First things first, though. As the summer and the presidential election bring us to thoughts of Hurricane Katrina again, perhaps a small lesson in American history is in order. While the residents of New Orleans and the surrounding areas continue to rebuild, on this day sixty years ago the residents of Vanport, Oregon, lost their city, and it was never rebuilt. Obviously Oregon has never been at much risk for hurricanes, but Vanport, a public housing city and the second largest city in Oregon at the time, was built close to the Columbia River. Dams were all that stopped the river from flooding the city, and government officials repeatedly told the residents of Vanport -- which had one of the largest percentages of African-American residents of any Oregon city -- that the dams would hold, and even if they broke, the damage wouldn't be that bad. When it became clear that the damage was, in fact, that bad, it still took the government forever to get proper aid to the region. Does all of this sound familiar? The only silver lining in this whole episode was that there weren't many people in the city at the time the dams broke because of the Memorial Day holiday, so only fifteen people wound up losing their lives. Again, thoguh, the city was never rebuilt. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What piece of information do you keep forgetting?
Nothing springs to mind here, but there's a lot of fairly obvious stuff that I find myself, at times, unsure about. I've had to look up some pretty basic information on the Web just to reassure that I had something fairly simple straight in my mind.
2. What regular event in your life do you keep forgetting?
I haven't been that good at remembering to replenish some foods and other staple items in the house after Dad died; I wasn't used to buying some stuff, and I still haven't really gotten into the habit of buying it when I need to.
3. How are you with remembering the names of people you meet?
Horrible. I've never been one for tying names to faces, and as a teacher, that poses a big problem for me in the classroom.
4. What kinds of tricks do you have for remembering to do stuff that falls outside your regular routine?
I've never been one for devising mnemonic devices, which may explain why I get so hooked on regular routines and why I have a hard time remebering to do stuff that falls outside of those routines.
5. If you keep a daily planner, what is it like? If you don’t, why not?
I don't keep a daily planner because up until recently I've never had much need for one. I have started to use Google Calendar more over the past few months, though.
Labels: fridayfive
Southwyck mall to close June 30 (toledoblade.com)
It's amazing how every little detail of something like Dad's death seemed to add just that much more pain to the ordeal. When I was young, Dad always took me out to a bunch of places on Saturday morning and afternoon, as soon as my morning cartoons ended. He called it "Adventures," and in retrospect he was probably doing Mom a favour by getting me out of the house for a while, but I probably did more bonding with Dad during Adventures than I did with anything else we did together. We'd get lunch together, go to the arcade together, and see a lot of stores at the mall. When I say mall here, though, I'm not referring to Southwyck; I'm referring to Franklin Park Mall, the mall closest to our house, and the only major mall still left in Toledo. (Mind you, it's now called "Westfield Shoppingtowne Franklin Park Mall" and barely bares any resemblance to the mall I remember as a kid. To me, that mall died a long time ago.)
My first memory of going to a mall, though, is going to Southwyck. There are a few things I remember about going to Southwyck as a child. First of all, they had a lot of small water fountains throughout the mall, all of which had different coloured lights in the fall that projected up and made all the water these soft, translucent colours that I thought were some of the prettiest things I'd ever seen. Secondly, in the middle of the mall -- it was one of those malls with several "spokes" full of stores around a central location -- they had the only full-size merry-go-round I've ever ridden on (the miniature merry-go-round they used to have in front of K-Mart doesn't count), and a kind of small pit that sloped gently and seemed, to my young mind, like a natural performing venue, a theatre-in-the-round sort of thing. Third, Southwyck had the first "arcade" I ever went to, a place called Old Towne that had the kind of machines that you used to associate with arcades before the Pac-Man era.
I can only remember going there a few times when I was young, but I went there a lot when I was a teenager. The mall's a fairly short walk from the private school I went to for fourth through twelfth grades, and since I usually stayed after school to use the computer lab (the only computers we had at home at that point were old TRS-80s), if I had some extra time before my parents got off of work to come pick me up, I'd walk over to Southwyck. Old Towne was long gone by that point, but our local arcade chain, Red Baron, had set up shop there, and I was in the middle of my Street Fighter II phase around this time, so I played that an awful lot. My first post-high school crush worked at the Waldenbooks over there as well, so that just gave me more reason to go over.
