Autobiographical essays, more or less
On being a curmudgeon (Essay #64)
What I’m like as a person, or at least a person on campus.
My laptop (Essay #65)
What my laptop aays about me.
Foods of my families (Essay #66)
Some food memories.
Embarrassing teaching moments (Essay #81)
A break in that series.
Sleep (Essay #16)
On getting enough.
Making good choices (Essay #73)
Something that might be termed
a bait and switchor perhaps even a ripoff. (Read the essay for why.)
If you ask a prof a question (Essay #62)
Reflections on my not-so-legendary primer.
Vast swaths of American Popular Culture have passed me by.
(Essay #12)
One of my favorite
mom quotes; one that I now feel that I have to say way too much of the time.
Addressing people (Essay #38)
On my difficulties figuring out what to call people.
Dad jokes (Essay #83)
What my students say about my jokes.
Is anal retentive
hyphenated? (Essay #94)
It was late, and I had to write something. Blame my muse.
Fall break, 2016 (Essay #96)
Reflections on how I spent my break.
The Tigger suit (Essay #105)
A family heirloom.
A response to the request
Please write an essay about this year’s election.
Thanksgiving 2016 (Essay #132)
Reflections on one of my favorite holidays.
Pebble Watches (Essay #148)
Some of my favorite timepieces.
Sleep Cycles (Essay #152)
My sleep cycles, throughout my life.
End-of-semester reflections (Fall 2016) (Essay #153)
My every-semester exercise with Karla Erickson.
The 2016 Grinnell Holiday Party (Essay #154)
A wonderful followup event to that exercise.
On being a pack rat (Essay #155)
Why I have so much stuff.
A day in the life of SamR (20 December 2016) (Essay #159)
A not-so-typical day.
Christmas eve, 2016 (Essay #165)
Reflections on Christmas eves, past and present.
Mid-semester planning (Musing #260)
A planning session with Karla Erickson.
End-of-semester/start-of-summer reflections (Spring 2017) (Musing #323)
Another planning session.
Implications (Musing #354)
Things people say that make me worry.
What do you listen to? part one (Musing #360)
My students asked. I promised to try to answer.
I’m free! (Musing #362)
Reflections on finishing a three-year term as chair.
What do you listen to? part two (Musing #369)
Continuing my answer to my students.
Introversion (Musing #370)
Embracing a core characteristic.
Meanderings (Musing #384)
Whatever happened to M Mark and related musical questions
Among the reasons SamR is not a SysAdmin (Musing #391),
Screwing things up, once again.
Shadow (Musing #415)
My mother-in-law’s dog.
Ridding myself of random stuff (Musing #420)
A step towards a less disorganized SamR.
Getting rid of stuff (Musing #423)
A follow up to the prior musing.
Being nicer (Musing #424)
On changing my initial inclinations.
Begin nice (Musing #425)
A follow up on the prior musing, more or less.
A biography, of sorts (Musing #429)
A few paragraphs for a poster.
Thirty years (Musing #430)
Happy thirtieth anniversary, Michelle!
How are you, Sam? (Musing #442)
A new/old answer.
Feeling fortunate (Musing #459)
A better answer.
Understanding a bit more about my father (Musing #475)
A complex and moral man.
A coat and tie (Musing #525)
What I seem to be wearing this semester.
My coding habits (Musing #541)
Ways I think about updating code. (At least that’s what I planned to write about.)
Dumb cooking mistakes (Musing #547)
An adventure from my college days.
Maybe I’m not a curmudgeon (Musing #553)
Questioning my identity.
Paul Nossiter (Musing #558)
Mom’s first and last boyfriend.
My favorite mug (Musing #561)
A quick musing for a late night.
Red-green color blindness (Musing #564)
I see red. I see green. But I’m still red-green color blind.
Forgetting the Joe stories (Musing #571)
Is it more important to remember the context or the content?
Giving up processed sugar (Musing #581)
Can I really do it?
Annotating the Web (Musing #586)
Early research projects.
Excavating the office (Musing #589)
Things that gather in boxes.
Rural high-school sports (Musing #610)
An advantage and disadvantage of living in Grinnell.
Sleep(less) cycles (Musing #614)
Some effects of insufficient sleep.
A short biography (Musing #619)
Or at least shorter than the last one.
