As I mentioned in my previous post, tonight was Beggar’s Night. The night when the little buggers beggars show up and ask for candy. Last year I had 33 visitors and had too much candy left over. (My physics class the next day was pleased because they got the leftovers.) I was expecting much the same this year. I encouraged my students to show up, even enticing the seniors with full-sized Snickers bars. And ended up having 80 visitors! Wow!

As I was running out of candy, I called ’round to the folks and mom brought me some of their candy. And yet I still ran out at quarter til 8 (the evening ended at 8pm) so I turned off my lights, another successful beggar’s night under my belt. And for once, no extra candy to tempt me – woohoo!

My tradition for Beggar’s night has always been to watch my poor 3rd-gen, once converted (or more) copies of Ghoul Lashed, the silly children’s series that Sylvester McCoy was in playing the part of The Butler Crud (which is my Halloween costume on IRC, BTW.) Last year I had to give ’em a miss when my VCR decided to eat one of the tapes (which prompted my purchasing a new DVD/VCR combo) and I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show instead. Tonight I got to watch Sylv gurn outrageously as Crud, however, so my tradition is back on track. 🙂

We had Trick or Treat for Unicef at school today – pay a buck and you get to wear a costume. So that’s what I did.

Me as the Metric Avenger – note my Blue Suede Shoes!

I walk softly, but carry a meter stick!

The Metric Avenger cuddles her cat.

Meet Jack!

I hope you folks have fun during your Beggar’s Nights (which I hope actually take place on Halloween for you!)

I designed the logo for my Metric Avenger costume tonight. With a suggestion from someone on IRC, I went with a blue cube motif. I’ve ironed it and my slogan onto the shirt and tomorrow I’ll make the cape. (And carve my pumpkin.) Thursday night is Beggar’s Night. (So I might wait until then to carve – hmmm…) Dunno why we never seem to have Trick Or Treat night on the actual holiday, but I’ve gotten used to it after all these years. Ho hum.

Today was the official end to the first nine weeks of school – woohoo! The quarter ended Friday, but I don’t consider it over until I’ve sent the grades electronically to our DA site. And I did that at 3:30pm today – woohoo! So one quarter down, 3 to go – I’m a happy camper.

In other good news, the ‘rents returned from California today. Usually whenever they get back from one of the Westar Institute‘s meetings, dad has yet another (nonpaying) job to do for them. This time, however, they had a job for me – woohoo! And I’ll get paid the same as dad. 😉 They want me to help out on their new website design. The current website is sort of blah. Hopefully I can help them make the new one not-so blah. They also brought me back a copy of The Fourth R (the Westar Institute’s journal) where dad’s E=mc² sermon was printed. Yay dad! Then they took me out for supper in thanks for my picking up their paper and feeding my cat.

In the mail today I had a very special treat. dark_pheonix sent me an inked portrait of Sylvester McCoy she drew which was inspired by the photos of McCoy that I sent her recently. It’s wonderful and I’ll be getting a frame for it to hang in my house. Thanks dark_pheonix! You’re very talented – even my parents think so. 🙂

I’ve decided on my Halloween Costume as well. On Thursday we get to dress up at school (after paying $1 towards Unicef) and I’m going as The Metric Avenger! [insert theme music here] I think I even have a slogan: “Balancing Injustice, One Gram At a Time!” Now to come up with the logo and whatever else I need to put on the shirt. (Let’s hear it for inkjet transfers!) And I need to buy a cape and mask. And maybe some colorful underwear to have on the outside of my clothes. 😉

I much prefers Mondays like today, rather than Mondays where my servers are dead or dying. 🙂

I have to laugh – back when I got my first ever computer, I started tinkering around with Windows 3.11 (for Workgroups) and discovered that I could personalize my wallpaper. So I decided to make my own wallpaper (this was before I had any scanners or any connection to the WWW.) I’m not a terribly good artist, but I figured I could copy the GUDI (I think that was the company name) t-shirt design of Sylvester McCoy. (I’d bought the shirt from 1-800-TREKKER or something like that.)

The result, using MS Paintbrush, was pretty good.

Note the “the Doctor” at the top. This was not part of the GUDI design. “the” was some font or other that I had on my computer and I made “Doctor” based upon the 7th Doctor logo. It was a good wallpaper and suited my purposes until I discovered the InterNets and could download loverly *photos* of Sylvester McCoy and others.

So in looking through eBay tonight, what did I find? Someone’s gone and printed the image off and had McCoy sign it. Now it’s being sold on eBay. LOL – I’m still chuckling. 🙂 Fame at last! Except that they seem to have removed my “tls” from the picture. Just as well, I was copying someone else’s work in the first place.

Many schools across the USA such as mine receive a service called Channel One. We get free TVs set up throughout the building and spend 12 minutes each day watching the news program Channel One. It’s not a bad service – only 2 of those 12 minutes are commercials and I let my kids talk through them.

