Two and a half more boxes

Went through two and a half more boxes from the porch.

-One was a small collection of gardening things:  a hose spray nozzle, a black plastic pot, a larger pot, a box of "plant food" powder inside the larger pot; one pair of gardening gloves (unused; still on the store cardboard hangtag), about four pairs of used gardening gloves, a short rope, a small pair of (slightly rusty) scissors, and a plastic gardening trowel.  All would have been from the house immediately before this one -- about twelve years ago.

-One that had notes from a project I worked on about 2002; and class notes from The Lady's graduate-level classes in 1997 and 1998:  all of which got recycled.

-I'm about two-thirds of the way through a larger box, with a bunch of binders, plus file folders, and some bound government publications -- all from the late '90s.  Everything in the box thus far is either a government publication (twenty years out of date; probably available online as a PDF), or else notes and paperwork from a project that The Lady worked on around 1997 or 1998.


I'm about two (and a third) boxes away from being able to sweep off that section of the porch -- for the first time in years!  Currently it has bits of dried leaves -- plus those boxes; and some chunks of week that have been "seasoning" for five or eight years.


--GG

One more porch box

Finished going through one more box from the porch.  Been picking away at this for the last few days.  This one was full of photocopied academic journal articles -- mostly for my dissertation, but with a few "miscellaneous".

Kept about ten; recycled the rest.


--GG

Journals journals journals

In addition to going through my CDs, and going through my books -- I'd already culled a bunch of DVDs a year or two ago -- I'm also getting rid of nearly all of my academic journals.

When I thought I'd be a professor, I was emulating what professors did:  subscribing to scholarly journals, and letting them accumulate on the shelves.  But now that I've accepted that I'm not going to be a professor, I don't need them -- and they're taking up valuable space.

I haven't kept track of how many I've gone through -- and I'm not sure how many I have total (stashes of them keep popping up!) -- but I estimate I had around 100 issues of various journals.  So far I've gone through about 30 -- and kept one... plus another where I tore out a specific article, then recycled the rest.

I can't bear to just recycle the whole lot without looking -- while waiting for webpages to load (and etc.), I've glanced through each one before recycling it:  using the "Pete Guest" approach (one of my professors in graduate school), I read the titles (usually 8-12 articles per issue).  Among the ones that sound interesting -- and often, none of them sound interesting!!! -- I'll read the abstract (the summary at the start of the article), which usually includes the "punchline" (the main finding).  For the very, very few that are particularly interesting, I'll actually glance through the article itself.

I usually go through 1-3 journals a night.


Between the book purging and the journal-clearing, there's now a few sections of carpet in front of the "main bookcase" that haven't been exposed in years:  a good feeling.

My aim is that I'll clear enough room that I can actually set up my recording gear properly -- such that I can record when the mood strikes me -- rather than having to spend 10-15 minutes setting everything up. 

Chipping away...


--GG

About as stupid as you can get

So, my wife -- a college professor -- caught a student plagiarising: passing off someone else's work as his own. Or technically, one of the teaching assistants caught it, as she was grading the papers.

First, the person is stupid for trying to do this, rather than just writing the paper properly. Smart people are able to write decent papers on their own.

Second, the person copied from one of the assigned readings from the course. A smart person would figure that the teaching assistant has probably read the course material.

And, third: the paper was written by my wife and the other co-instructor.

Duh, duh, duh.


--GG