Pawprints From Space

Recently received a questionnaire from my first grad school and suddenly realized how long it had been since I graduated - 19 years. The school is celebrating its 150th this year and wants to put together an alumni newsletter around the fact so they are asking alumni who their favorite professor was, fondest memory that sort of thing. Had to dig through the textbooks to find the guy's last name. I thought I had it, wasn't 100% sure but voila! I was right. Now I am five weeks away from a second graduate degree. So what is this? Every 20 years or so I go back to school, spend scary amounts of money and make myself even more unemployable? Works for me. Happy 150th Birthday Illinois State University!

Hmmm.... Could it be true? Could this travail finally be coming to an end? Well it is possible. I am still in the running for a job I had a great interview for over a month ago. Talked to the guy yesterday (gee I only left a message a week for four weeks what kept ya?) and he has a research question (think mini-paper) that he wants me to answer for him. Kind of a test. Seems they got burned in the last couple of hires and want to make sure I can do research. Can fish swim? Duh! So... if this pans out and they make an offer in the next couple of weeks my summer could look a whole lot better. Heck, I might even be able to - oh I don't know - have a life! Save some money! Work in the garden! Fix the bathroom floor even! Of course he was supposed to call today with the question and to set up a time.... he didn't

Well the project for the Class From Hell is done and safely emailed away to the Professor From Hell. Thank God that's over! All that is left is the presentation in class tomorrow night. Nothing should be this hard, cause this much stress or otherwise destroy every sinlge bit of free time you thought you had. The worrisome thing of the moment now is... what are we facing in the next class? This is the last class after all. Normally by now we have a syllabus and textbooks. We got nada. That in and of itself is unnerving. As is the fact that the cat just stole my seat on the couch, the big jerk.

It is Saturday. The sun is shining and it is a cold 30-ish degrees with a wind chill of something like 15. And yet it is probably the best day that this town has had for a St Patrick's Day parade in about 20 years. We were cold at 9:00 a.m. decorating the "float". We were cold at 10:30 a.m. lining up along the parade route. We were cold at 12:00 p.m. when the parade actually started. By 1:00 p.m. it was over we had no feeling in noses, toes and fingers but we had at least had fun. Cold fun to be sure. But fun. Now it is back to the homework - the final project for a class that has been nothing short of hell. No one can explain to me why on earth we need to know upper level calculus in order to understand economics from a managerial standpoint in business. Hello! There is software for this sort of thing thank you very flippin' much. But no we somehow have a physicist teaching managerial economics in the MBA program. A man who does not understand that a nonprofit is not...

Sheesh! I've been away from this longer than I thought. Of course I'm going to blame work - saw that one coming did you? - and it would be an accurate statement. Suffice it to say that I am fed up, burned out, had enough, want out. As in "I want outta here yesterday". Only 7 more weeks of classes and then the MBA will be in hand. Okay it will be once the school mails the diploma to me. Apparently even if you have paid all your bills (thank you student loans) you don't get the piece of paper until they are good and ready. Back to the work thing. I did not sign up for a job that involved sales - cold calling sales. I wanted out of a bad micro-managing situation and now thanks to all the nervous nellies at division since the reorganization I am right back in a micro-managing situation. This has got to stop. I have no nerves left. Huge project due on Monday. Haven't started yet. Had meetings almost every night this week. Have started sending out the resumes but it...

One needs to set limits. On the time one spends doing stuff (who needs to clean every seam in the floor with a toothbrush after all?), on the effort put into things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things (if there is a grand scheme but that's a whole other topic), and on the way work intrudes into what passes for a life. You know, I've said it before I don't really have a life thanks to work and well, work. But it has gotten out of hand. Working from home does not mean that folks can call me 24/7 or drop by outside of office hours to discuss well, work. And yet they do. Most will tell you that I am high-strung, intense, even fierce in my emotions. Everything is right there, what you see is what you get. So as you might imagine I am all tied up in knots since I spent a full 8 hour day yesterday at a training session and then have spent a huge chunk of today dealing with the fallout because somebody didn't like something they heard at the thing. This i...

While the rest of the county had "snow days" yesterday and today we who work from home are not so lucky. The phones still need to be answered, email replied to and whatever else you can manage to get accomplished when you can't get out of the driveway. Oh yeah, and shoveling said driveway. Can't snuggle up with a good book and ignore the phone and emails. When your office is in your home you can never get away from it. I don't know about you but I had had enough of the media hoopla surrounding Ms. Smith following the birth of the baby and the death of her son. The poor thing led her life in the tabloid press. Leave the woman alone. No one gave her any peace to grieve her son or rejoyce in her daughter. Now she's gone. Sure it was a weird life, she was someone who was famous for being famous and not for any real talent or achievement - unless you can call knowing where the cameras are at all times a talent. But enough already. The vultures are circling, the bab...

