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The week before me writing this has been a very very trying week.
On Monday I came back to the school to work on the slideshow, and finally learned enough to go straight to the downstairs lab to seek the Dark Lord.
He was sitting at his desk without his glasses as I came in, and he regarded me with eyes to which I was probably a blur (I have the feeling I learned once that he is myopic). I have only ever seen him without his glasses at times when he and I were both very tired, so the sight of his face without them must always trigger the protective instinct in me. So a few seconds after I entered the Mac lab, I asked, "Is everything all right?"
Not that I expected him to admit that anything was not; I suppose my motivations were just to convey that I do occasionally care. In exchange for getting the iMac.
As he opened the Mac lab door for me, I ask, "So, have you seen V for Vendetta yet?"
"No, not yet."
What sort of evil powers were keeping the Dark Lord, the man who saw The Matrix Reloaded at the 12:01 a.m screening, from watching a Wachowski brothers' movie on his March Break? "You'll like it."
"Did you see it?"
"Yeah, Concolor and I saw it on Saturday." Somehow the imp that lives behind my tongue did not mention that nearly the entire Language Acquisition Lab accompanied us.
"Concolor? And how is he?"
"Being a gentleman who would pay for concessions," said I. "Do you want some chocolate?"
"Maybe later. How long do you think it will take you to finish this?"
"Maybe another four or five hours, barring any accidents."
"Nothing can go wrong with a Macintosh," the Dark Lord said confidently.
"You need to meet the iMac at work then," I laughed.
"It goes wrong?"
"Yeah, it's one of the fishbowl ones. But I think this show is beginning to look really good. Knock wood." I looked around for wood. "Knock wood laminate substitute." I knocked the table.
"Yeah, it is looking really good," the Dark Lord agreed.
Oh gods above, why were the evil ones among you listening?
The Dark Lord left, promising that he would be back, and I worked on. After a while, I needed to go to the washroom. Realising that, given my luck, the Dark Lord would return exactly on time to see the lab empty, I carefully closed the door of the inner lab. So carefully, indeed, that I heard the lock click, and realised that what I had done was lock myself out.
To prevent this, I carefully put a doorstop against the outer door. And returned from the washroom to find that guess what? The door had slipped over the doorstop, and now I had no choice but to seek the Dark Lord.
As I entered the main building, a sinewy arm in a rolled-up blue sleeve held open the door for me.
"Oh, there you are! I have locked myself out of the lab."
"That's ok."
"I mean, I knew that if I left the door open, that would be the precise minute when the Dark Lord comes back and sees the lab abandoned..."
"That's ok, I know that you would only be gone for a short while."
High, high opinions, I thought to myself as I got back into my seat. The Dark Lord puttered about the lab, out of the corner of my eyes looking like I imagine wizards to move about their laboratories, only I do not picture wizards' labs to be as austere as the Mac lab. "It arrived," he said cheerfully, picking up a round box the size and shape of a film reel.
"What did?"
The box contained a slim book and some other objects. "It's the kit The Director in the Classroom. So I can teach my students how to make movies."
"Ooh, where did you get it, and can I have some?"
"I ordered it."
"Did you expense it?" As I said when Consuelo picked up the tab for our entire dinner at the Elephant and Castle, one of my fondest wishes is to be rich enough to expense my meals.
"No, that takes too much paperwork. I hate paperwork."
"I hear you." He had taught me that expression. "I hear you."
As the Dark Lord finally put on his coat to leave, I repeated my offer of chocolate.
"No, not now."
"Is the place where you are going likely to have chocolate?" I challenged.
"Yes, I think so."
He left me behind, and at around 7 the catastrophe came.
First I put some new animations in, but then Build Inspector refused to let me change their order or change them from On Click to Automatically, those fields in it remaining mute and unresponsive. Growing frustrated, I moved back to a slide where I knew I had changed the builds before, only to find it not working there too. Desperate, I closed the file and went to open it again.
And up came the worst possible message you can imagine without someone being dead, sick or injured.
"Why?!" I screamed at the flat screen. "For the love of all the gods there are, tell me why?"
In my History of Mathematics presentation, I make the argument that computers are still a long way from understanding human language. The Apple iMac G5 with iWorks 2006 is a case in point.
I went to pull the unresponsive file to my memory key, and was relieved to see the blue bar "Saving..." grow. At least it was not "Keynote cannot save the file triivia night.key because it is damaged," another memory error I am familiar with. Well, there was the memory key, and if worst comes to worst, there was the backup CD I burned two weeks ago. Well, one of those weeks was March Break and another was truncated because of that stupid emergency and the Dark Lord's meeting. So there was not that much work to be made up.
It is an interesting observation that all through that long trivia night slideshow saga, I never felt despair. I felt frustrated, yes; I felt stressed out, yes; I felt angry at technology and the people around me, yes; but I never felt that it was not going to work out. I felt that, given only a titanic effort on my part, it will all work out fine. The good will end happily, and the bad unhappily. That's what fiction means.
And it did take a titanic effort.
The next morning I dropped by the school before work to write a note to the Dark Lord telling of my plight and telling him I will be back on Wednesday. Tuesday was out of the question, because on Wednesday was the English Syntax (which has no exam) final test, and I meant to study for it. After filling another sheet of foolscap with writing, I headed off to the lab where Concolor must be waiting, humming under my breath Kipling's
And having no idea who I meant.
