(no subject)
My final professor is Professor O'Malley. He looks exactly like how you would expect a college history professor to look -- shaggy gray hair, a tweed coat, glasses, freaking tall. History 499 is mostly independent study. We finished the last of our class meetings yesterday. We were supposed to have a more-defined topic and a rough bibliography.
I had shown up at the second meeting with a well-defined topic. The general idea was "the capture of Blackbeard the pirate". When he asked what was significant about that, I rambled for a bit about how Virginia invaded North Carolina in order to capture the guy and how that had interesting implications for the definition of what a state/colony is. Then, just to add a little bit of extra intellectual punch, I added that Alexander Spotswood's attempts to use the capture of Blackbeard as a distraction from the scandals of his administration was sort of like President Obama and Syria and the NSA scandal. Then I said that my main source, The Republic of Pirates, had called Spotswood's capture of Blackbeard a "distraction" but didn't provide any evidence -- in fact, he kept it hidden as long as possible, because Blackbeard was popular among Virginians.
So I had a well-defined topic and a couple of possibilities as far as what direction I could take my interpretation of events. I was ahead of the game as far as that goes.
But still, when I showed up yesterday, I felt underprepared, because I had a horrible bibliography. I had ordered A General History of Pyrates off of Amazon, and had managed to find a source for the Boston News-Letter. Williamsburg has little in the way of Spotswood documents in their archives.
Therefore, "My main source for Spotswood is going to be the University of North Carolina," I said.
Prof O'Malley looked surprised.
"They have all of his correspondence with North Carolina government in their archives," I said. "I can access their archives online for free. Completely searchable."
"I have been teaching this course every few years since 1994," O'Malley said. "I always forget how much technology changes the field. A few years ago you would have had to drive down to North Carolina to find all that. A few years ago you wouldn't even have known North Carolina has what you're looking for! And even if you did, you would have had to manually search the database with microfilm."
I was just pleased that I hadn't come across as a lazy slacker.
On Friday nights, I hang out with a group of folks. My gaming group.
Some of whom can be seen here, being wacky.
Normally we hang out in Robinson A on Friday nights. Steph brings food, and one of us runs an RPG session. Lately we haven't been doing much RPing. Things seem to be picking up with their LARP, and I just don't have time anymore, what with school and theatre. So we've been playing board games or watching anime instead. Tonight was going to be a normal night of that.
Eric: I may want to take some time to continue/conclude the champions game I was running earlier. I'm going to try and storyteller through some of it, may game the plot in favor of brevity. I'll aim for just one more combat.
...which was not board games, but whatever. The venue and time hadn't changed, and I would still get to see them. I hadn't enjoyed the first round of the game he had run. There had been too many people playing, and Tony had played a mind controller, and so the vast majority of the time I hadn't really been playing the game, I was just doing whatever Tony told me to do, which is the worst way to play a game. But Tony lives in Woodbridge now, so he wouldn't be able to make it to Friday night game night. Also, David is still in the process of moving back to the area. So we would be down two players. I could deal with that.
Sandy: Tony wants to start a pathfinder game if you all are interested, wed have to pop by his place to sta r t up character creation. Itll be a late night ish thing to fyi
Eric: Mmk, on lunch now so I have a good hour to talk plans. I'm up for moving the venue, but we'd need an address.
Eric: If we would like to move the venue, we will need to inform Steph separately, she is unlikely to get any messages posted here at this point in the day.
Sandy: I just let her know. So are we meeting at mason then going or what?
A couple of things:
1) I hate driving to Woodbridge. With traffic. Into a town I haven't really ever driven into before (just through).
2) Three hours before the event? Really?
3) To Woodbridge? Really?
4) With Tony as a player? Really? The dude is cool in person but I have never enjoying RPing with him. He's fantastic at just warping the game to be about his character.
But these folks are my friends. No time to be dramatic. There is surely a diplomatic way of dealing with this.
Kelsey: I can't really say I'm interested in driving to Woodbridge, as much as I would love to try out Pathfinder.
Tony: It is a 30 minute drive from fairfax to Woodbridge (At least where I live). Getting on GMU campus is a chore for those who dont have parking passes.
Oh so I'm the bad guy because I didn't think about parking passes? I'm the bad guy for not wanting to change plans? Also, hey: way to change the time from 7:00 to 5:00.
I just don't ditch/get ditched all that often, and so it just rubs the the wrong way. Plans change, I get that. I just don't like this.
