This Day In History: 02/27
Today is Paige's twenty-third birthday. Happy Birthday!
The head of the VT music department, John Husser, sent an e-mail out to all music majors today. Here's some excerpts:
This is to report to you on the status of the departments current situation. As you know, budget cuts are here and real. The College of Arts and Sciences was given their target reduction for the next two years, and the college then gave the department's their reductions. We were assigned a 10% reduction. This is different from department to department and this is what I was expecting we would be called to do. This amount has nothing to do with our "value" to the college or the university, only our ability to "pay back". This percentage amounts to us having to cut $150,000 from our budget as it was this year. The other departments I have talked to are being required to cut from 6-10%.
The "rules" for these cuts included:
This means in our department we had to draw our cuts from Dr. Polifrone's retirement, [an] already planned departure, [the jazz professor's] one year appointment, and [the choral director's] one year appointment. There are a number of complicated details about funding that I can not discuss because of confidentiality issues, but this is bottom line. This is not good news, and if you are in my MIDI class, you will have heard me ranting a few times over the past few weeks about politicians, and citizens who don't think they should have to pay taxes. We Virginian's are reaping the results of our past fantasy that we can have top 10 services, but pay taxes in the bottom 10.
I have had notes from a number of you and I wish I could tell you that you could do something about this situation. However, I think the reality is that the University is going to be short an enormous amount of money next year, and there is no way around it. If you wish to complain to someone above me, I report to the Dean of Arts and Sciences, he reports to the Provost, and he reports to the President who reports to the Board of Visitors. But, we get our E&G, (Education and General) funding from the legislature of the state of Virginia. And unfortunately, they do not have the needed money to keep the state running the same as it did this past year. This means either government services are cut, or taxes are raised.
If you would like more details about this situation, I would be happy to have a meeting with anyone, or everyone. I'll be upfront about this, and give you all the information I am allowed to disseminate. We are all in this together and the department will try to have this situation impact on your education as little as possible. Also, we will try to be sure everyone gets what they need to complete their academic programs.
Hopefully, this will be a short term problem. We are being asked to return money, not faculty positions. It could be worse.
I've already heard people who still attend Tech voice concerns over the long-term effect of these cuts on the program, as well as the qualifications (or lack thereof) of professors being assigned interim duties. I guess we'll see how things turn out in the future.
"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin." - Mark Twain
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Happy 24th Birthday, Paige!
My power went out yesterday at about 11 PM for an hour. Strangely, only the three apartments in my vertical column were affected -- the rest of the building looked fine in the thunderstorm. Perhaps my upstairs neighbour abused her vibrato one too many times and hit the natural frequency of electricity.
My students took their written midterm exams today and I'll be grading them over the weekend. I tried to make the materials during the course of the term a little harder than what was on the exam, so hopefully the grades will reflect that.
Here's a random music theory question for you. Is B-sharp to C-flat an ascending or descending interval?
Computer Stupidities
This article used to have a picture of duct tape on an assembly line with the caption "duct tape".
Idiots crash a cop party and offer drugs
ABC ensures that I can continue to post too much about Alias next season
The Oscars, Part IV of VI
Best animated feature film of the yearWe're only two days away from the Oscar ceremony, which I probably won't be watching. Tomorrow I'll cover all the actor categories, and the final day will be devoted to the directorial categories and Best Picture. Who will win? Only I know.
Yesterday's notable search terms:
michelle cao, fork tailed bush katydid, weenie wagon, if all the girls who attended the yale prom were laid end to end, i wouldn't be a bit surprised
Happy Birthday Paige!
It's like the ring from The Lord of the Rings and we're kind of like Frodo, trying to get it over with.I've done this for four years so you should know the drill by now. Movies that I've seen are bulleted in the list and I take no responsibility if you lose all your money betting on my completely unscientific choices! Follow the links above to see selections from previous years.
Documentary FeatureTo be continued tomorrow...
Happy Birthday Paige, a.k.a. Oompa Loompa Girl!
Why I'm not a quantum physicist"I can't say I know exactly how a victim of a sexual assault feels, but I think it's something like this -- they invaded my home," Washington said.
I'm sure there are worse ways to defend yourself when you have a history of short-tempered outbursts and shoot the guys delivering your furniture, but it'd be hard to top this one. After remaining silent for thirty days following the shooting, the best that homeland security officer, Colonel Keith Washington, and his lawyer could come up with was "They raped my house"?
To be fair to Washington, he at least tried to come up with some details, such as "One of them hit me with a lead pipe". However, any reasonably educated American who has ever played the game, Clue, knows that you can't invoke the lead pipe unless the pipe is in the same room. It's not even clear from the news reports if the pipe was ever found or if Washington had a pipe-shaped bump on his head.
Three CD players hidden under a cathedral's pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices.