I entered a darkened lab, with the lights off, and it took me a moment to scan the quiescent computers, the bag on the floor, the Concolor sprawled on the floor catching up on a sleep deficit... I laughed and we slowly got to work, confirming that the His de Math assignment was indeed due on Thursday.
I came back to the lab after Reach practice, having nowhere else in particular to go. Concolor greeted me.
"I have done all of the questions except the fourth one, and it's the last one so it must be the hardest."
"Let's see?" It was on Q's polynomial division ring, and its imposed order. I fell to thinking, almost literally although not so rapidly, as I lay down on the floor, feeling myself almost as strong a sleep deficit as Concolor's, and pondered out loud. "So assuming x is less than y, without loss of generality..."
Concolor lay down about a foot away from me. "The fact the you can divide by polynomials within it must be important..."
The key clicked in the lock and we both sprang up and got into chairs, I at least thinking that even the Language Acquisition Lab would find it odd to see us two lying on the floor together...discussing total orders of polynomial fields.
"How long are you staying?" Aldonza, for it was she and Amico, asked us.
"Well, we have History of Math at 1:00," said Concolor, "but one can never be late for history."
"I like that," I laughed. "One can never be late for history. I should put that as the title of a blog post."
Gentle reader, you have been warned.
That afternoon, though, was not for much studying, as
(a) Society Max showed me how to access his computer, and his MP3 collection, on mine through the LAN, and so I spent a great while emailing myself Marek and Vacek, my favourite Vanessa Mae songs, and my favourite Queen song of all time.
(b) Remember my discussion of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab?
I wore Lightning for the test.
The test I finished quickly enough to go back to the lab and write another email to Irene.
Not just any lunch; the whole bunch of us were going to Perfection-Satisfaction-Promise for Aldonza's farewell lunch.
Interestingly enough, the conversation at the peaceful restaurant turned to Scientology this time. Now that Amico has sent me the link to the South Park Blainetology episode, and while waiting for it to download I read a whole lot of the xenu.net site explaining the evils of Scientology, I think I dislike Scientology intensely.
Today I am not alone. The fragrance of my home-flower garden shall stay with me. Thus ran the quotation from Sri Chinmoy on a flower box at PSP, and we all had a laugh over it.
Fare well, Aldonza.
At the school, the Dark Lord was working with a few other students in the lab, and let me past them to get into the Mac lab.
"So," he said, "I tried opening your file, and it gives me the same error message. I wish I knew what it is, but it says nothing about what kind of error it is. So I am afraid I can't help you."
"Well," I said, "it's saved on the USB key. Could we try it on another computer, to see whether it is a local computer problem or a Keynote problem?"
We opened the computer next to mine, stuck the USB key imn, rebooted the iMac to make it recognise the USB key...
And got the same message: Keynote cannot open the file triivia night.key.
"Well," said the Dark Lord, "I guess you'll have to take it off the CD and reconstruct your work. And you know what? Every time you save, try exporting to PowerPoint. That way, even if the Keynote file fails, we'll still have the PowerPoint file."
I got to work, but before I did, I accessed my email and downloaded a certain song to open with iTunes, and perhaps the Dark Lord and his student heard, with irony set to delicate silk.
Well, I turned the volume down at "I'm a sex machine ready to reload." The school has its standards; just like in the USSR, except in Health classes every person in the school came into being by immaculate conception.
I listened to the Dark Lord joking to his student, to his irony and the dry humour I used to love so well and missed so much, and the thought struck me - maybe it was not the Dark Lord changing and seeming so depressed that I reacted to last fall. Maybe he is one of those people who only know how to act around teenagers with that dry humourous mockery. And now that I am not a teenager anymore, the power balance between us has shifted (and he has been a little afraid of me, believing my intellect to be superior to his, for a long time now, and I can cite many quotations to prove it.) So perhaps his apparent change to dry cold depression is simply because he does not know how to act around someone who used to be his inferior and is now his equal in our societal balance. I have broken out of the student-teacher relationship system, and, besides giving me what I want and more, and the very occasional mockery at a third party that we used to share all the time and now have not since the Cathcart Street tale, he has no idea how to act around me.
That's ok. A lot of men don't.
But what does it say about me that I enjoyed the inequality of the teacher-student relationship?
No, it was not that which I enjoyed. It was the sense that, because I was the smart one, the responsible one, and the one with a similar sense of humour, that he would look at me when he was going, "They're hopeless. They're hopeless." And I would nod yes in understanding. I enjoyed that unity.
There is a Russian song, "I just waited and believed Though my heart denied That we two are two trees, two leaves, By the same riverside." Only the rhyme is kept in an alternative Russian verse that I would translate into English as
The Dark Lord's entry interrupted my musings. "Oh, and save them under different names, do you get what I'm saying?"
"No, say that again?" Maybe the unity was gone - but I remembered the first time I had ever truly admitted that I did not understand something, and that had made me a much better person, and that had been to the Dark Lord too.
"Well, say you have worked for an hour, and you decide that's enough work, you decide to save..." (An hour? I had saved three times already in those twenty minutes.) "And you save under trivia night 1, say. Then you work for another hour, and you save - save it under trivia night 2. And the next time you save after that, save back on trivia night 1. So that if one of them breaks down, we can go to an earlier one and see what was different. I'll be upstairs if you need me. "
Wise advice. Trivia night 1.key, export to trivia night 1.ppt. Trivia night 12.key, export to trivia night 12.ppt. Trivia night 1.key, export to trivia night 1.ppt...
Out of Memory Error.
Delete everything unnecessary - songs, other files I could re-download, etc. Empty trash. Export to trivia night 1.ppt.
Out of Memory Error.
Carefully leave the lab door slightly open, go up to the math office, and knock twice.
"Dark Lord, PowerPoint is giving me an Out of Memory Error, even after I have deleted everything I could."
"Well," said he, "export it to Images, then."
That worked. He came back later, me happily exporting to Images, and he got ready to go.
"How long do you think it will take you?"
"Another four or five hours. Knock wood. Although I guess knocking on wood substitute did not work last time. There!" I sprang up and grabbed a dowel rod from behind the storage cabinet. "Knock wood."
I put on a song. It was for him as he put on his coat.
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to
why don't you go where fashion sits,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Different types who wear a day coat, pants with stripes
and cutaway coat, perfect fits,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Dressed up like a million dollar trouper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
Come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks
or "umberellas" in their mitts,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Have you seen the well-to-do up and down Park Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare with their noses in the air
High hats and Arrow collars white spats and lots of dollars
Spending every dime for a wonderful time
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to
why don't you go where fashion sits,
(Puttin' on the ritz)
(Puttin' on the ritz)
(Puttin' on the ritz)
But then, late in the eighth hour, with trivia night 1.key open, I clicked on trivia night 2.key.
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I went to the iPhoto, opened the last album. I could not for the life of me figure out how to extract them one image at a time. Finally I clicked on "Make slideshow in QuickTime," and waited.
It did make a slideshow. In QuickTime. But very differently from the one that Keynote makes. iPhoto is designed for displaying people's digital camera photos, so its slide show simply drifts from one picture to the next. Cute for those snapshots of your baby with Aunt Matilda; totally impractical for any question game where you need to read text on the pictures. And it's half a gigabyte in size, too.
And then I accidentally closed trivia night 1.key while trying to minimise it.
I deleted trivia night 2, the older previous export, and saved the previous PowerPoint on the USB key. Then I took one of the spare CDs the Dark Lord had given me when I burned the CD backup, and I burned the album on it. Then I wrote the Dark Lord a long and very sad note. Saying I will be back tomorrow.
In the morning I met Irene for coffee, and over our conversation she smelled the imps, and I frantically worked on my His de Maths assignment. Once that was done, she and I discussed Russian - particularly the tense vs. aspect. To explain the Russian past tense of the verb "go" I gave it, and realised that was the imperfective aspect. "I was going to visit my friend when a crocodile attacked me. So you never finished it."
"So in Russian, crocodiles attack on people?"
"Yep. It has the derivational affix from the verb 'to fall,' right? So a crocodile fell on you. That is even scarier."
"So you mean those things that we were doing in the past tense, we never finished any of them?"
"Nope. Or you did them repeatedly."
She and I went to watch several more His de Maths presentations. In some of them, the most interesting part was watching Pestov try not to nod off.
After school I came to the Dark Lord, but he was with a student. So meanwhile I worked on the not-yet-done sports round, waiting for his bidding on what to do with the main round.
Finally I came out to him. "I have all the show as it is saved on images. Is it possible to pull the builds out?"
"If you want pretty pictures. So do you want it animated, or do you want it to work?"
Dark Lord, haven't you learned yet that Tourmaline wants both? Always, Tourmaline wants it all. "Ok, so I have the PowerPoint presentation. I tried it on my computer last night and it could not open it, but I think that may be my computer. When we saved things on my key at work, I saw pictures of the PowerPoint, so I think it is there."
The Dark Lord plugged the key into his laptop, and pulled up the file. Leaning over his shoulder, I laid my hand before him, with the two fingers crossed.
The literature title page appeared, playing. With the builds in the wrong order, like I remembered they were, but all there.
"So there it is. I guess you will have to do it in PowerPoint and display it on a laptop."
"One of those PC computers out there?" I asked, pointing to the outside lab.
"Unfortunately none of them have USB ports."
Long long ago in my robotic days, I had overheard him complaining about that. Then I did not care. Now I cared. A lot. "So do you trust me with your laptop for four hours?"
"Unfortunately not. Where I go, my laptop is going with me."
"Ok, then," I decided, "the lab at work has a good computer with PowerPoint. I will export the sports round right now, save them both on the key, and go to the lab and do it there."
Quick and decisive as usual. "I think what is happening is that your file is getting too big," said the Dark Lord. "I think you need to split it up into little chunks."
"We tried that before, and it could not save, remember?"
"Ok then."
"So you will need a laptop to display them," said the Dark Lord as I came back with my precious burden. "The school has a laptop, but it would not be able to take this PowerPoint. Keynote exports to the newer version, the one that comes with Windows XP. The school laptop has Windows NT, and they fixed all the things wrong with NT and called that XP. That's ok, I am sure some of your friends have laptops you can borrow."
