Blessed by the Potato

I’m not talking about dates as in the stuff that happens before the awkward 5 minute silence as you clumsily try to say goodnight on the doorstep, I’m talking about the day of the month, in numeric form. Many people prefer a date format that looks like DD-MM-YY (or YYYY) since it’s a nice progression from short time periods to longer ones. Still others prefer YYYY-MM-DD for the same reasons, and also because it sorts nicely on a computer (plus if you see a date format that has 4 numbers at the front, it’s very hard to get confused about which standard you’re using). Other people (apparently Americans/Canadians for the most part) prefer a MM-DD standard; I know for a long time that was the standard I used.

This standard, some say, is peculiar. Now, I must admit that it does cause confusion, and there have been a number of rough Aprils spent looking at expiry dates on food and trying to figure out whether it was March 5th or May 3rd… but I don’t think the format is so confusing. It meshes well with the way we format our time (HH:MM), that is from larger to smaller divisions. And since the month is usually the most important thing to look for when going through a set of papers, it makes sense to put it first (typically you can remember the month you did something in but not the exact date, and papers from different years will likely be in different folders). It also follows the way we tend to say the dates: March fifth versus the fifth of March or five March (though those last two forms, particularly the middle one, do appear with some regularity).

Of course, in saying that I find that I’m at a complete loss to explain why ten dollars gets the dollar sign put in front ($10).

Do you ever find yourself caught… trapped somehow in that hazy time period between 2 and 4 am, uselessly pondering things that not only can you not change: but that also don’t matter in the slightest? Yeah, me neither… though I have started to wonder if I had a small stroke or something, because my typing has gone hugely downhill all of a sudden this last week. I thought that maybe something got into my keyboard at work, but tonight I’ve found the same problem at home: tonnes of typos (far above and beyond what is normal for me), particularly with the way my two hands sync together, and the way my thumb syncs with the rest of my typing: my spaces are often coming a character or two too soon or too late. Or maybe I’m just over tired and my hands are clumsy.

My point, and I shall make it shortly so that you can finish this post and go back to not sleeping, is that “The Peculiar Date Standards of Americans” WMAGNFARB.

Oh, and I really need to get a good short story finished in the next few weeks, and I haven’t even had any half decent ideas to write on sticky notes and lose in the last little while…

Via DJ Paradise, comes this article about serving sizes.

Yep, people have trouble determining what a serving size is sometimes. I think it was a really poor choice of words — “serving” — it makes you think of a serving platter at a restaurant or something. Most people automatically make serving = meal in their minds, but really servings are quite small (a total of 20-24 or so servings a day over your ~3 meals + snacks). 2 cookies, a kid’s sippy glass of milk, half a bowl of soup: portions that are much smaller than we tend to have experience with. Unfortunately in this case it’s not the companies, but the government that’s to blame for not only creating the discrepancy between portion size and serving size, but also for giving it the name “serving”. [Though whether we should blame the American or Canadian government is a bit of an open question; if in doubt, blame both]

Also, I highly recommend you all go to YouTube and search for “How it should have ended” — they’re a funny series of clips.

I think that my cat is making me stupid. I just simply spend too much time alone with the creature, speaking in monosyllables or baby-talk.

Plus she’s just such a pretty kitty that I want to roll over and take a nap, or maybe purr a little.

By now if you own a radio you’ve doubtlessly heard the song that basically wails “does that make me crazy?” On endless repeat like that, I find it gets really annoying. However today I noticed that the song tends to play in the morning when my alarm goes off, and its undue popularity is handy, because when you’re half asleep playing snooze button basketball, asking yourself “does that make me crazy?” is a good question…

Well, it turns out my inexperienced, volunteer-based course offering isn’t an isolated incident at Western: grad studies just doesn’t seem to care about classes anymore. Halfway into September, after the add/drop date, the faculty decided out of nowhere that it wasn’t going to let grad students take undergrad courses (even if they need them to round out their background for their research). Some of our students found out by showing up to class, and having the profs tell them that they weren’t on the class list. The department had no idea that this was even under consideration, and it makes very little sense. True, grad student tuition is a bit lower than undergrad tuition on a per term basis (~$2k vs $3k), but we pay every term, so it evens out, and for the most part we don’t take any classes, so the few people who do need them should be able to take them on that sort of subsidy of the majority.

It is also true that nigh unlimited undergrad course enrolment was being abused by a few people: some have used their time doing a research degree to brush up on their chem or bio before taking a run at med school. In one notorious case, a PhD student got a bachelors of art at the same time, paying only grad tuition (which was covered by her research stipend). But these are pretty rare, and to not even let grads take one undergrad course (and to kick those who were already taking one out halfway into September) is overkill…

I’m really pissed off at a few online stores and their “click to enlarge” links. Usually, a click to enlarge link is present because they’re using a thumbnail that’s too small to see anything on, so you want to enlarge the image to see more. So logical it hurts. Usually, the enlarged image appears in a pop-up window, sometimes it replaces the screen you’re viewing at the moment. But the key factor is that the image should be larger than the one you were just looking at.

I was just shopping at creepedout.ca for some Halloween stuff, and saw that they had a Zombie Pirate makeup kit, which sounds just perfect. The thumbnail image is 100×80 pixels. So, of course, I clicked to enlarge… and a window popped up with an image that was 135×104 pixels. It was so small (and in a new window) that I at first thought the “enlarged” image was simply the original thumbnail again. But, oh no, it was technically a larger image, but by such a small margin that I have to wonder why they bothered. It just pisses me off.