They recently did a special One Vote project where they sent ballots around to their Channel One schools (ours included) and let kids vote on whether they wanted President Bush, Senator Kerry, or a third party candidate to win the election. You can see the results here. It was a LANDSLIDE victory for President Bush. (My class was cheering each time they mentioned Bush. I am at least assured that I’m not the only Kerry supporter in school. There are even some students who are Kerry supporters. Just not in my first period class.)

The thing that I was most encouraged by was how many Newton students said that they voted. Everyone in my first period class did. So perhaps vehicles like this might encourage students to also vote in real elections when they are old enough. At least, I hope they will!

It’s Tuesday. Though it’s Wednesday for some of you right now. And for others, you won’t read this until Wednesday as it is.

But that’s not what I really meant by “Tuesday Update.” Cuz most of you probably knew the day of the week. (I’m actually kind of vague on it since we had inservice yesterday and thus have a short week of “real” school.)

Thanks to those of you who suggested webcomics for me to check out. I’ve not actually had the time to check them out yet, thanks to my busy weekend. When I get home anymore, I think “Time to play Diablo!” and screw everything else. Well, no, it’s not quite THAT bad. But I will check them out – looking forward to having enough brain cells to do so. 🙂

For those of you who are still thinking about joining us for a Diablo marathon, we’re still willing to have folks join! Please let me know if you’re interested. (And timjr – any luck finding your CD key?) We need to start thinking of starting times and characters we want to try. We’re beginning at the beginning of the game and going until we all pass out or whatever. So far it’s looking like Saturday the 30th is the better bet. audioboy is wanting to try his hand at a poison & bone Necromancer and I’m still hoping to try out the Amazon. Anyone else have something they want to try?

Computer-wise, I finished the 4th grade rooms today – woohoo! Nearly done with my summer tasks! Then I can start working on “new” things (which aren’t so new anymore).

Shopping-wise, I finally broke down and bought a TV for the bedroom. Bought a cheapass TV and cheaperass DVD player for it (Region free, of course). Yay me! (Amy, don’t shake your head at me! And I won’t even admit that I bought them at Walmart er, nevermind!)

Now it’s time to head off and read The Algebra of Ice, the 7th Doctor PDA written by Lloyd Rose. I enjoyed her EDAs (and I’m not terribly fond of the book 8th Doctor) so I’m really looking forward to this book. Plus I love supporting the female DW authors (rare though they are).

Our school’s technology partner, Dean, was once interviewed for a school paper. When asked to summarize computer work, Dean said “It always takes longer than you think.” Amen to that, brother!

Yesterday, our school had the day off (in lieu of Columbus Day). But I went in to work on FINALLY switching the Fileservers. Dean showed up around 1:00pm, so that’s when I officially started working. We started by testing out the permissions and shares and found out the original plan didn’t work to copy over the permissions (though a registry export/import transferred the shares without a hitch). We tried Winders Backup on a single file and found that it could transfer the permissions. So I backed up all the user files and sent them to the new server.

Meanwhile, I took Dean and dad down to the main computer lab which had been giving me grief this week. Each day, another computer would “die.” At first, I thought it was dead HDs. Then later dead graphics cards. Actually, I believe now that it was a combo of the graphics card, Macromedia, Clean Slate and the dreaded Microsoft Debug Mangler Manager. I uninstalled Clean Slate, disabled MDM, uninstalled the graphics card, reinstalled it and Clean Slate, and the computers are back to normal. Phew!

So I did that in the lab of 22 computers (thankfully only 12 had the MDM/graphics card problem, but they all needed the upgrade of Clean Slate) while I was backing up and restoring the user and software folders on the new Fileserver. I left at 7:00pm and had supper at Taco Hell.

Today, I actually went to Curves for the first time since August. Then, after lunch, I returned to school to make sure the restore worked (it did) and to check the shares and permissions (all were fine). I then turned off the old Fileserver, renamed and re-IP-addressed the new one, and logged onto a machine with my account. Yay! Everything in my account was there! The new Fileserver worked!

Now, the old Backup Domain Controller crashes more than doesn’t, so I turned it off and decided to put in the new PDC that we also bought this summer but had no time to finish installing. Unfortunately, when Dean installed WinNT4 on it, he made it a PDC at the time. But the old PDC refused to acknowledge the fact that it was a server in that case. After some research, I discovered there was no way to demote to BDC with this situation. So I thought “I’ll just reinstall WinNT4.” Ha!

There’s never a “just” about it. Firstly, I tried the upgrade, but it remembered the old settings. Then I started from scratch – but when it came time to log onto the Domain, it couldn’t be found. The Intel NIC, I figured. But that’s no problem, Dean made floppies of the NIC drivers. Except that for some reason, the new PDC doesn’t see its A: drive anymore. ARGH!

