gottahavacuppamocha

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith came out today, and while I wasn’t one of the die hard souls to see it at 12:01 am, I got done with work early and saw it.

If you have problems with spoilers, profanity, randomness, or spelling errors, then I suggest you avert your eyes. Otherwise, feel free to click for Continue Reading »

I can’t decide whether to do some writing or reading, so I decided to blog instead while I make up my mind.

Yesterday, after I got daily dose of blogs, Fark, and Slashdot, I took a nap. I woke up around 12:30 this morning and haven’t been back to sleep yet. Not a sleeping problem per se, just when I tried to lay down to go to sleep I wasn’t that tired and I had some sinus/congestion issues going on. I took a DayQuil, which helped with the latter, but I’m still not tired yet.

I spent most of the morning surfing the web and whiled away many hours at Wikipedia. What I love about Wikipedia is all of the links can take you on an amazing journey. I started out with smallpox (which was linked on the main page) and ended up with Banned Books. It is a great site to spend a few hours.

I am pretty sure I will not sign up for another class in place of Literary Masterpieces. Instead, I’ll just wait until the Creative Writing class starts up. Every so often, I like to take a crack at writing stories, but I am as bad at finishing those as I am at finishing reading books that are already written. Plus, when you add in the occassional hard drive failure and no backups, it gets a bit frustrating. And of course, there is the inevitable writer’s block where I might reach a section in a story and can’t figure our where it goes next. Still, there is at least a certain satisfaction in trying it, particularly if I get in a good groove where I might type 10-15 pages in a sitting.

I have one idea for a story (probably a short story), that I wrote a basic outline for, but I have yet to actually start writing it. I also have another story that started out as a series of writing exercises for myself, but I’m trying to keep them in a theme with the hope that the may be a book one days. Of course, it would also help to come up with a plot for it, too.

The other option is reading. I got a copy of ’1984′ a week ago. Today is a good day for reading it, too – a dark, dreary day for a dark, dreary book (It’s drizzling out. I went for a walk downtown earlier and it was nice and quiet – peaceful – due to the time and the weather). I’ve never read the book before, and since I got it I’ve only just cracked it. I’m up to the point where they introduced the Two Minute Hate and Emmanuel Goldstein. It’s yet another classic that I’ve never read.

When I went to work today, I logged into Oncourse to see what, if anything, had happened. The instructor had posted a note saying he was sorry. He said he was told 48 hours prior that the class was cancelled, but he wasn’t told that the students weren’t going to be notified, otherwise, he would have let us know.

Later on in the day, I checked Oncourse again, and there was another post, this one from one of the other students who showed up. Where some people write letters to the Dean, I chose to blog about it. Anyway, the lady who emailed the Dean, posted the email and the replies from the Dean, and the head of the English Department, and a few other people as well. It was a proliferation of apologies and offers to enroll in different classes.

Anyway, I’m satisfied it was an innocent goof. I dropped the class to make sure they don’t charge me for it – I had a feeling if I didin’t do that, I would see a bill for it, even though it was cancelled. I haven’t decided if I will replace the class, or just wait until the Creative Writing course later this summer. I’m leaning towards the latter, but haven’t ruled out the former.

It was an interesting Friday the 13th.

Shoulda known.

Last week, the instructor for the Literary Masterpieces class puts up a notice on Oncourse (a website for class announcements and stuff) saying that the class might be cancelled due to low enrollment (6 students at the time), but unless we heard anything, to go to class assuming it will take place. So this week, I have been pretty diligent about checking Oncourse for any announcements. I did see we had 7 students enrolled, so it looked like it would still take place.

Today, around 3:30, one of the other students posts a question about which building and classroom it will be in. I wrote it down last week and stuffed it in my wallet, just in case. I replied to the question, but then I checked the Schedule of Classes at the IUPUI website, and the class wasn’t listed. Strange, but I figured it was a SNAFU. I log into OneStart (kind of a multi-purpose website for students and employees) and check my personal schedule of classes. The class was still listed, but now the location was TBA. Strange, but since I hadn’t recieved any notice about the class being cancelled, I still assumed it was going to happen. I also figured I would go to the old classroom listed, since there was no new information on location.

I get out of work at 4:30 pm and the class doesn’t start until 6:00 pm, so I went to the bookstore and got something to eat (Carrot cake Clif bar and an OJ), then went to the library and surfed the web for an hour or so, until it got closer to the class time. I arrived early, making sure I could find the classroom. It took me about five minutes to find that, and while there were a couple of notices regarding classroom changes, neither of the notices was for my class. There was another student already there at about 5:45 pm, and by about 5:55 pm, another couple of students showed up. Six o’clock rolls around, then 6:05, and 6:10, nobody else had shown up, not even the instructor. By 6:15, the four of us had all given up and headed to the library to check Oncourse and email. No news.

