phone moves

I went back to work today and found that my phone had been moved to my future office. I wasn't sure where to work, but when I checked the future office, I saw that all I had there was the phone. No chair. No desk. I figure in about a month or two I'll be able to move into the new location...

Palms for better test scores - dubious way to spend money

A "low-performing" school district in St. Louis has thrown their money at the Palm T/X in an effort to raise test scores. I found this one a little hard to believe. At $400 each, the T/X does cost less than a computer, but is there really any evidence that using one of these can improve test scores? Is there any software to help students with the tasks which are being tested? Is that even a good strategy to begin with?

A Jennings administrator acknowledged that the recent purchase was a gamble.

"We're rolling the dice on this," said Steven A. Schmitz, 53, the district's technology director. "It's unknown whether they'll raise test scores. But we're assuming."

Students in grades three through 12 are scheduled to begin using Palms in summer school.

The graphing calculator on the Palm is cited as the most useful feature for the students, but there's no research which supports a connection between this and test scores. The bigger issue is that it certainly is going to take years for teachers to adopt and integrate these devices into their teaching, and by that time, the test score issue will probably be a moot point. I don't think anyone is going to be happy waiting 3-5 years to see better test scores. This was a bad move. The million dollars would have been better spent on additional teachers, tutors, better instructional materials for math and reading or many other things which would have produced results in a shorter time frame than a hand held computer which has little or no software designed for students. Certainly there are successful projects like the HI-CE effort at the University of Michigan, but these use a totally different model of learning than one which would emphasize improving test scores.

BitTorrent goes the way of Napster

Napster never had much success becoming a paid service. I think it's hard to convince people who got things for free that they should start paying for the same things. Bittorrent is trying the same approach with their new service starting today. I believe their files use Windows Media DRM to allow for "renting" and of course that excludes non-Windows users. I think that's the same thing Wal-Mart is trying to do, with little success. I don't think this is going to be successful.

Another go with GoGoer

We bought some Runescape gold from GoGoer a few months ago. They advertise on their site that you'll get your loot in 15 minutes to 24 hours after you pay. In our case, it took 10 days and several email message and eventually some threats from me to write a bad review about their service on one of my blogs. After that we did get the money. I'm hoping there won't be any problems this time, but we'll see.

The blogging class that wasn't

Today would have been the meeting date for the blogging class I was going to teach. Only one person signed up, so the class was canceled, but we have another one scheduled in a couple of months. I will get started preparing for that class soon. There are already some people signed up for that one, so chances are better that it will be held. The one scheduled for today was supposed to meet at a satellite campus which may have had something to do with the low enrollment. The next one is at the main campus and is scheduled for the evening during the week.

new Mac models

It has been some time since Apple updated their computer line. With so much focus on the iPod and iPhone, it's easy to forget that Apple, Inc. is still primarily a computer company. I'm waiting on an update to the Mac Mini. Adding a Core 2 Duo would be enough for me to buy one and hook it up to my tv. I might need to get the Wireless N router also to go with it. says there may be a black iMac. That might be nice http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifalthough I am content with white. If it's like the Macbook and you have to pay more for black, I'll pass on that. Nice marketing gimmick, however. When something only comes in white and then you offer black and charge a little more for it, I think you've pulled a fast one on people.

New Blogger bug remains

There is a bug in the new version of Blogger that is still there, a couple of months after I first saw it and reported it. I run into it every day at least once, but there is no pattern to it. I select some text and go to create a link using the link button. Instead of a link, I get a reference to the gif file which makes up the link icon and the link code isn't inserted. Plus, it erases part of the text that was selected, so I can't undo it. Normally when I re-do it, everything is fine.

iPhone ads during Oscars

I don't care for awards shows, particularly the speeches, so I don't watch them. The Oscars may not be as bad as some of them, but since I rarely get to watch a current movie in a theater, I'm usually not familiar with the movies and actors who are up for the awards. This year might be different though since Apple is going to advertise the iPhone during the Oscars. I'm not going to buy an iPhone and I could probably wait and watch the iPhone commercial on Apple's website, but it might be fun to see it this weekend.

Chinese Acrobats

We have a busy weekend ahead. Usually we sit at home and play Runescape all day, but this weekend we'll be going to two shows at the Pechanga Casino. Tonight is the Incredible Shanghai Acrobats and then Sunday is David Copperfield. It should be fun, although no photos are allowed in the auditorium.

another sick day

I am not sure if I've ever taken a sick day before yesterday. Although I've been working for a long time, prior to October, I only had a job which provided sick leave for 3 and a half years. Most of the time I either worked as a contractor or in academic jobs which didn't offer sick pay. Now I've taken two sick days in a row. Not that I'm getting used to it, but I may need one more before I get back to work. I feel good enough to do my work but not good enough to drive there and sit around all day in the same room.

Lakers trade

I don't think the Lakers are going to get Jason Kidd. I bet he doesn't get traded at all. The Nets want too much from the Lakers and Kidd has a huge contract. I don't see the Lakers giving up Andrew Bynum for a guy who may have 3 or 4 more good years left, if that. Bynum is too young to trade away. If they can get Kidd for other players, it would be a great deal, but that doesn't seem likely. Unless the Nets want to cut their payroll and start over with Richard Jefferson and let Jason Kidd and Vince Carter go, I'm not sure why they would make the deal.

posterino 1.0

I have been using the 1.0 version of Posterino to create a poster from the many photos I took about ten days ago at Astrocamp. It certainly has improved since 0.8 and there are no huge bugs, but there do seem to still be a few quirks I haven't figured out. Adding text seems to be incomplete as I can't add a background with it. When I leave a section of the poster blank to add the text in Photoshop, I end up with images in that area anyway. All in all, it does save a huge amount of time, but I've got to re-do mine because the output is too dark and I think that means I'll need to start over.

Home sick

I don't think I've missed a day of work because of illness in 10 years. That's probably because until this year I didn't have a job that had any sick days available. Yesterday there were two guys who work in the same office as me who were out for the week with some kind of throat related illness. They worked in the office over the weekend. Sure enough, I started feeling something funny in my throat last night and it was worse this morning, so I stayed home and used my sick leave. I hope it doesn't get worse because even though I've got the sick days available, I don't like missing work.

