subject to change without notice

Yay! Christmas is over!

2005-12-28T14:01:00.000-05:00

Christmas was good, good in the way it was supposed to be, with lots of food, friends and good times. I got lots of toys to play with. I got a really really really nice microscope so I can look at cells and the things that live on my toothbrush. I got a talking Ann Coulter doll (which satisfies my inner child's wish for the Barbie I never got when I was a kid), books I wanted, and the first four seasons of South Park on DVD, which I will always cherish. And my housemate hunted down a children's book that I had when I was a kid that I always remembered and wanted to have again! Butterball the Little Chick! It was truly a child-like Christmas! On December 25th in the evening, I then went down my wish list and bought the things I didn't get, to complement the things I did.

One of the things I'm kind of proud of is that I didn't overdo everything like I always do...I plan big complicated meals and desserts and bake lots of bread and cookies, and have lots and lots of dirty dishes afterwards and a fair amount of resentment that someone who lives here is not pitching in to help. This time I cooked 2.5 meals, but they were fairly simple and easy to serve and clean up after. I announced after Christmas morning breakfast that I had pretty much had it with the kitchen and everyone else could pitch in to get the dinner meal together--I had already prepped the potatoes au gratin, the bean casserole, the artichoke dip, etc. and that needed to be done was cook/serve. I still ended up finishing the dishes that were left two days later, but at least I had one relaxing holiday evening.

I felt the urge this year to roll out the old Slovak traditional food that we always had for Christmas eve. My grandmother always cooked Christmas Eve dinner: pierogies of many stuffings, halupki (cabbage rolls) and I had intentions of making the vile sour mushroom soup I used to loathe as a kid, but decided to let it go at pierogies and halupki. I will make it sometime before the season ends though. We also made artery corks (aka roski) whose dough consists of equal parts cream cheese and butter, and a bit of flour to hold it together. I was trying to go easy on myself, so I looked all over for lekvar (plum/prune filling) but no store in town carried it. I made my own, which was much better in the end; used canned apricot filling for the rest of them. There was also shortbread and fudge, holiday sugar cookies and gingerbread. Found a great gingerbread recipe...different from any I'd seen before and delicious to die for!

I seriously suffered from post-holiday depression on the 26th. There was no way I could do anything to keep my eyes open. I napped a lot the whole day, and counted the minutes until I could pop an Ambien and sleep through the rest of the night. I did much the same thing the next day too. I would be doing it today but I am having plumbing work done, and we're going to the movies later today to see the Narnia movie, which I hear is pretty good. I really want to see the Potter movie too, but don't know when that will happen.

I'm so glad my friends Clay and Christopher drove down from Pennsylvania to spend Christmas here...I miss them a lot. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and thus their presence was really really special. Christopher LOVES his new job, and I'm so happy for him; I hope Clay finds work soon, and I'm sure that soon he will. The two pups of theirs are staying here with us and that makes 6 dogs total. You'd think it would be chaos, but it's really not. The only thing that bothered me was that the weather did not cooperate this week.

I got a nod, weather-wise, for a white Christmas--it snowed big fat flakes all day and covered everything. Then the temp shot up and everything melted by evening. But the only problem I'm having is that it's not cold. I wanted things to stay frozen so that there would be a minimum of muddy paws. Alas, that was not to be. But it all works out, and I'm sure I'll get my cold weather soon. It's almost 60 degrees today, which is unbelievable.

So the only traumatic holiday left is New Year's Eve and New Year's day. I plan on drinking a bottle of Pinot Grigio and going to bed when the urge hits me (which is getting earlier and earlier every year...to hell with midnight and auld acquaintances and confetti. I want my sleep! And then it's back to school and work. But it is a great break and a great holiday and I'm very pleased with it all, which is unusual. I'm normally the scrooge in the house!

Yay! It's Christmas!

2005-12-25T08:53:00.000-05:00

One of these days, I'll actually go to midnight mass instead of watching the Pope do it on TV. That's how I brought in my Christmas Day. Then I went upstairs and watched a Christmas South Park, which made me feel better than the former. Merry CHRISTMAS, everyone!

I know I'm going to inspire lots of hatred and chants of racial profiling, but this bothered me this morning (regarding a nuke-sniffing program the US government is engaging in): "

Some experts question the legality of a program that involves entering private property to take air samples.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the FBI-NEST sniffing was based on race and religion instead of common sense. "Fear seems to trump constitutional rights for Muslims," Hooper said. "We're very concerned that Muslims would be targeted simply because they're Muslims.""

OK. Let's take a moment to enumerate the details of the situation:

Years ago, a jihad (holy war) was declared on the infidels (Westerners, or the US and sympathizers of the US who are not Muslim).
Those who declared this jihad claim to be Muslim mujahadin(holy warriors).
Since the fatwa (holy official declaration), many heinous attacks have been carried out by Muslim mujahadin.
- USS Cole
- Somalia
- World Trade Center I
- World Trade Center 9/11
- London and Madrid train bombings
- Many others that are slipping my mind right now
So called 'sleeper cells' exist in many Western countries, people fitting into society, working, having families, but waiting for the activation orders from Allah's messages to commit more acts against the infidels. These people in these sleeper cells are Muslims.
Muslims generally worship in Mosques.
Not always, but generally, Muslims tend to come from or are descended from ancestors who are from or who are married to people from the middle eastern Arab countries, Malaysia, India, Thailand, all over.
[imagine a 2 X 4 hovering above the head] Do I even have to say it?

