Linux geek = science fiction reader: discuss

On Friday one of my committee members (the geeky one) stopped by my office, and I showed him the pretty new version of Ubuntu I had installed. With Beryl! Hence wobbly windows! And desktop-on-a-cube! He was very impressed.

Then he suddenly got this expression that, in a cartoon, would be represented by a lightbulb appearing above his head. "I have the new Charles Stross book!" he said proudly. "You can borrow it when you finish your thesis."

I laughed at him. "Are you trying to find me an incentive to finish? Do you think the promise of a new book to read would do it?"

"It's Charles Stross!" he said. Then, obviously fearing this might not be enough, "I've got all the Alastair Reynolds books as well."

Do you think I've been spending too much time on the computer?

Last night all my dreams had menu bars across the top. (And since they were nightmares, the file -> exit option was greyed out.)

Exacerbation

Ever since that post, it's been all, "Rhinoceroses don't stop for red lights" and "A rhinoceros wouldn't care about those pedestrians."

Memo to self: blogging about him just encourages him.

Grad carnival is up!

Geeka at When do you think you'll be done has just put up the latest Carnival of GRADual Progress.

So hurry on over there for lots of thoughtful and entertaining reading about grad student life, including some from new blogs that haven't appeared in the carnival before. Enjoy!

My first blogger meet-up!

I had lunch with a pig-puppet! Well, okay, she didn't actually bring her pig-puppet, which was sort of disappointing, but that was the only thing that was. Everything else was totally undisappointing: from the fact that she looked like I imagined (but with extra cuteness), to the way she had just enough of an American accent to give me something to hassle her about, humoured my parrot obsession, and ordered Mars Bar cheesecake for us to share, without even much prompting from me (i.e. just one round of, "Mmm... look at those cakes! I like cheesecake. Do you?")

We even went on a short bookshop-crawl after lunch, and Lucy heroically refrained from laughing disdainfully at what passes for good bookshops in this city. At first I was a little bit overawed at the prospect of being in a bookshop with a person who posted 120 book reviews last year, but it was totally worth it because I got a recommendation for an author I hadn't heard of before, and whose name now totally escapes me. And I managed to pretend to know something about an author Lucy hadn't read (Alexander McCall Smith) and I think I got away with it. (So don't tell her I was bluffing, okay?)

My one regret is that despite talking about it, we both totally forgot to take a picture. We couldn't have done shadows anyway, since the sun appears to have gone on holiday to warmer parts, but we could have at least got a photo of our shoes. I promise to do better next time.

Speaking of next time, whose turn is it now to come to Australia and visit? Come on! I'm lonely down here.

Get it right

Coming back from the movie 300, I notice Geekman is driving faster and more erratically than usual. When I point this out, he answers with something only semi-intelligible.

"Did you just say what I thought you said?" I ask. "Because I don't think it's good driving practice to pretend you are a war elephant."

He smiles triumphantly. "War RHINOCEROS!"

Thus spake Geekman

Gah! I only saw Miss M's comment when I arrived to do the judging. Too late for bribes, unfortunately, otherwise I would have totally been up for being bought off.

Enough prepositions! On with the judging.

Anonymous with "Can't talk, eating" definitely appealed, and might have won if 1) they weren't anonymous, and 2) I hadn't been worried that I was being influenced by the fact that "Can't talk, eating" is pretty much all I think about anyway.

So, I award first place to... Dr. Brazen Hussy for "How you like them black-eyed peas, Earl?"*

Congratulations!

If Styleygeek wants to award a prize for runner up, that will go to Geeka for the most creative approach to coming up with a caption, i.e. bending the rules. I'm all for bending the rules.

********

Added by me, StyleyGeek (because I am totally incapable of letting someone else have the floor for five minutes):

I will indeed award a prize for runner up. The runner up will get a slightly inferior postcard. So if Dr. Brazen Hussy and Geeka are brave enough to email me their real addresses, a letterbomb postcard will be soon be on its slow and international way to each of you. Hooray!

