The best I was ever able to come up with was ‘brainless, hate-spewing maw’. And even that was derived from this brilliant caricature by Mike Monahan:
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Just spent 6 hours on what should have been a 1-hour job, replacing the exhaust fan in my laptop. I’ve done this a dozen times in the past on other machines, but for some reason this laptop needs a complete stripdown to get to the fan, and you can’t test the result without putting it at least 50% back together. First time reassembly it didn’t work at all (yikes!), turns out I’d missed a cable now it works but at least 10 degrees hotter than with the old fan, so redo from start try better thermal compound and more careful application now only 5 degrees hotter than I would like. However, at least I’m not getting the fan stoppages that were shutting the machine down.
PS - on shipping, I used to complain how hard it was to get stuffed shipped to me here in Hawaii (with Amazon Prime 2-day delivery they often don’t even process the shipment for a week or two), but we’ve never had the kind of problem with shippers here that we’ve been having with my kid in Chicago. He’s at around 50% success rate on packages actually getting delivered.
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If he has any friends who live in buildings with doormen, or if he can get the packages delivered to work, he might have better luck.
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He does, just not in Chicago:-)
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I do believe I’ve found like one job posting that even remotely fits my field (because the field is basically open). It’s in state, but kind of far away. Two of my friends are likely applying for the same position. One of them should probably get the job over me. The job market for modern Americanists is horrible this year. A street of broken dreams.
VL and then go back on the market next year?
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Are you willing to look further afield? You’ve got a large cast of characters here who can give you a heads-up on most parts of the country, and probably at least some of the potential educational institutions.
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I’m really looking as local as possible. And from what I’ve seen, there is little out there for modern Americanists. There was an opening at another local college (in the ATL area, even) in the American Studies department (which I think given my focus, I could make that case for being in that department), but they specifically wanted someone doing Latin@ studies… It’s just a bad year, I think. Maybe next year will be better?
But of course, I’d love any advice the academics/academic related folks here have… 
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This is like every HP I’ve ever had to work on.
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Voluntary Layoff? Leave?
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Sorry! Visiting lecturer. It’s a short term appointment, usually with a salary and benefits, but one is only teaching the survey courses. Usually for two years. It’s the most likely job one gets when one wraps up a PhD in a field like history. There are also post-doc positions, which have a similar salary, you’re not usually teaching (except maybe one course) and you can usually use it as a means of furthering one’s research rather than getting into the teaching game. But it usually requires some sort of residency at whatever university one is applying for a post-doc. If I can’t get a tenure track position (either a teaching school, which is far more likely coming out of a school like GSU), then a VL is more likely than a post-doc, I think.
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Why not just find a tenure track position?
Laughing with, not at. You’re laughing, right?
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That’s what those jobs look like!
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So, one of our cars has a hatch that stretches into the heavens, which in our garage means it rests against the garage door when the latter is rolled up. Here’s the car (stock photo, though that could be around 3 miles from my house):
In the 10 years we’ve owned it we’ve never really wanted to know what would happen if we accidentally closed the garage door while the hatch was open. Well, as of yesterday evening now we know.
The good news is that thanks to Brexit the cost of a replacement spoiler shipped from England is not too bad.
The better news is that I’d been using the trunk of the car as a platform to set up some rat traps - that’s why I’d left it open - and the traps at least were not a waste of money.
[quote=“Mindysan33, post:2611, topic:67518”]
There was an opening at another local college (in the ATL area, even) in the American Studies department (which I think given my focus, I could make that case for being in that department)[/quote]
I suspect all the many many people getting PhDs in American Studies might disagree, especially since many more schools have History departments than have American Studies.
I have notoriously bad judgment here; I once turned down a tenure track job at one of the best schools in the Cal State system in order to take a postdoc at a 2nd rate school in England nobody in the US has ever heard of. I think though that the number of really satisfying jobs in higher education has been far outstripped by the number of people with PhDs vying for them, and - especially if you are geographically constrained - you should always have a plan B (and even a plan C) that is not in the sector, and be ready to embrace it enthusiastically.
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That goes both ways. We’ve had VLs and people apply for tenture track jobs in the history department here with American studies degrees. Of course I can only speak for this department…
Roger that! 
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Crash Course History Part III with @anon61221983!
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That’s it… I’ll start my own history youtube channel. That’ll pay the bills, right? Worked for Khan Academy?
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Yaaay, me, for figuring pinpointing the single source of multiple bugs yesterday, and fixing it this morning!
Boo, me, for introducing the bug last month.
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da kids will love your gif deck - highest rated prof evah
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At work I’ve just been upgraded to Windows 10. I’m not sure what the previous version of Windows we used was called–it was mainly 2010 Office Suite products–but why the fuck does MS feel the need to make so many changes to the interface with each new iteration? Why the fuck does Outlook now look so completely different and why the fuck did they take away the ability to pin items?
And how fucking stupid is it that I can’t change the wallpaper background color? I have a nice picture for my wallpaper but it’s not big enough to fill the entire screen. On my previous computer I was able to change the color of the wallpaper behind the picture to a nice shade of green. Now, as far as I can tell and as far as anyone in IT can tell me, there’s no way to change that from the default black. Because obviously no one ever wanted to change that color so MS decided it wasn’t necessary.
Granted it’s a work computer and there are probably bigger concerns with Windows 10 and personalizations are, well, personal, but I can’t figure out why MS can’t just leave some things the fuck alone. I’ve talked to developers who tell me they don’t give a shit about the UI which makes me wonder why they insist on regularly changing it.
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yeah I have grumbled about their changing of little things since nt4.
however the start menu for 10 is an improvement over 7 which was pretty awesome already but you can seriously customize and pin common used stuff like mad to it.
as far as the wallpaper/background right click on the desktop and personalize doesn’t work?
What version of outlook is it now?
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