Tag: masters

Thinks

I’m nearly caught up with grading again. Always amazing how it seems to run away from me. But I stayed at work until after 5 yesterday grading tests that were beginning to smell they were so old. And I got a few other things graded today which had been molding. The trick is to now stay on top of things. (I think I should stop assigning round things since it’s harder to stay on top of round things than flat things…)

My latest DVD watching has been Into the Labyrinth. I loved this show as a kid and became a Ron Moody fan because of it. I always enjoyed the various “characters” he played in the series. It was a number of years later that I discovered that there was more than one season of the show. Thanks to the DVD set, I have begun watching season 2. Amazing to think that the visuals were even worse in season 2, but Ron still gets to dress in cool costumes, so I figure I’ll enjoy season 2. Season 3 doesn’t have him, but at least it still has Phil Church (one of the kids who help Moody’s character – and the cute one that I had a crush on as a kid). Oh, and Pamela Salem (Belor) will also be there to chew the scenery, so I’ll probably have fun with season 3.

One thing that I’ve decided is that it’s fun to watch early 80s British children’s television programming on a widescreen high def TV. Heh heh. (Almost seems a waste of all that high tech-ness, but I love the irony.)

I’ve been helping dad with some YouTube videos for Westar. So far I’ve edited two short excerpts and uploaded them, though I may have to work on the second one. The sound on it didn’t come out too well. Feel free to check out the clips. The first is of Elaine Pagels talking about the origin of Satan and the second (with the crappy sound) is Karen Armstrong talking about “what is religion?”

My superintendent had seen a neat animated clock on one of the other schools’ websites and asked if we’d be able to put a clock and/or weather thingy on our website. So I looked into finding standards compliant, handicapped accessible, ad-free (or non-obvious) solutions. And I think I got it. The clock is basically a live clock of your own PC rather than a world-time clock (those were all ad-laden that I could find). I found that Weather Underground had the least-obvious advertising weather stickie, so included that as well. (Their own page, like so many other weather pages, is chock-full o’ ads. If only the National Weather Service had widgets like that – they’re ad free.)

I’ve been busy and I hope to spend some quality time tomorrow working on college stuff. My task for tomorrow? Write about astrology and how it’s not a science. Should be fun. As per the assignment, I’m going to suggest feng shui as another example of a pseudo-science. (I love the Penn & Teller: BS episode on Feng Shui and bottled water.)

Ouch!

Yesterday I mailed off the credit card payment which included my last big semester at university. That took out nearly all of my savings, so this is as poor as I’ve been since, well, since I don’t remember when. (Probably since I used to travel to England every year or so. Amazing how much money I got into savings when I stopped flying there each summer. Heh.) But there are many good things in this too.

  • As I said, it was my last big payment. After this semester are 3 more semester hours which I’ll pay over 2 or 3 semesters. (And this semester I paid for 7 semester hours).

  • I have paid for my Masters program WITHOUT taking out a loan. I am very proud of myself for that.

  • When I called the folks to whimper (in a not very serious way) they invited me around for wine time and the watching of the Inauguration Parade. It was fun.

  • Yesterday amazon.com sent me $50 worth of gift certificates for paying for my college bill with my amazon.com credit card. 🙂 I only spent $5 over that to order lots of fun books. (And I’m only $400 away from another $25 gift cert.)

  • In my preliminary work on my taxes (still waiting on forms from lame-os Wooster and Ohio) it looks like I’ll be getting a refund again. Woot!

  • Heck, this summer I updated my bathroom big time which was a great use of money in savings.

So, although my savings account looks pretty pathetic right now, I’m very fortunate that I’ll be able to start saving again now that my Masters Program is finishing up. And next year, when I’m done with the program, I’ll move sideways on the pay scale at work and get a bit more money. (I’m envisioning a successful Masters Thesis. It’s the only way to envision it.) Yay!

Nearly done! Woot!

Well, I think I have both of my final papers in nearly presentable formats. I’m letting them stew overnight, now, so that tomorrow evening I can reread them with semi-fresh eyes. Both dad and judiang pronounced my essay well-written, so that makes me happy. They both also offered up useful suggestions. Using the comments from two classmates and my professor, I think I have gotten my research proposal more ready for prime time than before. There is still work to be done on it, and I hope my professor makes more helpful comments. I’m considering using that proposal as possibly the basis for my Master’s Thesis, so any suggestions he has will help immensely.

Anyhoo, tomorrow after work, our teacher’s union is having an informal gathering at Applebee’s so I’ll definitely be going there. Then that evening, I’ll reread the papers, correct anything else I notice, and turn the fuckers in. Whew!

Saturday should be a fun day. In celebration for mom’s birthday (and the end of my semester) the folks and I will go out to eat somewhere and do some shopping at JoAnn’s (I need some supplies for Xmas gifts I’m making this year). I’m also hoping to go see a movie or two this weekend. And definitely re-up my WoW subscription. (I’ll hold off a couple of days before re-upping City of Heroes so that I can be playing it right up until classes begin again.)

