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[Elizzybeth]

Not to mention, I've found most people learn better in four one-hour blocks than two two-hour blocks (I've been on both block and period scheduling - aka one where there's four two hour classes per day, and the other where there's eight one hour classes a day, and I learned way more on the shorter time frame ones. It takes time to digest things.)

I dunno, I've found when teaching that my classes are a lot more effective in two two-hour blocks per week than four one-hour blocks.  By the time everyone gets settled in and you get done with administrative stuff (answering questions about deadlines, etc.), there's not a whole lot of time left in the hour.  Having two-hour chunks means you only have to deal with that stuff twice a week instead of four times.  Also, in a writing class, having enough time to do some in-class writing is really helpful.  But my students are 18 - 22, and they have longer attention spans--at least by a little!--than most 5-year-olds.

May, maybe two-hour blocks won't be so bad if you can make your tutoring sessions like play, with games and colorful things and gummy bears or something?

[Jimor]

May, unless the parents are uptight yuppies who want junior to know calculus in 2nd grade, I know you'll do wonderful at keeping things fun and interesting. I feel that at that age, the most important thing is to just instill the idea that learning all that stuff is just the coolest thing in the world, and that it's all a piece of cake (even when it isn't).

I just tallied the footage I got from the local art/music festival over the holiday weekend. Keeping in mind that I missed most of Saturday because I had to work, I have over 8 1/2 hours of live music from approximately 25 different acts. I managed to nurse my sick camera pretty well through the 2nd and 3rd days, though I had to cut filming short on a lot of sets to give it a chance to cool down before the next one began.

The best thing was meeting a whole slew of new bands and artists. I'm pretty confident that when I can get this processed and people see the quality of it all, a lot more people will know who to call for this kind of thing. My new camera comes tomorrow, then Thursday I'm taking it out to film a national act (Eisley), then later in the month I'm filming a Buddy Holly tribute show that the town's main promoter puts on as part of a long series where he gets about a dozen local acts to each perform 2 or 3 songs from the artists. What I want to do with that is turn it into a high quality DVD that showcases what exactly I can do beyond the filming.

Exciting times. 

[Barmymoo]

I feel that at that age, the most important thing is to just instill the idea that learning all that stuff is just the coolest thing in the world, and that it's all a piece of cake (even when it isn't).

This is so exactly how I view learning, I really hope the parents aren't going to be obsessed with workbooks etc. Hopefully we can strike a balance - do the workbooks to prove the learning has taken place, but do the learning through fun activities (I relearnt how to make one of those chatterbox things we played with at school - great way to ask questions in a fun way!).

Now I'm off on a canal boat for two days. I'm not sure where I'm meeting said boat yet; I'll just get on a train and hope it's going in the right direction!

[Patrick]

I just went to the music store to discuss a couple of business prospects with my buddy who works there. 1. I got Injun Magic a gig for Sept 16. 2. I met a very young teenage boy who played really well. And his demeanor reminded me so much of my teenage self that I nearly hugged the kid. Instead I borrowed his "Flood" Les Paul Studio, plugged it into a Marshall Haze 40, and let rip on some early Clapton. Then I gave it back and he let rip on something I've never heard before. Kid's talented as fuck, and meeting him made my day.

I'm going to leave here in 15 minutes to set up at the bar for open mic. I've borrowed a snare drum from the music store (the house one broke; we're getting replacement parts soon!) and I've been word-of-mouth promoting like crazy. I spend a lot of time running around town promoting that shit any way I can, and it's already one of the hottest spots in town on Wednesdays. I couldn't be happier.

Also, Injun Magic is working on getting a show at Cloyne co-op in Berkeley this weekend. I'll keep you posted, but if anybody local is so inclined, you should go anyway. Our friends Junkie Blood are a phenomenal punk outfit and I am going whether I.M. plays or not.

[Zingoleb]

Found a new place to stay that's more friendly and not with a guy who insists I'm male.

Also went on a second date with a girl that looks like six foot tall Lucille Ball with a mohawk. Picnic in the woods, which was sushi and chai tea way way way off the beaten path. In the middle of nowhere, so there was kissing and sex and seven year old children walking in on us.

[Thomas Edison]

Oh you.


Edit: Huh, what a terrible pagebreak.


