In the past, any item of houseware or appliance given to us by my family has either broken or proven inferior somehow. This has been a consistent pattern, so we stopped accepting those sorts of gifts after a while. Of course, when we got back to the city, we ended up accepting a few things to make our lives easier and because we figured it would be ok.

Last summer, the futon frame they gave us broke. I finally ordered a new one yesterday, so at least we will have one that we like now.

Yesterday, the tv they bought for us broke. It sounds like the tube has shorted out or something. We decided that we had to get a new, and I talked myself into paying a little extra for an LCD. At least it's a nice new tv.

The Mardi Gras report:

Living three blocks from the parade route gives one the opportunity to go to many parades. I've spent the last couple of weeks exercising said opportunity. I don't want to give a day-to-day breakdown, but I'll put down some highlights.

Friday, three parades were scheduled: Hermes, Krewe d'Etat, and Morpheus. Due to rain, Muses got tacked on at the end. I went out around 7:00pm and found that the theme for Hermes was one of my favorite myths, "Cupid and Psyche." During a gap, I got some food, then went back to the apartment to eat it, and went back out to catch the end of Hermes. I got some cool stuff from Krewe d'Etat, mostly a flashing high priest medallion, and then settled into a chair to watch Morpheus so I could rest up for Muses. Any reputation that Muses has for really awesome throws and generosity is well-deserved. I caught all kinds of nifty stuff, and just about anything remotely electronic had a battery compartment, so when the battery runs down, I can just replace it. By the time Muses was done, it was midnight, the latests I've ever been at a parade.

On Saturday, the main event was Tucks. Once again, really good throws, very generous riders, and a good long parade.

By Lundi Gras, I was pretty tired of the whole endeavor. Friday night really took the wind out of me, but I still wanted to go. I just made less and less effort to catch things.

Today, we got up early to catch Zulu. We're actually kinda close to the beginning of the route, so we had to get out there quick. We walked up to St. Charles at 8:30am, just as the lead vehicle was passing. Now, I hadn't been much for throws, but there are some things I always like to get. If there's a medallion, I like those. We use the cups (what person here doesn't?), and doubloons, when they throw them, have been my favorite since childhood. Of course, the one thing that trumps all of that is a Zulu coconut. I've only seen Zulu once before and that time, I came away with no coconut for my trouble. When Zulu started, I didn't think I would even really try for one this year, but as the floats passed, I realized that Tara's outfit (pictures to follow in her journal, I'm sure) might just be eye-catching enough to snag one. Furthermore, the riders were throwing out more coconuts than usual, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try. I talked her and Alice into going up front to see what they could do, and within a few minutes, a rider tossed a silver coconut right into Tara's hands. She had also tried to get one every time she went to Zulu, so she was really happy, and from there, we were content.

We took a break for lunch after Zulu, then watched some of Rex. Zulu had gotten delayed a good bit, so it was 12:30 by the time they were done and Rex was following right after them. We missed the court floats during out lunch, but caught most of the other floats, and they went by very quickly to keep on something that resembles a schedule. None of us felt like going out for the truck parades, so we just basked in our coconut-laden victory for the rest of the day.

Now, I'm sun-burned, tired, neither drunk, nor stoned, nor hungover, and I have to teach tomorrow.

Namaste

Today I finished the syllabi for both of my classes. They're ready to copy and put online. Now, I just have to prepare material for the first week, but I've still got time for that. I'm looking forward to rereading Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I last read it for a paper two years ago, so some of the high points have faded. I'm also still getting used to the idea of teaching philosophy of religion at a nominally faith-based university. The class is usually taught by the Chaplin. My Buddhism class also looks pretty good. I've got a better idea of how much I can cover, so I found it easy to make out a schedule. Having all of these lectures recorded will be cool as well.

The other day, we went to Lakeside Mall to buy a new calendar. Now, it's been a while since I've been to the mall, so this is the first time I had to deal with the new parking garage. Does anyone find that thing poorly laid out? It seemed harder, not easier, to find a space, and it was just difficult to get around. The whole thing just seemed designed by less intelligent monkeys than the ones who usually design such things.

