Well we just had a power outage that lasted for about 10-15 minutes. It’s still kind of dusk outside, so there wasn’t much ambient light to see off of. So work was pretty much out of the question. The kids wanted to tell gost stories. I knew that would keep them pretty entertained, and relativly quite. So thats what they did. The power just turned back on, so I had better get them back to work.
Finally Friday. I am really looking forward to a couple of days off. A little sleeping in and not thinking about much. The weather is pretty nice out. The temperature is warming up a bit, and we have had some really clear days. Rumor has it we are going to have some blowing snow the next couple of days.I just signed up for an account at www.flickr.com. This site allows you to post pictures on the web for free so friends and family can see your pictures. You can view my pictures on my flicker account. I have only uploaded three pictures for now. Seems like a nice service. What got me turned on to it was a plug in I found for iPhoto. It allows you to upload directly to Flickr from iPhoto. You don’t have to worry about a web interface. Works out really well.Erin and I have been watching a lot of Alias lately. Lyndi was nice enough to tape the first episode of this season for us. We were going to watch it, but the weather was pretty bad out and the dish wasn’t getting a signal. So we weren’t able to catch that one. When Lyndi told us she recorded it for us we decided we would wait to watch the second one until we had seen the first one. So we recorded episode 2 on Wednesday night. In the mean time we borrowed season 3 from AnnMaire and C.O. So we have been trying to get through all of those by this weekend. AnnMaire and C.O. are coming over to watch the first two episodes with us. Should be a good time.
The day is finally done. School went pretty well today. The kids are always a little squirrelly. Erin is working with the battle of the book team right now. She’s a little frustrated with their work ethic. Seems like the kids want everything handed to them on a golden platter. The thought of actually doing some work on their own doesn’t seem to have entered their mind. There were about 15 kids here for battle of the books. They were supposed to have read the books by this week. Next Monday is the beginning of the district competition. Erin was quizzing the group with practice questions. The correct answers were few and far between. So needless to say the competition next week doesn’t look too promising. Its definitely nice that today was our last long day for the week. Friday’s we dismiss the students at 2:00 allowing the staff to have some much needed collaboration/planning time. We also have basketball games this weekend. Stebbins is flying in for the competition. The kids are all excited. Basketball is one of the most important things in their lives it seems.
I just remembered a couple of cool articles I read last night. I found them of course on Fark.com. The first was about a kid over in India I believe. He is only 8 years old and is like this computer genius. He started using a computer when he was two. If I remember correctly from the article he sent out an email when he was 2 or 3. Crazy. He is MOUS certified (Microsoft Officer User Specialist) – Core & Expert Level. He has done web design, met the president, and Bill Gates. I read in there that he is doing some video conferencing. I think it would be cool for our kids to have a videoconference with him and interview him for the KKTS News Broadcast. His website is www.microsoftkid.com to read the article about him follow this link.The other story I thought was interesting last night was about a couple of kids in PA that “borrowed” on of their dads’ planes. Their mission: To bomb their school with eggs. There were two of them 15 and 16. Neither of them had their pilots license. Sounds like their mission was successful. They did however scare everyone in town by flying so low. On top of that it was really foggy out. The police weren’t able to ID the planes tail number. They waited for the plane to land at the local airport. That didn’t work out so well when the kids landed at a private strip owned by the father. The boys ended up turning themselves in when they heard they were being looked for. I don’t think they realized how much of a stir they caused. Follow this link to read the full article.
Sleeping flew by too quickly last night. I need to get my sleeping patterns under control. I am at that glorious SFA meeting right now. It’s going pretty well. I brought over a couple of cinnamon rolls that Erin made last weekend. They are pretty tasty. Looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day. On my way to school I noticed that all the stars were out. It’s still pretty cold out. I think I like it a little better than the weird warm days we had before break. At this point I’m looking forward to the end of the day. I hope it goes quickly. 🙂
Once again I am up way to late. My mind was racing when I went to bed. I gave it an honest effort but sleep never came. So I got up and came out here to the couch. I started out trying to make some flashy colons for the clock at the top of my blog, which I accomplished but didn’t like how it looked. I ended up scrapping that idea. Then I got this notion of making a form so my viewers could submit comments. Well…. After over an hour and half of trying to figure it out I have failed. It turns out I need to get into contact with Copper Valley Internet (our ISP) to find out where the cgi-bin is located on the server, and if I can put a perl script in there. Odds are they won’t. So I’ll be out of luck. You would think by now they could have made it a little easier to accomplish that task. Ohh well.. I have an SFA meeting in the morning, which I am not allowed to skip. The SFA coordinator (Erin) would not be a happy camper if I skipped her meeting. So I had better head to bed so I can get my beauty sleep.
