Newton's Kumquat

Well, at least I'm blogging somewhere...

2006-08-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

Yup, believe it or not, I'm still alive. I know my blogging has come to a screeching halt this summer. Partly that's because I've been super busy, but I won't try to make excuses. I will say, however, that for at least the next few weeks I'll be making contributions to the new "GSLIS Dispatches" blog at Simmons, located at http://gslis.simmons.edu/blogs/dispatches. So if you want to know a bit about what I'm up to, you can pop over there and read about my trip to the Society of American Archivists convention in Washington, DC, and my upcoming trip library-related trip to Nicaragua! I promise I'll get back to blogging regularly at some point. However, I'm also pondering changing the focus of this blog to cover more topics related to libraries, archives, history and technology. Since those are the things I'm spending most of my time on these days, it would make it easier to come up with regular content. (I might simply start over with a new blog. We'll see.)

Spam of the day

2006-05-16T08:25:00.000-05:00

When your morning starts off with an e-mail that begins "Would you like to have unbelievable sex during all the night?" and ends up with a passage from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, you know it's going to be an interesting day.

Whew.

2006-05-15T09:02:00.000-05:00

My last history paper was due at 10:00 this morning. At 9:51 AM I walked through the professor's office door and handed her my 30-page opus. I am now officially done with my first semester of Library school. Yay!

Nothing left to do now but sit here refreshing the grades page.

In need of regretable 1950s recipes

2006-05-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

Our "Cold War Culture" history class meets for the last time on Monday. My main concern related to this should be fleshing out my final paper so that I can present a coherent outline of it in class. (I'm buried in sources I've been collecting all semester, but haven't written a word. Luckily the actual paper isn't due for another two weeks.)

It has also been proposed that we all bring in 1950s-themed dishes to eat while we're listening to people explain their topics. Someone has already spoken for Mamie Eisenhower's Million Dollar Fudge, so I'm trying to come up with some other uniquely cold-war-era recipe that I can make. Any ideas?

UPDATE: For some reason, Blogger apparently ate this post and it never made it online. So I'll just give you the post-action report. After a not-massively-helpful discussion with my cold-war-era parents, the only really good idea was Tomato Aspic.

I was looking for something with a little more pizazz and a little easier to transport, so on Sunday I stopped by the library at Simmons. Unfortunately, the library is in the middle of a massive, multiyear renovation project, and something like 2/3 of the collection is now stored off site and takes a day or two to retrieve. It seems that the 1950s cookbooks didn't make the cut for staying on campus. So after browsing every cookbook that was left, I headed back to my office to ponder my options.

But then, while aimlessly wandering the web, I found this reprint of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook from 1950, and it has the "search inside the book" option! So I searched for "appetizers." Booya! Pages of classic 1950 party food.

I desperately wanted to make the "flaming cabbage." But alas, it seems that Sterno is harder to come by than it was in 1950. (I tried the drug store and grocery store at Porter Square before giving up.) So I went to plan B, which was essentially a layer cake made of out bologna and mustard/chive flavored cream cheese, and garnished with sliced olives. The cookbook calls this cholesterol and nitrite laden delicacy "wedgies." Yum.

When I got to class, this was definitely the most, umm, unique food there! A few brave souls actually tried it. No deaths have been reported.

Oh, and the part where I talked about what I wrote in the paper that I hadn't written went pretty well too. (Apparently all my research this semester has paid off -- let's hope I'm as loquacious when I actually sit down to whip out 20 pages this weekend.)

After Monday I should have a lot more time -- no classes for a month! So perhaps blogging will become a bit more consistent.

On second thought...

2006-04-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

Spent several hours in consultation with catalogging study group. Now pretty sure that the Dewey for the home weaving thing is actually 659.1974614 -- with the difference being whether you consider weaving to be an art or a trade. Let me tell you, it was an exciting evening!

Trot, trot, to Boston

2006-04-17T21:03:00.000-05:00

Trot, trot, to Boston;
Trot, trot, to Lynn;
Trot, trot, to Salem;
Home, home again.

Well, I wasn't precisely trotting, and I certainly didn't make it as far as Lynn or Salem. But I did make it to Boston proper on my bike today. (Charlestown, where I went on Friday, is technically part of Boston, but it doesn't really count since it's on this side of the Charles River.)

Today was going to be another study day. I had toyed with the idea of having some folks over for dinner, but the timing didn't work out. By 4:00 PM the sun was peeking out and I was sick of the inside of my apartment. So I lugged my bike down the stairwell and set out. My original plan was just to head in the direction of Harvard Square, since I figured that if I could get the hang of riding there I could take the subway from there to work. (Thereby getting a workout and a shorter subway ride.)

I made it to Harvard and sat on one of the quad-like areas for a bit. I was still feeling pretty chipper, so I decided to push onward. After getting lost in the windy little European-style streets between the university and the river, I finally found the Charles. Since the river has relatively flat bike paths on either side, I kept going.

Next thing I knew I was on Commonwealth Ave. near BU. From there it was only a short ride to Kenmore Square, where, to my surprise, there were still marathoners jogging the mile 25 marker! People were cheering like crazy, and the beer was clearly flowing. I pushed through the marathon crowds for a bit with the idea of possibly seeing either the finish line or a red-line T-stop where I could hop a subway home. When I got to Copley Square, the whole square was barricaded for finish-line VIPs, so I didn't actually see the marathon at that point. (Did see lots of exhausted runners heading away from it, though.)

At this point I found out (through a call to a friend) that a group of friends who had gotten up early to watch the marathon were still wandering the streets of Boston. We agreed to meet up at India Quality in Kenmore Square. So I headed back in the other direction. I was thrown off by the marathon barricades and ended up going past Northeastern, the MFA, and then up the Fenway and around Fenway Park. (This is actually about 3 blocks from Simmons, which proves that I could realistically bike there!)

Dinner was very good -- I had lamb kabob type thing. My lawyer friend explained to us that if we could build a hut and live on someone else's land for 20 years without anyone evicting us, we would own the land thanks to the doctrine of adverse posession. (Note to self: if housing prices keep going up, seriously consider this!)

After dinner, it was starting to drizzle, so my first thought was to find the nearest bike-friendly subway stop and head home that way. But I ended up missing Kendall, and was still going strong when I hit Central Square. Made it to Harvard, and from there it's not too far to Porter. Next thing I knew I had ridden all the way home! In the dark, in traffic, no less! (This is something that would have terrified me a few weeks ago.)

Hard to say for sure, but my guess is I rode at least 14-15 miles -- and I have the butt-bruises to prove it! (I think I may need to look at alternate saddles at some point.)

I'm really getting down with the whole bicycle transportation thing. Remains to be seen if I can keep it up when the weather gets hot, but for now it's definitely a good way to get around and get some serious exercise at the same time. (I've lost something like 5 pounds in the last week since I started riding regularly -- not surprising when, according to the computer, riding at 10-12 MPH with "light effort" burns something like 1,000 calories/hour!)

Now that I'm home, I've seriously got to work on the archives management paper I've been avoiding. Ugh.

659.19677028242

2006-04-15T23:24:00.000-05:00

That's the Dewey Decimal number for a book about advertising your home weaving projects. At least I'm reasonably sure it is. (It doesn't really matter in real life because no library would be crazy enough to have a 14+ digit call number!)

This, my friends, is how I've spent a major chunk of my holiday weekend Saturday. It could be worse -- LC classification makes Dewey look like a walk in the park! Luckily I've gotten most of the LC stuff done with my study group.

I also took the bike out again and rode up to Spy Pond where I watched the geese and read a chapter from"The Invisible Man" for my history class. From there, on to Arlington Center where I ate an orange croissant and did some more reading. After that I followed the path a while longer to roughly the border of Lexington. I felt like I was losing steam, so I turned around. At that point I realized that I'd been pedaling up a shallow grade -- which is probably why I was feeling sluggish. The return trip went a lot quicker. At Arlington Center I got off the bike path and rode back along Broadway, which was also a pretty easy ride despite the traffic. I don't know how far I actually went -- I've got to get a cycling computer for the bike so that I can keep track of these things. (The real question is am I brave enough to attempt the 6-mile ride into Boston to get to school.)

When I got back, I vegged on the deck for a with Ralph Ellison and a beer, then headed back to Dewey Land.

Tomorrow's Easter, but I don't really have any plans. I was originally considering going home, but I had too much schoolwork stacked up to give up the travel time. So it's probably going to pretty much be just another day, other than the fact that I may actually go to church for once.

Boston by bike

2006-04-15T00:59:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I purchased a bike, my first since sometime in high school. Tuesday morning I ignored the homework I should have been tackling and instead took it for a spin. I started out heading toward "downtown," but soon reveresed course and headed out through Davis square and onto the Minuteman bike path toward Arlington. The weather was beautiful, and eventually I made my way to Spy Pond. I sat on a bench watching ripples course through the reflections of budding trees and a white church steeple. Two geese paddled placidly around the pond, keeping a wary eye on a woman who was swimming in their general direction. An extended family was gathered at the water's edge -- two young kids were busily occupied chucking handfulls of pebbles into the pond while their elders conversed in rapid-fire Korean. I soon had to turn around and head back for work. But the sunny morning at the pond set the tone for the rest of my day.

Today I got up a bit early and biked to my internship in Charlestown. I think this was a longer trip than the Tuesday ride, and also involved far more hills and intense traffic. I made it on time, and made it back without major injury. Go me!

For my last 9 months or so in Nashville I'd gotten in the habit of going to the gym 3-4 times per week. Since it was at work I could get in at any hour, so it wasn't a problem to stop in even if I was heading home at midnight. And it was working -- I've shed close to 100 pounds in the last year.

Now I'm relying on the gym at school, which keeps "normal" hours. I'm often in work, classes, or study groups until late evening, so it's sometimes hard to make it to the gym. I've probably been averaging once a week since I started going again a month or two ago.

The fact that I'm walking a lot more than I used to certainly helps. On most days I walk about 30-40 minutes as part of my daily commute. But I'm hoping the bike will give me another way to keep up the routine.

A few winter snapshots:

2006-04-14T01:21:00.000-05:00

Hoisting furniture over up to my balcony on an unseasonably warm day, January 2006.

Another move in photo. Note that I'm now showing my Tennessee pride. I bought the sweatshirt in Nashville years ago, but never wore it there for fear of being mistaken for a Vols fan! Honestly, officer, I have no idea where that sign came from!

Making good use of gravity to get the moving blankets back to the truck.

That's just how important I am up here. I even have my own port-a-john!

Hiking on the freezing cold beach, March 2006.

Later in the hike we discovered the mansion of some filthy rich turn-of-the-century industrialist.

On the chairlift at Jay Peak, March 2006.

My friend Marty doing his level best to burn down his newly-remodeled kitchen, April, 2006.

The commute

2006-04-13T01:10:00.000-05:00

Walking to the T. Early afternoon sun shines obliquely through the trees lining College Ave. Warm breeze -- feels like spring. On the platform at Davis, an old man picks bluegrass banjo next to his lazy-looking black dog. Two quarters from my disorganized backpack plunk into the banjo case as the train glides into the station. Porter. Harvard. Central. Kendall. We glide smoothly up and over the Charles, Boston bound. Twin obelisks of the Bunker Hill Monument and the graceful Zakim bridge crest the distant horizon to the sound of Glenn Miller's Tuxedo Junction. Off the train at Park Street -- bustle of feet rushing up the stairs to the green line platform. The D-line train comes before my usual E. I hop on -- the longer walk on the other end means more time to enjoy the weather. Off at Fenway, rushing toward work. Sidewalk Sam is chalking a Matisse on the pavement while the geese graze on the Fenway. Almost there. I arrive at my desk 10 minutes late, but it's worth it.

(actually written a week or two ago, but I forgot to post it!)

It's not that I don't want to post...

2006-04-05T00:56:00.000-05:00

But I've been unbelievably busy. Between 30 hours of work, 9 hours in class, 6 hours at an internship, 11 hours commuting, and who knows how many more hours spent on homework, study groups, etc. there just isn't that much time left over. I've also been trying to actually maintain some semblance of a social life, which requires even more time. (My blog reading has gone down even more precipitously than my blog writing!) I'm hoping to gradually get back in the rhythm of blogging... Stay tuned!

Poetics of commuting

2006-02-15T00:25:00.000-06:00

To get to work/school, I now walk about 15 minutes from my house to the Davis Square T stop, where I hop a red line train into the city, followed by a green line train back out to MFA. I then walk about 5 minutes on the other end out along the Fenway to Simmons. The commute unfortunately takes about an hour each way, which is not ideal. But it also adds up to about 40 minutes of walking per day, which hopefully somewhat makes up for the fact that I have yet to make it to the gym in Boston. (There is theoretically a fitness center at school, but it's somewhat inconvenient if you don't live on campus.)

In any case, the commute is interesting because there are a thousand new things to notice every day. Sometimes they're really obvious -- like the day I was bringing my mom back from the airport on the T and a couple was having a knock-down, drag-out, yelling and screaming argument at the other end of the nearly-empty subway car. Other times you catch more subtle things. Like the house on College Ave. where someone has laid out giant poetry words on the ground like refrigerator magnets.

Here's another one: The subway platform at Davis is made up of dingy red bricks. Etched into them is a faint message -- easy to miss if you're not looking for it:

At 7am watching the cars on the bridge
Everybody's going to work. Well.
Not me. I'm not
Going to work
-James Moore

When I stand amid the swarm of people milling around the platform and see this, it makes me smile.

Snow. Lots of it.

2006-02-14T00:09:00.000-06:00

The good news is that I had the foresight to go out and buy a snow shovel a few weeks ago. (I had gotten rid of my old one from Syracuse years ago because Nashville never had enough snow to bother.)

The bad news is that I put it in the back of my pickup so that I'd have it handy when I needed to dig the truck out. Now the back of the truck is frozen shut and buried behind a 5-foot high snowpile.

If I had the shovel I could dig it out, but...

Got a day off from work on Sunday, which is a mixed blessing. The extra holiday was nice, but when I don't work I don't get paid! The workload and crazy schedule have been killing me, but we've reworked some of my hours and I think that will help. I'm hoping to do some catch up posting on this blog sometime soon, including photos of the move in and more details about what I've been up to since I arrived.

Words to live by

2006-01-29T23:27:00.000-06:00

A close friend and her family recently became involved in a tragedy on a scale that most of us thankfully never have to deal with. We've all been very concerned, but they seem to be holding up remarkably well considering. She recently wrote an e-mail that included the following, which I plan to post on my refrigerator as soon as I figure out where the box with the magnets went:

this is also a reminder to me that life needs to be lived to the fullest. that each day is a gift - not to be taken for granted. and i am trying to remind myself that. never hang up mad. never leave without a hug. those are my cardinal rules. never regret. everything is an experience to be learned from - and this is what i'm taking....
man. i almost went up to a total stranger on the train the other day and told him he was cute.
almost.

My thoughts are with her, her family, and the others who have suddenly been asked to deal with the unthinkable.

Sorry

2006-01-29T01:07:00.000-06:00

Sorry for being so scarce. My life has changed radically almost overnight, and I'd like nothing better than to chronicle it all here. But I'm still waiting on Comcast for my Internet hookup. My main net access at home is coming through my cell phone, which isn't conducive to writing your life story.

I do now have an actual desk, phone, computer, etc. at my new job. But I haven't had much time to blog there.

So, anyway, there is much to say, and I'll try to catch you up once my apartment gets plugged back into the matrix.

I will say one thing now: I've seen more snow in the last week than I'd seen in years in Nashville.

First day

2006-01-23T16:05:00.000-06:00

Classes don't start until next week, but today was my first day at the assistantship job. It started at 8AM, which is early (at least in my world). The commute took an hour (about 20 minutes of walking through a snow storm and the rest on two subway lines.) That's about right for where I live, but is clearly going to take a bite out of my time. I'm going to have to learn to be productive on the subway. There is very little parking on campus, and will be virtually none when they tear out the main parking lot to start building a parking garage in May.

I spent most of the day at work being shown around and filling out paperwork. Still don't know precisely what I will have to do in the job -- we're supposedly going to go over some of that tomorrow. I'm essentially an assistant to the acting IT director for the Library School. The actual job is probably whatever she needs done. It's a small office, but seems to be staffed with nice folks.

I also spent the day making phone calls trying to shut down Nashville utilities, start up Mass. utilities, etc. I've been parking illegally on the street for the lastt few days, and I was hoping to get a resident permit today. I called about this, and was told I would need a Mass. auto registration and driver's license to get the permit. So I called the DMV, and was told that I would need proof of Mass. insurance to get the registration. So I called the insurance company, and they said I would need a Mass. driver's license to get insurance. Urgh! (Actually, turns out I can call back with the license info later, so this isn't a total catch-22. But when it all shakes out, I'm probably going to have to risk parking tickets for another week while I wait on all the paperwork.)

Despite the fact that I have a longstanding beef with Comcast (about running my own server at home), I signed up for their Internet service after Verizon told me they were overloaded with DSL subscribers in my area and couldn't currently take anymore. I guess I could have looked into other options, but I was too lazy. Also signed up for cable television. That may be a luxury on my student income. But the Internet costs a lot more without it. I even added the basic digital package for $5.95/month because this means they'll waive the installation fee. I can then cancel it in a month or two if if turns out to be pointless. I'm not thrilled about sending close to $100/month to Comcast, but I'll survive.

Only problem is, it will be almost two weeks before they can install it. So I'm stuck without reliable Internet at home. (Occasionally I can pick up someone else's WiFi router at night, but it's spotty.) Currently camped out in the lounge at school, and I can also go to the coffee shop around the corner. But still not as good as having it at home.

