Further adventures in declining productivity

By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with these. Chances are that at one point or another you've wanted to make your own. Well, now you can.

It's fun, if a bit challenging (finding the right photo is the trick, I think). Give it a try. Send yours to workinblogress@hotmail.com and I'll put it up here, or post a link in the comments.

The Gallery
Arjewtino

... Another town, and one more show...

There was surprisingly little shouting, jumping, hooting or hollering, all things considered. I guess you could say it went out more or less like a lamb. It was not nearly so much celebration as relief. But either way, the result is the same.

As the boys of Yes said (in case you're challenged in that area and didn't get the lyrical reference in the title): One down, one to go. I am now officially one semester away from being finished with grad school. Two classes and a little less than four months from now it will all be over. On the one hand it's kind of hard to imagine, since my life has been a certain way for going on three years now. On the other much larger, stronger, and more insistent hand, however, December cannot come fast enough.

Between now and Labor Day weekend, I am a free man (well, except for that whole work thing, which puts a bit of a damper on the freedom, but I'll take what I can get). I don't have travel plans this time, but I do plan to try and set up as many weeknight dinner meetups with friends as possible, since I can't really do that while class is in session.

Oh, and sleep. Sleeping will be good.

And probably some work on ye olde resume, just between you and me. I think it's about time to dust that off and polish it up.

But it is a definite relief, and I have a heavily-inked appointment for the shouting, hooting and hollering, and general carrying-on that will commence on or about December 10, 2007.

Lemming management, or why the iPhone is kind of a scam

If you're like me (and whether that is a good thing or not is a matter of considerable debate), you've been watching all the iPhone mania and asking yourself one question:

Huh?

Maybe I'm overthinking things, but I have a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about. I have to admire the marketing folks for giving this thing that sort of messianic je ne sais quois, but honestly I can't buy into it. I know I'm a little late to this particular party, but I got into a conversation about it over the weekend, and it sort of flipped the rant-switch, so here we are.

My basic problem with the iPhone is this: it's targeted at the early-adopter, the gadget geek who wants the latest and greatest, the bleeding edge technology. This is the group that has been salivating over this thing since they'd heard about it, and you've been telling them (and everyone else who'll listen) that it's going to revolutionize their lives. But in the end, all it's really doing is adding time and cost to their lives, which isn't exactly the kind of revolution I think they had in mind. Let me explain (there is plenty of time, so no need to sum up).

Let's say you're a full-on Apple disciple. If that's true, you probably have a Mac of one kind or another, and love it. You probably also have a great big iPod with the video screen, and have ported over your whole cd collection, and are enjoying your iTunes and watching Scrubs on the metro in the morning every day. Now, you're just itching to pick up this new iPhone, because holycrapitsaphoneanditplaysmusicanditsawifisupercoolinternetcruiserandohboyohboyicantwaittogetone.

And so you camp out for a few days, you and your brethren turning every Apple store into its own little Geekstock village. And the doors open on That Fateful Morning, like the heavens themselves (just with more casually dressed angels), and all of your patience and enthusiasm is rewarded with the Greatest Electronic Gadget Ever, the iPhone. So you rush home to fire it up, figuring the first thing to do is move all your music from your iPod to the phone, since clearly now that you have the iPhone, you won't need the iPod anymore. This is going to be so effing cool, you think, until you get home and realize....

Your iPod: 40GB
The iPhone: 8GB, max

Which does pose something of a problem. See, it's one thing if you have one of those 512MB players, where you just switch out a few songs here and there since you're only working with a couple hours' worth of music anyway, but with 8GB? that's 20% of your collection, a fifth of your music will fit onto the Next Big Thing. Which means that you'll actually have to be judicious about what moves from one to the other, the avoidance of which is more than likely a big reason you bought the 40GB iPod in the first place.

So really, you can't replace your iPod with it.

Okay, so at least you can replace your phone. That's easy, right? It's a cell phone, so I won't need my current cell phone anymore. True, but as cell phones go it's awfully expensive, and it's not exactly slim and portable, is it? Say you're currently carrying a RAZR. That's a decent-sized phone, as the more recent models go, and the iPhone is considerably bigger than heavier than a RAZR. Part of the reason I don't want a Blackberry or a smartphone is because they're just too big for me to want to carry with me everywhere I go. But that's just me.

