No Fancy Name

defunct

2006-12-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

for readers who happen to come by here, this blog is officially defunct.

all 1170 or so posts are still available within the site, via archive or search, and will remain so.

i will be blogging elsewhere.

explanation

2006-12-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

Apparently I was to attach an explanation to my previous post. Sorry about that.

* No, there's nothing wrong.

* Nothing "happened."

* I simply don't have anything to say.

* One could argue that I've never had anything to say, and the previous 1169 posts were wastes of space. I wouldn't go that far. I think 100 or so were useful and relevant.

* Being an "authority" in something is only useful if people actually listen to what you have to say, learn from it, and pass that knowledge on to others. Otherwise, you're talking to a wall and that's useful for no one.

* I have zero interest in putting in the time and effort to remain an "authority" in anything technology-related. If I wanted to remain plugged-in and knowledgable about cutting-edge things, I wouldn't have spent the last year or so trying to disentangle myself from it all.

* I associate blogging with a part of my life that I really have strong negative feelings about. Having a virtual presence keeps more than a foot in a world I really don't dig.

I figured I'd mentioned all this at some point. Must have only been on the phone or whatever to people I talk to in real life. Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I struggle with this whole bleeding-edge technology vs simplification vs utility thing.

nope, nothing to post

2006-12-11T05:26:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the false alarm. I have nothing to say.

In fact, I doubt I'll be blogging anymore.

there's a rumor....

2006-12-09T06:49:00.001-08:00

...that I'll be able to blog something today!

[looks around for signs of the apocalypse]

I taught my last class for the semester. I had the last two seminar meetings of the semester. We did holistic grading of the 1A finals yesterday. I only have one more paper to write. In the one paper I did write, I quoted something from a post at Earth Wide Moth. Blogs...so useful!

Later, perhaps, I will have more words on the subject.

help groom the next generation of social activists

2006-12-02T06:19:00.001-08:00

Squid (she is very cool, as is her blog, and as are her kids) is trying to raise money for a local high school girl to participate in The Sojourn Project's ten-day journey retracing the American civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's. Here is Squid's original letter:

Like many of you, our family has decided to focus on the kind of holiday giving that makes a real difference. If you feel the same way, then consider the following opportunity:

My friend Amy Sandia is sixteen years old, and is a junior at Deadwood High School. She "has a dream," which is to go on a ten-day Sojourn Project journey (www.sojournproject.com) that will retrace the steps of the American civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's. I can only hope that my own children will show such a fierce interest in history and humanity when they reach her age.

Amy is a wonderful girl, from a wonderful family, but unfortunately her family cannot afford to pay for all of the trip's expenses. Amy has been doing quite a lot of fundraising, but has not yet reached her goal. The payment deadline of December 7th is looming.

If you are looking for a way to make a concrete difference in a local life--and to help groom the next generation of social activists--then please consider making a donation towards Amy's trip. It will make a lovely holiday gift in the name of your favorite historically savvy liberal.

Thank you,
Squid Rosenberg

Squid originally said she wanted to raise $200. We did that in 12 hours (the internet ROCKS!). Then the trickster said she told Amy she'd try to raise $1000 but she didn't want to be greedy on the blog.

Oh HELL, what do you think the blogosphere is for? It's for HELPING people in some way. This particular way happens to be by foregoing one's quad venti starbucks drink and sticking that $5 into the donation bucket. Go! Shoo! Do it!

Here's my own little story about The Sojourn Project: in my comp class on the day we discussed Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," one of the quiet kids in the back stuck his hand up and was confident enough to say something insightful and useful for the rest of the discussion. He, too, had raised money and gone on The Sojourn Project's trip when he was in high school. He said it really changed him and he learned a lot. Hey, if a shy kid speaks up in class only once in the semester and it's about King and civil rights, I'm all for whatever got him there.

Here is a link to the Dropcash donation page. It's easy. I've used it multiple times to donate to things (including this, of course!!).

meme-ing in the name of science

2006-11-29T04:20:00.001-08:00

I've seen Scott's meme request all over in the last two days but didn't get a chance to put up a post until now (see "self-imposed exile to the island of non-bloggers").

So, Scott's running a little experiment to see how fast a meme travels across the blogosphere. It's for a good cause: his MLA paper. Go Scott! Ok so again, here's the description. Posting counts as participating in the meme, but I'd like to offer the following answers anyway:

1) blue
2) sometimes black
3) 12
4) wouldn't you like to know?

Since I've seen this all over, I don't quite know who to credit. I'll just go in alphabetical order through my feed reader and see who I hit first....Bardiac! There you go.

PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THIS MEME. IT'S FOR SCIENCE! You don't have to be an academic type to do this. All you need to do is:

1. Write a post linking to this one in which you explain the experiment. (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook,

2. Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances. Imply I'm one of them. (Do whatever you have to. If that fails, try whatever it takes.)

3. Ping Technorati.

Go on now!

i have temporarily exiled myself to the island of non-bloggers BUT...

2006-11-28T12:13:00.001-08:00

I passed part II of the comprehensive exam.

I would like to thank my kick-ass study group and lenient exam graders.

Now that stress is out of the way, I can concentrate on the "oh, I've been trying to build an application for the last two weeks" stress, plus paper-writing stress, plus PhD applications stress. The "application" at the beginning of that sentence? That would be application in the "online service for the masses" kind of thing that I do as my actual job.

Stressy stress stress stressful.

But hey! I passed both comps so there you go.

EDITED TO ADD: I finally heard from my group members. We went 4 for 4 on part I and 4 for 4 on part II. Best study group EVER!!!!

happy thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T09:45:00.001-08:00

I have mixed feelings about Thanksgiving since, as trillwing says, "today's holiday technically commemorates a mythical supper that presaged much colonial nastiness."

I am also reminded each year of the words of that sage, Wednesday Addams, who said:

Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground. [in Addams Family Values....via Mac, as always]

But all that aside, I am thankful for many people and things:

YOU (and you, and you, and you, and even you). My folks. My friends (and the job they still let me have). My cats. My profs, especially those writing rec letters for me, and the ones who have made this semester a hell of a lot better than last semester. My students, who really are a great bunch of students and who have made my first semester of teaching a relatively stress-free time (and a joy).

And because I love me some Thanksgiving food, I am especially thankful for my friend's mom who invited me to Thanksgiving dinner even though my friend/her partner/their kid aren't going to be there this year becauase of an out-of-town soccer tournament. If I'm good, I'll even get leftovers. Score!

classroom survey results

2006-11-21T06:13:00.001-08:00

I was poking around the internet the other day and came across a survey of first year writing students at Boise State from Fall 2000. I had been thinking of asking my students some of the same types of survey questions—if I had been thinking I would have asked them this at the beginning of the semester.

I asked them this (stolen entirely from the BSU survey):

* Which one of the following do you believe most strongly is the key to becoming a better writer?

choices:
a) Studying the basics, starting with sentence structure, then paragraphs, and then the whole compositions.
b) People are born writers. Either you can do it well or you can't.
c) People have to develop confidence in their own writing voices before they can improve.
d) Improving one's writing involves an understanding of the steps involved and practicing each separately.
e) You get better at writing if you read a lot.
f) Developing writers most need to learn how to produce the various forms of writing—argument, exposition, description, etc
g) The best way to develop as a writer is to imitate the writing of others who are better than they are.
h) The key to a writer's development in the fluency. Once a writer can learn to write a lot, he or she will improve.

I don't know which option I'd pick. I'm torn between c, e, f (not in that order).

The BSU results were:
c) 31%, a) 24%, f) 16%, d) 15%, e) 13%, h) 10%, b) 6%, g) 1%
[the numbers don't add up so I'm not sure how they calculated it]

My class:
a) 39%, c) 17%, e) 17%, d) 13%, f) 8%, h) 4%, b) 0%, g) 0%

I'm glad no one answered "b," but I wonder how many would have at the beginning of the semester?

The fact that the overwhelming choice was "a" makes me a little uneasy since that's not how we did things at all. Sure, we worked on sentence-level stuff but we certainly didn't set out on day one and say "ok, let's write a sentence." I do have a fair number of students (maybe 8-12?) who came down the remedial/developmental/whatever you want to call it track before getting to 1A, and I know those classes do start with "let's write a sentence" and move forward from that.

Re: answer "c," well, I can do something about that. I hope I did. Same with option "e"—we read in our class. Not a ton, but they were constantly exposed to words of all types—essays, historical texts, etc.—and they actually did the reading for the most part. One can only hope some of it sunk in.

I find it interesting that only a few answered option "f" when that's the type of course we teach. Well, the TAs teach modes-based courses. Not all 61 sections of 1A are modes-based. I don't know anything except to teach that type of course (what with my 14 weeks of teaching under my belt) but I'm not against it at this point. We'll see how that changes over time.

why yes, I AM grading in the wee hours before class

2006-11-20T04:22:00.000-08:00

So I'm grading argumentation essays. These essays are the last of their out-of-class essays and they are revisions of a previous in-class essay. Perhaps another day I'll tell you about how I had to lecture the poor souls about how their "revisions" were not so good at all, and how a vote re: what to do about it ended in a tie and a compromise. It's not a great story, but it is a story nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm grading these essays and I can't help but laugh during one of them. Luckily, it was the intention of the author that the reader laughs at the absurd example used to counter an opposing argument. They had three options for their argumentation essay and one of them was to argue for or against arming pilots of commercial aircraft. My funny student (who never says a word in class, unfortunately) offered an example of terrorists using as weapons the sporks found in on-board meals.

I think maybe it wouldn't be quite so funny if it weren't 4am.

Soon, I will go off to class and we will discuss Poe's "Philosophy of Furniture." Yes, I'm serious.

embarrassing confession

2006-11-18T18:09:00.001-08:00

I've been shopping at Amazon.com since...well...as long as it has been around. What's that, eight years? Ten?

Anyway, the design of their logo never clicked in my little brain until just this very second when I looked at the box in which my cat was sitting.

I never noticed the swoosh goes from the A to the Z, thereby, of course, reflecting that the store has everything from A to Z.

If ever you needed an example as to why I have never been part of any corporate branding project at my job, here you go.

In my defense, I notice a hell of a lot of other things in the world. Just not things like this. Also, I know better than to even try this quiz.

one down

2006-11-14T06:21:00.001-08:00

I guess the exam readers don't want to be burdoned with the exams over Thanksgiving, because our grad coordinator emailed me last night and said I passed the first part.

I would like to thank the authors of the Odyssey, Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, Robinson Crusoe, Tristram Shandy, Wieland, and The Compleat Angler, as those are the works I discussed in the exam. Why yes, you're right: there's no Shakespeare or Milton on that list. I was aghast as well. But that's the way the questions worked out.

Whoo. So anyway, that's one down. The more I think about the second exam, the less lame I think my answers were. They weren't perfect or anything, but they weren't entirely stupid. Maybe it will work out too.

Thanks for all your support!

Performancing for Firefox 1.3.5

2006-11-13T06:35:00.001-08:00

The Performancing for Firefox extension, a blog editor, supports the "new" Blogger platform in its latest official release (version 1.3.5).

I have been beta testing the PFF extension + new Blogger for a few months now, and they work just fine together.

» read announcement

survived

2006-11-12T08:48:00.001-08:00

The exam was fair (and balanced). I wouldn't be surprised if I passed, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I failed. I wrote an answer to the first question (poetry) that was 3/4 fine and then became really lame at the end. My answer to the second question (novels) was just fine. My answer to the third question (two passages, talk about the narratives and try to place them in their period) was halfway fine because I was ok on the first passage (from Lolita) and although I talked about the right things re: the second passage, I didn't place it correctly. It was from Hard Times and it didn't scream "Dickens" to me. But such is life.

Several of us were in the range of feeling "iffy" about it, although our buddy Jim nailed the whole thing (it was his second go around). So, those of us feeling iffy also felt perfectly fine with taking it again in the spring, because we know our deficiencies. Unlike the first exam, this exam really brings one's deficiencies to light. And really, I think that's fair.

Our only real complaint about the exam was that the third question wasn't an explication of two poems and the placement of said poems in their period. We feel that's a better test of our analytical skills—and I'm saying that as a person who doesn't dig poetry.

So we'll see what happens. I don't regret for a minute going out with my friends on Friday night, because we had a good time and we rarely get to go out. It didn't affect my performance on the exam, as I got more sleep Friday night than I typically do. Only three of us went out after the exam but we stayed out for a good six hours. It was fun.

so...there's another exam tomorrow

2006-11-10T07:47:00.001-08:00

I've not written about this one, really, because I've been terrified of it. "Why on earth?" you may ask, since it is, after all, the stuff I am supposed to be well-versed in: the last 206 years of literature in English. I think I'm terrified precisely because of that. But hey, terror and the sublime and all that. It'll probably end up fine.

One of the reasons we (my study group) are so messed up about this exam is that the sample exam questions from years past are purposefully difficult to unpack and then once they're unpacked you have this matrix of period/geography/gender into which you have to fit your answers. For instance, once you figure out the question and the themes in poetry the question asks you to talk about, you have to pluck half your answers from the Brits, half from the Americans, a couple in the 19th C, a couple in the 20th C, and oh hey, a couple must be by women. On Monday, when our group go together to give the sample questions a shot, we couldn't fill up the matrix. For those of us who don't have the ability to memorize poetry and regurgitate it at will, these are difficult questions. If the questions are about fiction or theory, I'm cool.

So yeah, I guess I'm saying I'm still afraid of poetry. But in my defense, I feel a hell of a lot better about it than I did just three months ago. [whatever] bless Dr. Pollock's poetry seminar. Also, Mel talked me off the ledge yesterday and basically said lookit, focus. Make index cards and get those in your head for the next two days and you'll be ok. I think that's true. I think the distillation of All of Poetry into these 35 particular notecards will be enough to help jumpstart my brain once I get in the exam and have nothing but my bluebooks and a pen.

Of course, I could continue my streak of good luck and the exam could be all about American fiction from 1865-1940. I'd be cool with that...much like the GRE subject test which presented me with no less than 6 questions on Walden, 4 on Emerson, 6 on Melville, 6 on Dickinson, 6 on Paul Laurence Dunbar, and so on...

But no matter to all this stress, as I'm going to a show with my friends tonight in the city. I heartily believe it will be better for my mental health than staring at my notecards all night long. Plus, the band is appropriately literary. I think I can work "Money Made You Mean" into any discussion of economy and commodity in the 19th C. Heh.

watch this (must appreciate the kitties)

2006-11-09T09:27:00.001-08:00

thanks for all the good wishes

2006-11-06T06:09:00.001-08:00

I realize I haven't written a blow-by-blow post since part 1 of the comps and the GRE subj test, sorry.

I'm just trying to get a lot of work work done because, um, it's my actual job and it's important right now.

But thank again everyone for popping in and saying nice things and also to those of you who emailed and wanted to know if the exams beat me into submission (they didn't). There's only one more left, on Saturday the 11th. My study group meets tonight as part of our final push for that one.

If I get a moment today I'll write about the highlights of the exams. There were some comic things (for me) with regards to the subject test, although these same things were kind of tragic for my two friends -- one is a classics/poetics guy and the other is a medievalist/poetics guy. I'm neither of those things, and thus I actually knew all the answers about African-American literature of the 19th/20th centuries...

But the question about Simians, Cyborgs, and Women? Totally missed that. We all did. And you know what? I'm totally fine with it.

Also, if some unknown blog reader sent an iTunes gift certificate to me...thanks! But not putting your name on it really hinders me from returning the favor and thanking you by name....so THANKS, unknown person....I will use it for something relaxing.

it's a waffle house kind of moment

2006-11-04T06:19:00.001-08:00

I've probably waxed poetic before about my love for the Waffle House. If not, all you really need to know is a) I love it, b) without it, I likely would never have made it through college, and c) I miss it terribly.

California doesn't have a Waffle House.

Right now, I really wish I had a Waffle House nearby.

I'm killing time before the GRE subject test. Sure, I could make some cereal or oatmeal or eat an apple or have some toast, but what I really want is a mess of hash browns (scattered, smothered, covered) and some eggs and some chicken. Also, some fricking sweet tea would be great. I haven't had any since I lived in Richmond, so that would be [counting] six years ago. A tragedy to be sure.

Anyway, I'm off to either the Cardinal Lounge or a Flames Restaurant (both known more as places we go after evening classes) or maybe I'll just go to IHOP and carb load on pancakes.

Either way, it's not a Waffle House. :(

Oh, about the subject test? I'm not worried about it. I know I'll do better than I did in the spring, since I've since studied things out of my area...

Then I'll meet up with my buddies who took part I of the comps at the normal time, and I think we're going to a bar in Japantown. Personally, I'd rather come back home and watch football while catching up on my work work and start the final studying push for next weekend, but we'll see. I'll say something more specific about the first test after they've taken it too.

it's all good

2006-11-03T13:52:00.001-08:00

more later.

must get lots of work work done since I wasn't around this morning.

T-24

2006-11-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in a state of concern that I will:

* forget the name of the king in King Lear

* forget the name of the hero/warrior in Beowulf

* forget Macbeth's wife's name

you get the idea.

I'll be drowning my sorrows by working for the rest of the day, on work things...you know, the things for which I am paid good money.

Believe me, my boss runs a close second to me on the list of people who cannot wait for November 12th (day after last exam) to roll around.

what's up with washington? (the uni)

2006-11-01T05:29:00.001-08:00

I'm beginning to think there's some sort of mysterious magnetic force around the University of Washington, such that it pulls people northward from California.

