Good deal

Amazon is running Mother's Day promotions on both the Kindle DXand the Kindle 3G.If you purchase either Kindle ereader, you get a free $25 Amazon gift card, suitable for building up mom's ebook library.

PS - Also suitable for upcoming birthday gift-giving obligations.

PPS - If you want to buy yourself a Kindle for Mother's Day, I won't tell: even if you aren't a mom.     :o)

Strings

Neatnik had to come with me to a couple of classes recently. Her school's Easter break never coincides with the college's spring break so this is a recurring situation. Usually I have her pack a backpack full of activities. This Easter recess, her choices included her Kindle,a hardcover copy of Inkheartand a box of crayons.

I dropped my dry erase markerduring my programming class, so I swung by the office to cadge a new one, Neatnik in tow. The full-timers were having cake to celebrate the department chair's successful defense of his PhD thesis. We were invited to partake and so Neatnik noshed. I chatted about school schedules and classes, mentioning that Neatnik had just sat through a programming class. The boss asked Neatnik what she had learned in class that day.

My kid proceeded to inform the entire room that she learned all about Strings and how Java is a case-sensitive programming language and then absolutely correctly explained to the assembled instructors the example I used in class to illustrate string interning.

Every jaw at the table dropped.

Except mine, of course.

Yep, that's my eight-year-old.

Shutdown in 3...2...1...

Government Powers Down SETI

I suppose it is time for us to implement an intergalactic answering machine: "Sorry, due to lack of funding, we can't come to the array right now. Please leave your message and we will get back to you as soon as additional funding becomes available. Try your call again sometime after the next presidential election..."

In which the end is nigh

After one has been teaching for a few semesters, it becomes really easy to tell when the end of the semester is nigh. One does not need to consult a calendar, nor monitor meteorological events, nor read the tea leaves in the bottom of your favorite china cup. Even the bones will tell you nothing.

No, there is a very simple, infallible indicator that the end of the semester is no longer on the horizon but instead is rushing inexorably towards you like an oncoming locomotive:within the last three weeks of any semester, at the end of each and every class, at least one student approaches you, looking furtive and uncertain. The Student of the Day shifts his feet nervously and inquires after his grades.

You look them up in the Spreadsheet Where All Results Live. You are looking at a loooong column filled with 0s: homework assignments which were never submitted. The only items breaking up the march of little red goose eggs are the test scores. Usually those test scores reflect the temperatures experienced within the past three months but occasionally you have a SotD with straight A tests. These are the most annoying: it is obvious that these SotDs have the ability to earn an A but are just too lazy to do homework. You calmly inform the SotD that s/he is failing your class.

The SotD may have the nerve to look shocked upon receiving the news of his/her impending failure. Excuses are offered. These often include how many hours s/he works each week, the number of credits s/he is currently carrying, or the fact that his/her computer bricked two months ago. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list. We are talking about college students here: their creativity in crafting excuses for non-participation is exceeded only by the amount of time they invest in dreaming up said excuses. Perhaps if they spent all of that time on their homework assignments and studying for class...nevermind.

You point out all of the missing homework, assignments turned in late, and the (generally) poor test grades. SotD invariably asks if s/he can still manage to pull a passing grade in your class. You punch some numbers into the spreadsheet based on past performance then you repeat the process with the highest possible scores. You use this data to point out to the SotD that if s/he were to score top marks for every assignment between now and the end of the time semester, s/he will earn a solid D for the term.

And this is where the fun begins: the SotD asks you to come up with a special extra credit project that s/he can do to bring up his/her grade so that s/he can get a B in this class.

Say what?

There are some things which programming professors can say to their students which might not go over as well in other disciplines. Last week's homework assignments weren't stellar. Well, more accurately, they were pretty pathetic, which is saying quite a bit considering that I went over the entire assignment in class and did everything but type the code for them. The parameters of the problem included adding up a series of numbers and arranging them in descending order. One fellow tried to develop his own custom design for data arrangement. Midway through the explanation of his algorithm, my mental editor copped a nap and I stated, "You really need to get your sort together."

In past, I have used a 4 GB USB flash driveto tote my data back and forth between work and home. Four gigs isn't all that much storage these days so this semester, I decided to invest in a 500GB external hard drive.This has worked out rather well but it does not fit in my pocket so when BzzAgent offered me the opportunity to join the Kingston Data Traveler Locker+BzzCampaign, I jumped on it.

This is a cool flash drive!

Have you ever lost the cap to your flash drive? They usually aren't tethered to the flash drive and even if they have a plastic loop for fastening to your keyring, how often do they break under normal usage? Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ sports a swivel cover.

Have you ever had a flash drive just crash for no apparent reason? I sure have. Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ comes with a five year guaranteed warranty and 24/7 customer support.