So either I'm going to attend an interest meeting for my Wednesday night group, or I'm just not going to hang out with anyone at all this week, because my Wednesday night group didn't meet this week.
I had shown up at the second meeting with a well-defined topic. The general idea was "the capture of Blackbeard the pirate". When he asked what was significant about that, I rambled for a bit about how Virginia invaded North Carolina in order to capture the guy and how that had interesting implications for the definition of what a state/colony is. Then, just to add a little bit of extra intellectual punch, I added that Alexander Spotswood's attempts to use the capture of Blackbeard as a distraction from the scandals of his administration was sort of like President Obama and Syria and the NSA scandal. Then I said that my main source, The Republic of Pirates, had called Spotswood's capture of Blackbeard a "distraction" but didn't provide any evidence -- in fact, he kept it hidden as long as possible, because Blackbeard was popular among Virginians.
So I had a well-defined topic and a couple of possibilities as far as what direction I could take my interpretation of events. I was ahead of the game as far as that goes.
But still, when I showed up yesterday, I felt underprepared, because I had a horrible bibliography. I had ordered A General History of Pyrates off of Amazon, and had managed to find a source for the Boston News-Letter. Williamsburg has little in the way of Spotswood documents in their archives.
Therefore, "My main source for Spotswood is going to be the University of North Carolina," I said.
Prof O'Malley looked surprised.
"They have all of his correspondence with North Carolina government in their archives," I said. "I can access their archives online for free. Completely searchable."
"I have been teaching this course every few years since 1994," O'Malley said. "I always forget how much technology changes the field. A few years ago you would have had to drive down to North Carolina to find all that. A few years ago you wouldn't even have known North Carolina has what you're looking for! And even if you did, you would have had to manually search the database with microfilm."
I was just pleased that I hadn't come across as a lazy slacker.
On Friday nights, I hang out with a group of folks. My gaming group.
Some of whom can be seen here, being wacky.
Normally we hang out in Robinson A on Friday nights. Steph brings food, and one of us runs an RPG session. Lately we haven't been doing much RPing. Things seem to be picking up with their LARP, and I just don't have time anymore, what with school and theatre. So we've been playing board games or watching anime instead. Tonight was going to be a normal night of that.
Eric: I may want to take some time to continue/conclude the champions game I was running earlier. I'm going to try and storyteller through some of it, may game the plot in favor of brevity. I'll aim for just one more combat.
...which was not board games, but whatever. The venue and time hadn't changed, and I would still get to see them. I hadn't enjoyed the first round of the game he had run. There had been too many people playing, and Tony had played a mind controller, and so the vast majority of the time I hadn't really been playing the game, I was just doing whatever Tony told me to do, which is the worst way to play a game. But Tony lives in Woodbridge now, so he wouldn't be able to make it to Friday night game night. Also, David is still in the process of moving back to the area. So we would be down two players. I could deal with that.
Sandy: Tony wants to start a pathfinder game if you all are interested, wed have to pop by his place to sta r t up character creation. Itll be a late night ish thing to fyi
Eric: Mmk, on lunch now so I have a good hour to talk plans. I'm up for moving the venue, but we'd need an address.
Eric: If we would like to move the venue, we will need to inform Steph separately, she is unlikely to get any messages posted here at this point in the day.
Sandy: I just let her know. So are we meeting at mason then going or what?
A couple of things:
1) I hate driving to Woodbridge. With traffic. Into a town I haven't really ever driven into before (just through).
2) Three hours before the event? Really?
3) To Woodbridge? Really?
4) With Tony as a player? Really? The dude is cool in person but I have never enjoying RPing with him. He's fantastic at just warping the game to be about his character.
But these folks are my friends. No time to be dramatic. There is surely a diplomatic way of dealing with this.
Kelsey: I can't really say I'm interested in driving to Woodbridge, as much as I would love to try out Pathfinder.
Tony: It is a 30 minute drive from fairfax to Woodbridge (At least where I live). Getting on GMU campus is a chore for those who dont have parking passes.
Oh so I'm the bad guy because I didn't think about parking passes? I'm the bad guy for not wanting to change plans? Also, hey: way to change the time from 7:00 to 5:00.
I just don't ditch/get ditched all that often, and so it just rubs the the wrong way. Plans change, I get that. I just don't like this.
So either I'm going to attend an interest meeting for my Wednesday night group, or I'm just not going to hang out with anyone at all this week, because my Wednesday night group didn't meet this week.