1. Well the semester has well and truly started and the usual chaos and frantic motion has set in. The first couple of weeks are a madhouse for advisors as we try to get students settled into their classes, make sure their financial aid is set and their bill is paid, and generally try to solve small problems before they become larger problems. My next open appointment is next week, I’ve got four classes of my own to teach on top of all of this, and somewhere in there I have things I’d like to be doing that don’t involve work. It will start to settle down in about two weeks, after most of the important early deadlines pass, and then the teaching madhouse begins. It’s a living!
2. The folks over at Financial Aid are just overwhelmed this year, which makes my job harder but I can’t really get too mad about that because it’s making their job a lot harder than that. For those of you who aren’t in higher ed, back in April Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s administration imposed new and openly punitive rules on how financial aid is supposed to work, because educating the peasants just makes them uppity after all, and then didn’t bother publishing guidelines on how to implement these rules until sometime in July. So there is a godawful backlog, magnified by the fact that it all has to be calculated by hand since the old programs don’t work with the new rules. If you have a kid in college this year and you’re wondering why your child’s financial aid is so late and/or disorganized, you can thank the folks in Washington for screwing that up too.
3. And in the middle of this, I check my email on my phone and get this:
2. The folks over at Financial Aid are just overwhelmed this year, which makes my job harder but I can’t really get too mad about that because it’s making their job a lot harder than that. For those of you who aren’t in higher ed, back in April Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s administration imposed new and openly punitive rules on how financial aid is supposed to work, because educating the peasants just makes them uppity after all, and then didn’t bother publishing guidelines on how to implement these rules until sometime in July. So there is a godawful backlog, magnified by the fact that it all has to be calculated by hand since the old programs don’t work with the new rules. If you have a kid in college this year and you’re wondering why your child’s financial aid is so late and/or disorganized, you can thank the folks in Washington for screwing that up too.
3. And in the middle of this, I check my email on my phone and get this:
Does anyone ever say Yes to these? Not that you actually have an option to say No, really – your choices are Yes and Kind Of, which is exactly the kind of bootlicking that one expects out of tech bros these days. There needs to be an option that says, “This is not a conversation that actual human beings ever have,” and another one that says, “Motherfucker you do NOT want to hear my opinion on this matter.”
4. I am continually amazed at the names that parents give to their children. Granted, I’m on an 18-year delay, so the things I’m seeing are what parents were doing back in 2008 and I have to wonder what was in the water supply at that point, though in all honesty I am not really sure I really want to know after all.
5. We had a lovely Labor Day weekend despite the best efforts of the world at large to burn down. Kim and I drove up to her parents’ on Saturday and hung out there for the day. In my never-ending quest to gather genealogical information I sat down with her mom for an interview. She told me right up front that she had no interesting stories and then spent two hours telling me interesting stories and we only got up to 1976, so there will have to be a second round, and perhaps one with Grandpa as well. Sunday we went over to her brother Justin’s house for a Feast of Many Meats, which is what happens when you bring various side dishes to a guy who has three separate meat preparing devices in his back yard. It was all really good and we had a nice time hanging around together, and that’s all you need out of a holiday.
6. For Labor Day itself Kim and I found a nice lunch by one of the nearby little lakes, and then I spent the rest of the day making more raspberry-jalapeño jam. It’s starting to take over the dining room now. There will have to be some distribution soon.
7. Of course, the larger point of the holiday is always worth remembering. Folks, the rights and freedoms you enjoy were not given to you by those in power. They were taken by people who demanded what was their due, often in the face of state-sponsored violence and corporate thuggery. If you enjoy things like weekends, sick leave, child labor laws, and workplace safety rules, thank a labor union.
8. Tonight was Mow The Lawn day, much to my regret. I hadn’t done that for a couple of weeks and it’s been ideal grass-growing weather around here over that time, so yeah. Fortunately we still have the room air conditioner in the window of our bedroom so afterward I could go up, turn it on, stick my face directly into the vents, and breathe for half an hour. Cool air with that metallic tinge around the outside – still one of my favorite summer smells.
9. Somedays you wake up with a random John Prine song stuck in your head and that’s just how it goes. Come back to us, Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard.
