some good friends. let's recount the last few days.
so on saturday night, me and euge went over to the fox&hound to watch the usc/nebraska game and eat a burger. good idea. then we played pool for free. good idea. until 2am. not good idea. i hiccupped until nearly 5am. not good idea. then on sunday, i managed to rouse myself and pour through some work. good idea. i did a literature review for a project that just got funded and they want me to describe the methodology to employ there. good idea. the project is in belize and venezuela. good idea, good idea. and then i tried to catch up with clayt online. bad idea (esp. to the two people who know the time commitment entailed). and i didn't find him. bad idea. but i didn't give up until 4am. bad bad bad bad idea.
so monday arrives, and i'm, methaphorically speaking, dead. i get to my awesomely intellectually stimulating geographical history (and philosophy) class completely unable to be intellectually stimulated. bad idea. but class was still good and i got a slight uptic in energy as the coffee and Kant hit (i told you it was philosophical). and then i sidled over to the office and prepared for my TA session. we had a fun outdoor lab mapping the grassy knoll (there's apparently lots of them in texas). and my energy seemed to wobble upwards. which, in reality, was nothing more than a passing sugar rush. somehow, i managed to finish up work and headed home with the express desire to "stay up until 8pm". and i did! 8:35 was observed before passing out for 12 hours. great idea!
tuesday was beautiful here. low 80s, maybe high 70s, with a nice crispness that led, owing partly to the 12 hours of rest and partly to the break from the unbearable heaviness that is texas heat and humidity, to euphoric reverie. tuesday was, in all manners of the word, not monday. i sat in on geography 203 (where i will guest lecture tomorrow on the coriolis force!) and then powered through my two other classes. then i received my first great packaage from mayor mccheese of st. croix, vi. the data i was looking for for my wetlands talk tomorrow (for my wetlands class). hurray and huzzah! except: i had already told myself i was done with it.
but done i would not be, as i let myself tweak and update the presentation with several new photos of the ravaged mangrove forest post-hurricane hugo, and several bold new graphs and tables highlighting my premise that, when done on the cheap, restoration projects rarely succeed. and so i worked, nose to the grindstone, on said "completed" talk until 10pm last night. not a great idea, especially when you consider that 1) the professor of said class is out of class tomorrow and will not see the bold new graphs and tables, 2) i put off prepping for the coriolis lecture and other things (like reading papers, grading labs, etc.), and 3) i did this all without eating all day long.
but i made it home, weary champion of a job well done and slightly charred along the edges. i passed out about 11:45pm, after realizing that an incredibly easy sudoku puzzle i was doing was entirely wrong upon completion (never a satisfactory feeling). and given the change in the weather (i should have known from my studies of shakespeare and the use of change to represent unrest and conflict approaching), i left my A/C off. yea!
or so i thought.
apparently, given the high numbers (at least 1 each year) of students who try to jump on to moving trains as they pass through college station and fail in the most mortal way, all the engineers give plenty of warning of their approach. and even though i'm about 1/3-mile from the tracks, their horns sound like they're just outside the door. 3 times last night, i was awakened by the heavy pull of the whistle by the train engineers. not yea.
and then, it being wednesday, it was off early in the morning to the philosophy/geography/history class. excellent class, esp. the part when discussion the hidden motives of "mass education" in the late 19th century in america (i especially enjoyed the precept of "mass education normalized individuals leading them to be 'entrusted' with a vote" i.e. education was shaped to ensure people voted a certain way. my! how things have changed! but just prior to heading off to class, i got yet another email regarding some side work that i've been completing over the past six months. the kind of email, given the tone and the insinuations, that make a champion of a job well done stew whilst discussing orwellian underpinings of elementary school curricula. scary idea?
not to say that i'm entirely not at fault or that these emails have not been unnecessary. somewhere about 5 months into the project, the analysis scope was re-described and i was asked to start the analyses over again from scratch according to these new (to me) standards. which i said i'd do. long story short: with 200 data points each month, and (now) 7 months of data, we're talking about re-calculating 1400 data points. and each data point takes about 20 seconds to do. so we're talking about 3 weeks of new work. discovering that there were essentially clerical mistakes on about 11 (0.7%) is both not particularly surprising and not that big a deal because 1) the project is on-going and the data is only now being re-analyzed and being incorporated into the reports, and 2) the mistakes would surely be caught if not by me then by someone in charge of the report. and the fact that they have been caught proves my points 1 and 2.
what got my goat, though, was the sheer lack of the email writer that 1) they were unfamiliar with the methodology originally and suggested that i was making things up. and how they are unaware of the methodology makes me wonder what part of the coral reef science niche they occupy since the methodology is used by EVERY governmental agency, and 2) that they suggested i was personally wasting their time because i was submitting incomplete data sets. it's only partially true that 2) is correct. the whole story is that the coral died and at some point me writing those zeroes got dropped so that i could tackle one of the other 20 discrete data sets. it doesn't take brain surgeons to grab a hand and write zeroes if need be, which gives me the distinct feeling that the data, though read, isn't being absorbed.
of course, i'd have a much bigger leg to stand on if i didn't have 2 completely whacked out data sets that did indeed need to be redone. to that, in the words of benedict XVI, "my bad." now get over it.
anyhow, the reason you're reading this is that, whilst shaping my "go die in a fire" email response (attached were the corrected data sets), i got item number two from the mayor. a catalog of 7 or 8 photos of the local christiansted celebrity nightlife. we're talking "dollar bill", "mrs. dollar bill", "fast hands richard", "army guy", "drunk at 8am guy", "stick man", and "pink doo rag guy" (not his nom d'plume, but i know him as that or, alternately, the guy who stands always at the southwest corner of king and strand streets, making me always cross along the north side. as if the mayor knew my plight and down-trodden spirits, he came through, as he always does. best idea!
so of course, if you're interested (and i don't know who to credit the photographs to or their tremendous ganas), i can email you "faces of crucian homelessness and drug dependency: a humorous take on life in tropical bliss". though you might have to be from st.croix to really catch that unique smell that is dollar bill as he shuffles up to you, jaw a-gape, hands outward, begging for change. if he asked for soap, he'd do much better. but i hear even he knows how to pixellate coral images for percent live cover and such.
but thank you, mccheese. i owe you some pale ale. best idea II!
--goose
Friday, September 15, 2006
the free-for-all friday shoutouts (and a quick aside)
hola! tis friday, tis friday, tis friday! woohoo!
plans for this weekend: read some journal articles, come up with awesome plan to sedate and perform non-invasive surgery on fish (take that good dr. carr of guam! ooh... you work on people! that's easy! let's see you intubate a 35-cm long (forked length) mutton snapper, insert a 8Hz 7mm long sonar tag, and have the fish in the outpatient clinic in 10 minutes. didn't think so!... anyhoo, watch usc/nebraska, don't take advil, and finish up formerly wicked awesome powerpoint slide show for a presentation next thursday for a professor i'm trying to get onto my committee for a class he's not going to be present for. WEAK END is right!
anyhow, here's the aside: so i've been doing the school thing for about 3 weeks. and guess who's already been invited to give a guest lecture to a freshman-level class for geography 203? if you guessed "the cooked goose" you sir, would be right! yeah! me! and stuff! of course, the trick will be to avoid advil, as i accidentally (stupidly is a better word) decided that i could take an advil gel-cap. let's do the logic on this one: all gelcaps give me hives. advil gelcaps is a gelcap. therefore, I TOOK STUPID ADVIL GELCAPS! and now my body recognizes former wonder-drug advil as an allergen and i had a nice little outbreak of hives today. whilst proctoring an exam. wonderbar. just your typical friday for what i'm calling "the worst week of class ever".
now i know i promised that i would abstain (mainly for reasons like "if someone actually reads this and figures things out and i say something untoward, maybe i'll get booted...") from discussion of class-related things, but i have to say this: if you are a teacher/professor/education professional/class leader and you say something along the lines of "ok, just a quick overview of the work today and then we'll get down to business so you have time to get the project done", please, for my sanity and the sanity of others (who have to hear me B and M) don't proceed to lecture for 1.5 hours, killing said time allotted for class work. as that kid who always tuned the teacher out and got going on the workbook in elementary school, ignored the intro to the chemistry lab assignment in high school, blew off the teacher's feedback on the biochem report in college, and told an idiotfreund named Helmut to go die in a fire while in grad school, i'm not one for long, drawn-out intros to a computer project that, all told, took me, on my own, about 2 hours to complete. without any teacher's assistance. this, by the way, is the class i "didn't" want to take, but it sets me up nicely down the road for some other classes. but, for those of you keeping score at home, the total "ooh! glad he said that!" moments in this class are at 1.5... total. oi!
so anyhoo, that's the aside and why i'm glad it's the weekend. and why you may have heard someone over the horizon singing, "beer me, doctor!" sometime thursday evening around 11pm.
--goose
on to the shoutouts!
