Technology and CS in Dallas

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  • I hate parent conferences

    They never happen until it is WAY too late.  We are week 15 in the school and I have three parent conferences scheduled this week.  Each student has less than a 20 average.  Two of them are NGed, meaning they have missed too many days to get credit.

    This morning, the kid MIGHT turn things around but he is so unfocused.  Sadly he's a senior, hasn't passed the TAKS (exit test), and isn't passing my class.  Oh, and he wants to be a game programmer.

    Tomorrow — this little sweetie has been blaming ME.  Okay, it is my fault.  She talks insistantly, espectially when I am demonstrating something, has been caught on Urban chat and using a proxy to do so and denied until I showed her, her internet log.  I get a "call her mother" message every day to explain MY behavior:  let's see, I made her take a paper towel and clean up her desk after she had water on it (which she denied until I pointed out the condensation).  I am totally unfair.  Sigh.  Each time I tell mom she needs to come to tutoring ,ask for help etc. none of which she's done.  And when I stop and help her she treats me like dirt.  Makes me want to stay in bed each morning.

    Friday — again doesn't come to school and doesn't do my work.

    It's hard to remember that the majority of the kids are good.

  • Overplanning

    Well, I hope not.  Moving 28 computers out of my room and into other rooms has been making my head explode.  I KNOW I can’t move them alone.

    I would like my students to place the computers in their new homes, correctly and working for the other teachers.  I figure to do it right, it should take 3 kids, and the most they can do in a 50 minutes class do is 2 trips.  That means my 6th period class can only move 16 computers. 

    I think I have figured out a good way though.

    4th period (only 4 kids) will move out 4 computers.  5th period will move out 8 of them (again, not as big), leaving the rest for my 6th period.

    If I really screw up and have to, I could probably retrieve a group of kids from 1st period, but there are not a lot of them.

    It’s only one and half weeks and we have other stuff to do too!

  • Computer Science Teachers Association – Podcasts

    Another one of those things I never seem to have time to deal with.

    Link: Computer Science Teachers Association – Podcasts.

    In an effort to provide additional opportunities for members to keep tuned in and up-to-date, we have assembled a collection of podcasts we call CS Snipitss.

  • Mobile Typepad

    Mobile typepad is sweet.  They have a program that runs on the Windows Mobile platform and it work very nicely.  Good interface!

    See http://www.kweaver.org/blog, I left a post there.

    Definately recommend Typepad.  http://www.typepad.com

  • This is why I got out of the server business.

    Every time I saw one of these, my blogging got slower……

    Movable Type 4.23: Get It Now – Movable Type

    I switched to TypePad.  I looked at several solutions:  setting up a blog on a Windows server (as I am also getting out of the Linux business, it would be different if I were teaching web mastering, but I’m tired of keeping up with too much stuff….. I looked at Blogger, and a few other things.  Even WordPress.

    Why did I pick TypePad?  It was a no brainer export and import, and "shazaa" my sites were up and looked darn close to what I used to looking at.

    All of the blogging software I use now works with it.  Livewriter and Contribute.  Blogging live on the server even looks the same.

    Their stuff works extremely well, I like the ability to upload pictures and videos off the cell phone and supposedly I can mobile blog but haven’t had the time/energy to try that yet.  Well, I might have, don’t remember.

    Price was good, and I could point www.kweaver.org to the same places and it would be transparent.

    Support is good — about a 4 hour delay in getting answer on the weekends, which isn’t bad.  Isn’t as good as mail service or my web service but livable.  Besides, is life really over if the blog doesn’t  work for a few hours?  I haven’t tried during the mobile interface and should soon.

    All in all, www.typepad.com is a good solution for painless blogging.  Which makes me blog more.

  • Best email hosting

    I know they do some other stuff, and may use them some time for that.  I’ve used this website for years to pull my email off the web.  Being a teacher, using other people’s computers from time to time, being able to pull email anywhere is a good thing.

    Even better is their business exchange service as email comes to my mobile phone automatically.

    By the way, it also proves that providing a good free service can lead to loyal business, as I did eventually come to  them as a full customer.