A little break in the action. The kids are with the bi-lingual teacher right now. They are playing AGIMA (BINGO). Take a look at their AGIMA Card…..
Seems like they are enjoying it. It’s another cold day out right now about 16 below zero. Not a cloud in the sky. It makes for great sunsets. It looks like they are cleaning up, which means its time for me to get back to work. Ohh and I think everyone should take time out of their day to go check out apple.com. They are out with news things. 🙂
Well another day of excitement. I had a staff meeting this morning. It went pretty well. It looks like I’m going to be the acting principal again next month. I don’t mind it so much during the day. But I really get sick of being in charge of making sure the gym is opened up for gym night, and the closed back up again. I have to go over to the school around 11 on the weekdays, and midnight on the weekends. On top of that the entire village is calling asking if their is going to be gym. It gets kind of old. Not to mention the occasional disciplinary incident I get to deal with during the day. Something to look forward to right??? 🙂 I went and had a chat with one of the classes that was in question for the porn incident. I will do another in about an hour. We are putting in place a more stringent check out system. The new system will allow us to know who was on a certain computer at a certain time. Hopefully it will get their attention and we won’t have an encounter like this again. SFA is going pretty well. It’s kind of tough when a couple of your students miss the first half hour of class. When they do show up, they are rude and loud. Disrupting the entire class every chance they get. That’s what I’m dealing with at the moment. I hope everyone else is having a better morning than me. It’s not that terrible, just disheartening knowing that its the norm. 🙂
I know my recent post have been crazy long. I’m sure they will slowly start to shrink as the excitement of having a blog wears off. Anyway… As promised I went out and took a picture of the sunset today. It is currently 14 below zero outside. Definitely colder if you account for the wind chill into account.
So after school I went and finished tracking down the computers that were up to no good. Having located them I will be talking to a couple of classes tomorrow about appropriate computer use. After I finished that task I remembered I needed to run to the store. I had thrown together some stuff for stew at lunch, but didn’t have any vegetables to throw in. The store has been a little bare lately after the poor weather we had a week ago, and they haven’t had a chance to stock back up yet. So for now we don’t have any eggs, potatoes, or carrots. 🙁 Not so good for stew. So on my run over to the store I snapped a picture of the sun set. I about froze by but off. I ran down to the beach to take a picture without the houses in view, and I was out longer than expected. I foolishly run round without a coat, and with sandals regardless of the weather. So by the time I made it to the store I was a little chilled. Unfortunately they haven’t received replacement supplies yet. So I found a bag of frozen stew vegetables, which I have had before, and the potatoes aren’t the best. Anyway. I picked up some of those and some bugles and Twinkies (One of the things I have grown a taste for since living up here). When I got home I found a box of food waiting for me. When I was in Anchorage, Katie and I did a little shopping for the second half of the year. The boxes are starting to trickle in. The custodians from the school are nice enough to pick up our mail from the post office. They deliver the boxes to the house and the paper mail to our school mailboxes. It’s really nice. The only things we have to go to the post for are things we have to sign for.
I am chatting with Katie right now (via. iChat) who is typing in her blog as well. I think it is time for some dinner and a little Alias.
Well… The kids are off to P.E. right now. It’s nice to be sitting in a quite classroom. After school on Saturday one of our teachers brought me some stuff she found on one of the school’s printers that wasn’t exactly school appropriate. So to find out whom the culprits was I first had to find out which site it came from. Luckily on one of the inappropriate pictures there was a water mark (text over the graphic showing ownership) that gave some sort of a web address, and there was a banner at the top of the page. So I tried the site that was watermarked on the picture and it turned out to be a website for video games. No porn there, or links to porn. So I thought I was at a dead end until I started to examine the top of the page. There was a site index, no links that gave the www. —–.com, but names. So I goggled one of the names of the links and what do you know, I found the site in question. So now I had the site, but how do you find out who has visited it you ask? Well this morning I called up GCI School Access (our ISP). They run our Internet filtering via a proxy. So I told them my problem and they asked for the site in question, and he gave me an IP address. Problem being it was MY ADDRESS. Mine was the only one there, which was really confusing. He did a little more looking and that I was the only one who typed in the entire address with the “www” at the beginning of the address. The other users had just typed in the part of the address that followed the “www”. So I now have a list of like 5 IP addresses to find. To locate those I find an IP that is in use that is on the list. Using my computer I ping that address (send out packets of info and bounce like radar). While the packets are being sent our I go to the switch and unplug one connection at a time until the packets don’t go through. That tells me what port the computer is getting its internet connection from. Then I locate that switch and it is either connected to a computer directly or to a airport base station that is giving the connection wirelessly to a computer. Once I find if I can have a talk with the class about appropriate computer use. That’s my exciting news for now. Looks like the kids are back from P.E. Gotta go 🙂
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