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Friday, May 31, 2002

 
7:35 PM: [#] [0]

no friday five this week. :(

 
3:01 PM: [#] [0]

update on the archos: what's error (-50)? nothing will copy completely. :(

 
2:48 PM: [#] [0]

the archos works now! go me! i had to email tech support & they sent me drivers (they would save themselves some time if they had them at the website to begin with). anyway, to support future endeavors, i've added the drivers & other info to nefarious.web. i'll add os9 drivers when i think far enough ahead to bring the cd into work.

i have also learned the joys of HEADER files for apache when FancyIndexing is on. :)

now if i could only get dave to work. other windows users see nefarious as a shared volume, and i can access the gretchin share, but the_masses share isn't understanding that there really is a user called "Everyone" and that everyone can read/write without a password. this is useful when i'm at other people's offices, or i want them to upload pix to nefarious rather than having them email me.

 
9:13 AM: [#] [0]

i had an issue last night where pagemaker 6.5 wouldn't even load under emulation, and was giving me grief when rebooted under os9. michael was nice enough to grab a copy from nefarious & copy it into a dreamweaver document for me. so i've been refining my resume, which is very much a work in progress.

Thursday, May 30, 2002

 
11:18 AM: [#] [0]

it looks like neither citrix connection manager or mystery machine are mapping to my "local" V:\ drive. without the ability to transfer files between the mac & the pc, it's fairly useless, so i'm back with the os9 citrix client. argh.

the rites blog is working now. yay.

 
1:01 AM: [#] [0]

argh. i thought i could get dave running tonight, but no luck. i can't pick users at all. sometimes windows doesn't even think nefarious is alive. :(

Wednesday, May 29, 2002

 
9:43 PM: [#] [0]

so instead of doing anything useful, i've been distracted by two great toys:

michael found me another java-based citrix client: the citrix connection manager, which i think is nicer than mystery machine.

but then i found the application i've been dreaming about for months: snapperhead! it's a utility which will send nefarious screenshots to you just for the asking! it's the coolest things ever! but it runs on another port, which means i have to ask someone to open a hole in the firewall for it. :( or..... is there a way to call it from a cgi?

 
7:35 PM: [#] [0]

another weirdness: aliases don't act like symbolic links, but symbolic links act like aliases. this is important for trying to access shortcuts at the darwin level & especially for webservers like mine that follow symbolic links (but which can't, alas, follow aliases). i noticed yesterday that there isn't anything in darwin that marks an alias as special: it isn't marked with a sticky bit; it doesn't show up as a link with ls -F. there's absolutely nothing you can do with an alias in darwin. but if you create a symbolic link in darwin, you can access it just like a normal alias in aqua. harumph.

 
5:57 PM: [#] [0]

here's a weird thing. i think nefarious is still broadcasting itself as nemo to other places (like, say, my apache logs). why is this?
update 8:45 p.m.: it looks like nefarious is fully propogated! whee!

 
4:51 PM: [#] [0]

nefarious has a dns entry! join the party!

jenn & i also added a team blog, rites (it will be at left, but i know it's broken now; blogger is currently having a problem w/ templates & new blogs). jenn was asked to take part in a "women's rites" symposium to celebrate the opening of the new arts & sciences building in the fall, and she asked me to come, too. we'll use the rites blog to bounce ideas off each other &, maybe later, other rites participants.

 
3:16 PM: [#] [0]

the web librarian asked me out to lunch next week! whee! :)

 
9:20 AM: [#] [0]

after discovering that i had been included in two year's worth of the southern colorado women's poetry series without my knowledge, i sent emails to the two people who should have told me and didn't. they both seem appropriately contrite & i know they had good intentions. i guess after the whole script thing with garrett, i'm a little sensitive to that.

"we don't see things as they are. we see them as we are." *sighs*

 
8:59 AM: [#] [0]

i'm supposed to fill out an emergency info sheet. i don't have a local emergency contact. :(

Tuesday, May 28, 2002

 
7:48 PM: [#] [0]

i just learned a great trick!
smb://workgroup;username@netbiosname/share
it's a little slow, but it works! more info at the macdebate forum. i wonder if it works the other way; i guess i won't know until i get a dns entry.

only two problems:
1. my 'go' menu isn't remembering other servers, including idisks (& won't let me add to 'favorite servers');
2. if i access an alias of a server connected via smb, the finder tells me it can't access it because the alias is broken, but then connects me anyway.