Nothing

operator error

Outlet shopping

Most of the time when you go to one of these shopping outlets, you don't get much of a deal. They produce lower cost stuff for their "outlet" stores, so you may pay less but you don't get the same stuff they sell in the regular stores. That's not always the case, but it seems that the real bargains are hard to find. Over the weekend I bought a reasonably nice pair of pants at the Haggar outlet for $12. That's a good deal, to me anyway. We'll see how these pants hold up, but they look pretty good. In fact, I'm wearing them today.

Hacked

Someone hacked one of my sites. They changed the homepage and that seems to be it, but it was liked that for 3 days before I noticed. I have been hacked once before. That one was a case of someone creating a folder and leaving links to some spam site in Russia. I didn't notice that for months. This one worries me more because I'm not sure how the person gained access. The previous time was due to a problem with the ftp settings that my provider had set up. This one might be a stolen password or maybe not.

Norv Turner coaching the Chargers

Getting rid of Marty Schottenheimer is looking more and more like a bad idea. The Chargers waited so long to do it that there were not too many experienced coaches left. So they hired Norv Turner, who does not have a good track record as a head coach, with an overall losing record. How is he going to do a better job? I don't see that happening. The guy who should have left was AJ Smith, the GM. At least there would have been some continuity with the coaching. I don't see the Chargers improving next year.

More Astrocamp photos

When it comes to school events, I figure that even though I might not rate a photo too highly, it still might be interesting to someone who knows the people in the picture. So I'm less choosy about uploading photos to albums which will be viewed by parents and friends and others. I use that approach with my school and sports photos. As long as it doesn't make someone look bad and it isn't flawed photographically, I'll upload it. I've just added Saturday photos from last weekend's Astrocamp outing. The good thing is that I have 200+ GB of space available thanks to DreamHost.

College student living in his truck

There was a period of about 2 months years ago when I had no place to live except the back of my old station wagon. I kept most of my stuff in two storage units, which I visited almost every day. I kept a small amount of things in my car and used the gym for showers in the morning. Eventually I found a place to live and ended my days of living in the car. The LA Times has a story in today's edition about a guy who has been living in his truck for more than a year. Andy Bussel has been doing it for 19 months. He's a full time student with a job at the local Apple store. To me, it would have gotten old and limited your options a little too much after that long. I guess the money savings part of it is nice, but the hassle of having to move around and knowing where the police won't bother you every night is too much work. I never had a problem myself other than being told by the police I couldn't park in certain places a couple of times.

All Star Game not in HD?

Maybe I've got the wrong channel on, but in my house, the NBA All Star game is showing in standard definition. It looks terrible. How can it not be in HD? I know they show some games, even on TNT, in HD. This looks bad and I have no idea why it's not in HD, and now that I have an HDTV, I'm a real HD snob when it comes to sports.

NBA All Star game entertainment

They really do it in style in Las Vegas. The pre-game entertainment was interesting while the halftime show was very good. I guess I thought Wayne Newton was a little older than he is (64). He can still put on a show, although he looks a little too good for a guy that old. The wonders of modern medicine, I guess. The Danny Ganz national anthem was pretty well done -- he's a good singer -- but it looked like they just picked 4 other guys out of the crowd who were wearing black to back him up. The outfits didn't match and one guy wasn't wearing black pants.

At halftime, everybody seemed good to me, but seeing Christina Aguilera's performance made me think of the contrast between what she's doing this week and what her contemporary, Britney Spears, is doing. Maybe she could give Britney some career advice.

Not really blogging

SFGate says that SF mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary is in hot water for his blogging. You'd think a newspaper which actually has bloggers would understand what one is. Peter Ragone left comments about news stories about the mayor on blogs using other people's names. I don't think that makes him a blogger. Maybe a blog reader, maybe an anonymous commenter, but not a blogger. He'd need a blog to be a blogger. Maybe they just don't have the language to describe what he did:

Although the timing worked momentarily for Ragone, the incident left him with a mark on his record that no press secretary would want: For whatever reason, when first questioned by reporters about his blogging, he was less than truthful.

He was dishonest, but he wasn't blogging.

Green Options is online

I don't know whether Al Gore and his movie deserve credit or if it's just a mass movement at this point, but there does seem to be a much greater recognition recently of the importance of the impact people have on the earth. Certainly this is very true in the United States, where people consume more of everything than in other parts of the world, although I believe China has just passed the US in oil consumption. Green Options is a website that has come along at the right time.Green Options: Greening the Good Life is a kind of portal for everything green -- news and stories about energy use, hybrid and electric cars, the high tech industry, wind power, the environment and more. There are a number of contributors to the site, so it's very up to date in terms of content.

As far as the organization of the site goes, it's not overly complex. There is a blog, discussion forums, the Green Life Guide, the Green Report and the Home page. Each section has a clean design and is reasonably easy to use and nicely illustrated with images and graphics. to The blog is collaborative, with short, readable summaries of longer pieces which are posted 3 - 7 times per day so far (6-10 posts per day is the goal, but 3-7 seems more in line with what's actually happening). The full article is available through the headline link, and has comments by readers visible. This article about the Chicago Auto Show is a good example of what you can find on the blog.

The site's discussion forums have a wide range of topics like solar energy, home and garden, and recycling. Some appear to be pretty new with very little activity while others have a little more activity. I'm sure as the site gains in popularity, this area will pick up and become more widely used.

The Green Life Guide is designed to help you apply some of the ideas on the site to lessen your impact on the environment. Each section is set up as a wiki, so it can be edited. The solar panel section has lots of information, although I'm not sure I could use it to put solar panels on my home.

The Green Report is a news headline page, with items that should be relevant to the purpose of the site. This may be done through an RSS feed or other automated system, which might explain why there's an article about the Duke men's basketball team ending their five game losing streak. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with green issues, but maybe one of the staff members is a Duke fan.

Overall, I think the Green Options site is nicely designed and has a good balance of content. I will definitely bookmark the site and revisit it weekly. I'll also add the blog to my RSS reader, but where's the subscribe button? That should be prominently displayed near the top of that screen and it's nowhere to be found. There is an RSS feed for the site, but it's not easy to find.

