2-2-04
Skied at Paradise yesterday with Sue, Lisa and our old buddy Mark L. It was great getting back in touch with our old partner in crime. He has a rare sense of humor, as you can tell from this old photo. Sue loves to feed the "cute" little camp robber birds. Mark and I, on the other hand, consider them a nuisance.
       He has become a very good skier since we've seen him last. He has the new plastic telemark boots and randonee skis. His turning skill was stunning to watch. He insisted that it was all in the equipment, but I suspect a large part of it was natural grace and confidence.
        Sue and I ski on equipment that was state of the art in 1980. The old saying: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has served our budget well, but seeing Mark cruise on his new gear may force me to change my mind about my antique skis. There might be some extra room in the budget this winter and Sue has needed new, warmer boots for 10 years.

1-31-04
Stayed late at school last night (Friday) and finished my grading for the week by eight thirty. This is the first time I've not had to carry grading home since the quarter started 4 weeks ago. I figured out what was causing the heavy work load. I keep grades in three places:

1. in an Excel document that keeps a running total as I enter the grades each week
2. A handwritten paper grading form in my three ring binder
3. An online php application written by our full time web instructor. This amazing demonstration of the power of server side programming allows instructors to enter grades over the internet, and also allows students to view their grades online. It's a full featured application that allows us to upload files for the students to download, list our upcoming assignments for the various classes, add or delete assignments and keeps a running total of each students grade.

       My mistake was in trying to add too much information to the comment section of both the Excel and the online php application. When I used to do them on paper, I would break down the grade into 4 sections: on time-20 points; tools-25; complexity-25; creativitiy-30; for a total possible score of 100 points per weekly assignment.
       That was great for the students, and it took the wind out of their sails when they decided to contest the grades. For example, if they were a day late handing in the assignment, but were very creative, they could plainly see that I gave them 30 for creativity, but only 10 points for being "on time".
       That was just fine when I only had 30 students, but when I tried to add all that information to the online application, and, what the heck, might as well put it into a "insert comment" box in the Excel grade box....well, the bright idea turned into a grinding nightmare. Now that I have 60 assignments a week to grade, and teach 5 classes, (not to mention the freelance work) there simply isn't enough time to put that much detail into each grade.
       I know who the negotiators are now, and I give them the extra info, but the rest of the students, who, by and large, trust my judgment, get the score with a quick comment. If someone really excels, as many do, I enter the comments in the online grading application. If the server goes down, those comments are lost, but I have the Excel file for each class backed up in several places, not to mention the paper copy.
       I heard from my old "ex" climbing buddy Dave. Sounds like he's has some weekends free finally so we may be able to visit Smith Rocks in the near future. I've been calling people trying to find someone, anyone, who wants to climb, but there is very little interest out there. Dave isn't the perfect climbing partner...if there is such a thing. God knows I have my issues. Anybody who wants to climb cliffs has to be a little wacky. Still, it's the sport I love, and it gets me away from the computer.
     I heard from our old friend Mark L again and decided to spend a few hours scanning some of our old slides. He lost his huge slide collection in a house fire, so I am scanning some of the slides I have of him climbing back in the eighties and burning them onto a cd. While I am at it, I figured I should capture some of our old images too.
        I have some scanning software called Vue Scan, from Hamrick Software. It's pretty cool and well worth the $80. It allows me to do batch scanning on my Epson Perfection 2450. Once I figured out how to set it up, I simply load the slides, press scan and walk away.
      It's a stand alone scanning application, which means you don't have to have Photoshop open to use it. This is very cool, because slide scans are slow, and I am able to edit the tiff files in Photoshop while Vue Scan runs the scanner in the background.

1-25-04
Well I've gone and done it. I've moved my office out of the living room. Now the kids can veg out in front of the TV to their hearts content without worrying about grouchy old dad muttering over his laptop. We have an old traveling chest from the last century sitting on the floor in our bedroom. I had this great idea to slap a sheet of particle board on top, pull up a chair and Walla! an instant office. I've even got a lamp...all the comforts of home.
       I should have done this a long time ago. Now I only have to hear the noise of a busy family (dare I call it chaos?) if I choose to. It was nice being constantly in touch with the heartbeat of the family, but the dad thing tended to interfere with my concentration. Now maybe I can get the homework done faster. Then, when I leave the "office" I can forget about the job.
       