I'm applying there, my school chum jimtrout is applying there, and today I got an email from one of my freshmen asking if could work with him on his personal statement because he wants to transfer there.

So, all you UW-ians, if you see a gaggle of San Jose State folks up there next fall, blame the water. Or something.

are you sick of these updates yet? I am.

2006-10-30T13:07:00.001-08:00

grad school blah blah blah teaching blah blah blah working blah blah blah.

* Exam #1 is on Friday morning, approx 92 hours from now.

* Excuse me while I spend the next three days re-reading Greek plays, The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and several Shakespeare tragedies. I'm probably cool with them, but these are the works I have nightmares about forgetting when faced with questions about them. I'm cool with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, several important Chaucerian things, metaphysical poetry, and enough 18th C novels to get me through.

* Unsurprisingly, I'm a hell of a lot more prepared for the GRE subject test (approx 116 hours from now) this time around.

* My students wrote an in-class essay today. They will revise this essay, workshop it, and turn it in all nice and pretty and such. A good idea (in almost all of our 1A classes, essay #7 is a revision of essay #6), except for them to get maximum revision-before-workshop time they should get their essays back on Wednesday. No, I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I made this schedule. Oh well.

* I cooked several things over the weekend, so I have plenty of prepared food in the house for the next week.

* Nothing to read for my two seminars this week. One seminar doesn't meet and the other consists of student presentations. Whew.

* My thesis proposal is finally in the hands of the graduate committee. I had to get a second reader at the very last minute because the logical choice for second reader [out of those people in the department who are allowed to be readers] hasn't even been around campus that we could tell, and thus I couldn't track her down. I think it'll work out better with this new second reader. He's my comp studies prof, and also splits time with the Am Studies dept, and is just an all-around cool guy.

* Back to work. I somehow managed not to enter any time yet in our time tracker tool for the month of October. All my tasks/time/etc indicators are sitting in my sent-mail folder and I have to go enter them into the tool. All 238 of them.

good class!

2006-10-26T14:07:00.001-07:00

So on Wednesday morning I posted about how Monday's class was a bummer and I hoped Wednesday's would be better because mentor prof would be there.

It was.

My students burst into spontaneous applause.

Twice.

Once was for their classmate, a quiet (doesn't say a peep in class) but smart (I know that, they don't) girl who read paragraph 14 of "Letter from Birmingham Jail"— the one with all the semicolons. No one volunteered (surprise!) so I picked her. I did it on purpose because I knew she would know all the big words and could read it with the proper emotion. Boy was I glad she did. I was so proud of them for clapping for their classmate. I was also proud of them for having a good discussion and answering all the questions correctly and puzzling out the arguments and what not. You know, like good college students.

The second time they clapped was for mentor prof, who always gives a spiel to 1A classes about the benefits of a liberal arts major or at the very least a liberal arts minor. He's an eloquent speaker. He asked questions, they answered them, and they clapped at the end. Good kids.

rboc, slaphappy edition

2006-10-25T04:44:00.001-07:00

* We didn't have a very good class the other day, trying to talk about Thoreau and a modern response to Thoreau. Today I'm tempted to hand out the in-class assignment and say something like "so this is a reading comprehension quiz on Bentham, Foucault, and the panopticon. Everyone's done the reading, right?" Because, after all, I'm trying to get them to think for themselves and as such they should say "what the hell?" But I'm thinking I'm too tired and they're probably too tired to think it's funny. So instead they'll be doing a worksheet on deductive reasoning.

* It's also observation day, so mentor prof will be sitting in the back taking notes about my every move. The good news is that I figured out the whole where to stand/what to do with myself issue I had when I started doing this.

* On Saturday, my study group officially lost our collective minds. We started coming up with questions for the exam. For instance: "Discuss the case of the missing phallus in four novels from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. At least one must be American and one must be British." We had noticed a prevalence of "war wounds" as we were discussing things. Or, "Several poets have written poems called 'The Pike'/'Pike' or 'The Fish.' From memory, explicate four such poems. Two poets must be American and at least one poet must be a woman." You get the idea. The scary thing is that these goofy examples aren't far from the actual questions!

* By far, the funniest moment was when we were discussing poems and talking about how our, um, less-intelligent fellow students might discuss them. [Have I told you all the "7th quarto" story? Additionally, surely I've mentioned Wordsworth's "wife," Dorothy, yeah?] For instance, we were reading Philip Larkin's poem "MCMXIV" and we thought surely someone would ask something along the lines of "Who is this McMixiv person?"

I think you had to be there. We were laughing so hard that the people in the study group room next to us banged on the wall to tell us to shut up.

rboc, exams edition

2006-10-23T11:29:00.001-07:00

* Jane Dark, real person.

* Phone calls should not result in more work. In this case, we thought of a paper to write together. Well, I said something like "hey, I have this idea for a paper and I don't want to write the British lit half of it."

* Phone calls to other people should not result in a last-minute addition of a school to one's list of grad apps, especially when said school is outside the geographic bounds one has set. The messed up thing, though, is that I couldn't tell you all if I ended up going there, since it's geographically near certain pseudonymous people. Grrr. Well, let's just hope I get into choice #1.

* Today's class sucked. People don't read. Whatever, though...I already knew that. So, moving on. Hopefully Wednesday will be better, since mentor prof will be observing.

* Doing administrative things and studying things.

* Oh yeah...also WORKING.

countdown

2006-10-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

In 13 days, 23 hours, and 21 minutes [from the time of this post] I will begin to write furiously on three questions about literature from the ancient greeks until 1800 (give or take).

That's a lot of literature.

I must say that our study group—5-6 hours per week for 15+ weeks—was a spectacular idea. I reserve the right to change my opinion if we all fail, but I don't think we will.

Participating in this group has been like having an extra seminar. Good thing I only took two seminars this semester!

Some faculty had a little Q&A session with 15 or so of us, to answer our questions about the exam (not content, more like test prep). My group had some specific questions, such as "Henry James: American/British wildcard?" and "Thomas Hardy: Victorian/modern wildcard?"—exam questions are often in the following form (actually, this is part of an actual question from a previous exam) so knowing the wildcards is important: "Compose an essay that examines six novels that center on an industrialized city. At least two of the six texts must be American, at least two must be British, at least two must be written by women, at least two must be Victorian, and at least two must be from the twentieth century."

What we didn't ask is if reading "10 or 15 things from the list" was a good idea, as one guy did...because "that's what I plan to study" and "it's impossible to read everything."

Um, NO. "Plan" to study? The exams are in two weeks. It IS possible to read everything, if you plan ahead, schedule time to do so, etc.

In other words, dude did exactly what one of Dr. Virago's grad students did, only in a room full of other students and three professors.

I guess the good news is that that majority of us thought his was a terrible idea and never in a million years would have thought to "study" that way. So that's something.

Labels Management for Blogger in Beta

2006-10-18T16:44:00.001-07:00

Oh THANK GOD.

Blogger Buzz: Labels Management for Blogger in Beta

Works well. Looks good. Go use.

uh oh

2006-10-18T06:27:00.001-07:00

I have to write a sonnet for poetry class tonight.

It won't be pretty.

Thankfully this isn't part of the grade. I think it's for "fun."

People sure do have strange ideas of "fun."

teaching is FUN

2006-10-16T16:35:00.001-07:00

Since I'd been talking up my composition class by telling my fellow TAs just what a good time we have (we do!), two of my fellow grad students sat in on my class today. One of my classmates was doing an observation for our comp studies class but the other one was just there for kicks (having already done her observations on other folks). They sat in the back and I swear they almost wet themselves from laughing so hard.

Today was "introduction to argumentation" day, in which we talked about persuasion, argumentation, fallacies, blah blah blah.

I was cracking myself up. At one point I dropped to my knees in a dramatic display of "appeal to emotion," and I think it was at that time they all decided I'd lost my mind.

Or maybe it was when I explained about red herrings, aka the "look! a puppy!" fallacy.

[shiny!]

teaching carnival #14

2006-10-15T15:22:00.001-07:00

Teaching Carnival #14 is up: m2h blogging » Teaching Carnival #14

It's another good one!

PPP: Blue Monster Puzzle 40

2006-10-15T07:05:00.001-07:00

This is a puzzle piece for the payperpostbluemonster puzzle thingamajig. PPP does this thing where they spread little puzzle pieces throughout various blogs and run a contest wherein the first person to reassemble all the pieces gets some cash.

The puzzles always have something to do with a super secret program or announcement from PPP, and I'm interested in what this one's all about!

[The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, although this post was sponsored via PayPerPost. I take my recommendations seriously regardless of payment status. For my views on the matter, please read this post.]

support the commons

2006-10-15T06:45:00.001-07:00

I was doing my usual surf-through-the-feedreader yesterday and saw the simple post by Collin Brooke re: supporting Creative Commons.

His post reminded me to do it (and I did, and I will display my sticker proudly on my laptop), so hopefully this post will remind you.

friday cat blogging: the saga of sharing continues...

2006-10-13T10:34:00.001-07:00

Max would like to register his displeasure that Deuce has taken a seat on "his" shirt...

If cats could talk, I believe Max would be trying to say something like "Mooooooooom, make her move! Now!"

Or, since he's an older cat, it might be something like "tell the bitch to step off!"

PPP: The PayPerPost Blog

2006-10-13T10:31:00.001-07:00

When I was trying to decide whether or not to jump into the PayPerPost fray, the first thing I did was check out the PayPerPost blog. If the blog had read like a bunch of smarmy marketing folks wrote it, or if it was in any way more like a press release site than a blog (in which case I would have known I would be dealing with a company who did not "get" blogging), then I probably would not have joined up.

The time has come when companies are judged by the content and voice in their blogs, it's true.

Since I did join up with PayPerPost, you can imagine the blog passed my personal smell test—it didn't stink. I found a fun, informative, and of all blog. The company has a voice and uses it for good.

So, if you're a blogger looking to take advantage of opportunities from people who wish to advertise on blogs, and don't know if this whole PayPerPost thing is cool or not, check out the blog and get a feel for the people behind it. I don't think they suck.

Plus, they use Blogger, and I'm partial to that platform. :)

[The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, although this post was sponsored via PayPerPost. I take my recommendations seriously regardless of payment status. For my views on the matter, please read this post.]

teaching MLKing's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

2006-10-13T05:39:00.001-07:00

On Monday, my composition class begins the argumentation section of the course (it's modes-based) and we'll be working with argumentation for the rest of the semester.

In a few weeks, the students will read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and that's all the scheduled reading they have for the class for that day.

I have some basic things to discuss, but if anyone reading this has used King's "LfBJ" and has some wicked cool activities or particularly useful discussion points, I'm all ears.

Thanks!

all I wanted to do was sleep in for a few hours...

2006-10-13T05:27:00.000-07:00

...and do you think I could? No.

Stupid messed-up body clock and all that. Grrr.

And I can't sleep in tomorrow because we have study group at 9am. I will bet good money that I will be asleep today at 5pm, if I even make it that long.

Unless my friends want to go out for dinner or something, which they never do (becuase they too are always busy), in which case I would try to work a nap in there at some point.

One thing I am grateful for is that my cats are not nocturnal. Well, I guess they are in that they sleep all day, but they also sleep all night. When they do get up, they are very quiet. None of that cats-up-all-night running-around-making-noise thing that people report. My cats think they're dogs, and sleep with me, and look at me all funny when I do get up and it's the middle of the night, like "hey, stupid human...it's still DARK OUSIDE."

Oct 29th...don't forget: fall back! One "extra" hour....

PPP: Hosting Zoom's Failover Hosting Packages

2006-10-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

Trust me, there are a gazillion web server hosting providers out there. It is very difficult to differentiate between all the various low-cost shared server environments, especially if you aren't technologically savvy and just want "something that works."

"Works" is one thing. "Machines that stay up," "networks that don't drop packets," and "easy to administer" are another story.

Suppose you're a blogger who just wants to publish your blog to a custom domain (via Blogger, WordPress, MovableType, etc.) or you want to set up a basic website for yourself, your business, your academic endeavors, whatever. You probably don't want to deal with anything that isn't push-button or easily admnistered via ftp/ssh/scp/sftp; that is, you probably don't want to play superuser or root user or someone (like me) who thinks this comic is hilarious.

Enter Hosting Zoom, a hosting provider with an important, differentiating feature: clustered failover hosting for shared servers. Essentially, this means that every $12.95/mo (cheaper if you pay quarterly or annually) virtual host has the same clustered failover technology that large companies put into place (for tens of thousands of dollars) for their enterprise applications.

Bottom line? It's a freaking great deal.

Take a look at the basic hosting package and you'll notice all the good stuff is there (emails, languages, databases, etc). Additionally, all virtual hosts are maintained (by you) via cPanel, which is my personal favorite control panel software. In addition to cPanel, Hosting Zoom uses the Fantastico add-on, giving you one-click install access to a ton of things. I've used cPanel + Fantastico to install several different blogging platforms and other add-ons for various clients. It's good stuff. Also, the name always makes me chuckle.

So, if you're in the market for shared server space for your own domain, I'd recommend checking out Hosting Zoom.

[The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, although this post was sponsored via PayPerPost. I take my recommendations seriously regardless of payment status. For my views on the matter, please read this post.]

albatross

2006-10-12T08:03:00.001-07:00

The thesis proposal draft is officially in my director's mailbox, as of a few minutes ago.

Note: albatross not dead, just carefully moved to the side. I'm not that stupid.

Spreadsheets + Writely = Google Docs

2006-10-11T05:59:00.001-07:00

If I weren't trying to finish up my thesis proposal right this very second before I go off to teach class (finally, for the freaking love of God, and yes this is the same one I've been working on for a few more weeks than planned, because I suck and hit some sort of weird block about it), I'd say a few works about how Writely (and Google Spreadsheets) is now officially googlized...that is, merged into Google Docs.

I have screenshots to show you and I'll post 'em later. I don't have any problems with the merging, but I haven't poked around enough to see if I'll have to re-learn where some buttons are.

In the meantime, read Google Docs merges Spreadsheets and Writely at Lifehacker (or Reuters).

in lieu of content, here's a cat photo

2006-10-11T03:47:00.001-07:00

Black cats don't photograph well, especially when said black cat is just curled into a little ball of sleep on your table.

Scratch that...on your shirt on your table.

What is it with cats and their need to sleep only on shirts (or piles of paper)? Max (pictured here) is a little co-dependent, and yesterday I really really really needed him not to be. So I tricked him. I put a shirt on the table which (since he is a cat) he promptly claimed for his own.

Two days later, he is still there and I've been able to get some work done.

Deuce, seen in the background, understands personal space.

perspective

2006-10-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

Everything will be better after November 11th.

You see, part II of the comprehensive exams are held on November 11th. Part I is the week before, on the 4th, unless you're me or my pal Rob, in which case it will be on the 3rd and the GRE subject test is on the 4th.

That's a lot of literature.

I was sitting in the English Society lounge (best couches on campus!) the other day with one of my classmates (Hi Mary!) and one of our former classmates-now-a-lecturer popped in and we were talking about workloads and such. The classmate-turned-lecturer was telling us how the 4/4 composition load is really hitting her hard and that next semester would be worse because of class times and her commute. She asked us about our schedules and I said next semester would be a hell of a lot easier than this semester because I'll just be working at my real job, writing a thesis, and teaching one class.

[crickets]

"As opposed to," I said, "working my real job, taking two seminars, teaching one class, and studying for comps." [and handling some grading duties for one of Janet's classes but that's like a coffee break]

Well then, they said, I guess when you look at it that way, next semester will be better.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Right now I just really really really really need to finish my thesis proposal draft, the one I said would be done, oh, two weeks ago? Yeah. And I have grading to do, and class prep for tomorrow, and study group prep for tomorrow night.

Yesterday's study group was fun—I gave my "here's what you need to know about Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne's short stories in 45 minutes or less" lecture. For tomorrow night I'm going to talk about Middlemarch and Great Expectations. This study group really is like having another seminar (or two!).

Everything will be better after November 11th.

[unless I don't pass the comps, in which case next semester will really suck.]

PPP: PayPerPost Perhaps Controversial, But Not Evil

2006-10-07T21:04:00.001-07:00

For the as-yet-uninformed, PayPerPost (PPP) is a consumer generated advertising platform. Essentially, advertisers and publishers open up "opportunities" to bloggers, who then choose to respond to those opportunities in exchange for cash (or, in what seems to be a little-known but important point, the blogger can donate the payment to the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, or other organizations).

In a recent TechCrunch post announcing PPP's $3M in VC funds, PPP is called "controversial." According to Michael Arrington, "The key area of controversy is the fact that advertisers can mandate that posts be positive on the product, and disclosure of payment is optional for the blogger." Both these things are true. Neither of these things make PPP inherently evil.

In fact, PPP specifically puts the responsibility for evil squarely on the advertiser, publisher, or blogger.

Advertisers mandating positive reviews is nothing new. I used to write product reviews for a CNET in the pre-blog years, and at the time (late 90s) it was generally understood that my $300 paycheck for a review was contingent upon the review being published, and in order for the review to be published it had to pass muster by the company, which was really an advertiser. A company would pay CNet to review their product, CNet would pay me (and a zillion others), and so it goes.

I will say I was honestly surprised at the number of PPP opportunities which were designated +/-, that is positive or negative or neutral. Not all advertisers mandate a positive review.