Uh. I don't really have anything blog worthy to say. I went out with the local skate team and made a video with a friend and one of the skaters (warning: language and bush destruction).

That's about it really.

[Zingoleb]

Well, there was like, one guy around thirty who couldn't decide if he still wanted to be a punk or not, being followed by a bunch of six or seven year old boys. One of them walked away yelling "WELL THAT WAS AWKWARD" the whole way.

[valley_parade]

(warning: language and bush destruction).

Ryan, why did we never hang out when I was younger? We all used to jump in bushes for the fuck of it.

[Patrick]

Last night was fucking ridiculous. Some drunk asshole kept jumping on the mic in the middle of other people's sets. He did it a grand total of 3 times. I got him to knock off being an asshole the first time, the second time he jumped on in the middle of some other kid's freestyle rap, and the third time somebody had asked the person playing to play Snow Patrol and he jumps up in the middle of the fuckin song all like "HEY MAN SO FUCK YO VOCAL SHIT AIN'T NOBODY LISTENIN SO I'MA JUMP IN AND THROW DOWN SOME RHYMES" and he just starts rapping right there. That was strike three, so I put my shit down and went in to cut his mic. Bartender (who is also the owner) took it into his own hands though and booted him out.

Then there were the meth heads, and we had this pretty hilarious comedian. The latter was a hit. Meth McGee and Tweakita Tweakschev weren't.

[Thomas Edison]

Ryan, why did we never hang out when I was younger? We all used to jump in bushes for the fuck of it.

There's a little something called the North Atlantic Ocean separating us, dude.

[valley_parade]

Wild, wild horses...

[benji]

It's looking likely that I will spend 11 hours on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester. Luckily I've only got one class the other days, but still, this kinda' sucks.

[pen]

Today was my kid's first day back at school, and I can't express enough how happy we BOTH are about it!  This summer was a series of disappointments for her... her art program had no real structure, she broke her nose, got ear infections and swimmer's ear... now we find out she might have sleep apnea and needs her tonsils out...  I'm so SO happy she's happy to be back at school too... where there is appropriate supervision.  It makes my life so much easier.
 

This is so exactly how I view learning, I really hope the parents aren't going to be obsessed with workbooks etc. Hopefully we can strike a balance - do the workbooks to prove the learning has taken place, but do the learning through fun activities (I relearnt how to make one of those chatterbox things we played with at school - great way to ask questions in a fun way!).

I think you're on exactly the right track there.  I'd put my kid in your class!

[valley_parade]

Oh yeah, hey, hey, hey Rachel!!!!

I'll be down in yr Metroboston, Metrobostoning it up in a few weeks. I'll get a hold of you and Jon later.

[LTK]

Huh, apparently there was an earthquake today at Xanten, near the eastern Dutch-German border, 4.5 on Richter's scale. They say the most damage was caused by people overloading the phone lines with calls to ask what was happening. Not surprising, seeing as the only quakes the Netherlands is known to get are the result of drilling for gas. As for me, I'm 160 km away and it wasn't noticable here at all.

But that's hardly important, since I'll probably be moving to Amsterdam at the end of the month! After lowering my standards a bit I became eligible for a room plus bathroom in an apartment shared by 5, which I'll be allowed to rent until my university enrollment ends. This'll hopefully break me out of a cycle of social isolation and will be a step forward in life. I'm very much looking forward to it. The day of the first lecture this year turned out great too; me and another fellow student visited a friend's apartment, where we played some games and made dinner. The place was absolutely infested with fruit flies, but that was okay since we ate on the balcony. I'm gonna have to get him an electric flyswatter. There are also plans for a sort of cooking club, where people take turns cooking for everybody, which is a great start to meeting people. Hopefully this is setting a precedent!

[pwhodges]

This evening I changed the domain membership of my cluster servers.  This was easy in previous versions of Windows, but in Server 2008 R2, it required the following:

Shut down nine virtual servers;
Export said virtual servers (first detaching data disks to save copying them);
"Delete" them from both Hyper-V and Cluster Services;
Unshare the eight cluster-shared disks (eight LUNs on one RAID array);
Destroy the cluster on both nodes;
Remove the cluster role from both servers;
Reboot both servers;
Change DNS settings (because of strange but different setups of both old and new domains)
Change domain membership;
Reboot both servers;
Add cluster role to both servers;
Run cluster validation tests;
Run Windows updates on both servers (indicated as required by previous tests);
Reboot both servers;
Create cluster;
Give disks back their sensible names;
Enable "cluster-shared disks";
Share the disks;
Give shared disks back their sensible names;
Copy exported virtual machines back into the desired places;
Import virtual machines (re-attach data drives which weren't copied);
Create cluster resources for the virtual machines;
Start the machines, and check them.

