Greg and Kat's blog

For a while there, I had started to think that the posts on Boing Boing (“A Directory of Wonderful Things”) weren’t as good as they used to be (too much politics, not enough wonder?). Whether or not that was true, they totally redeemed themselves with two posts I saw this morning.

The video of people from 1 to 100 hitting a drum is pretty much what it sounds like. There’s really no reason for it to be as captivating as it is, but I couldn’t stop watching it.

Second was a link to Bent Objects. I especially liked “Chained to His Desk“. Now, there are certainly ways in which I am creative, but I still often mourn my lack of creativity. When I do that, this is exactly the kind of thing I wish I could think of, but never would in a million years.

Also, the octopus who is friends with a Mr. Potato Head was funny.

I have mentioned my landlady here before.

A few months ago, she came down and was in a flap (as my mother would say when she meant “flustered”). Eventually, we got around to the gas bill being twice as much as it usually is, and she didn’t know why. I looked at the bill: it hadn’t been paid last month. (Her written English is such that she didn’t get that.) She was adamant that she always pays them when they come.

She takes the bills to the bank and pays them there. I didn’t even know you could do that. It’s like Internet bill payment without the Internet. Crazy. (My mother always sent cheques.)

She had the receipt and we realized that the $144 had been sent to BC Hydro, not Terasen Gas. So, she decided to go to the bank and have them fix it. Great.

Of course, that didn’t happen and the flap continued. She asked me to go over to the bank with her today and help her figure it out. What we finally figured out made perfect sense (poor teller).

The next Hydro bill was for exactly $144. So, her Hydro account balanced and they didn’t send a bill the next month. So, she paid all the bills she got, and never had a credit.

Sigh. I think we’re good now. As long as she really didn’t get a bill from BC Hydro in December.

Before I get to the point, I want to explain my last two weeks, with pictures where I have them:

• Dec 19: Kat gets to YVR at 21:00 after my marathon FAS UCC meeting in the afternoon.
• Dec 20: A few last things at work for me; Kat works on her talk.
• Dec 21: Kat’s Ama’s Birthday. For her grandmother’s birthday, the grandkids prepared the meal (for the second year). Kat and I did a lot of the heavy lifting, preparing butternut squash soup, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, ham, pasta, and probably some other stuff I forgot. [10:00–21:00]
• Dec 22: Kat and Tina get their hair cut at Neil’s, followed by dinner. [16:00–21:00]
• Dec 23: Lunch with Kelly and Paul, then I gave blood.
• Dec 24: Xmas Eve lunch at Ama’s. They used to have dinner on Xmas eve, but decided that was too late this year. So, it became lunch, then dinner (and Wii) with Pam and her parents. We brought potato salad (mmmm… potato salad). [10:00–1:00]
• Dec 25: Presents, then the rest of the day at Kelly and Paul’s. A whole day and my pants didn’t even really hurt at the end. [14:00–2:00]
• Dec 26: No boxing day shopping, but dinner at Tony’s. [17:00–19:00]
• Dec 27: Dim Sum and Hockey with Oli, Tina, Jon, and Eunice. The guys that are paid to live in the same city as me scored more goals than some guys paid to live in some other city. That makes me feel pride, apparently. [11:00–22:00]
• Dec 28: Beer & Bacon fest 2. The second Beer & Bacon featured a Wii and three pounds of bacon. [18:00–2:00]
• Dec 29: Dinner with Suyoko and Sameer (the boyfriend that I had never met). [18:00–21:00]
• Dec 30: Bubble tea with Angelica, Jen, and Eugene. [14:00–16:00]
• Dec 31: New Year’s Eve at our place. I also spent an hour or so at Daniela’s. [19:00–1:00]
• Jan 1: Lunch at Ama’s. As always, lunch is a long thing. [11:00–16:00]
• Jan 2: Kat leaves for YVR at 4:15. Back to work and coffee with Amanda at 11:00. After being at work for three hours, I finally got to my office and put my jacket down.

Kat and I didn’t cook at eat (alone) a single time while she was home. The meals we did have at home were scrounging leftovers.

Now that you have the context, you should understand why I say “I’m kinda glad Kat’s gone so I can get back to work.” I said that a few times today and got crap for it.

I’m tired, and want to get back to work so my day has some structure to it. It turns out Kat’s more popular than me, and when she’s here, it’s a whirlwind of stuff to do. I’m glad to have less stuff.

Well, the semester is winding down for me. All of my marks are in and approved. [Angelina: your mark is in.] Relatively few students are complaining about their marks. There are a few with inflated senses of their accomplishments, but it’s pretty quiet.

I have a few more sets of grades to approve, and a few last meetings, but it’s all pretty much over.

I had a discipline hearing today. I was on the board; it wasn’t a CMPT case. It was a serious case that they have been trying to schedule the hearing since May. The end result was the harshest I have seen: upheld department’s Fs, retroactive removal of degree, student must surrender parchment, 9 semester suspension, permanent notation on transcript. This was considered somewhat lenient.

Kat should be hitting YVR tomorrow at about 21:00, so that’s good.

After that, it’s all food and drink until the new year.

Edit: On the subject of complaining about marks… What goes on in a student’s mind to get 74.6%, and then ask if 75% is the cutoff for the next letter grade, and shouldn’t that be rounded up? Do students really think some spreadsheet has a roundoff error just for them? If I had wanted the cutoff at 74.5%, that’s where I would have put it. There are 180 students, so some of them are going to be close to boundaries no matter what I do.

