Living Room

February 2009 - our living room before we lived in it; a plain white canvas for my creativity to conquer.

February 2010 - after a year of living here.

New Gadgets

I have two new gadgets this semester:  a USB flash drive and a digital voice recorder.  These guys have improved my school life dramatically.  Both are very easy to use, light-weight, small, and efficient.  I'm pleased with these recent purchases because I see them as being investments in my school success.  The flash drive was ~$20 at Sam's Club, and I paid ~$40 at Radio Shack for the digital recorder. 

Being an aural learner, I rely heavily on lectures.  Although I love books, for me to retain their morsels I need to read a book's contents more than once, and read out loud, conversationally, in a non-comfortable environment, or while pacing the room.  When reading out loud, I must pause often to discuss the material with myself - out loud.  Needless to say, I get easily distracted while reading.  I learn best by listening and then transmitting what I've heard into written or spoken words.  Now that I am friends with a digital audio recorder, I can re-listen to every lecture as many times as I need to!

Before I found the flash drive, I was emailing documents to myself between school and home computers.  The emailing method worked with little hassle until my internship required the reading of a very large PDF file that was too large to attach to an email.  I couldn't be more pleased that I was forced to buy this flash drive because it can hold 16 GB of memory and comes along with me anywhere I go.  It safely stores all of my school work, blog files, and photos that I wish to print someday at Wal-Mart.  Also, all of my recorded lectures are stored on my flash drive, so this setup is working really well.


Photo credits: 

Verbatim USB Flash Drive photo from: radioshacklebanon.net

Olympus Digital Voice Recorder VN-5200PC photo from: http://www.detshop.com

Linguistics

Linguistics is a class required by all anthropology majors at UCCS.  I am having a difficult time with this class because it feels really mathy to me.  If you know me, you know how math makes me cry.  So far, linguistics is having the same effect.

Below I have solved problem #26 on page 140 of Language Files. By detailing this process, I hope to come to a better understanding and maybe not cry so much. There must be a reason why anthropology majors are required to take this course.

Step 1.

Using Spanish for the example language, the book tells me that something suspicious is going on between the two sounds [d] and [ð]. I must investigate the following words: 

The letters within the brackets [ ] represent the phonetic sound, not the actual spelling.

In reference to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

• [d] sounds like 'd' as in 'dog' or 'cad'
• [ð] sounds like a voiced 'th' as in 'this' and 'scythe'

Step 2.  

In a chart I've distributed the occurrences of [d] and [ð] in their natural habitats: 

Explanation of distribution method:  

• The underscore represents either [d] or [ð] in its respective column
• '#' is a filler that represents the beginning or ending of a word

Step 3.

I notice these 3 patterns from the distribution table:

1. each sound occurs in separate environments, therefore they are allophones of the same phoneme*
2. [ð] is a condition that only occurs in between vowel sounds
3. [d] is the basic unit because it occurs more often

Looking back on my distribution chart, I can see that the environments of [ð] and [d] are very different. [ð] only lives between two vowels.  So, I write this formula to represent the findings:

  

 

What is the process here? What does the [ð] sound have in common with vowels?  In other words, what is it about vowels that transforms [d] into [ð]?

The name of the process is Assimilization or Fricitivization.  As the mouth is speaking the word in normal everyday conversation, it is faster to place a [ð] sound in between vowels in place of a [d] sound.  It is easier to say [komiða] than it is to say [komida].  The [d] turns into [ð] in between vowels for the ease of speaking, when the air from the first vowel is allowed through the teeth during [ð] in anticipation of the next vowel. 

Step 4.

The more I understand it, the more I think I am starting to enjoy this Linguistics stuff.  Why I need to study linguistics is yet a mystery.

Note.
*The term allophones of the same phoneme implies that the meaning of the word will not change if the allophones are switched.  [komiða] and [komida] still mean 'food', despite their slight difference in pronunciation.  

Education in Colorado

I snapped this photo on campus last week.

