Recent News
Posted by Dev on June 23, 2009 at 3:57 pm

My mom has been on Facebook for a while, now and ever since my aunt told her about Skype, she’s been interested in learning more about communication tools so she can stay in touch, I suppose, with all of her friends and relatives. My mom is not really what I would call a technical person; she doesn’t get things conceptually the way that those of us who use these tools everyday do or the way that “digital natives” do. And I often get frustrated because she doesn’t read things fully and because, let’s be honest, here: I have no patience.
So I am trying to help her with Skype and she is testing a call when her home phone rings. She looks at me and says, “Is someone calling me? Who knows my number?”
“Mom,” I say, “That’s your home phone ringing.”
And then there is this exchange which occurred because my mom spent each morning reading my people’s Facebook statuses.
Mom: “Ooh, Dev, michelle got hit the back during softball last night.”
Me: “I know, mom. I talked to her last night.”
Mom: “Well, is she okay?”
Me: “She seemed fine.”
Mom: “Did you ask if she was okay?”
Me: “Yes, mom. she said it didn’t hurt as bad as getting hit in the stomach with a ball hit off a teammate’s bat… this one was thrown by the other team.”
Mom: ” Ohh… ” long pause… “Was she out?”
June 17, 2009 at 9:45 pm
I have been scoring AP exams for a week again this year so I’ve not been spending much time online and I haven’t really felt myself this week either. I’ve been away from Illinois so long now. It’s starting to get to me. But…I have had a wonderful time with my mom and I’ve had [...]
June 7, 2009 at 12:08 am
I just finished watching Revolutionary Road based on Richard Yates’ award-winning novel, which I read for the first time over Spring Break this year. The novel is spectacular and tragic, in all the best ways. It’s a lot like reading someone’s diary, only more literary. So many more critics have lauded the novel and the [...]
June 1, 2009 at 10:21 pm
There are a lot of things I know, in a logical sense, that don’t quite make it to my emotional self. Take, for example, student evaluations of my courses and my teaching. I know evaluations are flawed. The language with all of its ambiguous terms and the scale “strongly agree, strongly disagree” doesn’t help. I [...]
May 30, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Thursday, despite the fact I started coming down with a cold, Mom and I visited Zooworld in PCB. It was not crowded as it was the middle of the week but there were enough people there to make it seem like a friendly place. It was hot, of course, and by the time of the [...]
May 27, 2009 at 11:14 pm
I’m in Panama City Beach visiting my parents. Today Dad I went exploring around town, looking for the tackier kitschier parts of PCB, which is actually harder than you might think given today’s high rise condos and corporatized environment of the beach today. However, if you go into Panama City proper, otherwise known as “across [...]
May 25, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I’ve shared with you many times (like here, here, also here and loads of other posts) my (quite possibly) unnatural desire to design and code blog designs, particularly when something stressful is happening. I need something small, minute, detail-oriented on which to focus. I don’t knit, so I code.
This update, however, occurred because [...]
May 22, 2009 at 11:39 am
From BrenĂ© Brown’s blog Ordinary Courage
What I love about this “exercise” or way of thinking is that it gives me an opportunity to think about myself in context with a bigger picture. I get to think about and reflect on my previous week an really pay attention to what I’m thinking and feeling. I normally [...]
May 19, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I’ve had the Naked Eyes’ song Promises, Promises in my head for a week. And today I found a kind of acoustic-y version on iTunes which is actually really cool. I usually like covers of songs where other singers/songwriters interpret classic songs. One of my favorites is still Ben Harper’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s [...]
May 13, 2009 at 11:13 pm
This is what my basement looked like earlier today. I’m STILL doing laundry. Thankfully, I don’t think there’s much damage beyond very wet and dirty clothes.
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