rkeil

08:21 am: 32%
It's hard to believe that tuition is going up 32% over the next two years at UC. Crossing the $10k mark is a psychological barrier for many students; there's a general sense of depression over the amount of money they're going to have to come up with over the next few years. The increase that got voted in is more than my entire tuition when I started school. Oh, my beloved UC school, how you have become nothing but a massive private school now. What blackness.

11:15 am: Birthdays, birthdays birthdays
Happy birthday to sodium! And, tomorrow, happy birthday to Therm and Ricky. Nine years old. yeesh!

09:07 am: spurt of remodeling
We finished the new kitchen sink two weeks ago; Getting the old one out was a hassle, and we ended up chipping some tiles in the process, but it's all in now. New pipes, new non-leaking garbage disposal, hot water heater.

Last week we finished painting the living room before the new carpet came in. Glad to be done with all of it, clearing all the bookshelves was the biggest hassle of all.

I'd like to replace the bedroom windows, but we've depleted the home improvement funds. Next month; I feel like I'm personally going to get the economy stimulated by the end of the year.

11:09 am: Fire day
The first day of fall, 108F, <5% humidity, and 30 mph winds. And, surprise surprise, the hills are burning! On the bright side, they canceled classes today because of smoke. I get to spend the day shopping and getting social security cards for the kids.

08:23 am: socialist pipedream
I was getting books from the library the other day when I had a thought. Imagine if public libraries had never existed, that Franklin et al had never started them up 200+ years ago. A world in which libraries were private organizations for members or colleges.

And then suppose someone today proposed setting up a program, funded by tax dollars, that would buy copyrighted material, and loan it out for free. Not just books, but CD's, and DVD's as well. And just for good measure, throw in some computers so people can read the net during the day. Would the large media corporations ever allow a system like that to be invented?

08:34 am: oh the internets
Ran across this ad for Triumph motorcycles. It's like a factory film written by Monty Python.

let me try to embed this...



or search youtube under "triumph rocket manufacture"

08:45 am: 3rd Kyu
I passed my 3rd kyu test yesterday, then went out and got baklava and BBQ-d with Therm and Elmo. The test was sloppy, I forgot a lot of stuff, my lungs felt shitty from the smoke, and I was mentally foggy the whole time. So that was kind of a bummer, but at least it's over.

Speaking of smoke, the winds have been blowing the other way, and it's down to 100 today, so the heat wave is almost over!

06:16 pm: Work tedium
We had our mandatory meeting day today, in which we spent three hours discussing SLO's. Ah, student learning outcomes, the college equivalent of "no child left behind" rules. Unlike my friends in the K-12 system, we have to write our own standards, then evaluate them, and then hold ourselves accountable.

There's no way that could go wrong! Yet, I'm still stuck with writing some sort of quiz that will somehow determine that students have learned something. Nearly all the older faculty (and most of the younger ones) hate the whole system. There's constant grumpiness about judging us based on their performance; mostly along the lines of, "we give tests, they pass or fail. That's the outcome."

The meeting was followed by a seminar on how to recognize signs of abuse in children. Which is great when none of my students has been under 16.

Add to that a staff freaked out by potential layoffs and you have the makings of a long, long year.

07:27 pm: last days off
I have to go back to work this week, so I took two days off of home and headed up to Morro Bay on the motorcycle. I met up with my friend Andrew in Moorpark and we rode up to Ojai. He turned back and I kept going to Santa Barbara to visit my friend Liz and her new baby.






At some point after Lompoc, I realized how cold the california coast can be. By the time I was in Morro Bay, I was sore and ready to crash at the motel 6. The next day, I rode the farm country roads to San Luis Obispo, then took Foxen Canyon all the way to Solvang. Lovely, 25 mile, two lane road with no traffic, and just enough curves to keep it interesting. Over the 154 to Santa Barbara, stopped to check out the painted cave site, and have tacos with Eric.

At some point in Ventura, I began to get seriously sore and tired; I have no idea how people ride more than 8 hours at a stretch.

01:24 pm: Ventura
Linda and I had a two-day make up vacation yesterday; stayed in a corporate hotel right on the beach in Ventura, went shopping at the (oddly) plentiful number of thrift stores and ate out. I bought a replacement wedding band, which, thanks to the rise in gold prices, cost a ton more than I expected.

Vacation is fast disappearing, only two more weeks to go!

08:32 pm: Legos
The trip to LegoLand got me thinking about Legos again (Gee, it's like they PLANNED it that way...)

Anyway, I love this from Ochre Jelly on Flickr...




There's a Lego store in Glendale, think I might head out tomorrow...

