Commuting

I’ve been very blessed for most of my years to not have to drive far, if at all, for work.  Most days, I can just walk the few blocks involved from my house to campus.  And I think that has left me very spoiled.

Before the reasons to commute from Bolivar to Stockton and back started this summer, I had two times of needing to do more than go across town.  Way back in the day, during the last few months of being single, between my first and second year of college, I drove the Stockton to Bolivar trip to work at McDonalds.  It is a east-west trip on 32, and I was mostly working in the mornings towards lunch rush, so I had to drive into the sunrise.  And drive home smelling like burgers and fries.  I’m not sure which was worst?

Several years later, we had been living in Bolivar for a while after my college graduation, settled into a job, and we yearned to live out in the country instead of in town.  We found a great rental, lived there for year.  Located beyond Halfway and a few miles before Buffalo on 32, it made for a decent drive time spent going back and forth.  And planning ahead for when someone would be in town to stock up on supplies was always needed.

After this experience we have spent many years owning a home near the SBU campus.  Now we only really need one vehicle, as my commute is a brief walk.  Time spent going from one important place to another is minimal.  If I tried hard enough, I could go a week without ever getting behind the wheel.

Now, I am back to the 32 route between Stockton and Bolivar, again.  Supplies need to be gathered in Bolivar, as Stockton’s resources are comparatively light.  What is just a 30 minute drive one way, far shorter than many folks have, seems to take twice or three times as long.  You gather your stuff, take care of things, drive, and once there, unpack the stuff and use the things as required.  Just like that, it is an hour and half later, and you wonder how that happened.

It make me wonder what the priorities are, should be.  Which way is best for as many as possible.  Should I stay in one place and get as much done as I can there, saving the drive for later when I am less able to write and think coherently?  Or get there as soon as possible, to enjoy the visiting time and then hope to sneak in the hours needed to get stuff done.

And I’m trying my best to not get embittered or jaded about driving.  Even during these past few months, it can feel like I am sixteen again (and that is such a long time ago!).  It is good to have the alone time to think about life, people, and everything.  While alone or with others, the rock and roll can be turned up loud and enjoyed as a time to forget about it, whatever it is. Or even celebrate it.  The visual sign of proper volume level is watching the rear-view mirror shake to the beat of the drums and thrum of the bass.  Somehow, that makes me smile every time I see it.

Yes, I’ve been spoiled by not needing to drive much.  Perhaps much of my frustration is just not dealing well with change?  Life is certainly full of change.  Living the full life before we die means changes will happen, need to be embraced and accepted.  Yet, there is comfort in repeated patterns.  On the other hand, doing things the same way, day after day can get to be boring and monotonous.  And also provide some sense of normalcy (whatever normal is or looks like, who can say?).  Somewhere in there is the balance to find, seek.

I complained about the time lost to commuting earlier this evening.  That now seems rather petty, at best.  I already had this overall concept in mind for a topic, but realizing I was being a jerk about it made it even more important to blog.  Home is where the heart is, they say.  And for good reason.  I’ve been testing that out for many weeks now, it seems.  I’d still drive any distance required to make sure that sense of home is provided, as much as possible, for those hearts which need it, that I count as precious.  In other times, we have to be content with getting that sense of home, within our own heart.  Knowing others have that same contentment.

Life is a highway / I want to ride it all night long – Tom Cochrane (a case where the original is far better than any cover).  So no more complaints about commuting.  Promise.

Out of the frying pan?

It is a few days before the Tuesday deadline for the nerdthunderdomers, but I’ve found a nice moment where I’d better get back into the blogging habit.  I think I mentioned last time I would report my survival of teaching four online classes at once.  Well, that report was delayed, but as you can read, here I am.

The fourth class, an SBU ITL program course, turned out quite well.  The conversion from a two-week computer lab to three weeks fully online was well worth the effort.  If I had to pick, I’d teach it online again.  And the students will appreciated not having to be on campus from hours away to attend.  So I hope this great teaching opportunity will be mine again in Summer 2011.

