| a brief tribute to mr hobbes. |
[Aug. 14th, 2008|10:55 pm] |
I'm not near home at the moment; Carin and I are on our annual trip out to Iowa to see her family and the state fair; we've also done a family reunion and I've met some relatives I didn't know before. I've had a lovely time, and Carin's been great out here. We hung out with her friend James, I got to see her show off her wits, and I got my first ride on a motorcycle. Plenty of other stuff as well.
But I'm not writing about that today; I'm writing to mourn the death of a pet back home this morning. At left is Hobbes as he appeared around his fourteenth birthday. He was the first pet I ever named, and he predated my adolescence. We had him since he was a kitten; he was the son of another one of our cats. He was a fixture in my parents' place since I was in grade school, and I'll readily admit that of all the cats in that house through my teenage years and beyond, I always had a special affinity for Hobbes.
He was quite a scrapper in his younger days; he didn't get the memo that he'd been neutered, and kept getting into fights with raccoons and such, which is (I think) where he got that notch on his right ear. He hunted quite a bit in his earlier years, but more recently had stuck to eating wet food, cutely huffing terrible tuna breath on people, and sunning himself for lazy afternoons on end on the asphalt in front of the house or on the deck in back.
He wasn't euthanized; he had some kind of sudden respiratory trauma which put him into a coma, and he died before the vet got there. He didn't suffer much; he had a long and happy life with a loving family, and spent his last days enjoying the sun's warmth. A good life, for a cat.
We'll be burying his body in the backyard the next time the whole family can be together.
He is missed. |
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| comments on the public domain boob project. |
[Jul. 23rd, 2008|01:18 am] |
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The gilded goal I seek is the most precious of all. Further enlightenment. –Thanos, Warlock and the Infinity Watch #10
I'm clearly not particularly famous for making timely posts. Heck, since my last post, I've gotten two jobs--the first was kind of temporary; I left it as soon as I got a better offer, but I did give them a whole month's notice. (And then they booted me early so they could drop my health insurance. Classy.) It was such a small shop that I'd have been doing them significant harm if I'd just skipped out. That, and I'd wagered that they needed me too much to perform the standard IT-industry action of "oh, so you've given us notice--well, thanks, but please leave now". Turns out I was half-right. The previous job title was "Linux System Administrator", which was something I'd been hoping for for quite a while; my new job title still hasn't been decided, but it'll be a superset of the previous, and I'll be doing it in a university library. A fabulous university library.
I've also resurrected the hard drive on a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 tablet after partitioning and formatting it outside of the tablet; this has previously been considered impossible, and while it's not easy, I did manage it. (I believe that the drive controller does some weirdly nonstandard stuff. Whatever it is, I figured out a way around it.)
Ah, but what to write about? I'll leave off giving a life update for now, though there's plenty going on with both me (I finished school again, and actually went to graduation this time) and Carin (she scored some sweet academic awards at the end-of-year art show for her fantastic white-pencil drawings), I'll turn my attention outwards for now. I've been spending more time dropping comments in various other places, places which take OpenID logins. (Isn't that so, so much better than signing comments with OpenPGP, which may be the clunkiest idea ever? I have a damp, sticky love for PGP, but that tool is so wrong for the job at hand it makes my teeth ache.) Because I keep spreading around the link to come here, I should have something of interest even to people who don't know me personally. (Especially since Jonathan Schwarz linked to me! I'm ridiculously flattered.)
While going on about how much I like my comments seems uncomfortably close to publically huffing my own armpits, I'm still going to proceed.
The so-called Open Source Boob Project (far better termed the Public Domain Boob Project) was a proposal from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) theferrett, who--and I'm abbreviating very, very heavily here--discovered that being in a situation among friends at a con where he could comfortably ask women if he could feel their breasts made him quite happy and exorcised some demons he'd been carrying around since high school. Reading this, it felt kind of wrong, but I couldn't exactly put my finger on why. Recalling Jonathan Schwarz's ever-useful advice that power--which is to say, privilege--makes you stupid, I took heart. See, Schwarz is writing about a very special kind of stupid. Normally, stupid is very hard to fix, but this kind can be addressed simply by paying attention to people not blinded by privilege, poaching enlightenment from them. So I paid attention and read a lot of comments until I understood why theferrett was the target of such anger.
The problem, as I saw it, comes from a breakdown in the functioning of the Golden Rule. Presumably these guys would be happy to have women come up to them and ask to lustfully fondle their secondary sexual characteristics. (Perhaps attractive women should be specified--after all, someone with a throbbing sense of entitlement is going to have a high opinion of himself. And so the standard method of implementing empathy fails even more.) But the symmetry is broken because being female comes with a standard package of depressingly justified fear and distrust which is pretty alien to anyone who grew up male.
