Was this all a big mistake?

No, not the blog - I have not done enough on here to warrant it being a "mistake".  Despite my best intentions I just never can seem to free up the time to write on here as much as it might be to my benefit.

And no, not the Ph.D.  Despite the time and energy commitment I have really learned a lot and I am having fun using that knowledge.

I mean, of course, the move to Tennessee.  I posted to Facebook a couple of nights ago that some storms had knocked out the power for a few minutes a friend asked if i was second guessing the move...and I could not immediately say no to him.  Because I had been.

I guess I should explain what has happened since the last posting - almost a year ago according to the Blog calendar (sorry about that).

Birmingham
As far back as last May I had misgivings about this whole situation - I had never had time to think and plan a move, had never really had a choice in any of my moves..and now I had a wife and son to think about, but we pushed through.  I was supposed to start at Tennessee Tech in August of last year so I would be in place for the start of Fall Semester.  That, unfortunately, was delayed.  Dr. Soni was not able to secure my position right away and so while I knew the job was there and I would be moving, it delayed the move up until January.  I spent the remaining time putting the finishing touches on my doctoral committee and finishing up my second to last semester of course work.

We cleaned and worked around the house and ended up putting it on the market around Labor Day.  It is still on the market.

Paula quit her job right after Thanksgiving and my last day of work was the 15th of December.  We spent the last two weeks in Birmingham packing and getting everything ready for the movers to show up and take us to...

Tennessee
After our trip up to Tennessee looking for places to live I thought we had decided that Mount Juliet was the winner.  Shows what I know.  To my surprise Paula thought the best place to move was to Cookeville.  She argued that the ability to hopefully get by with only one car, less driving and other savings in the college town meant we could have more money on smaller paychecks which would be nice until our house sold in Birmingham.   We worked with a realtor and found a house that was only about 2 miles from campus and an added bonus would rent to us until our house sold.

I started to work at Tech and discovered that nothing had been done to prepare the lab for my arrival...and the amount of red tape involved in getting started was going to be staggering.  Add to that I was teaching a class for the first time, on a computer language I only had a passing familiarity with, I was taking 6 hours of coursework remote with U.A.B. AND trying to get my proposal together so I could proceed with my doctoral research.

The last 6 months I have worked to get things squared away.  Most of the equipment for my lab has been purchased - with a few glaring omissions.  My proposal was very well received by my dissertation committee who informed me that I had answered all of their questions and had one of the more complete proposals they have seen and turns out I am a pretty good teacher.  I just cherry picked those traits my favorite teachers portrayed and the students did wonderful work.  So I guess you can honestly say that despite some minor setbacks THAT portion of my life is really looking up.

So what's wrong?  Everything else.

To tide us over until Paula found work she applied for Unemployment.  Figured she had left her company in good terms but had to leave because her husband was relocating to a place more than 150 miles away should be a no brainer...except it was.  Turns out Alabama only recognizes relocation as a rationale when the military is involved.  No military, so no unemployment.

Add to that the simple fact that we live in a small town with a local university suppling lots of cheap labor and it is, perhaps, easy to understand why Paula has not had any luck finding work.  She has tried hard and has been on a handful of interviews but she always loses out to someone with previous experience (or better knowledge of the hiring director).  Some of the jobs she has done in the past will not even consider her because of her lack of degree.  Call my silly but i would rather have someone with 4 years experience in the job than someone with a degree.

And remember what I said earlier about the state of the Birmingham house?  Yep.  Still unsold.  We have changed realtors, we have lowered the price (more than we could afford) and have been down a few times to repaint a room the realtor did not like, clean, mow the grass etc.  None of it works.  People just do not like the house and I am having to keep paying for it.

So here we are - a little over 7 months in the state and we still have 1 paycheck coming in, 2 mortgage checks going out...and all the utilities/fees/etc.  Needless to say my bank account is running on fumes and we have had to put more than I am comfortable with on credit.  The amount we had to lower the asking price in Birmingham was basically our downpayment on the house here in Cookeville so I am not sure how we are going to come up with THAT.

