Year of the Crane

Years of the Crane
2008
1996
1984
1972
1960
1948

Concept: The crane is a symbol of balance; balance through wisdom.

Born: Those born in the year of the crane are often faced with having to navigate through the hazards of life to find their own balance. Like the crane picking its way through the reeds at the edge of the waters, they move from one leg to the other - gently picking the way through potential danger. Cranes will have hardship thrown at them over and over again but they have the capacity to find a balance that may not work for anyone else.


Year: The year of the Crane is all about figuring out some sense of balance for your life. It may not work for other people but if it works for you - if you can find some sense of balance, embrace it.

Almost a Daddy

A friend of mine from High School, who has kept in tenuous contact with me over the past 18 years, appeared on my door step on Sunday with a tale of saddness and woe.

She, Stephanie, had seperated from her 48 year old husband (she's 36 like me) and her youngest son, Conner, had been having severe behavioral problems with the man over the past few months.

After the kid was put into handcuffs for fighting with other kids in school and threatening teachers, she had to remove him from that school and decided to drive all the way up from Florida to drop the kid off with her own parents here in portsmouth.

Normally, the child would have been sent to go live with his father, a man named Chris, but Chris had died in 2006 from... something. So there was no family on the father's side to take care of the boy. That left Stephanie's own parents to figure it out. Her own parents are getting on in years and her dad's health, from what I understand, isn't the best.

So she and two guys that she know made the road trip up to Portsmouth and she ended up on my doorstep. She said that she attempted to call me, but I probably ignored it since I don't answer numbers I don't recognize.

This is when it gets weird.

Since Stephanie, who has had no job for 6 months and is attending school in Florida for an Associates, is still living with her soon-to-be-ex husband, she wanted me to act as a "mentor" for her son.

It was clear that she didn't want me as a Mentor, she wanted me to be a dad to her son since her son "was just like me". I'm not sure what she meant by that since, at 13, I was damn-near homicidal, half-blind, and seriously in need of time alone.

Her own father is ill enough that he couldn't go tromping the the woods with the boy - which is what Stephanie wanted. I told her that I had no interest in being someone's surrogate father. Immediately she back-peddled and tried to explain that it wouldn't be that much and just a few hours a week or so.

Her plan, it was revealed, was to drop the kid with her parents here in Portsmouth and bring me in as a surrogate role-model for the boy if they couldn't keep control of him. This would work, in her mind, long enough for her to finish her Associates degree (by July of this year) and then she could collect the boy and reunite him with his older brother (at 15 years old) . The three of them would find some new place to live and everything would be great - once she has her degree.

So... a woman I haven't seen but for maybe a half-dozen times in eighteen years arrives with a thirteen year-old son and wants me to watch over him because he can't stand her near-fifty year-old husband. Rather than pulling both of the boys out of Florida and relocating to Shawnee State (since the only thing holding her there is the degree that she's working on down there), she's dropping a child with parents who are ill-prepared for a teenage boy and wanting me to pull up the slack.

Even though I had such a perfect role model as a father, I would somehow be able to utilize my uber-cool teacher mojo to take care of a child that I've met twice.

Yeah.

So, I was almost a daddy.

And then it happened.

Yes, it happened.

Listen for it....

"Oh HEEEeeeEEELL No."

Politely, yes politely, I explained that her entire process of thinking lacked any sense of logic and that she was being selfish. She was focusing on her own life more than her children's. She wanted her degree. All things will be better once she has her degree. She's not realizing that an Associates' degree isn't going to solve all of her problems and that even when she gets it, she'll have to go back and pick up the pieces of a child that has been fostered upon her own parents sixteen hours away from its mother.

I gave her a hug, some coffee, and sent her back into the game. She needs to fix her own problems and not include someone from high school.

Oh, and get this:

She continually tried to site our friendship in high school as 'eternal' and something that has lasted for the past eighteen years. Granted, I have kept in touch with a few people that I knew in High School - one of them I've lived with, attended his wedding on my birthday, etc., and he's even a soulless red-head, but come on. She is someone that I've seen only sparsely, for a few hours, once every two or three years. For her, nothing has changed because she's still living as though it were the day after high school graduation.

