BBC Headline of the day: Fire death baby accused in court.

I have discovered the most amazing shortcut for word processing. Alt+Ctr+Shift+V = formatless pasting. Having to reformat text every time I cut and paste from an outside document was driving me crazy, so I finally went looking for a solution, and sure enough, there it was.

I was flipping through the Chronicle of Higher Education while waiting for a meeting yesterday when I came across an ad that amused the hell out of me. Apparently Xerox is very upset with the fact that its brand has been appropriated to simply mean copy, and is actually spending money to advertise to whoever it is that reads the Chronicle of Higher Education that they'd really appreciate it if everyone only used the term Xerox when referring to the brand itself. There's something about how Zipper was once a brand, and now it stands in for, well, zippers. You would think a company would be happy that their brand was synonymous with whatever it was that brand did, but I guess not. Stuff like this is why I roll my eyes at business.

I have never lived with cats, but since coming to Denver I haven't spent a single day without one. My roommate's cat, Rufus, is a real character, and after a few jittery days where he did nothing but stare at me he's now decided my lap is the happening place to be. He also doesn't seem deterred by the fact that there is a computer on my lap and I am trying to do work. I thought if I stuck my elbows out and just kept typing he would get the hint, but he just straddled my left arm and lay down on top of it. I'm too much of a push over to shove him off, so one half of my lap is cat, and the other is computer, and I have yet to figure out a comfortable way to accommodate both.

Today was my first advising appointment of my masters career, and it was probably the best advising appointment I have ever been in in my entire life. My high school counselor was bad to the extent that she could not spell the subject that I wanted to pursue in college. My college counselor met with me something like twice in the four years that I was at school, and did little more than make sure I had the credits to graduate. When I tried to transfer my major to Japanese in my freshman year the Japanese advisor looked at me like I had grown a second head, asked me why I'd want to do that, and then told me to wait. I had my little battle with Japan after that and dropped the idea.

But today I went in, was asked about my intended focus, my intended career, was advised on classes I should be taking in and out of the program, e-mails were sent on my behalf as we discussed things, possible employment, internships, etc were brought up, and I left knowing what to expect for the next two semesters, and what would take priority in my work outside of class.

I don't know if the Grad/Undergrad divide has something to do with the massive difference in treatment, or if the hundred or so library students divided between 5 or so advisors makes the difference when the entire Asian Studies Undergrad department had a single advisor (I think) or if I have grown so much as a student that I'm better equipped to look for what I want and to go for it than I was back in Hawaii. All I know is that things are already feeling more productive than they did in Hawaii.

The only problem is that none of this is guaranteed to translate into employment. It is an employers market still, and people who are far more qualified than I am are coming up empty. At this point the only option is to move forward though. There's no point in wasting time, making little money, and hoping some day it gets better.