Mountains Made Low

Well, the American League playoffs are set. The only thing still up for grabs is home field in the LCS. The Division Series will be Cleveland (95-65) v. New York (92-68) and Boston (95-65) v. LAAngels (93-67). Everyone has two games yet to play in the regular season. All I have to say about that is, “Go, Twins!”—if Boston (playing Minnesota) wins fewer than the Tribe, all home field honors potentially go to Cleveland this year, since the AL won the All-Star Game.

But, as home field advantage oddly works in the LDS, that means that the Tribe will be headed to New York for two after finishing this set in Kansas City (actually, they will be no matter what happens with the BoSox). We’ll see what happens if C.C. and Fausto pitch in the Bronx—the Tribe’s two Cy Young contenders against the Yankees on the Yankees’ turf. To be oh-so-very-NY about it, Oy vey!

The NL, by the way is still up in the air. Only the Cubbies have clinched, but the Phils are looking good, and DBacks, with the best record in the NL are in the most danger of clinching on closing day—or not at all. But Arizona and San Diego will both be there, one as NLWest champ and the other as the wild card. (I mean, I suppose it’s possible that the Padres will have to play a one game playoff with either the Rockies or the Mets, all three teams could potentially wind up 89-73, but it doesn’t seem likely—what happens if three teams are tied for the wild card, I wonder).

And the lotteries for LDS and LCS tix are already gone. But I’ve got my name in for World Series Lotteries in three cities: Cleveland, Philly, and another American League city to be named later….

I just couldn’t pass on the Trek reference. I’m really not looking for a Klingon. What I’m looking for is an IT person who is actually helpful, who actually believes that someone with a PhD in a humanities discipline might have the first damn clue about computers, who actually does not actively participate in Bill Gates’s master plan for taking over the whole universe.

I guess while I was at Capital, Barb spoiled me.

Are you supposing, by now, that there’s a story of some sort here? Why, yes! Yes, there is.

Part of my job is to examine writing in the curriculum (campus-wide) and develop a writing across the curriculum program. One of my first steps in this regard is to implement a survey of attitudes toward and practices of writing in courses and of faculty across campus. Not scientifically valid, I know, but a good base-line starting point, nonetheless.

I wrote the questions, decided what kinds of answers would be appropriate to them, wrote the xhtml to code the form, wrote the php to control the form (pretty elegant, if I do say so myself—seven nodes to the survey, all bundled in to one php file, with one massive data dump at the end), did the MySQL set up to store the data, debugged code (for like three hours), play-tested the form on my home test server, play-tested it some more on my “live” server, and—yesterday—sent the link out live.

Here’s what I know:

• I tested my survey app on the following OS/browser combinations: OSX/Firefox2, OSX/Safari, WinXP/IE6, WinXP/IE7, WinXP/Firefox2, WinXP/Firefox1.5
• In my tests, after the extensive debugging, everything went perfectly—the app worked just like I wanted it to.
• Last night, I logged in to my MySQL dbase to see if anyone had actually done it yet; I had no survey data, but three people willing to participate in the follow-up interview, which you can’t get to if you don’t submit your survey data.
• I called a halt to the survey, because something was FUBAR.
• I ran through my testing protocol again (all six combinations); everything worked, picture perfect.
• I contacted IT (here’s where the fun begins), knowing that I’d wait overnight for a response.
• IT was no help.

What do I mean, exactly, by “no help”? I’m glad you asked. What I mean specifically is:

• First suggestion: We offer survey services; why didn’t you have us do this for you? (This is called We need job security.)
• Second suggestion: It can’t be a problem on our end; it must be a problem with the survey; what app are you running? (This is called: Not my job, man!)
• Third suggestion: You wrote the app yourself? You must have messed up in the coding. (This is called: You’re an idiot who couldn’t possibly know enough about computers to pull this off.)
• Side note: I’m going to correct everything you say about coding, to feel better about myself; even if what you say is correct, I’ll find a technicality. (This is called: See previous.)
• Fourth suggestion: What you’re saying is not possible. (This is called: Observable phenomena do not matter, my word is law.)

At this point I stopped bothering to try. I made some changes to the code. I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening and my “friend” in IT doesn’t believe me. It has only been an issue on campus with the WinXP/IE7 combination (WinXP/Firefox1.5 has worked as scheduled; I don’t think I’ve seen a Mac-derived response, yet). I’m thinking that this is a result of the overzealous Microsoft can’t plug its security holes so it builds a big wall around them that stops all sorts of useful things too computer security craze that is sweeping the country (WinVista: Allow or Deny?), and has firmly taken root on this campus, too (the Micro$oft Exchange Server is the only email server on campus—there is no POP3 email…grrrr! But I think I’ve ranted about this before).

I’ve asked some colleagues whose survey data I know vanished to try again using the Winblows/Exploder combination, hoping that I’ve managed to write code sufficient enough to fool whatever “security” device is causing the problem. I’m thinking at some point, my session cookies are getting erased and all of my $_SESSION[] variables are going bye-bye. I can rewrite the whole bloody app without them, but that would be a pain.

