|
|
Monday, November 16th, 2009
|
|
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
|
|
|
There is fire up aloft, there is fire down below
There's fire in the galley, the cook he didn't know.
Fire, fire, fire down below,
Let's fetch a bucket of water, boys, there's fire down below.
When I drove back home two weeks ago around 11 (midnight, if you take into account of what Daylight Savings time makes it feel like) things went pretty ridiculously wrong. I drove behind about three firetrucks heading towards a pillar of smoke reaching out towards the heavens at about where I live. That's a problem. The good news is that my apartment was not on fire; the bad news is that what I suspected was true: the Putney General Store was on fire. Again.
The Putney General Store got hit by an electrical fire about a year and a half ago. Most of it had sprinkler systems install so only the third floor caught on fire. It was pretty quickly put out and the building was in decent shape despite not being actually usable as a store anymore. Being a historical landmark folks raised over $200,000 to try to rebuild it. Last night, at the point when it was almost ready to reopen, it caught fire again.
Again.
I said that word very many times that night.
Investigators are saying that it's probably arson. I mean, it really doesn't take that much to figure out it's probably intentional. First of all, there's pretty much nothing inside this empty building that could start a fire. In general empty houses do not instantaneously turn into roaring infernos; especially after a day of rain. The fire also spread very, very quickly through the building and wood just doesn't burn that fast on its own---the fire was seen three miles away and I could see the smoke from over ten miles away. Sadly, pretty much everything was destroyed in the fire so investigating at the scene will be hard.
Nobody was actually hurt in the fire. However, every single goddamn thing in this little New England town is made of wood. The fire could have easily spread to all the residential houses around the store---it did do quite a bit of damage to another commercial building---and then to the woods behind those houses are the entire county would have been on fire. Over a hundred firefighters from VT and NH was there which means that pretty much it took everything the local fire department could summon to contain this fire. That also meant that a very large surrounding area was understaffed for firefighting last night. The firefighters were amazing, though. Despite the fire being pretty much an unreasonable inferno they were in fact able to contain it.
Unlike most people who actually lived here for more than a few years I don't have many fond memories of the place. I never really shopped there and it was more a landmark than anything else. What I'm more concerned with is that there's a strong possibility that someone went and endangered the entire town for some unknown reason; usually when a store burns down it's because of organized crime or insurance fraud but both those reasons do not apply here. I mean, if this was arson this would have been completely stupid and had absolutely no purpose besides causing grief and wasting both historical society and taxpayer money (oh, and causing extensive property damage to nearby buildings).
I've actually never seen this many sirens in my entire life. This includes the time when someone threw a grenade at a cop across the street. Driving into town was surreal. The entire area was cut off by fire department vehicles and so I (and the Guildford fire engine) had to take a detour. Well. What else was there to do driving home on a twisted dirt road with a pillar of bright smoke rising behind me besides singing Fire Down Below?
|
|
Comments: Read 23 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
|
|
|
Here's a simple test I have whenever I'm playing a game or reading a comic or whatever: if I notice that I'm not smiling at all when doing it then I know that the only reason why I keep doing it is basically because my OCD is going "grind more levels" or whatever it is that I'm doing. That happened in lots of MMOs I played. Maple Story (oh lord why did I ever waste time on that game) is the best example; it pretty much ceased being fun after the first ten minutes but I kept playing because I was kind of pretty much completely obsessive compulsive about it and good lord did I frown all the time playing it. Another good example is Kingdom of Loathing. It's a great game. But I've gotten to the point where it just isn't fun anymore and even the great flavor text doesn't make me want to smile anymore. That's a problem.
Conversely (or inversely?) I just started playing Torchlight. It's still pretty new and still brings a smile to my face whenever I knock like an army of ogres off a cliff into an endless abyss with my two massive swords, so it's still got a huge fun factor and is definitely a good way to spend an evening.
Of course if I'm not smiling really doesn't mean that I'm not enjoying something. There's an overwhelming culture of "you have to smile all the time otherwise you're unhappy omg" around here and I kind of hate that. If smiling all the time is default behavior then how the hell do you do better than that? Also, sometimes I'm happy but I'm just intensely thinking about something or I just really want to poop or something so I'm somewhat frowning. It happens.