But yes, you can replace your cell phone with it. As long as you already subscribe to AT&T, or are at the end of your contract anyway. Otherwise, prepare for the $125 cancellation fee from your existing provider on top of the $600 for the iPhone and the AT&T activation fee that's going to accompany the Joy of iPhone Ownership. And while we're on the topic of cell phones, let me ask this question: in the past 12 months, how many times have you dropped your cell phone? How paranoid are you going to be about scratches, dents, etc after dropping $600?

And as for the internet thing, I would have to imagine that the people who really need/want internet access as part of their wireless activities probably already have a Blackberry or a smartphone or something, which again only bears replacement if you're at the end of your contract or if your current device isn't working very well. The wifi thing is cool, but if you already have data service, then do you need the wifi? I don't have it, so I don't know. But it's a reasonable question.

So in the end, you pay $600, still have to keep your iPod, and making significant changes in other areas of its functionality stands to cost you even more money. Does that sound miraculous to you? I don't really see it.

Okay, so maybe the ubertechie early adopter isn't the best target audience. How about Joe Average Consumer? That's easy: $600. No thank you, I'll wait, at least until they sort out all of the bugs (which I won't even get into here, but it's not like this thing performs perfectly out of the box). The list of things I could otherwise do with $600 is long and distinguished. Plus the added $50 or so per month it's going to cost someone who doesn't already have data service on their cell plan. That's a lot of money that if I haven't already spent, it's probably not because I've just been waiting for this opportunity.

I realize also that the word 'scam' is kind of severe, but if someone told you to give them a bunch of money in return for changing your life, and the only change is that it ultimately made your life more complicated, not less, then that's probably the same word you'd use. Plus a few choice others, I'm sure.

Don't get me wrong, I think the iPhone is cool. I have a coworker who was right up front to buy one, and I got to test-drive it a bit. It's definitely an innovative little device; I'm just not sure it's worth the $600 price tag. But they're selling, so what do I know.

Jeans-wearing CEO and a borderline-cultlike marketing culture: priceless.

Obligatory (but not burdensome) recap

I don't get to nearly as many of them as I should, but I did make it out to the Happy Hour on Friday. The short version: loads of fun, great people, many laughs. Good times, as I have come to expect with this group.

This is my third-ish HH since I started this blog, and I'm still learning a few things (besides names and faces, of which there are many to keep track). For example, I'm still kind of getting used to referring to myself as "a blogger" in the first place. I know I'm going on two years here, but still. I don't talk about it often among my friends (the ones I know in 3-D), so it's something I rarely refer to outside of the HH's. Plus, I don't post all that often; I'm generally lucky to get something up weekly, what with my schedule. So it's still a little strange when someone asks me if I blog. It's getting better, in that I don't pause for nearly as long now, but it's still a little odd.

More than that, I am still apparently unprepared for when someone tells me that they a) read, or b) like this blog. Especially the latter. So it was pretty surprising when I had, on more than one occasion, not just recognition but enthusiastic responses to my blog. I have never taken compliments particularly well, my reflex generally being deflection and self-deprecation. It's always just kind of been my way. It was no different on Friday, I don't think. This may have resulted in something that looks like clumsy embarrasment rather than actual gratitude, so if you said something nice about me or my blog, and I tripped all over myself in response, please let me just say here: thank you, I appreciate it. While I may look like an idiot (and it would by no means be the first or last time), I am a very appreciative idiot.

Fortunately, the weather wasn't as much of an issue as it could have been. I got rained on in VA (heading to and from the metro) but not in DC, which was a very good thing. I was a little worried that it would keep people away, but this was not so. These folks are like the Postal Service: not rain nor sleet nor snow shall keep them from their appointed rounds. Of shots (the drinking kind, not the kind of shots you might expect from other kinds of postal workers). There was a very good turnout, and I was pleased that so many faces are becoming more familiar to me now, which is great, and I'm still meeting some people that I read often, which is also very cool.

