Uncategorized – Regular Guy

I’m a Loser

brian — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 03:48:57 +0000

I could not figure out today’s Wordle puzzle. And that’s OK.

I didn’t share that one to the thread I use for my results because I don’t really need to share my failures. (I have a single Facebook thread for Wordle instead of making a new one every day.) But I feel like maybe I should have.

For the first few days of the Wordle craze, I resisted. And for no real reason other than the stupid mind games that follow any Internet craze. Then I did a puzzle and fell in love with the game.

I love the rhythm of one daily puzzle that we all can share. Of course, this has been ruined by people whining about colored squares in their Facebook or Twitter feeds or the ultra-competitive who make it seem like not guessing a word is some sort of moral failing.

Neither of these groups should make me pause before posting my result. The first one definitely does not. In fact, they make me more eager to share what I have done because their humorlessness deserves pushback.

The second one, however, gives me pause. Because I am competitive even though I don’t always do my puzzle at the most ideal time which leads me to not share my result some days.

I generally do my puzzle very early in the morning before I try and catch another hour or so of sleep. If I don’t do it then, I might toss and turn thinking about Wordle. If I do log in, I might get frustrated around guess 4 or 5 and just throw in the towel.

And that is what happened on this one. I just didn’t care at some point. But I did care enough to not show it, which is dumb because this is a free word game that means absolutely nothing.

Can you forgive me?

Making the Grade … Barely

brian — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:47:28 +0000

As many people are wont to do in their mid-40s, I have turned nostalgic. I have always had this streak, but the good times of college have really flooded back recently. A friend recently told me on Facebook that I needed to catalog all the stories from those days. So here I go. This will be an occasional series which may make you laugh, will surely make you question my judgment and could make you wistful for your version of the good old days.

I have had a bear of a time recently at work. They offered a couple of professional development classes I wanted, but both got cancelled. As I wept over the lost opportunity to sleep in – I come in normally at 7, but these classes don’t start until 9 – I also thought back to a weird situation during my senior year of college. Allegheny College had a requirement which (I think) was called 10-6-3. The final number is important because we had to take at least three classes in each of the major divisions – humanities, social sciences and sciences.

As an English major, that means I had four years to take three classes in the sciences, my least favorite area. I knocked two of them out my freshman year, relying on my brother to help me in computer science and managing to put two years of high school calculus to use in “Calculus for Non-Majors.” For the next two years, I did what I do best.

I procrastinated. I didn’t take one class to satisfy this requirement as a sophomore or junior. I had too much fun exploring my major and finding classes in other areas where I could rely on my writing rather than taking tests. So when I had to pick classes for my final year, I realized I had to buckle down and get this out of the way. When the schedule came out for the first trimester – we had three 10-week trimesters back then instead of semesters – I saw the perfect class: Sexual Reproduction. Some friends and I managed to stop giggling long enough to register.

However, we got a rude awakening when we returned to school in the fall. As I remember, the instructor was a part-time teacher who left over the summer because her husband was transferred. Or something like that. Either way, I had to find a new class. I inquired about the cake course to end all cake courses in the sciences Economic Botany, but that was not being offered for some reason. I vaguely remember low enrollment or an instructor conflict, but don’t recall the specifics.

All I know is that I could not find a science class for first term and needed to push it to the second trimester. I don’t recall the name of the class – General Biology sounds right – but the catalog made it sound like it would cater to those just looking to fulfill a requirement. Boy, was I wrong.

The goofy instructor made things as entertaining as he could, but that didn’t change the fact that I had gotten in way over my head. This trimester also included the final stages of my senior thesis, my final season as a wrestler plus my responsibilities as sports editor of the campus paper. I didn’t have time for a class that had way too much work for a non-science major.

Luckily, we had a bunch of us in the same boat, and a friend who was a science major (and enrolled for an “easy” class away from her concentration) did her best to tutor us. I had taken the class pass/fail so I really just needed to squeak by.

That didn’t happen. Technically, I did pass, but at Allegheny, if you took a class pass/fail, you gave up the right for a D to count as a passing grade. I had a solid D, something I never told my parents. I went to the teacher to throw myself on his mercy, but he didn’t want to hear it. In fact, as I walked into his office, he said, “I’m not changing your grade.” Crestfallen, I almost walked out, but he offered me a compromise. If I gave up the pass/fail option, I could take the D, pass the class and graduate. Since I had pretty much no chance of adding a science class I could pass for the final trimester, I had to accept. I could figure out how to deal with my parents on this later.

The deal had one catch, however. The provost of the college needed to approve it. At the time, I was writing very unflattering things about the administration’s decision to discontinue the wrestling program after my senior year, so I really didn’t want to go to them and beg for mercy. But I had to. Because of that, I really needed approval more than ever since the wait would put me well beyond the time I could add a class.

I hated that meeting at the time, but got the sense Provost Andrew Ford actually liked how I stood up for myself in the wrestling thing. We talked about the grade, he said he’d get back to me and, a week or so later, I got a letter confirming I had the best D I could ever imagine. The grades had come to my PO box at school over spring break, so I fudged the truth to my parents and never told them the truth of what happened.

