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I never did find out the meaning of this strange wooden ball that one day appeared on campus and then vanished several days later.
Completely unrelated to the giant ball, Dean has asked that I blogroll him. As most of you already know, I try to only add people that have been commenting for at least several weeks, but I have no problem linking to someone in an entry:
Blogging Rule #937: When you have nothing to say, post a picture.
Today they released the trailer for Joss Whedon's new Firefly movie. It looks pretty good. Who knows? Maybe they'll even base a series on it. (Thanks to Will for the trailer info.)
One thing that never gets old is when someone comes across a food item that vaguely resembles something and sells it on eBay.
They're redoing the micronauts. Personally I prefer the old ones. The only improvement needed is increased durability. (The old ones always broke within the first ten minutes after removing them from the packaging.)
Patrick Norton must be one of the most talented bloggers in the world. He started a blog last month, posted a single entry, and now has over 564 comments. I wish I could blog like that.
Never ever heat your lava lamp on a stove.
And for today's game, how many times in a row can you Guess-the-Google? (from Mike)
Today I had another stained glass glass. Last week I showed you the pattern I had created for my project. Since then, a great deal of progress has been made. Here is the pattern transferred to a plastic sheet:
Today I cut and ground nearly all my pieces. Whiskers, nose and beady little eyes will have to await the next class.
I won't have another class for two weeks, so you'll have to live with the suspense until then.
Here's another tale from my past. This one isn't so much funny as it is interesting. Two or three years ago, before I moved to Oregon, I was taking classes at another university. One of them was a beginning language class. Despite never having had any prior exposure to the language, I found myself doing very well in the class, and I'm fairly certain I was outperforming all the other students. In the final week of class there was a big test followed by the final in the subsequent week. I aced the first test and scored 98.5%. The other students were not as lucky. When the prof handed back the exams, everyone groaned, and there was a long discussion about the results. The prof didn't want to penalize everyone for one bad test, so he came up with a compromise: The final would cover the same material from the disastrous test (as opposed to everything we had studied throughout the term), and whatever score we got on the final would also replace the score we had received on the previous test. One student laughingly asked what would happen if they actually scored worse on the final (The entire class burst out laughing.), and the prof said that he would apply the higher of the two scores.
Well, that seemed pretty clear to me. I had other more challenging finals to take, so I didn't even bother showing up for the final. And I'm sure everything would have gone smoothly if not for one thing; unbeknownst to me, my professor had just been diagnosed with cancer a few days earlier. He had someone else from the department administer the final, because he had to undergo an operation that day followed by chemo. When I learned that I had astonishingly earned a C- in that class, I spoke to the departmental secretary about it. She explained that she had given the grades exactly as per the profs instructions, which she read back to me. She explained that, while it was true that that the higher of the two scores was to be applied to both, there was nothing in the instructions that said a student could miss the final. Therefore she had to give me a big fat zero on the final, which to me would seem to contradict the instructions she had been given.
The secretary promised to speak to the professor the next time he was in the office. I checked in with her every few days after that to see if she had seen him and spoken to him. Sometimes she would say he had been in, but she never seemed to remember with any certainty if she had actually spoken to him about my grade or what he had said. Normally, I would have made an effort to contact the professor directly, but, since he was dying of cancer, I really didn't feel it would be appropriate to bother him. Also, he had a reputation for being an extremely private person to the point that it was a running joke in the department that none of his colleagues even knew where he lived. Anyway, I eventually gave up trying to get anything out of the secretary, but I was optimistic that the situation would eventually be resolved.
A few months later, I saw my prof's obituary in the paper. My grade still hadn't been changed, and I doubt it ever will be. Having a C- on my transcript in a 101 language course is quite embarrassing, but it makes for an interesting story. A lot of people complain about receiving unfair grades, but I've never heard as airtight a case as mine.
Bush has an iPod. (He calls it the "iPod One".) The contents of his playlist have been released to the public. (from Leo)
The ZoomQuilt is fun for a few minutes. (It's sort of like being on drugs.) (from zannah)
You've seen Napoleon Dynamite, right? Well, now you can buy a time machine just like the one in the movie. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide testicular current. (from mike)
Here's some entertaining local news. I'm actually surprised I've never met the guy. I suspect the police are only giving him such a hard time because of his sexual orientation.
There's now an anime version of the famous Ellen Feiss commercial. (I think the real one is the more adorable of the two.) By the way, did I ever link to the never-aired bonus commercial?
I've spent several hours reading a saga about a blogger and a plagiarist. It starts here and goes on for for several entries with hundreds of comments. Lots of food for thought, especially with regard to plagiarism and responsible blogging.
Good news. My ethernet connection reestablished itself. I guess it was a problem with the dorm's connection, although it is strange that the computers in the lobby never stopped working. Another day of this and I was going to rip out the motherboard and replace it with the one from my previous computer. This is not advisable. Although I know how to replace a motherboard and have done it about three times before, my computer inevitably dies of motherboard failure about two weeks afterward. The operation is always a success, but the patient invariably dies. It's quite sad really.
Will is being interviewed. Today he talked in depth about the book project. I'm so glad he hasn't lost faith that I will get it finished. And I will finish it. Unfortunately, I go through periods of being swamped by schoolwork, interspersed with periods of recovery. I've been sidetracked far longer than I ever expected. The thing is I try not to bring it up if I have no progress to report. In my experience, the more a person talks about doing something, and the more emphatic their reassurances, the less likely it is that the will ever actually accomplish their stated goal. It's far better for me to prove that I'll get it done by actually doing it rather than by constantly apologizing for the delays. (I do apologize, by the way.) Plus such entries would quickly become tiresome to my readers. It will get done. Please bear with me just a tad longer.
In other news, I just rented a great movie from Netflix. I very rarely give anything five stars in my Netflix ratings. (The last time was Donnie Darko.) Therefore, I think it's blogworthy that I gave that rating to Spanglish. I'm not really up for writing a review, but you might want to check it out.
When I booted up my computer this morning, it said a network cable was unplugged and refused to let me access the internet. I don't yet know if this is a problem with the system in the dorm or with my computer. I've done all the usual troubleshooting, but nothing has made a difference. Anyway, my entries will probably be rather short for the next few days as I have to write them in a nearby computer lab.
On an unrelated note, Netflix recently upgraded their Netflix Friends feature to give one heck of a lot more personal rental information than it did before. Some people are a bit concerned about this. Not me, though. Now I can track exactly what my Netflix friends are watching, how long they keep their discs out, and what they have in their queue. Snowball, I'm watching you.
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 75% General American English |
| 10% Dixie |
| 10% Upper Midwestern |
| 5% Yankee |
| 0% Midwestern |
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