- Kathryn and KassyK, two of the first blog-acquaintences I ever made, sort of bookended my HH experience: got to catch up with KK first thing, and Kathryn on my way out.
- Managed to greet gn, H, and Gen without falling victim to the awkwardness of the hugshake. I have only really met these girls together; they're like the Musketeers, just much hotter. And no swords (Ahem). Delightful, all of them, but I did have to give gn a hard time for not bringing treats to share...
- I dare you to spend five minutes with Jo and keep from smiling our laughing out loud. It's pretty much impossible. You'll lose before you get the watch started.
- Arjewtino is at least as funny in person as he is online, even if his short-term memory is a little spotty. And the former coworkers were great fun as well.
- INPY can work a room. And a patio.

And I got to see other familiar faces, and a few new ones. All in all, a good beginning to an excellent weekend, and a great way to end a long week. Hopefully it will be less than four months before I get to another one. Thanks to the hosts, and best wishes to Roosh on his travels.

Climate (out of) control

The good news:
When the Metro doors open, a cool, light breeze blows onto the hypercrowded afternoon train, giving the riders near the doors a brief moment of comfort on a hot commute.

The bad news:
You're at Rosslyn.

WMATA gets the gas face*.




* A gazillion ultra-cool points if this makes any sense to you at all. Seriously. A gazillion.

And then there were four

Generations, that is.

Saturday morning marked the passing of my great-great-uncle Mote, succumbing to cancer at the age of 97. Mote was the last remaining member of his generation of my family, and he had served as the family patriarch, in a way, for the past several years. We were fortunate enough to have him with us for that long, and long enough for him to meet the fifth generation, the children of my cousins, over the past three years.

I've written before about how pleased I am with my family, and how blessed I am to be related to them. I can't say I knew Mote all that well, given how far apart we were in age and geography, but I certainly had (and have) a great deal of affection for him. It's always tough, when you're a kid, to relate to the much-older generations, and by the time you are old enough, there just isn't enough time. But Mote was the grandfather-type with the gruff, gravelly voice and twinkle in his eye, and he was always happy to take a few minutes out to chat with us kids.

I do have one Mote moment, which will always serve as characteristic of him in particular and my family in general. This part of my family tree, my father's mother's side, has bi-annual reunions, where as many of us as possible get together in Ithaca, NY, and catch up. It's been a tradition for at least as long as I've been alive, and will hopefully continue for decades to come. In 2000, we had a double celebration, my grandmother's 80th birthday that year, and Mote's 90th. It was a lovely weekend all around (and it was also the site of the summer-prank story I referred to in the past post). But the funniest conversation I had all weekend was with Mote.

Mote comes walking by, and I inquire as to how he's doing. He says, "You know, I'm a little tired. I think I might be getting old." Now bear in mind, he's turning 90. I chuckled, and asked what brought this on. He then told me about the week leading up to the reunion. He had, in the seven days previous, done the following:
- played 18 holes of golf
- resurfaced/resealed his driveway (and yes, by himself)
- he and his wife, on the way to Ithaca, stopped and picked $25 worth of blueberries, so they could take them around to their friends, who were in many cases much younger than he was, who couldn't get out themselves (and blueberries were running at $0.75 per pound, by the way).

He spoke of these things as though it was the perfectly normal activity level for someone his age. I was tired justs thinking about it. So naturally, I told him that the kind of week he'd had would wear anybody out, even a strapping young lad like himself, and that I was sure he'd recover as quickly as ever. That, in a nutshell, was Uncle Mote. And by the end of the weekend, he would curse the heavens for raining and preventing him from mowing his daughter's lawn for her (who is my parents' age, give or take).

I'll always remember the big sunglasses and the big smile, on display for the whole weekend we would see him. He is survived by his wife, Dot, and an enormous extended family that will miss him dearly, all while hoping to have the kind of long, full life that he enjoyed himself.

And boy, did he enjoy it.

Here's to you, Mr. Absurd Cause-and-effect Connector

If you haven't yet seen this, you should, if only to enjoy the feeling of your hand involuntarily smacking into your forehead at its ridiculousness.

The story refers to this research, which I don't really have an issue with. It's objective, measured data taken by researchers. Left alone, it seems reasonable, and kind of obvious. It's the inane interpretation that I can't stand.

