Ahhh, computers....

Today while the Internet repairman was here, he commented on how slow my desktop was since it took about 5 minutes for all the start-up programs to desist. Yeah, I know, dude. The Norton package is so old that pretty much the only stuff that updates is the anti-virus. So I took myself off to Best Buy to get some new Norton toys that will clean my hard drives.

Problem #1: The Geek Squad guys are pretty helpful normally, but they all seem to hate Norton, primary reason being that it "slows down your computer." I've had my butt saved by Norton so many times that I'm not particularly concerned with 60 seconds vs. 2 minutes.

So they recommended getting Norton 360 (which is apparently so new, no one knows how to use it), Norton Systemworks Standard, and Spysweeper (because Norton still isn't quite so good at the anti-spyware. I also picked up an external hard drive so I can back everything up (good deal - 250GB for $100). Price tag for everything? ~$250. Ouch, but it's cheaper than a new computer if mine gets chomped by some Internet worm.

Problem #2: Since the Geek Squad dudes don't like Norton, I don't think they know what all the different parts of Norton do. For instance, Symantec has this lovely "compare products" page that will compare what each package does after installation. Notice that the Norton 360 does everything the Systemworks packages do, except Norton GoBack (I'm still looking for Disk Doctor and the Windows Registry Scan - I think they're on the Check-It Diagnostics software part of the CD-Rom). So I paid seventy bucks for Norton GoBack. ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH. And I just noticed that the Spysweeper said it's a "Service Desk Edition - Not for Display". Can I still use it?

So here I sit, at home, in my office, surrounded by two computers with two different security programs from Norton. Notice the time. The laptop is still uploading to the backup server at Symantec. But the laptop has the 360 on it, which is pretty slick (it is nice - this is why I love Norton - it removed 3,000 temporary files that were getting missed because the old package wasn't updating). The desktop has Systemworks, which will have to be removed (after 2 hours of installation to get it this far and find out I got hosed) so I can install 360, then re-install Systemworks to get the Norton GoBack and the Check-it Diagnostics.

I swear to you, I am not a computer science major, I am a self-taught computer person (with a little help from Dad and various computer books) and I could do a hell of a lot better job than a lot of the people who are supposed to "help" you.

Current book-in-progress: I picked up The Buccaneers today - I got three paragraphs read; this is very Wharton already.
Current knitted item: The shrug is almost done. I've started the last increase round, then it's just 6 rounds of ribbing and a bind-off!

Tidbits and Oddities

I love literary sound bites.

"Shock news: Grown-up critics think e.e. cummings sucks. I honestly didn't know. I read him in high school, put him in the "good" box, and left him there." - Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

"I'm an irreverent person because I believe reverence is usually misplaced when it isn't faked, but I felt reverence for his reverence then." - William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts (Mr. Gaddis and His Goddamn Books)

"The philosopher David Hume thought Tristam Shandy the best book written by an Englishman for the past 30 years, though he rather spoiled the compliment by adding 'bad as it is.'" - Terry Eagleton, The English Novel: An Introduction (Ch. 4, Laurence Sterne)

And on addressing "instant classics" in literature:
"Maybe that's why you have to give books time to live before you decide that they're never going to die. You have to wait and see whether anyone in that multitude is really listening." - Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

Current book-in-progress: A Temple of Texts, The English Novel, and waiting for The Buccaneers to arrive at BN so I can start on the next book for the LbW board.
Current knitted item: The shrug - I got the stitches picked up for the collar (Eydie had Addis!! Although I'm glad I went with the 32" circular, I can't imagine working it on a 24" like the pattern called for!)

Can I add just one more thing?

Call me crazy, but I added on yet another activity to my already over-scheduled and totally manic life (and you all wondered why I consume so many caffeine-containing beverages...).

I agreed to be a reader-moderator at BN Book Clubs for two boards - knitting (duh) and the Literature by Women board (taking over from pmath - yay pmath!).

Now, for everyone who thinks I'm a slave to the company, the BNBC is an entity that I think does many great things. Yes, it replaced the old BN University, of which many participants have fond memories and were sad to see its demise; however, I think the new BNBC has so much more potential. BNBC is far more transparent because you can see all the threads without having to register. With BNU, you had to sign up and "join" a class to see what it was about; I didn't join BNU for a while because I thought it would be too "academic" for what I was looking to do. At BNBC there are more classics discussed, for longer that then very limiting month (i.e. Paradise Lost with Laurel) which is great, but readers are starting their own threads in some of the general discussions supporting all different types of books. This is wonderful and, IMO, it's what a book club should be about. Reading. And having fun.

So stop by and see how I do (not terrible, I hope - yipe!). The knitting board is just for chatting, reviewing pattern books, etc. The LbW board is starting A.S. Byatt's Possession this month.