Anyway, the problem is that if I'm not distracted enough to notice that I'm not smiling, it's a big alarm bell. If I'm in the middle of battle or doing some cool things with my friends or min-maxing my stats and I'm super-engaged, that's great. I like doing those things. I'm having fun. But if I'm not engaged and I realize that the game isn't really making me smile with interesting things or good flavor text or whatever it is, it's probably not worth playing anyway.
I'm bringing this up because I just realized that I'm really no longer enjoying most Facebook games. The initial "aw I can decorate my farm" bits are gone and I really don't want to grind carrots to buy a tree for my farm or whatever. I'm just not smiling at the cute cows or whatever anymore. That's a problem. The only non-OCD-related reason why I'm still playing Restaurant City or whatever is that my ex-girlfriend is playing it and she sometimes sends me messages and that is a horrible and stupid reason to play a game that I don't enjoy, especially since I'm working 10+ hour days and have a pile of good music and books and stuff that I haven't got the chance to look at thanks to Facebook games and other pointless stuff I'm obsessed with.
|
|
Comments: Read 31 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Monday, October 26th, 2009
|
|
|
Six paragraphs about the good old days of computers.
* * * * *
Last week one of my Korean students dropped his jaws when he found out that I played Starcraft without the expansion. That was completely incomprehensible to him. No medics? No lurkers? How the hell did it work? Well, it worked and it worked damn well. New things give us more choices, but not necessarily make life better; especially when life was pretty damn good to begin with.
* * * * *
A month ago someone said "we should buy this software". I took a look at the proud "Designed for System 7 and Windows 3.1!" badge the marketers placed on the web page and the $400 price tag and I said oh hell no I am not signing this off. Did you know that we have students who were born after those operating systems were made obsolete? Yet these guys are still selling the same software they sold fifteen years ago. Except of course now they do it on the Internet with almost no upkeep costs. Who still buys proprietary database software made for the days when closing a window meant double-clicking on the control box?
That's right, kids, back in the old days we had no X button on our windows. The quickest way to close something with a mouse was to double click the control box on the top left that nobody uses anymore. Or you just did Alt-F4. It took me until Vista to shake that double-click the top left habit.
* * * * *
Back in the old days, we didn't have LiveJournal. We didn't have Blogger. We didn't even have the word blog. We started out by writing every page out by hand and linking and checking dependencies manually and placing them on www.geocities.com/Area51/7201/ or whatever the URL was for the 2 MB of space AOL gave us. And we liked it. Actually, I didn't and so I learned PERL and wrote my own custom journal script. And then we got LJ and Blogger and then Movable Type and finally Wordpress and I got lazy. I lost that edge I had back in the day when setting up a blog meant dedication instead of going from nothing to a Xanga full of smiley faces and textspeak and sparkles in three minutes. The art of web programming is almost lost to me; it's some arcane knowledge that I would need to unearth and rediscover with a mental team of Indiana Joneses.
Of course, back in the old days we were also in high school taking classes designed for millworking drones and had plenty of extra time to hack and slash away at this new thing called the Internet. Now we have jobs and mortgages and children and things to do. It's like once you're married in Harvest Moon you can't stay out too late without buying some cake for your wife. We just don't have the time nor the energy to screw around anymore. Now we don't walk uphill both ways not because we don't have to or because we are too old to, but because we have better things and more important things to do so we take the bus instead.
* * * * *
Yes, you. I'm talking to you with the VAX clusters and internal .plans that passed for blogs. You with memories of writing your own operating system from assembly or punchcards or whatever because your computer came as an empty slate. You with your porn printed on paper. I know you had it tougher. That's why I'm glad I'm not that old.
|
|
Comments: Read 53 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
|
|
|
I come at empty gestures from two different points of view. As a sort of engineer with OCD empty gestures are stupid because they're inefficient. As an artist empty gestures are stupid because every gesture as an inherit meaning. But! Instead of going all me-talking-about-metaphysical-stuff I'll tell you a story! Here. Story time.
Once upon a time I was a stage manager for a small show at a college. It was really stressful and overwhelmingly crazy. I was working with good people, but spending four hours a day with good people in a high stress situation is still not very healthy. At some point I noticed a really weird trend.
Everybody signs their e-mails with "Thanks."
The director who needed me to go buy a magazine for a prop. The asshole lighting designer. The actors complaining about something missing. The people protesting because we're ripping up an American flag on stage. All the people saying "you're screwing up". All the people saying "that was awesome". All the people saying "we hate you". All the people saying "fuck you" short of actually saying that. Everybody. Every single e-mail. Good or bad, they all ended with "Thanks."
