About Ramblings of a Hopeless Khowaga
Welcome to my Web site. My name is Chris, and I’ll be your host. I live in Austin, Texas, with my partner, Ray, and our child dog, Mocha. You can read more about me, learn 100 random things about me, and if you’re wondering what the heck a khowaga is, click here. Feel free to browse, read, and leave comments!
I kinda geeked out last week when Ray installed Windows 7 on my laptop and I discovered all the fun international themes that you can download and install – and you can make your own! Wow. Geekiness ensues.
There’s no Egypt theme for Windows 7 on the Microsoft site, though, so I decided to make one of my own. You can download the themepack, or the individual images below.
Egypt Themepack for Windows (5.5 MB)
Enjoy!
It’s almost Halloween.
Unlike some people I know, I’m not a huge Halloweeny type person. I haven’t carved a pumpkin since the incident a few years ago when I managed to irritate the crap out of my eyes (and my eye doctor just wanted to know where I’d found a pumpkin, since they were in short supply that year). Also, I don’t have enough room to store Halloween stuff in the house – we can barely fit our eco-friendly Christmas tree.
Plus, this year they’re having a big conference (of teachers — who thought this was a good idea?) this weekend, so I’ll be driving home from Dallas on Halloween evening. One presumes I shouldn’t have difficulty, since there should be no trick-or-treaters out on the Interstate … one presumes.
I was thinking about this yesterday because a professor from the East European Studies program that I’ve known for years has a dabbling side interest in vampires that’s taken off. He’s been on those vampire specials on The “History” Channel. He was brought in as a consultant on “30 Days of Night,” and got to attend the premiere and he was this close! to Josh Hartnett.
He did a reading of vampire stories yesterday, and one of our staff members went to hear him read. “He’s so neat,” she said.
I was bemoaning the fact that we don’t have vampires in the Middle East. It’s not because, scientifically, we have more sunlight there (in fact, given that it’s closer to the equator, the hours of day and night are more evenly distributed than they are in the northen latitudes). They just don’t go as well with sand dunes and … well, frankly, there could be several wandering old Cairo or Damascus and no one would know.
Also — can I just take a moment here to say that if the entire cast of Twilight were to fall into a bottomless pit, it would not bother me in the slightest? Seriously–am I the only person in the world who thinks that the lead guy is bland and boring? He’s too thin, and has no muscles, and … yes, what’s really bothering me is that this wasn’t considered “hot” when I still matched that general description. Wolf dude, on the other hand … isn’t legal.
And the hoardes of fans … fuggetaboutit.
We need to come up with the next great supernatural genre series, stat. Look at J.K. Rowling — she started off writing on the back of a paper sack and now she’s donating her pocket change to pay off the British national debt.
I was discussing this with my boss yesterday, and he said that whenever he teaches his intro to Islam class, he has to spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to persuade his students that djinn, as mentioned in the Qur’an, and not “genies,” and that even “genies” have nothing to do with Disney’s Aladdin or Barbara Eden.
They might, however, make for an interesting plot device. [Strokes chin.] Might have to explore that …
Anyway. It’s a brisk Tuesday in October — finally. Hope yours is well 
It’s Saturday morning. It’s cool outside (54 degrees! — 12 if you speak Celsius), and I am relaxing with a cup of Cafe Yaucono that I brought back from Puerto Rico and ran through the French press this morning. (Does anyone know if they make automated / programmable French presses? Cos I could totally get into that…)
Ray commented last night that I am neglecting my blog (I wouldn’t say I’ve been neglecting it: it’s been hacked twice in the past two weeks and I spent a good chunk of Tuesday locking it down to prevent a third occurrence).
But here’s why: there’s a big conference coming up at work at the end of next week, in honor of a professor who passed away last year. Since the summer, I’ve been wrangling an organizing committee (a bit tantamount to standing up cooked spaghetti) consisting of dear colleagues who want to honor said professor. Read another way: the organizing committee consists of people who have massive personalities and are capable of causing all sorts of massive drama.