To try and explain what this means to people with a shorter attention span, misia posited the (self-explanatory) Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project; I wrote two comments there. The primary response seemed to be that everyone was shocked, shocked that anyone would speak of doing violence to anyone's tender testes. The point--that being groped is threatening, even if it takes the thought of testicular trauma to get dudes to understand that concept--flew over the intended audiences' heads, as did every other attempt to explain it, even when it was broken down into easily understandable pieces.
My understanding arrived in bits and pieces as I read. In an earlier comment, for instance, I refer to privilege as something that can be shed. This is flat wrong; privilege can be acknowledged and dealt with on an individual level while one works at tearing it down as a group phenomenon, but that's not what I was asking for there. Subtleties aside, it was easy enough to alliteratively excoriate people who refused to get it... but self-righteousness is a cheap drug, and one I shouldn't drink of too deeply.
In general, it's easy to chew these people out, because the alpha dork they cluster around is one creepy dude. I don't use "dork" in order to other theferrett; this disturbs me largely because I find him not so different from me a few years ago, in my more bitter and entitled moments. I take this personally, not without cause:
A decent human being might, in the intervening two decades since high school, have engaged in honest appraisal of their own privilege, might have understood that high school sucked for other people too, might have tried to hone their honor and morality so as to live a life to be proud of (the best revenge), might have gotten over that adolescent resentment of women for cruelly depriving men of those sweet sweet groping privileges, might have, in short, grown the fuck up.
But then, that person wouldn't have come up with TheFerrett's brilliant little boob-therapy idea, would they?
I hated, hated being tarred as a pathetic excuse for a person during my own adolescence; I hated being repeatedly told that I was a disgusting little troll and that no one would ever want me. I'm reasonably proud of the person I've grown into; the best response to those insults is to try to live in such a way that I'm living evidence that being introverted, fannish and good at math doesn't inevitably lead to cheeto-stained mouthbreatherdom. (The primary benefit, of course, lies in not being a cheeto-stained mouth-breather.)
TheFerrett, with his highly-visible asshattery (which he clearly sees nothing wrong with), is contributing to the cheeto-stained mouth-breather image. He's not just monumentally insensitive; he's not just driven stupid by power; he's not just a creepy rape apologist who openly cops to exploiting women in shady circumstances--he's also a living, breathing example that fairly shouts from the rooftops that it's okay to hate on geeks. He is not helping.
It's like the insult garnish on a shit salad. I've made an effort to link to all of my comments made during this thing, but since I was active in some rather large comment sections, I'll just dump links to those here to satisfy my urge to archive everything:
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) sf_drama: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
synecdochic: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Finally, the generally simian level of understanding from nearly every male participant in the conversation meant that my contributions were graded on one hell of a curve. Upon seeing some of the reactions I got, Carin was a bit skeeved, and seemed to think that I was trolling for internet blowjobs, or, as they're called in at least one corner of the internet-feminist community, "a cookie". She wasn't the only one to notice. I'll cop to being ridiculously pleased at someone thinking I was female, not because I'm going to go try to sneak into MWMF now, or because I'm going to start hitting on people, but because it means I got it, at least a little--I understood the situation from someone else's viewpoint, and now my perspective is a bit broader. And that is what I was aiming for. |
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| they come in threes. |
[Nov. 6th, 2007|10:50 pm] |
It is, of course, no more than a stupid, stupid superstition that disasters appear in threes. This didn't stop it from happening to me.
The first two events, occurring shortly after my last post in quick succession, were the loss of my job and the loss of our pet hamster, Simon. After months and months of having my pay and benefits quietly shortened, the client finally decided to cut me from their staff. Brian had no other work for me, so I'm laid off. I should have seen it coming, and I suppose I did, but I was hoping that I could slide through until I finished librarian school, which is certainly not now the case. I haven't been unemployed since I started working more than two and a half years ago. It feels like a never-ending weekend which gets ever more ominous as I do construction work for my father (the house is, again, being fixed up) and do some independent coding on a sketchy sort-of-volunteer basis which I might eventually get paid for. I've had an interview and a few calls, but mad cheese has not been forthcoming. I have savings, Carin works, and I have plans for this sort of thing--many of my expenses are less than essential--but I do miss getting books twice a month.
Simon had been off-and-on ill since the last time she got sick. She wasn't cleaning herself, she wasn't taking food, and as we were driving up to the veterinary hospital, she died in Carin's hands. My parents were kind enough to provide us with a space in their little pet graveyard out back, and we buried her that night. I didn't know her that well, but she'd gotten much friendlier after the first time she'd gotten sick (with the abscess behind her eye), and was okay with being held by people. I knew she was important to Carin, but I didn't think I'd miss her quite as much as I did.
