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Tag: nerd

mooc

mooc

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i really like my mooc and am learning a lot more stuff to put in my devils syrup book. i don’t do all the forum work, but i do all the quizzes and it’s really interesting.
speaking of the devils syrup book, i haven’t written in it in a while. it’s been a little busy this month, so i’ve sort of put it off. i really need to pick up on it again, and since the next chapter is the environmental one (oy), i’m going to really want to have to get going on it. my dad was supposed to bring the hard copies i’d printed off for him to the reunion to give to jane, but i think he forgot, and i forgot, and so it was a bust. i’m sure when they move they’ll get lost. oh boy!
anyway, i would recommend taking a mooc. very interesting, and totally opt in.

librarians

librarians

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when i was in school, the library was tucked away in the corner of the stone building that faced the playground, half of it buried in the earth with windows along the ceiling that filtered sunlight into the book-filled recesses. part of the room was dedicated to desks and early 80s Apple computers where classes would sit for a half an hour playing number munchers or practicing keyboarding, and the rest of the room was divided into a small kids’ book section and everyone else’s books.
i was what you would have called a “voracious” reader throughout my gradeschool and high school days, mostly because i found myself on the fringes of friend social structures in my classes. plus i liked to read. i remember in first grade i was telling third graders how to read the petitions for weekly mass. (that might explain the friendlessness…) so in first and second grade, after i’d outgrown and become bored with the picture books and exhausted the small supply of non-picture books in the section, i asked the white-haired librarian (who i remember as quite cranky) if i could read the “Little House on the Prairie” books from the big kids’ section. there were a couple girls in the class whose parents had bought them the series and they had read them. i so wanted to read them! but the librarian, who was bent on keeping the rules, said i couldn’t read them because i was too young.
i must have complained enough, because my aunt colette, who was a school librarian in rochester, brought me a few books in the series that were remainders at her library: little house in the big woods and the last two in the series. i devoured those books. i must have read each of them ten times, and by the time i was able to actually use the better part of the library and check out the rest of books in the series, they were all falling apart.
today neil gaiman started #LibrarianAngel(s) trending on twitter. i thought of all the librarians i’d known through my life, and the one who was the best, even though she’d never checked out a book for me, was colettie. not only did she get me those remainders, she suggested books and authors on more than one occasion that i fell in love with, like robin mckinley and the polar express (back in the 80s!). she tended toward the weird, fantastic, and morbid; i’d like to think she and mr. gaiman would have got along swimmingly.
cheers aunt C, my #LibrarianAngel.

missing!

missing!

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as most of you know, i’m working my way through the hercules and xena episodes again, very slowly. while perusing episodes, i noticed that a couple of the seasons have less episodes than others. i already knew that “lyre lyre” (one of the best xena episodes) was missing, but i didn’t know there were more.
so i did a comparison, thank you wikipedia.
missing herk episodes:
yes viriginia, there is a hercules (season 4) (great episode)
greece is burning (season 5) (another great episode!!)
missing xena episodes:
lyre lyre (season 5)
antony and cleopatra (also season 5)
why these episodes?? i could possibly see some weird copyright thing with lyre lyre since it uses a bunch of tunes that are copyrighted, but the others? i’ll have to watch them and see what’s going on in those episodes that would get them booted off netflix.
ETA: omg i had to pull out my dvds. watching virginia episode now! #nerdworldproblems

fail whale

fail whale

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as much free time as i have, i don’t think i can keep up with writing my blog, stay on track with a goal of reading 75 (hefty) books this year, and writing my devil’s syrup dissertation 🙁 i think the book goal may have to take a backseat 🙁  🙁
 
#nerdworldproblems

twog

twog

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here’s a shameless plug for medium, twitter’s new thing. it’s basically blogs that are public, like twitter. the nice thing about it is that you can follow medium on twitter and they will post when a decent new one is published. and at the top of the posts? it’ll tell you how long it will take you to read the blog.
i’m calling it a twog – twitter blog.
there are editor’s picks, featured collections and posts, about things you didn’t even know you needed to know about! take the “best of” from blogs all over the webiverse and put them in one spot: medium. love it.
and when there’s a blatant spelling error on a post that’s been sent to twitter, the twitter masses will always be there to correct; case in point: a post on macarons (…or macaroons as it had been originally published). Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 1.51.04 PM
 
yeah i was an annoy twitter corrector. oh well!
so there is my recommendation and shameless plug of the day. it’s like if all your favorite bloggers posted to the same blog. if you want a really easy way to keep up to date on them, follow @medium and they’ll tweet when a picked post is published.