I’m not proud of the whole thing, but learned a lot from the process. It didn’t cure me of my procrastination, but I learned a lot about planning ahead. I learned how to deal maturely with people who had the power in a situation. I also learned that I really, really hated biology.

Going (Back) to the Go-Go’s

brian — Mon, 30 May 2011 13:02:50 +0000

In January 1982, my brother Kevin took me to my first rock concert. Ostensibly. we went to the Cap Centre in Landover, Md., to see The Police, but the opening act made a much greater impression on me. After all, the Go-Go’s had the nation’s No. 1 album at the time of the show, narrowly edging out The Police’s new release. I will never forget that cold night.

Last night, I got to re-visit that memory when I went to Hershey, Pa., to see the Go-Go’s perform. I managed to get a third-row seat (shame the theatre didn’t sell out) at the door, and loved every minute of it. The picture and video (not sure if the sound is working but this is Vacation, the opener) below aren’t the greatest, but they are enough of a memory for me. I’ll post more about this in the coming days.

ITEOTWAWKI: Pageant Anniversary

brian — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:33:07 +0000

I first truly discovered R.E.M. through “Life’s Rich Pageant,” the band’s fourth album. I bought a cassette over ~~Christmas~~ break from college in the summer of 1987, almost a year after it was released.

I had heard some of the band’s songs at parties and on mix tapes from friends during my freshman year at school. When I perused the racks at Record and Tape Traders in Catonsville, I found a copy of Pageant on cassette for a few bucks. That ranks as one of my best purchases ever.

Between the opening guitar riff of “Begin the Begin” to the familiar jangle of “Superman,” the final (and unlisted) track on the album, I fell in love with the band. “Document” came out a few months later and, by the time “Green” hit the shelves at the beginning of my junior year, I had fallen completely under their spell.

On July 12, “Pageant” will get the 25th anniversary treatment just like the band’s first three albums. In the same vein as last year’s “Fables of the Reconstruction” recognition, the second CD will feature demo sessions which led up to the album’s release.

I initially didn’t like that decision, but came around since the tracks did not represent anything easily accessible from various bootlegs. I again head into this a little skeptical. The announcement says everything on the second disc is unreleased, but the second disc of the 2006 compilation “And I Fell Fine… The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987” has three demos from the Pageant sessions.

Have they pulled out alternate versions of “PSA,’ “(Theme from) Two Steps Onward” and “Mystery to Me?” I guess we can only wait and see. I am psyched that a version of “Wait” will feature on the disc. I have heard one studio version on bootleg so hope this is an even better take.

Old 97s videos

brian — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:06:53 +0000

A couple more to come when I get a chance.

A Little Song, A Little Dance …

brian — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:50:08 +0000

Thanks to my friend Heidi, I discovered that today is a very important anniversary. Thirty-five years ago, the Chuckles Bites the Dust episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show aired. If you are not aware, this was perhaps the greatest television episode ever.

Sadly, I had trouble finding a good video file of the best parts. Hulu only has the first three seasons available – Chuckles came during the sixth season. The video below was the best I could find. It covers nine minutes (including the whole theme song), but the audio and video are not synced up. Still, it’s worth a watch.

Also of note (thanks to my friend Dave – yes I have two friends!), Ken Levine’s excellent blog has some info on the script as well as MTM’s performance.

Play the Game Right

brian — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:19:20 +0000

I have long maintained that the game the kids today call Beer Pong is not really Beer Pong. To play something called Pong, you need to hit the ball with a paddle, not just toss it. Somehow Beirut (what the game should really be called) has gained more popularity over the years.

Well, that has come back to bite some students in the rear. I’m not saying that the version I played as a younger man was completely sanitary, but I don’t recall it spreading the flu around my fraternity house.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is asking students to curb the sharing of cups after a group of students contracted the swine flu during a weekend of drinking games, according to Dr. Leslie Lawrence, medical director of the school’s health center.

Play Beer Pong the right way kids, and you won’t catch the flu.

ITEOTWAWKI: Eating Crow

brian — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:19:28 +0000

OK, the last time I did one of these updates, I expressed disappointment that the re-release of “Reckoning” would be paired with a disc from the Dublin rehearsals prior to the Accelerate release. A few people pointed out the fallacy in my logic and told me to stop whining. Well, they were right.

The Reckoning release and the live Dublin CD are separate. I clumsily read the initial news item, but got confirmation this week I was wrong when the Reckoning date was announced this week. So on June 23, geeks like me will head out to add another copy of R.E.M.’s second full-length release to our collection.

As a bonus, we will get a recording of a July 1984 show from Chicago. I’m sure I have heard this show at some point and might have a CD lying around the house with it, but I will avoid the temptation to look for it so that it can be a nice little surprise next month. I guess a few songs will disappear like they did with the concert paired with Murmur, but that doesn’t bother me too much.

Tony Fletcher, author of the first and probably best biographies of the band, will provide the liner notes. That should be fun.