It has been a bit since last I posted, but this topic rises to the level of import worthy of my time. Joss Whedon has a new project - it’s a Video Blog titled “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and it is a fantastic role-reversing episodic tale of trial and error on a super-human scale. Plus, there’s the extra-added bonus of the fact it’s a musical. Note: the music is catchy and good - beware the stuck-in-your-head-ish-ness of it.
Act I and Act II are currently up as I type this and Act III is scheduled for release tomorrow (July 19). Also, they disappear July 20, so you don’t have much time. Get ‘em while they’re hot! Tell all your friends:
Today (three days late) Media Com finally came to bury the exposed cable in our back yard. It has been almost three months since they decided to change the entry location of the cable in our house (from the northeast side to the southwest) and since then we have had a loose exposed cable running from the far northeast corner of our back yard all the way around to the south west corner of our house - spanning the entirety of the back yard. It has been a real treat to mow the grass around this cable. I have to stop and start or mow right up next to it and then move it and mow the rest of the yard. Today that ends!
They pulled up a ditch witch and just seamed the cable underground. It looks like the grass will grow back together nicely now they’ve gone. I know I will look forward to mowing this weekend!
This is what our new back yard looks like . . . sorta.
Last night I attended my last class session in my graduate program. I finished class around 6:30PM and walked out of south Lindquist Center when a thought entered my head: this could be my last academic class session ever! I don’t know if it is my eagerness to be finished with my program or the lovely spring weather in Iowa City, but it was a good feeling either way.
I am walking in the graduate college commencement ceremony on Saturday May 17 at 3PM - you are welcome to attend if you are in the area and looking for a toasty way to spend a May afternoon - we’ll be in the Carver Hawkeye Arena. No air conditioning. Yah.
If you are interested in the festivities but prefer to enjoy it in the comfort of your own home - here’s the link to the live webcast:
The link should be available starting at 2:30PM Central time. It is my understanding that the hooding of PhD students runs first, and then the masters students walk (no hooding for us). It will probably run upwards of 3 hours. Look for me in the crowd - I’ll be the one in the black gown, black cap, black tassel, and white/gold roping. I should stand out.
This is an example of the new photo insert tool in Wordpress.
As far as I can tell it works pretty well. The photo, by the way, is of our new chair rail in our house. Tina and I measured, sanded, sawed, stained, nailed and puttied up the rail this Saturday and Sunday past. It went really well!
As I sit here in the apartment this morning studying and drinking strong black coffee I realize that in less than eight hours the torment and impending doom of comprehensive exams will be over! This is a huge relief for me as I have been thinking of/fretting over/making myself anxious about these exams for almost as long as I have been taking graduate classes (fall of ‘04). That’s a long time to dread driving past the Lindquist Center (where most my classes and these exams are held).
I have to imagine the sense of relief that will come with walking out of those doors today will in some ways mirror the feeling an exonerated inmate feels when he realizes he doesn’t have to consider his cell his home any longer. Stress is stress, but academic stress is a beast all its own. I know I’ve studied hard for these exams and I think all along I’ve known I would be well prepared for them, but something about my psychological makeup wouldn’t let me sleep well as long as these exams were in front of me. It’s almost as though it was an unconscious burden, kind of like regret for some distant wrong that you don’t think about all the time or even know it’s causing you stress until you really focus on the feeling and realize that its source is quite obvious.
On a humorous side, I can share all manner of recurring, whacked-out dreams I’ve had over the past 6 months about these tests. Some involve me in a severely unprepared state, panicking for answers to questions I don’t understand; some have me over-confident to the point of hubris; some are quite mundane in nature and those are the worst - from those dreams I wake with the fear that I’ve missed some obvious sign or some major course assignment that would have easily prepared me for success. Nothing like a little academic paranoia to keep your nose to the grindstone, eh?
So to all those conjecturing, I am excited - stressed, yes - but glad for the resolution of so much fretting. I am looking forward to finishing this task, checking this hurdle off my list of things to do this spring, and moving past it to greener pastures.
See you on the other side of the gate!
*It should be noted that the Michigan State T-Shirt is purely coincidental considering the last post to my blog. It’s a comfy shirt! Green’s a good color!
Words I thought never would leave my mouth - thanks to Tom Izzo.
Perhaps it is too early for such praise, but it sounds like Tom, the Spartan Basketball head coach, through his disparaging comments towards the dispute between the Big Ten Network (BTN) and local cable service providers has sparked a fire of negotiations. Well, at least for Comcast customers. The major dispute seems roiled over where to place the channel (on a sports tier package, on an advanced cable package, or on the basic package) as well as how much to increase customer rates across the board.
When the BTN was first announced, they extolled many promises of additional programming, availability and access to all your favorite team’s sporting events. However, due to the fact that many of the cable providers in the Big Ten viewing area have failed to reach a contract with BTN, many have actually lost any ability at all to watch their favorite (or any) Big Ten team’s events without purchasing a satellite service. This has left many with a bad taste in their mouth towards BTN, and several others with increased disdain for their cable providers.