 
6:22 PM: [#] [0]

no new dns name for me today. :( when i got to work early this morning webct was down & so mike had to reboot; then later he called about cst2, as we have no idea if anyone still uses it and if so, why. (god knows i don't know anymore; i'm so glad to no longer be doing cst). he didn't answer his phone for the rest of the afternoon. i don't think i should probably install dave until i get a dns entry.

had a brief scare where i couldn't copy/paste between os9 & osx, which michael promptly discovered was due to having classic launch at startup. whew! thanks, michael!

i downloaded the trial of dreamweaver mx because i hate having to do stuff in classic (come on, citrix!). i still can't figure out how to use webdav to publish from dreamweaver, though i can use the same infomation to connect locally. i still have this dream of publishing the rogue webct administrator's guide to mac.com, but both of my idisks are incredibly, excruciatingly, head-poundingly slow. am i doing something wrong? and now the rogueadmins idisk keeps resurrecting three folders i keep deleting. argh!

i added stuff to the website, like jenn's no show pix and a "current projects" folder for calligraphy.

Monday, May 27, 2002

 
2:27 PM: [#] [0]

i got home around 6 a.m. this morning after attending to some final nefarious touches & stopping by the store. upon awakening, the laundry fairy visited and i'm getting ready for the brick fairy now. i'm still hoping to get back to the school to make sure everything's ready for tomorrow (i still have summer course stuff to do & the psu application to finish).

but what i really want is a nap.

 
4:17 AM: [#] [0]

we're up! view my new desktop! (ip only for now). nefarious should be way faster than nemo, and all i can think is unix, unix, unix! (though for the record, i'd like a webserver as awesome on the backend as apache AND as well-formatted as the mac's personal web sharing. alas, it seems i can only choose one.)

should i attempt to stop by the grocery store at this late hour? the laundry fairy won't come tomorrow if there's no laundry detergent.

Sunday, May 26, 2002

 
10:02 PM: [#] [0]

i am writing my first blog entry from nefarious! yay! am now in the process of copying from nemo.

osx is different -- way different -- but things i want to have been better don't appear to be (e.g., appleshare still doesn't appear to log. argh.) things i want to get right the first time:

1. users: the helpdesk set me w/ an admin account, i think, but i would rather be me with admin. i don't know if it matters, but i want a "gretchin" home directory instead of an "admin" one, and i want to get to root ocassionally. i tried adding the michael user & discovered "michaelmas" is more than 8 characters & therefore not usable as a login. :( plus, it seems all his stuff is inaccessible to me as admin, which doesn't seem right. is it?

2. sharing: in os9 i had a sharing structure which worked well for my windows/mac sharing needs. i'm still trying to figure out the best setup in osx. i want to figure this out before i install dave. websharing, especially, seems more confusing than i expected: though i have found i can't find the apache root from the gui & i'm trying, for now, to stay away from the terminal window because i think i could become too reliant on it.

3. applications: does dreamweaver have a carbon/cocoa version? when will outlook have a native version? i tried to open an apache gif & it launched pictureviewer in classic. :P

the new dell flat panel seems much brighter than the old crt. when i turn my attention to the black keyboard, my eyes are momentarily blinded. brightness/contrast controls aren't helping much & i wonder if *gasp* i should actually use the overhead lights.

 
7:19 PM: [#] [0]

i just spent far too long dealing with an accidental resolution fubar on my new computer, nefarious. after 2 hours, this finally fixed it:
http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/17/wa/query?searchMode=Expert&type=id&val=KC.25289

but i have far less desire to do anything else tonight. :(

Saturday, May 25, 2002

 
5:51 PM: [#] [0]

as brian says:

"this site will give you a religion even if you don't think you have one.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html"

my top three religions are :
1. Liberal Quakers (100%) (i was going to make fun of michael 'till it happened to me!)
2.  Secular Humanism (100%)
3.  Unitarian Universalism (100%)
(#4 was theravada buddhism, brian. :)

my bottom three religions are:
25.  Islam (10%)
26.  Orthodox Judaism (10%)
27.  Roman Catholic (10%)

 
4:50 PM: [#] [0]

helped chuck & susan move today, and i am so glad to finally recognize her! she & i met at gerrie's when she held a reiki session; we both thought it was an interesting thing to have done once, but a little too new age to do it again. anyway, she's an extremely nice person & she makes a good couple w/ chuck. they are renting a nice place in a palomar college suburb.

i forgot that i have to make bricks for risa which should probably happen this weekend -- probably monday.

