I bought a Windows Vista HP DV2210us notebook in March 2007 because I wanted to be an early adopter and figure out Vista before the rest of the world. Now, unlike a great deal of the world, I don’t think Vista is a total waste: Some of the UI improvements are nice, especially the breadcrumb navigation and the Start menu search.  My biggest problem with Vista is that it’s slow as molasses.  I upped the RAM in the HP to 2GB, but it didn’t help much. Aside from the laptop at home and for web and Java development, my classroom is a lab with 20 brand-new, Vista-equipped Dell Optiplex machines.  Again, they have Core 2 Duo processors and 2GB RAM and are still slow as molasses.  So much for progress.

In September, I bought my MacBook with a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM. Equipped with OS X 10.4.12, the MacBook is a pure joy to work with. The jewel goes from turning on to ready to be useful (i.e. no latent grinding like Vista) in about 20 seconds.  That’s simply fantastic and something I have never witnessed in a 32-bit Windows OS. (I had a DOS box that would boot in about 8 seconds, but I don’t think we can count that!)

As far as getting stuff done, iLife is the defacto consumer-level media suite as far as I’m concerned. Vista’s Photo Manager and revamped Movie Maker are improvements, but iPhoto and iMovie HD 6 (which is available for download if you own iMovie ’08) beat both hands down. I use NeoOffice (a Mac-native spinoff of OpenOffice.org) to handle all my Office tasks. For software development, I use Eclipse and custom-compiled Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Now, I could have compiled these on Windows, but compiling the stuff without spending money on a full-blown compiler is a huge challenge. To top it off, I can get 5 hours of full productivity off of one battery charge, compared to 2.5 hours on the Vista machine. 

The bottom line is that I don’t use the Vista box much, but the MacBook gets carried around and used for work and play day in and day out. It’s a joy to use and I would recommend it to anyone, as long as you’re willing to relax your PC mindset.  (Let it be known I don’t like Leopard AT ALL: I downgraded back to 10.4 after about a month of suffering.)

I have come to the conclusion that teaching someone to un-learn old-school HTML markup is nearly impossible. This seems to be the one thing that plagues my better students moreso than those who really do not care about web design. Most of my students that are really into designing webpages already know how to do a lot of basic stuff with good ol’ 1998-style HTML including but not limited to: change font faces and colors, add a background image, use a table for layout, use blink/scroll, and (shudder) add music that plays when the page loads.

It stinks, because part of me is very ecstatic that they cared enough before they got to me to figure out how to get this stuff to work. Heck, when I was in high school, I did exactly the same thing with those same tags. However, it becomes very frustrating when they want to use these old-school methods when I am in fact trying to teach them how to do the same stuff with the modern, preferred CSS methods.  Is it so hard to forget about the <font> tag and use a nice class that can be re-used and re-applied over and over?!?

I think the biggest obstacle to having them change their markup behavior voluntarily is that in the scope of a classroom, it’s impossible for them to experience the frustration of changing a site layout when all fonts and colors have been marked up inside the HTML itself.  If they had to go through 1,000 static pages to get rid of all their <font color="red"> tags, I think they’d probably be a little more receptive to coding their sites from the ground up to take advantage of a central stylesheet for all things visual.  I guess this shows that a teacher’s words are usually no substitute for experience!

I got an email today with a prayer that was read by Joe Wright in 1996 to the Kansas House of Representatives when he was asked to act as Chaplain to the House.  Here’s the prayer:

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.

We know your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.

We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.

We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.

We have abused power and called it political savvy.

We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.

Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will. I ask it in the name of your son, the living savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

I applaud Mr. Wright for actually giving his opinion about what he feels is right and wrong.  I read this and realized how tight-lipped I had become about telling people what I felt was right and wrong. There is nothing wrong with having an opinion on what’s right and what’s wrong, especially in an elected body such as the House or the Senate. To totally separate right and wrong from the law is impossible, even if a lot of what governs right and wrong in those contexts is governed by religion. Mr. Wright in no way suggested that anybody had to believe the things his prayer had to offer. Somehow, though, just through its utterance, a great number of people were very offended. How can we go on and on about Freedom of Speech and crucify this man for stating what he believed in…All I know is that Mr. Wright is welcomed in my home anytime, simply because he had the gumption to speak his mind.