This is a professor of finance (and we'll leave aside for a second the fact that he's a professor of finance, not social studies or psychology or sociology or any area of academia that would make him, I don't know, credible in this discussion), who should if nothing else be a fairly competent analyst, in general. And what he does is look at people who are at a minimum 18 years old, and deduce the cause of their behavior to be an experience that is roughly 12 years old by then, ignoring the host of influences that might have been present along the way. Whiny? Clearly, it's because of a single program they watched as a 6-year-old. That by itself should get him fired, for intellectual laziness unbecoming a college professor, and for piss-poor analytical skills which, if applied to his finances, would have him living in a Maytag box under a bridge somewhere, unable even to afford the coffee cup to collect donations with. Or, in a highly-placed position with the Bush administration. But I digress.

We're living in a time where
- kids can divorce (or sue) their parents
- the act of parental discipline has been reduced to softly-spoken comments and standing in a corner
- the 'tweener' age group has among the highest buying power of any demographic, and therefore marketing panders to them like nobody's business
- getting (and staying) in college is so competitive, and the pressure so high, that parents have increased the pressure on students to "succeed"
- the cultural role models are predominantly hypersexed, undertalented, spoiled brats who have done very little outwardly worthwhile to achieve their success
- everything is negotiable, from traffic tickets to hotel reservations to, well, everything.

But the reason they're self-centered is because some kind old man in a cardigan said they were special. Uh-huh. Right.

Actually, what I find really amusing is the clip from the FOX News program Fox & Friends, where their crack staff of investigative journalists takes on the issue. Watch it here. What's great about it is that the anchor guy basically gets most of his facts wrong. The "research" he attributes to the LSU professor is actually the study at SDSU; the quote about having room for improvement is actually not from the professor at all, it's from some commenter in a chat forum. The LSU professor didn't actually research anything, he just ran his mouth, and ignorantly at that. Clearly, he could do a stand-in on Fox & Friends if this whole teaching thing doesn't pan out (heck, it might keep him out of the Maytag box, you never know), considering the high standards of journalistic and intellectual rigor they have in place there.

I don't even want to get into his comments about Asian students; I really don't have that kind of time. But obviously, if you want to evaluate the influence of a television program on our youth, your best control group is one taken from a completely different social structure and culture. Yes, I think that is the Nobel committee on Line 1, sir; I'm pretty sure you should take it. Moron.

People get degrees in this stuff, apparently

Ooof. The irony of summer classes in grad school is that, while you'd expect summer activities to be leisurely and slow-paced, summer classes are whole classes squeezed into half a semester (so we can get two out of the way in one summer). So while you're only in class for a short while, it's a fairly intense short while.

All of that to say: I've been a little busy, hence the silence.

But I did want to share something I saw in CVS yesterday, which has had me shaking my head ever since.

I stopped into ye olde CVS to pick up some stuff for the cold I'm fighting (a fight I appear to be winning, at least for the moment), and on my way to the cashier I spied a product that I literally had to stop, go back, and look at again to make sure I had seen correctly. I couldn't believe it, myself.

Waterproof diapers (I guess), for little baby to go to the pool in. To keep little baby from going in the pool. As it were.

Called... I kid you not...

Little Swimmers.

I want to know how this made it past a room full of adults. I mean, really. Maybe there were no men in the room, so there was no one to spit out their coffee when the name was suggested. That's my best guess. I can't for the life of me imagine a man making it through the decision process with a straight face.

Actually my theory (hope?) is that the name was suggested by the one guy in the room as a joke, and everyone thought it was adorable.

There is serious upside for fathers, though. At the public pool, they can be very proud, publicly, of their little swimmers. Actually twice, if you think about it.

I'm a mature adult. Except when I'm not.

Every once in a while, you have one of those regression moments, one of those times where you see something, and your inner 5th-grader (or perhaps your inner Beavis) just takes over your brain. No matter how old you are, that little part of you stands up, takes notice, and takes over your head for a few, oddly gratifying moments. Most often, it is totally inappropriate, but also totally unavoidable.

I would say it probably happens more often with guys than girls, on average. And more often with me, I'm guessing, than most. I blame television. Yeah, television, that's it.

I had my most recent one last night, on the way home from class.