Friday, May 24, 2002

 
6:07 PM: [#] [0]

finishing up course stats for the annual report. i discovered something i didn't know before: i apparently didn't keep records of which courses were supplemental, partially or fully online before "the form" -- summer of last year (one of the things i suspect the form was created for). so i only now have a full year's worth of data. otherwise, i have spreadsheets from summer of 2000 & webct info from summer 1999.

 
4:01 PM: [#] [0]

oh, yeah. it's time for the friday five:

1. What's the last vivid dream that you remember having?
heh. the one i just wrote about: i went to visit my mother at our old house in la junta (as part of some very casual, not-related activity). she had 4 other young children, at least two of them daughters, and they all seemed so cheerful & charming & loving; i was jealous and sad. i went & hid in the bathroom, which she had redecorated, and i overheard her say, "do you think i'm proud of what i did? beating my own child with gelatin?" and in the dream i remembered she had spread vaseline/gelatin over my skin to make the belt hurt more.

2. Do you have any recurring dreams?
no, not any more. for several years i had a dream that occured once a year, but now i don't even remember what it was about.

3. What's the scariest nightmare you've ever had?
i'm interpreting this to mean "disturbing," as i have had almost no classical nightmares. i once dreamt i was locked in a room full of rebels and we had to fight our way out. the oppressors could take almost all of us one-on-one but there was nobody for me to take except a guard dog. "kill him!" everyone kept yelling. "but it's a dog!" i kept calling back -- i didn't want to kill a dog. anyway, the dog finally lunged for me & recognizing that it was going to be me or him, i managed to grab him, wrestle with him for a bit & finally break his neck, but i felt horrible about it. i fell to the ground with the dog in my arms, weeping. a newspaper photographer took my picture and published it the next day.

the weird thing about this dream is that i had it while i was staying in a hotel room (i often have my most vivid dreams while travelling). when i woke up, one of my pillows was thrown across the room & my eyes were puffy from crying.

4. Have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? Why or why not?
i do, actually. i have finally almost filled my original dream journal i got for xmas while i was still dating jacob. i got a new dream journal the last time i was in portland in anticipation. when i got my final round of stuff from my parents' house, i found a small spiral notebook w/ dreams i had recorded in college in it -- and i had forgotten having them, but reading them, i totally remember them. :) anyway, i guess i write them down because i think the unconscikous mind is really interesting and sometimes some of them become poems.

5. Have you ever had a lucid dream? What did you do in it?
nope. unless you count the one where i was dreaming about creating the adapt logo and i made myself wake up because otherwise i was just going to have to spend all that time recreating it as well as dreaming it.

 
3:09 PM: [#] [0]

i do feel better. i was almost cheerful during break. relieved, perhaps. i got some rollos but what i really want is ben & jerry's chubby hubby.

 
12:52 PM: [#] [0]

i went to go sit in the library for a while. (what was i doing there, michael asks. thinking of ways to quit my job.) when i returned, garrett had finally responded:

"Reformat the script however you feel is honest and I will not change it (this is the philosophy I used when I reformatted it the script yesterday)."

*stomach knot loosens a little*

 
11:15 AM: [#] [0]

tulip apps are finally picked. i thought our meeting was this afternoon, though, so i was going to stay home & get my dialup connection working in the morning so i'd have it over the weekend. chuck beeped me as i got out of the shower & asked if i was going to come in. uhhh.......

no word from garrett; i wrote him again. i'm about to go ballistic. had a weird dream about my mother last night.

Thursday, May 23, 2002

 
5:10 PM: [#] [0]

more work on the rogue webct administrator's guide. i wanted to host it on mac.com but it doesn't look like they've enabled auto indexing, which is hugely important to me.

still not working on stats or tulips apps. *sighs*

 
3:06 PM: [#] [0]

after going outside to yo-yo my frustrations, i finally decided that i couldn't play this passive-aggressive game anymore and wrote him:

garrett, please don't claim to be author of the grep.ksh script. i sweated that script out by hand for over 6 hours last night & it is not a derivative of your original tail_grep_for_helpdesk.ksh file. modification information is entirely appropriate, though.

i still feel sick.