Those people are quite disturbing.

So... for those people who are reading this and wondering "WHAT THE HELL?"... there ya go.

Hopefully it was more entertaining for you than it was for me.

My life has more drama than a production of Les Miserables.

Fall, I missed you

It's official, Lady Winter is wining the fight against the Lord of Leaves.

Like a pair of boxers sweating it out in a ring, the weather has been going back and forth for the past week or so but this morning I think Winter rang Autumn's bell. Waking up to 37 degrees outside was a bit of a surprise. Waking up to some outside cats screaming for food at eight in the morning meant that I had to brace myself against the frigid temperatures.

So, with a cup of kitty kibble in hand, I dashed out to fill their offering bowl and then quickly ducked back inside and scampered back into the nest of my blankets and covers.

Day-um. It be cold out there.

-T

Bucky Paper

If the pen is mightier than the sword - what about the paper?

Since the Ancient Egyptians wove sections of papyrus together, we have enjoyed the ability to record our thoughts upon a medium lighter than stone or wood. While browsing through Cnn.Com today, I saw something that caught my attention.

Revolutionary paper, in general, is something that I'm always interested in. I have been looking for paper that is made from more renewable sources (hemp, etc.), but there's not much research going on in the field as of late. When I saw the link to this story I had to check it out.
I doubt that anyone will be using this new type of "paper" to scribble on any time soon. The new paper, called "Buckypaper" was developed through research into composite materials at Florida University A&M.

From CNN.COM

Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.

From Wikipedia:
Buckypaper is a thin sheet made from an aggregate of carbon nanotubes.^[1] The nanotubes are approximately 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.^[1] Originally, it was fabricated as a way to handle carbon nanotubes, but in 2008 is being studied and developed into applications by several research groups, showing promise as a building material for aerospace vehicles, body armor and next-generation electronics and displays.

I don't understand all of the physics, chemistry or mad alchemy behind such a material, but I hope that this might lead us to a continued appreciation for where such innovation originated.

Though researchers now are more likely to use laptops more so than small notebooks, it's good to hear that "paper" and pen have yet to be completely forgotten.

Personally, I find the notebooks of early researchers (Leonardo Da Vinci), to be treasured works on par with illuminated bibles.

Free Notebooks?

It's almost a pick-up line to someone like me.

I have been looking for a good notebook for a very long time. I have gone through a number of different designs from the fairly cheap to the expensive. One of the more common notebooks used today is the Moleskine. It's not a bad notebook but it has two fatal flaws: A) it's two and sometimes three times as expensive as the others out there and B) it's not 'exactly' what I need when I'm looking for a notebook. Depending on the model, it is either too skinny or two narrow or doesn't have enough pages to make it worth the expense.

One of the sites that I follow is a blog that reviews Moleskine alternatives, is a blog called "Black Cover".

Black cover is a great site that gives practical reviews of almost a dozen different varieties of notebooks out on the market. For those out there, like me, this helps us in the quest for the right notebook for the right job.

I'd recommend Black Cover to anyone who is looking for a selection of notebooks to choose from.

-Tom

New Schedule for Spring

Well, it seems as though my schedule for this spring is going to be one of the more "creative" ones that I've had in near two and a half years of teaching at Shawnee.

The sections that were made available for the part-time faculty were all over the place. Some in the day and some at night as though they were made without really thinking about the students.

My Criminology course is two days a week next term rather than one night like it is now. The once-a-week classes are really rough on the students and myself. You're trying to cover a whole chapter of material in one night. However, as most of the students are already suffering from symptoms closely approximating ADD, they just can't focus their thoughts for three hours. Normally I give them a break about every 45 minutes or so - enough time for people to go down and grab something to drink or burn a bit of tobacco or cloves. It's long enough that they can relax their mind - relax their attention, for long enough so that when we get back into the lecture they have a bit more mental stamina.

