Tue Nov 11 01:54:44 CST 1997
On Tuesday, Moshen started dating Rachel.
On Wednesday, I went to Thunderchief's concert - sat with the Mendoza clan, learned a little more about Native American Culture. Had a fulfilling meeting with Jason and Andrei and Kent for CS327 afterwards.
On Thursday, I skipped dinner to do some library research for English 381. A grad student gave me some candy for participating in a survey, but more important, the damn gears in my head kept jumping in to a frustrated high gear.
On Friday I drove a group out to see Starship Troopers - kick-butt movie as long as you're not anal about Science Fiction and having read the book.
On Saturday I went to an Anti-Chief protest outside of Memorial Stadium. Later in the evening I went to see Boogie Nights with Katarina, previously referred to as the cute Asian Girl With the Three Latina Friends. I kissed her cheek on parting, and she seems very happy about receiving flowers the following day. She seems very much to like me, which can do wonders for one's mood. I think she's pretty darn swell myself - we'll see what develops there. So far nice and casual, not stressful at all, instead fraught with a pleasant mystery that we can clear up in our spare time.
Sunday night I got to chat with Jesse Olson some, who is on leave from Marine training for ten days. I am proud of him. I am even more glad that he doesn't seem at all obviously fucked up by Boot Camp. I am even more proud of him. We were never good friends at all, but I kind of feel special about his experience coz I had a similar, albeit entirely different experience from my six weeks in the Army, so long ago.
Today got a "performance review" at work, from Pat and Jon. Mark and I have received generous raises of $1/hour each. We are now making $7.25/hour, which is a pleasant surprise to us as it turns out we've been making $6.25 where we thought we had been making $6! The group is pleased with both Mark and my work.
Ray Moseley is our new Guest in Residence. I went to his program tonight, where he presented us with some questions in medical ethics. After that, I wanted some coffee. I called Linda and she wasn't up to it. I called Katarina, nervous and shy, and she wasn't home. I then managed to spearhead a campaign which resulted in about ten or so Allenites invading Espresso. Kat called at 0030h or so and said she'd actually been there the whole time, just hadn't seen each other. She then thanked me again for the flowers and said she'd call tomorrow. Giddy excitement for awhile there, again. :)
I'm going to conference with Prendergast tomorrow about the second paper for her class. I have a number of ideas. I feel confident as well in my ability to create a decent portfolio for English 302, which I've been seriously neglecting.
I need to get cracking on some code for CS327, and I am writing here now to try to outline some of my thoughts for my meeting with Prendergast in the morning here. Let's see if I can maintain an appropriate level of consciousness.
Well, I keep running back and revising the past days. Need to skip on down to English 381!
Tue Nov 11 02:45:05 CST 1997
Just spent some time kickin' it in the GS Quad. There are plans afoot to wake up early tomorrow and go to breakfast. I'll write here then tomorrow morning, or later tonight pending insomnia. I will instead though attend to bodily functions and alarm-setting.
Goodnight ... for now!
Tue Nov 11 11:14:45 CST 1997
Heh, I knew I wouldn't write anything here before my conference with Prendergast!
Anyways, that conference did go well. I woke up early for breakfast - 0725h! I then woke Brian Wang up, and he thanked me, showered, breakfast.
I wonder if this 99 and 44/100 pure Ivory soap is causing the recent skin dryness. Some of my sistas have suggested lotion ... uh huh, I be walkin' around smelling all berry-like? Just seems like a messy thing to do, really, though I understand the philosophy behind it .. I'm just prejudiced against the idea of being oily. That and my skin is pretty good about hydrating anyways. Talk about sweaty palms ...
I have a very wide telnet window open. For some bizarre reason vim is wrapping based on the telnet window size ... but I did set wm=78 in my .exrc ... hmmm ...
:set
--- Options ---
columns=114 lines=41 shiftwidth=3 tabstop=3 wrapmargin=3
endofline modified showmatch ttytype=vt102
Press RETURN or enter command to continue
Okay ... just for my own sanity, :set columns=80 ... ahhh, now the last two paragraphs are all funky in 80 columns ... time to use my fmt macro ... vi is kewl! :)
Alright, back to reality.
Anyways, the current idea for paper number two is to take academics, and their writing on the genres of the new technology (web, email "cyberspace" stuff ...) to task about ... dammit, why is vi smoking crack? Right, I guess vi assumes columns=80 is somehow implicit, only to be overrid ... errr, maybe the fmt macro reinitializes vi ... augh!
Anyways, that (should) be fixed now. As I was saying, I'm a gonna look at how academics adapt their discourse to the context of electronic communications, and contrast that to what the writing discipline has determined with regards to students and perhaps other laypeople do when faced with entering the discourse of the academy. Concerns such as a misappropriation or misuse of existing terminology which labels them as "newbies" on the Internet - that kind of thing. The thing is that I'm a computer geek trying to acquire academic discourse, in my own well-studied and bumbling style, but in studying their concerns about folks like me learning their lingo, I can notice the same sort of patterns with them trying to deal with this Internet thing. They're not even conscious of it. So what I'm a gonna do is kinda study the validity of this sort of hypothesis first, and then develop a more generalized thesis around it with which to construct a paper.
Take for example, one of the books I've checked out so far - well it's called "Re-Imagining Computers and Composition: Teaching and Research in the Virtual Age" - exsqueeze me, the Virtual Age??? Uhmmm, don't we exist? Virtual implies something that almost exists, but not really ... as Prendergast implicated - that sort of means it's unreal to them maybe ... well, honey I'll tell ya right now, this "Virtual" shit is pretty damn real to me. I'm getting paid $7.25 for my virtual job ... how many English undergraduates can say the same for their University job? This Virtual Age seems a bit more real to most people than say, the Shakespearean Age.
Dinosaurs!
I'm just ripping on the Academics here for fun, coz I'm this scrappy little guy who would like to join their community, but instead of suffering the licks it takes to acquire academic discourse conventions for my own ends it's more fun to just rip on the oppressors in my home turf. Of course, I'll definitely want to avoid doing as much in the paper. Just working it out here folks. Let us all pause a moment in reflection of how we love to taunt English teachers, and recognize just how much shit they get for their own Virtual existence.
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