One other nice feature of the site is that it uses a Creative Commons license for the content, so you can share and remix the materials with attribution. That's a great thing for bloggers who might want to link to or excerpt from the site.

Astrocamp photos online

I finally got some of the AstroCamp photos online. I've divided them up by days for now - Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Since most of the photos are from the group of students I was with, they may not appeal to everyone. I did try to get pictures of everyone, so there are still quite a few from other groups. They can be found here and I will be adding more today.

Link spammers

I got a couple of emails and comments recently from people who wanted to exchange links. I put the links on my blog but didn't see anything on theirs, so I'm de-activating the links. I'm also not sure there is much benefit from these kinds of links unless the other person has a quality blog. Not sure if these are quality blogs.

Electrolux vacuum

We have an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. It's about 11.5 years old, so I think it has lasted as long as we figured it would when we bought it. At the time, it seemed very expensive, but it has done a good job over the years and hasn't been much trouble. However, recently, it has started to break down a little bit. The tube has a hole in it and there are some missing pieces of plastic where the attachments get attached. We also have an Electrolux carpet cleaner which we bought used about 9 years ago. It has also started to fall apart a little bit, although it does still work pretty well. We don't have much carpet, and what we do have should be replaced, but the cleaner at least makes it acceptable for a few weeks at a time. Electrolux seems like a very conservative company. The equipment we have is non-stylish, in contrast to the vacuums from Dyson. However, the Electrolux website is full of Flash and moving stuff and color, so maybe they are making a move into the 21st century. When I look for a new vacuum, I'm not sure I want to spend a huge amount of money again, but I'll take a look at what Electrolux has to offer since their products have been so reliable.

Scottie Pippen comeback

I don't think Scottie Pippen is the Roger Clemens of basketball. He doesn't seem like a guy who's going to come in mid-way through the season and perform at a high level. The conditioning factor for someone who hasn't played for 2 years seems like it would be a huge thing. On the other hand, he does seem like a guy who could help a team like the Lakers since he knows their offense and has played for Phil Jackson. Whether his contribution would make much of a difference is hard to say, but you can always use another guy who can pass the ball and play defense.

NBA All Star Game

The NBA All Star game is usually a no defense high scoring event which gets close in the fourth quarter when guys try to win the MVP award. I think I prefer to watch the skills competitions like the 3 point shootout and the dunk contest, although the dunk contest has that goofy rule where guys can keep trying over and over to make a dunk. That was not fun to watch last year. I don't care much for that 3 person team event with one old guy and one woman and a current player. Probably the best event this year will be the Dick Bavetta - Charles Barkeley race. I'm putting my money on Bavetta.

Global Warming

I guess George Bush and his guys are still debating the existence of global warming. They didn't do much to help that with their policies and pseudo-science. While everyone else in the world seemed to see the evidence, the US was in denial. Well, it's 86 degrees here today in the middle of February. Not necessarily evidence of global warming but it's still an odd thing in the middle of winter.

Learning from mistakes

I realized after the fact that I could have done a better job with some of the action photos I took at Astrocamp. I knew that I wasn't getting what I wanted at the time I was taking the images, but I wasn't really sure how to correct the problem. My night photo instructor had some good tips which would have been even better if I had them on the spot. Next time I'll be ready but for now I did at least get a few good shots. I plan to have my DVD done by this weekend and will hand some out next week.

Vegetarians not visible for school events

One thing I've noticed over and over is that local school events which involve food almost always assume that everyone eats meat. I know that vegetarians make up a small percentage of the population, but since I'm in that percentage I notice it more when there's nothing on the menu I can eat. My wife and sons are going to a spaghetti dinner tonight at the school and the two options are meat sauce or butter. I'm not sure what kind of restaurant is providing the food, but is butter really the way most people eat spaghetti? What happened to olive oil or marinara sauce? Maybe they can bring their own or just eat it plain like we did at Astrocamp...

Subsitute teacher convicted for school tech screw up

The story of Julie Amero and her conviction for exposing 7th graders to porn on a classroom computer is like something written by Kafka. The school's spyware license hadn't been updated because the renewal was sent to an incorrect email address. She allowed students to use the computer and they inadvertently clicked on a link that generated a bunch of pornographic pop-ups. She didn't know how to deal with it although she tried to keep the students from seeing what was there -- she had been told not to turn off the computer for any reason. So she ends up being convicted for exposing students to pornography. The whole thing is absurd and the prosecutor didn't do his job. The computer wasn't checked for spyware and adware by the prosecutor and an expert for the defense who did check it wasn't allowed to testify about it. There is a potential 40 year prison sentence in this case, but the whole thing is ridiculous.

Talk of the Nation - life logging

NPR's Talk of the Nation had a program today called life logging and the generation gap over privacy. I only caught a couple of portions of the show, but it seemed to be about how younger people who use MySpace, Facebook and blogs to document what they are doing are often exposing things about themselves that their parents might not think should be put online. Of course, this includes blog entries about personal things as well as photos of activities that might best be kept private. One of the points made by one of the guests was that standards in this area may change and what's considered bad taste today might not be in ten years. I think that is probably true, but I still think there are some things which don't need to be shared with anybody who can get online.

Talk of the Nation does not seem to have a podcast, so you have to listen to the show using RealPlayer online.

Chargers need a coach

After firing Marty Schottenheimer, the Chargers have to scramble to hire a coach. SFGate says they are looking at a couple of 49ers coaches, Mike Singletary and Norv Turner. Turner has been a head coach before and was a finalist for the Cowboys job a few weeks ago. Sounds like he's the frontrunner unless they can persuade Pete Carroll or Jimmy Johnson to give it a shot. If the problem with Marty was that he wanted too much control, then that's probably going to continue to be a problem with these guys.

The Missing Link

Something went wrong with this one.

End of Marty Ball in San Diego

It did seem odd that the Chargers would lose both their offensive and defensive coordinators at the same time. Both got head coaching jobs. Two other assistants also left, and despite their 12-4 season, the Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer today. The timing seems bad since most of the other coaching vacancies have been filled at this point, so you either will get a guy who hasn't been a head coach before or a retread who didn't get any of the other jobs. Maybe Bill Parcells will change his mind and give it one more shot with a team that has a great chance to win next year. I don't think it's the right move to fire your coach because he can't get along with the general manager, but maybe the owner felt the general manager was more important.