All done at home with the dogs playing at my feet, a glass of whisky, and my wife (who's away) on the phone.  Total time: five hours; I'm going to work late tomorrow (actually, going in early in case of issues and leaving at lunchtime, I think).

[valley_parade]

Woohoo, half days! o/

I'm heading out at 1, packing up and going to the Adirondacks for the weekend. Though, mostly we'll just be at the muscle car show in Lake George because uh, old muscle cars.

[Patrick]

My friend's dad just called me asking me to find him weed. I don't know whether to be embarrassed or utterly delighted. A bit of column A, a bit of column B, and apparently a bit of (TH)C.

[Barmymoo]

I just got back from a spontaneous three-day trip on my friend Tom's canal boat. It's a pretty important boat historically; one of the last remaining and certainly one of the best preserved boats from Thomas Clayton's fleet of tar boats. She was built in 1937 and still has the original engine and cabin etc. Which obviously means no toilet on board, no running water, lots of smoke and soot and noise, and very little space to sleep - the cabin fits two at a squash and everyone else sleeps in what used to be the tar tank.

It was a lot of fun and very tiring, so today I'm going to just chill and sit around trying to lose the sensation of gently rocking. Oh and have my first shower for four days.

[Zingoleb]

As of right now, there is a four year old child on my left and a six year old child on my right, both combing my hair and putting things in it to make me a pretty princess. They've been telling me all about princesses today. Apparently, princesses don't wear underwear. When I pursued this line, they informed me that princesses don't wear underwear on their heads. Oh! I never knew that!

[nekowafer]

We used to have six ladies on our team at work, plus the manager and supervisor. Those two don't really do anything aside from give out and track work - the supervisor is new and the manager is so disconnected from us that she has no idea what she's doing most of the time.

One lady went out on maternity leave. Another then went out on medical leave for her mother dying, then her mother-in-law getting sick. A third went out on medical leave for mental health issues.

Second lady quit. There are three ladies remaining - crazy 65 year old woman who dresses like a toddler going to church and talks/acts like one too. She knows how to do some of her job but is mostly a moron. Then a new-ish girl, who is willing to learn but doesn't particularly give a shit about her job.

And then there's me. I seem to be the only competent one left on the entire team. Which means I have a giant fucking to-do list and not enough time, attention span, or energy to do it all. But refusing the work is not an option. The other two ladies will return some time in October, but no one knows when, or what they will do when they return. And one might quit!

I'm going a little insane.

[Zingoleb]

I'm sorta staying at a place called Sidhehaven. I'm surrounded by hippies and naked women.

[Patrick]

I love writing music with my bandmate. I love playing together, I love performing together, and I love recording with him. However, I hate being the only one with any discipline whatsoever on the matters. I hate being the only one who can even fathom what discipline is. I am easily one of the laziest people I know, but when we're talking about something we both love, the guy can't focus for a sack of beans.

It is really fucking irritating. I spend money to go up there and work with the guy, I go out of my way, and I've risked homelessness more times than I care to think about just for the sake of being able to stay in California and continue making music. And what happens? He stays in bed and/or plays video games, then says "Oh we can practice tomorrow." No, because I have shit to do tomorrow. I am not endlessly flexible. I have a social life I like to uphold, I have promotional tasks I could be working on, I have a lot of shit I could be doing that does not involve sitting on my ass and wasting time I've set aside for something important to me.

[Patrick]

I expect him to not waste half the time I set aside for his ass. Not after I've gone out of my way a million fucking times for this.

[valley_parade]

We're going mini-golfing tomorrow, and my HR director just came over and said that I should rock some argyle.

Thankfully it's going to be on the VERY cool side tomorrow, so I may have to bust out a sweater.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i bought new pants! i never buy clothes

progress is going well on my experiment to see how many pairs of volcom pants a person can own before they become part-owner of the company.


was gonna get some shoes too but i wasn't really feeling it when it came right down to it

[Lupercal]

what do you expect with a name like injun magic

I think that Patrick is Magic, the other guy is Injun.

