Growin' Blog

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2010-04-23T21:57:00.001-07:00

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The local landscape

2010-04-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know. Now I'm just showing off.

I see Great Blue Herons (I'm told--please correct me if I'm wrong loyal reader) daily in the estuary. After Sunday night's storm, a real 12 hour soaking, I noticed that many of the birds relocated to shore. This guy was even still there in the afternoon. He (she?) is behind a fence on top of the beach cliff, about 12 feet away from me. This morning he (or another individual, but I like to think it's the same one) was on my side of the fence. A jogger passed within 5 feet of him and he didn't startle at all.

Many of the other big shorebirds (great egrets, snowy egrets, other things with long legs, cormorants, and a variety of ducks [and yes, I know ducks aren't shorebirds]) have returned to the slough as the week has gone on. The water level in the river-y part of the slough has fallen a good 3 feet since Monday morning. I wonder what motivates them to move? I'm guessing the water is too turbid for them to see what they're eating.

The rain has freshened up all the spring vegetation, and each morning's bike ride is extremely fragrant. I wonder if it's mostly the eucalyptus that I'm smelling? There are distinct times it's citrus (because I can see it). But there's lots of different scents. It's a smell party riding in each day.

The longer ride is also having an effect on me. I think I'm in a belt-loop already. And I'm hungry on a totally different schedule, and hungry for different things. More cravings for protein and starch. Less for salty snacks. I had to force myself to each my chips and (fresh, local) guacamole last night while my dinner cooked.

I know....poor me.

Settling in, but moving on.

2010-04-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Big happenings here in the American Riviera. After one week on the job, folks are hollering for an update after yesterday's big Facebook and Twitter announcement that L and I will be heading back to China come late August.

Yesterday afternoon I asked L for a Skype date to discuss my UC benefit package. She replied by saying 'maybe we should Skype right now to check out the envelope from the Fulbright people that just came through the mail slot.'

Sadly, the webcam was at the apartment so I had to settle for hearing the good news on the phone. So here's the plan:

There are some administrative details to clear, but the letter was definitely one of congratulations.

Late August we head to Beijing for orientation,

Then head to wherever they tell us to. We expressed a preference for Shanghai

I teach library school, in English, for the fall term, which runs through Chinese New Year. I don't know exactly what I'll be teaching, but I sent them 3 sample syllabi. Alternately (and again it's really up to the Chinese) I put on a series of public lectures and 'participate in the daily life of the department.'

20% of my time is supposed to be set aside for research. The project I described in my paper was to combine information science user studies with geographic methods to study how mobile communication technologies (read: smart phones) are affecting how people interact with the city. I have a model to follow, which I've thought about running in 3 different and distinct ways. It should generate quite a bit of data for analysis once I return.

Meanwhile, we rent out the house in Eugene. Upon our return, L relocates to Santa Barbara

We continue to work for 24 more years, then retire to Eugene.

Granted, it's a long term plan and you, loyal reader, can see that we've really put the most thought into these next 10 months. The important thing right now is that you all pay your damn taxes on April 15 because you, dear American reader, are footing the bill for this adventure. The Fulbright is a State Department program and while there is some private money involved, it really is all about creating opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. It's a good deal for me: a good chunk of my salary gets paid (UC is letting me take a leave of absence); I get book, housing, travel, and language tutoring allowances; and L and I get to spend 5 months at a major Chinese university that has yet to be announced.

As for Santa Barbara, life is tough. Last Thursday evening I rode along with a First Thursday bike parade. That was a great first day of work activity. Friday I visited the campus gym for the first time and returned to the Goleta Sushi House. Sadly, I forgot the business end of my headlight and had a rough, long ride home. Happily, without incident and with a full belly of sushi. Saturday was spent around the apartment, shopping, and acquainting myself with the new office Mac. Sunday saw a lovely Easter afternoon around town. Monday it was back to work and acquainting myself with the new office. There's a ton to learn and everyone seems pretty happy to have me there.

Yesterday was the big day, but even with all the excitement I followed through on my plan to attend the SB farmers' market for the first time. Oh my--what a different ecoregion I live in now. Multiple kinds of avocados and citrus. Ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, parsnips, carrots, and beans already. I guess this is all part of being in California. Lamb, eggs, cheese and butter too. I brought home herbed cultured butter, a loaf of bread, and pixie mandarins. Consumed onsite was a half pint of fresh squeezed blood orange juice.

To celebrate the announcement yesterday I followed up the market with dinner at the Wine Cask. As I was pathetically dining alone, each course was live-updated on Facebook, capped off with me Tweeting / Status-ing my news.

Now I really have to study my 汉语。 But first, check out this tree:

From SB beginnings

And thus it begins...

2010-03-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

I have finally settled on tomorrow's ensemble. We all know the debate between the utilikilt with measuring-tape suspenders versus the Sheila Moon jacket and knickers was fierce.

The argument centered around balancing my hard-ass managerial side with the more playful tropical-business-casual ethic that is appropriate to Santa Barbara. All the while staying true to my rock-and-roll roots.

I can't even believe I just typed that. Nonetheless, the Sheila Moon jacket will make an appearance tomorrow because it's chilly here in the mornings (and indeed, was all day today) and I am attending an event after work that calls for both a warm outer layer and a reflective stripe.

Add to the jacket a business-like wrinkle-resistant button down, brown trousers, and my new green and black Vans with white sidewalls and I think I have struck the appropriate aging-skatepunk / wannabe YA librarian vibe. Not that I was ever a skatepunk or actually tried to ever be a YA librarian.

Wardrobe aside, it's been a pleasant few days of unpacking. The apartment is in order, and I think everything is set for a few months alone while L finishes school and we await the results of the funding application for China. What lies ahead is anyone's guess.

Those of you following along on Twitter and FB know it was a pleasant last day: a bike ride, some snacks, reading on the beach. What I failed to mention was that the forecast today was for rain.

If only all my rainy days look like this.

Onward

2010-03-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

But will it really be upward? It's too soon to tell, as I haven't even started the new venture yet. I suppose only time will tell, and judging by the local vibe, nobody's in a hurry to figure anything out.

But I get ahead of myself. I arrived in SB a couple hours late on Friday evening, which made it too late to get the keys to my apartment. So it was off to the mid-centure modern motor lodge for me. After checking in I wandered a bit and had a beer at the tavern that L suspected will be my closest. Super friendly old folks, though not much of a beer selection. And I was told the bartender gives excellent haircuts in his spare time. Dinner at the hotel restaurant, the Crocodile, was fair. The service was, uhm, leisurely. But I did end the evening with a scotch by the pool.

Saturday morning I shuttled my bags over to The Fran. One trip with a big backpack, one with a roll-y bag, and then I returned to the hotel on my bicycle for my daypack. Breakfast was a perfectly average Benedict at Steve's Patio (I'm afraid the hollandaise was bottled), but it was serviceable.

The Pod worked out. There was a little bit of shifting, but nothing actually moved or fell over. I set myself the goal of moving everything in one day. As I moved back-and-forth, it got a little warm so I scaled back my plans. It's the California way, right? So I attempted to get all my furniture inside so that I could move it around trying to figure out the best arrangement. I am glad I left the bookshelves empty that first night because I did wind up moving a few things around.

I spent the afternoon biking to the boardwalk, getting my public library card, and acclimating to the neighborhood. As I tweeted (@jonjab), the local grocery's bike rack sucked. I asked the manager how often people complain and he said 'daily.' Again: not in much of a hurry. The local Chinese food is better that Steve's Patio, and the folks very friendly. The sign says Sichuan and Mandarin, but upon inspecting the buffet I told the folks at the front desk '没看到四川菜。' The sister said 'Oh, I can give you a menu,' and the brother said '我觉得他说了汉语。' (or something to that effect--I think he may have used the 是...的 construction, but I'm not sure how to get the adjectives in there). Mama looked up surprised, and sister giggled. I've got new best friends. They gave me the Chinese-only menu and were gracious enough to steer me away from the tripe.

Unfortunately, the Mexican waiter didn't speak Chinese. Maybe me could have wrestled some up if I had actually gotten the menudo.

Sunday, because of my furniture moving head start, was a short moving day. All of the boxes were inside by 1pm, so I set off to the mall (@jonjab: "I've never seen a dead fancy mall. La Cumbre Plaza -- You are so sad with your 30% empty storefronts. And all I need us a stinking Brita."), stopped in the park to listen to a birthday party's mariachis, and made yet another trip to the Ralph's--this time on foot with a stop at Trader Joe's.

So far I feel like I've been spending my time spending money, but I've also been reveling in the time off. Without gardening, the days are long and varied and filled with little trips to here and there. Today it was a test ride to campus (46 minutes en route), lunch out, and a quest for the bike shop. On my way BACK from UCSB, my brakes started making a terrifying screeching sound. Wheelhouse is closed on Mondays, so I threw myself on the mercy of the ex-Paul's mechanic at Velo Pro. He rode it out, said he didn't hear anything (it took me a good three beats to get the joke) and then said 'yeah man, that sounds awful.' I reiterated that I'd be happy to go to Wheelhouse in the morning as they regularly deal with drum breaks and internal hubs, he scratched his chin, said he's go look in his Trek book, hesitated, and then said conspiratorially and in a hush 'you know, maybe you should go to them.' We agreed that it's best to go someplace where they do this work daily and I pointed at a mountain bike 'yeah man--you do those all day everyday, I'm sure you can figure it out but I'm good going to the place that deals with this kind of bike everyday.'

So now I'm squeaky and at risk of having to be a bus rider for my first day of work. Or maybe I can get a loaner. Regardless, tomorrow I have a date with the cable guy, the bike shop, and need to sharpen my pencils and mentally steel myself for returning to the land of the employed. I will attempt to get photos / maps / route profiles posted once I get this out.

It's all good man.

I'll leave you, loyal readers, with this: the doctor's office down the block from the Trader Joe's, right next door to the smoking supply store, was open late on Sunday afternoon, had a two-way mirror in the waiting room, and the practice was named homophonorifically "Dr. Referral." Just sayin'.

It's odd...

2010-02-01T22:39:00.000-08:00

Here I am in my last few weeks at Duck U and I have found some sort of a balance. Oddly, I find myself doing the same things I did before starting grad school again: holding strictly to 9-5; doing my best to exercise and get on the tennis court as often as feasible; having a nice glass of wine or beer before reading a book and going to bed (ok, and tonight liver sausage and crackers too).