_________

* You can look it up on Wikipedia; I had to. (SG)

The bureaucrats must have run out of compliance processes to implementize

I just tried to find out whether our university had a policy on a particular issue. So I went to the part of the website which links to various university regulations and guidelines. And then had to bang my head vigorously against the desk when scrolling down to the bottom of the list revealed the following links:


Guidelines for a policy on policies! Doesn't it make you want to bite someone? (Preferably an administrator.)

Warning

When it's so cold in the morning that you can't feel your head, there is a very real danger you will forget to take off your bicycle helmet and wander round the department looking like a total dork.

Physicists like to interpret things literally

Geekman enters with an envelope. "I got this from the real estate agents who manage the apartment. It's an envelope full of receipts for every rent payment we made for the whole past year."

Me: "Is there a letter or something to explain why they sent it?"

Him: "Just this piece of notepaper. It says 'with compliments'." He looks disappointed. "But they didn't give us any compliments. They could at least have said you have nice hair."

Another caption contest!

Same rules as last time. And like last time, the winner will get a postcard! From me! (Are you excited yet?*) Contest closes midnight on Wednesday, Australian time.



__________

* For anyone uncertain, Bardiac demonstrated the appropriate level of excitement here and here.

You already know I'm totally uncool...

...so I don't need to be ashamed of posting this link and admitting I find it absolutely hilarious.

Fair's fair

"Hey Geekman, how come I'm carrying all of the groceries?"

"Back there in the shop, you said I was incompetent. You wouldn't want an incompetent person carrying your food, would you?"

"I never said you were incompetent! Oh except for... okay, I might have said something that implied you were being incompetent."

"Well, if you like, I could say something that implies I might carry some groceries."

As I was saying...

My flight back from Christchurch shared a boarding gate with a flight to Singapore, the announcements for which, over the couple of hours I was waiting there, became more and more tragic.


"This is an announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. Your aeroplane has landed, but appears to be experiencing some mechanical trouble. We have engineers investigating and will make another announcement when we know more."

[30 minutes pass]

"This is another announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. Our engineers have disassembled your plane. We will let you know as soon as they have put it back together."

[30 minutes pass]

"This is another announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. Our engineers have reassembled your plane. However, there appears to be a part missing. We are currently trying to locate this part."

[10 minutes pass]

"This is another announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. We are currently making enquiries as to the availability of replacement aeroplane parts in New Zealand. We will let you know as soon as we have located the part our engineers require."

[5 minutes pass]

"This is another announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. The aeroplane part required for your plane is only available in Australia. We are having one flown in. Your flight will be delayed for at least another four hours. We regret this inconvenience."

[20 minutes pass]

"This is another announcement for Flight XXX to Singapore. We are very sorry to announce that there may be further delays to your flight beyond those already anticipated. Your flight crew have now exceeded their shift hours. We are currently inquiring as to the whereabouts of Singapore Airlines staff in New Zealand and will let you know as soon as we have put together a new crew."


At this point in the saga my flight boarded, so I never did find out what happened to the poor passengers on the flight to Singapore. I hope they got well compensated, whatever the outcome, because when I left they were looking like they were about to start a riot.

Whew

I'm home! The 12 hours I spent travelling yesterday were totally worth it because I have my own bed back! And a Geekman! And a clean house! And parrots! And a refrigerator full of moldy food I left there three and a half weeks ago, since Geekman has eaten nothing but toast while I've been gone.

The travelling time was also worth it, because now I have a whole heap of entertaining airport anecdotes to share with you. Well, okay, two. Or maybe three. Let's say two and half. And I will get to those later, after I have done 98 million loads of washing, been to the gym and got drunk on coffee.

Meanwhile, a big thank you to everyone who has now sent me a copy of the Somali article. I hugely appreciate all of your efforts, but it is time to stop! this! madness! There are only so many copies I can use (well, one, to be precise). I feel horribly guilty for not updating yesterday when the first copy arrived in my inbox, but now you know, so you can cancel those interloan requests and go do some of your own work instead of mine.

That will be all, minions.

Delicacy and tact run in my family

My mother to my grandmother: "Are you still having enough pleasant times every day to make it worthwhile being alive?"

