mikeneko, posts by tag: work - LiveJournal

It's here, and it's lovely. It is a pretty laptop. (I didn't realize it would be.) It's more or less the same size as the one I'm using, but it weighs less. Now it is gulping down antivirus and Windows updates, and I'm trying to ignore it so that I can get more chapters read. Evidently I need to make some recovery disks, as it came with . . . nothing. I am not used to this unhappy new world where you get zero OEM discs.

( I'm also upgrading a few programs.Collapse )

In the meantime, I was offered another book overlapping the one I'm desperately reading right now, I have a small pile of medical articles to get through before Monday (though I asked for -- and received -- a deadline delay on those if needed), several TWC articles to read before Monday (there had been more, but I asked them to give them to someone else), and the sociology professor suddenly popped up to ask if I'd like to do some of his stuff as well (which I really would, 'cause he's cool). And at some point I have to get started on my taxes.

I ... don't even know what I'm doing. Maybe I should turn down this next book and concentrate on getting moved to the new machine. Or maybe I can do both at the same time. Or not. I don't know. I have to decide before tomorrow morning. Yikes.

(Aside to La Q: I found a small cardboard box outside under my mailbox, getting rather damp. Guess what?!? I will tell you about it when I see you . . .)

eta: No new book for me. Had to turn it down. T_T

Have book, am irritated. For some reason, the entire manuscript--not just the chapters with equations--was typed up in LaTeX. So all the book files are conversions. It's an unholy mess of a sort I haven't seen in years. I'm not even going to try cleaning this up; I'm going to edit what's here and let the typesetter tackle the Word style disaster.

( book babbleCollapse )

I have teeth again. :D

( Well, maybe. We'll see.Collapse )

( also some computer folliesCollapse )

( Read more...Collapse )

( an aside to la qCollapse )

( SO ANYWAYCollapse )

I survived yuletide by the hair of my chinny chin chin. Oooaahhh! I've been grumbling about all that elsewhere.

The first thing I had to get through was the Philosophy Book of Pain. I'd taken this one because ... well, I don't know. They offered it. I wasn't really thinking it though. I was dazzled by the money! I was also thinking wistfully of having liked my medieval philosophy courses, Duns Scotus explaining how a table is a table and a chair is a chair and suchlike. I had many rationalizations going.

This was not medieval philosophy. This was a weighty English translation of a French work by someone who'd been attempting to explain a turn-of-the-century British philosopher to the many who have evidently had difficulty figuring him out. So it was ... difficult. Also, I wasn't allowed to change anything, just find typos and fiddle with the punctuation as needed. I was floundering madly until I finally grasped that I didn't have to understand this book. All I had to do was fix the punctuation. Period. All I needed to do was work through the syntax of each individual (extremely long) sentence.

I still have no idea what that book was about.

So it was not fun. One of those books where you're crying (literally) while you read it because you have no choice but to keep reading, the other alternative being skipping over the border (but that would need a passport, and I don't have one).

Those books pop up once in a while. :P

This meant I had about two weeks or so when I wasn't really thinking in terms of fanfic, just about getting through that book somehow. So I had a late start, and they really didn't give us a lot of time to begin with this year. Then the usual rounds of "Do these articles now!" came up as well. I turned down the next book offer because it was obvious that I couldn't edit a book and write this fanfic on a deadline at the same time.

Then came the part where I threw out everything the week of the deadline and started over. Uh.

( Yuletide is fanfic anxiety.Collapse )

( Yuletide is also not domestic.Collapse )

And that's it!

I missed Halloween this year. Completely spaced it, and now am stuck with a lot of candy. Partially this is because I was busy. The Book (latest incarnation) was making me crazy--it was a collection of essays and excerpts reprinted from other sources, but it was filled with strange typos, missing words, erratic punctuation, pretty much every conceivable problem you'd find in something original. However, these weren't new material: they needed to be fairly exacting reproductions of the originals. I asked if I could somehow get copies of the originals or at least a listing of the sources--but no dice. I was told to just query anything that looked strange to me. I'd have been writing non-stop queries.

