What I'm up to

In reunion planning hell until tonight. Yesterday's errands included going to the bank to pick up $1000 in $10 bills, buying nametags and certificate blanks, and trying to teach a kinkos guy how to use a computer. Plus dealing with a major server failure back in Nashville last night.

More of the same today. Reunion is tonight, and then off to the convention for tomorrow through Tuesday. After that, maybe a trip to the farm, and/or visiting another division of the company to see a new system in action. Back to Nashville next Friday. Whee.

A manager's lament

Editor's note: What follows is a bitter rant that I will no doubt regret in the morning.

I feel like all of my interactions with senior management go something like this:

Me: Here's what I need to do what you're asking.
Them: No, what we need is the absolute bare bones estimate. No frills.
Me: That's what this is.
Them: So you're saying that this is the absolute minimum your department can get by on.
Me: Yes.
Them: Ok, here's half of that. And from now on can you also have your staff wash the windows and empty the trash?

I am really freakin' tired of this. I work for a Fortune 200 company that pays regular dividends to its shareholders, yet to hear folks around here talk you'd think we're subsisting on government cheese. I mean, we ration Post-It! notes, for crying out loud. And our mileage is reimbursed at a whopping $0.24 (bumped up from $0.22 due to the gas price increases.)

At the moment I'm supposed to feel grateful because this year they only cut my laptop budget by 50%, instead of last year's 100%. Even if the budget were fully funded, we would still have 6+ year old machines in our fleet.

And I also found out today that some of my staff had simply been ignoring a public-facing voice mail box for the last three months. I can't blame them, because I've been pressuring them to do other things, and they simply don't have enough time. But I'm utterly frustrated that the company doesn't provide us with sufficient human and financial resources to do what is expected.

At some level, I know things could be worse. I mean, there are companies in our industry that are laying people off. But at the same time, I can't help wondering if things could also be better.

Supreme court considers making history; instead goes for pizza

After agreeing to hear a controversial case on the constitutionality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the Supreme Court yesterday decided to weasel out of the debate by finding that the guy in question didn't have standing to sue. This leaves unresolved the core issue of how one reconciles the 1950s-era congressional insertion of "under God" with the the constitutional admonition that "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

"Passionate & Opinionated" vs. "Fair & Balanced"

I thought this was pretty interesting. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mark Oppenheimer points out that the most interesting and challenging teachers tend to be those with strong, passionate points of view that are expressed in the classroom:

Disagreement is a prime engine for advancing human knowledge -- and besides, hearing boldly stated opinions is tremendous fun. For smart students to feel challenged, and for dull students to lose their cobwebs, they need to learn that academic subjects are both a matter of grave moral concern and a source of exhilaration, worth becoming overheated about. They learn this not by being invited to care, but by watching professors who manifestly do care. For the college professor, the proper pedagogic role is not as facilitator, coaxing children into thinking, but as role model, showing young men and women what a thinking mind looks like.

My suggestion that professors are too mild, not sufficiently opinionated, may at first sound ludicrous. It is well known that professors take their fields too seriously. They are too inclined to think that second-century Roman coinage is a matter of ultimate concern, too willing to end friendships over what Willa Cather's lesbianism might mean for her depictions of wheat fields. But while professors may get contrary at conferences and in journal articles, those same professors are often profoundly milquetoast in their classrooms, so eager to get in opposing points of view and to assure students that no opinion could be wholly wrong that they forget to have opinions themselves.

Yes, some professors are known for "advancing an agenda," which is thought to be a bad thing. But for the most part, they hold to the well-meaning liberal dogma that students ought to figure things out for themselves. That leads to the kind of teaching that all of us dread and yet engage in: "Very good. I see where you're coming from. Now, does anyone have another point of view?"

I wonder if the same calculus applies to attempts by the news media to be "fair and balanced" (in the real sense, not the Fox sense). By trying to present every point of view equally, are journalists creating gutless prose that fails to inspire meaningful intellectual debate?

Justification for travel?

Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance--steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?

Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!

Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?

-- The conclusion of
Around the World in
Eighty Days, by Jules
Verne, which I just
finished re-reading.

