Heading Out To Europe

It's been awhile since my last post. Things have been extemely BUSY. I've had SO many problems with technology (both personal, at work and at school) in the last few months. It's been frustrating and draining. I've found myself feeling exhausted daily. My concentration is poor, my left eye has been twitching for weeks and I often have headaches.

Time to get away.

Sandy and I are flying out tomorrow for a LONG overdue trip. We'll be traveling around France and Spain for the next 2 weeks. We're going on a LIGHT travel trip. We're taking small travel rolly luggage that converts to backpacks. No need to check luggage. We're taking minimal clothing and will be doing laundry along the way.

We'll be in Paris for a few days, then travel to the Loire Valley. Visit Normandy and Mont St. Michel. After a week in France we'll fly to Madrid. We'll travel to Toledo and Sevilla. The heaviest luxury item I'm brining and refuse to leave home is ... anyone care to guess? My SLR digital camera. Other than that, no palm, no computer, no cell phones, and no USB thumb drives! Ahh! We will be brining our GPS (of course!)

This will be a chance for me to unplug and get off the grid. I really need to get away for a bit and recharge.

We'll be doing "some" recording and have already set it up so that we'll still be delivering 2 Monday podcacher shows (thanks to my bro-in-law Steve).

I'll be bringing my harmonica to brush up on my skills.

Although there'll be LOTS to do when I get back (there always is), for now it's time to say ciao!

In and out of whack ...

There are times when I absolutely HATE technology. I get so frustrated with it sometimes, that it's the best word to describe how I feel about it.

Many people who know me personally know that I'm a self confessed geek.

Monday night I went to my old church to rehearse with the old band to play for this Sunday. The audio equipment there is in bad shape. A loud, LOUD static hiss shows up intermittently. One of the amps is completely broken and no one has replaced it. Bummer. Sandy brought a camera to take pictures of our rehearsal, but the battery was dead. Bummer.

I teach an Educational Technology course at Cal State University, San Marcos. The other night when I was teaching:
Couldn't see a web page correctly.
Couldn't download files. Attempted over a half dozen strategies.
Could not hear audio on a movie file on my laptop when it has worked fine in the past. Later that night, after class, when I got home, I tried the same movie and it worked fine.
Word locked up, had to re-boot.
Video wouldn't show in class at the time I needed it. Later the same system showed video just fine.

Part of my frustration while teaching (and have technology fail) is the feeling that I'm trying to impress upon my students the importance and power that technology can have in education. Instead, I get the sense that some of my students are making a mental note ... "Reminder: don't use technology in a classroom, it fails, you can't get the lesson done and you look like an idiot."

My work computer is, to sum up, out of whack. My Palm is out of whack. Sometimes, but fortunately not too often, my Macs get out of whack. Weird things that I can't explain. Gremlins, someone with a voodoo doll of my electronic equipment sticking pins in it. Who knows.

Now I'm back from a short vaction. My computer has been re-imaged and other things are now out of whack. I just tried to use a simple USB flash drive to read a Word document. My computer (Windows XP) would not recognize the flash drive. I was told by my tech that I should re-boot the computer to see the drive. How absurd is that? To open a file that would take 20 seconds I have to do through a 5 minute reboot? I hate when my tech stuff is out of whack. Why can't they get in whack? What will it take to get them back in whack so I can get to work?

Just had a new car alarm installed and the proximity sensor is out of whack. I'll have to take it in again to have it adjusted / fixed.

Sniffles and Coughs

Sick at work today with a cold. I took yesterday off (EUHSD) work, but got myself bolstered enough to teach (CSUSM) last night. My students this semester are great. I enjoy working with them.

At work today, I'm also bolstered with "comfort" meds. I know that colds just need to work themselves out, but having luxuries like Dayquil is a nice, nice help.

The Tech Use Plan is pretty solid, stable and mostly complete. I'm waiting on some material from the director of staff development and the entire document will be ready to be shipped to the State for approval. Wahoo!