1-24-04
The students in my Illustrator class are creating some very pretty work. This quarter, for the first time I have a contingent of students from the Graphic Design program, in addition to our normal group of students. These Graphic Design people have a brand new classroom full of gorgeous, brand new dual processor Macintoshes.
       Our building has always been an all PC building, but this quarter the Macs moved in and their students are taking advantage of some of our offerings, one of which is my Illustrator class. It's fun to have them in the class, because they are a little older than our usual group, and with the years comes a welcome maturity and seriousness.
       All of my students seem to be liking the program, but about 10 are creating stunning work after only 2 weeks. I try to encourage them to be creative. They ask me if they can use different colors than what the book says to use. The book gives them the precise percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black, but I tell them to pick anything that looks pretty.
       I also add a lot to what the book relates. The people at Adobe know how to press the buttons, but the lessons are extraordinarily dry and I have to constantly reassure my students that it is OK to color outside the lines. I tell them that I will give them a C if they just follow directions. I want them to make it better than the book. In other words, using what they learned in the book and my lecture, take off and run with it.
       It seems to be working. As I graded the assignments, I saw project after project that was simply stunning in it's complexity, color choices and design. Illustrator really is a very fun program to work with. Unlike Photoshop where one has to mess around with selections and hand painting layer masks, Illustrator is straight up vector shapes. They never get fuzzy, or appear pixelated when you zoom in to do detail work. It's always sharp, and infinitely precise.

1-19-04
My eyes flicked open in the darkness and I looked at the faintly glowing bedside clock: 2 a.m. As my eyes focused on the numbers my mind, of it's own volition, began putting together the long, long list of tasks I have due today. Three freelance clients who want this, that or the other thing done immediately, 75 students who need their homework graded, a lesson plan to prepare for a class I've never taught before and a stack of bills in my in box for which I have no money.
       There will be money, it's just that we part-timers don't get paid for the 3 week xmas break, and this works out to skipping a two week pay period.
       It's the new laptop that put me so far behind. Nothing wrong with the computer; Toshiba, at least with this unit is living up to it's great reputation. I've never seen a computer boot up in 13 seconds before. The problems have been loading all the software. Much of my software is upgrades, which means that I have to load the old version first, then reload the new version.
        My CD storage organization could be better, and I've spent too much time running around looking for install discs. The worst problem so far was installing the drivers that allow me to dial up through my cell phone.
        Why do I use a cell phone to dial up? Two teenagers make for a busy phone line. Can't afford broadband, so when the phone queen is chatting to her friends: "Dad! I mean, like, this is important! Do you Have to get online right now?"...I get online with the cell phone. It's faster than the land line anyway, thanks to a compression utility called Venturi. It compresses the jpegs down to lowest quality but is other wise normal, just faster.
      I spent about 4 hours on and off the phone with a tech from Verizon. He was very helpful and patient, but couldn't fix the problem. We got it online and surfing, but the Venturi compressor wouldn't work. Finally I gave up on assistance and began pressing buttons based on gut instinct.
       It's working now, not sure why. I made some notes on the process and sent them off to the tech, perhaps it well help the next time someone has this problem.
       I should get to work right now, but it seems sick to work at 3 in the morning. I'd rather write and maybe clear out some of the words rattling around in my head. My first full week of teaching went better than I'd expected. One of my students (who had web design last quarter as well) came up to me and commented that he learned more in 3 hours from me than he learned all last quarter.
      I guess that sounds like bragging...but really, he did say that, and more. Part of my lecture was showing the students how to create a web page from scratch in Notepad with 12 words. As I walked around checking to see if they were all getting it, I noticed one student had written the following words on her web page: "I wish Mark had taught the web stuff last quarter".
       I guess that is why I've stayed with teaching as long as I have, it's a rewarding field. Contrary to printing, where I was usually in trouble for being too slow, I seem to be thriving as a teacher. My bosses like me, the students like me (most of them anyway) and I enjoy sharing my love for a fun profession.
       I still have no plans to do it for a living, but it's paying the bills right now and sometimes that's as good as it gets.
       My old friend Mark L dropped by today. I've not seen him in a good ten years. I'm not sure when or why we drifted apart. It's silly since he only lives 10 minutes down the road. Perhaps it was their never having kids and the sailboat racing hobby. He told me an exciting tale about crewing on a boat that raced around Vancouver Island. It took them 2 weeks, God, I'd love to do that!
        As I showed him around the house he kept seeing things he recognized. We were climbing, skiing and beer drinking buddies for about a decade. He was in the Mountaineers when I met Sue in 1977 and knew her for several years before that in junior college.
       As we stood by the front door examining each others gray hair, and comparing mid life paunches, I saw his picture appear on the computer's screen saver. "Look Mark, there you are with Sue! Jeez, look how young you both look!". He was either in, or actually took many of my oldest and best pictures. We both carried cameras back then on our adventures, and I have reels and reels of slides. He lost all his slides in a big fire at his cabinet shop which also burned up his climbing equipment.
       We went out in the garage to look at Clint's kayak and I realized that Mark had built the table the kayak was sitting on. Until he was standing there, I'd totally forgotten about that. Over in the corner was the old car camping food box, which Mark immediately recognized by the neon yellow paint he applied when he built it back in 1979. I think I sewed him a chalk bag...or maybe it was a bivy sack...anyway, I know we traded him something to build a durable wooden box.
       This is not your ordinary wooden box. This thing is made out of 8 ply, cabinet grade hardwood. I think it would stop a bullet. The lid alone weighs ten pounds. When the lid was tied down with bungi cord, and the box was strapped to the top of the Gremlin, I knew our food was safe on the 24 hour road trips to California.
       Well, it's 4 a.m., maybe I can get back to sleep. I'm not sure why writing in a journal clears out my mind, but I won't argue with success.
       
