5.04.2009

RBOC: Proctoring Edition

Well, it's that time of year again (finals time) which means that TW and I are helping the Registrar administer finals.* That sounds much more important than what we're actually doing: we deliver blue books to each exam three times a day; otherwise, we sit in a room and hope that there aren't any problems.**

I have a few things on my plate at the moment, but I've been wanting to bloviate/blog about a few things...in random bullet form.

  • TW and I saw "Spring Awakening" last night for the first time. I really enjoyed it, although our seats were so good that I was distracted by a lot of the technical aspects: crew, music, lights -- it's a pretty minimal show, but with a few new effects. I'm always drawn to figuring out how they do this or that, and it's a major reason that I enjoy live theater. Luckily, I'll be going back to see this show in a few weeks -- when TW's mom -- comes to visit us in Boston. She's been dying to see the show, so I'll get another shot at enjoying the show from an entertainment point of view.
  • Farhad Manjoo, Slate's resident tech writer, has an interesting post (up yesterday) about how he hates RSS feeders. They strip out the soul of blogs by giving you a sanitized version -- I completely understand this, and agree with a number of his points. I'm giving his method a try, for now.
  • The summer movie season has officially began, at least for TW & I. We went to see a 10:20am showing of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" over the weekend.*** It was entertaining in a $5 way...in the poker scene, look out for one of my favorite pro poker players (just a heads up, so to speak!). We've also seen "State of Play" (liked it), along with a few rentals: "Indiana Jones & the Crystal Skull" (seriously, I still like this movie!); "Hellboy II & the Golden Army" (the movie itself kind of sucked, but it was incredible to see Guillermo del Toro use a full-movie budget to create all the wacky characters...can't wait to see this guy's version of "The Hobbit"...it'll be awesome, in a "Pan's Labyrinth" kind-of-way, hopefully...

* I wonder how 'normal' people gauge time? 9-5, M-F, I guess you get to look forward to 3-day weekends, right? Well, in the Ivory Tower, we have a much different system of time...Sept-May gets broken down into semesters, mid-terms, finals, beginnings/endings of class -- it's a whole new world!

** We actually do a little bit more than that, but for your purposes -- we sit in a room from 8:45am to 11:15pm for six days.

*** How's that for a title? Seriously, it pretty much screams: come see some backstory, but you know there's a whole franchise behind it..."X-Men Origins: Storm/Slug/Sloth/Anteater"

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Normal people with kids are still anchored to the schedules dictated by schools. Academic calendars aren't so great. For the last few years, I haven't been able to take a vacation in September - November or in April since there is always some exam or paper due. I'll be glad to be done with school so I can take a vacation whenever I find a good deal. It is Work to Live, not Live to Work.

On RSS readers, just click to read the original source. That way you see how the writer intended it to be read. I actually use to do it the way he suggested with bookmarks and different folders. Google Reader is much faster, especially since somethings are so time sensitive like airfares or business news. If I miss a long time (like when I'm on vacation), you can just mark everything read and start new.