AstroCamp and behavioral issues

One of the things that was very clear after spending 2 days with about 50 5th graders is that when even a very small number of the kids have behavioral issues, it can really have a huge impact on the entire group. I don't think I could deal with the stuff I saw during the two days on a day to day basis, and it did seem like the teachers involved had become immune to some of the stuff and just dealt with the more serious transgressions. Lots of kids in the group need medication just to get through the day -- or, more accurately, they have been giving medication to get through the day. I wondered how much of the bad behavior had a biological basis to it and how much was psychological or of some other origin. Some kids were just disruptive all the time, constantly seeking attention in one way or another. It drove me crazy. And in almost every case, the behavior could be related back to the parents or absence of parents. It's easy to get upset with the repeated bad actions of the child, but it's probably the absent parent who bears much of the responsibility.

ArtText or TypeStyler

One thing I have not figured out is why it has taken so many years for the OS X version of TypeStyler to be released. It's still not out yet and I'm sure they have long since lost many customers because of this. It's been "coming soon" for years now. I really liked the program years ago when I used Mac OS 9, but that was about 7 years back. Today on MacZot, you can get a new competitor to TypeStyler, ArtText, for 33% off -- $19.95. I will give it a try and if it can do most of what TypeStyler did, I'll buy it. Too bad for TypeStyler, but how long can you wait?

AstroCamp photos

I took 1250 photos in 48 hours at AstroCamp. There have to be a few good ones in there! Actually, I've got them all imported in to iPhoto and tagged and I've rated about half of them. I'm hoping to have enough variety to make a nice poster using about 80 of them. I will also upload the good ones so other people can have a look. This is going to take a couple of days, but I think it will be worth the effort. The challenge was in getting pictures of each of the 4 student groups since I was spending all of my time with one group. I think I managed to do it, but maybe next year the school will allow me to go up and just take pictures on Saturday without being a chaperone. We'll see.

Return from Astrocamp

Our AstroCamp weekend in Idylwild wrapped up today. We made the bus trip back down the mountain in the rain. In fact, it rained all day today and was cold which made the last day a little rough. Overall, it was a good experience for most everyone involved, although there were more than a few meltdowns by a small number of students. Oddly enough, most of them were by students in my group of 12.

AstroCamp

Day one of AstroCamp is coming to a close. We had a nice bus ride up here and enjoyed some fun activities. Getting hoisted up about 40 feet in the air and then dropping and flying along a line was a good one although it hurt a bit when the harness dug into my thighs. I got some great pictures of the students doing this one as well as a couple of others. I need to clear my memory cards tonight and recharge my battery so I can take more pictures tomorrow, which should be a long day.

Shouldn't that be "enigmatic"

Another one of those "rush to be first" stories with a strange error. From the home page of SFGate.com, under a picture of Anna Nicole Smith:

Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as a tabloid tale, died today at age 39 after collapsing at a hotel. Famous for being famous, she went from being a dancer and centerfold to billionaire's widow and reality TV star. Talk about it in NWZCHIK.

According to dictionary.com, and my own common sense, pneumatic isn't normally used in reference to someone's personality.

Top 5 definitions of pneumatic from dictionary.com:

1. of or pertaining to air, gases, or wind.

2.	of or pertaining to pneumatics.

3.	operated by air or by the pressure or exhaustion of air: a pneumatic drill.

4.	filled with or containing compressed air, as a tire.

5.	equipped with pneumatic tires.

Steve Jobs and DRM

I read Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and iTunes yesterday. Innocuously titled "Thoughts on Music,"it was interesting and certainly not what you would expect from a CEO of two huge media companies, but then I don't think Steve Jobs is the typical CEO. He's the only one I know who laid me off, but that's beside the point. I didn't interpret his essay as a call to end DRM. I don't think that is going to happen. With the pressure from a couple of countries in Europe to remove the iTunes DRM to make the music available to other players, this essay was just a way to deflect that criticism and put it where it should be -- on the backs of the music publishers.

Podcast plus PDF

I knew that iTunes supported PDFs, but I hadn't really used the feature or thought about how it might be useful. Until today, that is. I set up my first podcast on my work blog and went to iTunes to subscribe to it, just to check that it was working. When I did, I also got the PDFs I had attached to previous posts on my blog. Since I am creating materials and making them available in PDF to various people, this is a nice way to distribute them. I only need to figure out how to be sure that people subscribe, but I don't think that is too difficult. At least in theory.

BeeDocs Timeline

BeeDocs Timeline is an interesting program (Mac only). It makes the creation of timelines very simple, so it's a big timesaver. You can use it for free for up to 10 items. We have used it several times for school reports and it works well. You don't really get much more with the paid version other than a much longer timeline. At almost $40, it's a little out of my price range, but today you can get it for $24 at MacZot. I think the developer is working on a new application which will extend the features of Timeline quite a bit, so I'm going to wait for that and continue to use the free version.

PE.com commuting blog

One of the local newspapers recently started up some blogs written by a few of their reporters. One is the Commuting Blog, written by Phil Pitchford. Phil only has a two mile commute, but he does cover transportation, so he knows the freeways even though he is smarter than many of us who still have to use them to get to work.

Phil's not getting the traffic that Steve Lopez gets on the Bottleneck Blog at the LA Times, but commenting on the Bottleneck Blog has slowed down quite a bit since that first entry which got hundreds of comments.

Really hot weather

They should have held the Super Bowl around here instead of in Miami. No rain and it was over 80 degrees yesterday. Today may break a record with the forecast for 87 degrees. Tomorrow it will start cooling down and by the time we leave on our school field trip on Friday, it will probably be cold again in the mountains.

Prince at Super Bowl

For a guy who is getting close to 50 years old, Prince looks good and moves incredibly well. His music was also good and he had a number of guitars including one with that weird symbol he used to use for his name. I thought the halftime show was good, considering it was in the rain and you can't really get good audio from something like that. Is Prince a football fan? I guess he might be a Vikings fan, but he doesn't look like a guy who would have played much football, although of course that has nothing to do with being a fan.