Current book-in-progress: Mostly The Master and Margarita as of late (it's really good I promise), but I need to get caught up on Possession for my new role
Current knitted item: The shrug - now working on the other sleeve. I hope Eydie gets Addi circs in size 5 before I really need them!

CSI - what?

So all three of my favorite TV shows - the CSIs - all had their season finales this week. CSI: Miami ended on a good note, but a little ambiguous as regards the relationship between Calliegh and Eric. CSI:NY ended with Mac, Stella, and Sheldon foiling the Irish Mob's attempt to raid the police lab and get their cocaine back; Danny and Lindsey got together which was about damn time.

So CSI was tonight. Talk about cliffhanger (stop reading here if you don't want to know). Sara winds up under a car after being kidnapped by the Miniature Killer and Grissom is trying to shake the information out of the Killer. Literally. Sara had better make it on the season opener in the fall; haven't heard anything about Jorja Fox leaving the show but it will suck big time if she does.

Current book-in-progress: The Brothers Karamazov and The Master and Margarita
Current knitted item: The shrug - only 8 rows of ribbing left on the first sleeve.

Current favorite-screw-up-by-other-research-assistant

As some of you know, one of my (least) favorite tasks at the research job is to take over a study from another RA. My main reason for (not) liking this is because the study is usually screwed up in some way - data collection, study design, bad analysis, you-name-it. And then I have to fix this, which neccessitates pointing out what is wrong to my boss which then makes me feel like a rat.

Like the current POS, er, study I am trying to fix so the fellow can get her article out of it and get herself a job. 2/3 of the data was collected by the fellow, the other 1/3 was collected by one of my fellow RAs (who no longer works for us because she moved up in the world and got a new job). The data collected by the fellow is pretty robust, few few mistakes and most of those are entry errors I would have caught during analysis (i.e. getting the date wrong because your finger typed 2006 instead of 2005). The data collected by the RA....ai-yi-yi (I should have known this was coming because this same RA made tons of data collection errors on another study that I'm trying to piggyback a new analysis off of - and I find myself essentially recollecting the previous data because it's full of holes). My personal favorite mistakes so far today? The one where the RA listed the subject as being male (when the subject is really female) and the next subject on the list was listed as deceased at the end of current admission (when she was both an outpatient as the time of study entry and had completed a physician's office visit two days ago). GAAAAAAHHHHHHH!! An undergrad could do better than this (and would be cheaper, too).

I promise I'm really not an obsessive-compulsive science rat, but I'm not attaching my name to ANYTHING that could potentially suck this bad. This is why science gets a bad rap - sloppy work. Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy.

Current book-in-progress: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (for the SF group, and I'm a little behind, but I just got the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Award for Translation winner by Pevear and Volokhonsky, so I got kind of excited about it again.
Current knitted item: The shrug - I'm working on the ribbing for the first sleeve.

Minor Confession

I still call my parents and tell them my grades. Guess I still like to get that pat on the head (who knows, I might even get dinner out of it - traditional rewards for earning good grades in the Ward household consist of going to a swanky restaurant sans younger siblings).

Now, I'm going to strut a little....got an "A" in my Modern American Fiction class. I think this is a good accomplishment for someone with two science degrees trying to go back for a grad lit degree - the brain definitely has to rewire itself for this to work. I also scraped a "B" out of my incomplete from last semester. Party!!!!!! I was pretty convinced I was going to receive an "F" out of sheer spite since I had avoided the professor for the better part of three months.

Current book-in-progress: Lots of them! The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber, The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay, and A Temple of Texts by William Gass (and many more)
Current knitted item: Serious start-itis since semester ended. Yes, I still have Eeyores. And a Christmas stocking to finish. But...I got this awesome knitting book Fitted Knits with about 10 patterns I want to knit. So I started the two-color shrug (mine is light blue and royal). I also keep trying to knit socks, which is a disaster since I can't get the toe cast-on to work correctly. I'm also making a surprise for our Harry Potter party at the store (Shhhh!!!)

Beyond freaked out because of the Departed

Finished watching The Departed, delivered to my mailbox courtesy of Netflix. Seriously, that is one sick movie - fucking sick as can be. Scorsese deserved the Oscar, no arguments here (he also deserved the Oscar for several other of his movies) - the script was great, cast excellent, cinematography was good. But it's really creeping me out. I think because the movie really didn't end, at least not the way I wanted it to end. I personally would have liked to see Leo's character get together with the shrink and Matt Damon's snaky little rat get sent to the federal pen. Instead, all the cops get shot in the head (including Leo) and Matt gets off scott free as the hero until he gets wasted by Mark Wahlburg (and he was soooooo good in this movie, like scary good) who then walks off. And the end. Maybe that's why the movie is so good. No one gets what they want. Still, violent and creepy.

