Labor Day Weekend

This was our last real weekend of freedom before heading back to school with kids.  I have been working for the last three weeks trying to rebuild all of the district websites… Its quite a task.   The list runs something like this…

• District Website
• High School
• Roosevelt Elementary
• Parkview Elementary
• Nurses Website
• Each staff member has a site. (roughly 250)
• All the sports (basketball, track, football, tennis, etc.)
• All the student activites (chior, band, orchestra, etc.)
• Community Ed

Im sure there are more that I am either not thinking about, or haven’t even been made aware of.  So that has kept me pretty busy.

Aside from that I’ve been helping Rudy (the network admin for the district) set up polyvision boards, install projectors, set up airports, which doesn’t really fall under my job description, but its a lot of work for one guy.  I have also been helping teachers get their classroom websites up and running, and working with a few of them on how they can start to implement some technology into their classroom.

Needless to say, I’m wicked behind and have decided I’ll work as hard as I can, but at the moment I have more tasks then can be completed before school starts.

So back to school starting tomorrow morning.  Amidts all that I haven’t really had time to plan for the two classes I’ll be teaching.  One being web design and the other broadcasting.  I’ve worked of the last couple of days hammering out a syllabus for each class, and lesson plans for the first week.  Those are finally under my belt, which feels good.  We’ll see how those plans play out in the classroom this week.

So to take a little break from the actual computer we headed out on Donny’s new pontoon boat yesterday with April, Trisha, Tonya, Cindy, Erin, myself, and of course Donny.  It was a great day to be out on the lake.  Very very warm, and just enough of a breeze to keep us somewhat cool, and throw the occasional wave up over the bow splashing everyone from the front of the boat to the stern.

I was reading up on CSS (cascading style sheets) while we were out and about.  I haven’t had time to do any reading lately, so it was a perfect time to relax on the boat and listen to everyone chit chat and catch up on all that fun xhtml/CSS goodness.

Although summer feels like it has come to an end, the days are still warm, and the lake is still swimable.  We went out a couple times today.  Its nolonger like bath water, but it sure helps cool you off from the hot sun.

Pizza

We started the day with sourdough pancakes.  For those of you who don’t know, my parents got this batch of starter going back in the late 70s.  Katie and I grew up with sourdough pancakes on the weekends, and sourdough bread from the leftover batter.

So after breakfast we headed out on the lake for some boating and tubing.  After the tubing we went out and about looking for a place to do some swimming and have a little picknick.  The trouble was all of our favorite places were in use by other people.  So we just dropped the anchor by a reef.  We did some swimming off the boat and had some cheese and crackers.

After some sun we headed back home for dinner.  I had been working on the leftover batter through out the day to use as a pizza dough.  So I streatched it out and thew it in the oven with some cheese and pepperoni and here’s how it came out.

Its been great having Jeremy, Nikiya, Rown, and Scout over for the weekend.

The McDonalds

Erin and I were lucky enough to have Jeremy and his family drive up from Bemidji to stay with us.

Its been fun to spend some time with their little girl Scout who is a little cutie.

They pulled in this afternoon and we hopped in the boat for a little tubing and swimming out at twin islands.  Rowan is pretty much a pro when it comes to the tube.

We did a little swimming out at Twin Islands.. Jeremy had a great jump off the top of the island.  It really is a fun place to go swimming.

We boated around a bit and even went to MooseBirds by boat to get some ice cream after dinner.

Its been a great day.  Its so much fun hanging out with Jeremey again, and getting time to spend with Nikiya, Rowen, and Scout.

Little Breaks

Today I worked from home, which is always nice.  It saves me the drive into the office, and it allows me to get right to work when I get up.  The websites are coming along slowly.  It seems like I run into road blocks every hour or two.  The design of the site is pretty much done, so now I am just porting over all the content from the old sites to the new one.  Its a lot of copy and paste and making sure all the linked files are transfered over to the new server and organized in a manner that makes a little sense.

I take breaks every few hours to either play a little Mario Kart on the Wii, or go swimming in the lake with Erin.  Its nice to give the eyes a little break from staring at code and get the muscles moving around a bit more.

