Now please dont tell me how great your’s was. I dont celebrate Christmas, not really anyway. Since giving up on the idea of a higher power, that precludes me from celebrating religious holidays. Meaning i wont be receiving an gifts from my family or anyone else. It sortof sucks, but thats the price of sticking to your guns. I dont really need anything anyway.
Although that terabyte HDD sitting under the tree for my brother is a little irritating.
So anyway, after exams I flew to NC to visit a buddy. That was fun, freezing cold, but fun.
Speaking of commercials, I just saw one laden with Katrina images, streets flooded, etc. spliced with images of a Hummer driving through the deep water. The final tagline: Visit HummerHelps.com. Upon doing so, I was directed to the main Hummer page, then to a menu of links “to learn more about what you can do with your truck,” some of which include stories of owners pursuing heroic efforts with their vehicles. The Katrina narrative begins as follows:
Some might argue Mike Morris’ search-and-rescue vehicle of choice, a Hummer H1, is a fuel-sucking monster. But Morris isn’t making any apologies for himself and a small battalion of other H1 (and H2 and H3) owners who spent nearly two weeks serving as early responders after Hurricane Katrina.
“You don’t ask the ambulance that pulls up at your home what its fuel economy is,'’ said Morris, of South Bend, Indiana, as he motored the debris-littered streets of New Orleans. The group, dubbed HOPE (Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies), performed a variety of volunteer work following Katrina…
OK–I’m not sure how I feel about this and, while the narrative begins to offer some support, the actual commercial’s visuals cast the Hummer as the superhero, not the individual heroes driving them. Also, this is but one story, so how are we to really assess the vehicle as a do-gooder, when the miles per gallon facts and environmental concerns are much more publicized and persuasive? Not to mention the vehicle’s reputation as a status symbol…
It’s been a long day and I need to think about this more thoroughly, but since I already planned to design a writing project around the visual rhetoric of Katrina, this commercial has moved to the top of my list!
Flew up to Chicago today with intentions to drive over to my husband’s family home in Minnesota. All I can say is snow, wind, snow, a lame white Mustang Convertible as our rental car!!!!!, snow, snow, wind, snow.
We may have been able to push on, but here we are, halfway there, in a hotel in the Wisconsin Dells with free wifi and a Domino’s Pizza. Oh and local tv ads for cheese stores and officialbrettfavre.com even though the Bears kicked their ass today!
I was not at all expecting to receive my XO laptop before Christmas since I ordered it a little later than most, so imagine my surprise when a loud knock came at the door this evening. As soon as I saw the box, I screamed, “It’s my XO!” and I put everything down. Sadly, I really don’t think I will start playing with it until after the holidays and MLA. We’re traveling soon and I’ve got too much writing and thinking to do before my interviews.
The beam went up today at 9am. It was exciting to see the gold beam shimmer in the morning sun as it was placed on top of the auditorium of the new Marshall Student Center. In some of the pictures you can make out the names and student organizations that signed the beam. You can view the pictures online and watch a sped up movie of the “topping off ” at http://ctr.usf.edu/renovation/ph3beam.html
Like D Weinberger, I had not noticed that dopplr went live last week. I’ve been enjoying the service since July and, because I hope to see a lot of travel in my future, I plan to use it to continue to keep up with my contacts in the new year.
And, again like DW, I have to say that this “spotlight on dopplr” is not one to miss!
The University of Texas Libraries- Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection- has launched “Free the Books,” a blog detailing their digitization efforts. The blog also “highlights [their] ongoing research about international copyright in support of the Benson Google Digitization Program and current discussions about orphan works and the public domain.”
Visit “Free the [...]
1. Should show new announcement for every week
2. The course is very well organized with logical structure of folders
and the contents are clear and clean. There should not be too much
course materials shown as text or graphics on one web page.
3. The students should be able to access the contents from the opening
page with easily followed links.
4. The course contents are engaging and are made up of various different
kinds of activities.
5. Active student/teacher interaction in Discussion Board
6. Gradebook demonstrates plenty of feedback
7. Teacher contact information is clear and obvious
A small group of Society of American Archivists(SAA) members are in the process of establishing a roundtable focused on Latin American and Caribbean archives. Under the moniker “Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives” (LACCHA), the group seeks to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas and to support US, Caribbean and [...]
Scholarly rant # 2.
Expect mildly plausible parables to compel your intellect to expel digestive juices out your nasal cavities.
Well, this semester ended with a bang. Apparently I passed all the courses I thought I wouldn’t. And the course that I was kinda sure I’d get at least a passing grade… I uh… well… snap… flunked it with a capital F. It’s amazing… I think I’ve taken this class three times now… I know it in and out. I am fairly certain I could write half a book on it… but so help me, I fail the tests miserably. Maybe if the tests didn’t have to be written by computer geeks (no offense… I’m a computer geek too… it seems we write out stuff okay, but when it comes to asking questions, it’s like the ostensible purpose is buried under a league of jargon and juxtaposed adjective/adverb clauses that make you feel like you’re trying to paddle a monkey with a toothpick in a grease house. And it doesn’t help that they don’t want you to answer the ostensive purpose in plain english, but rather purport the answer in a similar manner… like mimicking someone who doesn’t know ebonics with the same ebonics that you don’t understand, even if you do understand it, and all the time you’re really talking about British English. I swear, these tests make me want to punt a kitten out a window *anger anger, frustration frustration*).
example question:
Which direction is up if you were lying on your back parallel to the Atlantic coast of the US, given that your feet point towards the nearest point along equator.
My answer:
North.
WRONG!
Correct answer:
Since the US is in north america, and north america is designated as north to the equator, chances are that your feet will point toward cuba and thusly your head would point north. Because people generally assume up to be along a vector that is perpendicular to ones eye-level and also pointed away from one’s feet, the direction of up can be associated with the cardinal direction of north.
Of course, 9 times out of ten, when I try to write this stuff out, I make a mistake somewhere near the third time I have to repeat myself, and so while 90% of the time, I repeat the same thing over again for them, there’s this 10% that I misspell something or mislead or state something flatly. Having done that, then it follows that the ten percent eats up about 60 to 70 percent of my credit on an exam. In the end, have a series of answers that are somewhat understandable, and the professors tell me I’m correct, but I wasn’t specifically correct, and so the credit is null.
I love it.
*shrug*
Oh well.
To be honest, I’ve never felt better. If I can’t produce the answers people want within a time limit, then I gauge myself as okay. In fact, I want to live the rest of my life having my own voice. The last thing I need is repeating myself, or my colleagues, in order to help them develop lazy ears that need repetition and generally promote the inbreeding disaster that normally plagues graduate level thinking (the idea that people shouldn’t get all their education in one place, because any university will always have one way of thinking). And besides, tardiness is my style when it comes to academia (yes, that was a corny double-entendre)…(although using the word ‘retard’ in any sense immediately renders this blog politically incorrect and offensive, I’m sure). I think I’ve made many people cry with how silly and blatantly optimistic my writing and programming is.
I guess being a realist is necessary for good engineering. Hahahah, then I’m going to be the worst engineer ever under those terms.
From approximately 2:15 pm to 2:45 pm some users experienced excessive wait time when submitting grades or trying to access myUSF. For about 10 minutes within this time frame we had a complete service outage for myUSF.
All grades submitted during this time (around 150) were processed by around 3 pm. No grade data was lost during this period.
We apologize for any extra frustration and time wasted as a result of this issue.
Thanks as always for your support and Happy Holidays!
On Thursday, the wife and I, two cats, my brother-in-law, and his newlywed bride will all take a road trip to Cleveland to spend Christmas with our families. It just so happens that both of the jazz clubs in town are featuring bassists while I’m home. Unfortunately, they’re both the same night!
Dave Morgan, Youngstown State faculty member and Cleveland Jazz Orchestra composer/bassist will be performing his tunes with a nonet at the Bop Stop this Friday. As Dave and Jack performed at our wedding reception, I had to give top bill to the Tom Knific Quartet, which is playing at Night Town Friday night. Tom is the chair of Western Michigan’s jazz department. I’ve secured a lesson with Tom for Saturday morning, pending schedules and Dave Morgan pointed me in the direction of a very generous Jared Craig, who is lending me a bass with which to practice for the week and a half I’m home. I’d love to get a lesson with Dave, too, if time permits.
When it rains it pours! I spend so much time at home laying around, watching TV - this will be a good opportunity to practice, learn and hear some live music! I wish I lived in a town with a real jazz club or two.
Smithsonian Latino Center: http://latino.si.edu/
Heritage Month Calendar: (http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/heritage_month/index.html) [be sure to check this out between September 15 and October 15, Hispanic Heritage Month)
National Museum of American History’s “Mexican America”: http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/group_detail.cfm?key=1253&gkey=100
“¡del Corazón: Latino Voices in American Art”: http://delcorazon.si.edu/
“Revealing Personal Identity: The Indigenous Vision of Manuel Carrillo”: http://latino.si.edu/virtualgallery/manuelcarrillo/mccode.htm
Heritage Month Calendar: (http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/heritage_month/index.html) [be sure to check this out between September 15 and October 15, Hispanic Heritage Month)
Smithsonian Latino Center: http://latino.si.edu/
National Museum of American History’s “Mexican America”: http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/group_detail.cfm?key=1253&gkey=100
“¡del Corazón: Latino Voices in American Art”: http://delcorazon.si.edu/
“Revealing Personal Identity: The Indigenous Vision of Manuel Carrillo”: http://latino.si.edu/virtualgallery/manuelcarrillo/mccode.htm
Things are moving along well in the construction process. At this time, we don’t have an exact date and time for the beam hoisting but I’ll keep you posted. During the springs we’ll be posting and 8 part series all about the new aspects of the new building. The first update will be the 1st week of classes in January and we’ll post interactive floorplans that you’ll be able to see where everything is and if there are renderings or construction pictures of that space, you’ll be able to click on it to view the pictures.
Thanks so much for reading the updates. We’re looking to having the building open for all the students of USF to enjoy. The date is getting closer and closer for a July or August opening.
So, the semester is officially over, and I am confident I have earned solid A’s in both of my classes. Before I look ahead to next semester, I need to think about what I want to accomplish over the next month. My plan is ambitious, and I will have to work at least as hard as I work during the actual semester. I am working on three separate, yet interrelated projects. Most importantly I am working on the content management system Drupal. My goal for Drupal is to be able to use it to make my current website, mrheaume.myweb.usf.edu much more interactive. My goal is to have a community website with a multi-user blog, discussion forum, and uploadable content. Drupal is easy to learn, but hard to master. I could potential have a website like that up in a couple of hours, but Drupal gives the webmaster, so many ways to tweak it, so I want to take full advantage of it. In addition to the Drupal project, I am trying to become more comfortable with photoshop and php. So hopefully, by the time spring semester starts, I will have a new and improved website up and running, so I can concentrate fully on my classes.
In doing some research on good presentations that deliver a message about Web 2.0, I keep getting sidetracked. It seems I get caught up on Web 2.0 itself (instead of finding good visual presentations on the subject). As with this blog, a social networking component of Web2.0, I end up adding to blogs, wikis, and making comments on YouTube videos and presentations I watch. Which brings me to one of my sidetracks…
If you have an interest in the digital effects on todays students, check out: Digital Ethnography @ http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/ - it has some good artistic videos on the topic. Very Cool.
[I started composing this post before Thanksgiving, but never got around to finishing it until now–my apologies]
As you all know, this has been the most hectic semester for me. While I probably did not have the time to attend a conference, I knew I had to attend the Louisiana Association for College Composition conference for several reasons:
1. It was being held in New Orleans, my hometown
2. Its theme was re•NEW•al, the overarching subject of my dissertation
3. It was hosted by Xavier University of Louisiana, where I was an Instructor for three years before starting my PhD
4. I had attended two of these conferences before when I was teaching at Xavier, and I’ve always appreciated its close community and small number of panels. When you’re faced with the immense program books of national conferences, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Here I only had to choose between two sessions each hour!
Needless to say, every trip I’ve made to NOLA since Katrina has been an emotional one and this would be no different, especially because I got to see my friend, Sarah, who recently had a stroke. I also had the chance to see my undergrad university’s ballet program, something I don’t think I have ever done as an audience member! I know watching the show was hard for Sarah to do, especially since some of the choreography was originally chosen for her to perform, but she was a trooper. Just last week she returned to a ballet and a character dance class, which is more than I think I’d ever do only 12 weeks after a stroke. She’s got amazing will power, and I’m so proud of her for never giving up!
Another off-putting feeling I had was checking into a hotel for this visit. Typically, we stay with my parents or friends, but because of the conference, I thought it easier to stay in the conference hotel than rent a car or rely on friends to drive me around. [Just the week before, though, the St. Charles streetcar began running again, so I could have had an alternative mode of transport]. Anyway, I felt weird being a tourist in my hometown, but got over it pretty quickly when I was reminded of all the fun things to do nearby. Walking St. Charles is something I’ve done every Mardi Gras so I just pretended there was a parade to get to and I was fine
But how about the conference?! Friday morning I attended a great session on Literature and Writing, and while it was noted that the second composition course requirement is moving away from using literature, I was reminded how much I enjoyed teaching the genres and creating unique paper assignments that asked for reader responses and new historical/social commentary. Perhaps my interest was piqued by the emphasis on regional literature and how students can supplement, in this case their reading and scholarly research of A Lesson Before Dying, with newspaper archival work and oral histories. The presenter, Elizabeth M. Beard’s, goal was to share how she helped make literature meaningful for her students, and I appreciated her strategies since this projects really pushes students to become critics and creators of cultural narratives. A text she referenced that I want to check out is a 2006 NCTE edited collection, Bergmann and Baker’s Composition and/or Literature: The End(s) of Education.
The Keynote Speaker at LACC was Dr. Jacqueline Jones Royster who shared 5 wonderful goals for all teachers, particularly those who Katrina has left traumatized, to consider:
context matters–specific circumstances have a way of changing our world view so what can we learn from these circumstances, what teachable moments are out there? How can be on guard to patterns of action? vision–who are we as teachers and what it is we’re trying to enable our students to do? courage–a motivating force; be upfront with students about the limitations of language b/c when they leave the cocoon of the classroom, they may be shocked at the lack of response compassion to act responsibly–Q: why should we care about others? Who is included in “our circle”? A: Draw larger circles of caring–connect to others around the planet conscious of our global realities–have the fortitude and commitment to be consistently “fired up.” Link lives and stories to those of others in humanity.
Her hope for those of us in the field of writing studies is for more opportunities to stand back and think about what we do and what we must do–>professional integrity. Most applicable to my work with trauma theory and the connection between the body and mind [writing to heal] is that we should pay attention to the whole body experience when writing, not just the “writing about.”
On Saturday I had the pleasure of chairing the panel on Civic Rhetoric and presenting along with Lei Lani Michel and Clancy Ratliff. Because I was chair and didn’t have a lot of time to take notes, but I did record my fellow panelists’ talks with my new i-pod attachment. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the recording, so for now I will share the memorable names and phrases from each.
Clancy’s presentation proposed “Opportunities and Ideas for Teaching Civic Literacy in Louisiana” and used Donald Lazere’s definition of civic literacy, which includes having a store of knowledge of history, civics, political movements and theorists. Obviously many of our students lack this specific background but if we localize the experience to issues specific to Louisiana–Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA trailer standards [or lack thereof], the Jena 6 case, etc., perhaps our students will thrive at vocalizing their opinions and grounding them in research/history.
Lei Lani’s presentation focused on “findability” and a course exercise she conducted with her students in order to emphasize writing for both people and search engines. Reminding us all that technology is unfixed and we all have the chance to be part of its change, a part of the information[’s] culture, it became clear that those of us who aim to teach technological literacy that we should also model “finding” for our students. One unique way she suggested we could do this is to ask students to do a rhetorical analysis of a search engine beyond Google and Yahoo, e.g. Kartoo.com, IceRocket.com, Like.com, and MsDewey.com. I’ve never heard of any of these and am fascinated by their emphasis on visual design [although I’m kind of scared of Ms. Dewey!], so I’m eager to explore these further and try this exercise out next semester!
The Double Bass Guide has the most exhaustive list of double bass pickups I’ve ever seen. My particular favorites (not because I’ve heard them, just because they look interesting) include the Schaller pictured to the left, which looks like someone took the hood ornamant off of a 1957 cruise-mobile and wedged it onto the end of a bass fingerboard.
The Wilson has always looked interesting to me, but I’m so afraid of a pickup that requires sending my bridge away for installation. It’s also never seemed convenient to spend time with a bass, but no bridge.
I think the most interesting-looking is the Japanese Yamahiko, whick looks a lot like the nearly ubiquitous Full Circle, but convenient in the fact that you can actually turn the wheel conveniently.
I have been very happy with my Upton Rev Solo II, which I’ve had for over a year now. I think, like many bass players, I’d love to have a mic setup, but am happy to find a rather neutral-sounding piezo system to fill in the gap.
On Thursday, the wife and I, two cats, my brother-in-law, and his newlywed bride will all take a road trip to Cleveland to spend Christmas with our families. It just so happens that both of the jazz clubs in town are featuring bassists while I’m home. Unfortunately, they’re both the same night!
The 
It’s also never seemed convenient to spend time with a bass, but no bridge.
I think the most interesting-looking is the Japanese