Friends? Dark Lord, there is Concolor, and maybe Irene. And... "If I grow really desperate, can I ask you?"
"Well...maybe."
"Do you know yet what you are doing on Friday, March 31, between 7 and 10 in the evening?"
"No. Ok, I'll see what I can do."
There is a way I learned in Lord Pencilturn's gypsy dance of pirouetting and going down on one knee. If done right it is very graceful; whether done right or wrong, it is murder on your knee, and I can only do it, on a good day, over the right, onto my damaged right knee. I did not do it then. I just went down on one knee before him. "Thank you. I do not know if I will come back here again."
I was going up the stairs when it hit me that if I am moving out, I might as well clear out. I returned to find the Dark Lord still there.
"Maybe I should erase the files I have on that computer," I said.
"No, don't for now. In case you need them again."
"I am just a little worried about the security of all this..."
"I told my students not to touch it."
"Yes," I said, "but how afraid are they of you?"
"If I tell them I will kick them out of the course right then and there if they touch it, they obey."
"All right, then even if I do not come back here, you will see me again."
Amico was a little surprised at seeing me at the lab, but accepted me working on that PC.
And so I settled down, and realised that of course I will need to come back to the Mac lab again; the acknowledgement show was still in Keynote. And then I did a trick to split the PowerPoint presentation into little chunks, a trick cunning in its very lowness: I saved seven copies of the big show, for the seven rounds in it...and in each copy I deleted every slide except for those of one round. So I got seven PowerPoint shows. And then I did the same thing to split each one into the questions and the answers.
And those things are huge in their memory. The whole show was 79 MB - and each round is between 20 and 30 MB. I would definitely not be able to carry these away in the free space on my brother's USB key.
Ok, I planned. Today I get all the files arranged and all the fonts changed. On Friday I do not work; it is Reach finals. On Saturday I will figure out the animations. And on Monday I will bring the show back to the Mac lab, have Keynote open each little chunk, export them all to QuickTime, and burn them all to DVD.
With each setback, I was still brought closer to the goal.
And so it went into a long night, with me listening over and over again to "Don't Stop Me Now," and that most trashy yet comforting of songs, Army of Lovers' "La plage de St. Tropez."
We drink tea for two,
The sky is blue and I love you,
It's in your eyes you love me too.
Where it never rains we drink a shower of champagne
Let's dance away, let's go insane.
Crying when I empty my last bottle of sherry
I survived the winter of Paris
Come on, la plage de St. Tropez,
that summer day I need you there
I take your hand, I say mon cher,
And we're in love.
Oh, on la plage de St. Tropez
We have a dirty love affair
And there is music in the air
When we're in love.
On Monday I came back to the school to work on the slideshow, and finally learned enough to go straight to the downstairs lab to seek the Dark Lord.
He was sitting at his desk without his glasses as I came in, and he regarded me with eyes to which I was probably a blur (I have the feeling I learned once that he is myopic). I have only ever seen him without his glasses at times when he and I were both very tired, so the sight of his face without them must always trigger the protective instinct in me. So a few seconds after I entered the Mac lab, I asked, "Is everything all right?"
Not that I expected him to admit that anything was not; I suppose my motivations were just to convey that I do occasionally care. In exchange for getting the iMac.
As he opened the Mac lab door for me, I ask, "So, have you seen V for Vendetta yet?"
"No, not yet."
What sort of evil powers were keeping the Dark Lord, the man who saw The Matrix Reloaded at the 12:01 a.m screening, from watching a Wachowski brothers' movie on his March Break? "You'll like it."
"Did you see it?"
"Yeah, Concolor and I saw it on Saturday." Somehow the imp that lives behind my tongue did not mention that nearly the entire Language Acquisition Lab accompanied us.
"Concolor? And how is he?"
"Being a gentleman who would pay for concessions," said I. "Do you want some chocolate?"
"Maybe later. How long do you think it will take you to finish this?"
"Maybe another four or five hours, barring any accidents."
"Nothing can go wrong with a Macintosh," the Dark Lord said confidently.
"You need to meet the iMac at work then," I laughed.
"It goes wrong?"
"Yeah, it's one of the fishbowl ones. But I think this show is beginning to look really good. Knock wood." I looked around for wood. "Knock wood laminate substitute." I knocked the table.
"Yeah, it is looking really good," the Dark Lord agreed.
Oh gods above, why were the evil ones among you listening?
The Dark Lord left, promising that he would be back, and I worked on. After a while, I needed to go to the washroom. Realising that, given my luck, the Dark Lord would return exactly on time to see the lab empty, I carefully closed the door of the inner lab. So carefully, indeed, that I heard the lock click, and realised that what I had done was lock myself out.
To prevent this, I carefully put a doorstop against the outer door. And returned from the washroom to find that guess what? The door had slipped over the doorstop, and now I had no choice but to seek the Dark Lord.
As I entered the main building, a sinewy arm in a rolled-up blue sleeve held open the door for me.
"Oh, there you are! I have locked myself out of the lab."
"That's ok."
"I mean, I knew that if I left the door open, that would be the precise minute when the Dark Lord comes back and sees the lab abandoned..."
"That's ok, I know that you would only be gone for a short while."
