Since I started my graduate degree out here at Flat Place University, I've encountered nothing but roadblocks from the graduate faculty advisor in my department. In fact, before I started my degree, when I was in the application process, she told me I probably wouldn't get in because I didn't have any letters of recommendation from professors in the department (neglecting to mention that I had letters from the ex-vice provost and two department chairs, all of whom know me very well) and that my GRE math score was low, which was a "red flag" (I got a 580/800 because I was told not to study by that advisor! And when I needed a 700/800 for my PhD application, I got it.).

Recently, I've been trying to register for my last semester here - Summer I 2010. I discovered that through some error in paperwork, my degree plan, which I had filed July of last year, in accordance with their requirements, had gone missing. Either the graduate school had never received it from my department in the first place, or both the grad school and my department had lost it. So I filled out a new form, and turned it in, only to find out (much to my surprise) that I was apparently missing a class before I could graduate. I double checked the form I had been following for the past four years and found that no, I actually had one more elective than needed.

Apparently, the form was wrong. Plain and simple. The standard I was supposed to meet had been up on the departmental website this whole time, and why didn't I check it? And since the department is so small, they're only offering one graduate class for all of summer one.

And it's being taught by this same person, the graduate faculty advisor.

At this point, I just want to finish the thesis and be able to move on. So, I decided to bite the bullet and register for that class. Of course, I can't do it yet, because the degree plan - which I filed last week with our department - has, once again, been lost. When asked about it, I mentioned that I had submitted it to the departmental graduate faculty advisor, who then emailed me back with this gem:

G----, did you return the degree plan to me after you put the eighth class on it (as I don't have it)? Are we having a deja vu experience again with G----'s degree plan that appears, but then disappears?

No, we are not having a fucking deja vu experience. You lost my paperwork. Again. And now you're telling me that even if I turn in the form today, I probably won't be able to register for another week, one week before classes start? Give me a break.

I refuse to accept that I - who had to wait a month after being accepted before I could register for graduate classes, because you couldn't get the paperwork into the system; who had to put up with your bullshit about my academic abilities being below the standards of your program, and then got unanimously accepted anyway; who had to email you almost every day for two weeks to remind you that I needed proof of enrollment so I didn't get charged for student loans - am the incompetent one.

In my experience, the phrase "coming out" has been couched almost entirely in terms of homosexuality. What I want to talk about are other ways of "coming out," and what it means to do so.

This action, this revelation, is sometimes - perhaps usually - an act of desperation. It means risking relationships for the sake of honesty, in hopes of something deeper and more meaningful. I think it's a lot like wildfire. The "confession" strikes a tree like lightning, creating a blaze which can affect entire communities, and after the ashes have settled, only a few branches may be left, or none at all. It takes great courage, and emotional fortitude, to knowingly start that kind of fire.

I wonder: why, as a society, do we feel the need to create such emotional and psychological barriers, that such reserves of strength are required to break them down? What kind of culture creates parents who, after learning that their daughter is gay, refuse to speak to her until she "comes back to Jesus"? One which is built upon fundamental laws and levels of privilege - where emphasis is not placed on learning, healing, or accepting, but on one's own commitment to the status quo.

I want to talk about all of this because of a personal situation I have found myself in recently. For the past several months, I have begun to seriously consider the meaning of my own religious beliefs. As some of you may know, my favorite book - my own personal "Bible" - is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. And I have found, over the years, that my spiritual beliefs, on the whole, lie entirely closer to those outlined in this book than in the Christianity I have encountered. So, I have started - for the first time in my life - to seriously consider and explore the Buddhist faith. I've been reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, and found in that text further confirmation of a system of belief which seeks to make this world right.

My parents are entirely oblivious of any of this. I haven't yet "come out" to them about even my doubts regarding Christianity. And I don't know how, or when, I'm going to be able to. A good friend of mine is an officer in a secular student organization out here in Flat Dry Place, and his parents still believe he's a born-again Christian, because he hasn't been able to find a way to discuss it with them.

