It’s not that my time at college has sapped me of my love for history, or that I don’t think I could do the work to get the other degrees. I still love the subject, and, not to pat my own back, but I think I would excel in graduate school. Rather, it’s that I’m afraid that there’s a very good possibility that I could spend 5-7 more years in school and end up not being able to find a tenure track position – and quite frankly, I don’t really have any great desire to join the droves of unemployed PhD holders.

Then again, it’s what I really want to do, or at least think I want to do. I’ve enjoyed the academic setting, the learning, the sharing of ideas. I’m worried about jobs later on down the road, yes, but I’m also fairly positive that if I don’t at least have a go at “The Plan,” twenty years from now, I’m going to be kicking myself.

I suppose I’m basically just waffling here. I know what I want to do, and I’ve known it since basically day one of college. But now that push is coming to shove, I’m (naturally?) having doubts. Friends and family that I’ve spoken to have all urged me to go for it; now if I could just convince myself that it’s what I should do.

I’ve long thought that indoctrinating small children with religion is not without its problems, as religion seems to me something that one should decide on for themselves. For something that can alter one’s life so much, it seems wrong to me to teach kids this way or that way from an early age. If we can get them to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, we can get them to believe in anything; to use the innocence, and frankly, gullibility of children to put them on whatever path the parent (or whoever) has chosen seems rather unfair to me.

But of course, I can certainly understand why this happens, particularly now that I’m in the position of the parent. You have to tell your kid(s) something, because rest assured, if you don’t, someone else will. But the big question is, what do we tell him? I consider myself Buddhist, but due to my feelings on the issue, I don’t really want to just say “this is it, kid; this is the way to be.” Buddhism is the choice I’ve made for myself, but I’m really not sure it’s my place to make that choice for him, nutty as that may sound coming from a parent. I’d introduce him to a variety of religions and let him decide, but at his age, I think all that would accomplish would be to confuse him – not to mention, I’d say most people I know would disown me for doing such a thing. While I may not agree with all of them, I can’t completely ignore social norms. I’m not sure how well it would go over in first grade if he went in and said that he’d decided to be Muslim or Hindu; we do, after all, live along the Bible Belt.

Then again, perhaps I’m agonizing over this for nothing. Perhaps, regardless of what we tell him, he’ll find his own way in his own time. I was raised in a Christian family, and I’m certainly not a Christian now. On the other hand, I’ve known people who were raised following one religious path or another, and it caused them endless trouble as an adult as they struggled to figure out their own beliefs and thoughts.

So, here I am. I’m in the position of needing to give guidance on this issue, but unsure as to what guidance I should give. Any ideas on this one?

I am, however, off of shovelglove for a few days. I’ve done something stupid, and gone and hurt myself. You would think that doing an exercise program that involves swinging a sledgehammer around, I would have injured myself with the hammer; but that’s not the case. I actually injured myself by doing the one exercise in my program that doesn’t really use the hammer at all: squats. I think I did them a bit… over zealously.

I don’t remember any sharp pains or anything while exercising last week, but by the weekend, I was in quite a bit of pain. I stubbornly put off going to the urgent care center until Thursday, thinking that it would just get better on its own (it wasn’t). The urgent care center did an x-ray to make sure I hadn’t broken anything, gave me crutches, and some wonderful pain medicine – the documentation on it says it’s akin to morphine.

The crutches seem to be helping tremendously, as I can already note less pain. I’ve also been icing it regularly, as ordered. I’ve got a follow-up appointment with my doctor on Monday, to see if she thinks I need to get an MRI to check for any soft tissue damage, or if I should just continue babying the knee. Let us all hope and pray and do knee dances (just do the rain dance moves and think about my knee) for the latter course of action. You all do the dancing, please; I’m not in any shape to jump around, even with crutches.

As an aside – crutches! I’m not sure if they’re supposed to help me or torture me. I’ve never had to use crutches before, and I must say – they’re a lot harder to use than I ever would have imagined. I’ve had some very close calls, thinking that not only would I need to get my knee checked out again, but also my head. In mid-swing, your balance has a tendency to get a little screwy.

So, if you’re still around, I thank you for your patience, and ask you to bear with me. Cheers!

