Tag Archives: school

Back in the Saddle Again

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I’m not entirely sure whether this will prove to be a short post or a long one yet, so please bear with me. It’s been a long time since I really sat down and wrote an entry, despite feeling that I should (and in fact missing the feeling). I have a number of things that I would like to write longer, more thoughtful, drawn out posts about, things such as UberCon, and all the surrounding brouhaha that has accompanied it (almost all of it positive, however, or at the very least not negative).

But not right now.
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The Good, the Bad, the Director

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So, things have been a little stressful, lately. Health insurance came due, and while not exactly unexpected, we really didn’t have the funds for it, so we are now left with needing to do some creative accounting to find the money for everything (rent, bills, car payments, car repairs, et cetera — the money we gratefully received from Mickey’s father to repair the car had to be spent on the health insurance). I’m scrambling madly for a job and have had absolutely no luck. I’ve submitted over 60 resumes at this point, plus several job applications for retail positions, and everyone is either not hiring, or is looking for someone more qualified. Not that they are telling me this, mind you: I’ve been lucky to get an auto-response out of most of them. They also generally say “No calls concerning employment accepted — if we like your resume, WE’LL CALL YOU.”

That would be “the bad”: being broke as hell, with no relief in sight. Even jobs I’m qualified for I’m not getting a response out of. At this rate, it is distinctly possible that we’ll have to sell stock (or use it as collateral on a loan) and move back east to DC, where Mickey has more consistent, reasonable-paying work. I really like it out here except for the job situation, so I’m really REALLY hoping it doesn’t come to that.
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Mostly Dead

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…If he were all dead, there’s only one thing you could do: go through his pockets for loose change.

I apologize for not posting recently. I have some schoolwork due that is taking up most of my time (nothing special, just some annotations and an essay), and I’ve felt guilty about taking the time to post. Silly of me, really, as nothing motivates you towards accomplishment like… other accomplishment. You take the pleasant feeling of satisfaction at completing something and use it to fuel working on something else that needs completing.

Anyway, there is a new image up in the gallery, from my lovely wife. She claims it’s the last of her Geisha pictures, we’ll see if that’s the case. As for when my own gallery space will be up… I don’t know exactly. I redesigned my copyright watermark to be less distracting, and am now in the process of going back to the originals from my archives. I’ve come across several images that I’d passed over before that I’m finding far more worthwhile now, so there will even be some new content among the old (plus actually new material, taken as recently as two weeks ago).

As a last word about the gallery: please DO register an account! It gives you a whole slew of extra abilities (voting and comments being two big ones), and really only takes a second to do. (The register and login links are in the upper right corner of the gallery page.)

I’ll try to get back into a posting habit again soon. At least I’ve got company in this no-new-post land… Uri, Eli, Adam, and Shane all haven’t posted in a while either. My wife has been pretty good about posting, as has Chris, so it’s not like I’m going to be left all alone in the “recently posted” realm. Damn good company, at that.

Schoolwork Cha Cha

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This will in theory be a quick post, as it’s already 12:30am and I really ought to be in bed snuggling with my wife.

I spent most of the day stressing over getting back into the writing swing of things. After an extended period of dwindling amounts of writing, let alone academic writing, I was feeling particularly unsure of my capability to write in even an informal yet scholarly way. I found ways to put it off (as I’ve been putting it off for the past few days, cleaning my office for instance), such as making myself a far more complicated dinner than was really necessary, and making a checklist of things I need to do daily or at least weekly, because I have a habit of being forgetful.

I finally sat down and started to write, and after getting a paragraph down, I found myself finally getting back into the routine, which felt really good (nearly as good as when I get going in a creative bent… a feeling that I still remember, though I haven’t felt it in far too long). Four pages later, I have two informal annotations done and proofread (thanks to my lovely wife, Mickey, who I am convinced is the patron angel of editors), and feeling pretty comfortable about finishing up the last of my packet tomorrow for mailing either Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. Yes, that will make it fully two weeks late. My advisor IS aware that it is late, and has been quite patient with me thus far.
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Ebb and Flow

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Forgive me if this post is a bit sporadic.

Barring the necessities of breathing, eating, drinking, et cetera, I have done five things in the past two days. I went to my chiropractor appointment this morning, which is one of those five things, and is the one I don’t plan to talk about further (not that it was bad, so much as that it was a non-event).

I have, in fact, been working on my schoolwork, at least a little bit each day. I’ve been reading through the Kitab-i-Aqdas, and feeling very sluggardly about my progress. We’ll see if I kick up the pace some more in the next few days. Something that is interesting about the Aqdas is that (after the introductory remarks), a great deal of the first part of the book is updates to the Laws of God declared by previous dispensations. I don’t know why, but I do find this somewhat humorous, looking back at some of the things that had been forbidden previously. Less humorous but interesting is the part where he addresses the leaders of various countries, and pretty much foretells World War I.

I’ve also been working on getting the site redesign ready for a smooth transition. If I stay on task, it should be ready by the end of the week, like I said before. Basically, what’s been keeping me is the minor variations that I have between the different sections. For instance, the visual gallery is currently set up to show 2, sometimes even 3 images across, assuming they were all posted on the same day. Also, the layout of the archives is slightly different, so I need to make sure I don’t break anything when I implement things there.
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Last Day

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This is the last day of my October residency. My study plan has been approved, and at this point I really just need to go to my last two meetings.. I’ll be gone by tonight, not back until April 9.

