Geeky Mom

This was me a couple of days ago, whining to the kids from bed to bring me a beverage:see more Lolcats and funny pictures... Read the rest of "Friday Fun: WoW and a LOLCat"

So, I kicked off some serious fund raising efforts yesterday and although the walk itself is 317 days away, 20 miles is a lot. And it's winter. And I am a weather wimp. And I'm running out of paths. A treadmill would offer me the opportunity to walk as far as I want without having to figure out where I can walk to. In my immediate neighborhood, through which I have walked numerous times, I can count on sidewalks and other amenities for walking. A long circuit I developed is a little over 3 miles. I could zigzag through blocks and probably get it up to 5 miles. But bleh. Venturing out of the neighborhood, to walk to the next town over for example, means no sidewalks in many places and heavily trafficked streets. Sometimes both together. I don't relish the idea of walking along a main thoroughfare with no sidewalk.So, in thinking about the treadmill, I've thought, well, I could purchase one or I could rejoin the gym around the corner just for the use of the treadmil... Read the rest of "Contemplating Training"

Of course, this week's WoW playing was interrupted by Thanksgiving--where I had. no. internet. access. And then by the baking extravaganza (made almost $150, btw). Sometimes life intervenes in game playing, as it should, really. But sometimes, the game lags a bit. When that happens, when the game loses its luster, some people end up giving up, figuring that if they're not interested anymore, they should just quit. Often this happens when you hit max level and have maxed out your gear and you think, well, there's nothing left to do. Which might be true. But Blizzard keeps coming out with new things, sometimes in patches and sometimes in larger expansions. We are, in fact, waiting for one of each of these shiny new things which promise new dungeons, new races and more. I don't play so much for the stuff except inasmuch as the stuff gives me the opportunity to play more often with people I enjoy spending time with. So, when the game starts to feel old, I don't want to... Read the rest of "WoW Wednesday: Lulls in the action"

Yesterday, I baked all day. From 9-5. I took a break for a chat with a friend at lunch, but then I actually forgot to eat. The cookies on the left are Pumpkin Pie Drops with Browned Butter Drizzle. Yes, they're yummy. I made seven different kinds of cookies, about 20 or so dozen, I'd guess. It took a day and a half to make them all. I'm crossing my fingers that most of them sell, though my family wants plenty of leftovers.I generally like to bake and the last couple of days were fun. Even as an experienced baker, though, I learned some things as I went. The cookbook I had had said not to use insulated cookie sheets, but that's all I had on hand. You can use them, but you have to add as much as 10... Read the rest of "Just call me Martha"

No, I didn't make it to 50,000. I had absolutely no time to do anything. When we would finally get home from various relatives' houses, I was too exhausted to think. This week, too, is busy, as I'm hosting a fundraiser tomorrow for my 3-day breast cancer walk. I'm baking dozens of cookies to sell. After my fundraiser, I'm meeting with someone to discuss digital scholarship issues. So, it looks like Thursday before I'll get back to writing regularly again. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though and, if I had to guess, I'd say I'm a week or so away from having a complete first draft. It's been a really great process, whatever happens with the product itself. ... Read the rest of "In case you're wondering"

Image by lorda via FlickrI had a thoroughly enjoyable Thanksgiving. Used to be at any family gathering, I got anxious about my appearance, what I was doing for a living, etc. I was keenly aware of being judged at these things, of people considering what I looked like, what my job was, what my kids looked like. And yes, that's as painful as it sounds. Now, I just don't care. I don't need some random relative that I see once a year to approve of my life. It makes the whole thing more enjoyable when you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Here's some th... Read the rest of "Thanksgiving Debrief"

This morning, after only getting about 5.5 hours of sleep, and after writing an incoherent rant on tenure, I looked at my computer screen and wanted to run away. I thought about the laundry that needs to get done, the preparation for our Thanksgiving trip, the fatigue, the almost-gone, but still kind of there wrist pain. And I thought, so what if I don't get to 50k. Enjoy Thanksgiving. Just relax. And I started planning a different day, one where I made hotel reservations and put away laundry and started packing. But then I looked down at the computer screen again and my document was already open and I knew exactly what I was going to write next and it just seemed easier just to write. An hour later, I had two thousand words. I have no idea if I'll make it to 50k and I have no idea if I'll do any writing at all over the holiday. I'm taking it day by day. Anything is possible, but even if I don't make it, I'm pretty damn proud of what I've done.... Read the rest of "I almost quit NaNo"