I remarked, shortly thereafter, that I was waiting for the third shoe to drop, and drop it did. I am ill again. Having not bothered to get follow-up medical care in the four years since I was last sick, it seems that things had gotten worse--that is, they've spread throughout the whole of my large intestine. I underwent a fascinating diagnostic procedure, for which the preparatory process was the worst part (drinking two liters of polyethylene glycol with electrolytes was nearly impossible; I don't know how people ever drank four), and am now on a large pile of daily drugs, one of which has a small but nonzero change of causing terrifying psychological side effects.
I also learned why one goes under sedation on an empty stomach. When I woke up, they gave me some crackers, which I enjoyed heartily. When I got back home, I promptly threw them back up, partly through my nose. I don't remember the last time I expelled the contents of my stomach before that, but I think this will be a memorable landmark. Never before have I been so confused as to whether to blow my nose or to snort-and-spit.
Through all of this, Carin has been particularly wonderful and supportive. I expected her to be angry at me for losing my job; she wasn't. She's been understanding about us being on a budget, and she cared for me far more than she had to while I was essentially bedridden. Her already-formidable skills have been growing by great galloping leaps. I knew this, but it was nice to go to Portfolio Day with her on Saturday and watch the cranky-acting admissions guy from Cooper Union (which I mainly know of as Cooper "you have no chance of getting in" Union) say nothing but nice things about her portfolio and tell her that she had the chops to be an illustrator, though they don't offer a program for that there. She's taking flute lessons in preparation for a competition in the spring, too.
My star may be drooping, but hers is clearly ascendant right now, and it's nice to be able to bask in a little of that reflected glory. We've gone through a lot to get to where we are in regards to each other, and I'm damned proud of the two of us. We can do everything from talking about art or music or politics to cooking together to dancing like idiots to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", and it's all just plain better because she's there.
This doesn't exactly fit in with the morose tone of the rest of this post, so I'm sectioning it off. Carin and I went out for lunch yesterday with a genuine gosh-darn celebrity and two of his fascinating friend. Tim Kreider, darkly brilliant writer of The Pain -- When Will It End? (and one of the best caricaturists since Dave Sim, in my opinion), his friend and stock character Jim (also known as James the Large, who is indeed a very tall man), and Jim's wife Sarah, who's a librarian at an archival library at the other end of the state. It was a fantastic day; all of them were absolutely fascinating folks, and the day was packed with sparkling conversation. Tim even took the time to look at Carin's portfolio, which she'd keep keeping in her backpack, and drew a little toon of himself in there, which I'll scan at some point.
I don't really exaggerate when I say that I believe that the companionship of one's fellow human beings is, if not the most essential thing in life (I suppose actualizing one's potential would have to be that), definitely in the very top tier. If I have that, then things really aren't that bad. |
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| on the animus and the anima. |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|08:30 pm] |
I read a thought-provoking bit that I'd found to Carin, and she agreed to draw her male and female aspects if I'd write a post about the idea of that duality as it applies to me. There's a rather excellent drawing of male and (especially-)female versions of her sitting on the bed. (I'm constantly impressed by the art she does, and have to keep reminding myself not to tell her to draw this and that, as she's not my art-monkey.) In any case, thus follows my half.
Were I a more well-read fellow, I would get my quotes straight from the source... but as I'm embedded in this intellectually narrow circle-jerk which we call the internet, I get it all once removed from the source. So, I'll quote Chet Hawkins here. I read Robert Bly's book Iron John (this was when that short-lived "men's movement" thing was starting up). I had read a lot of Bly's poetry as an undergraduate, so I read this book too. A lot of it seemed pretty silly to me, but there was one passage that struck me like a hammer to the forehead. What it said was, the Woman With the Golden Hair does not exist. What Bly meant by that was, a lot of men are looking for their anima -- the term Jung gave to the feminine side of a man's personality. But what a lot of men in a patriarchal culture do not understand is that the anima is part of them, and is not to be found in another person. This is because men in a patriarchal culture are taught precisely that they don't have an anima: that there is nothing feminine about them, or if there is, that it is a bad thing and must be suppressed. Unfortunately, what this means is that a lot of guys who are a bit of a mess (and who isn't, really?) tend to project their anima onto the women they see around them. This struck me as a particularly apt way of putting it. It also sounds like the sort of thing I'd probably heard of during my Women's Studies days, but which hadn't come up for a few years--so I get to figure it out anew.
I'm not advocating difference feminism here; pretty much the opposite. The idea isn't that there are male and female people which are fundamentally different and must work together for a society to function, but rather that the animus and anima within each person are fundamentally opposed but must create a synthesis for that individual to be healthy.
