Category: Weekly Review (Page 2 of 6)

Vacation Time

With a week off, it’s time for some fun and excitement. That’s right, it’s time to paint! Well, maybe not so much fun and excitement as a lot of work and disruption. However, I know that when it’s done, I’ll be quite happy.

More paint prep. This always takes longer than I think. Plus, doing two rooms seems like a bit more than twice the work. You’d think it would feel a bit less than two as it should be more efficient. This may be just a bit of mental jiu-jitsu. It may really take less time and be more efficient, it just isn’t feeling that way right now.

I bought two gallons of paint (different colors). As is usual, got a paint opening tool, a couple of spouts, and three stir sticks. Wait. Three stir sticks? What is the math that goes on in the head of the person mixing the paint?

Photo Challenge

I was able to submit for the Photo Challenge again this week. I actually had a couple of pictures that I liked.

Website Update

I finally got around to reviewing the theme for this site. I made a change. Originally, I was looking at some themes that are much more picture intensive. However, I realized that I don’t have a ton of highly engaging pictures of me, and no interest in trying to create them, and I prefer to have full blog posts displayed. Most of the visually focused themes default to the blog summary instead of the blog post. I’ve always focused on the whole blog post rather than the summary. In practice, this means that the summaries are less than ideal. I’m working on writing better summaries, but this means that a layout with lots of pictures and summaries didn’t reflect what I wanted.

Rememberances

A couple of “oldies but goodies” came up in some discussions today.

• Five Minute University
• Medieval Help Desk

I have used both of these as discussion points. They are highly entertaining and generally useful to spur a discussion.

52Frames

I completed the sixth challenge for the 52Frames Photo Challenge.

Super Bowl Sunday

This was mostly a lazy day. I did a bunch of web updating, application updating, website backups (remember to create your backups), and a little bit of reading (Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential).

The game wasn’t all that great. The one thing that did strike me though was that the Lions have looked like they belong in the top tier of teams. This is the first time in my life that I’ve actually been able to say that.

Jokes

I set up a new Moodle Course. The main purpose right now (there will be other uses coming) was to create a Random Glossary Block of Jokes. I’d like to do something similar in WordPress, but I’ll need to figure out how. Moodle was simple.

Grocery shopping

I did the grocery shopping this week as D1 was over. It still amazes me how one gets used to the way that a particular place is laid out to navigate. Our local grocery store is still closed because of the flooding on December 15th. The store that I shopped at has a very different layout. I’ve been there before, but I’m still getting used to the layout.

This reminds me just how important the visual look and feel of a web resource is. I’m hoping to do a bit of revamping of my website soon. I’ll need to remember to make navigation as easy as possible. I also want to add some features, so I need to make those easy to use as well.

Google Appointment Slots

I worked with a fellow employee who wanted to add an application to the work calendar. The application has refused to sign the student data privacy agreements that we now require. So, I asked what the person was trying to accomplish. That person explained. I opened Google Appointment Slots and walked them through the process. “WOW, this does the same thing. How is xxx going to stay in business?”

Moving From One Island to Another

Some of the Tech Integrators I follow on a list serve were complaining about Quizlet. Apparently, there are student data issues and cost issues. Lots of posts were about moving to another provider with similar concerns:

• Knowt
• Kahoot
• PearDeck
• Quizizz
  My observation is that many are going to move from one island to another. The island looks good until you realize that you are captured. Incredibly, instead of asking about an island where you aren’t “captured”, many are moving to another island owned by a venture capitalist who is going to want/need to make money from you soon.

I shared Study State which was created as an open source project by a high school senior. This is a project that scratches the itch of an individual. Thus, the concern is if that individual moves on.

Randy Rainbow

We went to see Randy Rainbow this week as well. Good show. Very much what was expected. It was a fun night.

I was a bit surprised that not many people I chatted with the next day know who Randy Rainbow is.

Earlier Posts:

• Enshittification and Owning Your Land
• 52Frames Week 6 Challenge: Shoot From Above

That’s it for now.

Moodle Login

This was a great week for Moodle work. I’ve fixed the Moodle Login Page so that it looks and functions so much better (see write-up for details).

Apple iPad Training

I participated in a training for using Apple’s iPad with early learners. It was too generic for me. In order to really use iPads proficiently, teachers need training. Training is a rare and extremely valuable resource in education.

Friend Chat

I had the opportunity to have a great chat with a friend. We chatted about some educational things (he works in the district that I worked in for many years), photography (we’re both doing the 52Frames Challenge), families, and how to be better people. I always enjoy chatting with him.

Dog Walking

I was watching D1’s dog this weekend. I took her for a wonderful walk (well, 75% of the walk was wonderful). She did all the things (cleaned up after her), plus she got some really good sniffs in. This seemed to be especially the case where a set of tracks let to the woods.