The apartment is still a mess, but I'm slowly getting it more organized. My office is more or less put together (although the computer doesn't really work due to the lack of Internet), and the living room is getting there. The kitchen still looks like a bomb went off -- need to tackle that this week.

Exhaustion

2006-01-22T00:35:00.000-06:00

In new apartment with all my stuff, thanks to an intrepid crew of 6 volunteers. Things are in disarray and there's a lot of work left to do. But I'm too tired to think about it.

Gotta get Internet going -- typing on a cell phone is getting old.

Even closer

2006-01-20T14:43:00.000-06:00

Almost there

2006-01-20T14:31:00.000-06:00

Cat in a traffic jam DC

2006-01-19T14:30:00.000-06:00

Lunch in Woodstock

2006-01-19T12:20:00.000-06:00

Drivin' my big ol' truck

2006-01-18T14:36:00.000-06:00

Loading Day (first of several, actually)

2006-01-16T14:21:00.000-06:00

Before.

The crew. Most of it anyway. The two brothers are off somewhere doing something.

Ahh, perhaps eating lunch. Homemade ham and bean soup (made last weekend -- I'm not that crazy.)

A chair before stretch wrapping.

A chair after stretch wrapping. Stretch wrap is my new favorite packing material.

Raking leaves (for some reason!) and jumping in them. You can't stop these volunteers!

Moving the dresser.

wrapping the dresser.

The truck. It's big. really big. I was waffling between a 16' and a 22' truck. Because I'm a great person, the Penske guy decided to give me a free upgrade to a 26' truck. When I tried to get something smaller, he admitted that they only had the 26'. Going to be interesting piloting that sucker down a snow-covered streets in Boston!

Disassembling the bed. Wildlife sightings included dust bunnies the size of small dogs.

After.

Y2K Nostalgia

2006-01-13T22:00:00.000-06:00

Cleaning out my office, and just came across a notebook full of notes taken in meetings about Y2K preparedness. Full of things like "Buy flashlights!" and "Go on generator at 8PM no matter what?" I still remember that New Years because my friends all got together for a big party in NY, but I was required to be at work in case there were power outages, computer failures, riots, plaugues of raining frogs, etc.

I spent the entire night staring at my computer screen watching nothing happen. What a way to ring in the milleneum.

Cake

2006-01-13T18:23:00.000-06:00

It's official -- I'm really leaving. I can tell because we ate cake with my name on it.

That and I received an automatic e-mail from HR telling me that I need to disable my own computer access. It was a very recursive moment.

Boxercize

2006-01-13T15:09:00.000-06:00

Just sent the following e-vite to 11 of my closest friends and vague acquaintances in Boston. We'll see how many folks I can sucker into white washing the fence:

"Help Me Unload A Moving Van" Party
Host: Yours Truly
Location: Casa Nueva de Me
Somerville, MA
When: Saturday, January 21, 9:00am
Phone: 555-5555

Featuring "Boxercize" -- the fitness craze that's sweeping the nation!
Ever been at a party and thought "Man, this is a drag. All these people are boring, and the guy in the corner is totally plastered and making an ass of himself. If only there were some heavy boxes here, I could at least be keeping fit by lifting them and carrying them up a flight of stairs."
Well, this is the party for you! Not only will there be no drunk guy in the corner, but the host is thoughtfully providing a Penske moving truck stuffed to the brim with physical fitness opportunities! Simply show up, grab an armload, and soon you too will see how you can boxercize your way to a new you!
But wait, there's more! For example, we could watch TV... after we unload it from the truck. We could could cook delicious food... after we unload the kitchen stuff from the truck. We could look at nifty art... after we unload it from the truck. And, of course, you'll appreciate all of these things more after having hauled them up a flight of stairs!
If you can't make it, that's fine, but I'll tell you now that this is a hot ticket around Metro Boston. We're even considering hiring a bouncer to keep out the riff raff. (However, if you have friends that want to come, we'll put them on the VIP list. But only because we like you.)
The boxercize madness will start sometime around 9AM, and will go until the first ER visit. Don't miss out on what Men's Health magazine called "The U-Haul Miracle!" Respond today!

Amazon reviews as creative writing

2006-01-11T19:11:00.000-06:00

I was looking up the cost of electric lawnmowers to try to figure out a fair asking price for the used one I'm about to sell. I stumbled across the following review on Amazon.com. It cracked me up.

Well ladies and gentlemen; it's that time of the year again. The time of the year where the grass grows faster than Vin Diesel's career. If your household works like mine then you will be the one who has to cut the lawn, while dad sits inside the nice air conditioned house watching sports highlights.
Over the last weekend, I was preparing to meet my friend Lyle at the local Cineplex to see the latest installment of what I can tell as the next big action franchise "XXX". This one features a great action star named Ice Cube (he was SWEET in Torque). Anywho, as I was getting ready, dad interrupted me and commanded that I cut the grass before I leave. I still had about an hour and half before the movie started so I was okay with it.
We have a decent size lot, so it takes a while to cut the lawn, plus my dad is pretty anal about how the lawn looks. He makes you cut the grass in a criss-cross pattern something like a golf course. Everything was going good, I was making good time. Then, it happened. While I was cutting next to the house I ran over the droppings of my dog Morris and due to the side discharge on the lawn mower, no joke, dog poop was flung all over the front of the house.
Dad came out and started yelling at me because a piece of Morris's offerings splattered on the window next to him. He made me clean-up the mess and after I finished cutting the grass. None-the-less I ended up missing the movie and had to reschedule for the next day.
In conclusion, The Black & Decker Lawn Hog (I love the name, Lawn Hog, it's so tough) has the capabilities to cut grass like any top of the line lawnmower, plus has the added feature of flinging poo like a primate. I have big plans for this thing when he leaves for work. I can mow trashbags on trash-day, flower-beds, pretty much anything. I'm also seriously considering going up to the baseball field at the school, so I can run the bases with the lawnmower to throw all of the gravel into the outfield. The possibilities of this thing are endless. I can do anything I want to with it, to anything. If dad is going to act like a slave-driver, then he can be responsible for whatever I do. It's his Lawn-Hog anyways. Later.

The review is by some guy named Howard Tuttleman, who has written dozens of other Amazon reviews and is expanding his media empire with a website featuring live radio broadcasts from his room.

A job, a dresser, messed up glasses, a movie, yadda, yadda

2006-01-06T02:05:00.000-06:00

Things are happening so quickly I can barely keep up, let alone let y'all know about 'em. But here's a quick rundown of today:

Free rent department: I'm on a quixotic quest to convince my landlords that they shouldn't charge me rent in January. (Would sure be helpful financially, since I've already paid January rent in Boston, and am paying an equivalent amount to rent a truck next week.) So far I've offered up my washer, dryer, and bunch of phone and home networking improvements to them as incentives. Don't know if they're biting.
This morning they said they definitely don't want the appliances because these would then have to be maintained for the next tenant. But they might be willing to make allowances if I leave the complete home network. Some of it is probably going to stay anyway simply because it's impractical to tear out several hundred feet of under-floor Category-5 cable. But if they don't cut me a deal I'm certainly taking the router, modem, etc. So this morning I wrote a big manifesto (with photos) describing what I'd done and laying out how the stuff I installed would sell for almost $500 on the open market. We'll see what happens.
Cat yakk department: Scheduled a pickup for my dining room rug to go to the cleaners. This is my cat's favorite place to deposit hairballs, dead mice, and other feline detritus. So it definitely needs help. Plus, if the cleaners bundle it up all pretty when they're done, it will be easier to move.
New job department: I've been pretty ambivalent about the fellowship I applied for in Boston. The good news was that it would hugely reduce my tuition and give me a (tiny) bit of actual income. The bad news was it has lousy hours and involves doing still more of the techie stuff I'm trying to escape by going back to school. However, a lot of my ambivalence evaporated when I got a $10,000 tuition bill over the holidays. Clearly I'm on a fast track to the bread line if I don't come up with some sort of get-solvent-quick scheme. So when the school called back today and offered me the job, I didn't hesitate too long before saying yes. Unfortunately, they want me to start two days after I arrive in Boston. So much for a leisurely transition.
Brain dump department: Over the holidays I set up MediaWiki and started creating an encyclopedia of everything I know at my current job. This has turned into a grueling task because a) despite appearances, I actually seem to know quite a lot, and b) there is nothing more tedious than trying to write about boring stuff you already know. That said, I'm pushing on in hopes of cutting down on the frantic phone calls from Nashville after I'm gone. I spent a big chunk of today camped out at my favorite WiFi-equipped neighborhood coffee shop tapping away on this. The only good part is that I've gotten more familiar with how MediaWiki works, which should come in handy in the future.
Furniture department: I have a dresser that my grandmother gave me when I moved to Nashville. It was pretty banged up when I got it, but is a solid piece of vintage furniture. About five years ago, I talked to a neighborhood furniture maker about fixing it up. Last month I finally got around to handing it over.
He brought it back to my house earlier today. My wallet is now $125 lighter, but he transformed a dull hand-me-down into a pretty slick looking home furnishing. A good investment, I think. Add it to the shelf I finished repainting a few weeks ago and the clean rug, and I may not recognize my new place.
Magical furniture department: Needed a stress reliever after driving to Green Hills to pick up my glasses only to find out that LensCrafters had screwed up the order. So I stopped at Wild Oats to grab dinner and then popped over to the movie theater to see the Narnia flick. I'm not normally a fan of fantasy movies, but I thought it was phenomenally good. Made me want to go back and reread the books, which I last looked at sometime in grade school.
Evil empires from Redmond department: Now at work, where I popped in just after midnight to try to get some things ready for tomorrow. Thought I'd be here for maybe an hour and then perhaps go to the gym. It's been more than two hours now and I'm still digging around in e-mail looking for stuff. Outlook is a piece of crap when it comes to finding things you wrote six months ago. Microsoft could sure learn something from Gmail.

Apropos of nothing department: After seeing an exhibit at the airport the other day, I've decided that I really want to get one of these Anderson Thomas Nashville posters for my Boston apartment. Still waffling... Maybe this one, this one, or this one. I also really like this one, but I think I'd feel weird having it on my wall because I've never actually been to the Bluebird. Maybe I'll have to fit that in before I leave.

Belated Monday morning blues

2006-01-03T11:35:00.000-06:00

Today isn't shaping up to be the greatest day.

When I got home last night, my first tuition bill from Simmons was waiting. Suffice it to say, I am in severe sticker shock. I knew it would be bad, but somehow it hadn't percolated that it would be this bad. I'm suddenly more interested in that fellowship that would pay a big chunk of the tuition. Otherwise, I need to start applying for student loans real soon now.
Part of the damage comes from getting slammed for Massachusetts-mandated health insurance. I think I need to investigate whether it would be cheaper to hang on to my current insurance under COBRA until this summer. Hmm.
My Linux box (which was becoming my primary desktop computer) seems to have died a horrible death. It started out with much unexplained sluggishness. It then became clear that there was a problem with one of the drives in the RAID. When I rebooted the first time, the system attempted to reconstruct things and then froze. Now it can't even find a bootable partition. Argh. I don't have time for this right now.
We had a grand plan where my brothers were coming down to help me move. Only problem is that they had booked their flights on the soon-to-be-defunct Independence Air. So my brother is now trying to book replacement tickets on Southwest (the cheap ones have already been snapped up), and we're trying to rearrange the plan to fit the new airline arrangements. (For any volunteers who may be reading this, the plan is still to load in Nashville on Sunday the 15th and unload in Somerville on Saturday the 21st.)
Speaking of all that, I'm realizing how much I have to get done in the next two weeks, which is when I'm supposedly leaving Nashville. I started making a list on a sticky pad last night, and then decided it was going to take too many pages. Seemed like I had tons of time before Christmas. Now it seems like there's no way I'm going to get it all done.

Have to go walk to work now, because my car is still being held hostage at the body shop. The door was starting to fall off, which should have been covered under the CarMax warranty. But the CarMax people said they couldn't do it and to take it to a body shop. Then the body shop people said they couldn't deal with the CarMax warranty people. Much telephone hillarity ensued last week. Supposedly it's all worked out now, but I guess I'll find out later today.

Midnight

2005-12-31T23:02:00.000-06:00

New Years in DC

2005-12-31T22:28:00.000-06:00

Rejected

2005-12-23T11:27:00.000-06:00

As part of the big cleaning and packing drive, I lugged the massive pile of coins on my dresser over to a local coinstar machine. I'd been lured by the promise of no-fee Amazon gift certificates. Unfortunately, however, this appears to be a bait and switch, since none of the machines in Nashville will actually do it. Having already schlepped many tons of coins over to Kroger, I went ahead and paid the fee to have them counted. To my astonishment, I discovered that I had almost $250 in change sitting around my bedroom. Even with the fee, I still cleared around $220, which isn't bad for 20 minutes work!

It was also fun to look at what the machine kicked back. Besides some severely-mutilated US coinage, there were things with a more interesting history. To wit:

Deutschmark, probably left over from the exchange program trip I took to Germany in Summer, 1992. Perhaps a collectors item now, since Deutschmarks no longer exist!
50 Pfenig coin. Another collector's item.
Random token with no cash value. Probably from Chuck-e-Cheese or somwhere of its ilk.
Token from Buttons Arcade in Syracuse, NY. In college, I took a course called "Literature and the Working Class." To begin a discussion about class in America, the professor divided us up into groups and sent us out into the community to observe people and take notes. Our group decided to go to Buttons, an arcade in a seedy dying mall in North Syracuse. Pretty sure this token came from that trip.
MBTA T token from the Boston subway. From one of my many trips to Boston. I should hang onto this to use in a few weeks when I arrive in Boston.
1776 coin. Don't know where this came from. I think it might have been part of a solicitation for some magazine published by the History Channel.
100 Pesos from Argentina. My dad's sister used to be married to a guy from Argentina. After living in Montana during the 1970s, they moved to Argentina during the early 1980s, and lived there for the rest of the decade. (Which is why my cousins all speak fluent Spanish.) This coin probably came from one of my grandmother's trips to visit them. Interestingly, XE.com claims that 100 Pesos are worth roughly $33 US dollars. But I suspect that the currency has been revalued since the 1980s, so I doubt this little coin is really worth that much. Maybe one day I'll get to go to Argentina and find out.
2 Mexican Pesos. Left over from my trip to Mexico in Spring, 2004. This side shows the eagle on the cactus eating a snake, which is the Mexican national symbol. The other side has nifty little prehistoric-looking heiroglyphs around the edges.
Another German 50 Pfenig piece.

Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray

2005-12-22T20:54:00.000-06:00

I'm in a foul mood today. Not entirely sure why, but here's one possibility:

I keep trying to actually finish projects and check them off my neverending to-do list at work. Lately, every time I take what I've done to someone, they come up with five more questions or action items that I simply must take care of before I can make the thing go away.

I just want to yell "Don't you know that I'm out of here in three weeks? Can't you let me just finish something for god's sake?"

Did I mention I'm in a foul mood?

Also, I had a phone interview for a graduate fellowship/assistantship in Boston this morning. I'm not even sure I want the danged thing. It has lousy hours, doesn't pay real well (although it does pay for a big chunk of tuition), and requires doing more of the frontline techy stuff I'm trying to escape. At the same time, I'm totally qualified and will probably be crushed if they don't offer it to me.

I won't know how I did until January when they make a decision. But talking about myself for 45 minutes to complete strangers has a way of pumping a healthy dose of self-doubt into my bloodstream.

Did I mention I'm in a foul mood?

Oh, yeah, and it's freakin' sub-zero in my office right now. I can't feel my fingers. I feel like I'm in a Jack London story.

Move update

2005-12-18T05:11:00.000-06:00

Yeah, umm, well, that whole decorating thing hasn't really happened. Somehow in the last week it finally hit me that I really only have two full weekends between now and when I'm packing the truck. (I am flying up to DC next Saturday, and am going to stay there all week, telecommuting part of the time. After that, back to Nashville for two weeks, and then off to Boston.)

I now have most of my books and assorted other things packed up in boxes, and am slowly working through the rest of a long to-do list. I got glasses made. (Mandated by the fact that my old decrepit ones finally broke.) I keep bringing home new loads of personal papers and junk from my office at work, then trying to sort through them. I made cookies for the office party. I sent an obsolete U-matic video tape from college off to be transposed to MiniDV. I painted a shelf that I started stripping in 2000 and then never finished. I ordered bubble wrap and other packing stuff online. I inquired about my dental benefits and verified that I can make a dentist appointment after I leave in January. I arranged for the replacement of the malfunctioning computer monitor. I returned one poorly-fitting pair of shoes that had been sitting around for months. (I highly recommend Zappos.com for shoe purchases -- they have tons of shoes for hard to fit feet, and a easy return policy.) I returned another pair that had begun unraveling after hard use in Spain, and Propet is going to replace them for free. (Also highly-reccomend Propet shoes. While I had trouble with this pair after hiking around Spain, I have another pair of sneakers that has been great. And all their shoes have a "thousand mile guarantee," and good customer service to back it up.)

That's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head. There are a million more things that have to happen between now and February 1. Ack!

Despite all that, sometime before I leave I'm hoping to find time to go down to Murfreesboro and learn how to print photos. While I've been an amateur photographer for years and have recently spent more time and effort improving my skills and equipment, I've still never actually done old-school printing. (I was introduced to darkroom work while in college, but only got as far as developing. There was less need to print at that point because we were already able to scan from negatives.)

I ran into a old friend/retired photojournalist at a party recently, and she offered to teach me the process in her home darkroom. She still remembers the first time she saw an image materializing out of nothingness on phoograhphic paper, and wants to share the experience. I really hope I can find time to do this. (Admittedly, printing photos this way is quickly becoming an anachronism, but it's still appealing to me.)

