international weirdness

There's a pandemic going on, so you think that any weirdness would be along the illness lines. Maybe the weirdness would be the massive bread shortage at the grocery store. But no...the world is outdoing itself with the strangeness.

Yesterday, I was contacted by someone from the China internet domain registration people. Someone is trying to register the Chinese versions of my themikedubose.com domain and wanted to know if I was associated with them. I told him a firm no. Today, I was contacted by someone from the company who's trying to get the domain, and they were telling me that in spite of the domain guy recommending they try a new name, they are going ahead and gonna keep trying to poach my name.

So I wrote to my own domain registration people to see if there was anything I could do. Afterward, I decided to do some research, and I found out the company who wants the Chinese version of themikedubose is...a pharmaceutical company.

Naturally, I do not get this at all. My only hope is that they're going to name the COVID-19 cure after me for some reason. I would be okay with that as long as I get a bit of royalty payment.

This is what my life is like.

the future generation

My daughter was sick last week, and we had to keep her home from school a couple of days. When this happens, it's important to use your time wisely. So, two important milestones:

1. The real advancement we made happened when, somewhere within the morass of my daughter's awful YouTube videos (one person she watches calls himself, "the Christian Jake Paul"; when I told one of my classes this, a student observed, "that sounds horrible!" He was right.), I was able to introduce my darling child to Buckethead:
   
   
2. One morning, she told me that she was coughing way too much the night before, but she just watched an episode of Bob Ross:
   
   

Sothat's what you have to look forward to when the next generation takes over. You're welcome.

quandries and consciousness

I'm tired. Even though I got my normal amount of sleep last night, I woke up feeling like I did when I was 20 and pulling all-nighters. I woke up as sluggish as...hell, I was too tired to even think of a metaphor for my exhaustion.

The irony is not lost on me.

This semester, I moved from a four day a week schedule to just Mondays and Wednesdays on campus. This sounds like a benefit, but I now teach from basically 2:30 to 8:30. After three straight classes, my brain moves into lethargy.

But I also drop my daughter off at school around 8:30 am, so I'm up and about. I could go home for a few hours, but when I reached campus, parking would be nigh impossible. So I just head to campus, get a good parking spot, and get to work early in the day.

The problem, though, is  that then I'm on campus for almost 12 hours. By the end of the day, I'm damn near catatonic. I'm pretty much useless by the time I get home. I'm also not productive whatsoever the next day. I'm old enough (187 years old, I think) to where it takes some time to rebound.

So what should I do?  Tough out the long work day and embrace the next day lethargy? Or relax a bit before going to work, budget a half hour for finding parking, but then have to actually bring more work home?

I'll have to puzzle it over...but maybe after a nap.