Metapost

Stuff that pertains to the site and whatnot.

Liebster Award

| xeyeti

Apparently I’ve won an award of some sort.

Usually, I don’t really pay any attention to these. I’ve received three or four of them since I started doing the daily sketches, and generally just ignore them. But I decided with this one to go ahead and post it. Why? Dunno. Whimsy, I guess.

Anyway, reader starscrapper99 nominated me for this one. I’m apparently supposed to nominate other blogs for this thing, so I guess I’d go with:

1. http://culturaltrash.wordpress.com
2. http://everyrecordtellsastory.com
3. http://normsonline.com
4. http://karenbjones.com
5. http://scottspinks.wordpress.com

I’m apparently supposed to notify these folks, but eh, they can figure this whole business out for themselves, I figure.

The rules (or whatever) are:

1. In the post, include the logo plus thank and put a link to the blogger who nominated you.
2. Answer the questions you have been given, then create any number of questions to give to your nominees.
3. Nominate 5 or more bloggers, and notify them that you have done so.
4. Sit back and relax.

Anyway, here are the questions I’m supposed to answer.

What do you think about home-educating?

As a teacher, I usually frown on the idea. Being a teacher is pretty darn difficult and requires a fair amount of training and effort to get good and effective at it. That being said, I’ve met some folks who were home schooled and turned out pretty good, but most of the people I know who were home schooled had educators for parents. That probably skews the data a bit.

If You Could Be Anyone On The Planet, Who Would It Be?

It’s a bit of a cop-out, but I’d be me. I mean, let’s all be honest, I’m pretty awesome.

Do You Prefer Writing or Reading? Why?

Tricky. I do more reading than writing, on average, and will sit and read for hours on end if given the opportunity. That said, I also love writing. If I had to give up one, it’d be writing, so I guess I prefer reading.

What Foods Do You Think Make People Fat?

Honestly, after talking with my wife’s nutritionist, I think it’s less what one eats and more how one eats and how much. My wife spent the best part of a year eating steak, food cooked in butter and olive oil, and drinking heavy cream in her coffee. And she lost weight. That being said, processed food seems to be pretty horrible in general, so I’m gonna say processed food is the devil of fatness.

I’m now at the point where I make up my own questions, so here they are:

1. What are your Top 5 Albums of all time?
2. What’s the most poisonous aspect of the current American political climate?
3. If you could hang out with any figure in history, how would you mess with them and attempt to alter the future?
4. Who’s your favorite Doctor (Doctor Who, that is)?

Embarrassment

| xeyeti

I was looking back through several of my posts from the past couple of months last night (insomnia is a curse, I tell ya). I noticed while cruising through my archives that I’ve made a considerable number of typos.

Now, this may not seem like a big deal; this is, after all, the Internet, where typos are just the natural order and cats “can has cheezburger.” But I worked as a writing consultant in graduate school, and I’ve always prided myself on using (mostly) proper and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation in my writing, whether it’s for the Internet or a business letter.

Admittedly, part of the problem is that I’ve been doing most of my posting for the past four months on the iPad. And, while there are many things to recommend the iPad, the whole “typing on a touchscreen” thing ain’t one of ’em. I make a lot of mistakes, and I often miss said mistakes.

So, if you notice that some older posts have been edited and that the text below a comic suddenly is grammatically correct, it’s because I got annoyed and decided to make some corrections.

After all, it’s the Internet. If I couldn’t go back and rewrite history to suit my needs, what would be the point?

Power Outage

| xeyeti

The comic for Friday, June 29th, will be delayed until the morning at the earliest. Power went out just as I finished drawing, so I didn’t get a chance to upload from my (wifi only) iPad. But it’s done! I promise!

Computer Woes

| xeyeti

So I accidentally killed my computer yesterday. I was packing it up at the end of the day and accidentally dropped it on the floor. I was able to resurrect it temporarily – just long enough to get it home and back it up – before it died for good.

I was, to say the least, pretty distraught. I fumed and raved and beat myself up about the whole thing. Thankfully, my wife had her old 13″ MacBook for me to borrow until I could get a new laptop.

Which I ordered this evening.

So now I’ve got a 15″ MacBook Pro winging its way to me, and it should be here by the end of the week. I’m thinking – given the ultimate demise of the recently-deceased – that I’ll probably continue to use my wife’s old laptop (she has a newer one she uses already) for school, especially since I got everything moved over from my backup to this computer. I am upset that I had to get a new computer at this specific time, but it was probably getting to be about time anyway. I mean, it was four years old, which is pretty damn good for a laptop, and I was wanting to pick up a new one this year anyway (I just figured it’d maybe be over the summer. Guess I was wrong). I am very excited about getting a new computer. It’ll be nice to have something current and more powerful at my disposal.

Rock and Roll Music

| xeyeti

Hey, I finally added some extra storage space to the blog, meaning I can now post audio files.

So yeah, have some music.