My Sociology course is going to be three days a week - meaning that I'll have to be on campus on both Monday... AND... Friday. Ugh. I rather enjoyed having a four day weekend. Oh well.

It will be interesting at least.

-Tom

Franken-built

Well, with the death and mysterious resurrection of my desktop, it was only fitting -considering the halloween season - that we end up having to create a new machine from scratch.

So with pieces from Josh's old desktop and most of my desktop we have been building a replacement most of the evening. With my motherboard, processor, memory and the like - we installed it all on Josh's frame with my old DvD Rom and Josh's DvD Rom as well.

Then we took Josh's old hard drive (which was still running Windows xp when his motherboard died a year ago) and installed it as a slave.

What does this mean?

Sometime tomorrow - I think - I'll have a clean install to corrupt all over again with an additional 120 gig hard drive for extra storage for all of the series I keep downloading plus two dvd roms to burn the stuff too.

Who knows - I might ask Mike to put Ubunto (A version of Linix) on the system rather than windows. See what happens.

Maybe I'll be turned into some uber Leet, white-hat something.

or... not.

I still think in Analog.

-Tom

Yup, I changed it

It was getting to that point and I wanted to update my blog.

After I searched through the web for a cool, new template I found one that reminded me of my fondness for journals and notebooks.

This one incorporates the important elements I wanted: Green, Notebook and uncluttered.

Whatcha think?

-Tom

Zombie Computers

Well, oddly enough the desktop has come back from the dead.

Last night, after I had already pronounced the desktop as dead, I reached over and punched the power button once more out of sheer habit. I needed to look something up and the laptop was in the other room and as soon as I hit the power button I realized "Duh, it's dead."

Well, this time - rather than it turning on for a few moments to start it's power-up process and then die when it 'accessed' either of the two CD/dvd roms - it actually fired up.

I'm not sure whether or not a faulty cd / dvd rom would cause it to fail to boot, though I did try disconnecting both to see if that would remove whatever the problem was before I declared it dead on Sunday.

So as of right now, it's up and working. However, I'm not going to try and jinx it by restarting the system until I have more info.

In somewhat related news, Bryian the technomancer and part-time chinese herbalist, sent me a link to a mini-laptop that Walmart is putting out. I am a huge fan of the mini-laptop concept. The very title of my blog is a "Digital Notebook". It's something that I've been toying with for ... more than a decade. My notebook is almost a symbolic representation of myself. Wherever you see me, there is my notebook - in one form or another. The problem that I have had is that the notebook eventually runs out. I would rather have a notebook that I could keep typing on and the like.

With the new Dell Mini-9 and the Everex 7" Cloudbook, I'm getting closer and closer to achieving a "digital notebook".

-Tom

It's dead Jim.

It's official.

My desktop is dead.

This morning I found out that the desktop computer will not turn on. Once you turn on the power, it starts to fire up but even before the monitor would display the first image, it dies.

I'm sure that means something so I'm trying to look up what it might be but for now it's dead.

Thank the heavens that I still have my laptop or else I would be disconnected.

fffear.

Later.

-Tom

Hammies and the curse of the sadistic bastard

Guess what I discovered?

I found out that I have hamstrings once more.

Hamstrings are the muscles on the back of your thighs. I haven't really used such muscles in quite a while. However, my "Sadistic Bastard" of a weight-trainer (aka. Will) has had me doing some pretty messed up things in the gym of late.

After Wednesday's workout my legs were tight but nothing more than that. I stretched out and all that and thought that they would be fine. The next day, while I was giving my Criminology students their first exam, I could feel those hamstrings start to tighten. It's not like I could start stretching out my muscles as people were writing out their essays so I took it in stride.

Then, later at home, I realized that they were more than just a "little" tight. They were starting to really make their voices known. By Friday morning I was half-crippled every time I tried to bend over or take a long stride while walking.

Today, after a soak in the hot tub yesterday, my legs are less of a chorus and more of a whisper. I can still feel them but they're not crippling me.

Sadistic Bastard!