Bryce Moore's Blog, page 222

7 Minute Workout Hell

I’ve never been in any sort of shape other than roundish. Yes, I’ve lost weight before, but when I did that, I ended up just skinnier, not actually any more physically fit. (And I just can’t write that sentence without having this pop into my head:

Sorry. I couldn’t help it. Anyway, while I’ve stayed bulbous, my siblings have done insane things like riding bikes to work or doing daily exercise routines. INSANITY! But this morning, while I was procrastinating writing, I noticed my sister had posted a link to this handy dandy “7 Minute Fitness App.” She said that on days when she doesn’t do her “real” routine, she settles for two time through with this routine, so that she can feel like she did “something.” I did a bit of research to see what exactly this thing did, and after reading it over and giving it all of two seconds’ thought, I figured, “I can do that!”

It beat writing, after all. Right?

So I downloaded the free app, thumbed around on it for a little, got myself a chair and cleared out some space in my living room, and hit “start.” I mean, I’ve been jogging in place every day for like five months. Surely I was up to a few thirty second exercises. 7 minutes and I’d be done!

First up? Jumping jacks. I really threw myself into this. I wanted this to be a real workout, after all. Nothing wimpy. I did those jumping jacks like a boss. 30 seconds, bam! Done.

10 seconds of rest? I laugh at the concept. But because I wanted to humor the app, I did what it told me to do.

Next up? Wall sits. I don’t even know what those are really, and I was too lazy to watch the video. It looked from the picture like you just put your back against a wall and pretend like you’re sitting for 30 seconds. Piece of cake. Good thing this app was free, because I was owning this. I knew I’d been in shape all along. That jogging in place was more help than I’d thought!

Another 10 seconds of rest. No wonder my sister thought she had to do this twice to get any good out of it. On to the next exercise!

Push-ups. 3o seconds, go! Again, I threw myself into this with gusto. I wasn’t going for quality push-ups. I wanted as many as I could do, as fast as I could do them. Fifteen seconds in, I was breathing hard. Twenty-five seconds in, and I switched to push-ups from my knees. Better to do the whole thirty seconds of something, rather than stop, right?

Right.

And finally I actually enjoy a bit of a break, because those push-up had been–

Time for crunches already? Whoa. Okay. Crunches. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do them, I know. But I don’t have time for that. I just start crunching like a mad man. Just call me Captain Crunch, ladies. And man, I wish I could breathe a little easier. Has this crummy app started crashing? Hasn’t it been 30 seconds yet?

At last, it tells me to take my 10 seconds of rest, meanwhile informing me that next up is step ups onto a chair. I drag myself out of a reclining position. Thank goodness I’m using leg muscles now, because my other muscles are wondering what in the world happened to my common sense over the past few minutes. Man up, other muscles! Sheesh.

Step ups. Go! That chair seems to get taller over the course of the 30 seconds. But I keep at it. I’m the jogging in place king, folks. Breathing is for wusses. Somehow or another I get through the step ups. I’m wheezing like a hundred year old bellows by this point. I gasp my way through the 10 second rest and then I’ve got–

Squats? Fine. Whatever. I start them. One. Two. Three. Four. I get maybe 15 seconds through this, and then I decide I’m going to take the next 15 seconds off. This is my first time. It’s okay if I’m not totally perfect, and an extra fifteen seconds’ rest could really help. Because next up is triceps dips, and that means arm muscles, and my arm muscles are still collapsed in a fetal position somewhere in my inner psyche.

In a blink, the triceps dips are upon me. Somehow I get through it. I push myself. I dig deep. I do the whole 30 seconds, and then get ready for . . .

Planks?

More arm muscles? And stomach muscles? What sadist came up with this routine? But whatever. I assume the position, start the planks.

And collapse on the floor after three seconds.

The app continues merrily on its way. 30 seconds goes by in a blink, plus the 10 second rest, and it’s time for high knees running in place.

RUNNING IN PLACE! I’ve been training for that for the past three months or whatever. I lurch to my feet and start jogging in place. Forget high knees. Actually, forget jogging.

