Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Out of control

Stress is most often caused by a person's feeling that they are not in control of the events in their life.

I am currently struggling mightily to re-gain control of my life from people who have taken it, while simultaneously letting go of the things that I can so that I don't feel like I'm out of control.

It's not easy.

I've been having troubles with a particular company that holds one of my student loans (okay, actually two - that's where the problem lies). They have in general been uncommunicative, and have lost at least two key forms over the last couple of years. This has created problems. I have had to solve these problems.

Their latest communication with me was to indicate they had sent one of my loans to collections. This was a big surprise to me, since I had been paying the loan regularly over the last year. I suspect this might surprise any other person in my position.

I made many phone calls to many different departments. I even went to my local office. Near as I can figure out, they sent the 2 payments I was making on 2 accounts to only 1 account. So even though I have receipts saying I've paid into both accounts, they think I've only been paying one account. The other account of course became delinquent.

Now, a reasonable person would think "Oh, that was a mistake. This customer was making double payments on one account and no payments on the other. That makes no sense. And this customer says she was paying both accounts. So we made a mistake. We'll fix it".

Nope.

No one who I have talked to has been willing to take responsibility for making this mistake. No one. So I have had to request a formal investigation be launched. Meanwhile, a credit agency is calling trying to collect on the account it has been forwarded.

Right now, I've done all that I can. All I can do is hope the "investigation" department isn't just a whitewash department. But I'm not holding my breath. At this point, I've received nothing but belligerance from the responsible department, which doesn't inspire confidence that their "investigation" people will be, what shall we call it,... human?

I'm experiencing a tenuous peace about the whole process. After all, I've now done all I can, and the results lie in someone else's hands. But it is tenuous at best.

But just after I launched the claim, I ran into another autonomy-stripping event.

The school I teach at uses an LMS for course management, as do most post-secondary (and even some secondary) schools. [LMS stands for "learning management system" and in its most simple form is a web portal that allows teachers and students to exchange files, post content, and manage grades] This term I'm switching from teaching full semesters to condensed ones, which means the courses are also switching from fully face to face to hybrid - half online/half classroom.

I like the idea of hybrid classes. I've always enjoyed teaching them, and one of the things that I find difficult in the online work that I do is that there is no face to face interaction to supplement it. So I've actually been looking forward to delivering these hybrid courses.

With the changeover, there's no break between terms though. I proctor my last exam Friday morning and distribute the syllabus for a new class on Monday morning. So being human, I worked hard to clear the exam week of any additional duties other than exams. In other words, for the new courses, I translated all the course content to hybrid format, created a coursepak, and wrote the syllabi and schedules all last week.

Foolish me.

I created all this material and uploaded it into the generic "inventory" shell for the course. We keep inventory shells so that you don't have to roll over the course in the next term, instead you just reload the inventory shell for a new class.

Unbeknownst to me, the powers that be decided I needed the content for the online version of the course (not the hybrid one I'm set to teach) and replaced my inventory shell with the online one.

Poof! There goes all my advanced preparation.

My first thought was "WTF!?!" Followed by "?Am I supposed to use this stuff instead?" Followed by "Is there anything useful here I can pilfer use as I erase all this content I don't want and RE-upload my stuff?" (btw: the answer is pretty much "no")

So now I'm erasing all that stuff that isn't useful but is in my course on the LMS, while having to re-load all the stuff I do want there.

To top it off, I have no control over access to the site, so 2 students have already sent confused emails saying they can't find the textbook listed on the site (you know, the online one, not the one I selected AND ordered) in the bookstore.

It's gonna be a long semester...

First IT Professional

Saturday, February 23, 2008

In Bruges

Sometimes the trailer of a movie just doesn't really do it justice. Sometimes this is because the trailer consists entirely of the good parts of the movie, leading you to think (erroneously) there are more good parts in the whole thing. Sometimes it's because the trailer seems to be for a different movie than the one that is actually made. Sometimes it's because the trailer works so hard at not giving anything away that it actually tells you nothing at all.

The trailer for In Bruges doesn't give anything away - which is good - but it also highlights only a small part of the film. That small part captures the characters in the film very well. But it doesn't capture the delightful black comedy that that the film consists of.

I went to see the film because of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Ferrell. And they were great. But the film itself is more than just a couple of great acting performances. It has you laughing and gasping in horror at your laughter, and then just somberly contemplating the horror, then laughing again. It's an intelligent film with realistic and witty dialogue, but it's the nonverbal acting abilities of its characters that carry it beyond just witty to a truly fascinating film. It's not the most intelligent film I've ever seen, and there are some scenes that left me feeling a bit hollow. But it was definitely worth the price of the ticket (not like Jumper last week that was a slick, swiss cheese plotted affair).

But don't go see it if you don' like black humour.

And don't go see it if you're American and are easily insulted (not that the Canadians fare any better - in fact, I think they come off as much less savory characters than the Americans, but they're at least taken seriously).

Monday, February 18, 2008

Blood sucking creatures

My reading over the last several days has consisted of vampire lore and theory. It's been productive, and even impressed one of my daughters who had trouble believing that I was actually studying vampires.

You might remember my question last month about what constitutes a vampire and the excellent responses I got. I was asking the question because I have a conference paper to deliver next month on vampires and posthumans. The argument I will be making is that essentially their similarities outweigh their differences and that vampires haven't cornered the market on the biological need for blood in order to reproduce.

I'm still working through the argument, which I now realize is going to be far more complex than a 15 minute conference presentation is really designed to handle. I suspect I'll end up with a seminar length paper that will have to be chopped in half to make it work.

One of the books I read - Blood Obsessions - makes an interesting argument that the serial killer and the vampire perform similar literary functions. The repetitive nature of the vampire's continuous need to feed and the serial killer's continuous need to kill are cyclical in nature and represent the Freudian 'compulsion to repeat'. Usually I'm not big on Freudian theory, at least as it is applied to literature, but I do find the argument that the serial killer and the vampire are figures performing similar functions quite compelling. I would suggest that instead of Freud's compulsion to repeat though, that the compelling nature of the two figures lies in their unhuman activities. Not only do both undertake activities not considered human(e), but they both also represent the threat that any human might become one of them - either through the bite, or through trauma, bad genes, atavism, or whatever other reason one might use to explain the production of serial killers.

Not that I'll be talking serial killers in the paper, but posthumans do tend to embody a similar threat to the human - that any human might become one of them and that they are unhuman in their activities. In that way, the posthuman challenges the vampire on its own turf, threatening to become the monster-du-jour and displace the vampire from that position.

Or at least that's the argument.

Not that you really wanted to know, but I need to start writing out the argument to work it out - as you can tell, it's pretty sketchy at this point.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Tired and wired

I just got an email from the tech people at an organization I'm a member of saying essentially "we had problems with our internet connection this morning, but now it's fixed. If you continue to have problems, please contact us"

An email.

And I thought my brain was scrambled from the weekend!

Last week was busy as I prepared to go to Boston for our second annual! grad conference. The weather last week was great, as is the weather this week, but on Friday, as I was preparing to leave, a storm blew in. It didn't seem like that bad a storm, and when I got to the airport, my flight was listed as delayed by only 15 minutes. No problem. I had two hours to connect in Toronto.

Two hours later, we finally lifted off, and even though the pilots made up time in the air, we got to TO airport with only a half hour to spare. I would've made the connection too if customs hadn't decided to close five minutes early that night. Yep, I missed my connection because the border closes at 9 pm in Toronto.

So I spent a mostly sleepless night on the Toronto airport floor. But I arrived in Boston about 45 minutes before the conference began, so at least I made it.

Travelling always tires me out, but spending the night in an airport really did me in. In my twenties, it would've been no problem. Even through most of my thirties I think it wouldn't have been a problem. But this time, it killed me.

I think I finally caught up on sleep last night!

Good news is that my paper went over quite well, and I had some great questions, which is always a lot of fun. And I got to have dinner with friends who I hadn't seen for a very long time. I have some really wonderful friends who helped out by adjusting their schedules to my wacky travel schedule and by driving me places. You know who you are and I appreciate it!

The icing on the cake? When I walked into Logan Sunday morning to come home, the first thing I see is that my flight has been cancelled! I thought I was in for the whole rigamarole all over again and was tempted to scream. Luckily they found a way to get me where I needed to go so I still got home at a decent time so that I could crawl into bed and finally sleep!

Monday, February 04, 2008

Hi, ho, the merry-o, a conferencing we will go

This conference is probably the worst timing possible! But of course I can't really complain since I was part of the committee when we set the date. For someone on a regular semester system, it's probably absolutely ideal. But with our wacky term schedule, we're in crunch mode.

In two writing classes, there was an assignment due this last week and 1/5 of each class just hasn't turned it in. I really gotta wonder what they're thinking, since the drop date has passed and they're stuck in the course now.... It's really hard as the conscientious-student-type to understand what other students are thinking of when they do stuff like this.

Good news is my conference paper is all there - in fact it's too much there. I need to trim at least 3, ideally 4 minutes off of it. I've trimmed it down considerably to this point, but it's still over the time limit. Problem is, I may have to fundamentally change (damage?) the argument to squeeze it into the time limit.

The other option to decrease speaking time might be to create a powerpoint to go with it. I can offload some of the explanation to visual images instead, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words and so on. But that will require probably more time than I have. I can imagine how a powerpoint would look, it's just that storyboarding it, finding images, designing slides, and timing it would probably take more time than I can afford. If I did it, I'd want to do it right after all...

Ah, well. The end of the week will come whether I'm ready or not, and the conference paper will get delivered one way or the other. I just wish I had an extra day to work on it. *sigh*

Sunday, February 03, 2008

New rules for living

NEW RULES FOR ENTERING ALBERTA :
1. Bring your own house.
2. If you are going to the Oil Sands, bring your own house, school, and hospital.
3. If you are going to Edmonton, wear your flak jacket. This is the murder capital of Canada .
4. If you are driving to Edmonton , note that it is also the auto theft center of Canada .
5. If you are bringing drugs, head straight to Fort McMurray, the drug capital of Canada ..
6. If you are looking for work, look no further. Minimum wage is $5.60 per hour.
7. If you work downtown, note that parking costs $5.00 per hour or more.
8. If you are able to buy a house in Edmonton or Calgary , why not spend the money on a 15 year holiday.
9. If you drive a Hummer, look out. Alberta has the highest gas prices in Canada [The Alberta Advantage].
10. In Edmonton we have 5 hospitals. 10 years ago we had 7. Don't come here sick.
11. In Calgary the population has exploded. The last road was paved 12 years ago. Calgary is a no parking zone.


NEW CALGARY RULES OF THE ROAD:
1. You must first learn to pronounce the name correctly -- it is: "CAL-GREE". The second 'A' is redundant.
2. The morning rush hour is from 5:00am to noon. The evening rush hour is from noon to 8:00pm. Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday morning and ends on Saturday night.
3. The minimum acceptable speed on most freeways is 130 kph. On the Deerfoot 500, you are expected to match the speed of the airplanes coming in for a landing at the airport. Anything less is considered "Wussy".
4. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Calgary now has its own version of traffic rules. For example, cars/trucks with the loudest muffler go first at a four-way stop; the trucks with the biggest tires go second. However, Calgary , SUV-driving, cell phone-talking moms ALWAYS have the right of way.
5. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended, cussed out, and possibly shot.
6. Never honk at anyone. Ever. Seriously. It's another offense that can get you shot.
7. Road construction is permanent and continuous in Calgary . . . Detour barrels are moved around each night to make the next day's driving a bit more exciting, but nothing ever gets finished, and more new construction starts everyday.
8. Watch carefully for road hazards such as drunks, skunks, dogs, cats, deer, barrels, cones, cows, horses, cats, mattresses, shredded tires, garbage, squirrels, rabbits, crows, and coyotes feeding on any of these items.
9. In Calgary, 16th Avenue, TransCanada, and "Hwy #1" are all the same road.
10. If someone actually has their turn signal on, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been "accidentally activated."
11. If you are in the left lane and only driving 110 in a 80-90 kph zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be "flipped off" accordingly.
If you return the flip, you will be shot.
12. For winter driving, it is advisable to wear your parka, toque, fur lined mittens and mukluks. Make sure you have a shovel, food, candles and blankets in the vehicle, as snow removal from the city streets is virtually non-existent until the spring thaw.