This post by Dean Dad, response to this post by Michael Berube, created quite a stir in our household this morning. The tenured faculty member tried to defend himself to a Ph.D. who's never landed a full-time t-t job, and in fact, doesn't want one, but wishes there were more options for employment in academia. What kind of choice is t-t vs. migrant labor. Once in a blue moon, I see a continuing non-tenure-track position in my field. I have never seen permanent part-time work.I don't have a dog in this fight as one commenter at Dean Dad's said, so I don't keep up with the literature though I do read blogs about "the fight for tenure and academic freedom." I think tenure at many places is misguided at best, detrimental at worst. At a few places, tenure works as it should. I think those who draw a hard l... Read the rest of "Tenure, or Tilting at Windmills"

This comic perfectly describes how I often felt in my staff position:I was often thinking like the Academia side of things, but the response to my ideas, from both faculty and staff, was like the Business reaction. I got the Academia reaction from colleagues elsewhere, which helped ease the pain of the Business reaction. Long-time readers might recall stories where I was asked to help with hooking up DSL, sort email folders, or upload documents in response to my reporting on the latest research in teaching with technology. No matter how academic I sounded, what people often saw was the mechanical side of my work. Sigh.<... Read the rest of "Friday Fun: Academia vs. Business or Faculty vs. Staff"

Hello fellow shakespearians I am geekygirl coming back for TWEEN TAKEOVER!!!!! If you are not a shakespearian please tell people near you to gasp for no reason. If you are a shakesperian congratulations you won a car. To get your car please go here: An Unknown Planet in a Different Galaxy. If you are utterly confused of what a shakesperian is let me give you some info. I am in fifth grade last year we were thinking how great it would be to have a shakespeare club. Our seminar teacher told us we should make petition and have a parent sign it. The principal agreed that we could have a shakespeare club with a couple volunteers. So in our club we vote on a couple plays and then narrow it down to two and out of that we vote again. This year just about everyone picked Midsummer Nights Dream and last year we did Hamlet which was fun dying.I want to be Hermia. Hermia is one of the leading characters out of three other ones. I want to be Hermia so bad, but I won't get upset if I do... Read the rest of "I am now officially a Shakesperian"

Image by lorda via FlickrThose of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen me deliberating yesterday about whether to write through the pain of the repetitive stress injury I seem to have developed. For the record, I decided to write by hand, which was only slightly less painful than typing. I even went out and got a new mouse and a keyboard pad (which heats up!) to help alleviate the pain. And I topped it off with a massage.But today, I can still feel the pain, a burning sensation that sits mostly in my wrist and shoulder, though at ti... Read the rest of "Writer's Cramp"

I'm continuing to level my priest primarily through PvP, with a few quests thrown in here and there. She's at 48 now. I'm hoping to get her to 50 before the weekend since I'll be switching back to my death knight on Sunday for the holiday achievements (more on that next week).I mentioned in my last PvP post that a lot of whining happens in chat during these games, with people telling everyone how much they suck. Horde always sucks according to these people, which cracks me up since if you play enough bg's, you realize that it's probably about even and depneds on the composition of the group. Besides the whining, I've noticed some other interesting behavior, some of which is quite detrimental to the group.I'm going to use Arathi Basin as my main example, a bg where there are five bases to be captured. When a team holds a base, they receive resources. Whichever team gets to 1600 resources first, wins. When I play a bg, I think of myself as part of the group... Read the rest of "WoW Wednesday: Weird PvP Behavior"