Southwyck has been ailing for a long, long time, and there had been a lot of talk about doing something new with the property for a long time. A few years ago a developer opened a new shopping complex down in Perrysburg called Levis Commons that, surprisingly, is a pretty awesome place. (Aside from the Books-A-Million and East of Chicago over there, the stores are painfully upscale, though.) The thing is, Southwyck is not in a very good part of town, and even if they raze Southwyck down to the ground and construct something truly grand in its place, that's not going to change that it's surrounded by a lot of low-end businesses in crumbling buildings on moldering streets. I'm fairly certain that someone will try to do something to "fix up" that part of town -- we're in about the tenth attempt to "revitalize" downtown Toledo in my lifetime -- but Southwyck shuttering feels to me like the one true note of confirmation that this part of Toledo is now dead.
Labels: personal, toledo, videogames
In the spring of 1934 the AFL held a strike against Electric Auto-Lite here in Toledo. Today is notable because it was on this day in 1934 that the strike turned violent, as a deputy began beating an elderly man as some picketers were being arrested, leading to the five-day "Battle of Toledo" between picketers and the Ohio National Guard. Two picketers wound up dying in the battle, double the bodycount of the previous century's "Toledo War." Although Auto-Lite went out of business in the sixties, its old building wasn't demolished until 1999; a park now stands in its place, the highlight of which is a bronze statue of two strikers standing on top of bricks from the old building. The Auto-Lite strike is widely credited as being the incident which made Toledo a union town, although this obviously isn't so much the case these days what with unions being weakened so much in my lifetime. On that rather long note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
[Okay, friday5.org is down right now, so I'll post the Friday Five when I can actually, you know, see it.]
Labels: fridayfive
In the end I wound up giving Yggdrasil Mark II to the local computer store for them to fix; a reinstallation of the heat sink that came with my processor actually wound up fixing things. Unfortunately they screwed up my network settings, forcing me to reinstall Windows to be able to connect to the Internet again. After that, though, it's pretty much been smooth sailing. I'm probably going to be up very late tonight -- even by my standards -- getting programmes installed, and at some point I'm going to take the hard drive out of Yggdrasil Mark I so I can transfer all my old files over, but for now I'm just having fun here with my new computer, relieved that the problems that I've had for the past week are finally over. (Famous last words, Shannon ...)
I don't want to go into too many details about the computer's specifications, but let's just say that I didn't build this system like her predecessor. Yggdrasil Mark I was built using fairly low-end hardware for the time (2003), although I used top brand names for all the important parts. I didn't go top-of-the-line for Yggdrasil Mark II, but I was only one notch down from top-of-the-line at best. It's another Intel-based system (my one AMD-based system was a real disaster for me), and contrary to my previous assertions I actually wound up going with an Abit motherboard since I heard that Asus' quality was slipping when I did my preliminary research on parts. I loaded it to the max with RAM (RAM was so cheap I figured why not), and even though my new hard drive is half the size of the one I first bought, I doubt I'm going to run out of space on it any time soon. I actually have a good 3-D card in this system because I may need it for something at MCCC; now I just need something to really test it with. I'd like to think that this setup will last me as long as Yggdrasil Mark I did, but I've been around computers too long to place any bets on that.
Although I already pledged Yggdrasil Mark I to Mom, I'm probably going to want to make some changes to her before I hand her off. For one thing, instead of reformatting the old hard drive and putting it back in, I'd rather keep the old hard drive as an archive, so I'll have to buy a new one. (I think they've still got old models at Best Buy.) I'll probably want to max out the RAM on her since, again, it's so cheap right now, and I may even max out the processor as well (although even maxed out it'll still pale to most any new system on the market these days). I'll need to replace the fans as well, and I may try sticking the power supply that came with Yggdrasil Mark II's case into the old system to see if that helps with some of the problems I've been having with it lately. That will have to wait for a little while, though; in addition to just wanting to play with Yggdrasil Mark II here, I also want to make sure she is stable for a couple of weeks before I part with my old system. No sense in not being cautious about this.
Labels: computing
A week ago I finally went ahead and ordered all the parts for Yggdrasil Mark II, my new computer. Yggdrasil Mark I is starting to flake out on me, so it's kind of important that I get my new computer up and operating as soon as possible. I was hoping that all the parts would arrive on Wednesday (I only teach Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays this term), but for some reason UPS decided to deliver only three of the five boxes of stuff that day, one of the boxes being the one with my case in it. That meant Thursday was quite arduous, as I had to leave here to teach before it arrived, and I had a meeting in Bowling Green to go to after teaching, so it was quite late by the time I got back here and was finally able to start putting things together.