10. I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to get rid of a random popup error message on my work computer – the kind that conveys no useful information and returns six to thirty second after you close it, on a random schedule because that’s scientifically proven to be more irritating than any other schedule. I explored a lot of bulletin boards with solutions far more technical than anything I would ever try and then I did what I should have just done in the first place and rebooted the computer and the problem went away. The people who programmed this are the same people who think we should turn over the economy, the military, healthcare, law enforcement, and society as a whole to a glorified word game program, and that’s a warning sign right there if you ask me.
4 comments:
1. I have frequently, over the years, wondered if you’ve ever implemented Dr. Jones’ solution when you start getting that “overwhelmed” feeling …
3. “… and another one that says, “Motherfucker you do NOT want to hear my opinion on this matter” (but if you’d just give me a text box, I’ll be happy to share it with you). There. Improved that last one for you…
4. Not only have names become unusual (do you ever encounter anyone under the age of 40 with a name like Steve, or David, or Kimberly, or Carol?), but anything approaching traditional spelling has gone right out the fucking window. My bewilderment comes from not understanding why anyone would condemn their child to spend their entire life teaching everyone they meet how to pronounce and spell their unique name! Tyrone? No, that’s spelled T-i-e-r-o-a-n. Seriously???
Our eldest daughter’s name is Amber. But my wife has spent most of the last 50-some-odd years apologizing to our youngest for naming her after a favorite aunt, Necia. The name is Danish and is pronounced ’Nee-SHA’. I’ve personally heard at least ten failed attempts at pronouncing her name, and yes, she's spent her entire life teaching everyone she meets how to pronounce and spell it.
My wife’s shortcut for this issue is just having everyone call her ‘Sue’. I abhor my first name. My middle name is ‘Lucy’, so I use that name for everything except legal documents. It’s a family name from my paternal grandmother's family and can be traced back to the 1300s ( https://www.lucey.net/webpage1.htm ). You would probably not be surprised at how many different ways there are to spell that name once someone determines that I’m male. It could be said that I have some first-hand experience with this subject. 😉
6. I got to spend Labor Day impersonating a Vet Tech (cleaning up and bandaging a nasty wound on my daughter’s dog’s abdomen).
9. Sounds one-helluva lot better than waking up to an Archies concert in your head … https://youtu.be/j3plj_Xplus?si=qe5-jqaa3QvHBvX3
Sorry. Not.
10. After the last OS upgrade, iMessage stopped working on my desktop. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to sign back in but keep getting a message that an “Unknown Error has Occurred. Please try again later.” (I’m starting to think by ‘later’ they must mean In The Year 2525.) There are no solutions on the ‘net, and restarting and/or hard-booting the machine has been ineffective.
Grrrrrrr.
Lucy
1. There are a number of Dr. Joneses in the world so you'll have to be more specific. Jim? Indiana? The econ professor down at Home Campus? So far I haven't tried any of those, but the time may be ripe soon.
3. The box would be satisfying to fill if they insist, now that you mention it. If they're smart they'll leave it alone but we wouldn't be in this situation if they were smart, would we?
4. I have been an academic advisor for over a decade now. Because I work for an intensive advising program where I am expected to see my students much more often than a standard advisor does, my advisee list generally runs between 75 and 85 per academic year. In that time I have run into one David, two Steves, one Carol, and no Kimberlys at all. I have run into a whole lot of cleverly spelled random nouns and adjectives serving as names, though. Cleverly being a kind word for it.
My grandmother (born in 1905) hated her first name so much she managed to keep it off her Social Security records.
It is hard to screw up Sue, but I have no doubt that people have done it. ("Hey, Sous!" Su? Soo? How about we just call you Bob?")
I have to say I would not have picked Nee-SHA as the proper pronunciation if you hadn't told me, and I have had three decades of experience in guessing at student names. My first thought was neh-SEE-ah, probably because I have had a friend since high school named Marcia who pronounced it mar-SEE-ah and the name reminded me of her. I will admit though that she recently changed her name to Marcy because she got tired of the mispronunciations, so take that for what you will.