Just started reading "Better Off by Eric Brende, a meditation on a life with less technology. The author, an MIT grad student, conducts an experiment in simple living by spending 18 months in a (sort of) Mennonite community with no electricity. Very interesting -- may have more thoughts on this later.

Seeing red

2005-12-08T01:17:00.000-06:00

I've been on a kick to get rid of stuff so that I don't have to pack it. Currently an entire corner of my dining room is piled up with things I think I can live without. Novels I'm never going to read again. Obscure literary theory readers from college. A blender with a missing blade. The Kermit the Frog that my friends won for me at Jillians years ago. A new garden hose, never used. Two obsolete computers. Pants that no longer fit due to the fitness regimen. And so forth. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all this stuff, but it's pretty liberating to get rid of it.

Along the same lines, last week I decided to get rid of my massive CRT monitor and instead buy a new LCD flat panel. I figured it would be a lot easier to lug to Boston, and would also give me tons more desk space. The good news is that the new monitor arrived today. It's big and flat and beautiful. Except for the fact that within its first hour colors went all loopy and tiny red stripes appeared all over the screen. So looks like I'm going to be on the phone with Samsung and/or Amazon tomorrow trying to get this straightened out. Yuck.

My boss finally officially announced my departure last week. It was pretty anticlimactic, since just about everyone knew I was a short timer anyway. But it somehow made the whole thing more official.

I also rented a truck. I really had no idea how much truck I would need. I settled on 24 feet, which might be utterly huge. But I figured it was better to have too much space than too little. The plan is to move the third week in January. I've convinced two brothers to come help, and volunteers at both ends have also stepped forward. So hopefully the whole thing will be pretty painless.

Right now I'm seriously considering decorating the house for Christmas. I figure that if I cover everything with greens I can go ahead and pack lots of stuff without making the place look totally depressing. Plus if I get really organized maybe I'll get arount to having some sort of Christmas/going away party. That could be fun.

First amendment center founder?

2005-11-30T17:57:00.000-06:00

A new article by John Seigenthaler, Sr. (A false Wikipedia 'biography') has been floating around at work and on library listservs today.

I just sent the following response to several colleagues:

I agree with the fundamental thrust of the article, which is that you should never take anything for granted from Wikipedia without checking against conventional sources as well.
But I have mixed feelings about the larger issue. On the one hand, it's obviously not a good thing that false information was published about Mr. Seigenthaler. But the main thrust of his argument seems to raise quite a few first amendment issues. He seems to feel that he should be able to sue BellSouth for libel or defamation, or that BellSouth should be obligated to hand over the identities of its customers anytime someone else claims to have been defamed.
Let's say that the offending text were in an anonymous pamphlet rather than an anonymous web page. And let's say that, by analyzing the paper it was printed on he was able to determine that it was photocopied at a Kinkos in Nashville on paper made by the Acme paper company. Should he then be able to sucessfully sue Acme paper company for libel? Or sue the Kinkos where the pamphlet was xeroxed? Or sue the electric company for providing the electricity to do the copying? Or demand that Kinkos turn over the identity of every customer who shopped there for the last six months?
This is really no different. If service providers (be they copy centers or ISPs) are held responsible for the content of their customers' speech, then they will be forced to hire censors to monitor the creative output of every customer. Is the benefit of preventing occasional character defamation really worth the cost of creating an army of private censors empowered to stifle speech that someone might object to?
Even if they are only asked to retroactively identify customers who allegedly defame someone, this means that they must keep detailed records on every customer, what they posted/copied, and how to contact them. It would no longer be possible to publish anything anonymously. It's a safe bet that under this sort of legal restriction, many of today's most exciting communications developments (blogs, for example), would never have come about. Do we really want to stifle the next Thomas Paine to prevent someone from writing falsehoods about a public figure?
The current system provides recourse in the form of anonymous lawsuits. It forces the complainant to demonstrate to a court that there is actually a credible legal case in need of resolution before asking a service provider to violate the privacy of its customers. This seems like a fairly reasonable position to me.
Sorry for the minor rant, but I was somewhat surprised to read this article coming from the founder of the First Amendment Center.

Big steps

2005-11-22T23:11:00.000-06:00

Sometimes when I disappear from the blogosphere for a while, it's because nothing interesting is happening in my life. Lately, however, it has been quite the opposite. In fact, I've probably haven't had more big changes underway in a single month since I graduated from college 8 years ago. To wit:

Turning 30

This happened, with almost no fanfare, on Nov. 3. I spent the day -- from dawn to dusk and beyond -- working on one of several huge projects we've had going down at work. (Part of my penance for the three-week trip to Spain, I figure.) So I've basically avoided any serious ruminations about aging and the meaning of life. Probably a good thing. Although I have begun to notice some scalp peeking through when I see pictures of myself from behind. Yikes! (Unfortunately, this may be destiny at work. My mother's brother, cousin, and grandfather were all follically challenged.)

Leaving Nashville

This is a long-term work in progress (some would say 7 years in the making.) But it started to feel real this month, beginning with the fact that the entire office basically knows I'm leaving -- even though it has yet to be officially announced. When I first told the big boss earlier this year, he wanted to keep it under wraps, probably to avoid blunting my supposed "managerial effectivness." However, nothing spreads faster than a good secret, and enough people knew that word began to creep around the office. Within the last few weeks I've answered numerous queries about it, and found very few people who didn't already have an inkling of my imminent departure. My assistant has already begun dropping hints to the bosses about how great he'd be for my position. (As well he should, since he rocks -- go you, J!)

And all that was just a prelude to the last few days. In which the following happened:

Friday - Flew from Nashville to Syracuse after an all-nighter on the afforementioned huge work project. Despite 3 hours of sleep, managed to stay up until 4 AM chatting with college buddies. Talked about topics like mortgages, kids, potential engagements, and other weighty topics that show an almost scary level of maturity for a group whose crowning achievement during our Syracuse glory days may have been stealing the "No Sledding" sign from Thornden Park at midnight! (If the Syracuse Police Department is reading this, the preceding is most certainly a joke, and should in no way imply criminal activity. Especially criminal activity that might have taken place at 901 Ackerman in 1996.)

Saturday - woke up late, and after more friends arrived we took a nostalgic trip to the Dinosaur Barbeque, Syracuse's very own "honky-tonk rib joint." Since we also nostalgically stood in line, the trip ate up a good chunk of the afternoon. The weather was unchacterisically balmy, so the wait outside was not all that nostalgic. We got over it.

We then took another nostalgic trip, this time to the Super Wegmans in DeWitt. If you have never been to the Super Wegmans in DeWitt, then let me just say you have not experienced grocery shopping as it was meant to be. We're talking wider and more diverse selection than I think I've seen in any other grocery store, ever. The 24-hour store was a staple of late-night food and beer runs in college. This time, we focused mainly on ingredients for homemade pizza (Jay even devised a recipe for whole wheat squash pizza, which turned out to be remarkably good!) Just for old times sake, though, we threw in a 24-pack of PBR and a 12 pack of Genny Cream.

After the Wegmans trip the rest of the evening was a blur of freezing cold Beer Pong, lots of homemade pizza, out of tune singing, and various other drunken silliness interspersed with a bit of interpersonal drama. Some things never change.

Sunday - we again woke up late (staying up 'til 4 AM playing cards will do that to you). A local friend brought over her 2(!) very cute kids, so we spent a while playing with them. I was presented with a belated birthday cake (not so surprising since I was there when it was purchased.) We then split up, and after the requisite hugs and goodbyes half of us went up to campus to relive our glory days. We (nostalgically) parked illegally near the security office and nostalgically wandered across the quad (and found Aaron's funraising brick in the new "Orange Grove"). We visited the old APO APO office in Schine, and were happily amazed to discover that a moistened gummy bear propelled toward a concrete ceiling at a high velocity will stay there for at least 9 years. (Don't let it be said that we didn't make our mark on SU!)

We then nostalgically snuck out through the service entrance of Schine, nostalgically purchased greasy food on M-Street while perusing the The Daily Orange, and nostalgically bought sweatshirts at Shirtworld.

At the same time, though, a lot of things had changed. The creative problem-solving program where I worked and spent a good portion of my junior and senior years has been shut down after being run into the ground by its somewhat clueless director. The communications school where I spent another big chunk of my time just broke ground on a major expansion. There is an entirely new management school building where we used to horse around behind the Catholic Center after APO meetings. But most of all, the students all look so... young! A few years ago when we went back we pretty much blended in with everyone else. Now we're starting to look like those roving groups of homesick alumni that show up on homecoming. Wierd.

After all the campus nostalgia we could handle, I joined the Boston contingent in a very packed car for the next phase of my journey. Which brings me to...

Boston

Unless you're new to this blog, you already know about my plans to move to Boston and go to school for a dual Masters degree in Archives/History. But this week was really the first time I've taken a more-or-less irreversable step toward this goal.

To start with, I stopped by the college on Monday and registered for classes. Despite a scary diatribe I overheard in the student lounge (about how the school was lying when they said the program could be completed in a year -- something that I was never promised anyway), I remain super-impressed by how up-close and personal Simmons seems. Maybe it's just because I did my undergrad and first masters at large schools, but I am still bowled over by the fact that the heads of the History and Archives programs recognized me from my brief visit 8 months ago, and both immediately whisked me to the appropriate authorities to ensure that my registration was taken care of. The head of the history program even offered to help with my apartment search. I like the fact that I'm more than just a student number. We'll see if the honeymoon lasts, but so far I have a good feeling about this.

I am now signed up for three classes next semester -- a basic archives class that includes an internship, a "Information Organization" class, and a history seminar on Cold War Culture. Should be a pretty manageable schedule, and I'm looking forward to the work.

The other reason I came to Boston was to apartment hunt -- the idea was to finalize my housing plans in three days so that I could return to Nashville and know what I should move and what I should pitch. Apartment hunting in Boston is a daunting task, especially because anything you can find is bound to be 2-3 times more expensive than the same thing in Nashville. I spent much of the last two days driving around aimlessly, perusing CraigsList, and making unreturned phone calls to potential landlords. Thanks partly to the wonders of the Internet and digital photography, I only ended up looking at three apartments. Unfortunately, the first one I saw was so nice it basically spoiled me for anything else I came across.

The good news was that it was a massive apartment (almost as large as my current house, beautifully restored, and with a modern kitchen). The bad news was that it was about 75% more than my current rent -- and keep in mind that I'm quitting my relatively well-paid position as part of the whole 'moving to Boston' plan. So I was pretty freaked out about the cost. Furthermore, while many larger apartments have the option of roomates, it would be difficult in this one because the only bathroom adjoins one of the bedrooms. So a roomate would have to walk through the other roomate's room to get to the bathroom. Not ideal.

That said, I admit that I fell in love with this place -- and we're talking severe crush love. The truth is, while the cost was more than I'd like to pay, in the crazy Boston real-estate market it's actually a bargain given the space and amenities. So after looking at other places that were nearly as expensive and a lot less cool, I finally convinced myself that I could swing the payments -- at least until August when the lease will run out. So I went ahead and applied for the apartment.

The landlord wanted a copy of my credit report, which I happened to have on my laptop thanks to the "free credit report" law that went into effect earlier this year. So I stopped by the house to drop it off. When he wasn't there, I called him, and it turned out that he was tapping away on his laptop at the coffee shop around the corner. So I walked over and he promptly bought me a coffee and sat me down at a table while we chatted. He is a very interesting guy -- turns out that he's originally from Uruguay, and is now making a living as a contractor, partly by fixing up and renting old apartments. (He's in the middle of gutting and refurbishing the place above mine -- I got to step across rafters to look on Monday.) He's an avid traveler, and just seems like an all-around nice guy (again, we'll see how long the honeymoon lasts). After looking over my credit report and resume, he said he would take the matter to his wife tonight, and they would make a decision on whether to rent to me. (They'd already had another applicant.)

I went back to my friend's apartment, bought her some new printer paper and ink to replace what I had used, and then sat around. A little after 5 I got the call from the landlord, who told me that they wanted to rent me the apartment! So we're meeting first thing tomorrow to go over the lease, after which I will be the proud renter of a severely-overpriced but very cool apartment in the Powderhouse Square neighborhood of Somerville, MA.

I am still a little freaked out about the price, especially since I have no idea what my earning potential as a part timer/freelancer/student is going to be. That said, I should have sufficient savings to absorb the hit from now through August, by which time I should have a better idea on whether I'm living beyond my means. If necessary I can move again at that point after a more leisurely apartment hunt. (Although I can barely imagine the hell of having to move twice within a year!)

From the social angle, I'm already feeling really good about my decision to move to Boston. I've managed to go out with friends both nights I was here (something I rarely manage due to job commitments in Nashville.) I've already met several new people, including a fellow grad student at Simmons who has been doing bar trivia with my Syracuse friends for months. And I still love the brainy yet super-diverse vibe in Boston, something that Nashville is just starting to get in small pockets.

So after the big lease signing tomorrow, I'm off to DC for Thanksgiving, followed by a quick jaunt to visit the two brothers now cohabiting in Richmond, followed by a return to Nashville, where I have to figure out a plan for packing and moving all my stuff in the next 8 weeks. It's going to be a busy and stressful time, but I'm really looking forward to the change.

Halloween procrastination

2005-10-31T20:10:00.000-06:00

So my big plan for tonight was to leave work, race by Kroger to stock up on candy, go home, and then dig into my homework (office-related and Spanish class-related.) However, I hadn't really thought this through -- nothing breaks your concentration more than having to jump up every five minutes to dispense candy to sugar-hyped whippersnappers. So instead I'll kill some time with a few cheers 'n jeers:

Cheers -- to Southwest Airlines, who sent me a cool birthday card today. Normally I don't much like corporate birthday cards. After all, it's not like there's really someone over at the airline who's handwriting these things -- all they really prove is that someone knows how to run a mailmerge. However, Southwest gets a thumbs up because the one they sent me is in 3D! That's right, it comes with punch out 3-D glasses, and when you put them on, there are 3-D peanuts falling out of the sky in front of a 3-D birthday cake and a 3-D pilot. So we here at NK like Southwest.

Jeers -- to all the other Southwest customers who bought up the cheap fares between Providence and Baltimore the day before Thanksgiving. When I first looked at that route, I could have flown it for $45. When I eventually booked it, the price had risen to $90. Ugh. This is part of what has turned into a weeklong-trip over Thanksgiving week, wherein I travel to Syracuse to hang out with a bunch of old college friends the weekend before, then ride with someone back to Boston, where I will hopefully locate an apartment costing less than the GNP of a small island nation. After that I will be taking the afforementioned flight back to DC for Thanksgiving with the folks, following which I will return to my regularly scheduled life in Nashville.

Cheers -- to the Nashville Fire Department, who evidently arrived on the scene and prevented a much larger conflagration after someone burned down the wooden gate behind my house while I was in Spain. When I arrived home, there was just a charred mess where the gate used to be. Quite strange.

Jeers -- to Amazon.com who, for some inexplicable reason, decided to ship my order for one book and three Canon printer ink cartridges in four different boxes. Cyan and Magenta both left the same warehouse on the same day, each occupying a large box filled with massive packing balloons. I'm no expert in shipping logistics, but doesn't seem real efficient to me.

Cheers -- to the Kleenex and Robitussin corporations, whose products allowed me to survive the last week of severe ickyness. After having kicked one cold in Spain, I returned to Nashville and immediately caught another. Yuck.

Jeers -- to the people behind the perhaps 40 credit card solicitations I had to wade through when I got back from my three weeks out of the country.

Cheers -- to my friend Josh, who just recently moved from Long Island to DC to take a job teaching school in Woodbridge, VA. He's already having fun teaching his second graders to be loyal little Yankees fans.

suitcase on world tour

2005-10-16T21:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening was in Barcelona. This morning was in Madrid. Now in DC. Luggage not in DC. US Airways a bit hazy on where precisely it might be. Mucho jetlag. Just realized I can't remember password for work e-mail. (a sign of a successful vacation?) Back to the airport in the morning to head for Nashville. Maybe even with luggage. If we're lucky. Need sleep. More intelligent thought later. Urk.

More Spain Pics

2005-10-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

Click for more...

Hola

2005-10-11T18:35:00.000-05:00

Writing from Zaragoza, after a whirlwind two-day stay in Segovia followed by two great days in the land that the Internet forgot on the north coast of Spain, and a day on the road in a Parador where the coin-operated "Internet Machine" used dialup and some funky browser. Tomorrow we're heading down to the center of the city for a festival celebrating the alleged appearance of a virgin on a pillar hundreds of years ago. I've obviously fallen hopelessly behind in blogging the trip. I'm hoping to write some snippets to go with snapshots after I get back. But for the moment suffice it to say that it's going great. The cold is finally starting to ease up (after a lot of nose blowing and some pretty funny sessions with pharmacists in which I attempted to pantomime my various medicinal needs -- oddly enough we didn't cover the phrase "coughing up phlegm" in my Spanish class.) We're learning as we go along (for example, my new itenerary rule is never to plan stays shorter than a single night in a given place.) But by and large the trip has been a success. Watch this space for details later.

Sniffle, sniffle

2005-10-06T03:32:00.000-05:00

Still feeling pretty iffy, but managed to drag myself out of bed yesterday and headed for the Prado. We pretty much agreed to split up and meet for dinner, which gave me a bit more flexibility. The museum was pretty amazing -- too much art to absorb. Also got a chance to walk through the Parque del Buen Retiro on my way back to the hotel.

Today we're probably going to hit one more art gallery (the one with Picasso's Guernica) and then head out of town toward Segovia.