 
2:24 PM: [#] [0]

it's worse than i thought it would be. garrett keeps adding himself as the author of the grep script. i don't usually care about ownership; deepak chopra (among others) says "it's amazing what gets accomplished when it doesn't matter who gets the credit." but i sweated over 6 hours of blood for this script because he didn't know how to do it and wasn't going to learn. i keep removing him & neither of us will bring it up directly. i am literally sick with anger.

 
10:33 AM: [#] [0]

the script worked! it works beautifully! i'm a goddess! now i just have to defend it from garrett. grr.

i saw a truck engulfed in flame on my way home last night. by the time i wandered through vista's streets to get there, the fire department was already there.

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

 
8:11 PM: [#] [0]

i'm this close to having my first working cgi script! i've never been able to do this before & even now it's actually mostly working. i hatehatehatehatehatehatehate(!) parsing the QUERY_STRING ! hate! grrr!

of course, i have completely neglected my other todo's while doing this...

 
10:20 AM: [#] [0]

yesterday i got a corn dog for lunch and jenn told me i didn't seem like someone who would eat a corn dog because i was too prissy (!). so i told her the christmas hot-dog-on-a-stick story and she insisted on going there immediately for cheese on a stick & cherry lemondade, singing all the way. yum. :)

garrett got a tail script going for webct logs. whoo hoo! it doesn't do what i want it to do (pass user-defined parameters), but it's a start.

i found the buffy season finale pretty predictable except for the spike-getting-back-his-soul part. i wonder what tabula rasa has to say about that?

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

 
1:37 PM: [#] [0]

whew! finally figured out a password schema. feel better now.

 
7:53 AM: [#] [0]

wow! i got my viking pcmcia smartcard reader last night and decided to try it this morning before i went to work: it was quite possibly the easiest hardware i've ever used on the mac! put in the viking card, put in my smart card, and poof! they were easy to access & fast! no installation or anything. and it fits handily in this slot i have no other user for. :) well worth $34.

unfortunately, it didn't help with either the joshua tree or australia smart cards, which are still unreadable, but now i can get a file recovery software to scan it now. :)

it also turns out that norton won't mount them as disks to recover them, even the one that works. guess i have to go to plan b.....

oh, wait. i don't have a plan b.

Monday, May 20, 2002

 
8:13 PM: [#] [0]

evaluations are finally done & you think i would get to take a well-earned rest. but no, here i am at work late, hoping i set the vcr right to record angel, and catching up on the stuff evaluations overwhelmed. specifically, i'm behind on tulip2002 & annual report metrics, and i'm afraid if i wait too long on the psu app that i'll miss the deadline.

i moved my nibbles archive to monthly archives instead of weekly archives & now i'm missing a chunk and don't know how to get them back. :(

Sunday, May 19, 2002

 
5:59 PM: [#] [0]

it's been grey & cloudy all day today & i've been napping. sometimes when i wake up from naps i can feel my heart beating erratically, like rain falling on the roof.

bills. ugh.

Saturday, May 18, 2002

 
10:57 PM: [#] [0]

oh, god. i had dreams about compilers last night.

i woke up and was immediately visited by the laundry fairy! later, i went to home depot to pick up concrete & 4 new plants (including catnip).

i'm still working on the psu position application. psu wants more than the mira costa job did -- and that was a supervisory role for three campuses! hmph. psu wants a vitae (not a resume). they want a 1000-word essay "describing your philosophy for working with faculty to design and develop instruction using technology." they want "a list of hardware platforms and software applications that you would be competent to teach at an intermediate and advanced level." and they want links to courses & materials i've created. but damnit, most of what i've done here is infrastructure. invisible. and i have nothing left from usc. :(

i think i'll ask kristin for a reference. or liliana. i'm having trouble figuring out how to reference roger, who was director of extended studies when i worked for him but now is a consultant for a different university.

 
2:34 AM: [#] [0]

i'm so funny. i kill me. it turns out that i left my backpack at the helpdesk this afternoon. so when i wanted to go home about 10 minutes ago, i had to instead call the police to let me into the helpdesk & retrieve my keys. sheesh.

 
1:29 AM: [#] [0]

rendezvous. jxta. zero configuration networking. my head is going to explode.

