The Tunnel

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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/


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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!

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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".