Remind me why we are using a wiki again?

Me: "Last time we tried to write a document collaboratively, it was a big mess, because of version control problems, and because everyone kept emailing me stuff to add in. And that was only with three people involved! This time there'll be eight of us!"

Boss: "So we could just use the project wiki to develop the document."

Me: "No, because the project wiki is public, and indexed by google. We don't want this document to be public. And we can't set the project wiki to private, because of [stupid software issues]. But we could use google documents to create something we can all access and edit, and that will handle version control for us."

Boss: "Google wha-?"

I explain. He looks blank. "Okay. But just explain to me again. What's a google? Is it like my Firefox thing?"

Realising I should work with what he knows instead, if I actually want him to adopt the technology: "All eight of you already know how wikis work, right? Well in that case, I'll set up a private wiki on [site that we already all use for something else]."

Boss: "Can't we just all email you stuff and get you to keep the versions straight?"

Me: "Can't we just NOT do that?"

Finally everyone agrees to use the private wiki. I set it up, explain to everyone who forgot how to access the site how to find their username and password. Walk a few people through using the system. I set up all the necessary pages and headings so that no one needs to learn any formatting commands, but can just click under the appropriate heading and add text.

Boss: "I want to write all my text in RED!"

Me: "Um, why?"

Boss: "Because that's what colour it is in MS Word when I use track changes! And that way everyone will know it's me!"

Me: "Well, we don't really need to know who wrote what in this document. But if you want to, here's how to format things in red."

Boss: "What? I have to type what? Brackets? And "red"? What a pain! Isn't there a drop-down box in the file-menu-whatsit?"

Me: "You don't HAVE to colour your text."

Boss, in email to the rest of the group: "It looks like it might be too complicated to use the wiki, so I think we should all just type up what we want to add in MS Word, and get StyleyGeek to put it in the wiki for us."

Le Sigh.

Two goodnesses

For the 1% of you who hasn't already seen this:

From the Rally to Restore Sanity, via Sociological Images

And in other news, you must make this coffee-streusel-walnut-caramel cake. No, really. I don't care if you don't like coffee, or walnuts, or caramel (although if that's true: what is wrong with you?) They all come together to make some sort of magic that is nothing like the individual ingredients. Look, just go and make it. It is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.

More interestingness

Our small university publisher is being taken over by a Big Name Big Deal publisher. I wonder whether this means the books in press I have stuff in are going to be published with the better imprint? That would make me really quite happy.

It looks like there might be a chance I can change my fellowship to a four-year option (with teaching) instead of the three year (no teaching) one I currently have. *ponder*

And my (new) department is about to advertise a job. They have never ever hired a woman in the long history of the department. And the university is getting progressively more annoyed with them, every time they continue to select the one man out of a pool of highly competitive women. So this time they have decided to advertise specifically for women. I.e. no men can apply.

This is pissing off a lot of people. Mostly men, who would otherwise be applying. But also some women, who feel like they wouldn't be taken seriously if they did get the job, because people wouldn't believe they are good enough to get a job without affirmative action. I don't really know what to think about it, myself. What about you?

Rejection

I just got the world's nicest rejection letter from the TT job I was waiting to hear from.

I'm really quite ridiculously happy about this rejection. For one thing, because I did. not. want. to have to choose between that job and my fellowship. It would have been a really tough decision, and I would have second-guessed myself for years to come. NO ONE turns down a TT job in a location they would really like to live in. And NO ONE turns down a national fellowship.

I am also happy because it was the first TT job I ever applied for, and I got an interview. That gives me hope for the future.

And finally, they said I gave an excellent interview and was an extremely strong candidate, but the other person was a better fit. I have no trouble believing that. I was such a bad fit for the job (as advertised, anyway) that I almost didn't apply. I still don't really understand why I got an interview.

So yay for rejection! WOO HOO!

Random bullets of "I still can't quite believe it"

I think I will start my fellowship in April.

April sounds like a good month. My current boss wants to keep me until the end of February, and now that I have some leverage (I can leave any time I want) I get to do fun stuff on the current project. No more data entry!

Between February and April I am going to do... NOTHING.

SRSLY.