I sit down on the floor and listen to the app tell me to go on to lunges, then push-ups and rotations, and then side planks. I’m breathing so heavily I think I might go into cardiac arrest. I’m sweating like a pig and wondering why in the world I took a break from writing to do this. I’m facing the awful truth: I am so out of shape, I couldn’t even get halfway through a 7 minute exercise program without giving up.

I think I’ll try it again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be breathing normally again by then.

Sheesh.

Mario Kart 8 Review

I’ve been playing Mario Kart since the Nintendo 64. Missed out on the Super Nintendo flavor for some reason I can’t recall, but suffice it to say that I’ve paid my blue shell dues over the years. And I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say one of the reasons I’ve made sure to keep myself up to date on Nintendo platforms is because I love the zany fun that is Mario Kart. So when the latest version came out Friday, I already had it on pre-order. I got to be the cool awesome father who buys his kids the latest game and sits down and plays it with them on release day for 4 hours.

I knew all that gaming would make me awesome sooner or later.

I’ve now played the game for three days, and I think I have a good enough read on it to give it a review. It’s a strong game, my friends. Very strong showing for Mario Kart. The graphics are awesome for the series, but of course, who’s playing it for graphics? Things I like:

The tracks have a lot of variety and challenge. Bowser’s Castle? An awesome track. One of my favorites from the whole series. There’s also a really cool one that recreates one of the airship levels on classic Mario games. A downhill skiing track also stands out in my mind.
The controls are just as you’d expect them to be. I’ve seen some reviews holding this against the game. Let me be clear: when I put my money down on a Mario Kart game, I want one thing and one thing only: Mario Kart. They don’t need to recreate the wheel. They need to update the game to the latest platform, add in enough spice to make it different, and then sit back and take my money. This does that (for the most part).
Customizing the karts–plenty of options to do this. You can create a setup that works just how you want it to.
New items–Fun additions. I miss the fake item box, but the sound blaster and the boomerang are fun. Finally having a chance to beat the blue shell is nice. You still need to luck out to have it in your arsenal, but the fact that it’s out there makes a difference.

Some critiques:

Battle mode–They’ve taken away the arenas and the mini-map, so battle mode becomes this alternate way of playing the standard tracks, where you’re supposed to hunt each other down. But the tracks are so big that without the mini-map, you waste a lot of time driving and don’t have nearly enough time shooting each other. That was a let down.
In multi-player mode, all players have to finish the track before you can go on to the next level. I play with my kids. DC is having fun, but she can’t finish a level without a lot of time or some help. It would be nice if she just could race until the end of the last bot to finish. Then again, she really loves finishing a race by herself, so maybe this is just me needing to learn how to be more patient.

It’s been a ton of fun so far. I do miss the days of Double Dash, where I could have a gunner in the back who would take care of firing for me while I raced. DC would love that, no doubt. But really, the game does just what I wanted it to. Is it worth getting a Wii U just for the game? Not sure. That would be quite the investment–though remember, it’s compatible with all of the standard Wii controllers, so you don’t have to invest in anything else other than the game and the system. Plus, Nintendo’s doing a deal right now where if you buy the game and register it online, they’ll let you download another Wii U game for free. Top of the line games, too–Wind Waker, Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros U, or Wii Party U. So that’s an added incentive. The Mario Kart bundle is around $330. Not the cheapest form of entertainment out there, but not the most expensive, either. I said back when I got it that the Wii U is a solid system, and I continue to stand by that statement.

So there you have it. I’d say overall I’d give the game an 8.5/10. The biggest drawback is the lame battle mode. Perhaps that’s fixable through a patch someday. Anyone else out there have the game? What do you think?

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

I suppose if you’re a bird, that saying is mighty tempting. I’m not a big fan of worms, myself. Kind of slimy, aren’t they? I’m also far from a fan of anything “early.” Days shouldn’t have more than 1 6 o’clock, if you know what I mean. But lately, I’ve found myself feeling more and more stressed out when I get home from work. I’ll have had a long day in libraryville, and I know that I’ve got 1,o00 words between me and being done.

