Our lives

July 31, 2008

Copied from PhD Comics

Posted in comic

Day One

July 29, 2008

I had mixed feelings about today, but once I got into it all was good. I am so use to working with Mrs Crabtree that I don’t remember to tell Mrs Deakin some things. I hope I don’t forget anything! For example, tonight I added my kiddies to the Google Calendar but didn’t add hers. I won’t not add them but I also don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I really enjoyed my afternoon classes, especially. Zero hour is a huge class, and really fun. I suppose they all are. The English 11 course is, as always, interesting. It’s like night and day between that class and the two before it. I’ll be fine. Tomorrow we’re handing out syllabi and doing some other fun projects. I am having the students do a “Facebook Poster” for the wall. I know it sounds corny, but hey who cares? They’ll be fun for Open House.

Posted in google calendar, school

One day left

July 27, 2008

Monday students return to school. This week we spent working in our rooms, meeting people, having meetings, and planning. Mrs Deakin and I spent time developing our course; she has a strong background in writing, so I’m glad we found ways to infuse that into the AP curriculum. It doesn’t seem like we have too many new people, but there are some. Collums and Warnke are gone. Scarbrough is new, and we love her. Evan and Johnson are cool, too. Then we realized Luke Hickey is gone, and that was terrible. We loved working with Luke.

Friday the kids came to help. Mostly the department chairs and level leads got the help they needed. We moved books all day, and I had a few people work closely with me to get several things accomplished. I also have two students repeating AP Lang this year for their own reasons. Quite an interesting situation, indeed.

Ok, I think I will have more to say once they arrive. For now, I think I am numb. Not really excited about Monday, but I am ok going. Our new administrator, Ken James, has already shown phenomenal leadership, support, and a humaness that makes me want to work my best for him.

Posted in Basha

Back to school

July 22, 2008

Today is the teachers official first day back to school. Last night I couldn’t sleep, and I tossed and turned most of the night. I was just relieved when I rolled back over and it was after 5AM. Perfect! I could live with that.

Yesterday I went in for half a day. Since day care was open, I figured I would take advantage of that. I knew we had meetings all day today, and I wanted an idea of what I needed to accomplish in my room. Every year the custodial service removes everything from the rooms (sometimes they leave the really heavy stuff), and this year was no different. A few kids offered to come in and put my room back. When they walked in I said, “Remember how my room looked in May? Do that to it!” Before the three of us left yesterday it mostly looked the way it should.

Deakin, the new AP teacher, and I share a foyer. I popped into her room looking for her, and it was odd for me. I am so use to Dr. Foerst being in that room, that when this new “stuff” was there I couldn’t get over it. Although when a student of mine walked into the room and asked what Deakin was like, I looked around the room and said “Anyone who sticks Dylan posters next to the Lennon photos, below the Picasso quotes, and near the Marley and Warhol quotes over by the Breakfast Club posters cannot be all that bad!!!”

Posted in nostalgia, school

Schools almost back

July 20, 2008

This time of the year one of two things happens. I get very excited to get back to work, or I stay the heck away. Let me explain.

Before I had children by early July I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND! I would go sit in my classroom and just rearrange pencils because I was so bored. Then when I started working at Basha I was still bored, but school began so much earlier; this made me happier. Of course, it didn’t help that they would still be cleaning buildings until July 15th and I could never get in the F building.

Then we come to last year. Last year Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows was released right before school came back. Instead of me working my butt of to prepare for kids and going to work on the weekend before classes, I sat for 12 hours straight reading that book. You know what? The first day of school I didn’t feel any stress at all. Nada. Because I hadn’t even had time to think about it.

Now this year’s a little different. I am less stressed, but I am planning on working all week. I got a new boss this year… both departmentally and school wise. I am going to miss Mrs Crabtree and Dr Foerst, and things will be weird but hey this is life. We live it. See you when the bell rings.

Post script, if Meyer’s Breaking Dawn had come out two weeks earlier, it would’ve been ideal!

Posted in school

Adding gmail contacts to a mailing group

July 20, 2008

Here’s a brief video on how to add gmail contacts to a mailing group. As we all know, Google Apps changes almost daily. As for now this way works!

Add Contacts to a mailing group

Posted in Video Captures, gmail, technology, tutorials, vidcasts, video

Sprint BlackBerry Curve

July 18, 2008

Got a new phone this week, and I’ve had some ups and downs with it that I will chronicle here. I’ve been truly trying to find the perfect smartphone for me, and I’ve come close in the last year or so. For example, I had a Sprint 8700 that I thought was pretty cool, since it was my first full QWERTY smartphone. A colleague had the same phone, so we were able to do some fun stuff with it, like tethering. That phone lasted over a year, but I had some problems. It broke and was replaced a few times (ALWAYS get the service plan on Smartphones!). Well, eventually I took it to Sprint and they told me they didn’t carry it anymore and offered me a Treo 700WX. I was intrigued by Treo and ready for a change.

I took the Treo home and thought I would hate they keyboard, but I got use to it surprisingly quick. The phone was a little clunky, but it was smaller than my old phone. The touch screen was smaller, too. The phone was fine. Nothing to write home about and it was solid. I did have a few problems here and there. For example one screen blew totally, and another time the plastic casing around the 2.5mm ear phone jack snapped off. The worse problem was when the speaker in the earpiece blew, and then on the next one, they keyboard started sticking. This was time to move on.

