2008: The Year of Cable

After declaring a year ago that I would finally break down and get cable, I really did. Digital. All 100's of channels.
It sucks.
Instead of a half-dozen channels of free TV with little to nothing interesting to watch, I have hundreds of mind-numbing channels of cooking, home makeovers, and such delights as Dr. Phil reruns.
On the good side, there are dozens of music channels, where I can catch up with all the Adult Alternative music I've been missing since moving from the New York Metro region (i.e. Jersey City) about 3 1/2 years ago. I'll say it again: I absolutely hate 80's music, and that's about half of what's on the radio up here in Albany. (I remember the 80's vividly. I got through that decade with lots of 60's and 70's music.)

Maybe it's time to get back on my research again. My other, better upgrade was boosting my laptop computer memory from a measly 256 MB to a gig. It runs like a real computer again, and I haven't once had the urge to toss the thing out the window since then. Unlike my TV, that is...

I have a grown-up job, again

I'm not an adjunct anymore, I'm a real, live Computer Science instructor, complete with office, office hours, classes, a desk, a computer, a file cabinet, a bookshelf, and even a desk drawer where I can begin to accumulate a vast collection of plastic spoons, forks, Wendy's napkins, ketchup packets, and or course, the unwanted cracker packets that come with orders of Wendy's Chili.
I've even brought in more books from home, a tissue box, some bottles of Diet Coke, and all the school papers I'd accumulated from prior semesters of teaching as an adjunct.

I'm home, in my new life as a college professor. I teach, attend meetings, make appointments, plan training classes. It's an office job, except I go somewhere else to waive my arms around, point to PowerPoint slides, do stuff on the computer displayed on an overhead projector, and, well, lecture on about things for an hour at a time.

But I'm taking the bus home at night, since my wife drops me off in the morning in the one car we share. I found a bus that takes 15 minutes to arrive in downtown Albany, where I have her pick me up-- cheaper than gas, and maybe not much difference in time. I'm struck by the number of students (some of them mine-- I have nearly 100 students this semester) I run into on the bus. I'm the only instructor I see amid all the students. Some of them take more than an hour each way to class. Those that drive may drive more than an hour each way, 4-5 times a week.

I'm wondering if there's a way to spend the time constructively. So I talk to them about taking the bus, since that's my research -- student transportation. And I think about this, those students who may already have gone to a 4-year college, not gotten what they needed to get a good job, and have gone back to community college to get what they missed the first time around.

Something to think about.

a modest Proposal

Ah- I'm officially registered in a dissertation course- that elusive full-time, PhD-seeking, proposal-creating 1-credit course 899. Now what..? It's the Dissertation Proposal, what's what. I'm going to aim for April, if for no other reason than I need a deadline, and I like the alliteration. That's about 3-4 months and a ballpark figure of 80 pages to research and write.

But I've unearthed my copy of "How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation" that I bought from a folding table on some street corner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan a couple of years ago, for about a dollar or two. (I'm a sucker for used books- I'll buy a $1 book if I think there's at least $1 worth of relevant, useful knowledge inside...) The book is from 1981, so a bit dated in parts, but some of the advice is probably timeless-- it's not like the dissertation format itself changes or anything.

And of course, I've noticed the little chart about graduation rates-- the percentage of library science (the ancestor of Information Sciences) ABD's who actually get their PhD's is about 9%, which is, like, 1 out of 11. I now have to think of 10 kids from my last class who won't graduate because of me.

Music thief

Ok, I get that you can make an MP3 of a CD you actually own.

Or can you?

There's the issue of "timeshifting", or taping TV so that you can watch it later, which is allowed, so long as you don't retain it permanently. But now, RIAA lawyers are suggesting that in fact, burning a CD you own into an MP3 already constitutes copyright theft. They would seem to know something we don't, or else, once again, don't understand Supreme Court decisions and need to go back to (friggin') law school.

Apple, owner of the iPod and iTunes, ventures that "less than 4% of songs" on iPods were bought from iTunes, seemingly implying that the ownership of 96% of tunes are a bit suspect.
But the first question that Windows asks when I pop in a CD is whether to "burn it". That would make Microsoft a willful conspirator in Intellectual Property infringement, much the way that Napster was convicted a few years back.

Could a class actions suit could even find that the RIAA had in fact inflicted "cruel and unusual punishment" by fining a single mom nearly a quarter of a million dollars for copying a couple dozen songs, yet leaving pervasive music thieves like Microsoft alone?

Ah, Recording Industry Association of America vs. Microsoft- that would be even more fun to watch than King Kong vs. Godzilla. You can only dream...