here's to spring

here's to spring

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tonight was commencement at rctc, and we got out of the sports center at about 9:30. it was gorgeous out! a perfect night for a bonfire. i drove home with the windows down, and since the college is on a pretty large acreage on the edge of town with lots of trees, i heard the frogs croaking in the ditches, the crickets chirping, the warm wind whooshing. it was the perfect night for a drive out of city limits, but i was so beat i needed to get home and crawl into the bathtub.
the other night i went for a bike ride. it’d been 95 degrees that day, but by 8 p.m. it had cooled off a little bit. i like riding my bike on my non-running days because it reminds me of how fast i actually CAN go past these places. that night was nice because the sun was low enough in the sky that it didn’t make me squint, but it was still light enough out to not worry. the trees are starting to leaf out a little bit, so they created a bit of shade as i cruised along. what was lovely was the pockets of cooler air as i went along, going from almost too warm to perfect, to too warm, to cool. i bike over to campus, and it’s like night and day. i live in a pretty trafficky part of town, then campus, which is less than a mile away, is almost in the country. i was biking along and i noticed two deer on the other side of the road, that then decided to bound right in front of me. the second deer was about 10 feet in front of me as it leapt across the bike path. i watched the white tails sticking straight up from their butts as they started toward the wooded area.
so here’s to spring, that lovely time of year that reminds you that yes, life can be pretty exciting.

answered!

answered!

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what is your favorite holiday tradition, and why?
a christmas tree. i love a christmas tree! you go out and pick it out, bring it home, let it sit and make the whole room smell like evergreen. then you haul up your boxes of tree decorations that have been sitting in storage for a year. you open them up and look at all the ornaments you forgot you had, and each one has a specific memory tied to it, so it’s a little piece of sentimentality each time you look at it.
if cows could talk, what do you think they’d want humans to know?
you guys are crazy for drinking our milk!
if you had to give up one of your senses, which one would you choose and why?
i would give up taste. might make it easier for me to stop eating food!
What is your typical day like?
work day: i get up about half hour before i have to leave, dress, eat oatmeal, then take off. depending on my schedule at work, i might go to 5 meetings a day or zero. log in at work and pull up our stuff – i monitor twitter all day for mentions of the school. do worky stuff – might be some web design or just posting to fb or researching some crap. eat lunch. continue worky stuff. time to go home and i make supper when i get home, watch some tv, maybe read a book, maybe go to a store, then go for a run if it’s a running day, take a shower, read/movie/tv again. nate leaves for work, continue reading, go to bed. i’m pretty boring.
Do you ever have random people post comments or regularly surf your site?
i had a couple of random comments on my LJ blog when it was still active. that probably had more to do with a search ability within LJ. i do look at my analytics from time to time and have a lot more readers than who actually post. it would be nice if those people would post occasionally so i know who they actually are…:(
Which of your cats is your favorite?
by default i have to say chasey because she’s been my kitty for the longest. but secretly i also like sophie a ton. she is more of your typical cat and actually enjoys snuggling! how about i say this: ralf is my lease-favorite cat, haha.
What is your ideal job?
can i say lying around and doing nothing? no? hahaha. i like my current job – it’s pretty decent. the thing with ideal jobs is that if it’s something you enjoy, it could get to be a chore. i think it’s a good idea to keep hobbies and work separate. based on my hobbies, i would probably be a small-time farmer who photographs and blogs her food. if that paid money, i’d probably get sick of it.
What do you think of homeopathic medicine?
i don’t know much about homeopathic meds to make a real informed decision, but you have to wonder how much of that is a placebo affect. or any medicine, for that matter (you know, for like, headaches and stuff – not huge stuff like pancreatic cancer).
would you consider writing a book about your devil’s syrup free life?
O
M
G
this is the most exciting thing i have thought about in a while. i might do this!!! problem is, can i fill 200 pages with devil’s syrup stuff? would i self publish or try to get a publisher? how long would it take me – a year? hmmmm….so much to think about! maybe i’ll start with an outline.