Shovelglove

I discovered shovelgloving a few weeks ago, but only glanced at the site; it seemed rather weird, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Yesterday, however, I rediscovered it via my daily consumption of feeds, and decided to read the whole page (something I don’t do much these days on the internet, I admit). If you’d rather not do that, in a nutshell: shovelgloving is wrapping an old sweater around the head of a sledgehammer, and then doing basic movements with your new “shovelglove” – shoveling, chopping wood, churning butter, smiting the orc (I’m serious). See, I said it was weird, and I meant it. But its weirdness gives it an awful lot of charm. How could anyone not pay some attention to an exercise program that has an exercise called “smiting the orc”?

Despite its weirdness, Reinhard, the quirky librarian in charge of the site, convinced me to give it a go. I like that shovelgloving makes exercise such a simple thing, rather than charting it all out – this exercise for that muscle, that exercise for this muscle. Sure, there’s a table of movements, but they’re all pretty logical, with the names (mostly) describing the action very well. I understand “tuck bales” and “drive fence posts” far better than I understand “lat extension to the rear” and “triceps kickback”… what do those things mean?

In regards to how often and how much you’re supposed to shovelglove, it’s dead simple: Monday through Friday, 14 minutes a day – no more, no less. You rest on the weekend. Reinhard has an interesting psychological explanation as to why he chose 14 minutes – it’s not a typical time block, so it d http://system13.org Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:11:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://system13.org/2010/02/05/am-i-going-to-graduate-school/ http://system13.org/2010/02/05/am-i-going-to-graduate-school/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:53:23 +0000 Josh http://system13.org/?p=964 Continue reading →]]> When I started college, my intention was to get my Bachelor’s degree in history, then go on to get a Master’s and, eventually, a doctorate. My end goal was to teach history at the university level. Now that I’m almost done with my Bachelor’s – if all goes well, I’ll have it this summer – I’m not so sure about my plan.

It’s not that my time at college has sapped me of my love for history, or that I don’t think I could do the work to get the other degrees. I still love the subject, and, not to pat my own back, but I think I would excel in graduate school. Rather, it’s that I’m afraid that there’s a very good possibility that I could spend 5-7 more years in school and end up not being able to find a tenure track position – and quite frankly, I don’t really have any great desire to join the droves of unemployed PhD holders.

Then again, it’s what I really want to do, or at least think I want to do. I’ve enjoyed the academic setting, the learning, the sharing of ideas. I’m worried about jobs later on down the road, yes, but I’m also fairly positive that if I don’t at least have a go at “The Plan,” twenty years from now, I’m going to be kicking myself.

I suppose I’m basically just waffling here. I know what I want to do, and I’ve known it since basically day one of college. But now that push is coming to shove, I’m (naturally?) having doubts. Friends and family that I’ve spoken to have all urged me to go for it; now if I could just convince myself that it’s what I should do.

I’ve long thought that indoctrinating small children with religion is not without its problems, as religion seems to me something that one should decide on for themselves. For something that can alter one’s life so much, it seems wrong to me to teach kids this way or that way from an early age. If we can get them to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, we can get them to believe in anything; to use the innocence, and frankly, gullibility of children to put them on whatever path the parent (or whoever) has chosen seems rather unfair to me.

But of course, I can certainly understand why this happens, particularly now that I’m in the position of the parent. You have to tell your kid(s) something, because rest assured, if you don’t, someone else will. But the big question is, what do we tell him? I consider myself Buddhist, but due to my feelings on the issue, I don’t really want to just say “this is it, kid; this is the way to be.” Buddhism is the choice I’ve made for myself, but I’m really not sure it’s my place to make that choice for him, nutty as that may sound coming from a parent. I’d introduce him to a variety of religions and let him decide, but at his age, I think all that would accomplish would be to confuse him – not to mention, I’d say most people I know would disown me for doing such a thing. While I may not agree with all of them, I can’t completely ignore social norms. I’m not sure how well it would go over in first grade if he went in and said that he’d decided to be Muslim or Hindu; we do, after all, live along the Bible Belt.

Then again, perhaps I’m agonizing over this for nothing. Perhaps, regardless of what we tell him, he’ll find his own way in his own time. I was raised in a Christian family, and I’m certainly not a Christian now. On the other hand, I’ve known people who were raised following one religious path or another, and it caused them endless trouble as an adult as they struggled to figure out their own beliefs and thoughts.

So, here I am. I’m in the position of needing to give guidance on this issue, but unsure as to what guidance I should give. Any ideas on this one?