It's DC in the summertime, and that means that while many residents will be out of town on vacation, an even larger number of out-of-towners are choosing DC for their destination of choice: it's the annual Plague of Annoying Tourists. Often, large groups are distinguishable by their plumage, commonly taking the form of identical T-shirts displaying the name of the town/organization/school from which they are coming. This is what caught my attention last night.

Got on the train a little after 8pm, and found myself surrounded by blue tie-dye shirts, worn by a large group of girls, emblazoned with what I could only assume was the school these young ladies attended.

The school? Licking Valley.

I hoped for a minute that it was an all-girls school, until I saw a couple of boys wearing the same shirt. But still. Licking. Valley.

The prospect of their mascot is both delicious and disturbing.

I would like to find this place and visit the bookstore, if only to see if I could find a Licking Valley Cross-Country Shirt. I might never wear anything else.

Stop, drop, and... oh never mind

When I was in college, I lived in dorms that were mostly populated by freshmen (the last two years as an RA). What that meant was, among other things, the buildings in which I lived were inordinately fire-alarm-prone, and usually late at night. My job, of course, was to go round up the stragglers (i.e. the people who heard the alarm and decided they didn't feel like getting up) and send them outside. So you can imagine how popular that was in January. Anyway, fire alarms quickly became something not to take all that seriously.

You'd think that would change as an adult, but not really. At my previous office, I can remember several times when the fire alarm would sound, and most people would take a moment and try to figure out whether or not this was something they could get away with ignoring. We're talking people with kids, behaving more or less like college freshmen. In their cases, I think, it was mostly laziness: uncertain danger of fire compared with walking down and perhaps back up eight flights of stairs.

Fast forward to last night, around 11pm. I'm in my apartment, minding my own business, watching a little TV and winding down. All of the sudden, this bell starts going off in the hall. It was a feeble bell, and kind of intermittent, but it was definitely persistent and obviously trying to tell me something. It just wasn't that convincing. It took about fifteen seconds of hearing it for me to realize that it was most likely the building's fire alarm.

My first thought was, "That's your fire alarm? Seriously? Get that fixed, because that's just wrong." The fact that I wasn't sure it was a fire alarm in the first place means there's a problem. I then actually stood in my apartment and debated whether or not I was going to go outside. Part of me still wasn't convinced that what I was hearing was a fire alarm, the other half was flashing back to college and kind of assuming (hoping?) that it was just some false alarm. But I was in a high-rise apartment building, not some freshman college dorm, so the odds of a prank were pretty low.

Of course, hearing the sirens in the distance helped make up my mind. Definitely tipped the scales a bit. I then cursed myself for never getting around to making that renter's insurace call I'd been meaning to for a couple of months, and headed out to see what was going on.

It's never a good sign when you see, at the other end of your hall, a steady stream of people coming out of the stairwell and heading out the door (I live on the ground floor, hence near the exits).

I made my way up to the lobby, only to find about 50-60 people standing around, not doing much of anything. I thought that was a little odd. I mean, the fire alarm is going, there's a fire truck parked outside, and you're standing in the lobby like it's social hour. GO. OUTSIDE.

I went out the back door, and wandered down the building towards the opposite end away from my place, where I could see flashing red lights off of the buildings across the street. The fire crew was running hoses, heading for the hydrants, which didn't exactly help my optimism. I could see smoke coming from around the corner.

Turns out the apartment in question was on the first floor, on the opposite side and end of the building from me. It didn't seem that serious once I got there, a fair amount of smoke but no obvious flames. An ambulance came, but it wasn't needed, thankfully. I saw firefighters moving around, inside the apartment, but I never saw hoses running inside. Good news there as well. It seemed to be pretty well under control very quickly, nobody injured and no damage to the building. In fact, the firefighters never seemed to be in that much of a hurry, which I took as a good sign.

The story ended up being that the guy living in that apartment had a stove fire while doing some cooking. He was fine, the apartment, it seems, is intact, and we had quite a show going on outside for a little while. All's well that ends well, I guess.

But seriously, fix that damn bell.

It figures...

... that on the one day I'm in a kind of hurry, I hop in a cab with the World's Least Assertive Cab Driver. No exaggeration.

