I'm finding it hard to have nothing to say.
Happy Birthday, Holly Smith!
And, I’m sorry that I said Happy Birthday to Tony. I was exactly a month early thanks to the incorrect way in which I entered it into my address book. Apparently, when you abbreviate “September” as “sept” it changes it to “August”.
Happy Birthday, Lindsey and Tony!
Today, in some ways, was a much less eventful day than planned, and, in other ways, much more so. Awoke to go shopping. The plan was to be back by noon, which didn’t leave much time. So we hopped to it.
At the town plaza we divided into girls and guys. Girls went with Quitterie, and boys went with Alfred. We tried looking at clothes, but they were all very expensive (Alfred agreed). So we did electronics instead. Then we went home for drinks. First we took a bus to a souvenir shop. I got a snow globe. I will probably have to finish up my shopping in Quiberon.
Soon it became obvious that we weren’t going to go anywhere at noon. Our parents’ plans had changed with their travels. Apparently they got lost or something. Then the girls returned and soon we had lunch. It was pizza, and it was awesome.
Then we played Smash Brothers for a bit. The parents returned and Benoit taught us to play Toc. It turned out to be quite a fun game. Before that Molly and Quitterie had played Blokus, after which, I joined in. I like that game, too, though Toc has much more excitement.
Then we had a late dinner of potatoes, cheese, and ham, which is what, moments earlier, Linds had requested for dinner. It was delicious.
Then we went to watch Camille, Alfred, and Quitterie have a concert. It was a school band with a bit of community thrown in. Camille plays cello, Alfred plays trumpet, and Quitterie plays keys. It was good music. There was a band from another suburb there, too. They even played a Sweringen song. Then, at the end, both bands played together. The place was absolutely packed with both musicians and spectators. Quite a difference from DSU concerts.
Antoine had asked if we wanted to watch his friend’s band, and we thought it was the same time so we opted to do the concert thing instead, but he said the band was afterwards. Then, some time between dessert and finishing Toc, he disappeared, so we never saw his friend’s band.
Benoit also taught us a blowing game. But, that sounds bad, so I’ll call it an exhaling game. You use squeezies to exhale cornballs around and get them in sinks. It got competitive. I played a largely defensive game, and it worked to my benefit.
Then I wrote a post, and now I’m going to bed so I can be up for Church tomorrow.
I miss Holli. She’s probably having a blast doing all sorts of American things. *sigh*
I blew two weeks of sporadic work and inter-library loans on it, but a recent case of plagiarism has finally been fully documented. I learned a lot in the process. First, this NYT article is six years old, but nevertheless eye-opening as to the degree of the problem educator’s face.
Complicating things, even websites that sound like they might be helpful, such as www-dot- academicintegrity -dot-com (I refuse to link to them and thereby improve their Google standing) , are in fact thinly veiled essay mills. This particular site is almost comical in the disingenuous caveats about the ill-gotten gains cheaters garner, and the moral high ground of the narrow ethical route which greet you to their front page. And speaking of ethics, they’ll sell you a canned essay on the subject, or even ghost write it for you, for a price!
But all is not lost. Some people have been kind enough to gather resources to discourage and detect plagiarism. And as far as detection goes, good software solutions (linked on the aforementioned pages) are relatively scarce. I tried out doccop and CatchItFirst , which both scour the web for matches to any text in an essay. I cannot speak to their effectiveness, because they both reported that the single essay I was probing was unplagiarized, CatchItFirst adding the almost pathetic “100% original” seal of approval. Apparently the folks who wrote their program have fallen for that new-old myth: “If it’s not on the internet, it doesn’t exist.”
Well, the essay I was . . . well, “suspicious” is not the word for when you’re looking for documentation to validate what you already know . . . but the essay for which I was seeking the provenance did, in fact, exist on the web. It finally turned up in a chapter of a text available through Google Books. But seriously, Google, if you’re listening, for the love of all things good, offer at least a link to the same search run at Google Books and Google Scholar if the generic Google phrase search comes up empty! Though I was relieved to find the primary source at last, I was miffed to have searched Google and Google Scholar, repeatedly, and never been offered either results or link to Google Books.