The house is clean (-ish). The wife seems satisfied. Dinners, with actual vegetables, have been put on the table. Time is being spent with friends. If only the backache would go away, life would seem completely satisfactory.

Why is it this happens only now that I am preparing to leave? Is it an indication that the correct decision was made? Or is it another symptom of short-timer's syndrome? Or has the exercise and wine and vegetables and 9-5 achieved an actual balance? Dammit! Too many variables and not enough empirical data. I'd have to change jobs 5 more times just to figure out the true cause!

Our National Scavenger?

2010-01-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

The vote(s) are in. The cloud / hive mind thinks it's an eagle. I understand considerable time was spent. Perhaps later in the spring additional empirical data can be gathered.

Mystery beast

2010-01-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

Since November, I've been starting each day with a brisk walk to the top of Skinner's Butte. Several times now, about half-way up, I am greeted by the warble or some creature. It seems like it's coming from high up in a conifer, but I wouldn't swear to it (those of you who have ever walked up the north face of that hill in semi-darkness would understand).

So: anybody have a clue what makes this sound? (250k .wav file)

#WAMLsp10

2010-01-21T18:50:00.001-08:00

I hereby declare that our hashtag for the upcoming Western Association of Map Libraries spring meeting, the hosting of which will be one of my very last tasks at Duck U. Today I officially filled the program, announced registration, AND received my 100th email related to the meeting.

I also reconnoitered the fieldtrip by taking a long lunch out at King Estate Winery. This had been previously arranged, but the day turned out to be stunning: sunny and 60 degrees. This was foreshadowed last night by the appearance of crocusses in the front garden--I hadn't even noticed they had broken through the ground. I don't know why I'm surprised by this development, as there is precedent. I suppose my midwestern DNA continues to be morally outraged by flowers in January.

From WAML

Oh, the lunch: I'm still full. A bacon-foie gras cheeseburger and truffled French fries. I think the fired may have been made in duck fat. My gut is still a little stunned--it's a good thing I was only in the office for a couple hours today, I don't think I could have digested the meal if my stress hormones had been activated by a full day's work.

So register for WAML!

(ps: I did NOT put the burger on the fieldtrip lunch menu. I hope WAMLites reading this post don't consider that teasing.)

Where everybody knows your name.

2010-01-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

It's starting to sink in a bit that we are actually leaving Eugene. Put more accurately: last week I had an experience that bummed me out about the move. I ran to the Red Barn for some Shanghai pork supplies (and yes, you can substitute anise seed for star anise), and because Facebook told me that the Dylan tribute band was playing, I stopped in Sam Bonds for a quick beer and listen. I got a head nod from the doorman (and no ID check); a New Year smooch from the bartender; and a hug from the guitar player's girlfriend; and a heyyyyyyy... from a couple neighbors (or maybe it was a smooch from the guitar player and a hug from the owner?). And the band was great! And I thought all the instruments in Brian's man-den were just for show.

It wasn't until I got back home that I realized that I had had an awesome neighborhood experience. And this sense of belonging has been steadily growing as we have set down roots here in Eugene. But now we're throwing them into a pot again and hauling them south. Does Santa Barbara have a Chicken Town?

Moving on.

2010-01-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Another New Year internal debate has been how frank to be with this blog and with social networking sites. As President Obama says, I'm someone who wants organizations to err on the side of openness. Does that mean that I also have a personal obligation to be as open as I want my institutions to be?

This morning I tested the waters by announcing, somewhat cryptically, that I am leaving my job at Duck University, although I failed to mention exactly where I'm heading. Indeed, I simply updated my status to say "Jon Jablonski just quit his job." Along with the expected congratulatory notes and comments, this generated quite a bit of confusion. Some folks were obviously in the know, others are still catching up.

It also prompted my mother to ask 'Isn't quit a strong statement'? In response I ask: can I not call a spade a spade?* I'd love to start my new job off by being the strongly opinionated, plainly stated person that I am. After all, if one's head is firmly planted up one's ass, should I not be able to tell him or her to remove it? (This assumes that my own head is in the fresh air. Perhaps that is not a fair assumption?)

The crux, of course, is that there is a big difference between being honest and being a jerk. If I'm aiming for breezy self-confidence, how do I avoid being labeled a cocky (and crude!) bastard. First impressions are hard to overcome, and I definitely don't want to go in tossing verbal hand grenades. That said, most future coworkers probably know about the Google, therefore they can easily see what I've been up to over the past few years.

So what approach should I take? As Jordan Jesse Go and a future colleague pointed out recently, new beginnings are also opportunities for reinvention of the self. On the other hand, this isn't the summer between 8th grade and freshman year of high school (see above comment about the Google). It's not like I can suddenly adopt a Manchester accent. Should I go with the Mork and Mindy suspenders or the utilikilt for my first day as the head of the University of California, Santa Barbara's Map and Imagery Laboratory?

*etymological note: the phrase comes Greek and has no racial connotation. Indeed, it refers to shovels.

New Year new blog?

2010-01-05T19:15:00.001-08:00

I suppose the New Year always comes with a resolution to post more often (or more deeply), but this year it will take on special meaning as new opportunities are poised to be seized.

Tonight though, is cribbage at a local bar with friends. Part of the new regimen of early-morning exercise, not going in too early, and evening recreational activities. The goal, is to not take work too seriously. In other words: to have a personal life.

The possibilities are endless I suppose, and will perhaps be detailed on the blog. Or maybe not.

OH, Canada!

2009-12-15T17:54:00.000-08:00

Just returned from a couple days at Whistler, and finished up a wander-around downtown Vancouver. My Vancouver companion agrees that two days of riding/skiing in a row is idea, and the second day sees a huge improvement in skill and comfort.

The resort itself was lovely, and our party included a lovely couple, one half of which is contemplating a move to Vancouver. The couple is affectionately known as the cocoon, as when they colocate in the same city, they tend to lay low and enjoy each other's company. It was the first ski for both of them, and they said they loved it. Dinner was excellent, even if the service was a bit slow. I couldn't tell you the last time I was in a restaurant where the owner's cookbook was on sale at the front desk (and yes, he does look just like his jacket photo). We were definitely lingering, but the wacky Quebecois waiter definitely forgot to put in our wine order. But he did regale us with a tale of a poutine made with fois gras. JBM had a carpaccio plate that he said was excellent (I totally should have tried it--but I was attempting to be careful with my 'delicate' stomach). I had squash tortellini with prawns, and it was EXCELLENT. Well worth the wait.

The cocoon stayed only one night, leaving JBM and I for a second day on the slopes and a second evening out in the village.

I don't do it nearly often enough, and likely will never be proficient. But it sure is a ton of fun.

....the conversation continues.

2009-12-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

The phone won. And planning for a brief trip while learning a new device has been a bit entertaining.

Many events are on my mind. Looking at joining a budding consortium; trying to work within a separate one; and juggling many pieces of the puzzle. Oh--and planning a 4 day meeting! But my entertainment this week is figuring out the new gadget. I'm hoping to become proficient before hitting the road with it. But then I need to turn it off while in Canada--but I think that will be ok. It will help to transition me to a deep vacation in which I will not save email. That's right--I picked up one new online technology while walking away one that was working just fine. But I need a couple weeks away, and that means no work email. Will this here blog become a one-way channel of communication? Will I microblog? Shall I tweet? Or is it Tweet?

If it wasn't winter, I think I'd be going camping or fishing. Cold and rainy (and snowy?) make for indoor activities. And it seems like going mobile is sort of made for that.

Hard, throbbing gadget lust.

2009-11-29T13:53:00.001-08:00

Since returning from UVa ten days ago, my gadget lust for a smartphone (or app-phone as one reviewer dubbed it) continues unabated. We are leaning towards a Droid and Verizon because of AT&T's oft-mentioned coverage problems. Also, if I had to make a long-term bet on a platform, I'd bank on the more open model of Google and Android. But then again, the iPod and iTunes juggernaut continues unabated even with crippling DRM and the difficulty of using a Pod with anything BUT iTunes.

Beyond feature sets and platform wars, more interesting in our household is the debate about adopting a cellphone lifestyle.

GIS Humanities Institute

2009-11-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

I'm at UVirginia attending a training seminar for GIS folks working in the humanities. Actually, that's not quite accurate, since I don't work in the humanities all that much. There are people here deeply involved with the humanities, but the attendees are all over the map. Librarians, developers, lab managers, a handful of entrepreneurs. And yes, even humanists.

We've just started, so there hasn't been much actual content yet, but there is a lot of potential here. We're divided into 2 groups: stewardship (I'm in that) and software. One thing I didn't expect can be summed up by this comment: "Stewardship isn't just about stewarding the data. It's about stewarding the projects and the scholars." Stewardship in this sense is piece of cyber-infrastructure. I've been neglecting that piece.

Lots of other good stuff. But it's been an exhausting day.

What's the purpose of metadata?

2009-09-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

GIS practitioners generally blow off metadata. 'Yeah, yeah--metadata is important, I'll get around to writing it as soon as we finish updating the data itself at the end of the next leap-fiscal year.' And their lack of emphasis on it is not misplaced: their job is generally to make sure that their data is as accurate and current as possible. Someone who makes data generally knows where all of his data is.

But how does he find out where everyone else's data is? If Joe is in charge of the county land ownership file, why should he care where Susie's city parks file is? He only has to figure that out once every three years when he is banging out a basemap to justify his job or entertain his kid's Cub Scout pack.

For Joe and Susie, their daily need for metadata is to document data that is already found. So naturally, they don't think of it as serving a discovery function. The metadata sits right next to the data--it doesn't help anyone discover it. This is exactly like descriptive cataloging versus subject cataloging. The descriptive cataloger is just trying to accurately describe the item in hand. She doesn't care about making sure the item is findable. It's not her job.

So who does need a discovery mechanism? Where do description and discover meet? Who is searching for GIS data? Where do they start looking? What methods do they use? Do they act like other users with information needs?

25¢ coffee.

2009-09-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

With my chicken-fried steak for breakfast. What is it about the chicken fried steak that attracts me like a spider to the moths near the porch light? Is it the combination of salt and fat that Michael Pollan says we have all become addicted to?

Or is it the pizza-like infinite variation in country gravy? It’s never actually bad, but sometimes it’s spectacularly good. Or at least an interesting local variation. American breakfast is American breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, omelets. There’s a wide variety of combinations, but basically they are all variations on a theme. I’m not sure what to do with the fact that most of them are bad for you.

