I worked from home today on Joe’s edit of an ITIM adapter installation and configuration guide.
Late in the afternoon, and before class, I ran three errands:
- to Blockbuster in Cameron Village to rent the first movie (of two) that we have to watch this semester in ENG 515,
- to Karen Lacey’s office in the Department of English to deliver signed paperwork to effect the change of taking ENG 583 as ENG 636, to make the course 2 hours credit (instead of 3) and pass/fail (instead of graded) for me,
- to the NCSU Book Store to pick up a book that I’d ordered online, but was on back order.
Class was okay tonight. We discussed the first three chapters of Hauser’s Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, based on comments people had made on the class’s electronic message board while, or after, reading the text.
I thought the discussion was a little clunky, but the professor thought it was “great.” It certainly was better than being lectured at the entire class, I’ll give it that.
At the beginning of class, I announced that I had a copy of What the Bleep Do We Know, and that I was staying after class to watch it if anyone wanted to join me and get their Wednesday night class’s homework out of the way right then and there. (Actually we have a reading to do for homework as well, but this would take care of having to get a copy of the movie themselves to watch.)
Two people took me up on the offer, and we were able to stay in the same classroom we were in (instead of having to find an empty room in the building), since there was no 7:30 class following ours.
This worked out nicely, as this room is equipped with the entire computer set-up to display all kinds of media on a huge screen in front of the room—including having a DVD player. This was way better than watching it on my laptop.
A couple of weeks ago, in this entry, I know I said that I’d already seen this movie, remembered not being thrilled with it, and intimated that I was not looking forward to watching it again.
Well, I have to admit that, surprisingly, I found it a little more interesting this time. I contribute that to three things:
- I made some connections to NOVA’s The Elegant Universe, which I hadn’t seen the first time I saw this movie,
- I made some parallels to a conversation I had with (Dr.) Patti (Clayton) at Helios a couple of weeks ago about her book on Environmental Ethics, called Connections on the Ice,
- I saw several connections in it to a book I recently read (for the Mostly Social Book Club, no less), called Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, which is loosely based on a book called The Secret, about which recently there’s been all kinds of hubbub about, including one of Oprah’s shows.
Back home, at around 9:30, I had a brief instant message conversation with Robert, and then spent a couple of hours doing homework for ENG 583.
OMG, this innocent-looking little book, which looked like it would be fun to read, was so not. It’s going to be a long, last semester.