| A day of progress! |
[Dec. 2nd, 2008|11:29 pm] |
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Parts for my comp showed up today; got started on assembly, only missing one part, but more on that later.
The most significant-feeling moment of the day was helping with one of the tutorials at work. The question involved the differences between Japan and China WRT European influence and trade/development/etc., and (as is the standard policy for this form of tutorial) I mostly let the students provide the ideas, analysis, etc. My job is to keep the discussion moving with little questions here and there; today, I got a very satisfying reaction when one point being made involved describing the actions of a country as not being collectively taken by all residents/citizens ("China did X" or "Japan did Y" or "Japan's goal was Z") but as the actions of specific people or groups of people within countries whose interests may be something other than "the national interest". It seems like a pretty basic concept, but it's disappointing how many adults -- even highly-educated adults -- just don't get it. The closest you get to a country taking an action is when a popular movement and/or the state takes some action; but even those cases involve groups of individual people with individual motives acting in ways which really don't add up to "actions by the country". I'll consider it a job well done if this group of students is just a little bit less vulnerable to propaganda and bullshit in the future.
I also talked to one of the other tutors -- it turned out that she'd done one of the NASA internships that I'm trying to land. She loved it -- even though she's not staying in the AV (I can easily understand why anyone who grew up here would want to leave ASAP), she's sticking with NASA and hoping to work at either Ames or the Jet Propulsion Lab when she finishes her B.S. And the bit I hadn't known -- a student who gets a co-op position (paid by NASA, alternating coursework and on-the-job training with enough grunt work to quasi-justify the salary) is gaining seniority and building up a retirement fund before even finishing college.
Finally, on the new-comp front. After a few hours before work and a few hours after classes fiddling around with parts, triple-checking all the manuals and slowly developing a mark from the anti-static wrist band, I have the thing in "just add CPU" form.
Unfortunately, the missing part that I mentioned earlier?
The CPU.
So, the motherboard is in, the RAM is in, the power supply is in, the parts from the old comp (hard drive, DVD drive, wireless card, graphics card) are in, all the cords are connected and double- and triple-checked, and all eight chassis fans are installed and wired. When the CPU shows up, I just need to throw that in, add the much-bigger-than-it-looked-in-the-picture CPU cooler and make sure it's powered (and try not to get thermal compound all over everything), and then take it to the roomie who actually knows how not to screw things up on the software side of the fence. If I'm lucky, I'll have a fully-functioning, not-complete-garbage and highly upgradeable (this was more of a priority than power right now) desktop on which I won't have to wait for the comp to catch up after every command in my AutoCAD homework. |
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| Reunited with Cat #1... |
[Dec. 1st, 2008|06:40 pm] |
This evening I brought Snake home.
I wasn't expecting to be able to do this so soon; but after the last rainstorm, I decided I'd had quite enough of sleeping under a leaky skylight, and grabbed the unoccupied bedroom at the house I'd been parked just outside. Now that I'm getting paid for tutoring, I can afford it -- and it's a pet-friendly house.
Shnookums screamed for the entire ride over (the poor thing hates cars), but she's now drifting between freaking out at being in a new and unfamiliar place and celebrating the fact that a) there are no other cats here (so my room is her territory -- she's had to share space for awhile), and b) I'm here more than just once in awhile. I've arranged things so that she can easily get to the two highest places in the room -- the top of my bookcase and the high shelf in my closet.
I'm having to reevaluate how I'm going to arrange the room when I get a second bookshelf; Snake will never be happy until she has a way to get to the top of it. There isn't enough room next to the current bookcase, but if I put the new one (when I get it -- another month or two) next to my "dresser" (read: "stack of plastic crates in a frame"), she'll be able to get to the top of the shelves without too much of a leap.
Tonight I expect to wake up more than once with a cat on my face. |
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| Spring schedule... |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|10:51 am] |
So after taking 12 units this semester, it looks like this spring I'll have 18.5 instead. Physics, chemistry, math (ordinary differential equations), and a couple of music ensembles (master chorale and rock band -- great combination). It looks much more do-able if I don't think about the number of hours spent in a classroom and think more about how the physics and chemistry are both mostly things I've done before. (My physics class this spring is the one I'd be able to skip if my high-school counselor had actually signed me up for the electromagnetism section of the AP Physics C exam -- which I'd studied for -- way back 10 years ago.)
