Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

23 August 2002

Okay, however mad I was at Apple, now I'm at least twice as mad at Brown's computer people. Turns out that when the bookstore "sent it out", it was in-house, to our own people (despite my specific request to send it on to Apple), who "evaluated" it and decided Apple wouldn't fix it, so they'd just try and charge me to do it themselves. They never even called Apple. (Which explains the bewilderment of the people at Apple when I called without a case number and never having seen my laptop in for repair.)

I went in and talked to the guy. He said it looked like it had been dropped---and with 17 years of experience, he should know what a dropped computer looks like---but of course wasn't trying to insinuate that I had done so. I told him it had not been dropped, and he ran a whole "I'm not saying I'm just saying" routine with me. Describing the damage as "the corners looked a little scuffed", I pointed out that they get that way just from sliding it in and out of my bag a few times a day, and he had the gall to say "maybe you slid it in and out of your bag too often, I dunno." How fucking patronising. He then claimed that the clips that held in the memory were broken (they're not, just worn down---the cheap plastic is too malleable), and that he'd "seen this before", and "Apple doesn't fix computers that are like that."

I'm going to go around and check a couple of friends' Mac laptops to visually confirm what the memory clips look like, then I'm calling Apple back and telling them they need to withdraw their "Apple warranty repair service" contract with these guys. Geez.

Oh, and I almost forgot: if all they were going to do is look at it and say "we're not even going to send this in to Apple", did they have to take a fucking week and a half to do it? God dammit, I'd've had my computer back and working by now if they'd just sent it straight to Apple like I asked. Should've just driven up to the Apple Store in Cambridge an hour away.

Exercises for the Republican reader #1: Write a rebuttal justifying the corporate subsidy of your choice, respecting the conservative principle that the tax system cannot be used for social engineering. --Mark Rosenfelder

Posted 5:27 PM [+]

I passed!

Posted 3:15 PM [+]

I am currently seething at Apple tech support.

When I sent in my computer last Tuesday, it had three things wrong with it: one, it had a tendency to come awake even when the lid was closed. This has been going on the longest---a couple times back in April, then more recently (and consistently) since mid-July. It caused the computer to get real hot, which may have caused the other problems. Two, it started simply freezing up solid. The keyboard and trackpad did nothing, all I could do was turn it off. Three, the screen would sometimes fail to come on when booting or waking up from sleep. I think this was accompanied by keyboard-and-trackpad lockup, but I'm not sure. So anyway, I sent it in.

Today, I get a call from the local computer store where I dropped it off. Apparently, Apple's entire response to this is: "It looks like you installed your own memory. Also, we think you probably dropped it. So we're not going to do any warranty work on it." See, there's these two plastic pins that hold in the memory; Apple claims that they are "broken" (they look more worn down than broken), and that they would therefore need to do a $420 repair on the thing in order to fix my problem. Now, those pins were like that since October, so I'm thinking that they weren't the cause of these problems that didn't start for another six to nine months. Furthermore, I have a hard time believing that plastic pins cost $420 to replace, so I don't know what the hell they think costs that much. And finally, do you really think that "the machine sometimes comes awake while the lid is closed" has anything to do with this??

The thing that really really pisses me off, though, is that the tech in the Brown computer store said that this was SOP for Apple---another Powerbook, that had a big line running down the LCD screen, had just come back from them. Like mine, it showed no evidence whatsoever of being dropped, but Apple claimed that they thought it was, and were refusing to cover it under warranty.

Is it really so easy to get out of honouring your warranty? "We think you probably dropped it"?? I am going to call Apple about this (later today, after my proposal---great timing, sheesh), but in the meantime: does anyone know any good tech-savvy lawyers?

"English has more phonemes than the alphabet has available symbols; the usual expedient of the orthography for solving this problem is to use digraphs. Both the problem and the solution are inherited from Latin, which had hardly finished tossing out the Greek letters it didn't think it needed when it started to borrow Greek words that needed them." --Mark Rosenfelder

Posted 12:11 PM [+]

22 August 2002

Just made a good practice talk, 50 minutes but solid. The one I give tomorrow will probably go even faster. And I make sure to drop in lots of "but you can ask me about that later", so I should mostly get pretty easy questions (knock on wood).

Incidentally, I just thought of a good phrase to describe the prevailing political philosophy of Brown ugrads: "closed-minded progressivity". I probably am not the first to come up with this. Sure, there are many open-minded people on the campus, but there are a frightening number who are dogmatically 'progressive', embodying everything that's wrong with the notion of political correctness. It's sad, really. Better than dogmatic conservatives, I guess.

