Come out, come out, wherever you are!

I saw this the other day and thought this was a great idea: so many of us read each other's blogs but then rarely comment. We lurk. Never participate.

So let's show ourselves. I'm going to delurk myself at the various blogs I read. I encourage you to do the same. Including this one: say hi! Wave! Introduce yourself! Ask me embarrassing questions which I'll try to reply! let's see how many people are really reading this.

No, really, I love my son.

It's just that he did two things this week that I, well, didn't approve.

One, he gave me his cold that he had last weekend. Very inconsiderate of him. It made me less than stellar this week as a teacher, particularly on Wednesday when I almost didn't make it through a block class on Salvador Plascencia's super-fabulous The People of Paper (which you should all read right now).

Two, he knocked my computer over. I should clarify that in my weakened mental state (due to congestion and slight fever from abovementioned issue), I left the computer on the sofa arm, which is well within his reach. And he knocked it over.

Which fried the hard drive.

Completely. As in, I couldn't get the computer to even acknowledge that a hard drive existed ever. Brand new computer, I had it for three months.

Happily, this was a work computer. So work covered a replacement, which is what I am typing on now.

Unhappily, said fried hard dirve meant I lost everything I was working on for the past month-and-a-half. All my new courses, the new chapter of my book, a few paper ideas, the notes I had taken on job candidate portfolios, photographs of Xan from Halloween, all gone. (Fortunately, I had backed things up at the beginning of October, so I didn't lose absolutely everything. And the couple choice Halloween pics I happened to have posted on here have survived. Still, it smarts.)

And yes, I know: this is only the beginning.

Anyhow, I'm back. Just in time for finals.

One for the road

So why haven't I been posting of late? Well, folks, that's easy: because on Friday afternoon, the computer decided to go kaputski. I couldn't start the machine again in any sort of mode, safe or not. When I finally brought it into the IT folk yesterday at campus, they basically figured out that my hard drive had melted and that there was little I could do.

This made me extremely happy that I had taken some time out on Wednesday to back all the important Word files onto my campus file space. Whew!

I did lose some amazing baby pictures (which I had not backed up on Wednesday, thinking I would do so when I had more time on Monday... oops...), but most of the early stuff was backed up in May, so I'm also OK there. Double whew.

And, as it turns out, I was due for a renewal on my computer since, apparently, the campus replaces them when the warranty runs out after three years. So I'm now typing on a new laptop (looking all space-agey) and trying to remember all the bookmarks I had saved on the old computer. (Still, I'm a-likin' this new one.)

And why might I not be posting for a few weeks? Well, see, tomorrow I am leaving for Ann Arbor, Michigan to see my parents.

Driving.

Alone.

With Xan.

Followed by my driving to Cape Cod.

The straitjacket for when I finally arrive on Cape had already been sized and ordered. In any case, I may not be posting for a little bit because either (a) I'm having trouble finding a good, free Internet connection, or (b) I have gone plumb nuts. Either way, wish me luck.

Potential gothdom thwarted by big eyes

I have over the last week or so been trying to figure out how to goth out the various accoutrements on my computer. This is in part inspired by my far-cooler-dad-than-I-am nephew Joel who is in part my idol because he actually did funky, experimental looks and things that I only thought about in passing. (Case in point: nipple ring.) Despite my preponderance for Depeche Mode, the Cure and Interpol over Britney, I have never really seriously tried going goth. There was a moment when I had makeup on college, but it literally lasted days and really wasn't going to work at Dartmouth, at least not for me. This does not mean I dropped my penchant for black clothing, or my realization that I actually still look good with eyeliner; I just decided it wasn't really worth the effort to goth myself out for what it would get me.

Anyway, I wouldn't have done it with my computer either, Joel's coolness notwithstanding, if I didn't also read that it would be easier on the eyes. I don't know whether this is actually true or not, but it sounds good and provides a good excuse to pimp my desktop in a dark way. Indeed, I'm loving all of the new fun ways in which my computer now inspires me to dance alone in a corner.

Here's the problem: Xan's eyes just aren't amenable to the whole goth aesthetic.

You see, my desktop picture is the famous Ikea-after-finding-Dino pic (seen here) and, while everything else can be modified accordingly, my son's wide-open orbs of blueness seemingly fill up the screen, bringing joy and light and a smile to my lips... and otherwise thwarting my attempts to inspire despair through the color black.

And oddly enough, I consider this a good contradictory juxtaposition, precisely because it reminds me of me: sunny disposition from hell that would love to just wear lots of black anyway. Perhaps I can instill this in my son? Maybe I just need to buy him clothing that is slightly more offensive, for starters.

Becuase what I really need in my life are more papers written by an undergraduate

This weekend, I wondered if there was something akin to an electronic siphon. Literally, I stared at my old Mac Powerbook 1400cs (anyone remember those?), wondering if there was a way to get information just by sucking it out.

You see, I've kept the old laptop only because virtually every file I have from undergrad and grad school is on there. All my papers, any creative writing, everything. The problem: the CD-ROM drive never was able to write anything, the disk drive is pretty much broken and won't accept disks, and I can't seem to find the connection to make my zip drive work. In other words: no way to get the information out. A couple months ago, I discovered that my internet PC card still worked and that I could just dial in to AU and download the files from an ancient version of Netscape; this meant, however, that I could only do this three files at a time with a v e r y s l o w connection. I looked for other ways to do this, to no avail.

