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


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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."