Laptop

Many people answered my plaintive wail about laptop buying, some posts ago. Alas, most people answered it with "Well, what do you want to do with it," which was all well and good, except that once I knew what to do with it I still didn't understand the difference between a 1.3Ghz and a 1.5Ghz processor and what they did and why I might or might not care.

To say nothing of trying to compare the specs of a Powerbook to those of a Thinkpad.

In the end, however, jadelennox and her gentleman friend sat down with me and we worked this out and settled on a Thinkpad. After which I ended up getting a slightly better Thinkpad (faster processor, built-in wireless) for less money, thanks to the wonders of academic discounts.

If anyone's curious, it's this one. W\(Which doesn't include the academic discount.)

Five Questions

There's a five-question meme being thrown about. So sensational asked me, because I asked her to:

1) If you could teach at any university you like when you're done with your PhD, which would it be?

Ah hell. The problem is that many of the places I would want to teach there are good and pressing reasons not to. I'd love to be at MIT, but I don't know that I'd want to be there too soon after finishing my doctorate. I'd love to be at Emory, for the location, if only they had a department; I'd probably like OSU except for the location.

In the end, possibly UMass Amherst in terms of location and program (but of course they're having budget problems, being a state school).

2) Do you think that spending most of your youth in the south has shaped you in significant ways, given the urban setting? How?

"Most" is a little misleading, since I lived from ages seven to thirteen in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, yeah, I think it has. Well, "significant" might be strong for it; but I think it has in some ways.

The main influence it had on me may actually not be a Southern/Northern thing, but the fact that I grew up in a more conservative and more Christian culture than, say, Massachusetts-bred jadelennox. It doesn't make me any more conscious of being Jewish, I don't think (she's still more Jewish than I am), and possibly not any more conscious of being liberal (she's probably also more liberal than I am), but there is in my subconscious something of an understanding that not everywhere in the country is like Cambridge, MA.

Then again, maybe everyone has these things, so maybe the real effect is that I say "Coke" for "soda."

3) Have you ever been out of the country? Where did you go?

Only once, in thirty years, which seems sort of surprising to me, but it's true. I was in Vancouver, BC, last summer for the National Puzzlers' League convention, and that's the only time I've been out of the country.

It's not the only time I've been out of U.S. jurisdiction; I visited the United Nations once, in New York, which is technically international, I think. And I might've made it far enough off the coast on a trip to the beach, though it's doubtful. I've also been out of the continental U.S. once, on a trip to St. Croix back in high school.

4) How many books do you have? A rough estimate will do. What percentage--again, roughly--are non-fiction?

Oh god. Lots? There are a bunch at the office, of course, and some in a pile on the floor of my room, and...perhaps 500? I estimate very badly, but that might be around the right number. (leighjen might be able to correct that.)

As for non-fiction--I mentally don't file "reference" and "puzzle" in non-fiction; they're different categories. (And of course "linguistics" is all kept elsewhere...) If you were to look at my non-fiction shelf at home, it would be easily less than 5% of my books. But if you count books that aren't actually fiction, like the thesaurus sitting here, and the Heim and Kratzer textbook, and so forth, then probably closer to 15-20% of my books are non-fiction.

(Again, leighjen may be able to refine that number.)

5) What's the last movie you saw (video and television work, as long as you hadn't seen it before), and what did you think of it?

Oh--the last movie I saw was actually Charade, which I watched with Michelle on Sunday. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are a joy to watch, and I love con game movies. This isn't really a con game, but there's stolen money and secret identities involved, which is close enough. But I'd seen it before. (I found it does hold up well to repeated viewings.)

The last thing I watched that I hadn't seen before was Lucinda Williams singing "Righteously" on Letterman last night, which I found quite disappointing; to me the song just oozes passion and lust, and she just sort of stood there singing. Then again, that might be because my mental image of Lucinda Williams is actually Susan Tedeschi. Except that she has dark hair. In my mental image. But I think the problem was a lack of passion.

The last actual thing I saw that I hadn't seen before must have been four episodes from the middle of the second season of Buffy, which I saw last Wednesday. (Well. I'd seen one of them before.) They were quite good; fun writing, not too bad plotwise, neat characters.

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Which means it's my turn to pass five questions along to them as wants 'em. Feel free to ask.