April 28
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result. In which case I am slowly going insane at my job... I am making tiny changes to an XSL template file - tiny changes - specifically, I am changing a table border from "0" to "1" so I can see the tables I am working with so I can figure out the best way to rearrange them to get the page layout I want. The problem is that these tiny changes that should be no problem at all are causing the whole system to choke and die... and even restoring the files to their original state (by copying over working files from the live server to the test server) does not cancel out all of the errors. So I continue to bang my head against the brick wall... deleting and reimplementing the same changes over and over again, hoping that the errors will all magically go away this time.
I would rather think about the weekend, which was quite nice. Now that the weather has warmed up enough and most of the pesky students have gone home, Sunday afternoon fencing has been relocated to the grassy area near the bell tower on North campus. Which is nicer because of the sun and the breeze and vastly more room for the fencers and heavy fighters to co-exist in peace. The downside is that you have to go much farther to get to the bathrooms and water fountain, but there are trade-offs to everything.
April 25
I am slowly getting used to a new schedule - up at 6am. Yep, I am becoming a regular early bird. Not that I catch any worms. But just because I am getting used to my new early rising schedule does not mean that I like it. I dislike it quite a bit. I am not a morning person. I am a late night person. Which means that when midnight rolls around, I am generally still quite wide awake and not at all ready to go to bed.
But unfortunatly, as much as I like to be able to stay up late and then sleep in and get up at my leisure I also like to not be working late into the evening. That is my time and I guard it fiercly. So the only viable option is to start getting up early so I can get my work done earlier so that I can have late afternoons and evenings in which to enjoy recreational activities. Or do chores. Whichever is most needed at the time.
April 24
I am currently being hugely frustrated by XSL - and in particular a very specific XSL stylesheet that I am attempting to modify. So as not to unduly disturbe the live system, I am working on the modifications on a test/development server. The simplest changes that I make... for instance setting a table border from "0" to "1" throw up massive errors when I try to open the XSL file in IE. And of course when I attempt to apply the XSL file to the system that is running on the test server, I see no changes at all to the page that is supposed to display the alterations. Which in this case are 1 pixel table borders. So now I am sitting here alternately glaring at Dreamweaver MX, IE, my locally stored files, the live system files, and the remote files on the test server and wondering just what is going wrong and whose problem it is.
April 22
I think that this will probably end up being a gripe log... the past couple of days have been not the best. No huge catastrophes or disasters, though. Just lots of the small annoyances that the universal 'mom-figure' we all carry in our subconsciousness urges us to 'ignore it - it is not worth making a big deal out of' and 'just grin and bear it'. And it is inevitable these little things that get ignored which pile up and pile up and eventually become the straw that breaks the camel's back. I am not saying that people should complain more anout the little things. But as a society, we put maybe a little too much stock into having a stiff upper lip - which leads us to ignore the things that will eventually do us in.
These are the things that lead down the primrose path that ends in breakdowns and heart attacks.
So on to my gripes. I have had a low grade headache all day so far. Not anything so incapactating as a migrane, painful and distracting anyway. And the fact that I am not currently laid out on a couch with a cold washcloth over my eyes but am still functional makes it worse. At least with a migrane it is hell for a few hours and then over. One of these background headaches can last for days. I suspect that it was at least partly caused by the fact that I have not been getting enough sleep lately. Innsomnia has been coupled with the fact that I have been trying to alter my sleep schedule so that I go to bed a little earlier (before midnight) and get up earlier (around 6:00am). Now I am not only not tired at all when I go to bed, but I end up tossing and turning for hours...and feel like I got no rest at all when my alarm goes off in the morning. Plus my allergy season is kicking in (Allergy season #1: pollen, especially grass pollen. Allergy season #2 in the fall is mostly ragweed).
And I know that I shouldn't gripe about my job - hell, in this job climate I should feel damn lucky to be working at all - but I have job gripes anyway. Most of them have to do with my inability to find complete satisfaction in what I am doing. I should face it - I am just geared toward the sanctuary of the ivory tower. Next fall if I am lucky I will be back at school somewhere in a PhD program.
Bleh. I am just bitching. My life does not suck. I am just disapointed because it does not match up to what I thought it would be like to be a 'grown-up'.
April 20
This weekend was Easter weekend. And, in a change of tradition, I did not participate in the standard family-oriented Easster activities. Instead I spent the weekend in West Virginia (in the middle of classic coal country) filthy and wet and crawling around in the mud deep underground in a cave. First time I ever went caving. It was fun. And, as sore and tired as I got, I would still do it again.
