Breezy
This week’s Illustration Friday is Breezy… I had several finished pieces I could have used, but I decided to put up this unfinished piece instead:
It’s a bit dark, and so overworked I’m not sure it’s salvagible, but I’m very happy with the intensity in the woman’s face, and the way her skirt falls. That’s graphite with ink in places.
Sheila Schwartz‘s Book Launch/Memorial tonight at the Lit.
Next week Matt and I will be in Chicago, so I probably won’t be posting much, if at all, but I will be twittering.
Moving Slow
My favorite teacher Sheila Schwartz died in November. Today I listened to her husband, Dan Chaon talk about her, and her book Lies Will Take You Somewhere, which will be launched this weekend at the Lit. Listen to the Around Noon program, read Dan’s tribute to Sheila, read some of Sheila’s thoughts around illness. They all made me cry, but sort of in a better way than I have before.
Here’s a short story, a fragment really, that I wrote in the first class I took with Sheila Schwartz. Reading it now, four years later, I’m not even sure it makes sense, but I thought I’d share it anyway.
Lather
Marcus tried not to sigh as the ragged group of undergrads trickled into his darkroom. Glancing at the developer tray he remembered that he had forgotten to change the fluid. Something had gone strange in the chemistry, and for the last few days it had been ruining everything he put in it, though it ought to have had another week left before it needed to be replaced. Marcus shrugged inwardly, guessing the students wouldn’t notice the difference. Pushing overlong black hair from his eyes, he tried to judge which students matched the names on his roll list. The freshmen were easy to pick out; breathing out cluelessness. They were the loudest group, obnoxiously assured and nervous all at once. A plump, plain girl with drab hair barely reflecting the orange half-light might be Sarah Matthews, or Margret Greer. She looked like a Margret, but Greer was a bit too interesting. The chatty blonds were Tiffany, Brittany and Dawn, though he couldn’t guess which was which and probably never would. William Alexander was the fat dark haired boy, Jeffery Kennedy the tall scrawny nervous one. They were the only boys, aside from a senior, Nathan Brown, who wasn’t there at all and would most likely drop the class within a week. In all five seniors appeared on his list, and they were easy, none of them had shown. Marcus didn’t expect them to sneak in late, seniors never came on the first day and he would have to repeat his rehearsed orientation. A couple of sophomores, Jill Chaffey and another Sara McDougal must be the girls lounging in back with Heather Moore, a punky freshman ahead of her time. He coughed to catch the attention of the twenty-three students who’d managed to find the photo lab by 3:25; ten minutes after the class was meant to start. His cough was ignored, or possibly just lost amid the high pitched freshman conversation so he was forced to speak. “Ok, uhm quiet down please,” said Marcus, belatedly realizing he sounded like a kindergarten teacher. Forty-six scornful eyes turned to him. He took attendance and was surprised to find that the punky freshman was Margret, the bland girl Dawn, and one of the chatty blonds was a junior.
It’s not that he minded teaching photography. The technical step-by-step and painfully obvious safety rules might be boring to most, but Marcus found the routine comforting. More satisfying was imparting his wisdom to eager young artists, driven to learn how to express themselves in film. Not the piranha faced morons who snickered at his jokes rather than laughing. The only pleasure in teaching an intro class was drinking their dismay when they realized how time consuming and difficult photography really was. Inevitably a third of the class dropped. “Alright,” said Marcus, “today I’m uh going to run through how to process your film and develop your photo paper.” A girl with a frizzy pony-tale, oddly yellow in the orange light of his dark room, put her hand in the air. Tiffany or Sarah maybe, Marcus ignored her. Freshman. “Since we’re meeting in the dark room today,” he continued, “we’ll start with the photo paper.”
The yellow girl, her frizzy hair making her appear unfocused, interrupted him. “Excuse me, will you show us how to use our cameras?” Someone giggled. Marcus blinked at the girl trying to see her more clearly.
“Yes-uh, we’ll go over that on uhm Wednesday, but its important first that you learn the technical aspects of uhm photography.” Marcus rubbed his nose and the someone giggled again. “As I was-uh saying. Yeah. Well I have this uhm negative right?” The blurry yellow girl’s hand rose into the air again. Marcus tried to glare at her, but looking at her made his eyes water. He rubbed them and said, “yes, what?”
