Dorm shopping

The thing that annoys me most about shopping for college is that stores like Target always depict dorms as some huge palatial suites in their ads. My dorm is slightly bigger than my bedroom, rolling in at an unimpressive 13’ x 16’ — and that’s being generous. We have built in desks, closets, and dressers, and movable beds — and the killer part? No running water. But I’m not complaining. I have less stuff to buy, which means I can spend more money on making my half of the room look completely swanky (I have already been assured that the other half will contain posters of David Bowie, Aerosmith, and other things that I highly approve of). And my building is so small that, instead of a crowded mass of people, there’s an intimate, and very cool (as I am told) community. Not so bad for one of the biggest public universities in the country, huh?

I am usually not a fan of terribly regimented shopping lists, because there are bargains everywhere, but if you need to shop for college, these are the best places to go for what you need:

• Sheets: Bed Bath & Beyond has a huge collection of sheets with high thread counts (go for 250+) and pretty low prices. And they stock Twin XL!
• Quilts/Comforters: I actually bought mine at Ikea, but you can find these anywhere. Ikea has these things called “quilt covers”, which basically means you buy a quilt ($10 for Twin), and then shove it in the quilt cover (mine was $20) and snap it in place. You also get a pillowcase.
• Furniture: Ikea has a tremendous amount of nice looking furniture, and lots of variety. I know Ikea gets a bad rap for being cheap or notoriously hard to assemble furniture, but I’ve never had a problem with the store. My theme song is, of course, “Ikea” by Jonathan Coulton. And just a tip: the Swedish Apple Cake is delicious!
• Odds and ends: Wal-Mart actually isn’t that bad when you’re shopping for small accessories for your dorm. I got a nice floor lamp for $10. Just make sure you think of the quality before you buy it.
• Kitchen accessories: One of the perks of going to Bed Bath & Beyond or Linens-N-Things is that you always get “20% Off” coupons in the mail, and although they “expire,” they’re always accepted. And Bed Bath & Beyond especially has some great kitchen utensils and pots and pans. If you want the same quality for cheaper, Ikea has a lot of kitchen gadgets and nice but very affordable pots and pans.
• Bathroom accessories: I think you’re on your own here. I don’t really have a bathroom that I can go on and on about (“Would you look at these adorable little cabinets? I mean, how gorgeous are they?”). I don’t really have a kitchen either — I have a mini fridge and a microwave, which UT calls a “microfridge.” Of course, when I hear “microfridge,” the only thing I expect is a tiny excuse for a fridge that will only hold berries and pieces of cheese. I guess I’m not cooking anything this year.

Here’s hoping that I’ll get off my butt and finish writing these, oh, nine drafts that I have stored up. But if I don’t update in the next two weeks, blame it on the Olympics. Just about as addicting as vanilla frosting, which I consume by the gallon.

I thought, at first, that a design job would entail some sort of formulaic precision on my part — sketches, wireframes, prototypes, communication with wolves, and late-light voodoo rituals. I have stolen no souls yet, nor have I followed my lupine brethren into the night, but I have been tremendously productive. The White Stripes and a laptop will do that to you. In the past few weeks, I’ve designed two sites, exported two others into Wordpress, and I’m currently procrastinating on finishing a third (it’ll be done in a few days, Matthew!) because I don’t know whether the best colors to use on a site about Houston are bright blue and green. It’s a real pity that there are no known hexadecimal equivalents for “Smog” and “Metro Bus” — although there are plenty of interpretations.

Working with Sandbox

I’ve always used Sandbox for WordPress themes because the templates are minimalistic enough that I can pretty much remove everything except the template tags and still end up with a functional site. I’ve only ever run into problems working with the sidebar. On the sidebar, I always have to edit out the wrapper <ul> and <li> tags that separate the different sections, like the archives and categories, etc. I always end up going into functions.php and removing the before_title and after_title snippets. Still, I’m sure that from a semantic standpoint, the nested lists are marginally better, but I’m not exactly sure why. I could probably even save myself the trouble and just throw in a few lines of CSS. But knowing me, I’d probably just sit back and cycle through all of “Elephant” until something obvious hit me in the face.

