Blackboard, Blackboard, toil and trouble. . .

I think I am rather computer literate. Although, I hate those kinds of snazzy little terms that sound oh-so-cool in this post-modern era, but I honestly think that I do know my way around software apps and the like. However, it was tonight's tango with Blackboard that left me scratching my head for a little while. . .

Typing in student grades didn't seem to be too much trouble. I did this late Friday night. However, tonight I noticed they weren't even there! So, I had to dig them up and retype them into their happy little places. I would love to be able to upload a spreadsheet with my grades into Blackboard, but apparently I don't have the kind of administrative access it takes to change the roll. This is very odd to me. I mean, why shouldn't we be able to add and remove anyone we want from Blackboard??

Along the lines of conspiracy theory, the missing harddrive from my university is still MIA. Apparently, benefactors of life insurance policies are also at risk for identity theft. One of my TA buddies is hoping that the thief just wanted the hdd for Everquest 2. One can only hope.

This is also our last week for job candidates. Well, at least for the committee that I'm on. Good times. The greatest thing about this whole process is the free meals. The second greatest is what I'm actually learning out of it. Academia is amazingly difficult to procure a job from. I'm a little concerned, but I'm hoping that 3-4 more years of this will help me out with my heebie-geebies.

As my advisor and former child of the eighties once said, "Never let 'em see you sweat!"

Grading Papers, la-la-la

I don't know why I constantly do this to myself, but I have already assigned my students short papers for the research class. I promised that they would be graded by tomorrow, but I sincerely doubt that I can get them graded in that time. Probably Friday will be the lucky day.

Why do I do this? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I sincerely enjoy procrastination. I also feel pensive about my masters project. Yup, this will be an ongoing whine session about my pathetic abilities in writing a complicated argument, but I don't care. That's what blogs are for, right?

Anyway, I wish I could say more about my absolute frustration with many things. . . primarily on a personal and/or administrative level. However, there is an issue with Colorado in that it has defamation laws. In other words, if I bitch and complain about specific people, even if there is barely a hint as to who they are, I can be sued. It sucks. Especially now, when I am faced with a number of people that I wish I could just slam online. Hell, they probably couldn't even find me or my blog anyway. But, I can't take that chance. It's an unfortunate thing. The cathartic feelings I should be experiencing while I blog are never going to come to fruition because of these crazy laws.

I will say that everyone is a hypocrit. And you really have to watch out for those people who claim to absolutely hate hypocracy in other people. I think that everyone should be wary of specific individuals throughout their everyday experiences. Here, in fact, is a list:

• Anyone who says that they hate hypocrits
• Anyone who says that they are doing something for the "principle of the thing"
• People who make snide remarks about complete strangers in public places
• People who frequently comment on all the "good works" they've been doing for society
• People who sound like they know what they're talking about all the time in that rather "I know what I'm talking about, and you don't" tone. Of course, there are definitely people who know what they're talking about because they are experts in their fields. But, we do seem to have an overabundance of people who act like they know what they're talking about but don't. . . They seem to frequently show up in middle management positions.
• Anybody who seems slightly off in a bad way. There are definitely people out there who seem slightly off in a good way -- they are usually creative and fun people to hang out with. But, I'm sure we've all met people who are slightly off in a bad way. Your sixth sense has some kind of "spidey sense" moment, and you usually aren't sure why. . . yet. Go with your gut. If you see crazy coming, cross the street.
• Anyone who is incredibly self-centered. I'm not talking about the general self-centeredness that most of us have. After all, we live in a post-Cartesian kind of culture. Instead, I'm referring to the folks that always seek the center of attention and suck your soul.
• The poser as "sexual predator." We know these kinds of people. Guys and girls tend to elaborate on their sexual experiences, but these folks always have a "story" about something totally fucked up. You don't want to hear it, but they'll tell it to you anyway.
• The eyebrow archer. No matter what anybody says or does, they always arch their eyebrows in that person's general direction. Occasionally, if they have a fellow eyebrow archer, they will exchange glances while you're talking. You have no idea why, which is part of their point.
• People who enjoy compiling lists. . .