"Rainbows look pretty a long way off up in the sky, and maybe as a bumber sticker. They do not make a good color scheme. The point of having a color scheme is that you, you know, choose colors, not just accept them all. Don't worry. They're just colors. They won't feel offended." --Kevin Colby

Posted 4:43 PM [+]

Well, I finished my slides, and I just sent off a really-final version of my proposal document to my committee. I gave an empty practice talk last night (and ran drastically overtime---55 minutes for a 40-minute time slot!), and I'll grab a few people for another one tonight. If I'm not ready by 1pm tomorrow, I'll never be. whew

In other news, my advisor just said he was having trouble reading the pdf I sent, and trying to get mutt to view it. Did I know anything about how to use mutt? "Sure," say I, "that's the mail program I use." "Oh good! Now I know who to go to when I have problems." Ah, the life of a grad student. :)

"Never underestimate the power of lint." --Eric Blau

Posted 1:26 PM [+]

21 August 2002

MORONS.

The Brown University Parking Office is composed of MORONS.

I've rented a house from Brown for a year now, and thus I've also had to deal with renting a parking spot from them. I could rent one of the parking spots next to my house, but for reasons surpassing understanding they charge twice as much for them as for any other parking spot on campus. So I rented a spot behind the Athletic Center, two blocks away; it works out pretty well, since I drive only rarely. I arranged for the spot before I moved in, but since I was leaving my car in Chicago for the summer, I just took the spot starting in August of 2001.

Fast forward to this week. Monday morning, I get a call at home at about 10:40 in the morning; the number didn't come up on the caller ID, so I didn't answer, because I was still tired. They didn't leave a message, so I went back to sleep. Twenty minutes later I get a call from my officemate, saying: "the parking office just called here, and you need to move your car, because the lot it's in is under construction, and if you don't move it right now they're gonna tow it." I'm guessing they were the 10:40 call. Thanks for leaving a message, guys.

So I walk over there to move my car. And I have a ticket. Wtf? I move the car next to my house (which I'm not supposed to do, since I didn't rent that spot, but whatever), and as I get out I notice that my parking sticker actually expired on May 31st of this year. Wtf?

I had gotten no notices whatsoever. Not from the parking office, not from the grad school, nobody; not a notice of expiry, not a renewal notice. Every other business I've transacted with, ever, has sent so many renewal notices when my service was about to expire that it bordered on spam.

So yesterday, I called the parking office, and asked them what was going on. Apparently, the parking office sends out renewal notices to faculty and staff, but not to students, because, I quote, "they might not be here next year." Not, again, that that stops any other business in the world. And even for undergrads the odds are about two thirds that a given undergrad would want to renew (freshmen aren't allowed cars); for grad students, who are typically here for five, six, seven years, the odds are pretty damn good that they're going to want to renew their sticker. In fact, I would bet that the average length of time a grad student is affiliated with Brown isn't much lower than for the average non-faculty staff member---it might even be higher.

So how was I supposed to know when to go in to renew? Apparently, I was just supposed to read their minds. I'm serious here---the woman on the phone actually had no idea where I might have found out that information. She "thought maybe" that the grad school was supposed to send out info. (They didn't.) But I was supposed to know that I needed to sign up around April for a spot. The only currently available lot is about twice as far as the one I was in last year. She sounded as if she thought me daft for even hoping to get a spot in that lot after missing the signup in April.

So then she asks me where I'd been parking all summer (I'd told her about the ticket, see). I said I'd parked in the lot, duh, because I thought the permit was a year long. She then had the gall to suggest that I should both pay the ticket and pay for a year-long parking permit, retroactive to June. I said that if I were going to pay for the year-long parking, shouldn't I get out of the ticket? She "guessed" that I could contest the ticket in that case.

Anyway, today I went in and got a sticker for that four-block-away lot, without making mention of my conversation yesterday---I don't think it was the same woman, anyway. She only charged me for the academic year, so I guess I'll just go ahead and pay the ticket; at least I got out of paying two and a half months of parking rent out of this whole ordeal.

I still can't believe they don't send out any information whatsoever to students about how to sign up for parking. Other people seem to manage. How do they find out about it? Do they, in fact, "just know"? Does the University send out parking info to ugrads but not grad students?

