Month: November 2005

Our school district is leveraging current tech

It’s nice to know the school district my son will enter in about three years is fairly hip to current technology. The district’s superintendent, Dr. Jerry Roy, has a blog, and in another attempt to get information out to parents, the district has a podcast.
In The Messenger, a small local rag, Roy says:

I’ve had a few folks talk to me and tell me they are happy that we are utilizing the technology. I wouldn’t say we are cutting-edge, but we are trying to find the best ways to communicate with the public. We are used to hard copy, but that is expensive. We are always looking for inexpensive ways to communicate our message, especially in these times when we are hard-pressed for funding. This gives us access to a lot of folks.
Dr. Roy and his staff need to be commended for their fiscal responsibility in leveraging these Internet technologies. Dr. Roy is using the free Blogspot service from Blogger for his weblog, and it is incredibly cheap to produce a podcast, which is one reason why the medium’s popularity is exploding.
Property taxes in Texas are much higher than they are in Louisiana, where we moved from seven years ago. One reason for that is, with no state income tax, school districts need to get their funding from somewhere. I’m not sure what the actual percentage is, but a very high percentage of the segment of property taxes earmarked for education goes in to your local school district, rather than disappearing in to some budgetary black hole at the state level. I see these efforts on the part of LISD to be a responsible use of my tax dollars when it comes to communicating with parents.
While my child is still years away from entering the school system, Dr. Roy and LISD have made it easier for parents like us to keep track of what is going on, and for that, I thank them.

Deeply irresponsible is an understatement

As usual, Jeff says it better than I was thinking:

It’s as if we’ve got a country full of people who are walking around under the impression that the moon is made of green cheese, repeating it to each other, going on television talk shows to discuss the green cheese issue, publishing lengthy editorials in prominent newspapers about the implications of new revelations about lunar green cheese. It’s positively baffling.

Today’s miscellany

I’ve been trying to send some e-mails with attachments via Gmail, from within Safari. Frustrated, I launched the 1.0b1 version of Camino, and it worked the first time I tried.
If Camino could mimic the easy subscribability of Safari when it comes to RSS and Atom feeds, there would be no looking back. Based on my own usage, Camino is consistently faster than Safari at rendering, uses less RAM over time, and remains more stable.
Then Tom has to go and remind me why Safari kicks butt when it comes to designing for standards.
An article in the latest Macworld has prompted me to look seriously at del.icio.us. My personal work habits have evolved to the point where I’m no longer worried about keeping bookmarks synced between two systems, but the prospect of an online backup of my bookmarks, that I could access from any where, is appealing. I’m coming closer all the time to my own personal death knell for .Mac.
Anthro’s eNook is so cool it almost makes me wish I didn’t have enough space to get one. Almost.
A happy belated to Tiffany.
Finally, my thanks to Tom. He knows why.

A word of thanks

Today we honor those who serve and served in our nation’s armed forces. Though the original day of remembrance was Armistice Day, noting the end of World War I, it became Veterans’ Day, where we honor those who have served throughout out nation’s history. I think it is quite appropriate that a day to thank and honor our veterans falls within the same month as the Thanksgiving holiday.
Each citizen of this country, whether they want to admit it or not, owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who wear and have worn the uniforms of our armed forces. Having been, at one time, in the process of becoming one of those in uniform, I hold a special place in my heart for our servicemen and women.
In addition to all veterans, there are a few people I would like to thank.
From within my family: Dad, Uncle J.D., Granddaddy, and Uncle Richard.
Friends: Will, Wally, Damion M., Brian, Dan, Larry, John A., and Gary R.
From Detachment 310, 1988-92: Liz, John, Craig, Cathy & Michael, Kristin, Greg, Russ, and Colonel Hendrickson. I miss you guys.