Necessary commentary

I still say that Movable Type is the best CMS for templating, but WordPress is a million times more reliable if harder to work with. Sometimes, I’ll sign into cPanel and find out that Movable Type’s been dumping giant steaming piles of core files in its home directory, so I have to rub its nose in the mess and yell at it loudly on a biweekly basis. But one hundred extra megabytes of useless core files on a hosting plan as “small” as mine is no laughing matter. I say useless because, although core files are snapshots of the server at the time of an error and can help to pinpoint exactly what went wrong, I can’t open them or access them with anything. Each core file has an extension composed of random numbers, and no two are alike. There is no directory of core extensions, and there are no entries in my error logs. At face value, there is nothing wrong with my installation. But I know that just a foot below its bubbling exterior is a volcano ready to destroy my island paradise and tempt archaeologists for years in the future to dig up the remains of my strawberry cheesecake ice cream and say, “Here was a civilized race.”

Tuesday: The dead pigeon affair.

This day was supposed to be my birthday, but Fate intervened and said, “No, this shall not be a day of celebration. You will hate everything.” In my experience, there are two types of bad days: there are bad days when I trip over or run into everything in sight and wind up with strangely-shaped bruises (is it a continent or an eggplant?). There are also bad days when I get nothing done and recede into a proto-human state, forgoing basic intelligence and language in favor of grunted communication back and forth. Sandy, at least, has also learned this language, although she has the tendency to punctuate her grunts with whines, yelps, and barks, which are far beyond my capacity to understand.

As far as bad days go, this was a combination of both. And I knew it would be so because I saw a massacred pigeon on my guided campus tour. This was no run-of-the-mill dead pigeon. This pigeon fought against a mighty army of hoofed sledgehammers — by fought, I mean of course, did not dodge at all — but instead, was pummeled by the whole herd. There may also have been a car involved. There is no other way to explain the pancake-nature of the bird nor the strange aura of fluids. Forgive me for this description, but any amateur haruspex knows that a dead bird, especially a dead bird with a coagulated mess of innards, does not augur well.

That would be two Roman religious references at once, for those of you keeping score at home.

A passel of red tape, woes, and wasted money.

At any rate, not only did I walk the length of the original forty acres of the campus (roughly), but I also spent half the day in underdeveloped conversation with myself, my brother, my cousin, my parents, and my mom’s friend who was helping me out. My first recession into this state occurred when I was asked to produce a photo ID. Since I didn’t have either a driver’s license or a passport on me — valid government IDs — I was told to walk down Guadalupe in search of a mythical place called Jenn’s Copies. It was hot as Hades outside, even though it was only around 9 AM. Just my luck. Since I couldn’t find this long-forgotten land, I stumbled into a CVS and handed over $10 for a passport photo that looked absolutely terrible. Looking at it, I could conjure up ancient nightmares of “Boochandhi”, the monster that my mom used to tell me lived in our apple tree and would come out to eat me if I was not asleep.

My mom is amazing.

Because I didn’t have an official ID, I couldn’t do any of the numerous adminstrative tasks that most people take care of on the first day, such as getting their UT EIDs upgraded and their student IDs made. So I waited in line and read some of Love by Toni Morrison, which is, as it turns out, is just as amazing as each of her other books. Please name a planet after her.

I also ended skipping the Chemistry 301 test I signed up for in order to take a Mathematics Level 1 test in the same time slot to avoid a conflict on the next day. But Fate is a bitter woman. I was given the room for Day 2, when I was originally supposed to take the test. The room for Day 1, as I found out later, was completely across campus. So I missed the test entirely. I also didn’t end up using any of the photos I had printed. Fantastic. Also, I was famished. I ate about the amount of calories one can find in a bowl of watery pasta. Did I mention that this pasta is bland and tasteless?

