Anne McCaffrey, 1926 – 2011

As the WeyrCat I feel I must say Thank you to this lady who so shaped my young-teen reading habits. My mother owned tons of her books and I came to love more than the dragons she was so known for, but space, the exploration of other planets and peoples, technologies and what humans could achieve through science. Sure, some of them were a wee campy but her books largely shaped who I grew up to be. Writers touch people, and she definitely touched my life and therefore everyone in it. Thank you. ♥


- Made official on her publisher's (DelRay's) website. Anne McCaffrey: April 1 1926 - November 21, 2011.

-From Wired.com

McCaffrey helped pave the way for women writers in fantasy and science fiction, and was both the first woman awarded a Hugo Award and the first awarded a Nebula Award. Even in her 80s she continued to write, and over her lifetime produced a prodigious number of books and short stories. She was still answering readers’ mail on her website as of a few weeks ago.

[Image Credit: WritersWrite.com]

Decent grades, cool science, depressing politics.

Had a wonderful chat with an older gent while I was on patrol this week. Was given some wisdom:

1. Get the best education you can get.
2. Have the confidence and will to become an expert in your job within six months.
3. Don't be afraid to take well-thought of and responsible risks; you never know how much you can gain.
Best advice I've had in a while. Respect your elders, they're smarter than you.



The rest is grades, whining, and cool articles from the net :D

Grades, Goals, and Giggles.

So. Today I found out I got a 95% on my Biodiversity exam. WOOT! Also, this means I only need a 65% on the Final to keep my A. I of course wouldn't settle for that, but it's nice to have the security.

I took my dread Chem exam today, the raw score is 72% (ugh). We get to write our choices down and then compare them to the key that goes up an hour after the exams are closed. My first test was around the same, but was raised to a mid B due to some tinkering and curving. I'm hoping this does the same but I'm disappointed. I know I redirected a lot of effort into the Biodiv exams (the one above and the Practical Final tomorrow). I'm going to put all the time I WAS putting into the Bio Lab into Chem and see if I can't strengthen my base before the Final. I need a 90% on the final to keep my A. Bleh.

Still no word on the History of Civ exam. It takes forever for those TA's to get back to us. I know they have their own exams, but sheesh. I did get a 95% on my rough draft. Happier about that, since the rough is 15% of my entire grade. Together with the final draft, the darn thing is 35%. The final exam is only 10%, and I'm breaking my neck and fingers twice a week trying to get her notes down. Ah well.

Shane and I started a competition this week. We're going to use the fighting spirit to put us back on the health track. We've let the stress of the semester bite us in the face (or is the bottom?) Did 0:27:30 on the Ellip at ~5.7mph, 2.44mi and a supposed 300 calories burned. Good, because I ate Salsarita's today because I didn't wake up on time to pack food for an 11 hour day at the university. Bleh.

My niece Ashlyn turned 3 today. Reeeeediculous. <3

Registration opened today, but I couldn't...
From the FB: Yo, MORONS who run the university servers. If you can't convince Admin there's a better way (over thousands of students trying to login to register at once when it 'opens') you might want rent more bandwidth for the night. Dicks. The whole 'self-service' area is crashed out. I was logged in early, ready with CRNs in notepad. Got auto-logged out at midnight (something the server doesn't normally do, I might add).

I was/am irritated. :( Jocks get to register a day ahead of 'real' students, and now I'm going to lose a slot to someone else too. It's hard getting what I need to mesh with each other and work. Harumph. Can we do registration by GPA or something? Seriously. Then, if I had to wait because I didn't have a high enough GPA, that, I could deal with. That some moron or slacker or god-knows could end up with my precious chem lab (there by precluding me from chem lecture, and setting me back A WHOLE SEMESTER FROM GRADUATING) makes me... peeved. It's been an hour. No choice by to give up and hope I can get some tomorrow. I need to sleep so I can wake up and continue avoiding the house/chore/dog/shopping/etc so I do well on my final.

Some giggles: (It won't let me put the images next to each other grid style. Bear with as I get the hang of it.)

Dear John Social Media,

Dear Social Media,

I think we're spending too much time together. I just feel smothered. I check my Facebook before my email these days. I download special apps for my computer and phone to make sure 'updates' get to FB, Twitter, AND G+. I stream some of my news feeds through FB, instead of RSS, and then feel bogged down when I have to go hunt through the mess to FIND the news stream I want to read. As a consequence of snatching up short blurbs of either densely packed information or witty one-liners, I'm pretty sure my attention span is MUCH shorter than it used to be. It's sometimes a struggle to get through a news article when I DO find the stream I want. I find myself breezing over paragraphs in the "TLDR" mindframe, figuring the topic paragraph and the ending paragraph will give me enough context clues to absorb the article. Having previously been a prolific reader, I'm rather appalled with myself. You know, I think I'm losing my 'spelling' too, darn you autocorrect etc.

I decided to look up if there were any studies done on this 'dumbing down phenomena', but I got distracted before I found any real data. No really I did, I found a hilarious article, but if I post it NOW I don't think you'll finish the blog. I went to share the article (I was on my phone) when I realized it wouldn't post to all three networks from there. So I dragged out the laptop and plugged it in so I could post it from the browser. Then I realized the link was SO LONG, I couldn't add a comment when it went to Twitter, so I went to shorten it in Ow.ly.com. You know, there's and ad on their site for their Toolbar.

Ow.ly Social Bar 2.0
In the age of sharing, linking, retweeting, capped attention spans and character limits, people need things to be shorter, better, faster, stronger.

I'm rather disturbed, because IT'S TRUE. Not because a toolbar says it is, but simply BECAUSE IT IS. I'm becoming a character in Idiocracy, where all my past-times come with ads attached, and all my goals are minuscule because the old 'grinding' of NES (and even WoW) is dying out. I feel like I'm trapped in Brave New World.

I don't blog anymore... I post snippets through my social media. The unimportant stuff? Nah, not worth the blog (so why post it to SM?) The important (to me) stuff? Doesn't get posted because I've already posted it, people don't read the blog anyway BECAUSE I SM, and sometimes I plain forget to 'repost' because (yep) I already posted it. Doesn't matter that the info gets sucked up in the stream and never seen. You know, my grandmother reads my blog, but doesn't participate in social media. Have there been times I posted about grades without putting it on my blog? I don't remember what info I write in the snail-mail letters, because I've put everything in SM already.

SO, my memory, my attention span, my TASTE, my ability to spell etc etc... I think it's all declining.
I are scared.

SO... Social Media. I'm breaking up with you. We can still be friends (har har), but I'm going to try to be more discerning about what I 'share' and 'tweet' and 'post' and 'like' etc etc. People probably don't need or want to know EVERYTHING I thought was cute yesterday (all though that crying Skyrim dragon was great). So...Maybe, a blog a day. Or every couple days depending on what turns out to seem interesting to me. Sure, I'll drop in the news articles I found really interesting. Maybe even put a tiny gallery of the super cute pictures I couldn't bear NOT to share. But really SM, I need a break. And it's definitely you.

Oh, for those of you who just scrolled to the bottom (I know you did) here's that funny "No attention span" article from DailyMash.