First real snow of the year

My last final was Thursday--collecting papers from students for the proseminar course. Now, all I have left to do is grade, but at home there are too many distractions. During my sabbatical, I went to the local library to read, research and write, otherwise I'd end up watching Cesar calming down a dog on the Dog Whisperer, or reading an old issue of Nodame Cantabile, or procrastinating on facebook. So yesterday, Friday, I went to the local library to grade.

And as planned, I was able to finish off two courses--the Bungo exam, the annotated biliobgraphies for the proseminar, and I calculated final grades. Woo hoo!

Just before the library closed, Musubichan came to pick me up, and we went to the local Giant and there were lines out the door. Holy moly, what the heck is happening. M reminded me that there's a snow storm in the forecast and people are probably stocking up. Yeah, right. They said that last time. We finished our shopping and went down the block to our watering hole on Route 123. We had a few beers, shared a salad and fries, and talked with our drinking buddies at the bar. Dude, Brian Kelly! I bet Notre Dame is in the BCS mix in two years.

Around 9 o'clock we decided to mosey along home, and when we opened the door and stepped out, the parking lot was blanketed in an inch of snow. I was a little nervous--beer and snow do not make for optimal driving conditions--but fortunately, we got home safely and went to sleep.
Well, this morning, I woke up and looked outside and saw this:

  

Brrrr...

According to weather.com it will snow for the rest of the day and night, but the forecast is for clear and sunny skies on Sunday. Which means I have about 24 hours to hide the snow shovel and practice my "What shovel?" look.  

H1N1

Thank goodness I haven't exhibited flu-like symptoms like many of my students have--or claim to have: "Sensei, I am exhibiting flu-like symptoms and am unable to attend class today." Hmmm... sounds like a cut and paste job from an email sent by the dean. Oh well, what can you do? I have yet to exhibit anything–knock on wood–but you never know. So I got my seasonal flu shot and am anxiously waiting for the H1N1 vaccine. Of course, if I catch something, then maybe I can take off and rest for a week or so. I'm sure some of my students would appreciate a reprieve from my weekly quizzes and writing assignments.

Anyway, I got an email from President Obama asking me personally to spread the word about their new Flu.gov website. Yes, I get an email from him often, like everyday, sometimes three times a day. Of course, much of it goes something like, "with your tax deductable support we can..." But seriously, the email comes directly from him...

Anyway, everyone, check out the site for the latest info on H1Ni, and please stay healthy and germ free. And always wash those hands!

Sabbatical Report

I began the sabbatical by focusing on collecting further examples of the application of the aesthetic/poetic principle, yūgen (幽玄 lit. mystery and depth), by Fujiwara Shunzei in poetry matches by going through matches he judged starting from the Shigeie Poetry Match of 1166 to the Sengohyakuban Poetry Match of 1201. I have identified thirteen—and I believe all—instances of yūgen in extant documents. Previously, I have determined that this principle—unlike the anachronistic interpretation by many previous scholars who believed that yūgen was applied to “mysterious” content—was applied in reference to poems that manifested an unstable text, poems that had more than one meaning. This instability was based on the poems reference to archaic elements that were somehow sensed but not readily explained. The noted Japanese scholar, Kubota Jun, reached a similar conclusion but makes reference to archaic grammatical patterns.  My research, on the other hand, suggests that this is an overly convenient conclusion; analysis of Shunzei’s application of the term does not refer to just any archaic element—would the phrase “thou hast” in a modern English poem render it “mysterious and deep”?—but rather specifically to older texts with which the connection is not obvious.

The absence of an obvious and direct association with other texts is in contradistinction with another poetic technique of the same era known as honkadori. A crucial prescription for this compositional technique was to borrow more than one poetic segment (ku) from a source poem and incorporating it into your own poem. Moreover, the borrowing must be an obvious reference to a previous poem. As the leading poet of the early 13th century, Fujiwara Teika, noted in his poetic treatise, Maigetsushō, “[borrowing] should be done in such a way that it is clear that the older poem has been used.”   While all scholars of premodern Japanese literature recognize the distinction between yūgen and honkadori, there seems to be a misconception when analyzing their role in critical method. David Bialock indicates that Teika was “deeply committed to the concept of the text as a stable, fixed entity,” but then indicates that the Shinkokinshū “conceals a vertical depth reaching back or down into the intertextual space of the tradition, an intertextual space which it in fact generates out of its own textual practice.”  While I agree that Teika’s approach suggests a commitment to a “stable, fixed entity,” this seems to contradict his idea that the Shinkokinshū—the eighth Imperial Anthology of which Teika was one of the compilers—reached into an “intertextual space” which “generates out of its own textual practice.” His comment suggests that honkadori—with its clear relationship with older poems—was a form of intertextuality. This is, in my opinion, far from correct. Intertextuality as defined by Julia Kristeva or Roland Barthes promotes quite the opposite: the text is an unstable, unfixed entity.

Still, Bialock’s assertion is understandable to the degree that honkadori is intertextual in nature. A poem that incorporates this technique can technically have more than one meaning—the straight-forward meaning suggested by the original text itself and the alternative meanings rendered when the source poem is also taken into consideration. However, the fact that the prescription for honkadori requires that it be “clear that the older poem has been used” strips away any pretense to the instability of the text. This is not intertextuality. It is contextuality.