“What’s a negative?” the girl asked sweetly. Someone snickered and Marcus realized that he had been wrong, the girl was not a freshman. Either she was making fun of him or she was exceptionally stupid. He reminded himself not to rule out stupidity. “I was getting to that please don’t uh interrupt,” he told her. Marcus pulled a pre-cut negative from the manila folder he’d left on the counter and slid it into the enlarger. “OK, uhm gather around please.” Boys and girls, Marcus mentally added. They closed silently around him the orange light glinting sharply off their hair. Teeth and scales flash! Marcus’s took a clumsy hop back from the counter to give himself room to breathe. The air was thick. “Uhm.” Marcus put his hand shakily on the counter and started again. “I uh, don’t have any paper in here,” Marcus gestured to the enlarger, “but I want to show you how to uhfocus it first.” Marcus put his hand on the enlarger’s focusing knob but then, sensing that they were closing again, spun around to catch them before they could bite. Twenty-three students stared blankly. “the light I mean,” he added lamely. The blurry hand raised again, he closed his eyes and turned warily back to the enlarger. “Well I’ve uh put the negative- this is the negative- into this slot up here so now I,” Marcus trailed off. He swallowed and managed to keep himself from looking over his shoulder. Turning on the enlarger he toyed with the knob, trying to bring the image that appeared below into focus. He thought he’d preset it- one of the students must have messed with it. He’d picked a simple crowd scene taken unobserved at a mall, but now he couldn’t seem to get the light image to resolve. “Well, heh, it doesn’t want to focus right now, but you get the idea.”
“What? Its clear,” sneered one of the fish. Marcus ignored him. He turned the light off and took a piece of paper photo-paper from his folder. “Now, I already know that this particular negative needs a twelve second exposure, but you’ll have to uhmplay with it to see what time each negative needs.” He could feel the eyes of blurry ponytail pressing into his neck, but he pretended not to notice and gave the paper its 12 second exposure. He blinked his eyes rapidly. In the back of his mind he heard bubbles and imagined a frenzied lather of gleaming scales that blurred in even the fastest shutter speeds. He reminded himself that the bubbles were only the sound of the wash bath. Marcus turned to the crowd and shook his head, hair closing his vision like a shutter. The image it left was a clear frightened face amid the sea of blank faces. Then he blinked and the face returned to the blurry exasperation of the pony-tailed girl, whose hand still waved in the air.
Marcus looked away, taking the paper and dropping into the developer tray. He kept his eyes on the fluid as he said, “You need to leave the picture for about thirty seconds, no more than forty.” Marcus watched the uninteresting crowd scene take form and continued, “Now these chemicals aren’t especially harmful, but they aren’t really very good for you either so, uhm, make sure when you pull the paper out you always use the tongs.” He took the tongs from their hook and carefully pulled the paper from the liquid. “You don’t really want this stuff on your skin.” He let the paper drop into the stop tray and turned back to the students without looking at any of them. “Leave it in the stop bath for at least fifteen seconds, that keeps the developer from uhm over developing your picture.” Marcus continued to speak but he looked over their heads and was uncertain of what he was saying. After a minute or so, he turned back to move the paper from the stop bath to the fixer, and froze staring at the image.
The stop bath had no effect at all. The picture had continued to develop, blackening around the edges in a stain that continued to grow as he watched. It slowly obscured the mall crowd, dulling them and finally blotting them out completely. In the upper left corner was a bright spot the developer hadn’t ruined, it left an unnoticed face. The same face he’d seen screaming in the student crowd. Unlike the other people rushing through the mall unaware of Marcus’s presence, this woman stared right into his eyes. Her face was wide and stupid in a moment of shock- the face of someone who hasn’t yet had the time to react to some terror. Marcus felt the students at his back closing around him. He spun around, scattering drops of the stop fluid on the startled students. Someone cried out in surprise. Marcus balled up the paper and glared at the group around him. They weren’t moving but he could feel them closing just the same. He took a big step forward with more confidence than he felt. “You’re dismissed early today, go away.” He said hoarsely. The students had orange alien faces. Slowly, confused but willing, they streamed out of the dark room.
Marcus breathed deeply in relief. He turned back to the paper and smoothed it on the counter. It had finally stopped developing, leaving only the frightened woman. He examined her, and the black space around her, for a clue to what had happened. But it was clear. This woman, her white terror, was the only importance of the boring mall crowd. The developer had left her in focus and blacked out the rest. Marcus shook his head in amazement. His hair again shuttered his sight, and he noticed his folder sitting under the crumpled picture. Thoughtfully he opened it, fingering through various negatives until he finally came to a self-portrait he’d taken a month ago. Marcus wondered.