Professor A, one of the two co-chairs, is a sweet guy, but bizarrely capable of getting his feelings hurt very easily. He also displays an innate tendency to bring an issue before the committee, which is discussed and agreed upon in a meeting where he takes no notes, and then goes back and reports something different to the people involved. For example: “How long should the Thursday keynote speak?” We decided that the talk should go no longer than 30 minutes as we don’t want the event to go longer than two hours. He then reported to the keynote speaker that she should be prepared to speak for 30-40 minutes, and would have 20 minutes for questions.
Seriously.
Professor B, who is the professor who sent the nasty message that put a sour spin on my last few hours in Cairo over the summer, has since then actually been very easy to work with.
Professor C is a handful. I believe my facebook status earlier this week read, in reference to her, “She’s such a pill that if I could bottle and market her, I’d be a millionaire.” She’s written one book that won tons of awards–as well it should: she spent TWENTY YEARS writing it. Her main goal in life is to make sure that people know that she’s in the room.
How this all plays out is as follows:
Thursday morning.
A drafts the program for the conference and sends it around. It’s formatted wildly, so I spend a good chunk of time reformatting it and pass it around. It takes two hours for someone to notice that all of the panel chairs are wrong and another hour for someone to notice that half of them are at the wrong times. When this is expressed, Professor A responds that, “Well, I didn’t have my notes in front of me, so I just made things up and figured that someone would catch the error.”
I choose, for political expediency, not to respond by pointing out that it might have been more useful for him to make a notation to that effect, or, heaven forbid, actually say, “Hey, I don’t have this information on hand, can someone fill it in?”
B asks if the program and poster can be sent around electronically so that everyone can send it out on their listservs. The program and poster are online, so I send out a message containing the links to the files.
B then responds that … well, never mind. It’s too much work for her to download the files (also, she wants to know if the 11X17 poster and the 8.5 x 11 program can be put in the same document), so, as I’m getting ready to go to a meeting, I quickly send off the poster and the program to everyone as an attachment.
In my haste, I send a slightly older version of the poster. The only difference between this version and the new version is that one speaker isn’t included on the list of presenters. Unfortunately, said speaker happens to be …
Professor C. Who writes me exactly 30 seconds later complaining about this, and then asks me, “Shall I just plan not to speak, then?”
Allow me to say it here: !!!!!!FUCKING BITCH!!!!!!
I feel better now.
When I get back to my office, I send out the “new” poster (which Professor C has already found online, because there were approximately 47 new messages waiting for me detailing every moment of her exhaustive search for a document whose location I had already sent out, but let’s give Madame Indiana Jones credit here because she wants it).
And so, we’re set. Right up until we discover that A has scheduled someone for a panel on Friday morning who was originally told he’d be talking on Saturday, and isn’t arriving until Friday afternoon.
I know that Thou Shall Not Kill is one of the big 10, but … surely there are exceptions, aren’t there?
Summer officially ends today here on this esteemed campus of higher learning. Never mind that today will likely be the 66th consecutive day of 100+ degree temperatures, and that we’re still in a massive drought. Summer’s over when classes start.
Most years, it seems that I always have something to say about the massive influx of students. There is something disarming about the arrival of 40,000 students on campus all at once (and believe you me, they all showed up over the weekend). Our summer school numbers are pretty low here, something I’ve never quite understood since it’s an easy way to relieve that crowding over the rest of the year, but what do I know?
The Bible pushers weren’t out yet this morning when I came in. You may recall them from a post several years ago in which I lamented my inability to throw out holy scripture that I didn’t want. I’m sure I’ll see them this afternoon, unless their precious saved souls can’t quite deal with the heat. That’d be funny.
When I got to my department this morning, I was surprised to find new fliers up everywhere.
We have this professor–I won’t name him because he actually googles himself on a daily basis (and given his narcissism, there’s at least three or four entendres at work in that statement)–who has declared himself the only expert in the bizarre dialect of a language that he teaches. He’s declared his office the World Headquarters of studies in this particular language.