High, high opinions, I thought to myself as I got back into my seat. The Dark Lord puttered about the lab, out of the corner of my eyes looking like I imagine wizards to move about their laboratories, only I do not picture wizards' labs to be as austere as the Mac lab. "It arrived," he said cheerfully, picking up a round box the size and shape of a film reel.
"What did?"
The box contained a slim book and some other objects. "It's the kit The Director in the Classroom. So I can teach my students how to make movies."
"Ooh, where did you get it, and can I have some?"
"I ordered it."
"Did you expense it?" As I said when Consuelo picked up the tab for our entire dinner at the Elephant and Castle, one of my fondest wishes is to be rich enough to expense my meals.
"No, that takes too much paperwork. I hate paperwork."
"I hear you." He had taught me that expression. "I hear you."
As the Dark Lord finally put on his coat to leave, I repeated my offer of chocolate.
"No, not now."
"Is the place where you are going likely to have chocolate?" I challenged.
"Yes, I think so."
He left me behind, and at around 7 the catastrophe came.
First I put some new animations in, but then Build Inspector refused to let me change their order or change them from On Click to Automatically, those fields in it remaining mute and unresponsive. Growing frustrated, I moved back to a slide where I knew I had changed the builds before, only to find it not working there too. Desperate, I closed the file and went to open it again.
And up came the worst possible message you can imagine without someone being dead, sick or injured.
Keynote cannot open the file triivia night.key.
"Why?!" I screamed at the flat screen. "For the love of all the gods there are, tell me why?"
In my History of Mathematics presentation, I make the argument that computers are still a long way from understanding human language. The Apple iMac G5 with iWorks 2006 is a case in point.
I went to pull the unresponsive file to my memory key, and was relieved to see the blue bar "Saving..." grow. At least it was not "Keynote cannot save the file triivia night.key because it is damaged," another memory error I am familiar with. Well, there was the memory key, and if worst comes to worst, there was the backup CD I burned two weeks ago. Well, one of those weeks was March Break and another was truncated because of that stupid emergency and the Dark Lord's meeting. So there was not that much work to be made up.
It is an interesting observation that all through that long trivia night slideshow saga, I never felt despair. I felt frustrated, yes; I felt stressed out, yes; I felt angry at technology and the people around me, yes; but I never felt that it was not going to work out. I felt that, given only a titanic effort on my part, it will all work out fine. The good will end happily, and the bad unhappily. That's what fiction means.
And it did take a titanic effort.
The next morning I dropped by the school before work to write a note to the Dark Lord telling of my plight and telling him I will be back on Wednesday. Tuesday was out of the question, because on Wednesday was the English Syntax (which has no exam) final test, and I meant to study for it. After filling another sheet of foolscap with writing, I headed off to the lab where Concolor must be waiting, humming under my breath Kipling's
Where my lover calls I go,
Shame it were to treat him coldly.
'Twas a fish that rippled so
Turning over boldly.
And having no idea who I meant.
I entered a darkened lab, with the lights off, and it took me a moment to scan the quiescent computers, the bag on the floor, the Concolor sprawled on the floor catching up on a sleep deficit... I laughed and we slowly got to work, confirming that the His de Math assignment was indeed due on Thursday.
I came back to the lab after Reach practice, having nowhere else in particular to go. Concolor greeted me.
"I have done all of the questions except the fourth one, and it's the last one so it must be the hardest."
"Let's see?" It was on Q's polynomial division ring, and its imposed order. I fell to thinking, almost literally although not so rapidly, as I lay down on the floor, feeling myself almost as strong a sleep deficit as Concolor's, and pondered out loud. "So assuming x is less than y, without loss of generality..."
Concolor lay down about a foot away from me. "The fact the you can divide by polynomials within it must be important..."
The key clicked in the lock and we both sprang up and got into chairs, I at least thinking that even the Language Acquisition Lab would find it odd to see us two lying on the floor together...discussing total orders of polynomial fields.
"How long are you staying?" Aldonza, for it was she and Amico, asked us.
"Well, we have History of Math at 1:00," said Concolor, "but one can never be late for history."
"I like that," I laughed. "One can never be late for history. I should put that as the title of a blog post."
Gentle reader, you have been warned.
That afternoon, though, was not for much studying, as
(a) Society Max showed me how to access his computer, and his MP3 collection, on mine through the LAN, and so I spent a great while emailing myself Marek and Vacek, my favourite Vanessa Mae songs, and my favourite Queen song of all time.
(b) Remember my discussion of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab?
Tourmaline to Irene, March 21:
P.S The oils arrived!
I just realised that the envelope I was kicking aroudn the floor is a
priority mail package for me that my kind family had tossed into my room...
Irene to Tourmaline, March 21
!! Tell me how they turn out!
Oh, and --
You got Snake Oil, right? ... a quick warning about that one: like a
fine wine, it's meant to be aged.
Tourmaline to Irene, March 21
No I did not get Snake Oil, I got Silk Road, Aizen-Miyoo, Lightning, Dragon's Heart, O, Fallen and Haunted. Hey, that makes seven. I had wanted all of them, which one was the freebie? Oh, (checking my order) the mind-readers! The mind readers! Dragon's Heart was the freebie! And here I am, picking that precise one to try first, and I am stinking up the place ;-) wearing it and listening to Ride of the Valkyries ;-). I won't rant about individual notes, but so far I love it, and a sniff at the imps made me immediately love all of them except Aizen-Miyoo, which reminded me too much of guava or etrog (you Israeli, you know what guava and etrog are ;-) But I'll give Aizen-Miyoo a chance.
