Life is busy

• Up at 5:45 am
• Make a cup of coffee (with cinnamon--I'm exploring whether cinnamon can help my blood pressure and my cholesterol level)
• Check my email
• Grade a set of quizzes and record them in my spreadsheet
• Check new link from college intranet to college Outlook calendar from home, doesn't work
• Access college email from home, figure out why calendar doesn't work
• Fire up GoLive, make the URL change, test, works now (needs https not http)
• Drop an email to IT administrator about accessing Outlook from home
• Look at Land's End catalog for dark gray pants (Year 'Rounders)
• Look up bulk pecans on Internet
• Look up bulk ground cinnamon on Internet
• Found interesting website on world's healthiest foods, read about cinnamon
• Went online to try to figure out how many milligrams in a teaspoon (one cinnamon source said 5000 mg per day--how many teaspoons is that?)
• Emailed the URL to Cindy (http://www.whfoods.com/)
• Fired up my old information database in Filemaker Pro and transferred all the graphics from it to DevonThink Pro--all done
• Deleted old information database
• Started this blog
• Accessed Lands End website, created & modified My Model
• Selected dark charcoal heather wool year 'rounder pants; tall long sleeve 60/40 buttondown pinpoint shirt; not ready to order yet ($100 total)
• Checked blood pressure
• Hotsync'd my PDA
• Ate breakfast (oatmeal w/brown sugar & cinnamon, 2 1/2 strips of bacon, water)
• Read the morning paper
• Checked email
• Fired up Interarchy, new version available, downloaded & installed, logged in to intranet, downloaded new projectsoft manager directories
• Set up a GoLive file to manage the projectsoft application on the intranet; found out permissions aren't quite right, emailed tech support
• Got an emailing ready to send assignments back to T & M class
• Studied Adult Bible Fellowship lesson for tomorrow
• Worked on requirements for garage wallboard & insulation
• Updated podcasts on my iPod
• Got dressed & ready to work outside (10:00 am)
• Worked outside
• Picked tomatoes
• Pulled weeds from the lawn
• Used the edger to cut checkerboard grooves 1' apart in the lawn to admit water and fertilizer; applied fertilizer (1/3 of lawn done)
• Spoke w/contractor re: insulation and wallboard in garage
• Cleaned up the garage some in preparation for wallboard
• Ate lunch
• Unloaded wallboard & insulation w/contractor
• Mowed 1/3 of lawn
• Picked beans, broccoli, raspberries
• Cleaned the beans (Kentucky Wonders)--they're dried for soups while watching an afternoon movie
• Wrote check for contractor
• Ate supper (chili & corn chips & zucchini muffins!)
• Showered & shaved
• Went to violin recital
• Researched on the Internet for a replacement piano bass bar for our player piano
• Watched TV with my wife

Back from Peru, School's Started, Home Jobs

Peru was busy. Two weeks of teaching. Registered and developed arribaperu.org. Took a lot of great pics of people in Lima:












Maybe upload more later.

Back from Peru, long but safe trip. Started faculty inservice immediately.

Wow, what a hurricane down South. Iraq drags on. Go Judge Roberts!

Cleaned out my garage--going to put up wallboard and a pull-down stairway.

Worked on the new side flower garden. Moving flowers/plants away from the house, putting in a stone path, grouping roses together.

Fresh raspberries every day! Fresh veggies for supper every day! I love this time of year.

Adult Bible Fellowship lessons are on the book of Joshua. Lesson 2: Rahab. Good stuff.

Brother in law visiting from Phoenix, bringing new wife to visit and meet us. Nice time last evening at Mom's with them.

In Peru

Well I'm down in Lima for my teaching assignment, "Media-Enhanced Speaking." Actually it's Media-Enhanced Communications. We cover communication, visual design & displays, transparencies, photographic composition, PowerPoint presentations, and digital video. All in two weeks. So far so good with all my gear, it seems to be all working ok. I even resurrected one of the student's ailing laptop. It was freezing up randomly. Took the memory chip out, cleaned the contacts with a pencil eraser, then inserted it into the laptop in the cleanest slot (the one it was in was kind of dirty). It worked, and she was thankful.

I need to learn some more Spanish beyond "como esta usted" "muy bien y usted" "muy bien gracias." Gotta get those Spanish tapes out...

Getting Ready for Peru

I'm getting ready for my teaching trip to Peru. This is my third time, so I pretty much know what's going to be happening.

There are three students this year. Their names are Katie, Crystal, and Aaron.

Here are their blogs:

Katie
Crystal
Aaron

Where angels fear to tread

Well I took the plunge, tore apart my PowerBook G4. I had instructions from PBFixit.com. Excellent instructions. Showed pictures with little colored circles showing what screw to remove. Every time I took a little screw out I taped it to the paper.