Classes will be starting again, so I spent some time working on the syllabus for one of my classes. In the course of this, I learned that I don't really get a spring break. Tulane breaks the week before Dillard does, resulting in little more than a couple of long weekends. I think this sucks, but I guess it's not too big of a deal.

For New Year's Eve, we walked down to Jackson Square for fireworks, then met up with a few people, and when everyone els seemed about to go in opposite directions, we walked home. For me, the whole thing was an immersion into public festivals, and a taste of what a festival would be like in a pre-modern city. Basically, I've really gotten into my Exalted character, so I wanted to go a little deeper into a certain way of mentally mapping living space.

Yesterday, I handed in the grades for my Buddhism class, so I am officially done with this semester. woot.

Our apartment's people:computer ratio has increased to 2:5. Two desktops, two laptops, and one box inherited from my mother. I decided to turn the new box into a home theatre pc. Here's the details:

Dell Dimension Something or Other
2.80 GHz processor
512 mb RAM
80 Gb hard drive
Ati RX300 video card with S-video out
DVD/CD-RW optical drive
6 rear USB ports, two front USB ports
Audigy sound card

I cleared the hard drive and installed Mythbuntu 7.10. Once I got the video drivers up, I switched from my old 17 inch CRT monitor to the tv via S-Video. I bought a Belkin wifi adapter which worked right out of the box, and hooked it into my home wireless network. I installed Azureus for managing torrents and bookmarked all of my favorite torrent search engines on firefox. For sound, I set up a set of Dell pc speakers (with subwoofer). Now, I have a working MythTv front end for watching and ripping dvds. so far, it locks up when trying to play an .avi, but If I exit MythTv and go into the desktop, I can open VLC player and play whatever I want, at full screen. today, I installed Zsnes and Mame, and set them up to be accessible from MythTv. Zsnes works like a charm. i'm still downloading a set of Mame roms. I also plugged in and configured my joystick.

Now, the fifth computer is the ultimate piracy box. Instead of downloading shows and burning them to dvd to watch them, I will download them onto the Piracy Appliance and watch them directly. I've got games, rss news feeds, and even the fucking weather channel. This setup truly rocks.

Thanks for all of your support over the last week. It's been hard, but it's getting better. The funeral was fine until the preacher decided to capitalize on my mother's death to proselytize. I haven't heard anything that bad since Jeremy's funeral. At least it's done now.

Stuff for my classes is coming together, which is good. I finished grading for logic, so now there's just buddhism. Then, preparing for next semester.

I passed my first qualifying paper, so the first major project for my PhD is done. From here on, all the work goes into the dissertation somehow.

Friday, we drove to Florida to pick up Rachael. I really needed to get away, and I was looking forward to surprising Whitney. A drugged-out haze later and we were back in a much colder New Orleans.

Now, i'm waiting for a friend to come over for more drugged-out hazes and a movie of some kind.

So, today I had to go identify my mother's body. My grandparents initially wanted me to go in alone because they didn't think they could handle it. However, at the last minute, my grandmother thought she would regret it more if she didn't see Theresa to say good-bye one more time. Really, seeing her wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. She looked ok, and I know that by now she's likely cremated, so i won't have to deal with it again.

However, this entire process has had its moments. Some of you may have gathered that my mother and I shared lots of interests, and this is true to a large extent. Well, let me be the one to tell you, that when you share lots of interests with your parents, you really should expect to inherit some things that you'll like and enjoy for practical as well as sentimental reasons. This has been nice, but it has also meant that part of my inheritance is my mother's collection of anime porn. Now, this shouldn't come as a shock since I recommended most of those movies to her myself. She just told me one day that she liked anime, porn, and vampires. Well, you can guess that there's some duplicates in our collection, but she also had some things I never bought. As such, I now get to say that I inherited the first two volumes of Cool Devices, and Legend of the Overfiend.

