In which all is quiet

It's quiet here. Number Guy just let to drive the Neatnik to school. The hamster is sleeping soundly. I am sitting down to review my lecture slides for this morning's class. Well, I was doing that right up until I thought, "Gee, I bet I have enough time to put together a little Friday morning Bullet Post

• The temperature is just barely above freezing at the moment. The carpet of leaves on the lawn is limned with an icy frost. Autumn has set up shop and invited winter over for tea and biscuits.



• I think I may have gotten my Kindle (Wi-Fi) issues all sorted out. I am Wi-Fi empowered, my elibrary has been downloaded, and my collections tagging system re-implemented. Still think it needs a name, though.



• Oh, you thought the Kindle issues were over when Kindle #2 arrived. Sorry, my bad. Should have posted on this earlier. There were some warranty-purchase issues that were not easily resolved. The final solution was sending back Kindle #2 and purchasing a brand-new Kindle #3, with the warranty in the same order.



• One good thing about the process: I have now refined my ebook collections. I am toying with the idea of creating an additional collection called "Read". I have around 130 or so ebooks on the eshelf at the moment. It would probably be nice to have a simple way to determine at a glance whether or not I've read a particular book. Any thoughts on that?



• Is it just me blogging less or is it the entire blogosphere? Almost nobody comments on a regular basis anymore and I think most of my site traffic is being referred by freebie knitting pattern sites.



• The 911 Socks have been getting lots of hits recently.



• This morning, I brought a school uniform and a pair of SJ Crews up from the drying rack for the Neatnik. She said, "Mommy, speaking of yarn socks, can you knit me some more?"



• Busted.



• :: hangs head in shame ::



• Unlike Sheepie who has been knitting under the radar, I can't even claim that. There has been no knitting.



• What have I been doing instead of looping skinny string into functional socks (besides sorting out my ereader issues, that is)? Programming Java code.



• My students are a bit needy. Almost all of my programming kids are first semester freshmen. I had to explain the concept of "Carvel Days" to them last week. and I've been doing ALL of the end of chapter assignments so that I might be able to tell them to do them as practice for the tests. While the work is not hard, it does take some time and I have promised them that if they do the exercises and send them to me, I will run them and send feedback.



• I really should knit my child a pair of socks or pretty soon she will be telling me that she feels like the shoemaker's kid.



• :: hangs head in shame again ::



• I've also been spending way too much time shuttling Neatnik back and forth to tae kwon do. The school where we started her in the summer isn't that far from home as the birds travel but it is not so quick for the minivan to navigate, especially with the construction along our route. We would leave the house half an hour before class started so as to allow enough time for congestion and traffic lights. Sometimes we would get lucky, but usually that allowed only enough time for her to shuck her shoes and grab her attendance card. I tried bringing my laptop to work while they had class but I spent more time trying to move out of other people's way so that didn't pan out. I would try to do my grocery shopping during her classes but you only need to buy so much milk each week. After class, we'd unravel the process and return home with the addition of having to schlep groceries in from the car.



• Upshot? I had to allocate two hours a day each day I took Neatnik down for a 45 minute class. It really cut into my class preparation and student assignment grading time.



• Yesterday, I took her to a school that is much closer to home. It is owned by a guy who trained with Number Guy and I way back in the day. Neatnik had the biggest grin on her face the entire class. We are very hopeful that this will be a good fit.



• And I should get more done: there is a huge area for the parents to watch and work, including a work table!

On that mention of work, I need to return to mine. Class begins in just over an hour and a half and I still need to finish my slide edits and set up examination passwords. Wishing all of my blog peeps a beautiful fall Friday!