Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 33

And the Winner Is...

In both my World History and my Western Civ classes, I usually have a question on the final about, What five people most influenced Western Culture (or World History) in the period studied (4 million BC to 1500 a.d.) and WHY?

This is partly because a lot of students freeze on exams, or have trouble reading the textbook, or whatever: basically, it's a save-yourself question for those who might very well blow one of the others. But what I'm looking for is the WHY part. Give me evidence. Tell me specifics. I'm interested in the argument rather than the nominees.

However, the nominees are pretty fascinating.

Here's the breakdown between two classes, World History and Western Civ. It's slanted slightly towards Western Europe because both classes cover the West, and only one (though it was the larger class) covers China, India, etc.

Martin Luther wins with 9 votes. I guess the lecture about Indulgences and Popes Behaving Badly impresses a lot of people.
Columbus gets 8 votes, Alexander the Great, 7. Jesus and Muhammed tie with 6 apiece. Generally the same people who vote for Jesus, also vote for Muhammed. Buddha got 4, St. Paul tied with Julius Caesar at 3 apiece.

Two votes each to: Constantine, Hammurabi, Hernan Cortez, Confucius, Elizabeth I, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, and Homer.

There were gang votes - votes for a people or group - for the Spartans, the Athenians, and the Medici Family. (?!?)

The single votes always delight and puzzle me. Why Jan Hus, the medieval Czech reformer and patriot who was burned as a heretic? Did somebody happen to drop in to class the day I lectured about the later middle ages? What lasting effect did Cleopatra or the Empress Wu have on civilization, amazing as it was that they ruled, and ruled well, in their own place and time? And who did the students who voted for "Charles the First" and "King Henry" think they were talking about? (We certainly never touched on Charles I of England - perhaps Charles Martel? Or Charlemagne?)

Those who got a single vote were: the Pharoah Narmer (first Pharoah of a united Egypt), Abraham, John Wycliffe (first Englishman to translate the Bible), Jan Hus (Czech heretic and patriot), "Charles the First"(?), "King Henry" (IV of France, perhaps?), Socrates, Aristotle,Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, the Empress Wu of China (!), and, of all people, Henry VIII. (For bringing the Protestant Reformation to England).

But, the grades are in and posted, and I now get to write Ben January #12.

Swinging the Big Ax

Finished grading finals - I'm now figuring out the course grades, always an exercise in judgement. There are few surprises, except that I'm always surprised at those students who don't bother to read the part of the syllabus that says, "Do not think that just because YOU quit showing up for class, I'M going to drop you from the roster. If you're going to drop out of the class, YOU have to do the paperwork..." There's always a couple of F's for those who simply quit showing up.

And there's always a couple who were in there trying their DARNDEST, and who were just in over their heads, mostly because - I suspect - they can't read sufficiently well to decipher the textbook. Frustrating and sad.

And then of course there's those who just don't give a rat's ass.

Between grading, I made gingerbread: I'm making a gingerbread-butterscotch trifle for Christmas luncheon. Love the way the house smells. I'll make the custard tomorrow for it, in between totting up final grades for the last of my classes, and ironing table-linen.

Magistrates Yet Again

Yay! Finally got the copy-edit of Magistrates of Hell!
I am ALMOST done with grading finals - if I see one more student who speaks of Queen Elizabeth taking the thrown of England I will tear his/her exam up and throw it away!
And, I'm re-discovering the meaning of the word, 'rest.' It's very pleasant to wake up after having had enough sleep, and to not feel pressured all time time (except, of course, I know I have to start on Root, Hog, or Die this afternoon)... Very pleasant to have the only thing that occupies me be the 36-hour Christmas Family Marathon (Christmas luncheon followed by Boxing Day brunch).
Very pleasant to actually feel like myself again.

