Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

But Maybe It's Fixed

For perhaps as long as ten years, my office has been subject to The Incredible Screaming Ceiling. Not often, mind you, but it seems to coincide with winter days with the sun shining and the temp outside in the 40s. Not today, by the way.

It's always been hard to locate the noise when it does happen. It sounds something like a mechanical vibration or rotation. It is not connected to the lights. It doesn't seem to be IN my office, but either on the third floor or in the grad student office next door.

The first time it happened, it scared me. It's loud and really annoying. Someone once came up to "look" for it, but the noise wasn't happening that day and well, it just wasn't worth it to keep crying WOLF! and having people find nothing when they actually got there.

Eventually, I just chose to ignore it. It only lasts for five to ten minutes anyway, once around noon and then usually in the later afternoon. (evil grin) I've always assumed it had something to do with the heating pipes on the offices above me.

But... the other week the dept. chair was holding a meeting in the conference room across the hall and when I came back from class and opened my door, the din got louder to them, and he came over and asked, "What the hell is that?!"

Thing about our current chair is that he is pretty proactive and gets things done. He checked my office, then went next door. Next thing I saw as I went down the hallway was him standing on the desk, having pushed a ceiling panel out of the way and saying he'd found it.

Some sort of hot water control valve with an electrical control wire coming out of it. He said he'd get it fixed.

Fast Forward To Now

The last couple of days? When I come into my office it is quite warm. 81°F on Monday and 85°F today. It cools off quickly after I open the door and it's a pleasant 77°F right now. As opposed to the 69°F and dropping that I usually get. Lower if the wind is howling and there's a draft from the window frames where they "fixed" that some years ago.

I think maybe the control valve got fixed and maybe my heat is actually working Better Than Life right now. Got to say, I don't mind it so much... (toasty grin)

Dr. Phil

I Saw This Coming

Friday I knew that the heat and humidity would soak in for the Fourth of July weekend. Also clear skies, so for those playing outside and picnicking and grilling and driving -- it could be a good deal. And while it got hot, the heat in West Michigan was shy of the triple digits which the Atlantic coast was moving into.

But Friday it was still pleasant enough -- still dry and about 86°F. And when I got out of class before 2pm on Friday and headed back to my office in Everett Tower, at the second floor I was hit with a lot of cold air. See, they tend to shut down the A.C. over summer weekends. So was someone trying to chill the place down to compensate for the upcoming hot summer three-day weekend?

Well, it didn't work.

Uh-ugh...

Tuesday was Monday this week. (grin) And already in the upper 80s in the morning when I rolled into Kalamazoo. And Everett Tower? Hot, hot, hot. And muggy. Whenever the A.C. was put on, it had barely made a dent in the heat which had soaked into the building over the long weekend.

I have a small 5" Radio Shack 120VAC computer cooling fan behind me on a bookshelf plugged into a switch block that I use for keeping the air moving in my office. It made little difference this morning. Usually I leave the computers on while I teach class, but I shut everything down while I was out. Not so much that I was worried about cooking the computers as not really needing any more waste heat into a small closed office.

By about 4pm, I'd found one room that was almost comfortable -- the Men's room on the second floor. Not the most useful place. I used to have a digital thermometer in my office, but it's in use elsewhere. But I doubt that by the time I'd left at 5pm that my office had dropped below 80°F. So you can imagine what it must've been some five, six hours earlier.

Not quite at the level of the sorority house during the 2004 Clarion workshop. (evil melted grin) There I was dealing with temps in my room around 97°F with 97% humidity -- at midnight. But closed up offices don't need to be hot, humid and miserable.

I can only hope the university saved a fortune on their electric bill -- and didn't lose it on replacing any equipment which cooked itself.

Dr. Phil

Reuse - Recycle - Revenge

No sooner had I gotten my telephone "upgrade" on Monday and the flying squad of installers had moved on to another floor, I discovered that there was a huge pile of Cisco boxes stuffed into the recycling bin in the hallway. They were for the desk/handsets they'd just installed. Good quality heavy duty cardboard -- and large enough to put papers in.

Now since part of my summer project was to clean my office -- and I was expected to bring the book reports from the last semester to the office, both because a student was coming to office hours to get his paper and because Mrs. Dr. Phil wanted them out of the house (grin) -- having a box or bag or tote bag to put them in is always good. Alas, though I keep a selection of good sturdy Amazon and textbook boxes in my office, the secretaries know that I have a box stash and sometimes they come up and see if I have anything suitable for something they need to mail. So I'd been fairly recently cleaned out of such boxes.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love the word serendipity?

