Annotations - 8/9/99

It's been a few days, as we finished up Summer Session last week. I am no longer a teacher, but a full time administrator again. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

One area I am feeling sure about is my free time and relaxation time. This is like coming out of a pressure cooker and finding yourself in the Pochanos. Amazing. I can tell huge amounts about how hard it is to teach purely by discovering the joys of not doing it any more. For all that I loved it (and I did) the feeling of freedom is staggering.

It's expressing itself creatively, not the least of which in the first of some shifts to the look of the journal. I'm going to design some new graphics while watching wrestling tonight (hey, combine what you can when you can, right?) and probably go with an entirely new look over the next few days, as I've threatened in the past. For one thing, I've gone back to Times New for the main text font, mostly because while the other font was more stylish, Times New is just plain more readable. And frankly, that appeals to me more than not. I've also gone from grey to white for the backdrop of the entries, and made things a little better looking, I think. And I've changed the few links I put in the sidebar for the Ithaca Trip into a "Recent History." So, people can tell quickly what I've done lately.

Ultimately? My meaty face will disappear and the site will get a more unified look. Review pages will also follow and other such goodies. The graphical sidebar will go the way of all such things. And I've massively bored everyone reading.

So, enough of this. Let's go to updates on life. There's been a lot of it, just lately....

My final exam was harder than my midterm, thanks to a combination of factors. One was the simple explosion of terminology and information needed for "Networking" as opposed to "Computer Platforms." I chose to discuss (and require) things like Open Source and BeOS for the latter. But you can't seriously talk about networking and not talk about TCP/IP, PPP, the Ethernet, and so on. If you want people to understand where we came from and how we got here, you need to talk about ARPAnet and the National Science Foundation and modems and VT-102's and terminal emulation and telnet and why it was important that you could suddenly run internet applications when TCP/IP stacks started appearing on desktop computers and....

Another factor in the test was the timing in my review Powerpoint. Thanks to my student who we ended up having to fire, I lost a full day's worth of administrative and classroom prep time, and as a result the Powerpoint didn't go to the students until the day before the final. It didn't make me or them happy.

But. Two A's on the final, two B's and a D (and the D clearly didn't study). That's not bad at all. And they got any number of concepts that your average technoweenie doesn't know that well. And maybe I got them to think a little. I dunno. I hope so.

They seemed to like me -- my surveys were excellent, though one student (and I think I know which one) said I "Never" provided the opportunity to work with the things they were taught. Which doesn't surprise me. I didn't let them sit there and run Linux, after all. And you can't expect everyone to understand that they mean quizzing, testing, showing knowledge, making intuitive judgments and so on and so forth.

Needless to say, I averaged a 3.6 out of 4, which is considered darn high. That's nice. I was a success.

And so were my kids. One student, Tyler Eaves, answered "Why did the Department of Defense create the ARPAnet?" in a way that was... unique, to say the least. I reprint it here with his permission (grammar mistakes and all):

The situation was tense. Both sides were nervous, with itchy trigger fingers. Global war could break out at any moment. And the consequences were una thinkable. If one of the controls site were hit, the entire US arsenal would be useless. But wait!!! The nuclear sites weren’t on a giant token! They were on Arpanet! I f one site got nuked, the rest of the sites would still be operational. Of course I think the first couple nukes would totally screw the country anyway, but, what the ----! We’re the United States of America! We must be able to inflict mortal wounds in the hearts of the Bolsheviks!

Not only was he right, but he used the word Bolshevik in a sentence. He's even one of the few who will come here in the Fall. I find myself looking forward to this.

We had a roast at the end of the program, where peoples' foibles are played up and they get gag gifts and the like. The kids took the opportunity to dress up (trying very hard to look nineteen years old and on MTV, and coming disturbingly close in the case of some of the girls. It is hard to be a morally straight, upstanding young teacher sometimes). We watched an amazingly well done student video on the Brewster career of the director's pet rock. (Doing stuff in class was obvious. Recruiting the children of your dorm parents to play hide and seek with the rock, the rock doing the hiding, is another.) The same kid did a startlingly Jimi Hendrix cover, singing along with the album and dancing. I didn't say startlingly good, though it was also impressive he knew all the words to Magic Carpet Ride. I mean, I don't expect fourteen year olds in 1999 to know the first thing about Stepphenwolf.

And the gag gifts were cute, and somewhat hurtful as they always are. The rec coordinator and the Summer Dean of Students gave them out, and they stepped over the line a few times. But, it was mostly good fun.

The faculty gag gifts were cheaper and sillier. But mine actually bugged me. It was a Darth Maul highlighter, given to me because "we've heard tell Mr. Burns is really into Star Wars."

Which I'm not. I saw it. It's nowhere near the best movie I've seen this summer. It's not on my list of "things I need to own." But I'm a big, overweight geek, so it was simply the safest assumption on their part. And really, if they said "well, we don't know Mister Burns very well, but he's a big, overweight geek so we figured..." I'd probably have liked it.

It's not that the implication was that I'm a geek that bugged me. It's that they clearly had no idea who I was. I don't work with the rec people. The faculty could have given an idea or three about what I like or what's stupid about me. My staff certainly could have. But the rec folks didn't ask around. They just figured "we're the rec folks. We know this stuff." And they were clueless about me (and several others -- at least four faculty members got 'stress balls' because they clearly didn't know anything about them).

It's no big deal, but it highlights an important part of Roast Etiquette. Know the person you're making fun of. No one likes to be shoved in a category they don't belong in.

Least of all, geeks.

Now, if it had been a Tarzan highlighter....

On Friday, we graduated.

That's right. A six week summer course, and we had them do caps and gowns and march.

The Hell?

That's all I have to say about that.

My sister packed up and headed for Colorado on Friday. Kris, her daughters Hilary and Hadley, and her dog Lily all came out in June for eight straight weeks of staying with Mom and Dad, who now have the look of disaster survivors. So, I took a ride over to see them Friday night, and decided I'd swap my sister's birthday present en route (I got her a sweater that was too big).

The sweater had been born in Portsmouth, so there I went again. I figured I'd go down there, swap sweaters, then head North on the Turnpike, meeting the guys for dinner.

Do you... have any... idea... how many... automobiles... go into... Maine... during... the summer... on Friday afternoons? It was like being in Seattle rush hour traffic again, except that my coffee wasn't as good. Ugh.

Okay. We were approaching a toll booth, and then we sped up. Okay. That makes sense. It's like a flow control. Stupid things anyway....

And then we slowed down again. To ten. Freaking. Miles. An hour.

I wasn't happy. I was, in fact, bored out of my skull. And anxious. And tired -- it had been a wearying week. What the Hell was going on here....

And then I saw it. It was an accident, with a bus over and people milling around and a smashed car. That made sense....

But it happened on the Southbound side.

You morons put an hour and a half extra time on my trip north for rubbernecking?

More on Kris's last day in Maine, plus commentary on Mystery Men and The Iron Giant, in our next entry.