Asides

Been quiet here for a while. Mostly having a hard time getting back into the swing of things, which should be remedied soon — I think I’ve burned out on reading, and need to take some time to start pulling all this stuff together and trying to hang it on the skeleton of the prospectus, to see where the gaps are.

And the other thing is the Dispute That Refused to Die, what feels like my own personal Jarndyce and Jarndyce. My pile of legal documents, which I’d hoped to be able to put up in the attic by Thanksgiving, and then by Christmas, and then by February, and then by tax day, and which I’ve now given up on, is about two and a half feet high. After much lawyering all around, everyone involved signed an agreement months ago, which I thought would put it to bed, but it hasn’t yet. Because of the courts. You know how they say the wheels of justice turn slowly? No. The wheels of justice are flippin square. We got the Orphan’s Court to bless the agreement back in March, and now a pathologically punctilious government auditor has suggested that what the Court blessed isn’t quite the way he’d like it, so he’s sent it back to everyone for another round of edits, petitions and signatures before passing it along to the judge again.

I thought university bureaucracies were bad. I was mistaken.

OK, I’m officially jet-lagged. Yesterday morning’s swim at Kailua beach was, I suppose, my sign that it was time to leave: on my swim in to the beach, I felt a sharp burn brush the back of my left leg and then my right side, and wrap itself around my right arm. I looked over in my side-stroke, and saw that I was dragging a jellyfish by its nearly invisible tendrils. A gorgeous thing; small, slick and thick and clear, trimmed with fine edges of brilliant purple. And it hurt like hell, and wouldn’t let me go. I got to the beach and had to scrape my forearm in the sand to break the tendrils — like some strong and stretchy stinging cross between dental floss and spiderwebs — and still they stuck to my side, my arm, my shorts. I wiped them off with my shirt, so I wouldn’t have to dry myself with a jellyfish towel. A day later, there are still some red marks left, and the memory of that sharp and clingy electric buzz remains, but it’s mostly OK.

And, for the first time in my life, I’m not sunburned after visiting the beach: I was conscientious with the sunscreen. If you ever go to Hawaii and stay on Oahu, get away from Honolulu and Waikiki, and spend some time in Kailua. You’ll be glad you did. A quiet little town, inexpensive, with wonderful food and gorgeous beaches. Not that Waikiki is bad, mind you: the cosmopolitan bustle is like NYC transplanted to paradise, or — with all the torches and tropical decadence — maybe like ancient Rome transplanted to Vegas.

But if you want something quieter, prettier, less crowded, there’s Kailua, a half-hour away. Here are the last pictures I’ll post, and they’re big; two panoramic views of Kailua beach. One from the surf (1.55 MB), and one from the beach (1.11 MB). I was planning on being all slick with Photoshop and stitching them seamlessly together, but I’m feeling lazy tonight, and I think the seams give a nice sense of time. Enjoy.

Yesterday was a day trip to beaches of the North Shore. Gorgeous drive along the coastal King Kamehameha highway, a few pictures from which I’ve posted below. The blue-water beaches were spectacular, albeit crowded and rocky, and the rugged inland scenery was glorious as well.

So yes, I got my grilled Ono sandwich, and it was as fresh and delicious as yesterday’s; dinner was a sampler plate of Kalua pig, eel and seaweed steamed in a taro leaf, and spice-crusted blackened salmon. The salmon was a bit dry, and the pig a little salty and not as savory as what I’d had before, but the eel was sublime. I’m thinking I might be able to do something like the pig in a slow-cooker, and I can certainly grill some fish, even if I have to go to Boston to get it that fresh, but the eel — man, that’s tough. The taro leaf, however, has the feel and thickness of fresh green corn husks, which gives me some ideas about the intersection of the luau with the New England clambake.

I remember, when I was growing up, hanging out with the kids down by the dam who would catch the green freshwater eels with bits of hot dog on their fishhooks. Their mom fried the eels for them, they said. I’ll have to see about getting some.

Some more pictures for you: one of Kailua beach in late afternoon, and two of this morning’s sunrise.

For scenery like this, I’d get up at 5 AM every day.