Bloggers, for that matter, don't have to take opportunities which require positive reviews. This is where the responsibility for one's own slimeballness comes into play. I can safely say that I will never take an opportunity that calls for a positive review if I do not have something positive to say. I can also safely say that I will never take an opportunity and talk about something or participate in buzz for something if I don't know anything about it. I will also always disclose which posts are PPP posts by putting "PPP" in the title and labelling it as such in the body. That way, readers can skip over something which, by the sheer nature of being a paid-for post, might offend their sensibilities.

I don't believe these actions make me a slimeball; I retain my integrity, have something to write about, advertisers get something for their money, readers can skip the post if they want, and everyone wins.

Of course there will be bloggers who do nothing but take every PPP opportunity they can, and who will intersperse their PPP posts within the minimum number of non-PPP posts (PPP posts cannot appear consecutively on a blog, and a blogger cannot blog more than three PPP posts in any given day). PPP puts restrictions on their bloggers so as to reduce the chance that a blogger will become a splogger.

If a blogger goes over to the dark side and becomes a splogger, that is not PayPerPost's responsibility. In the TechCrunch article, Arrington says that one of the investors, Josh Stein at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, "seems excited about the potential profitability of the company while downplaying the ethical issues raised by this and other blogs—the market will sort things out, he says." I agree. If bloggers become sploggers, I think advertisers will stop paying for the posts of those particular bloggers because their review/buzz/etc will be tainted.

The only difference between PayPerPost as a platform and an Amazon Affiliate link is the money: dollars instead of pennies. The Amazon Affiliates network has been around for ages; I've been collecting checks from them for 5+ years now. The biggest difference between PayPerPost as a blog advertising network and something like Google's AdSense or the BlogAds Network is (besides, again, dollars versus pennies) the control bloggers now have over what appears on their blogs. Do not underestimate the value of that control.

The last thing I have to say is this: if PayPerPost is evil simply because it provides a platform for people to exercise choices which might good (advertising what you believe in or have thought about, and disclosing that you are doing so) or might be evil (advertising simply for whatever pays you to do so, and/or not mentioning you're being paid for it), then a huge chunk of the internet is evil. Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and all that.

heads up

2006-10-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

I am going to experiment with PayPerPost, for reasons I'll write about shortly. The simple version: I don't think it's evil, and I am in control of what I write about.

What I will do is label all my posts with "payperpost" AND I'll put "PPP" in the title of the post so readers can easily skip past them if they so desire. But I'll address that in the next post.

calling all rhet/comp instructors! survey of grading/response styles [grad student project]

2006-10-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

I hereby call on the Academic Blogosphere to help out one of my fellow grad students. If you have taught composition at any type of college/university, as a grad student/adjunct/prof, for any length of time, my classmate would very much like to hear your thoughts on grading papers. She says:

My name is Michelle Perry and I am enrolled in a class at San Jose State University on Composition Theory. I have decided to write my final paper on the grading insights of people in the field of teaching composition. Many theories abound regarding the "correct" way to grade papers, but I am curious to see what people have to say about their own styles and successes. Thank you for your time in answering the questions. I appreciate your time and I look forward to your responses.

How to reply:
- anonymously/pseudonymously or not, doesn't matter
- you can leave your responses in a comment below and I'll forward them along OR
- you can email responses to me at jmeloni@email.sjsu.edu and I'll send them along OR
- you can email responses directly to her at mishperry@hotmail.com

Please spread the word, if you are so inclined, because I know all the rockstar rhet/comp people I read have no reason to come to my wee "life and everything" blog, although I do know I am two degrees of separation from them all through some of you who do hang out here.

Basically, I want Michelle to get some great responses, write an outstanding paper (she's very smart), win the research paper of the year award at our school, then win the CSU-wide research paper award, and then go on to great things. I'm not writing about anything nearly as interesting for my project in the same class.

On to the questions...

1. How many years have you been teaching?

2. During those years has your grading system or method changed? If so, how?

3. How would you describe your current grading/feedback system on composition papers? Comments? Grammar? Endnotes?

4. How many papers do you grade per semester on average?

5. How much time to you spend, on average, grading each paper? (If your time grading varies depending on the type of essay please provide examples)

6. Does your grading method on papers differ based on the type of essay presented? Descriptive vs. analytical or Final version vs. Draft? If so, how?

7. How do your students react to the type of grading/commentary you provide on their papers? (please provide specific examples if possible)

8. In your opinion, how does your grading process affect your student’s writing? Do you see improvements? Are these improvements consistent?

9. If you had more time and a lighter teaching load would you change your grading style? If so, how?

go to main page

oh so tempting...

2006-10-06T06:41:00.001-07:00

Our student association wants to give a 10-minute presentation to all our 1A/1B classes (because everyone has to take those classes) about all the things the organization offers to students.

I'm fine with that. I'm all for developing community at a commuter school, registering people to vote, and so on.

But I swear to god, when the person comes to give the presentation I want to hand over the contact and follow-up emails all marked up in red ink. If you were going to send a message to a bunch of English instructors, don't you think you'd proofread your work? Seriously.

* "As an update, we are currently matching Directors' to class meeting times."
good for you. what are they possessing?

* "I will send you a conformation email early next week!"
great! I'm sure you will build a lovely email, all symmetrical and such. However, when will you CONFIRM the time?

test from PFF

2006-10-06T05:04:00.001-07:00

This is a test of Performancing for Firefox 1.3dev20061006, a test build with Blogger Beta integration.

Says Jed:

* This build works for both Beta and normal blogger account. Finally pff should not care which one you are talking to and set them up the same.
it does

* The PFF theme should now look more like what your os theme looks like. (i.e. the background color).
it does

* If you use Master Passwords in Firefox, it should now only ask you once, (not 10 times)
yes

* For blogger BETA accounts, you can now add Labels to your post!! You can do this under the 'Category' tab (Categs.)
yes

* You can also edit older posts and change their categories by unchecking them and adding more.
yes

* Drafts work, but only for NON beta accounts. This is an issue on beta.blogger.com that they are looking into, so it might start working whenever they fix it.
duly noted

All signs point to yes!

teaching...it's JUST LIKE THIS

2006-10-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

So I was walking down the hall the other evening and I happened upon one of my fave profs in his office. I never see him in his office, so I stopped to say hi. He asked, in his sarcastic yet kindly way, "how are the little bastards?" (for he is a venerable prof and "little bastards" is a reasonable thing to call freshmen). I said, "oh, they're not little bastards to me just yet, but today I found out they have issues with critical thinking." (which is true, but I still adore my students). He says, "aye, dumb little bastards," and I laugh (because he's a crack up, really).

Then he promised to send a clip from an old Saturday Night Live episode featuring Jerry Seinfeld teaching a history class. Clearly he followed up, as it's embedded below. The clip is from 1992 (wow, the year I graduated from college...that clip IS old!) and the sketch is called "Make You Think."

It's funny because it's TRUE.

[happily sucking bandwidth from MySpace. Click here if the embed doesn't work for you.]

today the freshmen will be reading ...

2006-10-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

... "What's the Point of a College Education."

You see, they've been eased into this whole "critical thinking and reading" thing. We discussed the concept and strategies for performing such types of thinking and reading, and then they promptly biffed the in-class exercise, en masse.

The in-class assignment was to read the following (I took it from the Handbook for Writers chapter on thinking/reading/writing critically):

It is the first of February, and everyone is talking about starlings. Starlings came to this country on a passenger liner from Europe. One hundred of them were deliberately released in Central Park, and from those hundred descended all of our countless millions of starlings today. According to Edwin Way Teale, "Their coming was the result of one man's fancy. That man was Eugene Schiffelin, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer. His curious hobby was the introduction into America of all the birds mentioned in William Shakespeare." The birds adapted to their new country splendidly. – Annie Dillard, "Terror at Tinker Creek"

After reading it, they were to list all the literal information, all the implied information, and all the opinions. Let's say there are 18-20 different things that could be listed (total). The most anyone came up with was 6. Not a good ratio.

After hearing me try to beat "you can't comprehend something if you don't know the meaning of words and thus you should have your dictionary handy" for weeks, a fair number of the students turned in their papers clearly not knowing that a starling is a bird. So I said to them, "the first thing you should have done was raise your hand and say 'hey, what's a starling' but instead you chose to wallow in ignorance." Ok, I didn't say the last part. But really, we had just discussed how you need to take control of your own brain and ask questions.

So today we will be reading Janet's essay and their instructions are to: underline any words or phrases whose meanings are ambiguous or otherwise unknown to them, note in the margins any questions you might have about a particular statement or example used, identify the thesis of the essay, and finally write a substantial paragraph about what it means to think and read critically (talk about how you have or have not practiced critical thinking/reading in the past, and how you plan to implement critical thinking/reading in the future).

I thank Janet for her very timely teaching tool!

some pet peeves

2006-09-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

Believe me, I have plenty. Most people do. But here are two very specific things that annoy the living crap out of me on a daily basis:

* You know the XML-based content feeds produced by blogs/web sites/etc which are then aggregated by a reader of some sort? They're called RSS or Atom feeds (depending on the format type). They are not called "Bloglines feeds" or "[insert other news reader] feeds." These content feeds are aggregated by a reader of the user's choice, and that reader can be called an RSS reader, feed reader, feed aggregator, news reader (etc). Bloglines is not the only feed reader out there. Content feeds are not called "Bloglines feeds" (see above). Over 60% of readers in use are something other than Bloglines.

* RADIO BUTTON. Not "radial" button. In forms on a web site, the little circular form control is called a radio button. It has a very specific purpose, just like a checkbox. Checkbox series (or single boxes) allow the reader to select multiple elements, such as "apple" and "orange" and "banana" and "pear" etc. Radio buttons are used when only one answer is allowed/expected, such as "yes" or "no". Web "developers" who provide checkboxes for "yes" or "no" questions, thereby allowing a user to select both "yes" AND "no," can be held responsible for all time-space continuum/paradox problems in society. I firmly believe marketing people are responsible for perpetuating the "radial" button phrase, much like people who use "would of" instead of "would have" because they hear would've but since they don't read they don't know that would've is actually a contraction while "would of" just makes no sense. [see also: "could of" and "should of"]

To recap: Bloglines is a reader. RSS or Atom is the type of a feed read by a feed reader. Circular on/off form controls are called radio buttons. Radial is the type of a tire.

Thank you.

blogger beta and feeds and your readers and blah blah blah

2006-09-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

the power of trillwing compels me.

if you are using blogger beta and you also burn your feed with feedburner, go into your feedburner settings and change your source feed URL from http://[whatever].blogspot.com/atom.xml or http://[whatever].blogspot.com/rss.xml to http://[whatever].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

if you are using blogger beta and you are not burning your feed with feedburner, tell all your users to switch to this URL for the feed: http://[whatever].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full by writing a post about it or something

if you are a proactive blog reader and you know the feeds for your favorite blogs aren't updating in your reader [note: any feed reader] AND you know these blogs to be of the blogger beta type, just change the subscription in your reader from http://[whatever].blogspot.com/atom.xml or http://[whatever].blogspot.com/rss.xml to http://[whatever].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

that should take care of most blogger beta feedy things. oh also if you're a feedburner, don't forget to manually ping after publishing.

on getting started

2006-09-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I briefly mentioned about some of the students [really just a few, like three or four out of 24] in my composition class not being able to get started when faced with an assignment. By this, I meant the short in-class writing assignments (eight to ten minute things) as well as the in-class essays (75 minutes). After they get going, they have things to say and their syntax is just dandy, but it's the "get going" part that stumps them.

It doesn't seem to matter if the short writing assignments come at the beginning, middle, or end of class (they're typically at the beginning but occassionaly they've been after we chatted about things for awhile), the inability to get started is still there.

It doesn't seem to matter if the assignment is "write an essay" or "answer this reading comprehension question" or "brainstorm on this topic" or so on—they can't get started. Even when the assignment is just to freewrite, they sit there and stare at the page despite the fact they just answered the question "what is freewriting?" with "put pen to paper and just write whatever comes in your head and it's impossible to do it incorrectly."

Some of them have long commutes—upwards of an hour to get to campus for a 7:30am class—but some do not. Some sleep during the commute, some of them read, some of them doodle.

Ideas? Suggestions? Thoughts?

obligatory where-the-hell-have-you-been post

2006-09-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting right here, actually. I read all your blogs, I swear. Sometimes I even comment. But every single bit of my brain energy has been devoted to work, seminars, thesis proposal writing, comprehensive exam studying, and teaching. That's not the exact order, but it's darn close. Everything will ease up on November 11th around noon—that's when comprehensive exam part II will be over.

So here's the bullet list:

* work: It's work. It's actually fine (unlike this same time last year) because with the exception of one big project completely under our control, there's just a lot of fluffy stuff for me to do each day ("fluffy" in that it requires little thought on my part).

* seminars: I still love them. I'm still not a fan of poetry, but I love the poetry seminar. I haven't done much on my seminar project besides gather all my research into a pile, but at least it's something. I had two presentations in the class last week, and they went fine. In my composition studies class, I've thought of a topic for my seminar project and it's nothing at all related to computers. Hooray!

* thesis proposal writing: I'm working on it as we speak. I have a large pile of stuff, so the annotated bibliography portion is taking the longest to do. I told my thesis director I'd have a rough draft of the proposal to him tomorrow, so I shall. Note the term "rough," which is why I'm not freaking out about it or anything.

* comprehensive exam studying: Our group has ramped up to twice-weekly meetings, and we met yesterday morning for a few hours. We're firmly into the 18th Century, but thankfully an American or two were on the reading list so it wasn't all English authors, all the time like it has been. We're meeting again tomorrow. I have to talk about Tristram Shandy for the group.

* teaching: I still love my class. They have an in-class essay tomorrow (description), during which time I will be reading Tristram Shandy.

sunday plans and other random bullets of crap

2006-09-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

* I'm taking a stack of student essays to a coffeeshop. That's right, I'm going to grade in a coffeeshop like one of the big kids.

* My comp class is modes-based, and now we're doing description (narration was first). The essay for this mode will be an in-class essay on the 25th. Their in-class writing exercises for the next two class periods will lay the groundwork for their in-class essay. I figured doing this would be a good idea for the first official in-class essay (there are three total plus the final, and three more out-of-class essays), since their biggest problem seems to be getting started. I have a few people who take a really long time to get going, and then they run out of time at the end and end up with a short essay not fully formed. The text they end up writing is mechanically sound, it just takes awhile for them to get to it. My thought for this essay is to have a couple in-class assignments that are essentially essay prompts, but the assignment is simply to pre-write in whatever way gets them a thesis statement and an outline for what they would write if it were an actual essay prompt. For the actual essay, I was going to give them a choice of prompts, drawn from the ones they had already worked with in class. Too nice?

* Must re-read a bunch of stuff for my study group meeting on Monday. We're into the 17th C/early 18th C now! We started with the Iliad and have gone linearly through the list. So, the early 18th C is an accomplishment. On Monday we're discussing Milton, Congreve, and Pope, plus Biblical things with which we should be familiar. We're ramping up our schedule to go to twice-weekly meetings beginning next week, so we can finish the reading for Part I of the exam by Sept 30. Then we'll have twice-weekly meetings for all of October to handle the 19th & 20th C. I'm strong on all things Romantic through WWI in both British and American camps, and the others in our group are strong in 20th C poetry, but none of us were strong on anything pre-19thC. In other words, eight study sessions for Part II of the comps will be just fine. We're all still terribly anxious about it, but less so.

* Had a great meeting yesterday with two of the profs who hold my future in their hands (they happen to be married to each other, but have different last names. Very handy for rec letters). The "thesis talk" went something like this: "what is your plan?" ... "I plan to take the paper I wrote for your class, multiply its length by 4, and add a sizable chunk on Thoreau." ... "good, that's what I thought you were going to do." ... "ok then." Then we talked about the second reader, and how crappy it is that the other prof in the room can't officially be a second reader. So, this week I have to write my thesis proposal draft and send it along to him, then talk to the potential second reader, then wait for it to get approved by the entire committee, blah blah blah. You can bet I'll start the actual work on it the moment comps are over in mid-November. Although the thesis credits are for next semester, the entire thing has to be complete by the first week of April—way before the end of the semester. I'm not worried about it. I just have to work in a trip to Yosemite in the next six months. I can't write a thesis about John Muir, the quintessential transcendental naturalist writer, without ever seeing Yosemite. That would be incredibly lame.

* I need coffee. Bye.

a brief note about my poetry seminar

2006-09-14T10:08:00.001-07:00

Previously, I mentioned my poetry seminar was quite fun. It still is, and I still am not a huge fan of poetry, yet I am compelled to mention this seminar once again.

Walking to the parking garage with my school chum, Jim, we both shook our heads and said, "I don't know how he does it," referring to our prof. Sure, our prof is good at it because he's taught this same seminar for decades, but still—we walk out of class filled to the brim with knowledge of all things poetic, yet not exhausted or anxious about it. Instead, we're just mentally full of poetic goodness and confidence in our analytical skills.

Last semester, one of my profs embodied every.single.trait I vow never to display to my students. (concentrated suckitude...good times!) This semester, I have a prof who is a walking list of "positive things to do in the classroom." You can bet that many of the notes I take in this poetry class are not about poetry—they're about the profession.

random bulleted things

2006-09-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

* Tomorrow, my students will turn in their first essays. I expressed to one of my fellow TAs that I was really stoked for my students. My fellow TA looked at me like I was insane. "But...the grading!" she said. "That's what we do," I said. She still thought I was nuts. But some of these students have good stories to tell, and these are narrative essays, so I think they'll all start out on a positive note—and I'm excited about that. They all had their drafts with them on Monday when we did a mini-workshop. I glanced at them all, just briefly since they were doing peer review, and all the essays looked like Cs or better (at first glance). It'll be nice not to fail someone on their first essay.