6. Poor doggo. I hope doctor and patient are feeling better now.
9. I never complain about having John Prine in my head. :) Now the Archies, that's a different story.
10. Technology is what doesn't quite work.
I waited almost a year to update to OS26. Even used my work computer as a guinea pig because I figured the IT folks on campus could rescue it if necessary, whereas I am the IT folk at home and that's just not going to end well for anyone. So far my home computer hasn't given me any notable grief about the recent upgrades, but you and I both know that's just a matter of time.
I get one of those messages on Workday - the Shiny Wow HR Software that the university hot-switched over to one day last summer. There's a particular report that I'm required to approve for my job, and now it comes through Workday. I get the report from my boss and I say "Yes, that's right." Except I have no idea whether it's right since it involves budget codes and those axes swing over my head. So I get my boss's boss to say, in writing, that they're correct, and then I go approve it. And since March I have gotten the same message: "The entered information does not meet the restrictions defined for this field. (To)." Except there is no To field. Nobody has been able to figure out how to fix this and it has been escalated to the national level of Workday programmers for five months now without resolution. I am beginning to think that this report really doesn't need to be approved for me to keep doing my job.
1. Hmmm. I was unaware. To clarify: “We called the dog Indiana …”
4. Sue is the one nobody screws up. My wife was born and named in Denmark. Her first name is spelled Susanne. Everybody looks at that and sees Suz-anne. Even I was guilty of that when we first met. My future mother-in-law corrected me early on, and Sue will correct you politely the first time, but if you mispronounce it twice, my wife will correct you thusly:
“Where did that ‘z’ come from? There is no ‘z’ in my name. It is pronounced Soos-ann—nah. Not Suzanne. Definitely not Suzan. Soos-ann—nah. Listen carefully - I know your brain is hearing Suz-an-ha, but I’ve never had a song written about me. The third letter is an “S”, not a “Z”. And the ’N;s are broken into two syllables. There is no emphasis on any syllable. I’m a full-blooded Dane with Viking Heritage. Please don’t do that again.” Followed by a grin that will send shivers down your spine … one of those few moments when you actually get to SEE the Viking.
6. Doggo is a Chihuahua and old. Somewhere around 21 yrs old. Managed to rip a hole in her abdomen near the ribs. Not serious - just need to keep it bandaged, clean, and watch for infection. If she were 12, I’d probably recommend taking her to the vet, but no … as long as she’s waggin’ her tail and not in any distress or obvious pain, we will allow things to follow their natural course. My wife and I have two Chihuahuas in the same age group. The clock is running …
10. Quite? Doesn’t quite work? If I hadn’t become so dependent on it, I'd take this thing out to the driveway and crush it under my wheels.
OS 26.6.2 is what broke my computer. You may want to skip it. There are several things I don’t like about this version. (I don’t think I’ve ever said that before …)
I’ve now identified three apps that have stopped working; I’ve lost some functionality in Numbers and Pages that I used heavily, and the new shit they’ve added is either some shit I will never use, or so complex that I’ll never figure out how to use it. Apple needs to learn that old adage: If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT!
I’ve ranted long enough … thanks for ‘listening'.
Lucy
Always happy to listen!
1. Aha! No, to answer your question. :) Although punching Nazis is an option on the table and I'd be willing to give that a go, I suppose, as all proper Americans should be.
3. Soos-ann-nah it is, then. I do not mess with Vikings. Again, I wouldn't have gotten that the first time, but there doesn't really seem a viable option for a second time here. ;)
6. Yeah, at some point you just keep them comfortable and hope for the best. We still have one cat (currently about 15, we think) who seems to be going deaf but is still doing well otherwise. The age of heroic medicine is largely over, though.
10. Well, it mostly works most of the time, which is pretty much the definition of quite here. The things that don't work keep adding up, however, and the fact that they worked just fine until they got optimized is infuriating.
So far I haven't lost any functionality with 26.6.2, which may just be a function of me not really expanding much beyond a very small set of programs that I use. I object to the fact that they've shoehorned another twisted and evil AI into this thing and I've done everything I can to turn it off (you can't delete it, apparently). Someday we will look back on AI in much the same way we look back on strip mining and leaded gasoline. Assuming we survive long enough to look back on AI at all.
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