A semester of a coat and a tie (Musing #627)
What I wore to work this semester.
My hair (Musing #641)
As tangled as this musing.
Traveling light (Musing #654)
One backpack to hold my laptop, CPAP, and three days’ worth of clothes.
Why me? (Musing #658)
Getting interviewed for a promotional video.
Nuts to allergies (Musing #660)
I hate mine.
The other Rebelskys (Musing #681)
There are other Rebelskys!
Bad beard decisions (Musing #686)
I shouldn’t have shaved.
Planning some fun summer activities (Musing #692)
Sometimes organizing can be fun.
Sometimes it’s best to rely on professionals (Musing #710)
Dealing with a broken ceiling fan.
Doing it yourself (Musing #711)
Dealing with a broken side-view mirror.
Fair rides (Musing #723)
Different choices Michelle and I make.
The first day of my Obermann fellowship (Musing #728)
Starting a different aspect of my career.
I thought you might like this
(Musing #733)
Becoming my mother.
Thirty-one years (Musing #735)
Looking forward to at least thirty-one more.
Staycation 2018 (Musing #739)
My second vacation of the summer!
My first Obermann seminar (Musing #743)
Encountering great minds.
Calming down (Musing #755)
It happens, once in a while.
An evening at a conference (Musing #756)
In my hotel room.
Traveling to the Obermann Center (Musing #761)
Reminding myself about how fortunate I am to live near work.
Promoting Grinnell (Musing #767)
Why me?
My second Obermann seminar (Musing #768)
Receiving feedback.
How (not) to adapt to the end of daylight saving time (Musing #799)
Things we do for our children.
Driving (Musing #805)
Recalling long trips.
Thanksgiving 2018 (Musing #817)
Being thankful.
The fantasy and the reality of my Obermann Fellowship (Musing #838)
When expectations are too high.
Starting fresh (Musing #847)
Starting a new year, more or less.
AFK (Musing #855)
A good day.
I’m an idiot (Musing #856)
At least some of the time.
Forty years (Musing #860)
I miss you dad.
A sign of the apocalypse (Musing #862)
Cleaning my office.
Naming my space (Musing #867)
No, not
CS Faculty in Exile.
One decade (Musing #871)
I miss you mom.
Red, green, black (Musing #872)
Is there a difference?
Things we lose (or at least things I lose) (Musing #876)
A pitfall of accumlation.
Changes in my teaching (Musing #879)
Is
the more things change, the more they stay the samea cliché?
Driving Midwest to Northeast, or vice versa (Musing #881)
What’s wrong with sixteen hours in a car?
U.S. Route 6 (Musing #882)
The longest continuous highway in the U.S.
Our 2^5 anniversary (Musing #885)
Here’s to at least another 2^5 years.
A day on sabbatical (Musing #889)
Some thoughts on assessment.
DadR’s weekly report, week 1 (Musing #895)
Notes for my family.
The Beatles (Musing #910)
My muse made me do it.
Dishwashers (Musing #916)
And their proper use.
Gratitude (Musing #938)
It’s that time of year.
Eggnog (and other holiday memories) (Musing #948)
Memories of holidays past.
Letters to colleagues (Musing #952)
Goals for next semester.
Teaching plans for next year (Musing #953)
Anticipation.
Mood swings (Musing #957)
Learning to deal with frustration.
Sympathy for my sons (Musing #958)
Feeling like a bad Internet meme.
Cooking (Musing #960)
Returning to old habits.
It’s getting better all the time (Musing #961)
Recovering from an earlier musing.
Visiting the University of Chicago (Musing #967)
It’s changed.
SamR’s undergraduate workload (Musing #969)
Perfectly reasonable.
Looking ahead to my next Tutorial (Musing #973)
Fingers crossed!
Sadness and Joy (repeat) (Musing #981)
Reflections from the end of the winter holiday.
Feeling surprisingly thankful (Musing #983)
Or maybe it’s not that surprising.
Volunteering for NESFA (Musing #987)
Triggering assorted memories left in my head.
SamR’s week in review (Musing #992)
What does SamR do with his time?
The Pyramid (Musing #995)
Adventures on a strange machine.
Shoveling (Musing #998)
A joy of Iowa Winters.
SamR’s week in review (Musing #1006)
What did I do this past week?