Coming up to a red light (where I feel obligated to mention, we were going to be making a right turn), the cab stops no fewer than five feet before the stop line, and made no moves to suggest making the right on red was even on his mind. Just waited patiently for the light to turn green (I looked for 'no turn on red.' didn't see it). On the way to the airport, he exhibited none of the maniacally aggressive cab-driver tendencies which most of us loathe and revile while driving near, but we do so tremendously appreciate when we're the ones benefiting from the onset of others' road rage. He let people merge. He didn't accelerate to stops, or jump from lane to lane at the first hint of a quicker line of traffic.

In short, he about drove me crazy.

I realize that we would all rather that more cab drivers would behave this way, but I'd just as soon they get enlightened when it better suits my needs. I don't think that's all that much to ask, is it?

I did see a couple of interesting things on the way, though:

A car turning into the flow of traffic with a steady stream of smoke coming from under its hood. The driver looked almost serenely unconcerned, which bothered me immensely. It bothered me that he wasn't bothered, and I was much happier once we passed him and made him someone else's problem.

If you travel down 23rd St to Constitution in the afternoon, you are no doubt accustomed to seeing the far right lane blocked by at least one car still parked at the meters, despite the fact cars aren't allowed to be there. The difference this time was that the lone offending vehicle was a WWII-era, olive drab Jeep. White star on the side and everything. I can only imagine Gen. Patton was off breaking a dollar for meter change.

The funniest thing about the trip was the car radio. Like many cabs, I'm sure, this one didn't exactly have a Bose premium sound system. Far from it. The upshot was that I got to listen to Wilson Phillips' "Hold On" with a disproportionately high bass level. Think about that: Carnie Wilson with Dr. Dre-level bass lines. It totally changed the song, which is to say it almost made it listenable. Almost.

Of course, Wilson Phillips was forever changed for me after I first heard The Dan Band. If you don't know who these guys are, you should, and here's why*:


I got to the airport and made my plane in plenty of time, so it was all good. But it wasn't quite the ride I was expecting, not by a long shot.

* safe for work, but there's a long-ish intro with some bleeped swearing.

Just.... A Little..... Farther...

I'm finished with classes for the semester, but I have to turn in a project (today/tonight) and do a final (this weekend) before I'm officially free. Then it's two-ish weeks of (relatively) minimal responsibility before summer classes start.

Just two semesters to go. Summer and Fall. Then I'm done. No. More. School.

Probably not ever.

I can't begin to describe how deliciously good that sounds. It will be topped, I admit, in August and December, but it's darn good for right now.

All I'll need to do then is figure out just what exactly the %$*@& I want to do with my life, and I'll be all set.

One last thing

For any of you out in blogland who are looking for something you can do for the people affected by the events of last week, here are a couple of links.

The Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

Hokies United (from whom I borrowed this excellent graphic)

And if you're a fan of collegiate a cappella, as I am, groups from around Virginia are putting together a compilation CD for sale, with all monies going to the above funds (all of it, they're covering the production costs themselves). Check it out here. Also, the Hokies United folks plan to have T-shirts available later this week. Keep an eye on the site for details and the design.

My goal is for this to be the last thing I say on the matter, at least here (hence the post title). Ultimately, it's not about me or what I think; it's about the students and families affected. So this seems an appropriate place to leave it.

As for me, I'm sure I'll be back to the moderately hilarious mediocrity you've come to know and tolerate soon enough. You can take that as good or bad news, as you prefer.

Monday

People with far more talent than I have written at length about the tragedy at Virginia Tech, what it means to the university, the students, and perhaps to us as people. With the exception of that first day, I haven't had many words about it myself; it's been more of a quiet sadness, watching the pictures from campus, hearing the stories of the victims, and enduring the words of those who would co-opt the deaths of innocent students for their own purposes. By the end of the week, I was just tired. I had run out of energy even to respond to the kind messages from people who cared about me. It got to be difficult to write what amounted to the same message saying, "yes, I'm fine, thanks for asking," much as I deeply appreciated the thought. I'm getting to it, but not quite as fast as perhaps I should.

