Well, that was stupid

I usually wait several weeks (months) before reading student evaluations. I find I need to distance myself from the just-completed quarter in order to have the proper perspective on these things.

Stupid me, I looked.

The course I usually teach was fine; most were in the good-very good range. The course I picked up midway through the quarter--oh man. Not good at all. In my defense, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot I could have done at that point in the quarter, and the class setup stunk (it's obvious this guy just mailed it in for this course) but it's my name on the evaluation and not his. Crap. Can't wait to hear what my director has to say when we meet next week. Double crap.

Oh well.

Break is almost over and I've finished about a third of the stuff I wanted to do. Also not good.

It's a grey, grey day all around.

Back to work Monday

The Thanksgiving holiday is over. Eldest Daughter is back in the City Too Very Far Away. Son is on the last leg of his journey to the State Too Too Very Far Away. Spouse is in NYC for work. Youngest Daughter is still asleep. I am working on lectures for next week and watching The Fellowship of the Ring.

Son and I got up early (5 a.m.) to get him to the airport for his flight. The lines were horrendously long, and two guys tried to cut in line by sneaking under the ropes but the security guard caught them and made them go to the end. Son and I both thanked him. Another man came up and asked if he could cut in front of everyone because his flight was leaving soon. The guard told him he should have gotten there sooner, and sent him to the end. The line moved pretty fast, though, and soon Son was through the metal detector and on his way to his gate. I sighed, turned around, and made my way out to the truck.

God bless the parents who waited impatiently on Wednesday, with signs and balloons, for their children and came back a few days later to tearfully wave goodbye. Our hearts are divided into little pieces, scattered all over the country with our kids.

Took Kitty Son to the vet this morning to get his rabies shot. He sure was not happy. The vet said we have to start thinking about his dental health; with his liver shunt, it's risky to anesthetize him. I guess I'd better start brushing his teeth (there's a lovely thought) to see if we can put off the procedure for a while. KittyMama needs it done now, but she hasn't got his health issues.

It's raining and that's going to turn to snow tonight. I guess YD and I will head back to UniTown later this afternoon so we beat the snow showers. KittySon will REALLY not be pleased.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Everyone arrived safely and we had a wonderful family dinner (12 of us!). Now it's Pinky and the Brain reruns, leftovers, and finally relaxing.

Many thanks to God for this blessed country, this blessed day, and the blessings of family.

Waiting, waiting...

Son flies in tonight from grad school in the state too, too very far away. He was supposed to arrive around midnight--but he called and said the plane was delayed. Delayed so much that he would miss his connecting flight. So he found someone who helped him change flights and now he will arrive at 10:30 instead! I am so excited, because I miss him so terribly. It will be so great to see him. We brought KittyMama and KittySon to HomeCity so he would be able to spend time with them.

Tomorrow night Eldest Daughter arrives for the holidays. Thursday will truly be a sweet, sweet day of thanksgiving.

Last night I made four loaves of gluten-free bread for stuffing, finishing up at about 1 a.m. I went to bed around 2-ish, once I'd cleaned up from the breadmaking. For some reason I woke up at 7, so I got up and took my thyroid medicine and laid back down to read for a while. I fell back to sleep and woke up at 9:30 to a knock on the door. Turns out it was the landlady coming to have the furnace serviced. Yikes! I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, found my glasses, and let her in. Ack. At least the place was fairly neat.

So at the moment I'm watching a documentary about Tokyo Rose and waiting for Son's plane to come in.

Numbers Tuesday

Number of classes taught this quarter: 4
Number of students caught plagiarizing: 3
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up before grades were posted: 2
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up after grades were posted, just because they tried hard: 1
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up after grades were posted, so they could keep their scholarship: 2
Number of students asking to "see their project report" after grades were posted, which really means, "I want you to bump up my grade": 1
Number of minutes elapsing from the time grades were posted to the first "bump up" request: 20

I have strange students.

One came in yesterday and asked to hug Jean-Luc.

Another, who will be in one of my winter courses and who I've spoken to for a grand total of 20 minutes when he stopped in to ask about the course, sent me a Thanksgiving poem and inquired if I enjoyed the snow showers and if I've prepared for the holiday.

The cheater spent an hour making an IT tech look for an old assignment she likely never sent me.

A fourth paged me on the course management site to tell me he would talk to the owner of our hometown hockey team about turning the season around.

Why do I get the weird ones?

Something that has been bothering me

Academia is mostly made up of people who are more liberal than me. Way more. Like light-years more. Normally I can take that. But some things are really hard to understand, and this week I bumped up against a couple of them.