I’ve been so busy with conference stuff that I didn’t take the time to find wireless access until a few days in. (And even at a Computers and Writing conference, there were a few minor technical difficulties.) Now that the conference is done with, I’ve been able to unwind a bit and enjoy myself. I’ll post some entries on a few of the sessions I attended when I write them up — maybe that’ll be a lazy break from the sun — but in the interim, I’ll offer a few pictures from in front of my hotel in Waikiki. Here’s what you see when you walk out the front door.

Today, I left the commercial bustle and tourist hubbub of Waikiki for a small, cheap cottege in Kailua, about a five-minute drive from the gorgeous Kailua Beach.

More soon.

So I should be in bed already, sleeping my way towards Oahu, my twelve-hour trip. But I’m not. Scant hours left to sleep, and Zeugma needs her chin rubbed. There was a thunderstorm tonight, and Tink could use some reassurance.

They slink across my desk, my keyboard, demanding attention, offering no advice.

Yes, of course, I stroke their chins, rub their bellies. Yes, of course, I’ll miss them, and they’ll miss me, for a few days.

And we’ll have a fine time together out on the deck when I come home. I’ll drink beer and read something non-academic, and they’ll chase moths.

Just lost five pages of work when Microsoft Word locked up. Yes, I was in the writing groove, and dumb for not saving it. Still, it bugs the hell out of me that so far this year, the only apps I’ve had lock up are Safari (like, twice), and Word (at least eight or ten times), and in past, when I was still using MSIE, it was another frequent offender. This is why I mostly use TextEdit, BBEdit Lite, or uEdit, except when I’m trying to make sure my formatting will be portable: as much as I like .rtf files, and as much as I dislike Microsoft, Word is pretty much ubiquitous.

I used WordPerfect for years, until it got so scarce that I had a hard time getting files to and from other people. (And besides which, Corel is where good software goes to die: via failure to market and failure to innovate, they’ve done a fine job of killing off many an excellent application.) I tried to get by without Word, but it didn’t work, and so now I’m paying the price. I mean, Word is mostly a nice, powerful program, with lots of cool stuff. I just wish it wasn’t built to crash.

Are Microsoft’s coders malicious, or just pathetic?

I’ve been working today on starting to draw together my paper for Computers and Writing 2004, titled “‘Who Computes?’ Now: Class and the Wired Writing Classroom in the Global Information Economy”. I’m presenting at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, along with Joan Latchaw and Matthew Bunce, and I’m pretty excited about it. My presentation will basically be a draft of the first chapter of my dissertation, where I lay out my economic angle on computers and composition. Today, I’ve been going through various Internet studies — U.S. Department of Commerce, Pew, UCLA — and trying to connect some statistics to my theorizing about class, economics, and computers; tomorrow, I’ll go back through the weblog archives by category and see what I can synthesize. I was thinking about trying to do a dash through Shapiro and Varian’s Information Rules and Dyer-Witheford’s Cyber-Marx (PDF chapters), but I don’t think time will permit, unfortunately.

I’m also moderating one of the very first panels, at 9:30 on Friday, so jet lag is gonna be kicking my ass. Still, it looks super-interesting, with Christopher Carter and Teddi Fishman presenting on “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Surveillance”, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Did I mention it’s in Hawaii? I’ll be taking along my sandals, and the new straw Stetson I picked up in Austin (yes, I’m very fair-skinned), and lightweight linen and cotton. And, well, OK, I’ll admit it: I’ve never been to Hawaii, and I haven’t been to the sea in years and years, so I got me a tiny, cheap little cottage by a quiet beach for a few extra days. If blogging gets scarce next week, you’ll know I’m lying in a hammock with some alcoholic tropical concoction in one hand, dragging my toe in the sand.

While San Antonio at 80 degrees in March was a treat after a New England winter, Austin at 90 degrees leaves me missing the 70-degree temperatures back home.

But I definitely can’t complain about my hotel room.

And here’s the view from that balcony last night.

Like I said, I can’t complain.

Ran into a friend of a friend today, who turned out to be one of the ruder people I’ve met. She sure showed me, I guess.

And the paper’s done, except for the minor tweaks I’ll continue to make up until I present it. I’ll post it the presentation version on Monday. Right now, I think I might go have myself a Shiner Bock before heading to Gerard Hauser’s talk on “Moral Vernaculars and Rhetorics of Conscience”.

First Verizon; now my web host. What an infuriating day.