He put the negative into the enlarger, and recalled that the exposure for this negative had been fairly short. He gave it five seconds. Marcus dropped the white paper into the developer.
Ten seconds. An image was beginning to appear, as ghostly as a forgotten nightmare. The hollow eyed woman stared at Marcus from the black and wrinkled photograph clutched in his hand. “What do you see?” he asked her in a whisper which nonetheless echoed in the empty darkroom. He was nearly surprised when the woman didn’t answer, but continued in her moment of blank-faced fear. Twenty seconds. He tore his eyes from hers and looked into the developer tray. The image was there, barely seen, as his face began to blacken in the mix of chemicals. Suddenly, realizing what he was starting to look at, Marcus couldn’t bear to see what it would reveal. Ignoring the tongs, he plunged his hand into the developer and peeled the still changing picture from the bath. Hands shaking, he tore it into pieces and dropped the sopping confetti into the bin. He leaned back against the table, black drops falling thickly from his fingers while he compulsively closed his other hand around the guilty photo. The room was silent but for his ragged breathing and Marcus began to relax, realizing that he’d just escaped the unspeakable. There are some things, he reflected, which should never be seen. He glanced down again to the frightened woman clutched in his hand, and for a moment his expression mirrored hers as his eyes caught instead the black lather hugging his other hand. It had spread and his arm was black, half his flesh painlessly eaten away up to the elbow. The crumpled photograph dropped from nerveless fingers and the black fluid continued up to his shoulder cold and efficient as a school of piranhas. “Now we’ll see,” he mumbled, vision blurred and darkening at the edges. “We’ll see what it leaves.”
*Story by Meagan B. Call. All rights reserved.
I’m Back?
Well it’s been a weird week.
My brain has been fragmented and sort of aimless lately, today is the first time I’ve sat down at my computer in about ten days. If I’ve ignored your comments I’m sorry, I’ll try to get to them soon.
I think part of my issue has just been traveling. Matt doesn’t travel too often really, but when he does, it seems to come in non-stop bursts. About half the time I go with him, on the idea that I can do my work as easily on the road as home. It never quite works out that way, traveling is distracting and tiring, but I’ve noticed that it can be just as disruptive when he’s gone and I stay.
We’ve been home for a couple weeks now though and I think I’m beyond post-traveling confusion. I always have a hard time getting started, but lately it’s been almost impossible. I watch people near me as I talk and realize that I’m zooming around like a bug, unable to settle. I don’t think this is travel fatigue anymore. I think this is my thesis. Or more accurately, the lack of thesis.
I’ve had this huge thing hanging over my head for the last year and a half, longer unofficially. Since I started grad school, the thesis has been the END. And it’s done, finished. Maybe not really, I’ll have things to work at after my defense I suspect, but since I sent off my manuscripts to readers a few weeks ago there’s been a sense of finality.
I am incredibly relieved. I’m not sure if anyone but myself realizes how impossible it is that I have completed a novel. It’s not the task that is impossible, but the “I.” I’ve felt good about myself the last couple years. I’ve actually been a good student, which is amazing. It’s hard to explain to people that while I’ve always managed decent grades, (we’ll ignore freshman year) I’ve always been a HORRIBLE student. So I’ve been proud that for the last couple years I’ve been doing all my work, reading when I had reading to do, putting in a sincere effort. Funnily, even completing all my work I have such a habit of feeling guilty that I had a lingering sense of embarrassment, as though if I stopped speaking someone might look into the silence and realize I didn’t belong there. At the same time I felt like doing well in school was irrelevant, school isn’t real and I’ve never done anything real.
Writing a novel is real.
And now I’m done.
So here I am, deeply relieved that I’ve proved to myself that I can do something real, but suddenly lacking that clear, framed objective. I have a thousand projects to work on, but I can’t seem to settle a priority. I make the priorities mind you, but I change them a minute later.
I’m not complaining. If anything, identifying the source is comforting. Sooner or later I’ll figure out my direction again. I plan to start book 2 in May, which should help, assuming I can convince myself to make it a priority. Once I get final corrections done to my manuscript, I’ll need to start approaching publishers, which should also help.
Meanwhile, I need to decide to make things important. I’m still a student, but not really. In a couple months, I won’t even be in school on the technicality of thesis credits. I need to grow up and learn to drive myself outside of the academic structure. Wish me luck.