Writing when you’re stressed isn’t an easy thing to do. It feels forced, and it takes a ton of time. This is loads of personal experience speaking here.

So the last few days I thought I might switch it up. I’ve been getting up forty minutes earlier than usual, and I spend those forty minutes writing as fast as I can. Focused, binge-writing. Normally, writing 1,000 words can take me an hour or so, and then you have to add in some padding as I procrastinate. Check Facebook. Check the weather. That sort of thing.

With this early approach, it’s all writing and nothing else. I’ve also escaped the stressed feeling by giving myself permission to not get the full 1,000 words done in the morning. Basically, the goal is to get a head start on the rest of the day. If I can just finish most or even some of my 1,000 words then, that means that I have that much less to write when I get home later.

It’s worked wonders. My writing’s felt better, my days have been brighter . . . I just feel like a happier me.

And I’ve gotten more than 1,000 words done each time I’ve done it. Bonus.

Really, this is a principle I’ve known for quite some time and have just forgotten. In college, I eventually had a plan worked out where I would do all my homework ahead of when it *needed* to be done. It made a huge difference. I’d still do homework every day, but knowing that the stuff I was doing that day didn’t need to be done until a few days from then made it feel like I was doing it because I wanted to, not because I had to. Simple mindhack, but effective.

So I plan to be seeing two 6 o’clocks every day again. And for now at least, I’m okay with that.

What are some of the things you do to keep yourself operating at peak efficiency? Please share!

How to Save Money on Your Bills: Just Ask

If there’s one thing I’ve started to notice over the years with bills–particularly bills for non-essential services like internet or cable–it’s that those bills are more “suggestions” than they are “rules.” Case in point: my local internet company is offering a deal for new customers who are willing to lock in a rate for four years. I’ve been with this company for at least that long, so I decided to check in with them to see if I could take advantage of the offer.

The answer? No. I wasn’t a new customer, so I didn’t qualify.

However, they also noted I’d been a loyal customer, and so they made a counter offer: if I would lock in my rate for a year, they’d knock $12 off the monthly charge for two years. They didn’t have to ask me twice. This was the equivalent of me calling someone up and asking for money, and they said, “Sure.”

The same thing was true back when I was ditching Dish. When I called them up to cancel my service, it was amazing the deals they were suddenly willing to offer me. “What if we gave you free premium channels for three months, cut your bill in half for six months, and increased the channels you have access to?” I still said no–free is lower than any counter offer they could give me–but the fact remains that they were very ready to bend over backward to keep me as a customer.

Why is this? I think it’s because non-essential service providers realize that you make a choice to stick with them. You could cancel them or go elsewhere quite easily, so they’re highly motivated to keep you. Plus, they depend on the fact that we’re all creatures of habit. We get in a nice routine and stick with that routine until something jars us out of it. So if they can just get us used to paying that monthly fee every month, then we’ll continue doing for quite some time.

So consider this your yearly reminder: call up your service providers. Email them if that’s too big of a pain. See if they’d be willing to knock some money off your bill. The worst thing they can do is turn you down, and then you’re only out the few minutes it took to write an email. But in my case, that five minutes saved me $288 over the space of two years.

Thanks. I’ll take it.

The War on Mosquitos Has Been Won(?)

My fight with mosquitos at my house has been well documented. Back in 2008, I phrased it like this:

We have Mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos. Like, if Neo from the Matrix was in a blank white room and said, “I need mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos,” he’d been whisked off to our backyard, at which point he would start swatting at his neck and arms, shortly before he was sucked into a bloodless carcass.

Some of this has to do with the area of the country we live in. Maine is notorious for black flies–these tiny biting insects that leave huge welts behind after they’ve chomped down on you. (Denisa and the kids are allergic to their bites, unfortunately. Those welts can get enormous. We’ve had issues with black fly bites in ear canals or on eyelids. It ain’t pretty, folks.) To complicate matters, there’s a very marshy area right by my property, and mosquitos love to breed like crazy there. So you’ve got the perfect recipe for blood sucking, itchy catastrophe. And no matter how much I wished the black flies would start a gang war with the mosquitos that would result in both sides being decimated, that never seemed to come to fruition.