SUPERBONUS EXTRASPECIAL SUPERCHUNKY SHOUTOUT TO: my cousins Patti and Paula M. of Falls Church, MD for their wonderful care package of 3 (three) jars of Skippy superchunk peanut butter! the awe that said package inspired caused the following overheard comments around the geography department: "you're 30 and you eat peanut butter like a 5-yr old." "skippy? your cousins got any boxes meant for me?" and (from a total MILF): "my son eats peanut butter all the time too. i don't know what i'd cook if he didn't like it." which of course got me wondering how many different ways you can include peanut butter into cooking. obviously, the PBJ and PBJB (bananas) are the gold standard use for peanut butter. equally enticing is peanut butter chicken, sometimes hautily described on fancy menus as "chicken satay". i'm not fooled. then there's the excellent, if hard-to-get-ronny jockitch's-to-make-it-right: peanut butter burger. YUM! ask the T3 of newark, nj. he got me on it whilst in tacoma. of course, the muhas at ronny jockitch (please say you know the restaurant by it's proper name...) will then add mustard, ketchup, mayonaisse (BLAGH!) and the rest to the burger too. or, if you tell them the precise order (burger. buns. lettuce. tomato. peanut butter. that's it...) they'll put on such a tiny portion of PB that it's like they're afraid of it. and then they'll all stand agape watching as i power it back with a vanilla coke and chili cheese fries.... i'm getting hungry! anyone else up for a quick drive to mohegan sun and a little late night burger? or any of the other 10million places johnny rocket's exists? so, i got 3 items that are "meal"-oriented. then there's apples, carrots, celery, chocolate, ice cream, cake, cookies, and PB-sculptures (that's right...) if anyone knows a nice lamb or fish recipe incorporating said skippy peanut butter, let me know. i have eugene to test drive all dishes.
excellent shout-out to the good dr. carr, formerly of st.louis, mo and briefly in houston, tx. i hear the boards were passed? nice! next time you're in houston though, do call me. it's the closest town to college station. oops! and pea-sized whoopwhoops to the little girls. they are taking to beach and island life, as the photos can attest.
diggitydang WTF shoutout to people who manage IPs. that's "internet provider". get this: my internet worked only at home for a week. then only at school for a week. but never both. why? four competing firewalls shut down my computer's ability to talk to the wireless routers that are strung up (metaphysically of course) all around town. does my computer ever say that i got 4 firewalls that are not even remotely working in concert quietly in the background? no. and better yet, with the windows-installed network connections, you don't even get the button to click that would clear that all up. fortunately for me, i had nothing but free time this week (ha!) to spend about 8 hours trying to match the 2 passwords that i had originally put in a week ago. amazing. i want seamless service and possibilities. not headaches and yearnings for our old 2400kbs modem from 1993...
finally, booyah! shoutout to the mom for her on-going efforts to clear up a minor little headache known as the "goose has no place to stay over thanksgiving". turns out, if you make a reservation online, these people expect you to read and click some button on an email they send confirming your reservation request. and turns out, dear old dad, whose favorite hardware is "a dixon-ticonderoga 2.0" and (now this is no joke) uses both a "reverse-polish" calculator and an abacus to balance his chequebook, didn't read said email or reply to it. but the mom, currently in possession of "world's best mom" title for a record 16th consecutive year (don't ask about her "grounded for eternity" campaign platform from when i was 13 and, um... didn't come home from a party on time... turns out, the base didn't like that proposal...)... anyhow, turns out she got the reservation resurrected. hawai'i, here i come! so BOOYAH! mom! BOOYAH! (and don't worry, booyahs are good t'ings...)
plans for this weekend: read some journal articles, come up with awesome plan to sedate and perform non-invasive surgery on fish (take that good dr. carr of guam! ooh... you work on people! that's easy! let's see you intubate a 35-cm long (forked length) mutton snapper, insert a 8Hz 7mm long sonar tag, and have the fish in the outpatient clinic in 10 minutes. didn't think so!... anyhoo, watch usc/nebraska, don't take advil, and finish up formerly wicked awesome powerpoint slide show for a presentation next thursday for a professor i'm trying to get onto my committee for a class he's not going to be present for. WEAK END is right!
anyhow, here's the aside: so i've been doing the school thing for about 3 weeks. and guess who's already been invited to give a guest lecture to a freshman-level class for geography 203? if you guessed "the cooked goose" you sir, would be right! yeah! me! and stuff! of course, the trick will be to avoid advil, as i accidentally (stupidly is a better word) decided that i could take an advil gel-cap. let's do the logic on this one: all gelcaps give me hives. advil gelcaps is a gelcap. therefore, I TOOK STUPID ADVIL GELCAPS! and now my body recognizes former wonder-drug advil as an allergen and i had a nice little outbreak of hives today. whilst proctoring an exam. wonderbar. just your typical friday for what i'm calling "the worst week of class ever".
now i know i promised that i would abstain (mainly for reasons like "if someone actually reads this and figures things out and i say something untoward, maybe i'll get booted...") from discussion of class-related things, but i have to say this: if you are a teacher/professor/education professional/class leader and you say something along the lines of "ok, just a quick overview of the work today and then we'll get down to business so you have time to get the project done", please, for my sanity and the sanity of others (who have to hear me B and M) don't proceed to lecture for 1.5 hours, killing said time allotted for class work. as that kid who always tuned the teacher out and got going on the workbook in elementary school, ignored the intro to the chemistry lab assignment in high school, blew off the teacher's feedback on the biochem report in college, and told an idiotfreund named Helmut to go die in a fire while in grad school, i'm not one for long, drawn-out intros to a computer project that, all told, took me, on my own, about 2 hours to complete. without any teacher's assistance. this, by the way, is the class i "didn't" want to take, but it sets me up nicely down the road for some other classes. but, for those of you keeping score at home, the total "ooh! glad he said that!" moments in this class are at 1.5... total. oi!
so anyhoo, that's the aside and why i'm glad it's the weekend. and why you may have heard someone over the horizon singing, "beer me, doctor!" sometime thursday evening around 11pm.
--goose
on to the shoutouts!
SUPERBONUS EXTRASPECIAL SUPERCHUNKY SHOUTOUT TO: my cousins Patti and Paula M. of Falls Church, MD for their wonderful care package of 3 (three) jars of Skippy superchunk peanut butter! the awe that said package inspired caused the following overheard comments around the geography department: "you're 30 and you eat peanut butter like a 5-yr old." "skippy? your cousins got any boxes meant for me?" and (from a total MILF): "my son eats peanut butter all the time too. i don't know what i'd cook if he didn't like it." which of course got me wondering how many different ways you can include peanut butter into cooking. obviously, the PBJ and PBJB (bananas) are the gold standard use for peanut butter. equally enticing is peanut butter chicken, sometimes hautily described on fancy menus as "chicken satay". i'm not fooled. then there's the excellent, if hard-to-get-ronny jockitch's-to-make-it-right: peanut butter burger. YUM! ask the T3 of newark, nj. he got me on it whilst in tacoma. of course, the muhas at ronny jockitch (please say you know the restaurant by it's proper name...) will then add mustard, ketchup, mayonaisse (BLAGH!) and the rest to the burger too. or, if you tell them the precise order (burger. buns. lettuce. tomato. peanut butter. that's it...) they'll put on such a tiny portion of PB that it's like they're afraid of it. and then they'll all stand agape watching as i power it back with a vanilla coke and chili cheese fries.... i'm getting hungry! anyone else up for a quick drive to mohegan sun and a little late night burger? or any of the other 10million places johnny rocket's exists? so, i got 3 items that are "meal"-oriented. then there's apples, carrots, celery, chocolate, ice cream, cake, cookies, and PB-sculptures (that's right...) if anyone knows a nice lamb or fish recipe incorporating said skippy peanut butter, let me know. i have eugene to test drive all dishes.
excellent shout-out to the good dr. carr, formerly of st.louis, mo and briefly in houston, tx. i hear the boards were passed? nice! next time you're in houston though, do call me. it's the closest town to college station. oops! and pea-sized whoopwhoops to the little girls. they are taking to beach and island life, as the photos can attest.
diggitydang WTF shoutout to people who manage IPs. that's "internet provider". get this: my internet worked only at home for a week. then only at school for a week. but never both. why? four competing firewalls shut down my computer's ability to talk to the wireless routers that are strung up (metaphysically of course) all around town. does my computer ever say that i got 4 firewalls that are not even remotely working in concert quietly in the background? no. and better yet, with the windows-installed network connections, you don't even get the button to click that would clear that all up. fortunately for me, i had nothing but free time this week (ha!) to spend about 8 hours trying to match the 2 passwords that i had originally put in a week ago. amazing. i want seamless service and possibilities. not headaches and yearnings for our old 2400kbs modem from 1993...
finally, booyah! shoutout to the mom for her on-going efforts to clear up a minor little headache known as the "goose has no place to stay over thanksgiving". turns out, if you make a reservation online, these people expect you to read and click some button on an email they send confirming your reservation request. and turns out, dear old dad, whose favorite hardware is "a dixon-ticonderoga 2.0" and (now this is no joke) uses both a "reverse-polish" calculator and an abacus to balance his chequebook, didn't read said email or reply to it. but the mom, currently in possession of "world's best mom" title for a record 16th consecutive year (don't ask about her "grounded for eternity" campaign platform from when i was 13 and, um... didn't come home from a party on time... turns out, the base didn't like that proposal...)... anyhow, turns out she got the reservation resurrected. hawai'i, here i come! so BOOYAH! mom! BOOYAH! (and don't worry, booyahs are good t'ings...)