On the Road Again
I guess today has been as good as any bad day can be. No day that starts with the dentist is going to be fantastic.
On the bright side, my cavities are now all filled, but I don’t remember it hurting this much. I don’t mean the actual drilling– I mean the days and weeks after. I got the first half of my caveties filled three weeks ago and they only just started to feel normal this week.
Today I only had two cavities which was a nice surprise: I thought I had three. Doesn’t make it pleasant though. Part of my gum was accidentally pinched during the filling. You know it’s going to be bad when the dentist warns you. Still, that gives me a totally legitimate excuse to have a milkshake. As excuses go, I’ll take a pinched gum over wisdom teeth or tonles. Anyway, I think the numbness is worse than the pain. No matter how many times I have novacane there will always be a little part of my brain that’s afraid the feeling won’t come back.
Matt has another trip down to Cincinnatti, so I’m riding along. Getting a little sick of traveling, but at least it’s not too far. Besides, we’ve just come to a Steak & Shake, so now I get my milkshake!
Personal Space (for cats)
We all know cats are territorial animals. When you’re looking to add a second cat to a household, one of the common recommendations is to pay attention to the gender of the cats. The best combinations are Male and Female or Male and Male. Female and Female is about as bad as it gets in terms of creating catfights.
Matt and I didn’t necessarily have a choice when it came to our second cat, or we did, but Tricky (the cat) made it for us. We’d been wondering for a while what to do about the stray cat on Matt’s street that we were both trying to deny we were growing attached to, and when we realized she was pregnant, we felt like we had to adopt her. (Morepictures of kittens and the sleepy mom posted earlier).
We expected problems between Tricky and Chyna, particularly during the pregnant and kitten problem, but we hoped they’d sort of settle down when we moved out, sort of resetting the whole territory issue. It worked to some extent, but there’s always been an undercurrent of tension that rises and falls depending on how much we’re home, the weather, kitty whims. The two of them could be curled up together on the couch and the next day fighting like mortal enemies. Which, in some respects, they probably are.
It took us a while to realize that the largest factor in our cat’s relationship was Matt and my cleanliness.
The apartment is good sized for a one bedroom, about 950 square feet. The bedroom is large, 17X12. For two people, it’s squished, but livable. For two cats, we thought it would be fine, and sometimes it is. Their square footage is more limited than ours because Matt and I are both allergic to cats: they aren’t allowed in the bedroom. That knocks their shared area down to about 750, which you’d think for two small animals, would still be enough.
When we first moved into the condo, we didn’t have nearly enough space. For Matt and me it’s fine, but our stuff is another matter. Between the two of us, we just have too much crap for one small apartment. Slowly we carved through it, donating or throwing away things we didn’t really need. By the time we got married, the boxes of un-placed crap had shrunk considerably, but the newly found carpet space was quickly swallowed up by new boxes: wedding presents.
In theory we ought to have been able to put most of the wedding stuff AWAY somewhere, getting rid of whatever its replacing, but right now we are STILL working on thank you notes (we’re awful) and we don’t want to put anything away until the notes are sent. So we have a permanent collection of stuff piled in one part of the living room. Thanks to this accumilation of stuff, we have now found the exact tipping point for cats that like each other and cats that hate each other. It’s actually pretty fascinating.
When you factor in furniture, appliances and boxes, actual usable space for our cats is probably around 500 square feet. The pure number isn’t the only factor though, much of it has to do with perception. The dining room table for example, doesn’t really take away any space from the cats. If anything, it adds square footage because the cats are able to use the floor beneath it, the chairs (some of their favorite playthings when they’re friends and playing together) and, even though we try to keep them off, the table top itself. This isn’t reality however, because while their usable space is unaffected, there’s a clear disruption in their perception of space: in the form of a big wooden object. This is further complicated if there happens to be clutter on top of the table, or on the chairs. The couch is similar: although it’s their most frequently used pieces of furniture, it’s clearly taking up part of their territorial space.
Our cats are tenuously friends, and they have exactly enough space. The slightest change in perception can make them enemies again. If a stacked box is moved down to the floor, the cats have less space than they did a second ago. The air fills with growls and hisses, often nowhere in the proximity of the guilty box.
My favorite variable is Matt’s drying rack. This is one of the typical college dorm types, light narrow wood, collapsible and flimsy. While it’s being used it’s a nuisance to Matt and I, but doesn’t change the cats’ actual space at all. In spite of that, Matt’s drying rack is guaranteed to cause new fights every time he uses it.