So last year we decided to try out a new weapon against these tiny vampires. We bought a Skeetervac. After doing all the requisite research, that seemed like the best model for us. We put it in at the beginning of last season, and it really seemed to have an effect. We still had mosquitos and black flies, but there weren’t as many as there usually were–we thought.

Fast forward to this year. We put the skeetervac out right at the beginning of spring, trying to stem the incoming flood of insects as best we could. And then we waited for the onslaught to begin. And we waited. And waited.

Folks, there still haven’t been mosquitos at our house. Maybe one or two? And no black fly bites to speak of yet, even though in the past those bugs have proven they have an unquenchable thirst for the blood of my children.

No. Bites.

I’ve asked around to see if this has been a light year for mosquitos and black flies. From the stories I’ve been told, it hasn’t. They’re all out there–just not on my land.

Perhaps it’s too soon. Maybe they’re plotting a surprise attack the next time I’m out mowing my lawn. But you know what? It’s already done a huge amount for helping us enjoy spring and summer somewhat more. And so I thought I might do you all a solid and pass the recommendation on. I can’t say it’ll cure your problems as well–a lot of it comes down to placing it at the right spot and conditions, etc. But if you’re burdened with an overabundance of black flies and mosquitos, then this is definitely something for you to look into. The upfront cost is steep, and then there’s the continuing price of propane, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s money well spent.

Anyone else have experience with these? Any questions? Feel free to chime in.

After 3,685 Days, My Experiment is a Success!

They said it couldn’t be done. Fools! All of them. I had a simple plan. One that would both add hours–if not years–to my life, and bring me untold success and fame. The goal? A biological-based automaton who could do my bidding. And at first, I’ll admit my plan seemed far fetched. There were early days when the experiment couldn’t even contain its fluids, let alone follow simple commands.

But I persisted. I innovated. I taught.

And it learned. And grew.

Bit by bit, I added to its programming. Basic motor control. Two language systems at the same time. Routines for self-care and self-preservation. And because no one wants to spend time with a mindless brute, I incorporated basic culture and gamesmanship.

The untold hours it took! There were days when I doubted myself. Weeks when I thought it would never succeed. That I might as well give up and try something simpler. Why did I have to insist on keeping it biological? Why not go with an android or cyborg? But I knew in my heart that for this to really succeed, I’d have to make sure it was sustainable.

Really, some parts of my creation continue to impress me. It lives on a glucose-based slurry of anything I happen to have hanging around the house. You’ve seen the Mr. Fusion in Back to the Future? This makes that seem like child’s play. There is a certain amount of rebooting that has to happen on a daily basis, but I let that happen while I sleep, and I can’t say I notice any real dip in productivity.

The best thing is that my creation is to the point where it can learn from others now, and not just me. I’ve convinced the government to subsidize its training, and I didn’t even have to go through any complicated grant writing process.

I am a genius.

And as I said, after 3,685 days, my experiment finally came to fruition. I give you THE WORLD’S FIRST AUTOMATIC LAWN MOWER:

Of course, there continues to be some setbacks. The patent process has proven more treacherous than I first had hoped, and I grow increasingly suspicious that some other people have been copying my designs. But I’m confident I’ll work through those issues, as well. In a year or two, I might even think about upgrading its operating system to enable it to go on to create a second generation of automatic lawn mowers.

We’ll see.

In any case, I’m happy to share my discovery with the world, and I’m confident that with this blog post, all shall know and recognize the super-genius that I am.

Eat your heart out, Dr. Frankenstein.