Of course I do.

You've had a preponderance of evidence saying that Muslims (who may or may not be of middle-eastern descent, but who probably worship in Mosques) are committing attacks against the west and supporters of the west. So logic tells you (or should) that you should watch the segment of the population from which these perpetrators come. Would it be prudent and wise to watch the Southern Baptists in the white clapboard church down the street? Would it be an appropriate move to hang out and test the air at the local synagogue or Catholic church? According to some, it would be fair to do so, because that way, you're not targeting a specific race or creed in your surveillance. If you believe that that is a good idea, I fear that many of your brain cells have died.

And this, my friends, is why I hate religion so deeply...it always comes down to this sort of thing, one way or another. A bunch of well-intentioned but totally fucked up people get together, and factions emerge. Someone always has to be right, someone always has to be wrong. Some people interpret the writings one way, some another. The schisms grow larger and larger. Splinter groups (denominations) form. There is vague dislike that grows between them, based on who believes who is right. Outright animosity is practiced toward those whose religion deviates radically from the belief system of the group. There are disagreements, wars, crusades, jihads. And to me, it's a total mess, an embarrassment and a fraud.

Let me quote Mr. Ibrahim Hooper above: "...Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the FBI-NEST sniffing was based on race and religion instead of common sense. "Fear seems to trump constitutional rights for Muslims," Hooper said. "We're very concerned that Muslims would be targeted simply because they're Muslims."

I will stop here with the following statements, the first being:

"Well, DUH." and
Westerners are being attacked and blown up simply because they are NOT Muslims. By Muslims.

. I don't think I need to say another word.

Happy F***ing Holidays.

2005-12-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

Oh, the terrible importance of it all. Oh, the brow-furrowing and the hand-wringing. It's so terribly important that we name things so that they don't mean ANYTHING.

Then why the hell name them at all? Holiday tree. It's a goddamn CHRISTMAS tree, period. If Jewish people put up a tree for Hanukkah, then it's a Hanakkuh tree. If people who celebrate Kwanzaa put up a tree....well you get the idea. Why don't we just call it 'the tree'? No meaning at all. You tell your significant other "Why don't you put up 'the tree' (wink, wink)" or, why not say "On Monday, the president will light 'the tree' at the White House".

Non-christians put up trees at Christmas. If you don't, where do you put all the gifts? Where does Santa place them? On the sofa? Then we'd call it a freakin' holiday sofa.

And as I have been bombarded with this horribly important news in every possible media form, I have been thinking. The next wave will come, surely as night follows day, surely as liberals will always find something to complain about... the next wave will be: "How dare you disenfranchise me by not calling my most important holiday what it IS...CHRISTMAS. How dare you minimize the sanctity of the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ?"

Since when have names of special days, which are, by the way, mostly associated with religious themes, become dirty words? Since when do people recoil in horror when the "C" word is mentioned? And I don't mean THAT "C" word, I mean the multi-syllabic one.

December 25th, has been, and always will be, CHRISTMAS. Call it what it is. Or do away with it altogether. It's a celebration of whatever meaning you make of it. If Hanukkuh falls at nearly the same time, great. We'll call the days of that celebration what it is, HANUKKAH. When Muslims fast for a month during daylight hours, we call it RAMADAN, not the dieting holiday.

What's in a name? What's in a symbol? Whatever you want it to be, whatever you happen to be, whereever you happen to be. In my culture, placing the tips of my thumb and forefinger together to form a circle means "OK!", but somewhere else, I might be calling you a flaming asshole. In my house, it's a Christmas tree. The conical green trees decorated with lights and ornaments ANYWHERE in town, in offices, where ever, will always be Christmas trees to me. Don't think you can force me to think about them or refer to them any differently. For all of you hand-wringing, brow-furrowing *concerned* individuals who never want to offend anyone by saying the name of something that other people are not--go read this. It's history. It sheds light on the tradition. It will occupy your minds for a time and perhaps prevent you from thinking up more crap to whine about.

History of the Christmas Tree from the History Channel

Lesbians have reclaimed 'dyke' for themselves. African-Americans, among themselves, have successfully reclaimed the 'n' word (sorry...I can't use it). I'm reclaiming Christmas.

Losing your head.

2005-11-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

Not as much of a bummer as you might think. Mike also has his own website: http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org

I will never understand...

2005-11-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

But it sure makes me feel better writing about it. Yesterday I was thankful for a lot of things--peace and quiet, not having to cook anything, naptime, my mutts. What I was not thankful for is the news, that once again, someone has blown themselves up, this time taking not only soldiers but children and other civilians with them. In front of a freakin' hospital.

