Some Words » College http://www.ianmacleod.net Occasional text by Ian Macleod, often lacking context. Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:54:55 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The Computer Lives http://www.ianmacleod.net/2008/06/18/the-computer-lives/ http://www.ianmacleod.net/2008/06/18/the-computer-lives/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:07:28 +0000 Bottle Imp http://www.ianmacleod.net/?p=442 And the computer is back. I didn’t really have to pay much of anything to get it back. There’s a stain on the monitor now, where some of the coffee got into the LCD under the protective layer. Aside from that little annoyance, and the fact that I have now voided the hell out of my warranty, things return largely to normal.

And soon there will be reunion, with the big project on temporary hold. I hope to have it done next week, but I only give even odds.

]]> http://www.ianmacleod.net/2008/06/18/the-computer-lives/feed/ 0 People Milling by a Fire Drinking Beer http://www.ianmacleod.net/2007/06/19/people-milling-by-a-fire-drinking-beer/ http://www.ianmacleod.net/2007/06/19/people-milling-by-a-fire-drinking-beer/#comments Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:28:56 +0000 Bottle Imp http://www.ianmacleod.net/2007/06/19/people-milling-by-a-fire-drinking-beer/ I went to college reunion this past week. This was more than a little silly, as it was for the class that graduated the year before me. Still, there had been a lot of great people in that class, and I’d lost track of most of them. So I thought I’d stop in and say ‘Hi’ to a lot of people at once. I could only make four hours or so of it, as I had to work, but I drove down to Northfield anyway.

It was a good year for this sort of thing. Minnesota has actually gotten some consistent rain in the past couple of months, so the fields looked lush and green as I drove down. It was the golden hour, and everything seemed somehow more than it had been. I was driving back to some sort of fantasy campus that had never existed. The rosy glasses were held firmly in place by the Tom Waits I was playing.

The weirdness really began when I got there. Some of these people had been strangers to me since they had graduated. There were several that I would have liked to say ‘Hi’ who weren’t there, and a few that gave a general sense of brush off before I could say hello. But there were plenty of people who I had really missed. It’s hard to imagine a more pleasant nostalgia trip. An old friend, Dan Diamond, even got his ass out of NY for a little while. I’ve got to track down a few people now who couldn’t make it. But it has been great motivation to keep up with people better. For those of you I’ve lost touch with, I’m sorry. I make this sort of resolution about once every four days. I’m going to try to write though.

The other nice thing about a five year reunion, is that no one has managed to get so much done that I feel like a failure by comparison. At some point, someone is bound to do something so awesome, that when I hang around them, I inevitably, not matter how gracious they are, feel like I’m wasting my life on some level. It’s really hard to do that in five years. Ummm… grad school… yeah. Time to go I think.

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