Is that Ooga Booga giving a thumbs up to donuts? Yes, of course.
Have we been eating too many donuts? Yes, we have.
Are we going crazy as we get into finals? No comment.
Showing posts with label Ooga-booga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ooga-booga. Show all posts
Friday, May 05, 2006
DonutFest 2006
Once again from our white board:
Is that Ooga Booga giving a thumbs up to donuts? Yes, of course.
Have we been eating too many donuts? Yes, we have.
Are we going crazy as we get into finals? No comment.
Is that Ooga Booga giving a thumbs up to donuts? Yes, of course.
Have we been eating too many donuts? Yes, we have.
Are we going crazy as we get into finals? No comment.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
A Brief Update
I've been meaning to post for a while, but it's that time in the semester. In fact, I've got some semi-technical posts I've worked on a bit and haven't decided whether to put up or not. So some brief updates follow, since I'm in today letting someone take an exam.
I think that will have to do for now, but perhaps I'll be back soon. Happy Holidays to all, and good wishes.
- Our office floor continues pretty much as usual. The white board degenerated from a lesson on elementary graph theory to something else about a month or so ago:
(Yes, Geomotron and the cat were my creations.) Eventually Ooga-Booga got involved:
I suggested to some other people on the hall that we have enough interesting things going on to create our own prime-time dramatic series. - I went down to Atlanta again for Thanksgiving. My partner has a new kitten. I'm not sure what the kitten would think of Geomotron, but he would almost certainly attempt to play with it, since it seems to be his main method of interaction with everything. (He's not too discriminating; he gets excited if you just wiggle your fingers in front of him.)
- Just as an aside, I've recently discovered that it's possible to rewrite "The Little Drummer Boy" into an alternative song about a boy who didn't even have a drum and had to play a different instrument. I call it "Little Flatulent Boy" (or something worse). You don't even have to change the 'Barump-pum-pum-pum's. It's fun, too.
- I have a student wanting to have a few extra days to study for a final, and I'm somewhat inclined to just let her. If I do, I have to resist the urge to say, "Sure, and how much more rope do you need?" There are always some students who believe in end-of-semester miracles. I've never actually seen one 'though.
- I now have five job applications out for next year, including one at my own alma mater. I'm really hoping I can leave next year (finally). Think good thoughts for me.
- I'm in today giving some make-up finals and grading. (Hence why I've suddenly found time to post here.) I'm also eating bagels and donuts that another instructor had left over after bringing in breakfast for his students taking a 7:45 am final. Now I owe him breakfast, which is problematic, considering the likelihood of either of us being up early enough to eat breakfast again in the near future.
I think that will have to do for now, but perhaps I'll be back soon. Happy Holidays to all, and good wishes.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
More Ooga-Booga
Since I introduced you to Ooga-Booga recently, I thought you might like to see the pictures we have up of him on the door to our common room/testing room. (Also the future site of Dean C's Celebrity Dance Party.)
Below, we see Ooga-Booga rising over the mountains, and skeet-shooting with son Oogie (2004):
Next, we see O.B. enjoying his iZot shuffle ("Utter chaos made even more random, starting at $99"), "Ooga Booga hates moving", "Guess what ELSE Ooga-Booga hates?" (all names are of local car dealerships), and finally "Ooga-Booga HATES meetings."
Another instructor's student once asked "Did someone's kid draw those?" He answered it was someone he worked with. Technically of course all the artists were in fact someone's kid, however.
Below, we see Ooga-Booga rising over the mountains, and skeet-shooting with son Oogie (2004):
Next, we see O.B. enjoying his iZot shuffle ("Utter chaos made even more random, starting at $99"), "Ooga Booga hates moving", "Guess what ELSE Ooga-Booga hates?" (all names are of local car dealerships), and finally "Ooga-Booga HATES meetings."
Another instructor's student once asked "Did someone's kid draw those?" He answered it was someone he worked with. Technically of course all the artists were in fact someone's kid, however.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Meet Ooga-Booga
We math people on the fourth floor of this building are unusual, in that we have our own personal god. (Well, OK, we are unusual in a number of other ways, but the existence of a personal god is the one I wish to address at this time.) I would like you meet Ooga-Booga, a giant, amorphous, ghost-like being who dispenses wrath on the deserving. He says hello. He is pleased to meet you.
Ooga-booga is the original creation of my office-neighbor, who drew on our white board a picture of Ooga-Booga attacking a college which had turned me down for a job about a year and a half ago. (We are a loyal group up here.) Ooga-booga is an angry god, who rains down green, lightning-bolt shaped "zotting rays." (They make the sound "zot!") We have determined that zotting rays make things burn and shrink at the same time. This makes clean up after Ooga-booga's rampage so much easier--everything (and everyone) destroyed can be dropped into a relatively small hole and buried. The theological origins of the shrinking power of zots involve problems in getting appropriate scales for drawings on the white board.