And Alec Baldwin is hilarious as the lead investigator. And then there's Jack - I have never felt like needing a bath after one of his movies. Now I do.

Current book-in-progress: Native Son by Richard Wright, Temple of Texts by William Gass
Current knitted item: Eeyores.

Today, we are all Hokies

After reading the growing media coverage of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, I waited nervously all day. Alpha Chi Sigma, the chemistry fraternity - of which I'm a District Counselor, has a large chapter at VT. Gamma Iota chapter hosted our 2004 Biennial Conclave and we had a marvelous time on VT's beautiful, peaceful campus. Thankfully, we heard from the chapter's president and none of our brothers are among the deceased or injured (and my friends Katharine and Beth, whose cousin attends VT, also heard he was unharmed). My heart breaks for all the families, friends, emergency workers, alumni, and administrators of VT. I pray to whichever God is listening right now that the entire VT community find peace and solace in one another as they heal. So many lives lost - none for any better reason than they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And now, some callous idiot has posted on the Barnes and Noble Book Clubs board that we should all buy a certain novel about gun-toting nuns in Wal-mart because the VT tragedy illustrates perfectly why the US should have gun laws. The post is as follows:

Yesterday's mortifying events in Blacksburgh Virginia underscore the importance of finding a way to stop the production and distribution of handguns. Only a few days ago I posted a message recommending xxxx's newly released novel "XXXX" and calling for EVERYONE interested in the subject of violence committed with pistols to read.Did you see? and if you did, did you care?If you did, and you didnt, you are part of the problem.xxxx'snovel is not available from Walmart online. Why? because in the story Nuns terrorize a WalMart gun department and destroy all the handguns present.WalMart refuses to publish it. How is this free speech in action? WalMart will say "We decide what free speech is".Fortunately, none of the other vendors agree. XXXX is not a political tract. It's a delightful novel filled with wonderful characters and at the base of it all is the question: why, when people can have all the rifles they want cause the constitution grants permission, do we need to allow handguns too?Look, don't listen to me. I'm only a schmuck who stumbled on a book far above his head and got kicked in the mind by it. I think the ISBN of XXXX is ISBN-10: ##########. I'm tellin' ya. This is a great read.

Did you notice a few things are missing? I took out the author, title, and ISBN - I don't want anyone, not a single person to buy this book. I even submitted a complaint to the BNBC admins; I'm a pretty tolerant person but this pretty much stretches my limits. The poster is part of a circle of authors with TERRIBLE self-published novels and they all push each others' novels. Promotion is one thing; the unfeeling use of a heinous act of violence with no regard for victims and survivors to sell a completely unrelated novel (which is crap, by the way) is completely ... I don't know. I don't even have a word for it - I need one which encompasses this jerk's callousness, self-aggrandizement, and my sentiment that he be electrocuted by his computer next time he's near it.

I shed many tears yesterday for thousands of people I will never meet and I shed more now in memory of the victims and their families. Nikki Giovanni spoke at the convocation and I close this post with her words:

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech ...
-- Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor, poet, activist

Work is just a synonym for HEARTBURN

Last week I pulled serious overtime on my research job (I quit counting at 50 hours on Thursday) and it pretty much sucked because I was tired, stressed, consumed far too many Tums, and since I'm salaried I don't get overtime pay. Activity #1 was helping the boss get the very large CDC grant finished - if we get this I get a raise, if we don't get this....well, the boss will be difficult to live with for quite some time. Activity #2 involved getting some numbers out of a study one of the ID people started and another RA analyzed - let me just say that it was completely set up wrong and I managed to get something useful out of it by Friday morning. Activity #3 occured Wednesday and Thursday because our clinical monitor from 3M came to close out our clinical trial - she bought us some seriously nice lunch at Atlas downtown to thank us (ps, Connie-the-monitor is very nice to work with, too). Basically, I worked like crazy and didn't do shit for my class last Monday evening - faked an entire evening of Faulkner discussion (bad, bad, bad). And I'm pretty sure that none of the other three RAs that work for the group did anything even remotely stressful. I hate being dependable.

To remedy the overworked attitude, I took yesterday off to read about 200 pages of the class assignment for Monday. Yup. And I finished Bound to Please and Reading Like a Writer. Go me.

Current book-in-progress: Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (only 100 pages left now) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Literature (oy - but good).
Current knitted item: Eyores. I eyeballed my sock yarn, too.

Netflix and 'Net courtesy

I finally got Netflix after debating with myself for quite sometime. I am stupid for not having signed up earlier. The price is great and the selection is WAAAAAYYYY better than any of the video stores in town (they have ballet - BALLET! - modern dance, opera - I'm in love).