Today in my social studies class, we enter the 1880s with imperialism. It's a very strange idea and concept, and personally, the separation from poor and rich, making them very far apart. Anyways here is how it went down.Imperialism, for those of you who don't know, is one nation controlling another for five different reasons.Economy: Of course making money. We'll do anything to get some moneys. Sweat shops, cheap labor, whatever.Exploration: Some people wanted to explore these uncharted areas. I think this is really a lame coverup reason of some of the other things.Political: Power! That power hungry white folk of the European countries ate up all them countries. All of Africa was controlled by Europe except Etheopia and Liberia.The last two are Religious and Idealogical, but they are basically the same. Ideology back in the day that white people were superior and primitive. To save these people they bring them Christianity, ... Read the rest of "Imperialism"

Peg Single has another column in Inside Higher Ed about establishing a regular writing routine. Her audience consists of grad students writing dissertations and faculty writing books and articles. But writing is writing and doing it regularly every day is good practice. Although blogging is off-the-cuff and informal, I don't doubt that blogging every day has been useful to me. But I can also let blogging, important as it is to me, suck away time from other kinds of writing. I did that a bit today when I wrote that long post on educational technology (one I'm sure 3 of you will read).I had basically established a routine this fall, but NaNoWriMo really solidified that routine by putting pressure on to get to a certain word count every day. Single talks about setting time-based vs. task based (word or page cou... Read the rest of "More on the writing routine"

Over a year ago, I discussed the shift I was seeing in how faculty use their educational technology support staff. The shift I had noticed (and continued to notice until I left a year ago) was a shift from a consultative mode to a service mode. Instead of faculty coming and asking to sit down and talk about the potential uses of technology in their classes and get help in figuring what to use and how to use it, they started to simply ask that the work be done for them. There are two reasons for this shift (in addition to the usual issues about faculty time). One, the faculty that asked for consultation rather than service were typically the more tech savvy among their colleagues. They are now mostly doing the tech stuff on their own, even the new stuff. Two, the demand from students for more use of technology in their courses has increased so that those faculty who were average to less tha... Read the rest of "The Future of Educational/Instructional Technology"

Hello people of Geekymom's blog I am the guest blogger for tween takeover Thursday. Two fill you in, those of you who don't me here is a little bit of info: My name is Stephanie (AKA geekygirl) I am geekymom's daughter, geekyboy's sister, geekydad's daughter, and so on. My favorite color is green, I love to play soccer, and my favorite food is spaghetti. If you would like to learn more about me or read about my stories please visit talesofgeekygirl.blogspot.com. So anyways I need ideas on what to blog and I don't have to blog today it can be tomorrow too. But if you have a cool idea or topic you think I might know about and might be able to blog about please leave your ideas/topics in the comment area. Thank you, Geekygirl... Read the rest of "Tween takeover Thursday"

From Indexed. ... Read the rest of "This is why I don't have a tattoo"

Am I the only one who thinks academic conferences are weird? Why do they feel a little bit like a junior high school dance?For background, go read this post about my last academic conference. I'll try not to repeat what I said there. Because I'm not in a discipline, I tend to go to conferences that are interdisciplinary or a little tangential to some established discipline. This is a good thing as the presentations can be on a range of topics. I was recalling some of my earlier Renaissance conferences yesterday. While the Renaissance is a huge period covering several countries, there are some conventions that get repeated at conferences. It can get tiring to hear yet another paper about women's poor treatment in [insert author]'s work. This latest conference definitely had a wide variety of topics. I heard papers on dna art (very cool), on illness in literature (also cool), twittered subjec... Read the rest of "More on Academic Conferences"

Image by lorda via FlickrThe reason I joined the NaNoWriMo activities even though I'm not writing a novel (which means I can't officially win) is because having specific numeric goals is quite helpful. There's also the group accountability of posting one's numbers every day, comparing them to your buddies and to others.I'm still behind a bit. I've set a goal of 3,000 words a day instead of the 1500 or so they recommend in order to catch up. I thin... Read the rest of "When Writing is Hard"

For you non-WoW players out there, PvP stands for player vs. player, a part of the game where, instead of fighting virtual monsters, players battle each other. There are PvP servers where this kind of fighting happens constantly in addition to the virtual monsters fighting one must do. But most PvP action takes... Read the rest of "WoW Wednesday: PvP"