Ugh

2005-10-04T16:48:00.000-05:00

In Madrid now, after a whirlwind tour of Grenada and Toledo over the last three days. (The cathedrals and royal trappings are starting to blend together.) That's the good news. The bad news is that as of this afternoon, I seem to be coming down with a sore-throw-runny-nose-general-lethargy fall cold. Not at all good. Questions is, if I still feel like crap tomorrow should I give up one of our few days in Madrid and stay in bed, or try to go out sightseeing anyway. If I don't go out, I will probably miss out on seeing the Prado. If I do go out, I run the risk of making the cold drag on longer than it otherwise would. Ugh. Maybe it will all fix itself overnight.

Getting into Madrid was interesting. For the third city in a row we basically found our hotel by driving in circles for an hour or two. We've got to start researching driving directions better in advance!

Snapshots!

2005-10-03T04:38:00.000-05:00

Click to view photos like the one below!

Lost on the Rock

2005-10-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Now in a big, somewhat touristy hotel in Grenada. Good news is that they have free Wi-Fi in the lobby! So (assuming I get motivated) you should hear a bit more from me soon.

I'll whet your appetite with a brief overview of today. After yesterday's combination of Roman ruins, old-town Tarifa, and hiking on a beach, we got up early this morning to hit the road. I first headed back down the street through Tarifa's massive town wall and into the old quarter, where I rounded up breakfast of pastries, apples, bread, Serrano ham, and orange juice from shops scattered througout the narrow cobblestoned streets and the tiny town market.

We ate breakfast in the tiled courtyard of our hotel, and then headed out of town past the massive electricity-generating windmills toward Gibraltar.

After parking our car in a dusty lot in La Linea (the line -- named for the line of fortifications built by the Spanish eager to take back the Rock from the Brits), we then flashed our passports and walked across the international border into the tiny British colony of Gibraltar. We hopped on a bus and were transported across the city's airport. The runway is built on a jetty in the sea and cuts across the only road into town. After arriving in the town center, we hiked past the town hall and down Main Street, past merchants hawking ape souvenirs and fish & chips. At one point the red-coated ceremonial guard marched by on its way off duty, looking like it had just stepped out of a revolutionary war pageant.

We arrived at the base of the cable car station, which transports visitors something like 400 meters up the rock. My parents bought into the spiel of a driver hawking minibus tours, while my brother and I decided to take the cable car up and then explore on our own. We agreed to meet up later in the town square.

The cable car ride up was fun -- but nothing prepared us for what we found when we arrived at the top. To begin with, the famed Barbary Apes of Gibralter were waiting in force at the top. One was perched ready to jump onto the cable car when we arrived, and others quickly stationed themselves nearby as we arrived. Despite the threats of massive fines, people still feed the apes food, and as a result they have lost all fear of humans and instead view visitors as a source of tasty meals. As I walked along the balcony, one actually jumped from above onto my shoulder and began unzipping my backpack! That was nothing compared to what happened to the woman who walked onto the balcony carrying two closed bags of potato chips. An ape came flying at her at lightning speed, launched himself at waist height, and grabbed the bags out of her hands. He then proceeded to open them one by one and eat the chips, while other apes jostled for position nearby to eat the crumbs. The apes have come to associate any plastic bag with food, so another ape managed to score a bag from someone's pack. He threw it away disgustedly when he opened it and found it contained nothing but Kleenex.

When they're not stealing from visitors, the monkeys generally ignore them, climbing around the rock, eating fleas off each other, and generally behaving like monkeys. My parents said that their tour bus driver actually knew them by name, and called one through the window into the bus for a short ride!

All this focus on the apes shouldn't obscure the other incredible thing about the Rock -- the view in all directions. It's easy to see why this has been considered a strategic stronghold for thousands of years. Standing on top of the rock, one could easily rain down artillery on any ship traversing the narrow passage between Europe and Africa. Even with a persistent haze we were able to see for miles.

Our troubles began when we decided to see the other sites on top of the Rock, including the seige tunnels built by the British defenders over the last three centuries. Foolishly believing the maps and guidebooks, we simply walked out of the cable car complex at the top of the Rock and started walking. However, we quickly found a complete lack of signage and a bewildering array of closed roads and stairways scattered among the ruins of abandoned fortifications. We weren't the only ones having problems -- halfway down the massive mountain we ran into a group of Russians who were equally confused, and several other groups confirmed our confusion. My parents said that one of the couples on their bus said they had gotten hopelessly lost on Rock yesterday and decided to try it again today with a guide.

During our explorations, we did discover a bunch of really cool stuff, including a dark tunnel that we explored for 30 feet or so with the aid of a camera flash, a variety of abandoned concrete buildings and fortifications, and even an abandoned 1902 gun battery with the gun intact. The lack of touristic guidance leaves a lot of room for exploration by the adventurous.

My brother and I eventually decided that there was no point in trying to walk back to the top of the mountain to take the cable car down, so we instead slowly wound our way downward in the blistering sun using a combination of roads, trails, and stairways (high in the air with missing railings!). Hours later we emerged (sweaty but victorious) in the town, and met up with our parents, who had already returned from their tour, eaten lunch, and then waited for hours.

After we ate fish and chips at a pub for lunch, we headed back across the line into Spain and hit the road for Grenada. Despite lacking directions to our hotel, we eventually found it and checked in around 9:30. Tomorrow we're touring the Alhambra.

My Spanish

My Spanish is rapidly improving -- while I still often stare blankly when someone lays down a line of machine-gun Espanol, I am usually able to get my point across in basic travel/commercial situation, read signs and menus, and understand the gist of what folks are saying when they slow down and use small words. The two factors that are really helping are:

Motivation to learn: I am now motivated to constantly study and improve my Spanish. I was spending maybe 4-5 hours per week on Spanish in Nashville, but now I'm now constantaly pulling out my dictionary to look up words, perusing my verb conjugation crib sheet, etc. You are very motivated to do this when the alternative is looking like an uneducated ugly American. Now I at least look like an uneducated ugly American who is making an effort.
Constant reinforcement: It helps tons to have the constant reinforcement of people talking to you in real world situations and being surrounded by a world labeled in Spanish. For example, this morning, I saw a sign for a Peliqueria. Having forgotten this word I simply walked down the street, peered in the door. I saw hairdressers hard at work, and was quickly reminded (in a memorable way) that a Peliqueria is a place to get your hair cut.

All of this means that I think my Spanish should be markedly better by the end of the trip. And it increases my desire to figure out a way to go live/work in a Spanish-speaking country for a few months at some point, since I think that's probably the best way to move toward fluency.

no time to blog!

2005-10-01T03:12:00.000-05:00

Now in Tarifa, on the Strait of Gibraltar. Can see Africa! Off to the Rock in a bit. Spent previous days sleeping on a pig farm and exploring hill towns and ruins. Much fun. Hopefully I´ll find somewhere soon with unmetered WiFi so that I can post details and photos.

In Spain!

2005-09-27T04:45:00.000-05:00

Writing this from an internet cafe in Seville. Got here last night after a marathon trip from Nashville via DC and Philly, using planes, trains and automobiles. We were still in a jet lag fog last night, but are starting to snap out of it now. Ate seafood at an outdoor cafe next to the river last night. My Spanish is usually good enough to make myself understood, but not good enough to understand the locals unless they slow down and purposely use preschool level words. I expect that after three weeks of trial by fire, things will improve, though. Dinner was especially interesting, because we didn´t cover the 20 varieties of fish in Spanish class back in Nashville. Everyone is looking to me for translations, so I was sitting there frantically thumbing through the dictionary...

Biggest problem right now is that I can´t figure out the phone number for my newly-activated GSM card. Anyone know anything about this?

gotta run now...

Not just the big easy

2005-09-12T05:07:00.000-05:00

I just got around to reading a colleague's account of her travels through Mississippi last week. It's a sobering reminder that New Orleans is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hurricane damage.

In d’Iberville, the stench is horrible. I’ve had my air conditioning off to save gas and to vent the fumes from my gasoline cans, but I have to turn it on even as I leave the windows cracked. The smell just hangs in the air, almost palpable. It’s horrible, all things rotten and spoiled and decaying and decomposing. It feels contaminated, and it brings home health officials’ concerns about disease and infection. I wonder, will this ever be the same beautiful bay again?
Across the bridge into the city, I see massive steel commercial fishing boats tossed ashore like toys. Remnants of clothes and paper and who-knows-what hang high in trees and in fences, looking eerily like prayer flags strung in the mountains of Nepal, and a little like high-school kids had TP’d the entire area.
A line of debris lies pushed up onto the shoulders of the road. Wood, kitchen items, toys, paint cans, you name it. Unbelievable, but the storm surge reached here, more than a mile inland. Beyond, houses on block after block are open all the way through, showing the path of the surf and the wind. And again, smashed buildings, one after another. The Boomtown casinos is torn apart, with green-felt gaming tables lying in the muck outside.

Outrage

2005-09-12T00:14:00.000-05:00

The more I learn about what happened in New Orleans, the more ashamed I become of my own government. One of the things I wondered when the whole thing was first going down a week or two ago was why people didn't just walk out of the city. Obviously this wouldn't have helped the elderly or sick, but the masses of people in the convention center, Superdome, etc. with no food, water, or sanitation could have at least gotten out of the horrible conditions.

Well, it turns out the police officers and other first responders were occupying the bridges out of the city and were threatening to shoot people who tried to cross them, according to several eyewitnesses interviewed on this week's edition of This American Life. The show focused primarily on the experiences of two people -- a NOLA native who was stuck at the Convention Center, and a San Francisco conventioneer who wandered around with a group from a hotel eventually ended up camping out in a small community for several days on a highway median.

The witnesses told of police occupying two different bridges out of the city -- firing into the air and threatening to shoot into the crowd whenever a group of people moved toward them. One of the bridges was occupied by the sheriff's department from the richer suburban community across the bridge, and was quoted as saying that they didn't want the suburb to "become another SuperDome" -- a reference that could well be taken as meaning that they didn't want lots of poor black folks coming into their neighborhoods.

The contrast to 9/11 is striking. On 9/11, we remember the enduring images of dazed survivors walking miles to get out of the city, covered with dust. At the same time, the first responders were considered heroes, rushing the other way to fight fires and rescue trapped survivors. But in New Orleans it seems that the police -- the very people who were supposed to be protecting the city -- were actively preventing its citizens from escaping the unfolding crisis.

Forget this sham "bipartisan congressional committee" being pushed by the Republicans. This thing needs a full scale independent commission with subpoena powers, just like the 9/11 commission. 9/11 was, in some ways, a bolt from the blue. This was a much-anticipated emergency, and one in which government officials at all levels utterly failed to uphold their commitment to the people they serve. Someone needs to investigate this, ensure that those responsible are held accountable, and prevent it from ever happening again.

It also ticks me off that some conservative demagogues are already twisting all this around to support their own political predilections. Bill O'Reilly says that this is what happens to poor people who don't take personal responsibility for their lives. He has also stated that anyone who relies on the government to help them in a crisis situation will invariably be disappointed.

Did the government botch this? Absolutely. But to act as if failure was foreordained because government can't handle crises, or because poor people are destined to suffer, is to adopt a criminally negligent viewpoint. Governments, quite simply, are the only institutions with the resources to mobilize and effectively respond to a crisis of this magnitude -- and they have a moral obligation to protect their own citizens. Whether or not they are successful in this obligation is a question of planning, resources, and leadership -- not one of political philosophy. If governments are prepared, they will be able to respond effectively. In this case, they were not.

(The call for "personal responsibility" because of the failures of government is especially crass coming from people who have supported gutting key federal programs, replaced career disaster managers at FEMA with unqualified political appointees, and diverted massive amounts of money and resources toward fighting an unnecessary foreign war.)

I am shocked and outraged at the continuing revelations of just how badly this thing was botched -- and like it or not, one can't escape the twin factors of race and class. It's hard to imagine armed police officers threatening to shoot rich, predominantly white midtown Manhattan residents as they fled Ground Zero. But somehow this behavior was deemed acceptable when the victims had smaller salaries and darker skin. What does this say about our country?

A night at the shelter

2005-09-10T18:05:00.000-05:00

Last night was my first shift volunteering at one of the Red Cross hurricane shelters here in Nashville. I worked the graveyard shift, from 1 AM until 8 AM. I am still processing what I saw.

I met an older diabetic man who toddles around with a walker. He likes his Cheerios with lots of milk and a single packet of Sweet 'n Low. He also likes bananas, but can't stomach anything to drink other than water. Definitely not lemonade, even if it's the good lemonade like they were giving out yesterday. He was rescued from his home by two men in a boat, but then he still had to wade through water up to his chest to get to a temporary shelter. He was eventually airlifted to Atlanta and then to Nashville. He thinks his niece is in Houston and is coming to get him sometime, maybe this week. In the meantime, he has fallen into the shelter routine, being escorted upstairs to the medical team three times a day for his pills and injections, and spending the rest of the time chatting with anyone who will listen.

I heard stories of evacuees who are claiming relief payments for non-existent family members. But I also saw first-hand the selflessness of many evacuees, who have taken it on themselves to turn the shelter into some sort of home. One man spent almost the entire night wiping down tables, emptying trash, and doing other chores. "Didn't he need some sleep?" inquired a staffer. But he was used to working hard at night -- his job in New Orleans was delivering the Times-Picayune in the wee hours of the morning. Another man took at upon himself to begin vacuuming the common area, and another lanky, well-spoken man in coveralls had clearly become something of a spokesman for the residents, advocating for their needs with shelter staff.

One woman, perhaps mentally ill, was worried about her children, who had evidently been hitchhiking away from New Orleans for the last week. Her son finally called her during the night, and she came running into the room desperate for someone to tell him how to get to the shelter. I talked to him for quite a while. Evidently he had caught a ride with someone in Alabama who was headed to Tennessee -- somewhere. His benefactors were asleep at a truck stop, and he wasn't sure what road they were on. In the end the best I could do was tell him which interstates came to Nashville and recommend that he call back when we could talk to the driver.

Another extended family staying at the shelter had to leave for the hospital in the early hours of the morning after the medical staff determined that a young child was running a fever of 103. The nurse called an ambulance, but the family then decided to take their own car, and the ambulance went away empty.

I quickly realize that the well oiled humanitarian machine that I learned about in my two days of training bears only a passing relationship the situation on the ground. In a smaller, more local disaster, the Red Cross' thoroughly-planned management strategies might work perfectly. But it is clear that the system was simply never designed to handle a disaster of this magnitude and complexity. Shelter staff have been dutifully filling out shelter registration cards for every client. But it's unclear whether these have actually been entered into a database to help reunite families. Furthermore, clients have left the shelter without signing out or providing a forwarding address, so even if some names could be matched up there's no guarantee that the person sought would still be there.

Americans everywhere are desperate to help -- a staffer who had worked the evening shift talked about the incessant calls she had been taking from people hundreds of miles away who were desperate to offer housing. The Red Cross is put in an awkward position by these requests. It is the official policy that all Red Cross services must be provided on an equal basis. (IE, someone can't come in and buy a steak dinner for one person in a shelter unless they buy a steak dinner for everyone in the shelter.) Furthermore, there are clearly unknowns and risks related to sending vulnerable evacuees off to live with unknown people in unknown conditions. So shelter staff are instructed to simply take these housing offers and post them on a message board, not to recommend them to specific clients. Many clients are already dazed and overwhelmed by their surroundings. The scraps of paper piling up on the message board are just one more input to their already overloaded brains. They are not yet able to consider life-altering decisions about where they will be living next month or next year.

The lack of response to offers like this has resulted in criticism that the Red Cross is somehow walling off evacuees from help. This is clearly untrue. While members of the general public are not permitted to come inside the shelter (for good reason -- there is enough organized chaos already), they are welcome to be in the parking lot. Residents can come or go as they please. Technically, they are supposed to sign in and out to help with communication and record-keeping, but this is pretty loosely enforced -- especially for the smokers who periodically retreat to the patio to light up. Evacuees inside the shelter have access to daily newspapers and television, as well as the bulletin boards full of housing and job offers. Daily shuttles are provided to places like the downtown Red Cross headquarters, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. Phones are available to make phone calls. Despite what you may read in the City Paper, this is not a concentration camp. It is simply a shelter whose management is trying to provide at least a small level of privacy to its residents.

It is impossible to generalize about evacuees -- the floodwaters clearly affected anyone with the misfortune to live below sea level. But it is evident that the hardest hit are those who are least able to reconstruct their own lives. Those with money, connections to other parts of the country, or simple resourcefulness are gradually moving out of shelters and picking up with life in their new surroundings. Increasing numbers of those left behind are elderly or ill (either physically or mentally). Some have never before left Louisiana, and they are baffled by the situation in which they find themselves. A staffer told of one woman who kept asking why she was at the shelter -- after all, she was sure she had paid her rent on time. Working with these people would be challenging in any environment. Add in the combined stress of seeing homes destroyed, neighbors killed, and then being forcibly evacuated hundreds of miles from anything familiar, and the challenge becomes almost unimaginable.

And the Potentate of Tonga also called...

2005-09-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

The assistant to one of the enior bigwigs at our company just sent out the following broadcast e-mail. I am muchly amused, though I can't quite put my finger on why...

From:[bigwig's assistant]
To:[Just about everyone]

Call me immediately at x1234 if you have a meeting at 10:45 a.m. w/the Governor of Nigeria. He is downstairs in the lobby.

On neologisms

2005-09-09T05:36:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else find it odd that the spell checker built into Blogger doesn't recognize the word "blog"?

Whole lotta nothing...