A bit of background, regarding my parents and my own history: I was born and raised in the United Methodist Church, with a church family which was, in many ways, an extension of my own. They were the greatest single source of support in my life when I had to deal with my parents' divorce, my dad's psychological issues, his subsequent remarriage, and extreme shift rightward (politically and religiously). I started playing guitar for the church, and was blessed with an extremely musical and caring group of people that I could begin to grow with.

After my dad left, he decided to return to the Southern Baptist Church in which he had been raised - a church which condemns homosexuality and Catholicism as "outside the fold." This church has always struck me as a frighteningly closed-minded group who are every bit as radical and dangerous as the Muslim extremists they are so eager to condemn. The only difference (as far as I can tell) is that their war is a psychological one, dealing in guilt, shame, and moral absolutes.

Because of the terms of the divorce agreement, I was a reluctant participant in this church for a number of years, until I turned 18 and had the legal right to stop attending. The beliefs of this church have shaped the way in which my brother, sister and I can safely interact with my dad and stepmom. Every argument - every single one - which we have ever had comes down to our religious obligation to obey our father and therefore God.

In addition to all of this, my dad was rarely around when I was a kid, always busy with business. He had several emotional and psychological issues (diagnosed but not dealt with), so when he was home, it was a scary and unstable time for me as a child.

All of these things have culminated in an entirely empty relationship with my father. I have never talked to him about a single serious issue, like marriage, or sex, or love, or what I want to do with my life, because the discussion is always based around what he believes Jesus would have me do, and that is not a conversation I want to have. My mom, on the other hand, is much less conservative (though still fairly conservative herself), and has been the one adult in my life I have been able to have these heavy conversations with.

If I were to "come out" to them right now - if I were to talk with them about why I'm considering leaving Christianity, for good - there's a chance that my dad would never speak with me again. I'm sure I would start receiving texts, Facebook messages and emails from people I had met at his church, saying that they were praying for me and would I like to talk about this. Going to his house would be more or less out of the question, because I would expect some kind of Christian intervention and exorcism sort of thing. My mom might be more understanding, but it would be harder to deal with people at my home church and their reactions. These people, who supported me through some of my hardest times, are still fairly close-minded when it comes to religion, and it deeply saddens me to think of how I might lose some of them as friends or mentors.

I don't know right now what I'm going to do, if anything. I am sad, however, not just for myself, but for every human soul that has been bound by these same feelings of guilt and shame, that has ever had to risk their support system for their own sanity. In considering these issues in my own life, I feel like I've had a glimpse of a small amount of pressure placed upon the GLBTQ community, and my heart goes out to them.

If I could say one thing to all of these people, it would just be to encourage them. Just be strong, for we are here with you and we will support you when those you love will not.

This hasn't been highly published yet, but I've decided to move this blog elsewhere.

From now on, you'll be able to find it at: http://www.glenrhunt.com/posts.

You'll still be able to comment and everything, and if you want the RSS feed, it's at feed://glenrhunt.com/posts.atom.

I should mention that I'm fairly proud of this blog - it's something I actually wrote myself. As in, I wrote the code for the actual blogging tool, the comments, and the design.

If you like it, please let me know!

There's something I've been thinking about for the past couple of months. It's not something that I've ever really been able to articulate, until tonight, during the ride home from the art trail.

The first time I ever went to a session - with the intent to play along, and not just listen - was over the summer in Dallas. It was a house session with people I had never met before, and it was kind of awkward at first, since the person I had been in contact with about it didn't show up until halfway through. That was the first thing that struck me. Here I was, some total stranger, just showing up at a random house with a guitar. And, even though I didn't know most of the tunes, and I sure didn't know chords to any of the ones I recognized, they were very tolerant of me by letting me pick out the one or two I did know, which was really nice.

