Tales from the Classroom: Reading Day

Posted on April 30, 2004

It’s Reading Day today — the day off between the end of classes and the beginning of final exams — and about an hour ago, I passed a student (not my own) who was casually strolling across campus and smoking a blunt, the unmistakable scent of marijuana lingering behind him.

I can only assume that he had finished all his required readings.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Tales from the Classroom | 1 Comment

Celeblogging

Posted on April 29, 2004

Yet again, I get the feeling that I’m at least a month behind the rest of the blogosphere here, but I stumbled across this blog earlier today. It’s written by someone claiming to be a well-known Hollywood actor, and the people who speculate about these things are speculating that the author could be Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, or even George Clooney.

Sure, “Rance” is almost certainly a hoax (what fun would the blogosphere be without the occasional hoax and/or accusation thereof?), but it’s an interesting read nevertheless.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Web Slinging | 2 Comments

Tales from the Classroom: The envelope, please

Posted on April 29, 2004

And the award for Worst Argument in Favor of Having an Exam Grade Changed in an Introductory Political Science Course goes to…

“I knew the right answer was A and I meant to circle it, but I accidentally circled D instead. Can I get credit for that?”

Let’s have a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Tales from the Classroom | 2 Comments

What a lovely black helicopter!

Posted on April 28, 2004

From Yahoo News:

Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials
By Doug Tsuruoka

People in black trench coats might soon be chasing blogs.

Blogs, short for Web logs, are personal online journals. Individuals post them on Web sites to report or comment on news especially, but also on their personal lives or most any subject.

Some blogs are whimsical and deal with “soft” subjects. Others, though, are cutting edge in delivering information and opinion.

As a result, some analysts say U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials might be starting to track blogs for important bits of information. This interest is a sign of how far Web media such as blogs have come in reshaping the data-collection habits of intelligence professionals and others, even with the knowledge that the accuracy of what’s reported in some blogs is questionable.

…

While blog postings are voluntary and available to anyone to read, some observers say blog monitoring by governments or the media raises civil liberties and privacy issues. One such critic is James Love, director of the Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology.

“When you’re conducting surveillance where you have no expectation of illegal activity, there has to be some threshold to justify such surveillance,” Love said.

(read the rest of the article…)

On an unrelated note, Apropos of Something and its webmaster — Rusty Shackleford of Ogden, Iowa — would like to reaffirm their support for any and all U.S. policies…past, present, and future.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under In the News | 3 Comments

Report to the bridge, Ensign Crusher

Posted on April 28, 2004

Upon tuning in to TechTV’s Call for Help the other day and discovering that Wil Wheaton was guest-hosting, I was tempted to call and say something along the lines of, “You’ve got to help me! I’m trapped on the holodeck, the safety protocols are disabled, and a holographic Professor Moriarty is trying to take over the ship! What should I do? You’re our only hope, Wesley!”

How’s that for a call for help?

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Geek | 1 Comment

Do you Yahoo?

Posted on April 27, 2004

So, have you seen the new split-screen Yahoo commercial featuring Al Franken and Ben Stein discussing how Democrats and Republicans use the search engine differently? Here’s a transcript:

Ben Stein: Democrats use Yahoo search for hugging trees, protecting little itty-bitty insects…

Al Franken: Republicans will check Yahoo news for the latest on, uh…large boats.

Stein: Republicans use Yahoo to find friends…

Franken: Yachts.

Stein: To do charitable work…

Franken: Yachts.

Stein: To do volunteer work to bring this country together, to make it a better, more loving country.

Franken: A lot of them get their trophy wives on Yahoo.

Voiceover: Politics engine, commentary engine, life engine — Yahoo!

