Three Concerns before the Beginning of a New School Year

As the last few days of the summer break slip away from me I find myself in an interesting state of mind. I’m very anxious about the classes I’ll be teaching (no doubt over-thinking everything, as is my habit) and while I have been getting a lot done at home and in the lab, I find that my afternoons and evenings are very much about avoiding getting anything done. It’s like, because I have been more productive than usual and I have a much better handle on what I have to have prepared before the school year begins, the avoidance is absolutely amazing. I mean, I’ve spent the past week staying up to 4 AM moving my iTunes collection to a network drive that I’d just purchased and then ripped a bunch of my favorite DVDs to the network drive so that I could then put them on my 5th gen iPod. Of course I had to pretty much re-watch the DVDs as I burned ‘em. Yeah, better work avoidance through better technology!

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A Definition of Insanity - part 2 - can’t change things

“The definition of insanity
is to do the exact same thing every day,
and end up surprised and disappointed
because nothing ever changes.”

My friend, Sissy, refuses to do committee work with public school teachers because of our renowned tendency to complain about everything and do nothing to change things. It seems that it doesn’t take us very long to “learn” that we really can’t change things and the best we can do is the work we do helping our students. Alas, enough negative experiences with that and many a teacher then reduces their expectations to just showing up on time, having a reasonable command on the curriculum and not fucking up over the course of the day.

It’s sad to think that the system has such a consistent knack for chewing up young energetic teachers and spitting out old bitter negative shells who are just hanging on to live to the day when they don’t have to do this fucking shit any more. Being a bit older when I came into teaching, and through my experiences with Pepperdine, I just can’t accept this idea that we can’t change things or that success by attrition is still success. I believe that there is no excuse for living ones life “in silent” frustration and disappointment. I’m too old for this shit. JBB

Definition of Insanity - New Day/Same Shit

I don’t remember where I heard the statement, but I’ve been pondering it ever since:

“The definition of insanity
is to do the exact same thing every day,
and end up surprised and/or disappointed
because nothing ever changes.”

Some folks seem to live their lives as walking examples of this definition, not happy with the way things are but unwilling or unaware that things will stay the same for them as long as they live their lives, day after day, exactly as they did the day before. Life is too short to live this way, with ones hand off the wheel, just wishing that things were different. That’s insane! JBB

Out of the Mouths of Babes, Literally

Technology is funny… no, really, it is. Got a call from my granddaughter yesterday. That was cool, especially considering that she’s only 10-months old. I haven’t seen the little one in months and have had some difficulty making a connection with her mom and dad, so it was very nice of her to dial me up. Granted, her English is still limited to gurgles, giggles and cries. I guess she’s been hitting the auto-dial buttons on their home phone lately and calling up her mom’s friends and family. Oops. Whatever. I found out that she’s starting to experiment with walking… I can’t even imagine. I’m just glad that she called and I got a chance to talk to her mom. jbb

Late Summer Levity… Jonathan Coulton-style

I first heard one of Jonathan Coulton’s more obscene songs, First of May (WARNING: this song is not for those with an aversion to blatant, but creative, references to reproductive processes!!!), on the podcast The Evil Genius Chronicles and have since loved his beautiful but somewhat twisted music. I mean, what’s a geek to say about a songwriter who wrote a ballad about his laptop? Besides having two CDs (“Smoking Monkey“ and “Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow“) he also was recently named “Contributing Troubadour” for the magazine Popular Science and released an EP “Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms.” For the past 45 weeks (or so) this unsigned independent artist has been posting a new recording every week. Sometimes it’s original material, sometimes it’s a cover tune, and sometimes well… in his journal he said that the idea for this one came from cruisin’ through audio recordings on the Internet. He found a recording made by a couple kids goofing around with a tape recorded. So Jonathan added the rest of the song and thus “Rock and Roll Boy“ was born. Click on the “play the song” link and enjoy!

