Well, Textpattern is installed and working … I hope. Comments are back and we’re Movable Type/CGI/Perl-free and mostly PHP (but still XHTML Strict compliant). There are some slight differences that I’ll have to work around over the next few days. There are still some issues; the recent articles and recent comments sections on the sidebar…
Month: April 2004
Thirty-Three Percent
« This is incredibly disturbing and sad’ »: ‘Out here on the farthest reaches of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, they are calling it “The Silent War,” the one where Marines are mortared and maimed, bombed and blown up, ambushed and killed, and almost nobody but them and their families know about it. Out here on…
Update
After pitching a fit with LunarPages, who finally apologized and agreed to restore the entire Movable Type installation, I spent an hour or so this morning trying to make the backup work. It doesn’t. MT is, to a non-programmer such as myself, often incomprehensible and beyond cranky. If you don’t hold your mouth just right…
Dead—Thanks to LunarPages
The content management system I use to control all facets of AirBeagle.com was obliterated by my hosting provider, LunarPages, today, without notice or warning and with extreme prejudice. I only found out about it in a back-handed sort of way. Therefore, there will be no updates for a day or two or three until I…
A Sight Worth Writing About
Walking down Liberty tonight after a movie at the Michigan, we saw the planet Venus rising low in the sky to the west. It would be difficult to think of a more beautiful sight.
Mutual Admiration Society
A guy from Lansing talking about the two halves of Michigan on a radio call-in show this morning: “We don’t worry about the UP, and they don’t worry about us trolls in the south.”
Tea
A random question (inspired by a recent srah post): Does anybody know of any good places to buy tea (as in loose-leaf or bags in stores, store sections, etc, versus cafes that sell tea by the cup) in the Ann Arbor area? I am getting a tea jones and would like to try something other…
April in Michigan
It was sunny late this morning when I got up (had my first long sleep in almost a week). But the cloud cover rapidly rolled in and the National Weather Service is predicting a 20% chance of showers. April in Michigan.
April 30
I’ve talked to a few of the second-year students in the past couple of days. The adjectives I’d use to describe them and the looks on their faces: relieved, relaxed, and, in some cases, resigned. One of them got a library job offer that you could see made his face light up. The look on…
Peak Flow Meter
It would seem that I’m going to have to start using a peak flow meter on a regular basis, at least until the pollen season is over. It’s a very simple device, actually; the best analogy I can come up with is to those “Hi Striker” carnival attractions in which you strike a platform with…
Milestone
Apparently we’ve made it to another milestone: a listing in Google Directory. (We’re under Reference -> Libraries -> Library and Information Science -> Personal Weblogs, if you’re interested.) I wouldn’t agree with the brief description of our blog that appears there. Because this blog is all about the beagle. It’s that simple. And very zen.
On the other hand …
… there was a huge Good Friday concert in the Diag today complete with a big wooden cross on the steps of Hatcher and an electric Christian rock band that sounded like a washed-out version of Live circa Throwing Copper, performing a retooled rendition of “O come all ye faithful,” so you really never know…
PhDs and Library Jobs
There’s a long column in yesterday’s Chronicle on Higher Education advising Ph.Ds on how to make the transition to librarianship, “because the library profession consistently offers a deeply satisfying career with multiple rewards that are too often missing from the faculty positions within reach for most Ph.D.’s.” The column includes tips like: “Librarians and human-resources…
Hypocrisy on the March
It’s always amusing to watch hypocrisy in action — as when certain conservative library blogs that normally get into conniption fits about any e-mail or posts on any other library-related site (including their own) that “don’t have anything to do with libraries” write reams on their own blogs about such library-related topics as gay marriage…
Grind
I lay in a hot tub for a half hour tonight and felt as though it were the first time I had had a chance to breathe and relax in days. I had to think for a couple of minutes to recall what day it actually was. I have been buried in the basement and…
Quip From an Ex-Smith
Morrissey may not be making great music anymore, but he’s still good with a one-liner (this one’s from tomorrow’s Guardian): Q: What do you feel when you look in the mirror? A: Extreme reluctance.
Moving (Fleeing?) Inland
Census stories fascinate me. This one, from today’s Associated Press wire, shows that San Francisco County lost more residents in 2002-2003 than any other California county (Steve and I left the month after the July 2003 cutoff point). Meanwhile, Los Angeles County gained the most residents (which is ironic, considering that people used to flee…
Presentation
My presentation was serviceable; it was supposed to clock in at 5 minutes and the professor signaled when I was going over the clock (which I don’t think she did with others who seemed to go over 5 minutes). I suppose that there were some advantages in going first (there were 19 presentations of 5…
Lecturer Walkout
I went to Ambrosia this morning to sit and do some last-minute prepping for my final 643 presentation. A grad seminar (apparently in Mideast politics, because every other word was “Islam” or “Baathist”) was holding court at a bunch of tables in a circle in the back. I sat at an empty table next to…
Good People
It’s nice to know that there are good people in the world. I was in a rush this afternoon, picking up a slice of pizza on my way to work, and I knocked my tray onto the floor in the Union with my awkwardly-positioned backpack. The slice of pizza was dust. An undergrad woman walked…
Onward to Asthma
Well, time to break out the inhaler. Asthma has returned. By the way, thanks, Steven and Bentley, for the Sudafed advice. I bought some today and it helped a lot.
Civic Engagement
It’s good to know that some people have nothing better to do with their time than write letters to their local newspapers (in this case, the Aberdeen American News in South Dakota) and ask whether any local libraries “carry” a “children’s book out right now that advocates homosexuality.” The newspaper’s News Line helpfully identified the…
Pollen and Punishment
No wonder my allergies have been so nightmarish the past few days. I took a look at Pollen.com. A lot of the pollen here is nothing I’ve ever really been exposed to before, at least not on any prolonged basis: cottonwood, poplar, cedar, juniper. The pollen I dealt with in Oakland was mostly mulberry, oak,…
Overheard
Two acquaintances talking on the 5 Packard: “Happy Spring!” “Yeah, right. I’m just glad to see a few hours of sunlight.” Actually, it was fairly warm today, once the sun rose high enough in the sky. The morning was pretty damn miserable, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky (or, I keep forgetting,…
Gone South
What AirBeagle would look like if he did a guest shot on South Park (No, I don’t have a goatee in real life. I just thought it looked bitchin’. And I don’t always have a pissed-off look on my face either. Well, at least not all the time.) Create your own character at the South…
Vernal Blues
That horrible sandpaper feeling in the back of the throat, endless post-nasal drip, a pseudoephedrine-induced sense of doped-up zombie lethargy all day long … yep, allergy season is definitely upon me. Yuck. This is why I can’t stand the spring.
Compare and Contrast Time
« Here is what happens in Canada when two soldiers wish to get married »: ‘Jason Stewart has become the first member of Canada’s military to marry a same-sex partner, exchanging vows this weekend with his fiancé Joey Schwehr. The couple eloped Friday when Stewart arrived at Schwehr’s Kingston, Ontario home in a white stretch limousine. Stewart…
The Truth is Dawning
The light of day is dawning and the rats are scurrying. The truth will have a way of coming out. Just ask Richard Nixon and his aides, one of whom, « John Dean, this week judged the Bush presidency as trumping Nixon’s in ‘secrecy, deception and political cynicism’ » which is ‘potentially the most corrupt, unethical and…
No Fluke
Yep. Sneezing fits, congestion, a sudden need for constant Kleenex, itching eyes, and a scratchy, irritated throat and roof of the mouth. This after just 5 minutes out of doors this afternoon. The allergy season is here. I hope it stays just allergies and doesn’t trip over into asthma.
“Academic Bill of Rights”
Meanwhile, on the home front, David Horowitz continues to storm around the country shouting that the halls of academe are actually Marxist-Leninist think-tanks in disguise (as though we don’t already have enough right-wing think-tanks to fill a state the size of Minnesota). Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights has been…
Cuba Clamps Down on Internet Use
Another Amnesty International Report, released in January, says that the Castro regime on January 10 put into effect a law which forbids access to the Internet except “to those, such as officially recognised businesses and government offices, with special telephone accounts payable in US dollars.” The Amnesty International report adds: “This prevents ordinary Cuban people…
Supercomputer Flash Mob
A gigaflop flash mob at the University of San Francisco’s Koret Gym yesterday. My time in 503 has demonstrated that I’m no computer science natural, but I still think this is pretty darn cool.
Nemesis
Having gone outside to let the beagle do his thing, and counting how many times I’ve sneezed in the past fifteen minutes, I have to think that my old nemesis — spring allergies — has returned.
Cuban Librarians
Last March and April, 79 dissidents in Cuba were rounded up and tried on charges of treason for conspiring with the United States to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Most of the dissidents were sentenced to between 6 and 28 years in prison. In Castro’s own words, “We are now immersed in a battle…
A Michigan Day
What a Michigan day ….. a nice warm sunlit morning and early afternoon (I wiggled my toes in amazement in the doorway, almost astonished to see sunlight bathing the threshold) followed in quick succession by an evening howling with wind and a mild rainstorm. Still, I walked to Kroger in it. I’m a freak, I…
Rainy Day Thoughts
• Attack of the killer allergy eyeball reddeners today. Got so bad I had to make a run to CVS in the rain to get eyedrops … • Love the rain, but am missing the sunshine. Looked at my very white arms last night and remembered how tan I was after spending time three times…
Attacked
Over the last week or so, we’ve finally been getting slammed by comment spam, the scourge of Movable Type-powered ‘blogs, that we’ve been hearing about. We had been lucky so far, but it got so bad today that I had to install a copy of Jay Allen’s MT Blacklist plug-in, which is a powerful tool…
Traffic Nightmare
I get homesick for the Bay Area every now and then, but not on days like this: Officials are continuing their negotiations with a man who has been standing on a railing on the westbound side of the Bay Bridge near Treasure Island since about 11 a.m. today, according to California Highway Patrol Officer Virgil…
Scheduling Nightmare
Next term doesn’t begin for almost five months but registration is already under way. I’ve registered for most of my classes already, but nobody has been able to explain why SI has decided that it’s not a problem to have at least three (if not more) high-demand courses scheduled on the same day (Thursday) and…
Is That a Spine I Spy Underneath That Pink Tutu?!
Well, for goodness’ sake! « Has Dashle FINALLY grown a spine?! »: ‘Mr. President, last week I spoke about the White House’s reaction to Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government. We all need to…