Detonating a CD player spouting filthy lyrics will surely teach it a lesson, but it seems like overkill to me. Why did it they have to incinerate two of them before realizing that the third was harmless? This sounds like a case of a very bored bomb squad that hadn't gotten to blow anything up in a long, long time (which incidentally puts an ironic spin on Ash Wednesday).
In fact, this would probably be a good way for the now predictable show, COPS, to generate some ratings numbers: At the beginning of any chase, the cops warns the perp (via a bullhorn) that if they get caught, they'll have to pick from three mystery prize boxes. One of the boxes has a Get Out of Jail Free card which will allow them to walk. The second is empty, and the perp gets taken into custody. The third box contains a bomb. Good old-fashioned American hilarity ensues.
Animal control authorities are not amused by a fast food chain's marketing stunt encouraging customers to dress their cats in a special take out bag.
I think my position on these atrocities is already well-established.
Happy Birthday Paige Jenkinson!
Teacher buys pot via text messagesToday is Paige's birthday, and in honor of that momentous event, I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in nine-hundred-forty-five days , which is longer than the shelf life of pasta (which starts to hatch mealworms around the two year mark, according to the bulk macaroni we kept in our house after I went to college). The duration even outlasted our previous health insurance provider at work, which meant I needed to find a new dentist in the network (this could also be the synopsis of a new Sandra Bullock movie: The Net 2).
I located a dentist's office on Route 7, north of Route 28, and established their credentials by noting that the main dentist's last name had five syllables would not have been an acceptable Scrabble word. I tried to make an appointment for a cleaning, but was informed that the first visit never involved a cleaning, because they needed to accurately assess my teeth to determine how much time the hygenist would need to devote to the cleaning (translation: we're going to make the HMO pay for an extra visit for giggles).
I arrived at their typical office a half hour ahead of schedule. It was a typical affair hidden away in a bland office building with issues of National Geographic, Time, and Highlights for Kids from four weeks ago, and the sounds of power tools ringing in the background. After filling out the First Time Survey (yes, I am happy with my smile, and no, I do not have venereal disease) I was escorted to a dentist chair for X-rays.
This office still employed the classic "bite down on this film eight different times and we'll take eight X-rays which can then be stitched together with the Landscape Stitch feature on our camera" approach instead of the high-tech X-ray machine that revolves around your head in two minutes while exposing you to high amounts of radiation. Fifteen minutes later, my mouth was all cut up from the sharp edges on the films, and the assistant to the assistant to the hygenist scampered off to the One Hour Photo to get them developed.
After reading about Hillary Clinton's out of control momentum in the Presidential primaries (TIME, January 2008), the X-rays came back. Because my previous dentist had flipped the films and then informed me that I should get teeth extracted from the wrong portion of my mouth, I made sure that these were accurately arranged to reflect the true position of my teeth. According to the X-rays, there are no cavities and my home-prevention routine is stellar. However, I should get my wisdom teeth extracted before they cause problems, and I should come to the dentist more often.
So essentially, absolutely nothing has changed in the past three years, which gives me no compelling reason to visit the dentist again anytime soon, and my HMO just paid for a bunch of useless X-rays. Chalk one up for health care.
Happy Birthday Paige!
Building the ultimate snow fort
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the 1294th most popular Friday destination on the Internet
♠ Following the "success" of their Drive Hammered, Get Nailed campaign (which only resulted in an increase in drunk driving arrests around the sorority floors of the University Commons at GMU), the Fairfax County Police have launched new LED signs with the message, Accidents don't happen... They are CAUSED. It seems like this sign is more confusing than helpful, since an accident which is caused does, in fact, eventually happen. In fact, I predict that accidents will actually increase around this sign as cell-phone drivers try to wrap their brains around the anti-tautology, run out of brain waves, and drive into a ditch.
♠ In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that IT'S A TRAP designed to send cell-phone drivers into a ditch, leaving the innocent drivers alive and well.
♠ Speaking of innocence, it's becoming increasingly less innocent on the Internet. As you probably noticed in yesterday's Weird Search post, people like to find naughty things, and the screenshot on the right is from the Hasbro site just a few days ago, where the Scrabble Word of the Day was posted for a good two hours before being taken down and replaced with the word "triply" (in a triple manner, or how Hasbro described the accident when their content manager was fired and pushed down a flight of stairs after the debacle).
♠ It's peculiar that that word would come up at all, since playing "dildo" is not a very high-scoring venture (in any setting).
♠ In a similar vein, when I went to wish Paige a happy birthday on her blog this morning, it told me that I wasn't allowed to do so unless I typed "coutchie". I wisely opted not to, in case my typing history appears during the 2028 Presidential Elections and scandal ensues.
♠ If I were actually to run for President (pending Arnold Schwarzenegger's dstruction of the "US-born" requirement), I would need an old white guy to help me win in the South and in central Ohio. I would probably choose my best man, Jack -- he would do well in public office.