( major headacheCollapse )

( a major backacheCollapse )

The new book (California UP this time) turns out to be readings on the subject of terrorism and suchlike. It's a collection of reprints (including poetry, woe) from other sources, so the text must exactly reproduce the originals; that's why it's fairly terrifying (heh) that the files are so messed up and typo ridden. They haven't provided me with copies of the originals, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing about this. I've got my fingers crossed that the Internet will provide.

The first chapter's due back by the end of the week, so I'm madly coding elements. From the looks of it, the volume editor couldn't make up her mind what she wanted this book to look like; no two sections are formatted the same way.

So I'll have to decide how the book's gonna look. It's not supposed to work this way. D:

( otherwiseCollapse )

Book is gone! I kept tweeking things at the last minute, but I forced myself to zip it and send it back. Then, like a responsible person, I updated my resume to add it. Good for me!

All the articles but two are done. I'm going to take care of those this afternoon.

Then I will start on the next book. Which may or may not be on terrorism. (I haven't opened any of the files yet. I don't know.)

While all this is going on . . . well, this YouTube video (provided to me by someone on Twitter who noticed my complaining) offers a fairly accurate description of an ongoing problem that I have as well.
( cut for annoyancesCollapse )

I've finished the book, which is due back tomorrow. I need to skim over it all again tonight and try to figure out where the two tables are supposed to be placed in the text. I honestly have no clue, and that was supposed to be one of the things I took care of during the edit. It's a great mystery.

I also have five articles to slog through. I've already done the cleanup and formatting as well as the reference lists, but I haven't done any text edits yet. They're all five from foreign sources, so I'm braced for the usual WTF-itis.

In the meantime, I'm getting weird correspondence about big changes and new media and whatever from the latest crop of Bright Young Things at the publisher. From this, I deduce that these toddlers have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. The problems with this journal do not have a damn thing to do with this "new media" shit -- they're organizational issues. And they're ancient of days.

( And I shall now be bitchy on that topic.Collapse )

The professor really is awesome. This is the second time he's paid me within 24 hours of my dropping an invoice on him. He's never quibbled about or haggled over the fees (and when I offered to discount the fee at one point, he refused to take me up on it).

( I kind of loff him.Collapse )
I just got a call from someone who wanted me to take a message for my neighbors across the street. So, uh, I did. Apparently they've been writing my phone number down on forms as their alternative contact because this is the second time this has happened. I walked it over to stick in their door, and there were feathers all over the yard and a dead, disemboweled dove sitting at the foot of their porch steps. Blergh.

Still plugging through hundreds of immigration footnotes for Harvard. Deadline doom looms. T_T

Still working. Have left the Canadian border and back on the Mexican one now. U.S. immigration policy has always been about a) race and b) gender. To a secondary degree it's been about ethnicity/nationality, but generally that's glommed together indistinguishably with race.

Mexicans had been tolerated since the 1800s because they didn't want to become citizens. They were considered "white," but a degraded, inferior sort of not-quite-white. (Interestingly, you could see a weird vestige of that on the last census form.) They'd cross the border, work at low-paying jobs, then they'd go home; there were several agricultural bills that specifically provided for this arrangement. They were allowed to immigrate into and live in the U.S. so long as they declared their intention to not apply for citizenship. Hence, the border with Mexico, until (relatively) recently, has been largely ignored. Most of the limited federal presence on the Mexican border was focused on snaring any Asians who were attempting to sneak over.

The Chinese were for a very, very long time loathed more than ... well, more than pretty much everyone. Even the Japanese and Koreans weren't disliked on quite the same level, though eventually they'd wind up in the same boat. Not even the black and Mexican and Jewish and eastern European immigrants (among those historically favored for deporting) were slapped with same level of vicious, frothing hatred as the Chinese. It's pretty appalling. The immigration authorities stacked the deck heavily against Chinese immigrants in every conceivable way, then they'd arbitrarily ignore their own guidelines at whim. Chinese immigrants were still managing to work the system by patience and guile to gain legal entry, so the U.S. government finally said, Screw it, this isn't working -- time for universal exclusion: no more Chinese immigrants, period. Then they also curtailed new citizenships for any Asians already legally living here, and that didn't change until 1952. Because they looked too "Asian," Indians (from India), Filipinos, and Middle Easterners likewise would get slapped around regularly until they'd "prove" their whiteness in court for citizenship purposes.

( more rambling about the bookCollapse )

( in the meantimeCollapse )