Oh, and doccop also provides you the ability to search against any corpus you like. The strength here is that you, your department, indeed your university or university system can now keep a database of all essays submitted electronically, and using doccop, you can run a similarity check against that database. This puts the skids on those giant collections that certain frats and sororities have amassed and which they make available to members.
Long time readers might be wondering why I haven’t trotted out my favorite whipping pony, Turnitin.com . Fear not; I haven’t forgotten them. I have long disparaged the number-one site not for its profit and not for its effectiveness, which are both quite impressive, but for its[Photo] unethical methods. Not only do I wince at the “guilty-until-proven-innocent” detection strategy, which has driven many universities to abandon the service, but moreso I abhor that universities are effectively giving away, to a profit-motivated company, student work without attribution, compensation, or even student permission (except the permission obtained with a grade held to their heads).
I’m not claiming the student work in question is precious stuff. Indeed, much of it is poorly written, poorly documented, and flat-out uninteresting. But that doesn’t give us permission to give it away to a company who turns around and charges us for contributing to their databases. Turnitin defends their practice of collecting free student work on the grounds that student names are removed and the text is reduced to what they call “digital fingerprints” which is about like saying it’s not an essay, it’s simply zeros and ones strung together! Isn’t the very act of removing attribution to the author the very theft we combat every day in the classroom? And Turnitin celebrates this removal of identifying tags. The irony is viscous nigh unto a solid.
A student recently (well, 3 years ago) won his case against his University and, by proxy, Turnitin.com using precisely the reasons I have mentioned so long on this site. Read all about it elsewhere.
This is just a quick post for all you Mac OS X users out there.
This weekend only, if you buy NewsFire, the most beautiful RSS newsreader on the Mac, you will get a free license for Inquisitor, the instant search extension for Safari that makes searching the web just like using Spotlight.
Also, my friend Bob Davidson has left the blogosphere. His former blog, the software for which I believe he wrote himself, is now dead, and has just that sort of deadness as it’s splash page. Bam. Dead.
Makes you think.
I ordered a poster-sized version of this photo, and it came in the mail the other day. Here’s what it looks like hung up.
Also, this past weekend, right after the wedding, we had a surprise party for Uncle Tim. Boy was he surprised, I think. We weren’t actually there at the time of the party because we had to try to track down a bottle of wine that mysteriously disappeared on our way back over to the hotel. It seems that they forgot to tell dad that he had a package.
Anyway, it was mostly sitting around, talking, and eating. Some family members came up for it, some of the great uncles and their families, so that was neat. The occassion was also kinda solemn since this would mark the last time we would see Bryce and Lindsey as occupants of South Dakota. I can’t be for sure, but I think Bryce was crying.
So, Tim: Happy Birthday! Pictures are here. And, Bryce and Linds: if you made it okay, give us a sign!
Denial is a silver hearse.
The story of John Fugazi and his wedding fiasco. Written and Directed by Miles Rausch.
Starring
Holly – Holli Gregg
Molli – Molly Rausch
Brenda – Brenna Rausch
Linda – Lindsey Nelson
Myles – Miles Rausch
Voice of John Fugazi – Miles Rausch
Written by Miles Rausch
Edited by Miles Rausch
Directed by Miles Rausch
Bryce named me Best Man and Best New Director of 2006!
This weekend my cousin Amber (Wiese) got married to John Faletti-Wiese in Sioux Falls this weekend. This weekend was much fun, and she is the first of the First Cousins to get married (on either side), so it was a new experience this weekend.
Amber and John have been dating for a couple years. At first all I heard were rave reviews about him, including (once or twice), that he was “the new Miles Rausch” in the family. I hated him. But then you meet him, and you get to know him, and you start thinking, “He IS the new Miles Rausch. In fact, he’s the IMPROVED Miles Rausch.” And then you start to plan his demise.