To be clear, I'm not using the words quite as Jung, or even Bly, did; when I write animus, I mean the masculine aspect of a person, male or female; when I write anima, I mean the feminine aspect of a person, male or female. (Jung apparently used the words to refer to the hidden half of a person--men had a hidden anima, women a hidden animus--but I may be getting this wrong.) And, of course, the very idea of what traits fall into each category is hopelessly mushy, dependent completely on one's culturally-based notions of masculinity and femininity. Someone raised in the Tchambuli culture, for example, would have a very different set of notions. I don't want to give the idea that I'm pretending to have access to some sort of universal truth, nor am I reifying these terms. They're just useful metaphors used to consider my own navel.
Enough ass-covering.
My animus consists of my competitive side, my enjoyment of physical exertion, of working up a good sweat and feeling strong and graceful. It's my appreciation of things gadgety and mechanical. When commenting, it's my urge to take apart a commenter with whom I disagree, or my satisfaction at constructing a good analogy. When reading, it's an appreciation of fantastic tales of magnificent scope and triumphant imagination. And it's my lust, of course.
My anima consists of my compassion and my appreciation for beauty. It's my occasional urge to do something nice for someone else, to get someone a present or to offer to cook for them. When commenting, it's my desire to keep reading until I can see where another person is coming from and add their perspective to my own. When reading, it's a desire to expand my understanding and broaden my frame of reference.
On a completely different scale, it struck me as especially powerful and beautiful that the human body, even when it seems to be in a steady state, is the product of competing engines of creation and destruction called anabolism and catabolism, respectively, each roaring along inside those tiny molecular foundries called cells. Take away half of the process, and the result is incompatible with life; it's only in balance, in synthesis, that we flourish. |
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| the xkcd meetup. |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|11:36 pm] |
Carin and I drove up to Boston today for the xkcd meetup, a small bit of which is shown at right. We met up with Rek and her visiting friend from Portland, Kevin. I'd assumed that he was the mysterious partner she'd been glowing about, but apparently that's someone else; she hadn't used his name because she has some sort of thing about jinxing relationships by mentioning names.
Carin and I headed up pretty early in the morning; I read some more of Le Ton beau de Marot to her, getting to the bit about the Mandarin cabin. It was a fascinating read for me the first time through, but not in the way its author had intended--a bit like Schrödinger's cat. Searle has indeed made an interesting point, but (a) it's not the point he thinks he means, and (b) the point he eventually tries to draw from it amounts to a big heap of hand-waving. Between this and the reputed philosophers over at Telic Thoughts, I'm not really impressed by philosophy as a discipline.
We brought Rek a stew that I had made the previous night.Vegan Stew
- 1 medium potato
- 1 onion
- 1/2 yam
- 2 carrots
- 1 cube veggie bouillon
- 1 cup barley
- 4 cups water
- A bit of oil
- Salt and pepper
Chop onion and fry in the bottom of a large saucepan while chopping the rest of the vegetables. Once they're smaller and translucent, put the rest of the veggies, the barley and the water into the saucepan. Bring to a slow boil and stir every fifteen minutes for the next few hours (at least two). Add water intermittently to fluff up the barley further. The stew, after cooking, thickens until it can be cut like a cake at refrigerator temperatures. I think this has something to do with starch, but I don't really know for sure.
Before going to the meetup, we went out to lunch and had some interesting hippie food which was funny-looking (a matter of bias derived from habit, of course) but very, very delicious, while listening to an absolutely delightful performance from a fellow with an eleven-string guitar playing in the classical style.
We took the T up to Davis, and on the way, noticed that our car was filled with folks in geeky shirts--a "to be or not to be" regex (/(bb|[^b]{2})/), a Firefox logo, and plenty more. I'm not sure I can explain exactly what the geek aura consists of, but I definitely sensed it. Is it clever shirts, long hair, pale skin and a high proportion of glasses-wearers? Did my enormous red beard set it off? My webcomic-derived shirt? (An unbirthday present from Rek, as the vast majority of my shirt wardrobe consists of freebies.)
The crowd surged up the stairs of the T station and made its way over to the park where the event was being held. There were a lot of people there, and spirits were very high. It reminded me more of the Serenity preview (which was more than two years back!) than anything else--wondering where these wonderful people had been all my life. The properties that previously been seen as handicaps in my personality were suddenly valuable. For a little while, I fit in, and while I'm okay being a beautiful and unique snowflake, it's deeply important to remember that there's a whole community out there.
It's easy to see how fandom can spiral in on itself and start referring to the outgroup as mundanes or muggles. (Just more words for goyim, gaje or gaijin.) I've written about this elsewhere; see the comments there. But this all occurred to me after the fact; at the time I was busy meeting people, watching this guy on a unicycle jousting with boffer weapons, the circle of guitarists singing Tenacious D songs (I knew some of the words to "Tribute", and joined in; this is notable because I very rarely sing in public),
I feel a bit silly now for having told everyone that they can look me up by checking the photographer who illustrated Pigeon on Wikipedia, when the right article to direct them to was Rock Pigeon, which refers to the specific species of pigeon most commonly seen in cities. Darn!