April 17
Yesterday being the last day of classes at UM, and my friends Sarah and Liz being about to graduate from SI, we did as any young Americn would do and went out to celebrate. We ended up at La Dolche Vita, a restaurant on Main street that is completely devoted to fine drinks and very fine desserts. And yesterday was a pretty hectic and crazy day for me...one of those days where you are busy the whole day but feel as though little was actually accomplished.
Hint: I started the day off at the Secretary of State since I had to renew my licence. And it kind of rolled downhill from there...
So by the time I got to La Dolche Vita, I was in dire need of "a hot dessert and a cold drink". I got both. Actually, when it came to the drink, I got a bit more than that. It was pretty busy, and our server accidently flubbed our drink order. The drinks we got were perfectly good, just not what we had ordered. I didn't even know anything was wrong until she came back to apologize for the mishap. So that round was a freebie and the 'real' drinks arrived slightly later. As a result - I mean, we don't want to waste all of these perfectly good drinks, right? - I had slightly more then I counted on.
I even let Sarah talk me into trying a 'petit cigarillo'. Basically a small cigar. smoking a cigar is nothing at all like smoking your garden-variety cigarette. for one thing, you don't inhale. According to Sarah, that will just make you sick. Instead you just puff away. And puff away I did... I got a very 1930s era gangster film sort of feeling out of it. And I have now complete changed my opinion that cigars are foul and smell like wet burning leaves. Apparently my friends while I was an undergrad so many years ago simply had horrible taste in cigars. This one had quite a sweet flavor, and the smoke tasted like vanilla and cherries.
We also met (were hit on?) by some very drunk businessmen who had "been drinking shots of single-malt scotch for the past two hours" who had been taking bets on whhether they could guess people's majors. I think that the fact that all three of us were out of grad school and in technical fields completely threw them off. They looked to be in their 40s or 50s and so were guessing some very 'female' majors - like home economics (is this even taught anymore?), education, nursing, business marketing, communications, english... One of the ones guessed for me was early childhood education. Way off! I think they were somewhat stymied by the fact that women could be in technical fields. In any case, they were way off base on all of their guesses for all three of us. A nice illustration of the generation gap right there. Kind of an amusing encounter, though...
April 15
April 15 - tax day - has come and gone without any rains of fire, earthquakes, or other destruction... other than that to my checkbook as I made out a check to the good old US gov't for the amount I stil owed them. Actually, I did my taxes about a month ago, but as yesterday was tax day, which NPR (as well as a number of newspapers) noted it was on my mind. Not that I object to paying taxes. Though I do prefer to be getting checks from the government to haveing to send them out. This year was particularily bitter ... I feel like every cent is going to fund a war in a distant country (that I strongly object to) which is cheerfully funded by a president who repeatedly turns a blind eye to the many problems in this country.
April 14
The worst thing in the whole world is to see your mother cry.
I went home this weekend to be with my Mom and see relatives and visit my Granny in the hospital. Last weekend she had a dissecting aortic aneurism and had to have immeadiate surgery. Not a stroke or a heart attack, but just as bad. She is still in the hospital and will probably still be in the hospital for a couple of weeks before she makes a stop at a rehab facility on the way back home. I am used to seeing my Granny with bright clothes, and makeup, and lots of jewelery, and one of those shellacked old-lady perms, and very much in charge. So it was really hard to see her in a hospital gown, no bright clothes, no makeup, no jewelery, hair all messed up, only half-conscious and babbling on medication. And I am not even that close to her...I cannot imagine how hard this all is on my Mom.
Granny is out of the woods, according to the doctors, but she still has a long road to recovery ahead of her.
At least I got to see my uncle Mike and my uncle John, both of who had come to town and niether of whom I had seen in over four years. The week after Easter, my aunt Donna will be coming in from Spain, and I will try to get back to Cleveland that weekend as well. To see my Mom and Granny and her.
I would go again this weekend for Easter, but I have that caving expedition that has been in the works for a while... But I told Mom that if anything happened or if she needed me or thought I ought to be there... to just call and I would come. even though Ann Arbor is about three hours from Cleveland, I am glad that I live close enough that I can go down there at relatively short notice.
This is also one of those times where I am really glad to have a cell phone, buecase Mom will be able to get hold of me even when I am not at home. I just hope that nothing happens to make her need to contact me.