Usually when I stop to think about this sort of thing, I get so angry and baffled that I'm nearly speechless and all I can do is shake my head and open my mouth and find no words to express what I'm feeling. I simply do not understand.

I am not a religious person; I ended that a long time ago when it became clear that if I had to socialize ('fellowship') with people who claimed godliness but didn't live it (most of them)I would commit some kind of horrendous crime (sarcasm, for the sarcasm-impaired). I'd heard some of the most atrocious things--men quoting bible verses in order to talk someone into having sex with them (Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free!), stealing church/fellowship funds and saying it was for god's work... all kinds of things in my own personal experience, and scores more incidents on the news. I'd been let down and hurt. God's people were simply a thorn in my side, and I walked away to live my life as I saw fit. Without them.

OK, so I look back at some of the things I've encountered among the religious and compare that to what the so-called religious are doing today, and I'm just floored. WTF?? And I'm talking religious folks of every and any flavor. My precociousness regarding religion when I was young was quickly quashed in light of dogma as I progressed through parochial schools. I had devoured with a burning fervor a catholic catechism left lying around in my house when I was 8. I then demanded to be baptized catholic and my mother agreed. It took a couple of years, but disenchantment with the lack of logic therein caused me to drift in other directions in search of truth and sense. So I wandered around awhile, came to light in several different organizations, but moved on again. In every organization, I found actions and attitudes antithetical to so-called biblical word-of-god teaching. I was disillusioned, and remain so even today.

That is not to say, however, that I do not admire, and sometimes even envy, those people who are actually able to live good lives and still be richly involved in churches, mosques and synagogues. I am happy for them and I'm certain that the world is better for them being there and being faithful, and living peaceful,loving lives.

But that's one thing...to be involved in something you believe in, something you live daily, and are passionate about to some degree. No god I have ever read about, learned about, heard of, in the sense of god in this world today--Christian, Jewish or Muslim--encourages the kinds of atrocities I'm hearing about. There is no way I can reconcile murder with god. Period.

Keep in mind that among Jews, Christians and Muslims, there is a common god. Allah is just another name for the god westerners worship in their churches. Muhammed was a prophet, and Islam acknowledges Jesus as one of the prophets of god. It all stems from the same thing. While I am not cognizant of the particulars of Islam (I'm working on that) and I'm not a comparative religions student, I do see threads of principles woven tightly through each of these religions, each of their teachings. How can a fearsome, vengeful god (OT) become a god of peace and love (NT) and in another faction, turn into a god of, simultaneously,jihad and mayhem and peace and love?

I know how and I know why. I've always known, since the first realization that the proclamations coming out of the mouths of church leadership had some contradictory flaws in them... it's not god, it's people. The things that pissed me off most about church and religion were people. The reason god takes on so many different faces and so many different aspects is because of people. People are, to god, what the National Enquirer is to celebrities. The pictures get doctored, the headlines skewed, just to sell more papers. People proclaim what is useful to them at the time, and then go searching through sacred texts for verse they can use to illustrate/prove it. People want to be powerful, they want to be insiders, part of the elite...they want to be better than others, holier than others, more righteous than others. There is a certain pride associated with that-- everyone, without exception, is prone to this and it's part of being human.

I do believe that there is something. I'm not sure what and I am not going to be vain enough to say that I do know, or even have an idea of what that something is. But I do know that while we are capable of great thought and immense creativity, it took a lot more than the likes of us to bring this game into self-sustaining reality. But whatever that something is, I do suspect that blowing yourself up and taking other people with you is not part of the plan, really, if there is a plan. Nor are religious theme parks, television beg-a-thon ministries, and snake handling.

Left to its own devices, the world sustains itself. My yard is a prime example...without me out there whacking off branches and trimming and pruning and imposing my structure on it, it takes care of itself and things grow and blossom and reseed and grow and spread out; the milkweed sustains the monarchs, and I didn't plant milkweed--it just showed up one year, to my delight. The seeds sustain the birds and chipmunks. The decaying old growth sustains new growth. And I don't have to do a darn thing. The plants sustain insects, who also sustain the birds. Not a lot we have to do. But I'm not really comfortable with that and I have to go out there and 'make sense of it'. I guess it's the same with some people... they have to impose order, a story, a reason, on everything or they aren't comfortable. And that's what religion is to me... someone imposing a structure on something that really doesn't need it. Someone using structure to govern and control what other people think and do. And to me, that's not right. But I guess they can do what they want. I'm not going to impose my beliefs and ideas on anyone...just write about them.

Bobo's World: Church signs from hell

2005-11-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

Bobo's World: Church signs from hell This whole blog is great!! I especially liked the visuals. Here is a link to a Church Sign Generator which is kind of a hoot. I made a sign myself...slightly too irreverant to show you. Church signs, when they're not pissing me off, can be amusing and funny.

Bitch, bitch bitch....

