Trevor Versus Dad

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Every now and again, things work out exactly as planned. What’s funny is that the two oldest kids are at the age now where they recognize exactly what just happened. Gabe got such a kick out of this exchange that he suggested I post it on the blog.

As we were finishing lunch yesterday, Jodi announced that after the meal, all of the kids were going to help clean up the kitchen and the family room downstairs. Trevor swallowed hard and whined, “Mom?” — a long, plaintive note.

“Trevor,” I said, “no complaining about having to work after lunch. Everyone helps. I don’t want to hear it.”

His little mouth bent into a sad pout and his eyes glassed. “I wasn’t gonna,” he choked.

“Oh. OK then,” I said cheerfully. “What did you want to say?”

Trevor wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Um … uhhh …”

“Never mind?” I ventured.

“Never mind,” he said.

Murphy’s Law, or This Week’s Answer to "What Do You Do, Anyway?"

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Long week this week. I made the mistake of taking last Monday off. It proved to be unwise during of Board of Regents week at the U — so much to write, and all of my usual sources are busier than I am.

Had a big budget presentation to create for 9 a.m. Friday morning. On Tuesday, we walked through the numbers in spreadsheet form. The spreadsheet was complex for those of us who aren’t “numbers” people. I spent Wednesday trying to come up with a non-spreadsheet way to illustrate the problem posed by a major cut to the University’s state base budget contribution, followed by “backfilling” with temporary federal stimulus money … namely that, if you spend that federal money as though it were base budget money, when the stimulus bill expires, you have a major hole to fill two years down the road. Temporary money is not a permanent solution.

I managed to remember how to “animate” a slide in PowerPoint. Took longer than expected, as always. I created a vaguely hole-shaped bar chart and filled it with base funding, then cut that funding so the hole was partially empty. Then I filled the hole back up with temporary money, which faded away after two years, leaving the hole partially empty two years down the road.

It looked alright, and was a metaphor folks could relate to. I showed our CFO, and he saw several problems with it, however, as a result of my overly simplistic understanding (repeat: not a numbers guy). On Thursday morning, he proposed an alternative way of showing the problem over time. I began to rebuild.

Again, it took longer than expected. He liked the result, but suggested a few tweaks. Unfortunately the tweaks messed with the animation, so even the tweaks took longer than expected. By Thursday afternoon, we were in good shape — except that my boss, who would deliver the presentation, hadn’t reviewed it yet. (I needed one more day to work—what happened to Monday again?) He took it home with him and said he would call with changes Thursday evening. Hard copies of the presentation for the Board and members of the public attending the meeting would have to wait until morning.

I rose at 5 a.m. Friday and headed for the office to make copies — I arrived at 6:20, extra early, in case of problems. Sure enough, I walked up to the front for of our building to see a note announcing network maintenance — periodic outages beginning at 6 a.m.

Uh-oh, I thought. I might not be able to connect to a printer …

Unlocked to office and fired up the computer. No access to printers. Crap. No place else open at this hour. What now?

I connected my computer directly to an old color inkjet we use for printing remarks on index cards, printed a handout that I could copy black-and-white for the public in attendance, then started slowly cranking out color copies for the board. After a few copies, the old printer ran out of color ink. I don’t use it to print color — so it turns out we don’t have color toner for it. I pulled out the tiny travel printer and hooked it up.

So slow. It’s 7:45 now.

The travel printer won’t print. My computer still is not registering a network connection. Hoping against hope, I shut down my computer and the printers and restart. Finally, the network is back. I start printing.

Printing animations in PowerPoint requires you to print each individual step in the animation as a separate slide — so the single animated slide is actually 7 or 8 when it prints, and some of the intermediate steps make no sense as standalone slides. As each printout comes off the printer, I sort through and remove the nonsense slides.

8:30. Two-thirds done.

At 8:50 the last one comes off the printer. I close the laptop, grab the paper, and run across campus to the meeting. I hook up my computer and test the presentation just as the Board chair sits down to start the meeting.

The session begins with several faculty recognitions. Halfway through, I notice that my computer has launched its screensaver. As the faculty members shake hands with the board, I slip forward and disable the screensaver. Nothing like having your computer idle and run the screensaver during a presentation to the Board.

Three days = one PowerPoint presentation. Two and a half hours = 55 copies. Oh, it took about 30 minutes of the Board meeting to present and discuss, and I pushed the button to advance the slides. The Regents liked it — found it very clear and easy to follow and asked that it to be posted to the Web site as a PDF. To do that, I had to unanimate the slide into its constituent parts.

Yeah. That’s what I do.

Mere Christianity

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment
I finished C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity after supper this evening. It’s a deceptively thin book for its substance — or put another way, much more has been written on the subject of Christian faith, and much less said, many times over. (I’m reading Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity right now, as well — much thicker, full of footnotes and sources and extremely interesting factoids … and not nearly as convincing as an apologetic work.)
Lewis’s little book is plain-spoken, well-argued, even-handed, and gentle. It is decidedly pro-Christianity, of course — that’s the point, after all. It gives great insight into why we believe what we believe, bolsters the believer’s faith, and may even send a doubter or two into a tailspin. Will it create new converts? Win fresh hearts and minds? Repel the atheist horde? Perhaps not. But I folded over many a page corner in my battered paperback copy.* I loved it.
* * * * *
* A habit I abandoned years and years ago, and only resurrected for this particular volume.

Faulkner, or Three Things to Love About As I Lay Dying

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Last summer, I agreed to my friend Jacqui’s challenge to read 15 Classics in 15 Weeks. I’ve not kept pace, but I have persisted — and today I finished William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.

I picked it for two reasons: one, because I was reading Hemingway, and as I recall the two crossed words now and again, and two, because it is told stream-of-consciousness, and I thought it might warm me up for James Joyce’s Ulysses. (As I’m writing this, I realize how poorly read I am: I’m not sure these connections make any sense at all, since I am making them all second- and third-hand.)

At any rate, I enjoyed Faulkner a great deal, although the story and characters aren’t particularly lovely or lovable. That’s part of the genius, I reckon …

And so, Three Things to Love About As I Lay Dying:

  • The Family. The Bundrens are quite the lot. Simple and canny, ugly and magnificent, pitiful and hard-as-nails. You can’t help but pull for them, even though at times they don’t seem to have a lick of sense — like their neighbors, you feel you must help them, even as you shake your head. They muddle along and survive. They persist.
  • The Method. The story unfolds character-by-character, just as it unfolds to their individual minds and senses. Stream-of-consciousness isn’t always easy to follow, but Faulkner makes it fascinating, and each character’s inner workings sing clear and true, if not always in harmony with the others.
  • The Time and The Place. How best to drink from the water bucket. How to get a frightened mule out of a burning barn. How to attempt a river crossing with the bridge out, and how to find woodworking tools lost in the flood. How two drowned mules roll and wash up on a river’s bend. Faulkner describes country life in loving and stark detail.

Next up: Homer’s The Odyssey, then Joyce’s Ulysses.