The Boston in Me

The horrible events at this year’s Boston Marathon have put me in a melancholy mood, and I turned to MetaFilter to make better sense of the senseless tragedy. After reading the thousand-or-so comments that came before, I said (in...

Posted by mistersquid on April 15, 2013 10:05 PM

Just Folks

My coffee supply was running low this morning, so I pulled on some jeans and pod-personed the two blocks uphill to my local grocery of predatory prices, Cala Foods»A 50-count bottle of Advil is priced at nearly $9.«. I’d...

Posted by mistersquid on April 27, 2011 6:43 AM

Lunchtime Shell Game on 38 Geary

On Thursday, 13 May, a few of the tech team»and HR« at my work took cabs to Dong Baek, located in the Tenderloin’s northeastern section.1 John Jonathon Leslie Jeffrey Sung Jack Lunch was great, better than I expected.2 I...

Posted by mistersquid on May 21, 2010 8:15 AM

Looking for a Job in California in Early 2010: An Anecdote

In July 2009, I notified my chair that I would not be returning to my job as a professor of literature. My departure was abrupt and left the department in the lurch. For that I am sorry. I am...

Posted by mistersquid on January 27, 2010 7:51 AM

A Late-Summer Afternoon With Boot Camp

Despite having done so much work on my new computer late this morning I found myself inventing more things for myself to do. I started looking over the 79 gigabytes of data (400,000 items) I had transferred from DVD...

Posted by mistersquid on September 8, 2009 5:50 PM

Writer

This morning, I finished reading "Those Who Write, Teach” by David Gessner, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who discusses the effect of academic teaching (Creative Writing) on writers. In addition to being an excellent read,...

Posted by mistersquid on September 20, 2008 12:16 PM

Scripting Tag Clouds in MovableType

At the moment, I’m in the middle of proctoring the final examination for my afternoon American Literature survey (1918-present). Teaching a month into what is every other universities’ summer “breaks” (more accurately read “frenzied research period”) is one of the...

Posted by mistersquid on June 8, 2007 3:38 PM

Pacific Coast Driver

I missed my 7:50 am flight Thursday despite waking at 4:30 that morning. I thought of Miss Weber, my Jr. high school English teacher, who admonished me any time I was tardy by telling me, “If you you’re late for...

Posted by mistersquid on December 17, 2006 9:48 PM

Iconophobia

This post is intended as a mild rant. Forgive me if it goes farther than that. On my workstation, I don’t use any instant messaging client because in addition to being sticky, instant messaging clients are designed to facilitate interruption....

Posted by mistersquid on October 6, 2006 8:25 AM