What else pisses me off? Taking 3 days to write a course syllabus and prepare a few lectures to find out that you’re not getting paid for the course (or rather, that “you’re already being paid”). My first class today went fairly well (except, of course, that it took the full 2 hours and I really was hoping to end the first one early). The rest, I doubt, will go as smoothly, because if I’m not getting paid for it, I really don’t feel like spending my weekends & evenings preparing. I’ve got a thesis/research to do (and already too much of that!).

I know not many of you are checking the site at all anymore, and it has been far too long since I updated. I’ve been very busy of late, and been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block at work that seems to be tranferring to the website as well. Things have been crazy busy there: in addition to all the work for my crazy project, I’m also teaching a class this term (!) which is incredibly demanding. I’m responsible for everything, from planning the syllabus to creating the assignments, delivering the lectures to booking the rooms… and this is a brand-new course, too, so I don’t even have a textbook or anything to use as a guide. The damnedest thing about it is that my first class is today, and I still have no idea if I’m getting paid for this, or if I was suckered into volunteering. It’s a lot of work, so I really hope I’m getting paid, but on the other hand, my new contract prohibits me from moonlighting (on the gripping hand, volunteering would likely count as moonlighting too, if I really wanted to get out of it). I’m stuck, of course, because I want to teach: I think it’s a vital part of getting a PhD, and it’s a real shame sometimes that there aren’t more teaching opportunities around in this department (especially less demanding ones).

So, I’ve had two posts “half-written” (in actuality, it’s far fewer than half the words, but I’ve put some of my thoughts down in point-form so I don’t lose them) for over a week now, and I had hoped to get them up on the weekend. Since they’re not up I don’t want to make any more promises about when they will appear, but will try to return to a frequent updating schedule soon.

In other news, I made some very good-looking cinnamon rolls last week and remembered to take a picture of them, so hopefully I’ll get that off the camera soon and up on the recipes page.

Finally, curling season is upon us again, and I hope to get into at least two leagues this year. It’s a bit of a shame that UWO is taking out its curling ice: it’s putting a lot of pressure on the other clubs in London, and means that a lot of students who found it pricey last year won’t get to play at all, since it was actually really cheap ($75 at UWO last year for 1 game/week; London Curling Club is $170 base + ~$40/league night for students, $420+ for regular members). I’m planning on joining the London Curling Club, and hope to play at least twice a week. One thing I’m not really looking forward to is that they heavily segregate the men’s & women’s sections. There are only two mixed leagues, and I can’t make one of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I found I preferred playing in mixed leagues in the past: they tend to be a lot less competitive, and the presence of women helps keep the banter cleaner. Of course, this will be a proper curling club rather than a university one, so those probably don’t apply… Finally, I don’t know if I told the story of varcity curling here from last year. Basically, I was interested in trying out for the varcity curling league here at UWO last year. I checked the webpage, found the time & location for the information meeting, and went. It was on a Thursday night in the worst rain we’d had in years. I don’t know why I insisted on going, but I went. My shoes were soaked through before I even got to the bridge. At that point I just gave up and enjoyed being soaked right through. When I got to the room, there were 4 other prospective curlers waiting… and waiting. We waited, soaking wet, for about a half hour, and no one showed up. No one came with a message to say the coach was stuck in the rain, or that the team was full. After a half hour, we just started drifting away to go home. I could have emailed or called the coach after I got home, but I wasn’t too interested in working with someone who’d skip an important first meeting like that, and I was a little leery of the whole varcity idea anyway (I was hoping the information meeting would tell me something, such as how much of a time commitment it was). At the end, I was soaked right through my jacket, through my shirt, pants, and even underwear. I was wet. I couldn’t wear my shoes for 2 days.

So tonight was the information meeting for this year’s varcity curling team. I figured I was still somewhat interested and wanted more information, so I marked the day on my calendar. As was fated, it rained today, quite a bit at that. I decided I wasn’t going to be a sucker twice, so I drove up to campus to see if it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if it was the rain or what, but campus was absolutely packed (and this was at 7 pm), and there wasn’t a single parking space near where I was going — even the pay lots were full. There were, of course, spots in the more outlying lots, but most of those are not much closer than walking from my place, and I wasn’t about to do that again. I’m still thinking about emailing for details: being on a varcity team looks good for scholarship applications (I think), and while I have no idea what the commitment is like for the practice schedule, I know that there are only ~8 games in the competitive season, held over 2/3 weekends in January/February, that third weekend only taking place if we win — not too shabby at all in terms of demands on my time.

I had a funny, brief conversation with a telemarketer from Rogers. They were trying to get me to switch to their phone service as well, and I said I wasn’t interested. They asked why, so I said the two basic reasons: if you have no add-ons to your line, it’s more expensive, and if the power goes out, it runs on a backup battery for 8 hours and then dies as well. I’ve been through too many blackouts that lasted longer than that to completely discount it. She actually acknowledged that in my case, it probably wasn’t for me, said she’d like to point out that the battery is rated for 8 hours but would probably last 12, and then hung up.

I’d like to thank Baum for pointing me to these:

Curl (come on baby put the rock in the house) and Code Monkey. It also gave me another song for my “alternative” Christmas album.

Right now I’m trying to sort out his terrible store front so I can buy these songs. There are lots of other cute songs there, too (like Pizza Day), so feel free to poke around for a bit. I’ll wait.

Once again, I follow on BoingBoing’s coattails to bring you:

Bomb Or Not?

And perhaps even more scary, this story of identity theft.