Archive for July, 2009
the family’s set up at a campground for the weekend, but I had to book it back into town to participate in an online session for my Qualitative Methods course. If I had internet out in the mountains…
another bike commuter rides toward downtown, through the Bowmont pathway system in Silver Springs, with the ski jump towers at Canada Olympic Park in the background.
mid-summer grass, heavy with the weight of absorbed moisture from pre-dawn rains. seeds nearly ready.
a stretch of smooth, well marked and maintained on-road bike lane in NW Calgary, frequented by careful and courteous drivers who are aware of the excellent condition of the bike lane, and welcome bicycle riders to share the road with them.
But they had no green. “No green paint!” said Brush and Hush. And they wanted green paint, of course, because nearly every place they liked to go was green.
Green as cats’ eyes Green as grass By streams of water Green as glass.
So they tried to make some green paint.
The Color Kittens A Child’s First Book About Colors By Margaret Wise Brown Illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen (c) 1958, 1949 by Golden Press, Inc.
gulls, pigeons, crows and other birds gather at the east calgary landfill
My folks needed this vintage 1962 Williams Trade Winds pinball machine moved out of their basement (they got it in 1979 from my uncle who ran an arcade supply company in Edmonton, and I spent many hours playing on it as a kid).
It went straight into ours. The Boy™ is fascinated with it – and I am blown away by the analog electronic design of the thing. It’s a work of art, inside and out.
Update: Converge Magazine refuses to publish any of my comments on their blog, so I’m putting enough info here so that it will show up in google queries: The magazine is “ConvergeMag”, aka “Converge Magazine”, and the principal is Michael Smith, blogger at PrincipalsPage.com – and he is apparently not a principal any more, but is a Superintendent of Oakland CUSD #5 School Board. The article in question is Chocolate Milk Tastes Better When I am Not Being Violated – posted July 23, 2009.
I read a blog post yesterday, by an elementary school principal who described an incident that happened to him. He was trying (very, very hard) to be funny, but the language and his reaction were not what I would have expected from a principal, or of anyone in a position of power and authority in the care of children.
I tried to post a comment on the principal’s blog entry, but the editors of the site apparently decided not to approve it for public consumption. No problem. I have my own blog. Here’s the comment I posted.
You didn’t do a spectacular job of describing exactly what happened, as you were trying so hard to be funny. I don’t know the full details, and I’ve never been a Principal, nor “Mr. Guy Who Always Wears a Tie.” I have been around children. A lot. Mine. Other peoples’. Lots of kids. Kids are sometimes a bit clueless about what exactly they’re doing. Sometimes, they think they’re being funny, or cool. Sometimes, they’re just being plain old clumsy and awkward. Sometimes, they combine for full effect. Without knowing if the kid intended to punch you in the nads, I can’t speak to exactly what happened. I’d guess it wasn’t an intentional nut-punch. If it was, then deal with the kid rather than ranting on a blog about it. If it wasn’t, then let it go. You’re the principal, for crying out loud. Grow up. And calling this incident “violation”? Seriously? Do you even know what that word implies? Do you know anyone that has truly been violated? I’d bet there are a significant number of people, including the parents of the kids at your school, who would be super-pissed to hear their principal describe what was likely an accident (or at worst, a clumsy attempt to be funny or cool) as violation. You devalue the word, and belittle those who have been violated. Not cool. Not funny.
Now, I realize that I may have had more success in having the comment published if I’d used honey rather than vinegar. But sometimes you just need to pour a tall glass of vinegar.
The flowers in the back garden are finally starting to look flowery…
I don’t know when this broke – maybe around the time Safari 4 was released? Anyway, Java WebStart stopped working. Downloading a .jnlp file and doubleclicking it brought up an editor (Dashcode) rather than the application launched via Java WebStart. I tried using Spotlight to find “Java WebStart” so I could manually launch the app. But nothing was found. WTF?
Apparently, the solution, of course, is to navigate in the Finder to /System/Library/CoreServices and click on Java WebStart.app – an entirely intuitive and obvious solution. This triggers some hidden magic to somehow restore access to JWS. Who knows. It works after doing this.