I have to admit, the whole thing hit me a bit harder than I had expected. I mean, sure, I went to school there and everything, but I haven't been back in almost ten years and I don't know anyone down there, with the exception of a professor or two. But there it was, a surprising weight in my gut. It got a bit heavier as I read the updates, and as I flipped past all of the news programs, since it seemed like everyone in the world was broadcasting from Blacksburg last week. Well, everyone except Lee Corso, who I think we'd all agree would have been a great break from what we'd been getting. I'd have gladly paid a dollar to have Lee walk around campus with that Hokie head on. Okay, maybe two. Just would have been a welcome change of pace, I'm guessing. But alas, no. We got what we got, and I'd had enough.

It still weighs on me, and probably will for a long time. What has been amazing, though, is the amount of support that I've gotten from people near and far, both fellow alums and folks with no clear connection to the school at all. Friday, I saw a truly humbling amount of maroon and orange around DC, and it's all been extremely heartwarming. I just want to take a second and thank everyone for their kind words, emails, phone calls, blog posts, you name it. It's been a great help to me, and I'm sure it's been for others as well.

It's Monday, the start of a new week. The students at Virginia Tech head back to classes today, and begin the extremely long, difficult road back towards normal (or something that passes for it). I just hope that the rest of the world lets them.

Beautiful

Even to the casual observer, this is awesome. But if you know about the Beta Bridge at UVA, and how significant it is on campus there (to say nothing of the rivalry between the two schools), then it means just that much more.

As one of my close friends (and UVA grad herself) put it: "Amazing, wonderful, and quite possibly one of the signs of the apocalypse."

Which pretty much sums it up, I think.

I have nothing to add here

Because I'm not thinking about much else today

I've gotten several messages and emails over the past 24 hours, inquiring about how I'm doing. So thanks to everyone for your thoughts, I certainly appreciate it. It feels like a strange question, though, to be honest. I mean, I haven't been to campus since the '99 graduation, and like I said before, I don't still have any contacts down there. So my natural reaction has been, "Well of course I'm fine, I'm not there." But admittedly, the whole thing has been weighing on me a little heavier than I would have expected. It's really, really hard not to keep checking on the updates, despite the fact that I can't say for sure that I want to hear more about it.

Now, of course, we've gone from people talking about what happened to people weighing in with opinions about the how's and why's, and that's the part that I can't stand. Leave the police and university officials alone. They did the best they could with what they had, and no amount of second-guessing is going to be helpful to the families and students who just lost their children, siblings, and friends. The timing of the email isn't the point. The point is that, when police responded to the first shooting, they contacted the resident advisors within that building, had them go and check on their residents, and tried to contain the situation there. Who among you would have guessed that more was coming, and how would you have known? Even if you had, how would you have predicted that someone would wander all the way across campus, passing any number of buildings with people (and sadly, potential targets) in them in the process, to get to one particular class building? How do you cover a campus that large effectively in any case? It's not like Blacksburg has an especially large police force in the first place.

How do you get the word out? Of the 25,000+ students at Va Tech, only about 8,000 actually live on campus. That means that more than two thirds of your audience is beyond the reaches of any conventional alert system short of air-raid sirens, no matter what you do. That's just the reality. You do what you can with what you have. They had bullhorns and police cars and email and phone calls. They interpreted the situation a certain way, and it turns out they were wrong. It happens, and it's not a function of incompetence, necessarily, nor negligence; it's just what happened. It really burns me up to see people so eager to jump on the folks who were on the scene and trying to help, passing judgment from in many cases hundreds of miles away.

If you want evidence of how drastically your understanding of a situation can change from what you first thought, just go back and look at the reports that came out of this tragedy throughout the day yesterday. It's simply unfair to suggest that anyone, police or civilian, could or should have known more than they did. All of that energy would be much better spent focused on the people affected by the day's events.

Okay, I'm done. Sorry about that; got off on a bit of a rant there. I just think it's too easy to point fingers, as if that's somehow going to make things better. It won't, and it doesn't help.

On the upside, it's been hearwarming to read some of the stories, from journalists and amateurs alike, in the aftermath of all of this. A small sample: Brunch Bird has a good one, as does Stewart Mandel on CNNSi, and Hokie alum Hoda Kotb, a Dateline correspondent.

