When I tell you that Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas are some of my favorite movies to watch, you get an idea of the type of soppy (and not so soppy) stories that I enjoy. Hey, if they’re Christmassy, they get a bit more leniency in the saccharine department. So it’s no surprise that I eventually wrote a story to fit in with such fare. Back in 1999, in the final issue of Dreamtime (the PMEB fan fiction webzine), I contributed a Doctor Who story starring the Seventh Doctor (anyone surprised?) and Mel. If you’re interested in reading Miracle on 23rd Street (or in some rare cases, rereading it) then click here. Thanks to elsaf and Steph for still keeping the Dreamtime website going.

Firstly, I shall join in with elsaf and judiang and make a Twelve Days of Christmas list.

My LiveJournal 12 Days
My True Love gave to me…
12 drake57s a-hopping.
11 elissahs a-calling.
10 elsafs a-hugging.
9 girlycomics a-hooting.
8 gordon_r_ds a-writing.
7 gregmces a-smooching.
6 indefatigable42s a-flaming.
5 light green judiangs.
4 drumming michaellees.
3 Palestinian redstarrobots.
2 goat shebits.
And a the_ladylark in a tomato tree.
Get gifts! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

And second – I now know what people mean when they talk about a night that swallows light. As I was driving home from grocery shopping tonight (to get stuff for tomorrow’s teacher carry-in) I was just astonished at how dark it was even when my lights were on. I first wondered if maybe I had a pididdle, but no, both of my headlights were fine. Just damned dark. The dark that sucks out the marrow of light. (Ewww, that’s rather gross imagery.)

So, what is Trina taking for the carry-in? Reuben Dip. Probably one of the most fattening things in the family cookbook (and my family excels at fattening).

REUBEN MIX


1 can sauerkraut

4 oz. cheddar cheese

4 oz. Swiss cheese

4 oz. Monterey jack cheese

½ cup Miracle Whip

3 small packages of corned beef



Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. Serve warm with rye bread.

When one teaches seniors, one must realize that there are times when seniors have other things on their minds… Often called “Senioritis,” the times when this occurs most strongly is right before Christmas break and right before school is out. So, what does one do with seniors when they’re antsy and don’t feel like studying? Have ’em build toothpick bridges, that’s what!

I added the Toothpick Bridge competition to my repertoire of engineering projects (which includes catapult building, come-back cans, and egg drop platforms or carriages) several years ago when I got a example lab on it. When I first assigned it, it was an out of class assignment to be done individually or in pairs. (Several of the engineering projects that I assign are like this.) But a few years ago, I was over a week ahead of my usual schedule when the Christmas season was fast approaching. And we’d just finished solids (including stress, strain, scaling, and support). So rather than move onto thermogoddamnits, I thought about having the kids build the bridges in class, in their lab groups (most groups of 3 kids). This has now become the tradition.

Today, the physics students began building their bridges. They’re still optimistic about things and have good physics plans. But as the week continues, they’ll learn to LOATHE toothpicks and glue. And then they reach the stage where they’re experts at having the toothpicks and glue do as they wish. We listen to Christmas music while they work and I can usually get some grading done. (Which is good – I need to grade their catapult research papers and reports.) But the best thing is testing them when we get back from Christmas break. The students are always amazed at how well their bridges actually do perform. It’ll be interesting to see which lab group wins this competition. (So far, no group has won more than one engineering contest this year – pretty evenly matched class.)

Today is the day to give out hugs (and receive them) apparently. I like hugs and thus have been giving them out today. And I’ll gladly accept any you might give. 🙂

*HUGS* TOTAL!
give trinalin more *HUGS*

Get hugs of your own

After a long discussion with shebit about my obsession infatuation with Sylvester McCoy, I decided that I needed an LJ icon with Sylv from The Last Place on Earth. The quandary cames when I realized that I’ve used up my 3 alloted icons. Solution? Pay for my LJ account. (Well, I was figuring on doing so anyhoo.)

To see the conversation, click here. I will admit, the icon isn’t as sophisticated as some I’ve seen, but I figure I shall learn with time.