* Most of my stress right now (re: school) is related to things of an administrative nature. For instance, until today I was in this zone of the unknown regarding conflicting dates between comprehensive exams, GRE subject tests, the departmental final exam for comp classes, and inconsistent publication of important dates. Everything has worked itself out, thanks to a flexible and accomodating grad coordinator (plus one other person in the same predicament). Two of us (so far) will sit for a specially-proctored exam the day before the rest of our pals take the exam, and when they're taking it we'll be taking the GRE subject test. Then the next week we can all sit for part two together, and this other fellow and myself will be able to proctor our class during the final in December. All is well. But all was very stressful until today.

* The next bit of administrative stress involves interesting and unique ways to clear my foreign language requirement. If I could get any sort of answer from the person in charge of signing off on language requirements (not in my dept), all would be well. But I haven't been able to track her down via email or in-person yet. Frustrating.

* I set a deadline of the 25th for a draft of my thesis proposal. I'm not exactly sure of the precise thesis of my thesis, but I have research out the wazoo to support whatever it is I decide I'm doing. I just have to decide what that is, then write my 10 pages of proposal, meet with my adviser, then make changes and send it along to the committee.

* I'm a little angsty about my composition studies paper. I feel I should write something related to a particular subject, given that I know a significant amount about the subject, but I really and truly don't even want to get involved in it. But then—and yes, I've had this feeling before—I think it would insane not to tap into the knowledge and experience I already have. But then I remind myself just how much I hate discussing the subject. Repeat ad infinitum. This is similar to just how much interest I have in building digital archives—zero, if not less—despite the fact that I can build those things in my sleep. No joke...and no interest. Um, anyway. So yeah, I have a little angst about my composition studies paper. [But I will note that it's neat to read around a topic and mentally note the articles written by people on my blogroll.]

* I haven't even discussed the awkward rift in my study group. Let's just say that three of us are on the same page and it's a good page, but there are more than three people in the group.

flickr support for blogger beta

2006-09-11T12:42:00.001-07:00

flickr support for blogger beta
Originally uploaded by jcmeloni.

Flickr is one of the first (if not the first) to upgrade their service to include an authentication/posting method for Blogger Beta.

Read the Blogger Buzz announcement.

I hope this signals a wave of upgrades for other third-party services, although the majority of the ones I use fall into that "not owned by Yahoo! or Google" category and therefore resources are scarce. I would be super pleased if Performancing for Firefox were next on the list. Fingers crossed.

why my parents are cool

2006-09-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, I sent some pants to my mom so she could hem them. I can mend things, but not hem things.

Of course I could just take my pants to one of the many alteration shops nearby (we certainly have plenty), but I wanted to give my mom something to do.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the return package...it included the hemmed pants PLUS whoopie pies.

Spectacular!

freakishly accurate prediction

2006-09-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

The Amazing Criswell is brilliant.

He says: "This weekend, for example, you will purchase a copy of Michael's new book, What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? And this afternoon, you will watch Penn State defeat Notre Dame, 19-17."

I bought the book on Wednesday (sorry, Criswell, but your prediction was a little off) and it's a freaking page-turner! So, when I'm ill-prepared for class on Monday, I'm blaming Bérubé.

Also, for The Amazing Criswell to be completely accurate, the Nittany Lions need to get their collective shit together.

i nearly shuttered the blog last weekend

2006-09-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

...not for any scandalous reasons, but because I have nothing to offer right now and don't see that I will for the foreseeable future. It is very difficult to be responsible for three large and distinct things: my actual full-time job (completely removed from academic endeavors), my academic endeavors (2 seminars to take, 1 comp class to teach, 1 thesis proposal due in a month, 1 book to index (not mine), 2 comprehensive exams in November), and writing about things loosely related to my books (that is, techie things and blogger things).

The vast majority of my blog readers are here for the latter, which is unfortunate because that's the stuff that lives at the very bottom of my to-do list—not necessarily because I don't want to do it, but because the things above it are far more important to me, as they involve things like a paycheck and my future. A blog without readers is just a paperless personal journal, and I was never a big journal writer, so it seemed it would be kind of pointless to keep a blog around.

So, I really can't say why I did decide to keep it around, other than perhaps next semester will be different (as far as time constraints go), and the following years will be much different, so maybe I'll get back to writing about the things people actually want to read. Maybe. Sometime. It's extremely difficult to schedule time for things secondary to job and school, since neither of those things follow a strict schedule. Given how I like to schedule things, you can imagine how frustrating it is, never knowing when I'll be able to do x, y, or z. So for those of you wondering when I'll do x, y, or z, I don't know.

observation day

2006-09-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Day 4 of my comp class, but Day 2 of actual teaching. It also happened to be the day the TA Coordinator/my thesis adviser/man-holding-my-future-in-his-hands scheduled as his observation day (first of two). Argh! Gah! Stress! Ok, truthfully I didn't have much of that. I actually volunteered to go first. I wanted to get it over with, and I also wanted him in there at a time when the students were still shiny and new and participatory. (I'm kidding...kind of...)

I had a plan for Day 4, and through some miracle we actually did everything on my list and only had two minutes left at the end. True, if we hadn't gone on a five-minute tangent about poor Pluto, we would have had more time left at the end, but it all worked out. My plan included a reading quiz at the beginning followed by several distinct blocks of discussion, and the students were talkative and smart. Boy oh boy does that make things easier, and far less boring than me standing up there and lecturing about the narrative essay.

After class, the "debrief" went something like this: it was fine, class has an identity, they're responsive, etc etc, what do you think? I said, "I just don't know what to do with myself," which is absolutely true. My biggest problem right now is that I don't know where to stand...and I totally forgot I had a huge chalkboard behind me, and could write things all over it for the visual learners and such. Duh. We used the chalkboard extensively last week, and yesterday? Totally ignored it. Then again, if those are my biggest issues, I'm starting at an ok place.

The thing about not knowing where to stand, it's partially because we have stupid furniture in the classroom. The room is jam-packed with chairs, then there's a large rectangular table at the front. I stand behind the table because if I stand in front of it I'll be smushed against the first row of students. If I shove the table to the wall so I can walk in front of it, then I won't be able to use the chalkboard. So, I just have to get used to wandering outside of the bounds of the table (outside of the safety zone!). All of the critical things the observer had to say matched the critical things I had to say, so again—totally on the same page. Thank god.

On Wednesday, the students turn in their first essay-that-counts, and it's an out-of-class essay. I'm actually looking forward to grading them, to see where everyone really stands. I think many of them will be quite good.

plans for this weekend

2006-09-02T06:54:00.002-07:00

* In half an hour I'm off to refresh my GRE general scores. [Done! i did exactly what I planned to do, which was increase my score significantly. If I can only do the same with the subject test in December, all signs will point to yes on the grad school app ouija board. right now they point to "meh."]

* After that four-hour diversion, I'll come back here and do my reading for next week's seminars. [done! I must say, two classes instead of three is like christmas.]

* I will gather some Dunbar research and figure out the articles I need to get from ILL. [done! we have new photocopiers in the periodicals area, and they rock hard.]

* I will think a little about my comp studies project idea [thought about it. must think more, after reading more]

* I will make my plan for Wednesday's comp class [done!]

* I will do my reading/make notes/etc for my MA exams study group meeting [ongoing]

* Football will be on the TV as background noise. I love baseball, but I am so pleased it's football season. [yay]

* I will work on Blogger Beta-related blog posts, I swear. Now that the template editor works, there is much to say. [maybe someday. this is such a low priority for me it's not even funny.]

brief thoughts on my own class

2006-09-02T06:54:00.001-07:00

Previously, I said that I'm not going to talk about my actual students or class except in very general ways like "fun!" or "I gave a crappy lecture," because I am not an anonymous blogger. This is still true. I won't tell you (dear blogosphere) anything that I haven't said to them already. This is not to say I don't have anything to talk about. :)

I said that my class did miserably as a group on the grammar diagnostic, and now I can say that they did average as a group on the essay diagnostic. I was (honestly) able to say something positive about each essay, followed by a ton of "here are things you should focus on and hey, guess what? they're exactly the things you'll learn in this class" kinds of comments. I had a couple students who wrote what would have been B+/A- essays right out of the gate, and some who wrote what would have been D essays. But the vast majority fell squarely in what would have been the C range. I was pleased, and we finally got down to business on day three.

Remarkably enough, by the end of day three I could match names and faces. Sure, I only have twenty-five students, but I am so bad with names that I assumed I'd have to wing it for most of the semester. Not so. I think the part of your brain used to store student information fires itself up when it knows it is faced with remembering important things. I couldn't tell you the names of eight of the twelve people in my poetry seminar, but I know every single one of the twenty-five students in my class. Whew. One hurdle down.

By the middle of day three, people were talking and we did a collaborative exercise re: writing a narrative essay and they seemed to dig it. Then we went around the room and did the "tell us about yourself" routine, and people were making connections with each other either because they went to rival high schools or a bunch of them liked tennis, etc. Hooray.

I have more than a few students who spent the last few years in remedial classes (some schools call them developmental classes, which I think is far more positive-sounding than remedial!), and they were not shy about saying so in their intros, because they were so proud to have made it through. That was pretty cool, but the really cool part comes next (or maybe I'm just easy to please). The writing exercise for the day was to write some sort of narrative about yourself (just a paragraph), and it turns out that one of the former remedial students, one who was at the low end of the group based on the diagnostic, wrote the best paragraph. It would be a perfect example of what I planned to talk about in our next class, so I e-mailed the student to see if she would be ok with me using it as an example and having her read it to the class and using it to jumpstart the discussion. She was very happy. I was very happy. It was pretty darn cool.

So, day four of class (wednesday the 6th) will be day two of actual teaching. It is also the day that the TA coordinator/my boss/my thesis advisor/thankfully an all-around-good-guy will visit my classroom and sit in the back and freak me out. Good thing I'm confident about what we're doing that day!

brief thoughts on my seminars and new students

2006-09-02T06:32:00.001-07:00

When I wrote (briefly) about my first week of seminars for this semester, I didn't really know anything about them—we had only met once, on administration day (syllabus and general chatting day). Now that I've had full-length meetings of both seminars, I can safely say that both will be great. These two seminars will be a good way to end my MA coursework—on a positive note and all that.

Although I am still not a huge fan of poetry, my poetic craft and theory seminar is a lot of fun. The fellow who teaches it has done so for a gazillion years, and he's still so gleeful about it that you can't help but be enthusiastic with him. It's no secret that a confident and enthusiastic instructor is the key to a positive learning environment, and this fellow/this seminar is a perfect example. The classroom time goes by pretty quickly as he moves us through our thought processes and we come out the other end all learned and such. I love it when that happens. "Oh that's what I know? Awesome." Plus, it's nice to be able to play the "what period is this from" game with a piece of anonymous poetry, answer correctly, and have a reason besides "I used the Force" to say just why I placed it in the correct time period. For those of you remotely interested in the poet I plan to work with for my seminar paper, I chose Paul Laurence Dunbar. He was really the only person I had on my short list, and I put him there for various reasons (in other words, I didn't flip through the Norton and randomly choose him). I think I'll have fun with the project. Oh, and another thing...we're reading Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate and it's really quite fun.

Take everything I said about my poetry seminar and apply it to my composition studies seminar, less the seminar topic and book title. I still don't have the foggiest idea about my project for that class, since "anything related to composition studies" is a bit broad. Ok, that's not entirely true—I have some glimmer of a thought about something but I don't know enough about what I'm thinking about to know if it's viable. I'm going to think more about it this weekend and then bounce it off my prof next week. It's technologically oriented, which breaks my whole "no! I'm not using technology, damnit! I just spent the last decade (plus) of my life building things, and I'm taking my toys and going home" rule, so I have to square that with myself first.

Moving on...let me say a word or two about my classmates. Finally, idiot girl is not in any of my seminars, nor is idiot boy. It's like Chriskwanzakah for us! Seriously, their absence alone makes this semester exponentially better than the other two. So far, the new students we have are simply quiet and shy (and overwhelmed). As is common, they were given no instruction as to The Way Things Work. As someone who knows The Way Things Work, I took it upon myself to help. The whole mentality that exists about not helping out your fellow student because everything's a competition and you may be helping someone who will one day be your competitor on the job market, well, I call bullshit. Of course, it is true that your classmate may one day be your competitor in the job market, but really, telling someone where to get their parking pass or how advising works in the department, or detailing the responsibilities of a Teaching Associate, or answering the "what does academic writing look like?" question and helping them start down their own path—it's just being a good citizen. So after comp studies class on Thursday, I answered questions for a couple hours and generally made people feel better about themslves. Come to find out they're not actually sullen—which is how they appeared in class—they're just terrified. But no more! Hooray.

Best line in my classes so far: we were reading several essays in The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook and several of us (including the prof) noted that one essay was particularly bad. One of the new students, a week removed from China, said, "I am so happy you said this is a bad essay. I thought it was my bad English!" We all laughed and said not to worry, for it really is the authors' bad English. Ha ha. Everyone felt better.

organicexpress.com

2006-09-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

I never found just the right CSA or other farm subscription for me—they tend to be too expensive or the shares too large for just little ol' me (don't want to waste food), or the pick up day/time/location didn't work, and so on. Additionally, I can never remember when and where all the various farmers' markets are held, and when I do remember, it's usually after I just picked up my groceries for the week and thus don't need anything. In other words, I'm lazy and disorganized but well-meaning.

Everything changed when I got an organicexpress.com flyer in my mail. The company is a cross between a CSA, a farmer's market, and the now-defunct Webvan (or any other grocery delivery service) in that they have small or large boxes for delivery on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, the boxes are all fruit, all veggie, or a mix, you can add all sorts of other organic groceries to the box (cans of beans, things of pasta, cartons of soymilk, etc. It's a very long list of extras), and they deliver to your door (on Wednesdays).

You can also customize your box by indicating the stuff you don't want. For instance, I checked off "eggplant" because I never want eggplant in my box (I like eggplant, I just can't work with it). Although they have a "this week's produce" list at their site, I thoroughly enjoyed the suprise when I opened my box—it was like fruit and veggie christmas! The box contained three valencia oranges, a big bunch of grapes, eight tree-ripened plums, and four nectarines—the nectarines were a substitute for canataloupe (I love it but I don't like to mess with it). On the veggie side, the box contained a pound of green beans, a big bunch of carrots, a head of cauliflower, and two pounds of gold potatoes. Now I can pick things to cook based on what I have here, versus what I have to go purchase elsewhere. Since I also bought a box of groceries (many cans of beans, some soymilk, veggie broth, some polenta, some cereal, etc), the only things I would have to get at the "real" grocery store are miscellaneous paper items or meats (if so inclined).

If you're in Northern or Southern California and any of this process sounds appealing to you, check them out. They're a totally low-key but completely repsonsive company (I've asked a few questions) and I really think this delivery process (plus the whole cooking-at-home thing I've finally implemented on a consistent basis) will be life-altering for me. Hooray!

blogger beta: template editing now available

2006-08-31T05:43:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to say that template editing is now available for Blogger Beta templates.

In this post, I said:

* If you switch your blog to the Layout system, you cannot edit the raw template (yet).

It should now read:

* If you switch your blog to the Layout system, you can edit the raw template but be aware it's an entirely new template language.

Blogger starter documentation is available, and I'll write something substantial (finally) over the weekend.

this made me chuckle

2006-08-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

	Please note I'm not chuckling AT Pluto. I'm chuckling at the special side column box warranted by Pluto's misfortune.
	It is true, though, as shown by this graph. The blogosphere is outraged.

since it's not about MY ACTUAL STUDENT, I can blog this

2006-08-27T17:24:00.001-07:00

It's Sunday (today). The phone rings. Caller ID shows an actual name and not "unknown," so I answer it thinking that if it's a wrong number I can at least tell them so, or if it's one of my friends calling from someone else's phone, I won't miss the call.

The person on the other end was neither of the two options.

caller: May I speak to Professor Julie Meloni?
I'M NOT A PROFESSOR. I ranted about people using "professor" without actually having the rank, over here. But whatever.

me: [puzzled] This is Julie.

caller: Hi, I'm [name] and I'm a [sport] player and was out of town until this week and I see you have an opening in your class at [time].
WTF? While it's true that it's schedule adjustment time and technically in my class I have one seat, I have a waitlist. Plus, um, what the fuck?

me: [not even politely] I have a waitlist.

caller: Oh, but...

me: [interrupting] Could you tell me how you got this number?
If she was given the number by someone, I want to know who it was.

caller: In the phone book.

me: Ah. Just so you know, this probably isn't the tack you want to take with faculty, calling random people at home on a Sunday evening.
/makes mental note to remove name from phone book

caller: ok, thanks!

Shall we examine just how many things are wrong with this exchange?

[I should reiterate that moving forward I'm not going to talk about my actual students or class except in very general ways like "fun!" or "I gave a crappy lecture," because I am not an anonymous blogger. Heck, even if I were an anonymous blogger I probably wouldn't be any more specific than that. I have an outlet for venting. But this student...sheesh. Not actually mine.]

my first week of classes

2006-08-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

In a recent e-mail, my mom asked if I was as stoked about my seminars as I am about my comp class (ok, so she didn't say "stoked"). I guess that means I didn't mention it in a blog post! Oops. It was a busy week. But yes, I do like my seminars just fine. This is a good thing, since they're the last two seminars I will take at SJSU (next semester is thesis-only).

