Living Small

On Not Posting

If I have any regular readers left (I hope you are still here!), you have probably noticed that I have slipped quite a bit from what used to be my daily -- or at least week-daily -- posting practice.  I'm still here and still doing all of the things I post about: working, knitting, reading, working out, going out with my husband.  I have just been very preoccupied with work lately, and stressed to the point of a near-breakdown in a colleague's office yesterday.  Fortunately, she was super-nice about the whole thing and willing to spend time talking me down from my self-induced madness, despite being busy and stressed herself.  It was just starting to feel like being back in grad school, and readers of this blog know how that turned out!  But I feel a lot better today, thanks to that talk, the work that followed, an evening out with David and my father-in-law, and a brief but encouraging run/walk this morning.

I just finished an awesome book about exercise and the science behind it -- Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata -- from which I learned two important facts.  First, the most health benefit a person gains from exercise comes from being minimally active (walking 20 min/day, for example) rather than completely sedentary.  Second, the fitness benefits one achieves beyond that come in proportion to how much you challenge yourself.  A muscle needs to be worked to fatigue in order to grow; your heart needs to be worked close to its maximum in order to begin pumping more efficiently.  The same can probably be said for most things in life: growth requires the discomfort of a challenge.  So I have to accept that it isn't supposed to be easy, and things that are hard for me now will get easier with practice, but then I will have to face new challenges.  There is no coasting in life!

Breaks and Goodbyes

That is perhaps too dramatic of a title for today's post, but I will be taking a bit of a break from blogging, as I will be out of town for most of the rest of the month.  First I'll be in Chicago for a conference, then I'm back for a day, and then David and I fly to Los Angeles for a long Thanksgiving vacation.  I'm excited about both trips, though a bit nervous about the conference, just because I don't know what to expect.  I'm not presenting a paper or anything, so it should be very low stress, but I'm also worried that I'll feel out of place because I'm not presenting.  But I should get a chance to hear about some interesting work and meet interesting people, and several other people from my office are going, so I won't be alone.  I'm also hoping to have a chance to meet up with a friend and a cousin while I'm there, and maybe even check out a local yarn store.  The trip to Los Angeles will, I hope, be fun and relaxing.  David and I haven't been there in over a year, and I haven't been for Thanksgiving since 2001.  I'm super-geeked to see my family and friends, to soak up some sun (though the weather here has actually been pretty nice), and to watch cable television!

The goodbye refers to David.  Today is the last day we will work in the same office.  We met here (not in this building, but while working for this organization) over six years ago, and I have never worked here withouth him (though he worked here without me for many years before we met and when I was in grad school).  I will very much miss seeing him around, but he will be starting an awesome new job when we get back from Los Angeles and I'm super-happy for him.  I can't give details here, but it will be a big step up and the work should be really interesting.  And it isn't really goodbye, of course, because we will still see each other at home!

Terse

It seems that many of my posts in the past few weeks have been either terse or nonexistent.  While I hate to start blogging about blogging, I thought it does deserve some comment.  Over the past three weeks, I have been taking a SAS workshop here on campus, so many of my posts were written furtively during the brief class breaks, with little time to actually get into the meat of a post or sometimes to even say what I really meant.  The workshop was quite good, though I didn't actually learn much that was new.  I started using SAS over the summer (and blogged about it quite a bit!), but there wasn't any training available (with the exception of a very brief overview as part of the stats classes I took) until October.  So I checked out manuals from the library, consulted people at work, became very familiar with the online documentation, and figured out how to do the things I needed to do.  I'm still glad I took the class because I did learn something new just about every day, but now I want to learn more!  (There is an intermediate class, but I don't know when I'll be able to take it because I am told that it will be offered here at the office, but a date doesn't seem to have been set yet).  Overall, I'm glad I knew what I did going into the class because I didn't get all hung up on the libname statements the way everyone else did.  For readers who don't know, a libname statement is what gives the program access to directories on the computer.  When it was first invented back in the 1960s, it was probably a brilliant way to navigate a computer, but today it seems awkward and unnecessary to users who are used to just being able to open Windows Explorer and see the whole contents of their computer.  I guess it is just one of those weirdnesses, like the fact that SAS calculates dates in number of days since January 1, 1960.  That seemed very bizarre to me until I learned that SPSS calculates dates in number of seconds since sometime in the sixteenth century.  Talk about a huge ugly number!

What's on the Internet Stays on the Internet (Sometimes)

Lately I have been feeling somewhat self-conscious about just how much of myself I have put out there on this blog, so this morning I logged in and edited the posts where I say my last name, in hopes of making myself somewhat less searchable on the internet.  I probably should have been more careful about revealing myself from the beginning, but I simply figured that if I didn't say anything I was embarrassed about, it wouldn't matter.  Nevertheless, what I am embarrassed about may change from day to day.  It is strange how the internet is both permanent and ephemeral.  Historians complain that there is no archival record of computer documents such as email and webpages, and at the same time, it is nearly impossible to hide the traces of websites that once existed because they get stored in browsers' caches and by search engines.  In truth, I have very little knowledge of the technology behind the permanence/ephemerality of websites, but it seems that the embarassing ones stick around forever while the ones with useful information disappear.

