Wahoo!

Alright, kinda cool. First time I decide to actually comment on something and I get an Editor's Pick. Here's the NY Mag.com article that I commented on, I found it linked from this BRO post. My comment is almost all the way down on the second page of comments.


Editor's Pick

Buffalo or NYC, choice is yours, surely depends on your ideals, "what" is "where" in you pyramid, can't do this in beau fleuve, wouldn't do the in the apple, needing to know what you want, tis key but the same lock won't accept both, come here, go there, go somewhere.......??

By jamnjazzz on 08/25/2008 at 1:19pm

I Think She Likes the Water

The new pup (Autumn) went out yesterday for her first hike. Nothing major just a little walk at Tillman to get here used to being out on the trails with us. She was good as Gold(en) and even though she liked being in the lead, she never let us out of her sight. That's a good sign.

So, part of Tillman is a couple of small abandoned quarries and it makes for perfect swimming holes. We let Autumn get her feet wet and she kept wading a little farther in the water. Slowly we started tossing a stick in the water for her to Retrieve and as this went on, she kept getting more aggressive in jumping into the water.

Autumn scared herself once or twice. The first time was when she stuck her whole head in the water trying to catch a leaf, and the second time was when she left the bottom and swam for the first time. She kept going back for more, each time leaving the shore a little more until she swam out for a stick and then swam back.































Looks like she's gonna be a real Golden. Also looks like we'll be coming back to the beach many, many more times.


As promised........

Coming home it was nap time!!

What's Going On??????

One of the reads I came accross recentely is this disturbing saga of American education.

One Teacher's Cry

I have some idea and sympathy for what she is saying and our national education policy is certainly a formula for disaster. I know a little about this because a long, long time ago........

I spent some time studying to be a teacher. I had tutored and trained people at various stages of my life experience and I thought....."Hey, I'm good at this, I should do this for a living" Besides, I felt (and still do) that my area of expertise is of extraordinary value in addressing the problems of our society. Don't we all!

So after being layed off, I figure, be a teacher. I apply and am accepted at a local institution of higher education and start by taking my general teaching courses. Nothing earth shattering. I them progress to taking some area specific teaching courses (Dr. Wielder, your course on Reading in Secondary Education is one of the 3 best courses I've ever taken, kudos!) and a few puzzles begin to surface. In many classes there is a theme running through all of this that says......"Make it fun! Keep them amuzed!" as if the students (were talking secondary students now, Jr. and Sr. High) shouldn't be asked to actually work for their progress. The notion that progress might actually be hard and difficult and something other than entertainment was completely swept away and ignored.

OK, well, I figure once I get into methods, I'll really see how to teach. Wow, suprise.....it got worse. The methods program was run by an elementary education specialist and boom! Work, who needs that! The kids must be entertained, we're all performers. So being totally disillusioned here I think to myself, I don't know about this any more. But I've got three semesters invested and all I have left is student teaching, and if I don't it's a waste money and time. So off to student teaching I go.

Yep, you guessed it, final blow. Let's be serious now America. You want to know why education isn't working, it's because we don't expect our kids to work for their education. They don't value an education because they see it as some sort of magic, and if they don't understand, oh well, they just weren't one of the lucky ones.

Here's the real problem with education. Teachers are simply baby sitters, and if someone actually learns while in class......wonderful, but the primary goal is to keep everyone quiet and orderly and pacified and moving through the system with a minimum of headaches and knowledge.

Valuing education can be blamed on society, or the media or teen culture. Look deeper though and you'll see the real culprits are parents. Some parents took the time to instill values in their children, some entertained them. If a child values education, they want education. I a child see's it as useless, well good luck.

I'm Back......

Going through a slew of unread reads, and came across a link for a personality test. I always think these things are interesting so as long as it not too long, I'll give it a try. So what do ya think?? Here's the link if you want to take it yourself.

Quiz

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test...

NBPC - The Daydreamer

Nature, Background, Big Picture, and Color

You perceive the world with particular attention to nature. You focus on the hidden treasures of life (the background) and how that fits into the larger picture. You are also particularly drawn towards the colors around you. Because of the value you place on nature, you tend to find comfort in more subdued settings and find energy in solitude. You like to ponder ideas and imagine the many possibilities of your life without worrying about the details or specifics. You are in tune with all that is around you and understand your life as part of a larger whole. You are a down-to-earth person who enjoys going with the flow.

Back In A Day or Two

Still loungin', back in a day or two!!

Breakfast Anyone?

Ok, so this is a few days old, I've been on vaca and been busy doing stuff, so posts have been slow. This was last weekend and the attack of the Banana Pancakes. Nothing fancy, just add a mashed banana to the mix and adjust moisture accordingly. This time we had some addons instead of syrup; strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate chips, powdered sugar.

This time we had a guest, Erin (on left) had her friend Jackie over for the weekend and both enjoyed breakfast.