People wonder why I have occasional Scroogey tendencies around this time of year.

I’m just sitting here watching TV as I work. I think this quote from a commercial I just saw sums it up pretty well:

Now in stores: Christmas with Boney M!

Really? The world needs this? The newly remastered version of this no less?

I can’t be the only one that thinks we might have lost our way here.

And not to rag on anybody’s religion, but I don’t want to hear any story that ends with “Now where’d that body get off to? Gaw-lee, that fella in the cave says it dun-gone to heaven.” There’s less nutty stuff later on, but are you really going to take the word of some guy hanging out alone in a cave where they chuck dead bodies?

Do you remember Estelle Getty’s character in Golden Girls? The premise was that she had a stroke and lost the ability to filter what she said, thus always said what was on her mind, no matter how abrasive.

I think I had that stroke.

I have sent no less than seven potentially inflammatory emails in the last 24 hours. Tones have ranged from “has the potential to cause problems in the future” to “please increase your stress level right now”.

And it feels good.

Several things seem to have recently come to a point where they need to be dealt with. The options are pretty much “ignore”, “placate”, or “try to fix”. I am basically just opting for the third… and doing it directly.

I think this all started when I went on a co-op site visit with Harriet in the summer. One of the students we visited was a little awkward and kept playing with his pen and the desk chair beside him during the meeting. About 5 minutes after it started bugging me, Harriet said “Put the pen down and stop playing with the chair. It makes people think you’re not listening.” My internal reaction was “OMG, you can say that out loud?”

For example, I was talking to Amanda earlier today (who is, of course, in favour of this behaviour). We were, as always, discussing the functioning of the School. My argument in favour of giving myself a potentially horrible future task was “people’s lives get ruined all the time; why not mine?”

This cannot be healthy behaviour.

Pay attention to this sentence, because it’s not one you have probably heard before: This week, I bought three new laptops for $800.

This morning, the One Laptop Per Child project opened up their give one, get one program, and I was there. For US$400, I bought two OLPC XO laptops. One goes to me, one to some kid in a developing country.

So, I suppose that’s a halfway decent thing to do. But, I mostly wanted to get my hands on one of these things that we have all heard so much about.

Second, I ordered an ASUS Eee. For $400, it’s a more-or-less fully functional Linux laptop and about the size of a small hardcover book. I’m hoping this one has a little more real utility.

The specs sound a little thin for a modern laptop: 900MHz, 512 MB RAM, 4GB storage (flash, not hard drive), 800×480 display. But, that would have been a pretty snappy laptop 4 or 5 years ago. How much has my workflow really changed in the last 4 years? [A laptop isn’t a primary PC for me. It’s a thing to use when not in my office or at home.]

I know low-end mainstream laptops are bumping down in the $500–600 range, but there’s that part about weighing less than a kilogram and fitting in my man-purse. How could this not be ideal for travelling?

I’m also hoping it can ride on a iRobot Create and run Player for a sweet little autonomous robotics platform. If they come out with the $200 model, that would give us a full setup for <$500 that high school kids could play with.

BTW, thanks all for the interest in my CMPT 120 assignment. I went with controlling the ghosts in a pacman-like game. That should keep ’em busy.

So, I’m sitting in my office, putting icing on cupcakes for our Halloween potluck. (It’s way easier to transport un-iced cupcakes.) It’s my office hours, but nobody ever comes anyway.

Which brings me to the reason for this post…

There is a list of things that a student expects when they arrive at an instructor’s office hours. The instructor turning around and saying (cheerily) “Cupcake?” while shoving one in their direction? Let’s say that’s probably pretty far down the list.

It was all I could do to keep it together until he finished his question and left. So somewhere, there’s a CMPT 120 student who is very confused, but has a cupcake.

So, it’s been a while. I’m in the middle of a crazy-busy semester, as I mentioned before. Certain things have become luxuries: hobbies, a personal life, leisure time. Other than that, things are going well.

One of my big stress things happened last Friday. We (and by “we”, I mean “I”) hosted a day of professional development activities for IT teachers. This is like the third one of these we have done. My plan is always the same: get them in a room and talking about the good ideas they have had for their classes. Bounce ideas around with just enough structure to keep things moving.

This time, Richard came and we talked about robotics projects and ideas. Richard really knows his shit (which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise, since it is his research area), and I think the teachers came away with some ideas that never would have occurred to them otherwise. The feedback I’ve had has been really good.

Anybody else that wants to take my quiz is welcome to: consider the phrase “High School Robotics Competition”. Form a mental image of what that looks like. Tell me about it.

I just finished putting together my CMPT 120 midterm for Friday. I hate making up exams like a five year old hates eating asparagus. I whine, bitch, moan, procrastinate, and complain about how horrible my life is until it’s finally done. It’s done, so I’ll be much happier until the final exam comes around.

One of the other things I need to do for 120 is create the last assignments. I have always had the last assignment as an open-ended problem that the students don’t have a hope of “finishing”. The goal is for them to work on it, think about algorithms, and get some good stuff done. This lets the just-okay students accomplish something, and really pisses off the good students who work their asses off, learn a lot, but still don’t “finish”.

I was on the bus tonight and finally had the idea I’ve been waiting for. Their assignment is going to be programming the behaviour of a NPC (non-player character) in some kind of game. I haven’t worked out the game, but I’ll create a library to play the game, and their code will have to control the NPC(s) to be good opponents. The game will have to be fairly simple.

Any of the CS types want to help me work that out in exchange for lunch?