Super Bowl - Colts win

At least this Super Bowl was competitive for a little while. The Colts dominated but the score was close until late in the third quarter. The commercials were typical for a Super Bowl -- beer, cards, GoDaddy.com, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember. Nothing really jumped out at me. No Apple/iTunes ad. I'll have to go back and watch them again. There were some funny ones like the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions. That might have been my favorite

Senora Ross' grading scandal

The LA Times has a story today about 20 USC students, mostly athletes who were denied credit for a summer Spanish course. They took the course at a local community college from Señora Ross, who, to put it nicely, had a liberal grading policy. There were 5 B's and everyone else got an A.

"I've never given an easy grade in my life," she told The Times in a recent interview. "You come to my class and work, and I see you want to learn, I'll give you an A. I see some lazy ass, coming late all the time, acting like he doesn't care, I won't give him an A. I'll give him a B."

I really like her teaching philosophy, though:

"Ross, meanwhile, remains feisty and unbowed, stoutly defending teaching methods she has used for more than 40 years.

"The most important thing in learning is that everyone likes the teacher," she said."

I thought the most important thing was that the students learn something in the class.

Ginobli -- turnabout is fair play?

After the very strange 1 game suspension of Kobe Bryant for hitting Manu Ginobli in the nose after a jump shot earlier this week, it will be interesting to see what happens after tonight's Suns - Spurs game. Ginobli just nailed Amare Stoudemire in a very personal area with his knee. It sure looked like a very unnatural basketball move, so if Kobe Bryant's hand to the nose was enough for a suspension, this move should at least be reviewed. I liked the commentator's statement "that every man in American can feel the pain right now".

Disable Snap

Those Snap previews get to be a pain in the neck after a while, especially when they are very slow to load. Lifehacker points out today that there is a download on the Snap site which will disable the previews. It's a cookie, so it only works until you clear your cookies, but it does the job. I tried out the Snap functionality for about two days and then turned it off. For a while I got emails from them asking why I didn't have it working on my site. I think it turns out to be one of those things that seems pretty cool at first but just quickly becomes a pain in the neck and on sites that use it I find I don't even look at the previews.

Classmates.com - service or fortress?

I have a free account at Classmates.com and every time someone I might have gone to school with visits the site, they send me an email reminding me to visit the site. When I do, it's just one wall after another where unless I pay for a real membership, I can't do much. Can't get someone's email address, look at their photos, see how they answered some survey, etc. It seems that the whole purpose of the free membership is to try to get you to pay up for the full thing. Some people I went to high school with are setting up a reunion and one guy posted a message and said email me to get the details. Can't do it without a full membership. He can't show his email address.

Bottleneck blog - one hit wonder?

Steve Lopez' Bottleneck blog about LA traffic is up to an incredible 602 comments on his first post, but comments have steadily declined since then. Subsequent posts have 116, 52, 19, 5, 0, and 2 comments. I guess he made a big splash and then dropped back to reality. Or maybe that first question was just so good that nothing could match it. I'd still be happy with 5 comments on anything I've written. On the other hand, googling "Bottleneck Blog" comes back with the original site at 1 and 2 and this site in 3rd. Maybe nobody else wrote about it...

Blogger Bug

Blogger isn't in beta any longer, but there are still some bugs. I've got one blog which will not convert to the new blogger. The first time I tried to convert it, I was locked out of all my Blogger blogs for a couple of days, which was not good. This must have had something to do with my participation as a beta tester for Google. The blog that won't convert was "upgraded" during the beta testing and then put back to the old version, but something must not have gone right because each time I've tried to move to the new Blogger, things have gone wrong. Now I can't even try as the system locks me out of the upgrade. I guess I'll have to leave that blog in old Bloggerland.

A Crowded House at Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music Festival is coming up in April and people are already getting excited about it. It's one of the top ten Google searches for this past week as tickets went on sale. It's a huge event over 3 days. Australian band Crowded House are reforming after ten years' of non-activity and their first appearance will be at the Coachella Valley Music Festival in April. I get them confused with the British band Madness who did a song called "Our House" and really they aren't very much alike. One group wears funny hats and the other one is from Australia and they didn't do that "Land Down Under" song but did have some other catchy songs.

Tennis and golf dominated by two guys

It does seem like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods win all the big ones in their sports, like they did today. I don't think I remember a time when tennis and golf were dominated so much by one person in each sport. Women's tennis had Steffi Graf and golf has had Annika Sorenstam more recently, but men's golf and tennis, especially the major events may be a little predictable. It's always a bunch of other guys trying for second place, or so it seems. I don't mind much and if Tiger Woods isn't playing I probably won't even watch golf. I think it might be better if one of these guys was a jerk, but they aren't, or at least don't appear to be. We may have to settle for another 5 years of this.

Stanford - UCLA men's basketball

I had a feeling that Stanford would give UCLA a good game today. It didn't look good in the first half as Stanford couldn't put the ball in the basket. The second half was a different story as Stanford played much better on offense and defense. Those two Lopez guys are already pretty good but in another year they should be unstoppable. I'd like to see them both on the court at the same time, although they are both playing the same position, so that may not happen too much. It was nice to see Stanford beat UCLA, something which used to happen frequently but hasn't been so common lately.

Haircut

One of my sons had gone a long time in between haircuts. His hair was pretty long, which was fine with me, but his disdain for showers was the problem. His hair wasn't too clean and no amount of suggesting that he just have it trimmed so he wouldn't have to worry about washing it every day was going to change his desire to have long hair. This situation went on for a couple of months and although he did get it trimmed, resulting in a mullet, there wasn't a lot of joy related to his hair. For me, at least. The other day I came home from work and was surprised to see that he had decided to get a haircut. Not just a trim, but a crewcut, similar to what his brother has. In fact, I thought he was his brother at first glance. The good thing about this is that because it was his decision, there is no more complaining about his hair. Now, we'll see what happens when it grows back enough to where he needs another haircut.