The score is now Campus: 1; Me: -feet and unconsciousness.

A step-by-step look at Boing Boing’s actions

1. Following some incident, certain posts that involved input from one “Violet Blue”, including one about — how funny is this? — Google’s “censorship” that resulted in several adult-oriented blogs dropping in rankings were “unpublished.” (Note: Her posts were not deleted. They still exist, essentially, but the posts cannot be accessed from Boing Boing itself.)
2. Some sites catch a whiff of the drama about to be let loose. Remarks are made about Boing Boing’s integrity, including (many) references to Communism and revisionism.
3. Teresa, one of the site’s moderators, posts an explanatory post, claiming that:

   It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.

   Teresa Nielsen Hayden: “That Violet Blue thing”

At this point, there’s little more to be said that hasn’t been said already. Here’s my take on the controversy: I believe that Boing Boing is perfectly within its right to delete and remove posts from public view. Because Boing Boing is not actively preventing people from reading the posts (they even mentioned that the posts in question are still available in the WayBack Machine), this does not even come close to the suppression of the 1st Amendment, or whatever else enraged commenters were spouting on about.

However, removing the posts does not create a good journalistic standard. The posts in questions were written over a year ago (some of them nearing two years old), and for a site of Boing Boing’s size and volume, that equates to eons ago. Those who addressed the controversy were not really concerned that the posts themselves were missing. I doubt their absence would have been noticed by many if it had not been for Boing Boing’s popularity — and thus inherent magnetism towards drama — and more importantly, its intense advocacy of free speech, free press, and free action. An accusation of censorship for Boing Boing weighs more heavily than, perhaps, on an online news site or magazine where such standards are considered commonplace.

Instead of unpublishing the post, Boing Boing could have just as easily posted a redaction of their support of Violet Blue, and have people judge for themselves whether the posts were even worth the concern. It would have saved Boing Boing’s face and a whole lot of fuss and anger. Boing Boing may have acted under the pretense of quietly resolving an incident, but it could have chosen words as a medium, not their absence.

Three doors, one waste of time

If you ever need a scholarship, the best ways of getting them are as follows:

1. Official scholarships: Straight from the college itself. Brimming with confidence and the hope that one day, you will contribute to the shiny new library on campus. If you get a scholarship from your college of choice, don’t take it lightly. Accepting it will save you a lot of trouble in the long run, unless, of course, you don’t want to go to that school at all.
2. Scholarships from tests or corporations: A high enough score PSAT will give you the chance to not only get money from big companies in the area but also colleges, which usually offer a special bonus scholarship exclusively for National Merit and National Merit Commended Scholars.

And then, there’s always scrounging (nature has always had a soft spot for scavengers), which is where FastWeb comes in. At first sight, this clustered, immensely busy site seems like a godsend, but it is not — not at all. Not only are the scholarships themselves often past their deadlines and of no use to me (I am not over 18 nor am I majoring in Neurolinguistics — although that sounds pretty interesting), but in order to access a great many of the scholarships, you have to click past an advertisement for an online college, the Army, or the Spanish Olive-Growers Union (if only). This is both tedious and annoying. It makes me feel as if FastWeb values its advertisers more than its users, and the only thing motivating me to continue using the site is the fact that college is expensive, and I would rather not live on Guadalupe Street in Austin selling oranges to passerby in order to earn my keep.

At the very least, I would sell sopapillas because of their crumbling, sugary goodness.

But today I uttered a full-blown, “Which entrance are you at?” while waiting for my dad to pick us up from Target. I wish (only slightly) that I had said, “What ho, guardian, whither hast thou parked?” or “Admiral Nebulon, where have you docked your vessel?” instead. I would have enjoyed that so much more.

