May 08
May 07
I went to work early to get some work done, then immediately got invited to the coffee break that everyone on my shift takes on Monday mornings. This is an hour of chatting and sitting around waiting for the sandwiches and coffee to arrive where a lot of peer office socializing occurs. It’s an office social obligation that I don’t really mind, as long as I think I can get my work done in the time remaining afterwards. Most of the conversation is just talking about people’s weekends, talking about graduate school papers, or talking about television or whatever else is going on in the office. There was some debate about a woman that entered the coffee shop, as some people were commenting on her someone brought up the social app 1km, and noted she might be using the social networking service.
I hadn’t been introduced to 1km before people mentioned it over coffee. One of my coworkers had it installed on his phone and said it was a great service for meeting women. He explained that it was a geo-aware service that alerted him when someone was nearby also using the service, and he could see if they were compatible matches by looking at their profiles. It could tell you if someone was in the room with you, or walking away down the street. All you need to do is turn on the application, share your location, and everyone nearby that is using the application is highlighted. You can specify for gender or interests, see their pictures, or anything else about the person that they’ve shared. You can see if people are looking for a relationship, what age ranges they are interested in, or what they like. That means you instantly have a way of finding a source of conversation before you even meet them. The coworker said that he knew someone that met a person and took them home for the night by using the application, which is why he thought it was worthwhile.
That struck me as funny, as there was a very similar “Gaydar” device that did nearly the same thing over a decade ago. I mentioned the Stephen Colbert “Gaydar” inventor interview on The Daily Show, which no one knew about. That’s a decade old interview on a comedy show. I didn’t expect anyone to remember it, but I remember the interview as being particularly gut-wrenching to watch which was why I mentioned it.I was just pointing out that geo-aware hookup apps have been around for a long time.
I then remembered a more recent application. “It’s like Grindr, but straight people use it too?”
“What’s with you and all the gay apps? Do you have something to share with who you try to hook up with?”
UGH. I can’t stand overtly homophobic coworkers. I can’t believe people didn’t outgrow that in high school. I mean, really? Are you that insecure because you use a social hookup application? It has nothing to do with the apps being used by gay people. It was a huge social network dating app based on hooking up with people in your area from 2009. It’s exactly the same idea, but it’s been used in another community with a different preference. Besides, who knows what the hell Blendr is? Damn it, I happen to know the precedent for a social media application. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been living on the Internet for the last 15 years, not because it’s about a gay thing.
Anyway, someone at the table was curious and installed the application to see if it worked. I mentioned that I disliked geo-aware social applications because I found them invasive and creepy. No one else thought there was any problem to uploading lots of personal information about themselves on social media websites. All of the following phrases were said by someone at the table when I discussed my objections: “Oh, I’m always responsible with what I put online. No one can use that profile to identify things about me. Facebook isn’t really a problem. No one cares what I do online. I have nothing to hide. It’s never a problem to post something about my location or activities. What, do you have something to hide? What are you doing that makes you worried about privacy? Why don’t you like sharing information? Why do you care about privacy? Why are you so paranoid?”
Why hello, Internet generational gap. All of these people had also suffered identity fraud at one time or another.
I think I know a little about sharing things online. I just don’t like using the argument from authority, but I think having a blog for 11+ years allows me some knowledge on the subject. If you want to go ahead and share everything about yourself on Facebook, go ahead. I just don’t think that’s a good idea, and if you can’t imagine a scenario where sharing information could bite you in the ass, you must be sharing such trivial shit about your life that it might not ever really matter. It’s just another difference of opinion, but I think privacy is a virtue that once lost is almost impossible to regain, and I haven’t found many things worth losing any of my privacy over. I’d rather hold on to the few things I do that are private then spend my time advertising my location to the world all the time. Sometimes not sharing is a virtue too.
Anyway, the second coworker to install the app tried it out, and found that there were lots of people that were single, desperate people, clearly lying about their appearance, looking to find someone of a particular type. Women stating that they were looking for sugar daddies, people looking to start affairs, and all types of people that seemed somewhat sketchy. There were prostitutes that had discovered the service as a way of advertising their services, as you could see pictures and find their location without ever needing to go to a seedy location first. Cut out the middle-pimp, as it were. It was never stated, “Hey, this is a working girl,” but their profiles left very little to the imagination, and the app seemed to facilitate that sort of encounter perfectly. Sketchy to say the least. Perhaps that is how someone met someone using this app to take home. The person they met was on the clock, so to speak.