I wanna be Scrubs, which one is Scrubs?

 

Dear Blog,

Good and bad things.

GOOD: Going back to University and have officially submitted my first report to the student newspaper. Aw Yeah!

BAD: Girlfriend is very 50/50 about me at the moment and it is making me die inside.

But hey ho, just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. Writing is going well, can't complain.

[Patrick]

what do you expect with a name like injun magic

I think that Patrick is Magic, the other guy is Injun.

That was one of the things we joked about when naming the band, yes. He's Indian, as in India, and I am admittedly the guy who plays the most prominent parts of the songs 90% of the time, and they involve a lot of studio magic.

Hey everybody, anyone a fan of Tyler the Creator? If you should, you shouldn't be, because he says "faggot n*gger" in every song. And words are inflexible and can only mean one thing, regardless of context, right? RIGHT? Right!

[valley_parade]

Personally the only Odd Future stuff I could ever get into was Frank Ocean and The Jet Age of Tomorrow.

[Tom]

Dad was just teling me that he needed a mini gender changer for a set of headphone plugs because "two males don't go together, that's just wrong!" Me: "Thanks for that, Biggie!"

I hate my family sometimes.

[Patrick]

Looks like a childhood pal of mine is going to be recording our set on Friday. Heart: Warmed. Soul: Stoked. Fuck: Yeah.

[Jimor]

Tomorrow I get to be "assistant engineer" on the access TV truck as we go cover a high school football game. It both is and isn't a promotion. No extra pay, but more responsibility. That's OK, the crew is basically a ragtag bunch that are a combination of older guys retired from the regular area TV stations, video pros supplementing their income with the occasional gig here, and a few like my just out of the college program looking to get some experience. It's a shoestring budget, and we mostly use cast-off equipment from the affiliate stations in town, but there are very few places in town where you get to actually jump in and do important jobs in the production like here.

Basically, I'll be in charge of some of the more technical equipment setups, wireless microphones and video for example, plus troubleshooting throughout the day, which given the state of our equipment, can be quite a challenge. This is why the older guy who usually does it is stepping down, all the running around putting out fires was just getting not fun for him. For now, it should be an interesting challenge. More importantly, it's much more impressive resume fodder for down the line.

What I'm really getting excited about is a Buddy Holly tribute show that one of the local promoters is putting on this coming Thursday. 12 bands playing all kinds of covers throughout the night in a club where I know I can get terrific footage and sound. But that's only the beginning. Because of a class I took last year, I can basically create a DVD with any trick you'd see on any of the big Hollywood releases. I'm going to produce a disc that between the quality of the footage and the production values of the disc itself is going to blow this town away. 

[Patrick]

Hey amigo, break a leg with that shit. That's a super rad opportunity to prove yourself even more than previously, and I'm pleased to see you taking it by the balls.

My recent ex is coming by to drop off the rest of my stuff. Not exactly stoked to see her but it'll be cool to get my shit back. It's starting to really cool down at night now and it'll be handy as fuck to get my sleeping bag back. And I'm excited to get my coffee table and my other filing cabinet.

Also, I've just discovered why there is no light in the bathroom. It is because the fixture is wired UNBELIEVABLY POORLY. I tried plugging my beard trimmer into the integrated outlet, and I nearly burned the whole fucking house down. And there's a Chinese restaurant and a bar below us, and I can't afford that shit.

[Zingoleb]

I remember living in a house where the wiring needed to be redone. When the wall was pulled away, the wiring wasn't even properly done - there was just an extension cord running behind the wall.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

ugh i just spent like two hours cleaning our big squishy landing mats at the gym, which involved unzipping them, taking all the foam pieces out and vaccuuming up all the foam dust from inside. took the oppurtunity to rearrange the foam and add in some more small insert pieces to shore it up where it was weakened and compressed

god i hate foam dust

these particular mats are about the size of a small sedan fyi  and they probably haven't been cleaned like this in...oh i don't know....ten years?

[Zingoleb]

Wow raw milk is delicious.

[Tom]

Mycobacterium Bovis

[Zingoleb]

I've heard the debates on raw milk - I'll take my chances. (Also, I'm surprised brucellosis wasn't the first thing mentioned. That's what comes to mind when I think of the hazards of raw milk.)