As of last night's teaching, I have a little break on certain obligations for a bit. As you've read in a previoius post, my week can get pretty full, pretty fast. CSUSM will be on spring break for a week and we are not hosting / leading our growth group for 2 weeks. This frees up quite a bit of time. Nice. I haven't had that in a while. Time for some reading, watching TV with Sandy, playing the guitar or didge, playing xbox (the new game at the moment is Burnout Revenge, a driving game). Things will come into full swing at full steam soon enough.

A few days ago I had the "itch" to shoot (photography). Has that ever happened to you? You just want to create? You want to produce and be creative, to stretch your imagination in search of inspiration? Well I had the bug. It was too cold and rainy to go drive somewhere to fill my photo-shooting needs, so I went out to our backyard and shot pics there. The whole "set" is here:

http://tinyurl.com/znaf2


.

Connections

One of the great things about the Internet is how small it makes the world. It is because of this virtual global community that we hear from our listeners from Denmark, South Africa, the UK, Australia and all over the US. It's because of these electronic connections that we are able to establish human connections with real people in real places.

I have been in contact with a geocacher in Washington (Glenn). He's also happens to be an educator (Principal and Director of Tech). He's a Christian and a geek. Sound familiar. I will have the pleasure of meeting him face to face this summer since he and I (and many other people) are organizing a geocaching extravanganza for a national education conference (NECC).

No suprise that he has a blog. http://peptechtalk.blogspot.com/ I've been reading his blog for awhile and today I mined a nugget. He pointed me to a website called ProtoPage. You've got to check this out. It's a "start" page. I think I'll be converting this to my default home page soon. Very cool. Give yourself some time to explore.

Disappointment at PS

Blogging from Palm Springs. I'm sitting here on a wireless network that is VERY slow. Painfully slow. Sometimes you hit a hyperlink, or "submit" button and just wait. And wait. Then you might get a screen that says that your request has "timed out".

Yesterday Sandy spent a good deal of time taking down coordinates for about a dozen "conference" specific caches. Last night after dinner we went back to our hotel room and worked for quite a while to set up for the next day. We took the coordinates, changed the names and input them into the computer. We then downloaded all the coordinates (about a dozen) into over 20 GPS units that Garmin had loaned us. Sandy prepared the handouts and some "signs" for the classroom. I prepared all the containers with disclaimers and logbooks. This morning we got up extra early (VERY difficult) to get a "to go" breakfast and then hide the cache containers all around the convention center. As we hid the last cache ... it began to rain. It then started to come down pretty hard. I went to the presentation room and began to plan for a modified version of the session: Plan B. I started the session, but there were less that a dozen people there. 8:00am on a rainy Saturday is a tough time to teach. I found out that they had originally printed my start time at 1:00pm so I think that some people may have not caught the change in start time. I was disappointed in my delivery. I question how effective I was. I was disappointed that it rained and we couldn't go out and find the caches that we had work SO hard to set up. I was disappointed that more people didn't show up and that my session was poorly attended.

Later, I was filmed for WestEd for a live webcast that will also be archived.

CUE 2006

Sandy and I are headed out this Weds night to Palm Springs for a few days for the CUE conference (www.cue.org). I always look forward to this conference each year, partially because of the new things I learn, but partially because of the people I meet. I get to meet some new contacts as well as catch up with old friends.

This year I'll be presenting a short session on geocaching in education. Sandy and I will be hiding some "conference specific" caches for teachers to find. My hope is to introduce teacher to the concept of geocaching and discuss the potential applications in education.

Sandy and I will be bringing our bikes this time in hopes of doing a some bike-seeing on our time off. We may get a chance to visit Moorten Gardens a VERY small, but pretty cool private cactus garden in PS.

Speaking of friends, I just got more emails and pictures from one of my good friends (Pancho) from his vacation. He an his wife just got back from a trip to the UK. There are times that the wonders of technology are just pretty darned cool. Panch' had a PocketPC and someway (I'm assuming wireless) of connecting to the Internet while out on the road and writing email. He would write me from various places including a train. One memorable point was when Panch' was riding on a train and watching the snowy landscape fly by. He described that he was listening to "Bohemian Rhaspsody" (they had just seen a Broadway play called "We Will Rock You"). On my side of the world I went over to the office iMac and started playing the same song. I wrote him back that after over 20 years of time from High School so long ago, there was still a connection. Cool.