You see, there's a dynamic in sessions which I didn't really understand very well. The way sessions work (at least as much as I understand it - I have very limited experience) is that somebody starts a tune, and you play the tune down, and then if you've got another tune, it's up to you to keep it going to make a set, and so on. It's very give and take, and there's a really cool unspoken conversation that happens in the span of a couple of seconds whenever the next tune is up for grabs.

I had heard stories about sessions where "the guy" is there. "The guy" could mean a lot of different things, but there's a general agreement that he probably has little or no business playing at the session, for any number of reasons. The particular scenario I'm referring to is one in which "the guy," for whatever reason, doesn't know too many tunes. So he ends up laying out most of the time, and then anytime there's a break between sets, he starts playing his one tune over and over again, looking at the session leader expectantly to see if it's finally his turn. Those first few sessions, that was pretty much what I would do. I would just start into some tune in between and hope people would join in, because I really wanted to play. Aside from the weird looks I got for playing melody on a guitar, people seemed mostly okay with it and I didn't really feel like I was stepping on anybody's toes.

Sometime in September, the local (but incredibly exceptional and largely famous) group of trad musicians sent out an open invitation to a house session. I was really excited about it, and stressed out about it for probably a week and a half leading up to it: did I know enough tunes? Would I be able to keep up? I knew I probably wouldn't be able to, but the quality of music there was sure to make up for it.

I tried to play at this session like I had played in the Dallas sessions, basically just laying out or attempting to improvise chords behind tunes I didn't know (a practice which still makes me wince when I think about it). I think I probably got one or two tunes in, but mostly, I was just glad to be there.

The time when it finally began to dawn on me that this wasn't the way I should be playing at sessions was at the O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat in October. It was nearing the end of the session (for me anyway: roughly 1AM) and I still hadn't started a set. I was baffled; this had worked before, maybe the session leader just couldn't hear me? Dr. Coyote turned to me and asked if I was ready to head out. Well, I guess, but I still haven't had a set.

"Well, okay, but that's not up to me," he said, nodding toward the session leader.

I went to bed that night kind of disappointed, wondering if I had somehow broken an unspoken rule. Hard to say this now, but in all honesty, I thought the session leader maybe just didn't like me or something.

A couple of weeks later, it just dawned on me. Just like that. It wasn't about me. None of it was! The session is not about what I want to make it. Neither is this music. It's about the music itself.

And what I've realized - and what the whole point of this post was supposed to be - is that that attitude has vastly changed the way I do most everything these days. I'm noticing it in conversation, now, for myself, where I'll keep wanting to change the topic back to something I want to talk about. I've started just letting it go, just allowing the conversation to drift where it may, and not trying to always be so comfortable with it.

I could say a lot more about it, but I won't. Instead, I think I'll go sit with some friends while they eat dinner.

Moving in to my new apartment in about an hour. WHOO!

Title comes from a song by Karine Polwart (courtesy of Pandora, linked here). Started a new routine, lately, of getting up pretty early (5:45~6:00) and working out for about 30-45 minutes before I go to work. It's been really great. I feel like I start the day with more energy than before, even if I get less sleep.

Pandora is huge. If it were not for this mystical Internet jukebox, I wouldn't have heard of The Wailin' Jennys (whom, I discovered, I like).

Using a combination of services and websites, I've managed to combine my Last.fm and Twitter updates into one feed, sorted by date. Not a huge deal, but it's sort of cool. HTML view here, and RSS feed here.

Along those same lines, I haven't had a whole lot to do at work, so I cleaned up my website on the CS department servers. No images, pure HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Win.

I need to get settled into some kind of routine, now, so that when I'm home by myself for three weeks I don't go batty.

This is a repost from http://bit.ly/3VXKq (copypasta) but I really enjoyed it so I thought I would share. Plus, it's very, very true.