However, on the way back, a dog came barking and running after us. The black dog attacked D1’s dog. They locked in, biting each other around the snout. D1’s dog probably had the better of the situation. The couple came running and we were able to get the dogs disentangled. They apologized a couple of times, but I was most concerned to get D1’s doggie home to see how she was. Fortunately, she had just a little scratch on the bottom of her jaw.

Please folks, know and watch your dog.

Costco

We made our first trip to Costco in several years. This is due to Costco opening in Maine. Naturally, we picked up a few things.

Joplin

Just a quick note about Joplin. I use Joplin as my main note-taking app. I’ve added a couple of plugins that make it even more useful.

• Journal – this allows you to quickly create a Journal entry for any day.
• Note Tabs – this allows for multiple Joplin notes to be “open” at once.
• MacOS Theme – just a visual thing.

Joplin syncs to all my devices through Dropbox. This means that I’m not dependent on any other service. (I could set up a NextCloud instance on my web server, but that isn’t necessary at this point.)

It works really, really well. This is how I write blog posts and many other things as well.

Followers

I am but an imperfect vessel.

I’m afraid I got caught up in who if anyone was following my online scribbles. I don’t really think that there are many people who follow my writings, and I do write for me. I have found that future me really appreciates when present me documents some things that I’ve done.

Still, it is nice to get some feedback every once in a while. It’s nice to know that there is someone reading. So, I posted about asking for subscribers to my website. Thankfully, the wonderful Ben Werdmuller commented that some people follow on RSS. A bit of embarrassment for asking, and a reminder that I follow lots of people via RSS as well. I really should shoot some of them a note of appreciation.

Moodle

The version of Moodle that I installed turned out to have an issue with the Lesson Module. I use Lesson extensively. This was part of our Annual Training course, so I needed to fix that. A bit of research showed that the Lesson issue had been identified and resolved. So, I installed the lastest version. Except, either I didn’t uninstall a plugin correctly before updating or there was an issue with some plugins during the update process. In checking the Tracker, there was an issue with some plugins, which may or may not have partly my fault for not running the plugin update prior to the Moodle update. I’m not sure if I did or not, but I totally agree that I could’ve missed that step – lesson learned. Anyway, the update resulted in being stuck at the install level. I was able to troubleshoot and re-enable acces that site, but I couldn’t install new plugins. Thankfully, the issue was fully identified and resolved with the next weekly update. So, once again, Moodle is up and running. Everything has been restored. A lesson has been learned. A reminder that the Moodle community is awesome.

Weather

We’ve had some winter weather lately as well. We had a two hour delay to starting school on Thursday due to ice. Last Tuesday, the district scheduled an early release due to impending weather. Since notice went out early enough, I was able to work remotely. This allowed me to get a specific project completed.

52 Frames

So far, I’ve submitted something for each week of the 52Frames Photo Challenge. I still would like to spend more time on some of the submissions, but I’m taking the submissions themselves as a win. I also really appreciate some of the feedback that I’ve gotten on photos posted.

Lions

I’ve long been a Lions fan (which by definition also means I’ve been a long suffering Lions fan.) It has been quite the thrill to see them winning. They have been playing entertaining football and really seem to have found the right combination of leaders. So, Go Lions!!!

Seasons

It’s officially winter. Cue Snow from “White Christmas”. We got a bit of snow overnight and are expecting a few more inches during the day. Of course, this makes Hazel’s Herding Ball that much more fun.

Since I was expecting the snow, I took down the outside lights and decorations yesterday.

I also received my first email of the year to buy Portland Sea Dog tickets today. Baseball is coming.

Back to Work

Well, it was back to work today. Lots of my friends still have this week off. I’m good with getting back to work, but I do kind of wonder about having the time off. That would mean foregoing other vacation days or going longer in the summer. Everything is trade-off. Generally a pretty boring day. I cleaned up a bunch of administrative things.

We also reviewed a new Help Desk system. It looks really good, fully robust, and affordable.

New Year’s Day

Spent the day doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive. Or, maybe I need to convince my wife that I need a new computer :-).

Flu Shot

I got my Flu Shot today (finally). I had to go to my doctor’s office due to insurance. Insurance covers the Flu shot, but only under medical. Most convenient places to get a Flu Shot, bill under prescription insurance. This led to a bit of frustration. However, I am now shot.

Giving Blood

I also gave blood again this week. This is usually a quick and easy process for me. However, this time they had to take two samples for Hemoglobin as the first sample came back slightly low. The second one was fine.

I hopped onto the table, and the needle was inserted. It felt different than usual. Sure enough, the Team Leader was called over. They asked if I was willing to try the other arm. Sure, I said. One of the other technicians stated, “You can’t use the other arm”. The Team Leader simply said, “Yes, we can” (didn’t confront the other tech). The Team Leader inserted the needle and everything was set. So I asked. The Team Lead rolled his eyes and said, if blood hits the bag, we can’t use the other arm. We wouldn’t be sure how much blood was taken. However, the Tech simply had squeezed the blood down to the bag, which is what he was supposed to do. She’s not in charge but likes to think she is.