What I've been up to

Sorry for the blogging dry spell... Here's what I've been up to for the last week or two:

I spent most of the week doing various things related to a conference being held here in Nashville. One of the departments I supervise at work was on tour on Saturday, so we spent a lot of time frantically straghtening things up and getting ready. I think it ended up going pretty well.

Sunday I spent part of the day preparing a Powerpoint for my own presentation on Tuesday. In the evening I made an abortive attempt to meet up with someone who was supposed to give me a ticket to one of the conference events. I spent an hour wandering around Opryland, but never found him. So instead I went home, grabbed my new camera, and went down to the riverfront where a carnival was set up. (Might post a few of the pictures when I have a chance to upload them.) I ran into a couple of other amateur photographers doing the same thing.

After that I spent a fun week out at Opryland doing various conference-related things. The conference was great -- I learned a lot, and met some pretty fascinating people. (Oh, and never let it be said that librarians don't know how to throw a party.)

Since that's over, I'm trying to dig out at work, and have also moved on to the next planning crisis: the 10-year-reunion that I'm co-chairing next weekend. While I'm in D.C. for that, I'm also going to stop in at another conference for work.

Today was the first day that I've really been able to totally goof off in a few weeks, and I took advantage -- sleeping in, watching some TV, talking to one of my Boston friends, and reading. Tomorrow I guess I should try to accomplish something a little more productive.

New camera

Last week I finally broke down and bought the new camera I've been pondering for quite a while. I don't think the DSLR is going to replace my point-and-shoot entirely -- it's a lot clunkier to carry around, for one thing. But it should give me more flexibility in terms of lenses, time-exposures, etc.

Monday evening I went walking in Shelby Bottoms for about two hours, and brought the camera along to play with. I'm still learning how to use it, and I don't think anything I took is really that great. But it was fun to experiment. I've already decided that I need to get a longer lens than the 18-55mm it came with. (Actually more like a 28-90mm lens due to the smaller digital image sensor.)

The only problem with buying lenses is that the good ones are really expensive. Like more than the camera. I think I'm probably going to let my checkbook cool down for a bit before I send more money over to B&H.

Personal Enrichment

Our company has an Internet station set up in the cafeteria, mainly so that employees without computers can access the intranet, benefits website, etc. I was at work late, and went down to get a Diet Coke. There was a guy sitting at the machine surfing, while his friend microwaved a bag of popcorn. "Check this out," he says to his friend. "Decapitations by helicopter." I glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, there were pictures.

Daily Yearly Bread

Continuing this weekend's theme of "all kitchen, all the time," I will now tell you about the loaf of bread. Not just any loaf of bread. The loaf of of Harris-Teeter brand "Premier Selection 9-Grain Enriched Bread" that I purchased last September or October and then accidentally left in a cabinet until now.

I'm sure you're expecting a scary-sounding description of mold and decay. But the actual result of this little inadvertent science experiment was even scarier. The bread looks and feels just like it did the day it left the supermarket. No mold. No staleness. Just plain old spongy American-style mass-produced bread.

Apparently they pump this stuff so full of preservatives now that it can basically stand decades in storage with little loss of its basic bread nature. Let's contrast this to bread from the local bakery, which tastes great, but basically starts going bad after a day or two.

So obviously store-bought bread has some powerful chemical juju going on. For all we know, Harris-Teeter just made one giant batch of super-durable bread made in 1987, and they've been selling it ever since. Kind of scary, if you ask me.

Truck Balls

I'm thinking about building a new Linux box to use as a media center/development server/web server/file server/etc. Ideally I'd like to get one that can just fit under my desk rather than taking up a whole shelf in my storage room. So I did a google search for "small form factor." It came back with helpful links to a variety of small PC vendors. But one of the adword results did't quite seem to fit:

I ask you, my friends, is this a great country or what?

My kingdom for some soap

Speaking of better living through chemistry, what I wouldn't give right now for some Boraxo. This morning I went to painting project sponsored by Hands on Nashville, and managed to cover my hands with latex paint. Boraxo is the only thing I know that gets this stuff off without a fight. Maybe I'll go on a soap expedition in a few minutes.

Kitchen declared federal disaster area

In addition to the Grape-Nuts fiasco (see below), I am also dealing with a massive ant infestation in my kitchen. When they first showed up, they just went after some hard candy that had been sitting in a mason jar on my windowsill for a few months. I got rid of that temptation, but new they were interested, and immediately commissioned ant-explorers to forage in new areas. Like the cabinets, the toaster, the sink, and just about everywhere else.