Some of you might know that I am completely and utterly deficient in poetry. Seriously. I don't know a thing about the technical aspects of poetry, and I have a difficult time reading and understanding poetry. The exceptions to this statement are Blake, Byron, Baudelaire and Rimbaud in translation, and the War Poets, but don't ask me why (I don't know). Anyway, for a number of really good reasons I figured it would be smart to take the seminar in Poetic Craft and Theory. Although this particular version of the class is focused on the sonnet, we will work with all types of poetry. Have I mentioned I'm not really a big fan of the sonnet? Yeah. But the prof is very nice, very wise, and very well-liked by colleagues and former students...I think "venerable" applies. We only have nine students in the seminar, and I only know one of them—one of the second-year TAs, who was also in my Victorian seminar last semester, and is trying to decide between a PhD program in English or Classics. He's a fine fellow. The other students seem to be entirely new to the program, including one very nice guy from the Philippines here on a Ford Fellowship. It's a pretty basic seminar with three short presentations, two low-key quasi-exam kinds of things (one written, one oral), and a seminar paper on a poet of our choice—"Someone on the fame scale between Shakespeare and [prof's name]" said the prof. I have a short list of three or so, but I'm always open to suggestions from people who actually know something about poetry. Plus, I'd like to see who my readers think I might like!

My other seminar is Composition Studies, and I don't think it could possibly be more low-key. We have twelve people in the seminar and I already know eight of them. Four of us are TAs (the other three new TAs already took this class), three are GAs (they'll likely be TAs next year), two are unknown to me, one is a middle school teacher who was in two courses with me my first semester, and one is an MFA student who was in my AmLit class last semester. The reading load is incredibly light. I'd say it's a mostly workshop/practicum kind of class. Those of us who are already TAs are responsible for bringing in our syllabi for discussion, and we'll have more samples of prompts and essays to discuss—stuff like that. We have to observe a few writing classes and write a few pages about things we learned, but the vast majority of our grade (70%) is our project and presentation of same. The requirements for the project are: "independent research on anything related to composition studies." While I appreciate the flexibility, and he did say it could be a traditional research paper "or even something web-based," I feel like I'm sitting on a wee raft in the middle of the vast ocean of possibilities.

So there you go. I am excited about my own seminars as well as my comp class, even if the comp class did miserably as a group on the grammar diagnostic. Bad news: they all did poorly. Good news: they all did poorly! I won't alienate anyone when we go over grammar-related things! Hooray!

recipe: super happy fun pasta

2006-08-26T19:24:00.001-07:00

[click to embiggen]

This is the latest installment in my plan to stockpile food for the week. The actual name of this dish is "Cavatappi with Arugula Pesto and Cherry Tomatoes" but I like "super happy fun pasta" better, as it more adequately describes the dish. It's awesome. The intro to the recipe says, "Peppery arugula complements the sweetness of ripe tomatoes. Use heirloom tomatoes, if available, for even better flavor." The arugula-instead-of-basil for the pesto makes it so perfectly arugula-y. I love my basil, sure, but arugula is great. I will definitely use some heirloom tomatoes next time. Those things are pretty and super flavorful.

This recipe is from the June 2006 issue of Cooking Light.

[recipe follows]

Cavatappi with Arugula Pesto and Cherry Tomatoes

Pesto:
5 C trimmed arugula [sure, you can use basil if you want]
1/2 C (2 ounces) grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/4 C pine nuts, toasted
1 T lemon juice
3/4 t salt
1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
1/3 C water
2 T extra virgin olive oil

Remaining ingredients:
1 pound uncooked cavatappi [you can also use fusilli]
2 cups red and yellow cherry tomatoes, halved (about 3/4 pound) [or heirloom!]
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted

To prepare pesto, combine first 7 ingredients in a food processor; process until finely minced. With processor on, slowly pour 1/3 cup water and oil through food chute; process until well blended.

Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain. Combine pesto, pasta, and tomatoes in a large bowl; toss well. Sprinkle pine nuts over pasta. Serve immediately.

Yield: 6 servings (serving size: 1 1/3 cups pasta and 1 teaspoon nuts)

NUTRITION PER SERVING
CALORIES 425(29% from fat); FAT 13.7g (sat 2.8g,mono 6.3g,poly 3.7g); PROTEIN 14.6g; CHOLESTEROL 6mg; CALCIUM 135mg; SODIUM 412mg; FIBER 3.2g; IRON 2.1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 61.5g

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trying to explain the "bathroom office"

2006-08-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Each year, a certain number of teaching associates (TAs) get the "bathroom office," aka room 227B in the Faculty Office building. [note: despite it's name, the FO building only includes the faculty from the depts of English and Philosophy. go figure.]

This year, I am one of the people in 227B. Three of us share this distinction.

Following is my attempt to explain why this is the "bathroom office"...

This is the view of our office door when you're walking down the hall. Oh, that other door? The one you can actually SEE from the hall? That's the women's bathroom.

If students figure out the correct door for us, that is, not the bathroom door, this is what they see. Well, they also see another desk. It's to the right, against the front wall.

This is the view from our office doorway. As you can see, the door that is visible from the hallway is indeed the BATHROOM.

recipe: beans, greens, and sausage (and grapes!)

2006-08-25T07:05:00.000-07:00

[click to embiggen]

Stockpiling good food for the week was an outstanding idea. I ate so well! I'll definitely make more dishes this weekend, for the following week.

This dish was actually the first one I made at the beginning of last week, and it lasted for a good four or five meals. It was awesome. The grapes thing threw me for a moment, but they made this dish very tasty indeed. The recipe is from the April 2006 issue of Cuisine at Home.

[recipe follows]

Beans, Greens, and Sausage (and grapes!)
2 lbs link Italian sausage
3 T olive oil
2 C seedless grapes [I used red]
1/4 C water
1 C onion, sliced [I would use more next time]
1 T minced garlic
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1 bunch mustard greens, stemmed and chopped
1/2 C chicken broth
2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
salt to taste
balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 400.

Piece sausage with a fork in several places. Heat 1T olive oil over medium-high in an ovenproof sauté pan; add the sausage and brown on each side for 3 minutes.

Add grapes and water, transfer pan to the oven, and roast until sausage is cooked through (about 10-15 minutes). Meanwhile, prepare beans and greens.

Sauté onions in 2T oil in another sauté pan over medium-high heat until soft, about 3 minutes. Stir in garlic and pepper flakes, sauté 30 seconds. Add greens, tossing until wilted. Stir in broth and beans, reduce heat, and simmer 3 minutes; season with salt. Slice sausage into 3" pieces, then serve with grapes, beans, and greens, drizzled with vinegar.

NUTRITIONAL INFO per serving (1/4 of recipe): 679 calories, 41% calories from fat, 31g total fat, 53g carbs, 1777mg sodium, 13g fiber, 49g protein.

technorati tag: recipes

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more clarification on migrating to Blogger Beta

2006-08-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

Pete Hopkins, esteemed member of the Blogger development team, stopped by to comment on my post about the path of migration with regards to accounts and what not. I'm pulling his comment up to this post so more people will read it.

After he verified that my info was correct (yay!), when talking about how accounts are linked to email address (or not), for those concerned with anonymity/pseudonymity:

Actually, your blog is never publicly linked with your Google Account login or Gmail address unless you choose.

So you can use the Google Account that's most convenient for you.

Just check over your Blogger profile to make sure you're not exposing anything publicly that you don't want.

But of course using separate accounts works, too, and may give you more peace of mind if you don't mind logging in and out of Google Accounts.

Thanks, Pete!

EVERYONE has a freaking MySpace account

2006-08-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

In my class, 23 of 28 students who filled out my little "student information sheet" answered "yes" to the question "Do you have a MySpace, LiveJournal, or blog?" Twenty-two of them have a MySpace, and three of them tacked on "who doesn't?" to the answer.

I DON'T, that's who.

But I won't hold their choice of platform against them. At least they're participating in a community!

So today's class is over, and it was a hoot. Well, as much of a hoot as you can have when going over the syllabus and various handouts. I hit them with a grammar diagnostic at the end, so I'll look over that and figure out where everyone stands. On Monday we have the essay diagnostic. No actual "teaching" happens for another week.

But everyone was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, which is always a good sign. Only one person on the roster didn't make it to class, which means I have four people who want to add who are vying for one possible slot. I guess this is where I learn to be cold-hearted.

willing myself to be well

2006-08-22T06:04:00.000-07:00

Please don't be sick...please don't be sick. But I am! Apparently a lot of people are sick around these parts, so I won't look terribly out of place when I stand in front of my class tomorrow and take roll/talk about the syllabus/give them a grammar diagostic with a hankie permanently attached to my person.

Yesterday was meeting day, and it certainly was interesting. I got a chance to introduce myself to a few people I hadn't yet officially met (such as our new graduate coordinator, who was on sabbatical last year), and it was nice to see some people who were in my classes last year but who are now adjuncts (having graduated in Dec or May). This latter group of folks contains some very nice and helpful people. In fact, there are really only a few curmudgeonly faculty (some older, some not at all) who are totally negative about the whole first year composition experience. I think we (new TAs) will forego any tips they could provide, and instead will get our info from all the positive folks. I believe it's better for all involved.

I, of course, plan to tap into the resources of my blogospheric friends whenever possible! You guys are the best. I really wish we could make "Blogosphere U." Think of the possibilities! PZ Myers would be in charge of all things science, natch. Janet could handle things philosophical. Susan would be in charge of the secret things she does, Mel and Jason could fight over things Victorian, Chuck would be the film and media guy...oh the list goes on and on. Would Bérubé be prez, or should we keep him in the trenches, shaping young minds with his dangeral studies?

But I digress.

School. It starts tomorrow.

recipe: summer black bean and pasta salad

2006-08-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

[click to embiggen]

With the semester beginning next week, I wanted to stockpile food so I wouldn't eat all my meals from whatever fast-food or chinese take-out place happened to be on my way home. So, I cooked three different dishes this weekend and stuck them in heavy-duty plastic things. This recipe is for a cold pasta salad, from the June 2006 issue of Cooking Light. It's good, and one of those cold-or-room-temperature salads, but next time I make it I'll tweak some of the ingredients even more than I did this time.

[recipe follows]

Summer Black Bean and Pasta Salad
3/4 cup uncooked ditalini (little tubes) [I used mini-penne, which is close. I also used the entire box because I wanted to make a lot]
1 1/2 cups halved grape tomatoes [I used however much is in a pint container]
3/4 cup diced peeled avocado [unfortunately, my avocado was not ripe enough]
1/2 cup chopped seeded poblano chile [aka "pasilla"]
1/2 cup chopped cucumber
1/3 cup chopped red onion [next time, I'd nix the red onion]
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed [I should have doubled the beans. I will next time]
2 teaspoons grated lime rind
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 teaspoons extravirgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon bottled minced garlic
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper

Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain and cool completely.

Combine the tomatoes, avocado, poblano, cucumber, onion, cilantro, and beans in a medium bowl, stirring well. Combine rind, juice, vinegar, oil, garlic, salt, and pepper in a small bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add pasta and lime mixture to bean mixture; toss to combine. Serve with lime wedges.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: about 1 1/2 cup) [yield based on original recipe]

NUTRITION PER SERVING: CALORIES 507(16% from fat); FAT 8.8g (sat 4.1g,mono 2.5g,poly 1.3g); PROTEIN 29.2g; CHOLESTEROL 25mg; CALCIUM 255mg; SODIUM 540mg; FIBER 4.7g; IRON 6.2mg; CARBOHYDRATE 85.5g [based on original recipe]

technorati tag: recipes

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tomorrow it begins

2006-08-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

The first meetings of the school year are tomorrow morning. I'll also be able to pick up my office key (hooray! no more coordinating with someone who has a key...) and park in the employee area for the first time. It's all very exciting, although classes don't actually start until Wednesday.

Today is jam-packed full of things to finish:
* a couple handouts and link 'em up to the the online version of the syllabus
* combining the previous notes from my MA study group into the Writely document
* do the reading for Monday night's study group meeting (Spenser plus Shakespeare tragedies)
* should probably do some Blogger-related things since I said I would
* cook! I bought the fixings for three separate dishes so I could have them all in plastic or in the freezer just ready to go this week. I'll likely post the recipes and such, since Susan likes that.
* maybe I'll write a post about my first tattoo, for Linda
* maybe I'll make a pie, in honor of seeker.

I'm sure there's more stuff on the list, but this will do for now. Also? I have a cold or something. Could be allergies. Lovely.

on migrating or not to Blogger Beta

2006-08-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

This is just a brief post to answer a few questions and clear up some things. It's not an in-depth technical post or anything, just a "this is the path of migration" sort of post. It goes with the comments attached to this post.

* When you migrate from Blogger to Blogger Beta, it is based on your account and any blog attached to your account. Thus, if you have three blogs attached to your account (as I do), they all get shipped over AS-IS to Blogger Beta and the only thing that changes is your login and the server to which you login (beta.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com). Thus, you cannot migrate selected blogs under your account—they all come along for the ride.

* Migrating your blog does not screw up any of your template customizations or settings. The act of migrating simply gets your account info squared away and your stuff within the new architecture.

* To reiterate, your custom template remains intact until you specifically change it to the Layout system.

* You can manually change one blog to the Layout system and keep your other blog(s) in the classic system, because as with any of your blogs-in-Blogger (beta or otherwise) the blog-specific settings are just that—blog-specific.

* If you keep your blog in classic mode, you can edit your template just as you always could. What you cannot do is use the Layout system and therefore the native Blogger categories (labels) system.

* If you switch your blog to the Layout system, you cannot edit the raw template (yet).

* If you switch your blog to the Layout system, you can edit the raw template but be aware it's an entirely new template language

* If you switch your blog to the Layout system, you will be starting from scratch. You can make customizations through the Layout system by adding "page elements" using the Layout system editor. The customizations may require massaging, especially when it comes to things that require additions to stylesheets or the placement of items in the HEAD element of your blog. ~~Since you cannot yet edit the raw template, you cannot create the sort of combo Layouts/custom template that would be necessary to complete the integration of your stuff.~~

* If you migrate your account to Blogger Beta and use any third-party publishing tools (e.g. Performancing for Firefox), you'll be out of luck until a new build of the tool becomes available—developers need to add in new hooks to the system.

I think that clarifies a few things. If not, leave a comment and I'll try again.

I switched my blogs to Blogger Beta

2006-08-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

I have switched my blogs over to Blogger Beta, which is the first step in trying to provide to you, dear readers, information about the process, the features, etc.

The dashboard is so lovely now, no? Also, the new NavBar—both contain far more useful elements than before. Thank you, Blogger Team, for listening to your users.

Actually, I believe that "thank you" is applicable to all the changes they've made, but I reserve judgement on that until I see with my own two eyes just how much we can tweak our templates and still use the new layout system.

However, I am very confident in the Blogger Team's ability to deliver on this, as Jason has stated:

Fortunately, it's always been part of our plan to introduce a new Edit HTML system for Blogger in beta. This system will not only let folks have the degree of customizability they desire, but it will let you create templates that are customizable with the Layouts system. Right now we are finishing the first version of this system and will be introducing in the "days not weeks" timeframe.

Plus, Pete has been answering questions at Freshblog, and I'm sure neither of these guys would bounce around the internet talking about their baby unless they really meant what they said.

My plan is to go total Layouts system for the blog for my book, and Layouts/Custom combo for this blog, when the combo is available.

The only downside to using Blogger Beta right now is not a Blogger issue per se, and even it's being worked on as we speak. That is, I can't use Performancing for Firefox because the hooks aren't in for the new API. I'm confident a new build will be available soon, though.

technorati tag: blogger, blogger beta, performancing for firefox

via Lifehacker: Writely Beta Re-Opens

2006-08-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

For the probably very small subset of people who read my blog but do NOT read Lifehacker, the announcement was just made: Writely Re-Opens for Business.

That is, new people can register for the still-beta Writely. I did, and I can't wait to work with it!

For anyone who has been a beta tester already, feel free to leave a comment about the different reason/things for which you've used Writely.

technorati tag: writely

the random quotations meme

2006-08-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to do this one because I figured all five of mine would be from Emerson and that's boring. But I tried it and was only presented with two Emerson quotes before I filled up my five slots, so I couldn't possibly choose five from RWE.

The rules: "Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe."

The first five applicable to me:

"Good design can't fix broken business models." - Jeffrey Veen, Designing the Friendly Skies, 06-21-06

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"People only see what they are prepared to see." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do." - Ethel Barrett

"Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment." - Norman Mailer

Now you play!

modifying Guy Kawasaki's Silicon Valley employment how-to...for academics

2006-08-17T08:35:00.000-07:00

I will bet good money that the academic folks who read this blog don't know Guy Kawasaki. That's ok. The short answer is that he's a venture capitalist. But the longer answer is that he's one of the few business and technology folks I like. Actually, I think he's pretty cool. Take that for what it's worth, or read his "about" page and check out the list of books he's written. A long, long time ago (6 years) when I was embarking on an ill-fated build-a-company project with a liar and a cheat, I used a significant amount of the Guy Kawasaki/Garage.com info that was available. It's where I learned about the elevator pitch, which has served me well even in academia!

Let me digress and tell the story...