It’s been a long few weeks (three, to be exact). While it has been a fun, enriching time on this visit (between seeing my friends again, UberCon, and the school residency), at this point, I’m ready to sleep in my own bed, snuggled up with my wife (whom I miss very, VERY much). I’ve had quite a few sympathies sent my way the past few days, once people found out it had been so long since I’d seen my so recently-married wife. (Most start really missing their own SO’s after only a week, so they’re generally pretty impressed that I haven’t gone starkers yet. Little do they know that I’m just better at hiding it!)

I’m really looking forward to this study. For those too lazy to read back a few posts, I’m studying mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, with brief comparisons of other forms of mysticism, such as the Kaballah, Gnosticism, and Sufism. I think this will be a really enriching, interesting study to do, both on a personal and on an intellectual level. Of course, I’ve also added an additional component that is not directly linked (but in my opinion in some ways is): creativity and spirituality, in an attempt to revitalize my own creative energies, something that I feel has been lacking lately. This loss of creative impulses is exemplified by a regression I’ve had lately of overanalyzing EVERYTHING, giving reason and rationale even to emotions and sentiments. I worked really damn hard to get that under control, so it’s kind of disappointing that I’ve regressed into it so much.

Time for lunch. I promise to try and post tomorrow as well, but I’m thinking Sunday will probably be a dead day, since I’ll be in transit for a good chunk of it.

Sundry Esoterica

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This is really only a semi-post. It’s just random stuff that I thought was cool or interesting, and probably won’t be for anyone else.

– I finished my study plan a full day early, and have already gotten it okayed… we’re going to photocopy it tomorrow and submit it, at which point I’ll be done and on my way. I’m pretty damn pleased about that.

– The pictures I took at UberCon have been put up in the UberCon web gallery. In the week since they were posted, one of the pictures I took has become one of the most viewed images in the gallery (viewed ~1400 times when I last checked). Not unsurprisingly, it was a picture of a cute girl in a costume.
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Residency

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I’m currently listening to the official Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, which is a delightful panoply of stylistic excellent music, music that evokes mood and mentality in a fashion that many other modern works simply and utterly fail to do. This is not a posting about music, mind you (though I could easily make it so), but I wanted to mention it as a segue that represents a certain mode of thought. “Mood music” if you will.

School residency started yesterday. I felt a strange mixture of dread and elation at coming back, feeling unprepared but at the same time eager to pick up a new study. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments and congratulatory comments on my recent marriage and move across the country (something that surprised a good deal of people, and has proven to be a conversation starter since). My hair still has highlights from when it was dyed this past July, which has been the source of most of the compliments (“wow, your hair looks great” and such). I dig the positive attention, but what really does it for me is the relative familiarity I’ve achieved with the other students, a familiarity that largely remains unchanged after not seeing or hearing from any of them for a full six months. At this point, I am an “old hand” at the residency, someone that new students can come to if they want to know how things work.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing this coming semester, which is a change: past semesters have had me coming in with a pretty firm understanding of exactly what I was going to do. This time, I come with a concept and that’s about it. I want to study mysticism, the mystical counterparts to several of the mainstream religions, with a focus on mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, since I have more of a direct interest in that one in particular (I’m a Baha’i, something that I’ve mentioned at least three times before on this site… do a search for “baha’i” to see where). Of course, there is another component to this study: I find myself feeling tapped creatively, and would like to find a way to reenergize and get motivated on really USING my creative resources again. So the other component, if it were to be summed up (and I’m going to have to for the study proposal) is studying the relation between spirtuality and creativity.

And yes, I am in fact writing this blog entry partially to help codify what I’m thinking. I went to my first exploratory meeting today, and found myself rambling a bit, so I want to cut down on that. We’ve got a large group this time (largest its been in several semesters), so the exploratory meetings are a bit more full than usual, leaving time as a bit of a precious commodity.
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Back in Vermont

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I’m back in Vermont for the first time since the beginning of August, and likely for the last time until April. It’s interesting to be back… the elation I felt as we touched down certainly reaffirms my firm belief that regardless of where I live or for how long, Vermont will always be Home.

During the days prior to leaving, I spent time with Mickey when I could (she’s been working) and for the rest of the time, I’ve been working on getting a local mirror of this site working on my computer. This took far more effort than I’d expected (or was really necessary), as I decided that it would also be an opportune time to update my versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl on my local machine. After all said and done, I reverted Apache to what it was, MySQL got downgraded from 4 to the latest version of 3, and PHP and Perl actually managed to be updated (though not without trials and tribulations)

I’ve almost got it working, I just need to figure out why my author database isn’t working on the local machine, and how exactly I can fix that. I’m sure given a few hours to root around in the MovableType forums, I’ll find a solution. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to really start gutting the site and making the more significant changes that I want to do. Of course, my reference books (O’Reilly’s Definitive Guides to MySQL, XHTML, CSS, and PHP, plus the PHP Cookbook) are all at home, so it may have to wait until November. We’ll see. (Well, I’ll see, since all changes will be on localhost until I have it running smoothly, at which point they’ll all get migrated to the website.)

I digress. Mickey’s father showed up the day before I left, travelling the countryside on a photo safari that I’m quite envious of. We all did some wandering, and swung by the local camera store (where Mickey thinks I should work, since I seem to be so good at evangelizing various types of equipment), and in general had a good time. Finally, Mickey dropped me off at the airport for my redeye on JetBlue to Vermont.
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