Apology

Yes, I know, if I’m going to post at all, I oughtta post something important, something relating to the somewhat impressive difficulties my small family endured this summer. Unfortunately, return from Omaha was an escape of sorts, and so I didn’t blog; school has since intervened, as have the election (loved the end of McCain’s speech, though were my policy differences with him great enough, it would not have persuaded me to vote for him), and the looking-like-it-might-be-abysmal Notre Dame football season.

Suffice it to say, for now, that Kay is doing well, mostly. A few small issues from the operation remain – a healing thrombosis, scars, a not-quite-normal-feeling abdomen (muscularly and otherwise vaguely, though seemingly improving); and then there is the sadness of it all, and her continual frustration with my position, which never boils over and only occasionally seems to surface.

I will be back. I will provide the answers to the five questions. I will, when I know, answer the question of, will we try again? I will discuss some of the adoption advice I’ve heard (four routes, one bad, one probably best, that one sort of like what happens in Juno, so they say). And you’ll hear a small yippee from me when we (they, I suppose) beat Michigan next week, most probably by something like a point.

GradeQuickSlow - A Sample of True In-School Correspondence, Offered without Commentary or Footnotes for non-Pedagogues

Dear Principal,

I know you always like to hear commentary, so here’s mine while I’m entering grades: GradeQuick seems to me to be Stone Age tech. I know we’ve got lots of technological (and other) needs, and I may be the only one who feels this way, but whenever I use it I feel stymied by a myriad of niggling inconveniences over and over again. If the question of “should we renew?” or “what do people think?” comes up, my answers are “no,” and “arrrgh.”

One quick illustration: even with GradeBook to GradeBook Copy (which is strangely inactive this year - finally sent our tech guy an inquiry today), there is no way to make commonsense changes (such adding tests, grade markings, or grade footnotes) just once. Always you have to make it to one of the four gradebooks, and then copy it.

I was driven off the deep end tonight by the effort to delete the Mean from my reports. I found an old e-mail that answered that question, but other programs (not grading programs – I have, alas, no alternate experience other than my wonderful old Excel spreadsheets: beautifully flexible, endlessly adventurous (i.e., always open to catastropic, unnoticed changes)), seem so much more intuitive and easy to grasp, unlike this sentence. Perhaps I just have more regular and long-lasting experience with them, but after two years and a bit, I still don’t like GradeQuick.

Thanks for listening to the vent,

J.

Turbine Sprawl

A small calculation riffing off a piece by Planet Gore's Drew Thornley:

According to numbers reported and calculations made by Mr. Thornley, wind turbines able to power one fifth of Texas would take up 2005 square miles. If Wikipedia is correct that Texas takes up 268,820 square miles, that means that these turbines would take up approximately 0.75% of Texas's land. Is there another industry in the nation that takes up almost 1% of the country's landmass? or even 0.5% of it? Does even suburbia take up that much land? (Probably.) Can you say Turbine Sprawl?