The most disturbing thing was that it only took someone 15 minutes from installing the application until they were stalking the nearest person they found online. They were looking at a stranger’s Facebook picture profile, discerning if they had a boyfriend in a serious relationship and trying to figure out exactly where they were relative to where we were at the time. It takes someone 15 minutes to turn into a total stalking creep. When we went into the student building, the entire application was filled with lonely single guys in different classrooms looking for ladies. We couldn’t recognize any of our students, but wouldn’t it be creepy to know that someone in your class was using the service? It took a relatively normal person 15 minutes to turn into a creep. What would happen when an actually weirdo got hold of this information? Still comfortable about sharing everything now?
I also found it extremely distasteful that you could sign up with someone else’s name, then use the service as a completely socially unacceptable stalker enabler. Imagine a revenge scenario? Sign up using someone else’s name, then solicit explicit contact with someone else’s name under false pretenses, then watch the fallout, or potentially blackmail the people involved. Online impersonation is one thing, but this is a service about meeting people in “meatspace” where things can really go wrong. What’s to stop you from ruining someone else’s reputation and or social standing using this application? I’m sure that’s against the terms of service, but once you ruin someone’s life, does it really matter? Getting doxxed sucks, but imagine having someone even worse happen to you in person every day for the rest of your life?
I’m just a cranky old man. Young people, blinded by the opportunity of a potential sexual encounter are willing to basically do anything without regard for their personal welfare. It’s the same as it’s always been, online or offline, except memories fade and people forget things offline, while online everything lives on forever. I think the stakes are a hell of a lot higher when posting content online. There are consequences for reckless online behavior, and I can’t believe people actually argue that point.
Anyway, I will not be installing the 1km application, as it does nothing I am interested in, but in younger circles it is popular. It’s a little too creepy for me. If you can manage the minimal signup procedures in Korean, you’ll be amazed at the number of people using it in any urban area.
May 06
The city’s card shop got in their set of Avacyn Restored, which is the final set in the “Innistrad” block that I started playing half a year ago. I’ve been learning how to play Magic, and building EDH decks as a hobby for the past year, but this is the first time I’ve played for a long time in a casual group, and it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve basically met once a week for the past few months to play, so I feel like while it is an expensive hobby to keep up with, there is a bit of a return on the investment with all the people I’ve met socially, or contacts I’ve made through the game. It’s also very fun, despite me always losing. I usually lose the majority of games I play, but I keep having fun and try to improve.
There was a rare impromptu Sunday meetup, since everyone was interested in getting the new set, and since I had nothing else going on I decided to meet too. We had enough players for an interesting multiplayer game. Everyone kept their cards, built the best deck from what was available, and simply tried to beat the people across from them. It’s fun to play Magic, but the set we opened today didn’t really win me over. There are plenty of fun cards, but a lot of cards I found very “swing-y” and blurred the edge between luck and skill a little too much. I don’t mind pulling the perfect card at the right time to win me the game, but when a lot of the mechanics dictate that there is no other way you can use a card effectively to win, I’m a little disappointed.
The games went extremely long, and I lost in third place each time, which won me nothing, but I did pull some of the the most valuable cards available in the set as of today. If I was able to turn the cards I won directly into cash, I would have turned a profit. Sadly that’s not how it works, so I have some expensive cardboard at the moment. No one in our circle was looking to trade for either of them, but now I have some spectacular trade capital in card someone from out of town, or someone gets the itch for a really high end deck. I don’t mind getting rid of either, or holding on to them and just putting them into an EDH deck for now. I rarely get the pulls from the packs I open that make other people drool. I hate opening packs at random, so it’s really nice to be able to pay for cards, then immediately get to play with them without danger of losing them if my performance isn’t good enough. It’s nice to finally come around and have my regression to the mean work in my favor, basically.