I think I’ve said before that putting Micro$oft in charge of security is like that medieval mistake made by the Chinese: hiring the Mongols to guard the Great Wall. Some people say there’s never a Mongol around when you need one.

So maybe I am looking for a fierce Klingon warrior, ’cause Mongols? Mongols I got.

And now for something you never thought you’d hear me say….

On October 6, in the morning (before Mom, Dad, Morgon, Steve, and the kids show up—first whole-family get-together since Christmas), I’m thinking I’ll be taking part in my first-ever 5k. I don’t know that I’ll be able to run the whole thing, yet, but I consistently do about 3.1 miles (~5k) in 40 minutes on my cardio-only days at the gym. So I’m gonna give it a try. It’s for the county hospital, and it’s a $15 entry fee, so I’m thinking “what the heck?”

Then, in a less surprising moment (at least in terms of me actually doing it), I was recruited for the faculty team in a faculty vs. students softball game today (I was recruited today, I mean; the game is on October 10). I will apparently be catching for the faculty side. What’s interesting is that most of the players will be from the Humanities Division, but the president of the college will apparently be playing shortstop for us. Should be fun. Haven’t played ball in a while, but it still should be fun.

…popular in the DC metro area?

This is my question. In the time I’ve been on chemistry.com I’ve only had two people express interest in me (the others I’ve talked to, I’ve taken that first step), and one lives in Alexandria, VA, and the other in Fairfax. I’m trying to figure out what the deal is with that. I’ve had enough success in the process that I’ve commented before that I must be sexy online, but apparently I’m really sexy in DC, too.

Who knew?

Okay, so I’ve been asleep at the switch in terms of paying attention to the tail end of the MLB season. Could someone please tell me how, with seven games left to play, my Indians have ended up with the best record in baseball?!—please?

I know the Yankees have come on strong, and the Red Sox have done what the Red Sox do in September (i.e., TANK), but even I, a die-hard fan, have to say the Tribe’s looking better these days than they have a right to. They should finish with 96 or 97 wins. That’s amazing! They’re a game ahead of the Angels and a half game ahead of the Red Sox—the same Red Sox whom “no one will catch” a month ago, and who still haven’t clinched their division (!!). The Yankees could still win the East, and if both the Yanks and Sox keep playing like they have been in the past 10 days or so, the Yankees might well pull it off!

And I nearly slept through it all!

Sheesh!

For a while there, wasn’t I the guy who posted to his blog every day? Multiple times? And now it’s been more than a week.

Things have been busy here. What more can I say?

There have been many meetings at work in the past week—but I guess that’s really no different…. We have lots of meetings all the time. But last week was slightly more intense because we started our annual lecture series on Friday, I did a workshop for faculty on Thursday (grading writing assignments using rubrics), and I had two sessions with students’ parents on Saturday (it was Family Weekend at Lees-McRae College).

Add to that the fact that I’ve got papers and speeches that I’m grading now, and the first several social engagements I’ve had since I’ve lived here…. And the fact that I’m trying to get my research agenda back on some sort of track…. Yes, it was a busy week.

I guess that’s life, though. But if my blog readers are anything like my family…just thought I should let you all know that I’m still alive and okay. Just really busy (all three of which—alive, okay, and busy—beat the alternatives!).

I was going to post this a while ago when it happened (last week sometime), but just forgot.

So here I am thinking that things are going along just swimmingly, everything’s just ducky—pick your metaphor. I’m liking my new job, and—more important—having some success at it. My professional life was looking, I thought, pretty darn good.

Then I got an article manuscript back. Rejected. This, in and of itself, is no major cause for concern. It’s really nothing to get upset about. It happens to everyone—especially when you don’t have the sort of name that makes an editor (not the reviewers, but the editor, since they’re often the only ones who know the author’s name) say, ooh, we can’t reject this…let’s slap a “revise and resubmit” or an “accept with revisions” on it. No, I don’t have one of those names. So… it happens.

But it was the tone the of the reviewers: Mean. I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have their childish reviews in front of me, but they said things like: You don’t understand the scholarly process, and you haven’t identified a problem, and if these sources you cite have something interesting to say for our field, you haven’t found it yet.

Yeah.

But one thing that both reviewers said that stuck with me, and makes me willing to shoot them both the bird in response was: You’re a good writer, but not a good scholar (again, paraphrasing a bit).

I am a good writer. I think I’m at least a decent scholar, too. But, and here’s the mondo grain of salt with which I’m taking their reviews, I would much rather be a good writer than a good scholar, if it came down to a choice. Many good scholars/researchers can’t write their way out of a wet paper bag…. It’s like some of them think that the research speaks for itself, and maybe (but only maybe) in some cases it does. But I’d much rather be able to write well—lucidly and clearly and with something interesting to say—than be the best damn researcher in the world.

Bottom line: While I’m sure it wasn’t meant as a compliment, I’m choosing to take it that way.