I have to think that purely open space wouldn’t be ideal either. Chyna likes her hiding spots even when she and Tricky aren’t clawing at each other. Tricky meanwhile likes climbing on top of things, being up high. The more open space they have, the happier and less touchy our cats seem to be, but this needs to be balanced with their “safe” places for them to be comfortable. I just think it’s interesting that this can all be changed by something as simple as a wet sweater.
Celebrate
Because I’m feeling really lazy this week (I blame jury duty), and because this week’s Illustration Friday is “Celebrate,” I’m going to repost the journal pages I sketched during my honeymoon in October, previously published on my old blog.
Text reads:
I’m actually far shorter than this. Matt is 6’4 and I’m 5’2 so the top hat really only added insult to injury. That’s ok though, I had henna and a ribbon wrapped around my dress and a bouquet made of metal that even lit up, so it really didn’t matter how short I am. I should carry around light up flowers all the time. Also, we got married in the zoo. Best wedding ever.”
“The bed in Seattle is roughly three times the size of the sleeper car on the train. Sleeping on a train has some ups and downs (but more importantly: side to sides.) It’s more cozy than cramped, but when the train gets moving super fast at night, the bad spots on the track make the car lurch all over the place, and you kind of think the whole thing is going to tip over at 100 miles per hour. On better patches though, the motion is soothing, and once you get used to it, the train rocks you to sleep. At least until the next rough patch.”
“On the wedding day, Matt and I didn’t really have much time to enjoy our wedding cake. This cake was actually pretty tasty: yellow/choc. marble, Irish cream filling and normal buttercream icing. So we brought it with us. The first two nights on the train we retreated to our roomette-sleeper and had wedding cake with leftover sparkling grape juice. The warm grape juice was every bit as romantic/elegant as champagne.”
“Apparently, getting married is the best way to get lots of free champagne, wine, and best of all, chocolate.”
“I was warned that much of America is a whole lot of corn, wheat, grass, dirt, empty fields, grazing fields, scrubby plants or flat barren rock. Montana is boring. Kansas is horrifically boring. Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, Utah, it’s amazing how many states are supposedly empty. There are many, many flat patches, but it seems like they go by quickly. And even these ‘empty’ areas- miles of harvest lines or just broken fie4lds, had a beauty of their own. The wheat, on a clear day, really does look just like gold.”
“We did a lot of reading on the trip. We also brought some travel board games but didn’t play them. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Matt is reading or sleeping.”
“The first night on the train we stopped for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere. For about an hour. I had a bit of Harry Potter PTSD. I was sure dementors were boarding the train.”
“Even after it started to fade, I kept getting comments on the henna. For some reason, I kept forgetting that I had henna, and it often took me a couple seconds to figure out what people were talking about. Interestingly, once we crossed an invisible line into the Northwest, the comments changed from ‘is it permanent?’ to, ‘Nice henna! Did you just get married?’
You can click on the images for a larger version. I’d like to pretend that these were “selections” from my honeymoon journal, but that’s pretty much all I managed. I guess that’s ok since I really had better things to do on my honey moon than journal. Maybe at some point I’ll get back into (read: get into) journaling, but so far I’ve not had much luck keeping up the habit.
Sheila’s Door
Today I sent off the drawing I did for Sheila’s Chapbook. They asked us all to write something, but I couldn’t, I turned to my remaining form of expression since the most obvious abandoned me. I may post the drawing sometime, maybe not. It feels wrong to publish it for the public to see, like it’s something private. It’s for her family, but most of all it’s for Sheila, and if she can never see it why should everyone else? We’ll see. Preliminary drawings are in an earlier blogpost, and that feels ok to share.
Today I went to CSU to deliver my manuscripts to readers. I wrote a novel, I finished it– not really finished but what feels like finished– last week. Sheila read perhaps a third of it. A year of work, the hardest year, but because it sped up so much towards the end she only read the third. A little part of me feels guilty delivering my maybe finished novel to four people who aren’t Sheila.
When she died, I wanted to go to her office and take a picture of her door. She kept little clippings all over her door, most teachers do, but when I say her door I really mean the window next to her door. Sheila taped pictures all along the window so it was hard to look in. The colorful vision of that door window is part of what I think of when I think of Sheila, so I wanted to take a picture, but I didn’t.
Today was the first day I’ve gone to the school since Sheila died. The English Department, all of Rhodes Tower I guess, is labyrinthine, even with numbered signs it seems like you always go the wrong way right off. My first turn took me to Sheila’s door.