I took Saldy out for his birthday dinner the other night. We went to a place called Rodo Viva in Temecula. It's a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. The unique feature of this place is that the waiters will bring you these "swords" (skewers) with barbecued (nicely seasoned) meat. There is also a small cylindrical object (wood) about the size of a salt shaker that is painted with red on one end, green on the other, and yellow in the middle. They tell you to turn the thing with green on to if you want more meat, red on top if you want to stop, and set it on it's side if you're done. Dinner is one price ($25) and all you can eat. The meat is SO good, but after awhile you feel like you're going to pop. Whooo! I got a chance to chat with Saldy for a bit (unfortunately not something I'm able to do often anymore) and found out what was going on with him.

Stress Management

Not sure if this actually occurred, but it made me feel good.

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. "If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. "In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short, enjoy it!” And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
* Never buy a car you can't push.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
* The second mouse gets the cheese.
* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
* We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
"A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour."

LED Throwies

Science and art combined again.

Link

Things are busy

Things are pretty busy right now. It feels like I haven't had any time off, that's probably because I haven't. For the last several weeks, it's been work, work, work. Sandy and I try to get up early to run / excercise. We know it's good for us, so we try to discipline ourselves to do it. It's tough though. Neither of us are morning people (we are very compatible here!) and at this time of year, it's COLD! I know we shouldn't complain, there are other parts of the world that are actually freezing, but being a California guy, having to run all bundled up feel unnatural.

After we get home, I shower and dress and head off to work. Right now I'm not enjoying my job. There is a major project looming over my head, and I'm finding it difficult to get motivated about it.

When I get home from work, there is usually more work to do. I'll usually have a brisk dinner with Sandy and then hit the work. Monday nights I prep to lead the Growth Group that actually happens on Weds night. Prepping can (and usually does) take several hours. I not only prep on facilitating the discussion of the sermon, but I also prep to lead worship. I'll choose 3 songs, and make sure that I've got them "wired". This usually take about an hour (for the worship prep part) and is usually the only hour I really get to "practice" on the guitar. One hour a week ... The whole prep take me to about 9:30 or 10:00, and it's time to go to sleep.

Tuesday: Workout, work, go to CSUSM to teach. This take me to about 9:00. Go home, eat dinner, sleep.

Weds: Workout, work, go home, eat, lead Growth Group. Our guests usually leave around 9:30 to 10:00. Sleep.

Thurs: Prep for CSUSM. This takes at least 4 hours. Last night, I spent about 5 hours prepping and still didn't get done. More to do tonight.

Fri: Get home from work, eat, work, sleep.

The last several weekends, have been: work all day, sleep, work church, record pocacher, sleep.

Then the week starts all over again ...

Ug

Why?

This is ultra retro, but I'm still not sure why you'd want to do this ...

Article

Pessimism

"(some) Men (people) are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult." - Samuel Johnson

I met someone the other day who embodied this quote. I was sitting with a group of people and almost everything that came out of this person's mouth was negative. I didn't hear a positve comment once, not once. This person was a teacher and had negative things to say about the school, the district, the government, admistration, fellow teachers, and students. I thought, whose left? Some other people made an attempt to suggest positive alternatives and strategies, but this teacher's negative perception perevented them from seeing anything but obstacles. This teacher didn't really want to DO anything about it, they must've felt some level of comfot wallowing in despair and sharing it with others. The sad thing was that this person was SO young, maybe just a few years in the classroom, not the typical burned out teacher who was ready to retire. I can only the imagine the infection this teacher might spread at a faculty lunchroom. Why is this person teaching?

