Archive for August, 2009
Writing Syllabi, Fighting Technology
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on August 13th, 2009
This semester I have to produce two new syllabi. One for a class I’ve never taught before — mythology — and the other for a class I’ve taught several times but am completely overhauling — composition 1.
I spent much of today working on the latter one, which is generally going well. The only snag I’m trying to work on now is getting the class ported over onto Blackboard, the Citadel’s online class service. This is no knock against the school, mind you, as I don’t know what feasible choice they have, but I’m finding Blackboard ridiculously clunky and antiquated. Tasks that should be simple — like automatically running papers that are submitted online through the system’s plagiarism checker — are either unavailable or very complicated. Quite annoying.
Why can’t everything be simple? You know, like the iPhone on which I’m typing this post?
Summer 2009 Pictures
Posted by Michael Livingston in Homelife on August 10th, 2009
It took me some time to get the many hundreds of pictures whittled down, but I think I’ve managed it:
As you can see, we saw and did quite a lot while we were out West. There are many more pictures that are specific to the Jeep-related things we managed to do, but I’ll put those in some separate Project XK posts.
Someone asked me on the trip why we would possibly spend so long out and about each summer. I could answer in several ways — including gesturing wildly to some of these pictures — but perhaps the simplest explanation follows.
On our trip, we stayed at the following locations, at which the kids saw the following family:
1. At my folks’ house in Denver, the kids saw their Granddad and Grandma, their Great-grandma, their Great-”uncle” Bobby, their adopted-family of Chuck and Shirley, in addition to their Uncle Lance, Aunt Bridget, and four cousins.
2. At Sherry’s mom’s house in Ouray, they saw their Nana.
3. At Sherry’s dad’s house in Montrose, they saw their Grandpa and Margot, along with their Great-aunt and Great-uncle.
4. At Sherry’s aunt’s house in Aurora, they saw a Great-grandma and a Great-grandpa, several more great-aunts and great-uncles, along with, well, I lost count of how many cousins, but it was a lot.
Plus we saw great country, great friends, and just generally had a great time.
Home
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on August 7th, 2009
We’re back in Charleston now. Got a lot of catching up to do, but I’ll try to be sure much of it is hereabouts for all to see.
Thanks to all our friends and family that we managed to see this trip!
Another Week or So of Silence
Posted by Michael Livingston in Uncategorized on August 2nd, 2009
I’m still alive. I’m also still on vacation.
Alas, though, the end is in sight: we begin to wend our way back eastward today. As such, it’ll be a bit longer of quiet hereabouts before I catch up on things with posts aplenty about what we’ve been doing.
The short of it is: having a blast.
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