Workshop prep (Musing #1015)
My first assignment for ENG-207.
My first manuscript for ENG-207 (Musing #1017)
Can you find a thesis?
Annotating myself (Musing #1018)
Or my manuscript, or something like that.
The end of an era (Musing #1019)
So much time in the sauna.
Acting April Foolish (Musing #1036)
Just call me Sam(son).
A personality quiz (Musing #1039)
It appears that I am like characters I don’t know.
My newer office (Musing #1042)
Small and mobile.
After the head shave (Musing #1043)
The new adventures of an Uncle Fester look-a-like during the pandemic.
Comfort food (Musing #1047)
Come for t’ food, stay for t’ puns.
Interview prep (Musing #1050)
Bits of autobiography.
Innumeracy (my latest manuscript for The Craft of Creative Nonfiction) (Musing #1058)
A pathography of sorts
Difficulty focusing (Musing #1065)
What was I writing about?
A comedy of errors, of sorts (Musing #1085)
Visiting my lab.
Email signatures (Musing #1086)
Fun with the things no one reads.
Another MIT press sale (Musing #1087)
Danger!
Recalling my past (Musing #1093)
Perhaps failing.
Back to the office (and lab) (Musing #1094)
It feels so good.
Answers to fourteen questions (Musing #1097)
More or less. It dependds on how you count.
Thankful (Musing #1111)
Another Thanksgiving
Resolutions for the New Year (Musing #1118)
Going with the flow, or with the crowd, or something like that.
The latest installment(s) of the Rebelsky Family Reading Group (Musing #1119)
Ever-changing family bonding.
Happy 90th Birthday Mom! (Musing #1127)
And related imaginings.
It’s time for a change (Musing #1128)
The title says it all.
Getting my gig at Grinnell (Musing #1129)
Ending up in the middle of ….
Two weeks! (Musing #1131)
Starting my new life.
Four weeks! (Musing #1134)
Plugging along.
Six weeks! (Musing #1140)
I’m alive. I’m great.
Three-fourths of a lifetime (Musing #1142)
More or less.
Words fail me (Musing #1143)
It’s hard to know what to say.
Eight weeks! (Musing #1147)
Am I settling into a rhythm? Perhaps.
Moving offices (Musing #1148)
It’s utterly terrifying.
The last day of classes (Spring Term Two, 2021) (Musing #1150)
A peek inside Sam’s tangled brain.
Fragmentary Beatles-related memories (Musing #1152)
Fragmentary, like most of my memories.
Discarding stuff (Musing #1157)
Or at least offering to discard stuff.
How are you, Sam? (Musing #1162)
Pretty good. Often great.
Thankful (Musing #1172)
Not just on Thanksgiving.
Alone again, naturally (Musing #1173)
Why does Sam think in song titles?
Disconnected (Musing #1178)
It’s just a job.
Loss (Musing #1187)
It’s hard to find the words.
Questions from Young Alumni Weekend (Musing #1193)
Also answers.
Thirty-five years! (Musing #1201)
Happy anniversary!
One of my sets of three sisters (Musing #1202)
What else might I have called this?
Road trip! (Musing #1224)
Exclamation point!
Forty-four years (Musing #1232)
It gets easier!
Half-remembered childhood tales of infinite recursion (Musing #1242)
It was a dark and stormy night …
Two weeks to go (Musing #1248)
Panic! Panic!
Happy birthday, Love! (Musing #1259)
My gift is my ’blog, and this one’s for you.
Giving myself more time and more space (Musing #1271)
A resolution of sorts.
Forty-five years (Musing #1282)
Three-fourths of my life. All of his.
Reflections on my teaching (Musing #1284)
What do I do?
Living with depression (Musing #1285)
Is it
suffering?
My professional responsibility to complain about software (Musing #1287)
Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts, including analysis of possible risks.
Tomorrow’s my birthday
(Musing #1292)
Today is June 16, 2024.
Sabbatical planning (Musing #1294)
Or perhaps just documentation of that planning.
A draft sabbatical application letter (Musing #1295)
Fairly rough.
Preparing to sit shiva (Musing #1303)
Embracing good practices.
Meeting Michelle (Musing #1305)
Not quite love at first sight.
Sitting in Limbo (Musing #1307)
Exploring the meanings.