No problem getting the hard drive out--basically remove the keyboard and top cover, and there you are. But the optical drive was a different matter. In fact, I couldn't do it. When I got to the step where I was supposed to remove two spring-loaded screws to release the heat sink, I couldn't get one of them out. It was sort of a hollow thing that screws onto a threaded post underneath. One of them came out fine, but the second would only loosen. It would not come off. So I was stuck. Ah well it all went back together ok and I'm up and running with a new 100 GB hard drive.

I put my old one into a little "FireXpress" hard drive case "slim storage by CompuCable". Such a nice little aluminum case. I put the new 8x dual layer DVD burner into an external "Digistor" case. Both are so nice and compact.

Oh yeah when I first got the hard drive and case, I put the new one in the external case, and then used Disk Utility to "restore" my old hard drive onto the new hard drive. Then I tested that it would boot ok, which it did. Then I swapped the hard drives. Slick as a whistle.

These small external media cases are so cool.

Oh yeah I forgot to say I also bought some audio stuff--an iMic by Griffin. Nice piece of hardware, provides improved quality of output over the built-in headphone jack (at least it seems that way to my untrained ears), and also provides low level and line level microphone inputs. That will be nice because I'm still working on digitizing my LP and cassettes.

Bought a nice little microphone on eBay. It's basically just a gold-plated 1/4 inch plug with a microphone mounted in the end and a wind-screen. I think combined with the iMic it will provide high quality audio input to the computer.

Stuff I did today 7/8/05

1. Ordered my hard drive
2. Tried to order DVD writer, online process didn't work, will have to call
3. Ate breakfast, made a cup of coffee
4. Showered & dressed
5. Went to work
6. Watched the Ken Ham video for next week's ABF class.
7. Went online and printed the instructions for changing my hard drive and DVD.
8. Printed and tallied distance ed course evaluation feedback.
9. Made spreadsheet for distance ed course feedback, graphed data, printed out, dropped copies off for the boss.
10. Called mwave.com and straightened out the order that didn't process--it got stuck on the "verified by visa" step, probably something Firefox didn't like.
11. Fired up Adobe GoLive and fixed a couple of typos on my online course evaluation page.
12. Ate a piece of blueberry coffee cake. Heh.
13. Set up a link in the Finder to connect from my laptop to my Windows desktop machine.
14. Went online and ordered a hard drive enclosure for the drive I will pull from my PowerBook. Should I order an enclosure for the DVD writer I pull? Hmmm. $50 from mp3car.com, looks nice.
15. Transferred a font from my Windows machine to my PowerBook, and installed it with Font Book.
16. Modified several pages on the school web site to have updated brochures.
17. Gave some instructions to a new client on my server how to set up his email.
18. Listened to Calvary Quartet all morning.
19. Talked with Jim about the school website and fixed up a page for him
20. Went home for lunch with my wife
21. Added some info to a page on the school website
22. Checked out stampauctionnetwork.com for any interesting 1909 commems--hm there's a nice 367 FDC mailed 2/12/09 at 8 am, and also a 370 plate/imprint block, nice.
23. Started up an iTunes podcast, an interview with a fellow from Google. He worked on Google Earth and mentioned the URL.
24. Downloaded Google Earth from earth.google.com and played with it for a while. It crashed once but I zoomed in on my area, and my sister's house was in one of the higher resolution scans. Kewl.
25. Listened to a couple of podcasts "Tips from the Top Floor" (digital photography)
26. Ordered the Slimline DVD enclosure w/FireWire/USB interface. Should be cool.
27. Worked for a good share of the afternoon without interruption on some academic achievement statistics, recalculating some percentiles and graphing them out.
28. Made a cup of coffee
29. Read an http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/08/london.muslims/index.html?section=cnn_topstories article about the Arab world reaction to the London bombing.
30. Handled a mis-directed phone call.
31. Almost time to go home. Maybe I'll read a bit on my PDA while I enjoy my coffee. I'm reading "The Clue of the Twisted Candle" by Edgar Wallace.

Upgrade season

Well, we're in upgrade season. I've ordered a new 100 GB drive for my PowerBook G4 from eBay, got a good deal for $175 for a brand new Seagate.

Now I'm working on ordering a new DVD burner, 8X dual layer for the PowerBook, too.

Will also pick up an external hard drive enclosure to hold the old hard drive from the PowerBook. Might as well use that 60 GB. Not sure if I'll get an enclosure for the old DVD burner, I just might and then sell it.

Installation. That's another matter, fortunately there are some good instructions online.

I like ecto.