2005-09-06T01:07:00.000-05:00

So, yeah, I've pretty much dropped off the face of the earth when it comes to keeping this blog updated. This is pretty much an annual occurrence -- I somehow just don't have the energy to blog during the dog days of summer. However, suffice it to say that nothing new and earth shattering has occurred. Here's a quick rundown of the mundane garbage I might have posted had I been in a posting mood:

I've continued my weekly sojourns to the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute, where I've been taking Spanish classes since January. I think I'm approaching the fluency level of a semi-literate two-year-old, but it's been enough to help with...
... continuing to plan the trip to Spain. I've never really trusted travel agents, having found that I can almost always find cheaper or more palatable deals on my own. However, after numerous attempts to locate a car somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula that was big enough to hold four people and their luggage and had automatic transmission, I gave up and got the travel agent involved. I ended up having her do the train reservations too -- got tired of trying to understand cryptic price quotes from RailEurope's website.
I have booked the rest of the trip directly, however, thanks to the wonders of e-mail and intercontinental faxes. I'll try to post an itinerary sometime soon for those who are curious.
Meanwhile, at work, I've been buried in the usual pile of sludge created by high school sports. Actually worse than usual this year because we were rolling out code we wrote to other branches of the company. Things are more or less stabilized, but it's been an exhausting month.
Nothing new to report on the getting out of Nashville plan, except that I feel like I'm starting to come down with a mild case of senioritis. It's not that I'm working any less than usual, but now that I've made the decision to split it feels like I'm just prolonging the agony. Oh, well... the paychecks are nice. (Truthfully, I'm toying with the idea of trying to sell myself as a part-time telecommuting consultant after I leave. The downside of this would be that I'd get to take some of my existing stress with me to Boston. The upside would be that I'd have a well-paying consulting gig right off the bat with none of that pesky inteviewing and kissing up to potential employers. Hmmm. We'll see what happens.)
In family news, brother number 2 is still living in Richmond, and wants out of his job. Brother number 3, after a summer as a camp counselor, is now talking about moving to Richmond and living with brother number 1. Unclear exactly what he'll do when he gets there, but hey, it's a start.
Fitness plan continues, although I've definitely found that weight loss slows down when I don't log calories. I purchased a program for my Palm phone that makes this fairly easy, but you still have to be pretty disciplined about entering everything you eat. Even with the occasional lapses, I'm still working out 3-4 times per week, and am now about 60 pounds lighter than when I started back in April. So I guess I'm doing something right. Only real problem is that my pants are all in danger of falling down.
After watching the total cluster that was the New Orleans disaster response, I've been trying to figure out how I can become part of the solution. Today I attended two classes at the local Red Cross chapter, and am now qualified to engage in basic disaster response work. They recommend taking a bunch more classes to truly learn the ropes, so I'll probably try to sign up for some more book learnin' soon. The Nashville-area Red Cross is trying to fast-track volunteers through the process because Middle Tennessee will probably be hosting several thousand evacuees from the New Orleans area (There are already two shelters open, and they will be adding more.) It's unclear exactly what my role might be in all this, since they have a "don't call us, we'll call you" approach to new volunteers. But given the amount of stuff they have on their plate, I expect I'll pull duty sometime in the next few weeks. (They are doling out shelter work in 12-hour shifts, which will be a bit rough with my regular job, but is probably do-able.) Based on what I've learned so far, I think I'm interested enough in the disaster response program to continue training beyond the immediate Katrina-induced crisis.

Red Cross Training

2005-09-05T13:02:00.000-05:00

Listening to 'Mile 8'

2005-07-30T19:00:00.000-05:00

Mmmmm... Jack's BBQ

2005-07-30T17:07:00.000-05:00

Mucho cerveza

2005-07-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

Blogging while intoxicated at Nashville Brewer's Festival. Ain't technology grand?

Dell Hell

2005-07-19T15:38:00.000-05:00

Turns out I'm not the only person to have frustrating experiences with Dell customer service. Some guy over here compiled a dossier:

# of Dell people I've talked to ... 14
# of times I've heard 'now this will fix the problem' ... 15+
# of new, larger problems created ... 6
# of times any problem was fixed ... 2
# of copies of an email Dell sent me in one day ... 62
# of minutes spent on the phone with Dell ... 320+
# of hard drives my computer now thinks it has ... 3
# of times I've restarted the PC during this process ... 65+
# of Google results for "Dell customer service problem" ... 2.6M
# of hours of paid consulting work I've missed @ $100/hr ... 5
# of times Dell support finally agreed to replace it after it was dead -- then changed their mind and want me rebuild it with them ... 1
# of times Dell sales called to sell me DSL for my dead PC ... 1
# of dollars I spent on Dell's optional high-end warranty ... $280

And that's just the beginning.

A lawyer, an orator, and a monkey

2005-07-17T01:29:00.000-05:00

My mom is still in town, and for a change of pace we decided to leave Nashville and head to Dayton, TN to see a reenactment of the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, which pitted famed orator William Jennings Bryan against well-known attorney and ACLU crony Clarence Darrow in an attempt to enforce a Tennessee state law against the teaching of evolution in biology classes. Interestingly, it turns out that the whole trial was more-or-less for show. The defendant volunteered to be the "test case," Bryan had publicly stated that he wanted to defend the bible in court, and the local Chamber of Commerce mainly saw the trial as a way to bring in tourists and attract national media attention. (Not realizing, it seems, that they had for all time condemned their town to become a poster-child for irrational religious fundamentalism.)

Indeed, it seems that the trial was accompanied by the sort of media circus we've come to expect when famous people have their day in court. In a technological coup, WGN radio in Chicago provided a live broadcast from the courtroom during the trial, newspapers wrote about it incessantly, souvenir vendors hawked trial memoribilia, and someone even brought a trained monkey to town and exhibited him playing piano, using a camera, and smoking a pipe.

The reenactment boils days of trial down into a two-hour play, but it gives you a pretty accurate idea of how things went down -- the History Channel has been filming this week's reenactments for an upcoming documentary.

Overall, it was a pretty fascinating experience. I took a ton of pictures, but unfortunately I left my camera cable back in Nashville so you'll have to wait until I get back to see any of them.

Twilight

2005-07-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

My mom is visiting town, so I've had an excuse to do all the touristy things I never get around to. A few days ago we visited the Frist Center, the beautiful new art museum carved out of the old art deco main post office. The showpiece exhibition right now is Renaisance to Rococco. But buried in a small gallery at the back is Twilight, an exhibit of stunning photographs taken by artist Gregory Crewdson. The photos are surreal, elaborately staged tableaus depicting a warped version of American suburbia.

This photo doesn't do the exhibition justice -- the actual prints are 6 feet across, making an astonishing level of detail visible to the naked eye.

My favorite piece -- Untitled (Dead Cow Discovery) -- depicts the discovery of a dead cow in the midst of an generic subdivision. Police and ambulances have been sommoned, and emergency workers in yellow slickers have fanned out across the landscape, searching for, umm, I guess the perpertrator. A detective stands near the cow and stares at the sky in a perplexed way -- was the cow dropped from a passing airplane? Another fireman has climbed a ladder to the roof of one of the houses, and stands near a suspicious-looking scorch mark -- or maybe just water stained shingles.

The whole thing is enchanting and disturbing at the same time. While looking for a copy of the photos, I found them being used to illustrate this article by James Howard Kunstler, a champion of New Urbanism and critic of the faceless sprawl endemic in modern American suburbia. I've always been a fan of this school of thought -- and perhaps that's why these photos appeal to me on such a visceral level. In addition to being beautifully executed, they hint at suburbia's strange, disturbing undercurrents.

Bob versus The Hurricane

2005-07-12T14:59:00.000-05:00

http://bobversusdennis.blogspot.com/

The Fat Man Walking

2005-07-08T11:37:00.000-05:00

I am in awe of this guy. The Washington Post ran a story today about Steve Vaught, a 400-lb man who simply got up one morning and decided he was going to walk across the country. He started near his home in San Diego about 13 weeks ago, and is currently crossing through the Arizona desert, roughly following the old Route 66. His original plan would have put him in Missouri by now, but he continues to make good progress and has already dropped 50 pounds.

Steve and his wife April are chronicling his journey on a website, http://www.thefatmanwalking.com.

Shattered

2005-07-06T09:57:00.000-05:00

carwindow
Originally uploaded by D-.

Awoke to find a smashed window on my truck. Turns out the same person apparently hit 9 other cars in the neighborhood early this morning. In my case, as near as I can tell the only thing missing is change from the ashtray. What a pain.

Life before google...

2005-07-05T23:38:00.000-05:00

...must have been unbearable, because if you got home and found one of these

sitting on your dining room wall, you might have no way to find out that it is a House Centipede (known aliases Scutigerida Scutigeridiae and "big scary bug with lots of legs) and furthermore that said bugs are supposedly beneficial because they eat other less agreeable bugs like spiders, termites, cockroaches and silverfish. Which is not to say I'm happy to see such a creature on my wall. But thanks to modern technology I at least know what this two-inch bundle of legs and feelers is actually up to.

(Note that I snagged the above photo from the Wikipedia article. I tried to take my own, but while I was focusing the resident feline batted the bug off the wall and proceeded to chase it around the kitchen. It was last seen heading for sanctuary under the stove.)

Another sign from the gods?

2005-07-05T06:13:00.000-05:00

My sleep cycle is all out of whack right now, and I stayed up late working on some stuff for work. I then went to bed to try to get in four hours of sleep before my 8:30 conference call. Unfortunately, though, I had trouble getting to sleep. After tossing and turning for about an hour, I glanced out the window and realized that the sun was coming up. Since I wasn't getting anywhere on the sleeping thing, I decided to go for a walk. I pulled ou sweats, grabbed the iPod, and headed up the street in the general direction of Lockeland Springs. I'd gone about a mile when, all of a sudden, the heavens opened and it began pouring rain. I turned around and started heading back, but by the time I got to the house I was sporting the drowned rat look. (On the bright side, I got to see the sun coming up, which isn't something I do on my normal schedule.) Now I'm trying to decide if I should go back to sleep for a while or just power through the day and go to bed early tonight. Hmm.

Independence Day. Whee.

2005-07-05T00:43:00.000-05:00

Usually I take the opportunity to escape Nashville for Independence Day. For the last three years (2004, 2003, and 2002) I've headed home to DC, which of course is a good place to be for patriotic-type activities. The year before that my two brothers came to Nashville for the 4th, and the year before that I went to Boston. In fact, except for when my brothers came, I've only stayed in Nashville for the 4th one time since I got here -- and that was the month after I arrived when I was sleeping on a mattress in an empty apartment due to extreme poverty.

Last week a bunch of my friends decided to meet up in Boston again this year, and I was really hoping to find a cheap flight and make it up there. But the good flights were booked solid, and I would have ended up spending over $500, which seemed silly since I'll be moving there full time in six months. I then considered going to DC again, but even those flights were approaching $300. Plus I was just there a month or so ago and my Mom's coming down here in a week. So given that I'm supposed to be saving for my future life as a starving student, it didn't seem like a good use of funds.

As a result of all this, I was in a pretty "bah humbug" mood about the whole holiday, and spend most of today knocking around the house and telecommuting to get some stuff done for work. Around 9:00, after watching a bit of the riverfront festivities TV, I finally got into the spirit of things. So I grabbed my camera (and new wide-angle lens) and walked down to the river for the fireworks. My original master plan had been to climb up on one of the bridges to watch the show, but the cops had closed them down for the duration. (They had two mounties guarding the entrance to the pedestrian bridge, and based on the accumulation of, er, horse leavings, I'd say they'd had it closed for a while.)

So instead I scrambled around trying to find a place in the coliseum parking lot that still had a photogenic view. But pretty much everywhere I could find was obstructed by a tree or light post. Furthermore, I was too lazy to lug my tripod with me, which I've decided is really a required item for shooting fireworks. So most of the photos were so-so, but the show was still pretty good.

Walked back to the house, dodging homebrew firework displays all the way. Fireworks are supposedly illegal in the city, but you couldn't go 10 feet without a few going off. Growing up in Takoma Park, the cops pretty much had a zero-tolerance policy for fireworks, but I guess the big city police in Nashville have better things to do with their time. While I'm sure people are probably putting their eyes out right and left, it's still pretty fun to walk around amidst the constant noise and sparkle of firecrackers and sparklers.

When I got back home I grabbed a pile of bills and set to work paying them, at which point I discovered the insurance mess described below. So that pretty much got me back to my original state of bah-humbugginess.

In other news this weekend, I went to a wierd Argentine movie by myself on Saturday. (I'm still not really able to keep up when they speak, but at least I recognize a lot of words as they go by.) Then I grabbed groceries at the nice but overpriced Harris Teeter in Hillsboro Village, and ran to the gym for a quick workout.

On Sunday did some stuff for work, and then went out to dinner at Basante's with a friend. After dinner we headed over to the electric whorehouse and saw War of the Worlds. Measured against your typical summer action/sci-fi blockbuster flick, it was pretty good. (Although I hate the idea that I'm helping Tom Cruise maintain the standard of loopiness to which he has become accustomed.)

Tomorrow I have my customary 8:30 AM Tuesday conference call, followed by a day of mindnumbing tedium. Yum.

Fast times

2005-07-05T00:15:00.000-05:00

It was bound to happen, I guess. The insurance company apparently noticed the whopper of a speeding ticket I got last summer in Oregon, and my insurance premiums are going up by about $216/year. I'm sure they have facts and figures to back up their assertion that people caught speeding are inherently unsafe. But since I've never had an automobile accident in my life it's still a bit frustrating. The only insurance claim I've ever made came from someone trying to break into the car while it was parked on the street.

I'm wondering if this is like the points on my license, where my rates will go down again after I go without a ticket for a certain period of time.

Showing my age

2005-07-03T16:22:00.000-05:00

I'm still not entirely comfortable in a world where everyone has caller ID. From preschool onward, I was taught that one begins a phone call by saying something like "Hi. Is this Jane? Hi, Jane, this is John."

So whenever someone picks up the phone and says, right off the bat, "Hi, John," I have a wierd moment of cognitive dissonance. My brain just can't grok that I should begin the phone conversation without identifying myself. So about half the time I end up identifying myself anyway, which sounds kind of silly, and the other half of the time there's an awkward pause while I mentally regroup. I imagine that kids growing up today will think nothing of being identified solely by caller ID. Personally, though, I long for a simpler time when phone calls still had an aura of mystery about them.

For the good of science

2005-07-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

Banal Update # 1456

2005-06-27T01:31:00.000-05:00

Another only marginally productive weekend. Mowed lawn. Did laundry, called the parents. Watched The Graduate, cleaned kitchen. Managed to have a wierd dream incorporating NPR content coming from my clock radio. Read most of A Short History of Nearly Everything, slept. Made homemade pasta sauce, had a spontaneous 4-hour,6-way conference call with friends in Syracuse, Boston, Long Island, Rochester, and somewhere on the Mass Pike. Briefly googlestalked someone who messaged me on Match.com. Considered trying to escaped Nashville to Boston or DC for the 4th next weekend -- don't know if it will happen. (Stupid last minute airfares.) Planned to do more, but didn't get around to it. Among things I didn't do: Spanish homework (we're on break, but I have a pile to do before the next class in two weeks, and I haven't started it), returning e-mails to friends and acquantances, pro-bono website work, bills, filing, scanning family photos, Spain planning (although my Mom swears she's going to get interested in this in a few weeks when she comes to visit). No ER visit, so I guess it was a good weekend, all things considered.

During the week I've been doing my usual 10 hours or so of mostly-boring work each day. Now that I know I'm really leaving in 6 months, it's starting to feel a bit like senior year of high school. I'm still as busy as ever, but mentally I'm counting the days until I can move on to the next chapter of my life. I don't want to slack off -- if anything I'm trying harder to make sure I finish what I've started. But sometimes I wish I could just get it over with. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo right now.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping up my gym habit generally 3-4 times a week. Usually around midnight, but it's better than nothing. I'm mainly doing a 45 minute or so stint on the eliptical trainer, and a few sets various weight machines. Nothing killer, but my endurance is improving and I'm losing some weight. So I guess I'm achieving something.

Another weekend, another ER visit

2005-06-18T20:07:00.000-05:00

Today's trouble started when I decided to go outside and tackle some of the thornier landscaping issues around my house -- a dead bush with a tree going up through it in the front yard, a massive weed tree growing up through a fence in the side yard, and a tree in need of pruning. I spent several hours this morning digging and cutting. I was almost done when I put my foot into some tall grass and discovered a board with four nails sticking out of it, thoughtfully left by the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none handyman my landlord keeps sending out. And when I say discovered, I mean that one of the nails penetrated my ratty tennis show and embedded itself into my foot.

After saying a few things that probably shouldn't be repeated in public, I removed the board, quickly tidied up my brush piles, and headed inside to ponder when I had last had a tetanus shot. Unfortunately, the last shot appears to have been while I was still riding a yellow bus to school every morning. Given that a booster is recommended every 10 years (more often if you routinely get stabbed by rusty nails), I figured it was probably about time. So I called the Blue Cross nurse, who once againt directed me to head straight to the ER. (One more visit and I'm eligible for the shopper rewards program!)

There wasn't actually that much pain involved initially, so I dawdled a bit before moseying into the familiar ol'B Baptist ER around 3:00. I then spent several an hour or two there, and was eventually sent home with a tetanus shot in my arm and a bottle of 40 pretty little red pills to take over the next 10 days. The moral of this story? Yard work is a bad idea.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot the incident on Thursday wherein my hand got stuck in a malfunctioning elevator door at work! No hospitalization on that one, although it seems like there easily could have been if the elevator had started moving.