I was then prompted to discover that Colorado gets the least amount of funding in the nation for higher education.

Then I started worrying.

I will have a lot of debt when I graduate.  In May 2012 I will have borrowed $52,000 to pay for expenses (tuition, fees, and books) at UCCS.  And after that, I still need to go to graduate school.  

Of Sheep and Students

I was stopped on campus today by a very young idealistic spokesman for the environmental cause who approached me like this:

The young man saw me walking toward him, waited for me to make eye contact, then, throwing his 3-ring binder in my direction, he said too quickly “do you have 60 seconds to spare for the environment?” 

I made him repeat himself by asking “what?”

He repeated himself, slowly this time, “do you have 60 seconds to spare for the environment?”  He pointed to the brightly colored slip of paper beneath the plastic cover of his 3-ring binder.  He continued fast talking about the organization he is working for.  He said that Colorado has 360 days of sunshine each year, and that his organization is working to help clean the environment of all the dirty fuel and make it a law that everyone has solar panels on their rooftops. 

It sounded like a good idea to me, but I wanted to know more.  I asked about the jobs that might be lost by switching from dirty fuel to clean power.  A good question, right?  A simple question he should have been prepared to receive? 

The young man gave me a look.  Not a respectful look, not the kind you give to someone you want to get to know.  I’d say the look he gave me was contemptful.  He shrugged his shoulders around his head and waved his arms a bit and did the chin bobby thing that some people do when they think they are sooooo right.  He said “well most of those jobs were gone since ’06 anyway.” 

I replied, “oh really? I never heard of that.”  I expected him to explain, but instead of explaining, he continued the rude know-it-all attitude. 

“Uh, yea,” he said, “you know, the economy?”  He said it as if I had failed to see the bread lines. 

I started to wonder if I was talking to an 18 year old skater dude who spent 12 years in the public school system and now lives in a dorm room on his parents' savings. 

He then stepped away from me, out of the path I had been traveling before we started talking, and said with an arrogant tone “you have a nice day, then.” 

I walked away from him, knowing that I should have said more.  

I should have refused his cue for me to exit the conversation.  I should have milked him for all the information he had.  I should have forced him to explain himself further.  I should have chastised him for treating me so rudely.  I should have explained to him that it's okay to have an agenda but that he will never sell his with that attitude.  

I should have said "Oh, now you don't want to talk to me, now that I have questioned your faith?"  I felt like I was talking to a gung ho missionary who thought it was his duty to convert me unless I was too far gone, and by gone I mean not easily convinced. 

Environmentalism seems like a religion to me.  I do think it's great to recycle, reuse, reinvent, and just plain clean up after ourselves.  I believe in doing our best to leave a clean and safe planet for future generations.  I'm not buying into the doomsday idea of global warming or that humans are responsible for it, and I'm not sure that forcing everyone to convert to solar energy is the best way to go.  I needed some convincing before I was going to join the bandwagon, and that young man didn't want to convince me today.  All he wanted to do was the like, whatever act and send me on my ignorant way.  

As I pondered it further, I should have said "you are in a place of higher learning, so get used to these questions," but was I just being presumptuous by thinking that?  Judging by his attitude toward me, I'm frightened that most of the people he talks with on campus are just blindly going along with his agenda.  Is it fair, is it right to ask, "are my UCCS peers merely sheep?"

Learning Web Design

I like web design, even though I don't know much about it.  My cousin was the first to tell me about HTML and CSS when I joined MySpace several years ago.  For those of you who don't know, I cannot describe HTML and CSS technically but I can say that they are design languages working behind the scenes to influence font and paragraph styles and to insert tables, frames, and images onto a website.  I once had a lot of fun customizing my MySpace profile, changing the entire scheme every few months.  But, now it seems that MySpace is less populated and more people have moved to Facebook, including  me, so I have played with web design less since Facebook doesn't have the same freedom of design.  