As for today – plans are afoot… It’s cleaning day! Yay! (Or is that ergh?) Dishes are being washed, clothes are being washed (can’t use the dryer until the dish washer is done – some eejit installed the dishwasher circuit on the 220V dryer circuit when my house was originally wired). I plan to reorganize my reading room and my den (a bit) and possibly even go through closets. Hey, anything to put off grading chemistry tests! (They’re pretty ripe by now – it’s been over a week since the kids took it.)

As I mentioned earlier, I adore Christmas music. I have converted all of my Xmas CDs (and a few albums/tapes) to MP3 for ease of listening. Since I have an MP3 player in every room in the house (barring the living room/dining room, where I have wireless speakers that can pick up music from my computer), MP3 is the way to go for me. After all of my conversion, I found out that I have 766 Christmas MP3s. That’s almost 41 hours of music. And so far this season, I’ve only listened to 487 in my playlist that includes them all.

As with my nonXmas music listening, I have ecclectic tastes. I have no problem listening to Julie Andews sing “I Wonder as I Wander” followed by the Chipmunks singing “Hang Up Your Stocking.” Or Loreena McKennitt singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” followed by the Muppets singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” One CD in my collection that’s probably not in most people’s is The Cincinnati Men’s Chorus’ A Homemade Holiday.

The Cincinnati Men’s Chorus is an all gay chorus from, as you might imagine, Cincinnati. Five years ago, the Dayton PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians And Gays) chapter worked on bringing the CMC up to Dayton to do a fundraiser for both organizations. Each year it’s become more and more popular – and my folks and I have gone each year. Last Saturday was when they held their Dayton Concert (basically, their dress rehersal for their Cincinnati performances). It was, as always, wonderful. And if anyone reading lives near the Cincinnati area, I encourage you to attend their concerts this weekend. They perform tonight and tomorrow night at the Jason-Kaplan Theater at the Aronoff Center for the Performing Arts. It’s at 8:07pm tonight and 2:07pm tomorrow. Check out their website for more information.

One of neat things one can do when one’s Christmas tune collection is in MP3 is figure out which songs are most prevalent. I discovered that I have 12 versions of “Away in a Manger” (no idea how many are the English version and how many the American style), 14 of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and 16 of “O Come All Ye Faithful” (two as “Adeste Fideles”). But the number one duplicated song that I have is “Silent Night” with 24 versions (three as “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht”).

Now, if you were to ask me what my absolute favorite Christmas song was, well… That’s not an easy decision. It has changed throughout the years. I know it used to be “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” But “The Coventry Carol” has been a favorite for a long time, too. (I love Alison Moyet’s version.) And “Pat-a-pat-a-pan” and “I Wonder as I Wander” (both sung by Julie Andrews). But there are many others that I love. Since I enjoy choral singing (especially boys & men’s choruses) the King’s College Choir occupies a good deal of my collection. And since they and Julie are English, I know a lot of English carols. And two versions of several popular tunes. (“Away in a Manger,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and others.) Etc. etc.

So I know you’re dying to know what all exists in my song collection… Thanks to MusicMatch, and Adobe Acrobat, I can make a songlist of all of my Christmas tunes. You can find it on my website here.

So, Monday, dad and I headed down to the Dayton Convention Center to the SOITA Tech convention. I was looking forward to it (despite getting stuff ready for a substitute teacher – but it’s never easy for a science teacher to prepare for a sub). Last year we learned a lot at the workshops. And I intended to do the same this year.

The best, I felt, was the Metadot Portal session run by the tech from Piqua, one of our county schools. As usual, Jim and Erich did a great job. I decided after the session that I might go ahead and use Metadot for the school website and include the Intranet stuff that I’d originally intended to use separately. Since I can set up users and groups, I should be able to block the Intranet specific stuff to just staff and students (hopefully). But this will also allow the staff to access things they might need at home.

The other session that might eventually be a time-saver for me, was about Progress Book. Currently, for grades, we use GradeQuick by Jackson Software. It’s not a bad program, and is very good for the money. But it means that I have a lot more work to do in order to get grades to our DA site. Progress Book would be a direct connection to the DA site and would allow for things like Lesson Plans and parental access to current grades and stuff. But it costs $5 per kid! (Hey, we have no money, thanks to the state of Ohio, so even $5 a kid is a LOT of money to be spending.) As more schools in our DA site’s region start using Progress Book, the per student costs should go down somewhat. So perhaps this might be an option for the 2005-2006 school year.

