#Freaking Out -AND!

Calmly completely freaking out about my move. AND! I quit smoking. I feel this qualifies me to have an opinion on how to do it.

Gambling

The one way I'm like Satan...

Perhaps this is a little weird...

I'm moving to upstate New York...

Because I have a tenure-track job!!! And my teaching evals were awesome.

So... I have very little idea what happened with my last evals. Last time over half said something like "intense" and "intimidating."

These evals say things like "enthusiastic!" "Charming!" "Made me care about rocks!!!" and "Best professor I've had at UIC!"

I did get a few "This class is really, really hard" complaints. However, I got about an equal number of "Her high expectations helped me succeed"-type comments.

And now I have a job. The contract is signed, and I'm moving.

To upstate New York. Which is weird... hard to describe why, but it is.

This might be one of the last posts on Off the Shore. I think I might be done with whatever this was. Not 100% done with blogging, but I might try something more... cheerful.

From the Wilderness,

C

Geology Degrees, Salmon Eggs and "Boys Are Weird, But So Are Girls"

Let the interviews come!

The Ongoing Saga of the Teaching Evals...

I have my comments.

And the abyss stares back...

It was me.

Opening up a can of John Douglas on the situation...

So I got knocked because of my terrible - truly terrible - evals.

I was crying.  I couldn't I believe that my students really felt I was a terrible teacher.

Post-Super Ego

I didn't get the job.

My Sigil

If I lived in the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire, this would be my sigil.

Why I suck at this...

Consider the Sloth, Adoreky and Unnecessarily Complicated Male Gonads...

One of my favorite blogs, Electronic Cerebrectomy, had a cute link on sloths.

Sloths are, in my lexicon, "adoreky."  "Adoreky" is a portmanteau of "adorable" and "freaky."  There are many creatures that are so ugly they're cute - they're adoreky.

A series of YouTube videos that I've become addicted to due to their focus on all things adoreky is "True Facts."

These are simply too funny, particularly the angler fish.  Unnecessarily complicated male gonads, indeed.

Holy Snarks, It's Real!

From the "Wow, did that happen" files: lightening strikes Vatican the day that the Pope resigns:

If this is fake, the BBC doesn't seem to know about it...

Valentine's Day, Ash Wednesday, and Facebook Is Lonely

I really love my church.

Cruise Control

"F##k you, f##k you, f##k you, you're cool, and f##k you, I'm out!" - Pope Benedict XVI

We're Back, Ready for Round 2

I miss David.

Music Videos

Every once in a while I'll stay up late and watch music videos on the 'net.

And every time I do I find myself going "Till Lindemann is gorgeous."  Every.  Time.

(Lindemann was a swimmer pegged for Moscow, btw, before he was in Rammstein.  Also, I don't care what anyone says: German is a beautiful language.  So is Danish.  So is Polish.)

How did the behavioralist get rid of the monsters under the bed?...

...He sawed off the bed's legs.

I have realized that all my obsession with "the human brain isn't ready for the internet" is really "No, my compulsive little monkey brain isn't ready for the internet."

ABC Wednesday: G is for Green Gas

This one is for Carver on conserving natural resources: Green Gas, or How Cow Farts May One Day Save the Planet!

Oceanic methanogens.  Image from the Oregon State University Subsurface Biosphere Initiative

Sundays with William Blake: A Divine Image

Hannibal probably would be stuffed by now.

Mappings are a way to associate objects from one group to another.  I remember when I first encountered this concept in  one of my very first logic courses and was struck at how useful a concept it was.  (Image from Mathworld.  Yes, I know it turned itself into a sketch when it loaded on my blog.)

What should I expect others to know and understand?

"Hahaha, you're stupid..." said Ian, my cousin-in-law, mocking my attitude of "How can you not know that?" when we were playing an American history trivia game.  I was about 21 at the time.

"Musk oxen are very closely related to goats...." I told my mother-in-law last night.  "I thought it was elk..." she said.  Later: "I looked it up; you were right..."