At first I thought it hadn’t been touched. The window was full of pictures. They were the wrong pictures though. Looking at them, I couldn’t remember what was on the door to begin with. Were there goldfish? I think there were goldfish, but maybe they were boats. Now there are leaves and trees. I think maybe there were leaves and trees before, just different ones. Or maybe the pictures are all the same ones that were there before.
I have tall stacks of Sheila’s spider thin pencil edits. The letters are small, hard to read and hardly there. They’re comforting though, like she’s reading over my shoulder. Some people are terse, they give praise so rarely that it’s a surprise. Sheila was sort of the opposite. She was so rarely negative that when she was sharp you blinked, and reconsidered. Mostly, she was not just encouraging, she was excited about you, really believed in you. Me.
I wrote a novel this year and last year. It’s been in my head so long, and I never seem to finish things, so I never really believed it until I wrote the last page. I got married in October, and when I got back from the honeymoon I heard Sheila was dead.
Getting married has launched a new phase in life. It’s not only that Matt and I starting a new family. I haven’t felt like a student for more than a year. I haven’t graduated yet, but that’s already lost my attention, I’ve started something else. Matt and I are talking about children, a house. Making plans. Sheila was my mom’s age– not old. I am afraid of death. Sometimes I feel so alive the possibility of death seems both impossible and horrible. Other times, it’s less threatening because I am happy. Somehow that also makes it more believable.
Smoocon Wrap Up
Last weekend I went to a hacker convention in Washington DC. I am not a hacker.
When I first met Matt he described his job as: “computer ninja.” He does everything from hacking wireless systems to physically breaking into buildings, and he does it legally, for money! He goes to hacker conventions a few times a year, often I’ll tag along because even though I only understand about a quarter of what they’re talking about, the people are interesting and the more theoretical talks are fascinating. Last year when he went to Shmoocon I went along for the ride, but didn’t got to the convention. The hotel is in a super safe part of DC and there’s a ton to do in the city by myself. Last year I meant to walk down to Dupont Circle and be all touristy, but mostly ended up hanging out at the zoo. I love zoos.
The talks last year sounded interesting enough that I wished I’d been able to attend some of them, and this year, Matt ended up giving one of the talks, so hacker or not, going to Shmoocon was a must. Shmoo tickets are generally a little pricey, not to mention close to impossible to get, to justify buying one for someone who won’t really understand what’s going on (aka: me). Fortunately Matt had already purchased his ticket when he found out he was speaking, so when he got his comp for speaking, we had an extra.
I talk about being a technical idiot, but the truth is I generally understand enough to at least keep my head above water. I’m not a hacker, but I am a weirdo, so I fit in pretty well. The keynote was given by an academic named Matt Blaze (not to be confused with my husband, Matt Neely), talking about what a horrible idea wire tapping is. Specificly, he pointed out that the ethical issues were completely irrelevant because the technical problems were so horrendous that something horrible is (and has) bound to happen. The talk pointed out several specific issues that I’d never considered, all of which go along with my usual conception of a disjointed, bullheaded government. I think that’s not a reflection on any particular administration, it’s just bureaucracy. He’s a good speaker and it was an encouraging way to start the day.
That evening Matt (my Matt), as part of Security Justice (a local security podcast) was part of a joint podcast with several other security podcasters. It was interesting to watch the process but I think it could have gone better. There were about fifty spectators or so, and we were repeatedly told, at the beginning, to keep silent, or we’d ruin the podcast. So we watched in silence (more or less) to recording that we unfortunately couldn’t hear. There were no speakers set up, or anyway way for us to have a decent idea what was going on. Although the podcasters were all speaking into microphones for the recording, we could hear only their normal, un-amplified voices. Often or not, that wasn’t enough. They gave out prizes throughout, and while I suppose that was cool for the people who got prizes, it sort of distracted from the actual podcast. Lastly, I think since they were recording in front of an audience, it would have been nice if they’d had some way for the audience to participate in the discussion (what little we could hear of it), beyond clowning for prizes. It was still interesting, and I think the actual podcast should be decent, I just thought there was a lot of room for improvement.
Matt gave his talk at ten the next morning. He ROCKED. I’m honestly not just saying that because he’s my husband, his talk was great, even though I’ve heard most of it in bits and pieces before.