“What entrance are you at?” indeed. I’m afraid there’s no hope for me now. I’ve receded to the grammatical capabilities of a lemming, which, despite being a fairly smart creature, has no skill with subject-verb agreement or the placement of quotation marks. I’m better off moving to Finland and mining voles out of the forest.

This is Corey (Korrie? Cory? Corrie? Kohree? Kumquat?). She, like numerous other strange animals (Fonzie the turtle, about a thousand cats, a little bird), took up residence in our house this weekend while we scrambled around trying to housebreak her, cleaning up our failed attempts, and keeping a close eye on her while she scampered up and down the stairs. Sandy bore this new burden extremely well, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was somehow terrified of this two-pound rabbit-creature, as if all of its jumping and bouncing and running around was bringing her one step closer to madness.

We made several random adaptations for Corey. We walked her around on a shoelace (because she is a tiny thing), and groomed a few of the burrs out of her fur. She also sat in an anthill, but we had nothing to do with that, except for the fact that her fur is still drying from all the water we poured on it, trying to get the ants off. For the first night, we alternated the dogs between inside and outside so that — we hoped — they wouldn’t get into any trouble in the night. We were so very wrong. The first night, Corey barked non-stop for hours until my brother finally let her sleep on his bed. The second night, we finally got her to sleep outside by ignoring her long enough that she gave up barking. Both nights, I imagine, Sandy must have stayed up, all wide-eyed and panicky, hoping and praying that the strange Thing™ outside of the door wouldn’t destroy her. “IAMONLYFIVEDONOTEATMEYOUCANHAVEALLOFMYVITAMINS.”

Achewood: February 8th, 2002.

Happily, Corey’s now back with her owners and Sandy’s not having any apocalyptic daydreams (so we think). But I’m still wandering from room to room, making sure that Corey didn’t leave any more lasting memories of her stay than her very poor survival instincts and her capacity to bury food in people’s laps and think it’s perfectly safe there. Oh Jah, I have seen enough poo for a lifetime.

It was a nice name, no doubt, but who in their right mind would name the son of God Warren?

This, thankfully, took a more serious track. I found myself a Hebrew font (hooray!), and got to work looking up names, places, dates, and telling myself that I’ll make my best effort to read the New Testament to get even a little more religious background so I can bring some humanity into the stories. Because, frankly, they’re a bit one-sided, aren’t they? Being a non-Christian, this is already difficult enough. At least I haven’t written whales into the story, but what more could you expect from someone whose favorite smells include melted butter, Mazda, and garage?

But even if I had been in those first few rows, even if I had the benefit of knowing that I have worked hard for my place, instead of being thrust in the back of the ceremony like someone who came too late to a party and missed out on everything, I don’t know if I would have been satisfied. Every achievement, every award, every distinction that I have ever received is instantly overshadowed by something, and I can’t enjoy it but for the few short moments that it finally hits me. And then, when something disappointing like this happens, it hangs over me — the proverbial albatross, damning me to worse things and lower standards. It doesn’t help that I bottle things up, but just this once, just this once,.I want to be proud of my academic career. Right now, I’m not even proud that I’m graduating. I’ve almost thought of not inviting my family to come, because it would mean so much to them if I had just pushed myself that extra inch, if I had turned that two point deficit into an A. An inch. And I have, unfortunately, fallen short.

There are bigger and brighter things on the horizon. My piano recital is next Saturday, and I will finally be able to perform Let It Be on stage, instead of hammering out a few chords of it as a warm-up and seeing if anyone actually caught it. July 8th is my birthday, and I’ll be turning 18, which is momentous for two reasons:

1. I have the tiniest possibility of helping to overrule the Republican majority in Texas come the general election (although they call it a majority for a reason)
2. I will finally be able to try out for Jeopardy, so if you see me on TV in the next, oh, thirty years while I study, cheer for me!

And I will never remember this day when I look back on it, or I will remember it only in idealized fragments. Hopefully, I will have nothing but positive memories of that day, and I’ll make someone, somewhere — if not me — proud that I made it so far. Until then, I’ll be drumming my hands on my desk, trying to find something to do with my time other than brood. Like alpaca farming. Always a good outlet.

