Those Things What Happen To Me

Random Things:

(Imagine this part is narrated by Albert Brooks using that voice he uses on the Simpsons) I got to campus today about 2 pm. I hadn't eaten yet that day (busy morning), and so I was hoping at least to snag a muffin. But I got to the library coffee shop and they were OUT OF MUFFINS! How can you be out of muffins? Who eats that many muffins? Where do the muffins go? Well, fine. I went with my second choice, and decided to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Only I hit the wrong number, and I got a Turkish Delight. That is the WORST possible chocolate bar you can get. What a day!

I gave a guest lecture this week on, among other things, personal video games and Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia. And honestly, it wasn't the best lecture I've given. The students just weren't responding like I was hoping they would. I think it's the subject matter more than anything. Not Anthropy's games, but trying to teach games at all in the lecture format. Given that I only had them for an hour, it was basically the only way to do things, but if I had more resources and time, I'd rather have taught it the way Samantha Allen describes here, taking students to a lab, having them play through it, and discussing it with them as they play, one-on-one or in small groups. There's something about actually playing the game that encourages an engagement that's a lot different from the lecture format. Now, some day, when I teach a videogame course, things'll be different. Some day...

On top of the afternoon muffin incident, I had to get groceries today, and I was half way to the store before I realize that I had forgotten my bookbag. Now, I don't have a problem with buying bags once, but the trick was that I was on my bike. Biking with grocery bags is tricky--the simplest thing to do is to let them ride on the handle bars, but whether that works at all depends on the shape of the bike. And on top of that, you've got to be careful in terms of balance. The best case is to get two bags and distribute them evenly. It'll still make the turns somewhat different, but it's fairly easy to do. Actually, it reminded me of the videogame Scribblenauts. In the game, you type in words, and whatever you type appears as something the avatar can interact with, provided it's in the dictionary. You type "cat," you'll get a cat. Type "cap" and you'll get a cap. And type "Zombie Abe Lincoln," you'll get... well, you get the idea. As the zombie example indicates, it does adjectives. And that's handy for levels where you have to reach something high. Winged boots works, as does winged shirt, and winged hat. But where the game's controls really shine is that the control is slightly different for each, because your center is moved from the usual center of the avatar to the center of whatever winged object you're wearing. It's still your avatar you're controlling, but your focus shifts a little. And that's what biking with grocery bags on your handle bars is like--the same, but with a shifted focus.

That was a lot of words describing something complicated to explain something simple. I think I need to lay down.

Later Days.

Cat Attack

I was cycling home today, going down the patch of sidewalk just before my house. (Incidentally, I was on the sidewalk because this city's bike lanes are good, but not perfect, and I ain't bravin' rush hour traffic on the cycle just yet.)  Anyway, I suddenly noticed that there was a cat on said sidewalk, right in front of me.  "KITTY!" I exclaimed loudly, as any 29 year-old male is wont to do when outdoors and faced with an unexpected cute furry creature.  (I have also been known to exclaim "bunny!", "squirrel!", "groundhog!", and on one memorable occasion "deer?".)  I was fully expecting the cat to obey its feline instincts and bolt at a sudden, loud noise coming from nearby.  Instead, it jumps up, startled, turns to face me--and then rolls onto its back and starts pawing the air.
It looked a lot like this:

"What, is this an inappropriate reaction to the vehicle hurtling toward my head?"

So I swerve to avoid running over the thing, and nearly steer directly into incoming traffic before I right myself.

Now, I know that I carry some blame here.  I declared my presence in a tone and manner that suggested that I wouldn't be adverse to applying a tummy rubbing to a kitty cat.  And under other circumstances, said tummy rubbing would indeed be dutifully applied.  But there is a time and a place, kitty cat.  There.  Is. A. Time. AND. A. PLACE.

Please spay and neuter your pets, folks.

Later Days.

random junk

More postings soon, honest.

For now, three things I learned today:
1) The shorts I'm wearing are indeed exactly the right length so that if I bike with my wallet in the front pocket, it will slip out and spill cards into the street. Good to know.