So ultimately, what this means is that I kind of departed from my original plan and began researching something else.

Macbook is Hot!

My Macbook looks hot: All aluminum casing, nice keyboard, nice size. But it also runs hot. The CPU can get so hot that the mouse malfunctions. Yesterday, I got the Mac version of the Blue Screen of Death: Mac's OS 10.5 version is charcoal gray. When it gets this hot, I can't even touch the casing.

What gives?

I know a CPU runs hot when converting videos, but still. When it shut down yesterday, I was transferring files from one external HD to another--yes, a lot of files for backing up. And I was running Parallels as well (to run Windows). Is Parallels also a CPU killer? Hmmmm. This is very frustrating. I used to use Bootcamp, but I got tired of re-booting every time I wanted to use a Windows program--specifically MS Word because the Mac version of Word cannot write Japanese vertically (although it can read it--go figure). Also, I came to the conclusion that Windows run through Bootcamp also makes the computer super hot.

Is my Macbook broken? Do I need to unplug my USB external devices? Any advice from Mac afficionados? Am I simply abusing my machine?

Overheated Macbook Pro Odyssey

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Last week, I dropped by the Apple Store in Tyson's Corner to ask about the "heat" in my Macbook Pro (MBP) and they told me to make an appointment with the techs at the store. Of course, they were too busy for a walk in, so I went home and made the appointment online to meet a tech at the "Genius Bar."

On Tuesday late afternoon, I went to my appointment to talk to one of these so-called geniuses. He asked me a few questions and checked a page that apparently recorded what exactly happened when my computer froze on me. He said that the report suggested that the CPU was "burning out" and that it might need to be replaced. He also wanted to run a diagnostic on the fans since that is probably the reason why the CPUs were burning up in the first place. But the fans were not in stock and if he needed to replace the fan, he wanted to do it all at onece so once they got the parts, they would contact me. The order probably went out the next day, Wednesday, and they got the part Thursday, and they promptly contact me. I went in on Friday to turn in my MBP and they told me that they'd work on it over the weekend. So far so good.

On Saturday I got a call. Wow, that was fast, I thought. But the guy working on my computer ran a diagnostic and told me that he found nothing wrong with it. The CPU looked fine and the fans were working within normal parameters. (I knew all those years watching ST:TNG would come in handy.) He asked me what I run and I told him that I use Parallels and often burn DVDs which, of course, requires video conversions. These are, he said, jobs that require a lot a juice and so make the Intel CPUs work harder and hotter. It's unavoidable. But the Mac conked out on me, I protested. Are you saying that's unavoidable? I tried very hard not to sound like a whining college professor, but he seemed pretty adamant about his position, reminding me that MBPs are known to run "very warm."
Okay, fine. I huff internally. I'll pick up my computer tomorrow.
In the mean time, I decided to take things into my own hands and do some research. Now there is a lot of stuff out on the Internet and a lot of it is not very reliable, so I read and read, checked and confirmed what others had written, and came to one conclusion.
Macs need to do work out some bugs in their operating system, hopefully when 10.6 comes out in a few months.
In the meantime, I have figure out a way to keep my computer cool by patching together the different thoughts that different people have written on the Internet and trying some things on my own.
1. I downloaded smcFan Control which provides my with a current reading of the heat of my fan. When the computer is working like a horse, temperatures surpasses 190 degrees F. Very hot. Like I said previously, you could fry an egg. Since I'm a nerd, I also downloaded the iStat widget which will load onto the Dashboard. It gives me all kinds of info including CPU temps, RAM usage and disk volumes, but most of it is incomprehensible to me, but it looks cool anyway.

2. I then began to pay attention to the Activity Monitor when the computer ran hot--as many people mentioned in their Internet posts--and saw some things that freaked me out. My Brother printer was using over 40% of my CPU, even though I wasn't printing anything. I turned it off and the CPU usage went down as well as the core temperature. My printer usually goes into hibernation when I'm not printing or making copies, which is copacetic with Windows, but not with the Mac OS. I Googled around a bit and learned that the Mac often tries to communcate with USB hardware sometimes unnecessarily and raises the temperature. Oooooooh. So I also unplugged my external DVD player and disconnected my external hard drive, and temps went down rather dramatically.

3. As I researched, I learned a little about kernal_tasks which also seemed to spike when I had these external devices plugged in. But I also learned that it also goes into action when other internal devices are turned on, such as the Mac firewall, Bluetooth and wireless connection Airport. I set the firewall to default settings and just turned off Bluetooth and Airport--which I kept on even though I am plugged in with ethernet.

4. Finally, I also make sure that I quit any application I am not using.
As a result, my Macbook Pro is at a cool 133 degrees. It used to be around 145 degrees even when I wasn't doing anything except type in MSWord and surf the Net. Now, the surface area around the speakers and keyboard isn't even warm.

Next project: I think my battery's dead. What is the lifespan of a computer battery? Does it go kaput if I keep the computer plugged in? Should I just disengage the battery so it won't keep recharging unecessarily? Any thoughts?