I am, however, off of shovelglove for a few days. I’ve done something stupid, and gone and hurt myself. You would think that doing an exercise program that involves swinging a sledgehammer around, I would have injured myself with the hammer; but that’s not the case. I actually injured myself by doing the one exercise in my program that doesn’t really use the hammer at all: squats. I think I did them a bit… over zealously.

I don’t remember any sharp pains or anything while exercising last week, but by the weekend, I was in quite a bit of pain. I stubbornly put off going to the urgent care center until Thursday, thinking that it would just get better on its own (it wasn’t). The urgent care center did an x-ray to make sure I hadn’t broken anything, gave me crutches, and some wonderful pain medicine – the documentation on it says it’s akin to morphine.

The crutches seem to be helping tremendously, as I can already note less pain. I’ve also been icing it regularly, as ordered. I’ve got a follow-up appointment with my doctor on Monday, to see if she thinks I need to get an MRI to check for any soft tissue damage, or if I should just continue babying the knee. Let us all hope and pray and do knee dances (just do the rain dance moves and think about my knee) for the latter course of action. You all do the dancing, please; I’m not in any shape to jump around, even with crutches.

As an aside – crutches! I’m not sure if they’re supposed to help me or torture me. I’ve never had to use crutches before, and I must say – they’re a lot harder to use than I ever would have imagined. I’ve had some very close calls, thinking that not only would I need to get my knee checked out again, but also my head. In mid-swing, your balance has a tendency to get a little screwy.

So, if you’re still around, I thank you for your patience, and ask you to bear with me. Cheers!

Shovelglove

I discovered shovelgloving a few weeks ago, but only glanced at the site; it seemed rather weird, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Yesterday, however, I rediscovered it via my daily consumption of feeds, and decided to read the whole page (something I don’t do much these days on the internet, I admit). If you’d rather not do that, in a nutshell: shovelgloving is wrapping an old sweater around the head of a sledgehammer, and then doing basic movements with your new “shovelglove” – shoveling, chopping wood, churning butter, smiting the orc (I’m serious). See, I said it was weird, and I meant it. But its weirdness gives it an awful lot of charm. How could anyone not pay some attention to an exercise program that has an exercise called “smiting the orc”?

Despite its weirdness, Reinhard, the quirky librarian in charge of the site, convinced me to give it a go. I like that shovelgloving makes exercise such a simple thing, rather than charting it all out – this exercise for that muscle, that exercise for this muscle. Sure, there’s a table of movements, but they’re all pretty logical, with the names (mostly) describing the action very well. I understand “tuck bales” and “drive fence posts” far better than I understand “lat extension to the rear” and “triceps kickback”… what do those things mean?

In regards to how often and how much you’re supposed to shovelglove, it’s dead simple: Monday through Friday, 14 minutes a day – no more, no less. You rest on the weekend. Reinhard has an interesting psychological explanation as to why he chose 14 minutes – it’s not a typical time block, so it doesn’t really register with a lot of people. 14 minutes? Sure, I can spare that, that’s nothing. But half an hour? That’s half an hour. I could watch a TV show during that!

I put in my first 14 minutes of shovelgloving yesterday evening, and it was a surprisingly hard workout. But it was also a hell of a lot of fun – in a quite weird way. I just hope the neighbors didn’t see me.

No S Diet

The No S diet is perhaps even simpler than shovelgloving. Here’s the diet:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No calorie counting, no “you can’t eat that!”; just 3 meals a day, without constantly visiting the kitchen for snacks all day. And while I suppose things could change in the future, I’d say that at least during my lifetime, there will always be 2 days in the week which begin with “S”, so when I want some cookies or cake or whatever, I’ll know right when I can have them.

When I read about this diet, which I discovered via the shovelglove.com site, I thought: this is it. This is the best diet idea I’ve ever seen (and I’ve looked at my fair share of them, lemme’ tell ya’.) Why? Because it’s doable. I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s simple, and it’s not going to feel like I’m trying to become an ascetic. I’ve tried counting calories before, and I discovered that it – ahem, sucks. Sure, I did it for a few weeks. And then I started to hate that little red book. Hate it. It made every meal a math assignment, and I think I’ve mentioned it in the past: I hate math! I’ve also tried diets that simply cut off certain foods, and that sucks even more than calorie counting. I like cookies, thank you very much.

