Locked Out

[dr_phil_physics]

Office Hours Today

As I breeze into campus and wander in from the parking lot, I get to the front door of Everett Tower. And it's locked. Huh. Pull out my ID card and swipe it through the card reader -- no joy. Blinked red LED and it beeps at me.

Are they telling me something? Has the disastrous Michigan economy crashed the university?

Just about that time the department chair came out of the side door -- and I was able to snag him. He was surprised that the door was locked at 11:30am, but his ID card did open it. Turns out the office said that the security computer crashed the other day and things have been wonky ever since. And the system seems to delete people in Physics randomly in its database.

So it's not me yet.

Next week it's two office hour days, then after Labor Day it's PHYS-1060 Introduction to Stars and Galaxies on Tuesdays and Thursday -- and sabbatical time the rest of the week. Should be a fun Fall Semester!

A Few More D9 Comments

Over the weekend we saw District 9, and while I gave it a Highly Recommended, I also expressed some concern about some of the ways racism was portrayed. Was this supposed to be part of the film's message? Or too much revealed about the filmmaker?

Well, science fiction/fantasy novelist and professor of creative writing at Chicago State University Nnedi Okorafor came out with a stronger comment which I think is worth reading. Link courtesy of writer jimhines Jim C. Hines.

And In Honor Of Starting A New Novel

Jim Hines also had a link to a column at SF Novelists he did on That New Manuscript Smell. He encapsulates the love/hate relationship of starting with the blank page very nicely.

Both of my current novels, OAS which just went to the first novel contest and GRV just started, began as short stories, so on Day Zero of the novel there was already something to work with. But I know what he's talking about.

The Gravediggers is turning into a lot of fun after just a couple of days. The original short story is now the basis for Part II, I have a good idea of how Part I will go -- but the real fun is that Part III is turning into something very unexpected. Cool!

Had things not gone so well at the start, I'd be tempted to set it aside and pick a different project. I'm always working on multiple stories, but this sabbatical time is a gift this year and I don't want to waste any of it. (grin) I'm sure I'll be eating these words when I get stalled three weeks from now. (double-jeopardy-grin)

Dr. Phil

Comments

[tom-evans.livejournal.com]

OK, OK. I guess I showed my own ignorance. I thought there were only theoretical physicists and experimental physicists. You don't seem to have your head in the cloud chambers, so I figured you were more down-to-Earth than theoretical. So are you a Dr. Phil-of-all-trades physicist, or theorectical, experimental, general, educational, mud-foot, somnambulistic (I had one of those for high school Physics. He spent a lot of time staring at a foldout marked with 914, 610, 914) or some other kind of physicist? Oh wait! I'll bet you are a Phil-osophical physicist! Yeah, that's the ticket!

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

These days my interests are heavily in science literacy and physics education -- traits which also color the hard SF stories that I write. Also I'm big on systems -- the basic Physics concepts we start with in the introductory courses are isolated to begin with, but in the real world there are complexities and interactions which require a thoughtful approach.

Those numbers in millimeters? Perhaps your teacher was doing research on image processing and checking out the original published photo of the Standard Lenna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna), from November 1972, in which case the sequence would be... gets out HP-32S -- 864-660-914.

You're welcome.

Dr. Phil