So yay – I can just smell freedom and it smells great!

Winding down the semester

Ah, my brain is fried. I’ve been working on my research proposal for my research course and my brain is full. But I have turned in the rough draft (very rough) to be reviewed by two of my classmates and my professor. Then I’ll work on updating it for turning in by December 12th. The rest of the stuff in the class I’ve gotten an A average on, so it’s just this last paper for the grade. I’ll also be evaluating two of my classmates’ proposals/projects. Hopefully I can come up with some helpful suggestions for their papers.

Likewise, the course on Science, Technology and Human Values is winding down too. I’ve gotten an A average for all of the essays thus far (the last one was my third 95% – woot!) We’ve still not received the final participation grade (though I’d gotten 20/20 for the first half of the semester), so I don’t know how I did there. Our final grade for the course will be a 5-10 page essay (the others were 1-2 page essays). I haven’t even started that one. Or picked the topic. But that’s what tomorrow is for. Heh. The final paper for this course is also due December 12th.

Just one more proper semester of university work, followed by a summer and fall semester working on my Masters Thesis (which I think I’d like to base upon my research proposal).

So, December 13th (which also happens to be my mom’s birthday) will be a day of celebration. I might even resubscribe to WoW for a month then. Yay!

Horror of Horrors!

No, my house hasn’t been invaded by ghoulies & ghosties in honor of Halloween – instead my main PC’s power supply went kaput yesterday. And college is overwhelming me this week.

But before I go there, I shall post a photo of me in my Halloween costume this year. (Yesterday was dress up day at school.)


The Good Grade Fairy (she’s on strike, so earn your own good grades!)

I had fun making that costume (the shirt says “The Good Grade Fairy”). Most people got it, too. Heh. The A-wand was something dad & I made together. He soldered the A and drilled the hole into the wood dowel that was the wand. I wrapped the A in red yarn and glued it into the wand. Then covered the wand base with purple duct tape. Basically, I wanted an excuse to buy fairy wings and The Good Grade Fairy was that excuse. 🙂

So, yesterday I get home from work and when I get into my den, I notice my main PC wasn’t on. In fact, my music server isn’t on either. I power up the music server and it starts just fine, however powering up my main PC gets nada. I did all the tricks I could think of, but no go on the PSU. Well, bummer.

I headed next door & asked the parentals if the power was off at our end of town today (it wasn’t off at the school any). Dad said that they had replaced a telephone pole and the power was indeed out for an hour & a half. That’s when my PCs went off unexpectedly. “So, anyone up for an emergency run to Staples?” I asked. (No nearby PC repair shops, but thankfully the Staples in Troy has PSUs and some other useful computer parts.)

Dad thought that sounded like a good idea. He said he should look at PC prices and maybe laptops for mom. Mom of course perked up and asked to come along too. We didn’t have long to be out & about however since it was after 4pm and Beggar’s Night began at 6pm.

I found a 500W Antec PSU that’s supposedly “cooler, quieter, greener” (than what, I dunno – it didn’t say). After I bought it, mom was standing in the aisle looking dejected. Didn’t we come to look at laptops for her? Heh. So we returned to the laptop area where she saw a purty HP for $700. It’s a 17″ widescreen which has a proper number pad on it. She also found a case that would fit it. (It’s probably no heavier than the 6 year old Dell she’s been using.)

We returned home where I straightened up the house a bit before my vast numbers of Trick or Treaters would start showing up. Then I nuked some soup and put Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on while I waited for the hordes.

I thought that I might actually get a few more kids this year than last because one of the main streets in town was torn up due to road work. However, I only got about 15 kids! I usually get 40-some kids (though one year got over 70 kids). I asked around at work today (only a teacher work-day, so no kids) and I wasn’t the only one getting few kids last night.

After 8pm, I returned to mom & dad’s to help them with a few Vista issues. I wound up staying past 10pm working on the thing. It’s very purty and the only thing it’s being truly stubborn on is in installing the Minolta printers. That particular printer is a few years old now so dad’s thinking maybe getting the $100 Brother wireless laser one of these days.

So I never got around to installing my power supply last night. Work today, as I mentioned already, was just us teachers. I had two groups of chemistry kids in my lab filming their Periodic Table Videos (one group putting alkali metals into water and the other group using the lab to be a mad scientists lair. They got every beaker, flask, and test tube out of their chemistry drawers, put colored water in all, then added dry ice that they’d brought with ’em. I think these videos are going to be a blast this year). I went to Indian’s Pizza for lunch and tried their spaghetti & meatball. Tasty! I didn’t get the quarter exams graded, but I got a lot of other stuff accomplished.

Our teacher’s association has a social committee this year and they have come up with several social events. Today we had such an event – after work, going to Applebee’s for half-price appetizers (and booze) and fellowship. It was quite fun – we were there a good two hours.