08:31 pm: how not to go on vacation
One of the best ways to mess up a long vacation is be uncertain about who has the passports. It is most effective to wait until the afternoon before you try to clear up the issue. But best of all is to realize that you've somehow lost the folder with your whole family's passports and birth certificates.

So after two or three hours of looking in every frakkin place in the house, we realized we were doomed. You can even get on the plane to Canada without a passport, so our flight was gone. SInce we had purchased it with frequent flier miles (from the credit card), there's no refund; though they will let us reschedule (there's no open flights until next year)

Well, we've got everything fully packed and we've got nowhere to go. We're thinking of heading to San Diego for a few days.

Canada 2010!

02:37 pm: Death of the analog
I don't have cable or a satellite line, having long relied on Netflix and broadcast TV. Last week, after the analog signal died, we lost three VHF stations that I used to get perfect digital signals on. Which means over the air TV is essentially PBS, CBS, one local station and foreign language TV. This is in spite of the fact that I have a large rooftop antenna. I literally cannot watch ABC anymore. (I suppose I'm not missing much) Nice going FCC!

I've also found that it's easier to listen to FM radio over the net in my house, as the reception is better. Not only do I have to use Hulu to watch regular TV, the only place I use analog is in my car.

02:30 pm: crazy week
So, things have calmed down this week. After returning from Berkeley and the aikido summer camp, I ended up in a big fight that lasted most of the week. We both got stuck in our angry silence, unable to figure a way to talk about our problems in a civil way. It didn't really end until the next weekend when we went on a weekend getaway to San Diego.

We stayed in a lovely hotel and had a free meal courtesy of L's gameshow winnings. Now, we're getting ready for the fourth of July, then it'll be off to Canadia.

06:40 am: she's back
she's back

02:03 pm: Any given wednesday
Tried to ride to Mt Wilson this morning, but the fog got so thick I couldn't see and my visor started getting dewed up. So, I turned around and headed out the 38 (?) to Palmdale, and ended up in Acton. Man, it was cold out there, and really windy. 100 miles though, and mostly lovely.

09:16 am: Errands
I had an entire day sucked into the black hole of errands. First off, did you that Canada is now an actual country that requires a passport to visit? More accurately, a passport to return from. It is, as of June 1st! Which meant we suddenly needed passports for the kids, which meant getting pictures, and dealing with a post office completely packed with folks getting passports to go to Mexico, which is also now apparently a foreign country. The first day we went was nuts, so we bailed and came back the next morning.

I got there an hour early and got first in line. Surprisingly, it went extremely smoothly; papers, sign sign, staple staple, check, done.

Then, I tried to get a replacement phone from Verizon. All I want is to switch to a pay-as-you-go plan. Now I've got three months left on my contract, which they insist means I have to shell out $70 to cancel my contract. Ten f-in years of sending checks to Verizon with not a single late payment, and won't let me end a two-year contract three months early. So, now I'm using a $15 phone from Target and ATT. I had to change my number (as I had no SIM card to take to the new phone, and I was so frustrated with Verizon, I didn't think to ask them to clone the card)

anyway, my new number is 818- thwee - phive - nine - 2 - oh - three - 9

i've got the pay by the minute plan, so call me at home if you need me

08:03 am: David Carradine?
Apparently, David Carradine killed himself yesterday in a hotel room at 72. You'd think being really old would mitigate the emotional trauma of suicide, but when Gary shot himself, I was just as upset as if it had been someone younger. very sad.

D.C. was a odd fellow. He certainly inspired a whole generation of kids (including myself) to study Kung Fu, even though he didn't know any Kung Fu when he started the show; though he supposedly learned it during the run of the show and eventually became a master. Therm used to say that he had three TV heros, Dr Who, Jim Rockford, and Kwai-Chang-Caine. Now, there's only Tom Baker left.

08:40 am: weekend at Mule days
I had a wonderful time at Mule Days; I really enjoyed the time I skipped the rodeo to hang out with Ricky around camp again. Why go on vacation, and then drive around more?

I seem to have developed a cough and some sort of cold. I feel incredibly tired all afternoon and have been wanting to sleep for hours at a stretch. Unfortunately, I committed to going to an aikido demonstration at a local junior high today. So, I have to drag myself down to Burbank to work out in a few hours.

08:43 pm: Nice things
My dojo is moving, as LAUSD is buying the land for a new elementary school. The current location is 6 miles of busy valley traffic, and they had been looking at location even further away. Happily, they just signed a lease on a place only 1.5 miles away, right next to a Trader Joes's and an Italian deli. Which means that my three time a week drive just got a lot shorter. I can even ride my bike there!

And we opened our pool. and school ends Monday. and we're going to Mule Days in two weeks.