Cody turned out to be a fun town, and the meeting I attended was flawlessly orchestrated. I’m thinking that libraries and conferences only have so many variations also. All the librarians complain of slow-moving administrations, irrational belt-tightening measures, and a misunderstanding of our various specialties. But we also brag of generous donors, engaged readers, and pride in our collections. I struggle to reconcile this contradiction as well. It is so easy to fall into complaint mode, but it is also easy to share accomplishments.

It was a pretty good 25¢ cup of coffee.

WAML dinner talk

2009-09-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

Before dinner two nights ago, I had a lovely talk with Dr. Peter Simpson, former Wyoming legislator, Republican nominee for governor, and retired history professor. Oh: and Duck U alum. He shared fond memories of many of our emeriti in the geography department, where he rounded out his education. I shared with him that there are only two real disciplines in the social sciences: history and geography. All others are derivative.

He seemed to really like that.

After dinner, he gave a great talk that revolved around the history 5oo yards around the restaurant where we sat. The three terraces of the Shoshone River have been settled in three distinct phases, and he walked us through the social and economic developments of each. And he charmed the comfortable shoes off the room full of librarians. There are rumors that we'll publish the talk in its entirety. I'm not sure if the whiskey jokes will be included.

Hong Kong and Shenzhen

2009-09-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Here we go! Last photos from the trip.

And now I'm on the road again in Cody, Wyoming. Great little town, great company at WAML.

And this weekend in Seattle.

I need to slow down.

Lagging...

2009-09-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

We had dinner tonight with my friend's parents, whom we have been euphamistically referring to as our 'package from Shenzhen.' This was a nice opportunity to apologize for any misunderstandings / deprivations / draggings-to-tourist-destinations that happened over our 3 days together. They swore there were no such things, and that the traveling went off without a hitch. I have to say though, that I was pretty much panicking in SFO trying to explain the monitors to them--they were originally scheduled to come in 2 hours later and the gates tend to change a lot with the mini-planes there.

We also got to fill in some gaps in the narrative--are they retired? How big is their town? How long have the 2 other kids been in Shenzhen? Did you really like the bird park or were you just humoring us? I was really happy for the chance to have this follow-up. And we got some typical Hubei food--rive powder stir fried with cabbage and pork. We were also treated to CY's and XB's first attempt at homemade sausage, which I enjoyed very much.

We are still a bit jet-lagged. Well--our schedules are off anyway. But tomorrow it's back to work and our normal schedule. That will take some getting use to--just like the empty streets of Eugene.

The next set of photos is ready. These are all from Shanghai, where we spent 5 days. As always--click on the thumbnail.

China tour 2009--Shanghai

First photos from China.

2009-09-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry to those who were hoping for frequent updates. Blogger was caught up in the Great Firewall. I did post a few geographer-ish notes over at the more business-like blog.

The thumbnail below will lead you to the first batch of photos--all from Beijing. I'll post the details of the trip in coming days, but I figure that most people just look at the pictures anyway. It was a great trip, and the only possible shortcoming (other than the weather--hot and humid all the way through) was a lack of time to visit with friends at Bei Da. I promise you all that next time will be more leisurely (if not for a full 5 months--but we all know the location of that trip is not up to me).

China tour 2009--Beijing

What's next?

2009-08-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

The public diary seems to have moved over to Facebook, but that doesn't mean that the blog is dead. Although my mother continues to complain that it does not get updated enough.

I resisted blogging our remodel this summer for fear that writing anything negative would fuel the fire (or at least make me worry) if there was any conflict with the contractors. Now that that's (almost) over, I am gestating a 'ten things you should know before hiring a contractor' posting. Don't hold your breath though.

There's also the next steps now that the degree is complete. The everyday stress of working at an under-funded university makes having some sort of side-project almost mandatory. I'm realizing that if I stay, I need either an extremely active personal life or an extremely engaging personal research agenda that I can drive forward with a minimum of logistical support and funding. From my understanding of our internal procedures, securing outside funding might create more problems than it solves. So off we go to China, just as internal GIS projects are taking off.

Speaking of GIS, Friday afternoon I spent about 3 hours doing something that I should have done several months ago. And it's going to bite me, because now I have to go ask for gaps in a dataset to be filled in. But the process will result in a great new set of imagery for campus users--now I just have to figure out how to give people access to it!

Ampersand

2009-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

Another reason for big city envy. We just don't get cool stuff like this:

Is that jonquil?

2009-07-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

I KNEW we picked a good color, but I didn't realize we were in such distinguished company.

From house

Results are in!

2009-07-18T09:06:00.001-07:00

During spring break, I asked the cloud (ie: I posted on Facebook) about podcasts: what do folks listen to, are they using their PCs or their iPods or some other device to listen. I got a bunch of great suggestions--some hits, some misses, and some things that I've taken to listening to regularly.

The whole highly unscientific experiment was inspired by the lameness of the local NPR station. They don't play the talk shows during the day, and they don't purchase This American Life. (There is an alternative station that gets it, but it's AM and scratchy.) For a couple years I've been downloading the weekly podcast, but that's only an hour and yardwork takes a lot longer than that. So here is what got suggested, in the order that I continue to listen to them regularly:

The Adam Carolla Podcast. I don't think I had cable when the Man Show was around, and I certainly never heard Adam on the radio. But dang--I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I've been listening to this and laughing out loud. He's very much an unreconstructed knuckle dragger and I do wish he'd tone down the 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' and 'women can't change light bulbs' crap. But if you like masturbation and fart jokes--and frankly, who doesn't--this is the podcast for you. One recent episode featured a celebrity barbecuer (if that's a word) and devolved into the sounds of chewing and threats to cut off legs once they ran out of meat. Good stuff--and several episodes per week. Thanks Marie!

Jordan Jesse Go is a kinder, gentler NPRish comedy podcast--masturbation and fart jokes without the misogyny. Unfortunately, both Jordan and Jesse have day jobs (oddly--Jordan as an NPR music show host), so there's typically only one of these per week. Like Carolla, it's probably an acquired taste. Oh--and I would guess that a significant number of people who like one hate the other. Just a guess. Thanks Kramer.

The BBC's Thinking Aloud is a talk show about social science research. This one wasn't actually recommended. Rather, Joe pointed me towards In Our Time, which is a history talk show. That one I have listened to a few times, but the shows with topics I'm not interested in just don't grab me. But--at the end they always plug Thinking Aloud, which I've grown to really like. But again--only once a week.

Several people suggested the Savage Love Podcast. I'm sorry Dan, but you need a sidekick and/or guests. Your writing is fantastic, but it's clear that you slave over each word (even if you are scribbling them on cocktail napkins) in your column. I just don't think you have the spontaneity it takes to do the podcast--unless you want to get Ira Glass to produce each of them. There's another possibility here. While I love the column, and would read every week regardless of my circumstances, I mostly read the column out loud to my wife each week. Often in a restaurant. So perhaps this we have taken to getting a little vicarious exhibitionist thrill discussing santorum, pegging, and other Savagery in public?

There are a few more that never really grabbed me. After three months of this I finally figured out that You Look Nice Today is with Merlin Mann--the 43 Folders, productivity guru, steam-punk penis-pump guy. It's a pretty good podcast, but I'm not wild about the editing. I'm not sure I gave We The People Stories a fair chance. I did listen to some some good lectures, but it just didn't stick. And then there's Eugene's own Dan Carlen, with Common Sense and Hard Core History. Neither did anything for me.

So that's the big podcast experiment, and now I generally have plenty of listening material for gardening, woodworking, and making up for the lack of a full-blown NPR affiliate.

Back to China

2009-07-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

I guess we'll call this my birthday / graduation present: we're heading back to China for 2 weeks at the end of August. Whoo-hoo! We're calling it a practice run for a potential sabbatical trip.

I want independance: from construction!

2009-07-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Sitting here at the end of week 8 of what was quoted as a 5 week job, I'm regretting a little bit not blogging the whole process: from the mis-sized windows to the mis-communications about paint, it would have made a good story.

But we're at the mercy of the people working for us. Once the house is taken apart, you're sort of stuck with them. It is nice to have them sit down with you and explain what's going on, but I can't help but feel like smoke is being blown up my ass. Disclosure is nice, but all to often it feels like finger pointing. 'We didn't know the sub was going to do it this way, etc. etc.' What you want to say is: 'Hey--the check to the sub doesn't have our name on it, it has yours.' Or: 'Hey--it's your insurance policy, not ours.' But then again, I have no idea who would get tangled up into the bullshit if things went downhill. But one thing I do know would definitely happen: work would grind to (even more of) a halt, we would continue to sleep on couch and twin bed in the mini-dining room, and it would be a huge mess.

So we smile, nod our heads, and I secretly reconfirm my decision not to tell this story day-by-day.

Fish on.

2009-06-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

I feel like such a baby. I spent a little money today replacing some lost gear (fuck you burglars!) and learned a new trick--a trick I probably should have learned a long time ago. The trick is: take advantage of those pre-tied loops in your leader. Buy a leader one notch up from what you want and by some tippet material. Put a perfection loop on the end of your leader and to the end of a length of leader. Now you have 2 loops that you can tie together, and it's easy to take that knot apart. This way, you have a length of tippet to tie flies to. Once this tippet gets short, you can take it off the leader and put on a new length of tippet. This way--your leader never gets shorter. It will really lengthen the life of the leader.

Really glad for the advice. But like the shop owner said: the advice is always free.

Finding the best resources.

2009-06-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Lindsay has already recommended the New York Times and content from the BBC. I'll add a few other sources that are excellent:

The Christian Science Monitor. Please don't confuse it with Scientology. It's very different, and this online-only newspaper is an excellent source of coverage of world events.
The New Yorker. Most of its content is available for free online, and each week they will typically have two or three 5000 word essays which are excellent.
The Economist. Staunchly pro-free market, this British magazine is a good alternative to openly political journals such as The Nation and he National Review.

But that's just the open web. The UO Libraries has a huge assortment of material available to you (we spend about $4 million per year). Try the topical lists of databases available for searching. These databases are especially good at finding news sources:

Newspaper Source. A search engine that includes content from many different newspapers.
Lexis Nexis. Has even more news content.
Ethnic News Watch. An index of newspapers by and about ethnic minority groups in the US.