"You've said yourself that North Carolina is changing because of a flood of Northerners coming in and changing the culture. That's great. I'll keep it in mind as a model for fixing the rest of Dixie." --Michael Kimmitt

Posted 5:46 PM [+]

20 August 2002

It occurs to me that despite the title, this blog has not yet made any particular reference to linguistics, or to dancing, or to any books (good or otherwise). Clearly, I need to rectify that.

I've just finished reading a fun little book entitled Sentry Peak, by Harry Turtledove. I have a difficult time assigning it to a genre---on the one hand, it's fantasy, but on the other, historical fiction. (How's that work then?) It is a novel of war....

When King Buchan died, his appointed successor was the gangly King Avram. But the northern nobles didn't like his attitudes toward provincial prerogative (they were for it, he was against), so they threw their support to his cousin and rival King Geoffrey. In the ensuing conflict, King Avram promised to unbind the blond serfs from the land....

Ok, get it? I'm not even quite sure if this is better with or without a strong grounding in Civil War history; I didn't have much, but I had enough. It is great fun to read this book and figure out what the cities of Georgetown and Rising Rock and the provinces of Cloviston and Croatoan correspond to, and who northerner Thraxton the Braggart and southron General Guildenstern correspond to---you get the idea, I'm sure. Some are obvious immediately, others come around and hit you like a ton of bricks dozens of pages after you first see them. I was sent into a fit of giggles more times than I can count at figuring out yet another one.

But gimmicks aside, it is still a fairly gripping story, and as is Harry Turtledove's specialty it somehow manages to make you root for both sides at once. The book isn't for everyone (my history-grad-student neighbour Sam would absolutely loathe it, I'm certain), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"My philosophy is to "educate and then trust the general public". This philosophy is in line with the basic values of democracies. The government's approach to homeland security is "keep everything secret and trust nobody". This is in line with the basic values of authoritarian governments." --John Gilmore

Posted 12:41 AM [+]

19 August 2002

Criminy. According to this article, families of WTC-killed firefighters are receiving over $1M from charities, plus federal payments of $250K, plus a continuation of the deceased's salary (avg $50K/yr) until they remarry. Cops' families receive slightly smaller amounts ($929K from charity, the rest the same). In contrast, families of the other victims receive an average of $146K from charity, and of course nothing from the other sources.

Now, I actually don't grudge these people the money. I hope it helps them put their lives back together after the tragedy, though no monetary amount could possibly ever compensate the loss of a loved one.

But the situation as a whole is very, very messed up. Where are all these donors for the families of the hundreds of service personnel who die in the line of duty every year? What about for the families of murdered people? They don't get a red cent.

If one of my loved ones had died, in the line of duty or by being murdered, and especially if I'd had a hard time making ends meet afterwards, I think I'd be pretty resentful of all this attention the WTC survivors are getting.

Anyway, back to the kicking and screaming.

"Man, if they offered the SAT at midnight, that would be such a party. I'd take it every week. I'd be like, hey, let's get ripped and take the SAT again. It'd be better than midnight bowling." --Casey Westerman

Posted 4:15 PM [+]

UGH. I finally got around to looking at the website of these Catholic anti-Disney people, and my feelings could at this point not be more mixed.

They are the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property. Browsing through their website, I found the tone familiar---it has the same sort of “sustained outrage” that I have come to expect from a lot of progressive sites. Of this, I approve; too many people have become totally apathetic in their acceptance of things they disagree with, and sustaining the outrage and calling others to action is important.

As for the things they get outraged over... some are pretty straightforward---many of their items are in protest of someone making fun of the Catholic Church, or its major players (Jesus, Mary, the Pope). I'm sort of annoyed that they think this sort of “blasphemous” discourse shouldn't take place, or shouldn't be broadcast or displayed; but whatever, they have a right to say their piece and convey their outrage. Fine. There's something about an anti-abortion rally---fine.

Then I get to two very interesting items: one, from last January, was a letter to Bush and Rumsfeld in support of not granting the Al Qaeda detainees POW status. Their basis is that these people are not honorable, therefore don't deserve any protections. WHAT?? I'm not even going to go into this, it was hashed over enough back in January, but suffice it to say that in addition to being wrong this struck me as really out of place for a Catholic organisation.

The second eyebrow-raiser was last December, when this group wrote a letter to Bush praising his decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty. Come on guys, what are we, Protestant fundamentalists? Last I checked, Catholics weren't hell-bent on bringing about Armageddon.