The trip was not an isolated event--at least, I hope that it won't be. I spoke to an attendee who happened to be an organizer for a small SF convention which will be taking place next year. He explained to me that the things which I consider valuable and important are, to a large extent, the same things that my fellow fans consider valuable and important. This was, to put it mildly, exciting to me. It was suggested that I visit a con, as the feel of the meetup was described by more than one person as being somewhat like an SF con.
Both Carin and I are are absolutely bushwhacked at this point. I didn't realize how sedentary I was until a day strolling around a city knocked me on my ass. Utterly worth it, though. |
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| the birthday festivities come to a close. |
[Sep. 16th, 2007|02:05 am] |
I had the run of the apartment today, as Carin was at work. I found myself lacking cash to do the laundry, so I walked out to the supermarket to get some ATM money. The walk took a very good long while, and when I got back I felt great. Sweaty, but great. I wasn't even dragging myself around for the whole evening like I usually do after working out after a long period of sedentary life. I did, however, eat three apples in a row.
When Carin got back from work, we headed up to meet with my parents for the conclusion of birthday festivities. Carin had acquired a small topiary (a rosemary plant) for my mother, as she has mad plant-growing skills, and I brought up a picture for my father's birthday (quite belated), one for my mother's birthday (less belated), and one which Carin took some time ago for their anniversary--they're walking along the East River in Queens hand-in-hand; it's an excellent shot.
My father has acquired a habit lately, which has become worse over time, of not paying attention to people. His laptop lives in the kitchen, which isn't in and of itself a bad thing, but he doesn't seem to notice that people trying to talk to him may take higher priority than reading whatever article he's got up there. I should talk with him about it, not in front of other people. He's not nearly so bad once you get him out of the kitchen, though.
I got some little knicknacks, a very thick book of R. Crumb comics (I know pretty much nothing about him, but I do know that he's not Paul Chadwick, so I'm ahead of my father there), and the same very large coffee-table anatomy book that Carin had already gotten me. They know me; they really do. (This, of course, means that I essentially have a gift certificate for the discount rack at Borders now.)
Cheesecake and conversation were had, and the waitstaff at the buffet were kind enough to sing "Happy Birthday" in Chinese (which I couldn't even try to pronounce), for which I thanked them emphatically and repeatedly. We went on our traditional post-dinner wander around the nearby stores, where Carin acquired a copy of "Fried Green Tomatoes", which we watched this evening. She thought I wouldn't like it, but how could I not like a story about the value of friendship? (I still think it was about the value of friendship even though it was originally a lesbian romance which was de-gayed for a wider audience.)
I've enjoyed having my birthday spread out over about a week. The slower pacing has worked quite well for me. |
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| another year. |
[Sep. 13th, 2007|11:34 pm] |
Another year, another retrospective.
In general, I hope to in any given year look back and think of how far I've come since the last; I hope to stand higher and feel wiser, to have acquired skills, qualifications and valuable experience, to be healthier, happier and measurably closer to various goals that I've set for myself.
From that perspective, I have succeeded this year. I've read at least one Big Idea Book (The Ancestor's Tale), and I'm three-fourths of the way to finishing that library science degree that I started on a lark. I have teeth which are not actively decaying for the first time since... well, I don't know, as I wasn't getting regular dental care, but almost certainly before high school. My cooking has improved greatly, as have my Java skills. I may not like my job, but I'm certainly better at it than I was a year ago.
On a more personal level, Carin and I are doing much better than we were a year prior. It's not that we don't get into situations that would have in the past led to us fighting; it's just that we're both dealing with them like mature adults. As is my birthday traditions, if I met the me of a year ago, I'd smack 'im. We made it through a rough patch when we hardly saw each other for a few months. (It's not that we were fighting or anything; it was a rough patch because working, sleeping, working, sleeping is a draining cycle when you don't get to do any of the good stuff in between.)
We've carved out some regular slices of time for ourselves, where I cook for her, or we read to each other before bed, or just flop on the couch and act silly--when I poke her nose, she wrinkles it up in the cutest way possible, and bats at my hands like a cat. It's pure distilled adorableness.
Adulthood has been a challenge in a number of ways for me; principally, I've been disappointed at the weight of obligations--by which I mean constantly being at work or preparing to go right back to work--and if I didn't have someone with whom I could pack a ton of what I refer to as the good stuff into the little time we have available to us, well, life in general would suck pretty hard.
Thanks, Carin.
This year's birthday festivities have been pretty much entirely organized by Carin. She's been fantastic in this specific context as well as the general one outlined above. Last Saturday, she rallied the troops up at the Cat's place, where along with him and Katie, we saw Eric (who had been traipsing all over Europe during the summer, lucky fellow he), Cubes and Erica, who I don't remember when I saw last. The boys watched UFC and ate nachos while the ladies went out for girly drinks (and other mysterious girly things), then we reconvened for singing and presents.