The wife was always complaining about my Google calendars and phone not syncing, and I wanted more control over my online mobile presence. Given my track record of replaced Treos, I figured I could make a pretty good argument for a new BlackBerry. Originally I thought the World Edition was pretty cool, but there was no video or camera, and I really only leave the USA once a year, if that. So next up was the Curve, which was smaller and sleeker. To be blunt, it was pretty damn sexy. Kinda like Tawny Kitaen on Coverdale’s car back in ‘87.

Problem was Sprint didn’t have any. They promised me deal after deal, but I had to wait. Finally I got a $100 refund on my plan and $100 off the base price of the phone. So pretty much they paid me $20.00 to take the phone home. Finally by mid July, I was annoyed. The iPhone 3G was coming out, Sprint’s Insight had already dropped and sucked goat eggs, and I had my sticky key Treo. I wanted TwitPics! I wanted Google Mobile! I wanted the opalescent trackball that reminded me of old deodorant sticks! Then my day came.

I called the Retention Department, and, boys and girls at home, be wary of this next step. Tell ‘em you’re outta contract and you’re leaving. They listen up quickly then.

They promised my phone would ship that day through UPS, and it would take 3-5 business days to arrive on my door step. No one in any Sprint store had any idea this phone was back in stock, so I couldn’t just walk in and pick it up.

Six days later a box sat on my door step. It was here. Wow. I took it inside and just sat the box on the table, looking at it. I took a photo. Not of the phone, mind you. Of the cardboard box. I then cut open the box and took more pictures to commemorate the experience. I eventually got to the cool looking Sprint box, opened it safely, and found the phone. It is a greyish green and very pretty. As soon as I loaded the battery, it booted. I hadn’t activated it yet, but I was still too busy drooling.

Later, after it was charged, I called to activate it. They quickly activated it, told me the data and Internet would be on in four hours, and to have a nice evening. Playing with my Curve last night was like playing with my MacBook Pro for the first time. I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I rolled it, I tried to push the screen (no touch screen, which bothered me for a whole two minutes), and I just tried to figure it all out. At one point I’d looked at the Motorola Q but hated the browser because you had to click through every link on the page to get where you wanted to be. This browser is more like a computer with a cursor and mouse. I still wish it had flash built it so I could enjoy videos (e.g., YouTube, Google Video, etc…).

My friend and colleague offered me a list of “Must Haves” that included installing PocketMac for syncing to my computer and Twitter Berry for mobile tweeting on the phone. I added a few of my own to the mix and was ready to roll.

Morning came and I went to get online. I couldn’t find the Browser. I also couldn’t find any File Manager where I could search for the Browser. I was annoyed so I called Sprint. The woman the night before had not initialized my data plan! This took mere minutes, and we were off. I began by setting up my Gmail through the BB app. Now this was a mistake because immediately all my filtered mail came through non-filtered. All my list servs (100+ emails a day) came rolling into my inbox. I immediately tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. I called Sprint back and it turned out I typed an “m” where I meant to type an “n”, so I wasn’t able to get back into the account. They did it for me. The emails stopped.

I immediately moved onto to Mobile Gmail, which was perfect because it maintained my filters, and everything. Love it! I also installed Google Sync for my calendars. I was told I could only sync my default calendar, but there was the option to pick any and all of them! Woohoo. I synced the calendars, and only ran into one small glitch when it duplicated everything! Fortunately, I only had 8 events; I just deleted the extras and moved on to getting rid of the nasty sig file. I didn’t want to preach that I was sending business emails from elsewhere than work, so why would I want to tell everyone I just sent an email from my BlackBerry? And with “Sprint Speed” no less. Nope. I called Sprint again. The nice lady told me immediately how to log into my webmail (who knew I had that!) and delete my signature file all together.

As the night wore on, I installed TwitterBerry, configured TwitPic, downloaded both Facebook and Flickr, and played a little with the built in GPS (?!) and News.

I finally got around to syncing it with Pocket Mac, and I immediately got an error. The computer said I could not connect to the Curve. I immediately copied the error into Google, as I do everything. After a nanosecond I was on the CrackBerry website (you know, it’s been a day only and my Curve’s already got me blogging a book at 12:01AM). I followed the directions the nice man left in a post, and Nada. So now my work wasn’t done, my dishes are crusty, the kid’s still away, and I am tired. I will call Sprint tomorrow (again) to complain about the PocketMac error and hope they can figure it out. But for now, me and the BlackBerry Curve are off to lala land.

Posted in Blackberry, gadgets, technology

Google Apps for the classroom

July 18, 2008

Shelley Rodrigo and I have worked on a presentation on Google Apps, which I am ready to adapt, develop, update and add to. It’s a work in progress, but here’s what I have so far. I am running it by a few colleagues tomorrow as a sort of preview to larger things down the road, I hope.

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Posted in gmail, google calendar, google docs, google groups, google sites, presentations, teacher2.0, technology, web2.0

Thank you, Mr. Adams

July 14, 2008

Thank you, Mr Adams from Devon Adams on Vimeo.

My students “borrowed” my MacBookPro and made me an “End of the Year” video in May 2008. I found it today.

Posted in video

Zoho tabs demonstration

July 9, 2008

Posted in Video Captures, video, zoho