Friday, August 17, 2007

well, there goes the rest of my career

first facebook bingo (rewraps)
(first facebook bingo - rewraps for 85 points)

I reactivated my Facebook account this afternoon, after learning they have an application that allows you to play Scrabble.

At one point during my time as a junior faculty member, I started playing online Scrabble through this international server, played 112 blitz games (5 mins each side) in a period of six days, and then canceled my account and haven't logged in since. Various lessons about my can be drawn from this episode.

I have been a complete bother up work-wise anyway since returning from ASA. I did buy a bunch of boxes today to pack up my office, so if I'm not going to make progress on any of the four papers I want to finish up in the next six weeks, at least I can make progress on moving.

17 comments:

Jamy said...

My first year of grad school, I installed Tetris on my home computer. I was totally addicted--I dreamed Tetris (not uncommon, I've heard) and developed a sore wrist from playing so much. I finally took it off my computer. Can't say it had much relationship to length of time in grad school, though.

I haven't gotten a lick of work done since getting back from ASAs either. Maybe it's not us.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jeremy said...

Anon (and whoever else cares): I have an agreement about when I will be moving out of my office with both the Chair of the department and the person whose students will be in the office when I vacate it. The decision to re-key my office was neither a departmental or university decision, but rather, as far as I can tell, a matter of staff initiative and nothing personal. Believe it or not, I still have quite friendly relations with all kinds of people in Madison.

jeremy said...

Jamy: I think I would feel less bad about not getting much done after ASA if I had felt like the meeting had been more professionally useful. (That being mostly my fault, mind you.)

Anonymous said...

Just don't send any of your books media mail. Well, except perhaps the ones you don't really want, but can't bring yourself to throw away. I recently made the media mail mistake, and wound up losing 33% of my boxes. Kim.

Anonymous said...

You read so defensively, Jeremy Freese. I just meant that would be a motivation if there was a set date when others were moving in.

If you've ever sold a property, many people procrastinate up to the point where they absolutly have to be out. It's human nature. If you know others were coming or you would be locked out for good, you would be forced to move it along. In some ways, that would be more beneficial than where you're at now.

And I'm sure you have a lot of friends in Madison. Where did you get that one from??

brayden said...

I understand why you're removing trolling anonymous comments, but all of this deleting is sparking my curiosity. I am going to start checking the jfw comments every five minutes just so I can catch the random rudeness.

Jamy said...

But you are now a famous Sociology Blogger! What could be more useful than that? ;)

I also just realized the humor of my little icon thingy being a cat...I sometimes write about my cat and people like that. They like it better when I write about dates-gone-wrong or unhappy break ups. But, who can blame them?

Kieran said...

The blogger system is a bit stupid -- it should be like other software, where if you nuke a post or comment, it gets nuked, with none of this "This post has been ... " detritus left behind afterward.

nina said...

You can do that in blogger, kieran. You just need to click the right button when deleting.

Kieran said...

I don't use Blogger and I was just going on what I was seeing here. But as we all know, induction is false.

jeremy said...

You have to remember to check a little box in addition to clicking delete. I don't always. It's a misleading induction problem because one doesn't see the instances in which I do.

Vicky Simpleton said...

I have some arthritis in my right thumb that I'm fairly sure is Nintendo's fault.

Jay Livingston said...

Nora Ephron, in her latest book, has a personal essay on speed Scrabble online. I don't dare go near it. My own version of crystal meth is Weboggle -- three minutes a game.

Ken Houghton said...

Did you cancel the account because either (1) you were 112-0, and felt like Alexander the Great or (2) you were 0-112, and people were describing you as the quadruplegic knight in Holy Grail?

I doubt either (more likely the first), but it's still less than four hours a day, so if you were skipping sleep or dating (dinner [incremental time] and a movie and transport time), it's a push.

Elliott said...

I used media mail recently. Lost the books, but had evidence that the box had been deliberately razored open by a post office employee. The postal inspectors cared less.

Anonymous said...

1. Why are you packing up your office? Why didn't you get movers to do it for you?

2. As someone who just went through a move (where I had no movers), I feel qualified to offer this advice: it's not necessarily worth starting super early with the moving. As someone noted, moving tends to be like gaseous material, it will fill up whatever space you leave it, that is, whatever amount of time you have will get sucked away by moving no matter how early you start. So no point in starting too early.

3. Weboggle was a favorite of mine during a part of grad school as well.