Fairest In The Land

Okay, it's up!
The Sun Wolf short-story (well, not so short - it's over 11,000 words) "Fairest in the Land" is now on the Website!
I'd originally wanted to put it and "Corridor" up at the same time, but I also wanted to have that done before Thanksgiving (the second anniversary of The Further Adventures).
I've had "Fairest" in mind for a long time - essentially, my take on Sleeping Beauty, with Sun Wolf hired to take on the Evil Queen. I'm extremely pleased with how it came out.

The Apple Issue, by the way, is more or less resolved. I have to re-load several CDs (since the backup of the music library is inexplicably several years older than the backup of most of the documents), but at least iTunes now recognizes my hard-drive. MANY thanks to those who gave me help and advice today!

S.O.S. Need Help!

Since Apple iTunes includes no Customer Support phone number that I can find on any of their websites, I need help.

1) My hard-drive crashed.
2) The backup was several months old. There were tunes I'd previously purchased backed up, many that were not.
3) There were songs that I'd purchased, that had not been backed up.
3) The Apple Store does not recognize the new drive, so will not download the purchased-not-backed-up songs to the new drive.

Thus:
a) How do I get iTunes to recognize the new hard drive?
b) If it recognizes the new hard drive, will the purchased-and-backed-up songs disappear?
c) Will these all disappear off my iPod the first time I sync?

Can someone please give me instructions on what to do?
Or, can anyone give me a phone number for Apple that they can talk me through what I assume must be a simple process.
I am surely not the only person this has ever happened to.

And, what the heck has happened with LiveJournal? I am getting just the basic version - no pretty graphics. Is this because of the hard drive issue, or is this an LJ Issue?

Virus vexation

Well, I'm now thoroughly vexed. In addition to a substantial acreage of shingles blowing off my roof, my computer has now gone away to have a virus scraped out of it - and of course all that goes through my mind is the number of things that I DIDN'T back up over the past six months. However, one thing I DID back up was the story, "Fairest in the Land," which I'd put onto a flash-drive the day before so I could work on it in my office at school... which is where I'll be answering my e-mails from, in the few hours I'll be here today, tomorrow, and Friday. And since I'd just finished Magistrates of Hell - and sent it off - and "Corridor" - and sent it off - I'm actually not in bad shape...
Though it's severely annoying to have to re-load programs, if the virus is the kind that requires wiping the disk.
a) I have a WONDERFUL computer-guy. His equally wonderful partner talked me through the preliminaries of yes, there's definitely a problem.
b) In the midst of all this, Mr. Roofing Guy phoned and THAT's on the road. With luck, before it rains next week.
c) The Universe may have taken away all my Christmas-money, but 1) the money was THERE, and it's better to lose money ear-marked for something else than to not have that money when the problem arose and 2) any sudden demand for money by the Universe that DOESN'T involve a visit to the ER for myself or one of my pets is... if not enjoyable, at least acceptable.
I finished "Fairest in the Land" on the flash-drive, and hope to get it loaded by this weekend.

Ragamummages and Princesses

In the Antryg & Joanna novella "Corridor" I mention creatures called Ragamummages - the things your cats stare at, when they're staring at the ceiling in the twilight. For the invention of these I credit George Alec Effinger, who said he always wanted to use them in a story but never found the right place to put them. He and his first wife, Diana, came up with them, he said. Mummages are small and invisible, like insects, but cats can see them, and when they die, their skeletons become visible as dust-bunnies under the couch. (I'm sure George wasn't the first person to come up with a theory of what it is the cat stares at - I think HP Lovecraft did something similar, and who knows how many other fantasy writers in between. Certainly my cats watch and stalk - and apparently occasionally catch - mummages all the time.)