When you workfor a service organization that depends on volunteers for its daily ability to function you are going to have a lot of headaches, experience a high level of burnout and come to understand why some species really do kill their young. When you're in graduate school you are also going to have headaches, come in contact with people who could not evenly remotely function in the real world and come to understand why there is such a thing as justifiable homicide. I am trying to survive both. At the moment... I am losing the battle, considering quitting the job and buying a gun. To quote one of my favorite songs: Send lawyers guns and money the s**t has hit the fan

This is funny. In a town in Texas it is illegal to rent an apartment to an undocumented immigrant. I suppose that is an attempt to discourage illegal immigration. But get this: they can outwit those landlords and buy a house. Yup you read that right. There are lenders out there who will grant a mortgage without you having to cough up a social security number. Heck, in deference to Hispanic culture they'll even put as many as four people on the mortgage (you see it is an insult to your parents in Hispanic culture if you move out of their home before you get married so why not buy that house with mom and dad?). Interesting huh?... you may not be able to rent that two bedroom apartment but you can buy that two bedroom house down the street. And do so legally. Go figure. I just heard this on NPR's Marketplace program but of course when I went to the web site I couldn't locate the story so I have no link to give you. It's just oddball enough though to spark ranting by vario...

Saw in the paper today in the "Random Kinds of Factness" section (I know, goofy name) that Union General John Sedgwick's last words before being felled by a Confederate sharpshooter were: " What! Men dodging for single bullets? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!" And then there is the master of understatement Alexander Hamilton who after being shot by Burr in that famous duel said: "This is a mortal wound, doctor" There is some really good stuff on GeoCities Famous Last Words page: http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/6537/index.htm But Sedgwick definitely takes the cake.

Okay, I am confused. As we all know whenever the "n" word is used to refer to a person of African American persuasion all hell breaks loose. There is outrage, general pandemonium in the press and assorted brawling. And frankly I do not blame anyone for getting upset. The word long ago (say around the early 1800s) lost any claim to its original dictionary definition of any lazy person and became the premiere derogatory term for the African American population. So why is it that while Christmas shopping while standing in the shoe department I heard someone on the phone use the word? Not just anyone mind you but a tall, good-looking African American man all decked out in expensive faux ghetto wear (you know the over priced leather jacket with major brand logos on it, the $200 sneakers, jeans that were impeccable, a microseude shirt and a leather ballcap turned backwards of course). He was speaking into a high-tech cell phone and was apparently discussing his Christmas shopping m...

Recently our local paper had a funny bit on new business terms. Apparently the writer had spent some time online and came across some great new words. Of course he had the time to spend online while at work because he is also the paper's editor. Be that as it may - and it does conjure up some interesting arguments over why the boss gets to surf while at work and the staff doesn't these are pretty darned good. To whit: Blamestorming - a meeting to discuss failures and find a scapegoat Assmosia - the apparent absorption of success that comes from sucking up (aka kissing a**) Deja moo - (my personal favorite) the feeling that you've heard this bunch of bull before Mouse potato - a close cousin to the coach potato this is a person who spends hours and hours in front of a computer Percussive maintenance - the common practice of 'fixing' something by banging on it repeatedly Photox - improving the look of one's face in a photo through the use of graphic software Dope-...

Ah ha! I thought so. Your local government could be the cause of your high cable bill. Cities control the rights of cable franchises within their communities. They determine if a company can have a franchise there and charge customers fees etc and the company has to go to the city for permission to increase their fees. This is all old news to anyone who was in class with me in grad school in the communications department at Illinois State in the 1980s. Today though I see that the FCC is finally realizing that some communities are actually blocking competition in the cable arena. For example, in my community there is no competition unless you get satellite service for which you need a city permit to even put a mini Dish Network dish on your house. The "other" cable company only supplies service to those outside the city limits and then only if you don't live near a copse of trees which can block the signal. But if you live in a town a more 20 minutes down the highway where...