The talk was on using radio equipment to break into a client site. He talked about hearing guard information and tapping into headsets to hear valuable information. I think this is pretty cool: he’s using what most people consider antiquated equipment. Radios are popular among computer geeks because they’re geeks, not because most of them actually consider them useful. He also had some awesome stories of times he’d actually used these techniques, which made it that much better. Because radios are pretty much ignored however, Matt presented a fairly new direction of attack. Considering the packed room and positive feedback he’s getting, I think I’m not the only one who was impressed.
After Matt’s talk I went to a martial arts demo in the hallway. It’s stretching parameters to make this fit in a hacker convention, but I think it qualifies simply by being “cool.” I found the demo interesting, not half because 70 percent of the attendants had some kind of experience with martial arts already. It was entertaining to listen to the conversations after of: “no, you should do it this way,” and “why did you do this? doesn’t this work better?” I myself have done several years of martial arts, but am by no means an expert, so I mostly kept my mouth shut (a rarity I assure you) and watched the show.
I avoided what seemed to be the super technical hacking talks. I could care less about new hacking tools, and I wouldn’t understand the more defensive geared talks. Instead I went to a talk on “Hacking the Genome.” The speaker was good, I enjoyed the first half of the talk immensely. I liked the idea of comparing gene biology to cryptography, a juxtaposition that ought to be obvious I suppose, but I’d never considered it. About halfway through the talk got to be a bit too technical for me, but I had enough to think about to keep myself entertained.
There was a great talk given by lawyer Tyler Pitchford on the laws surrounding the 4th amendment (he also talked briefly about the 5th amendment). This was right up my alley: my iphone has the constitution app installed, and before that I carried around a pocket constitution. I get very annoyed when people talk about their “constitutional right” to do things that aren’t actually in the constitution, so I keep it handy so I can make them look stupid (because I’m that kind of person).
This talk was all about when and what police can search on your computer. He used case studies to show different examples. The one I remember best is: the police are searching for a robber in your neighborhood and ask for permission to search your apartment. You give it, and while they’re searching they notice a file on your screen called: “My illegal hacking files.” The open the file, discover that it’s only porn, but on searching the rest of your computer, find several scary illegal hacker files on other parts of your computer. As I understood it, anything in the initial file would be admissible in court because it was in “plain sight” while the files found under further searching would not, because they were not covered in the scope of permission you granted them. Lots of stuff like that, a discussion on whether passwords are protected by the fifth amendment, and a heavy concentration on border laws.
The last talk of the day, and my favorite (aside from Matt) wasn’t hacker related at all. It was “Storming the Ivy Tower,” by Sandy Clark (or “Mouse”). This talk was all about how hackers can use their skills (both technical and social engineering) to get into school (undergrad or grad). The only criticism I have is that I think Mouse may have misjudged her audience– I may be mistaken but I don’t think there were many high schoolers in the audience, and she spent about twenty minutes talking about how to get into college from high school. I still found it interesting since I’ll have kids someday, and, since academia moves at a glacial pace (I should know) I doubt much will have changed in twenty years in terms of admissions. Nobody else seemed to be bored by it, so I don’t think it’s a big deal.
The rest of the talk was probably more relevant to Matt than me. It was all about how to convert real life experience to academic credit, how to change hacker, convention style talks and papers (like Matt gives) into peer reviewed academic papers, how to find the right program, etc. It was geared specifically at people looking into computer science degrees, but much of it could easily have applied to other areas. She included her own academic history which was interesting and encouraging.
Aside from all the talks, Shmoocon is mainly an excuse for hackers to get together and go wild in their geeky, low alcohol tolerance, ways. Matt actually wore a kilt (from Utilikilt in Seattle) the whole weekend, which made it easy for people to pick him out. And yes, he was wearing it “regimental style.”
Shmoocon is fun and relaxing, even for me, not knowing much about hacking. I did skip the second day of talks, not understanding any of the titles I guessed I wouldn’t understand the content either, so I got my National Zoo fix. I even managed to make it back in time for closing remarks, which included lots of “Shmooballs” thrown at the speakers, prizes (I snagged a book, the Manga Guide to Statistics???) and general silliness. It was a good weekend.
Around Cleveland
Turns out I’m a bit out of it today for whatever reason, so I’ll write about Shmoocon tomorrow. Fortunately, I ran across this photo post which I somehow never published. I think I just forgot. Didn’t have to go in for jury duty today, which is lucky.
This photo of entering downtown is one of my favorite views. It doesn’t show the whole skyline, but it’s just a cool entry photo.