When I got home, I FINALLY put my new PSU into my PC. It wasn’t easy at first, but when I finally got it jiggled in properly, it worked just fine. Indeed, I am typing this from my main PC. Yay!

After I finished that, I returned to mom & dad’s to work more on mom’s laptop. And now I’m home to play on my own computer. 🙂

In other news, this weekend I’m going to have to batten down the hatches on my college work. What I really need this week is a “spring break.” I haven’t worked one jot on one course this week (the one which requires near daily output) and haven’t read any of the material for the other course. With the quarter exams to grade this weekend as well, I’m going to be a very busy trina. Blech. Still, it will start out nice cuz it’s pancake day at the UCC tomorrow and the folks are buying my pancakes. Here’s hoping that gets me nicely productive for the weekend.

Arrrr! Pirate Bounty!

Thanks t’ payin’ fer college classes wi’ me credit card, I now be havin’ $100 worth o’ Amazon.com vouchers. They gave extra reward points fer college payments, so I got nearly twice as many points as I would be havin’ gotten. Hmmm, wonder what I ortin’ ta buy wi’ me treasure?

(Translation thanks to http://www.syddware.com/cgi-bin/pirate.pl)

I’ve missed my calling!

Forget teaching – I should have been a science writer for MacPaper! I’ve gotten my grades back from my scientific writing course. We had to analyze two science articles and compare to the original studies. Then we had to write two New York Times-style articles on two science studies. And finally write two USA Today (MacPaper)-style articles on two other science studies. And I got 9/10 on five of the assignments and 8/10 on one of the two NYT-style articles. Go me!

For those of you who’ve subscribed to my scienceblog feed (tls_scienceblog) you’ve gotten the first two assignments already and the other four will show up over the next five Wednesdays. My favorite headline is with the last article that I wrote: Bigger Weapons or Bigger Testes – Choose Only One. Heh – how can you not read an article with that title?

Finito – for now!

I have just turned in the 6th assignment for my online summer Masters course – Scientific Writing. Today is also, coincidentally (not!), the last day of the semester. So I’m done with college until August 25th when fall courses begin. Though I need to work on a thesis idea since one of my classes is the first of my thesis classes. I’d like to do something with children’s science books, but I haven’t gotten things sorted out in my head yet about it. Then I’ll have to ask one of the three professors (one of whom I’ve not had yet) to be my thesis adviser.

In addition to thinking of theses, I need to be working on my new course for school – Advanced Problems in Science. This is a critical thinking-style class with influences from my Masters program and ideas from when dad created and taught the course. I also have two of my Vernier LabQuests at home that I want to play with and write labs for. So I have lots of intellectual things I want to do yet this summer.

Other summer goals include updating my Sylvester McCoy website to be a Coppermine Gallery. Plus getting old VHS clips into digital format. Plus updating my main website. Plus… well other things too.

So what am I going to do first? Probably resubscribe to World of Warcraft for a month. Heh. When the Olympics start, however, I need to be off the game so that I can fully enjoy the summer Olympics experience. 🙂

“Aaaaaaaaaa!” quoth the Fonz

Well, summer semester starts Monday, and we’ve finally gotten our grades for the spring semester. And as you might guess from my title, I got As! Yay! 4 courses down, 3 As and a B+. (Curses Logic Class!) Still waiting for my statistics final project to be returned, but our prof e-mailed us that he would be sending them back. Good, I wanna see if I’m on the right track. 🙂

May has been… well, considering that I’ve written only one other post this month, I guess you can figure it’s either been dead boring or horribly busy. I’ll give you a hint – if it ever got dead boring, I’d start posting memes. 😉

Phew! Done with That!

Well, about 15 minutes ago, I turned in my first statistical research paper, which also happened to be my first APA-style paper. I had turned in a very rough draft on the 18th (with minutes to spare before midnight) but, alas, never received any feedback from it. Still, I worked on the paper since then, especially yesterday, and it was taking good shape. However, when I was walking home today, I was feeling rather low about research papers in general, wondering even if I’d be able to tackle my eventual thesis paper.

My work on the thing after work today managed to swing that feeling around. At 8:30pm I was done with the paper, so I printed it off (cuz it looked so nice!) and took it around to the folks’ who agreed that it looked nice. And surely looking nice is half the battle! Dad didn’t see anything truly glaring in my conclusions, so that’s something too. After they oggled the paper, I returned home, saved the file in Word format (I use StarOffice at home) and turned it in. Yay! I feel elated and have begun to work on the other class’s final project – a curriculum for a science and the public course. That’s due on Friday.

Wow – hard to believe that after this week, I’ll be 12 semester hours into my Masters program! I have a summer class starting May 19th (and ending July 12th) on scientific writing. That should be good practice for my science blog (tls_scienceblog) among other things. And this weekend, I start up my 30-day retail version of World of Warcraft. Yay!