The Parable of the Two Programmers

Neil W. Rickert

Once upon a time, unbeknown to each other, the "Automated
Accounting Applications Association" and the "Consolidated Computerized
Capital Corporation" decided that they needed the identical program
to perform a certain service.

Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their
problem.

Meanwhile Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level
programmer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he
pretended.

Alan, having had experience in difficult programming projects,
decided to use the PQR structured design methodology. With this in mind
he asked his department manager to assign another three programmers as a
programming team. Then the team went to work, churning our preliminary
reports and problem analyses.

Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the
problem. His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet
on the desk, drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer
terminal, but his office mate could tell from the rhythmic striking of
keys that he was actually playing Space Invaders.

By now, the team at Automated was starting to write code. The
programmers were spending about half their time writing and compiling
code, and the rest of their time in conference, discussing the interfaces
between the various modules.

His office mate noticed that Charles had finally given up on Space
Invaders. Instead he now divided his time between drinking coffee with
his feet on the table, and scribbling on little scraps of paper. His
scribbling didn't seem to be Tic Tac Toe, but it didn't exactly make much
sense, either.

Two months have gone by. The team at Automated finally releases
an implementation timetable. In another two months they will have a test
version of the program. Then a two month period of testing and enhancing
should yield a completed version.

The manager of Charles has by now [become] tired of seeing him
goof off. He decides to confront him. But as he walks into Charles's
office, he is surprised to see Charles busy entering code at his terminal.
He decides to postpone the confrontation, so makes some small talk then
leaves. However, he begins to keep a closer watch on Charles, so that when
the opportunity presents itself he can confront him. Not looking forward
to an unpleasant conversation, he is pleased to notice that Charles seems
to be busy most of the time. He has even been seen to delay his lunch,
and to stay after work two or three days a week.

At the end of three months, Charles announces he has completed
the project. He submits a 500 line program. The program appears to be
clearly written, and when tested it does everything required in the
specifications. In fact it even has a few additional convenience features
which might significantly improve the usability of the program. The
program is put into test, and, except for one quickly corrected oversight,
performs well.

The team at Automated has by now completed two of the four major
modules required for their program. These modules are now undergoing
testing while the other modules are completed.

After another three weeks, Alan announces that the preliminary
version is ready one week ahead of schedule. He supplies a list of the
deficiencies that he expects to correct. The program is placed under test.
The users find a number of bugs and deficiencies, other than those listed.
As Alan explains, this is no surprise. After all this is a preliminary
version in which bugs were expected.

After about two more months, the team has completed its production
version of the program. It consists of about 2,500 lines of code. When
tested it seems to satisfy most of the original specifications. It has
omitted on or two features, and is very fussy about the format of its
input data. However the company decides to install the program. They can
always train their data-entry staff to enter data in the strict format
required. The program is handed over to some maintenance programmers to
eventually incorporate the missing features.

SEQUEL:

At first Charles's supervisor was impressed. But as he read
through the source code, he realized that the project was really much
simpler than he had originally thought. It now seemed apparent that this
was not much of a challenge even for a beginning programmer.

Charles did produce about 5 lines of code per day. This is perhaps
a little above average. However, considering the simplicity of the
program, it was nothing exceptional. Also his supervisor remembered his
two months of goofing off.

At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was
about half the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion.
After about a year he became discouraged and left Consolidated.

At Automated, Alan was complimented for completing his project on
schedule. His supervisor looked over the program. With a few minutes of
thumbing through he saw that the company standards about structured
programming were being observed. He quickly gave up attempting to read
the program however; it seemed quite incomprehensible. He realized by now
that the project was really much more complex that he had originally
assumed, and he congratulated Alan again on his achievement.

The team had produced over 3 lines of code per programmer per day.
This was about average, but, considering the complexity of the problem,
could be considered to be exceptional. Alan was given a hefty pay raise,
and promoted to Systems Analyst as a reward for his achievement.

....Miles