Erin also did some baking today and made home made blueberry muffins as well as some delicous peanut butter twists.  I’ve eaten about 6 of them this evening which isn’t the best for me, but they are pretty tasty.

Laura, Erin, Mike, and I went to “Step Brothers” tonight.  It was a little over the top at times, but Will Farrel is a fun actor.

Jeremy, Nikia, Rowen and Scout will be visiting and staying the night with us tomorrow.  Its always fun hanging out with Jeremy.  It should be a nice evening of boating and grilling.

Im off to work super early in the morning so I’d better get some sleep.

Back at it…

Well, I will officially start blogging again.

The HughesNet installer was here this morning setting up our “high” speed interent dish today.  Don’t get me wrong its better than dial up when it comes to progressive downloads and overall page loads, but the 900 ms ping times is killing me when I try to FTP files and do web work.  It is nice to be able to surf the web somewhat normally again.

For those of you who hadn’t heard, I accepted a job with the Virginia Minnesota Public Schools for this next year.  They already have me working this summer on revamping their district, high school, upper elementary, and lower elementary websites.  It is quite an undertaking and the beginning of the year is quickly approaching.  I would like to have all 4 sites done by the end of next week.

Along with being in charge of the websites for the district I will also be teaching two hours a day.  One class is a web design class, and the other is an advanced video editing / student broadcasting class.  I should be pretty fun.  The rest of the day I’ll be helping teachers integrate technology into their classes and the rest of the jobs that a tech person runs into.

The shcool uses only Apple computers, however they have the administrators running windows on their macs using bootcamp.  So I do have to deal with the dark side from time to time.

Erin and I have had a busy summer.  She has graciously accompanied me on the BWCACAST camping trips this summer.  We have our last scheduled camping trip this coming Monday.  I don’t know how long we’ll be able to go in for with work hanging over my head.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been getting up around 6:00 AM to get to work when everyone else does in Virginia.  I have about a 40 mile drive each way, so I have to get up a little earlier than I’d like to, or have had to in the past.  Here is what it looked like the other moring as I drug myself out of bed.

We needed another car since Erin got a job in Net Lake which is 40 miles the opposite direction I’ll be driving.  So we looked around on craig’s list and found a 02 Kia Spectra in Superior.  So last weekend we drove over there and bought it.  Its a nice car and gets about 32 mpg.  So that will be nice with the driving.

Thats all for now.  I’ve found that getting up at 6 AM causes you to go to bed earlier in the evening.

I should be posting more often now that we have upgraded from dail up out here at the lake.

I look forward to reading all of your blogs as well.  I havn’t been able to do much of that either, so it’ll be nice to see what everyone else is up to as well.

Lots to catch up on…

I know its been a long time since my last post, so I’ll try to give you a quick recap of whats happened since then.

Currently I am waiting for the third overtime in game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals between Detroit and Pittsburgh.  If Detroit scores the next goal they win the cup, if Pittsburgh scores they force a game 6 back in Pittsburgh.  Its been an exciting game.  They are tied at 3 a piece.

A few weeks ago Jesse and I took a weekend motorcycle class in Eveleth.  It started Friday night from 5 PM to 9 PM, and let me tell you, they used every minute of it.  The 4 hours was basically going through a book they had sent in the mail with instructions to read it before the class.  The evening came to an end with a multiple choice test.  Jesse’s quick studying in the parking lot allowed him to pull off a 100%.  My diligent three days of reading through the book and answering the questions through out the book enabled me to only miss one on the test.  So with the first step done we were back bright an early at 8 AM for the first 5 hours of actual riding time.  The class assumes you know nothing about riding a motorcycle, so it was perfect for me.  They walk you through everything from how to use the clutch to shifting, swerving, and turning.  We had great weather for the occasion with cool over cast skies.  I am so glad it wasn’t 90 degrees out.

The next day we were back again for the last day at 8 AM.  We had another 5 hours on the bikes picking up the speed and difficulty a bit working more on quick stops, running over obstacles, swerving, and slow tight turns.  The day ended with the actual driving test.  I made a couple of mistakes, but passed anyway.  The cool thing about the class is the test you take is good enough to get your Minnesota motorcycle license.