And this is just news stuff! I'm sure you'd get bonus point if you were to use scholarly journals in your work--stuff like a couple of the journals I have listed under geography on my blogroll. Try GeoBase, or some of the indexes under Political Science and International Studies to get a taste of what these are good for.

As for the cheese--when I returned to the coffee shop, I'm sure the two young ladies thought I was pretty smooth when I walked in and said "Excuse me, did you see a piece of cheese sitting here when you sat down?" I finally bit the bullet and rode my bike all the way back downtown. I had left the dang goat cheese sitting on the cheesemonger's table when she gave me her change. She had set it aside for me in a little wax paper bag. "I knew you'd be back."

Duck U blog options.

2009-06-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

Lindsay's class has to put their blogs somewhere. If there's a high-octane geek in the class (and isn't there always?) they can always put it on their own domain. But that's usually not an option. So generally, students can put blogs on their local webspace (Hey everybody: did you know you can have webpages hosted by the university? It just takes up part of your disk quota.) or just let Blogger take care of things at blogname.blogspot.com.

Here's some essentials about getting a Blog started at uoregon.edu/~your_user_name:

Getting a page set up on the university's server.

I recommend putting a basic index.html page up just to test that you set everything up correctly. There's also a campus IT page with some extra file transfer help.

Set up a new folder on your 'shell account' that is named whatever you want the url of your blog to be, such as: uoregon.edu/~your_user_name/myblog/

You're all set to start following the instructions at blogger.com!

If you want Blogger to host your blog, start there. If you have a gmail account--you should be able to use that username to log in at Blogger.

Easy as pie.

But what about the cheese? On Saturday I went to the market for the first time all year (that admission by itself is a bit embarrassing). Strawberries, cherries, and all sorts of early vegetables are available. Often, I'll also buy a loaf of bread or a piece of meat. It's expensive, but it's almost always worth it. So Saturday I bought this beautiful piece of cumin flavored goat cheese, ingredients for the salmon chowder I made Saturday night, berries, cherries, and greens for a salad. Then I headed to the Goat for a morning coffee. When I got home and unpacked.....

...the cheese was missing.

Feed me!

2009-06-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

In the past two years, I all but gave up on feed readers. I was committed to bloglines for about a year, but writing my thesis made me feel totally opposed to keeping current with library blogs. Besides: I kind of enjoy seeing the blogs I read regularly in their native format. In a way, blogs lose some of their appear when they look like webmail.

Anyway, I do want to introduce Lindsay's students to readers--at least to take their pulse to see if anyone is using them. I've never been a Google Reader user, but it does seem to be a popular option amongst my colleagues. Getting started is certainly a breeze:

Bloglines is much the same, and I use it to generate the blogroll to the right. I spent some time today playing with CSS to make them match the look of the GrowBlog a bit more closely, but those skills are REALLY rusty.

You might be wondering about the cheese. I'll explain as I continue to prep for Tuesday, but suffice it to say: if I was single, I think I would have just discovered a new pickup line.

Found my cheese!

2009-06-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

Spring cleaning here at the GrowBlog. I'm visiting a class on Tuesday and need not only to show a few features of Blogger, but also show what a blog is useful for. So get ready for some rapid posts, a few template changes, and just a little bit of commentary on the weekend's food and reading.

First off: the class I'm visiting is charged with identifying news and/or reading items on a given topic each week, and writing a brief posting about them. As it's summer and all, I'm also catching up on a little reading. Starting in China, I checked in with one of my semi-regular Chinese blogs today which recently posted a whole bunch of commentaries on how June 6 was treated in the world media. I will note that my own campus had a panel discussion on that evening, but I was unable to attend.

The posts though, led me to a new site and introduced me to a blogger who is also an archivist. A great combination. I have heard of this Budapest human rights archive, but have never had an opportunity to check out their website. This here post is a reminder for me to do so at some greater length at a later date.

"Almost belligerantly unambitious"

2009-06-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

Is how one of my coworkers described herself today. I thought that was f'in awesome.

3 more retirements.

2009-05-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

Announced since I wrote that last post. All map librarians. Seeing as there are typically 3 jobs open nationally each year, this seems to be a big deal. 7 openings. Well, that's not exactly accurate. 7 positions vacant. Only one opening so far.

(note to my own colleagues: no, I'm not looking. If I was looking, I would only be getting a new roof and paint job instead of all the other renovations.)

I've just been slated to teach Library 101 in the fall--a 1-credit 1-hour-a-week course. In starting to think about how to go about it, I realize that there will be few places in the syllabus where they will actually have to touch a physical resource. I'm thinking about making attendance mandatory though. 5 random quizzes in 9 sessions? As one of my high school history teachers would say: "Gentlemen, take out....a half-sheet of paper.

Libraries losing.

2009-05-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just finished up several days in Salt Lake City. I wandered around town less than I have at other conferences, but this was primarily because I spent most of Sunday with a fellow iSchool alum. It was great to meet his family and friends--they actually threw a brunch!

The conference itself was especially good for me, but the side conversations were dire. There are considerable shakeups happening out there in library land, and I have been thinking carefully about their effects on colleagues across the country and in my own library. Lunchroom conversation this week has been similar topics: What services will continue into the future? Who will be responsible for them? Will as many people work on providing them? What will the library look like as an organization in 5, 10, 20 years? In six months?

The public news is serious:
A big cut at UW.
Other ARL libraries are cutting. And this isn't a very comprehensive list. For example: my own ARL library is in the middle of a 30% serial cut.

The private news, gathered at the abovementioned conference and via the grapevine: one colleague holding a 'temporary' spot for five years finally had her position advertised: but with a caveat in the job description that makes her unqualified. A 20% staff reduction at another prominent university library. A 'terminal contract' for someone not quite ready to retire. And again, in my own library: a 25% monograph cut last fall BEFORE the campus started talking about across-the-board cuts.

In an environment where the dean says that her two largest priorities are preventing staff and (further) collection cuts, we can't help but wonder if the choice is really hers. In a budget where more than 90% of the money goes directly to staff and collections, what else is there to cut if there is a budget rescission? We're not dumb, and we don't think the collection can really stand another cut. The only temporary solution that I can imagine is a 'year without books,' which some other libraries have done in the past. But I don't know that we would be allowed to only plan for one year. Cuts to budgets take a long time to come back.

Unfortunately for this blog, this leads to a lot of conversations that I would never repeat online. Conversations about whether or not administrators have enough information to make sound decisions. Or whether they understand the information that they have. Conversations about which services (read: departments) have outlived their usefulness. Which ones are nice to have, but unessential.

I had a job interview a few years ago where I went out on a limb at one point. It was a library with about 65 staff, completely traditional in its range of services. Basically, a mid-size college in a mid-size city. In any interview you get asked to do a bit of handwaving: What will the future look like? What sorts of new services do you want to see in the future? How will librarians spend their time as more and more tools become self-service and materials arrive more and more shelf ready? I gave what I thought were pretty middle-of-the-road answers: more data services; more assistance with higher-level projects; leveraging of unique and local collections. The people just weren't getting it though. It's as if they hadn't left the building in 25 years. That's when I decided to go out on that limb and say something to the effect of:

"Look, they (the researchers and students) really don't need us anymore. Someday a provost or a president or a politician is going to come in and notice that there's a lot of people sitting around and not doing anything. As a proportion of new materials, we do almost zero original cataloging--and even that could be outsourced. There's a hundred service companies that will provide shelf-ready books, electronic content, and outsourced web development and technical support. We already have distributed virtual reference--how long will it be before the person on the other end of the chat widget is living on another continent? This isn't a particularly big library, and I haven't seen very much that is out of the ordinary. It could be run with 15 people: Three to hire, train, and supervise student assitants. One to do selection. One (preferably a lawyer) to negotiate contracts. A couple to manage integrate online systems together and design a web front end. One to visit classrooms and do other sorts of teaching and outreach."

You get the idea. But my audience didn't. They were having nothing of it. Two years later? While 15 might not be the right number, there are staff reductions happening everywhere.

The problem with many libraries--not just my own--is that the people who decide who stays and who goes are not the best equipped to make that decision. In only 1 case, out of the 6 I have learned about in recent weeks, is there any sort of rational planning happening to make sure that the library is evolving into some sort of new entity through this process. So what does this mean for the other 5? Irrelevancy? Absorption by another campus unit? A warehouse for grumpy employees treading water until retirement?

Stay tuned. The next few years will be interesting.

Just read: "Citizen of the Galaxy"

2009-03-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

While gardening and woodshopping this week, I've been listening to an audio book version of Citizen of the Galaxy, a 50-year-old science fiction novel. For some reason I got totally sucked into the first part of the story--to the point that I just had to sit down and listen for a while on Sunday. It went downhill a bit, but it was still an awfully good read.

What makes the book blogworthy though is that I picked it at random at the public library without knowing who Robert Heinlein was, or that he was writing 50 years ago. While listening, I did think that the book was mis-categorized YA fiction (or that maybe EPL doesn't segregate its audiobooks by adult versus kids). It never occurred to me, until the narrator said it at the end, that the book might have been written in 1957. I think this is the second or third time this has happened to me in recent years.

So while we're on the topic: everybody go re-read Snowcrash. And for those of you who have never read it, resist reading the copyright date.

2 things

2009-03-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

First: one of my favorite bloggers is back after more than a year away. She holds to a strong theme (successful meals--whether cooked in or out) while subtly dropping in life updates.

Second: to the commenter at March 13: for the record, my house is one long block away from the Tiny Tavern. And when you gotta go, you gotta go.

oh--let's make it 3 things. My adviser accepted my thesis on Friday largely as is. Now I only have to jump through the grad school hoops and then I'm done.

The horror!

2009-03-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

I stopped in at the Tiny Tavern on my way home from the Whiteaker Jig on Saturday (not too crowded due to the rain, but the sound sucked), and saw something a little odd. In the men's room were three or four bright red lipstick kisses.

A lady in the men's room? Natch.

A man wearing lipstick? Natch.

Touching anything in the men's room of Tiny's with your lips? Now that's scary. Think about the opening scene of Trainspotting.

A world class university?

2009-03-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a little embarrassed that my "world-class teaching and research university" is looking at hiring a new president that can't format a CV.