I haven't had a holiday where I didn't take work with me since before grad school. Um, 2003, I think. I submitted my PhD half way through my first semester of teaching full time, so yeah, no time off to recover there. I can't think of anything more blissful than four full weeks without any responsibilities. I might not even get out of bed.

When I start, I move buildings/departments/offices within our university. Linguistics at our university is split into two departments, and this fellowship will be held within the other one, since their research focus is more in line with the topic of my new project.

It's a pretty different culture over there. Besides linguists, my current department is full of language teachers and literature specialists.. They also all have huge teaching loads, so everyone is always frantically rushing from one class to another, and it's impossible to schedule social activities.

The other department is full of anthropologists and historians. Anthropologists are weird. They sleep during the day and work at night. They lurk around tearooms and photocopiers taking surreptitious notes about other people. They like seminars and workshops a LOT. They go away to the field for a year at a time and return looking slightly feral, no longer quite in touch with modern society, and smelling faintly of quinine.

The new department has morning and afternoon tea together EVERY DAY. No one teaches. They have weekend retreats in the middle of nowhere. They have secret parties that they don't invite the teaching staff to. (And I just got my first invite to one yesterday). Apart from the PhD students, they are all male. I feel like I am joining some sort of fraternity.

The building my office is in right now is solid and square and conventional. It has windowsills full of parrots, and no air-conditioning. It has one- and two-person offices, depending on one's status. The new building where the "other half" lives is actually three hexagonal three-and-a-half-story buildings connected by random walkways on split half-levels that are only accessible from hidden stairwells. Once inside, no one ever finds their way out again. Staircases move from week to week and sometimes walls spring up in the middle of corridors. The linguists live in two places: the "dungeon" (basement), single-person offices below ground with no windows; and the top level of the building, which has large airy offices that are shared by four to six people apiece. The dungeon is overheated and the upstairs is over-air-conditioned. I wonder where I will be?

Starting April, for the following three years, I get to do nothing but research, all day every day. I have money to go to several conferences a year, including internationally. I can do a whole heap of fieldwork. I can employ a research assistant. My time is my own, and I answer to no one except the funding body, who require annual reports. This degree of freedom makes me kind of dizzy.

I think I will buy a lot of stationery.

The longer version

I am obsessive.

The national grants that I just got one of (OMFG) were due to be announced today, so like most of the rest of Australian academia, I had the grant funding organisation's webpage open in on my computer all morning, and clicked "refresh" every 10 minutes oh who am I kidding— 30 seconds. Sometimes I clicked two or three times in a row. Just in case the first click didn't work.

Click. Click. Click. Click-click. Clickity fucking CLICK.

I had a lunch date, but she canceled, which was good, because that way I could spend more time clicking. Click. Click-click.

Then I had a gym date, which I didn't cancel, because my god I had a lot of nervous energy that needed burning off. I set up filters on AwayFind so that any emails with key words corresponding to the grant or to the TT job I am (still) waiting to hear about would be forwarded to my mobile, and went off to the gym.

Half an hour later, Geekman showed up.

"The grants have been announced," he said, looking glum.
"Oh." I surreptitiously check my phone. Nothing. "So I didn't get mine."
"I couldn't bring myself to look," he said. (I KNOW!)

And would you believe, I actually did another 20 minutes of my workout before I gave up and stomped back to my office, certain I had missed out. (Because of course I hadn't programmed my AwayFind filters to check for emails titled "congratulations", which were all that my inbox was stuffed with.)

Stomp stomp stomp. Stomp-stomp. Stompity.

The first five minutes of the walk back to the office I felt resigned. Of course I didn't get it. I'm nowhere near that good. What did I expect? I still have options for next year. (Even if they suck.)

Stomp stomp stompity.

The next minute or two I spent on fantasizing about getting out of academia. I dreamed a few nights ago that I was working at a carnival as an ice-cream seller. That was a pretty good job.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Then I got angry. Fucking academia! Why does it suck so much?! Why can't I even get a little bit of a job? Even for a year? Why is it people are happy to pay me to teach undergraduates how to do my subject, but they won't pay me to actually fucking do the research myself?

Stomp fucking stomp. Up the steps towards my building.