As I repeatedly tell Paula IF she had qualified for unemployment or IF she had found work or IF we had sold the house in Birmingham we could get by.  Not comfortably but at least enough to go out every once in a while.  All three of those things being "no" however means I am just about at the breaking point and I do not see what I can do to fix it.

The problems have caused some issues, or the issues have caused some problems I am not sure which.  I am stressed of course, which leads me to being frustrated and short.  Xander, who is used to being a little spoiled, is getting upset that he can not get everything he wants.  He says the right things at times, then turns around and asks for something.

Don't get me wrong, I love my work, I think the University has great potential and I think once we catch a break or two we will probably love it...but until those breaks happen I can not help but wonder if we would have been better off in Birmingham, with a little less opportunity for me, but work for Paula and only one mortgage check hanging over our head.

Hobbit Redux

OK, This is going to be a long one so sit down and grab a drink.  I have been meaning to write this one for a while.  On December 14th, me and several of my lab mates all went to the Rave IMAX theater over in Hoover to catch the first of the Hobbit trilogy (gods it pains me to write that).  As I stated before I was a little worried about this movie and I would love to say that all of my worries were unfounded and that I loved the movie...but I can't.

As I have said, I have read, reread, and loved 'the Hobbit' since I was hobbit-sized.  I understand the problems with making it into a movie, really I do.  As mentioned earlier, the book was originally a bed time story Tolkien read to his children when they were young.  The dangers were easily overcome, the humor was broad and the only thing you had to worry about with adventures is them making one late for dinner.  It is, for the most part, a travelogue of Bilbo's journey.  In fact, the book is subtitled "There and Back Again".   Unfortunately this type of story does not lend itself well to grand spectacle trilogies.

The movie decides to cover the first half of the book (Hello movie 3 that consists of a 3 hour Battle of Five Armies) and starts off in the "future" with Ian Holm's Bilbo talking to Frodo on the day of the Great Party from Fellowship of the Rings (FotR).  Bilbo explains the history of Erebor and the coming of the dragon, Smaug.  The movie then moves into the familiar opening from the book with the set up for the "Unexpected Party".  The movie ends with the party being dropped off at the Carrock by the Eagles of the Misty Mountains after their flight from the wargs and goblins from "Out of the Frying Pan".

Everyone knows that if you are going to cover that area of the book their are certain...high points, that you simply MUST cover to call yourself the Hobbit.  They are:

1. The Unexpected Party of dwarves that drop in unannounced and disrupt Bilbo's life
2. The Trolls and the parties rescue by Gandalf with the discovery of Orcrist, Glamdring and Sting
3. The parties arrival in Rivendell, with Elrond decyphering the map of the Lonely Mountain
4. The capture in the mountains by the Great Goblin
5. Bilbo's finding of his "Magic Invisibility Ring" and riddle contest with Gollum
6. The parties capture in the fir trees by goblins and wargs and their escape with the help of the giant eagles.

Peter Jackson hits every single one of these highpoints...and then screws up everything else.  I hate to be one of "those guys" that always talk about how the book handled things and how the movie messed it up, but given Jackson's track record of staying at least CLOSE to the imagery the author outlined I feel the radical changes he brought to the story really warrant the discussion.

First problem

In the book, part of the humor of the dwarves not wanting Bilbo along because he is inexperienced, is that THEY are inexperienced.  The book quickly point out that the only dwarves who survived the arrival of Smaug were children out playing in the field or older dwarves were away on business and that the survivors have spent their lives working as blacksmiths or coal miners and now want to use their limited wealth to "reclaim" the traditional family home...but they have no idea what they are doing.  You can see it all through the book.  When they start discussing their plans for how they are going to deal with Smaug it comes down to 'we will get to the mountain and then figure something out'.  There IS no big plan for how to do this.  The dwarves send Bilbo to the troll fire because they feel anything is better than being wet and cold..even capture by trolls.  They blunder and they bluster but they are quite honestly, just as new to this whole thing as Bilbo. The whole reason they had gone to Gandalf was because they did not know what they were doing.  Yes, Thorin is a warrior, but it is never mentioned in the main body of the book.  I had read the book at least 10-15 times before I realized that Oakenshield was not Thorin's last name.  It is in one of the appendices where Tolkien spells out how he "earned" that name not in the main body of the book.  He is introduced as "Thorin Oakenshield".  If a man has a first name like Thorin, would you really be surprised that Oakenshield was his last name?  Really?  Over the course of the book Bilbo changes and becomes the experienced leader of the group, the dwarves for the most part never change.  They have grown old working as common laborers and are too set in their ways to realize they are making mistakes.