Pretty funny stuff. You can view the commercial online here.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Pop Culture | 1 Comment

Introspection

Posted on April 26, 2004

I used to think that my tendency toward feelings of stress and anxiety while grocery shopping at Wal-Mart suggested an emerging case of agoraphobia, but upon further reflection, I’ve decided that I’m just an antisocial jerk.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Life in a Nutshell | 5 Comments

Yoke for a roguish cow

Posted on April 25, 2004

An antiquity spotted while visiting a museum/gift shop at Cade’s Cove this weekend:

When I hear the word “roguish,” names like Rhett Butler and Han Solo typically spring to mind. As it stands, I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered any livestock that I would describe as pleasantly mischievous. Then again, I haven’t spend much time around livestock.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Photo Ops | 2 Comments

Parking ticket update

Posted on April 23, 2004

So, I finally asked to speak to enough people’s supervisors at campus parking services to find someone who acquiesced that something about the whole parking ticket situation seemed at least slightly unfair (see here and below for more details). She eventually agreed to contact the Department of Motor Vehicles to run the license plates and figure out who actually owns the mysterious blue Honda — assuming, as I have claimed, that it’s not me. The process, however, will apparently take three to four weeks to complete. I can only assume they’re using carrier pigeons to transmit the information back and forth.

In the meantime, the parking services representative suggested that I pay the fine now in order to clear the flags on my account and allow me to register for classes. Then, if they ultimately decide to reconsider my original appeal and overturn the ticket, they can reimburse me the forty bucks. Yeah…right. I’ll get right on that.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Life in a Nutshell | 1 Comment

Campus justice

Posted on April 23, 2004

Some of you might recall my run-in with campus parking services from earlier this semester. To make a long story short, I received a $40 campus parking ticket in the mail several weeks ago. Since I didn’t remember actually parking illegally at any point, I contacted parking services for more information on the violation. They informed me that a car I didn’t own, registered in a state in which I don’t have a license, was cited for being “out of zone” in a parking lot in which I had never parked. I suggested there must be a database error or a problem with duplicate parking sticker barcodes, and they assured me that neither was possible. Therefore, they claimed that I had either lent out my parking sticker to someone who had parked illegally or it had been stolen (and returned to the windshield of my car, I suppose, with no trace of the crime). Needless to say, I filed a written appeal; you can read all the details in the original entry.

Anyway, I received the results of my appeal via e-mail this morning, which I have reproduced below (emphasis is mine):

Read more… or Read more right here… »

The appeals committee has reviewed your appeal of the below listed citation. Student Appeals has determined that a violation has occurred and that it was avoidable; therefore, your appeal has been denied. As the committee is an independent body solely charged with the task of reviewing appeals, this decision is final.

As a student of this university, it is your responsibility to know where you can and cannot park. In the future, please be aware in which lot you are parking and utilize alternative transportation (buses, carpooling, walking) when needed.

You are responsible for the citation and associated fine. If this citation has already been paid, no further action is needed on your part. However, if the citation has not been paid, it is now due and payable. If you have not already received a bill for this citation, you should during the next billing cycle. If the citation is not paid within 10 days of the invoice date, your academic records will be flagged and you will be unable to register for classes until all debts are paid. Vehicles with three or more outstanding citations are eligible for immobilization or towing.

Apparently, the fact that I don’t own — nor have I ever owned — the car ticketed for the violation wasn’t enough hard evidence to get me off the hook. You have to love the part toward the end, too, where they remind me that my academic records will be flagged and I won’t be able to register for classes until I pay up. Now I know how the A-Team felt — unjustly fined for a crime I didn’t commit.

I’m going to cool down for an hour or so, call back parking services, and ask to speak to someone who isn’t insane. Tactics like presenting rational arguments, offering empirical evidence, and asking to speak to supervisors haven’t served me particularly well up to this point. It could be time to implement Plan B: irate yelling.

Hey — forty bucks is nothing to sneeze at when you’re a graduate student.

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Posted by Jess | Filed Under Life in a Nutshell | 9 Comments

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.

