The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey December 6, 2011

On the value of shorter class sessions

With this Fall Semester, UMUC fully transitioned all of their classes to an 8-week format. Most classes previously had been 12 or 13 weeks in length. The price is the same, and the number of units granted for completing the class are the same, but the material, and time, there is less. Here's the pertinent commentary from one of the course evaluations I've written this Fall: This course suffers from the shorter (8 week) session length. The ONE value of the shorter courses is that they're shorter. It's like 1.5 quart ice cream for the same price as the old…

Brian Bilbrey December 5, 2011

Hah!

Remind me not to attempt brain surgery this week. I ended up remounting the Windows drive into the chassis, and booting there for the financial management software. Hard mounted to metal, so it's noisy as hell. But it got the job done, and I was able to boot back into hellboy shortly thereafter. It was opening the chassis to pop in the drive that revealed the missing screwdriver. Hmmm.

Brian Bilbrey December 4, 2011

Transitions

Another busy week, another year nearly wound all the way down. Work was assisting in proposal writing, preparing for a big weekend systems test, and ten hours yesterday working remote on said test. In between, a bunch of reading and some coding and conference participation for my Java programming class, a bit of left-over turkey for noshing, and sleep when it was able to fit into the schedule. Oh, yeah. "Transitions", eh? So I stripped out all the installed games off of the Windows box, and got that all winnowed down just the small-ish C-drive. Then I pulled the drive…

Brian Bilbrey November 27, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

For those that celebrated the holiday, or for those that just like to give thanks, and belatedly, Happy Thanksgiving! We had a quiet week at home. We were both off work for the whole week. I gave a fair bit of time to school work, and a few hours to Skyrim. Marcia quilted and ripped and quilted. We did a big bird for the day itself: 23 pounds. We've now got a pot full of yummy turkey soup, a week's worth of turkey tetrazzini, and more meat left. So, a good week overall. We hope that everyone else enjoyed theirs, as…

Brian Bilbrey November 21, 2011

Continued Woodshop Reorganization

The "cart" I use for the jointer and the router table was empty space at the bottom, and when stored against the wall, I kept the compressor in the niche. But I had to move the compressor every time I wanted the cart out in the middle. Now the compressor rolls with the cart! Previously seen on that shelf: an Aiwa boom box. This new setup uses the old Logitech system from my office desktop, providing an audio input for the iPhone, which also can charge (which is good in the low-signal environment in the basement): Being a wood-hoarder, I…