I'm not sure I've felt this accident prone since the holiday weekend at a friend's cabin a few years ago when I sliced my scalp open and tore off a toenail in a two-day period. (Amazingly there was no hospitalization then, but only because we had our very own med student along and the nearest hospital was an hour drive.)

Pain. Intense pain.

2005-05-28T23:11:00.000-05:00

After falling asleep over a book late last night, I woke up around 6:00 this morning with intense pain in my lower abdomen. At first I thought it was just your garden variety gastrointestinal distress, and for about the next hour and a half I paced restlessly, took a hot shower, drank a bunch of water, tried various yoga-inspired poses. The pain continued to intensify. Then came the nausea, sweating, and dry mouth. Finally, around 7:30, I decided it was time for drastic action, and I pulled on some ratty sweats and staggered out to my truck to head for Baptist Hospital (roughly 30 city blocks away).

I was making good progress until I hit Eighth Avenue downtown, where the police had stopped traffic in both directions to allow some sort of track and field event to pass by. Barely able to talk, I pulled around the line of cars and basically begged the police officer to let me through. After making several suggestions that I try to back up and find another route he eventually called his supervisor over, and they let me pass.

I arrived at the ER, parked, staggered through the door, and threw myself on the mercy of the woman at the desk. They immediately took me into the triage area, where I received the first "official" guess at what was probably going on. "Do you want to throw yourself on the waiting room floor," the nurse asked.

"Huh?" I grimaced dimly through the pain.

"I'm just asking because most guys who come in with kidney stones want to throw themselves down on the waiting room floor." She also told me to stop drinking from the water bottle I'd brought, because "you're going to start throwing up soon." This was bad, because my mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. I continued to surreptitiously take tiny sips.

She sent me over to the office where they verify insurance info, where I merely gasped that they should already have my info in the computer. They then sent me back out into the waiting room, where the pain continued to intensify. Apparently two ambulances arrived around that time, and I got bumped down the list. So continued to writhe in pain, no doubt scaring some folks. An eternity later (well, probably only 20 minutes, but it seemed longer) someone finally arrived and took me back to an exam room, where at least I could lie down.

A while later a nurse arrived in the room. At this point, everything was more-or-less a blur, but he soon became my favorite person in the world after he started an IV full of very potent pain and anti-nausea medication. The drugs were a godsend -- the pain was still there, but it had gone from the "wild badgers are clawing through my guts" variety to the "scraped my knee on the playground" variety. A big improvement. The drugs, however, made me pretty loopy and I began to nod off in a warm, fuzzy stupor. Somewhere in there I remember being wheeled off to the x-ray area, where I laid on a freezing-cold table and had my abdomen irradiated. After that, they wheeled me up to the second floor for a CAT scan, which also involved a cold table. Then it was back to the exam room, where they hooked me back up to the monitors, reconnected an IV of some sort, and left me to float along in a happy drug-induced haze. Eventually a doctor showed up and told me that it definitely appeared to be a kidney stone, but since they were unable to find the stone on the x-rays they were pretty sure it was going to emerge on its own. So they gave me a perscription for Percocet (crazy strong anti pain medicine) and anti-nausea supositories (ugh), and instructed me to go home and drink tons of water.

Well, actually, it wasn't that simple. Apparently they've had problems with people on the happy drugs checking themselves out and then trying to drive home. So they refused to even let me out of the bed until someone arrived to pick me up. I duitifully called a friend, who showed up to bail me out. We then took a detour to the pharmacy and picked up the pain pills and a pile of bottled water, and she dropped me back at my house. I drank and dozed for a while after that. At about 1:00 I woke up thinking that I was actually feeling pretty good. That is until I tried to urinate. Suddenly the pain was back with a vengeance. I took a percocet, drained another bottle of water, and retreated whimperingly to my bed. Luckily the drugs kicked in, and I was able to doze off again.

The original plan was for my friend to drive me back over to pick up my car around two. But when she heard I was back on the drugs, she wisely suggested that we put off that expedition. So I stayed at home and continued snarfing bottles of water, until a bit later the culprit finally emerged.

From the amount of pain, I was expecting this thing to look like, I don't know, a lima bean. Or at least a pea. But the actual stone (or at least the one I recovered) was about the size of a small pebble. Doesn't seem possible that such a tiny thing could wreak so much havoc!

Since the emergence of the stone, the pain has basically disappeared. I'm still drinking water like a madman -- and I have a newfound resolution to drink massive quantities of water on a daily basis. But it looks like the worst of the ordeal is over now.

Not the way I'd recommend spending a holiday weekend.

Wild Wacky Roof Gizmos

2005-05-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

I'm on a continuing quest to get my landlord to make repairs around the house. Even better would be if I could get her to make repairs with some degree of sensitivity to the fact that the house is located in a historic district.

The house includes these wierd-looking tile things on the roof:

Several of the tiles were broken recently. Gary, my landlord's favorite cut-rate jack-of-all-trades handyman, took one look and observed "well, you can't get them things at Home Depot." He had a go at the broken pieces with liquid nails, but I have little faith that this fix is going to last very long.

So I'm on a quest to find out where, if anywhere, you can still get things like this. So far my Google searches for "roof thingies" haven't been successful. Anyone have any ideas?

Platypus hitting the sauce

2005-05-22T17:51:00.000-05:00

Another memory from the same batch of disks: Senior year of college, my roomate and I decided to try to create a new mixed drink. The basis was some sort of Jello-based dessert that I had made for a potluck. Jay was convinced that this could be turned into a mixed drink with a bit of modification. As I recall, the resulting beverage required Cool Whip, green food coloring, pistachio pudding mix, and some sort of liquor (maybe tequila.) We got it to the point where it was at least drinkable, christened it "Green Shit", and served it once or twice. I don't think it ever really caught on, but at some point (possibly hopped up on the stuff) Jay created illustrations on paper plates immortalizing the beverage. I apparently scanned them, and will now post them here for your enjoyment.

A slow goodbye

2005-05-22T03:40:00.000-05:00

I've been sorting through old computer disks from college, and came across this essay I wrote for a magazine journalism class in 1998.

May I sit down on your bed?" I ask the woman, unsure of the house rules. We are in a generic room that could be a part of any modern housing subdivision. Personal momentos dot the shelves, and a the wool blanket I remember snuggling under as a child is draped over a chair.
"I don't care if you sit on it or shit on it!" the woman responds, cackling to her self as she hobbles out of the room.
This woman lives with my grandmother. But she doesn't know my grandmother. In fact, no one really knows my grandmother anymore. The tiny explosions that have ravaged the blood vessels in her brain have also destroyed her ability to remember, to converse, or even to dress herself. Her life is a progression from one bedtime to the next, with the occasional intervention of nursing home staff.
I have never before seen her in this setting. I have been away at college, and the last time I saw her was Christmas two years ago. At that point, her short term memory was gone, and, as usual, you found yourself having the same conversation twice in a period of minutes. But she was there. She had an interest in her surroundings, and I knew this was the same person who used to take me home after church on Sundays and eat Pepperidge Farm chessmen cookies with me in her dining room. The staunch member of the DAR, who took me to nearby Monticello when I was in sixth grade. The woman who agreed to marry my grandfather after he took her on a grueling hike on the C&O canal towpath.
That woman is no longer there. Instead, my grandmother stares at her lap constantly, and her speech is limited to the immediate expression of preference. "I'm cold." or "I'm not hungry." Her hands shake, and she can barely eat without assistance. She is the shell of a person.
The scariest thing about all this is that she saw it coming. It was not a sudden, debilitating condition that struck one day, leaving no time for reflection. Instead her brain began to fail her bit by bit, just like a trick knee might slowly impair walking. At first she would forget a few details of conversations. Then she would forget entire events. She knew this was happening. She began to compulsively keep lists of everything -- She would routinely pull a rumpled piece of paper out of her purse and read over it, trying to remember the obvious -- where she was, who she was staying with, where her family was. She began to lose track of the date, and she would routinely address us as relatives who died decades ago. When I stayed at her house in rural Virginia during my freshman year of college, she woke me up at 7:30 in the morning so that I wouldn't miss the school bus.
You sometimes hear senility called a "second childhood." But this facile characterization does nothing to convey the horror that one must feel as the brain begins to fail. To me, this is the most terrifying aspect of growing old. It is not the loss of bodily function. It is the prospect of losing the ability to think and understand -- and to know that this is happening.
When I graduate from college this Sunday, I will think of my grandmother, sitting in her small nursing home room 500 miles away, quite possibly unaware that she has three grandchildren in college. And I will wonder about the future.

Another low-productivity weekend

2005-05-16T02:58:00.000-05:00

I spent most of this weekend reading Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, a fascinating account of events leading up to the massive 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal, India that most likely killed tens of thousands of people in an instant. (The exact death toll has never been established, since most victims were poor and image-concious government officials stopped counting after about 1700.) This book has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years because I expected it to be a dry account of the disaster with a lot of finger pointing. But the book goes far beyond the accident itself, providing deep insights into Indian culture and the corporate culture of multinational corporations. If there was ever an argument for the importance of strong and impartial environmental watchdogs, this is it.

Other than that, not much was accomplished this weekend. Cleaned up the kitchen a bit, did a load of laundry, went to Bongo Java and did my Spanish homework, sent a few e-mails, watched part of the very rainy Iriquois Steeplechase on TV, and went to the gym. Not necessarily in that order.

Spanish excercise

2005-05-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

EXERCISE G:
As a party game, Dolores has prepared slips of paper with cues and the names of party guests. Whoever picks the slip must ask a question using conocer or saber, and the person(s) called upon must respond.
Example:
Rafael / jugar al boliche.
Rafael, sabes tu jugar al boliche?
Si, se jugar al boliche pero no muy bien.

Boy, does that Dolores know how to party, or what?

My Pet Fat

2005-05-06T21:20:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago -- after only seven years of procrastination -- I finally got around to joining the fitness center at my office. My body includes a great deal of, erm, "safety padding," and I figured as long as I'm getting ready to quit my job and entirely uproot my life anyway, maybe this would be a good time to try to pick up a more consistent exercise habit.

Things have been going pretty well. Before this, my activity patterns tended to be very uneven -- IE, a month or two of couch-potatodom, followed by the occasional strenuous exercise, such as climbing pyramids in Mexico or playing snow football in Pennsylvania. Typically said strenuous exercise would result in aches and pains the next day. So I was expecting the same thing from the workout program. So far, however, I've been pleasantly surprised. Apparently using actual, approved workout equipment and a reasonable exercise plan avoids the stress of my former (in)activity patterns.

This is all leading up to a hilarious blurb I came across in today's paper. Inspired by the pet rock craze of the mid-1970s, it seems that New Jersey marketing specialist Jay Jacobs has come up with the idea of My Pet Fat as a motivational tool for those with abundant portable strategic energy reserves.

Pet fat is available in several sizes, with a 1 pound gob (representing 3500 calories) going for about $35. According to the article, "[t}hey are made of vinyl plastic, they are soft and pliable, they are slightly oily, they are amber-colored, with touches of red that suggest capillaries -- and they are gross."

(Note: while writing this post, I also came across this "virtual pet rock" software for MacOS. I've gotta get me some of that!)

Followed by possible vague left-wing paranoia of the week

2005-05-05T02:56:00.000-05:00

Part of me wants to get incensed about the new "suggestion" that you give your birth date when checking in for an airline flight -- it definitely reeks of the reductions in civil liberties that have been brought on by the Patriot Act and its ilk.

But another, more rational, part of me says that this is a total non-issue for the simple reason that there's nothing new about it.

Here's why: You've been required to show your photo ID (drivers license or passport) at the airport for years. And every drivers license or passport has your birthdate prominently emblazoned on it. So this new policy is simply asking for information that the airlines and the TSA already had access to.

I suppose there is some additional risk to civil liberties from the government actually collecting the information. But probably not enough to make it worth making a scene by "refusing" to give my birth date.

(I tried this once when a clerk at Motel 6 demanded my birthdate in order to rent a room, but when she cited corporate policy and refused to budge, I caved rather than going in search of a new motel. Yup, I'm a pushover.)

Right wing bonehead of the week

2005-05-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off Camera) But, sir, you have described this in pretty, this whole battle is pretty apocalyptic terms. You've said that Liberals are engaged in an all-out assault on Christianity, that Democrats will appoint judges who don't share our Christian values and will dismantle Christian culture, and that the out-of-control judiciary, and this was in your last book "Courting Disaster" is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al Qaeda, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War?

PAT ROBERTSON: George, I really believe that. I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together. There is an assault on marriage. There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off Camera) But, sir, let me just stop you there. How can you say that these judges are a more serious threat than Islamic terrorists who slammed into the World Trade Center?

PAT ROBERTSON: It depends on how you look at culture. If you look over the course of a hundred years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings. I think we're going to control al Qaeda. I think we're going to get Osama bin Laden. We won in Afghanistan. We won in Iraq, and we can contain that. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
-- ABC News Transcript of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," May 1, 2005

Good grief. As Tom Regan points out, the difference between Pat Robertson and most of the rest of us is that he doesn't ever seem to realize when he's said something profoundly stupid.

MoveOnPac is running a campaign about this particular interview, and I was ticked off enough to sign the petition.

It's (sort of) official

2005-05-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

Today I finally sat down with my current boss (and my former boss who I still sort of work for in a dotted line sort of way) and told them about my plans to leave town at the end of the year. The meetings went pretty smoothly. The biggest hitch had to do with what I would have to do to remain eligible for the company's 2005 performance bonus program. Suffice it to say that I may now be working here (or at least telecommuting) right up to the point classes start in January up in Boston. That's not ideal, but, on the other hand, the extra paychecks will help with the tuition, and a bonus check in February would definitely help.

We also ran into a bit of a snag over my plans to take three weeks off in October to go to Spain. The new boss' position is that he doesn't allow anyone to take three weeks off at a time even if they have the vacation time available. (This is what I so dislike about the corporate culture of US companies as opposed to those in Europe.) However, this issue seemed to go away after I conveyed that the trip was already pretty definite, and that if I didn't get the time off I would probably make September 24 my last day at the company. (Am I bluffing? Who knows... But I have already paid for the tickets, so it would be a pretty big deal to reschedule or cancel the trip. Since I think it's to their benefit to keep me around as long as possible, I doubt they'll call me on it.)

The fact that I'm giving my notice 8 months in advance adds some interesting twists to the whole thing. For example, they're talking about hiring my successor(s) and having him/her/them start while I'm still here so that I can impart all my wisdom. That could be interesting.

I'm taking in plurals because the idea came up of possibly splitting my job into two parts and essentially hiring 1.5-2 new people to replace me. I think may make a lot of sense given the amount of stress I've had trying to manage two chronically-understaffed departments at once. The big question is whether they'll find the money for that.

We're meeting again next week to talk about all this. Progress continues. Now that I've gotten this over with, my next step is to formally notify Simmons of my deferral plans, and to officially notify the other two schools that they are out of the running.

The Wikipedia Reliability Index

2005-05-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

I had a brainstorm in the shower this morning. I'd been playing around adding information to Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as you may know, is a collaborative encyclopedia that literally anyone can update. The idea behind this "open-source" information model is that anyone can add or correct information, and that eventually bad information will be weeded out through a process of natural selection.

The problem with this, at least according to lots of folks, is that the instability of the information and systemic bias in the encylcopedia makes it unsuitable for use as a serious reference work.

This is a complex problem, and not one that can be easily solved. Some have even proposed a formal peer review process for articles. But there might be a way to increase the awareness of potential problems without the organizational overhead of trying to coordinate formal reviews of a constantly-changing work.

Here's my idea in a nutshell: every article in the Wikipedia should include a mathematically-calculated "reliability score" that gives the user a general idea of how likely the article is to be correct.

It would take some work to figure out the perfect formula for this. My initial thinking is that more page views and more edits should generally increase the score, since this indicates that the article has been subjected to a high level of scrutiny. A large number of recent edits (say, within the last 6 months), however, should reduce the score, since this tends to indicate that the article is in flux. Long edits (based on percentage of total article length) should, in general, also reduce the score more than "minor" edits, since they fundamentally change the content of the article.

It would also be possible to incorporate subjective criteria -- for example, number of sites linking to the article according to Google, and perhaps a rating system where users can vote on the accuracy of the information (along the lines of the "did you find this article helpful" links you often see in tech support databases.)

These factors would need to be incorporated in such a way that one person could not unduly influence the ranking.

It is possible that someone has already proposed this idea (if so, someone please point me in the right direction.) If not, consider it proposed!

the company we keep

2005-05-02T04:06:00.000-05:00

In glancing through my traffic reports, I just discovered that someone found this site by doing an image search for "illegal girls" in MetaCrawler. I unwittingly clicked the link to find out how the heck that happened, only to find a page full of thumbnails of rather graphic porn surrounding a single photo I took of girl scouts marching in the Takoma Park Independence Day Parade last year. It seems that I referred to "illegal fireworks" in the paragraph above the photo and Girl Scouts in the alt tag, and that was enough to group my poor little ol' blog with neighbors like "www.horse-bestiality.com," "www.corporal-punishment.net," and "madincest.incest-host.com" and "lace-lingerie.nubiancock.com." Charming, no?

Mi hermano va a viajar a España con mí y mis padres.

2005-05-02T02:48:00.000-05:00

After some deliberation, my youngest brother has decided to join us on the trip to Spain in October. This is the brother currently living a life of poverty while working at an after-school program for inner city youth, so the money is an issue. But we found a really good airfare ($110 less than my parents and I paid for the same trip! grr.) And we agreed on various measures to keep his costs down. So this is slowly turning into a family trip. Should be an interesting experience, since the furthest we ever made it on family vacations when I was little was to Michigan.