I could probably ramble on for hours about this whole thing, but I won't. I hope that the students and their families and friends are all right, or at least that they will be. I'm optimistic; one thing you figure out spending a few years at Tech is that the Hokie Nation is a pretty strong bunch. They'll pull through. I just wish they didn't have to.

In case you hadn't heard

The fatality count is up over 2o now. The latest reports say that number includes the shooter, so hopefully the numbers won't go any higher. [ed. note: total up to 32. Just boggles the mind.]

It's all so sad and disturbing, and more than a little surreal. I went to Virginia Tech. I was an RA in West AJ, and spent the bulk of my time at college right across from Norris Hall (the Mechanical Engineering classes were primarily in Randolph); Norris was where the Engineering Science and Mechanics kids had most of their classes, and where, at the time, the Dean of the School of Engineering's office was (and probably still is).

I don't really know what to say about it. It's hard to get your head around the idea that something like this could happen much of anywhere, but especially in a place like Blacksburg.

Blacksburg is the picture of a nice, small college town; which is to say, it was almost mind-numbingly boring a lot of the time. Most people who went there will tell you, "Nothing ever happens in Blacksburg." Sure, the occasional incident downtown, some trouble with varsity atheletes, but nothing any different from or worse than a school of its size anywhere else. It's a beautiful place to be, absolutely picturesque on a sunny day.

Sadly, not anymore. Blacksburg is, from now on, going to be That Place. What was once described as a quiet, borderline-idyllic campus settled in the mountains of southwest Virginia will forever be referred to as the site of one of the worst disasters a college campus has ever seen. Virginia Tech is now inextricably linked to Columbine and every other school tragedy you can think of.

Fortunately for me, I don't know anyone still at school there, nor can I think of anyone I know whose kids are down there. I hope you don't either. But if you do, I hope that they're safe and unharmed.

Don't You Think?

If you remember Alanis Morrissette from her Jagged Little Pill days, you probably had the impression that she took herself very seriously, was very earnest about her music and her message, and you were, if you're being totally honest, just a tiny little bit afraid of her.

Then she goes and does something like this, and..... totally redeems herself*. No kidding, this is brilliant. I might like this even more than the bluegrass rendition of Gin & Juice. Okay, maybe not, but it's damn funny.



* points if you can tell me where this came from; it's either movie or tv, but I can't quite place it.

Sometimes irony is subtle, I guess...

So I spent Saturday afternoon/evening at a friend's place, watching my previously-first-place Blog Madness bracket disintegrate before my eyes. That sucked. What's worse is that the games themselves weren't even very good. After several weeks of nailbiting, down-to-the-wire displays of brilliant basketball, we were treated to a couple of games for which by halftime the over/under was going to struggle to break 100. When Florida is playing UCLA, both uptempo scoring teams, and it takes almost fifteen minutes through the first half for either team to break ten points, you know there's a problem. And it wasn't even good defense, either, it was just slop. And after all the slop, both of my finals teams were out of the tournament. Another one bites the dust. But this isn't really about that. I'm just venting.

Also on Saturday, another sporting event got started: the Civil Rights Game in Major League Baseball. Now, I'm not much of a baseball fan. I pretty much avoid watching it on TV; I just can't seem to get into it. Live is a different story: I'll watch just about anything live, and baseball parks are usually great places to spend a few hours. But again, I digress. I think that a Civil Rights game is a good idea; Jackie Robinson should be recognized, along with the contributions of countless minority atheletes to modern sport. And furthermore, I think that Memphis is an excellent place to hold such a game, being the location of the Civil Rights Museum, as well as the place where MLK was killed. Good ideas all around. What struck me was this -

The matchup for Saturday's Civil Rights Game: The Saint Louis Cardinals against...

The Cleveland Indians.

If you need to, take a moment and read that again. It'll come to you.

I couldn't believe it. Do you really mean to tell me that no one, while they were putting this game together, saw the teams involved and didn't at least raise their hands to say, "Um, guys? You sure this is a good idea?" Assembling an event to commemorate the progress of an oppressed minority and including a team named for yet another oppressed minority. Effing brilliant.

I guess it could have been worse. It could have been Braves-Yankees.