In Jackson's movie, the dwarves are all supremely skillful warriors and have every right to be upset to be saddled with a no account like Bilbo.  Jackson makes it perfectly clear they are all excellent warriors by spending 15 minutes of screen time going through that appendix I mentioned showing the battle where Thorin earned his name.  It is a gory scene full of blood, mayhem and mutilation.

This is actually a recurring problem through out the movie.  In an effort to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, Jackson has appealed to none.  The movie is too violent for younger kids, to silly for adults.  Maybe I am wrong.  I probably am.  Of the people that I saw the movie with, 3 had never read the book, 1 had just finished it and 1 had read it a while back.  All of them loved it.  I guess I was just expecting a movie about the book.

Second problem

The constant "reminders" that there is a whole LotR trilogy out there.  The bit where Ian Holm is talking to Frodo in the beginning was nice, and it should have been enough.  Instead, we are treated to Saruman and Galadriel joining Elrond in Rivendell, mentions of Sauron, Bree and several other people and places...and none of them are in the source material.  They are all purely there to set up things in LotR.

Third problem

Ego.  Pure and Simple.  Radagast (shiver) the Brown, the stone giant "Transformers" having a fight in the mountains, the darkening of the story, the addition of Azog "The Defiler" and of course the running time, all point to a Jackson who has let his ego get away from him.  Honestly I see a lot of similarities between this and the the other prequels we have all had to endure - Lucas' Star Wars prequels.

Pros:

1. The cast was excellent.  Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman were perfect as Gandalf and Bilbo.  The dwarves, the with exception of Thorin and Fili and Kili were pretty much cardboard cutouts, but that had a lot more to do with the script than with the actors playing the parts.  Even in the books there was not much to differentiate the different dwarves in the party..other than Bombur being fat.  The movie has the same problem.  There are 13 dwarves to force the need for a "Lucky Number".  If their were fewer dwarves we could have actually had some character development from them..but then they would not need Bilbo.
2. The special effects were stellar.  Whether it is the hall of the Great Goblin, Rivendell, or the first encounter with Gollum, the effects were pretty seamless.
3. I really enjoyed the "History Lesson" about Erebor.  The book leaves it up to the song of the dwarves to tell you of their home, Bilbo's lesson made it a little easier to see.  However, rather than making the coming of the dragon about the toys and gold, Jackson decided to make it about the dwarves somehow being wicked which did not sit well.  That and he had a LOT more dwarves escape.

Cons:

1. Everything else.  No Really.

Couple of other things to mention

As I said we saw it in IMAX in Hoover.  I highly recommend seeing at least one big budget Hollywood movie in this format.  The huge screen just sucks you right in.  That is not to say it was without problem.  The main issue I had with the whole setup is the sound.  I do not know if the movie itself is loud or if the movie theater just had their amplifiers turned to 11, but I am lucky I did not suffer permanent hearing loss in there.  Our sound engineer mentioned after the movie that we were hitting 90-100 dB pretty consistently.  

Finally as a bonus for paying to see the movie in IMAX we were treated to the first 9 minutes of "Into Darkness", the second Star Trek movie from J.J.Abrams.  I thought the movie looked like a lot of fun.  I have already thought of ways to make it another "research outing" for the lab.  I still don't know who Benedict Cumberbatch is playing - though everyone else seems to think it is obviously Khan.  I am leaning that way but the shots of him in a Star Fleet uni just makes me pause.