Unfortunately, the good luck I had getting Yggdrasil Mark I up and running right away did not seem to come to me this go-around. After I got Yggdrasil Mark II put together, the system wouldn't even power up. I suppose this is what I get for trusting the power supply that came with the case (power supplies that come with cases are invariably second-rate, and from the looks of this one was even last-generation), so I wound up having to wait until yesterday to go out and get a better power supply from a local computer store. As if that weren't bad enough, after I got the new power supply home and started installing it, the power cord plug on my hard drive literally broke off, rendering the whole thing useless. I had to turn right back around and head out to Best Buy to get a replacement hard drive, half the size of the one I originally bought. (I only hope I can return the old hard drive because it was not put together well.)
At long last I was finally able to get Yggdrasil Mark II powered up, but it would automatically shut itself off after only a minute or two. After a bit of research and testing, I discovered that the problem was with the heatsink; I was using the heatsink assembly that came with the (Intel) processor, and it wouldn't plug all the way into my motherboard, so it wasn't making a good connection with the processor to help dissipate its heat. I spent most of the night last night just trying to get it to fit as best as I could -- the tip of my right thumb is still numb -- but in the end I only lengthened how long the system would stay up for a bit. I was able to get my OS installed, but trying to install anything else, or do anything processor-intensive at all, results in the system shutting itself off.
Now I'm forced to wait until tomorrow to go out and find a better heatsink; either that, or I'll order one online and have it shipped here Tuesday, since I'm kind of already booked up for tomorrow and probably won't have too much time to work on the new computer. I should have known that I'd have a harder time getting a computer assembled now than I had last time (Yggdrasil Mark I came together perfectly the first time, much to my surprise), and between the frustration of finding part after part that doesn't work, and the cost of buying new parts to replace the broken ones, this really doesn't seem like it was worth the effort to me. The next time I need a new computer, I'll probably go down to the local computer store and have the people there assemble it for me; as it is, I'll probably need their help just to get Yggdrasil Mark II up and running now if the next heatsink I buy doesn't solve my problems.
Labels: computing
On this day in 2001, the top floor of our house burned down. My sister lost nearly everything she owned, the rest of us lost other things, and it was the end of my "week from hell" that saw us all move into a hotel room for ten and a half months. I got bored, went back to school, and, well, here I am now. Like every other important date in this family for the past three months, realizing it's the first time we're marking this date after Dad's death makes it hurt a little bit more. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
(Oh geez, and this week's five isn't going to be fun to get through.)
1. What makes you feel old?
Pretty much everything at this point. I'd probably feel better if I could get back on my diet here, but I'm still five Red Wings victories away from that.
2. What makes you feel young?
I don't know if teaching necessarily makes me feel young, but it's probably the closest thing to feeling young that I can do these days.
3. What was better when you were allowed to do it the old way?
I don't know that I ever "allow" myself to be forced to do things in a new way. The best answer I can give to this is that I always bake without using any electric mixers, doing all the mixing by hand because I think it improves the flavour.
4. What’s better now that you do it the new way?
Research. If I didn't have easy access to recent English journals when I was in school, I don't know if I could have studied the topics that I did without wanting to pull my hair out.
5. What’s something you are old school about?
I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that saying I'm "old school" about something means that I'm making an attempt to sound cool, and I am not cool.
Labels: fridayfive
I started teaching again this past Monday. I'm in the same classroom I was in last semester, starting class at the same time. It's a different class (Composition I versus Composition II last term), it goes for two and a half hours instead of one and a half, and I see the same students all week. (However, I do have Wednesdays off.) I was hoping that the week off between classes would give me time to recharge, but I think all it realy managed to do was to make me feel lonelier. On Friday I did have a pizza with Lara when she stopped by on her way up to Michigan, and that was the first time I'd really had the chance to hang out with friends I knew since last December. As it is, my social calendar is still pretty blank, and even though I have some ideas about how to go about fixing that, between still being busy taking care of things that popped up after Dad's death and my general nervousness, it's been hard to act on any of those ideas.
Several years ago when I went through my last period of deep suicidal thoughts (back before my counselor at UT finally straightened me out), I had this recurring dream. I was in an apartment by myself, sitting at one of those really cheap white-and-pine dinette sets you always see on sale at Big Lots, and I was holding onto a revolver. Even though I've never touched a handgun in my life, I can still remember just how heavy the gun felt in my hand. The suicide implication there was obvious, but I think the other obvious thing from that nightmare was that it was happening after both my parents had died, since I was on my own like that. Although I haven't had anything approaching suicidal thoughts since Dad died, I am still having this dream pop up every now and again, probably because I've now lost one parent, and I have to think about losing Mom in a way that I've never thought about before.
Having some kind of circle of friends locally to hang out with would probably help me a lot, but again, I'm just not that comfortable doing that right now, in part because I'm so busy and in part because I'm so fearful because of all the disasters there have been in the past when I've tried to make friends. I also have to admit that I'm questioning my own motivations for wanting friends, because I think that in addition to companionship, I may also be looking for people to foist responsibilities on. I was kind of already doing this before Dad died, because seeing him and Mom, and Mark and Heather, made me wish that I had a lover, someone for me to shower affection on, and even though I had a few people in mind as potential partners, I didn't do anything about it because, in addition to general fears, I was worried that I was just looking to fill a hole in my own life, and that for the person I tried to partner with I'd be too interested in filling that hole in my life that I wouldn't be focused enough on filling the holes in that person's life. Now that Dad's dead and I've had to take on so many more responsibilities, I'm worried that I may be longing for a partner even more just so I have someone to share those responsibilities with.
As it is, other things developed with two of the people I'd been thinking about talking to (I never even got the chance to talk to them) that kind of made serious relationships with them impossible. There's only one other person I think I'd be comfortable partnering with right now, and not only do I think that she'd rather not entertain that idea just on general principle, but she also seems to be at a period in her life where she would rather be single. I can't say as I blame her for that, because for a long time there I appreciated the freedoms that being single gave me. However, now I seem to be longing for companionship, and the worst part is that I'm not even sure that I'm longing for it for the right reasons. If I can't trust my own intentions, how can I possibly expect anyone else to?
Labels: personal
Steve Yzerman turns 43 today. Now that the Canadiens are out of the playoffs, I'm hoping that in a few weeks here we'll see Stevie Y. hoist his fourth cup, although it will be weird to see him do so in a suit and tie. Maybe he can slip on the number 19 again just before he gets down to ice level, who knows. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. When was the last time you had a needle stuck into you?
If we're counting pine needles, last January before Mom vacuumed up the remnants of the Christmas tree. If we're only talking about doctor's needles, then it was at my last physical, which was too long ago for me to feel comfortable mentioning here.
2. Who among your friends is the easiest target for needling?
Probably Jeff, but I rarely engage in that sort of stuff these days unless it's self-depreciating humour. I've gotten really sensitive and scared about these sorts of things, what can I say.
3. What’s something you can confidently do with a needle and thread?
Poke my fingertip. Actually, I used to cross-stitch back when I was in junior high, but I haven't done that in forever, and, well, video games have advanced a long ways since then.
4. About how many phonograph records do you have in your home, and when’s the last time you dropped a needle on one?
Were it not for the fire, we'd have several hundred here; as it is, I only have the three that were in my room at the time of the fire, an unopened copy of Tori Amos' Under the Pink on pink vinyl, and two copies of a picture-disc interview with the Sugarcubes, one of which has a clock mechanism jammed through it (it came that way). The last time I played an LP would have had to have been in the mid-80s, and I don't have any equipment to do so now.
5. Someone told us the other day about someone at a party using a flavor injector to spike a watermelon with vodka. Is this brilliant or is this stupid?
I'd say stupid, but then again I'm a teetotaler so that's kind of a given.
Labels: fridayfive
I had hoped that the NHL would schedule the start of the Red Wings-Stars series for tonight because it would give the Stars little time to recover from that grueling four-overtime game on Sunday. Now I'm wishing they'd scheduled any game for tonight so I wouldn't be stuck watching more primary coverage tonight. I know that I don't have to watch, but this is my normal news-listening time, and for the sake of being able to converse knowledgably with my students about this stuff, I still feel obliged to keep tabs on things. Still, this primary campaign got tiresome long ago, and as much as I'm not going to tell the Democrats how to run their campaigns (even if they tell we Greens to perform anatomical impossibilities in terms of us running for offices), on a personal level I wish we could just get this campaign over with.
