Courtesy of the friendly neighborhood rubbermouse, comes the Gizoogle.com. It will instantly translate your page into the smoothest dialect ever: Snoop talk! This really ain’t nothin’ but a G thang!
For any of you budding web designers out there, I recommend you visit Web Pages That Suck.com. One of the best ways to learn good web design is to look at the WORST web design. Gotta love it.
Life is going great: I’m doing well at my job and with graduate school. It’s just too bad that I’m so bored with my routine. On the weekends, all I do is grade papers, plan, and do tedious work in search of my Masters degree. Grading papers and planning isn’t that bad, but if I have to write another reflection on educational philosophy, I think I’m going to slip into a permanant narcoleptic state!!! Grrrrr!!!
On a brighter note, I looked at a house for sale today. I really like it. If I can get the loan for it, I think I’ll go for it. It has redwood siding, and two rooms that were added on about 20 years ago are solid redwood. It’s gorgeous. Instead of throwing this rent money out the window, I’d like to build some equity. Somehow I don’t think I’ll get the loan, but who knows. I threw my hat into the ring. The most they can do is say “NO!”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I just got back from Mom and Dad’s with a load of my books. I’ve been slowly funneling all my books to this place since I moved in. This tote-full had been MIA until Dad found them yesterday.
Most are computer books, but my stats and quantitative analysis text were in there too. I’m glad I found them. I really like crunching student data: Stats, when taken with a grain of salt, can be a powerful way to see hidden trends. Right now, I’m really interested in the correlations between students performance/attendance and Socioeconomic Status (SES). The correlations have been studied to death, but I want to do some models myself, just to see how “statistically normal” my students are.
I found my Ender’s books too! I forgot how awesome they are. I think I read Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow back to back in 2 days.
I no longer have “miles to go before I sleep” (at least for a little while). I don’t get to feel this way very much. All is well in my little world at the momment. Now all I gotta do is drink a Red Bull to wak e up :)
I bought some of those Endust wipes for electronics, and I must say, they do a fantastic job. Cleaning an LCD with Windex usually leaves a wierd purplish film which blurs the display. The Endust wipes left my LCD, CRT, and TV screen spotless. If you’re an electronics clean freak, you’ll probably want to get some.
I’m fixing to crunch my students’ grades from last semester to determine how much their attendance contributed to their final average. Just from eye-balling it, I figure at least 75% of the grade variations can be attributed to whether or not their butts were in their seats. The wierdest thing about me doing this is that I’m actually very anxious to see if there’s a trend. No matter what the numbers say, I know I shouldn’t harp on it too much. As Mark Twain once said, “There are three types of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
I ran across this picture while I was at Mom and Dad’s on Christmas (click for a larger view). It’s me and my prom date in 2000. I had a wonderful time. Brittany, the lovely lady in the picture, is one of the sweetest girls I know. I’ll never forget that night.
Wikipedia is either a linguist’s nightmare or dream, depending on his disposition. This free online encyclopia offers tons of definitions that are years ahead of any formal dictionary. The entries are continually checked and updated as needed by a huge army of loyal contributors. Click here to check out one of the best geek-speak encyclopedias on the Internet. A hundred years from now, Wikipedia will probably be regarded as a cutting edge pioneer in language and linguistics.
This is the first time in four years that I don’t have to pack up %50 of what I own and head to Mom and Dad’s for a month. I can now leave everything exactly where it is. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be heading there for all the neato food, but I don’t have to actually pseudo-move back in. This is wondermus.
On the teaching front, everything went smoothly today with the new round of students. I get paid on Wednesday, which is always good. Yipeeee!