2005-11-21T19:46:00.000-05:00

It seems like all I do on this thing is bitch and moan about stuff. I have to stop that. Someday. But first, what the HELL? I spent a goodly amount of time rearranging and playing with my site, ala-murphala.com. Not to mention this blogspot template. I enjoyed every last minute of it. I was surrounded by CSS guru's books, playing with CSS layout and (figuratively) dancing and singing at the thought of not having to nest tables to control the layout of my web page. So, I'm testing with my index page in Firefox (yeah, I know, half of the people out there are still using IE, but hey) and I finally get it to look exactly the way I want it. Great. Spacing is pretty, it shows up great in Netscape and Firefox... IE, not so much.

The strangest part of it all is that, well, my CSS (cascading style sheets which are supposed to cascade to all the pages in the site--consistency across all pages) doesn't seem to cascade all the way across my site. Go to any other page, it looks like complete crap. All the padding and spacing goes away. This is in firefox, and these pages look suspiciously similar to how IE renders the index page...

It's got to be something stupid. Evenutally when I switch to the mysql/php method of creating the pages, I'm sure I'll get a much better rendering and much more consistent than editing individual html pages. However, I still can't figure out how the hell that happens. A line-by-line between the 'standard' portions of the pages reveal no difference at all in tagging. I don't know. I'll spend more time staring at it tonight.

Tonight, I will continue to see how I f***ed up the code to make my blog entries less...long. That is, abbreviated. It looked idiot-proof--just plug in code and you're there. Yeah. Right. :-)

Almost time for Turkey Day! I'm thankful for the time away from work and the peace and quiet. I am NOT thankful for the fact that my adopted (and only) family, Clay and Christopher, live several hundred miles away, Christopher having left for the lure of filthy lucre and tenure. I'm glad that he's finally getting recognized at least in part, for his abilities and knowledge...something that never seemed to happen here. It will be the first Thanksgiving celebration in years without them. It will be lonely. And sad. And Christopher won't get his mushroom soup and green bean casserole, which Clay refuses to make. But there's always Christmas. Hopefully we can work out alternate visits to each others' homes for the holidays... other families do it, so why not us?

All I have to say in closing is that Medium in 3D will be worth all the hype as I just spent 40 minutes figuring out a pair of home-made 3D glasses out of my telescope filters, velcro, and cardboard, since TV Guide was so incredibly cheap as to only include one pair free in their magazine. Did they really expect each member of the family to buy a damn TV Guide just for a pair of glasses? Hmmmph.

Way too long since I...

2005-11-19T10:34:00.000-05:00

...have blogged and been creative on my site. Know why? I work too damn much.

Know what? I'm disgusted at that. There comes a time when you have to say enough is enough, and try to move on. I don't think I'm going to try to play catch-up for over 2 months of no blogging, but it is worth saying that those months haven't been easy or pleasant.

I suffer from what used to be mild bipolar disorder (sometimes it seems it's getting worse). It has been under control for about 8 years now. I still see people recoiling in horror/surprise when I tell them, but I don't care...one of the things I believe strongly in is that mental health issues shouldn't cause people to be horrified, or feel uneasy around those who have them.

For one thing, no one understands what it is like to be inside of me dealing with this. By no one, I mean nobody in my life, unless of course they know they have the same disease. So this is where my reaction to work comes in. (No, this isn't going to be a complete non sequitur as a testament to bipolarism!) I have been miserable there. Recently, I changed medications, or rather, dropped one and went to larger doses of the other things I was taking, namely, dropped fluoxetine (vitamin P) completely and started on 450 mgs of bupropion along with a mood stabilizer. Seemed OK at the time. In fact, I liked that I had emotions again. Let me digress...fluoxetine, otherwise known as Prozac, had the effect of making me so calm that absolutely nothing bothered me...I was able to handle any kind of crisis with aplomb. Take this party I threw the year I started on the drug...

The year was, hell, I don't remember the year. However, I do know that during the Christmas prior to the party, I had purchased a live tree, the first one since I had returned from Japan, the land of Christmas as a big sex date holiday (that story is for another entry...). I went to erect it (no pun intended) and the wood was so soft on the tree that the screws for the stand didn't hold it. It just kept falling over. I got it to stay put after an extreme amount of frustration and loud cursing, and started decorating it...hanging lights, those fragile little ornaments. I decided to sit down and take a break and have a smoke (back in the day, I was self-medicating with nicotine) and I hear this soft, whispery noise behind me as the supposedly stable tree behind me slowly falls over AGAIN! This caused a complete meltdown. Where most people would just say "Shit" and move on, I went into a complete hissy fit and ran upstairs, slammed my bedroom door, and cried piteously for an hour. This was typical behavior for me...everything got to me.

It was springtime. I was throwing a massive birthday party for all of my friends who had birthdays clustered around mine. My dear friends Clay and Christopher, my housemate Elizabeth, Becky from work all were born in the same span of Aries/Taurus and we generally made it a 'thing' to celebrate everyone's day all at once. So I had invited about 100 people, I had lots of food and drink, a cake, and this was also kind of an unveiling of my house, since not too many people had ever been there. It was the morning of the party and I was getting ready. I was cleaning like a crazy woman, and moving things into the laundry room in order to have more room in the house for warm bodies.