Me studying disliked Syntax for exam tomorrow, but me very happy.
Ok, examining the description of Dragon's Heart, I am smelling the musks - I cannot tell the smell of whatever dragon's blood smells like, or fig or currant either. Since I like musks, that's fine by me. If I sniff up close, I am getting a resiny amberlike scent, so maybe that is the dragon's blood. But the musks definitely dominate. I am not getting a dragon impression, but I don't mind; I like the scent.
I will check which of the oils I have is best for exam-taking.
And a double-check shows: Fallen: amber and musk, O: Amber and musk, Haunted: Amber and musk, Silk Road: everything, Lightning: ozone and marine, Aizen-Miyoo: funky spices. "We're guessing the gal likes amber and musk," think the experts at the lab.
Now that I have put some on, me likes Aizen-Miyoo. It smells...as if guava and a really nice citrus mated and had a child. Not something I would eat, but yummy to smell. That's first application. I will keep you posted.
To self: Go study passive structure, girl!
Ok, Aizen-Miyoo had a chance to dry a little, and it is still very interesting: almost-fruity, almost-spicy, with some kind of cool (temperature; and expression of admiration) undertone. Me likes this lotsa.
On the other wrist, Dragon's Heart is now strongly amber resin - and I smell the dragonfire! And ta little bit of something that I think has to be currant.
I thank you for introducing me to this wonderful company.
Now that Aizen-Miyoo is dry, I can smell the sweetness - something similar to vanilla; although the citrusiness lingers. It now smell like something you'd like to put on your chai latte (if you're me, and I've had Timothy's new chai latte that is fantastic, with sweet and spices...).
On the other wrist, Dragon's Heart has gone to a very clear resin amber smell all the way -with that fiery hint.
Me loves both.
Tomorrow is going to be either Lightning or Fallen for the test, and then maybe some O to try... hmm...
I wore Lightning for the test.
Tourmaline to Irene, March 21
So, I think O is not the smash hit it was cracked up to be, with me. Yesterday I tried it before going to bed, O on one wrist, Fallen on the other.
I love Fallen. I was intentionally lying with my wrist near my nose. I think I want to make Fallen my signature scent for night (Lightning works for day so far, although I have not yet tried Silk Road or Haunted).
But O is just a blend of something sweet and something medicinal, and it did not make me feel sexy and lustful and whatever - it just made me go "ok, this is an ok smell, but nothing in comparison to Fallen."
I think my body chemistry may bring out musks really strongly on first application. But I will give O another chance at a different time of the month before writing it off, as I love Aizen-Miyoo now.
Lightning is beautifully fresh - something indeed like a garden after a thunderstorm. It clears my notstrils.
Although I should note in my observations that my nose is slightly stuffed up and I may only pick up the strongest notes.
I will bring some of the imps tomorrow to show you.
Tata for now, I wish you joy.
The test I finished quickly enough to go back to the lab and write another email to Irene.
Tourmaline to Irene, March 22
Lightning smells like fresh wet flowers. I like it.
Now Fallen time again. Musk, here I come. And something that I think is votiver. I can smell the breath of imperial florals now.
Me going for lunch.
Not just any lunch; the whole bunch of us were going to Perfection-Satisfaction-Promise for Aldonza's farewell lunch.
Interestingly enough, the conversation at the peaceful restaurant turned to Scientology this time. Now that Amico has sent me the link to the South Park Blainetology episode, and while waiting for it to download I read a whole lot of the xenu.net site explaining the evils of Scientology, I think I dislike Scientology intensely.
Today I am not alone. The fragrance of my home-flower garden shall stay with me. Thus ran the quotation from Sri Chinmoy on a flower box at PSP, and we all had a laugh over it.
Fare well, Aldonza.
At the school, the Dark Lord was working with a few other students in the lab, and let me past them to get into the Mac lab.
"So," he said, "I tried opening your file, and it gives me the same error message. I wish I knew what it is, but it says nothing about what kind of error it is. So I am afraid I can't help you."
"Well," I said, "it's saved on the USB key. Could we try it on another computer, to see whether it is a local computer problem or a Keynote problem?"
We opened the computer next to mine, stuck the USB key imn, rebooted the iMac to make it recognise the USB key...
And got the same message: Keynote cannot open the file triivia night.key.
"Well," said the Dark Lord, "I guess you'll have to take it off the CD and reconstruct your work. And you know what? Every time you save, try exporting to PowerPoint. That way, even if the Keynote file fails, we'll still have the PowerPoint file."
I got to work, but before I did, I accessed my email and downloaded a certain song to open with iTunes, and perhaps the Dark Lord and his student heard, with irony set to delicate silk.
Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time
I feel alive
And the world is turning inside out
Floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now
Don't stop me
'cause I'm having a good time
Having a good time
I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go go go there's no stopping me
I'm burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you
Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just give me a call
Don't stop me now
'cause I'm having a good time
Don't stop me now
Yes I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at all
I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars
On a collision course
I am a satellite
I'm out of control
I'm a sex machine ready to reload
Like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode
I'm burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic woman of you
Don't stop me don't stop me, don't stop me hey hey hey!