Friday, May 17, 2002

 
11:59 PM: [#] [0]

oh my god! i found roger! :D

 
11:43 PM: [#] [0]

my eyes.... are... glazed.... i have..... fingers...

i somehow got focused on working on the content for the rogue webct administrator's guide (note i said content and not format).

and then i got sucked into osx developer stuff. i can't stop reading! btw, it's true; you can open disk in windows now! (i wish i had known that before the cats conference, but there you go). and mac.com has webmail now, which is the only way i would use it. :)

 
5:02 PM: [#] [0]

well, the apple guy was finally here and i got all excited about maybe doing the nemo/omen switch this weekend, but javier wants to install a new image on the machine carlos gave me for xmas and that won't happen till monday. argh. still, it would probably be 8 hours of my time vs. 3 hours of their time, so i guess i'll just do garden stuff this weekend. or calligraphy. or something.

hey, sandy's got pictures from europe up now.

 
1:09 PM: [#] [0]

nancy:
"After talking with a few people on campus, we decided that there wasn't anyone that really 'fit the bill' on campus. We really are looking for someone who has at least an MS degree. You could apply but you may not be competitive, even with all your great WebCT experience. It's up to you."

not exceptionally encouraging, but i would be remiss if i didn't at least try. wish me luck!

Thursday, May 16, 2002

 
3:47 PM: [#] [0]

the cdl rejected the tigers' grant adapt proposal. damn it.

nancy bowers posted the i.d. position at psu, which i guess means they didn't fill it internally. but it still requires a master's degree. damn it.

 
11:34 AM: [#] [0]

courses, course stats, course workshops. good thing jenn & i are going to katsu for lunch. or is it....?

hey, jenn has a blog now.

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

 
5:29 PM: [#] [0]

i'll bet you weren't expecting this: another quiz! yes, if i was a buffy bad girl i would be faith.

i've been reading a lot of reviews of this buffy season (6?) and i'm surprised to find how many people dislike it. personally, i really like the fact that the show recognizes that the bad guys are not always supernatural. hell is other people. sometimes good people do bad things; sometimes bad people do good things. i think the people who don't like this season are people who have never hit rock bottom, or people who have never had to trade sex for self-esteem.

what i haven't seen yet is verification of my suspicion that the mysogynist tendencies this season are deliberate, as a way to demonstrate how horrible we humans are to each other (and, especially, women). am i just reading stuff into this? i admit i was slow to notice (and i missed the episode w/ warren's xgf). but between warren & spike's conspicuous use of the word "bitch," warren's whole sex-slave/anti-gf/anti-slayer bent along with his eventual emasculation (orbs? please.), spike's near-rape scene & subsequent classic-psycho-bf reaction, xander leaving anya at the altar, the destruction of the happy lesbian couple, willow's "power" speech... well, i think the show is making a point, at least.

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

 
7:02 PM: [#] [0]

i've been looking at online course statistics all day. you'd think after attending an edward tufte workshop & reading two of his books, that i'd have a better idea of how i want to present this info, but as you can tell if you bothered to download the excel file, i'm really at a loss.

what i want to do is show course numbers by year, term & type of "courseware." it seems if i group year & term together, i lose a good way to demonstrate courseware at the same time. if i do courseware & term, then i lose the impact growth of a year.

what i'm not doing is creating edss520th. :P

 
2:43 PM: [#] [0]

i've always wanted to be an autobot: it turns out i'm prowl. it also turns out that i'm really funny today; i don't know why. but jennifer says she's glad i'm back to "normal," whatever that means.

new term: blogosphere.

Monday, May 13, 2002

 
8:38 PM: [#] [0]

ergh! i just spent an hour (!) getting nemo to display, simultaneously, color AND 800x600; he wouldn't do both at the same time. after zapping pram, nvpram, trashing pretty much any preference file which looked like it might interact with the monitor, disabling some and then all of of my extensions, then enabling colorsync, it finally got resolved. but at some point i called michael and was grumpy, which he patiently overlooked.

may i never have to restart again. *genuflects*

 
6:15 PM: [#] [0]

how weird! i did an egosurf on "gretchen lair'" to see if anyone was linking to me but didn't know how to spell my name, and there are actually some results! including people who should know better!