For more Internet silliness and stuff, check out my other blogs. It’s all hilarity and hi-jinx at Jacob’s Ladder, an exploration of the vast wasteland between my heartfelt beliefs and faith and the vulgar frustrations of life. At JBB’s Desktop the motto is “Staring At the Gap Between Ed Tech’s Promises & The Realities.” Okay, so I was kidding about the blogs being all farts and giggles, but I’d really appreciate a visit to my blogs. Also, I’ve been moving a lot of pictures to my flickr account and you might want to check out my videos at youtube.com. ((End of Commercial)). l8r, jbb

Friggin’ Arrows in the Back

I’ve been putting it off for weeks. At the end of the last school year I wanted to redesign the lab, especially after I found out that I wouldn’t have the math class but would be teaching yearbook with my other computer classes. I carefully measured every aspect of the lab, the furniture, the data drops and electrical outlets and decided that I wanted to draw up the layout so that I might save myself the frustration of moving 50-odd pieces of furniture only to discover that I don’t have enough network drops or electrical outlets or that I can’t fit the desks and the students in a given configuration.
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Some People Have Too Much Time On Their Hands…

Not me…

Bible Geek, Continued

I’m a bible geek. I know I’ve mentioned it before in December 2004 and August 2003. Anyway, I was doing some late summer cleaning, throwing stuff out, moving stuff and i moved my collection of bibles to a place outside their former closet space. That’s personal history, right there. Every one of those books played an intimate role in my life from the time I was 15 until my 30s. And then I walked away. Okay, it was more than that. I have a BA in Biblical studies and have several bookshelves and filing cabinets full of books and reference materials that speak to the compulsive book-buying thing that I had going when I walked away.

Technorati Tags: biblestudy, blogs, faith

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Modern Mythology: Lady in the Water

Fiction is about “suspended disbelief” and being a fan of sci-fi and fantasy fiction I love being taken to amazing other-worldly places with great characters. Over my summer vacation I’ve indulged my passion and watched the last three seasons of the sci-fi show “Farscape“ and the whole “The Lord of the Rings“ trilogy while tooling around my apartment. A friend commented that she wasn’t very imaginative, saying that she couldn’t get into the LOTR thing because she couldn’t get into the whole elves and hobbits and monsters thing. Alas, the best sci-fi and fantasy makes one forget about the funny ears or weird languages and connects the viewer with the fears, struggles and triumphs of its characters. Understandably my friend expressed no interest when I said I was going to M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film “Lady in the Water.” It’s too bad that some people let their need to “be real” get in the way connecting with an amazing story with amazing people.

This film doesn’t take one to an amazing place (a la LOTR) but uses the same thematic thread that made the original “Matrix“ film so powerful: there is something to this life that we’re missing when we just live day to day and there are forces at work who want to keep it hidden from us and others who want to bring us into the light…

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What the Dog Knew

I’m not entirely sure if this is a “blog-able” item, but it was something that made me smile. I had the pleasure of meeting You-know-who’s little 2-year-old dachshund, Max, when I drove her home a couple weeks ago after the 30th reunion party. In a word, he didn’t seem to be too happy to meet me and barked and barked and barked. Granted, that’s his job and it probably didn’t help that he’d been tied up all day and all night and we didn’t really spend any time “getting to know” each other. Yeah. So, needless to say, I wasn’t feel altogether that comfortable being there in the first place, having the little guy bark and bark pretty much brought home the message that I wasn’t welcomed there. That didn’t feel so great.

Then this past weekend when I brought her home following the CSN&Y concert I asked to use her facilities before heading home. This time when I got out of the bathroom, she put Max on a leash and I sat down on the floor and he just ran up to me, sniffed me and then rolled over to let me scratch his belly. You-know-who’s mouth dropped open. I spent several minutes scratching his belly, then rubbing behind his ears and then back to his belly. I told her that I’d just met the McConnell’s new dachshund, Sophie, when I was AZ and that that might have something to do with Max’s change in disposition (or maybe he smelled the potato skins and bacon I’d eaten earlier). Actually I don’t think that it was either the other dog or the smell of bacon. For whatever reason Max saw that I wasn’t a threat and decided that here was someone else to give him attention. After several minutes, she said that she hated to break up our little party but that she was exhausted and needed to get to bed. I got up off the ground, gave her a kiss and the dog a final scratch on the head and smiled as I headed to my car. She may not be able to figure out what I mean to her, or what she’s missing when she leaves me in this “shadow role.” But a little two-year-old hyper-dachshund figured it out and let me rub his belly. I felt vindicated. JBB