So here is the laundry room. Full of stuff. Dog food, an old kitchen table, a metal shelf or two, one of which was nailed to the wall...of course the washer and dryer, and boxes of stuff I hadn't bothered to unpack. The aforementioned shelves--they were crammed with stuff--cans of paint (one of which was a particularly pretty shade of dark blue/green), leftover roofing shingles, tools, and other stuff. I had gone back into the living room to grab another armload of stuff to move back there when I heard it happen. With a loud crack, the shelf that was nailed to the wall fell. That happened to be the shelf with the shingles and green paint. That shelf, in turn, knocked over the other shelf that was at a right angle to it. That shelf, in turn, fell on top of the old kitchen table which had laundry on it, and against which a 40 lb. bag of dog food was leaning.

I walked back there and looked. It was a giant mess... more giant than you can imagine. All that dog food spilled, the green paint spilled also, all the nasty grit from the roofing loosened and fell off, there was broken glass, green paint not only pooling but spattering the walls, the clothes, everything... but there was no meltdown. I looked at it, breathed a deep sigh, and said to my housemate, who had run downstairs to find out what the noise was, "Well, I think I'll sit down and smoke a cigarette and then get started on getting that cleaned up." I then walked back into the living room and did just that. This reaction was not lost on my housemate, who marveled at my calm, especially considering the part was going to be rolling in about 6 hours and I hadn't really started cooking yet.

So fluoxetine was definitely a skin-thickener. Things that irritated me, hurt me, made me feel overly emotional, didn't anymore. So when I stopped it, it was strange to want to cry at sappy commercials again, or at funerals, or when I said good bye to friends who were moving away. It was also good to feel extraordinarily happy again, and loving. But I wasn't used to it at all. It was kind of disturbing actually. But I felt that I needed to come to terms with normal feelings and live with them again. So I ignored the fact that the emotions were progressing in a complete downward spiral.

Bring in work. Work started on just about the last date I blogged back in August. I work for a university, so summer vacation was over and it was time to get back into the classroom. Back into the office. Back into a strange situation. This would be the first semester back without Bill, my boss/coworker who had passed away in July from mesothelioma. It would be the first semester without my friend Clay working with me. And over the summer, other people I worked with had gone through some epiphanies which made them noticeably absent from the office when they werne't teaching or holding office hours. It was pretty darn lonely there.

Add onto that the new boss, who wanted to spread duties around a little more evenly. So, some of the things I wanted to give up were given to another colleague, and some things I didn't want to give up were taken away and assigned to someone else. This did not sit well with me. Doing a good job, in my mind, means you get more work to do. Taking work away, therefore, meant I sucked. Take away the drug, and BOY did I suck. Boss man was never around, and when he was, he would sit in my office for half an hour and distract me from what I was doing, and then shoot holes in what I was doing, and question what I was doing. Then he would leave. Luckily, he wasn't around much to be able to do that very often. Once every couple of weeks was more than enough. But all these little things were enough to destroy me. There were other things which caused me anger and pain regarding how I was (or wasn't) treated there, but suffice it to say that I descended into a giant black pit. Just the thought of going into work made me want to vomit. I went anyway though, and stayed long enough to teach and hold office hours.

It was yesterday, my fourth day of sitting around in my pajamas and playing Will and Grace solitaire at NBC's website and bursting into sporadic tears and feeling like vomiting, that I realized that I was sick again. I was a non-functioning human being who couldn't find the strength to get up and get dressed, start writing code, read my students' research papers, look in the mirror, concentrate. And yes, wishing to die was part of it, and that's always the big old alarm bell in my head. When dying seems like a good idea, even in passing, it's time to address the situation. Yesterday, I had a burst of energy and decided to go shopping with my housemate. I drove. I dropped her off in front of a store, and before she was fully out, I spied a parking space and started driving toward it. I was completely distracted, unable to concentrate, even on driving. I had her drive the rest of the time. But that was it...called the doctor and asked to be put back on the drug. I was out of control, completely unable to govern my life. Time to use modern medicine to get back on track.

But though my disease governed, to a large extent, how I handled events at my job, and how they affected my emotional well-being, it didn't mean that I was making a huge deal out of a few passing comments. The things that bothered me should have bothered me. They are things that shouldn't happen, and I shouldn't be marginalized or disenfranchised in any way when I interact with my boss or observe how things I believe are important are disregarded. I cared a lot about my job and how well I did it...to the point of 12-15 hour days 6 days a week (I had to do laundry on the 7th), and I saw very painfully that my caring meant absolutely nothing to anyone. It didn't change anything at all. It just took hours out of my life that I couldn't get back, time where I could be doing stuff on my website, writing, painting...playing with my four dogs. Finishing that afghan I started to knit three years ago, that quilting I started 5 years ago...

I can't quit just yet. I need the retirement and the insurance to help pay for the drugs that help me deal with the BS at work. (Ironic, isn't it?) But that doesn't mean I can't build my dream on my off hours...start my business, write my textbooks, do my independent consulting and corporate training. And when that takes off, I can just reduce my load to teaching as an adjunct, perhaps, and not as a full-timer. That would be so nice.

Looking at the length of this, I guess I have played catchup for those months of inattention. But I'll try to be back more often in the future...I feel so much better now!

Jeez.

2005-08-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

Some higher power, of some sort, is strongly indicating to me that I should cut my losses, toss the technology, and go live on a mountain somewhere. This week has been interesting.

If it had to do with me getting my job done in an excellent and straightforward manner, well, it went south. It all started coming together at the end of July, the perfect storm--many factors working together to make my life hell. (I know, that sounds awfully self-important, but seriously, that's the way it feels!)

So I run this website for this very large course in that aforementioned well-thought-of business school. Which, of course, shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. So this week, without going into too much detail, bureaucracy bit me in the butt, big time. Not to mention a large, faceless corn-fed computer corporation. Perhaps I will start there.

Outsourcing sucks.

Every last one of the customer service reps that I've interacted with in the last year (credit cards, Real, Gateway, etc.) involves someone named Hal or Mildred (a lesser evil than Ahmar or Huma or Thanikachalam) that sincerely tries to help but somehow falls short, and is trapped, much like the telemarketers at Dial America or some other outfit like that, with their little speeches and canned responses. They see the word 'keyboard' and no matter what the context, they will go off and copy and paste the directions on how to replace it. Hard drive failure to boot? "Please be sure that there is no disk in the disk drive when you turn on your computer." I know there's no way for them to know that I'm not your average idiot who uses the pc to surf porn, but it's still very frustrating.

My Gateway 200arc (and watch for my forthcoming scathing review in epinions on this machine) has had an interesting habit ever since I received it a year ago. This is that if I rest my hands on the chassis to begin to type, it would start shooting up browser windows all over the place. In IE, it would refresh my window and I'd lose whatever I was doing...like email, or a blog entry. With my new default browser, Firefox, it launches window after window after window. In fact, One day I ran myself out of memory by just squeezing the bottom left corner of the chassis and watching it go. So I chatted with a tech.

Hazel, or whoever she was, wanted to assume control of my machine remotely to diagnose the problem. She really didn't understand that unless she could extend a hand across the ocean, there was no way she could make this happen so she could see it, as it was some kind of physical malfunction. After 45 fruitless minutes, I was given a ticket number and that was that.

Six months later, another issue arises with my display and motherboard. Zapped. I sent it in and also mentioned the strange spontaneous browser launching. They sent the machine back with a new display, a new motherboard, and they wiped my hard drive, for no apparent reason. But boy, those browsers were still shooting up. Now, my HDD is occasionally inaccessible, and the tragic "media not found" and "operating system not found, exiting Intel Boot Agent" message would come up repeatedly. I had to pull all the power, find a bootable cd somewhere, and that would help things out. Very long story short, I tried all three possible support options, telephone, chat on the computer, and email. I have had most success with the email.

I thought, like a good nerd, that if you actually mentioned what it was that needed to be fixed, they would actually appreciate that and just, well, FIX IT. I narrowed the problem down to the led and multifunction button controller, which is a board that hardwires the power and wireless buttons, the LEDs and those handy little one-step launch your email, browser or explorer window with one push, together, and then it connects to the motherboard via a connector ribbon. They are not programmable. But certainly, you'd think you could disble them, somehow. Registry entries? Something? After asking this to the chat tech, he or she simply disappeared. I think my last entry in the conversation was "Are you alive over there?". No response. I called. It was some American guy, but he as much as admitted he was not affiliated with Gateway and that he worked for an outside company. He didn't listen either. I was sitting there with my keyboard popped out and the connector to the controller unplugged and asking him if this board could be replaced or altered, and he wanted to tell me, oh so slowly, how to remove my keyboard. He wanted to know if the key was stuck. He thought I was hitting something as I typed. He finally managed to do a "hello? hello? " escape. Next was the email, and I just went off on the poor guy. He turned out to be very cooperative when I mentioned writing each and every Gateway executive and then making sure all 1400 students in my course would know that, as I stopped lecture to reseat my hard drive as he suggested, I was using a Gateway product. Amusingly, his English grammar got worse and worse with each progressive email message...he had to go from copying and pasting steps to actually saying something, but that was OK...at least he didn't 'accidentally' delete my mail and ticket number from the system. Soon, I hope, I will have a working notebook again.

To be continued...I think I need to save some of the catharsis for tomorrow sometime when I'm crawling up a wall and trying to get caught up. It gets better...not.

Back to work...

2005-08-16T09:04:00.000-05:00

It's that time again. I work in academia with a 10-month appointment, so that means the paychecks (and the stress) start again.