So, I got a little bit of entertainment with my blood donation.

Posts:

Here is a quick update on other posts this week.

• Attribution
• Reader’s Theater
• 52Frames

I posted a couple of extra things this week as I can post here and let that be a post on Mastodon. I like this workflow. I retain ownership of the material. I’m not dependent upon any outside provider, but get the social advantages.

It’s back to work time as Holiday break is now over. I got to relax and spend a good bit of time with the family. It was great to see the kids. We got the youngest moved to her new apartment. This is the best apartment she’s had in a while. She actually has plenty of space. She has an upper floor, technically two bedrooms, but one is being used as a dining room.

I rented a trailer for the move. I also took some dressers, a futon, and our old kitchen table to the youngest. She now has things that at least go together.

Spent today (January 1st) doing some cleaning and a bit of reading. Also went to the my eldest daughter’s house to watch a bit of Fry and Laurie. I also spent a bit of time upgrading darktable. I updated to version 4.6.0. Everything seemed fine until I went to import some new pictures. Darktable would then hang upon rejecting the request to access other programs. Apparently, this just took a really long time to set. Upon leaving it run for a while (OK, I admit it, I was working on posting a bug report), the import menu showed up and all is right with the world (or at least darktable). I do have pictures on an external hard drive and probably should switch to a faster drive.

I saw that John Gruber posted Merry about being the luckiest person in the world. I hate to break it to him, but I think that I’ll challenge that one. 😉 (He actually ends with “I hope you are too”, so really, I tip a pint to him and say, “Yes, Yes, I am too”).

Blog Photos

I usually use Labnol as a great way to leverage Google Photos as a blog post image. However, occasionally, the service just doesn’t work. It’s a free service, so there is no real concern. This was the case with the last blog post.

I try to watch the space that I use with WordPress (a habit developed long ago). I also post several of my pictures to be freely shared (usually CC-SA-NC-BY). I had a picture that I wanted to use as the featured image, so I shared that image on Unsplash.

I also shared the image on PixelFed. PixelFed is a free, no-advertising site for sharing pictures. There are lots of great pictures shared on the site.

So, I have at least a few ways to share images. There are lots of wonderful images out there that can be used. (Please remember to attribute images and thank those who post.)

Dinner with the Family

I had a great dinner with the whole family. It is so wonderful to sit down and eat with my wife and kids.

Clocks

I’ve dropped off a couple of clocks for repair. One is actually a timer. The other is a clock with sentimental value.

The clock repair person was wonderfully typical Mainer. She is passionate about clock repair, and a wonderful person. We had a nice chat about the clocks and life in general.

Target

My wife and I headed out to Target for a bit of shopping. I was pretty gobsmacked by the number of empty shelves. This was on general stuff too.

Dog Showers

Hazel got the “zoomies” and with the rain, her backyard is pretty muddy. Thus, Hazel received a record three baths.

Christmas Lights

I put up Christmas lights right after Thanksgiving. I was thinking that maybe that was a little bit early. Then the temperature hit a high of 12 degrees on the next day that I would’ve been putting up lights. So, yeah, not too early.

Email

My favorite email that I received this week started like this:

“I apologize for the delay in my response as our team has been understaffed, and my time and focus has been limited to the most urgent tasks.”

Subtext, your email wasn’t that important.

Snowy Morning

Well, we had our first real snow this morning. That meant a little bit of shoveling this morning. It was really beautiful though.

The drive to work was incredibly beautiful.

However, the power also went out (later found out it was tree-related). Not only the power, but the cable went out as well.

Christmas Decorations

We got the tree up and decorated this weekend. The first task ended up un “pre-lighting” the artificial tree as the lights that are (uh, were) tightly wrapped around the branches failed to actually light up.

Cookies

Rm and D1 had a cookie-making session. Much fun and many good cookies were baked.

A1

We ended up going out to lunch at A1 on Saturday. This meant there was no need for dinner that night (save for a bit of cheese and crackers while decorating).

Flu Shots

I had a nice long call with our insurance as I was trying to get a flu shot. It turns out that our insurance covers Flu shots. However, they cover Flu shots through medical insurance. Most common places to get Flu Shots bill through prescriptions. So, I’ve made an appointment, but it will be a while before I can get my Flu shot.

Clocks

We have a couple of clocks that need to be fixed. I had tried to fix one, but it proved beyond my capabilities. Finally, we have found a clock repair shop. I’ll be taking the clocks this week to get repaired.

Thanks

I take inspiration from Doug Belshaw, whom I’ve met but I’m sure wouldn’t remember me, and Alan Levine for their blogging, sharing, and presence. I appreciate their work and sharing so very much.

Pixel Fed Feed

I’ve finally been able to subscribe through Mastodon to my PixelFed feed. It’s little things like this that end up bringing joy. It also points to the power of open-source and Activity Pub.