The end of an era, compressed

I just finished watching the last episode of Doctor Who's original run.

What'd it take me, about six months? But I watched every single episode out on region 1 DVD. All seven Doctors. All twenty-odd companions.

It's been a wild journey. From the cackling, teacher-napping Slytherin of the first Doctor, all the way to the short, vegetarian seventh. From the first sight of Daleks at home on Skaro, to the last mad laugh of the Master in a suburb of London.

I've found it fascinating watching the series grow up and mature. The Doctor is such a dynamic character---and not just because he regenerates. Watching, I can see experiences changing him. Picking up his first human companions because he daren't let them go, then discovering he misses them when they leave. Siding with the Thals because it's expedient, angering their enemies---a strange mutant race known as the Daleks. Frustrated by being stuck on earth with Unit---but asking Sarah twice. Watching him kidnap Ian and Barbara and try to dump them in the Ice Age, it's hard to imagine this will someday be the man who burnt up a star to say goodbye---but after all those episodes, I understand how he got there.

And I can't wait until more DVDs come out.

Terrified

My classes start Thursday at 10am.

I am so fucking terrified.

Gah. Morning. Gah.

Woke up early this morning, only to realize that I'd miscounted the days and the stuff won't get to the people that I need to see to have them look at the stuff to fill out paperwork so I can go get more paperwork so I can throw money at people so I can park on campus until tomorrow.

So. Breakfast, and then bed. Gah.

Aaron Sorkin weighs in

and by God is it funny. And true. And... damn. Bartlet is still my president.

"And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back."


"You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work."

Oh yeah. That's my President.

Rediscovered soundclick.com today.  Spent a while downloading new music.

My favorites are still Denny Schneidemesser and Morten Malvik.  They rock.  Or something.

Also, some people have a lot of fun with legos.

It's official

I get to torture^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hteach small freshmen!  Wheeeeee!

I'll be TAing intro statistics this fall.  How much fun is that?  That's so cool.

Ugh. Medical care in this country sucks.

Medical stuff in this country sucks.  Although, my dental's all right.

I drove over the hill late yesterday/early this morning (got in around 4am) for a dentist appt at 1pm this afternoon.  Got there, and it all went well; I have some gum inflamation, but I'm pretty sure that's just my ineptitude at flossing.  I have one itsy bitsy cavity in a back tooth that they want to fill before it gets to be a big cavity, and one of the onlays (basically a replacement for the inner part of my tooth) that they put on last spring is still being tender, so if that's still being funky they want to replace it.  So I have an appt for early morning on Jan 5 for that.

Then... then I went to lunch with mum, which was fun and nice.  And then I went to get my medical records from Kaiser ordered for the UCSC health center.

Now, they have the forms right there.  I had all the info.  I filled it out.  I got there just after 4pm and took a number.  Shit.  I'm 73; they're on 63.  This could be a while.

Forty-five minutes later, my number finally gets called.  The lady scans the form, asks one question (do you want to pick these up or have us mail them?  Well, when can I pick them up?  Friday.  No, mail them) and I'm done.  About a minute, all told.

Now, of the roughly seven people ahead of me, about four of them were this rapid.  By the time they got to me, they had two people helping us so they could get us all out the door before five pm.  Explain to me why I couldn't have just dropped the damn form in a box somewhere and been done?  Or stand in a line for five minutes specially for these forms that are quick and rapid and easy.  Or something, so I don't have to wait 45 minutes for the three folks whose forms (different forms; disability instead of medical records) take 15 minutes each to process?

Argh.

Then I went to pick up my prescriptions, which was relatively easy and quick except that parking there is a nightmare, and their cute little electronic signature pad NEVER works the first time.  Sigh.

And now I need a nap.

The polarity, of course.

How do you keep neutrons from revolting, anyway?

Answer: You reverse the polarity of the flow.  Duh.

Rassilon Scarf: Take 1

I successfully finished the pattern for the Seal of Rassilon knitting pattern.  I cast on for a test knit of it, in yarn I bought to make nice stuff for Teddy.  I love knitting, but I can't wear acrylic and I can't afford wool, so hey!  Look!  A friend who can wear the cheap yarn!  W00t!

Anyway, I'm just doing a quick version of it with a 4st moss stitch border and the patterning in purl/knit.

The "back" side

The "front" side

I already ran into two problems.

(1) I was expecting to have problems with the knit stitches being too "high", and making it stretch vertically.  Instead, the knit stitches are too "wide" and it's stretched horizontally.  Since my guess is that the scarf will be under more vertical than horizontal tension, this might be a good thing, but next time I'll knit it with slightly bigger needles.  These are my size 3 needles, and they're just a hair small, I think.  On the other hand, this means the scarf isn't three miles wide, which is probably a good thing.

(2) I wasn't paying enough attention, and I managed to do three stupid pattern things.  

     First, I didn't properly purl/knit in the other loop to untwist stitches where I switch stitch types in the first few rows, with the result that they're pulling even harder in the vertical direction.  While this creates some neat effects---and now I think I know how to do horizontal cabling---it's not quite what I had in mind for this.  On the other hand, once I went back to the "right" method, I'm having trouble with the knit stitches forming cabling-type rising stuff.  

      Second, I made the pattern off a PDF of the Seal, and I started reading it left-to-right while knitting right-to-left, with the end result that this end of the scarf will have a clockwise seal instead of an anticlockwise one.  Doh!

     And third... third, I can't count.  'nuff said.

But I think it looks pretty cool, even if there isn't much done on it yet.