April 11
After much irritation and complaints to Ameritech, my phone is fixed. Or at least it ought to be fixed and I have not yet noticed any horrible problems with it. So I will assume that the technician was not jerking me around when he said that he thought he had located and taken care of the problem. Seems that the swicth box on the outside of my building where all of the phone lines come together nefore rejoining the outside world has gotten clogged somehow with mud and decaying leaves and all a manner of debris. Which was probably mouldering in there and causing all sort of shorts and other associated problems. I wonder if anyone else in my apartment complex was also complaining? I may never know...
April 9
Who wins in a war? I mean, really... who does? What is the point of this war that the US government is currently waging against Iraq? Yes, I know... the great eternal ideals of freedom and democracy (as long as it is the US government's ideas of freedom and democracy). I have never been in favor of the war and as it drags on I get even more bitter and pessimistic about it and all of the reasons that our government cited for it in the first place.
War only benefits the higher ups...the people in power... the ones who don't need any help, in other words. Everyone else just gets trampled on along the way. Bush says that we are doing this to "free the Iraqi people". I saw a picture of an Iraqi boy in Time magazine yesterday... he was in a hospital because he had lost both arms and been badly burned over most of his body after a marketplace was bombed. The photo caption said that he did not yet know that the rest of his family had been killed. Is this "freeing the Iraqi people"? It seemes to me that scenes like this will only become more common as the war drags on. Bush says that the war will stimulate the economy. But the stock market continues to drop, layoffs continue unabated, and the lines of people collecting on unemployment just grow even longer. Where the the glorious market stimulation?
I admit that I am one of the people being hit hard by the latter... I was downsized from my company just over a month ago now and am having terrible trouble finding work. I have a MIS/MLS degree, web development experience, and library experience, and I want to work in technical services/web development in a library setting. And there is nothing out there. There are hiring freezes all over, and in many places there are active rounds of layoffs. How can I compete in this kind of employment enviornment? what can I do and where can I go? I have some savings built up, so I am not hurting yet... but I will be soon. And then what?
April 8
I have heard that theeconomy of the US is moving from a factory/industry oriented model to a service oriented model. And if that is so, then the service industry has a long way to go here. You all know what I am talking about. when was the last time that you dealt with your local cable company? Yeah, you know what I am talking about.
I have been having a lot of problems with my phone line lately. hisses, pops, electronic crackle, dead lines, echoes of distant conversations, you name it. So I finally got fed up with it all and called my friendly local phone company - Ameritech. They were able to determine from a remote test that, yes, there was a problem on my line and would I like to have a repairman (sorry, -technician-) come out to look at it? Yes, of course I would like to have my phone line fixed so that I can hold conversations and be able to hear the person on the other end of the line. So a time was set... I could expect the technician between 8am and noon today. A nice wide four-hour window of opportunity.
Of course, the technician never came. At 11:30 I called Ameritech to find out what the (@&#^@($^&*^#! was going on. The very unhelpful individual who answered the phone said that there was a service tag on my account and that I should just wait for the technician. He was probably on his way even as we were speaking.
Well, could she check to make sure that he was on his way? Was he running late?
No, she couldn't (read: wouldn't) check. I had to just wait.
So I spent the next 40 minutes fuming to myself. Noon came and went. No technician. So I called Ameritech again. By the time I got through to a service representative at about 12:15 I had worked up a fine icy rage.
What was the problem? Well, it is well after noon and my promised trechnician never showed up. After 5 minutes on hold, the service representative informed me that they were running late and were still at a previous appointment, but I was, of course next on the list. If I waited the technician would be sure to be there soon. Would I wait? Of course I can't wait...I have work to get to, and if the technician is still at a previous appointment then how much longer should I wait for him to be finished and get to my place?
I rescheduled. For Thursday (April 10). 8am to noon window. Hopefully this time the technician will show up.
If they were running late, couldn't they call in so that the people who were waiting for them could be notified of the delay? No, of course not. God forbid that a service industry actually attempt to serve its customers. And I don't think that I am way off base or asking for too much to expect that if the phone company says that a technician will be at my door within a specified time period, that they will indeed be there. And that if something happens or the technician is running late and will not make it within the time frame, that they ought to call and notify the customer in a timely fashion so that the customer can decide if they want to wait or reschedule. I don't expect perfection. I know better than that. But I do expect people to do their job and do properly.