During the lunch, which was very good (like last year), Leslie Fisher, of www.lesliefisher.com, gave a presentation about Gadgets You Must Have. And basically, she was me but with unlimited funds. Most of the stuff she had, I could honestly say I either wanted or already had. (The one exception being that she’s Mac-based and I’m PC-based.) She said that the presentation that she was going to do for the teachers on the other two days was going to have even more gadgets.

Leslie Fisher also did the Flash workshop that I attended. While dad was busy at the MDECA (our DA site) meeting, I was learning how to make some basic Flash animation. I think I got the better deal. 🙂 Well, at least ine was more fun. Dad’s was very informative.

We really only had two complaints about the whole day. The first was that there was no way to tell, in most cases, whether you’d be getting a good informative workshop, or whether it was just a sales pitch from some vendor. (I got pretty lucky – the closest thing I had to a sales pitch was the Dell guy talking about Disaster Recovery. And he managed to prevent it from being a Dell commercial. Dad, OTOH, was at a few sessions that were more about buying solutions than solving problems.)

The other complaint was the same one that we had the previous year. We love the fact that SOITA now has a tech-only day. Most of the teacher and administrator workshops they have on days 2 & 3 aren’t what we techs need. But they don’t have the vendors present during the Tech Day. And yet, it’s the techs with the purse-strings. Or at least, with the recommendation power. As for me and dad, we ended up going to the conference on Tuesday afternoon in order to meet with the vendors. Since dad only works one day a week for me, to have him go for a day and a half to the SOITA conference, means he’s worked a week and a half.

We’re glad we went to the vendors. We always learn something there. This year, we were mostly interested in finding out about the prices of LCD projectors. And we think we found the one we’ll be getting (with REAP grant funds – remember, we have no money). The vendors were pleased to see some techs there – turns out they wish they’d been present for the tech day too. Actually, one vendor probably wasn’t happy to see me…

WorldWise, out of Columbus, had a table with some “educational software” for teachers. Priced nice and low. And as soon as I saw the table of software, I almost had a fit. Actually, I did speak my mind (albeit slightly censored) to the salesman there. Most of the software (I’d say 90%) on the table was stuff that I’d seen in the elementary classrooms that ONLY plays at 256 colors. Stuff that I’ve had to either throw away, or find 1 classroom machine, reset it to 256 colors, and install the games only on it. (Which, IMO, is a waste of my time.) Why the hell are these guys flogging this crap to teachers? I know, it’s to get rid of the crap that other people won’t buy. Most of the teachers don’t know they’re being ripped off. I’m just glad none of my teachers were at the conference. I was very angry – I’m still a little steamed. I mean, when I run a network with Win98 computers, and they’re TOO POWERFUL for the software that the teacher’s just bought, that teacher has been RIPPED OFF. Grrrrrrrrrrrr – thieves, the lot of ’em!

Anyway, I almost felt sorry for the vendor there, except that he probably knew full well what he was doing. And he was probably glad he *wasn’t* there on the day that the techs were present. I know I’m not the only tech in the county who hates this out of date software – so there’s got to be lots of us techs in the region who can’t stand it.

So, in summary, the SOITA conference was a good thing. We got cool bags (once again) and some nice freebies. And both dad and I learned some stuff. Plus I got to vent off steam at a hapless vendor. All in all, a fun time.

I actually had the time to sit and read through some of my networking journals at work today. (Usually they go in the big round filing cabinet by my desk, unread.) And Network Computing had this little gem that they’d gotten from the Full Disclosure mailing list.

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

A: Top-posting.

Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?

In another journal, on the last page (usually the best part of any good network journal), was an article about paranoia and that they really *are* out to get you. But what I liked best about it was the commentary on the vendors. Vendors, if you’ve ever been to a vendor show, don’t sell software or hardware anymore, they sell solutions. Dad and I have yet to figure out what “solutions” are and why we’d want to spend our limited school funds on them. Aparently the fellow who wrote the article felt the same way that we did about buying “solutions.” I’d quote what it directly said, but I ripped it out and taped it to dad’s monitor so he can read it tomorrow (on his one day working for this week).