Monday, September 11, 2006
Reliving Five Years Ago... and a call to love
It's hard to avoid or miss the fifth anniversary of the 9.11.01 attacks, even when you have your head tucked into books or your eyes glued to football. Everyone knows where they were. And I'm no exception. I still remember hearing it on the radio, all tucked into my blankets back at the Taft House, in that way you hear things when you're half-asleep. I roused myself once the radio station dropped it's usual morning banter. So I headed downstairs and turned on the television. And that's where I saw the rest of it.
I still remember the fruitless calls to Kurt and Alison's cell phones. I still remember just sobbing on the I-95 as I headed to class. I remember thinking "why am I going to class?" and not referring to not being prepared or caring in the topic. I remember walking into the 10am lecture room and finding a class finishing up while everyone else who came to school were downstairs listening to the television or radio or trying to call from the pay phone in the building. I remember heading back to the Taft House with Clayt and watching the lady down the street stare off at the little plume of smoke and haze that drifted the over the horizon. Her daughter. I remember noticing how pretty the sunset was and how quiet the night was.
It's amazing how fast things can change.
Fortunately, Kurt (trying to head down town) and Alison (away from her apartment when it all happened and then evacuated from the market district) were fine. Sadly, there's thousands of sad stories from that day.
But I remember. And I'm caught between wanting to hit back and knowing the people I'm hitting are just as innocent as the people hit on 9.11.01. We've already shown how phenomenally bad we are at getting the bogeymen. They will forever lurk in the shadows of our minds. They will forever pull you from a good night's sleep. That's what they do. As a concept and imaginary figure, they are powerful. And we know they hide behind rocks and mosques and families and children and farms and hospitals and who knows where else so that they stay just out of sight, just out of reach. There is evil in this world. There is no denying that. So we can fight that evil, take it head on, and fight until it gives up. But that's the thing. A concept doesn't give up. It will just appear somewhere else. Someone else takes on the persona and suddenly soldiers are off to Indonesia or the Philippines or central London. So rather than make a mess of every Mid-eastern, pan-Arab nation and neighborhood in the world in our quest to purge terror and evil while destroying thousands of innocent, young lives for every "target" we get, I say we try something different, beyond turning off the talking heads who seem to direct our national policy more and more every day:
Be human. Be human first. Be human last. Be human always. We all take joy at witnessing a birth, we all celebrate our achievements and birthdays, we all blush at first love, find quiet moments when we are at peace, sit with passing thoughts that run through the mind, and cherish friends and family. We laugh in same tones and mourn with familiar tears. We dream. Are we so different really? Then why must we insist so? And why do we let people insist for us? So, dear friends and readers, do your part and be human. Pull the lens back far enough and you'll see the truth in this.
And as St. Francis of Assisi said, "Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love."
"Love One Another."
~Judeo-Christian
"As the source of both internal and external peace, [love and compassion] is fundamental." ~Buddhism
"God loves those who do good."
~Muslim
"Teach me to love all my friends. By loving them, may I find Thy love in everyone I meet."
~Hindu
"To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage."
~Taoism
--goose
(and a special big shout-out to the good dr. mav, currently of st.louis, on his surgical boards! take names!)
I still remember the fruitless calls to Kurt and Alison's cell phones. I still remember just sobbing on the I-95 as I headed to class. I remember thinking "why am I going to class?" and not referring to not being prepared or caring in the topic. I remember walking into the 10am lecture room and finding a class finishing up while everyone else who came to school were downstairs listening to the television or radio or trying to call from the pay phone in the building. I remember heading back to the Taft House with Clayt and watching the lady down the street stare off at the little plume of smoke and haze that drifted the over the horizon. Her daughter. I remember noticing how pretty the sunset was and how quiet the night was.
It's amazing how fast things can change.
Fortunately, Kurt (trying to head down town) and Alison (away from her apartment when it all happened and then evacuated from the market district) were fine. Sadly, there's thousands of sad stories from that day.
But I remember. And I'm caught between wanting to hit back and knowing the people I'm hitting are just as innocent as the people hit on 9.11.01. We've already shown how phenomenally bad we are at getting the bogeymen. They will forever lurk in the shadows of our minds. They will forever pull you from a good night's sleep. That's what they do. As a concept and imaginary figure, they are powerful. And we know they hide behind rocks and mosques and families and children and farms and hospitals and who knows where else so that they stay just out of sight, just out of reach. There is evil in this world. There is no denying that. So we can fight that evil, take it head on, and fight until it gives up. But that's the thing. A concept doesn't give up. It will just appear somewhere else. Someone else takes on the persona and suddenly soldiers are off to Indonesia or the Philippines or central London. So rather than make a mess of every Mid-eastern, pan-Arab nation and neighborhood in the world in our quest to purge terror and evil while destroying thousands of innocent, young lives for every "target" we get, I say we try something different, beyond turning off the talking heads who seem to direct our national policy more and more every day:
Be human. Be human first. Be human last. Be human always. We all take joy at witnessing a birth, we all celebrate our achievements and birthdays, we all blush at first love, find quiet moments when we are at peace, sit with passing thoughts that run through the mind, and cherish friends and family. We laugh in same tones and mourn with familiar tears. We dream. Are we so different really? Then why must we insist so? And why do we let people insist for us? So, dear friends and readers, do your part and be human. Pull the lens back far enough and you'll see the truth in this.
And as St. Francis of Assisi said, "Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love."
"Love One Another."
~Judeo-Christian
"As the source of both internal and external peace, [love and compassion] is fundamental." ~Buddhism
"God loves those who do good."
~Muslim
"Teach me to love all my friends. By loving them, may I find Thy love in everyone I meet."
~Hindu
"To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage."
~Taoism
--goose
(and a special big shout-out to the good dr. mav, currently of st.louis, on his surgical boards! take names!)
Friday, September 08, 2006
Now Let Me Clear My Throat!
it's the Friday Shout-Outs Edition, Homey-omeys!
With A Special Dedication to everyone in Bahama Bay Nation, a big-upzz rip-your-lines shout-out to DJ Kool for using his lyrics to stylize today's shout-outs!
"Keep Making Noise!" Shout-out to Humberto, our bringer of goodwill today. Precisely at 9:15am, the cloistery went online. Side benefit to internet in the house (apart from that foul stuff you just thought of, Corcoran...), cable tv! side no-benefit (or, in the econ manner "cost") home study effort just found a new obstacle (side note to the mother: i'm at work right now...)
"Some of Y'all are with be, and some of y'all won't!" shout-out to the flurry of emails i sent out this afternoon. my big two boxes of things finally arrived from st.croix and with them, my address book.
"Have mercy, babe! I hope you don't mind!" shout-out to the Heidididio, formerly of Reno, NV and parts unknown. Big congratulations on the nuptials! I tried to put this as close to the top as possible so that you wouldn't get bored and miss it! Be glad I wasn't there. I bounced a 102-degree fever home with me on my plane.
"Peace Out to C-Lo, Flex, and Doug Lazy!" shout-out to Tyson and Joy S. of Newark, NJ! The C-Lo reference should be obvious enough. Not so obvious is the Doug Lazy (i.e. the piano stand hopefully taking up space in your place that I couldn't get without backtracking 500 miles...)
"Now I Need Some Help From the Maestro, Please!" Shout-out to the Mayor McCheese of St. Croix. You win the "1st to comment" award. Now my mom won't feel weird adding comments. A thought that somehow gives me the willies...
And Finally: "Special Dedication going out to all the ladies and all the brothers in here, like to love y'all to death here!" shout-out to everyone. the settling in is much more complete knowing you're all just a few typed letters away!
Today's True Headline (Courtesy Elibzeff B. of St. Thomas, VI):
"Abuse Counselor Arrested for DUI"
have a great weekend!
With A Special Dedication to everyone in Bahama Bay Nation, a big-upzz rip-your-lines shout-out to DJ Kool for using his lyrics to stylize today's shout-outs!
"Keep Making Noise!" Shout-out to Humberto, our bringer of goodwill today. Precisely at 9:15am, the cloistery went online. Side benefit to internet in the house (apart from that foul stuff you just thought of, Corcoran...), cable tv! side no-benefit (or, in the econ manner "cost") home study effort just found a new obstacle (side note to the mother: i'm at work right now...)
"Some of Y'all are with be, and some of y'all won't!" shout-out to the flurry of emails i sent out this afternoon. my big two boxes of things finally arrived from st.croix and with them, my address book.
"Have mercy, babe! I hope you don't mind!" shout-out to the Heidididio, formerly of Reno, NV and parts unknown. Big congratulations on the nuptials! I tried to put this as close to the top as possible so that you wouldn't get bored and miss it! Be glad I wasn't there. I bounced a 102-degree fever home with me on my plane.
"Peace Out to C-Lo, Flex, and Doug Lazy!" shout-out to Tyson and Joy S. of Newark, NJ! The C-Lo reference should be obvious enough. Not so obvious is the Doug Lazy (i.e. the piano stand hopefully taking up space in your place that I couldn't get without backtracking 500 miles...)
"Now I Need Some Help From the Maestro, Please!" Shout-out to the Mayor McCheese of St. Croix. You win the "1st to comment" award. Now my mom won't feel weird adding comments. A thought that somehow gives me the willies...
And Finally: "Special Dedication going out to all the ladies and all the brothers in here, like to love y'all to death here!" shout-out to everyone. the settling in is much more complete knowing you're all just a few typed letters away!
Today's True Headline (Courtesy Elibzeff B. of St. Thomas, VI):
"Abuse Counselor Arrested for DUI"
have a great weekend!