A quick break in the story..  Pittsburgh just won in the third overtime.. Game 6 in Pittsburgh on Wednesday…

So when I got back to Baxter I went into the DMV and not only added the motorcycle license, but also got my address changed to Erin’s Grandparents place in cook since we are moving there in a couple days.

Also since my last post I have finished my BSSD contract which feels really good.  Getting all 15 videos done was quite a job.  Its nice to have that all wrapped up before the summer really starts.

Two weekends ago I flew out to Tacoma to attend Katie’s college graduation.  It was fun to hang out with family and spend a quick couple days with her.

When I got back to Baxter I had a couple days off and then drove down to the cities to pick up Rick Holt who was coming over for a couple of days to work with me on finishing up my RISC contract.  Along with the barrage of video editing we found time to play a little Wii golf.  Rick is a feisty competitor.

Friday I drove him back down to the cities to fly out, then back up to Baxter to pick up Erin and we continued on our way up to Cook for the weekend.  We got in super late and worked all day Saturday on her grandparents house.  The new carpet was installed and looked and felt really nice.  We went out to dinner Saturday night with April, Jesse, and Trisha and then worked again all day Sunday on the house before heading back to Baxter.  We pretty much have all the plumbing done, and are getting closer and closer to having the place all fixed up.  Its really starting to look nice.

Erin is finishing up her last bit of work this week.  She worked Monday and still has Tuesday and half of Wednesday.  The nice part for her is there are no kid on any of these days.  She gets to work on packing up her classroom since they are cutting her position.

Tomorrow morning I will be picking up the Uhaul to load up everything in our apartment.  It’ll be a big job, but we should be able to get it everything packed up tomorrow.

Then Wednesday morning I will head off to cook, and Erin will follow when she is done with work.

I hope it all goes well…

Also in the last few weeks Jim and I have been working on getting his Motorcycle up and running.  I’m happy to say after a few parts from DennisKirk and some new gas and oil the bike is running like a charm.  Erin and I have been out for a couple short rides.  Once the house gets all settled I’m sure we’ll be out for some longer excursions.

Well that’s all for now.  Sorry there aren’t any pictures or video, I know they make posts a ton better.  I’ll try to do a better job of that on the next post.

Table Rock Falls

Last weekend Erin and I headed up to Cook.  We picked up some linoleum along the way.  I got the wood stove going as soon as we got home to get the house all warmed up before we attempted the install.   Saturday night around dinner time we started the process.

The directions tell you to leave an extra half inch on all the edges, put the linoleum in place and then after a day of sitting to trim it down.  Well let me tell you, that is the stupidest line of reasoning EVER.  In my experience (doing this only once) when you leave a half inch on every edge, it doesn’t fit in the area you cut it for.  Especially around the corners.  Anyway after about 6 hours of work we got it all installed.  It looks pretty good.  We still have to put the trim back on the doors and put baseboard down.  The carpet should be getting installed in a couple weeks.

On Sunday I was pretty sore from crawling around on the floor for 6 hours the night before.  Jim, Jesse, and I headed out for a little canoeing trip to Table Rock Falls.  We shot an episode for the BWCACAST site.  Jesse had his camera with and took some pretty cool pictures.  Here are a few of them.

It was a fun trip.  Nice to get out on the water.  We had a few snow flakes flying in the air, and it was a little grey out, but watching the volume of water churn its way down the narrow gorge.

It should be posted in the next week or so on the bwcacast site.  Hope you enjoy.

Back Post

I just was going through my pictures and found a couple that needed posting.

When Rick was getting more video taken of him by the Discovery channel, Keegan, Rohnan, and I hopped on the snowmachine to head out on the trail ahead of them.  We were a little concerned about the snow conditions and wanted to have an outlet to get the Discovery guy back to the yurts if the trail was poor.

So we drove out to the half way point on the trail and waited to see if they’d make it.  There weren’t any problems, and the boys and I were killing some time.  I got this nice photo of the boys on the snowmachine.

We didn’t want to start up the machine as soon as they went by because they were activly filming on the sled.  So we had some more time to kill.  I talked to boys into doing snow angels off the snowmachine…

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/snow_angels.mov 320 260]

It was fun haning out with them.  Its nice to feed off of their engergy.