As God is my witness, there is no more fearsome creature known to man than Sandy Millicent Hasselhoff Jackson (this name is under revision). While she appears to be a dog of respectable character and quaint mannerisms, history will likely depict her as some sort of hirsute whale-people emissary. Or if not, at least they’ll give her a biscuit and send her on her merry way, swearing away any obligations to cover the catastrophic results of any attempt to put her in a position of authority.

But that’s my Sandy. Lazy, hasty, and motivated by monosyllabic words. Why, just this evening, in trying to pick some ungodly piece of trash up off of someone’s lawn, she grabbed my thumb instead and instantly gave me a look of, “I did not enjoy that at all. Not in the slightest. Please continue to feed me.” Oh, silly dog. Don’t you know that we need you to entertain us with your Amy Winehouse impersonations?

The support sites that develop around a CMS are vital to the success of the script itself. If a script requires you to know, intimately, a bizarre programming language and practically write certain basic functions from the ground up, odds are that its three users will be comprised of a zealous programmer, a lay genius, and an ostrich, who, for lack of a better hobby, was knee-deep in binary detritus. Movable Type has grown tremendously since the release of version 4.0, but its support structure still needs work. The best help costs money, and while a paid license is probably a pretty good investment, the best free options do not consistently offer the same quality.

The official documentation is actually quite good — even if it is rather basic. My one complaint with its organization is that the content is separated between three roles: the author, the designer, and the administrator. And if all three of these are one person, namely me, said person has to rummage around between the three categories to find the relevant information.

If the documentation doesn’t help, the primary support/community site is MovableType.org. I’ve never treated this site very well (we have a difficult relationship) because the hub of the site, the forum, is so ill-frequented by people who have the sort of expertise with Movable Type — Six Apart employees, maybe? — that would be beneficial to everyone who asks for help but never gets it. I can’t count the number of posts without replies that I see on the site, and I just wonder how many users that is actually costing Six Apart. Or how many paid licenses. If you’re wondering why WordPress has so much of market in its pocket, this is probably the biggest reason.

The best sites for Movable Type resources/help

I’ve found the following (especially Learning Movable Type) to be very helpful on my long and arduous journey. Some of these sites haven’t updated in almost a year, others in a few months, but since certain errors in Movable Type (CGI or Perl related) are often constant across generations of the script, the archived entries should prove invaluable:

• Movable Tweak
• Learning Movable Type
• Movalog
• Code documentation (if you’re the programmy type)
• A rundown of the various templates/styles that come with Movable Type

So here I am, writing a post that will, thanks to weeks of failed attempts (and half an hour of tinkering in the end), appear on the front page of my site, trying to fix the dashboard, and coercing Sandy to give up her rolly-chair for the betterment of all free peoples. It’s a hard life, but in the end the perks (not having to fiddle with The Loop or ask Jake or Joey for help every few minutes) win out.

Of course, I’m only making excuses if I say that’s the only reason that I’ve failed to write. I also spent a bit of time tweaking this site to work with Movable Type 4.1. That plan worked brilliantly, except for one tiny hitch — I installed the script in a subdirectory, /journal/, and was unable to get the index pages to publish to the site root.

I also tried Expression Engine, which I found to be powerful but confusing. Movable Type on the other hand, is buggy but simple. I think I can maybe live with that. Here’s hoping that this site will stay functional so that I can continue to write. Because lordy, without it, I might have to go back to the woods and hunt me some possums for the rest of my life.