Dealing with Rejection

I’ve been afraid of rejection for as long as I can remember. I’m the sort of person who cares a fair bit about what other people think–more before than I do now, granted. But I still can’t really shake myself of the habit. For a long time, my personality was such that anytime someone would turn me down or tell me no, I’d want to try even harder. Keep at it. Not let it drop until I’d overcome that rejection. Because rejection can come in a lot of different ways. It can be when you’re not picked first (or second, or third . . .) in a pickup game of ball. When you lose out at an audition. When you ask a girl to a dance and she says no. When you submit a manuscript to an editor and they give it a pass.

For a guy who doesn’t like to be rejected (though who does?), I seem to put myself in the way of rejection an awful lot. Sometimes it can come out of the blue and hit you square in the face when you least expect it, or when you’re least prepared. Nothing’s quite like having a downer of a day, only to be socked with a nice rejection letter or two to top it all off. It can be really hard to keep writing, or keep trying, or keep caring, when the hits just keep on coming.

But the thing is, it seems most of the things in this life that are worthwhile end up putting you in the line of rejection fire sooner or later. When I was applying for jobs, I had sent out over 50 applications and heard “no’s” from almost all of them before I finally got a “yes.” After I got that “yes,” I got a few more “no’s.” It was amazing how much easier it was to handle rejection when I already had an acceptance. When I was applying to English doctoral programs and I got no’s across the board . . . that was pretty rough. And then I applied to a single Library Science program and got a yes. Go figure.

I’ve had all sorts of rejections over the years. In eighth grade English, when my teacher refused to recommend me for the advanced English course the next year. (Reason? I couldn’t write well enough.) On my mission in Germany, when each and every day was filled with people telling me I was wrong, I was wasting my time, or I was deluded. The job applications I mentioned. The query letters. Asking girls out back in the day.

No matter how much practice I get with it, it doesn’t seem to get a whole lot easier. I think sometimes I assume that there will come a day when rejection will be a thing of the past, or when I won’t care anymore. Sometimes, I think we keep trying to prove ourselves in different ways because we think that if we just become great enough, then we’ll be at a level where rejection doesn’t hurt anymore. But from my experience, no matter the level you reach, you’re still in danger of having someone tell you “no.”

So what do we do about it? I still have that contrary streak in me. The desire to try harder once I get rejected. It’s done me pretty well so far, though I’ll also admit that there are times when it takes a bit longer to pick myself up off the ground and try again. Like with my job applications, it’s much easier to deal with rejection when you’re in a position of strength. So it’s when we’re at our most vulnerable that it hurts the most, and that’s unfortunately often when we have to put ourselves in the most danger of being rejected.

I don’t really have a conclusion here. But I was working on writing yesterday when a few types of rejection reared their ugly heads. Ironically, the scene I was writing was about a character dealing with rejection. So there I was, stuck in the same boat as the poor guy I’d just inflicted the same thing on that happened to me. Maybe I can turn to him to see how he dealt with it. It’s first draft stuff, but I’ll share it anyway, since I feel it applies to the current discussion. In this scene, Eldin (the main character) is talking to his friend Braces about the setbacks they’ve been having at school. (Important note: Eldin is fairly amoral. He’s got a code he lives by, but it isn’t the one you and I might choose to obey.)

“Don’t you want to just throw in the towel, mate?” Braces asked me one evening about a week after we’d returned. “Nobody would blame you. Nobody wants us here. They’d probably throw us a ruddy going away party.”

I grunted, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. “And that’s why I’m not going to give up.”

“Come again?”

I rolled over on my side, propping myself up on an elbow. “Come on, Braces. Give up? When all these people want me to? When they’re all being jerks to us and doing their best to get us to leave? Doesn’t that make you want to stay even more?”

Braces stared at me in confusion. “What? No.”

I shook my head. “Then maybe you and I are different. Me? Bobba always said I was stubborn. Not just kind of sort of stubborn, either. I’m hardcore stubborn, and I know it. Someone tells me I can’t do something or shouldn’t do something, then all I want to do is go and do it. Prove them wrong. Shove their faces in it and have them be forced to admit that they were wrong and I was right.”

My friend thought about that for a while, scratching his head in an almost caricature of concentration. “So,” he said at last. “For you, it’s not about succeeding. It’s about winning?”