After an initial bout of frustration, I thought “I could make a CD of the NIC drivers” and did so. Finally WinNT4 finished installing and the new PDC was now a BDC on our network. It will stay this way until I’m ready to promote it to the new PDC and demote the old to a BDC.

Next was installing the graphics drivers, but of course, a higher service pack was needed. No problem, I’ll update using IE. Except IE doesn’t work. Argh! So I download the service pack on my PC and save to a CD. Except there’s two different encryptions – and I’d downloaded the wrong one. New download, new CD burn (same CD-RW, thankfully) and finally I got the new PDC/BDC updated and ready for action. PHEW!

All in all, it ended up being 10.5 hours of work – and that’s just me. Thankfully only about 4 hours of Dean was needed. I’m merely $25/hr, but he’s $60/hr. Hopefully on Monday I can finish the last 4th grade rooms and be nearly caught up to where I should have been at the end of summer. Woohoo!

Gakked from elsaf. I think I will truly be unique here. Feel free to prove me wrong. 🙂

Name a book you own that nobody else on your friends list is likely to:

Behind the Scenes of a Musical by Bruce Purchase. This is a children’s book documenting the making of The Pied Piper, the National Theatre’s production which starred Sylvester McCoy. It’s got great color photos of Sylv in and out of costume.

Name a CD you own that nobody else on your friends list is likely to have:

‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime… by The Hammered Music Duo. It’s hammered dulcimer music of several Christmas tunes. Beautiful music.

Name a VHS tape/DVD you own that nobody else on your friends list is likely to:

Well, I hope it’s The Three Kinds of Heat, but there may actually be one or two who do have that. So I’ll say The Mumbo Jumbo instead. (Actually, most of my Sylv stuff is probably rather unique.)

Name a place you’ve been… yada, yada:

Bruckner’s Nature Center. I’ve yet to take any of my friends there, except one ‘net friend who doesn’t yet have an LJ. It’s a nice little park just outside of town. Perhaps someday I’ll take elsaf and judiang there. (So is that cheating, picking a local spot? Tell me if it is.)

BTW – HAPPY BIRTHDAY dark_pheonix! I’d make her Sylv wallpaper, but I did one better and sent her actual Sylv pix for her b-day. Heh heh heh. (I’m such a bad influence on the youth of today!)

Firstly, please vote! Secondly, there are two important (well, at least two) issues coming up this election which have nothing to do with who’s gonna become president. The first is about educational funding. The second about partners’ rights.

Ohio’s general assembly was told by the Ohio Supreme Court a number of years ago that the method by which they fund Ohio schools was unconstitutional and they had to change it. The General Assembly has NOT done this. And what they’ve been doing instead is trying to get the Supreme Court to change its mind. One way for it do to that is to get folks on there who will overturn the previous ruling. Rather than reform educational funding, they wanna change the Supreme Court. Gah! This year’s election has a number of people running for Supreme Court. And some of them have been very supportive of educational funding reform. Please, for the sake of Ohio public schools which are in a horrible money crunch these days, consider voting for these supportive candidates. The Ohioans for Educational Justice endorses the following candidates: Paul Pfeiffer, Republican (incumbent), William O’Neill, Democrat (Warren Court of Appeals), Ellen Connally, Democrat (Cleveland Municipal Court), and Nancy A. Fuerst, Democrat (Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court).

The second issue I’d like to discuss is an actual issue on the ballot, Issue One. This is Ohio’s attempt at an anti-gay marriage amendment, but it affects a LOT more people than the LGBT community. Even the AARP and the Dayton Daily News have come down against it. It will remove many partner benefits that are currently in place in Ohio – which will affect LGBT and straight people. I urge you to consider voting AGAINST Issue One.

Feel free to link to this in your LJ or whatever in order to get as many Ohioans to see it. I don’t often get all political, but I’m really concerned about these two issues. OK, I’ll get off of my soapbox now.

I thought of a GREAT idea today. Well, I think it’s great at least. Halloween is coming soon and I think to celebrate it, we need to have an All Day Diablo Marathon! Yes, a whole day devoted to the playing of Diablo.

You make plans in advance to have meals either easy to fix or delivered (I like the idea of pizza, myself – if only someone delivered here!) and work on reducing the distractions in the day. And we get together on the Blizzard network and play a game from the start until the Marathon ends. Just to see how long we can last and how far we can go. (I ask, in advance, if maybe I could be an Amazon? I’ve not been her yet – just recently started playing with the Barbarian and he’s lots of fun.)

If this sounds do-able, we need to pick the date. Halloween is on a Sunday, so that might work for many folks. However, I’ll have to be done by 10pm EDT cuz of school the next day. (Thankfully it’s the end of Daylight Savings that night, so I can stay til 10pm instead of 9pm like usual.) I personally prefer doing it Saturday cuz I, for one, can stay up a lot later then. So, Diablo players, what do you say?