Now, I'm happy about this, but I feel a little squicked out at watching my mother's porn. I don't know if it's better or worse that I felt no similar discomfort when I went for her handcuffs and leg shackles (she was a correctional officer, remember?).

Thankfully, Tara, not I nor my grandmother, found Theresa's vibrator. Doubly good that it's a bullet type, and as such not recognizable for what it is by my grandmother.

I just want to make this quick, to let people know. Thursday nightt, around 1:00 am, my mother died. We had had our differences in the past, but had patched things up over the last couple of years, so I don't hold any regrets in that regard. However, it is the most profound expression of the momentary nature of existence, on several levels really. I hope to post the brief lecture I gave for my class today, I just don't know where best to upload an audio file. I'll figure it out soon enough, though.

Otherwise, thanks for stopping by and giving this a read.

Namaste

Remember the other day when I said I themed my laptop to a more Mac-like look and added a dock program? Well, this experience has taught me that I don't like the whole dock thing. I used avant-window-navigator on my desktop and now on my laptop as well, and it just doesn't do things the way i want to do them. The simple panels work way better for me. I think part of the issue that I like gnome panel applets better than the awn applets. It's the little things, like how the clock and calendar syncs with my appointments in Evolution (synced from my Palm Zire71). It all just works together. Maybe there is an environment where I would awn, but I haven't found it yet.

So, today, I decide to undo the Mac thing, which meant I needed to pick a new theme. I decided to try out the default Ubuntu Human theme, just for kicks. The brown and orange turned me off initially, so I never used it much. I preferred Crux in my early days and in the absence of anything interesting, will still go back to Crux. this time, I thought I'd see what it would be like with Ubuntu as the art team would have me see it. And you know, I was surprised at how much I liked it. The browns have gone in a darker direction, which tones down the orange as well. I picked an brown-orange emerald theme, and the overall effect is quite pleasing. It's dark without sharp contrasts, very mellow, and very not what other desktop environments look like right now. I even found an ubuntu firefox skin to complete the immersion. I don't know how long I'll keep it like this, but it's really good for now, and I'll keep it in mind next time I decide to shuffle themes on my desktop.

In other computer-related news, my laptop feels especially fast compared to my desktop, and I think the culprit is Azureus. It's in my list of programs to run each session, and it just eats memory. i should shut it down more often and start it up again when I'm just going to encode a dvd (another memory-heavy process) or go to sleep.

I'm also thinking about trying out KDE again. There's been so much buzz about KDE 4, it's tempting to see what the early adoptions in Kubuntu look like.

I thought about most of this in connection with grading my logic class's final exams at the coffeeshop today. I still have to average their grades and report the totals. After that, I'll be done with Dillard for the semester, and I'll only have the exam and essay to grade for Buddhism. Of course, I still need to read more of the books for Philosophy of Religion next semester, make a syllabus for that, and rework my Buddhism syllabus for the spring. It never ends, but at least it's all work that can largely be done while high.

End of the semester update. Both of my classes are winding down, so I'm at the point where I don't have much to do other than wait for the last assignments to come in. That starts tomorrow with my logic class's final exams. I get the same from my Buddhism class on Friday, then I think i have two weeks before their papers are due. Grading is not so bad.

I do need to step up work on my philosophy of religion class next semester. I have more books to reread and a couple of short pieces to find and photocopy before I can write my syllabus. My Buddhism syllabus will likely be a little different for next semester, but i haven't made any final decisions on that yet.

My keyboard suffered a small spill, so my a and s keys are stuck. I cleaned them, but not as thoroughly as they need to be cleaned. i'm waiting to see how much regular use will wear the sticky coating before I go out and buy a new keyboard. However, the situation has yet to improve, so I might go out and get one soon. It's that or do a really thorough cleaning, and that may be more trouble than it's worth.

The voice recorder I got to record my lectures has been working out well.

i swear, I keep thinking I have more to say, but i don't really.