When I'm Not There

Last night, David went to the Tiger game without me.  I was in a meeting at work, and he went with his mom and stepfather and the senior citizens of Northville.  I can't even imagine what that bus ride must have been like, but he ended up having a lot of fun at the game.  It helped that the Tigers won due to a pretty spectacular come-back in the bottom of the ninth inning (at least, it sounded spectacular when he described it to me later).  Why is it that they win when he goes without me (he even witnessed Verlander's no-hitter earlier this season), but they lose when I go?  I shouldn't ponder that one too long, or I may never go to another Tiger game!

More Commentary on the Pyramid Scheme

Today I received another comment on my old site about the pyramid scheme series I wrote last fall.  This comment was the other type: a person who had been approached about TEAM, had become suspicious, had done her own research (which turned up my site), and had decided not to let herself be scammed.  Whenever I get a comment like this, I'm glad that I devoted four days of my life to exploring and writing about this so-called "business opportunity."  I also received more detailed commentary from our friend from last week.  Since his initial comment had criticized me for being "wrong" about TEAM, I asked him exactly what I had said that was wrong.  He replied by emailing me a Word document in which he had copied and pasted the first entry of my series, and inserted his own comments.  Here are just a few choice tidbits:

When I called TEAM "Amway's internet-based sister company," he responded that:

"TEAM is not Amway’s internet based sister company, TEAM has nothing to do with Amway. Alticor owned Amway and in year 1999, created another subsidiary called Quixtar that utilizing the convenience of the internet since Amway uses catalog. TEAM is just another company/organization that utilized the business model that’s setup by Alticor/Quixtar to move products and services. "

I should have been more clear in my initial post by specifying that TEAM is an affiliate of Quixtar (scroll down to the paragraph just above "accreditation"). So TEAM is Quixtar, which is owned by Alticor, which also owns Amway. This means that Alticor is the parent company and Amway and Quixtar/TEAM are both its children, which means that Amway and Quixtar/TEAM are siblings.  TEAM is not "just another company."

This was the only point where he (incorrectly) corrected a statement I made.  Otherwise, he just made snarky comments.  For instance, when I said "I have become very curious about what other people do for a living," he responded with:

"I was just curious why you care about what other people do for a living?  This statement makes you a very open minded individual, but when you get across something that doesn't suit you, you turned into a very narrow minded scholar, then what's the point of wanting to know what others do?  Moreover, even if there's something that you don't like, being a scholar, you should have respect what other people do and politely said no and walk away, just like you won't bash people that are out there doing the missionary work, or monks that's spread the Buddism."

How can I respond to this?  I'm not sure I can even make sense of what he is trying to say through that atrocious grammar and spelling.  The part that made me laugh, though, is when he said "you won't bash people that are out there doing the missionary work."  No, I wouldn't bash them to their face, but I did spend three years in grad school studying (and criticizing) British imperialism in Africa, which had a sizeable missionary component.  There is a huge difference between having respect for other people and not criticizing something I believe is wrong.  I believe it is wrong to make money by selling people a promise that won't be fulfilled (I'm talking about TEAM here, not religion).

Finally, when I said that my post was in response to research I had done on TEAM, he responded that it was "biased research."  This is a badge I'll wear with pride.  All research is biased because all research depends on the questions being asked and the methods being used by the individual researcher.  His "knowledge" about team is no less "biased" than mine.  Being biased, however, is not the same thing as being wrong.

The Impressions People Get

Most of the people who read this blog either know me in real life or are other bloggers whose blogs I have read and commented on.  Every now and then, however, I do get a comment from someone I don't know at all.  Many of these are generated by a four-part series I did in October about TEAM, a pyramid scheme that a so-called friend tried to recruit me into.  Click here for the first installment (and I apologize for the way the links show up on Typepad -- I originally wrote these entries in Moveable Type -- for the original formatting, go here).  The comments I get on these posts fall into two categories: the writers either thank me for my posts, saying that they were planning to join TEAM until they read my blog, or they insult me, usually with bad grammar.

Today I got a comment that falls into the latter category (the comment was left on the old site, but you can read it here).  I could tell it was an insult because he said that he felt sorry for the aforementioned "friend" for knowing me, and that he feels sorry for any students I may be teaching here at the University of Michigan.  I'm not teaching this semester but, if I were, he said he "would pray for your students to drop out from your lecture cause they are inflating your pockets by buying the study materials you requested."  I'm not quite sure what he is getting at -- professors don't get kickbacks from textbooks -- but you can see what I mean about the insulting emailers needing a good grammar lesson.