Briefly, an elevator pitch is an overview of a project (or an idea for one) that can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride. For instance, Jane Entrepreneur has a great idea for a business and ~~stalks~~ runs into a venture capitalist ~~at their office~~ in a random office building. Seizing the opportunity but constrained by the elevator ride from the ground floor to, say, the third floor, Jane pitches her idea from start to finish. The door opens at the third floor, but the venture capitalist doesn't step out immediately—instead, the VC reaches for a business card and tells Jane to call the office for an appointment. Money flows, everyone is happy, they change the world, and it's all because of the elevator pitch.

During the final class period of my lovely seminar in the American Romantics, as we handed in our seminar papers the prof said we should chat about them if we had time at the end. I said, "hey! we can do elevator pitches."

[crickets...]

[people looking at me like I have three heads...]

So I explained the elevator pitch and then made it applicable to a bunch of grad students in English: "limited to 30 seconds (or so) each, it'll only take 10 minutes and boy won't we look like experts by being able to distill our papers in just 30 seconds." My thinking was that if we bled, sweat, and cried over these essays for a semester, we damn well better be able to present our thesis and findings in 30 seconds or less!

You will not be surprised to learn that the people who ended up with As on their essays were those able to complete the elevator pitch, and those who were still talking when the elevator was on the 48th floor and we still didn't know what the paper was about...well, they didn't do so well.

Back to my point...

A few days ago, Guy wrote a post called Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn't Know Who to Ask. Having spent several years in the mid-90s being a contractor, meaning every six or eight weeks I was off on an interview with someone or another, I can tell you his post is spot-on.

THE CHALLENGE...

All you academics who have been through the job market, how would you amend his list for academics?

For instance,he says:

1. Love what the company does. Passion for what a company makes or does is the most important factor in getting a job in Silicon Valley. Companies here are built on passion—indeed, perhaps more passion than reality. Hence, they hire passionate people who are already in the Reality Distortion Field. The question is, How do you show your passion?

The best way is to profess your love of the company's product or service, and I literally mean "love" not "read about," "have used," or "looked at the web site." If the company is at all enlightened, passion can overcome the lack of a "perfect" educational background and work experience.

How do you do this in academia without looking like a crazy person? I'm thinking "OMG, the undergrad requirements for the major is teh r0x0r" won't go over well.

I assume Guy's point #4, "Expect the funny farm," is the easiest to modify.

Discuss.

on using Windows Live Writer

2006-08-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about using the brand-spanking-new Windows Live Writer blog editor, but as you can see it requires the .NET framework. I refuse to install that on my machine. My Windows laptop is fast, runs smoothly, and has crashed exactly twice in four years (knock wood)—and I am not messing with that by installing some bloated framework just to test a blog editor. Sorry. It would be unlikely to sway me from using Performancing for Firefox anyway.

So as not to be all negative nelly on you, I will say that when I first saw the announcement about Windows Live Writer the first thing I thought was "cool, I'll try it and write about it!" I don't talk lovingly about Microsoft, and have great internal conflict about having a Windows-based laptop, but lookee here—Microsoft made a product that supports a whole host of blogging platforms besides their own, right out of the box: Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal, even Radio Userland and so forth. They get a gold star for that. Also, it's free. Another gold star. Sure sign of the apocalypse, don't you think?

Since I won't be discussing it, let me point you to people who are:
- at Digital Inspiration, here (basic) and here (tips and tricks)
- a post at Freshblog rounding up some other posts
- a review of WLW at Performancing , including user comments

[cross-posted at Blogger in a Snap]

technorati tags: windows live writer, blogging

tuesday bullets of crap

2006-08-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

* The new Blogger Beta has some really, really, really great things. I have 43 screenshots sitting on my desktop waiting to be discussed. That's a lot! But they're all very cool. Good stuff.

* Over the weekend I sat down and organized all manner and sorts of application stuff for PhD programs. I'm only applying to five, but damn—that's a lot of shit to track down/keep track of. Luckily, the three people I'm asking to do rec letters are all really responsible/non-absent-minded folks, so handing forms and envelopes to them with sticky notes re: what goes where won't be a stressful experience.

* The stressful experience that did occur? Realizing that my last two chances to bolster my score in the GRE subject test fall on day 1 of the 2-day MA comprehensive exam (Nov 4) and also on the day of the composition final exam (Dec 2). I could choose to take part 1 of the MA exam in the spring and therefore the GRE subject test in Nov, but if I biff it then I'd be screwed (whereas if I biff it in the fall I can take it again in the spring). I did find out that it's possible to arrange a fill-in proctor for the composition final—just have to run it by the chair. I have a fill-in proctor lined up, so it looks like that's the way I'll go, taking the subject test in Dec. Yes, I know that the scores are relatively meaningless, but given that I will have studied and taken the comprehensive exams by the time I re-take the subject test, I am confident I can improve my score dramatically, so I have to at least try.

* Grad school pal called me last night to go have coffee, turns out she was in need of talking to someone who understands crazy grandmas. Oh yeah, trust me...I know about bat-shit crazy grandmas. They finally were able to put mine in a home. Well, just the one. The fundamentalist christian simpleton still manages to do her thing on her own. But the mushy-brained paranoid one is in old-people lockdown. I wish my grandmothers were like my buddy's grandma—she's perfectly lucid and able, her only problem is she's overly stoic in the face of tragedy...but it's not a problem for her. She's a great lady. But I digress.

Amazing New Blogger Things!

2006-08-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

More on this later, but via Blogger Buzz comes the Blogger in beta announcement.

There are SO MANY lovely things being added to Blogger, which dovetails nicely with discussions about refreshing my Blogger book.

I am not one of the lucky few who could migrate their existing account with the new and improved Google accounts login (hey guys, pretty please could you sneak me in there?) but I created an account on the beta site and can test that way. I'm stoked!

Note: Any snarky comments about "well, my blog platform already offers x,y,z" will be met with silence. I don't care. If I wanted to switch platforms, I would have. I didn't, because I like Blogger. So, whatever.

[cross-posted at Blogger in a Snap]

technorati tags: blogger

tappity tappity tap tap

2006-08-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

Finally, it's less than ten days before the semester starts. I hang with a geeky enough crowd that we're all pretty stoked for the semester to begin. My comps study group is heading into its fourth session next week, other people are already talking about getting the jump on their reading (well, they're reading Ulysses...I'd get a jump on it too!), and those of us who are teaching composition for the first time, well, my buddy Rob's statement pretty much sums it up: "I'm so amped to teach, I electrocute myself in the shower." Yeah. Like I said, we're pretty geeky.

I made copies of my syllabus and also put it online, tested that my office falls under the wi-fi blanketing the building (I share an office with two others, but we have three desks and a couch and it's not terribly cramped. However, the office location is odd—it shares an entrance with the women's restroom, basically. I'll have to take a photo to help explain properly.) since I'll have my laptop with me during office hours.

I have three bags, only one of which I'll carry at any given time, but they all serve different purposes: computer bag, teaching bag, and bag for my own classes. They're all neatly lined up in a row for easy grab-and-go. I have my transportation schedule all worked out (when to take the bus versus when to drive and park), know where and when to get coffee in the morning, I've been practicing everyone's names (I believe it's the first step to putting names to faces), I have the first five or so class sessions mapped out in general (allowing for flexibility of course), and basically I have no unusual stress about this whole thing.

People keep asking me, "so, are you nervous?" Um, no, not really. Showing nervousness is a sign of fear, and showing fear will get you trampled on. At least that's how I'm operating—as if this pack of freshmen is a pack of wild dogs. I'm only slightly kidding. Another person asked if I was anxious about going to the department meetings. Um, no. Sitting in the back of a room at a meeting in which I am not expected to contribute at all? That's sheer joy for me. "But all those professors, and we're just teaching associates!" the person said. I laughed. "Believe me, they're thrilled about our existence—we represent eleven sections of composition they don't have teach."

So there's just one more week of tappity tappity tap tap just waiting for everything to start...and I think it'll be a long week.

thieves and plagiarists suck

2006-08-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

Thieves, plagiarists, etc—Sucky McSucktards, the lot of them.

I just love checking my inbound Technorati links and seeing a link to one of my how-to posts, surrounded by text that looks awfully familiar...oh hey I know, it's because it's text that I wrote. In one of my books. On a page that has the link to one of my blog posts.

Some jackass has the text of my Blogger book online, on a site filled with AdSense links. No, I'm not linking to it. This is one of those times when it's lovely to have a publisher with a legal team. I figure a strongly worded letter should do the trick, plus a strongly worded e-mail to the AdSense abuse notification e-mail address.

I guess I could look at the bright side, that my content is just so useful that people want to steal it. Um, yeah. Ok sure, that's nice. But plaudits don't pay the bills.

A few years ago, some jerk took the time to scan the text of all of my books (plus a few others) and sold the PDFs on a CD on eBay. Shit like this happens all the time. But hey, at least I'm so familiar with content thieves and plagiarists that I won't take it personally when my students do it. I'll just ~~fail their asses~~adhere to the policies for reporting plagiarists and move on.

blogger in a snap: en español!

2006-08-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

My book on Blogger, Sams Teach Yourself Blogging in a Snap, has been translated and published in Spanish!

If you pay attention to blog metrics such as David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere reports, or if you are just a worldly and generally aware kind of person, you'll know that English is the primary language of only a third (or so) of all blogs. Personally, a good 15% of my blog traffic comes from countries in which Spanish is the primary language—and most of that traffic goes to my how-to posts. So, while the author is never involved in things like securing translation rights for books, I found it to be an incredibly appropriate choice for the first translation of this book.

I don't get one red cent from individual purchases, but that really makes no difference to me. I just want a gajillion people to have a good, basic book on using Blogger, and in their own language! The book can be found online at El Corte Inglés, Librería Hispano Americana, Casa del Libro, ALIBRI Llibreria, Agapea, and probably a ton more places but I'm not hip to Spanish booksellers online. Despite the fact that my name is misspelled on the cover, I think it's a cool book. The best part?

I have ~~four~~ ~~three~~ ~~two~~ one copy to give away!

I will ship to anywhere in the world, so if you want a copy of the Spanish-language Blogger book, leave a comment. I'll send a copy along to the next ~~four~~ ~~three~~ ~~two~~ confirmed person.

[cross-posted at Blogger in a Snap]

[Lists of translations for my other books can be found at my books-related web site, but I don't have any of those to give away.]

via Inside Higher Ed :: Anger Over Coeducation Plan

2006-08-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

An article at Inside Higher Ed, "Anger Over Coeducation Plan," reports that the board of trustees at Randolph-Macon Women's College is "set to vote Sept. 9 on a strategic plan that includes allowing men to enroll and expanding the global studies program."

I am ambivalent on the issue of coeducation, because I've been a student at both a women's college and also co-ed colleges and universities (I've been around) and feel each have an equal number of pros and cons. Bottom line, was the educational experience at the women's college a good one? Yes. At the co-ed university? Yes.

Moving on to the reason for my post...it's to call bullshit on these statements:

"Our decision to embrace a coed environment is not because we think a women’s college isn’t a good form of education," said Virginia Worden, interim president of Randolph-Macon. "We are proud of 115 years of being a women’s college, but we have come to a difficult conclusion that to attract more women, we need to attract men." [...] Worden said that fewer than 5 percent of college applicants are willing to look at a women’s college, and that most students "don’t come because, but in spite of, the fact that it’s a women’s college."

A comment on the article by a RMWC alum says it best: "I suggest that if the board wants to “attract more women” they concentrate on increasing the excellent faculty, campus, overseas programs, and courses available to the students. Don’t use men as 'bait' to get the girls!!!" No kidding.

RMWC is in Lynchburg, VA. Within a 2-hour radius of RMWC are at least three other women's colleges: Hollins, Sweet Briar, and my undergrad school, Mary Baldwin. I'm probably forgetting a few. We played them all in sports and eventually the schools all ran together..."oh yeah, another small liberal arts college with beautiful old buildings and lush fields and legacy students." I don't see any of those places going co-ed, calling on the need to use men as bait. Unless something's changed in the last fifteen years since I was there, there's a very strong social network between the women's colleges and the neighboring institutions (VMI, Hampden-Sydney, W&L, Roanoke, Lynchburg, etc.). There was never a lack of men around, that's for sure.

It's sad that the administrators at a perfectly fine institution negated its value by (essentially) saying that they don't have the people or resources to compete for students. If I were a student or faculty member, I'd consider that a slap in the face. "We're not good enough as-is. We have to let guys in. That will make us better." Great message.

[My own undergrad institution allows men to take classes/get degrees in their non-traditional (e.g. non-residential) adult program, because it fits the needs of the community. The number of men are so few that I daresay it wasn't about the money or using them as bait.]

it's friday. there are bullets of crap.

2006-08-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

* I have real posts to write, but I haven't managed to do so...perhaps after 5pm today, when work is over. Unfortunately, that breaks a great rule of the internet (or newspapers) which states that you never do a press release on a Friday. Good thing my blog posts are just brain spew, and not a press release!

* I owe e-mails to some people.

* I have bugs to squash in a project.

* I had a crisis/minor freakout about my future plans, but that only lasted a day.

* "A Philosophy professor and a grad student in English walk into a bar..." Ok, no bar. But there were power tools involved.

* real posts later

what's on your USB drive?

2006-08-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

The BlogHer conference had sponsors, as I noted here and a gajillion other people noted in their posts about BlogHer. So...

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT SPONSORSHIP ISSUES.

Rather, what did everyone put on their free Saturn-branded USB drives? Sure, 64MB is nothing, and many of us already have flash drives much bigger than that, but for the sake of levity regarding this issue let's just play along—just like my Mazda key and Saturn drive. Everybody wins!

Happily co-existing on my free drive:
- Portable Firefox, for all my web-browsing needs.
- Portable AbiWord, for all my word processing needs.
- PortaPuTTY, for SSH and SFTP
- Notepad++, for when I need to jot things down but don't need a word processor.

Total space used: 42.7MB. Total space remaining: 19.6MB

If the drive were 128MB, I'd have added Portable Thunderbird and Portable GIMP. If I were a designer rather than a programmer or writer, I'd have installed Portable GIMP instead of Portable AbiWord on this wee drive. I can make do without Portable Thunderbird because I can access all of my various mail accounts via a web interface.

You can find portable apps at PortableApps.com, The Portable Freeware Collection, and plenty of other Google-searchable places.

Technorati tags: blogher06, blogher

blogher: where I go from here

2006-08-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

[note: here are links to all my BlogHer posts. I'm finally done with them all!]

This post should really be titled "so am I going to BlogHer07 or not?" The answer: no freaking clue, and it has very little to do with my various impressions of the conference in its first two years, the structure of the BlogHer organization, the community, etc.

This time next year, I could be preparing for a move to Davis (CA), Eugene, Seattle, Pullman (WA), Albuquerque, or none of the above. I'm applying to PhD programs in those cities. I might get into one, I might not. If I do, next summer I'll be moving and selling my condo in San Jose. If I don't, I'll be figuring out if I keep working with my friends full-time or cut back to "as needed, and not for large projects" as already planned (those of you who have been grad students know that I will definitely be able to use the money!), while trying to pick up composition classes to teach at any of the gajillion community colleges around here. Provided, of course, that I finish the MA I'm currently working on!

Some of you may have picked up on the fact that I'm a very conflicted person when it comes to my job and working in this industry. At our little table of folks during the evening drinking time on Day 2 of BlogHer, you would have heard me talk more about Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, and various and sundry Transcendentalists than you would have heard me talk about code. You see, despite my job at the most friendly, accomodating, flexible, deals-with-my-shit place I could ever work in technology-related things, working in this industry (for me) is an incredibly soul-sucking endeavor. Going back to academia is my way out. [Yes, I realize there are academics who feel exactly the same way about their position in academia. To each his/her own. It's all a matter of perception.]

Why would I go to BlogHer07? Hell, I might have a book on Drupal out by then (seriously—the first thing I did on Sunday morning was to email my super bossman editor Mark and say "so, how about a real Drupal book that people can use to do things, not a rehash of documentation?") and people might want me to chat about such things. Or about blog things for beginners (see book). Or about getting started in web-based application development with xAMP (see other books). Or edublogging sessions get ramped up and there's stuff of interest to me that I can learn about for my academic life. Or maybe this will be the conference that all my other blog buddies (the ones who didn't attend this one) go to, in which case there will be a hell of a good time talking about myriad topics, regardless of the direct application of sessions to me.

Kathy Sierra has a post called I am not a "woman blogger," and there are so many statements in it that I completely agree with, as they apply to me (minus the co-blogger part), such as:

I am "one who blogs" (among many other things). I happen to be a woman. But I am NOT a blogHer, and my male co-author is not a blogHim.

I write code. But I am NOT a programmHer.

I write tech books. But I am NOT a writeHer.

In her post, and in ensuing comments, there's some discussion as to how the conference is framed—is it a tech conference? is it just for women? is it because women need "extra help"? I would say no, it's not a tech conference, but some people would say it is. Some people think it should be all women, but some people (myself included) think that having guys around is perfectly fine. I even think that having guys on panels is fine, depending on the guy and the panel. It reminds me of my college years. I went to a women's college, but we had a small percentage of men in the non-residential program, inegrated into our classes. They were welcome voices. Do women need "extra help" when it comes to tech things? I certainly think there are some women who erroneously believe that they can't "get it" because they're women—because that's what they've been told. Now, we all know that's a load of crap, but it certainly shouldn't negate the individual's feelings about it, just because some of us know it's crap.

As such, I think the value of BlogHer is as a community. No, it's not [yet] "where the women bloggers are" (despite the tagline), it's where some of the women bloggers are, and a place where all women bloggers are welcome, where they can feel comfortable, get their feet wet, try out new ideas and tools, without any sort of feelings of insecurity which they may personally perceive elsewhere, even if others do not. [ed. note—I was referring to something said in the comments to the Kathy Sierra post; I get that the tagline is a statement of intention and not truth!]