How not to remove Palm Trees

I cut down two 30 foot tall palm trees in my yard about 3 months ago. It was a huge amount of work, but dealing with the palm fronds and stumps is turning out to be even more work. I am able to get a small amount taken away each week with the trash, but at this rate it may take a year to remove the two trees. Plus, I've got at least one more tree that needs to be cut down before it knocks down my fence. I got one estimate on removing what's already down and it was around $500 which seemed a little too much. I may need to just rent a dumpster and get as much of it hauled away as possible. Those are $75 each.

First black coach in Super Bowl

I don't get why Lovie Smith is the first black coach in the Super Bowl. Tony Dungy is also black, and the Super Bowl starts at the same time for both of them, so aren't they both the first black coach in the Super Bowl. It seems ridiculous that because the Bears game ended first that Lovie Smith is first and Tony Dungy is second. It makes no sense. It's about the Super Bowl, not which team was in first.

Steve Nash not an all star starter

How can Steve Nash not be a starter in the all star game? He won the MVP award the past two years and his team is one of the top two this year. No starters from Dallas or Phoenix. I think the fan voting is a little off this year. Tracy McGrady is a great player, but I don't think he deserves to start this year. And Shaq? Not even close. Injured most of the season, with lower productivity anyway.

slow blogging week

I have had a busy week at work and haven't been keeping up as well with my blogging. I still haven't gotten around to either of those 5 things memes I'm supposed to do. Five things people don't know about me and my five favorite movies are the ones I need to do. Very far behind. Maybe tomorrow...

Backing up

I'm waiting to get the file recovery software today so I can try to salvage what's on my laptop's hard drive. I hope that goes well, but you never know. What I really need to do is have a good system in place to back up my files regularly. I've got too many 300 adn 400 GB drives which are practically full and I'm not doing any regular backups. Greg Keene at TechDigs.net does an extensive job laying out the options for backing up your files when you've got lots of files. It's a little daunting, but something has to be done, in my case. It's no fun to lose your files when your drive goes bad.

Burning CDs

I'm using my laptop to burn 16 CDs to give out in class tonight. It's going to take about 45 minutes to do it. Years ago, at Apple, I had access to the first commercial CD writer, made by Kodak. It cost $10,000 and took 45 minutes to write a blank CD, which had less capacity than CDs do now. Those blanks were $10 each, so when you had a write error, it was a little more painful than it is today. The CD Writer was also huge -- bigger than two VCRs are today. Now, of course, CD-RW drives cost very little and come with almost every computer. Blanks are around 10 cents each. Quite a difference. People sometimes say that CDs aren't reliable as archival media, but I still have the CDs I made in 1993 and they are still working. Of course, I didn't leave them in the sun or flip them around, so they are in good shape.

Bush plan to reduce gas consumption

I'm a little skeptical of President Bush's plan to reduce the amount of gasoline used by 20% in 10 years. Not that it can't be done, but I think this guy and his buddies are the same group who lowered clean air standards and did nothing to put pressure on US automakers to improve gas mileage. If it wasn't for Toyota and Honda, I don't think any of the US carmakers would be selling hybrid cars or looking into electric cars. We'll see what happens. It would certainly be a good thing. Maybe car sharing, like they are doing in the Bay Area, would be a good thing to promote. There are three car sharing companies in San Francisco, which is pretty impressive. I don't think car sharing is viable everywhere, but it does look like a way to save money. I'd just like some kind of mass transit where I live, something that seems unlikely to happen.

Scrivener for OS X

It does seem that there are quite a few outliners/word processors/note-taking/clip management applications for the Mac. I have trouble keeping up with them and don't seem to get around to spending enough time with new ones to change what I'm working with. Scrivener 1.0 was released yesterday and it has some unique features. In addition to the full screen, distraction-free mode which has become popular in order to help people focus on writing and not on browsing the web or checking email, it has a kind of note card mode which allows you to organize your thoughts on a project and view them on a virtual corkboard. I'm not clear on what kind of functionality you get with this, but it's worth a look.

Lane Kiffin new Raiders coach - bad career move

The Raiders have their guy - Lane Kiffin from USC. He's younger than nine current players and the youngest coach in the modern era of pro football, 31 years old. I guess he doesn't subscribe to the Sporting News, which has a scary looking picture of his new boss on the current cover. I don't know if Lane Kiffin is going to fix the problems facing the Raiders. He's got to improve their offense, but after the bed and breakfast guy, that shouldn't be too hard to do. I just wonder how hard it will be for him to get guys like Randy Moss and Jerry Porter to play hard for him. There are just too many knuckleheads on the Raiders. I just hope he's got an out clause in his five year contract.

Pechanga Comedy Club

The local casino here in Temecula -- Pechanga -- is opening up a branch of the Improv comedy club in March. Shows will cost $20 and it might be fun. I am not familiar with any of the names on the list of performers, but they are up and coming talents, not stars. If they were already stars, they would be perfoming in the theater, along with the Moody Blues and the Fab Four. Actually, not all of the performers are on the county fair circuit. The Chinese Acrobats and David Copperfield are showing up next month. Not on the same day.

Parcells retires, AP publishes first draft

Bill Parcells retired from coaching today. I'm surprised he lasted a whole season with Terrell Owens, who should be the next to go. Looks like the Associated Press was in a rush to be first with the story, as they included the following two paragraphs:

Parcells won two Super Bowls with the Giants. He came to Dallas four seasons ago energized by the challenge of restoring glory to "America's Team." He went 34-32 and definitely left the Cowboys better than he found them, but his tenure ultimately may be remembered for the lack of a playoff victory.

He came to Dallas four seasons ago energized by the challenge of restoring glory to "America's Team." While he definitely left the Cowboys better than he found them, his tenure ultimately may be remembered for the lack of a playoff victory.

How about a little proofreading before you press the Publish button?

Some of the fault lies with CNNSi, who published the story as-is. ESPN and SFGate edited the AP text so the duplication isn't there.

Sunday football

I was hoping to see the Colts against the Saints in the Super Bowl, but I'm at least half wrong. And it's not looking good for the Colts. I think the weather worked against the Saints a little bit, but not enough to change the outcome. I'd like to see the Colts come back in the second game and make it competitive. It's going to be tough to outcoach Bill Bellichick however. If the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl, I think they would be the favorites considering their experience.

