Month: November 2024

Hold Still A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann was the most recent book that I read. I have a write-up on my Book page.

One thing that struck me was that there was a bit about whether her Dad loved her. She states that her Dad didn’t share much affection. She also came to the conclusion that her Dad did love her. But that got me thinking. How will my kids remember me? Have I done enough for them to be absolutely sure that I love them?

I grew up in a pretty typical lower-middle-class family. My Dad worked as a machine repairman for General Motors. He worked long hours, and frequently afternoons.

I grew up with very traditional role expectations. When I became a Dad, I tried to be more involved with the kids. There were certainly many times that I deferred to my wife, but I tried to be fully present and participatory in my kids’ lives.

This led me to wonder if I made any difference as a middle school principal. That one I’ll probably never know. I do think back to situations that I wish I had handled differently.

I do truly hope that when I leave this mortal plane, my kids will know how much I love them.

I happen to know someone who wrote a thing that is publically available as an Open Access article.

Developmental constraint underlies the replicated evolution of grass awns

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.20268

I’m pretty proud of the author. Give it a read.

An issue came up where an Athletic Director needed kids to be able to “book” a bus. The AD started out using Google Forms, but this quickly became onerous. Too much information to collect. Too many days to cover.

After describing what was actually needed, I suggested using Framadate. This is a really neat site that is privacy positive.

Framasoft will not use your personal data, except for statistical purposes (anonymized) or to notify you of a significant change in the service;
Framasoft will not transmit or resell your personal data (your privacy is – really – important to us) ;

So, I set up an example and shared it with the AD. Since the “time” field is just a text field, I was able to add additional information (basically the location). This creates a view where the parent can enter the kid’s name and then pick the dates they want to use transportation.

The Admin gets a full list of the responses AND can download a spreadsheet if needed.

There are several settings available as well.

• Password can be added
• Full description can be added (with links to schedules and more information)
• “Voter” can be allowed to modify (see below)
  • Nothing
  • Their own “vote”
  • Any vote (definitely would not want this on for this use case)
• There is a Print button, but it doesn’t print the response, just the form

This allows users to “change their mind” as plans change.

Potential Issues:

• The word “Votes” is odd in this setting.

While Framadate was not truly designed to be used in exactly this use case, it does work really well. It is a great resource.