 
5:59 PM: [#] [0]

hey, look! someone was paying attention at the cats conference! robert baird wrote notes about the tulip revision & published them! (it was the best received presentation of the three i did, i think.) gayle also asked for a copy of the powerpoint presentation and the rubric we used to evaluate the apps to "borrow" for her own program.

 
5:25 PM: [#] [0]

mike came in to talk to me & jenn and ended up walking away with a box of penguin reds. i swear, i could be a distributor.

 
9:24 AM: [#] [0]

apparently, frank & jeff made good on their xmas presents and flew old planes.

Sunday, May 12, 2002

 
9:56 AM: [#] [0]

"gretchin lair, make $399.57 [by selling] your past purchases at Amazon.com today!" but it only counts your last 25 purchases! :(

 
9:42 AM: [#] [0]

happy mother's day. for all the good that does me.

Saturday, May 11, 2002

 
10:34 PM: [#] [0]

i wonder if dinotopia will be any good?

 
7:42 PM: [#] [0]

i stayed up till 2 a.m. doing celtic knots, which it turns out i can still do! i even did some mildly complex ones. thanks, mark! :D

using "what the wing says" instead of the magic/tech text was absolutely the right decision. i still want to explore the magic/tech connection, but it just wasn't the right thing for this format. i also made a conscious decision to not make the accordian book for the color studies. i really like the color studies and they were a terrific exercise, but i have to face the fact that this isn't a priority and will only succeed in driving me crazy. i'm not ready for bookmaking yet. it was a hard decision, but i'm so glad i finally made it.

at lunch some of us went to the carmel valley artists sale at the karl strauss brewery. wow! there were some beautiful pieces (i bought two raku stars; i'll buy anything with stars), & the brewery was like a little park! i've got to go eat there (yes, michael, this is probably in your future).

the kids at the montessori school must be learning about biology; they had three little baby chicks! they were just four days old and too young to be held (as i belatedly discovered).

Friday, May 10, 2002

 
10:47 PM: [#] [0]

so when i was still a member of the summit scribes guild in colorado springs, i bought a tiny little book that taught me how to draw celtic knots. it was a terrific book, especially for someone like me who is afraid of three dimensions. the author's name was mark van stone. guess who was at the sdfc meeting tonight? yes, mark van stone! though it took me a while to connect the two.

anyway, he was very charming, very likable, very knowledgeable. i think most of the women had crushes on him. i've never seen carol so giddy before (she was the one who introduced mark van stone to sdfc). i thought he was cool, but i couldn't get over the fact that he reminded me so much of michael! if mark had been talking about gaming, it would have been michael up there! he even looks like michael! only one odd thing: "the problem with modern art is that it doesn't want to be beautiful. it wants to be anything but beautiful. it wants to make you feel something, it wants challenge you. well, spare us the challenges." and he meant that! hmmmm.

ugh. i have another color workshop to attend tomorrow morning & no pages for it. i think, for the sake of brevity, i might actually temporarily abandon the magic/tech text in favor of "what the wing says," my favorite poem.

 
11:19 AM: [#] [0]

the olcdb is like a floundering goldfish which has jumped out of its little bowl. lynx2 has been down for two days, which canceled my meeting w/ aaron (since i didn't have anything to tell him and he didn't have anything to show me).

i read plato's the apology today. has anyone else heard of killarney clary? reading about her made me realize that i'm still trying to find a southern californian voice; i'm still writing like i'm from colorado, poems about snow.

Thursday, May 09, 2002

 
9:30 PM: [#] [0]

hey! i know where i'm taking michael when he visits again: balboa park! the art museum! prado!

i went to the young book arts exhibit tonight; one of terrilynn's students had a (gorgeous!) book entered. there were some really exceptional books from all ages, including a haiku (rainbow fish with hopes/as strong as fiery sunlight/joy stronger than dreams) and a block-print "kindercolor" book. but my inexplicable favorite was a little tunnel book by a third grader called "dream horse," which was tiny and precious. i also liked another more elaborate eye tunnel book, also with a poem. another poet made a narrow red, black & white book called "life told me i am a martyr." one group of students had made altoids tins into containers to illustrate vivaldi's "four seasons" (w/ both pages sewn into the hinges & dimensional art inside). "pele" was a gorgeous book even though there was no text. "love" was dimensional and tangled; the text was almost unreadable.

then there was a small exhibit which contained such desire-inducing items like illuminated pages from ancient arabic dictionaries; a box of fortune cookies w/ fortunes inspired by a chinese-american father/daughter relationship; several types of dreamlogs; a papal bull; the london polyglot bible; and the eliot indian bible. there was also a little "gumball" machine containing tiny handmade books in little bubbles -- stick a token in, turn the handle, and a little book rolls out! :)

one of the things i find really depressing about book exhibits is that they're almost always behind glass, so you don't get to appreciate them as books. :( apparently, ucsd has a small books collection one can handle with white gloves. i gotta go find out how.

