Hooray!

Robin helped me bake a pineapple upside-down cake for the exams.

We had to figure out how to call a committee member in Alaska on the spur of the moment.

When I reread my answers two days ago I thought that my writing improved considerably over the summer (the Spencer app was written much better than answer 1, eg.), so I was a little worried about that.

During the exams, I had a couple of questions that I ended up trying to think/talk through in the moment and that didn’t turn out so well, but I was able to recognize that and cut my answers short.  😛

The process was much more rich conversation like than what most people think about when they think “exams” I’d imagine.  In other words, it really was the exact same thing that happened for my undergraduate thesis orals.  I guess I have to thank Reed for preparing me for that.

I don’t think there was much doubt about whether I would pass, but I still worry about being caught red-handed trying to pass as an academic.  Is that normal?

To celebrate, I bought an internal SATA hard drive, the brand new AMD 3870 video card (the NVidia 8800GT was unavailable and overpriced), and the fastest processor that’ll work on my dated motherboard.

Next week, I might be reinstalling WoW…  heh.  And I’ll definitely be checking out Gears of War (too slow on my current set-up) and Crysis.

New things:

1. Google AdSense (see that new search thingie up at the top right? and the ad on the right?) – Fellow Reedie Erik gave me a bunch of tips to make it so regular readers don’t see the ads which I’ll try to get to some time this week. Just thought I’d see how much revenue this thing generates anyway… Maybe none, but maybe some…
2. I finally admitted to myself that I don’t really play WoW anymore and thus uninstalled it last week. Well, sorta. I still have it on my laptop and intend to log in once in a while to finish up mail and bank stuff and get Thog in a state to park indefinitely (read: until the expansion probably). The catalyst to this uninstall? Call of Duty 4, Culpa Innata, and Gears of War take up a lot of disk space, but truth is I haven’t really felt compelled to play since August.  🙁  CoD4 is amazing, set in the near future rather than WW2. CI is a point-and-click adventure game set in a utopian/dystopian future where society is divided into a class structure based on ambition, greed, and capital. Nice fascist state, in other words. The player takes control of a character who was raised in the system and has completely bought into it. It’s interesting being forced into the role–definitely a political statement by the game developers. While I wouldn’t give it 100% like Just Adventure did (a few bugs and camera frustrations as well as kind of a barren game world), it is a pretty good game. GoW is being installed as I type this. We’ll see how it is.

Busy week:

1. The oral defense for my general exams is this Thursday. (If you’re interested in reading my written answers you can find them here: 1, 2, old 3, new 3 (essentially the same as my app for Spencer).)
2. I might be meeting Constance Steinkuehler and David Simkins via phone tomorrow to figure out how similar my data is to other people’s and whether data sharing/collaboration should occur. But if not, I sent them some sample data.
3. LIFE will have a meeting about some Second Life projects that the center might want to pursue tomorrow, too.
4. Also tomorrow, Nigella Lawson is giving a book signing at the UW bookstore. Going with Robin = fun!
5. Robin and I really need to finish up that bookshelf we’re making so that we can fill it with the books that are sitting in boxes in our living room in time for our party on Thanksgiving…
6. Too many games. Crysis is almost out.

Dinner with a bunch of folks and then a bar with some of them. Photos and text to come later! 🙂

Joe Simpson, Sal Humphreys, Cassandra Van Buren, and Daniel Ashton (and someone behind Daniel but I actually never caught her name!)



Keith Cormier, Sean Lawson, and Casey O’Donnell



Roger Altizer and Liz Losh

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