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
mid-week shout outs!
a WTF shoutout to all high school math teachers! it's now certified. the majority of students in my lab sections are a bit uncertain in their math skills. to the point they confuse themselves over what happens when you add/subtract some number from zero.
a happy humpday shoutout to Elibzeff B. of St. Thomas, VI. simply b/c i know she giggles when i say "humpday."
a crazy, low-down hug-a-brotha shoutout to brycer of san fran, ca. he has officially re-established the criteria for a d-dialing. good luck trying to meet that standard, friends.
inauspicious, buddhist greeting shoutout to the texas a&m football team. having lined up the citadel in their sights last week, they now take on army. let the suckage begin!
and finally, double-fist-pump holla at ya boy shoutout to the one person (possibly two) who get the buddhist reference above.
--goose
a happy humpday shoutout to Elibzeff B. of St. Thomas, VI. simply b/c i know she giggles when i say "humpday."
a crazy, low-down hug-a-brotha shoutout to brycer of san fran, ca. he has officially re-established the criteria for a d-dialing. good luck trying to meet that standard, friends.
inauspicious, buddhist greeting shoutout to the texas a&m football team. having lined up the citadel in their sights last week, they now take on army. let the suckage begin!
and finally, double-fist-pump holla at ya boy shoutout to the one person (possibly two) who get the buddhist reference above.
--goose
simplifying life in 10 easy steps!
americans have a fascination with making life easier. i haven't quite figured out this fascination with something that might be categorized as an effort to "modernize". why waste ten minutes of your precious time cutting tomatoes that end up being all pulpy and messy when you can get that auto-dicer that does it perfectly every time? as a part-time fan of late-night infomercials (from my periodic insomnia), i have seen nearly every last shortcut for some human endeavour. don't like sit-ups? get that pro wrestling-sized belt that shoots electrodes through your ab muscles. get ripped sitting on the couch! need to make perfect omelettes? or complicated braids for your hair? the message, as always is: your time is more valuable than going to the gym or slicing tomatoes. we americans value our "free time", even when invariably, those extra free minutes each day are squandered by the go-go mentality of trying to do it all.
so why is this today's subject? well, "free time" in the ph.d.-candidate world-view is a highly ambiguous, and oftentimes ephemeral concept. apart from attending class and leading my lab section, technically all my time is "free". i don't "have" to do my readings, and i don't have to do a literature review. there are short-cuts out there. and in a class with 20 people, chances are i could fake a discussion if pressed. and i could just read abstracts or cross-reference papers (referencing a paper simply from reading its citation in a second paper...) but that, in my humble opinion, "lessens" the experience. so it's hard work! woo-hoo! reading until 2am, watching the first 20 minutes of "Wallace & Gromit" b/c any more would waste your window of falling asleep, volunteering for innumerable requests from various professors/advisors to help them. i want to, in all senses and varieties of the term, EARN my degree.
of course, hang around a university office long enough, and you'll begin to wonder if it's more insane asylum than ivory tower. the story is that we all go crazy at some point. maybe it's by degrees. maybe it's a clock-tower-esque total meltdown. but, i hope, it's not inevitable. as a result, i'm girding my sanity with some daily rituals, which, over time, hopefully will both shape me professionally/personally, and keep my sanity. for your reading pleasure, i present: "Goose's 10 easy steps to sanity"!
1) change your alarm time. daily. pre-establishing what time you "need to wake up" is building stress into your day before it even starts. for convention, i like to vary it b/n 7:10am (MW) and 9:49 (TR). on Friday (F), i like to play russian roulette. it makes it exciting! you wake up, say at 8:00am, and you start thinking, "is it about to go off? can i lay here for 30 minutes playing fifa soccer on my computer before it goes off? 2 hours? all day?" see, instead of stress, you start with hopeful possibilities and optimism! of course, to be on the safe side, i limit the "blind setting" to no later than 4pm. which is when the "non"-mandatory guest lecture begins.
2) whistle. no kidding. the halls here are nice and echo-ey. and i remember reading an article whilst at yale saying something like "happier people whistle" or maybe it was "guys whistle when thinking about girls". i can't recall. either way, your happiness quotient improves. to recount: happiness +2, stress 0.
3) pack exciting things for lunch. like twinkies. happiness +4, stress +0.5 (simply b/c you know that a) you're 30 and are probably the only person in the building with twinkies for lunch, and b) that whole "bad diet leads to heart attack" idea...
4) read the comics. for regular readers, you know that i read 6 comics religiously. find your 6. 7 if you insist "better or worse" or "hagar" are funny/entertaining. if you're unable to find a couple good ones, may i recommend: "over the hedge" (esp. if you have the LA experience), "pearls before swine", and foxtrot (esp. since the good dr.mav, as a young collegian, confided the daughter in said comic was "cute"). sure, people may catch you reading the latest dilbert and think you either unprofessional or scatter-brained. but realize, if they do think that, they are the ones needing help. relax, muha! enjoy "zits" and get over yourself. happiness +10 (+9 if boondocks gets a little too political or doonesbury isn't making fun of the president), stress 0 (reading over the hedge gets over your twinkies guilt...)
5) when conceptually lost or mentally fatigued, give yourself a pep talk. i like the one, "there's a guy farming yams in kenya, who does that every day for no money and his family is dirt poor and he's always tired, and he always works harder than you." it might make you feel more kinship with kenyans or agrarian farmers or sympathy for their plight. or, it might, for a few moments, get you to forget about whatever was bothering you. if you want to rise up and celebrate not being that yam farmer, good for you. if not, imagine being his assistant. that'll get you through the reading! happiness +5, stress +1 (temporary, once the work gets done, stress drops to -4)
6) get away from the work once a day. even yam farmers do other things. currently, i like the gym or grocery shopping or fiddling with the antenna to get nbc. until i realize that nbc has no good shows. (happiness +8, stress -1) (the muscleheads at the gym remain a bit too much...)
7) pack in as many things as you can whilst standing. for example, before sitting down when you get home, start cooking. then maybe go freshen up. then maybe check the mail. then maybe organize shoes, or something. so when you do get to sitting down, you get to think things like, "YEA!" and "man this stirfry is tasty 5 nights in a row!" or "that phone better not ring b/c i forgot to grab it and bring it over here." (happiness +11, stress -4)
8) ponder shaving options after your shower. then spend time convincing euge to join the "mustache club". (happiness + 12 or +21 if euge joins, stress -9)
9) celebrate the little things. you'd think that this is a bit redundant. but not having the opportunity to go climb everest or disappear into the amazon for a month doesn't mean that the routine must become routine. another way to put it: amuse yourself. for example, this week i've turned my bike route from home to campus into a slalom course. the gates? undergrads of course. and yes, time yourself. (happiness +22 or + 25 if you clip a few gates, stress -11 or +4 if the gate wants to press charges...)
10) finally, the best way to simplify life is to remember rule #1: "there are no rules". when in doubt, check rule #2: "SEE rule #1". stress is self-made. and therefore, self-eliminated.
ok, i'm off. i got a great Super G course to the gym. theme music i'll be whistling "always let your conscience be your guide" (give a little whistle). time to beat: 6:18.05
--goose
so why is this today's subject? well, "free time" in the ph.d.-candidate world-view is a highly ambiguous, and oftentimes ephemeral concept. apart from attending class and leading my lab section, technically all my time is "free". i don't "have" to do my readings, and i don't have to do a literature review. there are short-cuts out there. and in a class with 20 people, chances are i could fake a discussion if pressed. and i could just read abstracts or cross-reference papers (referencing a paper simply from reading its citation in a second paper...) but that, in my humble opinion, "lessens" the experience. so it's hard work! woo-hoo! reading until 2am, watching the first 20 minutes of "Wallace & Gromit" b/c any more would waste your window of falling asleep, volunteering for innumerable requests from various professors/advisors to help them. i want to, in all senses and varieties of the term, EARN my degree.
of course, hang around a university office long enough, and you'll begin to wonder if it's more insane asylum than ivory tower. the story is that we all go crazy at some point. maybe it's by degrees. maybe it's a clock-tower-esque total meltdown. but, i hope, it's not inevitable. as a result, i'm girding my sanity with some daily rituals, which, over time, hopefully will both shape me professionally/personally, and keep my sanity. for your reading pleasure, i present: "Goose's 10 easy steps to sanity"!
1) change your alarm time. daily. pre-establishing what time you "need to wake up" is building stress into your day before it even starts. for convention, i like to vary it b/n 7:10am (MW) and 9:49 (TR). on Friday (F), i like to play russian roulette. it makes it exciting! you wake up, say at 8:00am, and you start thinking, "is it about to go off? can i lay here for 30 minutes playing fifa soccer on my computer before it goes off? 2 hours? all day?" see, instead of stress, you start with hopeful possibilities and optimism! of course, to be on the safe side, i limit the "blind setting" to no later than 4pm. which is when the "non"-mandatory guest lecture begins.
2) whistle. no kidding. the halls here are nice and echo-ey. and i remember reading an article whilst at yale saying something like "happier people whistle" or maybe it was "guys whistle when thinking about girls". i can't recall. either way, your happiness quotient improves. to recount: happiness +2, stress 0.
3) pack exciting things for lunch. like twinkies. happiness +4, stress +0.5 (simply b/c you know that a) you're 30 and are probably the only person in the building with twinkies for lunch, and b) that whole "bad diet leads to heart attack" idea...