[Tom]

It is, by far, more common but I've spent the past few weeks studying tb in path. Your chances of not getting anything are fine.

[Tom]

Not that you needed reassurance.

[Zingoleb]

It's kinda like fucking Patrick. Pretty fun, and you probably won't get a nasty virus in return.

[pwhodges]

Heh.  I had TB in 1959.  As some milk in the UK was not pasteurised at that time (it was labelled "TT" for "tuberculin-tested"), I suppose it might have been Mycobacterium bovis.  OTOH, it was treated with PZA for 6 months, to which M bovis is resistant; the drug it was combined with I can't now identify, as I can find no record of the combination I was given (whose name I remember as Pycamisan 33).

EDIT:

Ooh, look, the Internet now has a hit on Pycamisan 33.  This article describes two outbreaks of TB in cattle in the exact area and time that I got it, and mentions treatment using Pycamisan 33 which, it seems, did not contain PZA as I thought it did.  I suppose I could even have been an untraced victim of one of those specific outbreaks (my case was diagnosed by early symptoms and X-ray).  Pycamisan 33 was quite unpleasant to take (I took 4 cachets a day for six months, I think), which is not mentioned in the article when discussing that people were uncooperative!

[Patrick]

<headdesk>

[Barmymoo]

That's insane, fewer than half of students pass?! And only a tiny percentage pass without retakes? That makes no sense at all! Does basically everyone go to university even if they aren't really academic, and then the ones who are can feel smug? Why would you even have a policy like that?

[snalin]

I've heard that some places in the world the A's sit a bit loose, but 40% pass rate is just way too far in the other direction. Almost no retakes is just a joke.

[valley_parade]

I feel like I just pulled off a Bagwell-Andersen deal here.

On another forum, I traded off a vintage distortion pedal for a preeeeeeeetty good tube amplifier.

[Patrick]

Living in a laundry room without a door or any air conditioning is a surefire way to never get laid.

[pwhodges]

At various times I have given pointers to my son's piano playing.  Here for a change is his wife, my opera-singer daughter-in-law Kirsten Blaise (or Blase).  In the following clip, she is strangled by John Malkovich at 4:40, and then at 7:30 she bursts into song for a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3sFYNNJNs4

[Jimor]

EDIT:
I've applied to do my practice lessons for teacher training at the high school I dropped out of.

Once again Tuathal sets out to prove that he can bullshit his way through life successfully.

It's amazing how much of life is like that. And I don't mean it in a bad way. If you're willing to learn from your mistakes, just jumping in and doing it is often the best thing.

Speaking of, in a similar vein, I've been asked to help instruct this semester's TV production class in the use of the remote truck we use at the access station. This really isn't that much of a step up from when I took the class myself 3 semesters ago, and helped demonstrate the equipment because I was already paid staff on the truck at the time, but this time I get paid to be in class. (I'm taking another video class at the school right now as well).

Earlier tonight I filmed another show. A fun night that included a punk band from Germany, The Yoohoos, who are actually just vacationing in town because the guitarist's girlfriend lives here, and had to borrow instruments to do a handful of gigs around town. The big reason I'm blogging about it is because this is the first time I've gone head-to-head in the video dept with the local legend of show taping, a guy who's been doing it for years now.

I am really competitive when it comes to this, and quite sure of myself. Of course, my cockiness got quite a kick to the groin when I forgot to turn on the mic until halfway into the 2nd song of the first set! 

Other than that, I feel I got a lot of good footage and I'm happy with how this new camera is working out. But since I AM so competitive, here's a side by side of recent clips taken at the same venue.

Him: Tornado Rider - Bluff of Rough Stuff / Dinosaur (this is worth a look in any case because of the amplified rock cello carried around with a guitar strap)
Me: Sister Crayon - Other

[Patrick]

Your lighting situation is definitely better than his, but I don't know whether to attribute that to settings on your camera, the camera itself, or the lighting technician. Still, your shooting style seems to be considerably more involved and interested than his does.

Also the sound is much better in yours, to my ears. I haven't listened with my headphones yet though but I'll get back to that in an edit.

In my own news, I am growing weary of not having much to do during the week. I want to do something about that but it can't be Injun Magic related, since Kabir's schedule won't allow it. What to doooooo...