Un-May-ish Weather

Though much of the first half of May hasn't been actually terrible, in terms of weather, it has featured some days of cold and/or rain. And we're still having to use the furnace, especially in the mornings, as the temps start out in the 30-45°F range. Tuesday's forecast sun didn't actually show up until about 7:30pm, but today has brought out the blue skies and a bright nearby star. Temp is supposed to get up to the 70s today -- and into the 80s by next week. Looks like May in West Michigan is going to go from early spring right into summer very quickly.

How 'Bout Them Gas Prices?

I haven't ranted about gas in a while, partly because they've been somewhat directionless for a while. I hate it when pundits announce what they think gas prices will soar to, because it always seems that they're giving carte blanche to the gas stations, who seem to immediately raise the prices to the new "target" sooner, rather than later. That looked to be the case going into Easter, but since then, it's been stable with a couple of odd bounces of ±20 cents a gallon for no good reason. (grin) After flirting with near $3/gallon gas, things have dropped back down to $2.80.9/gal for regular. Indeed, on Monday regular was $2.83.9/gal and I had a 60 cents a gallon discount coupon from the grocery story for its gas station, which took a little of the sting off the price.

Earlier they projected $3/gallon by Memorial Day and $3.50/gallon for the summer, but that we wouldn't see $4/gallon. Now, despite the ongoing Great Spewing Gulf Oil Well Project, they re-projected that summer gasoline won't be much more than $3/gallon. Not sure I quite believe that, but we'll see.

I R A G-nius

While sometimes Mrs. Dr. Phil looks askance at me, despite my bad habits of piling stuff up, I actually tend to have procedures and rules for things that I do all the time. Backing up files and moving them daily between office and home machines is a definite priority. On July 1st I'll be teaching my next class, the same as I just taught. In fact, this will be the 16th time that I've taught PHYS-2070 University Physics II (E&M) at WMU. However, the last time I taught this course in the summer was back in 2002.

Now the main machine I am using at the office is one I acquired in 2005. It hasn't been necessary for it to have all of the files from the older machines, so I checked and it only went back to the 7th time I taught PHYS-2070. No problem, I already had one of my older machines running, so I found the Physics .ZIP files from Summer 2002, copied them onto a Swiss Army Memory, dumped them onto the newer machine, made a directory, unzipped the files and voilà! I'm not sure it took more than 30 seconds.

I love it when a plan comes together. (A-grin)

Writing Projects

Tuesday was a very productive day. I shipped three stories submissions, including one which hadn't gone to market before. I'd planned on just the last one, but after one market sent me a Hold request and said I was free to submit something else (thank you!) and I got a very nice rejection, I sent out two more. All three were electronic submissions, including the one to Asimov's, two of which used the Clarkesworld e-sub system.

I don't prefer one method over the other -- electronic versus traditional snailmail. On the one hand I like having a pile of paper representing a story. On the other, e-subbing is certainly fast and you very quickly know if they've got it. (grin) One thing for sure, I don't scrimp in my procedures for e-subs over traditional. I take the same care to review and possibly revise the manuscript, and I take care to write the appropriate cover letter for the market. I believe that 8 of my 14 published stories (9 of 15 if you count my next publication) were done as e-subs. Does that mean traditional is dead? Or just that I've sold a number of stories to lower paying e-sub markets? (grin)

Net result, though, is I treat all submissions seriously.

Now I have to figure out what writing project is next. Oh, I have some essays to write for the teaching side of things. One on repeating courses and perhaps one on cheating. (evil grin)

Dr. Phil

As Long As I Mentioned This...

On Friday I talked about trying to spend some of my sabbatical writing time downstairs in the Kitty Room, just as Mrs. Dr. Phil did during hers. So I remembered to take a camera down and take a couple of pictures for you.


This is our 16×20 foot Kitty Room -- the reason we bought this house. (grin)

Bagel, Blue and Sam checking out another pleasantly cool July day in the sunshine.

KEPLER, my refurbished laptop I bought in 2002.

Yup, that's a Dr. Phil personalized Swiss Army Memory.

So that's what I'm doing on my summer "vacation" -- how's your summer?

Dr. Phil