4) read the comics. for regular readers, you know that i read 6 comics religiously. find your 6. 7 if you insist "better or worse" or "hagar" are funny/entertaining. if you're unable to find a couple good ones, may i recommend: "over the hedge" (esp. if you have the LA experience), "pearls before swine", and foxtrot (esp. since the good dr.mav, as a young collegian, confided the daughter in said comic was "cute"). sure, people may catch you reading the latest dilbert and think you either unprofessional or scatter-brained. but realize, if they do think that, they are the ones needing help. relax, muha! enjoy "zits" and get over yourself. happiness +10 (+9 if boondocks gets a little too political or doonesbury isn't making fun of the president), stress 0 (reading over the hedge gets over your twinkies guilt...)
5) when conceptually lost or mentally fatigued, give yourself a pep talk. i like the one, "there's a guy farming yams in kenya, who does that every day for no money and his family is dirt poor and he's always tired, and he always works harder than you." it might make you feel more kinship with kenyans or agrarian farmers or sympathy for their plight. or, it might, for a few moments, get you to forget about whatever was bothering you. if you want to rise up and celebrate not being that yam farmer, good for you. if not, imagine being his assistant. that'll get you through the reading! happiness +5, stress +1 (temporary, once the work gets done, stress drops to -4)
6) get away from the work once a day. even yam farmers do other things. currently, i like the gym or grocery shopping or fiddling with the antenna to get nbc. until i realize that nbc has no good shows. (happiness +8, stress -1) (the muscleheads at the gym remain a bit too much...)
7) pack in as many things as you can whilst standing. for example, before sitting down when you get home, start cooking. then maybe go freshen up. then maybe check the mail. then maybe organize shoes, or something. so when you do get to sitting down, you get to think things like, "YEA!" and "man this stirfry is tasty 5 nights in a row!" or "that phone better not ring b/c i forgot to grab it and bring it over here." (happiness +11, stress -4)
8) ponder shaving options after your shower. then spend time convincing euge to join the "mustache club". (happiness + 12 or +21 if euge joins, stress -9)
9) celebrate the little things. you'd think that this is a bit redundant. but not having the opportunity to go climb everest or disappear into the amazon for a month doesn't mean that the routine must become routine. another way to put it: amuse yourself. for example, this week i've turned my bike route from home to campus into a slalom course. the gates? undergrads of course. and yes, time yourself. (happiness +22 or + 25 if you clip a few gates, stress -11 or +4 if the gate wants to press charges...)
10) finally, the best way to simplify life is to remember rule #1: "there are no rules". when in doubt, check rule #2: "SEE rule #1". stress is self-made. and therefore, self-eliminated.
ok, i'm off. i got a great Super G course to the gym. theme music i'll be whistling "always let your conscience be your guide" (give a little whistle). time to beat: 6:18.05
--goose
Monday, September 04, 2006
a very special monday shout-outs
first, a big "too soon, mate, too soon!" shout-out to the crocodile hunter. as you all know by now, steve irwin met the sharp side of a sting ray earlier today and died from the resultant trauma. all in all, i wouldn't have predicted that. after all, this was the guy who swam with hundreds of bull sharks, caught thousands of crocs, wrangled sea snakes (the most poisonous on the planet), and pulled off any number of other "you couldn't pay me a million bucks to do that" on his always popular, once must-see show. and as i'm certain dear friend, fellow yalie and ocean-lover elibzeff b. of st.thomas can agree, hearing that a sting ray killed steve produced an immediate WTF?!!!!
my bet is it takes all of 30 minutes for cnn and fox news to come up with some hideously overblown "when stingrays attack" special. but, in terms of actual danger to someone's life, a stingray falls somewhere between fire coral and a stone wall. sure, if you roll on top of fire coral for a good long while, you might die from toxic shock, and if you mess with a stone wall for a while, sooner or later it's going to topple on top of you, but in general, both are neatly avoidable and, barring your stupidity to bother them, they tend to give you plenty of warnings to stop before you do actually die. but there you are. instead of swimming away like every other stingray i've ever observed (and sometimes touched...), this one throws its tail up and gets him in the heart. what a pity. what a shame. and seriously, that's some bad luck. he will be missed.
my bet is it takes all of 30 minutes for cnn and fox news to come up with some hideously overblown "when stingrays attack" special. but, in terms of actual danger to someone's life, a stingray falls somewhere between fire coral and a stone wall. sure, if you roll on top of fire coral for a good long while, you might die from toxic shock, and if you mess with a stone wall for a while, sooner or later it's going to topple on top of you, but in general, both are neatly avoidable and, barring your stupidity to bother them, they tend to give you plenty of warnings to stop before you do actually die. but there you are. instead of swimming away like every other stingray i've ever observed (and sometimes touched...), this one throws its tail up and gets him in the heart. what a pity. what a shame. and seriously, that's some bad luck. he will be missed.
the post-mortem of teaching
it should come as no surprise that usc crushed arkansas. in fact, it was such a blowout that 1) i don't feel bad driving 580 miles to the game (and another 580 back), and 2) we didn't even watch most of the 4th quarter.
in case you're wondering, there is quite the contingent of usc alums / former faculty here at texas a&m. in fact, there's a sneaking suspicion that certain elements of the faculty are actively recruiting their best usc students to undertake a ph.d. here. don't believe me? how about this: of the current crop of ph.d.-bound students, fully 7.5% have a root at southern cal. there aren't even that many texas a&m grads continuing on here. and, removing those individuals with undergraduate degrees abroad, that number jumps to 19%! what can you say?
on a side note, i do believe i am the only one with an ivy league degree too. who says you can't have it all?!! damn! i'm fine! that's right! one fine hunk o'man! just dip me in butter!
okay, enough self-posturing. the weekend, having come and gone, is now just a notch on the very long and nearly-unnotched totem that counts my time here. 1 notch in! as the buddhist say, "even a journey of a 1000 miles begins with 1 step." i must admit there are some in the camp who are hoping for journey of less than 1000 miles. which would be nice. but at times, based on things i discover, how some people who are finishing up behave, 1000 miles might just be the outskirts of the destination. the goal, as always, is to remain aware of the destination and the path that leads me there. and if i can get away with skipping along the path sometimes, why not?
ok, enough self-uplifting. for today's topic is: my first TA session! as seasoned readers can attest, a certain portion of my life (namely 2003 and 2004) were dedicated to the profession of teaching. in particular, teaching mathematics. for all its faults (and they are myriad), i was always quite comfortable in front of a classroom, and my instructional style both fit my personality (students can spot a fake from a mile away) and benefitted their learning (or so i would like to believe, though if SAT scores can be a gauge, i didn't leave so deep an impression as i would have liked). so go figure today, after several days of thinking, "the TA-ing will be a joke!" i found myself nervous as the students filed in, more or less on time. was it the newish material i was expected to be master of? certainly, that couldn't explain it. after all, i had taught calculus for 2 years with sometimes little more than a quick review of the material to guide me and the awesome skill of recognizing when i was both 1) wrong and 2) confusing the students, leading me to quickly erase the board and start over, whilst saying something like, "okay, one more time. let's see if you guys can follow the Chain Rule this way..." (ahh! the secrets of teaching revealed!)... was it being away from the classroom? or was it not knowing the level of knowledge of the students? to be honest, i still haven't determined why i was nervous. but i did discover 3 things: 1) no matter what people say, a good kid in a bad school can be at least as successful in an academic setting as a mediocre kid in a great school, 2) you figure out the moment the students start trusting and liking you in a college setting b/c they go from the dazed look of every student to asking whether you had seen some movie "X" or fished on some river "Y" or ever visited some place "Z". and loyal readers will know, and to this i admit a weakness to vanity, i did drop the "let's use st. croix as an example." if some people name drop, i place drop. a geography lab is, therefore, a great excuse to do the "okay, so when i lived in australia, at the december solstice, the sun made a 90-degree..." you get the idea? so, in the course of 2 hours, while i learned a little bit about the students (they're atrocious at math, didn't think about reading the lab ahead of time, are hard workers, and are very polite), they found out that i had, through lab-oriented examples, mind you, lived in the virgin islands, france, australia, and northern norway (the last might be a bit of a stretch insomuch as i haven't actually lived there, but it was the only way to discuss why the sun doesn't set above the arctic circle in june...). as i always say, the greatest challenge of a teacher is being an entertainer. think about it. then tell me that i'm wrong.
actually, don't. i like my gentle ignorances.
final note: so yesterday (sunday) was a great day. nothing special happened. didn't really do much. did read about 80 pages for 1 class. did read about 6 journal articles (another 60 pages). but most importantly: i made a superb stir-fry! on the exclamation point scale, that's like:
stir-fry!!!!!!
it might even be higher. now why was this stir-fry so tasty? after all, to those out there who enjoy the cooking effort, a stir-fry is about 1 step beyond making toast. poorly. but, in the world of the "bachelor ph.d. student life", making stir-fry that is tasty and waiting for you after a long day of reading, is like sailing to your home and knowing sitting on that dock is your best girl waiting with a nice big chocolate cake.
don't believe me? try eating dried carrots and frozen pizzas for a week and tell me otherwise.
actually, don't. as i said, i like my gentle ignorances.