I don't think it was terribly meaningful to have a room full of people sing "Happy Birthday" to me in the past, but it certainly is now. I couldn't say exactly why it makes me warmly happy, but it does. The swag (a stack of books--they know me!) was just delicious gravy; the best present I can get from my friends is simply to get to see them.
As for today, Carin set up some things in the apartment such that when we got home, I sort of waltzed around the apartment to find the things she'd acquired over the last (I don't know how long she'd been planning it)--a bottle of delicious tawny port, a new DDR pad, a box of Jelly Bellies, dinner that had been marinating since last night, a coffee-table anatomy book that's very nearly the size of our coffee table as well as a huge book of da Vinci's paintings, and, most impressively, scads of artwork including a wall display made of nine little watercolors of cats. (I do so enjoy her cat drawings.) I think she's started to take as much joy in stashing clever things around the apartment as I do when her birthday rolls around.
Since it's still my birthday, I'm going to put off writing about the things I alluded to in the last paragraph of my previous post. Yes, they're interesting, but I'll dork about them later. (That, and having finally gotten 'round to watching "Art School Confidential" tonight.) There's time to be spent with my sweetie; I believe I'll be reading to her about Hox genes this particular evening. |
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| nearly my birthday. |
[Sep. 10th, 2007|12:43 am] |
It is nearly my twenty-sixth birthday. Traditionally (or as traditionally as anything can be if it's just me and I've only done it for a few years), I look back on what I've accomplished, things that have happened, changes I've made, and generally take stock of where I am in life as compared to a year previously. As it's not quite my birthday yet, I'm not going to do that right now. I am, on the other hand, going to recap the time since my last posting. Though my journal has been sorely lacking in frequency, I hope to maintain a reasonable level of completeness in coverage.
I am, as people at my age do, not enjoying my job. No, it's now reached the point where I hate my job. I'm sticking with it for the time being because it pays reasonably well, it's closely located, and I'm going to be switching careers in roughly six months in any case. Above all, I believe it is because I'm terrible at looking for work; my inertia is truly something to behold. I do like my coworkers, and I wouldn't mind working with them more... but I can't stand the customers. And I'm still sore about getting my pay chopped, as it has remained chopped. (When I took this job, there were murmurs of profit-sharing! What a joke.)
Carin talks about how the promise of a new job never pans out, how the job the managers sell you on ends up bearing little resemblance to the job you actually do. I want to think that she's wrong about that, but experience is slowly beating it into my head that she's depressingly right.
Over the last week, I've started to have a problem where I lose track of my sentence halfway through, I can't pay attention to anything except what I'm doing right now at this very moment, and I draw a blank on the simplest of things. Maybe it's finals-stress; it's subsided considerably since classes ended for this quarter. It worries me greatly when this happens; I don't know if it's happened before, or how long it will last, or what it really means. It's been centering around the work day lately, to the point where I have to tell Jay to stop explaining something to me because if he explains something new to me, what I was working on will fall right out of my head.
(I ended up looking for puzzles to prove to myself that I could do something that involves problem-solving. Not for the results--I didn't even complete it--but to do something to convince myself I wasn't going all Flowers for Algernon.)
The last few months have involved two trips, and a few outings. Looking back, I'm surprised that Carin and I got out that much, as her work schedule was opposite mine, so we were both out of the apartment most of the time, and we got to see very little of each other. She didn't get much of a summer this year, unfortunately. But we look forward, and hope that things will be arranged better. She's no longer working evening shifts at the jewelry store, but rather day shifts at a framing shop, where she can dress casually and is learning a useful trade. The change comes just in time for her to be going back to school.
I'm impressed that she's worked up the guts to ask me math questions. Not that I don't respond well to being asked math questions--I rather like it--but she's been very self-conscious about taking math classes, as she's rather rusty at it. She's perfectly good at math, but she's not happy about relearning it. Despite that, her desire to learn this stuff has trumped her pride, and that makes me very happy. (Remember, it's never a bad thing to ask; whatever the other person knows, they must have learned it somewhere in turn.)
As for trips, we took a whirlwind weekend drive to Chicago in an enormous rental van to pick up her father's old furniture. The drive out there became interesting, in the cursed sense, when the rain picked up to the point where visibility was under fifty feet, and hail started falling. I'd never actually been in a hailstorm; it was as if a hundred angry toddlers with rock hammers were banging on the roof. Carin performed admirably well, finding us a bridge to park under until the storm died down. (The under-bridge area was occupied by cars which had gotten the same clever idea first, which is why we got to listen to the hail on our roof.) A more peaceful part of the drive is seen at left.