May 05
It’s not like I didn’t want to do something with the family, but when I heard “Let’s go to the park”, I thought we were going to have a nice, solitary picnic and play. Little did I know that there was a “Children’s Day Festival” that was being held near the government buildings in the city, and that’s where we were actually headed. Grouchy, whining child + Hot weather + Crowds + Korean MC droning into a microphone at top volume + Caffeine withdraw = Recipe for a nasty migraine headache. I don’t do well in any of those situations, and as soon as I was forced to endure my first long line waiting for cotton candy I knew I had to leave. Within twenty minutes of arriving at the festival, I was asking my wife if we could to go before my head exploded Scanners style.
We had missed most of the activities and drawings because of our late arrival, which was due to our spectacularly grouchy daughter, who didn’t want to anything without a really big fight. She’s wonderfully stubborn and independent, but that’s a huge problem when you are trying to get things done and need her to get on board. She already had her toys and gifts, what did she have to complain about exactly? Since the festival was nearly over besides the cleanup, I knew of a better park a few blocks over that has a three story tall twisting children’s slide. It’s in a huge park that would need lots of people to fill up. We headed over to the much quieter, much emptier, much nicer park to rest. Glow finally settled down enough to play on the swing set and slides, and I got to be a ladder and safety buddy as she navigated the very large playground jungle gym. The park has a playground I wish our apartment would install, but I’ve heard that elaborate safe jungle gyms are extremely expensive so perhaps our tough metal things will remain for the foreseeable future.
After the park ran its course, The rest of the day we decided to spend at home, as restaurants and places that are family friendly are swarming with children. It was 100% better once we were back at home.
May 04
Now that my schedule doesn’t force me into class early, I have weird sleeping problems. I still wake up at the exact same time, never needing an alarm, and I can’t get back to sleep. I’ve also developed such a strong tolerance to caffeine that I need to have a dose before 3 PM or my brain shuts down and requires a nap of at least an hour to reboot. I’ll be in class and feel the crash come on, and I’ll go from alert and caffeine free to a complete zombie that can’t function.
I’ve been dosing myself throughout the day with coffee or an occasional cola to keep awake, but without that first early morning jolt to wake me as I had been doing for the past six months, I really have a hard time making it through the day. It will only build to an unsustainable point and require me to swear off caffeine once again. I don’t have two weeks of patience to level out and rewire my brain since I always have class right around the time I crash, but eventually I’ll try to reduce my intake and level out to a smaller one coffee or less per day routine.
By the time I sort out the sleeping patterns and caffeine intake issues, I’ll be back on a morning schedule and be forced to wake up extra early, or stay late once again. WHEE!
May 03
I’ve been watching movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the past four years, and I’ve seen most of the successful superhero movies of the past decade, good and bad. It’s been a long time since a string of six films led to such a satisfying payoff. I’m very satisfied with the results of waiting four years and paying for all of these movies in the theater. Individually I was entertained, but watching them build into a greater story was very satisfying as a fan. Watching the buildup to The Avengers was enjoyable because all the characters were introduced in (mostly) awesome, enjoyable movies that stood on their own and established their characters. With that out of the way, it was much easier to get into the meat of the story and have lots of amazing action scenes.
I’ve been waiting, and watching for years now, so I had pretty high expectations. Joss Whedon has produced a lot of my favorite content (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), so seeing him in charge of The Avengers made me very happy, and worried. How could a movie, made from the characters of other movies I liked, directed and written by a guy I adore come together in a near perfect storm of geek. Can the universe handle this much awesome at once? When my coworkers beat me to seeing the film, and told me that not only it was awesome, but would be justified in watching even in 3D, I was very optimistic. I made a date to see an early morning matinee with my wife, and we set off after sending Glow to daycare. Because we went early, it was a 5,000 won ticket, which is a ridiculous deal. I didn’t end up seeing the film in 3D, despite my coworker’s recommendations, but that wasn’t an issue for a ticket that cheap. I didn’t know you could get into a theater before 10:00 AM, but for that price? I might see a few more early morning films. It was nice, and not abandoned like I expected.
The total run time of the film was two hours and twenty minutes, and most of that was spent in epic battles, scenes discussing the characters opinions that got their character across and did something to advance the plot at the same time, or something to set up the next action scene. It had a simple formula that it did very well. Joss Whedon tells stories I want to watch, so that’s no surprise. There was to obligatory “getting the team together” stuff at the beginning, strong individuals who try to do their own thing but fail because they lack teamwork series of events, then the turnabout when they realize that they need to come together to fight a bigger threat. It’s been executed many times as a formula, but was done very well here.