And now for a minor rant: If you are reading this, and you do any posting on a forum of any kind - for book groups (BNBC, SF, Yahoo), knitting, politics, AXS, whatever - please, for the love of God, use some punctuation and some capitals. Otherwise, I'm gonna rip your fingers off.

Example:
omg william hurt was so good as mr rochester but imo toby stephens was hott just like i imagined but dont tell i didnt read the book for class i read the cliffs notes

How much of that do you think is fun to read? Imagine a whole page - several paragraphs at least - on a computer screen. At least throw some periods and capitalize the first letter of the sentence so I know when each one starts and ends. It's like a foreign language! And don't get me started on ALL THE PEOPLE WHO POST EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Ugh.

Current book-in-progress: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom; I'm starting Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night since I think that's what I want to write my paper on; and Bound to Please and The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Literature (oy - but good).
Current knitted item: Eeyore #2 - and he's on hold since I ran out of blue-gray yarn and had to order two skeins from Eydie (!!!!); still have to seam and stuff both before April 1.

"R" for Onegin?

Having just finished watching a movie at 12:30 am, I would normally go to bed. However, I'm a bit perplexed.

I watched Onegin with Ralph Finnes, Liv Tyler, and Toby Stephens. According to the slipcase, the movie was rated "R" for brief violence and a sexual image. OK, big hairy deal. Finnes probably shows his bum again (who hasn't seen it yet?) and, having read a bit of Pushkin before, you know that Lensky dies in the duel. Pretty graphic, right?

Wrong. Lensky dies in the duel - head shot and you don't see much except a blood pool. And the sexual image? Tatyana seduces her husband while wearing a nightdress - this is tame; all you see of her husband is his bare chest. They don't even make it to second base before the camera cuts. Who rates this stuff? This is PG at most, except most kids wouldn't make it five minutes before getting bored. Still, great movie.

Speaking of Lensky, I stayed up until 4am last night to watch the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Jane Eyre - Toby Stephens plays Mr. Rochester and a wonderful job he did of it, too. I think he's a bit young for the part, being not yet 40, but he was so gruff around the edges and his eyes are gorgeous. Ruth Wilson was a perfect Jane and through just her face and eyes able to convey so much of Jane's thought process, a piece of the novel often lost in the transition from 1st person to 3rd person. I cried and cried when the wedding was thwarted by Mason and Jane ran away (I am rediculous). The writers also neatly inserted flashbacks (while Jane is at the Rivers') where we see Rochester trying to convince Jane to run away with him; a much weaker woman would have caved. Beautiful adaptation.

Current book-in-progress: Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom; also peeked through the Johnston translation of the Pushkin and my three copies of Jane Eyre keep making eyes at me.
Current knitted item: Eeyore #2; still have to seam and stuff both before April 1.

So I was motion-picture deprived

Not having purchased any new movies (or rented any, or gone to see any since I only pay theatre prices when under duress), I sort of went on a buying spree. ::sheepish::

Purchased at Best Buy: Casino Royale (Daniel Craig - drool), Marie Antoinette, and Minority Report (not a Tom Cruise fan, but a) it was $5 and b) Samantha Morton is so very, very good in it); I also bought two more John Mayer CDs

Coming from B&N: The Prestige (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale - double drool), The Illusionist (Edward Norton, Rufus Sewell, and Paul Giamatti - triple drool), Onegin (Ralph Finnes - drool again) and the PBS/BBC miniseries of Jane Eyre.

So I watched Casino Royale as soon as I got it home. I love it - it's such a faithful adaptation of the original novel which is nice after Moonraker, &etc., which resemble the original novels in title only. The only drawback is that while the stunts are amazing for the free-running chase sequence with Mollaka and the chase sequence at Miami Airport, both of them contribute to slowing down the movie and adding quite a bit to the length. But it is a Bond, and it's fantastic. Love, love, love.

Watched Minority Report (fastforwarded through a few parts - chuckled when Tom Cruise ate the moldy sandwich), switched it up with a viewing of Sense and Sensibility (old favorite - sort of like cleansing the palate at a wine tasting), and watched Marie Antoinette. It's a good movie but very strange. I think about any sweet, young actress could have playing MA due to the script, direction and cinematography. What Sofia Coppola did so well was convey the isolation that MA felt - the actual spoken dialogue is very sparse and the action is carried through the visual image on the screen. The set and costume designs for the movie are fantastic and some of the supporting roles played by Judy Davis (the mistress of the household) and Rose Byrne (one of MA's ladies-in-waiting) are wonderful.

Current book-in-progress: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein(for class). Truly, I can't understand why I have to read this - it's not very interesting. I would probably like it better if I were an art history major. The Faulkner is up next, but I really, really need to finish the Stein for Monday.
Current knitted item: Eeyore #1=knitted (seams and stuffing not done), Eeyore #2=started. The nieces' birthday party is April 1, so I really need to get the needles clacking.