Of course, since this smacks of a cut-and-paste job, maybe a more accurate statement would be to say that I'm embarrassed to work for a world class university that can't take the time to re-format the new president's CV before posting it online. Of course, it's an improvement over the 404-message that accompanied the initial announcement earlier today.

That said, it is very intriguing to see a variety of (what appears to be) hi-tech advisory gigs on the CV of a Hindu scholar who has written a scholarly journal article titled "Never marry a woman with hairy ankles." And although one of my coworkers called him a foreigner today, it should be noted that he is a Chicago native. I wonder where he grew up?

Abandoned plans

2009-03-02T18:00:00.001-08:00

So that would be a big "NO!" on the major remodel. Here's several reasons why it's not a good idea for us at this point:

It would take almost all of our savings just to pay for a very stripped down project. It would be at least 2 years before we could finish the bathroom that we'd be roughing out.
Is anyone's job really secure at this point?
Committing to Eugene for 5 years is not really an option for us at this point. Things are just too precarious
The house is pretty awesome as it is. And with just a few tweaks (which I'm sure you'll all be hearing more about later) it will be even more awesome.
We're just not fancy enough

It sort of feels like a dodged bullet. When push came to shove, we were just not willing to take the risk. Live and learn.

Contemplating...

2009-02-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

It's not that I have too many plates in the air right now, but rather there are decisions to be made that all affect each other. At the same time, these particular decisions have long-term effects.

The main decision, of course, is what to do about the house. We know we need a new roof and a thorough paint job. So last year we began exploring the idea of the most obvious renovation for the place--an attic remodel that would include a dormer and second bath. As time has gone on, we realized we can't actually afford to have all of the work done, so a cascading limiting of the scope ensued. Now we are down to having the contractors leave us with finished dryall and a subfloor upstairs--and little left in our savings accounts. (Don't panic parents--we're not touching retirement.)

This not only is a big financial commitment, but it is also a time commitment over both the short, medium, and long term. First, we have to pack up a good chunk of the house and do the demolition work. Second, my summer will be committed to doing all the finish work after the contractors are done. Third, doing all this basically commits us to Eugene for the indefinite future.

Then there are the career considerations. If we pursue this project and then leave in less than five years, we'll take a huge financial hit. Of course, in a world where no one's job is 100% secure, we could take a huge financial hit no matter what. So there's financial risk. There's also the risk of whether I'm really up to doing the work that I am committing to. There's no Kramer to bail me out this time. Who will be my personal construction guru? Then there is the general risk that we're getting ripped off. We know it's a fancy design-build firm, but avoiding the risk of architects and contractors miscommunicating seems to be worth the premium price.

Finally, I'm also contemplating what to do with the shank. We've been very much enjoying our half-lamb from Pammy's farm. I wish I had met it--it tastes great.

The shank is on the upper left of this photo:

Maybe I should have laid everything out anatomically.

Monthly updatey.

2009-02-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

Maybe someday it will be more than monthly. I still can't say it's done, but it has been submitted to ye olde committee. And actually, it sort of limped across the finish line--there were no trumpets. No one poured Gatorade over my head. Maybe that comes when the thing is actually approved.

So I seem to be paving the road to hell brick-by-brick via my plans for the blog, but here's what's going on:

A snotty cold.
The abandoning of a very old, very Spam ridden email account. It's harder than you think.
The first table saw project. I made my first tongues too long. Or maybe I made the grooves too shallow. But my dado was fully extended, so I'm sticking with the tongues.
Final discussions with the contractors regarding the upcoming renovations.
Learning a bunch about the Coast Range--in my penultimate MA class.
Making of this here Valentine's casserole: because nothing says I love you like a hot dish
Cancelling of one-third of my university's journal collection.

What's next?

Overhaul of this here blog.

Preparing manuscript and making requested revisions.

Making some sort of epic 'tips for writing a thesis' blog post.

But as with most of life, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

Closing in on being done.

2009-01-19T10:13:00.001-08:00

I'm currently in thesis hell, but it's rapidly coming to an end. As I begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I am beginning to poke my head out of the attic and back into the real world. Last night, as I was finding a reference to last fall's final report from Berkeley's youth culture onlne study I discovered that someone who I followed extensively a few years ago had just posted (like literally--the date was the 18th) her dissertation (part of the larger study) online.

I gotta say: it was a little inspiring because I remember when she started school. Although we're in a bit of a different league: people actually read her writing. Her post was doubly charming because a: it admits that theses and dissertations rarely get read; b: she acknowledges the OCD-type qualities of online-type people; and c: she frets that, like all dissertations, it is not a finely polished piece of prose.

And I had a nice little moment when I pictured her with her finger poised over the upload button chanting (much as I have been the last several weeks):

The only good thesis is a finished thesis.
The only good thesis is a finished thesis.
The only good thesis is a finished thesis.

Changing times at Library of Congress?

2009-01-18T21:46:00.000-08:00

Funny, I didn't think they circulated.

Oh Senator Franken

2009-01-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

Will you be wearing your longjohns tomorrow?

The long silence...

2008-12-07T19:59:00.000-08:00

...of the thesis is, hopefully, over. It was a crazy month, but now the presentation is complete and the paper is almost complete.

I'm a little tired of the project, but that might just be my ADD talking. This week, it's off to Chicago for an all too brief visit. When we return, the paper will get polished off and then it will be time to start planning the next adventure: which may or may not be a big construction project here at whatsgrowing HQ.

Here's some recent, non-thesis happenings:

Renewed correspondance with my Lanzhou interpreter. Who is now in Alberta! How'd that happen?
Thanksgiving with the father-in-law at the neighbors was lovely. And perhaps made a couple new friends. If Eugene keeps up, it might become home.
We've been having weekly advent wreath lightings here with the alterna-Catholics. I'm flummoxed at how to proceed with them.
Managed to prime the garage door yesterday. But today was too wet to apply color.

Finally!

2008-11-03T00:34:00.000-08:00

It only took me 14 months to find Dick and Cowboy's rendition of 甜蜜蜜. Oddly, alot of Dick's other stuff is sickly sweet mando-pop. So I'm still not sure where this came from.

Chapter 1: in a nutshell

2008-11-03T00:30:00.003-08:00

Well, in a wordle shell anyway. It's late.

Yes, I can...

2008-10-26T22:00:00.001-07:00

carve.

My parents' money was so not wasted on art school.

New favorite LC class number

2008-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

GV 850.45

Dancing on ice.

Can't help but be a pirate

2008-10-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

(thanks boingboing).

btw: looking at the image heavy posts recently, I have to remark again (or maybe this is the first time, but I've said it to myself a bunch of times): the digital camera has really revived an interest in taking and sharing photographs. Sure, it's no grand Art Project, but I have derived great pleasure in sharing photos of meals and harvests and friends.

Random office finds.

2008-10-01T21:47:00.001-07:00

As promised.

Of course we start with everyone's favorite: a bare breasted cartouche.

And move on to a scenic view:

Then there are exotic weapons:

Check out the detail on the etching:

Really: these things were just sitting on a pile in my office. For at least 4 years. It's possible it's been 9!

Happy sailing!

Astonishing find.

2008-09-30T21:07:00.001-07:00

Today while cleaning a pile of crap in my office--essentially a mound of manilla folders hiding a pile of maps that I made when first moving into my office--I uncovered a set of 49 plates from a 1745 book.

The title is "A new general collection of voyages and travels: consisting of the most esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language." And we do not have a print copy. One of the map sheets has a corner carefully cut out--in exactly the place one would put, say, a property stamp or call number.

We do have electronic access to the book via Gale's 'Eighteenth Century Collections Online,' but it's a crappy scan from microfilm. I'll be scanning a few of these tomorrow to use in a presentation next week. I'll post some here.

Harvest season

2008-08-30T18:18:00.001-07:00

Having just finished a market steak (Dr. Karen might be on to something about beef not tasting as good as it used to: this piece of meat had a texture that I have never experienced in grocery store steak. Like a good piece of sashimi: buttery texture and flavor, seasoned perfectly well with just a bit of salt and pepper before cooking, my teeth marks apparent on the side of the bone after I finished gnawing the last of the flesh off of it) I realized I haven't said much about the harvest this year.

We came as close as we ever have to using the oregano as it became available. The garlic harvest started as it usually does with whips back in late May:

And then just a few weeks ago we pulled a pretty good batch out of the ground:

I've already put in about 8 cloves back in the ground. Another 15 or so are sitting in a cup next to me as I type this. 2 weeks ago we made a massive batch of pesto (which I finished with my steak just now) with the first good batch of basil for father-in-law and friends. There's still about a half pound. This continues to be the garlic we found wild when we first moved in. Now the best heads have a nice stiff neck, purple skin, and produce about 6 large cloves each. I wish they were a bit more productive, but the flavor is excellent.

Around the same time the pesto was made, the first cherry tomatoes came on. 2 plants are producing about a pint a week now. And this afternoon for lunch I had my first two slicing tomatoes (Big Boys) of the year:

It's a bit late. I'm afraid the spring was too cool and I was too slow to get a good tomato harvest. I'm afraid the Santiams and Black Russians won't get a chance to ripen at all now that it's cooling off.

Well, that's the news from Yoo-Gene. I'm off to be the licensed driver for an immigrant friend who's practicing on a learner's permit.

btw: I had an audience the whole time I ate that steak:

Writing updates

2008-08-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

So should I be giving you all the nitty-gritty about how the thesis is going? I've never written a 150 page paper before (that's my budget after a rough outline and one chapter worth of detailed). Actually, maybe my loyal readers (I'm not talking to you Ma) could offer practical advice on how to manage such a document. I sought the advice of my peers, but they didn't bite. We get stuck taking a one-hour-a-week 'thesis writing workshop', but it's mostly used to practice presentations. There's very little workshopping about actual writing.

So...discuss.

(and wasn't that a nice speech that Mr. Obama gave tonight?)

Happy blog anniversary

2008-08-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

An old, old friend got in touch with me today and I sent her the url to the old growblog here. (Later on, L said such a reply is rude. 'Oh, hi. How have you been the last 20 years? Here, read my blog.' Sorry HH.) That made me click on the archive to see what it was I was saying back in the early days. By some cosmic coincidence, today is the 5 year anniversary of this here blog, online diary, travologue, rambling. And boy--I need to do a little housecleaning. Those IM icons haven't worked in months. The archives need a hierarchical menu.

So: 5 years. 432 posts. 2 jobs. 3 months in China. 3/4 of a geography degree. 1 darkroom. 2/3 of a fixed garage.

