tengrrl’s thoughts & news on teaching writing, literacy, and literature
February 6, 2006
30 Boxes calendar beta live – Lifehacker: This tool has possibilities for a shared calendar for IRA and NCTE as we both work on ReadWriteThink. We currently have a shareware app that lets us upload dates. This looks slicker. I need to investigate it in more detail though.
February 5, 2006
cbd offers an explanation of how Del.icio.us and teaching go together. I wish I could get my head around del.icio.us completely. It just evades me. There’s something I just don’t get. The way the cbd explains it here made me wonder if it wouldn’t be a way for me to have categories on my blog, which doesn’t really support categories. If I chose keywords that were my categories and then tagged things, could I create category links to those entries on del.icio.us? It feels like that would work, but there’s something that makes the whole del.icio.us thing feel too complex. I think I need to sit down with someone and have him/her walk me through a site till I get it. I’m not exactly sure who that person would be or where she/he is hiding. And while that miracle person is at it, I’ll take details on how all this compares to technorati.
February 5, 2006
Finally, I’m caught up. Feels like a million entries I’ve edited or written in the last 24 hours.
The most interesting observation through all this was a note on one day that I was horribly late for work, and a note on the very next day that I got in at a reasonable time. Both days I arrived at the same time. My brain is so mixed up it seems. I know that I am the poster child for black and white thinking, but normally, it’s that everything I do is wrong or stupid or horrible. Here I had evidence that I thought the same action was horrible one day and great the next—and I didn’t even notice until I read back through things. Maybe one day my brain will make sense.
February 4, 2006
Got up at 12:30. Went back to bed at 2:00. Got back up at 4:30. Am I lame or what? I had it in my mind that I would run errands to Home Depot and Office Depot (an emerging depot theme). I didn’t really accomplish anything though.
Did lots of work catching up this silly blog, and I made broccoli soup. Didn’t work on cleaning things as I should have either.
February 4, 2006
A friend said that he’s taking Cymbalta, so I went off to find out what it does. I found the tips on their When You’re Just Getting Started page fun. I’m very good at “Defer Big Decisions”—that can account for not bothering to get out of bed long enough to go shopping. As far as “Try to avoid stress” and “Be good to your body” are concerning, I’m certain that napping is an excellent way to take care of both of those. Not so good at “Be aware of your diet” I guess, but I did make a healthy pot of soup today. “Interrupt negative thinking,” hmm, okay I’m failing on this one; but I scored on “Talk to your friends and family” cuz my sister called me twice and during the calls I chatted with my brother-in-law and mom too. If only things actually worked like this.
February 4, 2006
Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail – New York Times—just what we need. What I find intriguing about the argument behind these charges is that spammers and other annoyances wouldn’t pay for the privilege of sending e-mail through AOL and Yahoo too.
February 3, 2006
Got to work just 3 minutes after. A major accomplishment. Continued work on the science fiction lesson plan. Had it live by mid-afternoon. Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction through Paired Readings is live and ready for the teachers of the world :)
As I was working on it today, I kept looking at one thing and finding that the cursor or arrow was some place else altogether. Turns out that in the world of computers, visual focus != cursor focus.
Did the traditional Friday night grocery shopping and started catching up on the long missing entries. I don’t know how I feel so far behind. Well, part of it may be something problematic that happened to a friend, and then once I fell behind, I couldn’t get going again. I saved drafts and snippets, but I couldn’t managed to get them published. I have it in my head that I can’t do new, current entries until I have all the gaps filled in. Stupid really I guess, but that’s my head. At least the process is underway. There’d be more done if I hadn’t foolishly taken a nap from 9 to 11:30. I have no explanation for that nonsense.
February 2, 2006
It’s Groundhog Day, which means I am to regale my brother-in-law with “I got you babe.” We have no excuse for this tradition really.
I had my update with Sharon, and went over my list of things I need to do and whatever I had questions about. It’s my first update since January 6 because of various things that kept both of us from being in the office at the same time during my scheduled update this last month.
Spent the rest of the day doing various odds ‘n’ ends, mostly upkeep and maintenance. Updated the virus checker on the server. I’m considering buying something else for it. This version just isn’t updating automatically for me in the way that I’d like. Did editing work on a 6-8 lesson on science and science fiction. We got a first draft of an interactive that we’re designing in house. It will let students make book covers and dust jackets. I hope to have it live by the end of the month, but we’re doing testing for now.
I am going to be nudged about the book manuscript again soon. At least that’s the word I was given today. It’s so hard to carve out time for it or concentrate when there are so many other things that I have to get done at work. Everything else seems to have unyielding deadlines, and as a result, I never get work on it. Sigh. I really have to get more done more quickly.
MarcoPolo has brought the LinkScan work in house. Took them a while to get things set up and configured. Yesterday we got the first report on broken links in over a month. Made my first pass through the document tonight. Because it’s on a different server, we lost our configuration set-up so things that were set at exceptions are showing up as errors again. Sent out a list of the changes that I need MacroPolo to make this evening, after I had to type it twice because of Exchange server nonsense.
February 2, 2006
I was intrigued by Dear Folks: No Time to Write, which talks about politicians who supposedly start blogs and then don’t post anything. I thought it amazingly naive to think that all these politicians are writing their own blogs. Sure, just like they all write all the letters that go out under their signature and all the speeches that they give. Uh-huh. Now don’t get me wrong, as someone who is unendingly behind on her own blog, I am in complete agreement that when people say they are going to write these things, they need to follow-through. But it seems to me that the problem is more likely a staffing issue. I wonder how many of the politicians even know that they are supposed to be posting?
February 2, 2006
Geek to Live: Survive IT lockdown – Lifehacker—information that you hope you don’t have to use, but that you know you better save.