2) Just because you can run 12 k at 5:30 am doesn't mean you should.

3) Just because you can spend seven straight hours reading Kittler doesn't mean you should. Also, beware buribunks. I'm serious about that. They're bad news.

Later Days.

Seriously, buribunks.

I'm Being Punished for Something

My bike's rear axle is loose, which means that applying any weight causes the back tire to rub against the frame, thus preventing forward locomotion.
...we will see what will be done about this.

*UPDATE* I've determined the problem is the rear axle. Namely, it's in two pieces. I'd be exceptionally proud of my mechanical prowess in finding the problem at all, but I kept wanting to call it a crankshaft, so "prowess" may not be the right word.


Later Days.

Today, I Became a Man...

Three Items to Discuss:
* ...because, after twenty-five long years, I finally opened my own bank account. Yes, I had one before, but it was back in my home province. So for the past five months, I've been using nothing but debit for all transactions, paying my bills online, and direct-depositing my earnings. That's worked fine, and it's a handy excuse for why I don't pay the tip, but as Michael Caine once said, a man should have more than a dollar in his wallet. The turning point came when the university decided to pay my teaching scholarship for the term in the form of a check, rather than a deposit. Since my own bank was, again, thousands of kilometers away, I opened a bank account. A few hours ago, in fact. A very young girl walked me through the steps, and suddenly, I was now pecuniarily matured.

Gender studies specialists in the crowd: feel free to speculate on the reasons for which I associate masculinity with financial savings.

* For those of you eagerly waiting the next installment in the ongoing love/hate relationship between me and my bicycle, I walked it into the shop on Saturday. The total cost was $50--15 for the actual tube change, and 35 for the new tire. As the clerk amply demonstrated, the tire was practically in shreds at this point, so a replacement was necessary. And frankly, it was worth it--I can't believe the difference in speed. It's shaving 10 minutes off my commute per day. Now, suppose my time was worth $10/h. (It could happen.) That means that after I make 21 trips on my bike to the university and back, it'll have paid for itself. (Fuzzy math is the best kind of math.)

* I confuse Burn Notice with Death Note. Fans of either are invited to berate me.


Later Days.

This one's a little flat

It seems like just yesterday I was complaining about bike troubles. Oh wait, it was eight days ago, right here. This time around, I was about a third of the way home when my back tire went flat, so there was a long, tedious walk from there, which wasn't really good for the bike or myself.
This is the second time I got a flat since moving to Blank, and it's interesting to compare the two incidents. The first time I got a flat, it was a week or two into my first term. I was feeling kind of floundering, and the flat came at just the right time to symbolize all that emotional angst in one single event.
It was so early in my tenure here that my internet wasn't even hooked up yet, so I had to drag out the yellow pages to find the local bike shop, then find it on my map, which managed to combine my frustration in:
a) my poor map-reading abilities,
b) my inability to find my way around Blank, and
c) the delay in getting my internet hooked up (which wasn't my own fault, but still very annoying)
Then there was walking the bike to the bike shop, and feeling guilty that I didn't know anyone around here well enough to ask them for a ride. (Yes, I felt guilty about that. Take it from an expert: with proper cultivation, you feel guilty about ANYTHING.) A fairly miserable experience, all around.
Now... it doesn't seem like a big deal. I know where two different bike repair shops are now, and I can go over tomorrow--unless the forecasted flurries finally hit, in which case I'll be equally willing to wait a day or two. Unlike last time, thanks to the last bicycle emergency, I know I can get by without one for a few days, so there's no hurry. I think I'll still walk it over though--I don't feel really comfortable imposing on most of my current friends to that degree, and the one I might feel comfortable with is out of town (so she dodged a bullet there).
So there you go. Even out of a fairly bad event, there's some good to be found, even if it's just realizing that you could have reacted much worse. A lesson for us all.
Now, if I was really on the ball, I would have either walked it to the bike shop that was actually nearby when the flat occurred, or I'd be walking it to the bike shop right now while the weather's great, but I didn't think of the first, and as for the second... eh. It's a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. I feel entitled to slack it a bit, you know?
I suppose that's the other side with not being overly worried: the problem of being overly complacent. But hey, I found a problem, so that's a good start.
Anyway, I can afford to wait; it's not like the bike's going anywhere on me. Not on that flat, it ain't.