Of course, sometimes it made sense. "Hey, Wing, can you get me a bucket? Thanks." Ignoring those, though, my guess is that half of the rest were passive-aggressive "do what I want you to do look I'm appreciating you so is it okay if you don't do that and do this?" and the other half were "everyone's doing it so I'll do it but I don't actually like you and you know that". Empty gestures. I could feel the passive-aggressiveness sometimes from the e-mail. It's hard to get sarcasm across on the Interwebs but it's easy to do passive-aggression.
Anyway, I started doing it too. Except that since I have pretty weird OCD and cannot lie when I write (unless it's fiction) I decided that well you know what I'm going to actually be thankful whenever I sign an e-mail. This sounds like a Thanksgiving after-school special, but, you know, it works. At first I just started appreciating other people more---even asshole lighting designer. Then my entire tone of writing softened. Every time I sign an e-mail I'd look back and go "okay this is not a sentence that denotes appreciation".
I still do this pretty often; not all the time. And, you know, it still works. Sometimes I sign with kthx when I'm sleepy or when I'm being endearing and it's okay because everyone I work with regularly knows what it means as my license plate is KTHXBYE.
Bonus Story: The magazine I had to buy for the play was Maxim. I swear the cashier (male) gave me the dirtiest look ever. He was saying "you horrible person how can you call yourself a man when you're buying that demeaning, horrific rag?" with his eyes while ringing me up at the register. I've had cashiers treat me like less of a horrible person when I was buying real porn.
|
|
Comments: Read 22 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
|
|
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
|
|
|
Hello, I'm Wing.
Through a sequence of events that can only be described as good fortune guiding the few good choices I made in life and dumb luck shielding me from the stupid things I did in my early twenties, I have somehow ended up working at a school set on a dairy farm in rural Vermont. Being one to squeal "omg cow secretions" and flail around helplessly whenever I go near a pail of raw milk I tend to stay away from the cows (and the turkeys, and the chickens, and the portable bacon factories). Instead I teach math to high schoolers. Through another sequence of rather silly but entirely reasonable events I'm actually the chair of the department; hijinks ensue when a 26-year-old attempts to lead a faculty body with an average age of 45 or so.
I've never done that whole education school thing that teachers tend to do before they teach. I prefer to learn by doing: the first time I got paid to do this I was 19 and was simply tossed in front of thirty students with absolutely no preparation, and things got better since as I keep gaining experience points. Right now the big issue that my brain is constantly revolving around is the similarity between contemporary math education and the eternal struggle between ninjas and pirates.
A poet once told me that she thinks of post-modernism as the idea of going back to the roots of art and working with the confines of traditional forms instead of completely abandoning them as modernism did. That's... what I love and do, actually. If I have free time and a friend or two I'll head down to the nearest town and find a pub with bluegrass playing. If I have more energy to do more than sitting there with a damn good microbrew listening to cute boys pickin' banjos I'll go another town south and head to a contra/square dance. On rare occasions I drive to old churches anywhere from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania and spend a day singing shape note hymn tunes written in the 1800s. But the thing is that the way we do these things nowadays is totally different than how they were done years ago; when I dance with someone who insists that we switch roles every 96 beats of music or so or when a lesbian Jewish Wiccan is enthusiastically singing of the glory of the Lord with me I can feel that something strange and absolutely wonderful is going on. We, the twenty-something weird, college educated, liberal, xkcd-reading folks are claiming the art and creating our own traditions and that is the most awesome thing I have seen us do.
(I cannot actually sing well. My ears are very bad and I have really, really bad hearing in one ear. It's a chronic condition and at this rate I'll qualify for disability claims pretty soon.)
I went on a tangent there.
Labels don't really work for me anymore. I'll just describe things here. I like girls. I like sleeping with boys but I can't deal with boys otherwise. I'm the one who latches on to your arm and hangs on to it when I'm in a relationship with you. I was born and am mostly a boy. My gender presentation depends on whether I have time to shave in the morning and what clean clothing I have available; though according to a friend I've pretty much stabilized at button down shirt, cargo/gypsy skirt and work boots. I actually have a style now. It's scary.