I'll also be taking 7 units during the intersession -- which is four weeks long. This looks like the equivalent of doing 28 units during a semester, but the short-term classes have always been easier for me (and in this case they're both lower-division general-ed classes that I should have taken years ago).
In the summer and fall, then, I move on to pretty much just engineering classes, with one math and one physics class thrown in. 24 more units (after this spring -- so just summer session and fall semester) and I'll have exhausted the math, physics and engineering departments at AVC completely -- and then it's a matter of figuring out where I can go next. |
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| AV moviegoers...(and elsewhere) |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|08:27 am] |
The CEO of Cinemark donated $10k to the yes on Prop 8 campaign.
Between this and their ridiculously unethical anti-union b.s., I think it's about time to avoid that movie-theater chain...but we seem to have a shortage of other options here in A.V. |
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| Prop 8 flyers, phase 2 |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|08:44 pm] |
In Phase 1, I put snarky and sarcastic "congratulations -- you've trashed 'equal protection'" flyers on the windshields of people with pro-8 bumper stickers.
In Phase 2, it's thank-you notes for people with no-on-8 stickers.
(My students have actually made me much more optimistic. Several of them very seriously checked to make sure I'd voted no on 8 -- and this from students who didn't ask about any of my other votes. I would have politely evaded most of those, anyway -- when asked about my vote for President, I just told them "I voted for the candidate I agree with the most," which is quite true.) |
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| The new roomie... |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|04:33 pm] |
So, the new guy (in the room vacated by Endearingly Eccentric German Lady, not the one that used to house Fucking Arrogant Fundie Couple, which has been taken over by Cool Colorado Guy) is a bit of a techie and a gamer, so I figured we'd get along. We'll still manage to be civil, I'm sure, but in our conversation yesterday it came up that:
a) he watches Naruto because he likes the "realism" of the ninjutsu-related hand-gestures and such
b) he does RP gaming, but he's a raging munchkin (not that he'd know what I meant by that), and
c) he loves talking about politics, but he's one of the type that treats foreign policy as a cock-waving contest. The "we've been attacked, so if we don't slaughter somebody then everyone will think we're weak" type.
So, while unlike with FAFC I'll actually be able to carry on a decent conversation with the guy, he's not exactly My People. |
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| Votes and subjection... |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|09:58 pm] |
I think I have another crit-theory essay in the works, this time involving California Propositions 8 and 9.
There's actually a creepy sort of parallel here -- along with Prop 4, though that one (fortunately) failed.
For those outside California -- Proposition 9 is another rather alarming attack on legal ethics. It makes victims of crimes (and their families) a party to the prosecution and sentencing of people blamed for those crimes in ways beyond they have in the past. Victims and victims' families are given more access to the judges passing sentence, and are to be made a part of the parole process.
The common thread between Props 4, 8, and 9 is how they make visible the process by which the state produces the subject/anti-subject structure. In 8, heterosexuals and participants in the civil-marriage process are interpellated as legal subjects by the marking of non-heterosexuals as anti-subjects; 9 makes the same distinction between "victims" and "perpetrators". In each case, the presence of the asserted subject is made meaningful by its juxtaposition with the related anti-subject.
Prop 4 is, in a sense, even creepier, as it establishes the "minor" as a body occupied by the "guardian" subject in a way which I can only read as somehow continuous with sexual exploitation. It's embodiment gone bad -- and while 8 and 9 aren't horrifying in quite the same way, the logic is the same. The asserted subject is given agency not through its own recognition but through its position of state-designated (and, of course, violence-backed) dominance with respect to the designated anti-subject. The state is now in the business of extending embodied subjectivity of its preferred subjects into the bodies of its anti-subjects. |
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| What could happen when 8 returns to the CA Supreme Court? |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|10:56 pm] |
I started thinking about this today, now that the legal challenge to Prop 8 is a reality rather than a backup plan.
Really, though what might happen? From my position of little-to-no expertise (IANAL!), here's what I gather:
If the CA Supreme Court rules that an exception to the "equal protection" rule is a "revision" by definition, this could be even better than if 8 had simply failed at the polls -- and not only in terms of marriage equality. Passing a revision to the state constitution is much more difficult than passing an amendment. A ruling that, as "equal protection under the law" is a fundamental part of the California constitution (and really, just on ethical grounds, equal protection should be a fundamental part of any legal system) means that depriving any group of any right guaranteed by the state constitution becomes much more difficult. An ordinary failure of 8 at the polls would have let the theocrats bring an identical "amendment" next year (or during the next election where a conservative-slanted turnout is expected, as they did with the Knight Initiative). A smackdown by the California Supreme Court, though, could end the question permanently -- the reactionary homophobes do not, and probably will not at any point in the foreseeable future, be able to put together the kind of support needed to pass a constitutional revision. And any similar measures in the future, whether aimed at LGBT people or another easy-to-pick-on group, would no longer be able to take advantage of the initiative system to put rights up to the vote of a simple majority.