Then came shame. I was going to walk down that corridor, and everyone in my department would know I hadn't got the grant, and would think I was pathetic for even trying, and would wonder why I had imagined I was good enough to get a fellowship. I hoped I wouldn't run into anyone.

Scuttle scuttle. Scuttlety. Scut. Hiding my face. Past the open office doors. Trying not to cry.

And my inbox was full of congratulations.

As well as this bizarre and hilarious message from the research office:

Dear grant applicants,

As previously advised, we expect the [national grant] announcements today.

There are 4 categories of emotional response to an grant announcement. For each emotional response there are important and coded rules of post-announcement etiquette that are important to obey.

I identify the 4 categories of emotion below ... Please read on if you want to be optimally prepared to manage your post-announcement experience.



(1) SMUG AFFIRMATION (approx. 1% of population)


Characteristics: The grant gets up, but you knew you had this in the bag anyway. You find it ridiculous that the [grant funding body] took 8 months to confirm what was clear on submission: This is great research and you're the only person who can do it.



Advice: No matter how polite your colleagues are to your face, they envy and hate you in equal measures. Best to keep a low profile for a couple of weeks. DON'T express commiserations to your colleagues who have
missed out. The tiniest drop of condescension - real or imagined - could be a death sentence. And don't complain about how the [grant funding body] cut your budget by 30%, and that you can't possibly do your research for only $500k.



(2) BLISSFUL SURPRISE (approx. 29% of population)


Characteristics: You really didn't expect this to get up ... and then you get it! A thrilling few seconds of joy followed by oceans of relief ... followed by the sobering realization that you now have to fulfil all the insane promises you made to the [grant funding body].



Advice: Please, no whooping, high-fiving or popping of champagne corks in the corridors. Behind those closed office doors are people who missed out and some of them are wishing you harm. Best to lower the blinds, shut the door, and jump up and down in silent and discrete excitement.



(3) RESIGNED HOPELESSNESS (approx. 20% of population)


Characteristics: You knew you were never going to get this grant. Maybe the reviews were cranky; maybe you think the [grant funding body] are prejudiced against you / your field / your methods; maybe you've been rejected so many times in the past you're just broken. When it comes, the rejection is a miserable full stop on an 8 month journey of pain and ritual humiliation.



Advice: Congratulations, you're now 1 year closer to the moment when your grant will get up. You're good enough, and your efforts are noticed and respected. Come along to the Grant development Workshop in November (more soon on this). We can rebuild you.



(4) GUT-CHURNING DISAPPOINTMENT / VENGEFULNESS (c. 50%)


Characteristics: You put a lot of work into this, the project was good, the reviews promising. Then BAM! ... Nothing. A few moments of numb denial followed by an emotional descent so steep that you get vertigo.



Advice: When your disappointment morphs into a blistering rage and resentment - as it surely will - there are certain things to remember:



• If you're slurring your words, now's not the time to confront that colleague who never believed in you or to send that e-mail to the [grant funding body]

• Don't blame yourself: There's surprisingly little evidence that you can "jinx" a proposal by secretly thinking to yourself that you've got a good chance this time
• Although your escape fantasies are understandable, it is quite rare that people transition from being academics to being world-famous actors, writers, or inventors
• Don't lash out at your friends, family or pets. They don't really care that your grant didn't get up and love you just the way you are.

What worries me is the number of warnings in that email about colleagues wishing you physical harm. Should I be arming myself before going to campus tomorrow?

Oh. My.

I still haven't heard about the TT job. Which probably means I'm out of the running.

But I don't care!

Why don't I care?

Because my name is on this list (pdf).

I am now sitting here staring blankly at my computer screen, because getting one of these fellowships is the main thing I have been working towards for the past three years, and now I have it, I don't know what to do.

Drink wine, perhaps. Yes. That's what to do.

I'm going to hear about a job tomorrow

A full time, tenure-track job. I interviewed last week. They said they'd contact me by tomorrow.

Oh my.

Update: the selection committee is "having trouble coming to a decision", so they won't be able to let me know until later in the week. That's good, right? (Or at least, it's not bad.)

Wow

We just caught a student who had posted flyers around the department(!) asking to buy an essay for one of her classes.

Problem is, she hadn't had any takers yet, so hasn't actually committed the crime. Can we "prosecute" her (i.e. kick her out) for planning to cheat? Time will tell.