The other brother is still deliberating, but doesn't seem especially interested in going to Spain in the first place.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Washington

2005-04-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

Being an explication of known and unknown sites and attractions in our nation's capitol, as recorded by a former resident and frequent visitor.

A friend of mine from Nashville is going on vacation to Washington DC next week, and asked me for a few touristic recommendations. Once I got started, I couldn't stop. So here's a long essay on the subject. Feel free to add your own sugestions.

Museums:

Washington DC is lousy with museums -- and most of them are free since they are part of the taxpayer-financed Smithsonian Institution. Here are a few ideas:

The insect zoo (now brought to you by Orkin, which cracks me up) is in the National Museum of Natural History, which is right off the Mall. (It's one of the domed buildings close on the Capitol end -- the other is the old wing of the National Gallery.) Other popular things there include the giant taxidermied elephant in the rotunda (which I remember seeing when I was in elementary school), the gems and minerals exhibit (including the "cursed" Hope diamond), and the Dino bones.

The Air and Space museum, across the mall from there, is the most popular of all the Smithsonian museums, but it's generally really crowded and last time I was there the exhibits seemed a bit tired. It was planned/built in the early 1970s when space exploration was in vogue, but I don't think it has been maintained very well. Supposedly they began a major remodel recently, so it may be improving.

The museum of American History is interesting, although a lot depends on what exhibits they have going on when you're there. They used to have a history of computing exhibit, but I haven't been there in a while so I don't know if it still exists or is worth seeing. It also used to have a massive pendulum that swung from the roof to the basement. I believed they still have this but may have shortened it substantially to make more exhibit space.

There are a ton of lesser-known museums that might be interesting depending on your taste. The National Postal Museum is surprisingly interesting (and convenient, since it's right across the street from Union Station, which is worth seeing in its own right.) The National Building Museum is also supposed to be good, although I've actually never been in it. (Although I think that's the building that my parents took refuge in when I was 6 years old or so and we got caught in a massive storm downtown.) The National Museum of the American Indian is brand new, and definitely interesting. (Although it's not exactly like a traditional museum -- more like a freeform stream of conciousness.)

There are also some well-regarded private museums. The Holocaust Museum is supposed to very good, but I've never been. (It always seems like a bit of a downer when you're sightseeing with friends, which is usually how I see these things lately.) The International Spy Museum is also supposed to be good, but you have to pay admission and make reservations. (Didn't know about the reservations thing last time, so we only got as far as the gift shop.) And the Corcoran Gallery of Art was another frequent field trip in grade school, but since I haven't been there in years I'm don't' recall many details.

Other stuff:

An architectural gem that I only discovered last year when I went up for the archives training is the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Notice that the carvings of American cherubs are all engaged in useful professions, not lounging around like those lazy European cherubs of yesteryear! The main reading room alone is pretty spectacular -- but maybe that's just my affinity for libraries showing through.

It's worth it to take a walk around the reflecting-pool end of the mall, where you can see the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, and the new WWII memorial. Unfortunately there's no Metro right in this area, so you either need to walk down from the Smithsonian stop or walk in from Foggy Bottom or another stop further inland. Despite having lived in DC for the bulk of my life, I have never actually been up the Washington Monument. The last several times I tried, it has been closed -- first for restoration, and then for landscaping and security upgrades. Last October it was still closed, but maybe if your lucky it will be reopened by now.

If you want to do some more walking, the Korean War Memorial, the FDR Memorial, and the Tidal Basin/Jefferson Memorial are all between the reflecting pool and the river. (There's a good map of all the sights in the "monumental core" right here. A lot of these green spaces around the mall were covered by "temporary" buildings during WWII to house the growing ranks of government bureaucrats. These "temporaries" ended up lasting for decades -- my grandfather worked in one for years.

Arlington National Cemetery is interesting, but perhaps a bit ambitious if you're traveling with a kid. Things to see are the changing of the guard, the Kennedy gravesite, and the cemetery itself. It was built around Robert E. Lee's family house during the civil war after the government took the land to spite him for leading the confederate army. One of the first 20 or so gravestones down the row from the house is Somebody Packard (forget his first name), who is one of my ancestors. He was in a unit from Maine and died in one of the battles in Virginia. This is not in the tour books, but I figured I'd throw it in for your edification.

Don't imagine you'll want to do much of this with a kid in tow, one interesting place to go hiking is Roosevelt Island (in the Potomac -- you can walk there from the Roslyn stop if you don't mind dodging traffic and taking a long detour to get across an unfortunately-placed highway. Or you can drive to it on the GW parkway.) The island is mostly made up of wooded trails, but in the middle is a slightly bombastic monument to Teddy Roosevelt featuring a massive statue of the man himself. Another good hiking place is Great Falls, where the Potomac crashes down across the fall line. The Virginia side includes the remains of an old canal that bypassed the falls, with massive walls blasted out of rock, as well as the more spectacular view of the falls. The Maryland side is a smaller backwater, but also has the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal, a restored canal with a hikable towpath that runs along the Potomac from Georgetown (in DC) to Cumberland, MD. (Despite the name, they never quite made it to Ohio.)

Another place I haven't been in years but is probably a good stop is the National Zoo, which is located a ways from downtown but is convenient to Metro. The National Cathedral is another very cool stop, although it is pretty much inaccessible via MetroRail. But you can take a bus or drive pretty easily. I was last there in College when we filmed a documentary on eclesiastical needlepoint that featured staff experts at the cathedral.

If you want to see a movie in an "old school" huge screen movie theater, you can go to the Uptown in Cleveland Park, which is one of the few survivors of the era of great movie theaters. Other interesting places include the Avalon in Friendship Heights, which is an older theater that was preserved by a citizens group (sort of like the Belcourt in Nashville) and now shows arty films. The AFI Silver Theater in downtown Silver Spring is another old theater that has been fixed up, although I haven't been in it yet.

Restaurants:

As I mentioned, my grasp of the DC restaurant scene is a bit shallow since I haven't actually lived there full time in years. But here are two places I've eaten at recently that were pretty good. Both are in the Maryland suburbs, since I tend to spend most of my time in the Takoma Park/Silver Spring/College Park orbit when I'm home.

Woomi Garden According to the Koreans who share my mom's church building, this restaurant in Wheaton is one of the best Korean restaurants in the area.
Samantha's Tiny Salvadoran restaurant in suburban Silver Spring, and a favorite of my parents.

I'm also crushed because I was going to recommend Haussner's, a family tradition in Baltimore that had been around since the 1920s. Unfortunately, it appears that it closed in 1999 and its massive art collection has been auctioned off. In addition to hundreds of paintings and Maryland specialties like fried soft-shell crab, they had a giant 800lb ball of twine that had been amassed by saving the string from napkin deliveries. Despite the German heritage of the restaurant, I remember my Grandfather mispelling his last name (Dichtel) as "DICKTELL" when making reservations to ensure correct pronunciation.

Big news - Boston Bound (eventually)

2005-04-21T01:57:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty quiet lately because I've been busy trying to plan the rest of my life. The good news is that I think I've finally figured it out -- at least up through next January.

As you may know, I wear at least two hats in my current job: IT Manager and Library/Archives Manager. I like aspects of both things, but I've also become frustrated with the amount of time I spend dealing with day-to-day technical support issues. And the 24x7 support pager is getting really old.

I've also become increasingly interested in the Library and Archives side of my job, to the point of attending the Modern Archives insistute at the National Archives last January. I enjoy working with this stuff, and would like to nudge my career toward it. But given the hybrid nature of my what I do now, it's hard to find time to focus on the stuff that I really enjoy. Furthermore, I don't have the formal training that will open doors to the truly interesting jobs in the field.

So I've decided to go back to school (part or full time TBA) to pursue a MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) with an archival concentration. Back in January, I applied to three schools that offered these programs: University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland, and Simmons College (Boston). Pitt and Maryland are both massive public schools, and while Simmons is a tiny undergraduate women's college in Boston with a well-regarded coed graduate Library school. I have been accepted into all three programs.

After much deliberation and visits to two of the three schools, I have pretty much decided on Simmons. I was very impressed program, and the faculty, staff, and students I met were extremely supportive. The archival program is top notch, featuring internships and teaching partnerships with dozens of institutions in the greater Boston area. Furthermore, the school seems to have a real commitment to self examination and improvement -- all course evaluations are published in binders in the student lounge for others to read. Furthermore, the school shares a brand new, well appointed, building with the graduate school of Social Work, and is in a great location in the heart of Boston -- a place I've already decided I wouldn't mind living (except for the rent -- yikes!).

Simmons also offers a dual degree program leading to an MLS archival concentration/MA in History. I was accepted to this program, and am seriously considering sticking with it. While it would take a bit longer than the MLS alone, it seems like a really interesting way to emphasize that I can do more than IT.

So having made the decision to move to Boston to pursue this at some point, the next big question is when. I go back and forth about how badly I want out of my job. There are days when I'm ready to walk out and never come back, and others when I really enjoy what I'm working on. Lately the former have been more common. So it wouldn't pain me much to leave in a month or two and head up to Boston for the Fall semester. But there are drawbacks to this plan. I have a lot of documentation, organization, and prep work that I need to do so that someone else can take over for me (my "to file" pile alone will likely take me a few weeks to excavate!) And I can use the extra money, given my concerns about expenses during my return to the land of financial aid. But the biggest factor is my recently stepped-up efforts to learn Spanish. I've been taking classes at the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute since January, and have decided that I'd really like to get to the point where I'm more or less fluent in the language. I have a long way to go, but I'm getting there. As part of this effort, I convinced my parents that they should go to Spain on vacation and take me along as a translator. Our original plan was to go sometime in the spring or summer, but as schedules came together it became clear that the only time that would work their usual vacation window in October. So starting school in September would preclude me from doing the Spain trip, something that I might not have the time/money to do once I'm back in school and struggling to make ends meet.

Because of this, I've decided to defer my admission to Simmons until January in order to go to Spain. In fact, I pulled together a conference call today with my Mom in Ocean City (there for a pastoral retreat of all things), my Dad somewhere on I-95 in Virginia, and me in my office in Nashville. After a lot of Internet searching, we went ahead and purchased three tickets from Washington to Madrid leaving on my mom's birthday (Sept. 25) and coming back on my parents' anniversary (Oct. 16.) At least that's what we hope will happen -- ten minutes I ordered the tickets, my dad called back to inform me that he'd just heard on NPR that US Airways was in merger talks with America West. So assuming the new company still goes to Madrid in October...

So to sum up, my rough plan is to stay in my current job until Septemberish, go to Spain and pratice my Spanish, come back and then work for another month or two while simultaneously moving out of my house and somehow arranging for all my stuff to go somewhere in Boston. I don't quite know when I'll actually leave the company, but my best guess is that it will be sometime in November or December. Depends on how long they want to keep me around as a lame duck, and whether I figure out something better to do with my time.

I will simultaneously be looking at potential living arrangments and jobs in Boston. I'm not thrilled about working full time while going to school, but I also have to face the unfortunate reality of the Boston rental market. So I'm probably going to look around for something interesting but not too taxing that I can do while going to school. If I could find a job with a generous tuition reimbursement benefit, so much the better. Hmm....

That's the big news from over this way. Still dotting the I's and crossing the T's, but I finally feel like I have a plan.

Spam as Art

2005-03-19T02:25:00.000-06:00

There's somethingsurreal and intriguing about the nonsense text tacked on the bottom of spam to thwart filters. I assume it's probably generated through some nefarious process that misappropriates snippets of private e-mail. But I find it amusing anyway:

this site is good way to get in touch with past and present friends feel free to email me anytime s rogers -- bendix to bendix g e to g e.
oh and that little moment between ginny and luciusry ry unexpected and cool and very ood!lucius in a way so there are weasleys who can see shades of gray in the malfoys after all.
the bandits are hiding behind the tank as the train under the false order stops to take water just before she pulls out they stealthily board the train between the express car and the tender.
i had my second session the other day i was worried that my trance training would not be strong enough for a good experience.
- free space of linux webhosting is also provided we are happy to present services of registration new domain name space offers ad free webhosting domains and free email address.
i really would lik e to see some male male pairings like giles wesley but as long as you keep writing i will be completely happy.
em breve esse frenesi silencioso essa placidez delirante essa força delicada que é carmita viana aparece ao público de novo depois dessa exposição no burburinho.
arghs blogger won t let me post so sorry if i didn t post it until like a day
later blame it on blogger and sorry to cherie and michelle if i couldn t post it on time.
directing actors audience expectation suspense surprise violence humor dynamic dialogue scenes static dialogue scenes group dialogue scenes tips documentaries experimental.
- freeservers is one of the oldest free web hosts still offering free web space and a solid hosting platform get a free web site or try one of our unbeatable premium hosting services today! choose.
as long as george w dosn t decide against rattifying it and as for his santa claus defence system well !
incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored from nicholas webb.

Blogging while intoxicated

2005-03-14T02:17:00.000-06:00

Somewhat drunk and watching a sappy romantic movie. I've been horribly remiss about updating this blog. But suffice it to say that big changes may be in the offing. Have been accepted at two of the three library schools that I've applied to. I've been hesitant to write about this, because it's all so speculative. But (at least in my drunken stupor) I've become convinced that it's time to make a change. It's not that I really have anything against Nashville or my current job. But I feel like it's time to do something different. And this is difficult when I am stuck in my humdrum existence of malfunctioning servers and complaining users. I feel like I'm in a rut (socially, intellectually, and romantically), and it's time to use some figurative dynamite to get out of it.

It must be nice to be truly rich. Not because of the things you can buy. I think you would quickly beome accustomed to these and they would cease to matter. But because you truly have the freedom to drop everything and pursue your dreams without worrying about the financial consequences. Last night I saw a show on PBS about an English guy (whose family had an estate) who was devoting his life to finding a new species of orchid to name after his grandmother. This is the sort of thing that you can only pursue when you either have more money than God or less sense than a hatmaker on crack. In this case, I'm pretty sure it was the former.

I have to settle for finding a middle ground between total conformity and total irresponsibility. For the moment, this means looking at library schools, planning a possible trip to Spain with my parents (hopefully a chance to use my developing Spanish skills) and looking for new experiences where I am right now.

I've had another IT job drop out of the sky within a 30 minute from one of the library schools I've applied to. But this is the one school that hasn't actually accepted me yet, and I'm not sure the job would really be a good career move anyway. So I'm pondering what to do about that.

Meanwhile, my parents' house was broken into, and my mom's engagement ring was stolen, along with most of the rest of her jewelery, their DVD player, my brother's class ring, etc. This is one of those things that could be a lot worse, but at the same time it stinks. It's just stuff -- as I told my mom when she called me the night it happened -- but it's stuff with immense sentimental value. They have a detective assigned to the case, but based on the MO they don't have a lot of faith that much will be recovered. Sounds like the perps were mainly interested in things that could be sold quickly on the street for drug money.

In other news, I've spent three of the last four weekend days working on a Habitat for Humanity house sponsored by my employer. I frequently worked on construction projects in high school and college, both through theater construction and through Habitat-type projects. But this is the first time in a while that I've spent more than a few hours at a time on this sort of thing, and I'm remembering why I liked it so much. There's something incredibly fulfilling about seeing a structure rise in the course of a few days and knowing that you had something to do with it. (On the downside, whacked myself in the face with the claw of a hammer yesterday. Despite all the blood, however, this turned out to be a pretty minor injury, and it really didn't hurt that much!)

4-year-old gets munchies, drives to store at 1:30 AM

2005-02-07T11:12:00.000-06:00

You may have thought you didn't need to worry about this sort of thing until the teenage years. But kids grow up fast these days.

More on the WHFS/El Zol Metamorphoses

2005-01-31T20:55:00.000-06:00

Today's Washington Post had an interesting article on the challenges Infinty broadcasting faces with El Zol, as it tries to mastermind the succesful conversion of an alt-rock station into a spanish language outlet aimed at DC's diverse Hispanic community.

Interestingly, when you go to WHFS.com, you are now redirected to AOL Radio, which is supposedly bringing the old HFS back to life on the Web.

A big shout out... In which D- get's off his butt and actually reads what y'all are up to.

2005-01-31T02:42:00.000-06:00

I've been almost as bad about reading other people's blogs as I have been in writing my own. So I just now came across this musing that Karen posted sometime last week. I thought it was dead on -- so did a lot of other people, apparently:

[S]ometimes I seriously feel like an imposter in my life. My nurse practioner said today that she thinks we all feel like that. That sometime around age 18 we stop really believing the things in our lives. I sometimes look around and wonder who's house I'm in, who's car I'm driving, when I even got a driver's license (I didn't get one until I was almost out of college), how I ended up married, and so on. It's surreal sometimes. I feel like yesterday I was greaduating from high school and today, I'm married, have a kid (albeit temporary), have a house, have a car (and a license to drive it!), have art, have a real job. Seriously, when did I stop "playing grown up" and become an adult? Weird.
Yeah, I'm a freak. But seriously, lots of people have told me they feel the same way. So maybe I'm not crazy (at least not about this imposter thing).

Oh yeah... While we're sending out the catchup love, here's a belated happy first birthday to that kid over at Polygon. I can honestly say I knew him when his main motor accomplishment was bonking himself in the head -- and now he's walking and stuff! Obviously good parenting at work. :-)

Continuing best wishes to Vail who is struggling with one construction nightmare after another -- which she is handling with her usual grace and aplomb.

Long overdue congratulations to J. over at the Last Page, who evidently up and eloped to Vegas while I wasn't looking!