The other trip was to Des Moines for the State Fair, where I got to meet another member of Caitlin's entourage that Carin had told me about, Chris, who was from rural Kentucky and apparently does not take after his family at all. I got to see all of Carin's family, and even though we had to head back shortly after I got there, I still had a great time. Highlights included cooking lentil burgers for the vegan guests (I don't like how they come out, which is why there's no recipe in this post, but other people seem to appreciate them) and seeing Carin's mom fly around her place of work on one of those little two-wheeled skateboard-with-handlebars scooters. The Fair has become the high point of my summer; I don't know how I got along before Carin started bringing me to it.
On a more negative note, I don't get paid for vacation. There was a change in management, the upshot of which is that my pay was cut, I get health insurance (but it's expensive as hell), I get dental insurance (which took effect just after I paid out-of-pocket for the last set of work), and all of my accrued vacation has gone up in smoke. Curse you, job situation.
My last full-time quarter at school has just drawn to a close. I previously had planned to take a full-time (three-course) schedule this fall, and then do a single course of independent study in the spring to complete the degree, but due to the vagaries of course registration, I barely managed to get registered for two. (If they hadn't added another section after registration had been under way, I'd have been down to one.)
This quarter did not include a repeat of the last one's failure to properly collaborate with my group, and I'm not embarrassed like I was before. On the other hand, my grades aren't better. (They weren't bad last quarter, so there's nothing to really complain about in any case.) I learned a few things, but I completed a course in "Information Architecture" and still couldn't say exactly what Information Architecture is. The name is like "content management"; it doesn't really mean anything. I took a networking course which encouraged me to learn more about public-key cryptosystems (short version: SSH host verification is a joke; note to self, expand on that), and also a course in human-computer interaction, which did teach me a few interesting tidbits about how "user error" is frequently indicative of bad design. Still, I'd rather be taking courses about library science. Next quarter should be better in that regard.
Earlier, I drank some ceremonial end-of-the-semester (literally quarter, but the idea dates back to when I took semesters) cheap beer this evening, which has made me quite sleepy. Hopefully I'll be able to update again before long, and I will write about a more local fair where I didn't see cows being born and took what I consider to be an awesome picture of horses, about some recent discoveries about integrated library systems, about my recently-arranged carpool into work with Doug (professional cook for twelve years, want to learn everything he knows, but don't think I like him), and about how Carin got me an early and extraordinarily awesome birthday present on Saturday. But for now, sleep, then work. |
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| the last two months. |
[Jul. 16th, 2007|07:15 pm] |
Well, it's been about two months off from this, and I think I'll pick it back up. A few things have happened in the interim, as one might expect. I suppose the advantage of occasional, rather than constant, posting is that I can summarize the interesting parts rather than racking my brain for something interesting that happened. (I could, of course, stop to ponder what it means that I need to do such racking on an ordinary day, but I'll tap-dance around that particular abyss for right now. No benefit there.)
A summary of what I remember as the important points of the last two months follows.
I think I've come out as nonreligious to my parents. It came up when I was trying to explain that I'd do poorly in politics for a number of reasons, and one of those is that atheists have a 53% handicap, at least in national elections. Talking about this with my parents made me quite uncomfortable, though I'd have a hard time explaining exactly why. It's not like I fear their disapproval--I did get an "I was in my twenties once" from my mother--but still, I felt strongly that I'd brought up something that's not generally talked about, and that I'd made a mistake in doing so.
Carin has gotten a full-time job as a jewelry salesperson. She's very good at it--she walks on water at the workplace--but it involves shifts such that we're out of the house from around 8:30 in the morning until 10:30 PM. This is by no means entirely a bad thing; I've taken to sitting outside her workplace and catching up on schoolwork or reading, and, of course, the money is a definite plus. Also, there's the self-respect she gets from a job well done. Nevertheless, it's been an adjustment; we see even less of each other than we did when she was working part-time and I was on vacation from school.
Ah, and speaking of school, I dodged a bullet at the end of the last quarter. I was stuck on projects for two of my classes, and missed the boat on the third--my group had completed the assignment without me by the time I popped in and asked what I could do to help. It was completely my fault, and I apologized to the class. When the instructor mailed me to ask what had happened, I explained that I had arrived late to the group through no one's fault but my own. Apparently my honesty was appreciated, and I was given partial credit on the final project (which I didn't ask for, and certainly didn't expect), pulling through the quarter without any particular outward signs of narrowly-avoided doom, despite spending about a week very stressed out about it.
I took a trip to Bear Mountain with the Cats, Eric, and a girl who the Cat was trying to hook up with Eric, or vice versa. I am surprisingly out of shape in that I excreted several liters of water through my skin on the hike, but in surprisingly good shape in that I didn't slow the rest of the group down much. On the way back, Eric suggested that we climb across some slippery, moss-covered rocks across which a stream was flowing, shown at right. I have no idea why I went; in retrospect, it was one of the stupidest things I'd ever done. We made it down across the stream and back up the side of the small gorge it had dug for itself, and I suddenly realized what a bunch of idiots we all were. But, of course, it's okay to blow it off now, since no one was injured.