The second of my two Princess stories is almost done. This is a Sun WOlf and Starhawk tale, which I'd hoped to release simultaneously with Corridor. Having grown up on Fairy Princess stories - especially the gorgeous Disney feature cartoons like Cinderella, Snow White, and SLeeping Beauty - I have an interest in the "topos," as my Renaissance Lit professor termed it: the trope, or meme, or whatever you call a recurring image/idea, of the lovely Princess around whom the action of the tale centers. What's actually going on with these girls? I had two Beautiful Princess stories in mind, one of which, the John Aversin story "Princess," is already on the website. The second, "Fairest in the Land," is another take on Beautiful Princesses, with Sun Wolf stepping in as rescuer and not too happy about it - it should be up before Christmas. It's been very good to be back writing the old scoundrel, after all these years.

In the Real World, the semester is wrapping itself up. It's been difficult and VERY tiring, and of course now that the crunch is on to turn in the short-paper homework assignments, I'm sorting through the usual tangle of things that were plagiarized off Wikipedia and FreeEssays. At the beginning of every semester I explain, at length and with pictures on PowerPoint, what is and isn't plagiarism: DO NOT cut-and-paste and pretend YOU wrote it. Do they not listen? Not understand? Do they forget? Are they on meds? (A report a couple of years ago about drivers estimated that one in ten of your fellow motorists on the freeway are on some controlled or uncontrolled substance, so the ratio is probably the same for the classroom).

They're always so hurt - and so surprised - when I turn their little asses over to the Dean of Students (even though I told them at the outset that's what I'd do). What did they think was going to happen? It's not my job - or it shouldn't be, anyway - to guess what's going on in the student's life or head when they don't follow directions that are clearly given both orally and in the Class Syllabus.

And I need to repair or replace a substantial portion of my roof, so I guess the people who were going to get nice Christmas presents this year, aren't.

Fooey.

Chilly winds

After one of those balmy, cloud-filmed afternoons on the half-deserted campus yesterday, abrupt switch to dry sharp cold and HOWLY winds with fall of darkness. Driving home over the hills (since CalTrans starts closing lanes on the 405 at 10, which is when my class lets out), in two places the road was nearly completely blocked by trees that had blown down, massive dark groping tangles in the headlight glare. When I got home, the yard was littered with shingles blown from my roof (and assorted other debris).

In the student store that afternoon, saw the newest tweak on Energy Drinks: in addition to those deadly-looking little black-and-red phials of Ninja and Rebel Fire five-hour energy shots, at the other end of the counter were restful white-and-pale-blue bottles of Dream Water, "calms you down and lets you sleep." Presumably, if you're still in a frenzy from drinking Ninja and have to get SOME sleep before your early class. Reminds me of the classmates in my high school in the '60s, who'd take reds and whites - amphetimines and then barbiturates...

None for me, thanks.

One more week of class. Then with luck I can settle down and get the first draft of Ben January # 12 started: Root, Hog, or Die. And a LOT of research to get started on.

I've been re-reading the mainstream Civil War novel I wrote a couple of years ago, Homeland - a very simple little story about two (female) friends on opposite sides in the Civil War, and what happened on the homefront, in New England and in Tennessee. It never went anywhere, but I'm VERY fond of it.

Feast done - table clean

Such a lovely Thanksgiving day. Most - though not all - of the family came; there was a turkey the size of a Volkswagen; there were scallopped potatoes and yams and pumpkin pie; there was constant talk; there were wild swings of hysterics because a) the turkey wasn't going to be done on time and b) the turkey was going to be done too soon. My nephew and his sweetie came early to help set up, my friend ro-anshi lingered late to help clean up. Hosting a dinner like this is like putting on a play. I'm single, I live by myself, and yet I have FOUR full-dress holiday banquet "sets" of dishes, tablecloths, and napkins... what's that about? Well, they're like the flats and props and sets for four productions.

And now it's over and I get to put my feet up and have a quiet, solitary evening before doing LosCon for the rest of the weekend.

The cats spent the day shut in the bedroom and are massively offended. My back hurts from standing. (It will hurt worse by the end of the weekend).

I love the holidays and can't wait til Christmas.

McCaffrey gone

Just heard the news that Anne McCaffrey passed away. At age 85, after a rich, full life.
Beautiful dragons.