The film was great. There was a lot of fan service and meaty brawling. Setting up a movie where these characters come together is going to be awesome, but seeing them fighting and loving it the entire time was great. There are several laugh out loud hilarious parts that had the entire theater laughing. It was blowing my mind. The battles take place in multiple locations at once, with lots of people flying around, blasting one another, and it is still easy to follow and clear as to what is happening. It’s a rare feat. The fights were choreographed well, so you didn’t feel like you were being shaken around by the camera. Only one of the fan service battles went a little long for my tastes (in the forest). The special effects are topnotch.
The movie is an action film, so it won’t strain your mind too much, but I had fun the entire time I was watching it. It was like being a kid again and remembering all the epic battles I would play out in my head as I read comic books, except it was presented to me in a visually stunning manner. I can’t remember walking out of a theater since Inception with a bigger smile on my face. I highly recommend watching it if you are a fan of the previous movies. I might see it again, but in 3D, to see if it changes the experience.
It’s that awesome.
LOVED IT.
May 02
There are a few things you can do as a teacher to take attendance without calling roll. For example, when you put people into groups, you can count the number of people and through a process of elimination figure out where you are missing people then quickly check your group lists to see who is missing. You can have students sign a roll sheet, which will always guarantee perfect attendance despite a varying number of students being present. You can also count the number of tests or quizzes you collect from a class where attendance is almost assured, then work on the assumption that anyone dumb enough to leave the classroom with a copy of your test is either cheating by taking it out of the class and deserves no credit for their test and gets a zero, or didn’t show up and also gets a zero.
One of my coworkers said that she counted the students in the class and found the proper number of students present, only to later realized that one student was sitting in on the class late because he had to reschedule. One of the students in the class was missing, or she was actually just missing one of the tests. She wasn’t sure which it was, and didn’t know how to approach the missing student if she saw him today. This is a nightmare scenario because if you give even the slightest suggestion that you don’t know if someone attended on a test day, they’ll protest and claim they were there, and blame you for losing their test. If you honestly lost it, you’ve made a huge mistake, but allowing them to get away with something they shouldn’t is also equally bad. The other students won’t be bold enough to take either side, and would likely support any student if asked to verify the claim. That means the student you think skipped will have a get out of free card for what should have been a failing grade.
The coworker wanted to know how to frame the conversation with the class and the possibly absent student to give the maximum amount of power to the professor.The optimal thing would be to NEVER, EVER lose a testing document EVER, but if placed in this terrible situation, I’d recommend a bluff to try to draw out the truth from your student.
I suggested going all in on the bluff and seeing how the student reacted. What I would say when approaching the student would be, “Hey, your exam, what happened?” and look very concerned about the result of their actions. If the student parses this to mean, “You didn’t score well on your exam and I am concerned about your grade,” you are in the clear. You can then redouble your effort looking for the paper as long as you think they are sincere, and as long as they don’t want to see the test results in person, they’ll never know you were still looking for it. I never hand out the original documents in class, and only 1% of students would check in my office. The kind of student that skips a test day isn’t going to be someone that is going to spend any time with a professor voluntarily. At least then you know they did it if they give you this reaction, or that they are very clever and have gone all in for the long con at the very beginning.
If you get a reaction like, “I overslept,” or “I forgot to turn the paper in to you,” you can deduce that they deserved the failing grade and you can think about rescheduling or doing a makeup. If students really did make a mistake, they’ll likely be spooked as soon as you walk in the classroom, so it’ll be easy to see if they felt they made a mistake or not.
Of course, if they actually took the examination and you really did lose it, you are in huge trouble. I have no idea what to do if the test ends up lost.
Luckily for my coworker it turned out that she didn’t need to do much of a bluff to get the truth out of the student. The student was sweating and looked terrified, so they had clearly been in the wrong. Turns out the missing student had overslept and there was no test to be found. Still, it’s stressful to have a nagging doubt about a missing test as a professor, so any system of organization to prevent this problem is an excellent idea.