♠ Speaking of Jacks, I don't understand why they continue to hire Jack Black as an actor or presenter. His showing at the Oscars was just painful to watch, much like most of the rest of the two hours I had on in the background before shutting it off. Hugh Jackman dancing around and singing about how he hadn't seen The Reader was inspired, and Ben Stiller's cameo was chuckly (in a chucklesome manner), but otherwise it was just plain bad, like a Shostakovich symphony arranged for marching band.
♠ Sadly, I have played a movement of a Shostakovich symphony while in a marching band, back in 1999 when I was in Rosie's rank.
♠ Speaking of Rosie, she popped out a baby on Monday (missing 222 by that much!), Colton Jason Mirick. I estimate that it will be twice her size in roughly four weeks. Congratulations!
♠ Plans for the weekend include a dinner with the family and some overtime. My work schedule should be back to normal within the next couple weeks, just in time for some Corned Beef and Guinness on St. Patrick's Day. What are you doing this weekend?
♠ I'm going to stop writing and post this, since Katie Lucas has reloaded the page four times in the last hour looking for a post. Have a great weekend!
Mermaid dream comes true
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I did not realize that "Total Editing Time" was one of the properties that Microsoft Word captured, and I probably would have preferred remaining in the dark about this particular measure.
When not writing tutorials showing Turkish bombers flying over a veterinary hospital in Atlanta, or running on the treadmill watching the really awful part of 24, Season One, involving amnesia, I was probably sleeping. However we did go to Don Pablo's on Saturday night for a very slow dinner and two-course carnitas (the tortillas came fifteen minutes later). We also watched the movie, Drive, which was interesting but not the type of movie I was expecting to watch. Ryan Gosling really looks like a less goofy version of Jason Segel.
We caught a little bit of the beginning of the Oscars on Sunday night while eating chicken bacon alfredo pizza, but it was unmemorable apart from Nick Nolte's lack of sobriety. The whole telecast sounded like we were listening to it from inside of a submarine, and I could barely hear Billy Crystal's song over the accompaniment. The Oscar for sound mixing did not go to the Academy's sound booth.
How was your weekend?
Maine's biggest lobster returned to the ocean
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On February 27, 2000, Shac and Kelley had a student recital in an interminable line of student recitals. Using my newly discovered Photoshop skills, I provided them with a set of incredibly pretentious recital posters, including one which just called it "The Recital".
I probably turned pages for accompanist, Jim Bryant, on this recital, as that was my go-to way to get better at reading piano scores and learning not to write block chords with 11 notes in my own piano parts. I also performed anonymously in Intrada by Otto Ketting.
Intrada was one of those weird solo pieces where the composer believes that people want to sit through a trumpet player talking to himself with dissonance for several minutes. Shac "improved" the piece by narrating a poem over the top of Kelley's performance, and then had me perform the last couple bars from the Green Room for an artistic fading-away effect. Quality theatrics!
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I am on Day 3 of a flu-like stomach virus, which is why there was no post yesterday. Apologies to the stalwart few that kept coming back every few hours and then checking the calendar to make sure that it wasn't 12 of 12. On the plus side, you now know what my website would look like on the first day after my death, or alternately, every Saturday since August 2004.
I first sensed that something was amiss around 3 AM on Tuesday. That entire day was spent at flu-driven extremes -- having a fever with chills, being exhausted but not being able to sleep, and incapable of getting comfortable in any position. Events came to a the head in the afternoon, in a Jackson Pollack meets the Exorcist meets my bathroom moment. Incidentally, the body triggers an effective physiological warning when you need to honk, but about 5 to 6 more seconds of alert time would be nicer, to get your affairs in order.
Tuesday night was the worst, scrunched up in uncomfortable positions across pillows and blankets next to a space heater, in the delirious throes of an opium dream to rival Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. When not fighting cats for blanket rights, I was demonstrating the dual discharge of detritus from a dysfunctional digestion. The meals recorded in my weight loss journal for that day included 8 grapes and a saltine cracker. (Side note: get a wife, because they will go to the store and buy you grapes when you are sick).
Every day since Tuesday has been the aftermath of a tornado -- I am longer probably dying, but still not working quite right and not able to do much besides sleep all day long and eat grapes. This morning, I felt well enough to start a laundry with all of my artifacts of sick, and then promptly had to lie down for a nap before writing this post.
I feel like this stomach flu should have come and gone in a single day. It's definitely passé now and has outstayed its welcome. This is probably why they invented the word, "antedifluvian".
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New photos have been added to the Life, 2015 album.
February's Final Grade: B, lots of indoor time, but pleasant and mostly low-key
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A few photos have been added to the Life, 2017 album. Google Photos sucks.
February's Final Grade: B, A mix of work any play, possibly with a little too much work. Rebecca's feeling better!
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New photos have been added to the Life, 2019 album. Google Photos sucks.
February's Final Grade: C+, Two straight weeks of work leave little room for other pursuits.
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New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.
February's Final Grade: B, feels really busy but pleasant overall
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