Six or seven attempts on his life later, he’s still in the family, and he’s marrying your cousin. Man, that’s special.
So, I guess I’ll say “Congratulations!” to Amber and John. Many happy years!
A business card is a smile, but a business card and candy is a vote.
I hate 7:00am. Woke up, showered, and had breakfast. We travelled to the subway to take it to the South Ferry. There was construction going on the lines, so they were all messed up (especially on the weekends). We ended up taking a shuttle, too. Subways are hot! (not in the “Paris Hilton” way, either).
First we went to Clinton Castle to buy tickets. This used to be the 1st stop for immigrants going to Ellis Island. 1st and 2nd class passengers usually entered the United States from here. From this point we boated to Liberty Island. We got a lot of pictures at the seafront. A lot. Then we took a Liberty Tour with our Ranger. I took a panograph of the Statue, herself, and hope to have it completed soon. The same bird was walking along the bottom of the statue and ended up in everyone of my pictures of the base. We also took a lot of pictures in front of the statue, and one behind.
For lunch we had pizza. Well, everyone ordered a pepperoni pizza and drink except me, who got a hot dog combo (what’s more American than a hot dog on Liberty Island?). At lunch it took me several minutes to recall the word “pangea”, but I did it.
From here we went to Ellis Island, again by boat. I found the Statue to be interesting, but Ellis Island was fascinating. I got caught up in the history. We saw a movie on it, walked around, and then boated back to New York.
There’s a park area with lots of venders, and we hung around that for a while. sor’d Then we sought out Wall St. We found a bull (bronze) and the Canyon of Heros, which I really liked, even though it’s just the name of a street. But, to add to it, they put names and groups that were considered heros into the sidewalks down this street, and the buildings all around really felt like an urban canyon. This brought us to the Stock Exchange, and the location where George Washington was sworn in.
From there we walked to Ground Zero. There is (obviously) not much to see there. Of course, that is what there is to see. A space. A gaping hole in the frenzied mountainscape of buildings. I didn’t realize at first that we were at Ground Zero, and I inadvertently took a very poignant picture of it. I art by accident!
Next was the Brooklyn Bridge. We were sure that we had to take a subway to get there, but upon reentering the tunnels, we talked to a guy who told us that we were basically underneath the Brooklyn Bridge right now. So, we exited the Subway, and lo!, there we were. On top we walked along for a while. You walk on this wooden walkway over the roaring traffic. Holli was tired (I was, too) and her hips hurt, so we stopped before actually getting underneath anything, but Marissa stayed with us, and we talked about how the inherent dynamics of life lead one to believe that God does not, in fact, exist, while, at the same time, the simple existance of life and its dynamics do, in essense, require the existance of God in some form.
We walked back to TGIFridays, but they were closed. So, we walked to the subway, metro’d our way to home, and walked right up to an Applebees out of the subway.
On the way back I called a strange number that had awaykened us last night, and I had thought it was Dirk, but it was actually Collin. He has a kid on the way. CRAZY.
Time for bed.
Yesterday was “really long day with corporate guys” day. We had to be at work at 8, which, with the drive, meant we had to leave here at 7 all dressed nicely and ready to stay until 5:20 or so. My goodness it was long, but lunch was on them, so it wasn’t all bad.
While at work, however, I was chatting with Jeff Gabhart. Jeff was originally going to go to a Wolf Parade concert in Minneapolis. Note: this isn’t THE Wolf Parade. That would be humorous and terrifying, as wolves hunt in packs and would almost certainly become incensed at the sound of yelling children. However, the band is quite good (hint, hint: Bryce). Anyway, Jeff said that he was coming to Madison, and I said that I would try to make it to Jersey’s for wings.