Later Days.

I Like To Ride My Bicycle

There are certain precautions a person learns to make if he or she becomes an adherent of cold-weather biking. You need to get a sense of how to function on both ice and snow. You need to figure out a way to dress so that you're warm enough, but not so insulated that you boil like a roasted hen. To save time mopping and discussing water damage with your landlord, you need to brush off the snow before taking the bike indoors.
And--here's a new one I had the joy of discovering recently-- you need to go to extremes to avoid any amount of snow in your bike lock. Because it will get into the lock. And it will melt. And then it will freeze again. And then your bike lock will be frozen.

For the past three days, my bike was stuck in place on the U of Blank campus. I would walk by it every day, futilely try the lock a few times, then sigh mightily. To be honest, I kind of put off doing anything about it for a while because I was hoping it would thaw on its own, which, given the usual average temperature for Blank (-2), didn't seem so farfetched. Unfortunately, we've been in an unaverage cold snap of late, with the unaverage temperature of -20, or lower. So after consulting the Internet and my parents (the two parties that played the most significant roles in raising me), I came up with a plan of action. For the edification of my readers, I will go into some detail.

The basic goal is to melt the ice inside the lock. There are few different ways of doing so: a hair dryer would work, but finding an appropriate extension cord on campus would difficult, to say the least. A deicer does the trick, but you need one that won't jam up the lock further. The most obvious method is to pour hot water on it, which works but with one caveat: you need to get the lock thoroughly dry before you use it again, or the water you added will freeze too, and you'll be worse off than when you started.
I was going to risk the water method--the bike would be inside over the weekend anyway, providing ample drying time--but my ma convinced me to try a heating pack instead. So I got one of those (9.99--cheapest the drug stor had) and heated it up. (Finding a microwave proved to be only slightly less difficult than finding that extension cord would have been.) A few tense filled minutes later, the lock was good and mellow.
And the townspeople rejoiced.
How do we keep this from happening again? Two things: some plastic held in place by rubber bands should protect the lock from precipitation, and WD-40 should make it overall less likely to freeze in inconvenient situations. Of course, a third option is to NOT bike in water-freezing temperature, but where's the fun in that?

Later Days.

Comic Book Wednesday: Would King of Consequence be a redundancy?

I biked to school today. It's the first time I've biked this year immediately after a large snow fall. It requires significantly more energy to bike through snow than ice, although the latter requires greater concentration. I felt you all needed to know that.

On to the comics!