In case you haven't noticed already, I'm a huge nerd. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say that I'm a geek or whatever. I'm a nerd and it's pretty awesome. Sure, I roll Charisma for a living but the fact that I just made a White Wolf RPG reference while describing what I do makes me a nerd. And that's okay. I'm also pretty fat. Like, my BMI just went off the charts in Wii Fit. I'm okay with being fat and large folks in general but I'm not okay with the fact that, after working 60 to 70 hour weeks for a year or so, I'm so out of shape now that I can't really do what I want to do anymore. My body has lag time. It feels like a modem game of Starcraft sometimes and that is very bad.
As for my LJ, I started it to flirt with a girl back in college. And it stuck. Sometimes I write stupid things on it. Now it's mostly friends only and I don't really update it anymore because I don't have the time to write anything longer than a 140 character update very often. When I do get to do web-things I use my time for my blog and my webcomic. Hopefully this LJ Idol thing will change that...
|
|
Comments: Read 20 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Friday, September 4th, 2009
|
|
|
1 - Many math/science PhD program TA-ships are opportunities where awkward people with low Charisma teach other awkward people with low Charisma how to use Charisma-based skills. This means that that teaching does not actually happen because they want to avoid it or they do not actually know how to do it themselves.
1' - This leads to inane statements such as "grading calculus homework and a three-hour seminar will prepare you as a teacher in a situation that is not perfectly structured".
2 - Pick any random first-year teacher in a poor urban school district and a random first-year TA from an Ivy League university PhD program. The urban school teacher (not to be confused with the Urban School teacher who, by the sheer fact that Urban hired her, is probably amazing) will likely have much, much, much, much more preparation in teaching than the Ivy League TA.
2' - The evaluation of teachers in post-secondary education in general happens in key points and are done rarely unless something special is happening (contract continuation, evaluation for tenure, etc.), which directly correlates to the lack of a support system.
3, 1'' - A researcher in science education once told me about a physics professor that he knew and described his intro physics lectures as the best lectures you'll ever hear if you already knew physics, but otherwise completely unreasonable and hard to understand.
|
|
Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
|
|
|
Seriously, it sucked quite a bit. Details are under the cut. It involves airplanes and courts.
( Read more... )
Also, something I've discovered: there is a strong correlation between number/density/concentration of poor black people and places I don't want to be in. For example, I do not want to be in DC, Philadelphia, NYC and Tacoma and they all have a sizable poor black community (if you can call it that). I do want to be in Seattle, Portland, Vermont, (parts of) Boston and Canada, none of which, as far as I know, has that many poor black folks. The same thing happens when you consider neighborhoods. I'm not sure if this is racist or not, since if you trace causation instead of correlation it would seem like that a concentration of poor black people implies higher crime rates, older buildings, fewer restaurants I want to eat at, lack of access to organic free range meat, no bluegrass bands, etc., all of which are things that would make me like being in an area. I am not completely sure if the same correlation holds true for black folks who aren't poor because ANYTHING I PUT HERE WILL BE OFFENSIVE.
|
|
Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
|
| Subject: | Going Places |
| Time: | 11:08 pm. |
| Mood: |  sleepy. | | Music: | Infamous Stringdusters - Get It While You Can. |
|
Hey. I guess I should update.
I'm in San Francisco until Wednesday, and Portland OR until Saturday, and then in Seattle for one week.
You should hang out with me if you're in these places.
PS I suppose I'll be in Philly for like a day two weeks from now too. And Vermont, like all the time.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
|
boys at play is a collection of poetic wit and whimsy, featuring almost a half-dozen of comics/visual puns by yours truely
it is published by bicycle comics and the publisher will donate one dollar to the amherst college annual fund for each book sold
you can buy the book at amazon.com or poetry slam inc.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
|
|
|
|
I'm winglmui on Twitter if you want to follow me.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
|
|
|
|
I'll be in Boston this weekend for a friend's party on Saturday night. You should hang out with me because, for the first time in a while, my schedule is flexible.
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
|
|
|
|
anyone going? i may have a favor to ask of you
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
|
|
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
|
|
|
|
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
|
|
Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
|
|
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
|
|
|
This is what I posted on Twitter in the last 24 hours...
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
|
|
Comments: Add Your Own.
|
|
|
blah.
cranky.
cynical.
accomplished.
bouncy.
calm.![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
excited.
geeky.