Of course, this is a best-case scenario, and I could be completely wrong about how the whole thing works. Maybe we need to work on a constitutional revision to get a stronger equal-protection cause in place -- which would certainly be a worthwhile project. |
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| Note to California: |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|08:18 am] |
So, it seems the count might take awhile on That One Issue. Really, though, if y'all don't start backpedalling pretty damn quickly?
Fuck you all, I'm leaving.
(*"you all" in this case should not be interpreted to include no-on-8 voters, which should be every California voter on my flist.)
Because it's not just marriage, though being so flatly insulted by half the electorate does add insult to injury. It's about the principle of equal protection, which is part of why even homophobes should've had the presence of mind to reject 8. Because if "equal protection under the law" can be cancelled with a bare majority vote, then no rights are safe for anybody. Yeah, there's still the U.S. Constitution -- but once you allow the California constitution to make exceptions to the really broad ethical principles, how long do you think you'll be safe? |
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| Alas, poor RAM slot... |
[Nov. 2nd, 2008|02:48 pm] |
Found the problem that was keeping my desktop comp from starting up.
One of the RAM slots had gone bad. Actually, two of the comp's four RAM slots (one in each dual-channel-compatible pair) seem to have died. Fortunately, I don't need dual-channel, so I'm back up and running with my usual 2x1GB, but it looks like my motherboard might not be long for this world.
If it goes (or if I replace it before it has a chance to do so), I might replace the case at the same time -- my current (HP-supplied) one makes it nearly impossible to reach the RAM. (Given that I had to try a few different combinations to figure out what was wrong and how to make it right, this was pretty horrendously frustrating). |
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| Plan B... |
[Nov. 1st, 2008|05:29 pm] |
I ended up abandoning the 24-hour NaNoWriMo kickoff.
At first I was just going to run off for a nap; I was already sleep-deprived by midnight, so once I'd gotten about a 2k-word start I went home for a bit. Today I caught up with the group for a couple of hours and made more progress, then went to lunch with friends.
After that, though, I was realy starting to worry about how much rain was coming down. Not enough to worry about under normal circumstances, but definitely enough that I wanted to take a crack at patching up my skylight before something sensitive and electrical got wet.
This turned out to be a good thing -- if I'd waited until tonight, one whole end of my bed would have been soaked and well on its way to mildewville.
So I'm still going to spend awhile writing, but I'll also be checking regularly to see if my duct-tape patch is holding up. (Tomorrow I'll probably borrow a ladder so I can cover the skylight with plastic from the outside; water is currently still getting trapped between the layers of window plastic, which isn't something I really want to see continuing to happen.)
At least The Snake and the Crocus is off to a decent start -- I now have more sense of the plot (not to mention how I'll be using the title as a recurring pair of symbols). |
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| NaNoWriMo countdown! |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|01:13 pm] |
10 hours, 49 minutes to go.
This time, to get NaNoWriMo off to a good start (as opposed to "barely getting started at all" or "not getting started at all", I'm joining up with a writeup this year. We're meeting up at 11:30 tonight, starting writing at midnight, and continuing for the next 24 hours.
Considering that I was woken up at 6 this morning (after 5 hours of sleep) by a leaky skylight dripping directly on my forehead (though woo-hoo! rain!), this could get...interesting. The first few chapters of The Snake and the Crocus might be a bit more surreal than I'd originally intended. |
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| Beep interpretation |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|06:07 pm] |
Still not having any luck with my desktop comp. I went in and checked all the fans and physical connections; everything's hooked-up as it should be. Still no signal to the monitor at any point after the comp is turned on, though.
I am getting a pattern of beeps from the hardware, though (and not through the sound card -- the hardware itself is beeping). It's a pattern of alternating one- and four-second beeps (the longer might be 3.5-second or so, since I'm not perfectly accurate counting out seconds, but the shorter is almost definitely 1-second). I'm going to poke around onlline and see if this is significant, but there are several of you on my flist whose opinions I'd trust more than someone on a random community tech-support message board.
