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#5283 – groupie routine

on sunday i went to an unveiling of a bust of frank zappa in baltimore.

a frank zappa fan club in lithuania had commissioned a statue of frank zappa years ago for a few different reasons, mainly because a) they were a frank zappa fan club, and b) they liked how he was dedicated to freedom of expression which they really liked as well (especially being since lithuania was once a soviet republic). so, they’ve got a bust of frank zappa in lithuania.

the statue in baltimore is a replica of the statue in lithuania. it seems that the lithuanian fans felt that there ought to be a similar statue in baltimore, frank zappa’s hometown, so they donated this replica to the city. when it was time to decide where it should go, it was decided that it should be placed at one of the city libraries because frank was quoted as saying “if you want to get laid, go to college. if you want an education, go to a library.”, and since libraries are all about free speech (which frank zappa was all about), the enoch pratt library in baltimore was pleased to have the statue placed at one of their branches. the head of the library said in her speech that it’s not often you get hundreds of people standing outside of a library, which prompted one guy in the crowd to start shouting “LET US IN! WE WANNA READ!!”, hahaha…

so, on sunday, which was coincidentally the 25th anniversary of zappa’s testimony to congress, they unveiled the statue in baltimore. it was a neat event, attended by zappa’s widow gail, and children dweezil, ahmet and diva; the lithuanians who donated the statue; the mayor of vilnius, lithuania; the head of the enoch pratt library system; and the mayor of baltimore (who declared it to be “frank zappa day”). the mayors, the head of the library, one of the lithuanians who donated the statue, and gail zappa all gave speeches before the unveiling, and after the unveiling ahmet and diva said a few words of thanks and dweezil put on a free performance with his zappa plays zappa group. there was a question and answer session held down the street earlier in the day, but i didn’t attend that since it sold out days beforehand.

still, even though i wasn’t at the q-and-a session, i was lucky in that i got to have a small chat with diva zappa for a few quick minutes during the zappa plays zappa concert after the unveiling, and later that evening she posted to me on her twitter feed:

so that’s pretty cool. 🙂

i need to edit my photos of the event and upload them, but here’s a few videos from WJZ tv:

– video 1

– video 2

– video 3 (post-unveiling)

(i think it’s funny how video #3 kind of edits the “if you want to get laid, go to college. if you want an education, go to a library.” quote so all you hear is “…college. if you want an education, go to a library.”)

and here’s other peoples’ photos on flickr. unfortunately i didn’t think of getting a photo of myself with diva, partly because i didn’t think of it, but even if i did i had my zoom lens on my camera and that wouldn’t have worked. oh well.

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#5281 – felled

yesterday a giant tree in our backyard that’s been there for who-knows-how-long (longer than we’ve lived here, and that’s around 25 years) was cut down. it was dropping big limbs during pretty much any windstorm, and we didn’t want to park our cars back there since, well, we didn’t want this to happen to our cars:

I guess it's a good thing I didn't park in the backyard last night like I usually do…

so, yeah, that tree to the left (that kind of forms a ‘v’ and is covered in ivy? it’s gone now. it’s so weird, the sky is all empty back there now, and we can see the fence between our yard and stueypark‘s.

classes are going. my heath care in information systems book appears to be written by my professor, which i’m not too thrilled about, but it’s slowly getting more fascinating. a group has been formed for my interaction systems class team project; though many of the people from the group i was in for a class last semester are in my interaction systems class, i figured i’d join a group of different people this time instead. plus, one of my fraternity brothers is in the group i joined, so at least i already know someone in the group.

there was another group where i’d already know someone, but it might have been awkward: a girl i met on livejournal years ago… we had a fling for a few weeks… there may or may not have been makeouts in the back of our cars in a denny’s parking lot (not a burger king bathroom… this ain’t the humpty dance, folks)… anyway, now she’s graduated from umbc and in the master’s information systems program and in my interaction design class. it wouldn’t have been bad if we were on the same team, but it probably would have been awkward. there’s a difference. awkward is like the time i was unsuccessfully flirting with this girl who was at a party i was at, and then it turned out a few months later that she was the teacher’s instructor for the summer semester course i was taking, and then i ran into her and her new boyfriend while shopping in ikea a month or so after that. party → summer course → toilet brush in my cart. how depressing.

anyway, she’s since unfriended me from facebook (not that i blame her, we barely communicated on there anyway, if ever), but a quick google search shows that she graduated with honors in her class. good for her.

still, it would have been nice to not dream about her last night. subconscious, you’re a pain. maybe i need a 12-step program on how to not tight-sweat girls i’ve barely known or have never met.

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#5280 – how embarrassing

this morning i had an appointment with a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon about my left foot/ankle/leg. got some x-rays done, he poked and prodded at my foot some, and the verdict is… stress fracture of the left fibia! he says that he doesn’t think that my shoes could be an issue, and that it’s likely because of increasing mileage. i dunno, though… i got these running shoes only maybe a month or so before the injury occurred, so maybe they’re partially to blame.

he said also that when i’m ready to resume running, to build up to 3 miles maybe only a quarter to a half mile at a time. that’s when i had to say “oops” and tell him that he’d probably want to hit me over the head since i just ran the annapolis 10 mile run this past weekend. he didn’t seem too concerned though when he heard that it hurt about the same before as it did afterwards, maybe a little more hurty but not as intense as it was back in july.

