Taxing Broken Links

This entire day has been devoted to repairing broken links on ReadWriteThink. It’s usually not a horrible task, but this time there were dozens. It seems that that National Archives decided to do a site redesign.

Now generally, I have no problem with such things. Sites need to be redesigned periodically. They either outgrow their old system or they become dated. The thing is I can’t decide what the point of this redesign was other than annoying people. Many of the pages look identical in the redesign, but the links are broken.

Okay, I know that file structures need rethought occasionally, but these were just stupid changes for such high profile pages. For instance, some of these links are broken because they changed underscores to hyphens:

OLD: http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html

NEW: http://www.archives.gov/national–archives–experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html

Your tax dollars at work. Oh, and notice that they DIDN’T change the underscores in bill_of_rights.html

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
ReadWriteThink

Characters in Because of Winn-Dixie: Making Lists of Ten

Finished editing and posted a new 3—5 lesson, Characters in Because of Winn-Dixie: Making Lists of Ten. Believe it or not, it’s not my lesson. I know you see “Lists of Ten” and think it’s mine, but somehow that lesson plan seemed too obvious, so I didn’t even think about it. Fortunately, my colleague did. In the book Because of Winn-Dixie, the protagonist, Opal, learns about her absent mother when her father shares ten things about her. This makes a lasting impression on Opal; and later in the novel, when Winn-Dixie is missing, she makes here own mental list of ten things about her dog. In this lesson, students create their own lists of ten to summarize the features of a character.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
ReadWriteThink

Giving up for the weekend. I’m not sure where any of it’s going. I’m beginning to think that when I get the eleven characteristics done, I’ll resturcture the entire section, removing the characteristics altogether. There are overlaps in the ways that they’re covered that just end up being redundant I think. But I’m really not quite sure. I’m only on #4, so I’m not even through half of them. I hoped that I could finish this chapter this weekend, but I’m doing nothing but struggling with it.

Current status
Pages: 27 of the needed 125 (21.5%)
Words: 5584

I am writing a screenplay for a children’s version of the bible, with all the characters portrayed by insects. The most prominent, of course, is the Ant Christ.

I wish I knew how to just quit, to give up on this garbage that I’m supposedly writing. But there’s really no way out. I just have to keep rambling in burbling prose. Prose that blows. I apparently can’t even explain my ideas informally. And no one really wants to read this circular mess anyway. Reading to barf would result. I want to dump the entire draft.

Current status —sadly unchanged

Finished editing a new 6–8 lesson, On a Musical Note: Exploring Reading Strategies by Creating a Soundtrack. Next on the to-do list is creating a back-to-school entry for the August calendar, but it will wait till Monday.

I am to spend the weekend writing. Sadly, I haven’t even opened the files since I worked on them last weekend. That will mean, even more sadly, that I’m still stuck in the same place. It’s stupid really. I have the first characteristic of eleven dealt with very well, but I just can’t make the second characteristic into anything that sounds right. More accurately, it’s that everything I seem to write sounds exactly the same to me. I stuck with the same repetitive trope: Characteristic says “a.” You’d think that obvious / unimportant / simple. But it’s not. It’s really much more involved / important / complex. Blah blah blah on why.

My head has turned on some kind of crapometer that won’t let me write anything now because it’s resisting that same, ridiculous, repeating structure. I don’t really know how to get around it either. I don’t understand how I could write about the first characteristic in a way that feels so good and then not be able to write anything but absolute garbage on anything that follows. Hell, it’s been sitting for a week now, and I still don’t have a clue how to get around it.

Current status (sadly unchanged)
Pages: 20 of the needed 125 (16%)
Words: 4059

Tags: K12 education |
language arts instruction |
lesson plan | ReadWriteThink

I should be in bed

but for some reason, I am not. As you may have guessed, interversity is back online; thus, tengrrl.com is back. Problem is that the server-side includes aren’t working, so handy things like the sidebar of links are missing. I really don’t have time to redesign things right now, so I’m hoping they’ll be back soon.

I wrote tomorrow’s Inbox ideas on Harry Potter, since the next book will be released on Saturday. Finished that about 30 minutes ago. Then I did some various searching for anything worth watching on tv. For more reasons that I cannot explain, I have parked on Cowboy Bebop and I am now heartily confused.

I have very many things that I need to write, and I’m not getting any of them done. I think I spent most of yesterday moving paragraphs around again. I just can’t figure out where to go with the next section. I was hoping that I could figure it out in the office today, but no luck. I never got to open the files today. Meetings and Inbox and related stuff. I have about 12 more pages to read in the latest e-mail novel that I’m reading, so I’m off to finish that task. Then I can say I got two things done today.

Gender and Nike Shox Cog

I know I should be used to blatantly stupid gender nonsense by now, but the two commercials that I just saw for Nike Shox Cogs just really pissed me off.

MALE RUNNER: side shot of guy running on treadmill with wilderness sort of landscape beyond the treadmill. An ostrich is running beside the guy, and he keeps increasing the speed on the treadmill cuz, of course, he wants to run faster than the ostrich. He is ahead, but just so. Thank goodness for Nike Shox Cog.

FEMALE RUNNER: front shot of woman running on treadmill with complete black backdrop behind her. Disembodied eyeballs on the backdrop fly forward towards her. She sees them and must run faster to keep away from the freaky scary evil eyeballs.

Let’s pretend that the front shot of the woman was required because the thing she was outrunning was behind her, rather than beside her as was the case for the male. I’ll pretend it had nothing to do with wanting to watch her b00bs bounce. But please God, women have to have Nike Shox Cog so that they can outrun evil? Women have to buy Nike Shox Cog because they are being terrorized while men are apparently just getting in touch with their animal instincts? If I had any Nike’s in the house, I would put them in the trash. I swear. I am so pissed off.

It may actually be worse too. The male runner is black. I didn’t pay enough attention to the background—was it supposed to be Africa? Is Nike saying something horrible about black men and animals that I don’t really want to think about? You know I’d tell myself that I’m overanalyzing but given the commercial with the woman, how can I believe that Nike isn’t the spawn of Satan?

If a person writes when the server is down does anyone read it?

So I’ve been waiting as patiently as a woman without her server can. It feels like it’s been at the very least 4 or 5 months. In reality, the server has only been AWOL since Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately, I had backups of the files I was actively revising on my laptops; so I can keep writing. I was lucky though. I had been uploading copies of the book chapters to tengrrl.com to transfer them from the work computer to the home computer.
Or you might say I was UNlucky since I don’t have that excuse to procrastinate. I figure I can use the “I’m so depressed that the server is down that I can’t write another word” excuse though if procrastination really needs to be accomplished.

I have actually been making progress. I’ve stopped moving paragraphs around in the first two sections, having finally figured out how they fit together and which parts go in which section. I’m into the 3rd chapter now. I fear it’s going to be the longest, and right now it feels impossibly so. I have 11 characteristics to work through. So far I have only one completed. Time to go back to characteristic two, I guess.

Current status
Pages: 20 of the needed 125 (16%)
Words: 4059