When I encountered job hunting problems, Ooga-Booga has appeared on the white board to take vengeance for me, as if by magic. When someone else encountered hiring problems, Ooga-Booga zotted the offending parties on the white board. Paper sketches have started filling the common-room door. Ooga-Booga now has a family, including a son (little Oogie), who he apparently goes skeet shooting with (using zots, of course). Ooga-Booga enjoys listening to his iZot shuffle ("total chaos made even more random, starting at $99.") When my office-neighbor had his nearby apartment building bought out and had to move, we learned that "Ooga-Booga hates moving." (He zotted the old apartment building. We engaged in a theological debate for a while as to whether the shrinking nature of zots were an aid in packing.) When my neighbor (who shortly became a regular neighbor when he moved across the street from me) had to also buy a car, Ooga-Booga was seen wrecking local car dealerships. (Caption: "Guess what else Ooga-Booga hates?")
Recently, I've been avoiding meetings. The department is a little meeting happy sometimes; they have meetings for the sake of having meetings. There is a weekly "course meeting" for one class I teach. It may be helpful to TAs who have never taught before, but I'm already familiar with this class. The content of the meetings could be handled by an e-mail message, but they meet every week anyway. Since they picked a time which is fairly inconvenient for me, I've not been going. I found out the course coordinators are miffed with me. My condensed response: Bite me.
I did come in early this Thursday for a different committee meeting. (I volunteered to be part of this committee, so it could be worse.) But since one of the agenda items for the meeting was to find a more convenient time to meet, I suggested that we stop physically meeting, since everything we were doing could be accomplished by e-mail and an online message board. In fact, we have course management software which could provide us with everything we need with an easy-to-use Web-based interface. I even offered to set this up and manage it. After all, the school prides itself on its high-tech approach to everything. Every student and faculty member has a computer, and students are expected to use a variety of systems (including e-mail and the web, but also including specialized course software and technical programs). But we couldn't switch to asynchronous meetings; it would require learning "all that." And besides, no one would be able to "see people's faces". (I resisted the urge to point out the department web page has faculty pictures on it.) So we will continue to have these meetings, which are convenient for almost no one, so that we can see each others faces. And I'll continue to avoid course meetings and be frowned at.
There's a new picture on the door of the common room: "Ooga-Booga hates meetings."
Ooga-booga is the original creation of my office-neighbor, who drew on our white board a picture of Ooga-Booga attacking a college which had turned me down for a job about a year and a half ago. (We are a loyal group up here.) Ooga-booga is an angry god, who rains down green, lightning-bolt shaped "zotting rays." (They make the sound "zot!") We have determined that zotting rays make things burn and shrink at the same time. This makes clean up after Ooga-booga's rampage so much easier--everything (and everyone) destroyed can be dropped into a relatively small hole and buried. The theological origins of the shrinking power of zots involve problems in getting appropriate scales for drawings on the white board.
When I encountered job hunting problems, Ooga-Booga has appeared on the white board to take vengeance for me, as if by magic. When someone else encountered hiring problems, Ooga-Booga zotted the offending parties on the white board. Paper sketches have started filling the common-room door. Ooga-Booga now has a family, including a son (little Oogie), who he apparently goes skeet shooting with (using zots, of course). Ooga-Booga enjoys listening to his iZot shuffle ("total chaos made even more random, starting at $99.") When my office-neighbor had his nearby apartment building bought out and had to move, we learned that "Ooga-Booga hates moving." (He zotted the old apartment building. We engaged in a theological debate for a while as to whether the shrinking nature of zots were an aid in packing.) When my neighbor (who shortly became a regular neighbor when he moved across the street from me) had to also buy a car, Ooga-Booga was seen wrecking local car dealerships. (Caption: "Guess what else Ooga-Booga hates?")
Recently, I've been avoiding meetings. The department is a little meeting happy sometimes; they have meetings for the sake of having meetings. There is a weekly "course meeting" for one class I teach. It may be helpful to TAs who have never taught before, but I'm already familiar with this class. The content of the meetings could be handled by an e-mail message, but they meet every week anyway. Since they picked a time which is fairly inconvenient for me, I've not been going. I found out the course coordinators are miffed with me. My condensed response: Bite me.
I did come in early this Thursday for a different committee meeting. (I volunteered to be part of this committee, so it could be worse.) But since one of the agenda items for the meeting was to find a more convenient time to meet, I suggested that we stop physically meeting, since everything we were doing could be accomplished by e-mail and an online message board. In fact, we have course management software which could provide us with everything we need with an easy-to-use Web-based interface. I even offered to set this up and manage it. After all, the school prides itself on its high-tech approach to everything. Every student and faculty member has a computer, and students are expected to use a variety of systems (including e-mail and the web, but also including specialized course software and technical programs). But we couldn't switch to asynchronous meetings; it would require learning "all that." And besides, no one would be able to "see people's faces". (I resisted the urge to point out the department web page has faculty pictures on it.) So we will continue to have these meetings, which are convenient for almost no one, so that we can see each others faces. And I'll continue to avoid course meetings and be frowned at.
There's a new picture on the door of the common room: "Ooga-Booga hates meetings."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)