I think an elaborate sting operation would have been more fun, myself.

Tragic, but necessary.

Yes, I did just add a new category to my blog, and went through back-labeling posts. It's called "what the fuck is wrong with hairdressers?"

This is why I only go to the hairdresser once a year

Hairdresser: "After this cut, I'm off for the day. I'm going to go to the supermarket and buy a family-sized block of chocolate and eat it all by myself."
Me: "I'm impressed! I think I'd feel awful if I ate that much chocolate at once!"
Hairdresser: "You mean you'd feel guilty? Because of cheating on your diet?"
Me: "Oh, no, I just mean I'd feel sick. I'm not on a diet."

She steps back and looks me up and down. "Really? Huh."

Then, five minutes later:

Hairdresser: "So, I'm moving house right now, and it's so stressful."
Me: "I know what you mean. Do you live on your own, or share?"
Hairdresser: "On my own."
Me: "Well, then at least moving doesn't mean worrying about whether your new housemates will be crazy people, huh?"
Hairdresser: "Crazy people? Oh, like Chinese or something?"
Me *blink blink*: "No, I mean CRAZY* people."
Hairdresser: "Oh, like gays."
Me: "What??? No! Like people who steal your underpants or label the toilet paper or insist that you vacuum the cat or something."
Hairdresser: "People like that are probably druggies. You have to watch out for druggies."
Me, carefully: "Uh huh?"
Hairdresser: "Yeah, my mum's a druggie."
Me: "Oh, really? I'm sorry. That must be hard."
Hairdresser: "Yeah, like she's on these anti-depressants and vitamins and stuff. The doctor prescribes them, but it's just as bad as pot or meth, you know?"

File under "not going there again". Which is sad, because she did a cute cut:


___________

* Like hairdressers, for instance.

Father knows best

This is old news, but it never fails to completely amaze me, when I stop to consider it, what the grant-awarding body who funded our current project considered "necessary" and "unnecessary".

Our project, anonymized slightly for Google avoidance, is basically the following:

1. Create innovative database that no one else has tried to build before, with exciting mapping interfaces and automatic language reconstruction tools.
2. Find all historical and current data ever on [huge topic] for any of 1000 languages and enter them into this database (a.k.a crucial but mind-numbing research assistant drudge-work).
3. ...
4. PROFIT!!!

(Okay, you can forget about #3 and #4. I couldn't help myself.)

Anyway, guess what the grant organisation decided to cut from our budget? (Because, given the nature of the project as described in 1 and 2, there's clearly no need for these items at all.)

Ready?

........




1. Our entire programming budget.
2. Research assistants.

Yeah.

The elves and the shoemaker: academic version

I'm currently collaborating with someone on a joint grant application. She has an amazing amount of energy and enthusiasm, so that ideas and drafts(!) just seem to keep bubbling out of her at a rate I can't keep up with.

It's a little awkward, in that I have between half an hour to an hour per day that I can afford to devote to this project, and it takes about that long each day to catch up with reading the stuff she sent me since the last time.

The wonderful thing, though, is that there's a time difference of 8 hours between us. (She is based in Germany.) That means I go to bed each night, and when I get up in the morning, sitting in my email inbox are 10-20 pages of writing that magically happened while I was asleep.

I have to find a way to make this happen with all my projects.

Scheduling committee meetings... by committee

This post at Bardiac's reminded me of a committee meeting yesterday.

We were just winding up and the usual question, "When shall we three we eight meet again?" was asked.

"I'm away for a couple of weeks in October," said one person.
"Which weeks?"
"All of them. And November."

"I'm away from next week until October," said someone else.

"What about our [slightly overlapping but not really the same committee] meeting on Monday?"

"Oh, no, I'll be around for that. So I guess we could talk some more about the issues we didn't get to today on Monday."

"Will everyone be at Monday's meeting?" someone asked.

General agreement.

"Well then, that seems like a good solution."

Just as we finish clearing off the table, some bastard helpful soul pipes up, "So we're meeting before Monday's meeting, then?"

And yes, it was generally agreed to have a pre-meeting meeting on Monday.

Sigh.