so after the appointment i went home and cleaned up some stuff and sold some old textbooks online and then went off to work. my coworker that sits next to me knew about my appointment, and i thought that my boss knew about the appointment, and i had a message on my calendar that i was going to be out of the office from 8 until 12 or 1 or so, but when i got in to work my coworker that sits next to me said how there was a manhunt going on for me earlier since our boss and our boss’ boss didn’t know where i was. she tried telling both of them that i was at the doctor’s, but that didn’t stop my boss’ boss from calling my house and leaving a message for me – i got home this evening and mom was like “uh, lee anne called and left a message for you…?” and i had to groan and roll my eyes.

i don’t know if my boss forgot about my appointment or what, but she was working from home since she wasn’t feeling well, and i got in touch with my boss’ boss over the phone at work this afternoon, so everything’s all straight. it’s annoying, when i used to be on the “online” (call-taking / email queue) teams, if we wanted to schedule time off we would schedule it through this particular website so we couldn’t exceed the number of hours taken off per day for the team, and if we were sick or couldn’t make it in, we would call resource management to let them know. when i started on the systems team, since we’re an “offline” team, if we wanted to schedule time off we just told our boss about it, and if we were sick or similarly couldn’t come in then we would just call our boss to let him or her know. well, about two months ago or so, we got a new process where (apparently) we call in to resource management when we won’t be in. maybe we’re supposed to call in too when we want to schedule time off. i’m not even certain what we’re supposed to do now, the change wasn’t explained very well, and so whatever it was we’re supposed to do i didn’t do today. oops.

notice how i like things a lot better when they’re not micromanaged? reference that previous post about the class syllabus.

years ago when i started in this office on our internet response team (an “online” team), i once woke up on a friday around 1 PM if i remember right (or maybe it was 11 AM, i just remember a ‘1’ in there), and the first thing i thought was “ahh, i sure like saturdays”, which turned into “OH FUCK IT’S FRIDAY AND I’M EXTREMELY LATE FOR WORK”… even then, i don’t think anybody called me wondering where i was. (i remember i ended up calling resource management and said that i’d be taking a sick day, because my logic was that i just slept through about half of my work day – or more! – and so i must be sick.)

after work i went to umbc for a graduate student association picnic from 4-7. i ended up getting there about 5:30 and made my way to the picnic, but i didn’t really see any food out for the taking (though they were still grilling, it seemed), i didn’t see anything that confirmed that i was at the right event (the flyer i saw online mentioned that student ids and photo ids would be checked since it was at the pub on campus, and i didn’t see anything like that going on, much less see anybody who appeared to be in charge), and i didn’t even see any flyers or information about the GSA there either (only some pamphlets these girls were looking at for WISE, and that was it). so, i ended up spending the next few hours in the library getting my read on.

once i got home i realized that the race results have been posted! here’s the specifics:

1:53:27 total time

3976th out of 4585 total runners

147th out of 155 males age 25-29

not bad for someone with a fractured fibia! 😛 i think i can do better, though. especially since…

…

…

want to know who came in 3975th? with a time of 1:53:26? just barely faster than me?

…

…

…

an 8-year-old girl. talk about embarrassing. and if that wasn’t bad enough? a 5-year-old came in almost twice as fast as what i did. that can’t be right.

why did i look at the results? why!

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#5279 – underpants on coathangers

ever get the feeling that somebody is trying too damn hard? i’m reading through this syllabus for my information systems in health care course, and it reads like it was written by arnold j rimmer:

7 Exercises

7.1 Answer Guidelines

7.1.1 Overall

You will select the exercises associated with 3 chapters for each of the three sections of the course and answer them.

7.1.2 Inside the File

7.1.2.1 Structure

Put your answers in one file. By way of background, logical markup represents the structure and meaning of a document. Physical markup represents specific visual effects that carry little semantic meaning. For instance, preceding this paragraph was the logical heading Structure which in Word was marked-up as “Heading 2”. That it might display in bold, italicized font is a function of the mapping from logical to physical structure that was specified in the formatting instructions of this particular document. When i put this word in italics, I am exercising physical markup.

Use logical markup to distinguish the parts of your document. In particular, place the title of the first question at the beginning of your answer for the first question (for instance, if the first exercise you chose is called ‘Challenges’, then select that title in your answer and make its style ‘Heading 1’). Do the same for the second exercise, namely, put the title before the answer and make it a ‘Heading 1’ style. If your answers have themselves logical subsections, as they should, then mark them appropriately too, as ‘heading 2’ for level-2 headings, ‘heading 3’ for level-3 headings, and so on. Then generate a table of contents at the beginning of the file using the Microsoft generate table of contents option – it is generated automatically from the ‘headings’ styles.

To repeat: to use logical markup, you first enter a heading into the answer, like ‘Need for Accuracy’. Then you select the term ‘Need for Accuracy’. Then you go to the style drop down box in Word and select the appropriate heading level, say it is ‘Heading 2’. Later to generate the Table of Contents, you simple point to the beginning of the document, select ‘Insert’ from the drop-down menu, then select ‘Index/Tables’, and then select ‘Table of Contents”. You should be able to get help with technical things from the OIT Help Desk and with English writing things from other sources in the university.

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i wish i just made all that up.

i should become a professor if only to tell my students to send everything as plain text documents, or to format their documents with markdown, since i’m so sick of professors demanding microsoft-formatted documents, but reading this syllabus as a whole really takes the cake. blargh!