Blessed by the Potato

I’m really pissed off at a few online stores and their “click to enlarge” links. Usually, a click to enlarge link is present because they’re using a thumbnail that’s too small to see anything on, so you want to enlarge the image to see more. So logical it hurts. Usually, the enlarged image appears in a pop-up window, sometimes it replaces the screen you’re viewing at the moment. But the key factor is that the image should be larger than the one you were just looking at.

I was just shopping at creepedout.ca for some Halloween stuff, and saw that they had a Zombie Pirate makeup kit, which sounds just perfect. The thumbnail image is 100×80 pixels. So, of course, I clicked to enlarge… and a window popped up with an image that was 135×104 pixels. It was so small (and in a new window) that I at first thought the “enlarged” image was simply the original thumbnail again. But, oh no, it was technically a larger image, but by such a small margin that I have to wonder why they bothered. It just pisses me off.

What else pisses me off? Taking 3 days to write a course syllabus and prepare a few lectures to find out that you’re not getting paid for the course (or rather, that “you’re already being paid”). My first class today went fairly well (except, of course, that it took the full 2 hours and I really was hoping to end the first one early). The rest, I doubt, will go as smoothly, because if I’m not getting paid for it, I really don’t feel like spending my weekends & evenings preparing. I’ve got a thesis/research to do (and already too much of that!).

I know not many of you are checking the site at all anymore, and it has been far too long since I updated. I’ve been very busy of late, and been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block at work that seems to be tranferring to the website as well. Things have been crazy busy there: in addition to all the work for my crazy project, I’m also teaching a class this term (!) which is incredibly demanding. I’m responsible for everything, from planning the syllabus to creating the assignments, delivering the lectures to booking the rooms… and this is a brand-new course, too, so I don’t even have a textbook or anything to use as a guide. The damnedest thing about it is that my first class is today, and I still have no idea if I’m getting paid for this, or if I was suckered into volunteering. It’s a lot of work, so I really hope I’m getting paid, but on the other hand, my new contract prohibits me from moonlighting (on the gripping hand, volunteering would likely count as moonlighting too, if I really wanted to get out of it). I’m stuck, of course, because I want to teach: I think it’s a vital part of getting a PhD, and it’s a real shame sometimes that there aren’t more teaching opportunities around in this department (especially less demanding ones).

So, I’ve had two posts “half-written” (in actuality, it’s far fewer than half the words, but I’ve put some of my thoughts down in point-form so I don’t lose them) for over a week now, and I had hoped to get them up on the weekend. Since they’re not up I don’t want to make any more promises about when they will appear, but will try to return to a frequent updating schedule soon.

In other news, I made some very good-looking cinnamon rolls last week and remembered to take a picture of them, so hopefully I’ll get that off the camera soon and up on the recipes page.

Finally, curling season is upon us again, and I hope to get into at least two leagues this year. It’s a bit of a shame that UWO is taking out its curling ice: it’s putting a lot of pressure on the other clubs in London, and means that a lot of students who found it pricey last year won’t get to play at all, since it was actually really cheap ($75 at UWO last year for 1 game/week; London Curling Club is $170 base + ~$40/league night for students, $420+ for regular members). I’m planning on joining the London Curling Club, and hope to play at least twice a week. One thing I’m not really looking forward to is that they heavily segregate the men’s & women’s sections. There are only two mixed leagues, and I can’t make one of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I found I preferred playing in mixed leagues in the past: they tend to be a lot less competitive, and the presence of women helps keep the banter cleaner. Of course, this will be a proper curling club rather than a university one, so those probably don’t apply… Finally, I don’t know if I told the story of varcity curling here from last year. Basically, I was interested in trying out for the varcity curling league here at UWO last year. I checked the webpage, found the time & location for the information meeting, and went. It was on a Thursday night in the worst rain we’d had in years. I don’t know why I insisted on going, but I went. My shoes were soaked through before I even got to the bridge. At that point I just gave up and enjoyed being soaked right through. When I got to the room, there were 4 other prospective curlers waiting… and waiting. We waited, soaking wet, for about a half hour, and no one showed up. No one came with a message to say the coach was stuck in the rain, or that the team was full. After a half hour, we just started drifting away to go home. I could have emailed or called the coach after I got home, but I wasn’t too interested in working with someone who’d skip an important first meeting like that, and I was a little leery of the whole varcity idea anyway (I was hoping the information meeting would tell me something, such as how much of a time commitment it was). At the end, I was soaked right through my jacket, through my shirt, pants, and even underwear. I was wet. I couldn’t wear my shoes for 2 days.

So tonight was the information meeting for this year’s varcity curling team. I figured I was still somewhat interested and wanted more information, so I marked the day on my calendar. As was fated, it rained today, quite a bit at that. I decided I wasn’t going to be a sucker twice, so I drove up to campus to see if it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if it was the rain or what, but campus was absolutely packed (and this was at 7 pm), and there wasn’t a single parking space near where I was going — even the pay lots were full. There were, of course, spots in the more outlying lots, but most of those are not much closer than walking from my place, and I wasn’t about to do that again. I’m still thinking about emailing for details: being on a varcity team looks good for scholarship applications (I think), and while I have no idea what the commitment is like for the practice schedule, I know that there are only ~8 games in the competitive season, held over 2/3 weekends in January/February, that third weekend only taking place if we win — not too shabby at all in terms of demands on my time.

I had a funny, brief conversation with a telemarketer from Rogers. They were trying to get me to switch to their phone service as well, and I said I wasn’t interested. They asked why, so I said the two basic reasons: if you have no add-ons to your line, it’s more expensive, and if the power goes out, it runs on a backup battery for 8 hours and then dies as well. I’ve been through too many blackouts that lasted longer than that to completely discount it. She actually acknowledged that in my case, it probably wasn’t for me, said she’d like to point out that the battery is rated for 8 hours but would probably last 12, and then hung up.

I’d like to thank Baum for pointing me to these:

Curl (come on baby put the rock in the house) and Code Monkey. It also gave me another song for my “alternative” Christmas album.

Right now I’m trying to sort out his terrible store front so I can buy these songs. There are lots of other cute songs there, too (like Pizza Day), so feel free to poke around for a bit. I’ll wait.

Once again, I follow on BoingBoing’s coattails to bring you:

Bomb Or Not?

And perhaps even more scary, this story of identity theft.