ETA: According to the HP website, my comp's running an Award BIOS...meaning the beep codes really aren't helpful. The next time it's light when I'm home (which may not be until this weekend), I'll go through and clean out all the heat sinks, vents, fans, etc. and, if that doesn't help, figure out if one of the memory modules has gone bad or needs to be reseated. Gah. |
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| Food explorations! |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|11:29 pm] |
I've been dabbling in the dark art of pupusa-making.
It's not just that they're so unfairly delicious -- their main ingredients are Maseca and water, meaning they hit the broke-college-student Holy Trinity of "cheap, nutritious, and yummy." So I've been trying my hand at them.
And yes, as I'd suspected, making pupusas is definitely a skill which requires some practice. I'm still in the phase where I'm trying to figure out the right amount of moisture in the dough, which is important; after that, it'll be on to getting the shaping skills down.
So tonight, I had another plate with a few rather dry and malformed quasi-pupusas...and the pot of ratatouille I'd made as backup (as ratatouille is one of those things which just seems to get better in the fridge, so there was no real loss if I put off eating it). Instead of wasting the pupusesque...things...or eating them plain, I tossed them in a bowl and covered them with ratatouille.
Dude, I think I saw God...and I'm not a monotheist. Pupusas are what ratatouille never knew it was missing. This is a combination of foods which I will probably be exploring in quite some depth over the next few months.
I need to find the appropriate set of fillings for the pupusas, though. (My attempted pupusas so far have been plain -- one step at a time!) I'm thinking...loroco, cheese, and morels, sautéed in truffle butter? |
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| Ugh. No desktop comp. |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|06:47 pm] |
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Got back from San Diego last night -- and either my desktop comp or its monitor has decided to throw a fit. The comp starts up (and all the fans are running -- I've had fan failures before), but sends no signal (at all) to the monitor. There are a few sporadic (if distinctly non-encouraging) beeps from what may be the hard drive (I can't pin down where the sound is coming from). Using my laptop now, but all my games and most of my fiction are on the desktop comp. |
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| New Prop 8 ads... |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|05:53 pm] |
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Warning! If California doesn't pass Prop 8, public schools may actually be required to give kids honest information! This is absolutely unacceptable -- it's the inalienable right of every heterosexually-married biological parent to misinform their children about state laws without the interference of the state. Next thing you know, they'll be indoctrinating our kids by telling them that it's illegal to beat queers to death in public places -- how ridiculous is that? |
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| It's that time again... |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|10:10 pm] |
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It's time for me to find another job. Not in place of the tutoring one, but in addition. As of this January I need to be completely self-supporting, for which I'll need another 20 hours or so a week. Unfortunately, given the schedule for classes and the job I do have, this will mostly mean night and/or weekend shifts. It really, really doesn't help that both my employment and education records are distinctly spotty; at this point I don't look good for much beyond the "show up, work, get paid for the day" sort of thing. By next summer I'll be able to re-assess my resumé, but for the moment I'll take whatever I can find. It doesn't help that the job market is going to suck in Antelope Valley for a long time...at least a shortage of options means less worrying about having too many decisions to make. |
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| My next bumper sticker? |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|06:59 pm] |
"Proposition 8: supported by liars, bigots, thugs, blackmailers and theocrats all over California!"
Too long for a bumper sticker, maybe...but it still works as a slogan. |
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| A job I now kinda wish I'd taken... |
[Oct. 19th, 2008|04:24 pm] |
A few years ago, when I was living in San Diego, I turned down a job offer from an organization I respected. It wasn't the pay or benefits (or effective lack of either) -- I wasn't in it for the money, it was a cause I supported, and at the time it was a life path I considered my first choice. Unfortunately, they needed someone who would be comfortable canvassing, phoning, and doing the assorted other community-organizer things which my own social issues make me both mediocre-at-best at and terrified of. Public speaking I can handle -- talking one-on-one with strangers, even about something I believe in, just freaks me out.
Now, though, this organization has been getting a great deal of press and I sometimes wish that I'd taken the job -- because this year I could, instead of a part-time high-school teacher and engineering student, be one of the ACORN organizers copying down hate mail and terrorist threats from McCain/Palin supporters. |
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| The U.S. elections... |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|10:37 pm] |
For those of you in close states, remember a variation on a bit of French advice from a few years back:
Votez pour le con, pas le facho.
Meanwhile, here in California, I can vote for someone who doesn't suck (and actually supports my right to get married!). |
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