…a bit of good news. Looks like the people in Santa Cruz have some good sense, and others are following suit.
Thoughts on frontier regions
I’m taking a class this quarter on frontier Roman archaeology, and after reading through the first few chapters of the primary textbook (Whittaker’s Frontiers of the Roman Empire) and trying to come up with some framework questions for the course, some thoughts came to mind.
(Warning: Extremely meandering thoughts here on changing perspectives on frontiers throughout history. Probably not interesting to most people.)
Winner for the “bad article titles of the week” award: “Homeotic Supersymmetry,” by Barenboim and Lykken. I made it halfway through the abstract before I realized that I’d misread the title. (And that it wasn’t nearly as interesting as I’d first expected)
hmm…
Well, I just filed my formal application to graduate. All I have left to do is finish the thesis and defend.
Thesis status:
- 7 papers complete
- 1 paper pending, in revision
- Glue text still to be written
Defense status:
- Reading committee already set (3 people)
- Rest of oral committee still to be chosen, schedule to be set
- Need to write talk
…and that’s it. My quarter at a glance.
This is kinda creepy.
Things achieved so far today
The grading for my class is now completed. These students did remarkably well on a hard course, and I’m proud of them.
I think I’ve found what broke in that server – one of the RAM chips was faulty. That chip is presently removed, and the server is sitting in a back room running a stress-test program which I named “forkbunny.”
(No, really – it forks off a bunch of little processes and reproduces like crazy, and does all sorts of things to strain the memory and the virtual memory)
Next: To get some research work done. Such as, trying to decipher this letter one of my collaborators sent me. It’s not that he doesn’t speak English, it’s that half the time he doesn’t make sense even when he does.
Thoughts on ethnic violence
The following is very cynical, (even by my standards) and should probably be skipped by most people.
It also talks about racism and uses the names of specific groups, so someone will probably find a way to be offended by that. Please be advised that I’m trying to think about the root causes of racism, and that therefore means bringing up various nasty subjects. Those who dislike that, please skip this too.
Bugger
Well, it’s now 2:30, and I’ve spent most of the day nursing sick computers. Right now I’m trying to get RAID to restart, which is proving to be an unnecessary pain in the ass because of some really poorly designed software.
I really hope I can make game tonight. I really do.
(Incidentally: If you’re trying to send me e-mail, it may be a while. E-mails aren’t being lost, but until the system is working again there’s no way for me to receive them. Yes, I am the head sysadmin for the server where I get my mail… sigh…)
Update: Well, the system is working again, and I may well make it to game tonight. Of course, none of the backup systems are working, so my weekend just got more interesting…
and…
Random bit of dialogue with one of my TA’s during our grading session tonight:
Kathryn: “Your computer is named olorin? You are such a geek…”
Me: “Wait a moment. You know that reference, and you’re calling me a geek?!”
Have I mentioned that I have really cool TA’s?
and…
Just to make that repair job a bit more surreal, while I was on my way there and back I was listening to the BBC on the radio. They were talking live with journalists in combat zones, who were yelling over the sound of artillery fire. At one point they had to retreat, and kept transmitting throughout.
This isn’t a bad sign about the war or anything like that – it just suddenly makes it very, very vivid that shooting is going on right now.
Sigh.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 