It was about 6:40 when I was finally on my way to Jersey’s. I got there and I found Adam Hafner, ridin’ dirty, or, at least, his blog is. Also there was: Jeff, Carl Ware, Sarah Linneman, John Fischer, Phil Huddlesteiner, Bobby Dineen, this girl who was a flute when I was in band, this girl who was a flute when I was in band’s boyfriend, Dusty Schnabel, and maybe some people I forgot.
We talked about:
All in all, it was a good supper, and it was nice to catch up with Jeff and Hafner and those guys. But they did make me unable to get any dishes or laundry done. Damn you Hafner! (and Jeff and Carl and those guys)!
This weekend was a goodbye weekend for Bryce and Lindsey. See, Bryce is my brother, and he has asked Lindsey to marry him, so, since she is going to Grad School in Philly, he is going with her, and they have an apartment, and they’ll be there for two years or so (or that’s what I heard), so, since they’re leaving a little over a week from now, there was a get-together at Justin Kaiser’s parents’ house to celebrate (or mourn or whatever).
Saturday, around 2:15ish, Bryce and Holli and I went to get Lindsey. From there we drove to the firehall to get ice. Bryce asked me if I remembered the combination, which I didn’t. Then at the end of our ice excursion, he asked me again, and I remembered. Much to my delight. We added our drinks to the cooler at Boy’s (Justin Kaiser’s) and waited for more guests to arrive. During this time, Holli and I gave them our present, drinking glasses with cool stems, and Boy gave them his presents, legal software. Once enough were assembled, Bryce began writing up a bocce ball tournament. Holli and I were on a team, and we were team “Gobias”, as in “Gobias some coffee”.
The plan at first was to divide into groups and go two games at one time, but we were thwarted by the game (only one white ball, known as a “brick”, was available). So, we played as one big group. Holli and I lost. It’s hard to tell who won. Then we went in, rested a bit, then Ryan showed up and Chris left. So we played another game, but Ryan kept throwing it really far, and I didn’t feel like exacerbating my football injury, so I usually just dropped my ball near my feet.
Then we went in, sat around for a bit, and ordered pizza. Holli and I volunteered to go get it, so when it was ready, we hopped into Bryce’s van and tried in vain to get out, but I have no idea how long that van is, and I could see Tyler getting kinda upset if I turned his bug into modern art, so I played it careful. Too careful. 120 minutes later, I was pulling out of the driveway, annoyed and confused, like after watching The Da Vinci Code. But we nabbed the pizza, drove back, Ryan left, and we ate it.
After / during the meal, I popped in a DVD. It was one I made for Bryce and Lindsey. It was basically a slideshow put to music (my skillz at iMovie are still quite limited) but I tried my best to make it touching and personal. Unfortunately, I don’t have that many pictures of Lindsey, so I had put out a request for pictures to the home email account, hoping that Bryce wouldn’t see the email (which he didn’t), but apparently Mom didn’t think it was worth her time to respond, so I never received any help whatsoever. Thanks. Linds, I’m sorry you aren’t more prevalent. I really tried. I did.
After the DVD, I gave Bryce and Lindsey a little packet each. The packet contained a CD that I made for them, called “Heay Brother and Sister-In-Law”, and a copy of the DVD. I hope they enjoy them. I felt like I should do something for them, and I like doing creative things, and it helped me learn my Mac. It was a win-win-win situation.
After that we began one of the longest poker games in history, and I ended up winning $30 by crushing everyone in my path. My final victim was Tony, and before that, Tyler. Holli was an early casualty. I knew I had the cards, so I bet high, but she saw me, then I bet high again, trying to scare her off, but she proclaimed being stubborn, and saw my bet. I halved her chips in one hand. Eek. Then the losers played Apples 2 Apples.
I hope it was a good time. I had fun, but it was way later than I wished to stay. Oh, well. Good luck Bryce and Lindsey! We’ll be out to visit as soon as we can!
I uploaded the movie to here, and this is another movie I made with iMovie ;). Yes, Chris, I made these on a Mac, and I’m typing this post on a Mac!