Bottleneck blog -- 458 comments

The LA Times/Steve Lopez started a blog about LA Traffic last week -- the Bottleneck blog. There are 3 posts now, but the first one has 458 comments! I wish I had that kind of interaction on one of my blogs. Obviously traffic in LA is a serious issue for just about anyone who lives or works there. An entire page of the comments on the Bottleneck blog was published in today's paper. Some were good. A few were weird or ridiculous, but it's pretty clear that something has to be done about traffic and maybe the blog will lead to some change, either in transportation or in who gets elected.

Credit Union not in the 21st century

I had a charge refused on an online purchase I made with a credit card from my credit union on Wednesday. Then it happened with another online purchase on Friday. After that one, I went online and checked my account. Everything was up to date and there was nothing to indicate a problem. Today I tried the card in a store and it was also refused. In this afternoon's mail, I had two letters from the credit union letting me know that both my credit card and ATM card had been cancelled because some company which processes some of the transactions had stored account information when they shouldn't have. Both of my cards were in the range of numbers which were compromised. They are in the process of replacing the cards for many people who have accounts there, something which may take more than a week. The question for me is why did they rely on snail mail alone to notify people. There's nothing on the website and there have been no emails indicating there was a problem. They do have a recorded message if you call them, but it seems to me that they should have covered all the possibilities.

KFI - The Tech Guy

I like to listen to Leo Laporte on KFI on weekends. He's on from 11-2 Saturday and Sunday, but the station doesn't come in at my house although it's okay in the car. I can get it online at KFI640.com. While the content of the show is usually pretty good, there's just not enough of it. Each half hour is good for about 18 minutes of content and he may take 3 phone calls. Lots of commercials and news.

PayPerPost convention

PayPerPost is going to have a conference for their bloggers and advertisers in Orlando June 8-9. $200 to attend. It might be fun but I don't think I'll be able to go. Too far away and too expensive to get there for me, but maybe once there are more details on what's happening I'll be a little more interested.

Steve Sarkisian

When it looked like the Raiders were going to hire a new coach -- Steve Sarkisian -- he woke up from this bad dream and realized what he would be getting himself into. He withdrew from consideration today, leaving the Raiders empty handed and backpedaling, saying that he was never offered the job. Maybe not, but who cares. So we know it won't be Sarkisian or James Lofton coaching the Raiders next year. My money is on Rob Ryan, the Raiders' defensive coach. At least the defense was good, so why not reward this guy and let him find an offensive coordinator so the Raiders can double their wins next year.

Walking across America

I read a book about a guy who walked across the US many years ago. Not something I would do myself, but it's still interesting to see how many nice people there are out there. A couple of weeks ago, Matt Gregory passed through Temecula. I saw him at the Temecula public library. He is walking from Bellingham, WA to Miami. I guess that's going to take a year to do. Right now, he's in Yuma AZ. He's doing the walk to raise money for cancer research. Check out his blog.

#84

I thought maybe Chris Webber had an advertising deal with 84 lumber when I saw him in his new Pistons uniform. Or maybe he's going to play tight end for the Detroit Lions next season and keep that number. Actually, his nephew had a dream that Webber was wearing #84 for the Pistons and that's why he chose it. Sounds funny, but apparently it's true.

Lakers keep winning

Anyone who thinks Phil Jackson isn't a great coach hasn't watched the Lakers this year. They have almost the same team as last year yet they are doing much better and beating teams like the Spurs and the Mavericks. I am not sure why they are so much better since Lamar Odom has been out and they have also been missing most of their big guys, but the guys they do have are much better and Maurice Evans is an excellent player who has really added quite a bit. I think Radmonovich will do better as the season goes along and the Lakers are going to stay near the top. I don't think they can beat the Suns in the playoffs however.

Mystery box from PayPerPost

I got a nice surprise on my front porch this morning. Some books I ordered were left there sometime yesterday along with a mystery green box from PayPerPost. I didn't order anything from PayPerPost, so they must have sent it just because they like me so much. :-) Inside the box was a big foam finger. That's going to look nice next to my painting of dogs playing cards... I also got a huge pen and a t-shirt which was folded up so small that I didn't know what it was. I was going to throw it into a bucket of water because I thought it was something that would expand in water. I also got a job search audio course from Trump University and a couple of other nice things. Thanks!

American Idol

I don't usually watch the American Idol show, but last night I saw some of it. They were in Minnesota so lots of people did Prince songs, although not very well. The thing I don't get about the people who show up at the auditions is how they can be so unaware of themselves in terms of their singing. I can't sing at all and I wouldn't pretend otherwise, but some of the people who show up are absolutely terrible. Yet when they get some honest feedback, some of them act like it's a big shock. Of course, the show relies on these kinds of people in the early stages to keep it interesting. That's obvious since they spend so much time on the characters who don't make it.

At work chatters

Once you get that Internet addiction, it can be hard to break the habit. SFGate has a Q&A column for business questions and today's item is about a co-worker who chats online all day long and doesn't get her work done. The recommendation is to enforce the policy that the computer belongs to the company, not the worker, and the use of the computer can be monitored. Also suggested is to install keylogger software. I bet there is a way to block chatting also, but wouldn't telling the employee that their chat sessions will be recorded be a step towards ending that?

Beckham getting a raw deal in Spain

Sounds like Beckham is not going to be playing in Spain again. When your boss calls you a Hollywood actor and says you didn't have any other offers, you probably aren't playing much before you leave the team. If he really didn't have any other offers and he can't play much, why are the LA Galaxy making him the highest paid team athlete ever? Somebody's story doesn't add up.

T-shirt at Saints game

In a brief crowd shot during yesterday's Saints-Eagles game, there was a Saints fan with an interesting t-shirt. The shirt exposed her stomach, which is probably why she was on camera, but the camera operator didn't pay much attention to the message on her shirt. It said "Fuck Da Eagles". I'm guessing that's not allowed on television and someone may be paying a fine, but I could be wrong. A few other people caught it too -- here, here, here, and here.

Beckham advertising starting already

There is a banner ad in the LA Times sports section featuring David Beckham in today's paper. That didn't take long. He may not be on the team for another 5 months, although since the Real Madrid coach says he won't be playing for them again, who knows? Maybe Beckham will show up early and play with the team the whole season.