As of the end of business on Monday I will be on vacation. For two weeks. Until next year (January 2nd to be exact). I have no clue what to do. I haven't had two weeks together for about 10 years (at least as best I can recall). This is going to be weird. Of course there is plenty that can be done from cleaning (ick), to getting a jump on the next semester (yuk), from painting the bedroom (smelly) to getting a root canal - oh wait that I have to do. Could catch up on CNN. Could catch up on sleep. Could do both at the same time if Wolf Blitzer didn't yell so much. Well the holiday baking won't be so rushed at least. Stay tuned, two weeks without structure in my life could get very strange indeed. I sense a Monty Python marathon coming on...

It is December. We are in that limbo between the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas (or whatever winter festival your particular belief system recognizes) where people are expected to be cheerful and generous. They are neither. Traffic is awful and people have no patience when trying to navigate it. The rudeness is something to behold. A traffic cop could make a fortune in one afternoon. In the stores the holiday music is mostly ignored and rather serves to irritate rather than inspire goodwill. Patrons are shoved, pushed out of the way at sale racks, salesclerks are subject to all sorts of verbal abuse - the list is endless. Even shoplifting increases this time of year, as do home break-ins, car break-ins and purse snatching. One assumes the folks engaging in these latter activities are doing so to provide a nice holiday for their own loved ones which warps the whole spirit of the season even more. It becomes clear when you witness this behavior that the reason for the season has ...

Is it just me? I mean, has this occured to anyone else? The recent death of the Ex-KGB guy Litinenko in England from poisoning via Polonium 210 and all the news coverage of his ordeal while awful and horrific sparked a weird little giggle in the back of my head. I am a fan of the Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian and I am sorry but the isotope Polonium 210 sounds WAY too much like Marvin's coveted Illudium Q-36. As in the power behind the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (with which he was going ot blow up the Earth because it blocked his view of Venus) and the focus of the race between Marvin and Duck Dodgers to Planet X the last known source of Illudium. This weird little giggle is either a case of too much caffeine or not enough.

I am about ready to throw the printer through the window. I have cleaned the print heads, I have aligned and I have even cleaned the rollers and installed new cartridges. All to no avail. I have ink blots the size of dimes on my printouts. These are papers that I have to turn in for grades you see so I am not happy. Not one little tiny bit. The printer is not old. It has not been used and abused. On the advice of trusted geeks and the paperwork that came with the thing I do not shut it off (ever) as the ink can get "cold" and be useless. Wonderful way to screw up a Sunday. Oh yeah.

Yes indeed as we all now know the Democrats have control of Congress and George Bush is eating a bit of crow these days. As the new Senator Brown from Ohio put it though (to paraphrase) if the Democrats go in seeking revenge they will lose. In my opinion, the country has asked for change. The Democrats have a mandate from the people to enact change. They can not afford to screw it up by throwing subpoenas at everything that moves and generally acting like the sheriff in a bad western seeking to gun down the bad guys and clean up the town at the point of his gun. You got elected. You have the power. Now play nice. And while you are at it get a dictionary that contains the word bipartisan.

Gotta love politics, it is just too funny. And you gotta love the folks in Tennessee for trying to have fun with it. Apparently there is this Senate race over there wherein the guys running the campaign are trying to be funny. And they are succeeding and of course the other party is extremely annoyed by this. The guy running is a Democrat currently serving in the House named Harold Ford Jr. Those "bad" Republicans have been running an ad featuring mock voters giving silly reasons to vote for him. Including such things as he "looks nice... isn't that enough?", "so he took money from porn movie producers... who hasn't" and closing with a pretty blonde who says she met him at a party and the Playboy mansion whereupon she winks at the camera and gushes "Harold, call me". C'mon guys isn't this more fun than the usual mud slinging? Sure it is a little muddy but instead of the sweet old lady saying how she doesn't trust Senator What...

With apologies to the Pop Tart whose song title I just paraphrased, the original Material Girl is back in the news: she did it again - she got a bunch of attention. Even my fave editorial guy is commenting. And he has a point (doesn't he always?). The woman went to Africa was moved by what she saw (you'd have to be frozen not to be) and is trying to adopt a child as a result. At least she is doing something. Never mind that adopting third world kids now seems to be a fashion statement, just ask Ms. Joile. This is one child who will get a chance to grow up. The rest of the world - the developed world - is pretty much ignoring the situation in various parts of Africa. It is a big continent ignoring it will not make it go away. Darfor isn't going to heal itself. The Sudan isn't going to heal itself. The desert is going to keep expanding (they have a tendency to do that). The snows on Killaminjaro are melting. And here we site, in the wealthiest nation on Earth. Pretty much...