War of Kings Saga. By Michael Hoskin. A text summary of various past miniseries, accompanied by images taken from the original stories. It's also free, which was a very good idea on Marvel's part. More specifically, the book summarizes the Inhuman storylines of the past few years, and the X-related storylines featuring the character Vulcan. As an introduction to the upcoming War of Kings series, it's a very good summary, and making it free, Marvel is sensibly trying to get as many people as possible interested. It also suggests the focus and audience for the series; Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy are mentioned as being involved in the upcoming war, but paid a single page of attention, combined. That makes it seem like Marvel is expecting the main readers of the War of Kings to be the fans of the current space Marvel line up, rather than X-Men or Inhumans fans, who really won't learn anything new here--which is probably a fair enough assumption, comparing the various series' selling rate. If Marvel is trying to build War of Kings to compete with DC's Darkest Night story, it's probably not going to work: the Green Lantern story has been building good press for far too long, and has the extra benefit of being much more confined to two titles. But as a sprawling space epic, it's off to a good start, as the saga at least proves that Marvel is aware of the coordination needed to join all these disparate elements together.
Invincible Iron Man 9. By Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca. Tony wipes his mind to keep Norman Osborne from getting at it. His two chosen allies--Maria Hill and Pepper Potts--decide whether they want to help him. It’s a fairly grim issue, which can’t be helped, given the subject manner, and it sets up what appears to be the new status quo for the series: Tony as a fugitive, fleeing from Norman Osborne’s troops. Larroca’s art is of the fairly realistic type, which fits the subject matter here. Fraction’s also got a good grasp on Tony’s character—even on the run, he’s still exhibiting a cockiness that borders on arrogance, while at the same time recognizing his own flaws. The issue didn’t wow me particularly, but it’s a perfectly good set-up for what’s to come.
Amazing Spider-Man 582. By Dan Slott and Mike McKone. Part 2 of 2. Norman's family comes under attack from the Molten Man, but a certain webslinger shows up to save the day. One of the larger purposes of this story is to pave over more of the "Brand New Day" changes: in this case, the explanation for why Harry isn't dead. As always, these pave-overs are somewhat wince-inducing and not quite logical, but they do need to be dealt with. The issue itself is an entertaining fight scene, although it rather carefully avoids any advancement in the relationships between Liz, Harry, and Peter. Slott's trademark wit takes a little longer to get going here than usual, but it raises its usual guffaw by the story's end.

And that's it for this week. Anyone who feels capable of explaining Kant's definition of the sublime is invited (or begged) to post below.

Later Days.

Not a Good Start

It hasn't been a good morning. I was just about to leave for the university when I remembered that I hadn't downloaded the latest file of my students' marks onto my memory stick. So I unlock my apartment and do that. Then I bike the 25 minute trip to the university. It's when I get there that I realise that I locked my keys in my apartment. Which also means that I can't lock up my bike either, since the key is... you know.

(I do have a spare key to the apartment, but my father was the one who collected the set of keys and he forgot to give me the second one, so it's about 600 km west. And that also means that none of this is my fault, since it's clearly genetic.)

So I bike back to the apartment. I'm dressed for the -1 degree weather in everything but my shoes, which means by this point, my upper body is drenched with sweat, and my feet are numb. I verify that my door is, in fact, locked, stash my bike in the laundry room, and get the phone number for the landlord from the person across the hall (whom I have never spoken to prior, BTW. Great first impression.). Then I walk BACK to the university, because I can't catch a bus, since, guess what, I forgot my wallet too. Then once I reach the university, I realise that I need access to my office, because my students' test papers are in there. I get the department secretary to let me in--for the second time, because TWO DAYS AGO I locked the same set of keys in the office.
So yeah, not good start to the day.
I talked to my landlord, and I've arranged to be let in later (which was good; my landlord can be notoriously hard to get a hold of sometimes). And the whole thing was made a lot easier because my landlord and the grad secretary were both very understanding. But it still bugs me.

And this is where the life writing comes in.

This sort of thing happens to me a lot. A lot a lot. In fact, when I once described a similar occurrence to a group of friends, one commented, "yeah, that sounds like a Person sort thing to happen," and everyone else nodded sagely. (They used my real name, not Person, but you get the idea.) Events like this happen so often, people can use my name as an adjective to describe them. That's a problem.

People who know me know that I like stories, and I like telling stories. The latter is so much the case that sometimes, I'll even do things that I know are bad ideas, just for the story that will result. Things like ordering a bad drink (the oatmeal cookie martini) or taking a camera into a men's room. It's little stuff. But sometimes, I worry that I take it a step too far. I know people who seem to thrive on drama in their personal life, to the point where they'll make the same mistakes over and over again, and there's not much you can do besides lending an occasional ear and staying out of the way. And I'm concerned that I'm the same way, that the reason these ridiculous, convoluted scenarios keep happening to me is because, on some level, I want them to happen. And to deliberately cause such tension in my life--it just seems like such a waste, you know?

Still, I'm glad that this particular tension-causer looks like it's going to land topside up. Now all I have to worry about is that none of my fellow tenants steal my bike before I get home.
....crap, now I'm not going to be able to think of anything else, am I?

Later Days.