With the potential breakthrough of a Comcast deal in the works perhaps it will pave the way for other companies to ease into agreeable terms? Perhaps it will simply roil the waters more.
On a personal note - we’ve had access to the BTN on our campus cable connection (the UI reached an agreement to provide content regardless of the [failed] negotiations between BTN and Mediacom) all academic year. In fact, campus cable services even provides the BTN in 720iHD! However, we will be moving off the campus cable all too soon, and my motivation for the companies to work together has been renewed of late. C’mon, Tom Izzo, what Spartan magic can you work in the great state of Iowa?
This weekend was eventful! Not only did we hold the second annual Super Boil at Kevin’s place - which was a fantastic success, pictures forthcoming - but I was finally successful in selling the motorcycle!
I had re-posted the bike on Craig’s List here in Iowa City and had a potential buyer up in Cedar Rapids, but he wanted to wait for warmer weather to test ride and then Sunday before church I checked my email and a couple from Muscatine expressed interest in seeing the bike the same day. I got a hold of them and in a mere matter of hours we were completing the transaction.
Now that we’ve sold the bike we are getting very excited to purchase a home. We’re just checking each item off our to-do list for this spring!
In honor of the sale, I have written a parting Haiku for our old bike:
My coworker sent me a link to a recent Jib Jab short and I noticed they have a feature on their site where you can add faces of your friends and family to one of their pre-fabricated videos. Here’s one starring Oisin, Kaylee, Brom, Derek and Travis:
And this version of the same thing with “grown ups” playing the parts. Watch out for the newlyweds:
In the past couple weeks we’ve struck gold with our rentals from Netflix.
The first was a period piece set in 18th century France based on a novel by Patrick Süskind titled Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It’s a heartwarming tale of mystery that follows the preternatural ability of Jean Baptiste Grenouille and his sense of smell. His sniffer is on hyper drive and he finds a way to become a journeyman for Dustin Hoffman (who plays a once eminent perfumer in Paris). It’s a mesmerizing tale filmed masterfully and scored perfectly by director and composer Thomas Tykwer (of Run Lola Run fame). The film has received mixed reviews, but if you enjoy a macabre tale of social unrest and stunning visuals you will like this.
The other movie I’ve enjoyed recently was a film I have been reading about and eagerly awaiting its release on DVD for months: Into Great Silence. The story behind this film, from the film company Zeitgeist Films:
In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks’ quarters for six months—filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one—it has no score, no voiceover and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light.
Watching this film is the most engaging film experience I’ve ever had. You can’t view this film without feeling drawn into the experience of these monks. Whether or not you hold a fascination for ancient church music and liturgy, carry an interest in Catholicism, or even if you lack a curiosity for the source of the Chartreuse liquor, you will find something visceral, yet intellectual inside this film. It moves from high quality filming media and techniques to dated early 70’s film grade leaving the viewer with a feeling of timelessness within their experience of the life of these monks.
Some of my favorite movie sequences and images have been replaced with scenes from this almost three-hour-movie. If you have a quiet uninterrupted 3 hours on your hands and are looking for something to do, find a copy of this film and begin your journey.
Two great films, two highly positive and encouraging recommendations for you. Enjoy!
. . . since last I wrote. For that I apologize. Now on to the interesting topic that motivated me to submit this post:
The funny symbols on your keyboard, and their names.
It all started this morning when I read the “word of the day.” Today’s was “Octothorpe.”
Know what that is? It’s the pound or number symbol: #
The name has a storied history with the telephone company, and combined with my knowledge that this, “&,” is called an ampersand, I was off on a mission to discover if any other symbols had cool obscure names.
Which included lots of similarly self-motivated research by author Stephanie. At the bottom of the post, there is a comments section including the following poem;
!*’’#
^@`$$-
!*’$_
%*#4
&)../
|{~~SYSTEM HALTED
Transliterated:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret at back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat tick dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka number four,
Ampersand right-paren dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket tilde tilde CRASH.
Which came from this site (I can’t get it to load, could be a bad link, sorry).
Some people have too much time on their hands, but isn’t that what we always say when we are overwhelmed by someone else’s creativity or a shameful lack of our own?
This is just what I’ve been doing this morning. Oh, that and researching the amazing life and career of Thurl Ravenscroft, but that’s another story for another time.
Note: I frequently use a collection of three full-stops to indicate missing text, interruption or continuation of text in a different location. Anyone know what that’s called? Leave your answers in the comments please . . .
and impending doom of comprehensive exams will be over! This is a huge relief for me as I have been thinking of/fretting over/making myself anxious about these exams for almost as long as I have been taking graduate classes (fall of ‘04). That’s a long time to dread driving past the Lindquist Center (where most my classes and these exams are held).