Information Design with ESC rolls along nicely.  I’ve been offered and accepted to help with a redesign effort during the Fall, and have informally been offered to teach it again come January 2011.  Very fun and exciting stuff, I’m still constantly seeing things from an Information Design perspective.

And I am back in the swing of things with two Computer Literacy classes for Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.  We just finished the Excel week, so the roller coaster will start speeding towards the end of this session and another will start the next day after it ends.  Which leads me to the title for this post.

July 2010 was the best of times and worst of times, to borrow from Dickens.  There was the class load I’m going to try my best to avoid doing ever again.  Concerns with family members health and re-arranging our lives to assist.  Some incredibly wonderful times of pure bliss and joy.  Times of wondering how I was going to make it, just to the next day, without snapping like a twig.  Trying to figure out what I did wrong this time.  Highs and lows.  In other words, really, just another month, week, day in the life of anybody, really.  Am I right about that, folks, dear readers?

August has, for many years, been one of those best and worst times months for me.  It is my wedding anniversary month, a continual best time.  It is the Month of Madness as my university awakens from a summer slumber and prepares to start another Fall semester.  Many of the things I am involved with right now will keep right on trucking through that time of madness.  So, my initial thought was, before starting to write this, “OK, great, you are getting out of the frying pan of July, only to step into the fire of August.”

Now, such thoughts seem like a rather first world problem to have?  Life, overall, really is pretty good.  I enjoy what I do for a living, have a great wife and two fantastic daughters.  I have a great family, quality friends and solid colleagues.  I’ve got slightly selfish plans to get a reasonably game-capable laptop and a copy of StarCraft II during this month (a reward for a long stretch of efforts to do what was needed by others, for others, day in and day out).  And lately, for a lot of areas within me, I think I’m doing better.  Improving.  Finding out that I just might be a pretty cool person after all, yet humbly knowing one had best stay humble about your own self.

August may be a hot month, but I am looking forward to seeing what the fire will burn away and reveal.  No doubt mistakes will be made, hopefully new ones learned from and never repeated.  Times of delight, times of woe, and in the balance between, will be the life worth leading.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

For Empire State College, I am in the middle of teaching a great class on Information Design.  For Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division, we just started another session and I have two sections of Computer Literacy.  For Southwest Baptist, I’ve converted a class I been a student in, and taught twice before, from being two weeks for hours each day in a computer lab, to three weeks online, on the topic of Multimedia Applications (used for making interactive lessons for students).

And they are running right now,  at the same time.

It is not a surprise; I knew all of this was coming.  But I suspect I have underestimated the effort it will require to do any and all of this well.  It’s already an effect I feel too much at my instructional technologist work.  Jack of many trades, master of none.  All work and no play making Jack a dull boy.

Even so, today was a good, no, great day.  And amongst other realizations, I think I have gained an appreciation for the plight of anyone teaching in higher education.  The jumble of student names, class topics, ideas & inspirations… the juggling act of keeping all of these plates spinning.  My perspective has widened, I can appreciate the conflict of wanting to help as many as possible, yet worry about how I’ll make it from day-to-day.

If I make a post by this time next week, you’ll know I made it through the rough part.  And helped at least 60+ people along the way.

Lest I Miss Two Weeks Straight

Honestly, it is not that I am lacking for topics, ideas, thoughts to share out loud.  In fact, on the morning of June 29th, I had all manner of great ideas.  Sadly, they all came flooding out, while showering.  Which gave me the idea of keeping a grease pencil in the shower, to jot down such things on the walls, lest they be forgotten.

But I woke up Wednesday the 30th, realizing what it was I kept thinking I was forgetting to do on that Tuesday; write a blog post.  More ideas since then, but the same issues have interfered.  In addition to new distractions, such as the failing health of my father-in-law.  We’ve spent a lot of timing driving back and forth, spending each day with him.  Time visiting with friends and family.

Tonight has been about making sure I am getting new classes ready to go.  Two CPU101 class setups due Thursday, a similar deadline for a SBU class I’ll start teaching at the same time those classes begin.  All while at the just-past-middle part of the ESC Information Design class I am teaching (and have a great time doing so).  I started to get sleepy, far too much too soon, so some Pandora-supplied tunes have helped propel me to this point.

