The Geek's Classroom

I am currently in the process of moving my blog to make the folks at blogger.com happy.  If you cannot find this blog in the next couple of days, try visiting http://rmblog.eaglevista.net/

Wish me luck!

Labels: blogging, tech support

So, last night began our marathon of watching Lost. If you have nothing better to do, and want to try keeping up, please let us know, so we know who we can talk to.

A couple of notes: We wont be able to watch on Tuesdays, so our schedule does include 3 episodes of season 5 on Feb. 2nd. Also, the weekend of January 22nd, we know we won't be available to watch so you can adjust the schedule since you probably have  2 more days than us. (We are also taking New Year's Eve off.)

Finally, we won't be tying ourselves 100% to the schedule, so please know that we may watch 4 some nights so we can have more nights of just 2. But it is about a season a week....

Season 1

December 28

1 "Pilot: Part 1"

2 "Pilot: Part 2"

3 "Tabula Rasa"

December 29

4 "Walkabout"

5 "White Rabbit"

6 "House of the Rising Sun"

7 "The Moth"

December 30

8 "Confidence Man"

9 "Solitary"

10 "Raised by Another"

January 1

11 "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues"

12 "Whatever the Case May Be"

13 "Hearts and Minds"

January 2

14 "Special"

15 "Homecoming"

16 "Outlaws"

January 3

17 "…In Translation"

18 "Numbers"

19 "Deus Ex Machina"

January 4

20 "Do No Harm"

21 "The Greater Good"

22 "Born to Run"

January 5

23 "Exodus: Part 1"

24 "Exodus: Part 2"

25 "Exodus: Part 2"

Season 2

January 6

26 "Man of Science, Man of Faith"

27 "Adrift"

28 "Orientation"

January 7

29 "Everybody Hates Hugo"

30 "...And Found"

31 "Abandoned"

January 8

32 "The Other 48 Days"

33 "Collision"

34 "What Kate Did"

January 9

35 "The 23rd Psalm"

36 "The Hunting Party"

37 "Fire + Water"

January 10

38 "The Long Con"

39 "One of Them"

40 "Maternity Leave"

January 11

41 "The Whole Truth"

42 "Lockdown"

43 "Dave"

January 12

44 "S.O.S."

45 "Two for the Road"

46 "?"

January 13

47 "Three Minutes"

48 "Live Together, Die Alone"

49 "Live Together, Die Alone"

Season 3

January 14

50 "A Tale of Two Cities"

51 "The Glass Ballerina"

52 "Further Instructions"

January 15

53 "Every Man for Himself"

54 "The Cost of Living"

55 "I Do"

January 16

56 "Not in Portland"

57 "Flashes Before Your Eyes"

58 "Stranger in a Strange Land"

January 17

59 "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead"

60 "Enter 77"

61 "Par Avion"

January 18

62 "The Man from Tallahassee"

63 "Exposé"

64 "Left Behind"

January 19

65 "One of Us"

66 "Catch-22"

67 "D.O.C."

January 20

68 "The Brig"

69 "The Man Behind the Curtain"

70 "Greatest Hits"

January 21

71 "Through the Looking Glass"

72 "Through the Looking Glass"

Season 4

73 "The Beginning of the End"

January 24

74 "Confirmed Dead"

75 "The Economist"

January 25

76 "Eggtown"

77 "The Constant"

78 "The Other Woman"

January 26

79 "Ji Yeon"

80 "Meet Kevin Johnson"

81 "The Shape of Things to Come"

January 27

82 "Something Nice Back Home"

83 "Cabin Fever"

84 "There's No Place Like Home: Part 1"

January 28

85 "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2"

86 "There's No Place Like Home: Part 2"

Season 5

87 "Because You Left"

January 29

88 "The Lie"

89 "Jughead"

90 "The Little Prince"

January 30

91 "This Place Is Death"

92 "316"

93 "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

January 31

94 "LaFleur"

95 "Namaste"

96 "He's Our You"

February 1

97 "Whatever Happened, Happened"

98 "Dead Is Dead"

99 "Some Like It Hoth"

100 "The Variable"

February 2

101 "Follow the Leader"

102 "The Incident"

103 "The Incident"

Labels: entertainment

I don't know if this will make my blog more fun and interesting, but I thought I'd give it a try!  Don't expect that this will totally revive the blog, but it may.  We shall see!

Labels: Microsoft

Sorry for those of you that saw this on my Facebook post - I just really think that its worth mentioning....

Let's imagine that your boss told you to get to work by 6:00 just one day because he wanted to get out by 3:00 because he had a lot of things to do before sundown. Something tells me that 90% of America would tell this boss to go jump in a lake - and yet this is exactly what we do as a nation for the entire summer.

And, just curious, who exactly benefits from this that couldn't just get their own butt out of bed an hour earlier without interupting the rest of the world?

Accidents are up. Productivity is down. It doesn't save energy. And the whole farmers thing is just a crock. So, why do we really keep doing this?

Labels: Daylight Savings Time, frustration

I know that just about everybody has given up on my blog. I've primarily moved to Facebook. I hate Facebook more than Blogger, but that's a post for another day. Perhaps I will still use Blogger for the intellectual thoughts and Facebook for the Facebook-ish stuff. (Yes, that does imply that most everything on Facebook in non-intelligent.

Anyway....