So yesterday morning I made an emergency trip to Cumberland Hardware. If you're imagining Home Depot, think again. This is the sort of old-school hardware shop that has been exterminated by the big boxes in most places. The moment you walk into the tiny shop, one of the proprietors quizzes you about what you're looking for. They then instantly locate it from amidst the floor-to-ceiling clutter. Once I asked for a lightbulb that they didn't have, but helpfully they sent me to another shop two doors down. I'd give you a web address, but they apparently don't have one. Which figures -- their main concession to modern technology is a cash register powered by a metal crank on its side!

Anyway, they sold me this stuff called Terro. It's a little bottle filled with clear goop that looks sort of like sugar syrup. And from what I understand, that's basically what it is, albeit with a dollop or two of boric acid thrown in for good measure. The idea is that you leave this stuff laying around, the ants go into a feeding frenzy on it, take a bunch of it home to the missus, and the die a horrible death. So far they're definitely snarfing it down as fast as I can ladle it out, but I haven't noticed a marked decrease in the number of ants marching in.

Too bad there aren't more of these guys around here.

A major Grape-Nuts related incident

For breakfast this morning, I was going to open a new box of Grape-NutsTM cereal. But the plastic liner in the box was very stubborn and refused to open. In hindsight, I guess using a pair of scissors would have been a good idea. But being a manly-man, I instead opted for the brute force method. And it worked -- sort of. The bag suddenly tore wide open, causing a massive Grape Nut explosion the likes of which have never before been seen. There are now Grape Nut nodules embedded in every nook and cranny of the kitchen. There should be a warning label on those things.

Graduation Day

Close, but not quite...

A guy in our department just got a phone call from someone asking if this was the Special Ed. Department. He had to think about it about it for a minute before he decided that it was a wrong number.

More on new Blogger features

I just tried enabling Blogger's new built-in comment feature. I then disabled it and went back to YACCS.

The new commenting interface seems to be headed toward the livejournal model, where commenters are either members of Blogger and post under their username, or must post as "Anonymous." I have never liked this, since I don't think it's fair that blog-less friends, Movable Type users, etc. should have to suffer the indignity of being known as "anonymous." The YACCS model allows anyone to enter contact info in on the fly, which is more democratic.

On another note, I also turned on the new "post by e-mail" feature, which sounds pretty cool. If this works, it means I should be able to blast out blog entries from my SmartPhone. (I've tried to do this before in other ways, but it's never been very reliable.) I'll give it a try in a bit.

I don't blog for a day...

... and they change everything! Not sure how I feel about this freaky new version of blogger, but it does seem to have some interesting features.

gak

Since I'm just about done with classes, I was totally looking forward to a weekend of freedom. I had been thinking all about what to do with it. For example, finally going to see that Frist Center exhibit that will be disappearing in a few days. Or maybe trying to watch some horses. Or maybe just running some errands around town.

Instead I spent today in orbit between the bed and the futon, feeling like crud warmed over. I seem to have picked up some sort of nasty head cold that is sapping my will to live. Hopefully with a lot of sleep it will blow over soon.

On the good side of the scale, the brother who was laid off back around Thanksgiving, finally found another job -- and it sounds like it's a pretty good one. Yay.

The Song

Ok, you've suffered long enough. The lyrics below were from "The Cranes," sung by Patty Larkin on the album "Red = Luck."

Name that tune...

Inspired by Danielle, who was, in turn, inspired by someone else, we will now play a fun game.

1. Grab the nearest CD.
2. Put it in your CD-Player (or start your mp3-player, I-tunes, etc.).
3. Skip to Song 3 (or load the 3rd song in your 3rd playlist)
4. Post the first verse in your journal along with these instructions. Don't name the band, nor the album-title.

On their wings they are returning.
On their wings they fly.
Shadows fade; the sun is burning... high.

Every day the light stays longer.
Every day you sigh.
Shadows fade; you start to wave goodbye.

If you're thinking of leaving, you're leaving at a very bad time.

No Googling Allowed. Which performer performed this song on which album?