www.carlosevia.com

Hey kids

Hey hello blog readers. Well, things have been busy and I apologize for not writing yesterday. I will be grading papers this weekend and then getting lots of things ready for the construction center grant proposal. Really, there's not much else going on here these days. I hope you have a good weekend and stay out of trouble.

Your friends,

CE & CR

Concho's smile

I was going to the office this morning when I noticed that my friend Concho River was actually smiling. Damn, I guess it was the first time I saw him smile in like a week. Apparently he exchanged a couple of nice, civilized emails with someone last night, and in his story there are no bad guys this time. Things just happened and that doesn't mean people are good or bad. I hope he continues smiling... it is hard to get things done when my best friend is sad all the time.

W4TW changes

This semester, and based on feedback from previous semesters, my Writing for the Web course is a little different. I have toned down the handcoding component (no more XML in the undergrad version of the course, and no XSLT for sure), and I am allowing students to use WYSIWYG editors and templates. Sure, we still handcode a lot of HTML and CSS. We start everything on the rocky road of the text editor, and then I show them how to do it fast on an editor. I do not encourage them to buy Dreamweaver at all, and I tell them before buying an expensive editor they should try an open source alternative like NVU/Kompozer. I think they are learning, and they are focusing on design and content now that structure is under control. I do miss the long work sessions, and as a result classes tend to be shorter now, but they are learning and seem to be interested. We are moving to content days now that code is under control. They are even doing divs and spans and layout things with nothing but CSS. Some of them are rejecting the editors and doing everything on TextEdit. I wish I was still teaching Creating User Documentation to teach XML/DITA, but there's no time for everything when you live in the tenure track. Besides, we have a new instructor who is doing great work in that course with help-creating activities. Next semester I will have one section of Writing for the Web and a senior seminar, which probably will be on political and socio-economic forces reshaping discourse in the workplace ("Outsourcing Technical Communication" will be a required book, BTW... hee hee).

Ponso going down

Barely a couple of weeks after Chela's death, Ponso decided to join her in the world of dead computers. What the f....??? two computers gone in less than a month? What has been causing this messy situation? In the case of Ponso, I think it was the horrible and dreaded static electricity thing. Sure, Ponso was an almost 5-year old iBook, but it worked decently. Yesterday I approached it and I felt a bad shock that went all the way up to my shoulder, and then it died. Static electricity can be very complicated here in the Burg during the winter, and the carpet in my home office (and the fleece inside my new jacket) doesn't help. I bought a couple of gizmos yesterday to deal with this, including an anti-static electricity mat for my desk, and a static electricity eliminator from ThinkGeek that looks very cool. Of course, it could also be the daemon attacking my computers because I refused to join Sobol's army, but that's another story.

"How are you?"

A few years ago, when I was living in Texas, I got to interact with a good number of international students from different countries. We would occasionally talk about strange things "the Americans" would say or do. In many of those conversations, some of my international colleagues said that they didn't understand how Americans could ask someone "how are you?" without expecting an honest answer. I mean, how are you usually leads only to "fine, thanks" or, at worst, "not so great today," and if someone starts really telling you about their problems and issues, probably you will run away or regret asking the question.
Well, this week I have been walking into people here in the office who routinely greet me with a "how are you?" as salutation. Sure, they don't expect/need a detailed report on what's going on in my world. Balls, have I struggled to put on a "fine, thanks" default answer this week. Things have improved a little bit today (my job simply doesn't allow for more than three sad days in a row). However, I cannot give you an honest "I am fine, thanks" answer when there are so many things going inside my head. Coming up next: a busy weekend with trips to the office on Saturday and Sunday.

Peyito

The blog is (more than a little) concerned about Pedrito, who still isn't 100% recovered from his tummy problems. It's been almost two weeks. We really hope he gets better soon.

Recycling laundry

Earlier this morning I found my friend Concho River going through the laundry basket. I was convinced he ran out of clean socks and was looking to recycle some from last week that were still "decent." I laughed at him, because I always have clean socks and that never happens to me. However, as Concho was taking out the laundry, I saw one of the smiles I was wearing last week and I was tempted to reuse it for a few hours today. It just doesn't feel right, and it still didn't help me in the process of leaving my apartment before 8 am once again. Reused smiles do not have the effects they had when they were clean.

Como diria Xime

Las cosas salen mal
Y no voy a pensar
Que todo es culpa mía.
Te quise hasta pensar
Que iba a estallar
Salté y caí
Salté y me fui
Salté y caímos mal.

good about today

what was good about today? lunch with DRP, who today got into one of her masters programs. also booked plane and hotel for san francisco. tomorrow i will teach three classes.

Neglecting my GTD

After I came back from Mexico last week, I had such a long to-do list that I had to go into triage mode and tackle the top priorities (teaching, sleeping, eating, taking showers) and I was avoiding the most essential GTD principles. Today I am doing nothing but replying to late email... yes, things are that bad right now.