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

 
6:48 PM: [#] [0]

went to work late; left early.

a card for terrilynn/brian, a card for chelsea, a card for jennifer. i think i remembered that i was going to give jenn one of these pieces of art, though i may want to see if there's another one i like at the grand galleria. have to write a check for chelsea after checking my account balance. i have no idea what to get for terrilynn/brian.

Tuesday, May 07, 2002

 
5:16 PM: [#] [0]

whoah! terrilynn & brian got married!

 
3:41 PM: [#] [0]

adra is officially leaving. joe got offered a job in arkansas, so she's staying long enough to sell the house & handle her biopsy stuff. i worry about her in arkansas, but she seems really happy about the decision. i imagine it's a relief. this means, of course, a coveted position will be up for grabs.

we got the evaluations back from the cats conference. good scores except for the adapt presentation! i was horrified that we got comments like "too casual or informal" and "overly cute" and, worst of all -- "very childish presenters. i was embarrassed. total waste of time." the strength of the cats conference is that it's informal and we're supposed to talk to each other like peers, not authority figures. the conference is cheap and voluntary and meant for networking, not for academics! or at least, that's the ways it's always been. maybe they're moving away from that. this will make me very sad. of course, i recognize that you can't make everyone happy, and the numbers were still good, but those comments really stung. :(

more quizzes:
i am a bird, a new school geek, daria (though one away from jane), a pocket calculator, and my battle cry is "meep!".

Monday, May 06, 2002

 
6:13 PM: [#] [0]

adra has returned! she says she has no more vacation or sick leave left and is still toting kyle around. :( i read a part in jenn's play for her playwriting class and it turned out the next person had lost a reader, so i read for that play, too. it was fun.

reviewed my performance evaluation today. i am "commendable," which is an improvement over last year's "satisfactory," though i worked & cared less. hmmm. i still feel badly about last year's performance eval because i felt like i was being punished for an impossible situation (required to be both cst and i.d. full time). but still, i've always been an "outstanding" or an "exceptional'"and this is a stituation i'm still getting used to. i sort of wish we could do 360-degree evaluations; i might feel better if i could place my evaulation in the context of others: for instance, if i knew chuck & jay got outstandings, but other coworkers on my "level" got commendables, then it would feel fairer -- chuck & jay do -way- more work than i do, and difficult team dynamic work that i wouldn't want to deal with. :P i can't believe i've been here almost 3 years!

i finally wrote a quick note to nancy bowers because i just couldn't let it lay around forever, though i fear i may have let it lay too long. i said,

"i haven't been able to write a response which effectively justifies my desire to work for psu even though i have neither a doctorate or a master's degree. :) i can do everything the position would ask for (and more!), though i say this without knowing much about the psu e-learning situation (number of courses and/or instructors, optimism level, etc.). is there any hope? :)"

she responded,

"I am sure you could step right in and fill my shoes...but...they decided to first try to fill the position from within the university. We've identified a small number of fixed term and adjunct faculty that will be contacted to see if they are interested. If the position can't be filled from within, then it will be advertised externally. I'll let you know if and when that happens!"

*sighs*

Sunday, May 05, 2002

 
8:44 PM: [#] [0]

planted pansies, peas & sweat peas this afternoon. watched the road warrior. am working on the "how do i keep myself from screaming" piece (memo to self: ink after watercolor).

 
12:02 PM: [#] [0]

yippee! neil gaiman has a journal!

