22.5.08

Isaac Newton over here.

Which is one of the funniest jokes Andy has ever made (be sure to say it with a Tony Soprano accent), re: Sammers' penchant for knocking things off of pretty much any horizontal surface above the floor. He's at it in full force this evening because they think it's almost bedtime snack time and if we're not getting snacks, dammit, I might as well drive her crazy knocking stuff onto the floor!

nutshell/mitraillette/gauntlet/machine gun post... you know the drill...
  • half listening to Speed in French while I work do lots of little online odds and ends in email, etc., before starting to work
  • major success today meeting with Steve (Clemson's Wiebke, for you AUers) to get a quick start on Blackboard - the real Blackboard not the stupid one that is called Blackboard but is really stupid idiot WebCT that is - granted I have now 6 years' experience with various versions of courseware and all the crazy toys that accompany it and granted I am setting up only the most skeletal of skeleton courses for this session, but still Blackboard deserves most of the credit for my only needing about 35 minutes to get all my questions answered - EVEN gradebook issues!! - and for my only needing about an hour to get everything done on the site - if that. I kept laughing every time I'd ask about a new thing and Steve's answer about how to do it was 500 times (or so) simpler than the same process ever would have been with stinkin' WebCT. I stayed in a state of utter disbelief for a full 30 minutes after leaving. Honestly it's like having made your own bread for 6 years - in a Dutch oven in a campfire in the middle of Montana on one of those sheep-watching jobs - and then someone telling you, "Well, here in civilization we actually have stores - just drive there, give them money, and they will give you bread."
  • You think I'm kidding but I'm not. Susan Hyperbole has nothing to do with this Entirely Accurate analogy! I canNOT imagine why the heck Aub*rn or any other school persists in using WebCT. The ONLY advantage it has is the aesthetic freedom and as far as I'm concerned that's far beyond what most of us need for our course sites and not at all worth how hard it is to do the tiniest little thing compared to Blackboard.
  • Can I just say: WEIGHTED COLUMNS ??!! No more (Adrienne and Gio) spending endless hours configuring complicated formulas and finagling ways to fake your courseware into letting you do it that way. (Of course I must admit that people who teach things which don't entail so many different graded components probably are much happier with WebCT than I ever was but well that's the cross we language teachers will forever bear...)
  • I honestly can't get over this. If I hadn't already come up with my fun bread analogy I'd liken it all to the difference between wheel-enabled mobility and that of a sledge or tumpline... oh we could go on all day...
  • Andy is coming this weekend - he's bringing his bike and we're going to go explore campus part of the time Saturday. I'm going to start riding to school regularly. The bus is good, for what it is, but on the way home especially, it is somewhat of a drag. For some reason the bus stop with the same name is 5 minutes from my house in the morning but 20 minutes in the afternoon. After riding 25 minutes in the first place it just seems kind of sad, esp. since I'm only 3 mi. from campus. Good thing the bulk of my 3 mi. is flat since campus itself is so hilly; also good that when there is wind it is usually going the right direction for my ride home to be unhindered.
  • bai.

1 commentaire:

Jessica a dit…

Hahahaha - Sorry i haven't been reading - but I'm back form LA! The bread analogy was hilarious.

Love you, have fun riding bikes, I'm more than a little jealous you can ride to work!