Never Perfect

Here's the only flowers in our wildflower garden right now, just 3 cone flowers, that seem to be haveing some problem with bugs of some king (the appear to be getting eaten). But right now they are really vibrant as I sit here looking at them. Thier violet is set off against the white fence and they're just standing out so proudly as if saying, "yeah, that right, isn't this a grand garden". Kinda funny really how they're taking the responsibilty of all the rest of the plants on themselves and displaying themselves.

Our garden is a real late spring early summer lover, lot's of day lilies that are gone now. Just this one cone flower plant is left, trying to carry on.

Torrentz!!

The new (Ha) Xubuntu machine DL'd its first show last night. A Medeski, Martin and Wood show off of bt.etree.org. Just to see if it worked, it did, just the first show I say that interested me.

Worked nice, "Transmission" came with Xubuntu. I've heard of this app before but never used it. Didn't have to set anything up, just opened to torrent file, and Bam!, DL started right up, was grabbing the files at 300 Kbs in a couple of minutes. 600MB show took <1 hour to DL.

This is gonna be nice.

Xubuntu 8.04.1 !!!!!! Part Deux

Yep, Yep, Yep

Moved all of the components down to the basement last night and reconnected the machine. Went with a long Ethernet cable, didn't try the Wifi, but maybe some day in the future(??).

Booted up into Xubuntu, no problem. Rechecked the connection and surfed a couple of minutes (all I had time for). I'm off for a week after work today, so I'll play a little next week, try to get the torrents flowing. But overall, everything working fine so far, and getting another year or two out of the old box of silicon.

Anyway, I need to focus a little bit on some Zen for a day or so, life is getting a little scrambled.

Next post hopefully on calmness.

Xubuntu 8.04.1 !!!!!! The Heron has Landed

Anyway, that's what I did last night. I'm gonna give Linux a try, can't be any worse that Win 98SE.

So I had an old PIII machine that was just creaky and cranky running 98SE. After years of this patch and that patch, drivers up the wazoo for some needed addons (usb 2.0, CD burner, new network card) the old girl was mostly a relic / paperweight / dust collector / piece of clutter in the spare bedroom we are going to paint next week. So I figure it's about time to demo the machine and then figure that, hooked up to a decent size (250MB) external USB drive it may be a good torrent machine. I'm gonna need to get a usb wireless g adapter, cause it's goin' downstairs. Hey, but it's Win98SE, I'm gonna have to mess around with drivers and CDs and new software apps that won't run right the first time anyway.

And it's pretty balky after almost 10 years at anything except having to crtl^alt^del and restart cause the system is frozen. So that may mean as well as cleaning it up from 10 years of crud being installed (that Erin) it probably needs to have the OS reinstalled. Unfortuanly that means reistalling drivers for network card, CD burner, USB card, not to mention the wireless g adapter. This ain't sounding like fun, especially cause I don't know where some of the CDs are, and we're painting next week.

OK, back to the scrap heap.

But wait, how bout Ubuntu?? Well let's see, I can do this. I'm pretty good with these things. So I check out he website and my girl doesn't meet the recommended requirements. Hell she barely meets the minumum requirements, and I know minimum ususlaly means unusable. So I read a little more and see Xubuntu, for older, less capable systems, and hey meets everything no problem. Great, download the file, burn a Live CD and Viola, install disk. And I can run it side by side too, incase it don't work so good ya know. My biggest fear is that I can't get drivers for all my anciant hardware and I need to go back to windows.

Well I boot the baby up and, woa, right the install screen. Go to install and at step 3 it asks if I want to install side by side with Win98 or by itself. Choose side by side to be safe and, Uh-Oh, not enough disk space. The machine only has 15 gigs total and 2 of that is in a Win98 partition. OK, what to do, oh hell, go for it. Choose Xubuntu only install and full speed ahead.

So, not to bad, only took about 45min, and the machine is ready to reboot. Ok, cross our fingers, Reboot!

My old machine booted, started in Xubuntu and ran fine in the 5 minute test I gave it. I was amazed!! All the addons worked, DVD and CD drives, network card, USB card. I really couldn't believe it. Nice work Ubuntu!!!!!

We'll get the usb wireless adapter today and see if that works. That's the final test, running it off a network cable in the basement is gonna be a challange, so here's to wireless.

Update 2008 08 07 1:30pm

Found some online documentation, looks like it's hit or miss with compatibility. There is a "wrapper" utility to get unsupported devices working with PC drivers, but I may pursue a longer network cord first.

Puppy Tales

He she is, Autumn.



Just a wonderful package of energy and movement that miracualously stops for naps at the a moment's notice.

It's been almost two years now without a dog. Sunny (Sunshine Daydream) was so close to us that it took a while to get over her. It didn't help that here passing was so sudden and unexpected but it's time. So here you have Autumn.Looks like it's gonna be fun!!!!