To give a little background, I have been asked to do a training at a local high school as to how GPS/Geocaching/Waymarking/etc. can be used in the classroom. (I was specifically asked to teach on Geocaching - which really doesn't hold a lot of value for the general classroom - so I expanded it a little.) Well, the problem is that there are no Geocaches within a mile of the school. So, I went on Sunday to scout out a few locations. I had a couple of containers with me, so I placed some, but I wanted to give some options for my training sessions and so I scouted out a few additional locations where containers could be hidden as well.

When I posted the coordinates where I had hid the containers to the Geocaching web site, it was suggested to me that one of my containers was a little too close to the playground equipment - that people looking for the container might look suspiscious. They were right - the container was actually on the playground equiment and I didn't really think about how that might look.

Also, over the weekend, I was informed that one of my geocaches had been raided. Interestingly enough, all that I think was stolen was the log-book. The person that found it put it back together and actually placed it back exactly where it was supposed to go. (I guess the coordinates must be pretty spot-on.)

So, I went out today with a friend to do some caching and also finish placing some caches, do some maintanance and of course move the container from off the playground equipment. Well, adding the log book to the raided cache went well enough - just frustrating that somebody would do something so stupid.

But when we got to the park near the school, things went from bad to worse. When I went to pull the original container off of the playground equipment, it was gone. So, since it was a brand new container, my friend and I did some digging around. As the folks from the Geocaching web site suggested, this got some attention from other people who were watching their kids at the playground. After not too long, we gave up assuming that it was gone. We went to place another cache in a location that I had already scouted out while thinking about where else in the park I could place another container to replace the one from the playground.

Well, we ended up back near the playground at some picnic benchs. While we visually scanned the area for a place to hide a container. We noticed that there was a lady that was looking at us kind of funny, but we had done a few odd things since we got to the park - digging around under some playground equipment and then walking to a rock in the middle of a field and walked back, but nothing that I would consider to catch anybody's attention.

So, I finally found a place to hide the container, but we needed to get the GPS coordinates for the location and also place it without this lady really seeing what we were doing, so we sat there a while longer. Finally we were successful. We got in my car, the lady seemed to have moved on - was now talking to somebody on her cell phone, so we looked up a place to go look for a cache and headed off.

About 1/4 mile from the park we passed by a police car. He immediately turns on his lights and flips a U behind us. I roll down my window and wait and the officer asks me to please step out of the car and keep my hands where he can see them. So, after explaining the sport of Geocaching to him, giving him my information, etc. he realizes that it was innocent fun - and also seems a little interested in learning more. We finally head on our way, the officer heads to the park presumably to calm down a lady who had seemingly worked herself into a fairly tight spin.

So, then at home, I'm still sort of processing my day, and I decide to go attempt a quick fix on our bathroom drain, which of course completely busts through - not the tub, just the drain, so we aren't looking at completely replacing the bathtub, thankfully.

Well, thanks to my introvert tendancies added to a flustering day that I am trying to get my head around - my wife is getting increasingly frustrated trying to ask about my dinner preferences - which at that point, I really don't care, but she is convinced will somehow improve my outlook on the world. Of course the only restaurant that I can think of that might do anything near the magic that my sweet wife is hoping for is Benihana's.

So, after spending a lot of money on a very fun and very long dinner, I think I can get my head started working again to get through a new day.

Labels: frustration, geocaching

Well, Blockbuster and I are no longer getting along.

The first irritation was more my fault and so I was a little more accepting - I let a gift card sit too long and they decided to wipe it clean. It's their policy - a well stated policy - but a policy that states that money is more important than the client relationship and trust. I through away my membership card on that one - so I'm already pretty much done. I figured that this was a personal decision - it was mostly my fault and so no sense to blog it....

However, this week, I was receiving 60 to 100 spams a minute for several hours from an email address that I only ever gave to Blockbuster. (Sometimes it's nice to have your own email server.) I know that Blockbuster is struggling to stay alive, but to sell email addresses is a very poor business decision.

I'm really liking the Netflix/XBox partnership that has begun this month. The only struggle is value - obviously we don't rent that many movies....

Labels: entertainment, trust

Last week, I was thinking through the upcoming election and realized there is a slogan that we can ALL agree on:

Dems in '08 - The Great Obama Nation!

If somebody finds or wants to design a shirt for the convention, I would be happy to buy one. (Please note: I can't buy one from everybody, but I would like to have one.)

Of course any time to come up with something cute and quippy, you can search the internet and realize that it is not a unique idea, but oh well....

Labels: funny

On June 22nd (my anniversary by the way), my sweet lady went with me to a "Geocaching Event". Not the most exciting time, but they are starting to grow on me. The event happened to be my 200th cache. Which means that I am now officially "ranked" in the Geocaching world. I am currently 498th in the state, 22,888th in the nation, and 37,971st in the world.

Let's just say I have a long way to go. :) In case you want to get me a gift, here's a suggestion - unfortunately, they're not for sale.

Labels: geocaching

So, I know it's not earth shattering, but in case you've been wondering what I've been up to....



I was really close to getting a perfect 5280, but I accidentally got 2 achievements at the same time and overshot. Luckily Viva Pinata: Party Animals, a perfect 6000 wasn't too far away. (And thanks to silly games like Yaris, 5 point achievements still exist in the world.)

Labels: entertainment, Xbox

Labels: entertainment, personality