APPROVED!

My human subjects protocol was approved by the IRB at my university. This basically means that the powers that be believe that I will not be torturing or otherwise inflicting any unnecessary harm upon my respondents. Which I'm not.

So on with the biggest challenge of my dissertation: Find speakers of Endangered Language Z! A typical cold call goes like this (translated from language B, which I am much more fluent in than Language Z):

Me: Hi, are you Y?
Y: Yes
Me: I'm (insert my name here). I got your name from (insert random contact here, anything from actual human being to web site) I'm doing research on Endangered Language Z and wondered if you knew anyone who spoke it.
Y: Yes, there are people who speak it.
Me: Cool! Wanna meet with a total stranger and discuss this?
Y: (dead silence)
Me: Okay, I didn't really say that. Would you be interested in meeting and discussing this further?
Y: Sure
Me: Where do you live?
Y: (obscure town in Orange County)
Me: Oh, I don't know (obscure town in Orange County). Is there a Starbucks there?
Y: (with some condescension) There are Starbucks everywhere (moron).
Me: (typing away on Starbucks website) oh, there's one at such and such avenue. When's a good time for you?
Y: tomorrow
Me: (crap, I have a doctor's appointment for my son that I've been waiting months for)--No problem! See you there at one. (it should take me an hour to get there which means I really hope we're done with the doctor's appointment, crap crap crap)
Y: (who the hell are you?) okay, see you then.

Whether or not Contact Y will be able to lead me to speakers of Endangered Language Z remains to be seen, but this is how my life is going to go for the next month.

Oh and Contact G is going to Hawaii for two months.

And Contact F is out of the country until the end of January.

Looks like I'm going to be doing a lot more cold calls. And reading.