The next Aibo?:

Sony's out of the robot business, but Ugobe is ready to take over. Pleo, its robotic Camarasaurus dinosaur, is loaded with 38 touch, light and sound sensors that let him find his way around and respond to his human masters (he can also understand speech). Like Aibo, Pleo learns as he goes. When Pleo's creator picked him up, he said of the poodle-size creature: "It's the first time he's been picked up, so he's scared. The next time he'll be used to it."

And like a real baby, Pleo starts life stupid and cranky. He takes a long time figuring out how to move around, and if you don't play with him, he sulks and looks depressed. I'm not sure I have the time and patience to raise my own Pleo. But maybe if a friend gets one, I can be his uncle. Pleo will be cheap, selling for about $200 when he comes out for Christmas. And while Sony prosecuted fans who tried to hack Aibo, Ugobe invites customers to mod its bot.

The iPod Nano drops to 1 gig

An article at Engadget announced that Apple has quietly created a smaller, less expensive version of the popular MP3 player.

<><

The End Of An Era

Jan 27 2006 STOP The end of an era STOP few notice STOP

Article

On May, 24, 1844 the first telegram ever was sent by Samuel L. Morse. Sent from Washington to Baltimore, the message read, "what hath God wrought."

Over the next few decades, telegraphs invented by Morse and his assistant, Alfred Vail, where deployed around the nation and around the world. The first Transatlantic Telegraph cable was succesfully completed on July 27, 1866.

In 1892, Thomas Edison was awarded a patent for the first two-way telegraph.

Fast forward through the next century. Telegrams were the primary means of non-verbal, instant communications across distances. Newspapers were named "telegram" and "telegraph." Foreign correspondents described the ravages of battle. Students off at college wired their parents with news of their safe arrival. Invitations were delivered, deals were struck, people fell in and out of love. Geographically distant cousins sent their best wishes to wedding parties they could not attend.

Telegrams were used to announce the first flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903 and the start of World War I. During World War II, the sight of a Western Union courier was dreaded because the War Department, the precursor to the Department of Defense, used the company to notify families of the death of their loved ones serving in the military.

Telegrams were always faster than letters.



Then, long-distance phone calls got cheaper. In what has to be the peak of irony, these calls became less expensive because of the breakup of a company with an initial that stood for "telegraph." I am talking about AT&T, which in an incarnation that stood firm for most of the 20th century, had the formal corporate name of American Telephone & Telegraph.

On January 27 2006, the first Internet fell silent forever. What was, at one time, considered the most cutting edge technology imagineable, has now been rendered obsolete. Imagine where we will be 62 years from now ...

RIP STOP

<><

The 10th Planet???

News: There is an object out there that is larger than Pluto and is further out. It orbits the sun. (but so does a lot of other space "debris") Is it the 10th planet? Is Pluto a planet?

Read the Article

The Tunnel

Hey, San Diego made international news!

Read Story

Things are rolling ...

How cool is it to not be sick? Very cool. Being sick sucks. I know that I don't have to tell you that, you've all been there. I'm not sure why it was such an annoyance this time. Maybe it's because I haven't been sick in a long, long time. Maybe it's because my annoyance began right at the begnning of my 3 day weekend. Maybe it's because things are rolling now and it's very inconvenient to get sick. The bummer now is that Sandy is sick. She doesn't have the same, flu, temperature, fever thing that I had, but instead has a nast cough and is sneezy. Ug. I'm still hanging on to a cough that won't go away and is a minor annoyance. In the big scheme of things, it's an annoyance. I am a bit uncomfortable, but I can still work and still do things. I can only imagine (and wouldn't want to) the health situations that certain people must deal daily that are far more than an annoyance. I think about all the people with truly debilitating and sometimes terminal conditions and feel blessed that all I have to deal with is a cough.

Growth Group has started up again (actually tomorrow night will be the 3rd week already). This should be a good quarter. We had 2 more couples join, so that brings our numbers up to a total of 12 people. We've already planned our service project as well as the social. The social will be (what else?) a trip to go geocaching after church one day. That should be fun.