May 01
I teach a lot of different types of students, but most of them are just breaking out of the chrysalis of high school, and learning how to be semi-independent for the first time. Some of my students still live at home with strict curfews, but some escape to live at dormitories and start to be more independent. The students with the most unique styles have consistently been my fabric, textile, and or fashion majors. I don’t know if the major informs the students more quickly about self-expression, or students that are more independent and “weird” (by Korean standards) are drawn to the major, but if someone is wearing something unique or trying to be expressive with their style, I’d bet they are studying clothes in university.
Today, one of my students walked into class a good five minutes late. While I was handing him the materials for the class, I noticed that the student had a tattoo running down his outer forearm from the elbow to his wrist. On the inner forearm, on the opposite side facing up as he was reaching for the paper was Eazy-E. The famous gangster rapper was staring at me out from under his hat saying “COMPTON”. I recognized it immediately, and I’m not a rap aficionado. W-T-F. Eazy-E was dead when this student was four years old or younger. What possible context could have found the image of a dead gangster rapper on this student’s arm? I asked him, “Is that Eazy-E on your arm?” and he simply just withdrew his arm and blushed.
I have no idea what to think.
There is a tattoo parlor in the neighborhood of the university these days. It’s not a place I’ve ever visited myself, as I don’t have any tattoos, or desire for any ink. It is relatively rare to see students with tattoos, as Koreans aren’t the most inked people, but the stigma connecting tattoos with gangsters is changing. Still, this is the first student with large visible tattoos I’ve ever taught. I don’t know if they are permanent (I really expect not) or long lasting but temporary henna ink, but they looked pretty good.
They didn’t fit this kid’s style at all, but that’s just my initial impression. Perhaps behind the fashion and textile major there really is a gangster rapping waiting to break free, or perhaps the tattoo doesn’t mean anything at all, and it is a pure anachronism for style’s sake. Personally, I just found it strange for a dorky guy to have an Eazy-E tattoo.
Apr 30
On Friday, the “Final Schedule” was released, and people with the largest classes and most experience barely managed to fill their seats. Teachers in the “overflow” spots that take students after the senior teachers hit capacity had a trickle of students register for their classes. Possible causes for the decreases in attendance include repeated level readjustment for students, book reshuffling, and a steady decrease in demand for English conversation classes not geared towards the TOEIC line of testing. It’s unpopular to teach English for the satisfaction of English, or for traveling outside the country. It’s all English for testing and jobs, or nothing.
I’ve got a class at a weird time, and I teach a level with multiple other people at the same exact time that always fill their classes, which mean that I have a few students that end up in my class, if at all, and if I don’t hit the threshold numbers, my classes might end up canceled. The threshold for a class in the past has been 4 or 5 students, which is where I usually end up for the entire session. It’s okay, but I really loathe having two classes at once. One very good class a few times a week is the sweet spot for me, anything more is oppressive, and anything less is pure gravy.
The final schedule that was released over the week had both of my classes canceled. Last session I had one class go ahead with low numbers, one canceled. This time both canceled. Sometimes it happens, but next session I’ll bounce back and have a few more classes. It’s not big deal, and being able to get three more hours of sleep a day is going to be tremendous. I’m happy to teach classes, but I’m also happy to plan my other classes more and sleep for a change.
EXCEPT, this morning I got a message that sent me into a panic. One of my coworkers sent me a message saying that I had attendance sheets sitting on my desk. While I was told that my classes were canceled on Friday, there were two attendance sheets with two or four names on each. This means that I had a class I didn’t know about, didn’t prep for, didn’t have a syllabus for, and didn’t have even a book for that had already started, waiting for me, with students in class wondering where I was. This is the reverse of the “Student forgot an exam” nightmare. I was dressed, but had planned on going into work three hours later. I got sent a message as the class started saying, “You might need to come in to deal with this, we don’t know what’s going on. Good luck.”
PANIC TIME.
I rushed to work as fast as I could, but ended up not being able to find the first class, in session or not, because my name and class weren’t on the room number list. If this class was meeting, it was being kept a very good secret from me. I couldn’t track down anyone that knew anything before my second class started, so I had to plan on showing up to a class, no materials, no book, no information and simply trying to fake my way through my first 75 minutes, as if this was going to make a good impression. The students can still get a full refund after the first day, and if I showed up to a class in that condition, I’d certainly feel obligated to get my money back. I was livid.