My job: I went away to college and never left. That's not entirely true; I left for a brief period to join a cult, travel across the US, work as a waitress, and write for a music newspaper. I came back in my mid-twenties to finish my degree. It was an odd transition from smart-mouthed waitress ("Drink it or wear it, asshole!")to well-spoken academic. For a time, there was no transition at all, simply a switch from one to another depending on my environment. It was really f***ing with my mind at the time.

As a returning, non-traditional student, I found I was much more motivated than I was at 18. While I was motivated at 18, it was not the kind of motivation that gets you good grades in school. It was more motivation along the lines of re-inventing myself, finding out who I was, changing who I was, and proceeding from there. As a non-traditional student, I was able to buckle down and study what I wanted, and get damn good grades. Made the Dean's List many times. Name in the paper. Famous. Respected by my co-workers (NOT!) and admired by my customers (sometimes).

One gentleman, who would come for coffee after his AA meetings, would always speak to me about my studies. He noticed that I was always on the list and he liked to congratulate me and encourage me in my effort to 'better myself'. One day, he was lounging in his usual booth, and drinking his coffee. I had a table of truckers sit down at another booth and I began talking my truck-stop waitress smack with them. They thrived on my good-natured abuse, and tipped me well for the entertaining banter.

That night, however, while I got a great tip from the truckers, I got a quarter (a 25% tip rather than a 100% tip) and chastisement from the gentleman coffee drinker. He told me he was really disappointed in me and that he knew I was 'better than that [style of conversational banter]'. I found I couldn't explain the duality to him--that change of voice. I only knew that if I spoke a certain way to truckers, they related to me, and if I spoke that same way at school, people shot me looks, and vice versa. So I had to switch it off and on. And like I said before, it really messed with my mind.

Even now, when I try to imitate what I used to sound like, I can't. I imagine that's because I'm totally immersed in the university environment. Sometimes, though, I wish I could find a part-time waitress job in another town just so I could revisit that part of my life. It's probably a lot like it was for me and living in Japan and speaking Japanese. I had to be in the right context. If I came home for a visit and someone said "Hey! Say something in Japanese!" I couldn't perform, but the moment I deplaned at Narita, I was desu nee-ing and o-negai-shimasu-ing all over the place...accomplishing what I needed to accomplish in order to get me and my luggage to my home 2 hours away, and get fed. (Biru, kudasai!)

I think that initial dual-voice experience is what led me to continue my post-baccalaureate studies in Linguistics. I found that it was really fascinating to study sociolinguistics and closely examine all the various nuances of language and how we use it. Of course, linguistics led me to Japan, Japan led me to an even deeper interest in computers, which led me to where I am today, a lecturer in a well-thought-of midwest business school teaching computer applications. Which leads me right back to the beginning of this post and my initial statement of "back to work, folks!" And it's time. Enough blogging and back to the business of class prep.

Snort.

2005-08-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

I just love those little quizzes you can take that tell you who you are, or who you're like, or your libido quotient, or whatever.

So my friend Clay's blog led me to this place where I could see what biblical villain I most resembled. I thought this was intriguing. Most of the time you can pretty much guess/read the way things are going to go. In fact, most of those personality tests are easy to bias, even though they give you the same question 200 different ways to see if they can trip you up. Anyway, off I go to this site, OK Cupid to take the quiz. I think I'm answering the damn things kind of, well, middle of the road. I changed my answers in two cases because I thought I was being wimpy. You know, somewhat this...kind of that. So I eagerly awaited the results.

Rather than ruin it for you, or waste precious bandwidth by repeating the commentary, I'll let you go read it: Murphala's Biblical Villain.

All I have to say about this is 'go figure'. It got me--I was totally off on what I would come out to be. But I am relieved to know that my friend Jason almost hit the 100% mark on the scale for this Biblical Villain. I'd say he's gonna get tenure, whereas I'm just a stinkin' lecturer (in that area, anway).

In any case, it gave me an opportunity to resurrect some old memories and make the whole thing kind of amusing rather than horrifying...

'Nuff for today. Cheers!

I wonder

2005-08-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

who will win "I want to be a Hilton". I'm not exactly sure what this show is supposed to be about and exactly what these people will win. Do they get adopted by the Hiltons? Do they get their own hotel? What? Of all the people who began the show, I like Jackaay the best. She's very genuine and she has such an open heart. I hope she wins.

But hell, seriously, I enjoy a good massage and pedicure with the best of them, but I would just HATE to live in, say, Donald Trump's apartment. All that metal. Ugh. One of the contestants just said "Who wouldn't want to live in a high rise apartment in Manhattan...?" I sure wouldn't.

I used to live near Tokyo. I have to admit I miss access to a big, bright, lively city. I used to love my commute to Tokyo, and watch the landscape change from squat houses along the Odakyu line to bright lights and 'soaring' skyscapers in Shinjuku (about the only place you'll find kinda-sorta high-rise buildings in any concentration in Tokyo). I miss all the different stuff you could do, things you could see. It was never boring. Anything you wanted to do was there. Most of it could be a one-stop shop... you could go to a department store (unlike any department stores in the US) and eat a sumptuous meal, buy gourmet groceries, view rare art in exhibitions and galleries, buy clothing, go to a movie... all in the same building. It's wild.