A smile broke out on my face. “That’s my whole life in one sentence. Perfectly put, Braces.”

He hesitated before he asked the next question, maybe afraid I was going to be ticked at his lack of faith. “And what happens if you lose?”

The smile didn’t drop an inch. I shrugged. “I keep playing.”

“That’s insanity, Eld. In. Sanity. Me? I go slink off and try to pretend it all never happened.”

“But don’t you see?” I asked. This conversation suddenly seemed important. Like it meant something more than it had a moment ago. Like I was trying to justify this to myself, and if I could convince Braces—if I could make him see—then it would all be okay, and my worries would be over. I would be right.

I continued. “Life is a game. It starts the day we’re born, and it ends the day we die. But some people give up long before that happens. You have something go wrong, and you think you lost. Why is that? Why do people just give up? I think it’s because of movies. We’re used to seeing good guys win or bad guys lose, and as soon as that happens, it’s roll credits, fade to black. But that’s wrong. That’s not how it works. Because their lives keep going in reality. None of us get a fade to black until we’re dead. So you have a setback? So what? If you have a bad dice roll in Monopoly, do you give up and go read a book? You keep playing. Life is a game, and the person who wants to win it needs to keep playing until it’s over.”

Braces stared at me, thinking it over. “So you don’t think you can lose?”

I shrugged. “Not unless I admit the game is over and I lost.”

Another pause. “But . . . What if you’re bankrupt in Monopoly, your opponent owns all the hotels, and the rules say you lost?”

It all clicked in my head at once—my explanation, my feelings, my thoughts. I lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “That’s when you start cheating. Change the rules. Steal from the bank. You do what you need to do to just. Keep. Playing. Life doesn’t have a timer. It doesn’t have rules written down. There are no goal posts, and no one knows how we’re really keeping score. So why in the world would anyone ever want to just give up?”

Braces didn’t say anything for a long time. Long enough that I thought he must have fallen asleep. It was okay. I let my mind wander over the possibilities. What the future might hold, and how I might respond to it. I hadn’t been kidding about changing the rules. Like I’d told him before: running a successful con—winning, in this case—all came down to knowing the angles better than your opponent. Our Lady had set up the rules. This school was much more like a real game than it was like real life. And so if I could tweak things the right way, I knew I’d come out on top.

And then, out of nowhere, Braces added one more sentence. “Remind me not to play you at Monopoly, mate.”

He wasn’t the first person to make that decision. And he wouldn’t be the last.

I think I do believe that. Keep playing. You get rejected, fine. It’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. But you don’t give up, and you don’t let it dissuade you. If I’d stopped applying for jobs at number 30 or 40, I’d never have gotten the one I have now. I know it doesn’t always work like this–I know that there are real setbacks and real costs and terrible things–but in the end, we all have a choice about how we’re going to respond to it all.

I hope I can continue to just keep playing.

A Few Rocksmith Critiques

I continue to use and love Rocksmith, years after first getting it. (For those of you who don’t know or remember, it’s a guitar game, where the controller is an honest to goodness real electric guitar or bass. You play along with real songs–not covers–where they’ve taken out the guitar or bass tracks, and you get to fill them back in. The game starts off very basic, and then it ramps up as you learn more.

On the surface, it’s a great idea. It’s also one I’ve happily used for years now. I’m to the point where I definitely feel like I can play electric guitar and bass. Not that I’m a rock star or anything, but I feel adequate. On a scale from 1 to 10, I think I’m around a 4. I know that sounds like not a lot, but this is coming from a musician background, where my idea of what a 10 is is extremely high. A 4 ain’t that bad.

But here’s where the critique comes in. I’m good enough now to know exactly how bad I am, and the difficulty level of the songs has progressed to the point where I pretty much need to be playing the exact song to improve. And so where for the longest time, I could just sort of play along and hit most of the notes, now the game’s asking me to hit all of them.

That last jump from most to all is a real doozy.