Don't stop me don't stop me ooh ooh ooh (I like it)
Don't stop me don't stop me
Have a good time good time
Don't stop me don't stop me
ohhhhhhh!
oh
I'm burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you
Don't stop me now
I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time
Just give me a call
Don't stop me now
'cause I'm having a good time
Don't stop me now
Yes I'm having a good time
I don't wanna stop at all
Well, I turned the volume down at "I'm a sex machine ready to reload." The school has its standards; just like in the USSR, except in Health classes every person in the school came into being by immaculate conception.
I listened to the Dark Lord joking to his student, to his irony and the dry humour I used to love so well and missed so much, and the thought struck me - maybe it was not the Dark Lord changing and seeming so depressed that I reacted to last fall. Maybe he is one of those people who only know how to act around teenagers with that dry humourous mockery. And now that I am not a teenager anymore, the power balance between us has shifted (and he has been a little afraid of me, believing my intellect to be superior to his, for a long time now, and I can cite many quotations to prove it.) So perhaps his apparent change to dry cold depression is simply because he does not know how to act around someone who used to be his inferior and is now his equal in our societal balance. I have broken out of the student-teacher relationship system, and, besides giving me what I want and more, and the very occasional mockery at a third party that we used to share all the time and now have not since the Cathcart Street tale, he has no idea how to act around me.
That's ok. A lot of men don't.
But what does it say about me that I enjoyed the inequality of the teacher-student relationship?
No, it was not that which I enjoyed. It was the sense that, because I was the smart one, the responsible one, and the one with a similar sense of humour, that he would look at me when he was going, "They're hopeless. They're hopeless." And I would nod yes in understanding. I enjoyed that unity.
There is a Russian song, "I just waited and believed Though my heart denied That we two are two trees, two leaves, By the same riverside." Only the rhyme is kept in an alternative Russian verse that I would translate into English as
I just waited and believed,
Though my heart was in the dumps,
That we two are two trees, two leaves,
And all the rest are stumps.
The Dark Lord's entry interrupted my musings. "Oh, and save them under different names, do you get what I'm saying?"
"No, say that again?" Maybe the unity was gone - but I remembered the first time I had ever truly admitted that I did not understand something, and that had made me a much better person, and that had been to the Dark Lord too.
"Well, say you have worked for an hour, and you decide that's enough work, you decide to save..." (An hour? I had saved three times already in those twenty minutes.) "And you save under trivia night 1, say. Then you work for another hour, and you save - save it under trivia night 2. And the next time you save after that, save back on trivia night 1. So that if one of them breaks down, we can go to an earlier one and see what was different. I'll be upstairs if you need me. "
Wise advice. Trivia night 1.key, export to trivia night 1.ppt. Trivia night 12.key, export to trivia night 12.ppt. Trivia night 1.key, export to trivia night 1.ppt...
Out of Memory Error.
Delete everything unnecessary - songs, other files I could re-download, etc. Empty trash. Export to trivia night 1.ppt.
Out of Memory Error.
Carefully leave the lab door slightly open, go up to the math office, and knock twice.
"Dark Lord, PowerPoint is giving me an Out of Memory Error, even after I have deleted everything I could."
"Well," said he, "export it to Images, then."
That worked. He came back later, me happily exporting to Images, and he got ready to go.
"How long do you think it will take you?"
"Another four or five hours. Knock wood. Although I guess knocking on wood substitute did not work last time. There!" I sprang up and grabbed a dowel rod from behind the storage cabinet. "Knock wood."
I put on a song. It was for him as he put on his coat.
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to
why don't you go where fashion sits,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Different types who wear a day coat, pants with stripes
and cutaway coat, perfect fits,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Dressed up like a million dollar trouper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
Come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks
or "umberellas" in their mitts,
Puttin' on the ritz.
Have you seen the well-to-do up and down Park Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare with their noses in the air
High hats and Arrow collars white spats and lots of dollars
Spending every dime for a wonderful time
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to
why don't you go where fashion sits,
(Puttin' on the ritz)
(Puttin' on the ritz)
(Puttin' on the ritz)
But then, late in the eighth hour, with trivia night 1.key open, I clicked on trivia night 2.key.
Keynote cannot open the file trivia night 2.key
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I went to the iPhoto, opened the last album. I could not for the life of me figure out how to extract them one image at a time. Finally I clicked on "Make slideshow in QuickTime," and waited.
It did make a slideshow. In QuickTime. But very differently from the one that Keynote makes. iPhoto is designed for displaying people's digital camera photos, so its slide show simply drifts from one picture to the next. Cute for those snapshots of your baby with Aunt Matilda; totally impractical for any question game where you need to read text on the pictures. And it's half a gigabyte in size, too.
And then I accidentally closed trivia night 1.key while trying to minimise it.
Keynote cannot open the file trivia night 1.key
I deleted trivia night 2, the older previous export, and saved the previous PowerPoint on the USB key. Then I took one of the spare CDs the Dark Lord had given me when I burned the CD backup, and I burned the album on it. Then I wrote the Dark Lord a long and very sad note. Saying I will be back tomorrow.
