Getting There!!!

So, I once again had a very productive day today towards making my website something that I can really use. I placed a link to the site on my blog links. I also uploaded and placed links for about 50 resources and tutorials of mine on my AB Calc, BC Calc and Algebra 2 pages. I also uploaded 3 years worth of Lancaster-Lebanon Quiz Bowl League Standings. While I still have a long way to go, I think that my web site will eventually be a fabulous resource for my students, their parents, and maybe even other math teachers out there. It has been a pleasure, but due to my big pool tournament this weekend and another grad course next week, you probably won't hear from me in a while. Hopefully, things will all go well this weekend in spite of my team being severly shorthanded during the first 2 rounds of the tournament. Maybe I'll have good news (or maybe bad news) the next time that I write. Talk to you when I'm talking to you...

Continuing the Process

Well, today was an incredibly productive day, although I've been staring at a computer for the past 4 hours. I managed to get all of the framework for my website completed, and now I am uploading my resources to freewebs to connect various things onto my framework. It has been very frustrating for about the last hour and a half, since I'm not being allowed to upload more than one file at a time, and then either freewebs locks up or I need to go visit another website and then come back in order to upload another file. Because of this, I'm nowhere near where I want to be with this project at this point in time. Since I will probably have next to no time to work on it tomorrow (I'm travelling to Philly to register my son for classes, etc. for the fall), I'm going to have to put off all of the other work that I have to finish this phase off on Thursday. This whole process has been frustrating to no end, and has made me realize that I need to get a new computer...

A Very Frustrating Yet Productive Day

Well, today was incredibly frustrating, as I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get access to the freewebs site from school. Since it was blocked, I was instructed to contact a member of tech services to get the site unblocked. That all ended when I received an email from the head of tech services telling me that they are completely unable to unblock the site for my use. Arrgh! Since my files from my laptop are incompatible with my home computer, I ended up going out and getting a flash drive. I'm hoping to be able to get most of the things that I have done posted to my site by using my brother in law's computer. I've actually gotten a tremendous amount done. The construction of things for my site has gone rather smoothly, and it appears the biggest problem will be to actually get the things onto my site. Oh well, back to work...

I'm getting so sick of this...

My computer and my browsers are driving me nuts today. I'm just going to keep this short and publish it to see if I can actually publish a post. I'm definitely living my life by Murphy's Law today.

The Last Day of Class...

Well, today is the last day of my "Internet for Educators" class, and I have to say that I feel like I've learned a lot. I have been working on the construction of my web site, and mostly things have been going exceptionally well. I'm a little bothered by how my formatting appears to change as I move from nvu to the post of my web site. I'm going to start playing with the html to try and figure out how to get my formatting to be consistent. I can't believe that I feel confident in trying to do this already, but we'll see how it actually happens in reality. I really feel that I want to develop this website into a huge resource for use in my classroom. At the pace that I'm going, I fear that it may take me the next year to get everything the way that I want it. Eventually, when I finish the site, a link will appear on this blog site, but until then if you stumble upon this, it won't appear.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to my night tonight and the opening of the Simpson's movie. I normally don't ever go to a movie on its opening weekend, but my wife got us tickets since she knows that I've been waiting my whole life for this movie. I hope that it lives up to my expectations...

Really Dragging

Well folks, I'm really dragging today... It has been a terribly long week, with the driving and the being in class and the taking care of all of the other things that I need to do outside of class. Today has been especially rough since Bubba's Ball Busters had a match last night. Knowing that I had to get up early for class today, I had decided to sit myself out and let the assistant captain stay until the end to take care of all of the paperwork. Well, with the way that the night played out I was going to be playing one of my 3 level shooters last, since the other team played a 5 in the 4th match I knew that I could get the best match ups if I played my 6. The 6 and the 5 were in the middle of their first game when my lone remaining shooter there (the 3 I mentioned above) told me that she was tired and bored and was going to go home. So, I had to not only stay until the end, but I had to shoot last when I was looking forward to a night off. Thankfully, Lee (our 6) quickly dispatched their 5 by winning five straight games and I won four straight against their 3 to give us the last 2 wins and get me home only a little bit before midnight. By the time I got ready for bed and actually fell asleep it was probably around 1. I'm getting to be too old to be getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. Of course right now, we're talking about html in my class and even though I've never used it before, it seems so ridiculously easy that I could sleepwalk my way through it. Thank goodness, since I'm basically sleepwalking (or rather sleep sitting) right now. I was going to show you all a picture of my team, but it isn't on Bubba's web site anymore (I guess it has been almost 9 months since we've won any tournaments, although we were just 2nd in regionals two months ago). I have to say that my mind is more on pool than just about anything right now, since we have the huge Valley Forge tournament coming up next weekend (128 teams, $8000 for 1st) and I'm still trying to figure out how things are going to work out with peoples' work schedules, etc. I am really excited about all of the things that I'm learning to do in this class, and actually hope to have my first web site up and running in the next couple of weeks and finished by about the middle of the school year (I can use it as my supervisory project for this year too, so that's pretty exciting). Anyway... Talk to you when I'm talking to you.

My Introduction to Blogging

I've never really thought about doing any blogging before this week, because quite frankly who cares what I have to say. However, this week I'm taking a graduate workshop on the "Internet for Educators", and we've been building these blogs. Here is a picture of our class...


I'm really sort of enjoying the whole process and may decide to become a full timer and see if anyone really cares what I have to say. We should start with my musings for today, that were initiated with this picture that I took earlier today, while we were looking for interesting things...


This picture interested me because of the rich possibilities for discussion of the ideas of fate and self-determination that arise as a result of this particular question. The writer pleads with us to "please tell me the answer", which if fate is unchangeable will have absolutely no effect on my behavior, since my decision whether or not to answer their question has been entirely determined by my fate in one way or another whether they ask me to answer the question. Of course, if fate is unchangeable, they had no choice but to pose this question, and in fact, had no choice but to plead with me to answer this question. Without that plea, I would never have even entertained taking this picture as something that amused me, so did fate dictate that they place this plea in order to meet with the larger plan of me being fated to write this entry?