Laura understandably laments the loss of WHFS -- a staple of high school radio that suddenly and with no warning transformed itself into a Spanish language radio station. Not that I have anything against Spanish language stations -- in fact, what with my Spanish class and all I've become a bit of a Univision addict. But HFS was a fixture, and one of the more truly local stations in the DC area. It will be missed.

And Danielle's brother is continuing to improve -- which is very good news.

Tracy's supposed to be studying -- but instead she's playing with MP3s and lusting after an iPod Shuffle. I can dig. (Her last mix CD is still frequent roation in my car, so I can state with certainty that her procrastination is more productive than mine!)

On a related note, iTunes just begin playing "Hotel California" as realized by the Raleigh Ringers handbell choir. I am very amused. And impressed, given that the handbell choir I played in years ago didn't have the chops for much classic rock! That song ended, so now I'm listening to "Flieg nicht so hoch, mein kleiner Freund" -- German language country/western at it's best.

Paint factory escape, part II

2005-01-30T14:47:00.000-06:00

You may remember the little stream of conciousness about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that I posted back in mid-December. I've been pretty lousy about blogging lately, but I figured it was about time to post an update for my two or three loyal readers.

As I vaguely remember telling a friend in a bar on Friday night, this really isn't precisely about escaping my job, so much as it is taking charge of my life. I could see scenarios where I could be happy where I am now. But I think it's going to be easier for me to make the life-changes I need to make if I'm not fighting 6 years of intertia. And I also think that this might be a good time to pick up some skills and credentials that will expand my career options further beyond the technology ghetto.

So, over the last month, I have applied to three graduate programs in Library & Information Science. (Link, link, and link.) I was looking at a dual program in Library/Archives and history at the two schools that offered it. I'm not sure if I really want to pursue that route, but the consensus was that it would be easier to drop a second program than to add one. But there were logistical problems associated with applying to the Maryland program. Because I already have a good track record in a Masters program, most schools do not require a GRE. But the Maryland history department does require it, and even if I had sat for the test immediately upon realizing this, my admissions portfolio would have been incomplete until at least a month after the deadline. So I decided not to apply for the dual program at Maryland. Simmons did not require the GRE, so I went ahead and applied for the dual program.

You may be wondering how I decided on these three schools. I was interested in programs with archival specializations, which narrowed the field somewhat. Simmons and Maryland both have very strong programs in this area. (Maryland is situated right next to the new National Archives in College Park, so it's a great location for that sort of thing.) Pitt has an archival option, and I also noticed that faculty are doing research on digital preservation, something else that I'm interested in. And then there's geography. Boston is ideal since I already have a lot of friends there. Maryland is also good, in that I grew up there and still have family and a few friends in the area. Pitt would be a bit of a leap, but it's still many hours closer to DC, NYC, Boston, and other Northeastern places I frequent.

I looked briefly at UCLA, partly because I think California would be an interesting change of scenery. But UC has an unbelievably strict "bilk the out-of-state students" policy that means you'll pay about $15,000 more per year if you're not from around those parts. To avoid this, you have to have lived in CA for at least a year -- and they'll check your drivers license, utility bills, ATM receipts, and possibly even major body cavities before they'll grant you in-state status. This all just seemed like a bit more hassle than I felt like dealing with, so I stuck mainly to eastern schools with less draconian out-of-state tuition policies.

I think the required forms, recommendations, transcripts, etc. have all been submitted, so it's just a waiting game at this point. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I talked to my current and former bosses about the possibility that I might be outta here later this year, and they were both very supportive. The new boss also seems willing to rearrange my responsibilities to nudge them more toward what I'm interested in. (But as I mentioned above, this is about more than just not liking my job.) And he talked about other opportunities elsewhere in the corporation, possible consulting, etc. I'm keeping my options open on this, since as of yet I have no idea how I'm going to pay for a 1-2 year descent into academia. I've been careful to emphasize that no concrete decisions have been made as of yet.

In the meantime, I began a noncredit Spanish class at the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute. I initially signed up for the class geared toward total beginners, but I quickly realized that I had retained more than I thought from my two years of middle school Spanish and my frantic study sessions prior to last year's Mexico City trip. So I transferred into the next class up, which seems to be a better fit. In addition to the classes themselves, I've been watching Univision religiously, and have been working through a growing pile of flash cards. I'm making progress slowly, although it's going to be a long journey toward a fully functional Spanish vocabulary.

In other news, I'm heading to Florida for a few days in the middle of February to talk to a vendor and various other corporate flunkies about the possibility that an unofficial, unauthorized IT system we've helped develop may suddenly become very much official and authorized, and be rolled out to other branches of the company. And the day after I get back, I've been coerced at the last minute into teaching a class on "Digital Asset Management for Newspapers" at a conference in town. (If you have any ideas on what should be in such a class, I'd love to hear them -- it's not coming together very easily.)

Systems analysis and your sock drawer

2005-01-30T13:23:00.000-06:00

Nova ScienceNOW just ran* this amusing segment about a robotics engineer at MIT who has taken a systems analysis approach to his life. For example, he has determined that it is inefficient to do laundry more than once a month, so he has expanded his wardrobe to incclude six weeks worth of clothing. And he plans his time to the point where he only ties his shoes at traffic lights. The only problem? His girlfriend says he's always late.

Daniel, this one's for you.

* Just ran... As in, just ran on my ReplayTV. really it ran sometime earlier in the week.

Christmas Snapshots

2005-01-14T01:56:00.000-06:00

		ABOVE: My brother. Or maybe a character from Chicken Run. We're not sure. LEFT:Mom hard at work...
More pics...

Another year, another catchup post

2005-01-14T01:06:00.000-06:00

Once again I find myself having skipped weeks at a time in this blog. So I will once again follow my time honored tradition of using a bulleted list rather than actual descriptive writing. (Thank God for <ul>!)

Drove 12 hours home for Christmas, barely making it in time for my Mom's Christmas Eve service. (Wouldn't want to know the consequences of missing that one.)
Hung out with family.
Spent a full two days working on the office computer network at the church. Got the new front office machine and the fax/printer working. But my Mom's laptop crashed 6 times in the first two hours, including one crash requiring a fresh ghosting from the recovery CD. Sent that sucker back to Toshiba, which means that I'm probably going to have to fly up again to finish this project. Someone from work mentioned that a friend's daughter works as a techie in DC but has to fix her Mom's computer whenvever she comes home to Tennessee for the holidays. Meanwhile I live in Nashville and have to fix my Mom's computer whenever I'm home in DC. Maybe what we need is a nationwide cooperative of techies who agree to work on other people's parents' machines in return for "credits" that could be used to buy tech support for their own parents. Hmm....
After valiant attempts to lure various northern friends to Nashville, I again copped out and went to Boston for New Years. Actually, I convinced my brother to go with me, which was fun. Except for the fact that, due to his non-existent finances, we drove, and it took 12 hours in each direction. On the way there, we ate at a nifty little diner north of Baltimore. On the way back, we met up with my friend Brian in New Jersey. Yes, that Brian.
In Boston, I visited a bunch of friends, helped unload a u-haul (after we spent over an hour trying to dislodge the stuck door), watched a New Years Parade and some fireworks, ate Indian food, and watched football.
Drove back to DC. Arrived much later than expected, so scrapped plans to continue to Nashville. Instead met up with other brother, made grocery run, and made fajitas. (Parents had just hosted a lobster dinner for a friend, but us kids weren't invited. Oh, well.)
Finally got out of the house around 11 AM the next day. Drove all day and arrived back in Nashville around 11 PM. The total for the trip was around 2,500 miles, which I believe is more than I drove in the first 11.5 months of 2004.
Went to work on Tuesday. As day wore on, my disturbing cough became worse, and tiredness and disorientation set in. Despite this, stayed until late at night trying to get caught up.
Woke up Wednesday and could barely move. Called in sick and spent day sleeping and/or wishing for death. The worst was the high fever stage around 8 P.M., when I called my Dad from under a pile of blankets and pillows, figuring that I should relate the contents of my last will and testament.
Thursday was a lot better, although I stayed home from work again to be safe. I actually felt up to some simple cooking, so made some of my new favorite oatmeal that my Hibernophile parents hooked me on over the holidays.
Back to work on Friday. Ugh.
Saturday slept in, then did some things around the house. Filled a few photo orders from the reunion I shot back in October. Went to see A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was visually stunning but didn't really grab me. Went grocery shopping for a few things. Read Fist Stick Knife Gun, a fascinating book about urban violence given to me by my brother.
Sunday, the cable guy came and fixed my fuzzy reception. Pondered the looming pile of grad school applications, but didn't really do nearly enough work on them.
This week has been work punctuated with various other things. More on the other things in the next post.

Christmas, as hurriedly dashed off in an e-mail to a coworker

2004-12-26T01:30:00.000-06:00

Made it to DC ok -- although I didn't actually get out of Nashville until 10:00 on Thurs, so was worried about making it in time for my mom's Xmas eve services. Drove until about 3AM (4AM eastern), and then slept at Motel 6 for about 5 hours. Then drove another 6-7 hours and got in with an hour or so to spare. Then to the church, where I took photos for their website effort. Then to a party hosted by one of my mom's widower parishoners, at which he proposed marriage to his girlfriend! Then home, to bed. Today was a bit more laid back -- xmas presents and stuff in the AM and family dinner in the evening.

No snow here -- in fact, once I got a few hours away from Nashville everything was totally clear. It is cold, though -- I still have the remains of the Nashville ice storm on my truck.

Anyway, was checking in because I got a voicemail about a server problem. Need to sleep now!

It's time of shutdown!!

2004-12-16T21:25:00.000-06:00

One of the software packages we use at work was programmed by a ragtag band of Russian programmers hired at sweatshop wages following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They may have been C++ gurus, but their linguistic prowess didn't always extend to English. I'm always amused by the odd turns of phrase I find buried throughout the system. Like this one, from a log file generated by one of the servers:

My own little paint factory?

2004-12-15T01:42:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the trajectory of my life. (Yup. It's going to be one of those "deep thoughts" posts. If you're looking for more laundry disasters and other typical NK pap, try back tomorrow.)

In some ways, I feel like I've always followed the path of least resistance when making major life-decisions. This seems like an odd statement, given how hard I work at the things I take on. But I feel like I've sometimes made decisions by default, basing them on the collective "common sense" of society and not on what I really want to do. My technology career is a perfect example: it's based more on a knack for the work than a deep passion. And lately I've been wondering if I really want to spend another 30 years doing more of the same.

I was struck by this tribute to a man I knew only as a wizened old movie reviewer with a cluttered office.

During his travels, Mr. Wyatt visited more than 100 countries. Over the years, he rode a camel by the pyramids in Egypt, lectured at a college in Kyoto, met with dissidents in pre-Velvet Revolution Prague and strolled among ancient Incan ruins in Peru. [...] Mr. Wyatt graduated from North (Nashville) High and David Lipscomb College and held a law degree from Vanderbilt University. He also studied Russian history and language for two years and took an Arabic language course at the University of Baghdad from 1945 to 1946. Mr. Wyatt served for 2½ years as a crypto analyst in the Military Intelligence Service, mostly in the USSR and the Middle East. [...]The longtime reporter, editor and lawyer merged his journalistic and legal interests in reporting on legal aspects of race relations in the 1950s.

Will my obituary be that interesting? Not at the rate I'm going. Here lies D-, struck down in his prime. He, umm, did something with computers.

As this was marinating somewhere in the back of my brain, I saw this story in the paper:

A mower, some cans and a dream of the Gulf
In mid-October, Bainbridge got bored with Indiana, his home for most of his adult life. Unable because of an injury from a severe auto accident to hold a job and unwilling to be trapped in "factory work" even if his back were stronger, the Hoosier said he "just felt like he had to get out while he could."
So Bainbridge, 44, cranked up his 34-year-old Massey Ferguson lawn mower — bought for a song for $35 — hitched on a small trailer that serves as his home on wheels and headed for the Gulf of Mexico … picking up a small mountain of discarded beer and soda pop aluminum cans to finance his trip along the way.
Last weekend, Bainbridge slowly rolled through Lebanon and into Murfreesboro on U.S. 231, attracting stares and a few waves.
[...]
If all goes as planned, he'll ride his lawn mower to the Gulf, dip his toe in the surf and "turn left."
"I'll go through Georgia and turn north. I've always wanted to go to Maine," he said.

Here's another guy whose obituary will not lack for interesting material. I was captivated by his ability to simply shake off "common sense" in pursuit of happiness. Then today I read Quitting the Paint Factory: On the virtues of idleness , an essay by Michael Slouka that finally brought this all together for me:

Increasingly, it seems to me, our world is dividing into two kinds of things: those that aid work, or at least represent a path to it, and those that don't Things in the first category are good and noble; things in the second aren't. Thus, for example, education is good (as long as we don't have to listen to any of that "end in itself" nonsense) because it will presumably lead to work. Thus playing the piano or swimming the 100-yard backstroke are good things for a fifteen-year-old to do not because they might give her some pleasure but because rumor has it that Princeton is interested in students who can play Chopin or swim quickly on their backs (and a degree from Princeton, as any fool knows, can be readily converted to work).
Point the beam anywhere, and there's the God of Work, busily trampling out the vintage. Blizzards are bemoaned because they keep us from getting to work. Hobbies are seen as either ridiculous or self-indulgent because they interfere with work. Longer school days are all the rage (even as our children grow demonstrably stupider), not because they make educational or psychological or any other kind of sense but because keeping kids in school longer makes it easier for us to work. Meanwhile, the time grows short, the margin narrows; the white spaces on our calendars have been inked in for months. We're angry about this, upset about that, but who has the time to do anything anymore? There are those reports to report on, memos to remember, emails to deflect or delete. They bury us like snow.
The alarm rings and we're off, running so hard that by the time we stop we're too tired to do much of anything except nod in front of the TV, which, like virtually all the other voices in our culture, endorses our exhaustion, fetishizes and romanticizes it and, by daily adding its little trowelful of lies and omissions, helps cement the conviction that not only is this how our three score and ten must be spent but that the transaction is both noble and necessary.
[...] All of which leaves only the task of explaining away those few miscreants who out of some inner weakness or perversity either refuse to convert or who go along and then, in their thirty-sixth year in the choir, say, abruptly abandon the faith. Those in the first category are relatively easy to contend with; they are simply losers. Those in the second are a bit more difficult; their apostasy requires something more ….. dramatic. They are considered mad.

In the final analysis, Slouka relates the obsession with work and the antipathy toward idleness to proto-fascist ideals of the early 20th century -- and lays out his belief that America's obsession with "success" (as achieved through work) is destroying our democratic society. Idleness, as distinct from the commercialized idea of "Leisure", is necessary because it allows time for reason and informed decision-making:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due.
[...]
Could the Church of Work – which today has Americans aspiring to sleep deprivation the way they once aspired to a personal knowledge of God – be, at base, an anti-democratic force? Well, yes. James Russell Lowell, that nineteenth-century workhorse, summed it all up quite neatly: "There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
Quite so. The mind, however, particularly the mind of a citizen in a democratic society, is not a boat. Ballast is not what it needs, and steadiness, alas, can be a synonym for stupidity, as our current administration has so amply demonstrated. No, what the democratic mind requires, above all, is time; time to consider its options. Time to develop the democratic virtues of independence, orneriness, objectivity, and fairness. Time, perhaps (to sail along with Lowell's leaky metaphor for a moment), to ponder the course our unelected captains have so generously set for us, and to consider mutiny when the iceberg looms.

So what does all this mean for me? I don't know quite yet. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

There are some things I'd like to do that have always seemed somewhat incompatible with my day-to-day Office Space existence. For example, I'm attracted to the idea of iving in a foreign country long enough to become comfortable speaking the language. (The top candidates for this would be Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, or somewhere in Central or South America, since I already have a slight linguistic headstart in German and Spanish. But I'm not all that picky.)

I've also been thinking about my longterm professional plans. Right now my job is split between a traditional techie job and managing an internal research library and archive. The techie stuff is lucrative, but there are big parts of it that I just don't enjoy that much, at least the way my job is currently structured.

On the other hand, I really enjoy a lot of the work I do in the library and archives. The problem is that my company really doesn't place that much value on this. Officially it's 15% of my job description. And in the constant battles over time and resources, things like organizing 70 years of photographic prints take a backseat to fixing laptops.

Furthermore, while I've had some training in archival management and now have several years of on-the-job experience, I'm smart enough to know how much I don't know. Most organizations that take this sort of thing seriously look for degrees in history, preservation, and library science. My liberal arts, journalism, and technology management background is a good start, but it's probably not enough to open some of the most interesting doors in the field. So I've been pondering what sort of course correction it would take to steer my career toward greener pastures. Perhaps the most likely scenario involves quitting my job and going back to school full time for a few years. (Maybe pursuing program like this.)

Of course, all these major life-changes would represent a huge financial hit -- something I'm still working through. But they might also be an opportunity to escape the corporate quicksand into which I fear I'm sinking. Maybe it's time for me to escape.

Dissonance

2004-12-14T23:52:00.000-06:00

The Nashville Symphony's performance of Handel's Messiah (at the Ryman) ended at precisely the same time as the WWE Smackdown at the Gaylord Entertainment Center. Walking down lower Broadway, it was pretty easy to tell who had been to which event.

fade to orange

2004-12-13T03:58:00.000-06:00

I was pouring bleach into the washing machine, and leaned the bottle against my dark gray t-shirt. Apparently there was a bit of bleach on the bottom. Now my shirt has an orange parabola emblazoned across the front. Drat.

On the other hand, since the shirt's ruined anyway, this may be a perfect opportunity to play with my new Clorox Bleach Pen (TM). Maybe if I further disfigure the shirt people will think I meant to do it in the first place.