April 2
Sometimes you just want to have a camera with you. I really ought to just start to carry my digital camera around with me as a matter of course. On campus today heading toward the Population Studies Center, I saw a campus bus with a greati sign on it. The UM Campus busses typically have their destinations indicated on signs above the windshield - ie. Bursley-Baits, Commuter Nothbound, Commuter Southbound, Chrysler, Northwood, etc. instead of one of these signs, the bus I saw this morning sported the phrase "I'm Lost" in place of the normal route designation. Made me wonder... was this a new driver who really was lost? Or was this just someone with a well-developed sense of humor?
Speaking of well-developed senses of humor... in all of the affirmative action/racial preferences hullabaloo yesterday, I forgot that it was April Fool's Day. Normally something like that is hard to miss, since the campus newspaper is gernerally very enthusiastic about its April Fool's Day edition. But not yesterday - yesterday they were very serious about the war in Iraq, the Supreme Court hearings, and the Michigan budget crisis. So, no happy, lighthearted joke issue.
I wonder how many people saw the huge irony in the Supreme Court hearing the pro and con affirmative action arguments on April Fool's Day? The person who set that date up in the docket must have one wicked sense of humor.
April 1
If you are at all interested in the Affirmative Action uproar at the Univeraity of Michigan, then today is the big day. The first of the big days, actually... today the Supreme Court will hear the arguments. As for when they will deliver their decision from on high? Well that will be the second big day, and I don't know when that will be. According to the news posts on the UM website, the Supreme Court generally delivers its decisions before the end of its current term - which this year ends on July 1. I am going to hazard a guess that we may have to wait a while before the decision on this case.
Is affirmative action good or bad? Should it be struck down, modified, or preserved as it is? I am all for abolishing it myself. Diversity is great and I am all for it...I like learning about other people's viewpoints and how they grew up. But you can't put a bunch of black kids and a bunch of white kids on the same campus and call it diverse. It just doesn't work that way. Diversity is not just the color of your skin - it is where and how you grew up. Frankly I have always felt that I learn more when I talk to foreign students or to people who grew up in different parts of the country. THAT is diversity. But sit me next to a black kid from Cleveland Heights where I went to high school? I probably won't gain a single thing from that converstaion because we will have had similar experiences. Geographic and socioeconomic diversity are much more important that diversity based only on the color of someone's skin. And frankly, I think everyone should be judged only on their achievements and merits, with no thought to background or race taken into consideration at all. One of the things that the Supreme Court will no doubt be looking at are UM's retention and graduation rates of the minorities admitted under affirmative action. The UM newspaper, the Michigan Daily, did a piece on those a couple of days ago. And believe me, they aren't that great. Could UM be admitting students that simply cannot handle it here academically, just because their skin is a certain color? If they are, then UM is doing those kids no service at all by accepting them to a university that they are bound to fail out of.
My suggestion for UM - should they ever ask me, which I doubt that they would - would be to eliminate all points that applicants are given for race. 20 points is a lot of points to award someone for something they can't control - how they were born. More points ought to be given for what they can control - what their grades are, what ports and clubs they belonged to, if they did and volunteer work or were active in their community. Save some points, maybe 5 or so, for socioeconomic status. I am sure that people on the UM campus could learn more from a conversation with the poor white son of an Upper Penninnsula farmer than they could from a conversation with the black son of a Grosse Pointe laywer.
I have a bet going with John. Just a small one. If the Supreme Court upholds affirmative action at UM then I will buy him an ice cream from Stucci's. And if the Supreme Court strikes doen affirmative action, then he will buy me an ice cream. Either way ice cream is had and we both end up happy. What will the Supreme Court decide? I know that I am betting for the removal of affirmative action, but I think that the Supreme Court will try to make a middle-of-the-road compromise decision that will anger all of the perties involved and please no one. They really have a no-win situation on their hands.
So now you all say..."Wait, you are a white female, so you have affirmative action working for you as well...why are you so against it?" Well, yes. Being female does help me a little, in theory, but never so that have actualy noticed it. I just thinkt hat everything should be color and gender blind. I hate filling out those little demographic statistic cards... I know that they are involuntary, but I always worry that if I decline to fill them out, that will be points against me. And when I fill them out I always worry... I have to check off 'white' - being of Eastern European descent, there isn't anything else I could check off - but I always fret that I will miss out on opportunities because I am not an underrespresented minority. Unless you count it as a 'minority' to be a woman and be a computer geek.
Down with human resources and their statistics and their demographic questionare cards!