I've been grumpy this past week. No particular reason, I think I'm just losing patience with the things of the culture that annoy me here as I approach the end of my service. I'm getting tired of flaky scheduling and stupid questions* about U. S. culture. I'd rather not come into the office and have to field questions like "if you accept same-sex marriage in your country, what will you do if a man you want to marry marries another man instead of you?" How is that any different from asking what I do if a man I want to marry marries another woman? And why do all questions I get revolve around who I'm going to marry, anyway?
Then of course, there is the teaching situation. I couldn't teach today because I found out my class period is scheduled for the same time and place as another class period. I couldn't learn this last week because the other lecturer didn't bother teaching last week. Grump.
At least today I got an email from a student asking me an interesting question that I didn't know the answer to! I love it when that happens. The kid went to my Linux seminar and now wants to know how to play a music file straight from the terminal in Linux. I like working straight from the terminal for a lot of things, but it has never even occurred to me to try doing that. For the record, I suggested mpg123 and installed it myself. So far it is working quite well, if testing my knowledge of regular expressions in selecting multiple files to play.
*From my students, there are no stupid questions, because just getting them to ask any questions is a victory. From people I may or may not know who start asking me about marriage apropos of nothing, there are plenty of stupid questions.
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