Disappointing end to Chargers' season

The Chargers should have won today. They blew it in the fourth quarter by wasting two timeouts and getting two stupid 15 yard penalties. One timeout was wasted when they challenged a call where there was no reason to challenge. The guy clearly fumbled, so wasting one of your 3 timeouts was not wise. The second timeout was wasted when they called it following a long stop in play after an injury. They had plenty of time to call a play and be ready to go, but for some reason, they called timeout. This really cost them at the end, because with two more timeouts, they could have run at least two more plays and thrown the ball over the middle and gained more yardage. The result would have been a much closer field goal attempt. 54 yards was too far away.

The two penalties were ridiculous. One bailed out the Patriots after they had failed on 3rd and long and the other gave the Patriots good field position after the Chargers had to kick off from the 15.

They beat themselves and gave Tom Brady a chance to come back, which he did. Disappointing.

Sign Spinners

I see people standing on corners spinning signs just about any time I drive around Temecula on a weekend when it's not dark. They are usually promoting a real estate development and sometimes they get pretty excited and put on a show. It looks like a boring job, although if you have an iPod and enough to eat, I guess it could be bearable. This morning I saw something I never imagined I'd see -- a woman with one of those signs with the name of a church on it. Now, I don't think it was for any purpose other than locating the church because I don't think too many people out driving around are going to spontaneously decide to go to church. I guess they might consider it for the future if it's in their neighborhood, so maybe that was what she was doing. She didn't have an iPod although she was wearing sunglasses.

Adam Carolla + Danny Bonaduce = problems

There's a great op-ed piece in the LA Times by Meghan Daum today about Adam Carolla. He's the guy who hosted Love Line with Dr. Drew for many years, then moved on to The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel and now has his own morning radio show in LA. To say that Meghan Daum thinks Adam Carolla is a great host is an understatement, but she does make some really interesting points in her piece. I have listened to Love Line many times when he was hosting and he really does have some good analogies which are pretty insightful. His junior college riff is usually pretty funny. I feel sorry for him now that he has been paired with train wreck Danny Bonaduce. What did that guy ever do besides the Partridge Family anyway?

What happened to the weather?

All the weather forecasts around here said heavy rain on Thursday and Friday with snow as low as 1500 feet. It never even rained! There were some very dark clouds this morning and it was cold, but no precipitation. I'd like to see it warm up a little bit but otherwise it has been pretty nice for January.

What happened to my page rank?

Google has been updating page rank this week. I don't know if it's done yet or not, but my other site went from 1 to 3 and this site hasn't moved off zero. When I checked with that PR predictor site, this one was supposed to be higher - 5 -- than the other one, which was also a 5, but slightly lower before rounding up. This site gets more traffic although the other one has a few more links coming in, but not many. I will wait and see but I hope this one gets up from zero.

Bad weather coming

There is a big storm headed this way, I think. At least some thunderstorms and cold weather and possibly snow at pretty low elevations. Tomorrow will be a good day to work from home and avoid the crazy accidents that always happen when it rains. I drove home at the speed limit today and everybody passed me. It will be the same tomorrow

Curriki

I didn't know that Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun, was so interested in education and in helping teachers. He set up Curriki, a site for exchanging lesson plans and other educational material. It sounds good. I need to get back and look at it more.

ScreenSteps

I took a brief look at ScreenSteps today and watched one of the tutorials on the website. It looks like an interesting way to streamline the production of step by step tutorials. It's also an alternative to screencasting. What's not clear is how much it's going to cost -- right now it's a beta which expires in less than two weeks. It might save some time since it integrates screen capture with a template for presenting the tutorial. The template I saw isn't a format I would normally use, but it might be flexible enough to work. Works on Windows and Mac.

MacWorld Discounts

Dealmac has around 50 deals on Mac software and hardware you can get even if you aren't going to MacWorld. Most are only good through tomorrow, though. One I liked is 30% off Profcast, an application which helps you convert a presentation into a podcast. It's a good deal at $21. I bought it myself.

Beckham coming to LA

I was reading in the LA Times today about how David Beckham would probably end up staying in Europe because the quality of play in MLS isn't high enough. That seemed odd, since he's not playing much for Real Madrid and he got booted off the English team. So I clicked onto CNNsi.com and the headline was Beckham coming to LA Galaxy. I guess $250 million is enough to make you not worry too much about the level of competition.

Apple, Inc.

The Apple iPhone is a very big deal, but changing the name of the company is pretty big, too. With the iPod, AppleTV, and iPhone, the company is doing more than computers. Reminds me of the VP who cancelled my video project because Apple "is a computer company." Good luck to Apple! I think I'll have to wait and see what the phone contract includes as far as paying for Internet access before I buy one of those phones.

Bring on Boise State

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be nice if Boise State had a shot at the national championship. They haven't lost and if there was a real playoff system for college football, they might have a chance to play their way to the title. Even though I'm a Gator fan, it still doesn't feel right that the championship isn't really decided on the field. Sure, they beat #1, but now you've got two teams with 1 loss and Boise State, which may end up #3 or #4, who knows, with no losses.

Gators looking good

I wouldn't call myself a huge Florida football fan, but when they have a good team, I like to mention that I'm a graduate of UF. I was hoping for the best against Ohio State, but never imagined that the Gators would just run them out of the building, as they have in the first half. Florida's offense hasn't been stopped much at all and they get the ball to start the second half, so things are looking good. Urban Meyer has called some excellent plays and the defense has been incredible.

MacWorld Keynote tomorrow

Less than 24 hours to go on the MacWorld Keynote. I'm expecting a few new items from Apple -- probably the new iPod, maybe the phone and maybe a TV and the media streaming device, plus a few software updates. That might be too much to expect, but we'll see what happens. The last few of these have not lived up to expectations, which tend to be very high because of how closed Apple is about new products.

Student Awards

One of my sons got an academic award at school today. He's been working pretty hard and does well in school, so that's great for him. I thought it was ironic that the two students who got the citizenship awards were the only two in his class who he'd had trouble with over the past couple of months. He had come home complaining about what each of them had done on different days. Both were incidents which had to do with honesty. Hmmm...