Right now I am seeking some new knowledge about web design so I can create a smoother, silkier Blogger page.  There are lots of free templates to use with Blogger, and although they are all very nice templates, they smell of other people's accomplishments and less of my own web design proficiency. I want to direct people to my blog to find articles written by me, on an interface designed and eternally tweaked by me.

I recently became the proud owner of Adobe Dreamweaver, web design software that I hope will become less of a puzzle and more of an actual tool in the near future.  Right now my schedule won't allow me to dive into Dreamweaver uninhibited, but I just thought it would be nice to get the intent out there on the old blog.  Being free to change my website design is one of the many ways that variation makes me so very happy.

The Problem of Haití

I am creating a PowerPoint presentation for my Spanish class.  We were all supposed to pick a different country to report on, using words from our current chapter about the environment (el medio ambiente), nature (la naturaleza), and different environmental problems (los diferentes problemas ambientales).

Silly me.  I chose Haití.  How can I talk about Haití in 2-3 minutes?

As one of the last students to pick a country, I chose Haití because (a) nobody else picked it, and (b) it had been in the news a lot recently due to the monster 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 12th.  I was thinking "¡los problemas ambientales!"

I have a tendency to take on too many projects, and I over-think pretty much everything, so I'm trying really hard to keep this presentation simple, mainly because I am limited by my small Spanish vocabulary.  I must remember that Haití has enough problems to mull over for the rest of my life, and this presentation is only supposed to be 2-3 minutes long.

It doesn't take much scratching of the surface to discover that Haití's problems emerge from the same kind of power struggles that plague the rest of Central America and the Caribbean.  How can I say it simply?  Haití's problems were caused by the rich and powerful.  The rich and powerful can solve Haití's problems but if they did, they would not be so rich and powerful.

What can we do?

We can look at pictures of the destruction and weep for the people who have to endure this tragedy (80% of Haitians live in poverty), we can donate to the earthquake victims via our cellphones and Facebook pages (Haití is the poorest country in the western hemisphere), we can pray to the deity of our choice to ask that the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Haití be lifted (the majority of Haitians practice a mixture of Voodoo and Catholicism), we can talk amongst ourselves about the never-ending bad luck that Haitians face daily (Haitian Creole is the language spoken by most Haitians, although the educated Haitians speak French), we can write to our nation's leaders, and plead with the rich and powerful to do something about the poverty and suffering, yet Haití's problems continue.

photo source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

I'm not happy with this setup.

I need to change the furniture around in my dining room.  I'm not happy with where things are.  There is no flow...  What needs to happen is SPRING BREAK so I can spend some quality time organizing this space.

Eleven months ago, we drove out to Maryland dragging my dad's trailer to pick up some furniture that was gifted to us by Dusty's relatives.  It was a rock maple dining room set used by his great-grandparents.  The set was made by a company called Cochrane's sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Included in the set was a 2-piece hutch, a buffet table, a drop-leaf dining table, and 6 chairs.

Although I posted pictures of the journey to Maryland (click Here to see that journey), I never did post pictures of the furniture at home in our dining room.  So..... here it is!

But, I'm not happy with this setup at all.  Someday when I have some time, I'll fix it.  But until then, I'm welcoming all suggestions!  :)

It's Cupcake Day! ♥

I made cupcakes to send as Valentine's Day goodies to my sister and brother-in-law.  They are both serving in the Navy in the medical field, and I wanted to show my appreciation to them.  Plus, I just ♥ them.

They are so cute!  ♥

I'm opting to make these cupcakes from a boxed mix, using the excuse that with 20 credit hours and an internship I cannot afford to spend the few extra  seconds it would have taken to mix the ingredients from scratch...

Duncan Hines, don't fail me now! (me want some Red Velvet!)

I followed the instructions on the box, making high altitude adjustments and singing a little along the way.  I love this color!  So rich and red!

And because I can't get enough variation, I had to get 4 different types of cupcake papers...

Here they are, in all their glory, coated in Cream Cheese frosting and trimmed in Valentine's Sprinkles:

Random Pictures of Cats and Birds