With an hour left on the deadline day, I started writing what you are now reading.  And it sure feels good to get back to this place.  None of this is great or profound stuff.  But keeping the habit refreshed is probably more the point.  A week from now is going to be an insane time for me to keep the weekly #nerdthunderdome pledge.  And who know’s what surprises are in store between now and then anyway?

All I can offer is a daily attempt to do my best, if not do better than yesterday.  So here’s to another post before the 13th of July 2010.

Board Games

I have always like to play games, particularly board games.  The type of thing that requires several people to gather around a table, and socially interact.  This can anything as simple as Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble, to something as complicated as Star Fleet Battles.  The hours spent just in picking ships to fight with, were overwhelmed by arguing over the rules.

While some of the fun can involve arguing over and bending the rules of the game, it easily spoils the fun of the game itself.  Keeping track of turns, stages, what can happen when, can be distracting compared to just reacting and making the best move you can in that moment.

In the past few years, board game favorites are showing up as virtual versions.  Facebook has Scrabble, which takes care of that whole “how can that be a word?” problem of this game.  Scoring is shown before making the play final.  Settlers of Catan is a really great board game, featuring a board or map which is never the same twice.  Since playing Settler in person for years, I have also played a version of it in Second Life, and on the Xbox 360.

Magic the Gathering, a simple game to play, card based, with part of the appealing being to buy, collect, trade the cards.  Since then, a PC version, and an Xbox 360 method of play.  Carcassonne is a fun yet simple board game, another of the type where the map/board is never the same twice.  And has an Xbox 360 version.

While these games, in an electronic form, will allow for playing a favorite game with any number of computerized opponents, that is not the main appeal.  Sure, it is nice to get some practice, at a time when you can play.  But playing against other human opponents, either strangers or folks you know, makes for the best game play.  So games and technology makes for the best combination, of human interaction while taking care of the tidbits and rules.

What games do you like to play?  And when shall we play it?

In a Fog

My mind is a blur of topics this week, so hopefully I can make something coherent?

Moving past a starting apology, the Information Design class I am teaching just got done looking at Words.  Being able to convey the message needed by your audience often requires words more than anything else. A tool available to any one writing the information is the Fog Index:

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~comm300/mary/fogindex.html

Time and Gumption permitting, I’ll go back through any and all of my posts so far, and report back the results, perhaps as soon as next week.

For a Monty Python-style, “and now for something, completely different…”; a question with some pondering statements, in a Thoughts Out Loud style:

Does building something require blowing something up?

Can we view life as a collection of Lego blocks, where each person gets a limited supply (some more supplied than others). We can building something cool, maybe even share some blocks with others in a collaborative effort.  But at some point, do we face the choice of staying with what we built, or taking it apart to get the resources needed to build something else?  Does this explain why life has times of triumph, sensations of boredom, periods of strife and rebuilding?

Personas

It was another good week in the Information Design class.  Part of what we covered dealt with knowing your audience, as it is hard to make decisions about how to design the information, if you don’t know who are the folks who need to know the information.

A tool used to help personalize this process, is to move beyond some simple demographics, and into personas (a social role or character):

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/index.html

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/customer_storytelling_at_the_heart_of_business_success

Initially, these seem like some positive tools, which would be helpful for my technology area at SBU to keep in mind.  Persona representing Joe and Jane Student, Faculty, and Staff would help with knowing the audience we are trying to help.

Moving out from their use of for Information Design, personas can start becoming more problematic.  It might be one thing to think of our personal brand.  But how often can a persona become the character we are portraying?  If we play the role we think is best or most advantageous, will we forget who we are?

When it comes to being who we are, the extremes seem to be brutal honesty, or being completely hidden within a persona.  Could the world as we know handle everyone being purely themselves?  Does that mean doing what we want when wanted, with no consideration for others?  Is at least some minor forms of personas needed for a civilized society?