But now for the flyer that started all this. Apparently it's one of their older campaigns, from 2000. The title of the flyer is “Disney's next victims?” with a picture of two cute little kids. What, are we supposed to think that all those evil gay people are going to convert them or something? In what sense exactly are they supposed to be Disney's “victims”? Ah, but further down we see a quote from Matthew 18:6:

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.

This is an odd choice of translation, talking about someone who would “scandalize” the children, whereas (go click on that link above) all the versions I can find refer to either offending the little ones or causing them to sin. (The New American Bible, which I'm given to understand is the Catholic standard, uses the latter interpretation.) Any one of them, though, is problematic, as kids aren't scandalised or offended by depictions of gay people on TV and in movies, unless their parents teach them to be, and such depictions aren't very likely to lead the little ones to sin---but it might lead them to be a little more tolerant of others, or a little less self-loathing if they turn out to be gay themselves.

But that's just the cover. Inside, there are some examples of what's so bad about Disney (preceded by the sentence “Did you know that each time we buy from Disney, we help destroy the family?”---Yeah, whatever.) The problem cases seem to be the TV show Ellen, Gay Day at Disney World, the book Growing Up Gay, and the movies Priest and Dogma. One of these things is not like the other... the objection to the movie Dogma is that it's blasphemous, which, well, it is. The others, though, all evidently are bad because they are accepting of homosexuality. (My favourite comment is about Gay Day, which “turns Disney premises into a modern day Sodom and Gomorrha[sic].”. I have to giggle at that---what exactly do they think those gay people are doing at Disney World??)

So many things about this irritate me, but I think most of it boils down to the inherent assumption made in the flyer, which is that merely being homosexual is bad, or at least that being a practicing homosexual is vastly worse than being a practicing heterosexual---or else why aren't these people boycotting, y'know, all the entertainment companies that depict unmarried relationships between straight people? I.e., all of them? According to actual Catholic doctrine, being homosexual is not a sin, and having gay sex (out of wedlock, which is at least for now tautological) is no different than having straight sex out of wedlock. But you never see TFP or any of these other morality groups getting their panties in a bunch over all the unmarried relationships all over the popular media.

Actually, there's another thing that irritates me about this, which is the assertion that homosexuality is somehow inimical to “the family”. But there's nothing about the fact that two people are of the same gender that will make them automatically worse at forming a family than any other two people. And one thing that's particularly bad for “the family” is when one member thereof discovers his or her homosexuality (or bisexuality, or transsexuality) and lives in fear of the disapproval of the rest of “the family”, or gets forcibly ejected from “the family” for being the way they are. My thoughts return to the two cute little kids on the cover, and wonder: if one of them turns out to be gay, aren't they a bit more likely to become TFP's next victims?

"I'm sure we could manage a reasonable middle ground, what with that "intelligence" and "flexibility" stuff going for us as a species." --Jonathan Prykop

Posted 1:57 PM [+]

Man, here I am at nearly 4 in the morning. Getting some work done on my slides, but it's like I'm dragging the work out of myself kicking and screaming. I've never been so easily distracted (which is saying something, I guess), and it's only by main force of will that I'm getting anything done at all. I suppose I could rely on my usual deadline stimulant (i.e. there is a deadline, which acts as a stimulant) later this week, but I really need to get the slides done and at least one practice talk by, say, Tuesday, so I can run the outline and any questions past my committee. I wonder if this is saying something about me subconsciously fearing the completion of the proposal phase and being ABD? I dunno, but my rational mind sure as hell just wants to get it over and done with.

So look at me now, I'm futzing with my blog. Sheesh. Well, I'll at least give you all this link to look at, which is a both funny and cute result of the unfortunate flooding currently plaguing Central Europe.

I also have a lot to say about a pamphlet they were distributing after church today about how we should all boycott Disney because they're oh so pro-gay; I knew that the Southern Baptists had organised such a thing a while back, but this pamphlet seemed to actually be printed by a Catholic group, which threw me. I thought Catholics were generally a bit more progressive than all that... anyway, more on that later. Right now I'm going to kick-and-scream a few more slides out.

(PS: I've just added another recommended link on the left: "True Porn Clerk Stories". Read it! It's work safe, and boy howdy is it funny.)

"I just assume that good managers secretly schedule these kind of meetings out of the knowledge that effective workers need catnaps from time to time and this is the unspoken time to take those." --Zach Miller

Posted 3:54 AM [+]