Through BeyondPod, I can get the official White House feed of speeches. That is more political geek than CSPAN. Still, I wish that someone could pass a law banning applause during the SOTU until the very end. It is SO tedious to listen to.
Brad Tuttle, in this 2010 blog post, counted 18 minutes (!) of applause in that SOTU.
Filed under humor, life, Politics, Power, Activism
Funny, odd, touching chat with an old and dear friend….
FROM CHAT
Filed under life
Being a minor or XX chromosome-d seems to impede developing the life skill of plunging.
A low flush toilet (Gerber Toilets, I’m looking at you), that requires five flushes for every #2 is a pile of shit.
Particularly good observation, I think:
Filed under life
I am on UFL (Untenured Faculty leave) this year, that is, Bucknell gives me part of my salary in exchange for the expectation that lots of work will get done. Sounds like a good deal.
I have many projects in midstream. I struggle with how to prioritize which project to work on, and within a given project, what tasks are needed, how long they will take, and when to do them. Add to this my tendency to think locally and globally at the same time. So, for example, with a qualitative study of virtual worlds, the local is to review some data. At the same time, I am aware that I never set up what I consider a satisfactory system for handling qualitative data. it needs to be stored, to be accessible to my collaborators, to be searchable and to be able to be handled and combined flexibly. How to do that? So, the local and the global tug at my attention. Meanwhile, a third mental routine starts to count how much time I spend worrying about local vs global and madly trying to calculate cost-benefit. At about this point, it all seems too much trouble and I go read Huffington Post or something.
So, perhaps there is a software app that will enable me to more simply look at multiple projects, add tasks, prioritize and reprioritize, and then fit it into a calendar. And, isn’t UFL a good time to retool my work systems and invest some time in self-improvement?
Any regular readers of this blog (if you exist) will recall “the grid”, a simple table for tracking scholarly work in different stages. I take no credit for it, it is something I learned from colleagues at Bucknell I met in a writing group. What I am looking for would allow me to go within each line (a project) on the grid and do at least three things: 1) establish tasks and subtasks and 2) assign amount of time and schedule when i would do those things and 3) establish levels of priority to help me figure out when to do what.
So, instead of spontaneously trying some application, or improvising with OneNote and other MS products, I decided to be more rational. I asked some friends and on Facebook for suggestions. Many came in! Yeah friendsourcing! (like crowdsourcing, but with friends).
I will review the different options in further posts.
Filed under life, Research, technology, writing
Here is an overview of where we will be this May and summer as we embark on the zim-com caravan of fun!
Zimmerman-Comas Family Caravan of Fun – Summer 2010
Please let us know if we are ever near you! We would love to see and visit with lots of dear friends and family.
Throughout our travels, we can be reached by e-mail. Until 31 July, we can be reached by cell phone.
May 10-14 JC in Knoxville.
May 14-16 Multifamily camping trip in RB Winter
May 17-June 11 Lewisburg
11 June Depart Lewisburg
11-25 June Red House Cabin, Yancey County, North Carolina (Time zone = EST)
25 June – 8 July 3928 Lincolnshire St., Annandale, VA, 22003 (EST)
[28 June – 4 July] Jordi at EGOS conference in Lisbon (EST+6)
8 – 21 July Oregon (EST-3)
9-16 Newport; 16-21 Corvallis
21 – 27 July Annandale, VA again (EST)
27 – 31 July Reykjavik, Iceland (EST+4)
31 July – 18 August Cuckfield, UK (EST+5)
18 – 19 August Travel by Brittany Ferries from Portsmouth to Santander, Spain
19 August onward Secretari Coloma 114-18-1, Barcelona 08024, Spain (EST+6)
Filed under life, Uncategorized
This is the obituary for my late father. I re-posted it here with the correct paragraph breaks.
Frank Vilanova Comas, born Francisco Comas i Vilanova, passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family on Monday, March 22, at home. He was a research and clinical physician in Oak Ridge and Knoxville ending his career as the Director of Radiation Oncology at UT Hospital in 1994. At that time, his colleagues initiated the “Frank Comas Annual Cancer Oration” to honor his “relentless pursuit” of medical excellence and his “wit and wisdom” in driving his fellow dedicated colleagues.
