NH to Rochester, NY, to Hamilton, ON, to Niagara Falls, ON, to Waterloo, ON, to Pointe Claire, QC, and back to NH… in 5 days…
i’m really quite tired… more pics to come!
..d
I’ve had one of those weeks… Sunday is filled with optimism, excitement, and reachable goals. I think I reached “Monday’s” goals this morning.. and my goal for today (aka, complete project with time to tweak) is about as far off as I could possibly imagine..
..nothing worth reading today. sorry. i’ve been on 110% mode for about five weeks and am slowly moving towards “i don’t care…”
I should probably send this to every single one of my future students 
I am back in Virginia Beach working with my old company pimping out someone’s home. One of the features that I am trying to implement is a routine that will close some blinds when the sun is reflecting off of the water and open them again once the sun is below the trees. There are algorithms everywhere (search online for “sunrise sunset algorithms”) to handle sun position, all of which require trigonometry. The language that I have to use to program these blinds does not have any trig functions… I was racking my brain to find a way to accomplish this without using a table of values… was about to write my current and former math profs.. then I remembered that lovely thing called a Taylor Series (look it up on wikipedia for a really decent explanation).
So, I am using a Taylor Series in a smart home. It really is a smart home now
just wanted to share
I spent 16 hours yesterday (less probably an hour or so of errands scattered throughout the day) staring at my computer, programming away. I am thinking back to what I had accomplished when I quit at 2am and was rather amazed. I definitely couldn’t have told anyone the amount I accomplished in only one day when I was actually working. I guess I take more pride in my work when it’s not as mundane. I was rudely awoken 6 hours later (as in this morning) to continue the siege.. should be an interesting week. I will post updates as I go. The short answer is that I am programming someone’s residence.. and my programming, I mean pimping out.. those of you who remember my previous career will know what that means…
..6 days
I can say with some certainty that this year was the one that broke my typical tradition of unbelievable productivity in the face of a virtually impossible set of items to accomplish. I think back to my engineering days when there was no physical way to study and remember all the material required of me and the task shifting from content mastery to what do I need to get ## grade. I placed myself with a distinct advantage with my recent studies as I already have a solid mathematical background so the studying for mastery was at last possible. I have since moved into the educational side of my studies and I am starting to see the gap between technical and non-technical fields. While I do enjoy what I am learning, I find that it is not very challenging.
I sometimes feel bad that I think this way. I do my best to shield these views from my friends and colleagues (this is only half-true, as I have met the few people like me at this school already, and they get to hear it from me often!) as they work very hard on these non-technical assignments. I also am starting to wonder if this was my calling before and I simply did not realize it. I do very well with research papers and reflective writing. I of course will never admit this as I know that everything I do can always be done better. I find that I am still tentative do discuss topics aloud until I am familiar with the setting and the people in that setting. Hopefully this is an area that I will improve on in the future.
With the good comes the bad. In the end, my goal is to impress someone with a red marker. If I don’t do that, I don’t get the piece of paper that says I’m a math teacher guy. Yet it is these people that I am slowly growing intolerant of. I suppose it is my right to say something like “I am paying for my education, therefore I have expectations”. This message is clearly lost in my education classes. I’m not sure where this message is lost, but I know that it is in fact lost. To explain some details for clarity’s sake: to get secondary licensure, there are several hoops that you have to jump through to impress someone with too many degrees that you are worthy to make a shitty salary and deal with the problems of society. While I don’t agree with this hoola-dance in the first place, I understand that the whole show is a necessary evil to ensure a standardized process across all potential educators. But when the hoops are withheld due to someone else’s shortcomings and problems is just inconsiderate and unacceptable. Pardon the crude reference, but I’m fucking paying for the opportunity for these hoops.
I guess that this is what I will encounter for the rest of my adult life. While I don’t consider myself the most ambitious, tolerant, or patient person on earth, I exercise restraint. When I discovered that my colleagues and I were getting the short end of the stick, I decided that I couldn’t fight AND win this battle, and promptly took a seat, got comfortable, and enjoyed the show.
I guess that’s all I have for now. The events in question all happened on Tuesday, so I’ve had a few days to process them. I definitely know who the villain is in the whole process, and I know who NOT to blame as well (I feel this equally important!).
…8 days
I should just call this the “Coming Up For Air” series.. so pretend that I am calling it that so that you can feel better (ok, so that I can feel better heh).
I made myself a very good schedule about two weeks ago so that this last month before the holidays would go by.. well.. smoothly. I loved that I was so ahead of the game and that I was so determined to stick to this fairly strict calendar. And now it is December 3rd.. While I am making progress, it is not at the point where that damn schedule says I should be at. I find that I am more distracted than I was two weeks ago (I mean, seriously, why would I want to do work when I can make xmas presents for people!), and I’m also more bored. I know that having too much to do and being bored are rarely uttered in the same breath, but here I am to do that for (not the) first time. Li’l dude (aka my 6-month-old son) isn’t screaming, drooling, crawling around. My wife isn’t there to say “hi” when I walk by. Oh well — two more weeks, right?
It’s too fucking quiet around here… so I distract myself so that I don’t notice.. but when the only noise I can hear is the clammering of my fingers on the keyboard (and the obnoxiously loud case fan I have in my computer).. it’s too quiet.
I guess it is countdown time.. 13 days until my holidays begin (yes, that is the 16th), 7 days until I go make some sweet sweet moolah with uncle rico.. and 5 days until my one (and only) final exam.
..d