I see BlogHer as a community of opportunity. While I personally get absolutely nothing out of being a member of the community, besides finding new people to read on various topics [ed. note—here I meant "applicable to my job in tech," and it wasn't my intention to discount finding new blogs to read! more here], plenty of people do get a lot out of it because we all start out at different places on the spectrum [of needs].

Ok, I'm done.

Technorati tags: blogher06, blogher

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yes, i actually do have a job

2006-08-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

For several reasons, I don't write about my job all that much. Apparently, some people don't even know I have a job, despite the teeny-tiny link in my sidebar that says "my job"! Ok, so maybe only trillwing didn't pick up on it. At BlogHer, I said something about my job and she said, "you have a job? I thought you just wrote books and went to school." Uh, no. If I did, I'd be a better writer and scholar! (Conversely, if all I did was work, I'd be a better employee.)

So yeah, I have a job. The company, i2i Interactive (disclosure: we haven't updated our client list or portfolio for awhile. Too busy.), has been around since 1996. [or 7? I don't remember. A long time in Internet Years, regardless.] It's my friends' company, and I've worked for them on and off for seven or so of those ten years. We've never had more than seven employees at any one time, and for at least the last five years we've only had four. As such, our titles are purely for business card purposes. Like mine—"Technical Director." What does that mean? Who do I direct? I direct myself, and it means I deal with anything technical—and believe me, that's a wide range of things, including things I don't particularly consider technical, but that's just me.

The remarkable thing about the company, besides the fact that although we've come close to killing each other on a few occassions (such as over tables vs css) we haven't, is that we don't do sales/marketing and never have. From the very beginning, projects have come from referrals, and we have the luxury (most times) of picking and choosing the projects we do. We'll do a really teeny, static website for our dentist, then turn around and build web-based products for NASDAQ-listed companies. Whatever works.

We're all self-taught in everything we do. Me? English degree, designs databases and builds web-based applications from the ground up, has since the first years of the web. Our creative director? History degree, skilled at every piece of software graphic designers/illustrators/multimedia producers have used since before the web was the web. Our prez, She Who Keeps Everything Together, knows both sets of things. You get the idea. Back in the day, everyone was self-taught because the industry and the technology were brand new. Everyone started on the same level playing field.

You may wonder why I'm writing about this, and I'm not sure myself, but if anything it's in response to this comment on a post-conference thread at the BlogHer site, in which the author (Laura Scott) says: "It was especially interesting to me to hear about the few women who are succeeding in technology within the corporate world, and how they found ways to establish themselves and their credibility. I can say I have not heard many of those stories." Here's our story: we do good work, consistently, and have for a long time. It's our philosophy, we have the people to do it, and we just do.

I realize that's not an incredibly helpful story. There's nothing about toppling The Man or breaking through a glass ceiling or overcoming sexism in the workplace, yadda yadda yadda. I think the only pushback we get when our proposals are considered in response to RFPs comes from our numbers. Because of the inflated numbers (both cost and numbers of people on teams) agencies often use, our relatively miniscule numbers often make us look too good to be true. Ironically, the majority of our work over the years has come from cleaning up other peoples' messes, often the messes of overpriced, too-many-hands-in-the-pot agencies. But that's another story.

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blogher: on the people I met (or didn't)

2006-08-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

[note: here are links to all my BlogHer posts]

I had a very short list of MUST SEE people at BlogHer, because I knew I'd run into a gazillion other folks and just wanted to spend my time kicking it with whomever walked by—not so much staring intently at people's nametags. Also, I'm the antithesis of a fangirl, and not just with bloggers but with everyone. I don't care if you're an Olympic athlete or a PE teacher or a famous musician or a coffeehouse singer-songerwiter or a CEO or a worker on the line or Dooce or Joan No-Name Blogger or a department chair or a lecturer or whatever—makes no nevermind to me, because I've known people in every category listed above and here's what I've learned: just people. [insert your preferred line here about putting pants on, or farting, or whatever]

Anyway, so my very short list of MUST SEE people at BlogHer numbered exactly four. These were people I wanted to be able to look in the eyes and say something, rather than send a random e-mail (news flash: e-mail? not the same as face-to-face communication).

- Geeky Mom, who is awesome and has a great fellow and cool kids. Plus, edublogger panelist and English lit person. Hooray! We had plans to have sushi with the absent, "sorry, but presenting at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education takes precedence over BlogHer," Dr. Free-Ride, so I had to make a point to meet Geeky Mom because I was driving.

- trillwing, because she does a great job with the Research & Academia posts at BlogHer and I wanted to say so in person, she goes to the school I seriously want to attend, her son is adorable, and (although she doesn't know this because I forgot to tell her) I also collected model horses in my youth and probably would now except I tend to go to the extreme with any hobby and therefore try not to have any.

- Liz Henry, of her many blogs, because I wanted to say I was glad her boy was out of the hospital (nasty appendicitis) and also for the love of all things holy please try to have two thoughts on all the brilliant things for which she has one thought and then moves on to something else. One thought == one thought. Two thoughts == a path toward something!

- supa, aka Mary Beth of Supafine!, because I contributed to her BlogHer trip fund and wanted to make sure she got here (kidding! you could have bought beer with the money, I wouldn't have cared). Also, she's a talented artist (templates! photos! makes movies with playdoh characters!) and her son? adorable.

Several days later, I realized I should have put Lauren formerly-of-Feministe on my list, because I contributed to her travel fund as well, but I really didn't have anything to say besides "hey, glad you made it."

Then we have people with whom I chatted for a bit or just said "howdy!":

- pseudonymous blogger in academia (yay!)

- two lovely women whose names/blogs I never did write down, despite the fact that they were part of conversations for at least an hour (I suck)

- tree fitzpatrick (she has a blog now, I heard...what's the URL?)

- Elisa Camahort, even if it was just to say "hi" at the registration table in the morning, before I had much coffee, and thus appeared as if I didn't give a crap, which I DID!

- Nancy White, milling around the registration table, made sure I got all the goodies. I believe I said "yes, ma'am" to her. I spent five-ish years in the south and it just comes out sometimes!

- Mary Tsao, who was one of the first person to say "that's cool!" when I posted the hyatt-to-starbucks directions.

- Barbara Sawhill, edublogger panelist and all-around lovely person

- Barbara Ganley, also an edublogger panelist and all-around lovely person

- TW, in the edublogger session and later in tabletalk at the end

- Liz Ditz, in the edublogger session but also throughout the day. I would have put her on my "must meet" list but I was 100% sure I'd run into her and chatter away, which we did.

- Professor Kim, in the edublogger session—she liveblogged it and contributed to the discussion, which isn't easy to do!

- I sat behind Steve Sloan and Cynthia McCune from SJSU, in the edublogging session. You'd think that in the year since BlogHer05, when Cynthia McCune was also in the edublogging session, I'd walk to the hundred feet or so from the Faculty Office building (home of English Dept, and others) to Dwight Bentel Hall (home of Journalism & Mass Communications Dept, and others) and say hello. But no. I suck.

- squid, although I think I momentarily freaked her out when I said, "hey! love your kids" and she looked at me like "the hell?" and then I thought "oh crap, is that not squid?" and then had to look at her nametag to ensure that indeed she was squid. Thankfully, Liz Ditz was there and said something to assuage her fear that I was some random internet weirdo. If you follow squid's blog and the stories of her kids and her family's trials, tribulations, and successes in working with austism, behavioral therapy, and educational endeavors, you can't help but become attached to all them them and truly care how they're doing.

- Lisa V and Amy who I know only from Phantom Scribbler's commenting pixie party.

- IdentityWoman, who randomly sat with us and chatted away for a bit

- Sarah Dopp, although it wasn't so much "hi" as it was "you have to fight me to pass." It was funny. Had to be there.

- Denise, who still scares me a little. That woman can rant, let me tell you. But totally a good egg.

In a category all their own, people I read regularly but didn't talk to for some reason or another:

- Jo Spanglemonkey, who is a great writer and visual artist. She was always surrounded by people and I didn't tap on the shoulder and say "hi!" because I'm shy. Given the chance, I would have said, "I love your stuff, I'm sorry you're going through all this crappity crap, and I'm really glad you're here." Emphasis on the here—not only at BlogHer but on the earth.

- Grace Davis, rockstar. No reason I didn't say hi to Grace besides the fact that she was either speaking to or surrounded by throngs of people. I would have said "hey, thumbs up for what you do" or some shit.

The last category of people are those blogs I didn't really read before but now I do, because I learned of them at blogher or afterwards in post-blogher commentary:

- Dogged Blog

- Gastronomie, via a comment on Scoble's BlogHer post

- HorsePigCow

- Melissa Gira

- Sour Duck (I read her BlogHer posts, but never read her actual blog, for some reason.

- Shuna Fish Lydon of eggbeater. I saved this mention for last because I will bet that her comments in various sessions were super huge takeaways for a lot of people. Way to fly under the blogospheric radar and make a big splash!

It's a little-known fact about me that I totally dig pastry chefs. Or maybe it isn't, I dunno. But that's completely secondary to the reason I perked up my ears when Shuna spoke, which is because of what she had to say. I'm quoting from SocalMom's liveblog of the opening discussion on Day 2:

[context: in a discussion about "how are your blogs changing your world," the question to the audience is 'who's done something that was a risk and has paid off?"]

Food blogger - but I'm a professional chef and what's really interesting about blogging is that in my profession, people don't know how to use computers at all and if you send in a resume it can't even be an attachment because they don't know how to open them. So when I became a blogger, I consider food really political. I think it has to do with class and culture and race and history and no one wants to talk about that, especially in the fine dining world.

But I recently posted a very emotional post about the May 1 protest, even though it was a long time ago. Because my industry is supported by people who are not documented, and it gets bigger and bigger because culinary schools are expensive. I feel like - when I started blogging - I didn't get that it was that big. People would write to me about how to make piecrust and I would say come to my class and then they would say I'm in Indonesia. I really feel like it has gotten me out of the kitchen and I've gotten to meet people.

Talk about "getting it"...sheesh.

Technorati tags: blogher06, blogher

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blogher: on why more than a few attendees now feel ambivalent about blogging

2006-08-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

[edited to add: here are links to all my BlogHer posts]

A popular topic in the post-BlogHer conference chatter is a sort of "us versus them" feeling among some people. Some "thems" feel some "us" folks were too exclusive, while the "us" folks for the most part weren't trying to do that nor did they realize boundaries and walls were going up/perceived to be up in front of the "thems" and so on and so forth. Again, this isn't an institutional oppression issue, because despite the BlogHer Ad Network initially including/targeting only parenting-related blogs, BlogHer is a roll-your-own community—fit yourself into one or more subgroups, and if one isn't there you can start one. In the BlogHer community, there are no institutional barriers in the way of making your community large and powerful. For instance, just like the mommybloggers mobilized after their "room of your own" session in BlogHer05 and created such as presence within the BlogHer site, ad network, etc., I will bet cold hard cash that the food bloggers and/or edubloggers will do the same thing next year (I will bet more money on the food bloggers).

Secondary (but not all that secondary) to the "us versus them" feeling is the disconnect between people's expectations and their reality at the conference, combined with insecurities ranging from the purpose and worth of blogging to one's own self-worth. Those are all intensely personal issues and everyone has them to some degree or another, and as such everyone is different. Personally, I believe all types of blogging are incredibly useful on all levels (personal, adding to the greater conversation, etc), and as such I am not someone who worries about my audience or monetization or The One True Way to Blog.

I'm going to quote myself here, because the following summarizes how I feel about the (lack of) The One True Way to Blog:

[When stepping out into the blogosphere,] you'll find blogs written by parents, teachers, geeks, actors, musicians, political pundits, religious leaders, eight-year-olds, and eighty-year-olds. In other words, ordinary people write blogs and ordinary people read blogs. No special skills are required to begin your foray into blogging. You need not have a purpose or a plan. The most important thing to remember about blogging is that it is ultimately your own space, and you may do with it whatever you want.

Hopefully, what you'll want to do is participate in the greater blogging community. Unlike a simple static website, the format of a blog creates a framework upon which a community can be built. With a static website, what you see is what you get; there is no expectation of interactivity between the reader and the author or subject of the content. For instance, if you visit a website and gather corporate information or information about your favorite musician or sports team, you typically can't post a follow-up to the content or ask a question which will then be answered with authority. However, that sequence of events is exactly what the blogging community is built on: communication and conversation. People write posts, other people leave comments, more ideas are generated, and the discussion continues on another blog, and so on and so forth.

YOU have the power to make blogging whatever you want it to be, for you. Similarly, at BlogHer (on the site and at the conference), YOU have the power to ramp up the presence of whatever community/communities with which you identify.

So why do some attendees now feel ambivalent about blogging? Perhaps they felt too much on the "them" side of things. Perhaps they felt as if they had to categorize themselves as a specific type of blogger, and could not, leading them to think they were somehow less of a part of the greater blogging community. Perhaps the split of the conference into the "how to do" day and the "how to be" day didn't fit with their own sense of "I already do and am, what's left?"

If people are ambivalent about blogging because they feel that one must be A Blogger to blog "legitimately," and that means careful categorization with attention paid to issues of audience, primping (and pimping), monetization, optimization, et al, that essentially there IS One True Way to Blog...well, that's just not the case. But I can see where coming to a blogging conference ostensibly about all those things would make one now ambivalent toward blogging if none of those things interest you. What I'd then ask is...why did you come to the conference? What were the things that you, Joan Now-Ambivalent Blogger, wanted to get from the conference that you felt were lacking in the program? Those things should be first on the list of proposed topics, panels, and discussions for next year.

But if you are now ambivalent about blogging because of issues with your own interpretation of the worthiness of your blog, either because of its subject matter, your plan for it (or lack thereof), or your writing skills compared with folks you met/heard at the conference, um...fuck it. It's your blog. Do with it what you want. You're writing and attempting to join the greater conversation. If you want to learn how to do those things "better"—that is, to study the craft of writing, or to pay attention to issues of audience (etc) and community-building—then do it. Join those sessions and find something to take away from them. If you have no take-away, ask a question—even if it's "I have yet to hear something I want to take away from this session. What am I missing?" If you don't care one whit about those things and just want to kick it with People Who Blog (as opposed to People Who Are Bloggers), then welcome to my tribe. We're just as important, worthwhile, and have legitimate things to say.

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random bullets of crap, friday edition

2006-08-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

* must. finish. blogher posts.

* had my first teacher freakout dream last night. in this one, I had everything prepared for day one and my entire schedule shifted to accomodate my 8:30 am class, which (in my dream) I arrived at five minutes early and..oh yeah did I mention my class starts at seven thirty? That dream sucked.

* I actually do have everything prepared for day one except I have to make copies of my syllabus. The syllabus is complete and turned in to the dept. office for placement in the Big Binder O'Syllabi. I have my employee-rate parking pass (awesome!), office key has been ordered, copy account set up, paperwork all done, books in the bookstore, and books for my own classes are in my possession. Bring it on, August 23rd!

* August 9th is the next meeting of my study group for comps. Last time we met, we did the Greeks. This next time we decided to ramp it up—we're covering Beowulf through Marlowe. Although we read all the stuff on the list, each of us has extra responsibility to lead discussion for one or more works (depending on their length). This time around I'm personally responsible for all of Dante.

* Speaking of Italians, last night I made this pasta/cabbage/potato dish and it was really good. I was a bit hesitatant about potatoes in my pasta, but what happens is that they soften up and blend in with the butter and the garlic and the cheese so that it makes the dish sort of saucy. I know it sounds like I just described pasta with a mashed potato sauce, and I suppose I am, but it's not really like that. It's more...chunky. Hell, just try it if it sounds appealing. It's very easy and very tasty.

* Anyone in the general vicinity of Palo Alto who wants to go see a Strangers on a Train at the Stanford Theatre sometime this weekend, holler—I'm going at some point Saturday or Sunday.

for academics or otherwise: what document indexing software do you use

2006-08-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

The title pretty much says it...what software do you use to index your books?

Secondarily, what method/process do you use to reconcile an indexed doc file (Word or WordPerfect or whatever) against typeset proofs? Manual checking, or something else? Is there indexing software that works against PDFs?

This is one of those things I'm eternally grateful my publishers do for me. If it were left up to me, none of my books would have indices, I'm sure. But this question isn't for me, it's for someone else who is in the all-that's-left-is-the-index part of her book. She laughed at me when I said, incredulously, "doesn't [academic press] do that for you?" Sorry, I momentarily forgot my brain.

I'm aware I could turn to Dr. Google for this, but I figured the first thing I'd try is to ask the sixty or so academic bloggers I read each day...

the book meme

2006-08-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

I need to clear my brain and stop working on my BlogHer posts for a little bit. Since both trillwing and New Kid tagged me for the book meme, I can't escape its grasp...

1. One book that changed your life?
Dr. Willis E. McNelly's The Dune Encyclopedia, ca. 1984. Seriously. I was eleven years old when I read this, having already read all of Frank Herbert's Dune novels up to that point. With a stack of books and a crazy large "reference" book, I learned to do research.

It was all downhill from there...

