[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Picture from Daehyun Park on Flickr

Last week I spoke at the graduation dinner for my master's degree program.  I had sort of an axe to grind, since last year's dinner sucked royally.  For whatever reason, the students that were second years nominated that worst, most inarticulate student in their group to give the final speech.  It was so bad that we all spent the night surfing the Internet on our cell phones while this guy droned on about their international trip.

Fast forward to this year.  I'm already super-checked-out about class.  I could really care less about whether or not I get A's this semester.  But, for some reason, the final speech meant a lot to me.  It was so important that I spent hours and hours thinking about it.  No one else seemed really interested in doing the speech, so I nominated myself.

My presentation borrowed heavily from the comedic timing of Dimitry Martin.  He is awesome, and I admit that I stole like a mofo from his chart-drawing.

When the final night came, everyone kept telling me that I talk too fast when I'm nervous.  Slow down.  Breathe.  Take your time.

I had my slides.  I had a bunch of inside jokes planned.  It was game on!

I was certainly nervous when I went to the podium, but, honestly, I've never had a speech go so well.  It flowed perfectly.  The jokes were funny.  At one point, people laughed so much that I had to wait for them to stop laughing so that I could continue with my speech. 

At the end, I got a roar of applause.  People came up to me afterwards and said that it was the best presentation they'd ever seen.  Everyone loved it. 

The next morning, professors came up to me to congratulate me.  When I left on Saturday, I got a standing ovation from the class.  Not too shabby.  

Like anyone else, I'm influenced by the attitudes of my peers.  So... I've got a copy of "How to master stand-up comedy" on order from my local library.  I don't think I'm a funny person, but, after last week's dinner, I feel that I might have made that judgment in haste.

I received word last week that my old professor died.  It wasn't entirely unexpected.  He was in his mid 70's and had had health problems.  I took his class as an undergrad and loved it.  It was such an awesome experience that I convinced him to let me do an independent study with him for my capstone course.

I arrived at my first lecture with the impression that I was going to learn so much that I would just burst from all of the new knowledge. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Alone in a course with him, he was a monster.  He bullied me, yelled when I didn't read his mind, and then threatened to fail me.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

I started doing rigorous work to prove to my department's administration that I was worthy of at least passing the course.  I took photos of all of my work and documented everything that I could. 

After the semester ended, I got my grade.  A.

After all of that shit that he put me through, he gave me an A.  C might have made me happier.

After that, I saw him once or twice at faculty events.  He said that I was one of his best students, and I never could understand that, especially since it was so obvious that I had failed to live up to his expectations.

I found out years later that the yelling and cursing was some sort of cultural thing.  He was foreign, and he was brought up in a different education environment.  It started to make a little bit of sense, although I certainly never got close to realizing his goals for me.

In retrospect, I wonder if I should have forgiven him and maybe made some sort of contact.  On the other hand, the spontaneous out-pouring of grief at his death by other former students dampens my own enthusiasm for bereavement.  They don't know him like I know him, and their experiences didn't paint the picture of the whole man.

One good thing did come out of my experience.  I wrote my first book.  It was a memoir about the experience.  I basically channeled everything that I was feeling and what my professor was saying into a book about my studies and failing.  It's been years since I read it, and I don't think I could ever show it to anyone again.  But, it was the first time that I was able to scale the 60,000 word mountain. 

I owe that much to him, even if it was verbal abuse that forced me to do it.  So, for that, Paolo, I thank you.  May you find even better students in the afterlife, if it exists.  Just try not to be an ass to them.  K?

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/14/occupy_valentines_day/singleton/?mobile.html

Not a bad idea!

This makes perfect sense, and it is almost certainly being used already!

http://blog.rodneyfolz.com/circumventing-the-no-fly-list-in-thirty-

http://m.cnbc.com/id/45899109

Creepy thought: if the shit hit the fan, we'd only have a week before things got bad. Since most disasters occur in isolated areas, I'm not too worried. But, I feel like I ought to be doing more to preserve my life in the event of emergency.

This morning I received an email from a department head at my university that I have never met.  She asked me to write a letter of rec for a professor of mine (apparently he's not in my department, he just teaches classes for us...).  He's up for a big teaching award, and they need some students to grease the skids.

Anyway, I told that of course I would do it.  I'm happy to write about how great he is, since he is actually a pretty good professor.  So, I've been tapping away all afternoon. 

Now I'm at about a page of writing, and I have the strangest form of stagefright that a writer can have.  I'm worried that 1) I'm not doing him justice and that 2) if I write more specific stuff, I might make him look like a weirdo.

Hmmm... I think I'll write the same letter again but from a different perspective.  If I were reading letters of recommendation, I would want a funny story or an anecdote that leads into the usual back-patting.  I might try starting with that.

Last week I made the two hour trip from my hometown back to the metroplex. It was dark and dreary the entire day, but at one point, the sky opened up. After days of rain, I couldn't resist snapping a photo with my phone!! I think it's the prettiest one I've taken thus far.

http://www.osnews.com/story/25469/Richard_Stallman_Was_Right_All_Along

I'm not sure how to react to this post. I agree with the idea of everything being capable of tracking. I'm just not sure that anyone cares to know that much about me.

This speech was the only speech where I saw him in person, and I was very impressed with what he said during the closing address:

Wikipedia hasn't reached their goal yet, so I'm passing along:

Here's how the Wikipedia fundraiser works: Every year we raise just the funds that we need, and then we stop.

Because you and so many other Wikipedia readers donated over the past weeks, we are very close to raising our goal for this year by December 31 -- but we're not quite there yet.

You've already done your part this year. Thank you so much. But you can help us again by forwarding this email to a friend who you know relies on Wikipedia and asking that person to help us reach our goal today by clicking here and making a donation.

If everyone reading this email forwarded it to just one friend, we think that would be enough to let us end the fundraiser today.

Of course, we wouldn't turn you down if you wanted to make a second donation or a monthly gift.

Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff.

Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 470 million different people every month – with billions of page views.

Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.

When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission, and leave waste to others.

Thanks again for your support this year. Please help spread the word by forwarding this email to someone you know.

Thanks,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder