Amazon Cloud; Pins & Needles

 

Part A:

Professors across the U are in chaos! 

The global "Amazon Cloud" debacle has wreaked havoc for many today at the U.  Our school's designated LMS (Learning Management System..... aka the "gizmo, electronic classroom") is inextricably tied by some linkages to the Amazon Cloud even though it is NOT an Amazon product.  Many professors across the U have ALL of their classroom paraphernalia electronically embedded into this LMS and cannot access a damn thing.  

And, a sizable chunk of the profs have their paraphernalia ONLY within the LMS.  They are "sh*t-outta-luck" and have cancelled many classes.  I too have my paraphernalia on my LMS.... but being the old-school curmudgeonly pack-rat that I am....  I was able to scramble around this morning and found a couple of tucked away flash drives that had copies of my PowerPoints on them.  So, I was good-to-go in my typical fashion.

In one lecture, I talked about the growth and development of the dentition pattern of we humans, and then I compared and contrasted our omnivorous dentition pattern with that of classic herbivore dentition patterns and carnivore dentition patterns eventually leading to a discussion of the development of the structure of teeth broadly, but then with a fun added focus of describing the rather unique rodent dentition pattern where they have perpetually growing incisor teeth through their lives due to specializations of their ameloblast cells.  

Part B:

Today feels so much more peaceful and "normal" (whatever the hell that may be) than the last several days.  October is a challenging month because there are a MULTITUDE of own nuclear family, other close family, and friends who have birthdays in this month.  From a technical standpoint of human gestation, this suggests strongly a logical and sizable upsurge in practitioners of complete reproductive physiology between New Year's Day and Valentine's Day.

My wife relishes hosting these birthday celebrations.  So, we did.

The celebrations include the intermingling of ALL SORTS OF FOLKS, who I normally get along with fine.... INDIVIDUALLY.  But, in the cadre of folks, there are points of long-standing rancor and contention so the worry of the potential of one or more of these folks stepping back into a rancorous encounter is always an undercurrent of MY emotions.  And, also, being family, the person I no longer write about here was also present in an extended fashion.  That ratched up my stress levels as well.  This person was provided guidance by me and my wife of requested decorum.  This person ended up following said guidance at roughly the ~70% level.  70% was NOT where I wanted it to be.  But, it was better than I feared it would be.  Still, living through the long array of "festivities" across Saturday was NOT in any way "relaxing" for me, as every moment was spent feeling uncomfortable and also fearing of the seemingly endless number of potential tornados that could erupt amongst the participants.  

It was not until late in the midafternoon on Sunday that the person I no longer write about left.  By that time, I was so exhausted from the mixture of stresses from the festivities day plus anger, resentment, frustration,, and worry that I had bubble up like a prematurely opened pressure cooker in me most of the time from Friday through the departure Sunday midafternoon.... I was not particularly functional Sunday evening.  

I would have liked a nice, stiff drink.  But, that is not really a good option the evening before a school day, and as my wife is pretty much a tee-totaler, drinking alone is dull.  

PipeTobacco