In the morning I met Irene for coffee, and over our conversation she smelled the imps, and I frantically worked on my His de Maths assignment. Once that was done, she and I discussed Russian - particularly the tense vs. aspect. To explain the Russian past tense of the verb "go" I gave it, and realised that was the imperfective aspect. "I was going to visit my friend when a crocodile attacked me. So you never finished it."
"So in Russian, crocodiles attack on people?"
"Yep. It has the derivational affix from the verb 'to fall,' right? So a crocodile fell on you. That is even scarier."
"So you mean those things that we were doing in the past tense, we never finished any of them?"
"Nope. Or you did them repeatedly."
She and I went to watch several more His de Maths presentations. In some of them, the most interesting part was watching Pestov try not to nod off.
After school I came to the Dark Lord, but he was with a student. So meanwhile I worked on the not-yet-done sports round, waiting for his bidding on what to do with the main round.
Finally I came out to him. "I have all the show as it is saved on images. Is it possible to pull the builds out?"
"If you want pretty pictures. So do you want it animated, or do you want it to work?"
Dark Lord, haven't you learned yet that Tourmaline wants both? Always, Tourmaline wants it all. "Ok, so I have the PowerPoint presentation. I tried it on my computer last night and it could not open it, but I think that may be my computer. When we saved things on my key at work, I saw pictures of the PowerPoint, so I think it is there."
The Dark Lord plugged the key into his laptop, and pulled up the file. Leaning over his shoulder, I laid my hand before him, with the two fingers crossed.
The literature title page appeared, playing. With the builds in the wrong order, like I remembered they were, but all there.
"So there it is. I guess you will have to do it in PowerPoint and display it on a laptop."
"One of those PC computers out there?" I asked, pointing to the outside lab.
"Unfortunately none of them have USB ports."
Long long ago in my robotic days, I had overheard him complaining about that. Then I did not care. Now I cared. A lot. "So do you trust me with your laptop for four hours?"
"Unfortunately not. Where I go, my laptop is going with me."
"Ok, then," I decided, "the lab at work has a good computer with PowerPoint. I will export the sports round right now, save them both on the key, and go to the lab and do it there."
Quick and decisive as usual. "I think what is happening is that your file is getting too big," said the Dark Lord. "I think you need to split it up into little chunks."
"We tried that before, and it could not save, remember?"
"Ok then."
"So you will need a laptop to display them," said the Dark Lord as I came back with my precious burden. "The school has a laptop, but it would not be able to take this PowerPoint. Keynote exports to the newer version, the one that comes with Windows XP. The school laptop has Windows NT, and they fixed all the things wrong with NT and called that XP. That's ok, I am sure some of your friends have laptops you can borrow."
Friends? Dark Lord, there is Concolor, and maybe Irene. And... "If I grow really desperate, can I ask you?"
"Well...maybe."
"Do you know yet what you are doing on Friday, March 31, between 7 and 10 in the evening?"
"No. Ok, I'll see what I can do."
There is a way I learned in Lord Pencilturn's gypsy dance of pirouetting and going down on one knee. If done right it is very graceful; whether done right or wrong, it is murder on your knee, and I can only do it, on a good day, over the right, onto my damaged right knee. I did not do it then. I just went down on one knee before him. "Thank you. I do not know if I will come back here again."
I was going up the stairs when it hit me that if I am moving out, I might as well clear out. I returned to find the Dark Lord still there.
"Maybe I should erase the files I have on that computer," I said.
"No, don't for now. In case you need them again."
"I am just a little worried about the security of all this..."
"I told my students not to touch it."
"Yes," I said, "but how afraid are they of you?"
"If I tell them I will kick them out of the course right then and there if they touch it, they obey."
"All right, then even if I do not come back here, you will see me again."
Amico was a little surprised at seeing me at the lab, but accepted me working on that PC.
And so I settled down, and realised that of course I will need to come back to the Mac lab again; the acknowledgement show was still in Keynote. And then I did a trick to split the PowerPoint presentation into little chunks, a trick cunning in its very lowness: I saved seven copies of the big show, for the seven rounds in it...and in each copy I deleted every slide except for those of one round. So I got seven PowerPoint shows. And then I did the same thing to split each one into the questions and the answers.
And those things are huge in their memory. The whole show was 79 MB - and each round is between 20 and 30 MB. I would definitely not be able to carry these away in the free space on my brother's USB key.
Ok, I planned. Today I get all the files arranged and all the fonts changed. On Friday I do not work; it is Reach finals. On Saturday I will figure out the animations. And on Monday I will bring the show back to the Mac lab, have Keynote open each little chunk, export them all to QuickTime, and burn them all to DVD.
With each setback, I was still brought closer to the goal.
And so it went into a long night, with me listening over and over again to "Don't Stop Me Now," and that most trashy yet comforting of songs, Army of Lovers' "La plage de St. Tropez."
We drink tea for two,
The sky is blue and I love you,
It's in your eyes you love me too.
Where it never rains we drink a shower of champagne
Let's dance away, let's go insane.
Crying when I empty my last bottle of sherry
I survived the winter of Paris
Come on, la plage de St. Tropez,
that summer day I need you there
I take your hand, I say mon cher,
And we're in love.
Oh, on la plage de St. Tropez
We have a dirty love affair
And there is music in the air
When we're in love.
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