So, this morning, there are fliers up all over the place. He’s running some bizarre contest, and god alone knows what the prize will be. A copy of his most recent biography, I suppose. (Seriously: he publishes these random books consisting of his journals through one of those “publish it yourself” vanity presses, like we all need to know what his opinion of the canapes at a restaurant that no longer exists is … )
I saw another professor on my way out yesterday. We joke around the office that he taught Hebrew to Moses — seriously, the guy is almost 90 and still teaching. I’ve thought to myself that I suppose that I’d like to be that active at his age. (The other running joke is that he’s still teaching because he’s afraid that if he retires he’ll discover that, after all these years, he really doesn’t like his wife.) We have come in on Monday mornings and noticed on the switchboard phone that the receiver in his office is off the hook and wondered to ourselves if he failed to hang up properly again, or if this is going to be the time that we key into his office and find him still in there …
He’s also massively grumpy at times, when it comes to things like only four students registered for his class and it’s going to be cancelled due to low enrollment. This was yesterday’s drama, and he was complaining about it to everyone. The problem there is that the person he needed to complain to wasn’t in the office, so the rest of it had to hear about it at some length. He doesn’t talk very loudly or quickly, you see.
The kicker to all of the pre-semester faculty drama is that I had a meeting yesterday that included the faculty member who sent a particularly nasty message at the end of my trip to Cairo. She was very nice and sweet and pretended like nothing ever happened. I suppose that’s one way to deal with it, but … for god’s sake, if you’re going to be that bitchy, own it! Don’t brush it under the rug. Seriously, does no one understand the finer points of bitchcraft?
At any rate. I need to go see how we’re doing on the office pool: the first day of classes we always have a pool to guess what time the first panicked student will arrive freaking out because he/she couldn’t get into the class he/she wanted. Never mind that registration is over and that we’ve been here all summer long — there’s always a handful of them. I picked 8:45.
I hope your summer is ending smoothly
Allow me, if you will, a moment of political incorrectness that nearly every member of the flying public has had at some point or another.
You’ve boarded an aircraft. You’re in your seat, and there is an empty seat next to you. It’s now late in the boarding process, but people are still coming down the aisle with that pensive look that is, frankly, a little mystifying. (Seriously, what’s causing that overly confused look? Are they seriously thinking to themselves, “According to my boarding pass, I’m sitting in row 23. I wonder where that is in relation to row 10? Oh, if only there were some systematic way of ordering rows on airplanes so that I wouldn’t have this problem!”)
Perhaps you have a coveted window seat. Perhaps, like me, you’re a little taller than the average person and so you enjoy a good aisle seat. Aisle seats have a lot of legroom, but if you’re flying on your own–as I frequently am–you have to get up once or twice to let someone by you, so it’s hard to relax until your aisle mates have arrived.
And so … as the plane starts to fill up, you do it. Don’t deny it–you have, too, done it. You start scrutinizing the people walking in–and there’s always that moment of, “Oh, no, please don’t let him/her be sitting here.” Sometimes it’s a mother with an infant in arms that’s already fussing. Sometimes it’s a child traveling on their own.
On a flight to DC several months back, I was next to a woman who was very sweet, but also very large. Although I did enjoy talking with her, when we landed in DC I had a very sore back because I had spent most of the flight leaning toward the aisle out of necessity–it was physically impossible for me to sit upright in my seat because, well, she was occupying part of it.
It’s not her fault — frankly, we as Americans are larger people in both stature and, um, girth–and our airlines seem to be shrinking the size of the average seat. Seriously, have you flown on one of those regional jets? Even I can’t put the tray table down without leaving a red crease across my naval. I have found myself fighting for control of the armrest with skinny people. There is no privacy on an aircraft — the number of businessmen who whip out those laptops and start working on confidential memos — if I’m sitting next to you, kids, I can read every single word on your laptop screen.
However, whatever experiences I’ve had–and you’ve had–here’s one I’m happy to have not had:
Friday, July 31, 2009 10:33 AMASSOCIATED PRESSCAIRO — An official at Cairo’s airport says a foot-long baby crocodile wriggled out of a passenger’s hand luggage and caused panic on a flight from the United Arab Emirates.
A crew member on the EgyptAir flight from Abu Dhabi rounded up the wayward reptile and calmed passengers. The airport security official says the animal was seized and given to the Cairo Zoo.
Transporting exotic animals in and out of the Egypt is illegal, and none of the passengers on today’s flight claimed ownership of the baby croc.
The airport official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
Where’s Samuel L. Jackson when you need him? Honestly.
So, the next time you find yourself on an aircraft, consider yourself lucky if one of your aisle mates isn’t toting a killer reptile. Or a skunk. Or … well, it’s not like they’d have the room to take it out of their luggage anyway! 