I have to admit I'm starting to have doubts about where my vote will go, though. I had gotten behind Nader as soon as he entered the race, even when he decided not to pursue the Green Party nomination, in large part because I didn't feel comfortable voting for Cynthia McKinney. I've still got very strong reservations about McKinney, but the mailings I've been getting from Ralph Nader's campaign have been giving me cause for pause as well. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there is something about the way the Nader campaign is conducting itself that is making me question my loyalty to it. I think that over my break I'm going to be taking a closer look at McKinney and how she's conducting her campaign, and reevaulate just who I want to support.
What may be bothering me the most about this is the impending sense that this is not going to end well. Not only am I concerned that the protracted Democratic primary campaign is going to give McCain an easy path to the White House, but between the Democrats opposing Green Party ballot access at every turn and the progressive vote already being split between Nader and McKinney, I feel like we're going to be in for another night like we had in 2004, where it's close but the Republicans win, the Green Party loses even more of the gains it got in 2000, and we'll be no closer to reinventing democracy than we were four years ago. I hate to be a pessimist about these things, but I can't help but be a realist, and it's hard enough to be an optimist and a realist at the same time about anything, let alone American politics.
Labels: greenparty, politics
About a half-hour ago I finished the last of my students' portfolios from this past semester; I'm waiting a little while here to allow some people who had problems submitting things to me to get some last papers e-mailed to me, but then tomorrow afternoon I'll be submitting their grades. Contrary to what I thought earlier, I actually do get a week off before the next semester starts, and I probably need that time off right now more than ever. In addition to catching up on reading and writing and cleaning and all sorts of other things, I'm going to need time to just relax, kick my feet up and do nothing at all.
As I expected, the end of this semester was more painful for me than it was in previous semesters, and I'm not referring to having to grade all those extra portfolios here. I take a very deep interest in my students, and I try to do all that I can to enable them to succeed, not just in my class and their other classes, but in life in general. I take care of my students, and earlier this year after Dad died, well, a lot of them took care of me. I know that students coming and going is an unavoidable aspect of my job, and I'm looking forward to having a new group of students to teach here a week from Monday, but after losing Dad a couple of months ago, moving on from this group of students is kind of hard for me.
I think Heather summed it up best when she talked about how hard this Spring is for her. I commented here a week ago about how the trees in our backyard are starting to bud leaves, and Heather pointed out that it's a sign that the cycle of nature, like life, goes on. For her, as it is for me a good part of the time, it's still hard to think of life going on without Dad physically here with us. As much as I know that I'm ready to move on with life after Dad's death, and as much as I know that I have to move on, a good part of me still doesn't want to move on quite yet. I want to hold on everything, from the good of my students' support to the bad of the painful grief, because I'm familiar with it. Moving on means moving towards the unknown, and I fear that I'm not strong enough to handle the unknown quite yet. I have to move on, though. Somehow I have to move on.
Labels: dad, personal, weather
... to say that on this day in 1972 J. Edgar Hoover passed away. A quick Google scan isn't helping me find out who it was who took to answering his phone "Fuck J. Edgar Hoover" in response to Hoover's efforts to weed out so-called radicals and subversives, but I have to say that I've given a great deal of thought to coopting that greeting in the wake of the PATRIOT Act. Unfortunately, no one ever calls me, so I'd never have a chance to use it anyway. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five!
1. How do you feel about spicy food?
I really love some spices (garlic and red pepper), but not others (Asian-based spices and spice blends). I love the heat of spices, as well as their ability to help clear out my sinuses.
2. What kinds of condiments do you add to food in order to spice things up a bit?
I've never been one for condiments except for catsup; the only time I ever put salt on anything is when I'm eating hash browns at IHOP, which is a once-a-year thing at best.
3. Not counting salt and pepper, what’s your favorite flavor enhancer when cooking?
Emeril's original Essence blend. Apart from things with a tomato base, it goes well with everything and adds just the right flavour and heat.
4. What’s the spiciest food you’ve ever eaten?
That I can remember, Morningstar Farms' vegetarian buffalo wings. I'm sure I had spicier stuff when I was a child, though; I just didn't get emotionally scarred by it.
5. In what way might some other aspect of your daily life be spiced up, and what’s keeping that from happening right now?
I don't have time for a boyfriend or a girlfriend right now, and it's not like I've ever had much luck finding them anyway. That's all I can safely say here.
Labels: fridayfive