He was born on February 16, 1926 in Barcelona, Spain, to Josefa Vilanova i Montiu and Francisco Comas i Durall. He grew up with his sisters, Rosa and Pepa (Josefa), during a time of tumult that included the Spanish Civil War. He enjoyed music, sports, and spending time with his uncle, Pelayo, on their farm in Premía D’Ált.
After entering the pre-medical university program at the University of Barcelona, he endured a terrible accident that would shape his whole life for better and for worse. On March 13, 1945 he lost both legs in a traffic accident on the streets of Barcelona. Continue reading
Filed under life
In my on-going quest to refashion English to my liking, I stumbled onto a new acronym recently. I proudly present:
Writing As Much As I Fucking Can
Pronounced, I suggest, “Wham-Aif-Ick.”
Uses: when you need to convey that you are hyper-focused on finishing a writing project, when you are in that sweet spot of enough stress to feel juiced but not so much that despair hangs about you like the odor of old cooking grease, then you can simply tell others to take a number and wait in line because you are WAMAIFC!
It is also handy for the whole short-form text world of status updates, IMing, cell phones and so on.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“WAMAIFC!”
You are welcome.
Filed under life, Uncategorized, words, writing
It is 8:30 pm.
My day, in short.
Up at 5:00. Shower and pack.
5:40. Drive to airport and communicate with Jeff and Laura about how to get Frank’s Car.
8:40- Arrive Detroit.
Noon Flight is canceled.
I am put on a 2 pm flight.
It is delayed.
Once.
Twice.
It has a gate change.
It has another gate change.
I check in to get my boarding pass. Ticket agent swipes me twice. Then says “You are already on the plane.” I think this an odd comment, buy hey, everyone is frazzled. More on this later.
Another delay.
We board just as I am reading the news about how all Interstates in East and southern PA are closed. I-80 (mine) is almost impassable.
As it turns out, my boarding pass says I am Jenny Warren. She is a nice horse trainer from Wisconsin. Her boarding pass says Jenny Warren. The ticket agent took my old boarding pass when she gave me this one. I never checked to see if it had my name on it.
Ticket agent comes on board and says we are over critical weight and we have to fly with 49/50 passengers. He has to kick off someone. WTF? Shouldn’t a commercial plane be over-engineered to carry the weight of 50 really, really fat or dense people??? He asks where “Jodii Cromaz” is. I realize it is me. He is thinking about kicking me off but I point out I had a confirmed boarding pass which the other ticketing agent took when she performed a technical though not anatomical sex change and made me the very nice Jenny Warren. Who is sitting next to me. His swift weight-conscious judgment falls on the last stand-by passenger. He gets booted. The stewardess starts complaining about how she is on the 7th day of her rotation.
We fly. All seems fine.
We start descending into AVP airport. It is very bumpy. No visibility out the side windows. Swirling wind and snow. Plane feels like it is accelerating and decelerating several times. Woman across the aisle says she can see the ground at 300 ft. I can too, but in patches. Stewardess looks like she is trying to look calm.
Pilot comes on and says he cannot land.
We are going to Syracuse, NY- 20 minutes away.
We land. A huddle between stewardess, pilot, and local gate agent. We will call him John. John comes on the PA and says that they are looking into things.
I start texting frantically.
John comes back on and says we can not go back to AVP. The conditions will not improve in short term. So, since there are fewer hotel rooms than us, and Syracuse is smaller than Knoxville’s airport, our best option is to fly back to DETROIT. Ugh. He says it is too dangerous to take ground transport to AVP. He says if any of us do anything that makes the plane stay in Syracuse for more than 60 minutes the flight crew will be beyond it’s legal maximum for working hours and something vague and menacing will happen.
We deplane so we can pee and they bring us sandwiches.
I call a hotel and car company thanks to some quick texting and googling on Mike and Virginia’s part.
I ask the other gate agent (not John) if I can get my carry on bag. I explain to her that I am not Jenny Warner, but that I am Jordi and I am getting off the plane.
I’ll crash here and drive down to Scranton tomorrow, get my car (Bernie), and then Bernie and I will put out our hands in the fine people of PennDOT and their big snow plows to go home on I-80.
Which is how I ended up writing you this email from a Holiday Inn in Syracuse while I wait for some steak tacos to be delivered.
Filed under humor, life, Uncategorized, writing
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