Evidently I got bitten by the bug to do work, so I spent the past couple of hours reading through and revising Chapter 7.
It’s actually not half-bad. It’s fairly coherent, and it doesn’t reek of a terrible cut-and-paste job like I feared, since I copied large chunks from both my articles and added some new [...]
Archive for December, 2008
That was fast
Posted in dissertation, tagged Chapter 7, dissertation on 31 December 2008 | 1 Comment »
Dream a little dream of (Chapter) 8
Posted in dissertation, tagged Chapter 7, Chapter 8, dissertation on 31 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Evidently my resolution led me to put my nose to the grindstone, as I cranked out almost twenty pages yesterday, calling it a night with 298 pages and a first draft of Chapter 7 in the can.
Not quite 300 pages, but I’m sure I could stretch to reach that milestone if I chose to spend [...]
A New Year’s resolution
Posted in dissertation, tagged dissertating, writing on 30 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
It’s silly and arbitrary, not to mention of no consequence.
But I’d really like to hunker down today and tomorrow in the hopes of cracking the 300-page mark and/or finishing Chapter 7.
I began writing my dissertation on 2 July, so it’d provide me a nice sense of accomplishment if I could say I cranked out 300 [...]
Walmart: putting the “ass” in “class”
Posted in don't want to be an American idiot, tagged Wallyworld on 29 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a story with a hilarious lead about how the CEO of a high-end lawnmower manufacturer had a meeting with a Walmart veep at Wallyworld HQ and got to sit in leftover samples of lawn chairs.
What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president’s office, was the seating area for visitors. “It [...]
Selling myself
Posted in acamademia, tagged academic blues, AHA on 28 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Ugh. I’ve spent most of today trying to prepare for my job interview next weekend. It’s kind of grueling.
I’ve found a few web sites with tips and advice for how to prepare, questions to expect and the like. Mostly it’s stuff I’d expect based on my own experience on a search committee (albeit one that [...]
In search of ancient Romania
Posted in don't want to be an American idiot, tagged advertising, damn lies, lies on 27 December 2008 | 1 Comment »
By means of strange coincidences, I’ve spotted multiple commercials this past week portraying Romania as a land of largely pre-modern, isolated, subsistence farming villagers.
First, there are various Burger King commercials seeking out people from what implicitly must be the most rural, backward, desolate parts of the world, including Transylvanian farmers from Budesti, Romania.
These folks are supposed [...]
Die, yanquí, die
Posted in diversion, tagged I hate the Yankees, I hate the Red Sox on 23 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Just when I thought the Red Sox had become worse than the Yankees …
Mark Teixeira has reached agreement with the Yankees on an eight-year contract worth more than $170 million, two sources involved in the negotiations report.
On the bright side, I’m not sure this really makes the Yankees that much better (ditto the CC Sabathia [...]
Review: Super Paper Mario
Posted in Wii, diversion, procrastination, video games, tagged Mario, review, Super Paper Mario, video games, Wii on 20 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Super Paper Mario
This game harks back to the old school Mario Bros. platformers. In fact, some of the structure of the game (being organized into eight worlds you traverse in order) is very reminiscent of the original Super Mario Bros.
Naturally, this makes it a lot of fun.
The premise is close to the original theme of [...]
Another chapter in the book
Posted in dissertation, tagged Chapter 6, dissertating, outlining on 18 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Actually, I think I already made that joke. Oh, bother. I can’t be arsed to look it up.
I finished the first, rough draft of Chapter 6 late last night. The final section and conclusion came pretty quickly over a couple of days, in part because I wound up cutting some of the smaller sections, at [...]
Archaeologies of knowledge
Posted in acamademia, dissertation, ridiculing the NYT for sport, tagged dissertating, Zotero on 18 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Times biology columnist Olivia Judson has an interesting personal account this week of her experiences trying to manage her research electronically using Zotero (you can see my take on Zotero on the “Tech of Diss” tab), along with a Mac program called Papers intended to organize PDFs of downloaded scientific papers and journal articles [...]