What can I say? I know I'm an absolute hypocrit. I think I do a chunk of the items I have just mentioned. But, I'm also misanthropic, so I figure it's ok to piss people off. . . I would rather not hang out with them anyway. I can tell the misanthropy kicks in after a while because I always end up hating most of the people I get to know well. It's terrible. I've given up working on my horrific personality because I figure I'm still ahead of the rest of the people I know. . . who basically suck beyond total comparison. Hehe.

Not a good week

Well, this week has definitely had its ups and downs. Here's a recap:

• Our university's back-up of their payroll records were stolen. Good times. I had to call my bank and the credit bureau to get things squared away. Identity theft seems to be an inevitability.
• I got my draft back for my masters project. Looks like I'll be writing a new draft.
• We watched Woodstock the movie for my class. After about 3 hours or so, we realized that we may have the wrong version of it. Apparently my good ol' SO says that he watched a 2 hour version several years ago. We got the Director's Cut. We should have watched the theatrical release. Sigh.
• I'm starting to break out in a skin rash, thanks to the dry weather, the overall stress from my personal finance situation, the robbery of all our information, and the inevitable outcome of my applications to Ph.D. programs. The last time I broke out in a rash was when I worked for IT during one of the worst viral threats of the year. I looked like I had leprosy. It wasn't fun.
• More reading and writing than I know what to do with.

On the other hand, I do find that both Research classes I am teaching have some pretty sharp students. Of course, there are other students who I've yet to hear talk. . . In fact, if I were to bump into them on the street, there's a good chance I wouldn't recognize them. And it's already the end of week 2. I really need to work on that. . .

I always wonder if it's ever a good idea to trust your employer with all of your financial information. However, given the circumstances of getting your paycheck in the mail, it always seems like direct deposit is the best option. This isn't the first time I've heard of sensitive material being leaked at a workplace environment. I used to work at a hospital, and they accidentally threw away copies of their financial records in the trash. Without shredding them. Or putting them in a bag. A huge wind picked up and blew these records into the parking lot.

Another instance included a woman from HR asking about "blacked out" portions on someone's personal file at a contracting company. Also not good.

Yet another was when a large file of "volunteer" donations and their donators were discovered to be directly linked to pay raises at a large plant. Also not good.

Should we really trust the folks that cut our paychecks? Why do we immediately provide them trust when we wouldn't give that trust to your average joe? These people in HR are average joes. I even wonder if they go through any additional training programs or certifications to learn how to handle confidential materials.

So tired. . .

It's the second week of school, and everyone has mentioned the fact that it feels like finals week. I turned in the majority of my project draft to my advisor on Tuesday. You would think this would be a huge load off of my shoulders, but I still feel inundated by all of the work that I know I will need to do to complete this thing. Sigh.
One thing I am very grateful for is the fact that I will be getting some additional funds from loans this year. Thank goodness for deferrment. I am going to try my best not to get loans for the remainder of my education -- that is, if I get into a Ph.D. program. Right now, I'm pretty much up in the air on that one.
It's not even 11 yet, and I'm about to go to bed. I suck.

Another Day in Paradise

Today was the last evening of a decent three day weekend. I am up to 28 not-so-decent pages of my masters project. I'm debating about even turning it in because it is horrible. Well, I've already sent me email to my advisor. I'm sure he's going to supress the naseated feeling of mediocrity as he tries to digest my craptacular paper. It's all just swell.
I've been trying very hard to keep up in my classes. So far I've been ok. But, I knew that I shouldn't have taken that rock film course. I am horrible at film analysis. It comes from having the worst sense of visual acuity and a penchant for getting really sick when watching films that shake and swerve. It's all from the advent of dolby surround sound. That puppy just kills me. Anyway, the reading load is intense for that class (which is what I expected), the films are great except for the fact that it takes me about 5 times to finally get what I want out of a scene or sequence. I frankly am concerned with what I am going to be writing my final paper on. Hmmm.