I was also amused by the impression he had of me.  Here is his description of Emily: "I have a feeling that you are an avid media supporter, that means you watch the news every night, read the newspaper every day. You immersed yourself with "Consumer Report" with about every product that you'll buy. I can imagine you owning either a Toyota or a Subaru in your driveway. "  First of all, if he meant this as an insult, he failed.  Perhaps among some people, being informed is a shameful thing but, to me anyway, ignorance is worse.  Part of his description is dead-on: I do read Consumer Reports and I do own a foreign car (a Volkswagen, though, not a Toyota or a Subaru).  But if David is reading this, he is probably laughing out loud right now at the idea of me either reading the newspaper or watching the news, because he knows the truth: aside from several hours of NPR during the workday, I am actually woefully uninformed.  I spend my evenings watching The OC on DVD from Netflix.  In sum, I am doubly amused by the fact that, in trying to insult me, this commenter actually painted a much more flattering image of me than is the truth.  Thanks, dude! 

Thinking Bloggers

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Rani the Defashionista tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award.  The rules are as follows:

1. If you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: proudly display the "Thinking Blogger Award" button with a link to the post that you wrote (I'm opting out of this one).

It took me a while to narrow my daily blog reading list down to the five that make me think most, but here goes.

1. Year of Consolation: Sara's blog deals with the most important things in the world -- life and death.  Death is something I have never had to confront before, and Sara forces me to really think about what it means to be alive, to create life, and to experience the loss of life.

2. 10-Year: Kisha's plan to get out of grad school alive and with a Ph.D., something I failed to do :)  Her posts remind me of those long chats we used to have (sometimes over knitting!) while drinking Dragon Eyes at Sweetwaters before she moved to California.  I miss you!

3.  Suenitos de una Rebelde: La Rebelde's updates from Los Angeles often make me laugh out loud, in between thinking very seriously about what it means to be a brown woman in academia.  Her blog also makes me terribly homesick, even though she occassionally gets down on us angelenas :)

4. The Sideways Love Balloon: Heidi is my conduit to the outside world.  Reading her blog gives me all the news I need to know, and her take on it always puts a smile on my face.  Thinking seems to come quite naturally to Heidi.

5. Urbane Homestead: Elizabeth had to make the list because she is just about the smartest person I know (after my uncle, that is).  Her blog makes me think about all kinds of stuff, from parenthood to gardening to (of course) knitting.  I must also admit that Elizabeth was a major inspiration to me in starting this blog.

To all of you whom I have tagged, thank you for providing me with so much reading material and grist for the thought mill.  I can't wait to see who makes you think!

Take A Survey

If you are bored online or looking for a way to procrastinate from your dissertation (or whatever else you should be doing instead of reading my blog), take this survey.  I didn't make up the questions, it is just a general survey for all blog readers, but if you link to it from my blog, I can eventually compile data showing, for example, what percentage of my readers floss regularly (if you don't, you should).

Welcome

Welcome to the new home of Living Small!  Those of you who have come from the previous location have already read all about why I moved the blog here, so I won't repeat myself.  There are a few bugs I am still trying to work out at the new site, mainly dealing with the way my old entries display.  I was actually amazed at how easy it was to move my old entries from Mblog to Type Pad.  The move was facilitated by the fact that Mblog uses the Movable Type publishing platform, and Movable Type and Type Pad are both Six Apart products.  So, in theory, all I had to do was click the "export" link in Mblog, save the resulting file, click the "import" link in Type Pad, and feed it the exported file from Mblog.  But when I tried this, I kept getting error messages.  The first seven posts from the blog would import, but then it would stop.  So I investigated.

I'm pretty amazed at the fact that I had the courage to tinker with the code, and I think this courage comes from my job, which has given me a lot more computer confidence and experience.  As far as I can tell (and I am just speculating here, so don't take me at my word), blogging software stores everything in XML and then uses some kind of script (probably XSLT) to display the posts in HTML.  But, since XML is, by definition eXtensible, every software package uses a different XML standard.  So exporting the XML from Mblog puts it into a delimited text file, which Type Pad can then read into its own XML standard using some kind of script.  The problem I was having was that the Type Pad script was choking on something in my eighth entry.  So I went into the text file to see what it was, and, sure enough, there were about a million trackback pings in that eighth entry for all kinds of random stuff.  I deleted those from the text file and tried the import function again and, amazingly, it worked.

A major difference between Mblog and Type Pad is that Type Pad was designed to be used by the truly HTML-illiterate.  There is no need to put in HTML tags because Type Pad allows me to format my posts just as I would in a word processor, and then it puts in the HTML for me.  In Mblog, I had to put in HTML tags by hand whenever I wanted a link or bold or italic type.  When I imported the posts, Type Pad translated my tags into HTML so that they would appear just as I had typed them in the post.  What that means is that when it saw a bold tag, for instance, instead of bolding the word, it translates <b> into the HTML code &lt;b&gt; so that it displays as <b>word</b>.  So I guess I will have to go back to those older entries and fix them so that they will display the way I intended them to display.

In any case, welcome to Living Small's new home, and please let me know if you have any design comments or suggestions for improvement.