in case you're wondering, there is quite the contingent of usc alums / former faculty here at texas a&m. in fact, there's a sneaking suspicion that certain elements of the faculty are actively recruiting their best usc students to undertake a ph.d. here. don't believe me? how about this: of the current crop of ph.d.-bound students, fully 7.5% have a root at southern cal. there aren't even that many texas a&m grads continuing on here. and, removing those individuals with undergraduate degrees abroad, that number jumps to 19%! what can you say?
on a side note, i do believe i am the only one with an ivy league degree too. who says you can't have it all?!! damn! i'm fine! that's right! one fine hunk o'man! just dip me in butter!
okay, enough self-posturing. the weekend, having come and gone, is now just a notch on the very long and nearly-unnotched totem that counts my time here. 1 notch in! as the buddhist say, "even a journey of a 1000 miles begins with 1 step." i must admit there are some in the camp who are hoping for journey of less than 1000 miles. which would be nice. but at times, based on things i discover, how some people who are finishing up behave, 1000 miles might just be the outskirts of the destination. the goal, as always, is to remain aware of the destination and the path that leads me there. and if i can get away with skipping along the path sometimes, why not?
ok, enough self-uplifting. for today's topic is: my first TA session! as seasoned readers can attest, a certain portion of my life (namely 2003 and 2004) were dedicated to the profession of teaching. in particular, teaching mathematics. for all its faults (and they are myriad), i was always quite comfortable in front of a classroom, and my instructional style both fit my personality (students can spot a fake from a mile away) and benefitted their learning (or so i would like to believe, though if SAT scores can be a gauge, i didn't leave so deep an impression as i would have liked). so go figure today, after several days of thinking, "the TA-ing will be a joke!" i found myself nervous as the students filed in, more or less on time. was it the newish material i was expected to be master of? certainly, that couldn't explain it. after all, i had taught calculus for 2 years with sometimes little more than a quick review of the material to guide me and the awesome skill of recognizing when i was both 1) wrong and 2) confusing the students, leading me to quickly erase the board and start over, whilst saying something like, "okay, one more time. let's see if you guys can follow the Chain Rule this way..." (ahh! the secrets of teaching revealed!)... was it being away from the classroom? or was it not knowing the level of knowledge of the students? to be honest, i still haven't determined why i was nervous. but i did discover 3 things: 1) no matter what people say, a good kid in a bad school can be at least as successful in an academic setting as a mediocre kid in a great school, 2) you figure out the moment the students start trusting and liking you in a college setting b/c they go from the dazed look of every student to asking whether you had seen some movie "X" or fished on some river "Y" or ever visited some place "Z". and loyal readers will know, and to this i admit a weakness to vanity, i did drop the "let's use st. croix as an example." if some people name drop, i place drop. a geography lab is, therefore, a great excuse to do the "okay, so when i lived in australia, at the december solstice, the sun made a 90-degree..." you get the idea? so, in the course of 2 hours, while i learned a little bit about the students (they're atrocious at math, didn't think about reading the lab ahead of time, are hard workers, and are very polite), they found out that i had, through lab-oriented examples, mind you, lived in the virgin islands, france, australia, and northern norway (the last might be a bit of a stretch insomuch as i haven't actually lived there, but it was the only way to discuss why the sun doesn't set above the arctic circle in june...). as i always say, the greatest challenge of a teacher is being an entertainer. think about it. then tell me that i'm wrong.
actually, don't. i like my gentle ignorances.
final note: so yesterday (sunday) was a great day. nothing special happened. didn't really do much. did read about 80 pages for 1 class. did read about 6 journal articles (another 60 pages). but most importantly: i made a superb stir-fry! on the exclamation point scale, that's like:
stir-fry!!!!!!
it might even be higher. now why was this stir-fry so tasty? after all, to those out there who enjoy the cooking effort, a stir-fry is about 1 step beyond making toast. poorly. but, in the world of the "bachelor ph.d. student life", making stir-fry that is tasty and waiting for you after a long day of reading, is like sailing to your home and knowing sitting on that dock is your best girl waiting with a nice big chocolate cake.
don't believe me? try eating dried carrots and frozen pizzas for a week and tell me otherwise.
actually, don't. as i said, i like my gentle ignorances.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
the saturday shout-outs!
first off: big love to the good family relations with penn state university credentials. you know who you are. i read this morning that psu isn't allowing alcohol at tail-gates????!!!!!! is nothing sacred any longer? one of my best family-related memories is from the 1985 or 1986 psu-pitt football game. the one where pitt beat psu, in large part due to a really weak holding or illegal blocking call against penn state that was completely on the other side of the field and had no bearing to the play. remember? anyhow, after the game, my psu relatives were having a tailgate. and they were probably a few years younger than i am now. i remember the food, the soda, my cousins singing songs and goofing off, and seeing, for the first time, a blow-up doll. now, now, don't go all reactive on me. the doll was dressed up and in pitt colors and the joke was obviously not meant for me. and, in the honor of all great adult humor, i didn't get it until i was a sophomore in college and, walking down trousdale to a usc/fucla game, i saw someone had done the same in bruin colors. and that's when the light went on in my head! so i send big love and good memories and sadness at the gutless, heartless criminializing of what once was a great weekend tradition. ergo, getting trashed at a football game.
much props to fellow trojans. me and euge (geography '99) were ready to drive to fayetteville to see the usc/arkansas game today. until we discovered that it's 560 miles away. and his paper isn't done. and i just drove that two weeks ago.
keen love and peace to drew l. of miami, fl. burning man?!!! really?!!! did you hear that the bonfire releases over 100-tonnes of greenhouse gases alone (not to mention any other burnables that one might wish to um... burn whilst there). and am i wrong in thinking that 1) it's a clothing-optional party and 2) i knew you'd get there one day?
restful peace and buddhist patient adoration to the clan l. of erie, pa. no internet (well, reliable internet that i have to pay for) for a week still. have no fear. we're already set up with the algorithm that models my gpa in a pre/post wow-world. the hockey-stick curve got nothing on me!
finally, big ??? love to texas a&m university. why ??? love? well, 1) they open today against the citadel (a div 1-aa school with "no passing game" according to the paper) and they're not favored by 50 points. that's a total ???. and 2) they don't give +/- on their grades here. anything above 90 is an A, anything 80-89 is a B, and so on and so forth. so you can get a 89.778 average and someone can get a 99.778 and you both score an A. that's a total ??? or as dr. mav of guam, guam would say, "WTF"???
beat the razorbacks!
much props to fellow trojans. me and euge (geography '99) were ready to drive to fayetteville to see the usc/arkansas game today. until we discovered that it's 560 miles away. and his paper isn't done. and i just drove that two weeks ago.
keen love and peace to drew l. of miami, fl. burning man?!!! really?!!! did you hear that the bonfire releases over 100-tonnes of greenhouse gases alone (not to mention any other burnables that one might wish to um... burn whilst there). and am i wrong in thinking that 1) it's a clothing-optional party and 2) i knew you'd get there one day?
restful peace and buddhist patient adoration to the clan l. of erie, pa. no internet (well, reliable internet that i have to pay for) for a week still. have no fear. we're already set up with the algorithm that models my gpa in a pre/post wow-world. the hockey-stick curve got nothing on me!
finally, big ??? love to texas a&m university. why ??? love? well, 1) they open today against the citadel (a div 1-aa school with "no passing game" according to the paper) and they're not favored by 50 points. that's a total ???. and 2) they don't give +/- on their grades here. anything above 90 is an A, anything 80-89 is a B, and so on and so forth. so you can get a 89.778 average and someone can get a 99.778 and you both score an A. that's a total ??? or as dr. mav of guam, guam would say, "WTF"???
beat the razorbacks!
the rules of undergrad/grad life (not what you think, d-mike!)
so it's saturday and i'm proud of three (3) things:
thing the first: that i made it through my first week of school unscathed, more or less prepared for class each day, and still on top of demands and commitments to my time.
thing the second: that i made it to the gym three times through said first week of school. unscathed. see "demands and commitments" above.
thing the third: that i know when to use "its" and "it's". see "more or less prepared" above.
it's a funny thing, really, how time's perspective (as opposed to conceptive) ebbs and flows depending on a variety of factors, some of which are controllable and others, like a meandering "guest" presentation on meso-scale farming modelling in developing countries, are quite well beyond your grasp. por ejemplo: by tuesday evening, me and euge were lamenting that it felt like thursday night yet we hadn't even gotten halfway through the week. now technically, since i have no class on fridays, i was at the hump, as it were, but i digress. the point being: wednesday, thursday, and friday were an absolute blur! and now it's saturday and i'm sure that there's college football on and i'm equally sure that there's a pile of papers in my bag that need a'reading. are these two interests mutually exclusive, kind of like the role of farming cooperatives and "the state's" ability to provide infrastructure in economically marginal lands for the greater production and profitiability of soy bean farmers? we shall see!
the goose's great idea of the week: abiding by a calendar. i don't think it's going to last, but i've been punctual for a whole 5 days (well, actually 4. i did come into the office at 10am on friday... but as mentioned above, by then my week was over..) but having a calendar is fun. it provides you a multitude of opportunities to say things like, "well, i'll have to check my schedule." or "maybe. i think i'm free, but i might not be." or "there's no way i'm going to that meeting. my calendar says it starts at 9am on friday and i'm booked for 'stealing someone's wi-fi connection.'"