Home

Well, I’m back in Minnesota again…  The funny thing is I recall three weeks ago when Erin and I were getting ready to leave she told me that when I came back from my trip it would be spring.  Well let me tell you…  Right now we are in the middle of a pretty healthy winter storm.  Forecasts say we should be getting up to 13 inches of snow by Saturday morning.  Excellent spring weather don’t you think?

I’ve been trying to get caught up on sleep.  When traveling around rural Alaska its pretty tough on your sleep patterns.  If you stay in the school, your sleeping on a classroom floor in which case you need to be up and packed up before the teachers come in the next morning.  Regardless you usually are flying the next day and have to be packed up anyway…

I was weathered in Breivg Mission for a few days, so I was able to visit with the Rudstroms..  I guess my last post kind of summed up that experience.

Anyway its nice to be back at home.  Nice to hang out with Erin again.  She’s been sick the last couple days 🙁  poor girl.  I hope that the district here decides to close school for tomorrow so she can rest up.  The downside to that is they have already canceled a couple of times and that in turn pushes the last day of school later into June.

So now that I’m back I will be hitting the video editing super hard.  I’d like to have all of it done before summer break.  I’ll keep you posted and will put finished pieces up for you to ridicule and critique.  🙂

Storm Bound in Brevig Mission

I was going through my iPhoto library to get photos for this post, and came across a picture of Sandford and Drum that Erin and I took on our way back from Valdez.

A few days ago I was in White Mountain filming a cross country ski race and a biathlon competition. It was a beautiful sunny day out and really not that cold which was a nice change from the last time I was up here and had sunny weather. I shot some video of the start of the biathlon race and got some video from different parts of the trail. I then made it over to the shooting area.  It was really fun to watch the kids ski up to the range huffing and puffing.  Lay down grab a rifle, slow their breathing down and hit 5 out of 5 on the target.

I left White Mountain and flew to Nome on my way to Brevig Mission.  I stopped over at Fat Freddies for a little lunch since my flight wasn’t leaving for another few hours.  I had a bacon cheese burger and a peanut butter milk shake and killed time watching movies on my laptop.  Lance Macky came in to eat just after finishing his latest sled dog race.

After a little food and a couple of movies I was off to Brevig Mission.  The usual rout when flying to Brevig is you leave Nome, fly to Teller, then to Brevig, then to Wales, and then back to Nome.  Well on this trip we went first to Wales then to Brevig and then they were heading right back to Nome.  So I got a little longer flight out of the deal.  While in Wales I snapped this picture of Razor Back mountain.

When I landed in Brevig the local Frontier agent gave me a ride to CO and AnnMaire’s.  CO and I visited for a little while… AnnMaire was on her way back from Unlakleet with Doug the BSSD pilot.  So when she was about to land I got to watch Harold while CO went to pick her up.  In the few minutes that he was gone the little guy crashed out.

The next day CO and I headed over to teller to get the video I needed for the BSSD recruiting video project.  It didn’t take very long, so we decided to go out for a ride around the mountains behind Brevig.  Here are a few pictures from the trip…

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/co_slide.mov 320 260]

I was supposed to fly back to Nome to get to Savoonga the next day.  The weather however had different plans for me.  There was freezing rain in Nome, and both Bering Air and Frontier Alaska (who just merged with Hageland) canceled all of their flights for the day.  This gave me some extra time to play with Harold and visit with CO and AnnMaire.  It was very nice to have the extra time to spend with them.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/04/harold_laugh.mov 320 260]

So this morning it wasn’t looking good for me to get out of Brevig.  The weather was still pretty bad in Nome, and it was going between rain and snow in Brevig.  Really not the best flying conditions.  I got a call around 10:00 letting me know that Frontier was sending a plane out.  So I got all packed up and hopped on the plane.

I am now sitting at Airport Pizza in Nome waiting for my flight out to St. Lawerence Island.  I’ll be going to Savoonga tonight.  Then my plan is to go from Gambel to Savoonga in the morning and then Gambel to Nome in the afternoon.  I hope the weather will allow this to happen.  🙂