Personally, I can’t wait. I could use the distance from my family, and the exposure to responsibility and independence. Like driving for instance: something that I can do in theory, but which I’ve never had the chance to experience. For the past several months, ever since I first read that damn driver’s manual (with such fascinating pieces of advice as “BEWARE OF BIG RIGS” and “This sign indicates that a national park is close by — please do not feed the bears.”), I’ve had to sit through my dad’s constant promises of teaching me himself, letting me drive around the parking lot, signing up me up to this driving school or that driving school, dropping me off to take the written test (or the computer test — even better!), and I know now to take it with a grain of salt. But hey, even if I can’t drive by the time I’m thirty, at least I’ll have that extra twelve-and-a-half years to invent a jet-pack-bicycle-with-wings. And a mini-fridge.

It’s not even really the thrill of having a car and being able to take your friends around for once, or running errands, or just being able to go somewhere by yourself whenever you want to. It’s not just passing on a bit of kindness to people who, like you, always end up stranded somewhere without a ride, or finally being able to get pissed off at gas prices. It’s just the idea that, finally, I don’t have to depend on my parents for the little things. It’s that one step towards being an adult that most people take in a timely fashion, but that I’ve sadly missed (and doesn’t it suck to be waiting for a ride as a senior, and having to watch the sophomores drive each other home?).

1. The food is just-released-from-an-awesome-asylum/insanely good
2. Board games. Thousands of them. No one stops playing until someone goes into cardiac arrest.
3. The dog gets a present or someone gives their present to the dog.
4. Everyone else gets their presents in after-Christmas shopping sprees.

The best part about all of this? This sort of fun is accessible to anyone and everyone, regardless of faith. So when people tell me that you can’t celebrate Christmas without mentioning Jesus, I get a little nervous — hyperventilation nervous. Like, what will I do without my 50%-off socks? Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Fall.

The fact of the matter is that there are many different faiths and even though the Pilgrims were Protestant and the settlers at Jamestown were Anglican or whatever they were, many of the first thirteen colonies started out as areas for religious refuge for people of other faiths — Catholicism, Judaism, etc. Our world is dominated by commercial and secular interests — don’t think that this means that religion is on its way out — and not every holiday is purely religious in nature. A lot of faiths don’t have the benefit of having a widely popular holiday that’s not exclusive to their own followers. Believe me, if Rasta had some sort of mass gift-giving extravaganza, I wouldn’t be writing this post. I would be sitting back and relaxing, mon, and getting my reggae on.

But believe me, Christmas thrives on its commercial aspect. People love buying gifts for one another. It’s an excuse to spend time with your family, to think about them for a change. Religion never really leaves you; I feel that true spirituality is internal and doesn’t need any sort of prodding or poking for it to emerge. Some holidays are inherently religious, but Christmas doesn’t really have to be. It’s about warmth, family, caroling, not-having-to-clean-up-after-your-dog-who-likes-to-poop-on-carpets, eggnog, figgy pudding (whatever that is), and, well, presents!

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you guys got more presents than your counterparts in some parallel universe!

It’s at that point that I start to feel ashamed for paying so little. I would have paid more, even if little of the money went to the band itself, and the publicity from the digital downloads would give Radiohead enough revenue in time. Because I feel the music is worth more than just 10¢. Given the opportunity — and a credit card — I would have paid at least… at least what?

And that’s where the concept sort of leaves me. What am I paying for anyway? The music itself? The sounds weaving in and out of my ears? Or the convenience of the format? Or the band’s creativity? Or the band itself? What is it that is actually worth my money — and why isn’t it necessarily the music?

It’s up to you.

That’s all it said. “It’s up to you.” Imagine being given the opportunity to pay any price — anything — for something you desperately wanted. Any price. It’s easy to put a price on something that is material, but what about something ephemeral? Something digital? What price should you pay then, for something that exists as something you cannot see, but something you can still feel and experience?

I paid 10¢. And believe me, even if the album is worth a million times that price, even if I had paid more — I really ought to just memorize that credit card number — the experience is still the same. I wouldn’t have gotten anything more for $5 nor anything less for 5¢. The music itself, as Danny says, is priceless. Having listened to the album, top to bottom, song by song, I couldn’t agree more.