madness

madness

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my earliest experience with any sort of march basketball tournament time was in 1992, when the pacelli shamrocks unexpectedly went to the class A state tournament. we lived in austin, my parents were both pacelli alums, and school spirit seemed to be at an all-time high. i was 13 and had been managing both girls’ and boys’ basketball teams for my class, but nothing could prepare me for the speed and knowledge needed for a high school championship game. the boys won, and life went on its merry way, dumping me in a little, unimportant high school by the name of new london-spicer. little and unimportant except when it came to its basketball teams.
i came to nl-s during its powerhouse years. every single year i was in that high school, at least one of our basketball teams went to state. i can’t recall what years, but there was at least one year when both girls and boys went to state. i have two very distinct memories from tournament times.
first, you have to realize i was in the pep band. since part of our grade in band was based on participation, it was expected that a person attend at least some basketball and football games to get your points. this also meant that if the team traveled, the pep band traveled (except one time). what better way to get into a game for free?
the first memory i have was traveling to a boys’ quarterfinal the same day as a girls’ tournament game. this had to have been a saturday in 1994. we left late morning to be at williams arena on the UofM campus to play for the girls, who came in 2nd, once again (they won second in the state in 91,92,93,94). then we turned right around and went up to st cloud state for the boys’ quarterfinal. we got back to new london around 11 p.m. that was a crazy day.
my second memory is of the most exciting basketball game i’ve ever been to. we were at halenbeck hall at scsu for the boys’ finals to go to state (could’ve actually been the game referenced above – who knows). after playing before the game and at halftime, we pep band people were allowed to go sit wherever. a bunch of nerds and i (yes, there are a separate sect of nerds within the band nerds who are more nerdy) went to the second floor balcony to watch the game. the game was close, and we were always behind. but, like i said, this was the beginning of the boys’ powerhouse team – 4 sophomores who were extremely good at basketball who were already starters for the team. can you imagine? 4 sophomores starting?? anyway, the game was close, and as the clock wound down, we were 3 points behind. with barely any time at all  on the clock, one of the sophomores, jaime olson (?) threw a mad hope 3-pointer toward the basket. we all held our collective breath, and it went in, pushing the game into overtime. i don’t think i’ve ever screamed so loud at a sporting event – the whole nl-s side of the bleachers was an ecstatic mess. seriously, it was something out of a movie. overtime went quickly, and we stayed 1-2 points ahead the whole time and won the final. amazing.
those boys never won a state title, and the year they could’ve done it was the year the  captain of the team caught a cold – one of the powerhouse players we couldn’t do without. he played, but poorly.
the girls finally won their state title in my senior year. at that point, the powerhouse boys’ team had graduated, and since none of the current seniors got any real court time prior to that year, the team didn’t do as well.
there are other memories – our pep band tshirts (woo!), always having to get a vanilla shake a fries on friday night hardee’s stops because it was during lent (boo…), having minneapolis north come to new london to play a game to a COMPLETELY packed gym, missing playing games because i had chickepox (thanks, aunt kathy), the pep band deciding not to go to a tournament game because of weather and taking the fan bus instead, watching movies on the coach buses, listening to “we are the champions”, watching mighty ducks, etc. good times.

the bleachers were always packed for those games. the rctc men’s team went to NJCAA nationals, and as i looked at pictures, you could see the bleachers were sparse. where is the excitement of high school basketball? what is it about those teams that puts people’s butts in bleachers?

oooooommm

oooooommm

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i’d had my keyboard for many years, and it was gross and dirty and yellow from age. since apple came out with their chiclet keyboards, i’d been using one at my places of work.

chiclet keyboard - keys are shaped like chiclets.
chiclet keyboard – keys are shaped like chiclets.

meanwhile, i had cleaned out my mouse so my mouse was working fabulously, which meant that i really wanted my keyboard to work fabulously. so i bought myself a new keyboard for home ($50!!!) and i looooooooove it. love it. perhaps it will inspire me to write more since typing will be easier.