I'm a moderator at a website for graduate students. One of the regulars wrote a post asking people what jobs they would not take under any circumstances. The list included the gambling industry, the porn industry, legal system in countries with the death penalty---and the armed forces.

Ooooooooooooooookay.

Given human nature, and the propensity for countries to go to war against one another, I'm betting this person would be one of the first shouting for soldiers to help repel invaders. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for soldiers and sailors and pilots from her country and the US, she'd be speaking German.

Smacks of 1) extreme naivete, 2) insufferable self-righteousness, and 3) appalling ingratitude.

Soldiering is an honorable profession and even more so as the people she would not deign to work with would, without question, defend her to their death. And they'd be polite to her no matter how much she shuns them. Shame on her.

The second thing was "multicultural diversity awareness training". I had to sit through an hour of this travesty yesterday (thank GOD it was only an hour!). First off, it was insulting. We had to read a stupid skit loaded with ponderously obvious prejudicial statements. Then we were praised for recognizing the obvious. There was a very REAL issue that we should have discussed, but of course the dead horse of our supposedly rampant bias against women and minorities had to be beaten. Of the 17 attendees at this session, 6 were women (two faculty, two staff, two deans) and 6 were minorities (5 faculty, 1 staff). This whole sideshow was mandated by HR, which is rapidly gaining a reputation for stridency and obstructionism. The faculty recruitment process is totally constipated by HR's requirements and stupid mandates.

An interesting thing I noted--political affiliation was not included on any of these "don't ask" questions. Maybe because it's assumed that one is a loving, tolerant, liberal Dhimmicrat ;-) (A few of us horrible, war-mongering, conservative Repuglicans have managed to confuse their sensors and slip by--but shush! Don't tell!)

Two in one week, or the black hole of plagiarism

In the course of correcting homework this week I found a cheater in my online class and a cheater in my data mining class.

Cheater #1 is taking his zero like a man, without complaint. Cheater #2 is whining and kicking and crying all the way, insisting it's not her fault and she just made a mistake and sent me the wrong file, etc. etc. etc. I've spent a goodly amount of time this morning being DetectiveMom instead of DrMom and I resent the waste of my time and energy.

Plus the bank was nice and gave back $38 of the NSF fees from the hotel debacle, then turned right around and charged an additional $114.

It's been a REAL GOOD week. Yup. And it's only Wednesday.

One down! Plus bunny sightings

I have finished one course. Grading is done, grades are entered. Three more to go. The end is in sight!

We have a bunny who hangs around the condo. Maybe he's friends with the chipmunk...but I digress. Anyway, when I come home after class at night, the bunny is usually sitting on the lawn close to the condo wall. He watches me warily and then runs off into the field. I wish he would stay and visit a while, because I would love to ask Mr. Bunny a question. Why, Mr. Bunny, with all the grass around and that lovely field with its bramble thicket, do you have to poop on the sidewalk?

Little bunny pellets, strewn up and down the sidewalk like miniature doodoo grenades, just waiting for a unsuspecting, deeply-ridged sole to collect them and bring them inside where it's warm and dry.

Thank you, America's Veterans

AP photograph, courtesy FoxNews.com

“The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;

The LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”


If you haven't said thanks yet, please visit this site and fill out a card for our troops.

Conference disaster

It's the in-between paychecks week for both Spouse and me, and since we had two major activities this pay period (my conference and our friend's daughter's wedding) we're coming down to payday again with less than $100 in both checking accounts. That would, normally, be fine as we don't have any big expenses to pay between now and Wednesday. Well, not this time.

Yesterday when I logged on to the bank website to schedule some payments for next week, I saw we had a hugely negative balance in our joint account. At first I didn't panic, because this bank (which we have decided to leave after 10+ years) has started putting large holds (sometimes as much as four times the actual amount) on non-check transactions such as ATM withdrawals (even from its own machines) and debit card-as-credit purchases. Twice in the past few months we've thought we had some problem when our balance dropped dramatically (always on weekends!) and it turned out to be these holds.

Not this time.

It seems someone in my department who shall remain nameless didn't fill out the form properly when paying for my conference hotel. As a result, the hotel charged ME for the three-day stay, to the tune of $600. Color me surprised! I called the hotel three times before I got through to a person in the billing department, then had to call my department to get the proper form faxed, and it's going to take a while to get this charge off my account. In the meantime, we are incurring about $150 in NSF fees unless the bank grants my request not to assess them (not bloody likely).

Argh. I have transferred money from other accounts but those will take a couple days to arrive. In the meantime, we are making preparations to switch banks and close out this account. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Time to get Youngest Daughter up for skating. Then it's grading jail for me.

Great news from Michael Yon: THANKS AND PRAISE!