Hot!

2008-08-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

We're having our second hot spell of the summer. But it's still pleasantly cool in the evenings.

I stayed late this evening to take advantage of the fast network speeds on campus (it's definitely noticeable when surfing Chinese sites) and as I was walking back from dinner admiring the quad in the setting sun I was once again struck at my good fortune: a dinner out; a pleasant campus to walk through; the opportunity to study and work at the same time (despite the overload); being able to eat out at the drop of a hat.

'Blessed' is a word that comes to mind. Or maybe just really really lucky.

2008-08-11T15:37:00.001-07:00

Word is getting out about the newest map of Oregon from Dave Imus.

North Park exploring

2008-08-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

And Hillcrest too! Yesterday a local librarian took my lament (that all food in downtown San Diego comes on the same Sysco truck) to heart and came back to me an hour later with a long list of places to explore and eat last night.

So I cabbed to the Hillcrest neighborhood and, not being hungry at her first recommendation (a lovely-looking Mediterranean place) set off on a rather epic walk. Up to University, across to 30th, and the back down to Upas. There, found via Google, was Zensei sushi. Ate at the bar, had a nice chat with the chef who made my dinner, and even got a free piece of nigiri at the end (because he said I looked "like a hamachi kind of guy." How could he tell?).

He was really surprised when he found out I was a tourist. But he totally got it when I told him about the flavor of the Sysco truck clinging to everything I ate downtown. Still, I guess North Park is not a neighborhood that most visitors make it up to. That's too bad: it looks diverse, affordable (unless those little houses are deceptively expensive), and fun. And well served by the bus I took back downtown.

Sweet suite!

2008-08-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks Sheraton.

Because I was such a late arrival Friday night, the hotel I’m staying at was completely full. So the upgraded me to the Governor’s Suite. If Arnold does stay here, he enjoys 3 bathrooms, 4 balconies, 2 large flat-screen TVs, and a king-size bed. If he comes often, he has probably learned that the refrigerator doesn’t get very cold, so he should bring home his leftovers if he has seafood.
Speaking of which, I had a lovely spaghetti dinner at Mona Lisa last night in San Diego’s Little Italy. Very nice, with a ton of vegetables mixed in with the prawns. Bell peppers, carrots, and zucchini. Even with the cream in the ‘pink sauce,’ it was probably a pretty healthy dinner. The cannoli was to die for. It was made to order, so the pastry was still very crisp. And the filling was soft and pillowy.

Everyone in San Diego seems to be loving life (except for the complaining Aussies at the table next to me in the faux-Irish pub yesterday). At dinner last night, being a solo diner I sat at the bar. A series of giddy parties came and went as I went. Every single one of them struck up a conversation: it’s her birthday; what are you reading?; how’s that cannoli? Granted, everyone was half- to three-quarters sloshed, but they were all happy sloshed. Even the bus drivers glad to see you—the opposite of most big cities where someone who doesn’t know the system (is my trolley pass good on the bus? Do I swipe it or just show it?).

I snuck up to Balboa Park for the weekly organ concert. Dreamy. The park is the city’s museum campus, and I knew there was a photography museum, but I wasn’t expecting a triple cultural attraction that speaks directly to several different parts of my personality:

(For those of my loyal readers who aren’t my parents, yes, I was a train geek growing up.)

My one complaint about the Sheraton is that the interweb isn’t free in the rooms, so I have to go downstairs to the lobby to post this and research a dinner location. I’m writing this up with my feet up on a deck chair enjoying my harbor view. So, I’ll enjoy that for a bit longer and then head down. As always, click on one of the photos to see the whole day’s worth.

(a bit later)

I assume the reason they make you go to the lobby to blog (check your email, google restaurants, etc.) is because some hi-tech business major figured out that they are X% more likely to sell you a beer for $4.50 than they are to sell you an hour in interweb access for $11.50.

This keen observation also made me remember that the San Diego convention center has a net-nanny web filter installed. While the Chinese government won't let you see websites about Tibet, San Diego won't let you google brew pubs

San Diego GIS fun

2008-08-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

At the ESRI User Conference. The opening session of the education conference was this morning, and the international user conference will start Monday.

They gave a very nice brief demo of features for 9.3 this morning in between a few marketing pitches about how great they are and how much they do for us. The highlight though was the keynote and an ESRI manager giving talks about their own work using GIS for historical research. Oddly, I edited a review of Anne Knowle's Placing History just yesterday. Charlie Frye gave a warm up talk about using GIS to trace his own family history research about revolutionary New England.

Erik Steiner, among others, got a nice shout out from Knowles for his work on mapping the Holocaust.

Wrote down a bunch of stuff, so expect more as the week goes by.

On the 'visiting a new city' front. I won on the lunch front. My first instinct was to walk into a schwarma stand. My second was an Irish pub across the street. I started in the pub, but the couple next to me was complaining loudly to their waitress, and to the manager. The people on the other side was their before me and hadn't gotten their drinks yet by the time I started to consider leaving.

I had finished my schwarma before those other folks had gotten their food.

Upcoming travels

2008-07-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

I am now accepting recommendations for eating and drinking in San Diego. Downtown or transit friendly please.

Celebrate your independence: with mechanicals!

2008-07-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

I realized a life-long dream this weekend. I finally got to jack something up! Sure, it was just a garage, but you have to start somewhere right?

Of course, my carpentry manhood was dashed when my friend Del showed up (he lent me that screw jack) and said: hey, you guys got the Internet? I don't have a computer but I'm on YouTube this week. Del's woodworking is amazing. Watch this video and remember: no metal parts whatsoever. All wood and glue. Note the wooden chain. A WOODEN CHAIN!

It doesn't actually do anything, but that makes it as useful as just about any steampunk device, right? Merlin Mann eat your heart out!

I may post a full photo essay on the garage project at a later date. You should see the dryrot! But at the moment I'm rather thesis driven and the garage is still in progress. The last thing we did tonight was dog-proof the side of it that faces the neighbor's. That rottweiler is friendly, but I'd hate to be the one that let him loose. Oddly, after putting a whole new sill around the whole perimeter, the back wall is now suspended about 1.5 inches above it's new pressure treated sill. Think it could have sunk that much?

What's Growin'?

2008-06-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Other than a freakish few days in May, it's been on the cool side all spring. This weekend the people who control the weather are obviously attempting to simulate the conditions in Beijing: 90s, with afternoon thunderstorms.

If only they hadn't paid off the grass seed farmers. Add a little air pollution and the we could really be guaranteeing that we only send the most prepared to China.

Anyway, I digress. With the onset of summer, I thought I'd show what's in the ground. The May flower season seemed to be prolonged by the cool temperatures.

There were quite a few nice surprises as we peaked through the tulips and irises. The lonely bleeding heart really outdid itself this year. This is a completely maintenance free plant.
If memory serves, it dies back to the ground and disintegrates so fast and thoroughly that I don't even have
to remove any foliage at the end of the season.

L insists the clematis looks like a giant valentine heart this year, but I think she's just being sappy. We're going to have to replace this side porch real soon--I'm hoping to enclose it, but we'll definitely make every effort to preserve this vine.

As always, the best part of summer is yet to come. As much as I love the showy flowers, the real reason for all this is the veggies and herbs. This year we have 5 kinds of tomatoes in the ground, and three different chilis.

The tomatoes have been especially sad and slow to take hold, but they have all perked up with this week's heat. The cinnamon basil got hit hard by slugs--even with the aid of copper rings. A couple weeks ago I added beer traps though, and that seems to be helping alot. Now if we can just get the grass seed farmers to switch to food crops we can get that pollen count down.

The summer: and track lameness

2008-06-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

On my way to dinner tonight I passed a guy heading west at 11th and Monroe on his cell phone, looking at the lame tourist map that they're handing out to the folks in town for the Olympic Trials. So I say: "Excuse me, do you need directions?"

'Nope, I know I'm going in the right direction. I was just surprised at how crummy this street got for a while.'

"Crummy" was the exact adjective used. You know how you can never think of a snappy comeback when you need one? What I came up with was: "Well, in a few blocks it's going to turn into strip malls." To which he replied: "Oh, so crummy, nice, then crummy."

So many other options:

"What's so crummy about 1920's Craftsman bungalows?"
"I'm sorry sir, we like to call that downtown."
"Hey: I live over there."

Of course, I could have just used the always appropriate: "Prick." But we were told to be extra nice to the visitors.

Just a test. Nothing to see here.

2008-06-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

Robo-walrus

2008-06-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well, walrus-tracker, anyway. These guys really get around!

A nice Endnote discovery

2008-06-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

The ultimate in procrastination: I did a complete reformatting of my hard drive this weekend and reinstalled everything from scratch. With nary a call to technical support. (But honestly, my computer was crawling. Now it reboots in less than a minute.)

And now it's back to work. And I've discovered that EndNote will let me keep track of keywork terms of my own, and will automatically add new keywords from new citations as I work. If I go back now and then to clean up the term list, I'll gradually develop a nice controlled vocabulary. Deleting wonky, database assigned terms doesn't delete them from the actual references though--so nothing is lost through the term editing.

WikiMashup

2008-06-18T11:19:00.001-07:00

A new button has appeared on Google Maps:

Finally warm

2008-06-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

And not a moment too soon, as the outdoor party season starts, er, now.

3 hours left to the quarter. Lots of folks already walking around with parents. The library is officially dead: only 4 inveterate community folks walking around and a total of ten-ish students trying to finish up.

I've already gotten through the worst pile on my desk (the one that sits immediately to my left. The 'attend to me immediately' pile. The one that I picked a 2 month old 'please respond ASAP' memo off of this morning). I also sent thank you notes for all those who helped with my contract renewal for this year (it was a big one: now I only have to renew every 3 years instead of every 2. It's as close to tenure as I'll every get). And I moved a map case. It's amazing what can get done when people aren't constantly asking for help and I'm not constantly running off to meetings or class.

I'll try and update about What is actually Growing this weekend. There are a variety of spring flower photos to post, and slug traps to bait. But L keeps taking the yogurt to work and not bringing the containers back.

Time off

2008-06-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

I am officially taking off from now until Sunday. This will make tomorrow the first day since at least May 3 that I haven't done anything work or school related. I hope it pours rain all day so I can sit around and read magazines after going to the farmers ' market.