Thirteen - uh four - ways of looking at an earthquake

Conflicting reports about the Christchurch earthquake:

Metafilter:
"Strong quake ay bro?"
"Yis bro, pretty strong."
"How strong would you say bro?"
"Strong as bro. Strong as."

My father (via email):
"You will hear that we've had a rather large earthquake in Christchurch (7.4). Just to let you know I’m okay. Couple of book cases fell over and china cabinet – so had to clean up broken crockery and now need to restore order to my library. I see on Facebook that most of my friends are bemoaning disorder to their book shelves. Better get back to work and clean up things – keep finding things that have fallen over. Hope you are well."

A sensible friend (via email):
"The only damage in our family was a broken mirror. Don’t trust what you see on TV – it’s mostly brick buildings in the inner city (which has been sealed off) that have been badly harmed, and even there it’s mostly the same buildings shot from different angles. Outside the inner city, it’s just chimneys and windows. And burglar alarms rending the night."

My mother (via phone, crying):
"It's so scary! And I couldn't sleep all night because I sat at the top of the stairs waiting for aftershocks! Because my roof might have fallen in! And I won't sleep tonight, because I don't think I should go upstairs until it's all over! And I'm so frightened! And I can't leave town because another earthquake might happen when I'm in my car and a bridge might collapse! And I'm too scared to leave the house! But I'm scared my house will fall down! And I need to go to church but I'm too scared to go into the city! The buildings might fall on my car! Or I might get shot by looters! And the radio says not to flush the toilet, but I was so scared that I really needed to take a shit, so I got a black plastic rubbish bag and put it into a bucket and—"

"You know what, Mum? I don't think I need to hear this."

"But you do! You NEED. TO. KNOW.

A quickie

Please don't hold your conference two days before Christmas.

That is all.

No, wait, actually, that isn't all. While we are at it, here's a longer wish list:

• Please don't send me an email, then call me up to tell me what your email says, then drop by my office to tell me the same thing again. Some of us have work to do.
• If you are "collaborating" with me, please don't hassle me for months about the importance of getting an application written long before a deadline, then refuse to look at draft of said application until a few days before said deadline.
• Especially if you then want (me) to totally rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
• Please don't ask me to guest teach your class, then micro-manage every aspect of my lesson plan so that you might as well just have written the damn thing yourself and asked me to deliver it word for word.
• If you are going to micro-manage my lesson plan, please make time to read it through well in advance, so that you don't ask me to redesign it from scratch an hour before class begins.
• Please give me a large piece of chocolate cake and several glasses bottles of red wine.
  

What's on your academic wish list today?

Snakes! In a box!

At a market the other day, we found this guy looking quite unperturbed by the fact that one of his snakes was making a break for it:

The very next day, we got to see this beauty in the wild.

Yes, we just spent the weekend up North.

Here is one reason why we didn't go swimming. (Yes, this was also in the wild, on the Daintree River.)

This was another:

And just for good luck:

How does that work?

Referee: "So, do you really want this job?"
Me: "Yes!"
Referee: "Okay then, I'll write you an excellent reference."

So, if I had only sort of wanted the job, he'd have written me a mediocre reference? WTF?

I can haz coffee and cake?

Yes, this bill originally said "Haz(elnut) truff(le) latte".

No, we couldn't help ourselves.


Yes, they still processed it. Without laughing, even. N00bs.

Skiing

Some photos from our cross-country skiing trip the other day:

The road on the way there, looking stereotypically Australian and as though we weren't likely to find any snow any time soon: nah, mate.
To be honest, we were still several hours drive away from the snow at that point. (I'm so envious of people like Bardiac who can step outside their door in winter and ski.)

More of the Australian stereotype:
I wish we'd got photos of the kangaroos in the snow as well, in order to collect the full set of stereotype, but they hop hop hoppity struggled away before we had a chance to wrestle our cameras out.

Some of our group spent a lot of time having little rests in the snow.

This is the same guy. I was having a good laugh at his expense while examining this photo, until I saw the tiny flat smudge of yellow about a third of the way from the right. I zoomed in, and yes, that is me. Face-planted.

And the real result of the day: my arse-bruise. More of an upper-thigh bruise, really, but arse-bruise sounds much more exciting.

More (photos, not arse-bruises) here.