(ooh! i love the grammatical punctualness! apostraphied it's and double-quotation marks goodness!)
on to today's final thought: in undergraduate life, you spend most (read: "all") of your time in/around your dorm, hanging out with friends, killing time, doing a bit of work, reading, watching tv, and planning your weekend.
in ph.d.-graduate life, you spend all (read: "all") of your time in/around your office, hanging out with friends, killing time, doing a bit of work, reading, watching youtube.com, and planning your weekend. the difference in experience is enormous! to clarify, as several of my loyal readers can attest, graduate school can be a bear at times, and apart from the stories i've heard about the first year of law or med school, the stress and obligations of the ph.d. program are ratched up several notches over any other single experience you've had. my typical (read: "not friday") day begins around 7am, when i wake up, make some coffee and generally get myself out the door for work by 8am. i'm one of the last people to get there. when not in class or the library (a tuesday/thursday routine of mine where i go to the 3rd floor, find the dewey decimal section for SH 105 (wetlands) or SQ 244 (fisheries), and check out a couple of books. they allow us 99 books at a time and, by the time christmas rolls around, i expect to have a full academic library in my office...) anyhow: when not in class, i spend the majority of my time at my desk, in an office with no windows. it would be claustrophobic (at times, it still is), but with everyone else there, many of whom are in similar stages of academic development and profitability, there's a kind of comraderie that develops. it's no surprise to me or euge that we can spend an astonishing 15 hours side by side and 1) not realize it, or 2) think that it's going to get mean and nasty one day from being in such proximity. there's work and there's not-work. and beautifully, in graduate life, they are mutually exclusive. now if only we could figure out a way to get them more in balance...
thing the first: that i made it through my first week of school unscathed, more or less prepared for class each day, and still on top of demands and commitments to my time.
thing the second: that i made it to the gym three times through said first week of school. unscathed. see "demands and commitments" above.
thing the third: that i know when to use "its" and "it's". see "more or less prepared" above.
it's a funny thing, really, how time's perspective (as opposed to conceptive) ebbs and flows depending on a variety of factors, some of which are controllable and others, like a meandering "guest" presentation on meso-scale farming modelling in developing countries, are quite well beyond your grasp. por ejemplo: by tuesday evening, me and euge were lamenting that it felt like thursday night yet we hadn't even gotten halfway through the week. now technically, since i have no class on fridays, i was at the hump, as it were, but i digress. the point being: wednesday, thursday, and friday were an absolute blur! and now it's saturday and i'm sure that there's college football on and i'm equally sure that there's a pile of papers in my bag that need a'reading. are these two interests mutually exclusive, kind of like the role of farming cooperatives and "the state's" ability to provide infrastructure in economically marginal lands for the greater production and profitiability of soy bean farmers? we shall see!
the goose's great idea of the week: abiding by a calendar. i don't think it's going to last, but i've been punctual for a whole 5 days (well, actually 4. i did come into the office at 10am on friday... but as mentioned above, by then my week was over..) but having a calendar is fun. it provides you a multitude of opportunities to say things like, "well, i'll have to check my schedule." or "maybe. i think i'm free, but i might not be." or "there's no way i'm going to that meeting. my calendar says it starts at 9am on friday and i'm booked for 'stealing someone's wi-fi connection.'"
(ooh! i love the grammatical punctualness! apostraphied it's and double-quotation marks goodness!)
on to today's final thought: in undergraduate life, you spend most (read: "all") of your time in/around your dorm, hanging out with friends, killing time, doing a bit of work, reading, watching tv, and planning your weekend.
in ph.d.-graduate life, you spend all (read: "all") of your time in/around your office, hanging out with friends, killing time, doing a bit of work, reading, watching youtube.com, and planning your weekend. the difference in experience is enormous! to clarify, as several of my loyal readers can attest, graduate school can be a bear at times, and apart from the stories i've heard about the first year of law or med school, the stress and obligations of the ph.d. program are ratched up several notches over any other single experience you've had. my typical (read: "not friday") day begins around 7am, when i wake up, make some coffee and generally get myself out the door for work by 8am. i'm one of the last people to get there. when not in class or the library (a tuesday/thursday routine of mine where i go to the 3rd floor, find the dewey decimal section for SH 105 (wetlands) or SQ 244 (fisheries), and check out a couple of books. they allow us 99 books at a time and, by the time christmas rolls around, i expect to have a full academic library in my office...) anyhow: when not in class, i spend the majority of my time at my desk, in an office with no windows. it would be claustrophobic (at times, it still is), but with everyone else there, many of whom are in similar stages of academic development and profitability, there's a kind of comraderie that develops. it's no surprise to me or euge that we can spend an astonishing 15 hours side by side and 1) not realize it, or 2) think that it's going to get mean and nasty one day from being in such proximity. there's work and there's not-work. and beautifully, in graduate life, they are mutually exclusive. now if only we could figure out a way to get them more in balance...
the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with...
...the elation that comes with seeing a furniture delivery guy stopping outside your house. and only 1.5 hours beyond the end of the 4-hour window for delivery. on the 3rd official attempt to deliver the furniture. 14 days of floor sleeping no more! scratch one more from the hordes of the impoverished out there who bed on straw or mats or under the stars on the savannah (actually, that one sounds good! sign me up!) progress has come to bryan, texas. and i answered the door. for a nice queen-sized sleigh bed, accompanying chest of drawers, side table, and portrait mirror. the extravagence and indulgence of all this! i'm so happy.
and did i mention the monkey chest? that's right!
i may need eugene to drag me out of my room from now on.
sole downer of the day (apart from the necessity of sitting through 3 delivery periods before finally getting the stuff delivered): the room is a bit narrow for all the furniture. ergo, there is no room for a desk. i think.
finally: bonus points to my history lecture and lector today. you know you've stumbled across a truly formidable mind when a professor paints a 1.5 hour portrait of the rise and ontology of geography as an academic discipline (not my word, 2006) with scarcely a glance at their notes. the lecture took us to dizzying heights, bringing in long-dead (???) philosophers like some sort of intellectual cameo appearance, boiling down words to their roots, both greek and familiar, stirring in an au jus of wit, and bringing it all together in literally the last minute of class. it was crazy. my only thought after: "we need him on our bar quiz team."
wednesday's dinner (as euge slowly goes crazy over a publishing deadline): pepperoni pizza with sliced carrots and celery.
and did i mention the monkey chest? that's right!
i may need eugene to drag me out of my room from now on.
sole downer of the day (apart from the necessity of sitting through 3 delivery periods before finally getting the stuff delivered): the room is a bit narrow for all the furniture. ergo, there is no room for a desk. i think.
finally: bonus points to my history lecture and lector today. you know you've stumbled across a truly formidable mind when a professor paints a 1.5 hour portrait of the rise and ontology of geography as an academic discipline (not my word, 2006) with scarcely a glance at their notes. the lecture took us to dizzying heights, bringing in long-dead (???) philosophers like some sort of intellectual cameo appearance, boiling down words to their roots, both greek and familiar, stirring in an au jus of wit, and bringing it all together in literally the last minute of class. it was crazy. my only thought after: "we need him on our bar quiz team."
wednesday's dinner (as euge slowly goes crazy over a publishing deadline): pepperoni pizza with sliced carrots and celery.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
How to Tell If You're In Grad School...
...Or Just Living A Bachelor's Life (with exclamation point scoring!!!)
Do you eat leftover spaghetti for more than 3 meals in a row, including breakfast?
Bachelor's Life!
Do you sleep on dirty laundry because your furniture hasn't arrived yet?
Bachelor's Life!!
Do you consider bacon & eggs & beer a dinner?
Bachelor's Life!!!!!!!!
Do you shrug off wearing a wrinkled shirt?
Bachelor's Life!
Do you sit on a porch swing in the evening having a beer discussing the day's events?
Bachelor's Life!
Do the day's events center around a rather terrifying warning against professional plagiarism?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!!!!
Are you moving peanut butter, jelly, coffee, gum, soda, and a mini fridge into your office so that you don't have to go home?
Ph.D. Student Life!!
Do you get surprised to discover that the sun's gone down before you leave your office because your office has no windows and you've been reading 100 pages of journal articles all day?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!!
Do you watch movies two scenes at a time because you have other things to do at night, like read or sleep?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!
How'd you score?
Odds & Ends: As part of my "Goose's Blog Rules" I promised that i will not discuss academic events here, but I do have to comment two things about the "consequences of plagiarism" warning we received yesterday (Farrell, pers.comm.). 1) The temperature in the classroom was a cool 76 according to the thermostat. After the minute-long warning, the thermostat registered 78 (Goose, unpubl. data). 2) The source of warming was most likely due to the elevated blood pressures and anxiety of the 19 students in the class (Farrell, pers.comm.).
Supposedly I get my furniture tomorrow! That would make 13 days of sleeping on a floor/futon mattress. Here is, for the loyal readers who know about my affinity for "night terrors", is a laundry list of nightmares I've had since arriving: dreamt the ceiling fan was going to fall on me (requiring me to move against the wall to sleep), dreamt the ceiling fan was a pirate's "X marks the spot" and that I was buried treasure, dreamt that I got electrocuted by a loose wire that brushed against the floor (this may not have been a dream. i'm still not sure...), dreamt that a lizard was dancing on my chest (the old "my arm's asleep and twitched" dream), and the "i slept through class" followed by waking up and running to the bathroom to brush my teeth, only to realize that it was 3:38am. On a Sunday morning...
