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Miscellany
Nov. 8th, 2004 07:55 amToday's going to be a long day.
Every year, those of us with tenure are assigned to observe our non-tenured faculty and comment on their teaching. This semester, I've got two. One is on a long-term non-tenured contract; she is not a researcher, and as far as I know she doesn't want tenure. She's just a darned good teacher, and I feel a little bit embarrassed sitting in judgment on her. I did that observation on Friday. The other one is call staff; these are people we hire on a semester-to-semester basis, depending on need. Unfortunately, his class meets at 6PM Monday/Wednesday, which is after the buses quit running. I'll be observing him tonight, and I hope I'll be able to find someone to give me a lift home.
A couple of years ago, I cut back sharply on my coffee habit, which was running three or four cups a day. (High blood pressure, y'know.) Lately, though, I've resumed drinking, though no more than one cup a day. Mostly it's been on-campus, either from a vending machine or from the coffee machine in the faculty lounge. Both of those are execrable. Yesterday, I decided that if I was going to drink it I'd go for the good stuff. The problem is that I'm not particularly fond of any of the Latin American varieties; the varieties I like are Indonesian (Sumatra Mandheling, Celebes Kalossi) or East African (Ethiopian Harar, Kenya AA), but they're not easy to find. Shop'n'Save's selection of whole-bean coffees isn't very good, and Schnucks is only slightly better. I did find a bag labelled "Sumatra", at least. I think there's a shop that specializes in coffee down the road a bit - at least, there was one a few years ago - but I may have to go online.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting very strange online behavior - uninterpreted HTML appearing on web pages, mysterious malfunctions attributed to AdSubtract, a couple of RealPlayer modules refusing to cooperate on shutdowns. I figured RP was probably the culprit, so I uninstalled it; voila, no more problems. I never had much use for it anyway. I suppose Windows MediaPlayer will fill the gap, hopefully without malfunctioning.
I finished Narcissus in Chains yesterday. Though it's intriguing what's happening to Anita, I wasn't much impressed with the overall structure. It seemed less cohesive than previous volumes, possibly because the real story was her transformation rather than her struggle with a specific opponent. Also, there were rather more characters than usual, it seemed; I had to flip back to confirm the identity of one character, who only appeared in two brief but important scenes. Hmph. I keep hearing that the series is coming to suffer from bloat; it's certainly true that the recent volumes are thicker than the early ones. I'll probably stick with it, though, for at least one more book.
Ah, well. I should get dressed now.
Every year, those of us with tenure are assigned to observe our non-tenured faculty and comment on their teaching. This semester, I've got two. One is on a long-term non-tenured contract; she is not a researcher, and as far as I know she doesn't want tenure. She's just a darned good teacher, and I feel a little bit embarrassed sitting in judgment on her. I did that observation on Friday. The other one is call staff; these are people we hire on a semester-to-semester basis, depending on need. Unfortunately, his class meets at 6PM Monday/Wednesday, which is after the buses quit running. I'll be observing him tonight, and I hope I'll be able to find someone to give me a lift home.
A couple of years ago, I cut back sharply on my coffee habit, which was running three or four cups a day. (High blood pressure, y'know.) Lately, though, I've resumed drinking, though no more than one cup a day. Mostly it's been on-campus, either from a vending machine or from the coffee machine in the faculty lounge. Both of those are execrable. Yesterday, I decided that if I was going to drink it I'd go for the good stuff. The problem is that I'm not particularly fond of any of the Latin American varieties; the varieties I like are Indonesian (Sumatra Mandheling, Celebes Kalossi) or East African (Ethiopian Harar, Kenya AA), but they're not easy to find. Shop'n'Save's selection of whole-bean coffees isn't very good, and Schnucks is only slightly better. I did find a bag labelled "Sumatra", at least. I think there's a shop that specializes in coffee down the road a bit - at least, there was one a few years ago - but I may have to go online.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting very strange online behavior - uninterpreted HTML appearing on web pages, mysterious malfunctions attributed to AdSubtract, a couple of RealPlayer modules refusing to cooperate on shutdowns. I figured RP was probably the culprit, so I uninstalled it; voila, no more problems. I never had much use for it anyway. I suppose Windows MediaPlayer will fill the gap, hopefully without malfunctioning.
I finished Narcissus in Chains yesterday. Though it's intriguing what's happening to Anita, I wasn't much impressed with the overall structure. It seemed less cohesive than previous volumes, possibly because the real story was her transformation rather than her struggle with a specific opponent. Also, there were rather more characters than usual, it seemed; I had to flip back to confirm the identity of one character, who only appeared in two brief but important scenes. Hmph. I keep hearing that the series is coming to suffer from bloat; it's certainly true that the recent volumes are thicker than the early ones. I'll probably stick with it, though, for at least one more book.
Ah, well. I should get dressed now.