Ah, tomorrow should be fun. Firstly, it’s Friday. Secondly, it’s PayDay! And Thirdly, it’s the day of our monthly county tech meeting. We gather at El Sombrero restaurant in Troy and sit around discussing problems and solutions (without any vendors around to get in the way!) Dad and I always learn a lot during these meetings and it’s always reassuring to find out that we’re not always the last ones to discover something. I will admit, there are times we feel more like the comic relief than valid participants, but from time to time we contribute something useful as well. Plus we get some good Mexican American food in our bellies and we get to talk to grownups for awhile. (That’s very important to do from time to time when you teach kids.)

On Tuesday, dad and I will get to be wowed by Vendors trying to sell us Solutions. But more importantly, on Monday we’re going to several workshops (paid for with professional development funds – yay!) that ought to be very informative. Last year we went to the tech conference and learned more in our 4 one-hour workshops than we’d learned in months. But we missed out on the vendors (who only come the second and third days of the conferences, with the first day for techs only). This year we were smart and set aside time to visit with the vendors on Tuesday. The conference is put on by SOITA, the Southwest Ohio Instructional Technology Association, and is always fun. (Plus we get lunch and usually a nice Lexus/Nexus bag.)

The only drawback to professional days is having a substitute teacher. Usually the subs are good folks and all, but writing up lesson plans for non-chemistry/non-physics people can be a real bear. (I have had bad subs, however, and returned to broken equipment – gah!) Still, all this teching will be good for my spirit and may help galvanize the work I need to do on the school intranet and WWW sites.

Online quizes will be the death of me. But I couldn’t pass up “What Christmas Carol Are You?” (gakked from drake57. Any surprise that I’m Jingle Bells?

You are ‘Jingle Bells’! Full of enthusiasm and
good cheer, you are excited by the first
appearances of Christmas decorations in shops
and have been heard singing along to the piped
music. Your attitude to Christmas is one of
childlike delight – with a slightly mercenary
streak. You definitely believe in Santa (you
get more presents that way) and will put up
your Christmas tree as early as possible. You
really like carolling, and presents, and mince
pies, and pudding, and will insist on getting
everyone up at dawn to open presents
immediately. So long as the food and presents
are good, you will have a great Christmas.

What Christmas Carol are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

So, enough of silly quizes, how was today? As productive as yesterday? Well, no. As is typical of tech work, one of the computers that I supposedly fixed yesterday really isn’t fixed. And I’m still fighting with it. I think I’ll have to give it a new harddrive (or rather, old harddrive) after all. I also managed to kill a PS/2 slot today. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I’m impressed! The keyboard worked before I fiddled with the computer, but works no more. (Yes, I thought to swap keyboards – so it’s not the keyboard itself that’s broken.) I’m just waiting for someone to suggest that I look in the BIOS to see if it was deactivated there. My waiting response is “Taste the soup!”

Some days in the realm of tech work, you actually do have a day when you feel further ahead than the previous day. (Alas, that is a rarity.) Today, for me, was one of those days. I actually fixed (I think) 4 computers in the course of two hours and a bit. Plus some other little jobs – including sending grades for the interim. It looks like a batch of 4 year old computers is having failing harddrives, so it’s up to Scandisk to sort them out. We’ll see how long the fix lasts, but they’re looking more promising than I feared. (We don’t have a lot of replacement drives – and none of those are new.)

Sending grades is always fun (not!) We’re using Jackson GradeQuick to do the High School (which for us includes junior high) grades and then send them electronically. It’s not a bad program, but there’s a lot for the teachers to do to make sure the grades are sent right. We’ve yet to have a “perfect” grade sending time yet – and we’ve been using the program for a year now. I’m wondering if the Progress Book program that the A sites are pushing will be easier on staff. I hope so!

So tomorrow, when the preview pages are printed, we’ll find out what sorts of errors we’ve got. And if any teachers didn’t get their grades in by the time I sent them onto our A site. (I did have one teacher rush in right as I was leaving and said she still had one class to go – but I’d already sent them. Indeed I’d sent them 45 minutes later than the cut off time. Ah well.) The joys of school techs!

As for the science part of my work, things be good. The physics students are working on their catapults for the Catapult Contest on Wednesday. I’m seeing more design variety than I’d seen in ages – that’s great! I revamped the way I did it this year – had them write the research paper up first before I’d even given them the specs on what to build. I think that encouraged more kids to actually research catapults *before* they built them. Should be fun on Wednesday!