But there is no media bias, part 6

Federalist Patriot 05-44 Digest:

The Big Three nightly newscasts have become nothing more than anti-war activists with a national platform. The Media Research Center recently released a review of over 1,300 news stories on Iraq from January through September. Among their findings was the following: 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, while only 15 percent were positive. The gap became even worse in August and September with negative stories nearing 75 percent; positive stories at seven percent. Stories about heroic actions by the troops were outnumbered eight to one by stories of abuse or other misconduct. Two of every five news stories covered bombings, kidnappings and other mayhem. Election stories also trended negative, as if things truly were better under Saddam Hussein. We think most Patriot readers will agree–the words that come to mind are “aiding and abetting.”

Go to vote, get a ticket

Alternative title: My Moron Moment of the Day
Of course, I have no one to blame but myself.
Each election cycle, Denton County, in its infinite wisdom, changes the polling place for our precinct, and apparently for all precincts in the county. This election was no different. So after finding out we would be voting at Bridlewood Elementary, I set off to vote.
I have passed by the Bridlewood development several times, but have never been inside. There is a golf club as part of the development, and part of the fairway parallels Bridlewood Boulevard. I followed my Yahoo! Maps directions, and turned off the main road to get to the school. After navigating a couple of turns, I find myself on Remington Park Drive, the street the school is on. I’m doing about 30, and slow to 20 when I hit the school zone, which starts near the top of a rise. As I begin to crest the rise, I see the school on my left, and a red sign with “Vote Here” in black and a large white arrow directing me in to the school’s parking lot. I come down the rise, put on my blinker, and turn left in to the school parking lot. Then I hear the “Whoop!” of the motorcycle’s cop siren. He does a single blast, and that’s enough to get my attention.
I pull over to one side of the aisle I’m on, wondering what I’m getting stopped for. It couldn’t be the school zone speed limit. I was doing twenty. I know I was doing twenty, because I’m fastidious about keeping it at twenty while in a school zone. Did I bump up to 22, maybe, coming down the rise? He’s going to give me a citation for that? These are the thoughts running through my head as he walks up to the window.
Driver’s license, insurance, I hand them over. He checks to make sure the insurance is current and hands the paper back. Then he asks if I know why he stopped me, and I tell him, no, I don’t. “You missed a stop sign back there, Mr. Turner.”
I did what?
Yep, never saw it. Sure enough, as I was leaving the school after I voted, there it was. Just on the down slope of that rise. I allowed my attention to laser-focus on the school and that “Vote Here” sign, and I totally missed the stop sign. (Stupid developer, putting a cul-de-sac right there in the middle of a down slope…)
So now I get to do the payment + defensive driving course (hopefully I can do the video version) thing, to keep this off my record and from affecting my insurance. It’s not good to be unemployed and broke, and have to cough up money because you were stupid. So again, totally my fault for not paying attention, and this voting experience could have been better.
On the totally geeky side of things, the officer had a handheld computer which allowed him to scan in my license info–thanks to the handy magnetic strip on the back–then punch in the violation, then I signed on the screen a la signing for a package from UPS or FedEx. He punched another button, and a paper version of the citation rolled out of the top. Nice to see the Town saving a little money by doing away with cases of duplicate/triplicate citations. I’m sure there’s a time savings, too, for the officer when he turns in the citations at the end of his shift. If I had to get a ticket, pretty nifty way to have done so.

The more things change…

…the more they stay the same.
[Via Dan.]

Inquiring minds want to know

Craig Shirley:

Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates — but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation’s war heroes?
This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley’s home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.

No such thing

Memo to Brendan Miniter: Marines don’t like being called “former Marines.” “Once a Marine, always a Marine” is how they view it. Having known a few Marines in my time, perhaps “retired Marine” would be a better term in the future.

Project Valour-IT

Soldiers’ Angels has started Project Valour-IT, an endeavor to get voice-activated laptops to our wounded servicemen. To help with raising money for the project, a friendly competition has been set up between four teams, one for each of the service branches. Holly Aho is running the USMC team, which Hugh and Glenn are a part of. Sign up with one of the teams and donate to help out our wounded personnel.