This photo is taken by the flats. There’s some digital editing going on there. I actually really like the sort of industrial feel of the flats and the warehouse district.
Another photo from the flats. There are a lot of archways and old, pretty buildings mixed in with the factory buildings and abandoned bridges etc.
I don’t remember where exactly this photo is taken from, but I think it’s also near the flats. Also a bit of digital editing here.
A bridge in the flats. So I guess having band-aids holding a bridge together isn’t exactly comforting, but it is pretty.
Another view of the cityscape from the flats.
An abandoned drawbridge in the flats. I love how the ivy is growing up and taking it over.
Another bridge in the flats, by night (duh).
Sky view, down near independence.
A shed dragonfly exoskeleton in the metroparks near independence.
Bridge in the metroparks, viewed from another bridge.
View looking the other way on the bridge.
The bridge where I was standing for the pretty views.
Cool water gate system at the metroparks.
Pretty plants in the metroparks. There are larger versions available for some of them if you click on the image.
Back to Unreality
It always surprises me how much time can stretch and race. The 6 hour drive to DC wasn’t that bad, but the drive back was pretty much torture.
Shmoocon ended around 4, and Matt and I decided to eat down the street rather than try and wrestle with the post-con traffic at the hotel. That was actually an excruciatingly late lunch, which was fortunately quite tasty, but it meant we didn’t actually start to leave the area until around 5. Assuming no stops, which is idiotic, that would have got us home around 11pm.
Matt and I were both pretty exhausted. Matt gave an awesome talk, which I’ll spend more time on tomorrow, and we were both up pretty late the night before. Even though we weren’t all that hungry, we stopped for dinner a couple hours into the trip because there’s a whole lot of nothing between DC and Cleveland. The next stop with anything worth eating would have been Pittsburgh, and by the time we’d made it there nothing would have been open. So we stopped early, and then hit a coffee shop to load up on podcasts for the trip and get some caffeine for Matt, who already clearly needed it. Then it got weird.
Our friend Jack left DC at least an hour later than we did, but somehow he ended up stopping for gas at the same time and place we stopped for coffee. We ended up chatting and laughing for quite a while and by the time we left the coffee shop it was somehow 10pm. We’re glad we did, it was a good way to wind down, relax, but it did put us considerably off the clock.
That’s about when I remembered jury duty.
I’m scheduled for jury duty this week. I was sort of hoping, strongly, that my number just wouldn’t be called, but when I checked on my phone, sure enough, I was told to report to the courthouse at 8:30 am. I’m just on the edge of my county so the courthouse is 45 minutes away, so with a 2 am estimated home arrival that prospect wasn’t thrilling.
We listened to podcasts, but I don’t think either of us really had energy enough to pay much attention. At about midnight, just after we passed over the border to Ohio, Matt started to fade. He was actually keeping awake ok, but he told me he was having a hard time seeing; his eyes were so tired they wouldn’t focus. I was slightly better off, I could see straight at least, but I can’t drive stick and didn’t particularly want to try to learn on the highway.
So we stopped at a hotel. We did the math, painfully, and set the clock for five hours later. Matt slept lightly, but enough to refresh him for the remaining drive. I hardly slept at all.
We left plenty of padding for me to get to the courthouse which naturally meant that I was there just barely on time. It was shockingly crowded. I ended up sitting down the hall because all the called jurors wouldn’t fit in the room. Twice, we were shepherded aside to let through chain gangs. It was weird.
My name was in the second group of jurors called. With thirty people, I sat in a courtroom that looked more like an elaborate board meeting room. This was a civil trial, which I’m assuming I’m not allowed to talk about, though who knows. I liked the judge instinctively, disliked one of the lawyers just as instinctively. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable, and the process was actually more interesting than I expected. We were questioned about our ability to make an unbiased decision. I think I might have understood everything better if I’d had enough sleep. As it turns out, not having enough sleep is actually considered an “extreme hardship” in your ability to sit through a trial. I was dismissed for other reasons I think, and in fact I could hear the lawyers whispering and I’m pretty sure my name was the first one mentioned as no-way-in-hell. Impressive, don’t you think?
I actually wouldn’t mind serving on a jury sometime when I’ve had more sleep, but I’m not sure I’m well suited to being a juror. I’ll talk about why sometime this week maybe. Interesting or not, I hope I don’t get called in again this week. And now, I’ll end my incoherence, and go to bed.