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.