The biggest difference between an American city and Tokyo is the safety factor. When I was there last, it was fairly safe for anyone to walk alone down the street. You could be fairly certain that the only kind of danger one would experience is from over-eager citizens who wanted to practice their English or take a picture with you. The worst thing that ever happened to me was the occasional 'personal space encroachment' in a crowded train.

I remember walking home one night (morning) from the local jazz bar in the town where I lived. It was 3:30 am. It was dark and in my town, that meant the streets were pretty much deserted. As I precariously climbed the hill that led to the shortcut to my apartment, I heard running feet behind me, approaching quickly. My heart leapt in my chest, an unfamiliar 'fight or flight' sensation, bringing me right back to late night scares from living in the States, and completely ruining my sake buzz. I whirled around, ready to face my attacker. "Sensei! Sensei!" he gasped. "How are you?" It was one of my freshman students. He had seen me stumble down the bar stairs--he had been hanging out at the Family Mart reading magazines-- and wanted to say hello. I laughed to myself...someone should tell him that he should never run up behind an American woman in the wee hours of the morning... he could get hurt.

While it was good to be able to hit the city whenever I wanted, (much like it was when I lived outside of Chicago) I always wanted to leave eventually, to be home somewhere else. I wanted the darkness and the sound of thousands of frogs croaking in the rice paddy behind my apartment. That is, until 5:20 every morning when the first Odakyu train would roll through. Then it was another day, all over again.

I can't imagine, and don't think I'd like, living in the city, at least not for very long. The winner of "I want to be a Hilton" gets an apartment in New York, diamonds, a trip to Europe, subscriptions and memberships to opera and museums... for a year. Oh, and $200,000 for pocket money. Among other things.

So, Jackaay didn't win. But I think she won ultimately, in just having the experience. I think she now knows she can go beyond what she thinks she can do. Jaret, the winner, is stuck in New York, living the good life... for a year. After that fabulous year, what will happen to him? Is he going to have to take his diamond and platinum cufflinks and go back to the trailer? Back to where he was? Or will he make the most of his time and emerge a truly changed person who will stay in Manhattan? I wouldn't want to win if I couldn't make it last. Baby steps up are good. Landing in Oz for a year and then being ripped out of it for 'home', well, that's another story.

More for today, August 8th

2005-08-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

Well, after staring at the date all day today, it hit me. Today is the 42nd anniversary of my father's death. He died on August 8th, 1963. I was 6 years old (yeah, whatever, do the math) and I barely knew him.

It surprised me, actually, that I don't think about him that often. In fact, rarely. My last memory of him was seeing him from the parking lot of St. Margaret's Hospital, framed by the window of his room on some upper floor. He was small and vulnerable-looking, and that was the closest they would let me get to him. At that time, children weren't allowed to visit in the hospital at all. You had to be at least over the age of 12 to get in to see your loved ones. I had to stand in the parking lot to get my last glimpse of my dad.

Kids weren't even allowed at funerals. Well, they were, but the mentality at the time was to leave the kid home and let him or her deal with it in therapy 20 years later. I guess this kind of hits home for me because my boss passed away this summer after a long and amazing fight against mesothelioma. He was a dad, too. He had a few more years with his daughter than my dad had with me. But even so, it's never easy for the ones left behind.

Rather than wandering down the path of "Gee, I wonder what happens when you die" in this entry, I'll just say this: I hope that whatever a person believes is going to happen to him or her after death really happens. If they believe they'll see Jesus, then I hope they do. If they believe they go to sleep, never to awaken, then, I hope that happens too. Death, after all, should not be the final disappointment.

To start with...

2005-08-08T14:36:00.000-05:00

Well, here's my first official blog entry. I swore I wouldn't succumb to the blog craze, or have my own site, but alas, here I am. (I also swore I didn't care much for reality tv and wouldn't ever watch it...ha.) My former beliefs that no one would care about what I said, or agree with what I said have gone by the wayside. *I* no longer care. I just want to speak, and mostly, to speak for me and my own satisfaction and not so much for everyone else. Should you happen upon this blog and read it, I'm really not out to impress, just express. That having been said, (and by the way, I am so sick of hearing 'With that being said' and "That having been said" as a preface to a decision or proclamation that I shall slap myself if I ever use it again, and you should too...thank you Reality TV for yet another tired phrase) look at the title of the blog itself: Subject to change without notice. People do, you know--change without notice. There's always something...the stray caveat, the rare (or not-so-rare) exception to the rule, a new light on an old topic... but that doesn't make the change a sign of a wishy-washy person. That is the sign of an aware person... a thinking person-- a person who is no less passionate about his or her beliefs than someone who remains staunchly, firmly, grounded (stuck) in their beliefs and opinions. And nothing is ever really black or white, except perhaps for the stray unimaginative web page. With that having been said, I leave you for now. [insert SLAP here]