This first song is one I wrote and recorded myself (with the exception of the guitar solo, which was conceived and played by one of my students at school). I’m pretty damn pleased with how the song turned out; all I really need is some drums (and possibly the ability to play said drums. But that goes without saying, I think, even if I did just say it).

Anyway, enjoy the song, and let me know what you think. I’ll be adding more and probably creating a specific Music Page here pretty soon.

Complete Control

“We’ve Got Three Chords And Some Compelling Lies”

| xeyeti

I think of myself as something of a musician. Not a particularly good one, mind, but a musician nonetheless. I’ve been writing songs for the better part of a decade now, and I think I’ve managed to work up at least a handful of good ones in that time. Mostly, I’ve written them with my younger brother, who is definitely a better musician than I (but not a better singer, and that, folks, is just sad) and is usually responsible for the actual music part of our songs.

But lately, I’ve been getting into the instrumentation aspect more. I’ve been collaborating with a friend of mine who can write lyrics but not music, trying to help her come up with arrangements for some stuff she’s written (and, in the process, ended up writing some new stuff of my own that I’ve been tremendously happy with). It’s been a very fruitful partnership: in the three writing sessions we’ve had, we’ve managed to create five songs with lyrics, basic instrumentation, and all that jazz. We’ve sat down and used my (admittedly, fairly basic) recording equipment and actually developed some nice-sounding tracks, and it’s definitely spurred me on to work on some stuff even by myself.

The long and the short of it is, I love playing music. I do it just for myself, really, but I also like the idea of other people hearing it and enjoying it as well. To that end, I’m going to (after I finally get paid) get the added storage thing for the blog and post some of the songs here. So just a head’s up.

The Job Switch Blues

| xeyeti

Switching jobs has been, in a number of ways, a difficult transition. There’s the animosity leveled at me by my (now former) boss for leaving the week before inservice (which is actually a pretty common time for teachers to get hired and jump ship), adjusting to a new group of students (about half of whom I already knew, but that leaves the other half to get to know), and adjusting my expectations of behavior and ability in the classroom. The greatest difficulty, however, has been going the month of September without getting paid.

When I changed schools last year, there was overlap in my paychecks for September. I received my last paycheck from School A at the end of August and my first paycheck from School B on September 5th. It was great. This time, though, School B’s last paycheck hit August 20th, and I won’t get my first paycheck from School A until October 5th. Ouch.

That being said, we’re almost a month into the school year and I feel great. I’m in the groove, loving my classes and coworkers, and actually looking forward to going to work every morning. That sense of anxiety I used to experience is just gone.

Possibly most exciting is the start of Clubs tomorrow. We’re doing Music Club (meaning I get to teach kids how to play the guitar again), so I’ll basically get paid to rock out for an hour or so. It’s a joy.

Everything Old Is New Again

| xeyeti

So, despite not getting any bites on my resume this summer (I’m pretty sure there weren’t a whole lot of private schools in the area searching for new teachers this year), I have suddenly found myself with a new job.

Funny thing is, it’s my old job.

See, last week, I found the opportunity to return to my previous school (at a higher salary) in the same position but with more leadership opportunities and a sense of peace with myself. To say that I jumped at the opportunity was to put it much too lightly.

Telling my (now previous) employers that I was resigning was, on the one hand, a supremely wonderful moment, while at the same time a giant crushing moment of anxiety. My supervisor threw the most unprofessional fit I have ever witnessed, calling me unprofessional and ultimately declaring that I lacked integrity for waiting until the week before teacher in-service started to tell them (keep in mind I accepted the new job last Wednesday night and told them Thursday morning). She also insinuated that I’d purposely waited to tell them until the last possible minute as some sort of passive-aggressive dick move. Mind you, if I wanted to be a dick, I’d have waited until this past Monday morning (the first day of teacher in-service) to tell them, not give them at least a couple days’ notice.

But that’s all behind me now. I’m back at a school where I’m appreciated and where I don’t dread waking up every morning. I can also say (with perfect certainty) that, while working at my previous school did improve me as a teacher, I will be content with never setting foot in that building again.

On the downside, I don’t get any paychecks this month, so I probably won’t be buying any comics until October (which means no Pull List this month). I should have some stuff to post around here still, though, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

When Did THAT Start Blinking?

| xeyeti

It's a Logan's Run reference, yo! They all, like, disappeared at the age of 30 when that little thing in their palm started to blink. Remember?

I turn 30 today. I do not feel like I should be 30 yet. I don’t feel much like I thought adults would be like when I was growing up. But here I am, 30, and while turning 30 doesn’t really scare me the way it does some people, I do find it strange and foreign to not be in my twenties anymore.

On the positive side, I’m doing better at thirty than I was at twenty-nine. Or twenty-eight, for that matter. Really, better than I was for a lot of my twenties.

You know what? My twenties sucked. Screw the twenties! I’m glad I’m thirty! Up yours, traditional interpretation of getting older in this stupid youth-obsessed culture!