Well, so far, I've got some ideas for paper topics for my other classes:

1. For my Cultural Studies course, I was considering an analysis of the television show Firefly (specifically the first episode) and how it demonstrates the conflict between the current politics which exist under the Bush administration and the ideal politics of the historical republican party. I also wanted to address the sublimation of the Chinese in these politics through the use of language in the show. It's interesting how the United States and China merged to form the Alliance government, yet there are hardly any Chinese in the show. It's also interesting how English is the primary language used for business and politics, yet Chinese is only used for profanity and other primative utterances. Why the difference if there is a merging of the two cultures? It demonstrates our assumption that we are the superior culture to China. I'm hoping my prof will be cool with this idea. Otherwise, I'll probably analyze shoes or something.
2. For my 18th century course, I want to take The Mysteries of Udolpho and talk about the social class issues in the novel. Most of the time people focus on the gothic elements, but I think that there is a real key to social class concerns that arise throughout the novel. Over last summer, I read many of Radcliffe's novels for my masters project, and I found an intersting passage in Udolpho that discusses how Theresa the servant can't understand why Emily cannot marry Valancourt. Emily says it's because of her lack of esteem for him after she was told about his lascivious lifestyle in Paris. Theresa thinks there really isn't anything to the concept of esteem; to a poor person, esteem doesn't really matter if you love someone. That moment in the novel demonstrated a rift that exists between the lower and upper class folks. It is constantly demonstrated through Emily's gullibility, and how she is often convinced of the honesty from upper class people (until she learns better) and how she finds that lower class servants only speak idle gossip (again, until she learns better).
3. I don't know shit about rock films, so I don't know yet. . .

Philosophy majors do rock!

Anytime anything references philosophy, I am on it! Questionable Content is one of the best webcomics, and I just love the fact that my years of philosophy courses can pay off in "getting" a joke on metaphysics and epistemology.

Anne Geddes and Celine Dion = Spawn of Devil

This is hilarious. I first saw this calendar from Hell at Borders in Denver. I didn't realize that this kind of horrific sublime could exist outside of the 1790s.

The last day of freedom

Today is the last day of Winter Break. My final spring semester for my masters program is finally here. Am I prepared for it? Not in the least. Here's a basic summary of what's already happened:

1. I'm still not finished with my first draft of the impending doom known as the master's project. I am hoping my advisor won't have a fit when I turn it in on either Friday or Monday of next week.
2. I've already received some heavy duty reading assignments for the first day of class. And yes, I did say the first day of class.
3. Remember that washer trouble? Well. . . we just bought a new washer today. That took up about 3 hours of time. Now we're struggling with the semantics of how to get it up the !%#@#$ stairs!
4. I still need to prepare for my first day of teaching in the semester. I'm using Blackboard this time to house the grades and everything else. I still haven't figured out how to put in my extended readings. I think I might try scanning them in and then converting them to pdfs. But, the hard part is figuring out how to scan them in without losing the crispness of the text. Or, I might just do things the old fashioned way and make photocopies. Hmm. . .
5. I think I got fatter over the holidays. Sigh.

Of course, it's all a matter of pre-panic and antici---pation for the new semester. But, I suppose part of this mini-adrenaline rush is the reason behind why I enjoy school so much.

Blech

I am sick as a dog, but I'm still working on my project. Barely. However, regardless of how I feel, I need the draft done by Sunday.
I'm also planning on taking a French class at the local community college. Unfortunately, the class is at 7:30am. So, we'll see if that works out.
This week is one of the worst weeks to be sick. I need to buy my textbooks, get my syllabus copied, and register for that French class. I'm excited for the new semester. But, I would be 10,000 times more excited if I could breathe.