I’m not pissed, but I am dissappointed. I mainly want to know if the class was cancelled, or merely relocated. Either way, somebody dropped the ball and forgot to mention it – to half of the class. My guess is it was cancelled, but since there were no announcements, I’m not sure.

Oh, well.

There has been a recent security kick at work where they are requiring people to change their login and email passowrds on a periodic basis. I know it’s a good idea, so I changed them. Then I thought it might be a good idea to change some of my personal passwords for Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Godd idea, however…

Over the past few days, I’ve been having problems with my DSL. At first, two days ago, I didn’t think anything of it. I just used the time to read American Psycho. I figured maybe there was a temporary line problem or something. Yesterday, I was still having problems, but I was tired, so I ended up going to bed early (slept 10 hours, too). Today, I was still having problems, so I figured I’d better tackle it to see what’s up. It didn’t take me long to realize I forgot to reset the SBC/Yahoo password on my DSL modem. I guess the DSL modem stores it, then sends the login info when I try to make a connection. However, I had forgotten what I changed the password to.

When I tried to change the password it gave me a few errors. Normally, I use letters, numbers, and other characters in my passwords, however, Yahoo kept giving me errors because they don’t seem to like the other characters I was using. In the end (I think) I ended up just using an alphanumeric string. Since I was already logged in, it slipped my mind to try and remember it. I’m not a person to write my passwords on a sticky, but that was my downfall.

Today, I spent a long time trying passwords without success. I ended up going to Corner Coffee, using their computer to try and login – with no success – and then trying to reset my password – which DSL customers have to do over the phone. I got the telephone number, and went home to call it. I eventually succeeded, but I had a close call. The whole phone system is automated (nicely, I might add), but there was a section where it asked for a special code found on the phone bill. I have internet billing for my phone and DSL, so I haven’t seen an actual paper phone bill in months. Luckily I found one from last year, and I was able to finish up. The good thing was it reste the passowrd instantly, so I could login and change the passowrd to something I could remember.

Moral: either a) don’t forget your password, or b) don’t change your password.

P.S. Literary Masterpieces starts tomorrow!

There have been some news reports over the past week about teaching evolution, creation, and intelligent design in Kansas. While a contentious educational issue, I have no problem with them being taught side-by-side.

I believe in God, but I also believe in evolution. I believe dinosaurs once roamed the Earth, and most ideas of creationism (i.e. The Book of Genesis) are symbolic. Intelligent design is a newer idea that some people call Creation 2.0 – kind of like a secular version of Creationism. Stangely, after seeing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I suppose that could be a case of intelligent design. Maybe mice really are avatars of pan-dimensional, hypergalactic beings, Earth was designed by Deep Thought and built by Magrathea. Maybe the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything really is 42. Do I believe that? No. Is it possible? Yes. Similarly with creation, do I believe it? No. Is it possible? Yes.

When I was going through grade school, I was taught the difference between hypothesis, theory, and law. A hypothesis is basically an idea. It might be conjecture, but it might be based on an observation, and is usually the basis for running experiments to prove or disprove. A theory is something that has been shown to be true in a wider set of circumstances, but has not been proven to be definitively true or false. A law (physical, as opposed to legal) has been proven to be definitively true in all experiments, like the laws of inertia, or the laws of gravity.

Evolution, creationism, and intelligent design are all theories. They have not been proven true to the satisfaction of 100% of the people, although each is believed to be true by large numbers of people. I have no problem with each theory discussed and compared in classes, though it best to let the individual draw their own conclusions, without having one crammed down their throats. At the most basic level of science education, I don’t think it matters much one way or the other what a person believes. Creation isn’t going to tell a student whether a rock sample is igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. Likewise, evolution isn’t going to provide an explanation for evapotransporation. Intelligent design, as far as I know, isn’t going to help a student distinguish a femur from a tibia.

I am not going to debate one idea vs. the other. I think science has come up with a lot reasonable explanations for the world around us (reasonable to me, at least). But I also believe science hasn’t explained everything. I can reconcile God and evolution, and still believe in both, and I think students can be taught the theories and determine what they believe is true. I belive it’s called critical thinking, and as far as I know, that’s still taught in school.

It took some time, but while browsing the English Department website, I found some course descriptions. They don’t have one for Literary Masterpieces for this summer, but I found some for past semesters. This summer’s class will also be taught by a different instructor, so I’m not 100% sure if it will be the same, but since it uses the same textbook, I have high hopes.

The time snuck up on me, since the class itself will begin next week. I got the textbook, The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, which looks pretty good. It has some stories and authors I’d heard of, and some I hadn’t. One load off my mind is that it looks like I don’t have to worry about being assigned a bunch of 1000+ page texts to read. The Anthology has parts of the stories, or if they are short, then the whole thing. So, it sounds like “A Survey of Literary Masterpieces” would be a better title for the course.

Still, I won’t know for sure until next week, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping I have the right idea.