And it’s made more difficult by the fact that I’m inevitably comparing myself to professional musicians. They’re the ones playing along with me, they’re the ones whose notes I’m mimicking, and they’re much–much–better than I am. (Well not all of them. Seriously. Some of these songs are just so easy, I kind of feel bad that I was ever impressed with the song to begin with. I learn how to play it, and I feel like the bands have been cheating me all this time.)

As I’ve thought about it, I think the real problem is that Rocksmith got me to the level where I am using artificial means. In other words, I have no idea about the theory behind what I’m playing. I’m just good at playing notes as they tell me what notes to play. Sort of like teaching someone to write by having them retype Moby Dick or Great Expectations. You can get to the end result, but you have no idea how you got there. And to get to the next level, there’s a ton more work involved.

That’s me now. I’m at a 4, and I’d love to get to a 5 or 6. But I know now that it’s going to be a lot of real work to get there, and I’m not sure if I have the time and dedication ready to get me there. What I really need to do is pick a song and learn it all the way through, but I’ve been avoiding that. I like to dabble too much.

Not that this is a really big issue. I mean, this is a lovely problem for a game to be having. It’s just a realization I came to the other day while I was jamming to some CAKE in the game. (So excited to see one of my favorite bands come to the platform!) It was good times, but daunting too.

Any of you out there use Rocksmith? Any thoughts to add? I still heartily recommend it and love the game. Just wish there were a magic formula for getting better–that didn’t involve “lots of practice.” (Ha!)

Moving Jobs, Moving Offices

I alluded to this a week or two ago, but I’ve recently switched titles here at work, going from thirteen syllables (Library Information Services Manager) to fourteen syllables (Manager of Instructional and Research Services). What does that mean in practice? For one thing, it means I’ll be doing (or supervising) everything I used to be doing (or supervising), but now I’ll be supervising even more excitement. I’m going to try and phrase this in a way a non-librarian would understand. Before, I was over technology, buying books, cataloging books, and databases and magazines. Now I’ve got that, with more responsibility over some of those areas, plus overseeing reference, instruction, training, and some other things I’m no doubt forgetting.

But more immediately, it means I’m moving offices. I’m currently on the top (third) floor of the library, and I’ll now be back on the first floor–ironically in the same office where I started here. It’s smaller, but closer to the public. I really don’t care where I work at all. I’m bringing my chair and computer with me, and the rest is just window dressing–though cleaning my old office and moving my crud is kind of a pain. Though on the plus side, I still have the same stapler.

So that’s what’s going on here. I suppose I really should mosey over to LinkedIn and put in a new job title, but I think I’ll wait to do that until the ink’s dry on the contract. Just announcing this publicly now because of the literal office move.

Long story short? Same building, lots of the same duties, some new ones, and a new office.

Maybe this should have been more of a Twitter-length announcement . . .

Did Led Zeppelin Plagiarize ‘Stairway’?

So I’m happily cruising through my day today, when suddenly this article pops up on my radar. Being a trained librarian and all, I’m a sucker for anything plagiarism-related, and something this well known would make an awesome example. Led Zeppelin ripping off the music to one of the group’s best known songs? So I give the song a listen:

Okay . . . There’s the same chord progression in spots. I’ll grant them that. But here’s Stairway (in case you need a little live Zeppelin for your Tuesday. And who doesn’t?)

I’m sorry. There’s no story here. Chord progressions doth not plagiarism make. Otherwise, ol’ Johann Sebastian might come looking for a few lawsuits of his own. Now, if you want to see actual ripping off at work, let’s stop, collaborate and listen:

Calling Mr. Bowie and Queen. Mr. David Bowie and Queen! Please report to the front desk to pick up your ripped off material.

That’s sampling without permission there, folks. That’s got some lawsuit potential. (Word is they settled out of court.) But this Zeppelin thing? It seems like a good way to get a lot of people to listen to that first video up there and hope that other people start loving your music. So let’s not end on that note. How about some Zeppelin/Sabbath mashup goodness to give an ironic parting shot across the plagiarism bow this fine day? Enjoy, peoples. And don’t mess with Zeppelin unless you’ve actually got a leg to stand on.