Me and Becky
Here we are. I think the tie looked better on her than it did me :) |
So, for all my readers (both of you), I guess I should post a little note to let you know I’m not dead. I’ve just been really busy. Let’s see…I have bought a place in Jackson and I’ve been trying to get moved in. I’ll eventually post some pics, but not right now. I just finished the content area capstone class. (It’s a whole teaching thing.) I’m now Microsoft MOS certified (highly overrated). And I’ve found the love of my life :) This is a lot of information without a lot of elaboration, but that’ll have to wait until I get my phone going at the new place…Trust me, there’s plenty more to tell. I just need a little time.
Would your doctor handle your blood without donning a pair of latex gloves? Would your dentist peek into your mouth without a mask? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding “no.” Your competent healthcare professionals wear their universal precaution because there are lots of little nasties within all of us that they have no desire to contract. Who can blame them? I don’t really prefer the germs I have, little lone the germs of someone else.
That said, why then do so many people use their PCs without a good anti-virus program sitting between them and all the little computer nasties that are floating around everywhere. Anti-virus programs are the latex of the computer world. It’s no big deal to get a virus in an email attatchment if you have your protection on. Without it, though, you’re up the creek…
The number one reason most people don’t get a new anti-virus program every year is because it costs money. That is a load of crap. You don’t drive your car without changing the oil in it once in awhile and that costs money. An up-to-date anti-virus program is essential for computing today. With the Internet, there is nothing but a good virus checker standing between you and a myriad of evil code that seeks only to kill, steal, and destroy your data.
Not to sound nostalgic, but back in the day when the only interaction that occured between PCs came in the form of the almighty floppy disk, a virus checker was optional and the concept of updating definitions was something that only the power user worried about. Sadly, today, everyone needs a virus checker and up-to-the-minute definitions to have a prayer. Good news is that updating definitions is now done with one click of the mouse. In order to save your data and avoid giving your friendly neighborhood computer guru unwanted stress, install and maintain a good virus checker.
Which one, you may ask? For those of you who are a litte more technically adept, I recommend NOD32. It slows your PC down less than any other anti-virus software on the market, and its virus definitions are updated daily. For those of you who prefer a no-hands-on approach, I recommend Symantec’s Norton Anti-Virus. It does a great job and doesn’t bother its users with the details. If you want a free anti-virus program that gets the job done (most of the time), check out AVG Anti-Virus. No matter which option you choose, please, please use some form of AV program. Your data’s life may depend on it.
OS Poisoning is a phenomenon that occurs when software is installed and uninstalled in an Operating System. When poisoning occurs, a computer system runs slower than normal. An OS can become so poisoned that the system ceases to function at all. Upgrading programs from an older version to a newer version can contribute a great deal to OS poisoning because of file version conflicts. Also, when poorly written programs are uninstalled, files that should have been removed are not. If you notice that your computer is not running as smoothly as it did when it was new, there is a possibilty that OS poisoning is responsible.
There is a great deal of debate over which Operating Systems suffers most from OS poisoning. Microsoft OSs become poisoned a great deal because of the Registry. The Registry is a huge file consisting of a tree-like structure that contains settings for almost all programs installed on the system. Each time a program is installed, it grows. Once it reaches a certain size, system performance becomes sluggish. In the Linux/Unix world, OS poisoning occurs mostly because of libraries and packages that are not exactly the right version for the programs that use them. While it is true that Windows suffers from versioning issues, Linux/Unix seems to have less backwards compatibility built into its shared libraries. The point is that no Operating System written yet is immune to OS poisoning.
The only way to prevent OS poisoning is to install only the programs that you need. The rate of poisoning can sometimes be minimized by uninstalling an old program before upgrading to a newer version. This, however, can cause you to lose settings, and is not always practical. The best defense is to pray that programmers improve their practices to help minimize the problem.
Anybody who has used any version of Windows in the last 10 years has seen the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I can’t really believe it, but the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn) has a Red Screen of Death! All I can say is “Wow…”
The wildest thing: You can check any KY Teacher’s credentials online at the Kentucky Educational Professional Standards Board site. A link to my credentials can be found
here. Somehow or other, looking up former teachers is very addictive. Everyone I have ever shown this to spends at least five minutes looking up someone, either good or bad.
I was reading The Talent Myth, an article by the current business philosophy guru Malcom Gladwell when I noticed a link on the bottom of his site to the web design firm Cavil.com. Apparently, Cavil’s croanies saw computer movies like Hackers and actually decided the artsy and useless sites that always show up in said movies are the way to go. It has been a long time since I have seen an artsy web design company that propogates mystery meat navigation. Most died off before or shortly after the dot com boom. Cavil, though, takes itself very seriously. The title of the page is “Cavil, an internet concern.” What kind of arrogant, pretensious title is that? If I didn’t know the site was about web design before I went to it, I’m not sure I would have figured out what they do.
I managed to find my way to Cavil’s site portfolio. On all of their sites, you are forced to poke-and-hope, relying on the little hand that your cursor turns into so you know where to click. That’s such crap. And if I were to question Cavil about their design practices, I would probably be told that I “Just don’t get it.” That’s the same mentality that caused Apple Computer to nearly tank in the late 80s/early 90s.
Why am I so upset over one little site like Cavil? I guess it’s because the same pompous asses who run places like Cavil seem to be able to get on TV and spread loads of crap about what freedom really is. They gladly sit around and protest animal cruelty and the evils of wearing brand-name tennis shoes. And at the end of all the whining, they’ll throw in something about how they create websites to “express themselves.” It irks me that people like that get to shape what a computer geek is all about, yet as long as sites like Cavil appear on a high-profile site like Gladwell’s such garbage won’t die because it will continue to generate hits. Generation of hits fuels these freaks into believing that what they create is quality. It never ends. Anyway…
On a very positive note, if I survive tomorrow, I will have offically completed my first year of teaching! It’s been a wild rollercoaster ride. I’m glad I went into teaching, though. I think I have actually helped a few students learn to think, even though they hated my guts while I was guiding them to that point. I must have gotten much more strict this semester. I failed 17% of my students (compared to only 7% last semester), not because I’m mean, but because they wouldn’t show up and/or do any work. I really don’t like failing people, but the expectations were clear from day one. I wish the students wouldn’t force me to drop the hammer, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.
There’s a quietness in my soul that I haven’t felt since December. Many things are coming to an end very soon: the first year MAT cycle, the students’ school year, and my curriculum class. My favorite part of any task has always been when it’s all said and done and I have achieved closure. The best part is how well I sleep when I don’t have a bunch of small things keeping my brain up at night. I do a lot of problem solving in my sleep, but when there are no projects due or papers to write, my brain takes a break.
It’s odd that I don’t mind that the closure of one chapter always brings the opening of another. I mean, in about 3 weeks or so, I’m going to start another leg of this race that is more challenging than the one I just finished. I guess I like the page between chapters. You know, the one that has been left intentionally blank. In that little section, there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Sometimes, that’s the best place in the world to be.
I turned in my massive MAT portfolio on Saturday (somewhere in the neighborhood of 380-400 pagses). It represents an entire year’s worth of teaching, reflecting, teaching, and re-teaching…It feels so good to have that out of the way. Now, all I gotta do is survive one more observation and finish my curriculum framework. This time next year, I’ll be fully certified and get a nice raise. The upcoming summer, fall, and spring are going to suck, royally. If I can survive one more year, though, it’ll all be worth it.
I don’t know what’s in the water, but the kids were very cranked up today. I guess Springtime does it.