From the desk of Mr. Walters

I was watching a bit of Public TV on a recent weekend, because I'm a dork who loves public television.  I was watching Martin Yan's China .  This is basically a cooking show in which Yan visits locations in China, gives you a bit of cultural and geographical history and then cooks a local dish.  This particular week he was high in the mountains of southern China, visiting beautiful Lugu Lake, where women rule the roost. A seven-hour drive from the nearest major city, the people of this region are known for both their hospitality and their food.  You get the idea. 

  Okay, today I want to address one Elephant in the room, that big "global-warming-destruction-of-the-earth-as-we-know-it" thing. Basically, we've passed the point where there is any debate at all that it is indeed happening.  The climate is changing, and it's going to equate to a bit more than minor discomfort for most of us.  The thing is, I don't think our society locally or globally is willing to undergo a little discomfort now to prevent severe tragedy later. Don't get me wrong, a lot of folks are doing their parts.  You may be one of them.  Maybe you use cloth grocery bags, high efficiency light bulbs, or maybe you even drive a hybrid.  That's just awesome.  Incidentally, when was the last time you had a cheeseburger ? 

After fixing my screen resolution and solving my internet woes with Comcast (bad connector that took 5 months and 3 visits to discover whilst they tried to blame my modem, my router, and finally my operating system), I've begun the hard task of setting up my desktop environment, a home network for file and print sharing, and getting some entertainment necessities loaded. First of all, let's talk about desktop eye-candy.  After much pain and suffering, I decided to go with Beryl .  Compiz was buggy and crazy.  I really don't give a darn about cubes and desktop switchers.  I just wanted a transparent appearance for for my windows, which you can see below.

I recently read Dennis Southwood’s October article, “ It's Not Just a Game—It's Skills for Life” from Educators' eZine. I know, I’m a bit behind on my reading, but I have a three-month-old, which I consider an ample excuse. Southwood begins by posing the following question. Q: Your students are most likely to be learning the real-world skills that employers demand when they are: a) In the classroom, following the lessons in the textbook. b) At home, completing assigned homework. c) On line, playing World of Warcraft. d) On a class field trip, visiting the offices of a local corporation. The answer is, of course, WOW (World of Warcraft). More and more, educators, scientists, and business executives are apparently coming to believe that such games require players to master skills in demand by today's employers, such as critical thinking, team building, problem solving, and collaboration.

I'm sitting here sipping my coffee and eating a cheap danish, waiting for the keynote speaker. Laptops on the table are the rule rather than the exception. The woman to my right is video chatting with her 7 and 10 year-olds on her Mac book, while the woman to my left is checking email on her Blackberry. Bear in mind, these are the digital immigrants. We're all teachers and administrators in our 30's through 50's. If this is the norm for us, imagine what our students did before or during breakfast, this morning!

...and there was much rejoicing. After weeks of frustration, the first solution I had tried (typing "sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel" in the terminal) finally panned out.  I turned out that after installing the intel driver I had to manually edit my xorg.conf file, replacing the defaut "vesa" driver with the word "intel".  Below you can click on the thumbs to see my original 1024 x 768 layout and my new 1440 x 900 goodness.  Check out all of that desktop real estate I gained back!  Wide open spaces are wonderful, particularly when you're running a seperate OS on a virtual box!     Tune in next time for "The Noble Experiment, Part IV: The Perfect Desktop"

Okay, so I've been a little distracted lately, what with changing diapers and feeding and just plain enjoying the company of my 1-month-old son.  My distraction, however abruptly ended when, in one week, my Windoze Vista single-handedly: Destroyed my Flash Drive (not kidding... my Lexxar USB drive doesn't even open anymore.  It's just dead). Deleted files I was backing up to a CD on the CD and the HD because it "lost the connection" Wouln't record sound in Macromedia Captivate (perhaps the only program for which I keep windoze around).