Postcards from the Funny Farm

Did you ever spend a weekend doing a whole lot of nothing and you felt great about it? In a sense that’s what my weekend was like. We bought a new stove for the house. We’re supposed to move in around May 15th. Other than that, I just whittled at the blog, wrote a guest blog that should be published this week and learned what “glass” effect was on Photoshop. I haven’t posted an “aside” post like this in a while but I thought I’d explain that I was doing nothing, thinking about everything, and doing stuff behind the scenes. I have 3 ideas for posts, it’s just a matter of getting the links and paragraphs in line. I thought a lot SAT-SUN. So much, I am speechless for once in my life. Funny how real quiet and thinking will do that to you. Suffice it to say, I had some deep thoughts that have done me well. Watch for a really big one in tomorrow’s column.

To close: for lack of any clever comment generating hook:

How was your weekend?

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How many electronic items do you own that are obsolete? I went through my classroom the other day collecting old items like cables and tape recorders and even a record player to clear out some clutter. It was remarkable to me how many district-purchased things were now useless. I remember when I was a senior in high school in 1987, I had a computer class in which we worked tediously on Apple computers that ran programs from those disks that actually were “floppy.” It got me wondering about what might soon be obsolete that I use today.

It’s kind of a depressing thought to me to think even the very blog I write in daily will one day be replaced with something else. Certainly my Compaq laptop with 36G hard-drive memory and 500M RAM has been supplanted in the marketplace. I’m actually afraid to look at what is out there now, and my laptop is only about two years old. Oh, and do I need to go into much detail on this keyword: hybrids?

Anyway, without letting progress overwhelm me, I try to be a student of the marketplace. Mostly in blogging and educational tools, but in all other areas of my life where it seems to be an issue. For example, my wife and our kids and I are moving into our new home in 30 days. This is so exciting and I find myself reading up and considering all the features of a home audio and tv system. I don’t have the money to get them all right away, but nowadays that may be a “plus” for the long term. I want to “future proof” my home as much as I can. If that means paying a little more for some things, I think it will be wiser in the long run. One example I ran across are HDMI splitters. Ignore the fancy name, they are simply connectors that hook up the speakers to your sound system. I read the current audio cables people use nowadays will not be able to handle the up-and-coming-systems of the near future. This is, of course, only one example of what likely lays before me on my first-time-home-owner safari!

All this stuff is enough to make me want to wear earplugs when I go shopping for electronic stuff.

Do you ever walk through the TV’s at Wal-Mart and think: “If only I’d have waited a couple more months?”

I’m off work for 10 days. Boy, I love Spring Break as a teacher. In my RnR however, I have been getting over a nasty cough. I wrote a guestblog over at the FuelmyBlog site about what I learned about generic and name-brand otc coughing drugs. If you are interested in reading it, you can get there through the url linked below:

http://blog.fuelmyblog.com/2008/03/name-brand-and-generic-coughing.html

If you are interested in having me guestblog for your blog for free, read the page explaining the process and contact me.  Thanks!  I hope to hear from you.