I also think it’s going to be a great fit for me, because I know I’m awful about snacking; it’s probably the #1 reason why I’m fat (with a close #2 being that during most of my life, when it comes to physical exercise, I’ve been a lazy bastard – hey, I’m going for honesty here). Bored? Hit the kitchen. In the kitchen for a glass of water? Hey, grab a snack – it’s just one or two bites of food, right? Right, but those bites add up, chum. Read the nosdiet.com page for more about this, because Reinhard’s got some really good info about snacking and why we all should probably quit doing it so damn much. And for the record, no, I’m not being paid to write this. I’ve not even spoken to the guy.

I realize I’ve only done shovelgloving and No S dieting one day, but I must say – that one day felt fine. It didn’t feel like a chore that I had to make myself do, even the exercise – which I can’t say about many other exercises I’ve done. (I still love punching bag workouts, though!) I’m going to continue to give both a go, and if in a few weeks I’m still feeling fine with both, they may just become life habits.

(Sidenote: I read that apparently, many people respond to the No S diet and shovelgloving as I have – very enthusiastically. And then they discover that it’s not ultra easy all of the time, and they start to despair a bit. So I’m keeping that in mind – the diet in particular is a big change for me, and I’m going to have to be diligent. Here’s my daily calendar for shovegloving and nosdiet; if you see a red square, feel free to say “get back on track!” via the comments here.)

Don’t you just hate it when you have a bunch of things you think are important to you going on, but then when you start to tell someone about them you realize they probably don’t give a rip?

I realized I’ve had a few things like that rolling around in my head – things that I’ve felt are fairly important to me, but I wasn’t quite sure if I could make a post out of any one of them. So, in the best fashion, I’m stealing Gnorb’s idea. Thanks, Gnorb. (Hope you enjoy your typewriters, and I hope you get your health issues sorted out soon!)

Point One. The first thing on the agenda: exercise. I’ve stuck with it. Days have been missed here and there, certainly, but the overall trend has been regular exercise. About two weeks ago, I started using my punching bag again. If you recall from the last post about it, I stopped using it because I was concerned that the house was going to fall in on me; that wouldn’t be good. However, upon inspecting where it’s mounted a bit more, I came to the conclusion that it should be okay. I’m going to keep an eye on the wall above the woodwork for any developing cracks, and if I see any, I’ll stop using the bag. Until then, I’m going to continue on. One good sign is that I’ve not seen any more little pieces of plaster on the floor after using it.

A week ago, I started the 100 Pushups in 6 Weeks program. I’ve been doing push ups as part of me routine, but I saw someone mention the site somewhere – a feed item, Twitter? – and thought it sounded pretty cool. I’ve done 4 sessions thus far, and am already seeing some improvement in my arms. Looking at the later weeks, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up with it – I’ve done well so far – but we’ll see. If I can’t, I’ll just start the program over and do it until I can keep up.

Finally, yesterday, I signed up at Mapmywalk.com, to.. well, duh, map my walks out. It’s a pretty neat service. You map out your walks on a Google Map, and the site calculates the distance you’ll be walking. Speaking of walking…

Point Two. I’ll now be taking two dogs for regular walks instead of one, as I’ve officially accepted that the dog that showed up is now ours. I’ve checked everywhere I know to check, and found nothing at all about her. No one has said “Hey, my dog!” when I’ve walked her with Gandalf, nor has anyone knocked on my door saying, “Excuse me, you’ve got my dog in your backyard.” So, she’s now ours. We named her Zoë. The name has some spunk to it, which she has plenty of. Perhaps a little too much – I’ve been paying lots of attention to both her and Gandalf, but she still keeps knocking their water bowl over…

And yes, particularly because Cas did some light badgering via email, pictures of the dog shall be forthcoming. Soon. I promise.

… an Amazon.com subsidiary. We offer open box, refurbished, and slightly damaged merchandise at reduced prices with the benefits of Amazon.com fulfillment and customer service. Satisfaction is guaranteed!

It sounded like a good deal. Getting the book from them shaved nearly $15 off the price, and yet amazon.com would actually be fulfilling the order? Cool.

The book arrived a few days after I ordered it, as I’ve pretty much come to expect from amazon.com. As they filled the order, it came in the usual amazon.com box. However, something was a bit – off. Observe:

Looks pretty normal, right? But wait… what’s up with the rubber band? That’s a new feature. Let’s see how things look on the flip side (literally). Aha!

Apparently, they figured out that if they just replaced a big swath of packing tape with one rubber band, they’d save millions of dollars in the long run. Unfortunately, one rubber band isn’t quite as secure. That is, it’s not secure at all. I’m glad I’m a nerd; if there’d been something in there that someone normal would actually want, I probably would have received an empty box. My rubber band might have even been gone!