Have you ever lost a flash drive and worried that some nefarious someone now had access to some of your personal data? Happens to students at the college all the time. They forget their flash drives in class and someone else pockets them. Usually there isn't all that much personal information at risk, I suppose, but consider that these are college students who are writing research papers and how valuable a free term paper would be to a lazy classmate. Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ has personal password protection: after ten unsuccessful attempts to access the data, it automatically reformats. Oh, yeah, it also features automatic hardware encryption.

I loved the reliability of my old Data Traveler but it is only 4GB. Kingston's newer, more advanced DataTraveler Locker+ comes in 8, 16, and 32GB sizes. A free 8GB model is winging its way to me courtesy of Kingston and BzzAgent. I'm really looking forward to giving this a good workout. Twice the storage, fits in my pocket, and is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.

Spring!

Now that we are nearly a month past the vernal equinox, it seems that spring really is here. Let's look at the local spring flair in a Monday Morning Bullet Post.

• Pollen counts are up...so are the allergy symptoms.
  
  Tree pollen counts are very high right now. Red zone high.
  
  
  Expecting a bit of rain
  Tuesday and Wednesday...
  
  Neatnik's teacher continues to send home pleas for donations of additional boxes of Kleenex.I sent in a 200-count box on the first day of school, another at the beginning of flu season, and a third last week. Now, if every parent in the class sent the same number of boxes, the class would have had over 100 boxes of tissues.
  
  Either some people are not stepping up to the plate or the third grade suffers from incessant colds, flu, and allergy symptoms on a continuous basis. Yes, I know: it is the former. I still refuse to send a fourth box of tissues this year.
  
  A significant fraction of my own students come to school sniffling and sneezing. Those are the ones who don't bother with the anti-allergy medications. The ones who, like me, believe in better living through pharmaceuticals shamble into class a lá Shaun of the Dead.Teaching is tough right now.



• Everything all of a sudden is yellow.
  
  I would almost be inclined to suspect that somebody has been slipping some digitalis tablets in with my daily vitamins if not for the fact that I am generally the designated assembler of the morning vitamins. I think I would have noticed an extra little round white tablet trying to masquerade as an antihistamine. Besides, the generic Claritinwe purchase is kind of football shaped, not round. Trust me: a retired pharmacist would notice that.
  
  Besides that, I can count. I'd notice an increase in the pill population.
  
  Since I am not digitalis toxic, I must accept the evidence of mine eyeballs and report that stuff is all turning yellow here. You can't swing a dead cat locally without hitting one of these three yellow things.
  
  
  Forsythia vahl
  
  
  Narcissus
  
  
  Taraxacum officinale


• Lots of houses are being put on the market.
  
  It is a formula: put your house on the market in early spring so that you can sell it and buy a new one and get moved between the end of the current school year and the beginning of the next one.
  
  Yesterday we noticed several Realtor's Open House signs. Just for fun, we visited three of them. The first one was a new construction. Four bedrooms in over 3500 square feet. Full basement. Two car garage. Lots of closets with built-in shelves. Kitchen hosted at least twice the cupboards and drawers of our house and you could easily have converted each of the master bedroom's walk-in closets into bedrooms in their own right. Ticket price? Just under a million. Next house.
  
  The second house was very different. Built in the late 70s on a slab. Again, four bedrooms but these rooms were tiny and rather dark. If someone was cooking dinner and you wanted something from the fridge, you'd have to ask the chef to stop cooking so that you could open the refrigerator door. The back half of the garage had been repossessed as a home office effectively creating an attached shed with one-car garage door access. Price tag in the $320s.
  
  House number three was very interesting. Ostensibly a four bedroom split-level, the master bedroom was on the uppermost floor in what would originally have been termed the "bonus" room by the builder. Large and with slightly sloped ceilings. The smallest bedroom would work fine as a storage area - maybe as a pantry - albeit a pantry half a flight of stairs up from the kitchen. Huge fenced yard and a completely dry basement. Owners asking $435k.
  
  It may sound a bit strange, but it was a fun way to spend a few hours on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon.



• Taxes are due.
  
  If you are an American and you haven't yet filed, today is the deadline. In order to make today a little less stressful, some merchants are offering free or discounted stuff. According to a news article I found on Yahoo, you can score a pair of Cinnabon minis this evening and a free kids meal at IHOP at dinner time. Don't like pancakes? I got an email from Chili's offering a free appetizer or dessert today. Can't do dinner today? Swing by Mickey D's for breakfast or lunch and score on their 2-for-1 offers. DirecTV subscribers get free HBO today.

I hope you are getting a refund from your favorite uncle this year instead of writing him a fat check. If you know of a tax day special, please post it in the comments and tell us what other signs of spring have you observed lately?