Do you eat leftover spaghetti for more than 3 meals in a row, including breakfast?
Bachelor's Life!
Do you sleep on dirty laundry because your furniture hasn't arrived yet?
Bachelor's Life!!
Do you consider bacon & eggs & beer a dinner?
Bachelor's Life!!!!!!!!
Do you shrug off wearing a wrinkled shirt?
Bachelor's Life!
Do you sit on a porch swing in the evening having a beer discussing the day's events?
Bachelor's Life!
Do the day's events center around a rather terrifying warning against professional plagiarism?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!!!!
Are you moving peanut butter, jelly, coffee, gum, soda, and a mini fridge into your office so that you don't have to go home?
Ph.D. Student Life!!
Do you get surprised to discover that the sun's gone down before you leave your office because your office has no windows and you've been reading 100 pages of journal articles all day?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!!
Do you watch movies two scenes at a time because you have other things to do at night, like read or sleep?
Ph.D. Student Life!!!
How'd you score?
Odds & Ends: As part of my "Goose's Blog Rules" I promised that i will not discuss academic events here, but I do have to comment two things about the "consequences of plagiarism" warning we received yesterday (Farrell, pers.comm.). 1) The temperature in the classroom was a cool 76 according to the thermostat. After the minute-long warning, the thermostat registered 78 (Goose, unpubl. data). 2) The source of warming was most likely due to the elevated blood pressures and anxiety of the 19 students in the class (Farrell, pers.comm.).
Supposedly I get my furniture tomorrow! That would make 13 days of sleeping on a floor/futon mattress. Here is, for the loyal readers who know about my affinity for "night terrors", is a laundry list of nightmares I've had since arriving: dreamt the ceiling fan was going to fall on me (requiring me to move against the wall to sleep), dreamt the ceiling fan was a pirate's "X marks the spot" and that I was buried treasure, dreamt that I got electrocuted by a loose wire that brushed against the floor (this may not have been a dream. i'm still not sure...), dreamt that a lizard was dancing on my chest (the old "my arm's asleep and twitched" dream), and the "i slept through class" followed by waking up and running to the bathroom to brush my teeth, only to realize that it was 3:38am. On a Sunday morning...
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Today's Shout Outs!
First off, big love to the big bro, the sis-in-law, and nieces2. Drs. Shamus and Elisabeth C., along with the super cuteness that is Skylar and Arianna are settling in well in far-off
Special thanks to the love that is Clayt and Kim and Atticus L. of
Big shout-out to the St. Croix Ex-Pats living in Northern California. You knows who's you is. Come to Los Angeles in November!
You know it’s hot when you go and buy a windshield reflector and it only lower the inside car temp to 130°.
You know it’s hot when you justify jogging at
Final Thoughts on Texans: Not to sound out-of-place and foreign to this lifestyle, but I’m always put off when a sports apparel store has nearly 25% of floor space devoted to hunting and hunting accessories. And outside, they’re having a big sale on deer hunting platforms and baiters. Maybe that’s where I can find my Skippy.
Texas In the U.N.?
The Lone Star State, Or Why Texas Is A Foreign Country
"A good way to think of graduate school at Texas A&M is to think of it as a study abroad program. And if you don't know what I mean yet, you will. Just head on over to the Wal-Mart." --Courtney, 2nd-year Master's Student, Oceanography.
There’s so many more tales from my 2000 mile drive from Connecticut to Texas, but I don’t want to bore you here. Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about life as I live it here inTexas Connecticut Texas Pennsylvania Texarkana , Texas Texas A&M University Texas Avenue University Avenue Texas
I soaked in the atmosphere for a good 15 seconds, before rolling the windows back up and turning the A/C on again. Its not that it smells, but if you’ve ever held a blow dryer to your face and discovered that you don’t really like the feeling of hot, dry air on your skin, then you know how I felt. After a bit of a detour (deciding that my place was on the south side of campus when its actually on the north side), I found my place and my dear friend and new roommate Eugene F. ofBryan , TX Los Angeles , CA Cork , Ireland Ireland Drive
"A good way to think of graduate school at Texas A&M is to think of it as a study abroad program. And if you don't know what I mean yet, you will. Just head on over to the Wal-Mart." --Courtney, 2nd-year Master's Student, Oceanography.
There’s so many more tales from my 2000 mile drive from Connecticut to Texas, but I don’t want to bore you here. Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about life as I live it here in
I soaked in the atmosphere for a good 15 seconds, before rolling the windows back up and turning the A/C on again. Its not that it smells, but if you’ve ever held a blow dryer to your face and discovered that you don’t really like the feeling of hot, dry air on your skin, then you know how I felt. After a bit of a detour (deciding that my place was on the south side of campus when its actually on the north side), I found my place and my dear friend and new roommate Eugene F. of
After I got over the shock of having to purchase Jif Brand Peanut Butter (an unworthy alternate), I decided to go check out a few furniture stores since my bedroom was a bit "unfurnished", something I didn't recall when I visited in April. Probably all the boxes Eugene kept in there. Anyhow, I found a nice little bed and bureau set, and set up a delivery and was very happy with how nice the lady was and how professional the movers sounded. It was not to last. First, they rescheduled the delivery from Wednesday to Friday, meaning I had to sleep on the futon mattress, on the floor, for 6 more days instead of 4. Then, they gave me a 4-hour window Friday afternoon when I was supposed to be at a meeting for new Teaching Assistants. Then they didn't show up.
If I ever own my own company, I promise to offer Grade-A, Peerless Customer Service. I called the store at 5pm to get the dispatch number so I could get a good idea when they'd arrive. The dispatch number, of course, wouldn't accept a long-distance call from a Virgin Islands' number. Nor could they call me, either (these things I learned on Saturday). They didn't have a map to the house. How that's possible is beyond me. I can print out a map to any house in the country. You'd think movers would either A) be completely familar with their coverage area, streets, and neighborhoods, or B) go to maps.com and print out a map with directions. They chose C) quit looking and take the furniture back to Houston so they could make it to the bar by 8pm. By 7pm (the end of the delivery window), I was a bit nervous. By 7:30, a bit agitated. By 8pm, both me and Eugene (who has no faith in delivery guys) were ready to explode. After all, it was the gala Welcome Party for all the new grad students in the Geography program, and these tardy deliverymen were delaying the margarita goodness. So we left. When I left the party at 11pm, there was no message on my phone. No note left on the door when I got back to the house. The Customer Service Score was lacking.
I was awakened the next morning at 7:30am when my phone rang. "The movers!" I thought as I answered the phone. But Alas! Twas Not Them. So I waited, sitting in the steadily-heating house until noon. At that point I went back to the showroom to lodge my complaint and get some satisfaction for all the garbage I had just gone through. The lady was apologetic enough, but I was in no way satisfied when I found out that they wouldn't be able to deliver until Wednesday. So that's 14 days of sleeping on the floor before I get a bed. I'm betting that 1) they'll get lost again, and 2) they'll schedule the delivery for when I'm in class. I seriously might buy some balloons and signs to give them landmarks all the way to my place. On the other hand, they did give me a nice hardwood jewelery box with a hand-carved monkey on the top that is, despite that description, quite nice and perfect. Although, at this moment, I'd give it back to have had a bed before the first day of school.
The End of the Journals
The End of the Journals
It has recently come to my attention that my journal submissions, so beloved by some, enjoyed by several, loathed by scores, and instantaneously blocked by someone who shall remain nameless, has gone absent for several past months. Perhaps since December? I can’t actually recall. So starting school seems the perfect opportunity to switch over to a blog-style journal.
Why a blog? Why not? It does seem a bit self-important, and not a whole unlike publishing your own diary of thoughts and deeds. For people you know all-too-well to read. Or not. But I like feeling a little self-important, and if posting in a blog helps me develop a normal routine as I start my Ph.D., all the better. At the very least, I don't think it will be my downfall. That's what the rest of the internet is for.
Now I know that all blogs are centered around a few themes. What's mine? We haven't quite figured out, but chances are they'll take on the tone of a great story or happening. Life is exciting, and it should be captured! But a sampling of posts will probably take on classlife, grad life, trips, and, should Kinky Friedman get elected governor, politics. Anyhoo...
I still feel a bit whelmed (we're not sure if it is over- or under- at this point... but I digress), as I close the chapter to my life on St. Croix and open up what looks like a doozy of one here in College Station, Texas. Although I've been here only 10 days, my arrival here has felt a lot like reading a really good book but beginning to feel tired and so you thumb through the next chapter only to find its about 35 pages longer than any other chapter and that the font has suddenly shrunk to 7pt. and the author made the executive decision to write in Tagalog. Not that learning Tagalog is a bad thing.
But first, let’s recap a zesty last 6 months on
And of course, there was the sailing and the friends. Perfect time. Already, I hear plans of doing the
The Love Affair of Texas
...And welcome to my blog! We feel that this medium, already over-used by millions, is ready for one more self-important dose of "life as i live it." So welcome! Hurray!
Time in Texas: 10 days
Average Daily High: 99.9 F
Average Overnight Low: 77.3 F
Class begins tomorrow. More stories to follow. --Goose
Time in Texas: 10 days
Average Daily High: 99.9 F
Average Overnight Low: 77.3 F
Class begins tomorrow. More stories to follow. --Goose
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