Eventually, things got sorted out. I talked to someone in the office when they arrived and found out that the redundant paperwork had simply gotten pushed through the bureaucratic mess in the office due to short staffing. No one connected my canceled class to my attendance sheets, so things were in a limbo state of being canceled, but looking like they were going ahead at the very same time. The elevator lists hadn’t been updated yet, in case of a late student joining perhaps tipping the scales into starting the class despite the low threshold, and there was no message to me alerting me to a possible change one way or another after the attendance sheets hit my desk. It was a paperwork error, nothing more, and I didn’t need to worry that my entire day, week, and semester had been thrown into chaos because of this oversight.
My schedule has been weird before, which always prompts me to freak out. Now it’s happened so often I’m starting to think someone in the office is messing with me on purpose.
Apr 28
One of my D&D buddies told me about Small World [Available on: Vassal and iPad], and said that he was homebrewing his own version of the game. He’s been building amazing gaming accessories for years, like soft foam dungeon tiles, or making projector rigs to play D&D via the computer and a wall of his house, and all of his stuff is really nice. I had no previous knowledge of Small World, but I haven’t been playing much outside of Magic: The Gathering for months now so that isn’t much of a surprise.
Small World is basically Risk, but actually fun. In Risk, every move is predicated on ridiculous dice rolls that extend the game and drag out the games. Winning means getting lucky and having your luck hold out long enough to steamroll an opponent to the point that when victory is inevitable, no one cares the outcome. It’s always anti-climatic to play, because the results are sitting in front of you on the board at all times. I really hate every aspect of Risk, so a civilization conquering game with a lighthearted fantasy theme is starting in a huge deficit to try to win me over to the strategic capture style of gameplay.
The thing about my friend’s version of Small World is that he built the game, modified the rules, and then created each individual tile, widget and marker he needed to play by hand. The creation aspect, for him, is as much part of the hobby as the game itself. He needed me to provide him with some sleeves for his custom made cards, and wanted to know how best to present custom card images. I pointed him to Magic Set Editor, and brought over the sleeves for the game.
I have no idea how the actually fixed board version of the game plays, with the different sizes and different amounts of resources allocated in a fixed, game after game manner. My friend’s version was made on custom movable hex-based tiles, which means his version is potentially different every time it is played. It is somewhat similar to the “Realms” version, but he didn’t make hexes in the same way. While these differences from the approved product might lead to potential balance issues when done carelessly, we tried to build an “even” world and ended up roughly approximating what the boards that come with the actual game look like. We built the custom world, set up the resources in an agreed upon manner, set down all the different tile markers and pieces, then started playing.
I got introduced to the rules, picked up the basics in a single sitting, and won my first game. This turned out to be beginner’s luck, as I lost my second game, and I could have played a few more before real life responsibilities pulled me away for the afternoon. You only roll if you need to at the end of your turn if you are being ambitious while trying to capture territories. Otherwise the exchange of territories is based on simple math and a little bit of strategy. Every race and power feel like they have the potential to swing the game in your favor, so there is always a reason to keep playing. I got blown out in the first round of the second game, but with a little luck and a few choice captures I was able to come roaring back and make it a very close game. Both of us won by the same margin each time, leading us to think that we are very evenly matched and the game is well balanced despite the custom nature.
I had a really fun time playing Small World, and it was little more than a demo as to how to play the game one on one. With a few more players, and a little more experience under my belt, I’d be really hard-pressed to see how to make a capture and hold game better. The tone is perfect, the game is simple to grasp, but with enough strategy to keep me interested for a while. The random elements of capture and turning over of the races and special powers are minor, but will absolutely swing a game in your favor. You have lots of information available to you each round to keep you busy chewing on what is in store when control of the game is yours for the turn. The games also finish after a set number of turns, because they’d otherwise go one forever since their is no win condition set like “first to X victory points” or “first to control X territories”. This means you could predictably rely on the game being fast enough to finish in a reasonable amount of time no matter what you do.
I’m thinking that if I wanted to play a version of Small World, it’d probably remain something with higher variance in board states, like the Realms version, or this hand crafted custom custom version. I really like this game, as it mixes social elements, strategic thinking, and lots of fun.