Saturday, May 04, 2002

 
3:09 PM: [#] [0]

last night i went to sushi for the first time, to see laura makey perform as part of the zero2one dance project. laura is a geography instructor and webct user and i had no idea she was this cool. garrett hates her (which i suppose should have ben my first clue ;).

because this was a culmination of a 3.5 month mentor/workshop, there were five different choreographers and we actually were requested to write our impressions between pieces. i wish i had my notes, but they were collected for later review by the artists. so here's what i remember.

blue river spiral: meant to be calm & serene, i found it to be the weakest of the group. i had very little emotional investment, and it seemed like the dancers didn't, either. however, it was pretty -- nice costumes and rocks.

amy's piece: good use of repetition & symmetry. some nice intro slides which just didn't seem to fit in with the actual dancing. interesting, but maudlin; overall, i was left vaguely unsatisfied.

volaka: laura's piece & one of my favorites. full of contrasts. some of the words i remember writing: "stark. blind. fear. out. out. more and more and more. thin. winter. brave." she seemed very exposed. and yet at one point, she seemed like a giraffe, and again, a spiky iris. volaka appears to be the name of a city in greece, or "a powerful whirlpool."

pomegranate: of fruit and darkness: energetic, dynamic, fluid. a brilliant dancer; the vocals were muddy, though, and very, very odd.

torn: my other favorite piece. fluid, surging. one of the more "classical" dancing pieces, almost ballet-like. pushing & pulling; freedom & restraint.

afterwards, the artists gathered onstage & the audience could ask questions.

Friday, May 03, 2002

 
5:17 PM: [#] [0]

i'm trying to get outlook to publish a freaking public calendar again. i get what it gives. :(

 
3:21 PM: [#] [0]

ben finished his "last official law school class"! go ben! :D

 
12:57 PM: [#] [0]

more quizzes:

• bwah-ha-ha! i'm apparently gambit in the "which xmen character are you?" quiz.
• i am a dark faerie, as counted by the "what type of faerie are you?" quiz.
• hmmmm. according to "which two towers character are you?," i'm wormtongue. but i was only one answer away from being treebeard.
• i'll bet nobody is surprised to find that i'm mountain dew.
• and the "what color are you?" test believes i'm black, which is no color at all. :P
• i tried taking "which buffy the vampire slayer character are you?", but couldn't seem to choose anything. :(
• the "what blogging tool are you?" quiz says i should be using manila as my blogger of choice, as i am "a very conservative and introverted person. You live in your own world and you're not very easy to approach."
• and last but not least, the "what type of explosive are you?" quiz qualifies me as a molotov cocktail.

 
12:11 PM: [#] [0]

ah! alex has reminded me about a movie to complete my top-10 list: fargo!

Thursday, May 02, 2002

 
7:18 PM: [#] [0]

thank god for the "sad macs, bombs, and other disasters" book! and thank god peachpit press has been kind enough to put some of it online! i finally figured out how to zap my nvpram to squelch this weird monitor problem i sometimes get. i knew about pram, but i never knew about nvpram before!

 
6:17 PM: [#] [0]

books i need. right now.
1. the user illusion (thanks, alex!)
2. how the universe got its spots (though you have to scroll down past a review about the new york botanical garden)

 
5:11 PM: [#] [0]

i am absolutely unmotivated today. jenn kept asking what was wrong. we still haven't seen or heard from adra.

it's weird that alex & i ran across the very cool alphabet soup at the same time, so in order to propogate the meme i thought i would add a link. now i need to upgrade to os x so i can start running cool unix stuff like this.

Wednesday, May 01, 2002

 
11:07 PM: [#] [0]

i still have a giant ink blot near my table, even though a guy came to clean my carpet. it's a little lighter, i suppose, and he says it'll go away a little more if i vacuum tomorrow.

 
1:32 PM: [#] [0]

i am apparently arthur, king of the britons on the "which monty python and the holy grail character are you?" quiz.

 
1:17 PM: [#] [0]

i couldn't go to sleep until 3 a.m. so it looks like i'm not going to work today. the ink has not come out of the carpet or clothing.

on the bright side, it looks like i finally figured out how to program my cd player.

 
1:14 AM: [#] [0]

i think i just succeeded in spreading the ink around on the carpet. go me. i'm going to go soak the clothes in the sink and maybe go to bed. or go mope outside on the patio. :(

 
12:49 AM: [#] [0]

oh, just fuck me! i was practicing calligraphy (i'm still looking for an idea for michelle's birthday, which was *looks at watch* yesterday) and i just spilled a cup of higgins eternal ink all over the place. *growls* i have a huge spot on the carpet & my clothes, though thank god i was smart enough to change into sweats and a calligraphy shirt before i began. did ruin the jean formo versals shirt, though. >:(