Pictures were taken with my crappy webcam.  But hey, at least you can see it's there, right?

A Letter to Barack Obama

Obama claims he wants to hear from the people.  So.  Here's the text of a message I sent to him, via the "my policy" link on his webpage.

Your Blueprint for Change encourages us to contact your campaign if we have thoughts about the policies in it.

I want to address the education policies, specifically the K-12. I want you to consider the idea of having science and math education taught by graduate students. You see, I'm an incoming graduate student at UCSC this fall, and while I've been hired as a teaching assistant for the university, my *total paycheck* after I pay fees and tuition is something on the order of $16,000 a *year*. To live in one of the highest-cost areas of one of the highest-cost states in the nation. For comparison value, I rent a 200 square foot studio at a cost of $950 a month. A half-gallon of milk sets me back almost three dollars.

I am going to be teaching *college* calculus and statistics. There is no reason in the world why I couldn't teach high school students, especially in the advanced placement programs---after all, if I'm good enough to teach *real* college courses, logically I should be good enough to teach high school students. I'd be *delighted* to either put aside a few more hours a week to teach a high school class, or to take a year or two off in the middle of my degree---or after I finish---to teach high school full time.

But the thing is, I don't want to be a teacher for the rest of my life. I want to eventually get my PhD and go into R&D work. I'd want to teach at most a year or two of high school full time.

What I propose is that instead of trying to get teachers who are qualified to teach the advanced placement programs, we instead offer graduate students in the sciences a deal: extra financing for graduate school, in exchange for a year or two of teaching high school science or math in their field. We could have the best minds in the country teaching our children, people who are at the cutting edge of their fields.

No more rooting around desperately to find people who are qualified to teach advanced placement sciences, who know more than their students about what they're teaching. We have hundreds of these people already available, who are struggling to put food in their mouths. If we're really promising that we want to fund R&D and education, that we want every student to have the best education they can get, shouldn't we *want* a program that *both* helps the upcoming minds in research *and* ensures that science teachers are highly qualified?

Thank you for reading.

--Teresa Jacobson

Sweatervest is go for edging

I found the Ravenclaw sweatervest I'd been working on last year for Halloween.  I thought about pulling it all out, but I decided to finish it instead.  Being me, I was too lazy to look up patterns (and I hate using them anyway) so I grabbed a couple of sleeveless shirts of mine and used them as patterns.

It worked surprisingly well.  I ended up with two problems.  The first was a minor one, that I can't count, and so I ended up having to pull out and re-do one of the back straps twice.  No biggie.  The second... well, let's just say, it's very low-cut in front.

There's no edging on it yet, so it's not quite as bad as it might seem.  I'll probably end up putting at least an inch and possibly two inches in front, though, using short-row shaping, so that it's not quite as... skanky... as it looks now.

Trying to decide what to do about the fact that I have yet to get a stretchy bind-off to actually work for me.  I think I might use some sort of relatively innocuous crochet bind-off, maybe with picots or something.  I'm a girl, I can get away with a little lace, right?

I worked on it last evening and this morning (when I couldn't sleep) while watching Doctor Who, with the result that the Sontarans may always make me think of counting endless rows of stitches.  I'm not a big fan of the Sixth Doctor, I'm afraid.  He strikes me as rather an arse.  Peri is awfully whiny, but part of that is that they can't seem to find actual American actors (she's theoretically American, I think).  The rest... well, she is a Classic Who Companion.  Sigh.  Still, she doesn't deserve all the shit he gives her.  Seriously.  Nine treats Rose better, and he's a total arse to her.

Now: to pick up stitches for my neckline, or to sleep?  Hm....

[Edit] Also, I forgot to mention.  I successfully figured out how to do the Kitchener bind-off join with (a) combination knitting and (b) the thread tail on the other side from the usual directions.  I is proud of myself.  Quite proud.  Now that I understand how it works, I think it'll probably be easily.  Setting it up is still a bit of a pain, but hey.  That bit isn't hugely critical.

Basically all you're doing is making a row of knit stitches by sewing instead of by picking up loops.  The general motion is up through the bottom of row A, down through the top of row B, pull that stitch off.  Flip the row labels and repeat.  The advantage of understanding the methodology is that now I understand how to, for example, bind off purlwise.  Go me!

I suck at this date thing

and I don't mean the romance version.

This is the second time in two weeks I've missed a deadline because I read the date wrong.  I SUCK.

Hopefully this won't cost me my financial aid.  I hope.  Fingers crossed.

Trope of a trope

I wonder if there's a word for the literary device of using a trope, and then having your characters acknowledge the trope, and talk about it.

It occured to me that the changes I'm making to "Last of the Time Lords" for my fic make the story... downright messianic.  And so the following story bit popped into my head.

"She gave her life to save the world.  Downright messianic, that."

"Now that you mention it, yeah.  Right down to the---before.  The glowing didn't hurt the image, either."

"If only... if only she'd follow the rest of the story.  On the third day she rose again, ascended into the heavens, and is seated at the right hand of the Doctor."

"Never let it be said you don't have an ego.  Hey, what does that make me?  The Holy Ghost?  No thanks."

"You'd get to play with fire."

"Okay, maybe.  You know... it hasn't been three days yet."

"Yes.  I know."

"Maybe..."

"No, Jack.  She's gone."

"Yeah."

...my brain is an interesting place.  I may have to clean that up for voices (so it sounds more like them) and use it.  Cause... they're right, you know.

[Edit] ...and then it wrote more.

Check it out at my fic LJ.