    It’s mail2web.com, and they are owned by Softcom Technology Consulting and also own myhosting.com

    You can find out more at http://affiliate.softcom.biz/aw.aspx?A=1538

  • My favorite host – Linux flavor

    If I were not interested in developing .NET ASPX websites, I would stay with them.  Who are they?  techark.com at http://www.techark.com

    I moved everything to them, years ago when click-l was still a e-mail list.  They have an almost 100% uptime and the few times they have been down, they have been very visible and very approachable.  Support has always been supurb.  I’ll miss them.  They even go so far as to send a Christmas card each year to each of their customers.

    A definate recommend.

  • Moving Domains

    I’ve never gone through a longer internet process. Seriously. 

    I decided to stop hosting my own servers.  Frankly it was keeping me from blogging as I knew I needed to update the server and going through that yet again wasn’t worth it. 

    I started out hosting a web server at my house using dial up.  I got an opportunity to move the server to a server farm, oh, years ago, and at the same time, starting hosting for other people.  Well, I really got into before that — you see, I used to be one of the FIDO nodes in the dallas area.  People used to dial up to my computer and leave messages and stuff for each other. 

    Anyway, I used to host other domains through the internet server and it probably kept me from paying as much as I could have.  I also ran a couple of email lists, mainly for click training called click-l and still have though domain and am hosting it through Jing. I do need to work at making that self supporting, but it does take some energy.

    So right now, I have several domains — kweaver.us which I have hosted at a free verio site.  It’s a Windows server but the server itself doesn’t always work and doesn’t have good support.

    I also have our high school domain, and it is also hosted at the free verio site. 

    I’ve always used kweaver.org for blogging and email.  I have had my class website at kweaver.net.  I’ve moved it to a cheaper windows server rather than a reseller, and am playing with Visual Basic on it, using it and kweaver.us as a staging area for the high school website.

    That brings us to last weekend.  I decided to kill the reseller website, and move kweaver.org to the place who hosts my email.  I REALLY like having an exchange account and these people do a good job of getting me my exchange stuff.  It means that I can get to my email, calendar, etc, from any computer including my Windows Mobile phone.  I really find the service worth what I pay for it.

    So I’m back and up — it took a FULL 5 days to happen.  I initiated the transfer on Saturday, and it finally completed a few hours ago. 

    In other words, don’t transfer your domain name unless you absolutely have to.  But having it this way makes it a no brainer and DNS stuff always makes my head hurt.

  • Inventory is DONE! (Not quite a day from hell).

    Got the school’s inventory done, uploaded and marked completed.  I’ll have to modify it when we take out my old computers but it’s done.

    I’m waiting on the principal to sign up on a form so I can send it in and get paid for the Fall.  I get an extra $1000 for the pain and suffering.

    So know I work on day to day stuff again, and finish getting my lab ready for the new computers.  They are slated for the 17th and haven’t heard anything different yet.

    I’ve asked the Asst. Principal to get a sub and asked the librarians to do a web lesson with.  I also have the furniture rearranged so all that is left is to move out the old stuff, clean off the tables, stack the chairs, and mark where I want stuff.  All good.

  • Day from Hell (Day 3 of 19)

    Got to school early and repaired the phone line I cut.  I bought 2 50 foot phone cords and a couple and it’s perfect as I can put the phone anywhere in the room where I want it.  I used to strangle myself with the stupid phone, it was always in the way, etc. so I am really happy with the new solution.

    Just as I am about to get breakfast, the principal calls an emergency, drop everything meeting.  His boss was there to tell us the procedure to get new principal and that we don’t have an interium yet.  <snarl>

    The good news is that I worked hard on inventory and got all of the portables walked (I had half done), and all of the missing rooms done but the longest hall.  I know we can get it knocked out tomorrow.  I went to do evil department chairs room and she kicked me out.

    ROTC is having a big inspection Monday, and they needed a website up for points.  So I got one that one of their kids wrote and added it to the school website.  Recompiled and uploaded it and isn’t working.  Published it to http://www.kweaver.net and it works fine.  Got to be server problem and there are messages in the support forums about it.  Hopefully it will get fixed soon.

    At least it wasn’t I did this time.

    And if I don’t get into the evil person’s room, I’ll upload the inventory, mark it active, report her to everyone who will listen and get on with my life.

    Oh and all the Pre/AP teacher lost their tutoring pay.