Bad, amazon.com! Bad!

1. Using French, for those of you who’re interested. More of my foreign language geekery over here.

After the rain stopped, we tried shooing her off, hoping she’d go home. But she’d not have it. She’d either ignore us completely, or walk a few feet away and then come right back. We even went inside for a few hours, figuring if we left her alone, she’d head home – wherever that might be. However, when we checked the porch, we found her curled up on one of the chairs, looking at the door. We left her for a few hours more, and while she did get off the porch, she just walked around our house, never going more than 50 or so feet away. We thought this was pretty weird, as it appears that she’s either got puppies, or had puppies very recently, as it looks like she was nursing them.

We also discovered that whoever she belonged to trained her to play fetch, as well as how to take a walk properly (that is, go on a walk without pulling the owner’s arm out of its socket). It appears that she was taken care of, so why won’t she go home?

We’re thinking that perhaps someone dumped her, for whatever reason. Maybe they couldn’t afford to feed her anymore; I don’t know. Her being dumped off in an area she’s wholly unfamiliar with is the only explanation we can come up for as to why she wouldn’t leave.

She’s in our dog pen now, with my dog Gandalf. We were concerned that if we just let her wander around our house, she’d get hit by a car. Here’s the problem: we’d like to keep her, but we don’t want to be stealing someone’s dog. I’ve called all of the local radio stations and reported her; they didn’t have any reports for a dog like her. I’ve walked her around the neighborhood, hoping her owners might see her and say “Hey, she’s mine!” No luck. I even asked a few people if they’d simply seen her before; they hadn’t. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the newspaper: no mention of a dog like her at all.

At this point, I don’t really know what to do. While we’d love to keep her, I’d love it even more if her owners would come get her. But I don’t even know if she has owners anymore. And if she does, how long am I supposed to wait for them to show up looking for her? I’m not crazy about the idea of keeping her in our pen for three months, feeding her and caring for her, just for her owners to show up and say “Gimme’!”

What should I do?

I put the 2 liters of soda, the chips, her total, and tomorrow’s date together, and commented, “Wow, looks like you’re getting ready to have a big party.” The lady just looked at me and smiled slightly. She said nothing. Okay, I thought, so much for small talk…

As she was pushing her cart away, though, I looked at its contents. Only two 2 liters of soda. No bags of chips. She had a lot of different things, including a rather large assortment of household cleaning stuff. I looked at the checkout counter and saw that all of the bags of chips hadn’t belonged to her – I was looking at a display of chips, simply situated next to the checkout counter. D’oh.

No wonder she wouldn’t talk to me. Yeah, lady, looks like you’re getting ready to throw a big party with a cart full of Windex and scrubbing pads.

Ugh.

1. My love affair with RPGs began quite early. When I was 9 or 10, I discovered a copy of Dragon Warrior for NES at a yard sale and bought it for $5. Many late nights weren’t spent boop-boop-booping around that fantasy land of skeletons and green and red slimes. RPGs are still one of my favorite game genres, 15 years later.
2. When I was a teenager, I avoided haircuts if at all possible; my hair was often down below my shoulders. My bangs could cover my whole face, hanging down to the front of my neck. My hair has migrated now, however; I prefer a shaved head, but I also sport a goatee at all times.
3. I’ve never tried any illegal drugs, not even the relatively minor league marijuana. No desire to, either.
4. My thumbs are double jointed, and I delight in twisting them backwards and popping them out of their sockets to make people squirm. I don’t have any other double jointed fingers or limbs, alas.
5. I have the awful habit of biting my nails.
6. I have a birthmark on my right eye which is more or less like a small cataract that doesn’t get worse (ophthalmologist’s explanation, not mine). My eye appears fine, but my right eye vision is substantially blurrier than my left.
7. When eating, I really dislike for my different foods to get mixed on the plate; I don’t want corn bumping into my mashed potatoes, or my biscuit sitting upon a serving of green beans.

The rules of the meme said I needed to tag 7 people, but I must say – I’m not sure I can. Between Hrafn and Edrei, they’ve very nearly pointed to all of the folks I’d tag. There are a few left, however – Liz at LearningNerd, Gordon from One Man Blogs, and Tom. Of course, you three aren’t obligated to do this – but I’d certainly like it if you did.