Disjoint and random

Finally, an opportunity to sit down and to collect my thoughts! Lucky you: you get to read my Friday Evening Bullet Post on Disjoint and Random Topics!

• Yet another price drop over at Amazon. Check out the WiFi Kindle with special offers and sponsored screensavers.This unit is $25 less expensive than the regular WiFi Kindlebut going for the discount means that

  "[s]pecial offers and sponsored screensavers [will] display on the Kindle screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen"



• I'm sticking with my full-price WiFi Kindle.



• If you are in the market for a larger display screen, the Kindle DXis today's Deal of the Day - marked down $80. Hurry!



• Last summer, I reviewed Revenge Served Cold.Today I note that it is available in Kindle format.A good read.



• Hmm, I still haven't read the series opener, Piercing the Veil.



• I really should order that.



• So many books, no little time!



• Did I mention that I had downloaded G Norman Lippert's free James Potter series?



• Lippert plays around in Rowling's sandbox for the duration of three full-length novels. The central character is Harry's eldest son, James Sirius Potter. More on these later when I finish volume three and put together a review.



• My computer literacy students had a practice test today. They need to demonstrate their proficiency with Microsoft Office Excel 2007in order to pass next week's exam. The practice test is intended to make the students familiar with the test environment, which is, admittedly, very persnickety. The practice test is just like the actual graded exam. All we do is use different data and reword and mix up the questions.



• Most of the students finished quite quickly today. Oh, wait, allow me to rephrase that: they finished both quickly and accurately. Once they were done, I allowed them to leave. I mean, if they scored 98-100% on the practice test, they've pretty much got the material down.



• One student attempted to escape leave an hour before the end of class. He wasn't the first student to stand up and to collect his things but he is not in the upper 50th percentile of students, if you get my drift.



• Before he got to the door, I checked his score.



• It wasn't there.



• I asked him why he didn't submit his test.



• He said that me he had five questions left and he was going to do them later.



• I told him that he still had an hour of class time left and to sit down and to finish his work.



• Neatnik's Brownie troop is going to see a musical play tonight.



• I hate this musicalwith an intense and undying passion.



• It's the amazingly unavoidable earworm potential.



• Number Guy came to my rescue: he volunteered to escort the Neatnik!

My hero!

Sorting

The weather on Monday afternoon was gorgeous here. Thermometers rose into July temperatures. The sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the cerulean sky. I blame said conditions on my short burst of spring cleaning.

I suppose it is fitting that while I was sorting out the laundry and the little fix-it projects around the house, my programming students were working on wrapping their heads around the selection sort and insertion sort algorithms. We coded them up in the Java programming language a couple of weeks ago in class. Never thought about implementing them in folk dances.

Educational entertainment*

* Not precisely accurate but gets the point across.

Black and white

Number Guy noted the other day that I haven't blogged in a while. I knew that. What I did not fully realize was quite how long it had been. Time to ease back into the blogosphere with a short Monday Morning Bullet Post

• It isn't that I didn't want to blog. I even recall thinking a few times, "Oh, wow, that would be good blog fodder." Problem was, by the time I sat down at the computer, I couldn't remember any of those things so maybe they weren't at that after all.



• One thing that was noteworthy enough to remember after the fact was a one-liner from the Neatnik. We took a walk in the local mall last Friday after dinner. She asked if I could buy her a new pair of earrings. I told her "not today". She replied with, "You never buy me anything!"



• After school, I bought her a Frosty as an atta-boy for keeping her room tidy all week long (with minimal reminding).



• Two days prior, we shopped for shirts, socks, and a pair of funky casual shoes that she was just dying to have.



• A week previously, I purchased a pile of new jeans since her pants were all too short.



• Two week earlier, it was new school shoes and two pairs of sneakers to replace the ones purchased last cross country season.



• But I never buy her anything!



• This semester I am teaching an extra course and it is in the compressed term so only eleven weeks to teach fifteen weeks of material. Why, yes, I am busier than a one-armed paper-hanger in a windstorm.



• Some of my students are very motivated this semester and some are not. No surprises there. Unfortunately, there haven't been any really funny emails this spring.



• I've been trying to stick to the workout routine. Things were going great with the Leslie Sansone DVDsfor a good nine weeks.



• Then my stupid sciatica flared. Enough said about that.



• If the rain holds off, maybe I can take a walk outside today.



• Between loads of laundry, that is.

So as not to leave the few loyal peeps who stuck with the blog during this most recent word drought, here's a picture of the cake I made over the weekend. We had a little something to celebrate and the honoree was very amused by it.

Black and white:
not just for cookies anymore

Ack, there goes the washing machine alarm...again. While I'm gone to make nice with the appliances, you'll leave me a comment, please, won't you?