Tonight will be the 2nd week for my CSUSM class. I'm looking forward to this semester. I'm teaching in a PC lab this time (last semester I was in the Mac lab) and it's large and oddly shaped for teaching. I have several enthusiastic students and I'm looking forward to learning from them and teaching them this semester. I "think" I have a total of 22 students at the time of this writing. Disappointingly, many students did not turn in their assignments on time (last night) and will be marked late for their first assignments. I hope this is not a continuing trend for the semester. Sometimes the beginning of the semester can start off bumpy as students are getting used to the tools ...

Sick At Home

Ug. I hate being sick. Friday morning I woke up with a cough. My secretary and one of the techs at work has had a cough for the last several weeks. Also my boss just got back from taking several days off because she was sick. The whole time, for the last several weeks I was doing really well. I wasn't sick at all. I don't get sick that often anymore. That's one of the side benefits of having been in the classroom for 12 years; a bullet-proof, cast-iron immune system ... almost. I remember my first few years of teaching, snffles almost all the time. Kids coming in bringing me the most exotic strains of bacteria and viruses. The really unusual one were delivered right after Christmas and Spring break or Summer when the student had the opportunity to travel and pick up stuff we don't have at home. I've been doing pretty well, but the last few days has not been status quo. I've been running and temp and don't feel like doing anything. I don't want to get on the comptuer (yet here I am), I don't want to play xbox, I don't want to watch DVDs. As I said, Ug.

We cancelled the game night we were going to host here at our house. I know that Sandy was really looking forward to it. So was I. I was also looking forward to this weekend off (3 days) to rest, recupe and prep for a busy year. It's a good thing I have 3 days.

ED 422 starts on Tues night. I think I'll be recording the audio from that first night because there is so much that we go over. I'm looking forward to another great semester with 422.

January 6th

Did you know that January 6th is when (some) Catholics and Christians traditionally observe the arrival of the Three Wise Men (Three Kings)? It is also the 12th day of Christmas (as in the infamous 12 days of Christmas)! The Feast of the Epiphany. When I was growing up, our family would treat this as the last day of Christmas. We'd keep decorations (the aluminum Christmas tree, the electric candles, and the nativity scene) up until then.

Tiny URL

In case I haven't posted on this site:

Have you ever seen an internet URL addres that was horribly long? Like this:

http://www.happynews.com/news/142006/missouri-researchers-find-largest-prime-number.htm

Nasty.

The problem with really long URL addresses is that they sometimes get "chopped off" or separated, especially when you paste them into an email. Then the person you send it to only gets part of the URL and they wonder why they can't get to your page.

By going to tinyurl and pasting in that huge URL above, the site generated this short URL instead:

http://tinyurl.com/cksgn

Go to both URLs and they should lead to the same place.

http://tinyurl.com/


<><

PodCacher Stats

Things change, they always do, but for now, today, Jan 4th, 2006, PodCacher.Com is ranked 25th out of 11,858 podcasts!

Woohoo!

Woohoo indeed ...


Edit Jan 5th: Our ranked has increased to 23rd!

<><

After The Christmas Holidays

I don't know about you, but I had a great Christmas season!

Life can get pretty busy sometimes y'know? I'm mean busy like "get up in the morning spend all day at work, get home shovel down some food, work into the night, then go to bed late tired so you can get up the next day" busy. That kind of busy.

This Christmas time was great. Not only do we get a chance to celebrate (the reason for the season) the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it also gives many of us a chance to "breath" and some time doing things that are not urgent, but very very important.

I was able to spend time with family. I feel really blessed that I can do that. We spent the first part of the day picking up my mom and then hanging out with the France clan. It was a great get-together. We ate, had some time to chat and play games (like croquet in the dark).

This season I had time to hang out with Sandy, skate, geocaching, watch several episodes of Battlestar Galactica on DVD (it's not as geeky as you might think), play some xbox, Myst, read Narnia, and just general "unwind".

Today I'm back at the grindstone, but with a renewed sense of refreshment and purpose. I'm ready once again to take on some "challenges".