• tongodeon: The “Work Blind” Curtain

Doing some back checking, I found out that Hurricane David came through in 1979 and the name was retired. How appropriate. So I’ll never be a hurricane again. You can see how bad I was.

I wish Orphelia would make up her mind. Tropical storm, then hurricane, then tropical storm. Then going to hit the NC/SC sea coast, then going back out to the ocean, then coming back stateside. No offense to any of the possible tropical depressions, but I think the US has had enough storm damage for 2005. Stay out east and brood and we’ll see you in 2006.

Oh, and if you didn’t get the reference in the title, it’s a funny line by a really, really bad weather man. There’s a video clip floating around on the Internet. I couldn’t find one to link in, but I bet my cow-orkers have it. (Tip: the titles always refer back to something somewhere in the post, even if it doesn’t appear to make sense or is the main point of the post. Blog post titles for me are like the exact opposite of what good email subjects should be. But, making you wonder why I chose that and how it links back is part of the fun of reading this. Or maybe it’s just fun for me.)

In other news, I’m 100% in my class right now after getting the first assignment back. Woot. I decided not to the reading response this week, although I wouldn’t mind having more discussions about Paul Otlet. Having a mailbox in the LIS building is kind of cool, until you realize you’re just a hanging Pendaflex folder in a big drawer of students. The CS grads have it better with an actual box in an actual room.

Insight was on site today at home looking at my cable modem problems. Turns out, as I expected and has happened before, the signal going to the outside tap at my house had dropped. They’re going to work on it, but that happens with a different crew and they don’t need me for that. The Internet works if I move the modem to the basement (one splitter closer to where it comes into the house,) so I’m still online. Just an annoyance.

I also called Insight to see if I could save money on my bill. I cancelled HBO, so I’ll just have to hang with Chuck or Nate if I want to watch the next season of the Sopranos. (And all the older seasons, if you can sit through them, are on DVD.) I decided that, for the first month or two, I didn’t want to give up the cable box/HD/DVR capabilities yet. In fact, I ordered an upgrade … The dual tuner model of their DVR is only a nickel more than the single tuner for the next 12 months (then it’s $3 more per month.) So that’s getting upgraded next week. In the meantime, I’ll just watch my pennies and if things get tight I’ll cut down to just the extended cable plan (gotta have my comedy central.)

But, with football starting, and ESPN and FOX in HD, I don’t really want to get rid of the HD pak yet. That, and then basketball starts I want to have a digital box so I can either see the games in HD if possible, or order the Full Court games/days I want.

The other choice is that I get a digital pak (meaning some select digital cable channels) for free. I’m currently getting the sports one, but I’m considering changing it to the family one. (That way, if mom ever visits, she can have her discovery health. *shudder* Oh God, it would even be on DVR, so it could be rewatched and rewound. Ew.) I’m a little annoyed that would mean missing the SciFi channel, but in reality I never watch any of these extended channels (sorry Josh, I just don’t get up to the golf channel,) so it doesn’t really matter (and it doesn’t save me money.) Here are the paks:

Movie Pak
502 WE: Women’s Entertainment
503 Independent Film Channel
504 Fox Movie Channel
505 Lifetime Movie Network
506 Sundance Channel
516 Encore Wam
517 Encore
519 Encore Love
521 Encore Mystery
523 Encore Westerns
527 Encore Drama
529 Encore Action

Sports & Lifestyle Pak
160 Sci-Fi Channel
161 GSN
163 SOAPnet
164 Fox Reality Channel
273 Bloomberg
274 History International
275 GAS
401 Fox Soccer Channel
402 ESPNEWS
403 ESPN Classic
404 Outdoor Life
405 Golf Channel, The
406 NFL Network
407 CSTV
409 Fuse
410 MTV Hits

Family Pak
120 Noggin
121 Discovery Kids
122 Biography Channel, The
123 Discovery Home
124 Discovery Times
125 Military Channel
127 Toon Disney
128 Nicktoons
130 DIY Network
131 Fine Living
162 BBC America
220 Discovery Health
272 Science Channel, The
276 VH1 Classic
277 VH1 Country
278 VH1 Soul

Friday night, before the start of a quick and fleeting (aren’t they all?) football weekend, I went to a GSLIS social event. This is significant … I’m basically doing grad school by myself. I don’t have any associations with people in the field or school, and introducing myself carte blanche to stangers isn’t one of my strong points. But, I went to a bar outside of my social circles, and met a bunch of other people there for happy hour.

Turned out to be a really great experience. I had a long discussion with one of the IS/interfaces professors, whom I know I’ll enteract with later academically, and probably professionally. I was impressed by him; out at a happy hour with students, and interested in listening to my ideas about technology and my impressions of LIS so far, and things us as CS/LIS people are doing right and wrong. I learned a few things, and hope I left a good impression on him. Part of it might have been drunken rambling (on my part most likely, maybe on his part — I don’t know him well enough to say.)

It’s tough completely reacclimating to student life, because IS is something I work in and study/experience every day. Yes, these are my professors and upper-classmen, but they’re also my colleagues. They have knowledge I don’t have, at least with terminology and history of the LIS field, but I have practical hands on experience with technology and the application of some of these pieces. I think that puts me in a unique, or at least rarer position than some of my other classmates. I worry that sometimes I presume too much of myself, and should take a humbler student approach.

And then Jeffe posts about inflated self-assessments and that’s been a strike to my self confidence. The post is funny to me because I took his class (for non UIUC-CS majors, that’s the CS theory class that is both the scariest and coolest thing you’ve ever seen. It is the class that fries your brain. It is the class whose topics or textbook you tout to non-CS people to revel in their horrified stares. It is the class that forces you to think outside normal considerations, and somehow logically argue how you got there and why it’s valid. It is the class that showed me if I can solve minesweeper (the demo game that comes with Windows,) in a logical way, I will have solved all of the impossible problems of the universe. They will all fold into one, and be answered, and the universe will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. Again. (With apologies to Douglas Adams.) Anyhow, “I don’t know.” I used that in his class.

The paper/pancakes blog post was a good, timely reminder that while I need to be critical and analytical and bring my wits to class with me, I need to be very open and understanding, and not overstep myself. If I err that way, it’s not because I’m arrogant or trying to show off, it’s that learning changes you. I feel my opinions on the readings and topics as they’re introduced to me bring a fresh perspective that maybe the teachers have long forgotten, and that I someday will forget, unless I get it out and talk about it now. I say stupid things because I want to be argued against. I think I know something about the topics, because in some ways I do, even if what I don’t realize yet is that bit of knowledge barely fills a thimble floating in the ocean.

I just hope I can do all that without making an ass of myself, both in class and socially.