Posted on April 22, 2004

Teedz just clued me in to this eBay auction: a recreation of the time-traveling DeLorean from the Back to the Future films. A couple of photos — including the all-important Flux Capacitor that makes time travel possible (larger images can be seen on the auction page):

Are you telling me you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?

If you plan to bid, be sure to confirm with your car insurance company whether your policy covers damage resulting from temporal paradoxes.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Geek, Web Slinging | 3 Comments

Dining in the Classic City, Part III

Posted on April 21, 2004

A disclaimer seen on a restaurant menu earlier today: “If you smell like patchouli or smoke clove cigarettes, we reserve the right to kick your ass out of here.”

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings | 1 Comment

The art of the prank

Posted on April 21, 2004

Slashdot has linked to a site featuring photos of a couple of great workplace pranks today: an office covered in 2,500 Post-It Notes and another filled with 650 balloons. In case the site gets Slashdotted, here are a couple of shots of the pranks:

You can find more photos, as well as details on how the pranks were executed, at the links above.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

I’ve never actually had the chance to work in a prank-friendly environment. I was, however, both the victim and perpetrator of several dorm pranks back in my undergraduate days. Without a doubt, the worst prank my suitemates and I ever suffered came when our sister hall decided it would be funny to take the gutted fetal pigs they had dissected in Biology 101 and deposit them in our rooms — hanging from the ceiling, tucked away in our beds, stashed in the refrigerator, and so forth. For some reason I never quite understood, they also put lipstick on some of the pigs. Oh, and they threw glitter all over our clothes, too. Personally, I found the whole pig thing far more disturbing than funny — you know, in a ritualistic slaying kind of way. Plus, the formaldehyde permanently stained one of my favorite t-shirts.

Needless to say, my suitemates and I were more than a little angry and itching to retaliate (although that could have just been the glitter). Someone suggested sneaking into their dorm and spiking their laundry detergent with bleach. That seemed unnecessarily cruel, though — not to mention a bit too costly for them to replace their wardrobes. The next proposal called for waiting until the night before spring break, sneaking out to the parking lot under veil of night, removing one tire from the cars of each resident of our sister hall, hiding them, leaving behind clues on where they might find them, and thus delaying their departures for spring break by a few hours. That option, however, sounded a bit too much like actual work.

Eventually, we decided that the answer was to fight grottiness with grottiness. So, we went out and bought several bags of manure-based fertilizer, a few containers of earthworms, and some crickets. Then, we slipped into their dorm rooms (with the help of an evil resident assistant), spread the fertilizer about liberally, set the worms free in it, and lifted the ceiling tiles to release the crickets where they could chirp along happily until eventually discovered. Sure, the prank lacked panache, but like I said, we were angry — not to mention the fact that we were a bunch of dumb college students.

And I still think they got off light for the whole pig thing.

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Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings | 3 Comments

Knee deep in the hoopla

Posted on April 20, 2004

Mac recently made note of Blender’s list of the 50 Worst Artists in Music History. Now, it seems that the magazine has published a list of the worst songs ever. Coming out on top (or is that bottom?) is Starship’s “We Built This City.” I really can’t argue with those findings, although I probably would have gone with “Hotel California” instead. Man, I hate that song.

Other “favorites” on Blender’s list include “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus (#2), “Party All the Time” by Eddie Murphy (#8), as well as some controversial picks like the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and Simon and Garfunkle’s “Sound of Silence.”

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Pop Culture | 5 Comments

Taking the blog linkfest to a whole ‘nuther level

Posted on April 19, 2004

Kelley of Suburban Blight has rounded up roughly umpty-gazillion links in her latest Cul-de-Sac and was kind enough to include my recent entry complaining about the replacement of low-fat, low-calorie foods with low-carb alternatives at grocery stores around the country. Meanwhile, check out the rest of the Cul-de-Sac; it serves up enough fresh reading material to keep you busy for at least the next few days.

Posted by Jess | Filed Under Web Slinging | Leave a Comment

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