       

1-12-04
Since I've written last it has snowed 12 inches and melted off. Sue and I skied around the neighborhood with our skinny skis. School opened after two snow days and I taught my first classes of the new quarter. I will be a busy camper this quarter, working 4 tens.
       I will have to put my freelance projects on hold for a while until I get up to speed with my new classes. I'm teaching a new one this quarter, and while it is a familiar subject, I haven't had time to put together as many lesson plans as I would like. Still, it looks like a fun quarter. Full classrooms and lots of bright minds.
      Clint and I have been making great progress on his kayak. We have the outside of the hull done, and the inside of the deck. The two halves sit out in the garage, waiting for us to find another 3 hour block of time to paint on more of the evil smelling epoxy and glass. It's been fun getting to know Clint better.
      We share the same house of course, but he hasn't had any serious interests that coincide with mine for quiet a while. I'd always hoped he'd take an interest in climbing, but he prefers his own high risk sport: bmx.
        I have a bad habit of burying my nose in my computer as the family life swirls around me. Our two teenagers take turns shouting abuse at their mother or each other, and dad simply turns up the volume on his insulated headphones and hits control alt delete again. Now that I've taken over from Sue as his boat building assistant, we labor for hours out in the crowded garage, getting tipsy and stupid on epoxy fumes as the boat rises like a sphinx from the table.
        Speaking of the three fingered salute, my laptop just died. Won't even boot up to a lit screen. It sits there and hums, with a black screen...not even a blue screen of death, just a black plastic box with a couple green lights indicating it's on.
        It began this new trick yesterday morning. I've seen it coming for some time now: the unexplained crashes and random lock ups, not to mention the 3 year guarantee expiring last summer. I was considering reformatting to get another 6 months out of the old beater. Instead, I did some fast research on cnet, took a quick trip to town, couldn't find anything, drove home and ordered a Toshiba online. I almost had that visa card paid off...Damn!
        Still, now I will have a reliable laptop for the first time in a year...I hope. Toshiba has the best reputation on the net, if the various bulletin boards can be believed.  A couple of my friends have them as well, and are happy so I have my fingers crossed.  

1-6-04
The skin on my back was crawling. Something was back there in the darkness but it was too dangerous to turn around and look. I tried to look behind a couple times, but staying upright required all my concentration forward. You get a weird sort of tunnel vision pedaling with a headlamp. I was coasting down a narrow one lane dirt road, deeply rutted and covered in compact snow and ice. Temperature was 17 degrees Fahrenheit and it was 10:30 at night.
      Why was I there? Why wasn't I sitting on my nice soft couch by the warm wood burning stove? Well, I felt like getting some exercise. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
        I coasted to a stop at the next dip, put my feet on the ground, slipped and almost fell onto the ice, then turned around. It wasn't a bear or a cougar...it was a 4 wheeler with two drunks carrying bottles of beer. I should have known. Pole line (or Powerline) road is strewn with garbage from these idiots.
       I waved and they motored past, sitting fat and happy, raising their bottles in a moonlight toast.You gotta love these hicks. The sound of the motor died as they bounced over the next rise and it got very quiet. In the cold blue light of the moon everything was dead still and covered in ice or snow. I could see for a miles in either direction as the arrow straight dirt track followed the power lines across the peninsula.
       Above the sky was full of brilliant twinkling stars. There was a wide halo around the moon...I wondered if it was the Northern lights? Sure, it was probably a little dangerous being out here miles from the house in the dark, in the snow, alone...except for the drunks up ahead...but I was having fun. What the hell.

       It's the second day after my late night adventure and would have been my first day back teaching of winter quarter but another winter storm has rolled in. The city has shut down. The new storm has only dumped 3 inches, but that was on top of black ice and frozen slush from the previous snowfall and most people aren't prepared for it.
      I could chain up and drive to work, albeit slowly, but the college is closed. Working for the government has it's advantages: a print shop would still be open and we'd be racing each other to see who could get in first. Sue and Lisa are cross country skiing up the driveway, heading toward the pole line road. Wonder if the four wheelers will offer them a beer. I'd better suit up and join them.
       After that Clint and I will head out to the garage to build the top of his kayak. We have the outer hull fiberglassed now...I think. We've never fiberglassed before and there is a steep learning curve. It's a touchy business and nothing is ever 100%. Jesus! Sue just zoomed by down the driveway...there goes Lisa, looks like the downhill event at the Olympics out there.

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