When I was a RA at the University of Kentucky from August 2005 to May 2006 I met lots of people and got to experience lots of new things.  One of those people in particular was one of the most energetic, fun-loving, goal-driven people I’ve ever met in my life.  As a freshman at UK in the fall of 2005, Christina Layton came to Jewell as a quiet, polite young lady from a small town in Northern Kentucky…That did not last long!  Soon after the semester started Christina met lots of new people and quickly became a smiling, positive aspect to the worst place I’ve ever lived!  Christina soon became one of my good friends and a wonderful resident to have on my floor, always participating in events and floor meetings and being very active in Campus life in general, and soon learning more about Trav and I than she ever wanted too ;).  To sum her up, Christina is just an all around good girl who I’d recommend for any thing she attempted.
You may be wondering why I’ve gone on for so long about this girl none of you know!  Well, it’s because Christina has decided to take the chance of running her own photography business and I want to help her succeed as much as possible.  Even though we don’t get to talk a lot anymore, I know that Christina is just as dedicated to her photography as she is UK and I’d like to let everyone who visits this site know how to get some great pics taken!  Visit Christina’s website at http://www.grassrootsphotos.com (or click the link in the special offers section to the right) to see what a great photographer she is, and please feel free to let me know if you need more information about Christina, or her fiance Jeff Gora, who made Christina’s website his first as a programmer!

Today, Beck and I stopped at the Dairy Queen in Clay City to get me a Cheesequake Blizzard (with no strawberries, of course). After Beck ordered, we sat in the drive-thru for about 20 minutes. Beck commented at some point that she was going to flip the Blizzard upside down if the worker didn’t to make sure we didn’t sit there all that time for a melted mess of soft serve. I didn’t really think she would do it, but when we got to the window, Beck handed the DQ associate the money, who quickly handed the Blizzard out the window. In one of the smoothest motions I’ve ever seen, Beck takes the Blizzard, flips it upside down, and quickly flips it right-side up, hands it to me, and drives off. Still hanging out the drive-thru window, the look on the Blizzard slinger’s face was priceless…It was definitely a WTF moment if I ever saw one. I laughed so hard I almost dropped the Blizzard. What a day!

It’s hard to believe I used to look like this on a regular basis! This picture was taken in 2003 on my 21st  birthday. I rolled out of bed and headed to the DMV. And no, I didn’t go out drinking that day!

A sad thing that happened to me sometime around 2001 is that I stopped following Major League Baseball. For anyone who doesn’t know, I used to be a baseball fanatic. I watched MLB, college, Little League World Series…It didn’t matter. Baseball was baseball and I was obsessed. If I could do anything in the world and there was nothing to stop me, I think playing in the Big Show would be my #1 choice.

The obsession got pushed aside once college got in the way. The beginning of the season wasn’t practical because it always began just as the spring semester was winding down. The weeks prior to finals week, particularly during my Junior and Senior years, were jam-packed with group meetings and project deadlines. The last thing I had time to do was to devote 2-3 hours to a game. Thus, I would always miss the first month of the season. When I came home for the summer’s, I was so distracted trying to brush up on the fun sides of computing that I hadn’t had time to conquer during the school year (such as learning more Photoshop tricks or perhaps learning Perl) that I just never started watching the remainder of the season. I honestly figured I would get reacquainted with MLB once graduated. Sadly, though, it didn’t happen. For the last five years, I haven’t had a clue who had the most homers, who has been pitching phenomenally, or even who made it to the Series…

This season, I’m trying very hard to become an informed observer of America’s Pastime. I have watched three Atlanta Braves* games so far, and I am very happy to say, I have quite enjoyed myself. I had forgotten how slow and methodical baseball is. I, unlike some people, really enjoy this aspect of the game. It gives me time to think and play armchair manager. And anybody who thinks that baseball isn’t exciting has never sit down and watched a well-played, close game. The pitcher vs. hitter is, in my humble opinion, the most primeval of all sporting situations. One man against another. Sure, the fielders, runners, and weather do play a big part, but for a split second, the ball can only be influenced by one or the other. It doesn’t require a block from someone else or having to take the ball away to do your thing. Both the pitcher and the hitter get an equal chance to do what pitchers and hitters do. That rocks in my book! So much so, that I want to watch it on a nightly basis.

* By the way, I am not one of those self-righteous people who jump from team to team depending on who’s winning. I have been a Braves fan since 1990, when I first took an interest in the sport. I was there when Francisco Cabrerra made it to the plate in 1991 to send the Braves to the series. And, at least in spirit anyway, I was there as the Braves failed to win their division. The Braves will be my team…Win, lose, or draw!