2. One book you have read more than once?
I read a lot of books more than once. For purposes of answering this question, I'll say that when walking past my bookshelf looking for something to read, it's likely I'll grab a Hardy novel or a Zola novel. I've read many of them, many times over.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
The Riverside Chaucer, because it's the lengthiest book I own besides my Nortons. Plus, you can re-read Chaucer so many times and still not get everything (at least I can!), so it'll give me something to do on that island.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Geez, I don't know. Lately I've been reading nothing but stuff for my comprehensive exams and none of it has been terribly funny (for instance, we just worked through the Greek tragedies). Pass.

5. One book that made you cry?
I cry all the damn time. I'm such a sap that I can find things to cry about in sitcoms. So I'll answer this with the last book that made me cry, and that was...[thinking]...Snow Mountain Passage.

6. One book you wish had been written?
This involves creativity, so...pass.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
My first book, back in 1999/2000. While I am thankful for the money and happy that my books have helped people learn cool stuff, the steady stream of people who saw fit to bombard me with emails and phone calls (at my home and at my office) to tell me how much I suck because a) girls shouldn't write tech books and/or b) the book doesn't cover what [caller/emailer] wanted it to cover and/or c) they have a problem with code on page 6 and wouldn't I just walk them through following the step-by-step directions personally because they bought my book ... well, it really made me a bitter, grudge-holding person against the entire high-tech industry and people in general. The misplaced sense of self-importance, the expectation that the dollar I get from their purchase of my book somehow gives them unfettered access to my personal time or the time of my co-workers, it just doesn't sit well with me. Not terribly rational, I know, but there it is. Trust me, I could go on...and on...and on. But I'll just leave it at that. I wish I had never written my first book, because if I hadn't written the first one I wouldn't have written the other ones, and I would have moved on from this place a loooong time ago.

8. One book you are currently reading?
Emerson: The Mind on Fire

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Heh. This is easy. Moby Dick. Seriously. I am the Worst. Americanist. Ever.

10. Now tag five people:
I tag...YOU, times five!

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blogher: on uncomfortable heteronormativity

2006-08-02T17:30:00.000-07:00

[edited to add: here are links to all my BlogHer posts]

Before I start rambling on this topic, you (dear reader) should be aware that I am writing waaaay out of my comfort zone. In life, and in literary studies, you won't find me talking about gender theory or queer theory—not because I don't appreciate the theoretical perspectives/frameworks, it's just my brain isn't wired to think within them. In fact, it's a running joke among some of my school chums who, on feminist/queer/gender theory day in litcrit class, all turned to me to start the discussion. "Why me?" I said to them, "I'm the worst lesbian ever. I don't even like Gertrude Stein. And I swore off girls like four years ago."

So, when I was thinking about the conference and feeling a little uneasy about some things, and the only word I could think of to describe my uneasiness was "heteronormative," I was shocked because I just don't think in those terms. I try to float through life being myself in a diverse crowd. I like having fellows around (provided they're intelligent, respectful, and good folk) and I like having women around (provided they're intelligent, respectful, and good folk). I don't like or dislike people just because they're female or queer or transgender or male or colorful or however they identify (or don't). I don't choose to spend time with people because they do or do not have kids. It's hard enough to find intelligent, respectful, good folk in this world—everything else is ancillary.

I spent all of my time at the conference with just those kinds of people—intelligent, respectful, good folk. Three edubloggers, who happened also to be moms, were in my primary crew. In the edublogging session, we had no less than three men—each lovely—and a range of single/married/straight/gay/moms/childfree people. But that info wasn't relevant, and it wasn't something I dwelled upon or even noticed at all. In the four hours of drinking and talking at the end of Day 2, my table contained the aforementioned primary crew, plus a revolving door of entirely non-heteronormative folks. Again, I didn't even think about it.

So what's the deal, you ask? Why "uncomfortable heteronormativity?"

Because I completely failed to notice that from the outside looking in, it was a conference of straight white moms. Wait, WAIT, WAIT!—just hang with me for a minute, because I'm not anti the straight white mom at all. Seriously. I have one. But think of the people on the outside looking in—newbies to the conference, newbies to the medium, and/or members of typically marginalized groups. When you're on the outside looking in, you see nothing but the majority.

Last year, the conference was half the size. It had a significantly greater grassroots/"do"-ocracy feel. The individual groups of bloggers—inasmuch as people self-identified with a group—were all small. There was no overabundance of any one type of blogger besides "enthusiastic" or "new(ish)". Some of the most widely-regarded panelists (the lovely and talented Koan Bremner for instance) put a decidedly non-heteronormative stamp on the whole thing.

Then a crazy thing happened—people got excited and the whole thing grew. The appearance, en masse, of mommybloggers at the conference has everything to do with the good things that happened in the mommyblogging "room of your own" session at BlogHer05, and the desire to repeat that—and I think they did. That's awesome. That's exactly what was supposed to happen. Similarly, as Maria Niles said in a comment to a post by Christie Keith, the "Identity and Obligation" panel grew out of the Brown Bloggers "room of your own" session the previous year. Again, that's a success story.

So when, by Day 2, I start feeling an undercurrent of "hey, I'm not a mom/I'm not heterosexual/I'm not white/I'm totally new to this"—and if you pay attention to the recent "introduce yourself" posts from folks who have joined the BlogHer site you'll see more than a few that say things like "I don't think I fit in here because I'm not a mom/I'm not heterosexual/I'm not white/I'm totally new"—then I become uncomfortable because I don't like other people to be uncomfortable, especially because I could have done something about it. I could have volunteered a question at a session or keynote in order to balance things out. I could have made a BOF signup for "freaks without a BOF" or something of that nature. I could have made it a point to seek out newbies in all my funny-looking glory. But I was doing my own thing. I was selfish (and I'm shy, which I kept telling Geeky Mom but she doesn't believe me) and had my own (non-)agenda, which was to kick it with people I already knew. That's not inclusive, it's not helpful, and it's an attitude that, when shared by many, is far worse than the commercialism or presence of a gazillion people who blog about their kids.

Basically, I'm of the opinion that the heterosexuals didn't make this conference heteronormative—the non-heterosexuals did, especially those of use who actually knew we could change something because the structure of the conference allowed us to, by not stepping up and trying to ensure an inclusive environment. In this case, at a "do"-ocracy-based conference, the responsibility lies only within; no one stopped the non-heterosexual group from being as visible as the mommybloggers or the I-want-to-monetize-the-crap-out-of-my-blog bloggers or any other group who did have a presence. In Koan's words, we did "the square root of bugger all." So, the "uncomfortable heteronormativity" is my own internal discomfort at, basically, supporting the patriarchy and making people in my own group feel crappy about it.

Gah. I'm gonna get my toaster oven taken away, I'm sure.

Technorati tags: blogher06, blogher

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blogher: on conference sessions, and edublogging in particular

2006-08-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

[edited to add: here are links to all my BlogHer posts]

In the interest of full disclosure before I start rambling on about conference sessions, I should note that I didn't go to Day 1 because we were working on a content launch thing for a client. I had originally planned to be there, and had volunteered to be a roaming ~~gnome~~ helper person for the Blog in a Box/basics for the beginning blogger session, since it seemed natural to help out given I wrote a book on the topic, but I had to bail when I realized Day 1 was on a workday with a project slated for completion. My bad.

The only session I wanted to attend was tagging, tracking & structured blogging, because I have definite thoughts on the topic and multiple answers to the question(s) that Elisa posed (in the link above) when she says, "I hear all this talk about structured blogging and microformats...and am loathe to admit that I don't really get what they are, how I would use them or why I should care." I firmly believe it's a case of a very simple concept made overly complicated because so many people are talking about different variations on theme without providing context, specificity, or listening to confused conversation participants. But my thoughts are probably best saved for another post on another day. No other sessions were of interest to me, because they're either things I already know how to do (technical things), or things I have zero interest doing (monetization, for instance). Conceptually, I think the subject matter intended for coverage by the sessions on Day 1 was totally appropriate for a set of bloggers of various skill levels and interests.

But as with any conference session concerning hands-on things, each of these sessions could easily be a semester-long class, or a six-session asynchronous class, or at the very least a full-day workshop at the local community center/community college. I've seen Liz Henry (I never know which of her gajillion blogs to link to when referencing her in general) bat around the idea of a teaching classes at local community centers and such, every now and again on her blog. Liz, like I told you: have the second part of the thought and ideas can move in an actual direction toward fruition! :)

On Day 2, I went to the welcome session, the opening discussion, the Edublogging session, and the "Transforming Your Life" session. I admit that Geeky Mom and I left the conference for a bit as I took her to The Wine Club. Wine Club is cool.

So let's talk about the Edublogging session. In a word, it was spectacular. Professor Kim liveblogged it, and I should just note that Professor Kim can both talk exceedingly intelligently and type all at the same time. I can't do either terribly well so, you know, awe and all that. [On a completely off-topic and probably incorrect note, as I didn't poll then entire audience, I'd like to point out that the CSU system stomped the UC system 3-1 in attendees at the session. CSU: me, Steve Sloan, Cynthia McCune; UC: Leslie Madsen-Brooks, aka trillwing. Take that!]

Geeky Mom, Barbara Sawhill, and Barbara Ganley led the session. Before the session, they were thinking maybe three people would show up, and were discussing how they had a strategies regardless if they had an audience of three or thirty. They got the thirty (or thereabouts). Because these folks are educators as well as veterans of conferences (as both attendees and presenters), the structure and tone of the edublogging session was unlike the other sessions I witnessed or heard about. After a very brief introduction by each of them as to their role in edublogging (for they each have different roles), they asked the audience for our interests in edublogging so that they could determine how to structure the rest of the session. Again, in Professor Kim's liveblog you can get an idea of the types of (really varies) responses to the question. After gathering information, the audience split into three smaller groups and had really good discussions regarding faculty development (with Geeky Mom), student development (with Barbara G), and blogging as a tool for inclusive pedagogy (with Barbara S).

The big take-away from this session was that there are so many ideas and needs and audiences within the meta concept of "edublogging" that we can fill a conference of our own. Reading the individual presenters' assessments of the session, (see Geeky Mom, Barbara S, Barbara G post 1 and post 2) as well as the thoughts of other attendees, it's clear that there's a huge need.

A few words on edubloggers, or academic bloggers: if you said you were an edublogger or an academic blogger, people often looked at you as if you had three heads. Seriously. Barbara G writes, "They hear me say, 'I'm an edublogger' and they recoil just a bit or look blank. And indeed, in the din of the pre-conference shindig for presenters last evening, someone thought I said I was an 'anti-blogger' not edublogger--ha." Ha, indeed. In a comment to this post at Geeky Mom's, Dr. Shellie hints at a possible reason for the disconnect: "I think most academic bloggers are primarily academics, and incidentally bloggers. Some of the non-academic bloggers at the conference felt about their blogging as I feel about being a scientist--it was a central part of their identity." In a comment to yet another post at Geeky Mom's, Lisa V notes, "When I would meet people at the conference and they would ask me what kind of blog I had I sometimes would answer 'academic' because I didn't want to get into the whole 'mommy blogger' debate." I don't blame her, but that sure is funny.

The venerable Leslie Madsen-Brooks (hey, she referred to me as "lit student and tech geek extraordinaire" so I can fire up the hyperbolic engine by referring to her as "venerable") has an outstanding "where we are"/"where do we go from here" post on the BlogHer site: Edubloggers: Lunatic fringe or BlogHer's core constituency? She says:

Personally, I enjoyed the conference, and my encounters with the edubloggers convinced me that these women have embraced BlogHer's mission to effect meaningful change through blogging. While I share the sense of unease the academic bloggers exchanged over wine, soda, and hard liquor, I can see the appeal of driving traffic to one's blog with the hope of profitting from it. I straddle the increasingly apparent divide between those who blog-for-fun-and-profit and those who blog-to-change-the-world.

She goes on to discuss what business bloggers can learn from edubloggers, and what edubloggers can learn from business bloggers, and the middleground:

Of course, there already is a middle ground between the traffic hunger of the biz bloggers and the idealism of the edubloggers: the nonprofit blogosphere, where bloggers sell readers on worthy causes. There's another skill we could teach our students: how to advocate for others as well as for themselves.

People on my blogroll/the people whose blogs I read everyday are overwhelmingly in the academic blogger camp. That is, folks in academia who blog, and who may or may not (usually may not) be part of the subset of educators attempting to leverage the medium in the classroom. Because this is my neighborhood, I forget that we're the far-away suburb of the bustling downtown of blogging. The Edublogging session, and the four hours of socializing at the end of the conference, reminded me of our true position in teh blogging landscape; to borrow an overused but wickedly appropriate term, we're in liminal space.

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blogher: on conference logistics/sponsors

2006-08-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

[edited to add: here are links to all my BlogHer posts]

Of the posts I plan to write about Blogher, this is definitely the easiest one to write. Before saying anything else, I will say that Jory, Elisa, and Lisa should be applauded loudly and ceaselessly for taking the idea for BlogHer and running with it. Any criticisms I have about the conference logistics/etc are not addressed to these individuals personally.

It boils down to this: it's expensive as hell to do anything here, and when the conference is scheduled (again) the same weekend as a Champ Car race, options are even more limited. Sure, the Hyatt San Jose is not the most upscale conference center/hotel in the history of the world, but the conference fees also weren't a thousand bucks nor were the rooms two hundred bucks each night. I'm sure if the BlogHer Triumverate wanted to make this even more of an elitist conference than it already is, they easily could have done it.

No, I didn't stay in the hotel—I live just a few exits down the freeway, so that would have been dumb—thus I did not experience first-hand any issues with the rooms or staff or crappy hotel food. But really, there are issues with rooms and staff and crappy hotel food at every hotel. Beyond that, I thought the conference accomodations (the meeting rooms, the ballroom, the pool area) were very nice, especially for the price.

The connectivity issue was deplorable. Who was it that made a comment in a session or keynote that there's a difference between 700 people at a blogging conference—who are likely (*gasp*) to be blogging constantly—and 700 businesspeople who need connectivity to check in with the office and glance through email? Yeah. I doubt that the BlogHer Triumverate didn't express the difference, I'll just bet the Hyatt didn't conceptually understand...or believe them.

I think the connectivity issue led many folks who were following the conference from afar, either through the live blogging, chat sessions, or Technorati/Flickr tags, to notice only the fluff (see comments on this post at BlogHer). I find this bit of a comment, from karriew, to be spot on: "[...] because as Mrs. Davis hinted at [ed.—in a comment upthread at the referenced post], it's unfortunate to think that a group of women who want to be taken seriously would not have more to say than 'Duuuuude...I so want to stalk you and your shoes rock my world.'

While there is, in my opinion, a strong undercurrent of 'Duuuuude...I so want to stalk you and your shoes rock my world,' there's also the fact that so many people are still processing the experience...and while doing so are happy to blabbering on about fashion and shoes and restaurants and coffee (easy things to talk about, and I include myself among the people doing it) because freewriting is part of the thinking/writing process. This isn't a conference, or an experience, like MacWorld or [insert name of tech conference here] in which products are announced (Vox not withstanding) and the economy is affected by the masses looking for their Wiis.

Oh wait, products were announced...Windows Live Spaces and Johnson's Mom Blogger Project. For sponsors who paid a considerable amount of money to give their 15-minute spiels before the assembled masses, they sure didn't pay attention to the audience to whom this message was addressed. But it's certainly not the fault of the BlogHer Triumverate that these sponsors did a crappy job, and in the grand scheme of things, half an hour of poor marketing in exchange for, well, all the things that sponsors pay for, makes no nevermind to me. But it is indicative, possibly, of the ongoing (and longstanding) problem with marketing and the creation of user-centered products: it's the rare company that pays attention and listens to their audience. In his post-BlogHer notes, Scoble writes:

This brings me to another point. Companies that listen to audiences like this are hyper rare. They still look at audiences like this as a one-way conversation. Let's just push our crap out to them, and get our messaging in front of them, but let's not send any of our engineers or program managers to LISTEN.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I'll turn to Barbara Sawhill for a thumbnail sketch:

* Johnson and Johnson is launching its own mommy blogging site to connect women. Er, 5 minutes with any one of the mommy bloggers that attended would tell you they have their connections, thank you, and don't need J&J for this.

* Microsoft has a new blogging tool (Live Spaces) and has launched the interactive blog called Be Jane: the blog for women who are not afraid to take on home improvement. Check out their spokesmodels and tell me if you would trust either one of them with a circular saw in your living room. While they were doing their schtick in front of the audience, with matching outfits and, I believe, $200 suede pointy-toe boots, the live bloggers were tapping away furiously on their keyboards...a sure sign of controversy in the making.

I'd add in Contrex. Sounds like something medical, like an antibiotic or a feminine hygeine product. But no, it's water. Water and a gaggle of minerals in a bottle. The aforementioned Barbara, she whipped out a water testing strip from her purse and confirmed the hardness of the water. It's rare to find me without a bottle of water in my hand, and free water is always awesome, but this stuff gave me a stomach ache. "Calcium, magnesium and other minerals give Contrex its unique taste," sure...like chalk. After two bottles of the stuff, I was done.

But what do all these negative comments about sponsorts have in common? The fact that they're comments. People are talking about these things. Would I be talking about Windows Live Spaces if they weren't so far behind the curve and had tremendously condescending spokesmodels? Not at all. So in that respect they did their job, and in return we all got reduced rates for things that otherwise would have cost a gajillion dollars.

Still, I go with what Geeky Mom just said:

I think what it boils down to is that I'm tired of being marketed to. I'm tired of being looked at as a certain demographic and being told that a company understands my needs because they've done the market research. Let me make my own decisions, damn it. I'll watch your ads, but I'm going to turn to the internet and do my own research, thank you very much.

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