This week, I really needed to access an article I had written during graduate school which I had promised to my students. Written in 1998 mere weeks before they won the Oscar, the paper is a star study on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, chronicling their coverage as screenwriters being an important factor to their construction as stars. Not only had I decided to share this with my class, but in the last week, a publishing possibility came to light, so I wanted to revisit it. I went to try accessing the file on Friday.

This was when I discovered that I had mistakenly taken out the PC card from the computer, and now don't know where it is.

Sigh.

I sat there for about an hour, looking from one computer to the other, envisioning the electronic siphon. I imagined myself sucking on a big tube stuck into the hard drive, making sure not to get any 0/1 combinations into my mouth as if it were gas.

In the end, I did what is unthinkable these days: I retyped the entire paper. Although it took the better part of a day (23 pages total, including an appendix -- and the day included many interruptions by cute baby), it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was.

In the process, I found this, which may be a solution to my problems so that I won't have to retype EVERY SINGLE FILE. Will update at another point (hopefully) on the ongoing saga.

Well, whadaya know...

Thanks to Xan banging on my keyboard while looking at a blog (no, really, it's true), I happened to come across a website which tracks DC-oriented blogs.

Scroll down to the "W" and you will find -- lo, and behold! -- I'm actually listed! This amuses me greatly, especially considering I did not even know the site existed until about 5 minutes ago.

Blog-o-rama!

So, in addition to being the movie awards season and all, I discovered that it's also the nomination period for The Bloggies awards -- or rather, they were, since the nomination process closed last night. I ended up voting for a couple folks that will undoutedly get lotsa votes anyway (like The Dooce) and I didn't even bother telling people on here to OOOH!! PICK ME!! PICK ME!!!!! because I stopped doing that in 5th grade. (OK, I stopped because no one picked me anyway, even when I was begging them from afar. How I ever won that Student Body Government election for Secretary against a popular girl is still a mystery. Oh wait -- maybe it was the free candy I gave out. Thanks, campaign manager Ben!)

In any case, I decided that I would also vote for some of the, shall I say, "off-the-beaten-path" blogs which few people know about. (I voted for Jen, too, but other folks know about her.)

So, JJ and Rusty, if Time magazine starts calling asking why you are the, like, coolest places to go on the blogosphere and all -- I'll be expecting some props in your acceptance posting. Otherwise, no more viewings of my insanely adorbale son for either one of you. Nyah.

Time really stops in the blogosphere

And I say that because I just checked several of the regular blogs that I read and we all stopped blogging a few days before the holidays really kicked in full force. (Well, not La Loca but then again she's over in Korea with her snoogums. And, well, she's loca.)

As for me, I had plenty to blog about but was hampered by a very slow connection in Cape Cod, an obviously changed toll-free dialup number for the University (darn you!), and all that free time that I used to have over the holiday break that was now swallowed up by such activities as, oh, keeping little boy hands from touching the hot wood-burning stove. (FYI: no injuries.)

But we're back -- bushed beyond belief, but back. And maybe some day soon we'll also see our living room floor again.

Narcisstic googling (or, Why I am soooooo popular)

So one of my former students (who is currently "somewhere on K Street with my soul being taken away") sent me this message:

So after reading your latest blog—yes I admit it—I went into Google to find the commercial and watch it. I typed in “American Express Kate Winslet commercial” and not only did I eventually find it. But your blogspot turned up on THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE. Therefore you’re a bonafide star now. You made the front page of Google, without even trying, and certainly and thankfully without paying for it. Haha.

Naturally, this led me to wonder what happens if you google my name directly. Looking at "Jeffrey Middents" naturally brings up some usual suspects, including various things at AU, some publications and news items and, of course, this blog (which, if you didn't know this, can also be accessed through www.jeffreymiddents.com, thanks to my sister-in-law). Indeed, the only amusing thing accessed using my full name is a letter to the editor of my college newspaper where I got on my high horse after someone wrote an editorial about how the gay right movement shouldn't be equated to the civil rights movement. (Said writer, about whose writing I wrote "provided great opportunity to show exactly how bad writing can confuse and anger your readers," apparently now works for The Nation. Oops.)

Putting "Jeff Middents" in, however, yields some more entertaining results. For one, the main things that come up are programs for The Sorcerer and Ruddigore, two shows I performed with The University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Thankfully, there are no pictures here, or at least not of me. I also appear in the script for the graduation halftime show of the Dartmouth College Marching Band (where I played cymbals), an announcement that I got married on my fraternity alumni page and (in a related vein) a picture from big sis Sara's wedding, featuring "all the Jeffs."

Googling just "middents" thankfully does not list me first. That honor goes to my brother Jonathan who, former students may be surprised, is also a professor. (He tried to talk me out of it. Silly man.)

Inputting my college fraternity nickname and my last name on pulls up one relevant result. Thankfully. In this way, my students won't find it out without looking very hard. No, I will not coddle you by giving you the nickname here.

What is amusing is how this has all changed, of course. There was a time when googling me would result in one photograph of me handing back student papers on the picket line when we had a work stoppage at Michigan. Given how fat and horrible I looked, I'm glad that appears to have disappeared.