Author: kathleen

I don’t know if it works this way in any other state.

In Texas, if you are in an automobile accident that is not your fault, and you get injured, you get paid by both companies as long as you have PIP.  Ask your agent.  Now!

Your PIP (Personal Injury Protection), will pay for your medical expenses up to a certain amount.  The other company will ALSO pay.

Here’s an example.

I was rear ended in May.  I felt like I was hit by a car the next day and for several weeks after.  I went to my local chiropractor.  He did a ton of xrays, etc. and had me sign my insurance benefits (DON’T DO THIS).  Pay them with a credit card.  Seriously.

So I have PIP with Farmers.  It doesn’t affect what you pay your insurance company.  They pay out I think $2500 max.  They will pay the amount of the claim I think (I have a call out to the person servicing the account).

The other company will ALSO pay the full amount.  In my case, the other company settled for $3200.  Sweet!

This is freaking weird, and I have no idea how it works anywhere else.  I also thought the insurance people were smoking dope when they explained this to me.

Moral:  In Texas, self pay.

On my second accident both Farmers and Nationwide paid me for my days off.  Unfortunately they had to figure out the pay as if I got paid yearly, instead of for 187 days, but since they paid me double, I got money for the days I had to take off work and get a sub and still ended out ahead.

Yeah, not really CS related, but I wish I’d known this at the start.

Quoted from http://www.compsciwoman.com/2010/09/06/how-to-create-computer-scientists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CompsciWoman+%28CompSci+Woman%29#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed:

How to Create Computer Scientists « CompSci Woman

My dad doesn’t think it’s that simple. He reminded me that I played The Incredible Machines and other games like it.

 

Maybe I should be doing more Incredible Machine.  Yes, I have a coyp of it in my lab.

I thought they had just shut down the Mac Mini, which I found annoying but it also looks like Entourage is corrupt and iTunes was even updated.

Weird.

Sucker is running hot!

Even weirder is that my Windows machine upgraded fine.

Entourage is STILL not working!

After leaving my Mac-Mini along and letting it rebuilt my Entourage database, it’s working again.  Still not happy.

I was absolute wiped out yesterday afternoon and so were my kids. I know, I asked.

For the first time ever, we did an accellerated block. We normally have 7 regular class periods and a short advisory period, giving us 50 minutes with each class. To help the math and science department and to give some time for special events, we have a modificed A/B schedule where we have 4 class period each day. Thursday was 1st through 4th, which gave me no break. Friday was 5th through 7th, then Advisory (we call it PAWS), so we could have a pep rally.

I tried to get my students to do class periods of work, but I think I was only successful with the advanced (AP) students. I am having trouble getting all my students to get with the program, and am going to have to really crack down on them on Monday. I have students in each class that are cooperating, but not the majority.

Thankfully the modified schedule happens about once a month. Though boy howdy, science better be doing labs on those day.

Would love to get some more ideas on this.

One of my student — one of the broken ones from last year that I’m still trying to fix — asked me to sponsor movie club.  Since I enjoy making bad movies as a hobby, I agreed to sponsor.

He’s a smart cookie — I wasn’t sure when we could met and showed him my calendar — he said "how about Thursday after school, you don’t have any appointments then.  He figured it out quicker than I did!

So far, I’m thinking about showing them Jing.  Wish there was a good way to install that on the lab computer, I could find good use for it.

I’m also going to show Camtasia and would love to have a lab set of it.  Will have to ask the Techsmith people.

Will also sign them up for screen cast.

Wish Adobe would do better pricing on their products.  Right now, I post the school announcements on a website from an email.  Wish I could get a copy so the person writing the email could do the posting.

Not that it’s hard to do the cut and paste, just that it takes time.

There are other things he could do directly if we could get another copy.

I work with a department that most of the time I really like.  I’ve already whined here that they just don’t do a good job planning.

For example, I got materials in the middle of the first week of school.  Excuse me?  I was required to report before that and they should have been there waiting for me on the first day.  Or at least the first teacher work day.

So here’s the deal.  They are starting a new program, and I officially got the news of it today. Supposedly my principal was supposed to forward an email last week.  He didn’t and he’s too busy to do that.  So I just found out that I am expected to be somewhere on a full day on September 11th.  The substitute plan is to do half a day on Monday and Tuesday evening on the 13th and 14th.

Since my plan this year is to do nothing extra if possible this is not my idea of a good time, but at least I get extra pay.

Wish they would get their act together.

Not sure I like this modified block thing.  WAY too long with 2nd period — my lunch period — though we did get an extra five minutes to eat.  Actually way too long with each class.

Also no break today.

Tomorrow, I get a too long break.

Good news — Labor Day Weekend.

Our campus based technician arrived today and introduced himself.  Avid readers will recall I have looking forward to this event for some time.

Not his fault, but nothing like having support arrive the week AFTER the students arrived. 

He left me with a favorable impression.