I got that dental filling that I had needed; everything went smoothly, and I didn't need to get anything pulled or rooted. Because I have plenty of other bad teeth, and have for years, I tried to get a follow-up appointment to get a set of dental X-rays and so forth, being motivated by a desire not to have part of any other teeth snap off while eating. I called for an appointment, and was told that the schedule opens up only on Tuesdays. I called the following Tuesday, and was told that the people who do the dental X-rays were on vacation; try back next week. I called the following Tuesday, and was told that all appointments were booked already, and that I should call in the morning. I called the following Tuesday morning, and was told that no new patients would be seen until at least next year, and then only maybe; there's a waiting list.
So I used my privilege and went to the local dental office which doesn't take sliding-scale payments and charges about three times as much for their work. (I mention this not because I'm cheap--though I am cheap--but to remind myself of how my options differ from those of someone who doesn'thave my cash flow.) It boasted comfier waiting room chairs, well-decorated facilities, and most importantly of all, a shorter wait time. I called and got an appointment set up for about two weeks in the future; about two days later, I got a call saying that there was a cancellation that day, and would I like to come in? Carin was kind enough to accompany me, as I wasn't looking forward to it. She's been remarkably calm about me getting all this dental work done; I feel a bit ashamed, seeing as how she has such fantastically good teeth. The good news is that I can get away with a bunch of fillings; I need to get them done as soon as possible, and so they gave me an appointment for a week later (on the nineteenth). I was strongly encouraged to start flossing, which is taking some getting used to but has conferred upon me the benefit of non-bleeding gums (though that might have something to do with getting my teeth cleaned), which I appreciate.
The dentist, whose manner I found curiously reassuring (there's probably a name for this particular bias) took some pictures of my teeth with a sort of endoscope-pen thingy. And boy, do they ever look bad. Apparently--and I have no recollection of this--I had some dental work done previously, as the teeth are cored out in preparation for fillings, but there's no filling in them. Looking at them, I can't believe I can actually use them to chew. Props to Carin for having a strong stomach, and for not... well, I'm not sure what she would have done, but bad teeth are a convenient shorthand for one's social caste in this country, loaded with shame on top of the practical problems of not being able to eat easily. (In the context of national healthcare, there's a bit of interesting reading at "The Moral Hazard Myth", explaining why I'd eventually be pulling out my teeth with pliers if I couldn't afford a dentist.)
I should also add that I'm not enjoying work. About two months ago, I went to the office manager and asked if I could buy a stamp from her, as she had them. She said to just take one, I did, and mailed my letter. A month later, I had another letter to send, and didn't see her there. The Steve without the mustache asked what I was doing, I told him I was mailing a letter, and that was that. Just now, I went to try to mail a letter, and discovered that the stamps were missing. Brian informed me that they're locked up, and that furthermore, Steve without the mustache had yelled, yes, yelled at him for the total of eighty-two cents in postage I had taken from the office supplies. I am now bringing pens home.
Whose brilliant math was it that determined that the morale lost by chewing people out and treating them as if they're going to run off with the entire office is worth less than eighty-two cents?
I have a large stack of comments; it's not like I stopped dropping science while I was failing to update here. I'll figure out a way to make it readable, which will be necessary, as there's more than five hundred to post. |
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| old anatomy. |
[May. 6th, 2007|02:22 am] |
Apparently you can score some decent bits of public-domain scanned artwork via Google Book Search. That fellow in the hat on the right is Bartolomeo Eustachi, or, in the Latin, Bartolomeus Eustachius, sixteenth-century founder of modern anatomy, who didn't actually discover the Eustachian tube, but did do some very important and painstaking research. If you look at the older anatomy texts, you can see that there's a great deal of artistry in them. The anatomists posed the bodies in their drawings in interesting, allegorical and occasionally horrifying positions. None of my textbooks had much in the way of art in them. The subtle allegory of the portrait went out with the introduction of the photograph. None of the science or engineering buildings were decorated with meaningful public art, like murals describing the history of that discipline; at best, there are a few pieces of bland corporate art hanging in the halls, and a heap of scrap labeled sculpture sitting on the front lawn.
I was going to get the new car registered at the DMV today, but I failed, because the car is old, and I need an emissions test. I have a temp plate for it now, which means that I have ten days--that's one Saturday--in which to do it. Who came up with the bright idea of everyone working at once? How do people who live by themselves receive packages, or register their cars, or bank (in person), or perform any task that involves meeting with people employed by the service industry? Yes, the work week makes a certain level of sense to me, but I don't understand how we're supposed to deal with it.
No comments today; I had nothin' to say. |
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