You'll find this dispatch at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/thanks-and-praise.htm

Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Infantry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)

Catching up after the conference

I'm way behind on lots of work, so these are short little items from the past few days:

• Conference was okay. I have never seen so many tall, skinny guys with prominent Adam's apples.
• Seattle looks like Portland where my hotel was. A few blocks down, it looks like HomeCity.
• I walked to the Pike Place market Monday morning, had a mediocre breakfast in a restaurant overlooking Puget Sound (great view, lousy--and expensive--pancakes), then managed to see the guys at City Fish fling a three-foot-long fishie. Amazing.
• There's a Starbucks on nearly every street. Across from the Starbucks, a Seattle's Best Coffee.
  
• My hotel internet access was terrible.
• A man sitting behind me in one of the sessions was clicking away madly on his computer, getting his presentation ready(I turned around to see what he was doing). It took all my willpower not to say "Hey, dude--I am 99% sure that the Enter key will work even if you don't whack it as hard as possible." It was really LOUD, all that whacking. Then he took out the 250-page conference guide, loudly riffled through the pages, slammed it shut with a bang, noisily gathered his stuff together, and hustled out of the room. How rude! I felt really sorry for the presenter.
• I got asked tons of gotcha-type questions (all of which I countered) but no one else in my session did. One guy asked me a question that had nothing to do with the topic of my talk. Grrrrr.
• NSF had great promotional giveaways--rubber balls that looked like Earth. I scarfed two.
• Chocolate promotional giveaways were more common this year. We've evolved beyond Hershey kisses to little Dove dark chocolate squares. Yummmmmmm.
• Northwest Airlines has the tiniest seats scrunched close together. On the way to Seattle my seat was getting kicked by the kid sitting behind me. On the Seattle-Detroit leg the woman in the middle seat kept leaning over on me to read her SkyMall catalog, very closely and very carefully. I finally told her I'd gladly climb out on the wing to give her more room, but the airline frowns on that. Between her elbow in my side and the guy in the seat ahead of me, who reclined completely and kept pushing back on his seat, I sat in about a 2 ft by 2 ft space for 3 1/2 hours. So much for doing work during the flight. I couldn't hardly even find the room to read my book.
• Northwest also doesn't even give out pretzels. Drinks, yes--but no food. I bought a bag of nuts to snack on, but forgot the essential element: one must have scissors to open the bag, and scissors are prohibited on airlines now.
• I'm never flying Northwest again if I can help it.
• Got to the Seattle airport quite a bit early Tuesday morning for the flight back East. It must have been Musician Day at the airport, because there were several guitar-toting passengers holding up the security lines. One couple had a guitar and two bags. They held up the x-ray line for several minutes while they fished things out of their bags. One bag was full of sound equipment, all of which they removed and put in totes. Then the woman tried going through the metal detector with her purse. The man ahead of me (also toting a guitar) was so interested in looking around at the long line of passengers that he wasn't paying attention to what was going on in front of him. I had to ask him to move along a couple of times. He spread his stuff out over a 6-8 foot range, and by the time he was ready to move the first of his things toward the x-ray machine, the entire length of the counter and conveyor to the machine was bare and the man ahead of him already had his shoes and suitcoat back on. Sheesh.
• Once I finally made it back to HomeCity, Spouse and I went to vote. After we did our civic duty (our candidate won! yay!) we walked out to the car and nearly got run over by a man backing out. I should have pounded on his trunk, he didn't look at all before he started moving. Obliviot.
• Conferences during the academic year are a royal pain because there's just too much that gets backed up and put off.
  

Blogging from the airport

I've been here since 5:15 a.m. and still have another hour and forty minutes before my plane takes off. Spouse needed to drop me off here early as he is off to State Capital for a wedding (college friends' daughter--I am SO bummed that I am missing the festivities!). Made it through security with no problems, then as I was walking to my gate I heard a siren going off. Turns out that a man in one of the other gates had a heart attack or something--they were working on him, intubating and IV-ing and getting him on a gurney for transport to the nearest hospital. He didn't look good. I prayed for him while they moved him to the waiting ambulance.

Normally I like traveling but this time I just wanted to stay home. Maybe it's because I'm really really tired, or maybe it's because Youngest Daughter is having a hard time with her Italian class, or because Son is having a hard time with his new job, but it just feels like a bad time to be winging to the west coast. Sigh. I come back on Tuesday. Tuesday can't get here fast enough.

The other bummer is that my computer is going to run out of battery power before I get to Seattle. There used to be electrical outlets here at the terminal but there don't seem to be any now. I hope I can score some power at Detroit, because the leg from Detroit to Seattle is four hours and I wanted to get some work done en route. Guess I'd better shut down now, while I still have about an hour of juice left.