Classes are over. I have 2.5 tasks remaining for finals week. Don't expect to hear from me tomorrow--I'm thinking about making it a technology free day.

Write, write, right.

2008-05-20T17:42:00.001-07:00

OK, last 2.5 weeks. I think I'm sitting in a pretty good place for the quarter. I hope last night didn't sound whiny.

3 papers. A final. A little quantitative analysis. And a couple hurtles for the bigger China project.

Speaking of which, lots of folks have asked: Nope: don't know anyone there. Nope: didn't go there (although Chengdu and Chongqing are on the short list of places I want to go). Nope: nobody I've talked to has personal ties to the area. It's not like I know all that many Chinese people. And hey: there's a heck of a lot of them.

For the curious (or the morbid), check out China Daily. I won't link to the policelady photo everyone has been talking about: it sounds better than it is. Unless there's more than one floating around. NPR here in the States happened to have 2 reporters in Chengdu: their coverage has been fantastic.

Boggles the mind.

Sigh.

2008-05-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Cory's going from Seattle today to the Bay Area tomorrow. It's a little depressing living in a drive-by / flyover region.

At least Barack stopped by Eugene for a milkshake on Saturday on his way to Portland Sunday afternoon.

Here's a summary of the day:
8:00 - 8:30: study Chinese / drink coffee.
8:30 - 11:00: work.
11:00 - 12:00: Chinese conversation.
12:00 - 5:00: work.
5:00 - 6:00: Chinese study group.
6:00 - 6:30: transit via pharmacy.
6:30 - 7:15: eat dinner, talk to parents / wife.
7:15 - 9:00: stats homework.
9:00 - 9:20: walk to Red barn with wife. Buy / make popcorn.
9:20 - 11:00: stats homework, prep for class.
11:00 - 11:15: read boingboing, drink beer, write this post.

This is about typical, except when I'm really under the gun to complete an assignment. I remember being in classes with single moms back in Milwaukee: I can't imagine how they did it. Nuts. Absolutely nuts. Makes me want to go work in a school with a larger non-traditional population just so I can worship at the feet of real non-traditional students. I've got it sooooo easy in comparison.

Sunny, warm

2008-05-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, totally early summer day.

Anyway: a coworker was just visiting and she was totally effusive in her admiration of my office. Who know that a window could bring such joy? I told her she can come visit any time.

Maybe I don't appreciate it enough.

Still here.

2008-05-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

I'm deep in the quarter, but even my mother is complaining about the lack of posting. So here is the news:

It's spring! May flowers are going like mad. We just finished tulips.

Classes are keeping me busy--but so are my incomplete from last quarter and pushing my thesis forward.

I've been liberated from a committee at work. Got a few 'attaboys but also some hard feelings. I am starting to understand a couple friends who have left the field because they just don't like working with librarians.

张丽 got into the PhD program at 北大. Great job!

We've been invited to the ordination of the next batch of Roman Catholic Women Priests. I'm really starting to like them.

And now, back to Cory Doctorow's new book, Little Brother. Download it now!

All those draft posts.

2008-03-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

My spring break resolution was to finish up all those draft posts from the dark days of winter. Maybe even talk about all the great things that I saw at the old Festival of Maps back New Year's week.

But when this is the view out the window as I'm eating my turkey soup:

I am inspired only to spend as much time at home as possible. And as much time poking around in the dirt as possible. It positively reeks outside right now of cherry and magnolia. So tonight it's a little bit of cleaning up around the house, a little bit of studying Chinese, and a little reading. Spring break it is.

A break from our coverage of Tibet

2008-03-19T23:58:00.000-07:00

I just watched the first 15 minutes of Barack Obama's Tuesday night speech. More than the snippets that played on the radio this morning, and more than was conveyed to me in class today, the full words of the man are perhaps the most accurate and moving testimony I have heard about what it must be like to to be black in America.

He admits to being incredibly privileged. And indeed, his experience is not typical. But Christ--he's running for president. That's only typical of a few dozen people in the whole country. But he embraces and explains for those of us who aren't black the contradictions and paradoxes and pitfalls of being an African-American.

Mr. Obama continues to grow on me. Starting in 2004 with his democratic convention speech where he spoke to the librarian in me by saying that we must "eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white," to his ALA conference speech in 2005 where Mayor Daley, unannounced, introduced Senator Obama's speech in which he stressed the importance of reading to his children, I have felt that Barack is somehow speaking directly to me and my values.

Do I wish he was more strongly against the war? Of course. But there's not a mainstream politician around who matches my objection to, not just this war, but all war.

So Eugene: get to Mac Court on Friday night and see Mr. Obama. And the rest of you: watch the speech. Hear someone develop a theme and make a point. It's better than any other sermon you will hear this Holy Week.

More from Xia He

2008-03-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

The video starts out a few blocks from the monastery, well into the Muslim part of town. It then cuts to right outside the monastery, across from some of the prayer wheels. The second floor of the building that's in the background is, I think, the Nomad Cafe, where I had the yak.

There's a photo album here (it's labeled 'Ambro Labrang', which is the Tibetan name for the town) with a series of photos. Those that look like they are in a more open square are pretty far from the monastery, where the Han Chinese dance at night. So I would guess that people are at least being allowed to walk around in different parts of town. Also: while the video is pretty blurred (thanks for being safety conscious!), it looks like a fair number of these people are Han, so this is starting to look like a 'leave us the fuck alone' uprising more than a strictly an ethnic thing.

And go figure--there was someone from Eugene there last week. I have only one correction to make to his article: Xia He distinctly has 2 paved roads, not one.

More on Xiahe

2008-03-17T08:28:00.001-07:00

Video from the Guardian UK shows my hotel, restaurants where I ate, and streets that I walked just a few months ago. It looks a little bit different with riot police and tear gas.

The monks, Tibetans and Han Chinese that I talked all seemed happy to be left alone. This place is so remote, and the culture so distinct (and not just the Tibetans, but others who live there as well), that it would probably be best just to allow it to develop as a heritage site. Cell phones and tourist hotels aside, there's more to be learned from the knowledge that the monks have developed over centuries than there is to be gained from suppressing an independence movement.

Recognizing photos in the news

2008-03-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

So I guess I really wasn't in the middle of nowhere back in August when I visited the Tibetan monastery town of Xiahe. Apparently the local Tibetans have gotten a little rowdy over the past few days. This Irish Times article is the strongest I see.

If you'd like to see more photos of Labrang and Xiahe in more normal times, look here.

Vegas baby!

2008-03-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've only been here once before, and left thoroughly unimpressed. This time it's a little different--I'm here on business, and I'm spending most of my downtime in my room working on term papers.

Still, the first night I wandered thru the Freemont Street Experience and last night the group banqueted at Carluccio's, which used to be Liberace's restaurant. No, really.

Dinah Katze is FOUND!

2008-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

I am an idiot. Or clueless. Dinah turns out to be organizing this, this, and this.

It was soooo right in front of me. And right now it (Lonelygirl and the Beast: Alternate Reality Games as immersive marketing, art, and information) is happening right in front of me.

Jared Spool keynote

2008-02-22T09:50:00.000-08:00

He's charming. And he is presenting original research results in an engaging, easy to listen to way, with lots of examples.

Great tips on designing navigation into websites by making sure links are 'scented' --that they drive users toward the information that they are looking for.

BTW: his thinktank is here.

Live! From OnlineNorthwest

2008-02-22T09:04:00.001-08:00

Jared Spool just took the stage. I think for the first time the room is full! We actually had to close registration a few days ago because there's only so much space for everybody.

Anyway, he's making bad Chinese New Year jokes.

Bloggin on the bus

2008-02-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

The shuttle bus has internet access! How cool is that?

That was a fantastic eclipse of the moon last night. Cold, clear, and big. Now it's off to Corvallis for OnlineNW--my last as a committee member. Next year will be concentrated on thesis and preparing for sabbatical. Oh--and I probably won't get paroled from the Learning Commons before then. I'm very much looking forward to see what we'll wind up doing.

OK--back to the homework. Hope I don't get bus sick.

Week 6, beer, Chinese movies

2008-02-12T23:20:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that crunch time of the quarter where all I can really do is work, study, and sleep. Weirdly, I'm going to take a little trip next week, but maybe that will get me focussed somehow. Reading in the airport?

This past weekend I spent some quality time with the geographers at the KLCC beer fest. The collaboration brew was a dunkel weiss. None really blew me away (unlike the Ben Franklin recipe of a couple years ago). The best of the evening was Ninkasi's Tricerahops, which I haven't seen around yet. At one point I did get taken by the elbow to have something, but they were tapped out. Dangit.

The netflix plan to watch 1 English then 1 Chinese movie is working out pretty well so far. The only problem is that the import Chinese movies don't have Chinese subtitles, so I have to read the English. Dangit.

Happy super fat paczki Tuesday!

2008-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

That's all I've got really.

Online social science.

2008-01-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

Dang, I wish I had thought of this. A nice analysis of reading tastes versus SAT scores that really makes you go hmmmmm. The gist is that you get the ten most popular books at every college (which you can do these days), corellate that to the average SAT score of the college, and presto: books that make you dumb.

It's funny, slap more text onto this and you've got a masters thesis or a pretty damn good journal article (and one with more empirical data than many in scholarly library literature land). (thanks jessamyn)

Choking on war

2008-01-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Miss Utah is an Army National Guard recruiter?

That little factoid was sent to me by the teacher of a class that is currently choking me with reading.

Well, not just that class, which is a grad seminar on the geography of war and peace (the two concepts, not the novel), but the whole quarter is a lot to digest right now, hence the silence from my end of the blogosphere. There's a half-dozen draft posts waiting for completion, a bunch of Chinese friends that deserve emails, and a thesis that needs to be worked on, but I find myself putting most of my effort into classes and work. That's not all bad. It's just the way it is.

We woke up this morning to 4 inches of wet, sticky snow. Good for packing snowballs. We are supposed to get more overnight. It's awfully pretty.

2 new folders that changed my life

2008-01-15T18:37:00.001-08:00

Well, not really. Anyway, I have a new habit to go along with last quarter's '2 minute rule' habit. Before I blew town for the summer I made a folder called 'after China'. It's still got stuff in it, but it's now turned into 'nebulous stuff that really doesn't need to be dealt with right now.'

My second folder is called 'Sunday reading,' which is a reflection of it being the place I put everything one Friday afternoon as I was trying to get a handle on my inbox. It's basically stuff I want to read, but that's not at all timely or task oriented.