My grandmother: "Are you?"

Creoles is must be fun

One of ShrinkyKitten's posts today included the sentence "I need can has kitten!" and this reminded me of a weird-ass creole example I came across somewhere. The sad thing is that I copied it down when reading a book on a whole bunch of creoles months ago, and I didn't take note of which creole it was from, since I planned to post it right away and figured I'd remember. But for what it's worth, here is coolness:

"I must be's right."
"What, you must be is right?"
"No, I must be was right when I wrote it."

If you are totally confused, see the explanation after the fold.

This creole uses "must be" as a stronger equivalent of "maybe". Read the exchange again, replacing "must be" with "maybe" and making the verb ("is") agree with the subject (i.e. "I am, you are") as in Standard English, and I guarantee everything will make much more sense.

Maybe this tool could write my thesis for me

The virtual academic sentence generator really did come up with this exchange for me on my first click!

Pootwattle the Virtual Academic(TM) says:

The delegitimization of linguistic transparency is strictly congruent with the epistemology of the public sphere.

Smedley Smedley the Virtual Critic(TM) responds:

Pootwattle's paradoxical yet not contradictory work on the relationship between the delegitimization of linguistic transparency and the epistemology of the public sphere risks being merely polemical.

(Seen at Chicago Beijing)

Frustration by the numbers

• Number of times my mother has accidentally locked us out of the house in the last two days*: 2
• Amount of time I spent last night sitting in the back garden at 5 degree temperatures (41 F): 1 hour 15 minutes
• Amount of money Mum has spent on locksmiths and glaziers (at weekend rates): over $200
• Amount of money Mum could have saved if she had only been prepared to wait a couple of hours (in a friend's warm house) for a neighbour with a spare key to get home: over $200
• Amount of time she would have had to wait today if she had chosen this solution: 1 hour 30 minutes (Yesterday, less than an hour)
• Number of other locksmiths and glaziers she called to compare their prices: 0**
• Number of times I suggested that maybe she couldn't afford to call someone out and that I didn't mind waiting: 2
• Number of times today that Mum has complained she can't possibly live on the money she is getting from welfare: 2
• Number of times she hinted to me at the grocery shop this afternoon that maybe I should pay for the food: 4
• Number of times I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying, "If you hadn't called a locksmith and a glazier, you might be able to afford to eat": too many to count.

And that illustrates the problem I have with my mother and money. I (mostly) respect people's right to treat their money the way they want to. In the past, when my mother had a middle-class income, I never said anything about her needless spending (although I admit I totally judged her silently in my head). But now she is trying to live an upper-middle class life on a poverty-line income.

I know how hard it is to be poor. I did it for years myself. But I also know that when you are poor, you wait a few hours to be able to get into your locked house for free, rather than calling out a locksmith at weekend rates. When you are poor, you comparison shop for EVERYTHING. If you have to pay a locksmith, you call every locksmith listed in the phone book and take the cheapest. I do also know that, when you are poor, you sometimes get frustrated with not being able to do what you want when you want, and you spend money that you can't really afford to spend. But when you do that, you cannot then turn around and ask other people (who DO manage their money carefully) to cover your basics.

Or am I just heartless and stingy?

__________________

*Last night while I was over at the university library for a couple of hours, Mum decided to go down the road to visit a friend, and locked us both out. (I had taken a key, but she had set the safety chain on that door before leaving). I waited in the garden for her to get home, assuming she had a different key with her, but no such luck. Then this morning I drove her to church, and unbeknownst to me, when she ducked back into the house to get something she had forgotten, she set the deadlock on the back door for "extra safety", then left through the garage, which can be closed manually from outside, but not opened without a remote control that is currently at a repairman's. And of course we didn't have the deadlock key, nor any key to a door other than the one with the deadlock.

**My mother is a big fan of the "call the first name in the phone book and don't ask what they charge" approach.

Does not want ok thnx*

This really stinks. No, literally. (Where "literally" means "literally", not "metaphorically", even.) Every time I go outside I discover a sudden need to stop breathing.

Make it go away.

____________

* Yes, I'm still spending too much time looking at LOLcats.