So while it might be too soon to tell (it's only week 2 of the quarter after all), it does seem to be keeping the overall size of my inbox down.

I still need to give a full report on my recent trip to Chicago. hmmmmmm...maps. As someone said in a meeting this morning: "Everyone likes to look at maps."

Bacon: the candy of meats

2008-01-07T13:22:00.001-08:00

Now I am a tourist attraction

2007-12-28T14:10:00.001-08:00

Some of the few people on campus this week are visitors--high school juniors and seniors by the look of it. Usually these folks blend into the crowd or are part of a big tour group, but this week they stick out.

Anyway, one of them just stopped outside my window and took a photo of me hard at work at my desk. Makes me want to go outside and see what I look like.

Back in the rain

2007-12-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

Just returned from a really, really restful week in Tucson. I brought back with me:

A bit of gadget lust for the father's-in-law new big-screen LCD tv.
A new desire to sleep in every day.
The realization that it really does rain once in a while in Tucson. (And the mountains get a very pretty frosting of snow)
A new author to praise: Vernor Vinge. This was a boingboing recommendation.

And we got back early enough today to still enjoy a full weekend at home. I did promise to straighten up the basement, and I'm hoping to get in a good bit of thesis work as well. L brought a cold back with her. Hopefully she doesn't share it.

Spent the afternoon at the Goat catching up on spam deletion and listserv reading. Lots of great stuff--maybe there will be a link dump post this weekend as well.

Comments, we get 中文 comments.

2007-12-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have taken any classes this quarter. There was a ton of follow up work to do from my trip, there's the whole 'transition the library to a learning commons model' task that's been assigned to me, and I have been desperately trying to maintain at least enough language skill to not waste my partner's time each week.

So I never got around to translating several comments on the blog from the summer. I wanted to do this (a) for my personal edification; (b) for the benefit of my Engish-only readers; (c) so that I knew what they were saying before anyone else did. While some of the comments were signed by people I know, a couple turned out to be spam.

So, in response to this post, my friend Hui said:

每年农历七月十五日为“盂兰盆节”(佛教），也称“中元节”（道教），有些地方俗称“鬼节”、“施孤”，又称亡人节、七月半。

Which means: Every July 15 (on the lunar calendar) there is the Buddhist 'yulanpen' festival (haven't been able to some up with a good English name for that. Maybe 'potted orchids?'), also called the mid-summer festival (by the daoists). In some places it's commonly called the 'gods festival.,' 'carry the orphan,' and 'the mid-July festival of the dead.

I like that 'the dead' (亡人) is literally 'dead person.' Does that mean that the Chinese word for zombie is 没忘人？

China fire, doctrinal debates,

2007-12-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

That paper's shortcomings turned out to be nothing that seven more hours of work couldn't take care of. My schedule, though, had me working noon to eight the day before it was due, so those seven hours turned Tuesday into an all-nighter. I'm too old for this. The night itself wasn't too bad, but the hangover was intense. I made it through about 2/3rds of the workday, but wound up going home and taking a nap before a meeting Wednesday night.

That evening saw us debating RC doctrine at the Bosco House. Actually, we weren't so much debating doctrine, but debating whether or not we were obliged to take doctrine into account when making organizational decisions. Before any other considerations.

I thought we had a well reasoned response: the Catholic Worker isn't part of the church; it has no central organization; and here in Lane County, the most active individuals have traditionally not even been Catholic. So no, it's the spirit of the group that makes decisions. Prayerfully and respectfully of most of our beliefs, but not necessarily doctrinaire. I sort of thought that that is the position that most American Catholics have come to. We don't know the rules, let alone follow them. Dogma versus doctrine versus discipline? I know about three people who know the distinction, and I'm not one of them anymore. I used to, but sometime around 12 or 13 years ago, I realized that most people just don't care. They observe or don't observe based on their own consciences. They have worked out a set of practices that works for them.

Why am I even worked up about this? Because Bosco has a mission that I support, and I don't want my own iconoclastic views to hurt that mission. My opinion tells me that most of the things that I am iconoclastic about (which tend to be disciplines and not doctrines) are trivial, but apparently some get very, very worked up over them. So do I have to bifurcate my views?

Fact is, we lack clergy. And those that we have (a) are overworked; (b) contain a significant number of criminals; (c) are pretty far removed from the real life of most people. Most of the actual work in the parishes is done by the laity. Maybe it's time to put more of those who are doing the work up on the altar. And pay them a living wage.

Speaking of a living wage, if we had married priests, could the church afford to provide health insurance for their husbands and children?

The push

2007-11-27T07:14:00.001-08:00

Now comes the school stretch. As pleasant as Thanksgiving weekend was, there were two trips to campus for information supplies and an afternoon spent at the Goat. I had a goal of having the rough draft of my term paper done on Sunday, but it was left woefully incomplete. Yesterday I worked on it for an hour before work, and then from 5 until 10 at the office. I stayed because I kept hoping to finish and turn my attention back to the illustrations, which I've been scanning out of atlases. I STILL didn't finish.

I fairly collapsed when I got home. I thought my bike ride would give me at least a half hour of energy to work on it. Nope. Part of the problem is that I have little investment in the topic of the paper. It's really hard to write when you're not interested in the topic anymore. Don't get me wrong--the fire class has been really interesting. Writing the paper, however, has not.

Giving thanks for dead birds

2007-11-24T19:54:00.000-08:00

We had our feast on Friday as people were driving down I-5 on Thursday. The PDX portion of the family has a retail worker, so J delayed her trip by a day. It gave us a chance to work on homework for the first part of Thursday (including a trip to the office to use the big scanner and snag a couple books). Late Thanksgiving night I put the bird in a brine of pineapple sage, bay leaf, and apple cider. Yesterday morning I got to work as everyone else went to breakfast. The menu:

The turkey
which came out great. The first time I stuck the thermometer in, it was at the perfect temperature. Moist and well-salted, the only problem was that the skin didn't get a chance to brown because I left the bird covered the whole 3.5 hours. I put it under the broiler for a few minutes, but that didn't really satisfy.

Cornbread stuffing
which was added to the family when my mother, who was a home ec teacher for years, taught in an African-American high school. They told her, apparently in no uncertain terms, that she left several key dishes off of the menu when planning the Thanksgiving feast. Hence, we've been having cornbread stuffing ever since. I made mine with canned green chilis in the cornbread, and added eggs to the stuffing for the first time. They added some nice body to the mix.

Mashed potatoes
naturally. We may have gone without, but a special chanterelle gravy was made for the token vegetarian. She shared, and it was awesome. The mushroom juice was leftover from the roasted chanterelles we based a risotto on several weeks ago. The shrooms themselves were gathered by neighbors. The vegetarian raved (and shared too).

Beet and potato gratin
with swiss cheese and gleaned rosemary from down the block. No one in Eugene should ever buy a $2 plastic pack of rosemary.

Glazed carrots
with just a touch of balsamic vinegar. Not quite sure where I picked this one up.

Chard and leeks
a 2 minutes veggie side that we picked up from neighbors of said mushrooms. L has fallen in love with it and requests it every winter.

Apple salad
with pomegranate and candied pecans.

Pumpkin pie

All this was served on new china and eaten with Grandma Jablonski's silver, which was mailed just last week. The Christmas tablecloth sort of camouflaged the whole arrangement, so the photos don't really tell the story. But it was a lovely dinner. None of the nieces misbehaved. And we ended the evening much, much later after hours of visiting.

Dating Japanese maps

2007-11-21T15:39:00.000-08:00

Here's one for the map librarians out there. (And probably for catalogers too!)

Japanese maps typically have dates on them that use the reign of the sitting emperor for the year. So 昭和25年 would be the 25th year of Showa, aka Hirohito. Since he took office in 1926 (year 1), a map showing the above date would be from 1950.

This all comes up because it turns out I can read numbers and dates in Japanese now too. Pretty cool eh?

Responses and organizing

2007-11-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

In response to a previous post, Kramer asked if I developed an alter-blog ego while in China at growblog.com. NOPE. That's not me folks--my Chinese isn't that good.

My Chinese homework this week involves finally getting around to translating the comments from over the summer. One down, 3 to go. Please stand by.

And I'm sure you've all been anxiously awaiting the results of last week's time exercise. It was a 56 hour work week, not including weekend hours. But 7 of those were for preparing a presentation that was at least as much as a geographer as it was for work--so let's call it an even 50. Conclusions? Well, I haven't spent much time looking at the distribution of tasks yet. I do know that there are 2 important parts of my job that I spent zero amount of time on during those 50 hours. I also know that there is almost no down-time. Almost every moment is accounted for. In fact, I find myself chafing when people stop me to chat. I am almost 100% on task--or walking from task to task. I keep meaning to wear my new pedometer (that L brought home as schwag) to work. Coffee breaks amount to the time it takes to walk to the coffee shop that is about 25 yards outside the front door.

While chafing last week (and I counted 2 quarter-hour increments of people engaging me in conversation), I finally admitted to someone that as I sit at my desk, I can't help but glance out the window at people walking by. I try, I really try, not to resent the co-workers I see strolling towards the parking lot at 3:45 ...and 4:15...and 5:30. Sure, they may have gotten to work at 8am. or 7:30. or 7. But some of these are people that I have attempted to get ahold of at 8:30 and 9 and 9:15 and have failed. On any given day? No. But patterns emerge. This afternoon I attempted to find someone in their cubefarm, and then jokingly wished out loud that they had an aboard/ashore board (something the Navy uses to make sure the boat doesn't leave without someone important), because no one could tell me if this person had left for Thanksgiving weekend or not (it's Tuesday, btw). A very amusing conversation ensued, but I found myself semi-seriously relating a story from China. During one of my visits, I was treated to lunch by an assistant director. This was an expensive hotel lunch that I was really surprised that a librarian could afford. And the lunch conversation was one of the more serious that I had, and if she had an expense account, I'm sure it got charged. Anyway: on the way out of the building, she asked me to wait a minute--the then strode across the atrium and punched out.

I know it's not a contest to see who can work the most hours. But then I observe some people, who rarely return messages promptly, who scoot past my window at 3:30 on a regular basis. And other people, who appear to be at the point of breakdown, who return my emails at 7am and 8pm. It's hard not to remember that high ranking official clocking out for lunch. What would we discover if we all did the same?